Part 11
Positivism in Germany is represented by Dühring in a biography which is only three-fourths of a column in length—an article which is merely an attack, both personal and general. “His patriotism,” we learn, “is fervent, but narrow and exclusive.” (Dühring idolized Frederick the Great.) Ardigò, the important Italian positivist, receives no mention whatever in the Encyclopædia, although in almost any adequate history of modern philosophy, even a brief one, you will find a discussion of his work.
With the exception of Lotze, the philosophers of the new idealism receive scant treatment in the _Britannica_. Hartmann and Fechner are accorded only one column each; and Wilhelm Wundt, whose æsthetic and psychological researches outstrip even his significant philosophical work, is accorded only half a column! Francis Herbert Bradley has no biography—a curious oversight, since he is English; and Fouillée receives only a little over half a column.
The most inadequate and prejudiced treatment in the _Britannica_ of any modern philosopher is to be found in the biography of Nietzsche, which is briefer than Mrs. Humphry Ward’s! Not only is Nietzsche accorded less space than is given to such British philosophical writers as Dugald Stewart, Henry Sidgwick, Richard Price, John Norris, Thomas Hill Green, James Frederick Ferrier, Adam Ferguson, Ralph Cudworth, Anthony Collins, Arthur Collier, Samuel Clarke and Alexander Bain—an absurd and stupid piece of narrow provincial prejudice—but the biography itself is superficial and inaccurate. The supposed doctrine of Nietzsche is here used to expose the personal opinions of the tutor of Corpus Christi College who was assigned the task of interpreting Nietzsche to the readers of the _Britannica_. It would be impossible to gather any clear or adequate idea of Nietzsche and his work from this biased and moral source. Here middle-class British insularity reaches its high-water mark.
Other important modern thinkers, however, are given but little better treatment. Lange receives only three-fourths of a column; Paulsen, less than half a column; Ernst Mach, only seventeen lines; Eucken, only twenty-eight lines, with a list of his works; and Renouvier, two-thirds of a column. J. C. Maxwell, though, the Cambridge professor, gets two columns—twice the space given Nietzsche!
In the biography of William James we discern once more the contempt which England has for this country. Here is a man whose importance is unquestioned even in Europe, and who stands out as one of the significant figures in modern thought; yet the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, that “supreme book of knowledge,” gives him a biography of just twenty-eight lines! And it is Americans who are furnishing the profits for this English reference work!
Perhaps the British editors of this encyclopædia think that we should feel greatly complimented at having William James admitted at all when so many other important moderns of Germany and France and America are excluded. But so long as unimportant English philosophical writers are given biographies, we have a right to expect, in a work which calls itself an “international dictionary of biography,” the adequate inclusion of the more deserving philosophers of other nations.
But what do we actually find? You may hunt the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ through, yet you will not see the names of John Dewey and Stanley Hall mentioned! John Dewey, an American, is perhaps the world’s leading authority on the philosophy of education; but the British editors of the Encyclopædia do not consider him worth noting, even in a casual way. Furthermore, Stanley Hall, another American, who stands in the front rank of the world’s genetic psychologists, is not so much as mentioned. And yet Hall’s great work, _Adolescence_, appeared five years before the _Britannica_ went to press! Nor has Josiah Royce a biography, despite the fact that he was one of the leaders in the philosophical thought of America, and was even made an LL.D. by Aberdeen University in 1900. These omissions furnish excellent examples of the kind of broad and universal culture which is supposed to be embodied in the _Britannica_.
But these are by no means all the omissions of the world’s important modern thinkers. Incredible as it may seem, there is no biography of Hermann Cohen, who elaborated the rationalistic elements in Kant’s philosophy; of Alois Riehl, the positivist neo-Kantian; of Windelband and Rickert, whose contributions to the theory of eternal values in criticism are of decided significance to-day; of Freud, a man who has revolutionized modern psychology and philosophic determinism; of Amiel Boutroux, the modern French philosopher of discontinuity; of Henri Bergson, whose influence and popularity need no exposition here; of Guyau, one of the most effective critics of English utilitarianism and evolutionism; or of Jung.
When we add Roberto Ardigò, Weininger, Edelmann, Tetans, and Sibbern to this list of philosophic and psychologic writers who are not considered of sufficient importance to receive biographical mention in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, we have, at a glance, the prejudicial inadequacy and incompleteness of this “great” English reference work. Nor can any excuse be offered that the works of these men appeared after the _Britannica_ was printed. At the time it went to press even the most modern of these writers held a position of sufficient significance or note to have been included.
In closing, and by way of contrast, let me set down some of the modern British philosophical writers who are given liberal biographies; Robert Adamson, the Scottish critical historian of philosophy; Alexander Bain; Edward and John Caird, Scottish philosophic divines; Harry Calderwood, whose work was based on the contention that fate implies knowledge and on the doctrine of divine sanction; David George Ritchie, an unimportant Scotch thinker; Henry Sidgwick, an orthodox religionist and one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research; James H. Stirling, an expounder of Hegel and Kant; William Wallace, an interpreter of Hegel; and Garth Wilkinson, the Swedenborgian homeopath.
Such is the brief record of the manner in which the world’s modern philosophers are treated in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. From this work hundreds of thousands of Americans are garnering their educational ideas.
XI
RELIGION
Throughout several of the foregoing chapters I have laid considerable emphasis on the narrow parochial attitude of the _Britannica’s_ editors and on the constant intrusion of England’s middle-class Presbyterianism into nearly every branch of æsthetics. The _Britannica_, far from being the objective and unbiased work it claims to be, assumes a personal and prejudiced attitude, and the culture of the world is colored and tinctured by that viewpoint. It would appear self-obvious to say that the subject of religion in any encyclopædia whose aim is to be universal, should be limited to the articles on religious matters. But in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ this is not the case. As I have shown, those great artists and thinkers who do not fall within the range of _bourgeois_ England’s suburban morality, are neglected, disparaged, or omitted entirely.
Not only patriotic prejudice, but evangelical prejudice as well, characterizes this encyclopædia’s treatment of the world’s great achievements; and nowhere does this latter bias exhibit itself more unmistakably than in the articles relating to Catholicism. The trickery, the manifest ignorance, the contemptuous arrogance, the inaccuracies, the venom, and the half-truths which are encountered in the discussion of the Catholic Church and its history almost pass the bounds of credibility. The wanton prejudice exhibited in this department of the _Britannica_ cannot fail to find resentment even in non-Catholics, like myself; and for scholars, either in or out of the Church, this encyclopædia, as a source of information, is not only worthless but grossly misleading.
The true facts relating to the inclusion of this encyclopædia’s article on Catholicism, as showing the arrogant and unscholarly attitude of the editors, are as interesting to those outside of the Church as to Catholics themselves. And it is for the reason that these articles are typical of a great many of the Encyclopædia’s discussions of culture in general that I call attention both to the misinformation contained in them and to the amazing refusal of the _Britannica’s_ editors to correct the errors when called to their attention at a time when correction was possible. The treatment of the Catholic Church by the _Britannica_ is quite in keeping with its treatment of other important subjects, and it emphasizes, perhaps better than any other topic, not only the Encyclopædia’s petty bias and incompleteness, but the indefensible and mendacious advertising by which this set of books was foisted upon the American public. And it also gives direct and irrefutable substantiation to my accusation that the spirit of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ is closely allied to the provincial religious doctrines of the British _bourgeoisie_; and that therefore it is a work of the most questionable value.
Over five years ago T. J. Campbell, S. J., in _The Catholic Mind_, wrote an article entitled _The Truth About the Encyclopædia Britannica_—an article which, from the standpoint of an authority, exposed the utter unreliability of this Encyclopædia’s discussion of Catholicism. The article is too long to quote here, but enough of it will be given to reveal the inadequacy of the _Britannica_ as a source of accurate information. “The _Encyclopædia Britannica_,” the article begins, “has taken an unfair advantage of the public. By issuing all its volumes simultaneously it prevented any protests against misstatements until the whole harm was done. Henceforth prudent people will be less eager to put faith in prospectuses and promises. The volumes were delivered in two installments a couple of months apart. The article _Catholic Church_, in which the animus of the Encyclopædia might have been detected, should naturally have been in the first set. It was adroitly relegated to the end of the second set, under the caption _Roman Catholic Church_.
“It had been intimated to us that the Encyclopædia’s account of the Jesuits was particularly offensive. That is our excuse for considering it first. Turning to it we found that the same old battered scarecrow had been set up. The article covers ten and a half large, double-columned, closely-printed pages, and requires more than an hour in its perusal. After reading it two or three times we closed the book with amazement, not at the calumnies with which the article teems and to which custom has made us callous, but at the lack of good judgment, of accurate scholarship, of common information, and business tact which it reveals in those who are responsible for its publication.
“It ought to be supposed that the subscribers to this costly encyclopædia had a right to expect in the discussion of all the questions presented an absolute or quasi-absolute freedom from partisan bias, a sincere and genuine presentation of all the results of the most modern research, a positive exclusion of all second-hand and discredited matter, and a scrupulous adherence to historical truth. In the article in question all these essential conditions are woefully lacking.
“Encyclopædias of any pretence take especial pride in the perfection and completeness of their bibliographies. It is a stamp of scholarship and a guarantee of the thoroughness and reliability of the article, which is supposed to be an extract and a digest of all that has been said or written on the subject. The bibliography annexed to the article on the _Jesuits_, is not only deplorably meagre, but hopelessly antiquated. Thus, for instance, only three works of the present century are quoted; one of them apparently for no reason whatever, viz.: _The History of the Jesuits of North America_, in three volumes, by Thomas Hughes, S. J., for, as far as we are able to see, the Encyclopædia article makes no mention of their being with Lord Baltimore in Maryland, or of the preceding troubles of the Jesuits in England, which were considered important enough for a monumental work, but evidently not for a compiler of the Encyclopædia. Again, the nine words, ‘laboring amongst the Hurons and Iroquois of North America,’ form the sum total of all the information vouchsafed us about the great missions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though we are referred to the seventy-three volumes of Thwaites’ edition of the _Jesuits Relations_. Had the author or editor even glanced at these books he might have seen that besides the Huron and Iroquois missions, which were very brief in point of time and very restricted in their territorial limitations, the Jesuit missions with the Algonquins extended from Newfoundland to Alaska, and are still continued; he would have found that most of the ethnological, religious, linguistic and geographical knowledge we have of aboriginal North America comes from those _Jesuit Relations_; and possibly without much research the sluggish reader would have met with a certain inconspicuous Marquette; but as Englishmen, up to the Civil War, are said to have imagined that the Mississippi was the dividing line between the North and South, the value of the epoch-making discovery of the great river never entered this slow foreigner’s mind. Nor is there any reference to the gigantic labors of the Jesuits in Mexico; but perhaps Mexico is not considered to be in North America.
“Nor is there in this bibliography any mention of the _Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu_, nor of the _Monumenta Pædagogica_, nor is there any allusion to the great and learned works of Duhr, Tacchi-Venturi, Fouqueray, and Kroes, which have just been published and are mines of information on the history of the Society in Spain, Germany, Italy and France; and although we are told of the _Historia Societatis Jesu_ by Orlandini, which bears the very remote imprint of 1620, is very difficult to obtain, and covers a very restricted period, there is apparently no knowledge of the classic work of Jouvency, nor is Sacchini cited, nor Polanco. The _Bibliothèque des écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus_, by De Backer, not ‘Backer,’ as the Encyclopædia has it, is listed; but it is simply shocking to find that there was no knowledge of Sommervogel, who is the continuator of De Backer, and who has left us a most scholarly and splendid work which is brought down to our own times, and for which De Backer’s, notable though it be, was only a preparation. In brief, the bibliography is absolutely worthless, not only for a scholar, but even for the average reader.
“On the other hand it is quite in keeping with the character of the writers who were chosen for the article. The New York _Evening Post_ informs us that before 1880, when a search for a suitable scribe for the Jesuit article was instituted, some one started on a hunt for Cardinal Newman, but the great man had no time. Then he thought of Manning, who, of course, declined, and finally knowing no other ‘Jesuit’ he gave the work to Littledale. Littledale, as everyone knows, was an Anglican minister, notorious not only for his antagonism to the Jesuits, but also to the Catholic Church. He gladly addressed himself to the task, and forthwith informed the world that ‘the Jesuits controlled the policy of Spain’; that ‘it was a matter of common knowledge that they kindled the Franco-Prussian war of 1870’; that ‘Pope Julius II dispensed the Father General from his vow of poverty,’ though that warrior Pope expired eight years before Ignatius sought the solitude of Manresa, and had as yet no idea of a Society of Jesus; again, that ‘the Jesuits from the beginning never obeyed the Pope’; that ‘in their moral teaching they can attenuate and even defend any kind of sin’; and, finally, not to be too prolix in this list of absurdities, that, prior to the Vatican Council, ‘they had filled up all the sees of Latin Christendom with bishops of their own selection.’
“It is true that only the last mentioned charge appears in the present edition, and it is a fortunate concession for Littledale’s suffering victims; for if ‘there are no great intellects among the Jesuits,’ and if they are only a set of ‘respectable mediocrities,’ as this ‘revised’ article tells us, they can point with pride to this feat which makes a dozen Franco-Prussian wars pale into insignificance alongside it. We doubt, however, if the 700 prelates who sat in the Vatican Council would accept that explanation of their promotion in the prelacy; and we feel certain that Cardinal Manning, who was one of the great figures in that assembly, would resent it, at least if it be true, as the Encyclopædia assures us, that he considered the suppression of the Society in 1773 to be the work of God, and was sure that another 1773 was coming.
“The wonder is that a writer who can be guilty of such absurdities should, after twenty years, be summoned from the dead as a witness to anything at all. But on the other hand it is not surprising when we see that the Rev. Ethelred Taunton, who is also dead and buried, should be made his yoke-fellow in ploughing over this old field, to sow again these poisonous weeds. There are many post-mortems in the Encyclopædia. Had the careless editors of the Encyclopædia consulted Usher’s _Reconstruction of the English Church_, they would have found Taunton described as an author ‘who makes considerable parade of the amount of his research, but has not gone very far and has added little, if anything, to what we knew before. As a whole, his book on _The History of the Jesuits in England_ is uncritical and prejudiced.’
“Such is the authority the Encyclopædia appeals to for information. That is bad enough, but in the list of authors Taunton is actually described as a ‘Jesuit.’ Possibly it is one of the punishments the Almighty has meted out to him for his misuse of the pen while on earth. But he never did half the harm to the Jesuits by his ill-natured assaults as he has to the Encyclopædia in being mistaken for an ‘S. J.’; for although there are some people who will believe anything an encyclopædia tells them, there are others who are not so meek and who will be moved to inquire how, if the editor of this publication is so lamentably ignorant of the personality and antecedents of his contributors, he can vouch for the reliability of what newspaper men very properly call the stuff that comes into the office. We are not told who revised the writings of those two dead men, one of whom departed this life twenty, the other four years ago; and we have to be satisfied with a posthumous and prejudiced and partly anonymous account of a great Order, about which many important books have been written since the demise of the original calumniators, and with which apparently the unknown reviser is unacquainted.
“It may interest the public to know that many of these errors were pointed out to the managers of the Encyclopædia at their New York office when the matter was still in page proof and could have been corrected. Evidently it was not thought worth while to pay any attention to the protest.
“It is true that in the minds of some of their enemies, especially in certain parts of the habitable globe, Catholics have no right to resent anything that is said of their practices and beliefs, no matter how false or grotesque such statements may be; and, consequently, we are not surprised at the assumption by the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ of its usual contemptuous attitude. Thus, for instance, on turning to the articles _Casuistry_ and _Roman Catholic Church_ we find them signed ‘St. C.’ Naturally and supernaturally to be under the guidance of a Saint C. or a Saint D. always inspires confidence in a Catholic; but this ‘St. C.’ turns out to be only the Viscount St. Cyres, a scion of the noble house of Sir Stafford Northcote, the one time leader of the House of Commons, who died in 1887. In the Viscount’s ancestral tree we notice that Sir Henry Stafford Northcote, first Baronet, has appended to his name the title ‘Prov. Master of Devonshire Freemasons.’ What ‘Prov.’ means we do not know, but we are satisfied with the remaining part of the description. The Viscount was educated at Eton, and Merton College, Oxford. He is a layman and a clubman, and as far as we know is not suspected of being a Catholic. A search in the ‘Who’s Who?’ failed to reveal anything on that point, though a glance at the articles over his name will dispense us from any worry about his religious status.
“We naturally ask why he should have been chosen to enlighten the world on Catholic topics? ‘Because,’ says the editor of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, ‘the Viscount St. Cyres has probably more knowledge of the development of theology in the Roman Catholic Church than any other person in that Church.’
“The Church was unaware that it had at its disposal such a source of information. It will be news to many, but we are inclined to ask how the Viscount acquired that marvelous knowledge. It would require a life-long absorption in the study of divinity quite incompatible with the social duties of one of his station. Furthermore, we should like to know whence comes the competency of the editor to decide on the ability of the Viscount, and to pass judgment on the correctness of his contribution? That also supposes an adequate knowledge of all that the dogmatic, moral and mystic theologians ever wrote, a life-long training in the language and methods of the science, and a special intellectual aptitude to comprehend the sublime speculations of the Church’s divines.
“It will not be unkind to deny him such qualifications, especially now, for did he not tell his friends at the London banquet: ‘During all these (seven) years I have been busy in the blacksmith’s shop (of the editor’s room) and I do not hear the noise that is made by the hammers all around me’—nor, it might be added, does he hear what is going on outside the _Britannica’s_ forge.
“Meantime, we bespeak the attention of all the Catholic theologians in every part of the world to the preposterous invitation to come to hear the last word about ‘the development of theology’ in the Catholic Church from a scholar whose claim to theological distinction is that ‘he has written about Fénélon and Pascal.’ The _Britannica_ shows scant respect to Catholic scholarship and Catholic intelligence.”
Father Campbell then devotes several pages to a specific indictment of the misstatements and the glaring errors to be found in several of the articles relating to the Catholic Church. He quotes eight instances of St. Cyres’ inaccurate and personal accusations, and also many passages from the articles on _Papacy_, _Celibacy_ and _St. Catherine of Siena_—passages which show the low and biased standard of scholarship by which they were written. The injustice contained in them is obvious even to a superficial student of history. At the close of these quotations he accuses the _Britannica_ of being neither up-to-date, fair, nor well-informed. “It repeats old calumnies that have been a thousand times refuted, and it persistently selects the Church’s enemies who hold her up to ridicule and contempt. We are sorry for those who have been lavish in their praises of a book which is so defective, so prejudiced, so misleading and so insulting.”
It seems that while the _Britannica’s_ contributions to the general misinformation of the world were being discussed, the editor wrote to one of his subscribers saying that the Catholics were very much vexed because the article on the Jesuits was not “sufficiently eulogistic.”