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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Millions of acres of fine forest lands passed into the hands of
ignorant priests, who, in their greed for immediate gain, and their
reckless indifference to the secular welfare of posterity, doomed their
trees to the ax, entailing barrenness on regions favored by every
natural advantage of soil and climate. Drouths, famines, and locust-
swarms failed to impress the protest of nature. Her enemies had no
concern with such worldly vanities as the study of climatic
vicissitudes, [199]and hoped to avert the consequences of their folly
by an appeal to the intercession of miracle-working saints.

[Contents]

D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.

Yet the saints failed to answer that appeal. The outraged laws of
nature avenged themselves with the inexorable sequence of cause
and effect, and in spite of all prayer-meetings the significance of their
crime against the fertility of their Mother Earth was brought home to
the experience of the ruthless destroyers. In their net-work of moss
and leaves forests absorb the moisture of the atmosphere, and thus
nourish the springs which in their turn replenish the brooks and
rivers. When the highlands of the Mediterranean peninsulas had
been deprived of their woods the general failing of springs turned
rivers into shallow brooks, and brook-valleys into arid ravines.
Summer rains became too scarce to support the vegetation of the
farm lands; the tillers of the soil had to resort to irrigation and eat
their bread in a harder and ever harder struggle for existence, till
vast areas of once fertile lands had to be entirely abandoned, and
the arable territory of this planet was yearly reduced by the growth of
an artificial desert. And while the summer drouths became more
severe, winter floods became more frequent and destructive. From
the treeless slopes of the Mediterranean coastlands winter rains
descended like waterfalls, turning once placid rivers into raging
torrents, and depriving the fields of their small remnant of fertile
mould. Hillsides which in the times of [200]Virgil had furnished
pastures for thousands of herds were thus reduced to a state of
desolation almost as complete as that of a volcanic cinder-field; their
dells choked with rock debris, their terraces rent by a chaos of gullies
and clefts, while the soil, swept from the highlands, was accumulated
in mudbanks near the mouth of the river. Harbors once offering
anchorage for the fleets of an empire became inaccessible from the
ever-growing deposits of diluvium. Yearly mud inundations
engendered climatic diseases and all-pervading gnat swarms.
Insectivorous birds, deprived of their nest shelter, emigrated to less
inhospitable lands, and the scant produce of tillage had to be shared
with ever-multiplying legions of destructive insects. Along the south
coasts of Italy the shore-hills for hundreds of miles present the same
dreary aspect of monotonous barrenness. Greece is a naked rock;
forests have almost disappeared from the plains of Spain and Asia
Minor; in northern Africa millions of square miles, once teeming with
cities and castles, have been reduced to a state of hopeless aridity.
The Mediterranean, once a forest-lake of paradise, has become a
Dead Sea, surrounded by barren rocks, and sandy or dust clouded
plains. According to a careful comparison of the extant data of
statistical computations, the population of the territory once
comprised under the jurisdiction of the Cæsars has thus been
reduced from 290,000,000 to less than 80,000,000, i.e., from a
hundred to less than thirty per cent. In other words, an average of
seventy-eight in a hundred human beings have been starved out of
existence, and the same area of ground [201]which once supported a
flourishing village, at present almost fails to satisfy the hunger of a
small family. For we must not forget that modern industry has
devised methods of subsistence undreamed of by the nations of
antiquity, and that the religion of resignation has taught millions to
endure degrees of wretchedness which nine out of ten pagans would
have refused to prefer to the alternative of self-destruction. A whole
tenement of priest-ridden lazaronis now contrive to eke out a
subsistence on a pittance which a citizen of ancient Rome would
have been too proud to ask a woman to share; yet with all their talent
for surviving under conditions of soul and body degrading distress,
only eight children of the Mediterranean coastlands can now wring a
sickly subsistence from the same area of soil which once sufficed to
supply twenty-nine men with all the blessings of health and
abundance.

[Contents]

E.—REFORM.

The discovery of two new continents has respited the doomed

nations of the Old World, but the rapid colonization of those land
supplements will soon reduce mankind to the alternative of tree-
culture or emigration to the charity-farm of the New Jerusalem. In the
words of a great German naturalist, “We shall have to work the world
over again.” On a small scale the practicability of that plan has
already been conclusively demonstrated. By tree-culture alone arid
sand-wastes have been restored to something like tolerable fertility,
if not to anything approaching their pristine productiveness. In the
lower valley of [202]the Nile (the ancient Thebaïd) Ibrahim Pasha set
out thirty-five million Circassian forest-trees, of which one-third at
least took root, and by their growth not only reclaimed the sterility of
the soil but increased the average annual rainfall from four to fifteen
inches. In the Landes of western France a large tract of land has
been reclaimed from the inroads of the coast sand by lining the
dunes with a thick belt of trees, and some fifteen hundred square
miles of once worthless fields have thus been restored to a high
degree of productiveness. In the Austrian Karst, a sterile plateau of
limestone cliffs and caves has been dotted with groves till the valleys
have been refreshed with the water of resuscitated springs; and
pasture-lands, long too impoverished even for the sustenance of
mountain goats, once more are covered with herds of thriving cattle.

The experience of the next three or four generations will not fail to
make every intelligent farmer a tree-planter. Our barren fields will be
turned into pine plantations, every public highway will be lined with
shade-trees. The communities of the next century will vie in the
consecration of township groves, in the founding of forestry clubs, in
the celebration of arbor days and woodland festivals. The barren
table-lands of our central states will be reclaimed, and before the
end of the twentieth century the work of redemption will be extended
to the great deserts of the Eastern continents. And as a hundred
years ago armies of tree-fellers were busy wresting land from the
primeval forest, in a hundred years more armies of tree-planters will
be busy wresting land [203]from the desert. The men that will “work
the world over again” will not be apt to forget the terms of their
second lease.

In turning up the soil of the reclaimed desert they will unearth the
foundations of buried temples, temples once sacred to the worship of
gods whose prophets drenched the world with blood to enforce the
observance of circumcision rites, wafer rites, and immersion rites,
and filled their scriptures with minute instructions for the ordinances
of priests and the mumbling of prescribed prayers. In musing over
the ruins of such temples, the children of the future will have a
chance for many profitable meditations—the reflection, for instance:
From what mistakes those alleged saviors might have saved the
world if their voluminous gospels had devoted a single page to an
injunction against the earth-desolating folly of forest-destruction!

[Contents]
CHAPTER XVII.
 RECREATION.

[Contents]

A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.

The indoor occupations of civilized life imply the necessity of

providing artificial substitutes for the opportunities of physical
exercise, which men in a state of nature can find abundantly in the
course of such healthful pursuits as hunting, fishing, and primitive
agriculture. For similar reasons civilization ought to compensate the
lost chance of outdoor sports which only the favorites of fortune can
afford [204]to combine with the exigencies of city life. To the children
of nature life is a festival; outdoor recreations, exciting sports, offer
themselves freely and frequently enough to dispense with artificial
supplements; but the dreariness of workshop life makes those
substitutes a moral as well as physical necessity. Under the
influence of unalloyed drudgery the human soul withers like a plant
in a sunless cave, and weariness of heart reacts on the body in a
way analogous to the health-undermining effect of sorrow and
repeated disappointment. To the unbiased judgment of our pagan
forefathers the necessity of providing city dwellers with opportunities
for public recreation appeared, indeed, as evident as the necessity of
counteracting the rigors of the higher latitudes with contrivances for a
supply of artificial warmth. The cities of ancient Greece had weekly
and monthly festivals, besides the yearly reunions of competing
athletes and artists, and once in four years the champions of the
land met to contest the prize of national supremacy in the presence
of assembled millions. Hostilities, even during the crisis of civil war,
were suspended to insure free access to the plains of Corinth, where
the Olympic Games were celebrated with a regularity that made their
period the basis of chronological computation for a space of nearly
eight hundred years. When Rome became the capital of the world,
the yearly disbursements for the subvention of free public
recreations equaled the tribute of a wealthy province. There were
free race courses, gymnasia, music halls, and wrestling-ring; free
public baths and magnificent amphitheaters for [205]the exhibition of
free dramatic performances, gladiatorial combats, and curiosities of
art and natural history. Every proconsul of a foreign province was
instructed to collect wild animals and specimens of rare birds and
reptiles; every triumphator devoted a portion of his spoils to a
celebration of free circenses—“circus games”—by no means limited
to the mutual slaughter of prize fighters, but including horse races,
concerts, trials of skill, and new arts. It would be a mistake to
suppose that the liberality of such establishments offered a premium
on idleness. The immense increase of the metropolitan population
justified the constant extension of that liberality, but even after the
erection of permanent amphitheaters the vigilance of public censors
discouraged mendicancy; the complaints of wives, creditors, and
landlords against habitual idlers were made the basis of penal
proceedings, and from the total appropriations for the support of free
municipal institutions the overseers of the poor deducted
considerable sums for purposes of public charity.

Nor did the citizens of the metropolis monopolize the privilege of free
public amusements. At the time of the Antonines not less than fifty
cities of Italy alone had amphitheaters of their own, and the smallest
hamlet had at least a palaestra, where the local champions met
every evening for a trial of strength and skill.
[Contents]

B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.

The alternation of day and night should reveal the truth that nature is
averse to permanent gloom. [206]Sunlight is a primary condition of all
nobler life, and only ignorance or basest selfishness can doom a
child of earth to the misery of toil uncheered by the sun-rays of
recreation. For even enlightened selfishness would recognize the
advantages of the pagan plan. The passions of personal ambition
burnt then as fiercely as now, but the Roman world-conquerors
thought it wiser, as well as nobler, to share their spoils with the
soldiers who had fought their battles, with the workmen who had
reared their castles, with the neighbors who had witnessed their
triumphs. The very slaves of Greece and Rome were indulged in
periodic enjoyments of all the luxuries fortune had bestowed upon
their masters; at the end of the working-day menials and artisans
forgot their toil amidst the wonders of the amphitheater, and neither
their work nor their work-givers were the worse for it. The promise of
the evening cheered the labors of the day; minds frequently unbent
by the relaxation of diverting pastimes were less apt to break under
the strain of toil, less liable to yield to the temptation of despondency,
envy, and despair.

During the last four weeks of his Egyptian campaign Napoleon

relieved the tedium of camp-life by a series of athletic games and
horse-races, and thus succeeded in sustaining the spirit of his troops
under hardships which at first threatened to demoralize even his
veterans. For similar purposes and with similar success, Marshal
Saxe indulged his men in a variety of exciting sports, and Captain
Kane found dramatic entertainments the best prophylactic against
the influence of a monotonous diet combined [207]with an average
temperature of fifty degrees below zero. Captain Burton ascribes the
longevity of the nomadic Arabs to their habit of passing their
evenings as cheerfully as their stock of provisions and anecdotes will
permit, and it is a suggestive circumstance that the joy-loving
aristocracy of medieval France could boast a surprising number of
octogenarians, and that the gay capitals of modern Europe, with all
their vices, enjoy a better chance of longevity than the dull provincial
towns.

[Contents]

C.—PERVERSION.

The superstition which dooms its votaries to a worship of sorrow has

for centuries treated pleasure and sin as synonymous terms. In the
era of the Cæsars the licentious passions of a large metropolis gave
that asceticism a specious pretext; but its true purpose was soon
after revealed by the suppression of rustic pastimes, of athletic
sports, and at last, even of the classic festival which for centuries
had assembled the champions of the Mediterranean nations on the
isthmus of Corinth. With a similar rancor of bigoted intolerance the
Puritans suppressed the sports of “merry old England,” and their
fanatical protests against the most harmless amusements would be
utterly incomprehensible if the secret of Christian asceticism had not
been unriddled by the study of the Buddhistic parent-dogma. The
doctrine which the apostle of Galilee thought it wisest to veil in
parables and metaphors, the Indian messiah of anti-naturalism
reveals in its ghastly nakedness as an attempt to wean the hearts of
mankind [208]from their earth-born loves and reconcile them to the
alternative of annihilation—“Nirvana”—the only refuge from the
delusions of a life outweighing a single joy by a hundred sorrows.
Not life only, but the very instincts of life were to be suppressed, to
prevent their revival in new forms of re-birth; and in pursuit of that
plan the prophet of Nepaul does not hesitate to warn his disciples
against sleeping twice under the same tree, to lessen the chance of
undue fondness for any earthly object whatever. The indulgements
of life-endearing desires, that creed denounced as the height of folly
and recommended absolute abstinence from physical enjoyments as
the shortest path to the goal of redemption. In its practical
consequences, if not in its theoretical significances, the same
principle asserts itself in the doctrine of the New Testament, and
justified the dread of the life-loving pagans in realizing the stealthy
growth of the Galilean church, and anticipating the ultimate
consequences of that gospel of renunciation whose ideal of
perfection was the other-worldliness of an earth-despising fanatic.
More or less consciously, the suppression of earthly desires has
always been pursued as the chief aim of Christian dogmatism; the
“world” has ever been the antithesis of the Christian kingdom of God,
the “flesh” the irreconcilable antagonist of the regenerate soul.
Hence that rancorous fury against the “worldliness” of naturalism,
against the pagan worship of joy, against the modern revivals of that
worship. Hence the grief of those “whining saints who groaned in
spirit at the sight of Jack in the Green;” hence the crusade
[209]against Easter-fires, May-poles, foot-races, country excursions,
round-dances, and picnics; hence the anathemas against the athletic
sports of ancient Greece and the entertainments of the modern
theater.

[Contents]

D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.
Wherever the fanatics of the Galilean church have trampled the
flowers of earth, the wasted gardens have been covered with a rank
thicket of weeds. Outlawed freedom has given way to the caprice of
despots and the license of crime; outraged common sense has
yielded to the vagaries of superstition; the suppression of healthful
recreation has avenged itself in the riots of secret vice. The history of
alcoholism proves that every revival of asceticism has been followed
by an increase of intemperance, as inevitably as the obstruction of a
natural river-bed would be followed by an inundation. When the
convent-slaves of the Middle Ages had been deprived of every
chance of devoting a leisure hour to more healthful recreations,
neither the rigor of their vows nor the bigotry of their creed could
prevent them from drowning their misery in wine. When the Puritans
of the seventeenth century had turned Scotland into an ecclesiastic
penitentiary, the burghers of the Sabbath-stricken towns sought
refuge in the dreamland of intoxication. The experience of many
centuries has, indeed, forced the priesthood of southern Europe to
tolerate Sunday recreations as a minor evil. In Spain the bull-rings of
the larger cities open every Sunday at 2 p.m. In Italy the patronage of
Sunday excursions and Sunday theaters is limited [210]only by the
financial resources of their patrons. In France Sunday is by large
odds the gayest day in the week. In the large cities of Islam the
muftis connive at Sunday dances and Sunday horse-races; and as a
consequence a much less pardonable abuse of holidays is far rarer
in southern Europe than in the cities of the Sabbatarian north, the
consumption of Sunday intoxicants being larger in Great Britain than
in France, Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Italy taken together. Climatic
causes may have their share in effecting that difference; another
cause was revealed when the followers of Ibn Hanbal attempted to
enforce the asceticism of their master upon the citizens of Bagdad.
Ibn Hanbal, the Mohammedan Hudibras, used to travel from village
to village, with a horde of bigots, breaking up dance-houses,
upsetting the tables of the confectionery pedlers, pelting flower-girls,
and thrashing musicians, and when the revolt of a provincial city
resulted in the death of the “reformer,” his fanatical followers
assembled their fellow-converts from all parts of the country, and
raided town after town, till they at last forced their way into the capital
of the caliphate. The recklessness of their zeal overcame all
resistance, but the completeness of their triumph led to a rather
unexpected result. Every play-house of the metropolis was not only
closed, but utterly demolished; musicians were jailed; dance-girls
were left to choose between instant flight and crucifixion; showmen
were banished from all public streets; but the dwellings of private
citizens were less easy to control, and those private citizens before
long evinced a passionate [211]and ever-increasing fondness for
intoxicating drinks. Elders of the mosque were seen wallowing in
their gutters, howling blasphemies that would have appalled the
heart of the toughest Giaour; dignitaries of the green turban
staggered along under the weight of a wine-skin, or waltzed about in
imitation of the exiled ballet performers. The Hanbalites convoked tri-
weekly, and at last daily, prayer-meetings, but things went from bad
to worse, till a counter-revolution finally restored the authority of the
old city government, and the flight of the fanatics was attended with
a prompt decrease both of spiritual and spirituous excesses.

[Contents]

E.—REFORM.

The predictions of our latter-day augurs would seem to indicate that

the civilization of the Caucasian race is drifting toward Socialism; but
a modern philosopher reminds us that “a reform, however great, is
apt to come out in a different shape from that predicted by the
reformers.” The citizens of the coming republic will probably waive
their claim to free government lunch-houses and similar
“establishments for preventing the natural penalties of idleness,” but
they will most decidedly protest against government interference with
the legitimate rewards of industry. Even now, few sane persons can
realize the degree of ignorance that enabled the clergy of the Middle
Ages to fatten on the proceeds of witchcraft trials and heretic hunts,
and the time may be near when our children will find it difficult to
conceive the degree of infatuation that could [212]induce their
forefathers to sacrifice their weekly leisure-day at the bidding of
brainless and heartless bigots. Drudgery will perhaps continue the
hard task-master of the working-week; but the Sundays of the future
will be as free as the light of their sun.

[Contents]
CHAPTER XVIII.
 DOMESTIC REFORM.

[Contents]

A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.

In the nest-building propensity of the social insects the biologist can

recognize the first germ of the instinctive desire for the establishment
of a permanent home. Certain birds, like the weaver-thrush of the
tropics, imitate the community life of the ant and bee, but in all higher
animals the homestead instinct is associated with the desire for
domestic privacy. The eagle will suffer no other bird to approach the
rock that shelters his eyrie; the hawk, the heron, and the kingfisher
rear their brood at the greatest possible distance from the nesting-
place of their next relatives. Each pair of squirrels try to get a tree all
to themselves; and even the social prairie-dog shares its home with
strangers (owls and serpents) rather than with another family of its
own tribe. The “homestead instinct” of our primitive forefathers
formed the first, and perhaps the most potent, stimulus to the
acquisition of personal property. There is a period in life when the
desire for the possession of a private domicile asserts itself with the
power almost of a vital passion; and success in the realization of that
desire [213]solves in many respects the chief problems of individual
existence. The love of domestic peace, the delight in the
improvement of a private homestead, are the best guarantees of
staid habits. There was a time when the neglect of husbandry was
considered a conclusive proof of profligate habits; and the office of a
Roman censor comprised the duty of reproving careless
housekeepers. The poorest citizen of the Roman commonwealth had
a little patrimonium of his own, a dwelling-house, an orchard, and a
small lot of land, which he did his best to improve, and where his
children learned their first lesson of personal rights in defense of
their private playgrounds.

The ruins of Pompeii show that the civilization of the Mediterranean

coast-lands had anticipated the conclusion of our sanitarian
reformers, who recommend the advantage of cottage-suburbs as a
remedy for the horrors of tenement life. Between the acropolis and
the seaside villas the town forms an aggregation of small dwelling-
houses, mostly one-story, but each with a private yard (probably a
little garden) or a wide portico, with bath-room and private
gymnasiums. And though the ancients were well acquainted with the
manufacture of glass, their dwelling-houses were lighted by mere
lattice-windows, excluding rain and the glare of the sun, but freely
admitting every breeze, and thus solving the problem of ventilation in
the simplest and most effective manner. The dwellings of our Saxon
forefathers, too, resembled the log-cabins of the Kentucky
backwoods, and admitted fresh air so freely that the large family-
hearth could dispense with a chimney, [214]and vented its smoke
through the open eaves of the roof. In the palaces of the Roman
patricians there were special winter-rooms, with a smoke-flue
resembling a narrow alcove; but even there, ventilation was insured
by numerous lattice doors, communicating with as many balconies or
terrace roofs.

[Contents]

B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
The evolution of all hereditary instincts has been explained by the
“survival of the fittest,” and the instinct of homestead-love has
doubtlessly been developed in the same way. The results of its
predominance prevailed against the results of its absence. Defensive
love of a private “hearth and home” is the basis of patriotism, so
unmistakably, indeed, that the fathers of the Roman republic for
centuries refused to employ foreign mercenaries, who had no
personal interest in the defense of the soil. As a modern humorist
has cleverly expressed it: “Few men have been patriotic enough to
shoulder a musket in defense of a boarding-house.” And the golden
age of civic virtues is almost limited to the time when every free
citizen of Greece and Rome was a landowner.

Nor would it be easy to overrate the subjective advantages of home-

life. Health, happiness, and longevity have no more insidious foe
than the canker-worm of vexation; and for the unavoidable
disappointments of social life there is no more effective specific than
the peace of a prosperous private homestead, soothing the mind
with evidences of success in the growth of a promising orchard, in
the increase [215]and improvement of domestic animals, in the
happiness of merry children and contented dependents. Xenophon,
after proving the excitements of an adventurous life by land and sea,
found a truer happiness in the solitude of his Arcadian hunting-lodge.
Felix Sylla, Fortune’s most constant favorite, abandoned the throne
of a mighty empire to enjoy the frugal fare of a small hill-farm.
Voltaire, worn out by the trials of a fifty years’ life-and-death struggle
against the rancor of bigots, recovered his health and his peace of
mind amidst the pear-tree plantations of Villa Ferney.

In the resources of medicine and scientific surgery the ancients were

far behind even the half-civilized nations of modern times, but their
children could enjoy their holidays on their own playground, their
sleepers could breathe pure air, their worn-out laborers could retire
to the peace of a private home; and they enjoyed a degree of health
and vigor which our most progressive nations can hope to re-attain
only after centuries of sanitary reform.

[Contents]

C.—PERVERSION.

The germ of the ignoble patience which submits to the miseries of

modern tenement-life, and learns to prefer the fetor of a crowded
slum-alley to the free air of the woods and fields, can be traced to
the voluntary prison-life of the first Christian monasteries. With all the
gregariousness of the African race, the very slaves of our American
plantations preferred to avoid quarrels and constraint by building a
separate cabin for the use of each family; but the ethics [216]of the
Galilean church recognized no privilege of personal rights; the
sympathies of family-life were crushed out by the enforcement of
celibacy; every symptom of self-assertion was denounced as a revolt
against the duty of passive subordination; the very instincts of
individuality were systematically suppressed to make each convert a
whining, emasculated, self-despising, and world-renouncing
“member of the church of Christ.” The mortification of the body being
the chief object of monastic seclusion, the hygienic architecture of
convent buildings was considered a matter of such absolute
unimportance that many of the cells (dormitories) had no windows at
all, but merely a door communicating with an ill-ventilated gallery,
after the plan of our old-style prisons. Eight feet by ten, and eight
high, were the usual dimensions of those man-pens; and that utter
indifference to the physical health of the inmates was but rarely
seconded by a view to the advantages of private meditation is
proved by the circumstance that the convent-slaves of the eastern
church (in the Byzantine empire, for instance) were not often
permitted to enjoy the privacy of their wretched dens; their
dormitories were packed like the bunks of a Portuguese slave-ship,
and the word Syncellus (cell-mate) is used as a cognomen of
numerous ecclesiastics. The abbot, and in less ascetic centuries
perhaps the learned clerks (legend-writers, etc.), were the only
members of a monastic community who could ever rely on the
privacy of a single hour. For the admitted purpose of mortifying their
love of physical comforts, the weary sleepers, worn-out with penance
and hunger, [217]were summoned to prayer in the middle of the night,
or sent out on begging expeditions in the roughest weather. Every
vestige of furniture or clothing apt to mitigate the dreariness of
discomfort was banished from their cells; they suffered all the
hardships without enjoying the peace and security of a hermit’s
home; novices (on probation), and even the pupils of the convent-
schools, were submitted to a similar discipline, and thus monasticism
became the training-school of modern tenement-life.

During the latter half of the Middle Ages, feudalism found an

additional motive for suppressing the love of domestic
independence. The church usurers and aristocrats monopolized real
estate, and made it more and more difficult, even for the most
industrious of their dependants, to acquire a share of landed
property. Every feudal lord secured his control over his serfs by
crowding them together in a small village (literally an abode of
villains, i.e., of vile pariahs), where his slave-drivers could at any
time rally them for an extra job of socage duty. The incessant raids of
mail-clad highway-robbers—robber knights and marauding partisans
—obliged all peace-loving freemen to congregate for mutual
protection and rear their children in the stone prisons of an over-
crowded burgh. The suppression of all natural sciences, including
the science of health, aggravated the evil by a persistent neglect of