




                       CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP

                                    BY

                          F. MAX MUeLLER, M. A.,

               FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE FRENCH INSTITUTE, ETC.

                                VOLUME V.

                       MISCELLANEOUS LATER ESSAYS.

                                NEW YORK:

                         CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

                                  1881.





CONTENTS


I. On Freedom
II. On The Philosophy Of Mythology.
III. On False Analogies In Comparative Theology.
IV. On Spelling.
V. On Sanskrit Texts Discovered In Japan.
Index.
Footnotes






                                    I.


ON FREEDOM.


 Presidential Address Delivered Before The Birmingham Midland Institute,
                            October 20, 1879.

Not more than twenty years have passed since John Stuart Mill sent forth
his plea for Liberty.(1)

If there is one among the leaders of thought in England who, by the
elevation of his character and the calm composure of his mind, deserved
the so often misplaced title of Serene Highness, it was, I think, John
Stuart Mill.

But in his Essay "On Liberty," Mill for once becomes passionate. In
presenting his Bill of Rights, in stepping forward as the champion of
individual liberty, he seems to be possessed by a new spirit. He speaks
like a martyr, or the defender of martyrs. The individual human soul, with
its unfathomable endowments, and its capacity of growing to something
undreamt of in our philosophy, becomes in his eyes a sacred thing, and
every encroachment on its world-wide domain is treated as sacrilege.
Society, the arch-enemy of the rights of individuality, is represented
like an evil spirit, whom it behooves every true man to resist with might
and main, and whose demands, as they cannot be altogether ignored, must be
reduced at all hazards to the lowest level.

I doubt whether any of the principles for which Mill pleaded so warmly and
strenuously in his Essay "On Liberty" would at the present day be
challenged or resisted, even by the most illiberal of philosophers, or the
most conservative of politicians. Mill's demands sound very humble to
_our_ ears. They amount to no more than this, "that the individual is not
accountable to society for his actions so far as they concern the
interests of no person but himself, and that he may be subjected to social
or legal punishments for such actions only as are prejudicial to the
interests of others."

Is there any one here present who doubts the justice of that principle, or
who would wish to reduce the freedom of the individual to a smaller
measure? Whatever social tyranny may have existed twenty years ago, when
it wrung that fiery protest from the lips of John Stuart Mill, can we
imagine a state of society, not totally Utopian, in which the individual
man need be less ashamed of his social fetters, in which he could more
freely utter all his honest convictions, more boldly propound all his
theories, more fearlessly agitate for their speedy realization; in which,
in fact, each man can be so entirely himself as the society of England,
such as it now is, such as generations of hard-thinking and hard-working
Englishmen have made it, and left it as the most sacred inheritance to
their sons and daughters?

Look through the whole of history, not excepting the brightest days of
republican freedom at Athens and Rome, and you will not find one single
period in which the measure of liberty accorded to each individual was
larger than it is at present, at least in England. And if you wish to
realize the full blessings of the time in which we live, compare Mill's
plea for Liberty with another written not much more than two hundred years
ago, and by a thinker not inferior either in power or boldness to Mill
himself. According to Hobbes, the only freedom which an individual in his
ideal state has a right to claim is what he calls "freedom of thought,"
and that freedom of thought consists in our being able to think what we
like--so long as we keep it to ourselves. Surely, such freedom of thought
existed even in the days of the Inquisition, and we should never call
thought free, if it had to be kept a prisoner in solitary and silent
confinement. By freedom of thought we mean freedom of speech, freedom of
the press, freedom of action, whether individual or associated, and of
that freedom the present generation, as compared with all former
generations, the English nation, as compared with all other nations,
enjoys, there can be no doubt, a good measure, pressed down, and shaken
together, and sometimes running over.

It may be said that some dogmas still remain in politics, in religion, and
in morality; but those who defend them claim no longer any infallibility,
and those who attack them, however small their minority, need fear no
violence, nay, may reckon on an impartial and even sympathetic hearing, as
soon as people discover in their pleadings the true ring of honest
conviction and the warmth inspired by an unselfish love of truth.

It has seemed strange, therefore, to many readers of Mill, particularly on
the Continent, that this plea for liberty, this demand for freedom for
every individual to be what he is, and to develop all the germs of his
nature, should have come from what is known as the freest of all
countries, England. We might well understand such a cry of indignation if
it had reached us from Russia; but why should English philosophers, of all
others, have to protest against the tyranny of society? It is true,
nevertheless, that in countries governed despotically, the individual,
unless he is obnoxious to the Government, enjoys far greater freedom, or
rather license, than in a country like England, which governs itself.
Russian society, for instance, is extremely indulgent. It tolerates in its
rulers and statesmen a haughty defiance of the simplest rules of social
propriety, and it seems amused rather than astonished or indignant at the
vagaries, the frenzies, and outrages of those who in brilliant
drawing-rooms or lecture-rooms preach the doctrines of what is called
Nihilism or Individualism,(2)--viz., "that society must be regenerated by a
struggle for existence and the survival of the strongest, processes which
Nature has sanctioned, and which have proved successful among wild
animals." If there is danger in these doctrines the Government is expected
to see to it. It may place watchmen at the doors of every house and at the
corner of every street, but it must not count on the better classes coming
forward to enrol themselves as special constables, or even on the
cooeperation of public opinion which in England would annihilate that kind
of Nihilism with one glance of scorn and pity.

In a self-governed country like England, the resistance which society, if
it likes, can oppose to the individual in the assertion of his rights, is
far more compact and powerful than in Russia, or even in Germany. Even
where it does not employ the arm of the law, society knows how to use that
quieter, but more crushing pressure, that calm, Gorgon-like look which
only the bravest and stoutest hearts know how to resist.

It is against that indirect repression which a well-organized society
exercises, both through its male and female representatives, that Mill's
demand for liberty seems directed. He does not stand up for unlimited
individualism; on the contrary, he would have been the most strenuous
defender of that balance of power between the weak and the strong on which
all social life depends. But he resents those smaller penalties which
society will always inflict on those who disturb its dignified peace and
comfort:--avoidance, exclusion, a cold look, a stinging remark. Had Mill
any right to complain of these social penalties? Would it not rather
amount to an interference with individual liberty to deprive any
individual or any number of individuals of those weapons of self-defence?
Those who themselves think and speak freely, have hardly a right to
complain, if others claim the same privilege. Mill himself called the
Conservative party the stupid party _par excellence_, and he took great
pains to explain that it was so not by accident, but by necessity. Need he
wonder if those whom he whipped and scourged used their own whips and
scourges against so merciless a critic?

Freethinkers--and I use that name as a title of honor for all who, like
Mill, claim for every individual the fullest freedom in thought, word, or
deed, compatible with the freedom of others--are apt to make one mistake.
Conscious of their own honest intentions, they cannot bear to be misjudged
or slighted. They expect society to submit to their often very painful
operations as a patient submits to the knife of the surgeon. This is not
in human nature. The enemy of abuses is always abused by his enemies.
Society will never yield one inch without resistance, and few reformers
live long enough to receive the thanks of those whom they have reformed.
Mill's unsolicited election to Parliament was a triumph not often shared
by social reformers; it was as exceptional as Bright's admission to a seat
in the Cabinet, or Stanley's appointment as Dean of Westminster. Such
anomalies will happen in a country fortunately so full of anomalies as
England; but, as a rule, a political reformer must not be angry if he
passes through life without the title of Right Honorable; nor should a
man, if he will always speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, be disappointed if he dies a martyr rather than a Bishop.

But even granting that in Mill's time there existed some traces of social
tyranny, where are they now? Look at the newspapers and the journals. Is
there any theory too wild, any reform too violent, to be openly defended?
Look at the drawing-rooms or the meetings of learned societies. Are not
the most eccentric talkers the spoiled children of the fashionable world?
When young lords begin to discuss the propriety of limiting the rights of
inheritance, and young tutors are not afraid to propose curtailing the
long vacation, surely we need not complain of the intolerance of English
society.

Whenever I state these facts to my German and French and Italian friends,
who from reading Mill's Essay "On Liberty" have derived the impression
that, however large an amount of political liberty England may enjoy, it
enjoys but little of intellectual freedom, they are generally willing to
be converted so far as London, or other great cities are concerned. But
look at your Universities, they say, the nurseries of English thought!
Compare their mediaeval spirit, their monastic institutions, their
scholastic philosophy, with the freshness and freedom of the Continental
Universities! Strong as these prejudices about Oxford and Cambridge have
long been, they have become still more intense since Professor Helmholtz,
in an inaugural address which he delivered at his installation as Rector
of the University of Berlin, lent to them the authority of his great name.
"The tutors," he says,(3) "in the English Universities cannot deviate by a
hair's-breadth from the dogmatic system of the English Church, without
exposing themselves to the censure of their Archbishops and losing their
pupils." In German Universities, on the contrary, we are told that the
extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, the boldest speculations
within the sphere of Darwin's theory of evolution, may be propounded
without let or hindrance, quite as much as the highest apotheosis of Papal
infallibility.

Here the facts on which Professor Helmholtz relies are entirely wrong, and
the writings of some of our most eminent tutors