78 



KNOWLEDGE 



TApeil, 1903. 



pure-bred, and though all three left behind them offshoots 

 of their race, they themselves added not a dro]i of alien 

 blood to their adopted countries, any more than did the 

 host of missionaries, from Mahinda and Boniface to 

 Mott'at and Damien, to the countries they evangelized. 

 Their action was pui'ely spiritual. Spiritual action is the 

 mimicry of physiologii:al action ; nevertheless, it too is 

 genuine. A. thinker's thoughts, an artist's works, a 

 statesman's deeds, are as children b(_iru to him, and the 

 transformation they accomplish becomes physi<jlogical in 

 tuni. The modes of cross-fertilisation still to be described 

 are of this order. 



The female of many animal species goes in search of 

 the male, or at least throws herself in his way. From 

 Plotinus to Postel, and fi'om Burnouf to Mrs. Besant, 

 sages, scholars, and seekers have gone on pilgrimage to 

 the East to discover the secrets of existence or the materials 

 of science. Mediaeval students flocked to Paris, and the 

 fertility of Scholasticism is doubtless due to the Gennan, 

 Italian, and English crosses with the French intellect. 

 Young Castilians southed to G-ranada to learn courtly 

 manners, as the young English used to do the grand tour, 

 and Spanish ceremony may owe its stateliness to the 

 instruction. The English, French, and German scholars 

 of the Renaissance pilgrimed to Italy. Painters and 

 sculptors of all countries frequented Rome, as now Paris. 

 New species are thus begotten. Again a few examples 

 must suflice. 



Almost all the pre- Revolutionary thinkers of France 

 had visited England, and had studied its constitutional 

 liberties, its science, philosophy, and free-thought. 

 Montesquieu spent two years in our country, and every 

 page of his chief work bears witness to the fertility of the 

 contact. Voltaire came to England "to learn to think," and 

 passed three years in constant intercourse with its greatest 

 writers. His debt to English thought has perhaps been 

 overstated. M. Brunetiere has conclusively shown that 

 Voltaire's scepticism was of earlier date than his visit to 

 England, and in fact he but continued an old French 

 tradition. But it cannot be doubted that his native tenden- 

 cies were stimulated by acquaintance wdth Bolingbroke 

 and English deists. Not less fruitfully he became the 

 expositor of the Baconian logic, the Newtonian physics, 

 and the Lockian psychology. English notions of liberty 

 and canons of criticism passed into the French mind. 

 Mr. Lecky does not exaggerate in describing this 

 interaction as the junction of the I'rench and English 

 intellects. 



The Baptist of the modern renaissance of art was Johann 

 Joachim Winkelmann. A deep affinity for Hellenism in 

 both intellect and temi>erament led him to the study of 

 Plato, the inspection of casts from the antique at Dresden, 

 and finally to Rome. There he accomplished his "finding 

 of Greek art." All who have since transfused the old 

 Hellenic spirit into literature and faith, art and life, 

 descend from him. No more scientific language than 

 Hegel's can be used to describe his generation of a new 

 variety : — 



■' By coutemplatiou of the ideal works of the ancients, Winkelmann 

 received a sort of inspiration through which he opened a new sense 

 for the study of art. He is to be regarded as one of those who in 

 the sphere of art have known how to initiate a new organ for the 

 human spirit." 



Under the grey skies of Sweden, Fogelberg, like Mignou, 

 dreamed of the South. A dying Swedish sculptor told 

 him that in Italy alone he should find true beauty. He 

 had sought to achieve a Balder, a Ihor, an Odin, and had 

 failed ; he needed the fertilising contact with Greek art. 

 Alter some years' study in Italy he produced an Odin, 

 which Gustave Planche describes as the offspring of " a 



happy alliance between the Swedish genius and the antique 

 genius." It is a new type, a genuine creation. His Thor 

 and Balder are similarly two original types, neither Greek 

 nor medieval, whose conception is Scandinavian, while the 

 expressit)n is Greek. 



Thorwaldsen spoke of himself as having been born on 

 the day he entered Rome, when he was twenty-seven years 

 old ; till then, he said, he did not exist. The influence of 

 Rome transformed a skilled artisan into a sculptor. His 

 ])rincipal merit, according to Vicomte Delaborde, lay in 

 combining the ancient style with nn)dern sentiment. He 

 expressed modern ideas and new or revived themes 

 according to Greek methods, discovered by intuition and 

 not by learning. He went back to an earlier period of 

 Greek art than had previously been imitated, and, with an 

 irresistible force of assimilation, he incorporated its sub- 

 stance and penetrated its spirit. Michel Agniolo had, in 

 just the same way, founded the sculpture of the Renais- 

 sance. More consciously and systematically, Flaxman 

 and Ingres arrived at similar results. 



The extent to which this mode of cross-fertilisation still 

 prevails in scholarship will appear from the fact that, in 

 1900, over 2.50O foreigners were entered on the books of 

 German universities. Of these 736 were Russians, in 

 whom the ardour of conquest is equalled by the ardour of 

 discipleship. The Russians are at once female to higher 

 and male to lower races. 



Secondary Agencies. 



1. The insects, birds, and mammals that carry pollen 

 and seeds to other plants and countries, have their 

 analogues in the chapmen and travelling merchants, 

 navigators, pilgrims, and missionaries, who convey books, 

 works of art and industry, germs of religious ideas and 

 political movements. It is a degenerate mode of fertilisa- 

 tion, being far slower and less efficacious than the local 

 presence of immigrants, but its effects are identical. 

 Native species are modified, if less deeply, and new species 

 are transplanted, though they, too, undergo modification. 

 An ancient and a modern exami>le may be adduced. 

 Phcenician merchants undesignedly introduced into Greece 

 the Egyptian alphabet and art of writing, and thus 

 foundecl the culture of Europe. The first seeds of 

 Christianity were planted, half unconsciously, by the 

 pirate-merchant Vikings, who returned to Scandinavia 

 after a long sojourn in Christian lands. 



2. The winds and marine currents that likewise 

 transport seeds have their congeners in the world- 

 rivers and commercial routes, and their analogues in the 

 ships, caravans, and vehicles by means of which the 

 bulk of modern propagandism is accomplished. Wind- 

 fertilised jalants are believed to be degraded specimens of 

 insect-fertilised plants, and the intellectual influences 

 conveyed through books and casts, though often vivid and 

 powerful, are faint in comparison with the direct action of 

 teachers immigrant or resorted to. Two illustrative 

 instances might be developed were there space : — (I^ New 

 England transcendentalism was begotten by the writings 

 of Coleridge, Cousin, and Carlyle on the theology of 

 Puritanism as expounded by profound thinkers like 

 Jonathan Edwards. None of its iuspirers ever visited 

 America, and, if Emerson visited Coleridge and Carlyle, 

 he professed that he derived little benefit from personal 

 intercourse with either of them. Yet New England 

 transcendentalism is a distinct variety of philosophic 

 thought. (^1) Darwin never visited Germany, and few 

 Germans were received at the modest house in Down ; yet 

 Darwin's writings initiated a new and fruitful movement 

 in that country to which no bounds can be set. Darwinism 

 developed by Haeckel is, again, a distinct variety. 



