162 



♦ KNOVS/'LEDGE ♦ 



[May 2, 1887. 



forms of microscopical cabinet now in common use are, 

 many of them, both cumbersome and inefficient. The large 

 handsome . boxes with their sliding trays, it is true, 

 keep the slides in a horizontal ])osition, but that is about 

 all. The author was once the unhappy possessor of a piece 

 of furniture of this sort, but got rid of it on account of two 

 very grievous faults. The sliding trays, after exposure to 

 unlooked-for damp, became .slightly warped, and every time 

 that they were withdrawn or forced home a considerable 

 amount of jerking was occasioned, and terminated fatally 



Fig. 2. 



-Book Box for the Storage op Microscopical 

 Specimens. 



for some of the choicest preparations within ; they were 

 thrown one upon the other, and became inextricably united. 

 Every time the ponderous case was moved the slides had to 

 be shifted into rack-boxes temporarily and then carefully 

 rearranged in the cabinet on arrival at the new destination ; 

 a labour by no means pleasant nor easy of performance 

 when the cabinet is a large one and well filled. Ordinary 

 small pine or mahogany cabinets, with divided lifting trays, 

 are all very well for very small collections, and when sets 

 of objects aie to be carried away for displays, &c. ; but their 

 presence upon the laboratory table in anything beyond one 

 or two cases is decidedly out of place, and most emphatically 

 "in the way." 



In addition to the furniture, properly so called, for the 

 laboratory, there are various items whicli cannot either be 

 clas.sed under the heading now discussed nor as part and 

 parcel of the instruments which call for a description in the 

 future completion of these papers ; they necessarily waver 

 between the two, and will therefore foi'm the subject of the 

 next contribution as "laboratory requisites." 



By Eichaed A. Proctor. 



A Catholic (Roman) monthly magazine takes me to 

 task, in somewhat schoolboyish fashion, for questioning the 

 authenticity of the well-known passage in Tacitus, in which 

 the Christians are desoiibed as malefactors justly punished 

 as enemies of the human race, though so cruelly as to excite 

 the sympathies even of those who recognised their wicked- 

 ness. It lias always appeared to me, from the time when, as 

 a boy, I first became acquainted with this remarkable 

 " evidence of Christianity " (to use Paley's ungrammatical 

 expi'ession) that the friends of Christianity would rather it 

 were proved to be an interpolation than see it established as 

 genuine. Paley says that the words of Tacitus prove that 

 the founder of Christianity was put to death. If the pas- 



sage is genuine, Tacitus slates that one Christus suffered 

 death in the reign of Tiberius, under the procurator Pontius 

 Pilate. But since Tacitus was born at least twenty years 

 after Tiberius died, and wrote his " Annals " more than 

 thirty years after the destruction of .Jerusalem, and more 

 than seventy years aftei' Pontius Pilate was ordered to 

 Rome (a.d. .37, because of bis harsh treatment of the fol- 

 lowers of an impostor who misled many Samaritans), it is 

 difficult to see how any statement of his about the origin of 

 Christianity can be regarded as proving anything. If the 

 passage is genuine, and a statement by Tacitus is to be 

 regarded as aflbrding proof demonstrative, then it must be 

 regarded as proved that the Christians in the time of Nero 



(1) were held in abhorrence for their crimes ; 



(2) were shown by their conduct to be veritably enemies 



of the human race; 

 (.3) were held, even by the most tolerant, to be deserving 

 the .'Severest punishment. 



* * * 



Luckily there are abundant reasons for regarding the 

 statement as of no weight whatsoever, whether a forgery or 

 genuine. We know that at the beginning of the second 

 century, when Tacitus wrote his "Annals," many related 

 what his statement has been held to prove. He manifestly 

 had his information, if he wrote that statement at all, from 

 those who repeated what was currently said in his day about 

 the events of the days of Nero (who died when Tacitus was 

 quite a small boy). There was probably not a particle of 

 real evidence to show that the Christians, who very likely 

 were persecuted by Nero with the ferocity described by 

 Tacitus, were really malefactors, or even generally said to 

 have been so at the time of the persecution. It is impos- 

 sible to imagine that any records (of the slightest real value 

 as evidence) could have been accessible when Tacitus wrote 

 his " Annals," by which the actual circumstances of the 

 persecutions carried on by Nero could have been ascer- 

 tained. 



If such evidence as that of the doubtful passage is to be 

 accepted at all, it must of course be accepted as it stands. 

 If it proves anything, it proves what the C'hristian would 

 prefer to see disproved. 



* * * 



The same Roman Catholic magazine recommends me to 

 read Bekker's remarks on the manuscripts of Tacitus, to 

 correct my judgment. But alas, that remedy can be of no 

 use to me, for it has been already applied in vain. Nothing 

 Bekker wrote half a century ago (my copy of his edition of 

 Tacitus is dated Leipzig, 1831) can controvert the ftxct that 

 the " Annals " of Tacitus have reached us in a most im- 

 perfect state, and that the genuineness of certain portions is 

 open to the gravest possible doubt. 



* * * 



My critic volunteers further the information that the 

 "Annals" were written in Latin, a language which admits 

 of no distinction between " Christ " and " The Christ." 

 I bad had .some inkling of this before. But the Latin 

 language was not so utterly feeble that Tacitus would have 

 been unable to show that the founder of Christianity was 

 called " The Anointed." Had he been as well informed 

 about the beginning of Christianity as Paley (for example) 

 would have us believe, he would undoubtedly have said that 

 the Christians were so called because the founder of their 

 religion, a man named Jesus, had been called Christ, which 

 in the Greek tongue signifies Anointed. To a monkish 

 interpolator, accustomed — as we are in our own day — to 

 speak of Jesus the Christ as simply Christ, nothing would 

 be more natural than to write as Tacitus is supposed to 



