Baron John Francis Arundell Arundell of Wardour

“ It is the tie which binds the past, the present, and the future together, and is the science of them all. If we possessed the memory of mankind, as we do that of our personal existence, we should know all. But if we have not the memory of mankind, does not mankind possess it? Is mankind without memory, without tradition?... There is no nation which does not exist through tradition, not only historical traditions relative to its earthly existence, but through religious traditions relative to its eternal destiny. ”

“ I do not see any, of which the evidence is more generally attested, than those which have transmitted to us that famous physical revolution which, they tell us, has altered the face of our globe, and which has occasioned a total renovation of human society: in a word, the Deluge appears to me the true starting-point (la veritable epoque) in the history of nations. Not only is the tradition which has transmitted this fact the most ancient of all, but it is moreover clear and intelligible; it presents a fact which can be justified and confirmed. ”

“ Yet the echoes of ancient life in India little resemble a Sicilian idyl or the strains of Pan’s pipe, but strike the ear rather as the cries of oppressed and wandering nations, of people in constant motion and pain. Early Indian researches, however, while they make havoc of the pastoral landscapes of Genesis and Job, have a consolation peculiarly suited to this age. They plainly tell us, that as in Europe so in Asia, the primitive state of mankind was a state of unrest; and that civilisation, despite its exactions and nervous city life, is a state of repose. ”

“ The sacrifice of Abel marks the era of patriarchal tradition; the sacrifice of Abraham marks the era of Hebrew tradition; the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the final and consummating sacrifice, marks the era of Christian tradition.... Such is the nature of tradition, and such its history. Tradition is the connection of the present with the past, of the past with the future; it is the principle of identity and continuity which forms persons, families, nations, and mankind. ”

“ But there was also a tradition of a law of nature which did not at all correspond to a state of license, of equality, and of barbarism, such as the state of nature was conceived to be. It was, on the contrary, a law of decorum and restraint. What, then, the Roman probably meant by the law of nature was a reminiscence of a primitive revelation, or a tradition of the maxims of right and wrong by which men were guided in their relations to one another, when fresh from the hand of God—“a diis recentes”—when family life still subsisted, and before men had settled down into states and communities. ”

“ International law, therefore, as accumulated in the precedents of diplomatists, is a parasitical growth upon that tree which has its roots in the hearts of nations, and which may be compared to one of those old oaks under which kings used to sit and administer justice. It was a dream of Dodwell’s that the ‘law of nations was a divine revelation made to the family preserved in the ark.’ In the grotesqueness and wildness of this theory we detect a true idea. ”

“ My present object is merely to suggest that there may be truths in tradition not dreamt of by modern philosophy. If the human intellect were as capacious as it is acute, we might then listen with greater submission to its strictures upon tradition; because then we might at least believe that its vision extended to all the facts. But in truth, no intellect, however encyclopædic, can grasp them all. Indeed, knowledge in many departments is becoming more and more the tradition of experts, and must be taken by the outside world on faith. ”

“ In opposition to the first proposition, I maintain that there is no race of men so degraded as to be without some vestige of religion.
And in opposition to the second, I assert that if they have a vestige of religion, and nothing else, they have still that which will convict them of degeneracy.
First, To say that a savage has no idea of the Deity, is to say merely that he is a savage; and it appears to me that this extinction of all knowledge of the Deity among a people, precisely marks the point where the barbarian lapses into the savage. ”

“ But if Mr Darwin has demonstrated this struggle for existence existing from all time; if also we are disembarrassed from all advertence to another world; if, further, Mr Malthus, before Mr Darwin, has shown reason to believe that over-population is the cause of half the evils of this life, what is there in Benthamite principles which should prevent our sacrificing these unconscious innocents to the greatest happiness of the greatest number? Nothing, except the horror we should excite among mankind still imbued with the old superstitions! ”

“ This is one instance of the entanglement in which the theory of progress, pure and simple, from a parent stock will involve us. The obvious mode of escape would be to deny the unity of the human race, a conclusion which would at once land us in the darkness of a still lower abyss, and convert our processes from being scientific in form and hopeful of result, into empirical and aimless conjectures. ”

“ But from our point of view it must be regarded not as an age of barbarism, but of prosperity,—not as a state of equality, but of the subordination of the members of the family to each chief, and of families relatively to each other; an age of much mental vigour and spiritual intuition, and, so far from being a period of misery, it left reminiscences of happiness such as lingered long in the memory of mankind. ”

“ It is the will of God that man should be happy. To ascertain the will of God regarding any action, we have, therefore, to consider the tendency of that action to promote or diminish human happiness,” p. 59. It is perfectly true that man was created by God for happiness, and that ultimate happiness, if he does not forfeit it, is the end to which he is still destined. It is moreover true that even in this world he may enjoy a conditional and comparative happiness. How it is that this happiness cannot be complete and perfect here below is precisely the secret which tradition reveals to him. ”

“ If conversely you say that the law of nations as we find it is purely the work and elaboration of legists, and the conclusions of abstract reason, put it to this test, bring all the legists of the world into a congress—such a congress is much needed just now—with instructions to create a new code on abstract principles, and upon the basis of the rejection of what is of custom and tradition, and see what they will accomplish! Do not all our difficulties begin exactly where, owing to the complications of modern civilisation, tradition ceases? ”

“ Without occupying ourselves with the question as to whether Scripture was a gift from above or an invention of men, we see that there exists two kinds of it—human and sacred scripture. I understand by human scripture, that which is considered by men as the expression of the ideas of a man; I understand by sacred scripture that which is venerated by nations as containing something more than the ideas of a man.... There are in the world an innumerable quantity of books, nevertheless there are but six of them which have been venerated by nations as sacred. ”

“ Every age has its own peculiar superiority, as hath each individual mind—non omnia possumus omnes—and it is as reasonable to object to an age of philosophic thought, or of intuitive perception, that it was not rich in the wealth of material civilisation, as it would be to object to Plato or Shakspeare, that they did not acquire dominion over mankind; or to Alexander, that he did not excel Aristotle; or to Sir C. Lyell, supposing geology to be certain, that he did not anticipate Darwin, supposing Darwinism to be true. ”

“ But it is precisely at this point that we must ask those who dispute tradition to discard tradition. Do bodies—so far as the exterior senses tell us—return to dust, or to other forms of life? If it is true that we return to dust—Scripture apart—it is tradition and not experience which attests it, and yet so common is the belief, that it might readily pass as the result of common observation. ”

“ But there is no fallacy so flagrant as to suppose that the modern ages have the peculiar privilege of scientific discovery, or that they are distinguished as the epochs of the most illustrious inventions. On the contrary, scientific invention has always gone on simultaneously with the revelation of spiritual truths; and more, the greatest discoveries are not those of modern ages. No one for a moment can pretend that printing is so great a discovery as writing, or algebra as language. What are the most brilliant of our chemical discoveries compared with the invention of fire and the metals? ”

“ These are the ‘Kings’ of China, the Vedas of India, the Zend-Avesta of the Persians, the Koran of the Arabs, the Law of the Jews, and the Gospel. And at first sight I am struck with this rarity of sacred writings. So many legislators have founded cities, so many men of genius have governed the human understanding, and yet all these legislators, all these men of genius, have not been able to cause the existence of more than six sacred books upon earth!... Every sacred book is a traditional book, it was venerated before it existed, it existed before it appeared. ”

“ A chief of a nation having altered the principle of morality in his household by one of those prevarications which, so far as we can judge, are no longer possible in the actual state of things, because happily our knowledge is no longer such as to allow us to become culpable in this degree; this chief of a nation, I say, transmits the curse to his posterity; and every constant force being accelerating in its nature, this degradation, weighing incessantly upon his descendants, has ended in making them what we call savages. ”

“ The Chaldean religion even here is far from being mere Sabeanism—the simple worship of the ‘host of heaven.’ The ether, the sun, the moon, and still more the five planetary gods, are something above and beyond those parts of nature. Like the classical Apollo and Diana, Mars and Venus, they are real persons, with a life and a history, a power and an influence, which no ingenuity can translate into a metaphorical representation of phenomena attaching to the air and to the heavenly bodies. ”

“ It is at least remarkable, that in proportion as men lose their faith, they fall back, as if by some necessary law, upon some theory which directly or indirectly contemplates mankind as a collection of atoms; and if ever society should lose again the history of its origin, as would happen if ever infidelity were to gain complete ascendancy, it would return by the same processes to the same conclusion. ”

“ It is the same whether we regard the action of the intellect upon the individual man, or upon society. And from this latter point of view it is so true, that it is more than doubtful whether those epochs in which man has attained the highest point of intellectual and material civilisation, are not those also in which he has reached the lowest depths of immorality; [80] and in which—having touched the lowest point of corruption—the human intellect is unable to devise any better plan for the government of mankind, than the repression of despotism. ”

“ How is it that communities totter when thinkers meddle with them, and that the precise moment of their fall is that when men announce to them that mind is emancipated, that the old forms which bound together human activity are broken, that the altar is undermined and reason is all-powerful? Philosophers! if you speak the truth, how is it that the moment when all the elements of society become more refined and develop themselves, is the moment of its dissolution?”—From Père Lacordaire’s “Conferences.” ”

“ The tone of thought common among us, all our hopes, fears, and speculations, would be materially affected, if we had vividly before us the relation of the progressive races to the totality of human life. It is indisputable that much the greatest part of mankind has never shown a particular desire that its civil institutions should be improved since the moment when external completeness was first given to them by their embodiment in some permanent record.... There has been a material civilisation, but instead of the civilisation expanding the law, the law has limited the civilisation. ”

“ On the contrary, fortified with this explanation, I return to my argument with those, who say that blackness is a mere prejudice of race, and that it is not demonstrable that it is the sign of a curse, or the mark of inferiority. Does not Nature herself proclaim it, in her contrast of light and darkness? Day and night, I imagine, would be recognised as apt symbols of error and evil as opposed to truth and goodness, even among the black races, irrespective of any consciousness or reminiscence of their degradation. ”