The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 11, 1926, Page 9

THIRD ARTICLE. TH the rise of the bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century religion, as a motivating force, came back into Hterature. In the days before the commercial revolution, in fact during the entire period of feudalism, litera- ture was but a hymn to godliness, In the middle ages religion and wisdom were synonymous. The main writers were priests. In fact, very few others than priests could write. The Roman catholic church was the inspiration of the age. Thinkers fed upon its doc- trine for ideas and conceptions. Occasionally there were rebels like Frederick II who opposed the church, believed religion an imposture, and struggled for a freedom of thought that was execrably radical in that day, Frederick Il, who was known as the Stupor Mundi, or the miracle of the world, in the thirteenth century, is a very interesting type of medieval rebel. Refusing to project a crusade at the behest of three popes, he de- nounced the catholic church, advo- cated a confiscation of its property, introduced Jewish and Moslemic phil- osophers to his courts, and in a score of other ways endeavored to combat the influence of the christian religion. In addition, he founded the University of Naples in 1224, ewlarged the medi- cal school at Salerno, and constructed a zoological garden—all daring and novel at that period. We must remember, however, that Frederick Il was almost like a lone meteor in a starless firmament. He was an infidel in an age of faith—an age that forbade dissection of the human body for fear that the ressurec- tion-bone would be destroyed, and burned Giordano Bruno at the stake for maintaining that the earth went around the sun. In literature it was not the Italian poems of Frederick II that flourished, but the prose of the churchmen. The modern drama grew out of the church. The first dramas were de- voted to christian themes. The birth of Christ and his resurrection afforded the background and motif of these early plays. These plays, which are known as the Miracle plays, were, of course, thoroly religious in tone and sentiment. At first they were put on by the churches, but later, as they became more elaborate and drew larger audiences, they were staged by the labor guilds. Out of these miracle plays sprang the morality plays and interludes, and then the Elizabethan drama of which Shakespeare was the highest expression. With the denunciation of the pope, the confiscation of church property, and the severance of church and state, Henry VIII in England weak- ened the influence of the church upon the drama. The artists of the later aristocracies fought free of religious dogma, Elizabethan and restoration dramas were unreligious in spirit. It was with the puritanic bour- geoisie that religion in literature was revived. Religion in literature now instead of emphasizing God had stressed virtue—the virtues of the bourgeoisie. Literature became looked upon as a vehicle for moral instruc- tion. This moral instruction, of course, was definitely associated with christianity. Samuel Johnson in his magazine, The Rambler, for instance, according to one critic attempted “to instruct mankind; to teach the happi- ness of virtue and religion; to display the horrors of vice and piety; to in- culcate a proper subordinate of the passions; and to arm the mind against the vicissitudes of life.” Johnson him- self, who was the most important critic of the 18th century, declared his |: purpose to be “the increase of virtue rather than of learning,” and in an- other place added, with sincerity and fervor, “there are few ways in which a@ man can be more innocently em- ployed than in getting money.” This was the characteristic of the virtue of the bourgeoisie, which the literati of two centuries decorated and deified. Anthony Trollope in the 19th century, in line with the same sentiment, as- serted that he had “always thought of (himself) ag a preacher of sermons, and (his) pulpit as one which (he) could make both salutary and agree- able to (his) audience.” Religion thus was preserved as 4 sacred element in literature. The Religion in Literature preacher as in Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield” and Jane Austen’s novels, was treated with gentleness and praise. Only at occasional moments did an anti-religious fiction ruffie the placidity of the literary horizon. It is because “the Damnation of Theron Ware,” by Harold Frederic is. one of the first novels to attack the religious myth that it is deserving of serious consideration. Modern re- ligion is but a justification of capi- talist enterprise. Radicalism and re- ligiosity are not compatible. The one depends upon material factors and the ether upon spiritual Their points of view are disparate and antagonistic. Christian socialist movements are ex sentially saccharine and ineffective. Jesus-radicals are always sentimental- ists. There hag been so much re- search done in the origins of religion, and particularly in the beginnings of christianity, that the appeal to Jesus is infantile and idiotic: The very historicity of Jesus is not only ques- tioned, but with the discovery of every new forgery and every new evidence its reality grows weaker and more dubious. At all events, even if Jesus did live, what he said is certainly un- known aside from the myths of sim- ple-minded fishermen and madmen. The gospels themselves, if one would take from them an evidence and dis- entangle a philosophy, have been so well garbled and in essence so con- fused and contradictory, that this ges- ture, too, is rendered hopeless and im- potent. _ Yet what christians know of the dubious origins of their creed? What christians know of the slender, ever- attenuating evidence upon which their Christ depends? Bruno Bauer and Feuerbach had begun the investiga- tion many decades ago—George Eliot even translated Feuerbach’s “Roots of Christianity” into English—but the majority of proletarians as well as bourgeoisie are entirely unaware of the nature of their work. Of course, this investigation is too technical to excite numerous readers, but Its com clusions should surely be known. Lit- .Cover me Dusk, For | have a Sorrow By JIM WATERS. (On reading the death of Serge Yessenin). Cover me with your somber robe, A Bury me deep in your sack of night Away from the stars and the moon; great sorrow— A great, black sorrow tonight. erature that helps to disseminate them is of social value, In “The Damnation of Theron Ware” the protagonist is a methodist minister, a devout, sincere soul, who has consecrated his innocent and ig- norant mind to the cause of the church. His contact with Father Forbes in the town of Octavius, to which he had been isolated by the methodist conference, brings him some catastrophic revelations, At the same time the author gives a picture of the ministry, and christian evidence that would volcanically disturb the é mind of a believer. The Reverend Ware, having con- ceived of the idea of writing a book on Abraham, decides to go to Father Forbes for counsel. Father Forbes is a catholic priest whose vast erudition has not clouded his mind to fact nor dulled his dexterity ag an ecclesiastio, “Modern research,” he says to the simple-souled Reverend Ware, “quite wipes (Abraham) out of existence a8 an individual. The word ‘Abram’ is merely an eponym—it means ‘ex- alted father.’ Practically all the names in the Genesis chronologies are what we call eponymous. Abram is not a person at all; he is a tribe, a sect, a clan. In the same way, Shem is not intended for a man; it is the name of a great division of the human race. Heber is simply the throwing back into allegorical sub- stance, so to speak, of the Hebrews; Heth of the Hittites; Asshur of Assyria.” “But this is something very new, this theory, isn’t it?” queried Theron. The priest smiled and shook his head. “Bless you, no! My dear sir, there is nothing new. Epicurus and Lucretius outlined the whole Darwinian theory, more than two thousand years ago. As for this eponym thing, why Saint Augustine called attention to it fifteen hun- dred years ago. In his ‘De Civitate Dei,’ he expressly says of these genealogical names, ‘gentes non homines;’ that is, ‘peoples, not per sons.’ It wag as obvious to him— By V. F. Calverton as much a commonplace of knowk edge—as it was to Ezekiel eight hundred years before him.” Father Forbes’ reply is significant It explains the tenacious affection of the church for ignorance, “Why should ‘everybody’ be sup- posed to know things? What busi- ness is it of ‘everybody's’ to know things? The earth was just as round in the days when people sup- posed it to be flat, as itis now. So the truth remaing always the truth, even tho you give a charter to ten hundred thousand separate num- skulls to examine it by the light of their private judgement, and report that it is as many different varie ties of something else, But of course that whole question of pri- vate judgment versus authority is No-Man’s-Land for us, We were speaking of eponyms.” 3 Later on, after discussing the ghosts of dead men’s thoughts, the priest con- tinues the original topic: “The names of these dead-and- gone things are singularly pertina- cious, though, They survive indeft- nitely. Take the modern name Marmaduke, for example, It strikes one as peculiarly modern, up-to date, doesn’t it? Well, it is the old- est name on earth—thousands of years older than Adam. It is the ancient Chaldean Meridug, or Mero- dach. He was the young god who interceded continually between the? angry, omnipotent Ha, hig father, and the humble and unhappy Dam kina, or Earth, who was his mother, This is interesting from another point of view, because this Mero dach or Marmaduke is, so far as We can see now, the original proto- type of our divine intermediary idea. I daresay, tho that if we could go back still other scores of centuries, we should find whole re- ceding series of types of this Christ myth of ours.” The Reverend Ware’s reply is as characteristic of the religious m the collection plate is of the retidjor service, “All I have done is to try to pre serve an open mind, and to maim tain my faith that the more wo know, the nearer we shall approach the Throne.” The plot of the novel is inconse- quential. In revealing the weakness and duplicity of the clergy, it merits attention. Instead of extolling the preacher, it exposes him. The expos- ure is not in the form of maliceful sa- tire, but of simple dissection. The love- made flight of the right Reverend Ware adds drama to his stupidity, but not power to the novel. The novel is not a distinguished achievement. It & important because in 1896, when it appeared, it was part of that trend that was slowly deviating from the bour- geois literature that had preceded. Since its appearance the preacher has lost his position of prominence and power in fiction. Now it is only in the trashy tosh of Ralph Connor and Har- old Bell Wright that the preacher re- mains a hero and his profession an honer. In the new literature it is the vices instead of the virtues of the clergyman that have been described. Harold Frederic’s novel chalks the be- ginning of this new attitude. —————ooo——IyIIIy———E>S>— _ Se UEDICAN WoRKED. Py ned he Mar + th Wert. tom 8 Chinagn, Hi, Amp, 1000 ae Prine & Coe