CATALYST for CONTROVERSY
Paul Carus of
OPEN COURT H
A R O L D
H
E N D E R S O N
CATALYST FOR C()NTROVERSY
CATALYST FOR CONTROVERSY
Paul Carus of
OPEN COURT
Harold flenderson
Southern Illinois University Press Carbondale
Copyright © 1993 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University Paperback edition 2009 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 12 11 10 09
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Designed by Kyle Lake Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Henderson, Harold, 1948– Catalyst for controversy : Paul Carus of Open Court / Harold Henderson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index 1. Carus, Paul, 1852–1919. 2. Open Court Publishing Company— History. 3. Religious literature—publication and distribution— United States—History. 4. Publishers and publishing—Illinois— La Salle—History. 5. Publishers and publishing—United States— Biography. 6. Periodicals, Publishing of—United States—History. 7. Philosophers—United States—Biography. 8. United States— Intellectual life. I. Title. Z473.C25H45 1993 381'.45002'0973—dc20
92-17303
ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-1797-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
CIP
ISBN-10: 0-8093-1797-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-2904-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8093-2904-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) Frontispiece: Paul Carus holding a copy of Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, published by the Open Court Publishing Company in 1898. (Courtesy Open Court Publishing Company archives, Special Collections, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. '
Contents
Illustrations Acknowledgments
1.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
9. 10.
vi vii
Introduction Paul Carus's Early Life The Philosophy of Monism and Meliorism Open Court's First Year The Religion of Science The World's Parliament of Religions Looking Toward the East Mach Peirce Cams's Later Philosophy The Great War Epilogue
4 12 21 45 64 89 118 125 142 153 165
Notes References Index
175 185 199
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Illustrations
Following page 80 Paul and Mary Hegeler Carus at the time of their marriage in 1888 Edward Carl HegelCl~ who founded The Open Court journal and the publishing company of the same name The Edward C. Hegeler house in La Salle, Illinois The premier issue of The Open Court, 17 February 1887 The premier issue of The Monist, October 1890 One of the sessions of the World's Parliament of Religions, 1893 D. T. Suzuki, prominent scholar of Zen Buddhism Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist, psychologist, and philosopher Charles S. Peirce, founder of the American school of pragmatism Paul Carns with his youngest son, Alwin Clemens Carns A selection of Open Court titles Galley proof of a note by Paul Carns, as amended by C. S. Peirce
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Bob Roth and Mike Lenehan at the Chicago Reader, for giving me the freedom to pursue this project; Ralph McCoy and Terrence Tannel~ for wise advice at the outset; David Koch, Sheila Ryan, and the staff at Morris Library Special Collections, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, for cheerfully making the mammoth Open Court archives understandable and accessible; the staff at the Peirce Edition Project in Indianapolis and at Chicago's Newberry Library, for their help; Seth Carus, for reconnoitering in the National Archives; Lewis Hahn, Richard Seager, David Loy, Sandy Henderson, Richard DeBacher, Henry FullenwidCl; and Andre Carus, for critically reading various chapters; Alwin and Elisabeth Cams, for sharing their memories; Arno Reidies, for transliteration, translation, and interest above and beyond the call of duty; and Blouke Cams, for the conception, the financing, the advice, and especially the freedom to use my own judgment in research and writing. For that reason, any mistakes the reader finds herein are also my own.
CA'TALYST FOR CONTROVERSY
Introduction
Between 1880 and 1920 Paul Carus wrote 74 books and nearly 1,500 articles on philosophy, religion, history, literature, politics, poetry, mathematics, and more (McCoy 1987, 76-111, 364-66; Sheridan 1957, 164-228).1 He oversaw the publication of 113 issues of The Monist and 732 issues of The Open Court. He counseled thousands of correspondents, from the great to the obscure, in tens of thousands afletters. In person he was" a magnetic presence" (Judson 1894) -outspoken, extroverted, and knowledgeable. "In the course of one morning at LaSalle," writes the poet and English professor William Ellery Leonard, he piloted me through his fathel'-in-Iaw's fuming zinc factolY, traversed Kant, Alfred the Great, Empedocles, and Gummere's ballad.theories on the way to the composing rooms, and then with whimsical mirth analyzed the character of a huge printer in his establishment who got drunk and wanted to divorce a wizened wife for cruel and abusive treatment. All was grist to his mill. ... . . . Professor Otto here at Wisconsin tells me of picking him up by chance in the corridor (the Carus boys were at our college) five minutes before the hour and getting him to talk to his students on Kant-in a luminous and well-ordered exposition without notes or other hitches. But most teachers, I suspect, would have begrudged him the hoU1~ (1919, 452)
They certainly have begrudged it to him since. This is the paradox of Paul Carus-a productive and influential life followed by comparative obscurity. His work has left little trace in the philosophic record. His name appears in few histories of American philosophy.2 The reference books are slightly more charitable, but not always accurate. 3 1
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To some extent Carus's obscurity is no paradox. Lconard acknowledges that "his prodigious output was in fact a disconcerting farrago .... He never took time to write a magnum opus, and was short on footnotes. Writing for general enlightenment, he frequently merely popularized (sometimes too in rather slapstick fashion) facts already familiar enough to the betterinformed. He would intermingle, with naive indifference to excathedral dignity and scholastic reputation, familiar commonplaces of higher thought amid valuable original analysis .... Moreover he sometimes made palpable blunders of fact or ventured on erratic guesses of theory.... If one is as alert, many-faceted, and fluent as Carus, he shouldn't have the use of a personally ... controlled printing press always at his elbow" (1919, 453). But the paradox remains, and this book seeks to resolve it by making him less obscure. Carus deserves to be better remembered than he has been, for four related reasons: L His energy and persistence over the thirty-two years from 1887 to 1919 made Open Court Publishing Company, if not profitable, at least a larger, stronger, and more diverse entity than it otherwise would have been, one that survived his death and continues today. At a time when there were few university presses, Open Court served some of the functions they do today. 2. In his own time Carus's educational and sometimes philanthropic work was particularly helpful to three great thinkers not usually mentioned in the same sentence: D. T. Suzuki (Zen Buddhism), Charles S. Peirce (philosophy), and Ernst Mach (physics and philosophy), 3. Carus's early willingness to take Oriental thought (especially Buddhism) seriously and to make it available to a wider audience may have been his single greatest contribution to American culture. InA History ofAmerican Philosophy (1963, 289) Herbert Schneider writes that Carus's "personal catholicity and his liberal editorial policies were an influential factor in awakening an ignorant American public to the basic problems and traditions, both Western and Eastern, of free and critical speculation on the import of natural knowledge."
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4. Whatever the final verdict on Cams's own philosophySuzuki and Mach concurred in important parts of it-he cannot be accused of making the technician's error of studying only those questions too small for anyone else to care about. In particular, the subject he cared about most - how to reconcile religion and science-remains alive today. It needs to be dealt with, and being acquainted with a thinker who made the attempt might help.4 Cams's obscurity has not been total. James Sheridan's doctoral dissertation (1957) is a model of diligence and judgment. Donald Harvey Meyer (1962) has written the best brief overview of Cams's life and thought, and Carl Jackson (1968, 73-92) has sensitively placed Cams's OrientaHst contribution 'in context. Sherwood Sugden's historical introduction to the Open Court centennial bibliography (1987,11-26) draws these and other sources together into a nicely balanced narrative. Ralph McCoy's bibliography (1987) is an indispensable tool. This book builds on these and more specialized contributions, and on the wealth of correspondence and other primary sources preserved by the Carus family and now housed and cataloged in Southern Illinois University's Morris Library. (All correspondence cited herein, with a few exceptions, is from this invaluable resource.) My goal is to describe Carus's thought and how it impelled him to act, speak, write, and edit during his thirty-two years at Open Court. This task is not always easy, both because Carus ranged widely and because his views, for the most part, are more significant as intellectual eatalysts than as philosophical contributions in thei r own right. Carus himself might have preferred that this book deal only with ideas, for he held that it is in the survival of our ideas that we achieve immortality. But his personal stOly-exile from Bismarck's Germany, eomparative comfort and renown in the turnof.the-centmy United States, and a ldnd of internal exile in Woodrow Wilson's war-maddened America - has its own interest. Finally, those who have puzzled over why a philosophical publishing house should exist in a small central Illinois factory town will find in Cams's story as much of an answer as there is.
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Paul Carus:>s Early Life Paul Carus was born 18 July 1852 to Gustav and Laura Krueger Carus- "descending from a family of distinguished scholars," according to Julius Goebel (1919, 513). At the time Gustav Carus was thirty-three years old and pastor of the Lutheran church at Ilsenburg am Harz; he rose steadily in the church hierarchy, received a doctorate of thcology in 1868 "in recognition of his scientific and theological writings," and ended his career as superintendent general of the church for Eastern Prussia (Obituary 1889). Paul Carus left no memoir or autobiography. Information about his first thirty-five years is scanty, although we can infer from his later writings that his parents' Protestantism and strong ethical sense left a deeper imprint on him than did any more specific beliefs (P. Carus 1891a; 1906c, 176-77). The family was well off (although probably without inherited wealth) and well placed in the fairly rigid German class structure of the time. Carus wrote later that he "had occasion to hear much good music in my childhood and youth, and met some artists at the residence of my parents" (P. Carus to C. D. Reynold, 23 Dec. 1893).1 A more substantial indication is the extent of his education-at gymnasia in Posen and Stettin and at the univcrsities of Greifswald, Strasbourg, and Tlibingen, culminating in a Ph.D. in classical philology from Tlibingen in 1876. Such a course required more than scholastic aptitude: it almost always betokened a family with financial and educational resources to help the student on his way (Goebel 1919; Sheridan 1957,2; Schafer 1986).2 4
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Of his education we know little. At the Stettin Gymnasium one of his teachers was the great mathematician and Indologist Hermann Grassmann. CanIs matriculated at Tiibingen in October 1873 and spent one semester as a law student before leaving. At some point he encountered an unnamed Buddhist priest who gave him "much food for thought." His ability to visualize mathematical relations made that subjeet easy for him, but he studied primarily "the classics and philosophy" (Sheridan 1957, 2; Schafer 1986; P. Carns to Pfounds, 7 Aug. 1893; P. Carns to Rev. Alan Hawkesworth, 31 May 1909),3 Carns then served in the Seventeenth Regiment of the Prussian field artillery and as a "lieutenant of the reserves" attached to the Twelfth Saxon Artillery Regiment. This tour of duty did nothing to disillusion Carns with either the military in general or the German militalY in particulm: "The writer of these lines has fulfilled all his duties as a German soldier in the ranks as well as an officer in the reserves," he wrote in 1909. "He knows what he is talking about and he here most emphatically contradicts the statement that the army is a tyrannous institution and a burden on the country" (P. Carus 1900b, 91n; Sheridan 1957, 2; P. Carus 1909h, 335),4 Having passed the civil service examination, Carus taught in gymnasia in Dresden and then at the military academy of the Royal Corps of Cadets of Saxony in Dresden. As oberlehrm" (a position that Carns described as ranking between instructor and professor) he taught Latin, German, history, and various other subjects to the cadets. (He later described himself as having been a "scientific instructor" there [Sheridan 1957, 2; von Billow 1888; P. Carus 1906c, 24].) Carus's diSCiplinary and teaching methods seem to have been those of an enlightened despot, degending on and fostering an esprit de corps among his classes. At the military academy, he recalled: I adopted the principle, whenever any disturbance of a recitation occurred, of simply asking the question, "Who did itP" On the first occasion, of course, there was no response, whereupon I spoke contemptuously of the spirit of the whole
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class, in which there was some one too cowardly to stand up frankly and acknowledge the mischief which he had committed. I argued that all the members of the class were responsible for the esprit de corps; and that so long as such cowardice was condoned and encouraged, I could have no respect for the class.... The result was that somebody rose to expose the delinquent; but I refused to listen to the denunciations, and stigmatized, at the same time, in strong terms, the practice of playing the informer.... The malefactor appeared after the recitation and denounced himself privately, but here again I refused to listen to the confession, and told him the proper thing would be to stand up before the whole class and publicly acknowledge his guilt .... Without any further suggestion, at the next recitation the malefactor jumped up, and in a few clear words made the confession required. An occurrence of this kind took plaee once only in every new dass and never again .... [Thereafter,} the question "Who did it?" was always followed by the prompt self-surrender of the delinquent. He knew, of course, that he would not be punished, nor was it ever necessary, because the confession ended the joke, if there was any joke in it, for its repetition had become impossible. (P. Carus 1906c, 24-26)
This mild unconventionality-Carus referred disparagingly to teachers who spent class time conducting ainvestigations" of misbehavior-was all that seemed to distinguish Paul Carus from others on the same humdrum career path. But beneath the surface the seeds of his great upheaval and later life had already germinated. Carus, it seems, had begun school intending to follow in his father's clerical footsteps. "When I was a youth," he wrote in 1890, a voice came unto me and said: "Preach!" ... That voice came from my parents and grandparents, from my teachers and instructors; and it found a ready response in my soul. To be a preacher of Truth, what a great callingl I knew the gospel by heart, and I studied eagerly, that I might be a worthy minister of the word of God. But the more
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I studied the more that sinful tendency to doubt grew, first secretly, then openly, first suppressed, then frankly acknowledged, until doubt ceased to be doubt; it became an established conviction .... Could I step to the altar in this condition and swear to preach the gospel? Never! ... I abandoned religion and followed science. (1890e)
Carus told the story of his disillusionment (and his subsequent return to what he saw as a higher and purer form of religion based on science) several times in slightly different ways, but he gave no hint of when, how, or under what circumstances he went through this wrenching process. The best guess is that it happened between the late 1860s and the late 1870s, by which time he had become a teacher rather than a preachCI: This loss of orthodoxy might have caused Carus no problem ifhe had kept his new beliefs to himself But although his faith in church doctrine had died, his impulse to preach had not. In the summer of 1880 he published a pamphlet denying the literal truth of scripture and describing the Bible as a great literary work comparable to the Odyssey (von Bulow 1888; Andre W. Carus, pel's. com., 21 Nov. 1989). Such views were not unusual in that day or this, but the Royal Corps of Cadets found them "not in harmony with the Christian spirit, in accordance with which the training and education of the Corps of Cadets should be conducted" (von BiHow 1888).5 At a later date Carus might have defended himself with the argument that his views were the logical fulfillment and future evolutionary direction of Christianity. Instead, he appealed to the memory of Frederick the Great, who himself had held that all religions are equal: "Have we forgotten, then, that the most glorious Prussian military deeds took place during the reign of the great king who, even on the throne, was not afraid to be and appear open-minded and who was in every sense the model of a good prince? - But I do not wish to quarrel with the governing powers of our people" (1884, 4). The young obCl'lehrer was given a choice: "I had either to ask most humbly for forgiveness for daring to have an opinion
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of my own and to express it, perhaps even promise to publish nothing more on religious matters, or to give up my post. I chose the latter. But not only had I therewith lost my office, but any chance of advancing in the service of the state had also been cut off. Anyone who has fallen into such a conflict should not be surprised if, from then on, he finds all possible paths closed to him. There was thus no other choice for me but to emigrate and, trusting in my own powers, to establish for myself a new home." His resignation was effective on Easter of 1881. Either that fall or the following one, after a farewell trip along the Rhine, he went to Belgium (P. Carus 1884, 4-5, 27; von Bulow 1888). This entire episode-from Paul's first loss of faith to his final decision to resign and leave the country-must have caused his parents great distress, both personal and professionaL (We have no firsthand evidence, but the career of an ambitious cleric in a state-run church can hardly be enhanced by having one's son denounced as an atheist [P. Carus 1884, 27J.) Yet neither in Aus dem Exil, his most personal book, nor in later accounts of his religious trauma are his parents ever mentioned. We have no idea what their relationship was during these years. 6 But by the late 1880s, when Paul Carus was established in La Salle, Illinois, they were once more-or still-in touch. In 1888 Gustav Carus, then aged sixty-nine, contributed a critique of The Open Court's philosophy to the magazine (G. Carus 1888). There is nothing in it, nor in his son's reply, to suggest that their relationship had ever been strained. The elder Carus expressed doubt that the magazine would succeed, partly because it held, in his opinion, inadequate doctrines and partly because it was too highbrow; but he added that he did not mean to question "the ability, the foreSight, and the skill of the editorial management!" That's as personal as their exchange got. One can deduce that, for a father in his time and position, Gustav Cams was unusually humane. But one wonders what he would have thought of his son's dedicating his 1892 Homilies of
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Science to "the sacred memory of my father, the late Gustav Carus ... who would not have agreed to the main doctrines of this book but whose life exemplified its teachings" (1892a). Of Carus's mother Laura we know considerably less, but she remained in correspondence with him until death in the late 1890s. 7 She read The Open Court and The Monist, and well into the 1890s she was urging her fortyish son to set aside his own convictions and raise her grandchildren in the Christian faith. We don't have Paul's letters to hel~ but there is no evidence that her appeals bore any orthodox fruit. Carus took his departure in stages: a last look at the Rhine, then to Belgium ("pure Low German ground" [27]), then to England, and finally to the United States. Sometime after October 1882 he began his "extended visit" to England for the purpose, he says, oflearning the language well enough to thrive in the United States. When he wrote Aus dem Exil in 1884, he still had some trouble with the language; for instance, he advised his readers that" all words consisting of a single letter are to be capitalized" (1884, 37). Nevertheless, Carus had, as he later recalled, "very qUickly obtained a comfortable position as Foreign Master in a Military College, where I had plenty of free time and as much vacation as I wanted, so that my position seemed to me to be a regular sinecure" (1884, 44). He also lectured at least twice at the German Athenaeum Club. English education, English military prowess, the Anglican church, and the aristocracy's passion for blood sports all drew Carus's disdain. But he acknowledged compensating virtues, and in any case by late 1884 or early 1885 he was on his way to the New World. In Aus dern Exil, written in England, Carus did display considerable emotion over the loss - not of his family, but of his fatherland: "Germany was more to me than the land of my birth. It was and is my intellectual homeland ... because I am convinced that it is on the salutary path of quiet and constant progress and that, of all nations, our German people contribute the most toward the advancement of culture and civilization"
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(P. Carus 1884, 3, 4). Nor did he take easily to English ways during his sojourn there. But in the United States, interestingly enough, Carus was able to remain German without constantly looking backward. His children don't remember him talking about his own childhood or the "old country," although there was discussion of current German political and intellectual events. And he undel'stood that the thinker's role must be different on the west side of the Atlantic. "European philosophers," he wrote in 1893, "may sit in their studies and devote themselves to the abstract questions that please them. American philosophers" he was happily counting himself as one- "have to step upon the same platform with the mountebank" (A. and E. Carus 1988; P. Carus 1893b, 11). When he did mention the Fatherland in print, it was not always in a favorable light. In 1896 he condemned "the most outrageous and illegal acts on the part of the German government" when Dr. Bruno Wille, the speaker of a "free religious congregation," was imprisoned for his preaching. "This actually happened, not during the Middle Ages, but a few months ago, in the civilized kingdom of Prussia." Carus even appealed to the English monarch: "Would that the QueenofEngland had heard of the suppression of religious liberty and had sent a message of sympathy to Dl: Bruno Wille encouraging him to bear his martyrdom with dignity and to stand up for his rights with manly couragel" (1896d). At first Carus found it more difficult to make a living in the United States than hc had in England. Teaching German classes in Boston proved unsuccessful, but still Carus managed to make the right contacts. A paper he read to the Industrial Art Teachers' Association on 29 December 1885-"Principles of Art, from the Standpoint of Monism and Meliorism" -was printed by vote of the association. Carus may have been involved in Henry George's insurgent campaign for mayor of New York City in 1886. At some point he found work there as coeditor ofZickel's Novellen-schatz and Familien Blatter (Un-
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derwood and Underwood [hereafter Underwoods] 1887, 14, 15,23; McCoy 1987,365; P. Carus 1886b; Hegeler et al. 1887, 639). Meanwhile, he had written and published his first philosophical work in English, Monism and Melim'ism (1885). Although it was not widely circulated, it was read by one person who counted-Edward C. Hegeler-ancl it serves as a convenient benchmark for judging the futurc evolution of Carus's own views.
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The Philosophy of Monism and Meliorism "Thought for its own sake is a disease," wrote Paul Carns (1891b, 361). "Thought should always end in the regulation or adjustment of our behavior toward our surroundings. If it does not, it is not the right kind of thought." As he told Edwin N. Lewis (5 Oct. 1897), editor of the Milway Master Mechanic, he most valued "the appreciation of a sober minded man who deals with the practical sides of life .... Both The Open Court and The Monist, although apparently velY theoretical, have very practical aims." The notion of a purely technical philosophy, or one of interest only within the academy, repelled him. "Most of the prohlems which are so vigorously discussed by many philosophers ... are mere sham such as the problem of pluralism and unity, and such also as the problem of the reality of the real," he wrote to Seth D. Merton (16 May 1904). "It is scarcely worthwhile to explode these bubbles because they are suited for whiling away a student's time when he attends his philosophical course at the university." This same line of thought led Carns to compare his adopted home favorably to the Old Wor1d: "Here all meet without pretensions," he told the World's Congress of Philosophy in 1893 (1893b, 11), "and the sage must reply to the incoherent notions of the fool as to his equal. This naturally appears to a European scholar as a humiliation; but by doing so a thinker does not stoop; it does not lower his work; on the contrary, it will only widen his views and deepen his convictions." In the United States, Carns argued, "A philosopher must feel the
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pulse of the people beat in his own heart, with all the nobility of their aspirations, and with all the errors that sway their minds" (1893,3). For this reason most of Cams's many philosophical writings are more or less popular in style and approach. He restated his views repeatedly over more than a quarter-century, but these restatements were rarely systematic or thorough enough to satisfy professionals in the field. In 1890 Charles Peirce described Cams's Fundamental Problems as containing "the average opinions of thoughtful men to-day.... [A]nd if there be here and there an inconsistency, it only ... adapts it all the better to the need of the public" (1890, 118-19). When Cams proposed that his 1893 Primer of Philosophy would "set the ship of philosophy afloat again" (iii), John Dewey in a brief and tactful notice (1895) suggested, "Were the ship of philosophy stranded, I doubt the ability of the united efforts of the whole race to get it afloat." Much later, Cams's friend, the poet William Ellery Leonard, praised Carus's lifelong willingness to debate all comers, famous or obscure ("he took any thinking, or honest attempt at thinking, seriously"), but he lamented Carns's tendency to blend popularization and "valuable, original analysis" (Leonard 1919,453). Carus frequently affirmed his willingness to change his mind ifhis adversary could convince him he was wrong. These declarations encouraged many a spirited debate in the pages of The Open Court and The Monist, but his bedrock views remained constant throughout his mature years: that the world is in some sense a unity and not a plurality, that we learn about it by applying reason to our sense experience, and that evolution is moral progress. With one exception (noted below), Carus did not call attention to changes in his point of view. Nor did he claim to be original in his work. "I do not want to propound a new philosophy of my own but to help in working out philosophy itself, ... one that would be as objective as any branch of the natural sciences" (1909d, 1).
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Later students of Cams's thought have usually followed his lead and treated his writings from 1885 to 1919 as expounding a single, fixed system. (K. S. Shin's discussion of the varying definitions of monism [1973, 76-96] is an exception.) But in fact Cams's philosophical views changed between 1885 (Monism and Meliorism) and 1911 (The Philosophy of Form) as his rationale, terminology, and subsidiary points evolved. Monism and Meliorism was Cams's first philosophical statement in English and his last such writing before he joined Open Court Publishing Company. In the retrospective bibliography Philosophy as a Science Cams described the book as "a preliminary statement" that "plainly foreshadows his views, which are more fully expressed in later publications" (P. Cams 1909d, 29). The book also expresses some views that were dropped from later publications. Although now obscure, and on some points less persuasive than Carus's later writings, Monism and Meliorism is the best evidence we have of the thoughts that Paul Cams brought to La Salle and that appealed to Edward C. Hegeler. Published in 1885 by F. W. Christern of New York City, the book's five "articles" expounded "a philosophical system" of which "causality is the beginning, ethics the aim and end .... All other questions are of minor importance." As ever, Cams aimed high: HI sincerily [sic} trust that I have succeeded so far as to have realized what David Hume ,and Immanuel Kant planned, and to have brought to a certain consummation what they intended to do .... If Kant compared his work to that of Copernicus, I may fairly liken mine to that of Kepler who filled ,P11t the Copemican system and reduced the law of motion of planets to simple mathematical formulae" (1885,5, 7, 6-7). Cams began by identifying himself with the "progressive party in philosophy," among whom he Singled out Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer. Not that he agreed with any of them completely-Comte "forgot the main pOint," and Mill "ought to have declared himself a sceptic." Spencer, whom Carus later savaged, received rather respectful treatment in Monism and Meliorism, although Carus did not
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endorse his ethics. In any case these men represented the tradition within which he was arguing - a generally hardheaded, debunking worldview oriented more toward science and thc future than toward religion and the past Cams dismissed much of old-time philosophy: "Kant," he wrote approvingly, "cleared the place where the rotten edifice of metaphysics had stood so long, and at the same time contrived a plan for constructing another and a better building." And now the general contractor announced he was ready for work (1885, 6, 32n, 10). Carus followed Kant's argument with Hume and Kant's establishment of time, space, mathematics, and causality as a priori-or, in the terminology Carns preferred, "internal" truths. But when Kant concludes that we cannot stand aside from our reason and discover whether the world in itself is organized in the forms in which we must perceive it, Carus accused him of a fallacy. Carus explained what Kant "overlooked" in the central argument of the book, a difficult section entitled "The Foundation of Monism." First let us ask, what is the subject in the objeetive world? What are we ourselves in regard to our surroundings? If we were standing outside of ourselves, inquiring into what we call our subject, our ego, the centre of our cognition, we should find it to be an object like all other objects beside it. How now, with regard to our problem? Are not the internal tmths inherent and a priori to all subjects which swann around us as objects; and should we not suppose, therefore, that they belong rather to our subjective existence? EvclY ego in this world (as it must needs have-or rather must be-an objective existence) finds the internal truths in this objective existence, i.e., within itself, in such a way as to be able to construct them a priori. ... evelything exists materially and must, of necessity, partake of the form of the world, viz. time and space .... such being the laws of objective existence, they adhere to any object permeating its entire essence so that any object, if developed to the state of consciousness, will find these laws by mere reflection and meditation. (1885, 43-44)
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In other words, the subjective self is also an objective entity. And as an object it conforms to the laws of time, space, and causality, which must therefore be objective. The forms define our thought because they have permeated us from '
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If the world consists of matter moving in space, and knowledge consists of ascertaining the causes of that movement, then-Carus explained-the limits of knowledge appear when one tries to fathom the depth of each of these three basic principles. Space is "entirely incomprehensible in its totality" the word infinite "merely signifies our inability to grasp it in its unity." Matter we know only from the outside: "what matter really is, we shall never know." And the (hypothetical) most general law, governing all causes of motions, "is withdrawn from our comprehension, for it would be absurd to look for a more general reason of the last and universal reason" (1885, 47-48). But by November 1888, when he wrote a two-page "Supplementary Note" added at the front of the book, Carus had abjured all such Spencerian talk He didn't mean that there was any thing unknowable, he insisted; it was as if he had said all mathematics could be proved except the axioms. 'As soon as they are understood, they will be recognized as most simple and self-evident." (Later Carus attempted to do away with axioms as well.) He claimed this switch to be "chiefly a change of expression ... because the former expressions as used in this pamphlet have been misunderstood." But it was more than that, and in a rare public acknowledgment of philosophical error he commented that his more recent (Open Court) writings "mark a decided progress in the author's thought, in so faI~ as the last shadow of mysticism has been removed" (1888e). Carus rejected the traditional idea of "final cause," based as it is on the idea that there exist "two kinds of causality, the one regulated by chance, the other by some conscious will" (1885, 49). His monism-which some contemporaries saw as a materialism-would allow no such dichotomy. But in its place he substituted the ambiguous notion of finis, roughly describable as the effect of one given cause allowed to operate without interference. Thus, the finis of the earth's movement around the sun is a tangent to its orbit heading out into deep space, while the finis of the sun's gravitation is to propel the earth straight into the sun. The actual effect is the earth's elliptical orbit.
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This seemingly unobjectionable extension of vector mathematics soon began to look like another "shadow of mysticism," one that does not appear in Carus's later thought. He wrote, "The finis conseiously aspired to is called purpose" (1885, 57), so evidentlyfints is a purpose not consciously aspired to. Carus rejected the dogmatie notion that the final cause of, say, the growth of cereal grains is the feeding of animals, inSisting that the fints of their growth is merely to produce seed of their own kind. But within a few pages he gave up this diluted teleology and stated outright that" the finiS reveals the aim and tendency in the cosmos." Evolution, he asserted after a ritual bow to Darwin, must be guided" not as Darwin says, merely ... by the famous law of the struggle for life, but enhanced by the strife for the ideal" (1885, 55, 73). This finis may not exactly be pulling evolution along (as a final cause would), but it is the clear direction in which evolution is heading. "It is undoubtedly a fact that the development of the world tends toward a higher plan and a better arrangement" (1885, 53). The notion that such an ideal exists, and that it is something that human beings will agree on and approve of, was so much a part of the Zeitgeist and of Carus's thought that he neither offered evidence for this statement nor defined its terms. In a universe so thoroughly permeated with causality there might seem to be little room for free will or ethics in any conventional sense. Carus insisted that there is and argued much as he did in later works: You are free, he said, when you are not subject to external restraint, or force. Being subject to necessity is different. The fact that your actions are caused by your will, which in turn has earlier causes, is not an external restraint but part of "the internal harmony and logical order of the world." "If a man can do as he pleases, we call him free; but if he is prohibited from following motives which stir him, if by some restraint or force he is limited, he is not free" (1885, 66, 65). Conversely, freedom in the sense of uncaused-chanceactions is ethically meaningless. "The best action would
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amount to nothing, if it were a mere chance result which might have occurred otherwise." He concluded that "the chief value of any moral deed rests on the fact that the man could not, under the conditions, act otherwise than thus, that it was an act of free will and, at the same time, of inevitable necessity." (Carus did not acknowledge the commonsense view that the value of a moral deed is that the actor could have done otherwise but chose not to.) The must and the ought, which Kant treated separately, "are found, to some extent, identical" (P. Carus 1885, 66, 75). Carus illustrated his view by comparing human free will with that of a compass needle. "Were the loadstone endowed with sentiment and gifted with the power of speech, it would say [when not interfered with]: 'I am free, and of my free will I point toward the north.'" But if you pushed it away from the north, then "it would feel, that it is acted upon and forced into some other direction against its nature, and would declare its freedom to be curtailed" (1885, 66). This illustration of a freedom to do only one thing is perhaps less comforting than he intended. Having walked the line between chance and determinism, Carus also split the differcnce between optimism and pessimism with his meliorism: "Let the world be bad! Our duty is to work with steady labor for its improvement." And this is no mere imperative founded on air, "no mere regulative law, prescribing what ought to be [but might not], but it is a naturaZlaw ruling the development and progress of the world" (1885, 71). How is morality part of natural law? Because it is exemplified in the division of labor in the natural (and later, social) world. In organic as well as social evolution, "single units serve as parts in a higher unity; like organs which operate in an organism, they work, they suffer, they sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole of which they form limbs. And the act of serving this higher interest, even with the neglect of personal desires, is what we call morality" (1885, 54). The organism or society whose members cease to cooperate (and sacrifice) will eventually perish at the hands of those who do-hence Carus's
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view that ethics consists of conforming to the law of nature. He does not here address the question that agitated a slightly later generation - why, in the absence of supernatural sanctions, the individual should not act as a hedonistic free rider on society. Carns's definition of monism in this early work was more elaborate and more specific than his later formulations were. In Monism and Meliorism, monism meant a unity of source for all things, a unity of principle (nothing uncaused), and a unity ofJinis ("everywhere the same goal"). But in a footnote to the preface he cut this definition by one-third, omittingfinis and saying merely that monism "traces all things back to one source, thus explaining all problems from one principle" (1885, 62, 5n). And by November 1888 his monism had become even more attenuated: it was simply "the unitary conception of the world," explaining matter and spirit "as two aspects of one and the same reality" (P. Carns 1888e). The concept of form, which later became central to Carus's philosophy, appeared only in the sketchiest way in this volume: matter, Carns wrote, remains unchanged, but "the arrangement in which [its] elements are combined, may be more or less favorable" (1885,53). The three years between the first publication of Monism and Meliorism in 1885 and its "Supplementary Note" in 1888 were the most important in Carns's life. These years included the founding of the Open Court Publishing Company, the beginning of Carns's association with Edward C. Hegeler, his marriage to Hegeler's daughter Mary, and his taking over The Open Court magazine from founding editors Benjamin and Sara Underwood. If, after December 1887, Open Court publications reflected Paul Carns's thought, it may also be that these tumultuous events and forceful personalities in turn affected his thinking.
Open Courts First Year
The beginnings of the Open Court Publishing Company lie, oddly enough, in zinc. The company's existence, location, endowment, and even to some extent its character-all derive from the nineteenth-century exigencies of processing zinc ore into a usable product. Frederick W Matthiessen and Edward C. Hegeler-recent graduates of the Konigliche Bergakademie in Freiberg in Saxony-arrived in the United States in 1856 to seek their fortune. After two years of investigation and travel they chose La Salle, Illinois, for their zinc works because it offered the supply of coal closest to the supply of zinc ore in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. "Since it took two tons of coal to smelt one ton of zinc ore, it was rational to carry the zinc to the coal rather than the coal to the zinc" (Sugden 1987, 12, 13). The Civil War at first killed their market and then after a year or two revived it manyfold with "a lively demand ... for zinc in the manufacture of arms and cartridges" (Matthiessen 1910, 447). While shut down, they had experimented and upgraded their methods of production; invention and improvement became a pattern. In 1872 Hegeler invented a zinc smelter (the Hegeler Furnace); in 1882 the company began reclaiming and selling sulfuric acid, which until then had been a waste product; in 1884 he patented a "muffle roastkiln" soon adopted around the world. "By 1877, M & H Zinc employed 300 workers and produced 8,000,000 pounds of zinc spelter a year. What had begun as one furnace on a few acres ofland was to grow to four furnaces, a coal mine, acid works, and rolling
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mill on 80 acres, eventtlally employing more than 1,000" (Sugden 1987,12, 13). "I would have undertaken anything with him as co-workCl;" recalled Hegeler's partner Matthiessen years later (1910, 447). "Mr. Hegeler was a most untiring and indefatigable worker. Having set out to do a thing, he had the most unyielding determination, the equal of which I have never seen .... in business, having conceived an idea, he would leave nothing undone to bring it to success." This determined man is the gray eminence behind the story of Paul Carus and Open Court. Hegeler became, of course, the founder and bankroller of the publishing finn and the father-in-law of Caruso He also attempted philosophy on his own. His opinions noticeably influenced Carus's, and they firmly positioned The Open Court and The Monist a bit aside from the mainstream of Anglo-American liberal-to-radical "free thought." Of course, the magazines published many who swam happily in that mainstream, but it made an important difference that Hegeler and Carus were not uncritical devotees of, say, Herbert Spencel~ the agnostic author Moncure Conway, or the early feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Hegeler's disagreement with more secular freethinkers is easiest to spot (after the faet) in his 1886-87 exchanges with Benjamin Franklin Underwood, the freethinker who became The Open Court's founding editor. The Hegeler-Underwood encounter also highlights Hegeler's rather autocratic personal style, with which Carus had to cope in later years. This chapter, unlike previous ehronicles of the company's founding, draws on the views of Underwood and his wife Sara as published in late 1887 after their resignation from the magazine. Their velY negative opinion of Paul Carus also helps us put him in context; in later years those who did not care for Carus or his views would often ignore him, a luxury the Underwoods could not afford. Edward C. Hegeler personified the intellectual dilemma of the nineteenth century. By careful observation, experiment,
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and invention he and his partner revolutionized the production of zinc and in the process made themselves wealthy. UnfOl'tunately for his peace of mind, that same inquiring, improving habit of thought led him to question his childhood religious faith, and to find it wanting. By the late 1870s Hegeler was active in religiously «radical" circles. He contributed generously to the Society for Ethical Culture and to the Boston-based Free Religious Association. He kept up with the writings of European scientists and academics (Hegeler et al. 1887, 623; Underwoods 1887, 21, 32).1 At this time, writes Stow Persons (1947, 91), many other Americans "had already abandoned allegiance to the Christian churches and were spontaneously organizing themselves locally in order to give expression to the new rationalistic impulse. They proposed to deal impartially with scientific and moral as well as with religious questions." This movement-of which Open Court's first editor, Benjamin F. Underwood, was a part-often took a more aggressively secularist, materialist, agnostic, and anticlerical view than did HegelCl: Perhaps we can say that Hegeler was in the movement but not of it. Hegeler's own ideas did not appear in print until February 1887, when "The Basis of Ethics" was published in The Open Cow-to Because Hegeler's beliefs-"the definite outcome of the long continued struggle in me between my early religion and science and experience" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 627)-were the foundation of the publishing firm, let us examine them first. Hegeler defined "good for X" as that which contributes to the preservation and growth of its form. The notion of form he derived not from Plato, at least not directly, but from the work of the contemporary psychologist Theodule Ribot, editor of the Revue philosophique. Hegeler described Ribot's theory of perception as involving the transfer of the form of an apple, say, into a similar form in the gray matter of the perceiver's brain. (Open Court published five books by Ribot, in several editions, between 1890 and 1910 [McCoy 1987, 278-82].) Hegeler also identified the good with evolution (defined as "that process in nature, by which on our globe, from simple
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organisms, the plant, the animal, the savage man, the civilized man have been gradually developed"). "Especially good I deem to be the evolution of form, through which thereafter, the same labor will produce a greater evolution than it did before." (This idea, Hegeler argued, fit right in with Ernst Mach's characterization of science as "labor-saving in thinking.") Best of all, "Science gives us the conviction ... that evolution is taking place throughout the universe-that God and the universe are one-are the continuous ALL of which man is a limited part and phenomenon" (1887,21). Hegeler argued against Spencer's hedonism, contending that the most basic ethical criterion is the preservation and growth of life and form rather than surplus of pleasure over pain. "Physiology shows us that our children are the continuance of our bodily existence ... of what we were near the time they were born .... they are the continued existence, as much, if not more so, than we ourselves are to-day. The living, feeling so-called matter, which then lived and felt and thought in our form, has been replaced by other matter again and again. The form only is what has continued in us. In our children the form gradually developed; in us it commenced to decline." The human form is (apparently) the human soul, which is not a ghostly entity but a "society of ideas." It survives material death in the further evolution of its ideas in other souls, that is, in "the great continuous ALL ... [of which] we are but temporarily individualized parts" (1887, 21). If this "refined pantheism" (as one observer called it) was too affirmative for many freethinkers, their agnosticism was too negative for Hegeler, who saw it as a form of defeatism and an obstacle to scientific progress. "It is a duty to hold firm the conviction, that we can understand the nature of ethics," he wrote. "I will here quote from Goethe: 'Man must hold firm to the belief that what appears incomprehensible to him is comprehensible, since otherwise he will not investigate'" (1887, 21). After all,' where would M & H Zinc have been jf its proprietors had maintained a standoffish "agnostic" attitude toward the properties of their ore?
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Hegeler was not a professional philosophel~ nor did the articulation of these abstract ideas, in English, come easily to him. 2 He did not make clear the exact connection between "forms," "ideas," and "souls," which he sometimes treated as synonymous and sometimes not. But he did have firmly in mind a philosophical-religious system, which he felt harmonized with science and to which he could attach those childhood sentiments he especially treasured - including, it appears, the sense of absolute certainty. Almost certainly, Hegeler is the "gentleman" whom Paul Carus described in this vignette: "I lately heard a gentleman say, who was asked by a guest of his to which church or religious denomination he belonged: 'I belong to the most orthodox religion.' The questioner looked rather astonished at his host, who had heretofore in conversation pronounced extremely liberal and even radical views. This answer was unexpected and like a puzzle to him. Then the gentleman continued: 'I confess to the religion of science'" (1887d). Similarly, in 1888 Hegeler argued, "I expect and hope that we and our posterity may have the good fortune constantly to make new acquisitions in the domain of knowledge. But the essential problem of religion is solved" (1888). Having solved that vexing problem, Hegeler was understandablyanxious to spread the word: "I deem it of the utmost importance for us all, to convince ourselves, that the future of our souls, their preservation and evolution, lies in our posterity" (1887, 21). And he realized he needed help in putting his ideas into publishable form. In 1879 or 1880 he told journalist Benjamin Underwood that he, Hegeler, wished "to draw you here for local work," possibly starting a magazine (Hegeler et al. 1887, 623). Underwood, four years younger than Hegeler, had served with distinction in the Civil War and then became well known as a writer and lecturer "championing a materialistic philosophyand Darwin's theory of evolution" (Ryan 1985, 678). He challenged Christian apologists to frequent debate, speaking as often as five or six times a week and for nine months out of
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the yem: Sidney Warren describes him as "one of the more conservative freethinkers ... more constructive in his approach than either Ingersoll or Bradlaugh" (Warren 1943, 40). Undel'wood wrote Darwinism: What It Is and the Proofs in Favor of It (1875), The Crimes and Cruelties of Christianity (1877), ~oman: Her Past and Present, Her Rights and Wrongs (1877), and other books. His wife, Sara A. Underwood, was an outspoken feminist, freethinkel; and author as well (Ryan 1985, 679). Underwood let Hegeler's somewhat vague proposition pass and in 1880 accepted the editorship of the ten-yem'-old weekly The Index, published in Boston by the Free Religious Association (FRA). The FRA had been founded by left-wing Unitarians in 1867 as a "spiritual anti-slavery society" (Ralph Waldo Emerson was the first to join). The Index, as the FRA's house organ, had peaked in circulation at 4,900 in 1872, and even then it never made expenses. Although the FRA spent all its energies keeping The Index afloat, by 1886 the magazine was heavily dependent on donations and headed for the rocks (Persons 1947, 42, 47; Hegeler et al. 1887, 622). Despite this financial weakness, under Underwood and coeditor William J. Potter The Index seems to have been a critical success. Persons describes it as "easily the finest liberal religious journal in America" at the time (1947, 90). Its contributors included Moncure Conway, Dr. Felix Oswald, Dr. Edmund MontgomelY, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. A newer contributor was a German emigre named Paul Carus, whose article debunking 'American colleges and those who are graduated from them" was published 26 August 1886. Underwood pronounced the article "very good" and put Carus, then living in New York, on the dying magazine's "free list" in lieu of payment (Underwood 1888). Meanwhile, Hegeler had continued to seek someone to put out a publication expressing his views-with little success (Hegeler et al. 1887, 624, 630-31). When Underwood wrote to Hegeler soliciting support for The Index, Hegeler replied 7 July 1886 proposing that they meet and have "a thorough talk" about "start[ing] a paper in Chicago." At this meeting they discussed
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both philosophy-Hegeler expounding his views-and Undel'wood's delicate position at The Index; at the time, the FRA was considering al10wing the journal to be moved to New York in a desperate bid for survival (Hegeler et al. 1887, 622). Hegeler followed up on their meeting with a letter of 7 August suggesting that the Underwoods "move into my former home, north of my present one, this Fall, and that we by to start a fortnightly or monthly in Chicago from here. If it appears necessary, you to move to Chicago .... I believe that we would well together. The paper should have definitely and energetically outspoken views, and if we both find them sound, they will make the paper a success too" (Hegeler et aL 1887, 626). A month latel; 19 September 1886, Hegeler wrote, "The programme of the paper we should be perfectly clear about. To me it is an earnest effort to give to the world a philosophy in harmony with all facts (the monistic philosophy) which will gradually become a new religion to it, as it has to me."3 Underwood responded that he agreed with Hegeler's "naturalistic, monistie view of the universe" and with his" melioristic spirit," adding cautiously that "with your terminology I am not always satisfied, as I am not with my own." But he also found The Index a little too conservative: "Its chief constituency was composed of a class but little advanced beyond the radical wing of Unitarianism. I have been obliged to adapt the paper to some extent, to this class. It has been therefore less scientific and less a representative of modern scientific thought than it would have been had the paper been exclusively under my control without any of the inherited characteristics, and quasitheological surroundings" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 624). Even at this early stage, with "the new paper" scarcely a gleam in its parents' eyes, we can spot the beginnings of disharmony between Hegeler and Underwood-a breach into which Carus would soon step. Following their July meeting, Hegeler was under the impression that Underwood agreed with his philosophy. Now nuances of difference were beginning to appear. It would be altogether out of character for
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Hegeler, for instance, to use "theological" as a derogatory term. Later the differences became more obtrusive. These differences might not have mattered had Hegeler been content with a role simply as publisher of a new "highclass exponent of liberal thought" (Underwood's phrase). But Hegeler £lrst of all was not particularly liberal in ideology. "What leads me in this undertaking," he wrote on 7 December, "is not so much a sense ofliberality, as a desire to communicate my ideas to others." Second, he wanted much more say in details of content than the average publisher has. Hegeler, but not Underwood, based the new paper on unanimity: "If we both £lnd them sound" (Hegeler et ai. 1887, 626, 627). Still, the lines seemed clearly drawn in the agreement the two signed on 8 October 1886: "A liberal publication is to be started in Chicago early in 1887, to be the property of E. C. Hegelel~ and under the business and editorial management of B. F. Underwood, subject to such conditions as the two shall mutually agree upon"; the Underwoods' annual salary was set at $1,800 (what they had asked), and their contract ran for one year. Sara Underwood was to be associate editor. Hegeler's only specifically reserved right, elaborated in a December lettel~ was "to express, over his own name, any difference of opinions from those expressed by the editors, and also to present, or have presented, his views over his own name." But Hegeler maintained afterward that Underwood had affirmed more than this, saying "that he would do his best to present my views, and made no opposition to them" (Hegeler et ai. 1887, 625, 626, 634).
During the last two and one-half months of 1886, events moved fast. The board of the Free Religious Association decided to close The Index. Underwood, with Hegeler's consent, succeeded in getting most of its subscribers and contributors to sign on with the Chicago paper, giving it a more solid base than most new publications start from. "The value of the [subscription] list will be great," Underwood wrote Hegeleron 3 November, "and the proposed announcement will give the
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new journal, before it starts, the moral approval and support of The Index-whose successor in a certain way, as a high class exponent of liberal thought, it will be" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 626). Contrary to some accounts, Hegeler evinced no qualms about the new publication's being the successor to The Index. 4 In fact, he himself so described it in his draft for a standing notice (Hegeler et al. 1887, 634). On 7 December 1886 he emphasized that he wanted the opinions of the best scientists of the day for the magazine and added: "The long honourable and conservative career of the Index, the successor of which the new journal I hope will be, will aid us in winning their confidence. "5 Yet it should have been abundantly clear that it was not The Index's conservatism that endeared iUo Underwood. Hegelm; by contrast, seems to have expected that the new publication would evolve systematically away from The Index's point of view and toward his own. He agreed to put off calling his magazine "religious" in a letter 01'11 December, adding, "Practically you will have to begin as a continuation of The Indexbut give preference to such topics that together with other topics will in time make clear the Monistic Idea" (Hegeler et al. 1887,631). At the Free Religious Festival in Boston on 17 November 1886, a list of twenty-two Index contributors willing to write for the new paper-including Moncure Conway, William J. Potter, Dr. Edmund Montgomery, '\IV M. SuIter, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Dl: Paul Carus "elicited much applause."6 With all this acclaim, said Underwood, it was high time to name the baby. He enumerated suggestions from The Index office: H01"izon, Dawn, The Radical Reasonm', The ReaSOne1" and C1itic, The Sounding Lead, The Meliorist, The Tribunal, The Contemporary. But his favorite-Sara Underwood's coinage-was The Open COtt1T: new, easily understood, dignified, and populm~ "What do you say of it?"7 Hegeler was not crazy about it. He had long intended that his magazine be called The Monist, and he thought he had told
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Underwood so when they met in October. Meanwhile, UndCl1.. wood, having no response from Hegeler for more than ten days, went ahead and used The Open Court name for the first time publicly in the announcement in The Index of 2 December 1886 (Hegeler et al. 1887, 626-28). This seemingly small matter vexed both men considerably-no doubt because it caused their divergent opinions and temperaments to surface. Underwood set out his objections to The Monist in a lengthy missive dated 7 December 1886, which appears in the Opcn Court archives with penciled marginal notes almost certainly by HegclCl: 8 The tcrm monism, wrote Underwood, was a new word unknown to the public and would therefore "defeat the very object of a name." (Hegeler: "Then it will cause them to inform themselves on the meaning.") And it would convey little to those few philosophers who did recognize it. (Hegelcr: "It conveys a religiOUS idea which has the strength to cause me to give my time and money.") The Open Court should expound on monism, said Underwood, but "let us not narrow it at the outset by giving it a name which stands for only a school or class of thinkers, and which would rather repel many able and earnest thinkers, with their adherents." (Hegeler: "Then you are an avowed agnostic who [in trying to please] everybody will not satisfy anybody. ")9 Underwood expressed alarm at Hegeler's phrase "a religious magazine" -yet how eould he be hearing it now for the first timer-adding with some understatement, "My friends and opponents would be surprised to see my name as editor of a journal called 'a religious magazine'" (Hegeler: "[I] think religion something very good.") Hoping to sum up judiciously, Underwood blundered into another thicket: "In the new enterprise you will have at stake a eertain amount of money. [Hegeler, in large dark script: "Much more than that!"] I shall have at stake whatever reputation I have gained. If the paper disappOints reasonable expectations, or fails under my management the result will be bad for me. You will be unaffeeted by it, exccpt pecuniarily; for it will be
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known you entrusted the management to another person." Hegeler responded, "In what you say about me you are quite mistaken," and added in a letter of 11 December 1886, "My manhood even is at stake" (Hegeler et aL 1887, 631). Underwood concluded with a plea that he have "uncontrolled management of the publication," with the benefit of Hegeler's advice and, of course, subject to the possibility of his being replaced after one year. HegeIer wrote in the margin, "I get along best with independent men who are not afraid of responsibility.... you will not notice any restraint from me." By month's end the two had reached a compromise: Hegeler agreed to the name The Open Court as long as his views were made clear in a standing notice on the editorial page. Hegeler asked that it read as follows: "The leading object of The Open Court will be to continue the work of 11le Index,that is, to establish religion on the basis of science, and in connection therewith it will endeavor to present the Monistic philosophy. The founder of the journal believes this will furnish to others, as it has done to him, a religion that replaces that which we were taught in our childhood" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 634).10 The correspondence between Hegeler and Underwood often reads like two incorrigible optimists talking past each other. Yet neither man was young or inexperienced. The two had been acquainted for at least nine years, and Underwood's views were well known and widely published. It remains surprising that they could have misjudged each other so seriously. Nor does the 1886 correspondence fully confirm either party's later version of why they fell out during 1887. The Underwoods later argued that Carus interfered and manipulated the situation so that Hege1er began to see their views as diametrically opposed to his. There is no evidence that Carns performed any reconciling function, but there is ample evidence of latent discord in the pre-Cams correspondence, especially when specific issues arose. Hegeler later claimed that the Underwoods had not conducted 11~e Open COU1i; as agreed- "the agnostic character of the paper ... was against my intentions." But their written
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agreement contained no anti agnostic stipulation. It provided simply that the Underwoods manage the magazine's contents, subject only to Hegeler's expressing his own views over his own name. Hegeler knew their views differed from his, referring to the Underwoods as 'Agnostics," and adding, "If the Monist entrusts his case so far to the Agnostic-this certainly implies great faith in his fairness" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 636, 628-29). Why, then, would Hegeler go ahead with the plan, knowing that such people would be in charge of it? There may be a clue in his letter of 13 December 1886: 'As [we had planned] that you would first come to La Salle and study through with me in detail the matters touched in my manuscript, whereupon we would go at the programme and commencement of the journal, I took no steps to re-rent my former house, thinking you might want to oceupy it some time" (Hegeler et al. 1887,632-33). Evidently Hegeler saw philosophy and religion as fields directly analogous to mathematics or engineering, in which two competent people in good faith rarely reach contradictory positions. No school of thought holds that the sum of a triangle's angles is 160 degrees. Similarly, Hegeler may have believed that once he and the Underwoods had gone over "the programme" - his thought - in detail, they would come to see its truth. A foreman in the zinc works might suggest refinements (as Underwood helped formulate Hegeler's "Basis of Ethics"), but he was not likely to object to using the Hegeler Furnace at all! The Underwoods came west in late December 1886 or early January 1887. Apparently their luggage included a small parcel powerful enough to detonate the fragile compromise with their new employer-a booklet of poems by Paul Carus, to be passed on to Hegeler. Hegeler had already read and approved of Carus's 1885 book Monism and Meliorism (Hegeler et al. 1887, 639).11 The poems-according to R. E. Stevens (1943, 41), a volume entitled Etn Leben in Liedern, Gedichte eines Heimathlosen (1886a)-surprised and pleased Hegeler. "The poems have brought you much nearer to me,"
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Hegeler wrote Carus on 21 January 1887, adding at once, and fatefully, "I should like much to have you nearer La Salle, in order to have your help and advice in the work on the new journal." Hegcler's offer was both specific and tantalizingly vague. "Mr. [William] Salter [of the Chicago Ethical Culture Society] spoke of you as qualified fo bring my religiousphilosophical ideas into shape for publication .... [But] philosophical occupation alone would probably not fill your time satisfactorily; perhaps you would take charge of the education of older children .... You could also take charge of the correspondence with German scholars and writers which I shall wish to lead in the interest of the new journal. Also the translation of German articles into English would give occupation" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 639). This is an extraordinary letter. Compared to his earlier caution- Underwood's engagement had required two personalmeetings and six months of busy negotiation - this offer, to a man Hegeler had never met, seems rather hasty. More to the point, Hegeler had just hired Underwood to manage the editorial and busines~ affairs of the new journal, "subject to such conditions as the two shall mutually agree upon" -and now he was hiring someone to work in Underwood's department without even consulting him!12 Carus replied to Hegeler at once (24 Jan.); "If I interpret your letter correctly, it contains the offer of a combined position, - partly as teacher, and partly as co-editor of The Open Cow't, and correspondent in scientific matters. I would be very glad to have you make me a definite proposition" (Hegeler et aI. 1887,640). Carus already had some definite propositions of his own. He suggested that Hegeler assign him "a certain space of The Open Court, to be called the 'Transatlantic Review,''' offering synopses of the scientific life of central Europe and "a translation of one or two articles of especial value .... Of course, this plan could be modified according to necessity. I have no doubt but that, on the whole, Mr. Underwood will aprove of it" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 639-40).
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Carus asked for "a definite proposition," and he got it in Hegeler's letter of 31 January 1887-$1,200 a year. But what exactly was Hegeler hiring him to do? To what you say in particular regarding The Open Court, I have to answer that Mr. and Mrs. Underwood are independent editors and managers of the same, though subject to such conditions as may be hereafter mutually agreed upon; still I wish to make the path of the editors as smooth as possible. But what you wish to carry into effect, the transplanting of European (especially German) thought to America, is what I particularly desire .... I desire at the same time to give to my children, as well as to others in my immediate environment an opportunity for a broader knowledge. I believe to attain this by bringing you here. (Hegeler et a1. 1887,640)
As a recipe for internecine strife, this could hardly be improved upon. At no point did Hegeler clearly contradict-or clearly affirm -Carus's belief that he had been offered an editorial job. Carus believed he had been promised a position on the magazine and told some newspaper friends so. Underwood emphatically did not believe so-and he understood Hegeler to have agreed with him that no such position had been offered. On 11 March 1887, two weeks after Carus's arrival in Illinois, Underwood wrote to him the words whichhad they come from Hegeler's pen in January-would have cleared the air: "I have no doubt that you can do acceptable work for The Open Court, and for such work, you shall have full credit as a contributor. What more you can expect, I do not understand, unless it is to take part in the editorial management of the papet~ That is something I cannot legally permit, and I have no disposition to do so" (Underwoods 1887,24,33, 15-16). Precisely what Hegeler believed, and when he believed it, cannot be recovered from this distance. He does not appear to have understood that his agreement with Underwood limited his own freedom of action.He wrote later that at the time of Carus's arrival, "I then did not insist upon Dr. Carus having an
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editorial position on the paper" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 621)something he clearly had no business to insist on, until the end of Underwood's one-year contract. By 14 February 1887 Underwood had found and furnished an office for the magazine in Chicago; the same day he had word that Carus would "be West" by the end of the month (Underwood to Hegeler, 14 Feb. 1887). The first issue of The Open Court, "A Fortnightly Journal, Devoted to the Work of Establishing Ethics and Religion Upon a Scientific Basis," appeared and was dated 17 February. William J. Potter, Underwood's former colleague at The Index and president of the Free Religious Association, wrote the lead article, "Society and the Individual." Other contributors wrote on Voltaire, ethnology, books, Jerusalem, and "the need for freethought education." Hegeler's talk, "The Basis of Ethics," and four responses to it formed the pieee de resistanee. And in an editorial entitled "Salutatory," Underwood proclaimed: "The Open Court will encourage freedom of thought untrammeled by the authority of any alleged book-revelations or traditional beliefs, afford an opportunity in its columns for the independent discussion, by able thinkers, of an those great ethical, religiOUS, social and philosophical problems ... , treat all such questions according to the scientific method ... , advocate the complete secularization of the State, entire freedom and exact justice for all. ... the most prominence will be given to the positive, affirmative side of radical liberal thought" (Underwood 1887,15-16). After more than a century, his differences with Hegeler seem to be matters only of emphasis; but sometimes one's friends can be the hardest to please. Hegeler awaited the first issue impatiently, complaining that his morning papers of17 Februmy contained no advertisements for it. (The printer did not have enough papers ready for the newsstands until the eighteenth.) And he seems to have been pleased with it. When Underwood learned that a halfpage advertisement in the important Century magazine would cost a stunning $125, he consulted Hegeler, who replied, "The
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best and apparently dearest places will be the cheapest. What will a whole page cost?" At Underwood's suggestion, Hegeler ordered a second printing oflO,OOO copies, most of which were sent out gratis to names and addresses taken from an international directory of scientists. Hegeler took a lively interest in the promotion of the journal, reminding Underwood not to forget to advertise in the Cennan-Ianguage press (Hegeler to Underwood, 17 Feb., 26 Feb. 1887; Underwood to Hegelet; 25 Feb., 7 Mar. 1887). On Sunday, 27 February, Paul Carus arrived in Chicago and went straight to see the Underwoods. Unfortunately, the only account we have of this meeting comes, several months after the fact, from Sara Underwood, who had found Carus's talkative, self-assured nature unendurable ever since their first meeting in November 1885. Two things about that evening do seem clear from her account and subsequent correspondence: Carus expected some editorial job beyond being Hegeler's secretary and his children's tutor. And B. F. Underwood said he could not have one (Underwoods 1887, 22-26). Carus was not one to take that for an answer. Writing on 1 March from La Sane, Carus advised Underwood of his safe arrival and pleasant reception by the Hegclers. "Late in the evening my relation to The Open Court was mentioned, and I informed Mr. Hegeler of our agreement. He said it is all right, and you are at liberty to do what you please .... So good-bye for to-day, and have a notice of my relation to The Open Court in the next number." A week later he wrote of his "disappointment" at "the omission of the promised notice [from the second issue] .... the sooner it is in, the sooner I can do real work for The Open Court. I do not mean to accept a sinecure." Carus also asked Underwood "whether you allow me to ask people for sending contributions to you, in case I think they are able to write an interesting paper. I suppose you do not object - for it would not interfere with your right as editor, and in each case you can accept or refuse the forwarded MS" (Underwoods 1887, 13-15). Underwood replied that it would hardly be fair to contribu-
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tors to solicit their work and then to reject it, so he preferred to keep most such correspondence in his own hands. As to the general issue, Underwood seemed to repent of whatever tact he had employed at their earlier meeting. "When you were at our home, my main object was to make your stay with us, after your long ride, pleasant; and to many of your propositions and suggestions I made no reply, or no further reply than that 'we will consider the mattel~' ... I was not disposed to accede to any of your propositions further than that acceptable contributions from you would be printed, and that you should have credit by the attachment of your name to them. I write you with great plainness and frankness, because I feel it is my duty to do so" (Underwoods 1887, 15-16). Underwood still thought he was in charge. But now Carus was in La Salle, mingling closely with Hegeler and his family; except for occasional visits, the Underwoods remained a good three-hour train ride away in Chicago. The same persuasiveness that got Carus hired so promptly was free to operate at close range. On 4 May 1887 Carus sent Underwood the essay published as "Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism" (1887b) with the note that "Mr. Hegeler read it, and it has been written according to his wish." Later that month, deluged with manuscripts from Carus's hand, the "independent" editor of The Open Court addressed his publisher's secretary in almost pleading tones: I have now four articles from you-a translation, a contribution on "Monism," etc, a reply to Mrs. Stanton (which Mr. Hegeler wishes also to appear as a contribution) and a short magazine notice. The last two were just received. They have all come to me either through Ml: Hegeler, or from you with a remark mentioning Mr. Hegeler's wish in the matter in a way, as you know, that appeals strongly to my desire to comply with Mr: Hegeler's wishes so far as I possibly can without protest or objection. But so many articles from anyone person ought not and must not appear in one number of the paper. ~o journalist would allow it. I cannot think you really desire it. (Underwoods 1887, 17)
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And that was not all. Underwood, who had known Hegeler for years, found himself perplexed and in a way supplanted. Who was talking in these articles, the publisher or his secretary? "It seems to me that the article ['Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism'] might and should be inserted as Mr: Hegeler's. As it stands now, nobody will understand whether the thought is yours or Ml~ Hegeler's-whether you put his ideas into language or your own. A leading article ought not to go in in that way" (Underwoods 1887, 17). But it did. In "Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism" Carus in part restated the premises of his 1885 book Monism and Meliorism: «I define Monism as that conception of the world which traces being and thinking,,, the object and the subject, matter and force back to one source, thus explaining all problems from one principle" (1887b, 209). He denied the term to reductionistic doctrines such as materialism and spiritualism (idealism); matter and spirit were equally valid aspects of a single underlying reality. But Cams also went beyond his previous work, adding several codicils to this basic monism. "[Because] there can be no gap between the organic and the anorganic empire, organic life is an intrinsic, eternal, and indelible, quality of matter." In ethics, "Monism teaches that single individuals are transient things which consist of the ideas they think and the ideals they aspire for.... The individual ... is one little link in the unmeasurable chain of life" (1887b, 211). Having added some new items to the monistic platform, Carus made a dramatic departure from his previous work. "Monism has a definite and clear meaning," he wrote, "and should not be used for all kinds of doctrines which pretend to be unitary in some way or another. Nor should monism be identified with agnosticism .... [It is] a philosophic view which professes to know nothing of the supernatural, and does not want to .... Their only point of convergency is that both reject a supernatural explanation of the world.... In many respects the monistic view is even antagonistic to agnostic
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doctrines" (1887b, 211, 212). This is very likely Hegeler's influence: in Monism and Meliorism (1885, 47-48) Carus had enumerated several areas where he thought human knowledge ended and "the unknowable" commenced. Here Underwood must surely have caught his breath. Carus (and Hegeler?) was not just making a philosophical point; he was aiming straight at the editors' carefully worded statement on the masthead of each issue: "Editorially, Monism and Agnosticism, so variously defined, will be treated not as antagonistic systems, but as positive and negative aspects of the one and only rational scientific philosophy, which, the editors hold, includes elements of truth common to all religions, without implying either the validity of theological assumption, or any limitations of possible knowledge, except such as the conditions of human thought impose" (emphasis added). The Underwoods considered their own thought monistic. But as Underwood wrote later to Carus, "I saw then, as did others whose written opinion I received, that you were encouraging the issue 'Monism vs. The Open Court'" (Underwoods 1887, 34).13 Hegeler's interest in the contents of the magazine continued to go beyond his established right to present his own views over his own name on the front page at any time. "For the next and two following numbers," he wrote on 14 April, "I desire the first place in the paper for a translation of Hering's ['Memory as a General Function of Organized Matter'] made for me by Dr. Caruso ... It is the groundwork of the positive psychology-fundamental to Ribot. You will read it with great interest yourself." Four days later he wrote enclosing Carus's review of D. G. Brinton's Religious Sentiment (1887c). "which I wish published in the next number." Again on 4 May, "Dr. Carus sent a contribution on Monism by this morning's mail. Please let it go in, in place of a contribution of mine." The editors, hoping to keep the peace, agreed. Underwood did have his good days. He had reviewed the pseudonymous "Wheelbarrow" essays (on labor topics) by Civil War general Matthew Mark Trumbull in The Index, and on 30 April 1887 he was able to report to Hegeler that he had
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heard from the maverick social commentator; by June The Open Court had begun publishing Trumbull's essays, a relation that continued until his death in 1894. Contacts with the eminent Oxford philologist F. Max Mullet; made through Underwood's Index colleague Moncure Conway, also bore fruit in June, when The Open Court began publishing MUller's . lectures on thought and language. Underwood had to consult with Hegeler about the price, but Hegeler as usual was not hesitant to pay for the best. Even before MUller's lectures appeared in print, there had been discussion of bringing them out in book form, and on 29 July 1887 Underwood sent the scholar £ 50 for what eventually became (in May 1888) Open Court Publishing Company's first book, Three Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought (Underwood to Hegeler, 12 May, 29 July 1887; Hegeler to Underwood, 28 Apr. 1887).14 The overall financial situation of 1'he Open Court was less encouraging, especially for those - Underwood and Hegeler among them - who believed that it could at some point support itself Underwood's cumulative statement of accounts through 31 May 1887 reveals that in three and a half months of publication the magazine had already cost $8,508.40-more than his highest estimate for a full year's operation ($8,425) made the preceding fall!15 Part of that cost can be attributed to staggeringly large press runs. The new journal published 20,000 copies of each of its first six issues-an enormous number compared to established periodicals such as The Nation (8,565 in 1885) or Scientific American (42,500 in 1885 and 1890). And it appears that less than 5 percent of those 20,000 were actually sold. Even the Chicago Tribune's daily circulation in 1885 was only around 36,000 (Ayer 1885-1936). On 28 March 1887 Underwood asked, "Is it not now about time we should bring the edition down to 5,000? These large editions add greatly to tlle expense of paper and postage (especially foreign postage) as well as press work, addressing wrappers, folding, etc. A five thousand edition would enable us to send off as many samples perhaps as can be distributed to
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best advantage." But not until May did Hegeler agree to cut back to 10,000, a reduction that Underwood, on 12 May, gratefully noted would save more than $300 per issue. On 11 July, Underwood again proposed that the 10,000 press run be cut back "by a fcw thousand" until October. But it continued as late as 24 November, even after Hegeler had expressed concern that the magazine had not found enough subscribers.16 In later years for which we have records, The Open Court's circulation never exceeded 5,600 (Ayer 1885-1936; Stevens 1943,49). Of Carus's activities during the middle six months of 1887 there is little direct record. He read a good deal of contemporary psychology and reported on it in The Open Court (1887eg).17 He had seven articles, two translations, and eleven reviews or replies published between March and October. And he must have paid court to Hegeler's eldest daughtel; Mary, for they had eVidently reached some understanding or engagement by fall (Underwoods 1887,18-19; Hegeler et al. 1887,638).18 To Hegeler, Carus's writings became "the most important part of the paper"; to the Underwoods, they were an irritation and an embarras§ment. Carus's English, they felt, was often inadequate; his philosophy was sometimes crude and at other times secondhand; and his attitude toward those who disagreed with hiln was unpleasantly condescending (Hegcler et al. 1887,636; Underwoods 1887, 23, 26-28),19 But the Underwoods would have been in a difficult position even if Carus were not becoming Hegeler's prospective son-in-law. Carus's English, although imperfect, was better than Hegeler's, and Carus's views, crude or not, were more smoothly articulated than Hegeler's own. The Underwoods condemned Carus's behavior in coming between them and their patron, but the seeds of their division had been sown long before Carus appeared on the scene. Hegeler had written in 1886, "The difference between Monists and Agnostics is of primary importance to be cleared away" (Underwoods 1887, 32; Hegeler et al. 1887, 636). But the "clearing away" was not happening.
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At a climactic meeting in September 1887 in La Salle, Hegeler complained to Underwood about "the agnostic character of the paper, which was against my intentions" (Hegeler et aL 1887, 636). In doing so, he was, of course, violating the letter of his agreement with Underwood. But his idea of the spirit of that agreement had always been that the Underwoods would come to agree with him and that together they would proselytize for monism, "the most orthodox of religions." It was not enough that the Underwoods had promptly published all offerings on monism (Underwoods 1887, 29): they themselves were not on board. Instead, they were publishing material like Sara Underwood's poem, "I Do Not Know," in which she replies to a conventionally religious friend, "Now I know but this: - / I do not know to what humanity is fated" after death (S. Underwood 1887). Hegeler's passionate objection tangled his syntax even months afterward: "I hold this making of the 'What I do not know' -that is the feature of the NOT KNOWING this 'what' -the final object of religious emotion as detrimental to the progress of knowledge and injurious to mankind in generaL That I wanted to eradicate this idea, I had prominently pOinted out to Mr. Underwood from the beginning of our negotiations" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 636). From this pOint of view it is easy to see how Hegeler - the man of "most unyielding determination" -might have regarded his agreement giving the Underwoods editorial independence as a mere technicality standing in the way of truth, and his proposal to make Carus associate editor or coeditor as a reasonable compromise. From the Underwoods' standpoint, editorial independence was more important than relatively small philosophical differences, and Hegeler's overriding of that independence was a profeSSional affront, all the more so because they regarded Carus as erratic and incompetent. Hegeler proposed that "Mr. Underwood and Dr. Carus should jointly arrange the contents of the papOl; and that at points where they disagreed we would discuss the differences in a meeting, when the decision would have fallen upon me.
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Both, I thought, in this way would have found leisure for leeturing" (Hegeler et aL 1887, 637). Underwood said he would rather resign. Finally, at Hegeler's request, in mid-October 1887 he sent the fifty manuscripts on hand out to La Salle for Hegeler's perusal. They came back" accompanied by deprecatory and eontemptuous remarks [by Carus]," wrote Sara Underwood, "such as an editor would hardly make in returning articles to contributors." The editors promptly resigned. 'After all this indignity-such as few editors, outside of Russia, were ever subjected to," wrote Sara Underwood, they felt they had no alternative. She asked HegeIer, in a letter of29 November 1887 to which he apparently did not reply, "In what sort of spirit would the foreman of your zinc works take it, think you, should you send him criticisms on his plans and methods, and orders to ehange them, from a stranger to whom you had taken a fancy, but who had littlc or no knowledge of, or experience in, zinc manufacturing? Would you not expect his immediate resignation, especially if he understood fully his business and took pride therein? Editors, Mr. Hegeler, are not employed on more servile terms than mechanics" (Underwoods 1887, 29-30). The Underwoods' last issue-volume 1, number 21-was dated 24 November 1887, and they turned over the Chicago office to Carus about 1 December. Carus's first issue did not appear until 22 December, and nearly half of it consisted of Hegeler's letters and memos regarding the Underwoods and the magazine's founding. The Underwoods' farewell editorial, Hegelerwrote, "is made in a manner intending to convey to the readers that he and Mrs. Underwood have been wronged by me .... I submit the evidence without argument to the readers of The Open Court" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 621, 622). The Underwoods in turn replied with a thirty-six-page pamphlet (1887) in which they blamed Carus for influencing Hegeler against them. Although bittel~ the dispute does not seem to have hurt any of the parties severely in the long run. Carus and Hegeler clearly felt they benefited from the outcome. Underwood
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himself promptly returned to the lecture circuit, speaking in nearby Peru, Illinois, in January 1888. 20 Later that year he became editor of the Illustrated Graphic News (Hyan 1985, 679), and in 1892, editor of the Chicago-based Religio-Philosophical Journal, a spiritualist publication with a circulation of 16,500 in 1893 (AyeI' 1885-1936). Under the Underwoods' tutelage one department of the Journal was entitled "The Open Court" (Religio-Philosophical Journal 1890). In 1897 they moved to Quincy, Illinois, where B. F. Underwood edited a local daily until his retirement in 1913 (Hyan 1985,679). He did not keep in touch with Open Court; in 1911 he wrote to Mrs. Hegeler to tell her of Sara's death, not being aware that both Hegelers had passed away. Carus sent him a conciliatory reply (P. Carus to Underwood, 1 Apr. 1911). The Open Court itself does not seem to have lost any major contributors because of the fracas. The most notable alteration was that the contents became somewhat more philosophical and more idiosyncratic (Stevens 1943, 44-48), as Hegeler wished, and thus more focused. The new and much more concise standing notice, which first appeared in the magazine on 22 December 1887, stated, "This Journal is devoted to the work of conciliating Religion with Science. The founder and editor have found this conciliation in Monism, to present and defend which will be the main object of THE OPEN COURT."
CD
The Religion of Science Paul Carus had always wanted to be a missionary, and now he had found his pulpit-a somewhat different one than his parents had planned for him. His original intention had dissolved, as we have seen: The more I studied the more that sinful tendency to doubt grew, first secretly, then openly, first suppressed, then frankly acknowledged, until doubt ceased to be doubt; it became an established conviction .... Is there truth at all? No! I thought; there is no truth! There are opinions only, and one opinion is as good as another. ... there is no cosmic order, there is no higher law, there is no justice and no truth in the world, there is disorder everywhere, the universe is a chaos of forces, natural laws are indifferent to good or evil, and the lie rules supreme in society, sham gains the victmy over truth, cunning and selfishness triumph over virtue and love .... I abandoned religion and followed science .... [But] the universe of science is another world than that which I imagined to see around me in the chaotic turmoil of the struggle for existence. I perceived invisible threads that connected distant events. I recognized that while the laws of nature might work blindly, yet they produced ordel: The more my views expanded, the clearer I saw that the chaotic attaches to the Single, to the isolated only, not to the whole, not to the greater system, and the All itself is identical with order. The All is a cosmos truly.... In former years I had answered the question What is truth, with the words: "Truth is the gospeL" Now I learned to reverse the statement. ...
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Years passed away and, again a voicc come unto me and spoke: "Preach I Preach the truth." ... I accept the calling, yet I do it with hesitation, because I am aware of its difficulties. And at the same time I accept it in gladness, because I know that the new religion which grows out ofscience-out of the rock upon which the old creeds were shipwrecked-will not come to destroy. The new religion will come to fulfill the old faith. (P. Carus 1890e)1
This is less than one-third of the emotional statement in which Carus Signaled a shift in his interests. Although he had left Germany because of his religious convictions, neither Aus dem Exil (1884) nor Monism and Meliorism (1885) contained any hint that religion was high on his intellectual agenda once he had shed his childhood dogmatism (P. Carus 1885, 7). His renewed focus on religion - the subject that dominated the rest of his life-seems to have come in part from Hegeler's influence. What had not changed was Carus's instinct for the middle ground. "Monism takes in all cases the central position between the extremes," he had written in Monism and Meliorism (1885, 79). Carus thought of his own views as lying midway between idealism and realism, optimism and pessimism, discarding the errors and combining the insights of each. Similarly, twelve years later, introducing the new monthly version of The Open Court, he wrote, "The Religion of Science combines in a consistent system the boldest radicalism with the most deliberate conservatism" (1897c, 2). Carus's radical convictions, in other words, were governed by a conservative instinct. Thus, the religion of science, as he and to a lesser extent Hegeler presented it over the years, was radical in substance, conservative in style: radical in its rejection of traditional dogmas, conservative in reinterpreting them "scientifically" and in retaining such terms as God and immortality; radical in its theology, conservative in reaffirming the ethics that had been based on that theology; radical, perhaps, in affirming evolution, conservative in using it to prop up rather than to debunk traditional church teachings.
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"I am not a common atheist," he summed up (1904b, 467); "I am an atheist who loves God." This unconventional combination had several consequences for Carus's thought: 1. It sometimes tempted him into absurdity, as when he seemed to forget that he had redefined "God" as the universal system of necessary laws discovered by science and wrote that "He is [His creatures'] life, their home whence they start, and the goal whither they return" (1908b, 36). 2. It sometimes gave him insight into the underlying characters of religion and science because he was better able than most to stand aside from both. 3. And it certainly contributed to his intellectual isolation. Carus wrote that The Open Court had "kept aloof from both the liberals and the conservatives" because "it is dissatisfied with the conservatives because they are not truly conservative [thinking that stasis will lead to preservation rather than decay] and with the liberals because they are not truly liberal [being tolerant of all traditions except their own)" (1897e). Carus had relatively few followers and no successors: both freethinkers and Christians could find ample cause for quarrel with his version of monism. The skeptical Truth Seeker (1889) commented on his Idea of God, "\Vhen it comes to making a decision whether we shall 'faithfully retain it as a sacred inheritance' or 'discard it as a fallacy,' we may by his method be able to straddle the fence and do both. We disagree with the able editor, as we are no mugwump in religion."2 The Chicago Standard, by contrast, castigated Carus's Fundamental Problems as a "waste of time" because the author's supposed "attempt to reason God out of the universe" had failed (11 July 1889). Carus's father Gustav (1888) made the same criticism more emphatically in the pages of The Open Court: monism, he wrote, "can neither answer to the needs of the intellect, nor respond to the yearnings of the heart." And meliorism's view of a perfected future did not derive (as claimed) fro111 the sciences; rathel~ it was a "defaced and distorted" remnant "unconsciously torn from the body of the Christian theory of the universe."
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The weekly magazine that straddled this divide was an austere eight by ten and three-quarters inches (later expanded to nine and one-quarter by twelve and one-quarter), usually consisting of eight pages of closely spaced type in two columns, with no illustrations and few advertisements. A fairly typical issue-21 May 1891-shows Cams and his contributors discussing a variety of subjects but almost always coming back to Darwinian evolution as an intellectual solution or comfort, or both. Carus led with a review essay on Ibsen's Ghosts, which he appreciated but compared unfavorably to the work of the liberal German novelist Gustav Freytag (whose novel The Lost Manuscript [1864] had been serialized in The Open Court in the late 1880s). Carus felt that Ibsen presented only the negative side of "the law of the conservation of ideas" from generation to generation. In many cases, Carus argued, we can overcome our ancestors' evils, and if not, then "Death is the wages of sin.... the bright side of this awful trutIl is the constant amelioration of the race." F. M. Holland wrote disparagingly of "Socialism and Transcendentalism," concluding instead that "competition is the test of competency." Rev. J. C. F. Gmmbine tackled "Wallace on Darwinism" head-on, hoping to acquit the evolutionary theorists of Malthusianism and establish that evolution, like God, is benevolent, maximizing life and enjoyment and minimizing suffering and pain. (This concept drew a sharp rejoinder from editor Carns: "Far from being benevolent, the Deity of the world is stern to cruelty.") In the back of the issue Carns reviewed a symposium in the New York Voice on teaching ethics in public schools, concluding that the best methodwhether" dogmatic religion," Ethical Culture, or his religion of science-would be determined by survival of the fittest. Matthew Mark Trumbull, whose usual critical comments on the week's news were absent from this issue, briefly reviewed a mediocre book of poetry by L. J. Block. And in the letters J. Harrison Ellis continued a lengthy exchange with Mrs. Alice Bodington on precise psychological terminology. Even in a time far more oriented to print than our own, The Open Court was not light reading. Not every issue had as much
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from Carus's pen, but they all bore his and Hegeler's imprint as they nudged contributors in their direction. In Janumy 1897 the magazine changed from weekly to monthly, adopted a smaller size (six and one-quarter by nine and three-eighths inches), and began using illustrations. Carns was listed as editOl~ T. J. McCormack as assistant editor, and Edward C. Hegeler and Mary Carus as "associates." We have some idea of what this term meant in Hegeler's case, since he did some writing and controlled the purse strings. But Mmy Carus's roles in the magazine and in her husband's intellectual life unfortunately remain almost entirely a matter of generalities and conjecture. The Open Court's notice of her death in 1936 (50:129) remarked that "her judgment in many matters [regarding the magazines] was invaluable," but it added no specifics. Given her unusual education and initiative for the times, it seems likely that she had a significant role. But exactly what was it? Mary HegeIer had graduated from the University of Michigan (class ofl882) and afterward studied at the Mining Academy at Freiberg in Saxony. She helped formulate her father's first contribution to The Open Court in 1887 (HegeIeI' 1887, 18n). In later years, before her father's death in 1910, she ran the zinc works, and after her husband's death in 1919 she oversaw the magazines. But during Open Court's liveliest period we have little direct evidence. The extant correspondence indicates that she was especially involved in business questions and that she was at the very least close enough to philosophical and editorial matters to handle them in Paul Carus's absence (L. G. Robinson to Paul Carus, 16 Aug., 18 Sept. 1912; P. Carus to L. G. Robinson, 14 Dec. 1904; M. A. Sacksteder to M. H. Carus, 24 Feb. 1904, 24 May 1902). To Carus's version of monism, mathematics was central. It is no accident that his first Open Court article, "The Harmony of the Spheres" (1887a), is an appreciation of the prevalence of the golden mean (which he gives as the ratio 1:1.61) throughout nature and particularly in the solar system. After reviewing the
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computations of a Dr. Lersch and others, Carus concluded that "the harmony of the cosmic laws may be recognized as an established fact .... If the scientist presupposes such harmony to exist universally in the domain of his investigation, he will never en~ because, as Plato said, the Laws of Nature are geometrical thoughts of God. "3 Although he made frequent rhetorical use of his crisis of faith, Carus never explained which arguments or experiences originally shattered his youthful Christian orthodoxy. It was probably the usual threefold combination of the higher criticism of the Bible, the increased explanatory power of the sciences, and the recognition that society's growing wealth was due to skepticism and experiment rather than faith and prayer. When confronted with unrepentant theists in his Open Court days, howevel~ Carus favored an argument from mathematics that actually does not depend on nineteenth-century advances in textual analysis, biology, or mass production. "It is possible indeed that the world might have been built by a rational being according to a rational plan," he wrote (1897b, 620-21). "But who, in thrt case, made the rationality of the Creatorr" This is the ontological argument turned against itself: because we can conceive of something more ultimate than a personal creator-God, then that is the true God. "Take the simplest mathematical theorems," Carus wrote to Pere HyaCinthe Loyson in a letter published in 1897, such as 2 X 2 4, or (a + b)2 a2 + 2ab + b 2. There are two possibilities for the anthropotheistic theologian: either these theorems have been shaped by God to hold good in the plan of his creation, or God has eleverly adjusted his ereation according to the laws of arithmetic and geometry. If God shaped these laws, they could not be independent of Him; but they are independent of Him, of an individual God, for we cannot help recognising them to be true whether we believe in the existence of God or not. These rules, as all other rules of mathematics, arithmetic and logie, have not been created; they are intrinsically necessary, unconditionally true, absolute, universal, and eternal. Thus the second possibility remains
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only. God must have adjusted his creation to the laws of pure Reason .... And if God adjusted His creation to these eternal conditions of the cosmic order they are superior to Him, as being a power to which He must conform. (1897b, 620-21) Such a Platonic demiurge, wrote Carus, might be to humanity as humanity is to a white blood corpuscle, but nevertheless it would be as much subject to necessary truths as we are. Such a god, "in order to create and govern the world eorrectly, must first make himself acquainted with the eternal laws of being, he must make his calculations and consider his plans with reference to the laws of mechanics; he must work out designs which are liable to miscarry unless they agree with the immutable norms of eternal necessity." As for the alternative, "I for one cannot conceive that God made 2 X 2 = 4, or any other purely formal statement. The harmony of mathematics is not extraneous, but intrinsic, and there is no room for an individual lawgiver who made the laws, such as they are, eternal and necessary" (1896g, 310). Carus was fond of this argument because it Simultaneously destroys and builds: "The main argument that refutes the existence of an individual God-entity affords incontrovertible proof of the omnipresence of an intangible God who, being the rationality of reason, the life of the living, and the ultimate norm of moral aspirations, is alone the true God" (1897b, 622). Carus's enthusiasm caused him at times to overstate his conclusions (what is "the life of the living"?) and at other times to use his own terms imprecisely. In the passage above Carus concluded that God is necessary truth; but elsewhere in that same volume he wrote that when we confront a necessary truth, "we are in the presence of a thought of God" (1908b, 31).4 Much of this argument's impact depends on Carus's corollary beliefs that mathematical truths are synthetic a priori (i.e., that a statement such as "2 + 2 = 4" conveys new information and is not merely a tautological definition of "4" [1889b, 3435]), that natural laws themselves are necessary in the same
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sense as mathematics,5 and that moral truths also fall into this category: "The ought of ethics and the must of nature are two aspects only, of one and the same reality." In other words, "That which has to be the standard of moral action can be inquired into, and can be searched for by scientific methods; it can be stated with as much exactness as the mathematical or logical rules or as any other precepts of the normative sciences" (1888c, 1381; 1899b, 283). When he took care to be precise, Cams took a dim view of statements such as "The stone falls to earth because it must obey the law of gravity." Such a statement, he pointed out, is dualistic, implying that the law is separate from the stone and must somehow be "applied" to it. In fact, the "law" is simply a generalization and abstraction from experience; it describes part of the very nature of the stone, no more. "There is no God and no law which dictates the course of action, but the things act on account of the inhcrent qualities which constitu te them" (1908b, 11). Thus, mathematics, ethics, and the sciences are just different arenas for discovering the nature of things, their "forms." "The conception of necessity which is the basis of all science, has found its justification as attaching everywhere to formthe laws of form being everywhere the same," Carns wrote in Fundamental Problems (1889b, 52). "The order of the Universe is thus recognized as an immanent necessity.... The laws of formal thought ... are our guide which like the thread of Ariadne safely leads us through the labyrinth of the manifold sensory experiences. It is this method, and this is the only one, which frees philosophy of mysticism, be it the mysticism of supernaturalists or of agnostics." (This concept of form, more funy elaborated in his later works, served Carns well; it is usually credited to the influence of his professor Hermann Grassmann, but Carus never wrote of it before encountering HegeIer, who employed the idea in his philosophical thoughts.) This line of thought leads not to a mere lukewarm "concHiation" between religion and science but to a passionate reunion. If science-natural and moral-consists of apprehen-
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ding form in experience; and if religion is the apprehension of God; and if God is Form, "unalterable law" that ties the seeming chaos of experience together into a necessary and beautiful whole-then no wonder Carus could write that "science is holy. It is the religious duty of the scientist to search for truth in all fields, philosophy, ecclesiastical history, and biblical research not excepted. And it is a religious duty of the clergy to ... revere truth 'vvhenever proved to be truth .... There is a divinity in mathematics, of which the modern idolater of dogmatic Christianity has no idea" (1893d, 206-7). Nor is one to be assimilated unwillingly into the other. Superstition- "the assumption of an error as if it were an axiomatic truth" "is not necessarily [only] a religious error" (1892a, 207). Copernicus and Christ were both in their days considered heterodox by their respective scientific and religious peers. (Carus's idea of a modern scientific" superstition" was the distinction between organic and inorganic chemistry, "as if two different kinds of elements existed, the living and the dead." This is one of several cases where the requirements of his philosophic system took precedence over actual scientific results [1892a, 208; Sheridan 1957, 34].) Carus went on to argue that a free-thinker of to-day differs much more from a free-thinker of mediaeval times than from un otthodox believer of to-day; and a Lutheran clergyman differs in the same degree from Luther himself. What Lutheran clergyman would throw his inkstand at the devil or order a misfol'med babe to be drowned, because it may perhaps be a changeling? ... The shortcomings of religiOUS men are not errors of religion; just as the ignis vitae was not an error of science. Errors and superstitions are errol'S of men and of their times, and our own time has likewise its full share of them .... Taking this ground, I fail to see why religion should be identified with the errors of the past and science credited with all the great ideals of the future. Why shall not religion just as well as science be freed fro111 the shackles of superstition? Ab-
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solute truth never existed either in religion or in science. [Despite this disclaimel; Carus and Hegeler often spoke as though monism were absolute.] Scientific definitions and religious dogmas have changed from century to century, but the religious spirit and scientific spirit remained the same. The scientifIC spirit is characterised by a pure love of truth, and true religiosity means man's consciousness of being in unity with the whole Cosmos. (1892a, 209~lO)
Nor can there be any doubt that Carus intended the religion of science to be a religion. "Not everybody can be a scientist, but everybody can be and should be imbued with the true religious sentiment ... that the individual is but a part of a greater whole" (1892a, 211); this notion of the individual was also the key moral sentiment (1885, 54; 1899b, 294). Carus intended the religion of science to be a way of sifting truth from error, not just another sect (1893f, iv-v). Nevertheless, he wrote and compiled a hymnal for it, Sacred Tunes for the Consecration of Life (1899d, 5-6, 22), with new words to familiar airs. For instance, "Allhood" was set to the tune of the "Crusaders' Hymn": "Unity of Nature's laws, / Cosmic order, without flaws, / In us all thy power stirs." Just as natural laws are not pieces of cosmic legislation handed down by a celestial graybeard, so the soul is not a thing or a substance. It is simply a "society of ideas." Carus found confirmation for this concept in contemporary psychology, which had found no need to posit a "self' behind or beyond the passing stream of consciousness. He was later pleased to find a parallel notion in Buddhism. The debunking argument against a soul-substance gave Carus a chance to sound like Ingersoll for the nonce: "It seems to me that if the soul must needs consist of a substance, it does not gain in dignity by the thinness of its substratum; at least I for my part would prefer to have a soul of solid steel than of some nondescript gas or ether" (1908b, 59). But like his argument against a transcendent creator-god, this one also leads directly into an affirmation. There may be no soul-stuff to
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survive bodily death, but it doesn't matter because "we live in our chiJdren, we live in our words, we live in our works, we live wherever we leave a trace of our being" (1902b, 79). In its popular form this naturalistic idea of immortality has been hackneyed and diluted. In its context in Cams's system it carries more weight: because your self is your ideas, your form; and because you are contributing to the evolutionary process whereby humanity is gradually and collectively improving its own form (i.e., its representation of the rest of the universe) then the survival of your ideas has more consequence than it would in a more pluralistic or agnostic worldview. Carus even argued that the passage of time may increase a particular soul's importance: "Think only of the inventor of the wheel or the inventor of the needle. Their souls still live and have been added to by later inventions .... The importance of man's soul increases with the progress of mankind, if his soul but be of the right kind." But because very few of us get to invent the wheel, or even improve on it significantly, the actual comfort of this doctrine is somewhat limited, as Cams acknowledged: "The difficulty of preserving the soul of everybody consists in the rarity of original souls of importance .... But every Tom, Dick, and Hany, who are at best mediocre reproductions of average souls, mere copies of John and Bill, without any originality of their own making added thereto, also want to be assured that their puny little egos will be preserved .... they ... will be disappointed" (1908b, 73-75). Elsewhere he averred that "the souls of our ancestors and their thoughts are as little lost as is the work of our school days" (1899b, 43)-surely a disquieting analogy! In his catechistic Religion of Science he carried this view of the soul to its logical conclusion: "vVe existed wherever the ideas of which we consist were thought" (1893f, 47). Such statements make it easy to sympathize with Christians who felt that Carus was unfairly appropriating their vocabulary while impossibly diluting its meaning. Howevcl~ sometimes Carns did not dilute its meaning enough for consistency's sake, as when he slid back into assertions that had no place in his
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mature philosophy but obviously had carried great weight in his upbringing: "Our soul will continue into the souls of the future .... There we shall be preserved with all our peculiar idiosyncracies in our personal identity" (1908b, 63). There is, of course, an alternate route to conciliating religion and science, starting from the religiOUS side. Carus believed that an examination of the history of religions would show that they all were, over time, developing and converging toward an increasingly broad, nonsuperstitious view. The churches, and especially the American churches, are not as conservative and stationary as their dogmas pretend to be .... There is a very strong tendency among them to get rid of sectarian narrowness and dogmatic crudities. The influence of science is felt in our religiOUS life everywhere, and its ultimate aim, although we are still very far from it, can but be a rationalising of the religiOUS faith and a broadening of the sectarian creeds into one cosmical religion, which will be the only true and catholic faith, the religion of truth, i.e., of scientific truth, the Religion of Science. (1893f, iv)
Two years after writing this passage, Carus met and corresponded briefly with Robert Ingersoll, who admired The Gos-, pel of Buddha. Carus did his best to persuade the eloquent infidel to go beyond iconoclasm. "The people as well as the clergy," he wrote on 7 September 1895, "have ceased to cherish those beliefs which have made our traditional dogmatism both ridiculous and dangerous .... Having to a great extent attained your ends, I feel confident that you could accomplish a great work by preaching that broad religion which we ... call the Religion of Science." (Ingersoll's response, if any, is not known, but Carus's end of the correspondence soon languished.) In other words, "the surrender of traditions, doctrines, or old allegiances" was not necessarily progressive at all, taken by itself. "The more a man has given up of his beliefs, the more Liberal he is accounted .... [Liberals] attempt to reject the errors of the past, but in the vain hope of attaining infallibility
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themselves, they reject also the aspiration of having defInite opinions." Carus wanted nothing to do with this kind of creeping indifferentism; he once criticized religious liberals for not proselytizing more vigorously. He aimed not to drop allegiance to God but to alter the meaning of God and then "make the allegiance sterner and more earnest than ever" (1897c, 4). "What we need," he wrote in 1896 (1896e, 5017), "is the right theology and the right orthodoxyl" And that new orthodoxy, the religion of science, "will be the most exclusive and orthodox religion that ever existed" (1899b, 10). It will also be "the most intolerant religion, for it will destroy all the views that are incompatible VI/ith it" -not by persecuting opponents but by "convincing them of their errors" (1899b, 10, 11). Not surprisingly, Carus found many religiOUS liberals lacking in pith. "I notice that all liberal sects always cling with great intensity to the special point on account of which they have left the orthodox church," he wrote to Dr. Paul Topinard on 10 May 1909. "Orthodox clergymen as a rule are much more liberal in allowing dogmas to be interpreted symbolically, and so it happens that I fInd frequently more progressive people among the very orthodox churches than among the liberals." In Monism and Meliorism Carus had considered ethics to be one of the most important questions for philosophy, and this concern continued into his Open Court years. "The truth of scientific discoveries is tested by experiments, and in the same way the truth of philosophy is verified in its ethics," he wrote in Primer of Philosophy (1893d, 5). As for religion, "the sole purpose of religion is to teach man ethics" (1894c, 559). Ethics could not stand on its own, he said: 'Any ethics without a philosophical view back of it is no ethics, but ethical sentimentality" (1899b, viii). As he admonished the Chicago Society for Ethical Culture in June 1890, "It is not sufficient to drop the antiquated creeds of supernaturalism, which furnished in former centuries the motives for moral action, you must replace them by new motives that can stand scientific criticism." Like Copernicus's astronomy, "The newethies is based upon facts
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and is applied to facts" (1899b, 14, 18). But Carus had difficulty in explaining specifically how ethics could be so based. For instance, he noted that "all knowledge can be formulated as an ethical prescript," in the broadest sense of the word-for instance, "If you want to produce fire, use friction." Similarly, "If you wish to exist, obey reason. Reason teaches us how to regulate our actions in conformity with the order of natural laws. If we do regulate them in conformity with the order of natural laws, they will stand; otherwise not. In the former case they will be good, they will agree with the cosmical conditions of existence; in the latter case they are bad, they will not agree with the cosmical conditions of existence; therefore they will necessarily produce disorder and evil" (1899b, 31-32; see also 6). A bemused William Salter of the Ethical Culture Society replied that he found Carus's views "radically insufficient .... To say, 'If you wish Bre, produce it by friction,' does not say whether we shall so produce it; to tell us, 'In order to build a house, observe the laws of gravitation,' does not call us to observe the laws of gravitation; to say, 'If you wish to exist, obey reason,' puts upon us no obligation to obey reason .... If anyone says, I do not care about my health, the laws of health are meaningless to him; if another says, I do not care about my family, the whole of familyethics loses its validity for him" (quoted in Carus 1899b, 91-92). (Another variant of this argument would be to pOint out that ethical prescripts do not usually take a conditional but a categorical fonn- "Thou shalt not kill" rather than "If you wish to be civilized [or to obey God], don't kill.") In reply, Carus insisted that "the proper attitude toward facts can be learned from the facts alone. Facts teach us for instance the laws of health. Mr. Salter suggests that anyone might say, 'I do not care about my health.' But in that case the laws of health are not (as Mr. Salter declares), meaningless to him. He will soon find out the meaning of the laws of health. Facts will teach him to care for his health, and if he does not, nature will soon deprive him of health and life" (1899b, 116). Is this too conditional, too hypothetical, to serve as a basis
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for ethics? Not according to Carus: "Obligation is simply ... the formulation of facts for special practical purposes .... all we can say about the ethical ought is to state the facts as they are: the man who does not care for being a useful member of society, or who does not care for his physical, mental and moral health, who does not care for going to the wall and whose actions are expressions of this indifference, he will do harm to his fellow-beings and he will be doomed to perdition. His soul so far as it is possible will be blotted out, and his life will become a curse to humanity" (1899b, 148). Carus's monism has no room for obligation as anything distinct from the facts of nature and the requirements of evolutionary survival: "We have to be pleased with the development of our race according to the laws of nature, and those who are displeased might just as well commit suicide at once, for they will go to the wall, they will disappear from the stage of life. Those alone will survive who are pleased with that which the laws of nature demand" (1899b, 241). "The universe has a definite tendency," Carus summed up in Homilies of Science (1892a, 217), "and morality means agreement with this tendency." The only ethic that Carus could fit into his rigid monism came perilously close to "Whatever is, is right." When not pressed by critics, howevel~ he reverted to a more natural, albeit less consistent, way of speaking. Earlier in the same book he wrote, "There is a survival of the fittest everywhere, but natural selection does not always favor the strongest and the best. ... We may say that the law of adaptation explains survival, but it cannot afford a criterion of progress [and hence of ethics]" (1892a, 38). Yet according to his theory, these statements are self-contradictory; that which survives is by definition the best. Carus beat a similar retreat from his reductionist ethics when Moncure Conway observed in The Open COtl-rt that "in some communities, both of animals and men, the 'fittest' to survive is the morally 'unfittest,' -the most venomous, furtive, selfish .... And can it be said that 'truth is stronger than error?' I cannot so interpret the crucifixion ofJesus, or the banishment _
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of Buddhism from India, or the present reign of superstition. In three-fourths of the world adherents of error 'survive' more comfortably, multiply and increase more extensively, than the diSciples of truth. Nor does any tendency to reverse this plainly appear in the nature of things" (1888, 1104). Carus's wan reply (1888b) was that these errors lead inevitably to ruin - but his case would have been no stronger had he offered evidence for that statement. On his own ethical theory it is a truism to say, "The fittest to survive are morally the best." Merely by raising the question Conway was uttering nonsense and identifying himself as a nonsurvivor. What holds this system -or "plan for a system" - together is not just its substance but Carus's own certainty that it is true. Monism, he wrote in 1893, "disposes for good of a number of fundamental problems" (1893d, 4, iii). He rarely expressed doubt. In his books and magazines he gave his adversaries generous space to criticize him. (More than two-thirds of the later editions of The Ethical Problem, for instance, was devoted to criticisms from William Saltel; John Maddock, F. M. Holland, Friedrich JodI, Robert Lewins, Harold Hoffding, and L. M. Billia, along with Carus's replies [1899b, xv-xvi].) But even though he often announced his willingness to change his mind, he does not seem to have done so after 1888.6 This selfassurance had several consequences: 1. It helped make him an avowed enemy of agnosticism"the main disease of our age" -against which Carns flailed with considerably more energy than he applied to debunking conventional orthodoxy. Agnostic philosophy, he wrote in 1897, "is a more effectual check on religious and scientific progress than the methods employed by the Inquisition. The Inquisition had the power to put a few independent thinkers on the rack, and for a time gagged the others; but agnosticism attempts to poison the minds of whole generations: it makes people drowsy and indifferent; it makes them despair of the possibility of finding the right solution, and induces them to abandon the search for truth" (1897c, 5),
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Carus argued that philosophical agnosticism is metaphysical and dualistic: It assumes the existence, first, of substance and then of predicates with which substance is endowed. The substance is supposed to be unknowable, while its attributes are knowable. ''''hat matter is, we are told, is a profound mystery; we only know qualities of matter; what electricity, what light, what fire is, we can never know, experience teaches us only their various modes of action. But how do we know anything at all about matter, mass, fire, electricity, and graVity? How do we know that they exist at all? Are these terms not mere abstractions? Are they not simply generalisations of certain actions of which our experience gives us knowledge? They are names by which we denote certain features that we observe under definite conditions, and the attributes of matter are all there is about matter.... there is one unitary reality which by the method of abstraction is knowable in its various parts. (1896c)
This is Hegeler's influence-Carus showed no sign of this view in Monism and Meliorism-and in part Hegeler's reasoning. Carus, morc than his father-in-law, distinguished between agnostics who simply said they did not know the truth about religious questions ("the agnosticism of modesty") and those who said they could not know it. But his strongest reason for objecting to agnostieism applied equally to both groups: Carus and Hegeler believed not just that knowledge of God and immortality and ethics was possible but that they had it. "The problems of the existence of God, the personality of God, etc., ... are no longer open questions to him who has taken the trouble to inform himself about the present state of investigation" (p. Carus 1891c, 2952n). 2. Carus's certainty also led him into condescension: "There would be rhyme and reason in Aristotle's four points [kinds of causation]," he wrote (1893d, 144-45), "if he had treated them in the manner briefly sketched here." When Carus published his criticisms of Herbert Spencer in book
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form (1899c), he wrote (22 Jan. 1900) to the elderly and distinguished philosopher, «I am VelY sorry for your neglect of attempting to set yourself aright before the world and posterity upon the pOints on which you have made some obvious mistakes." This attitude-which greatly perturbed Sara Underwood (Underwoods 1887, 23, 25, 29-30)-stemmed, paradoxically enough, from Carus's tolerance and evolutionary perspective. Cams did not condemn those who took less "enlightened" views of church dogma than his; he figured they had gone as far as they could. For instance, he wrote that he did not intend his book Whence and Whither (1900e) for those who were satisfied with the traditional notion of the soul. Such people "possess a surrogate of the truth which most likely will prove sufficient for them, because adapted to their special wants; and the truth may positively hurt them .... They have the religion to which their mental size is adapted .... They need milk and cannot as yet stand stronger diet. The book has been written [instead] for those who are about to reach the age of mental maturity" (1902b, 74, 81). Thus, when Henry Collin Minton charged him with "pantheism robbed of its mystical adorations," Carus could reply without apparent embarrassment, "More than thirty years ago I was in exactly the same place in which Ml: Minton is now. I can understand him, but he does not understand me. I know his God-conception in all details, for it was my own belief when I was either at his age or at least at his stage of mental development. ... and I have no doubt that Mr. Minton himself, or his sons and his diSciples, will by and by reach the position in which I stand today" (1904b, 460, 466). 3. Cams's certainty also gave him confidence in a sometimes difficult world. In 1893 he wrote, "The Religion of Science is still a voice crying in the wilderness. Yet it comes from the heart of mankind and cannot be suppressed. Should it remain unheeded, itwill be repeated by others that shall come after us, until its warning be heard and obeyed" (1893f, vi). Even within his own lifetime, events did not always confirm
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this forecast, but Carus never seems to have lost hope. "To present a true monism which would not overlook the most significant phenomena of existence has been the aim of our life's work, and we feel confident that we have succeeded" (1913c, 600). If anything, his assurance that religion must evolve into more scientific and less superstitious forms sometimes caused him to be too enthusiastic when hopeful occasions did arise. And one of the most hopeful was the Worlel's Parliament of Religions of 1893.
CD
The Worlds Parliament of Religions "The Parliament of Religions, which sat in Chicago from September 11 to September 27,1893, was a great surprise to the world," wrote Paul Carus (1916,1) shortly after its adjournment.! Carus himself was not taken by surprise: since the middle of July he had been scheduled to read a thirty-minute paper before one of its sessions. But he did not expect to be so moved-almost overwhelmed-or to redireet his lifework as a result of this unprecedented gathering. The parliament proved to be one of the high points of Carus's career, even though his role in it was relatively modest. It brought together speakers representing most varieties of Christianity, as well as Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, Confucianism, Shintoism, Parseeism, and Jainism. Over the seventeen days of meetings it may have drawn as many as 150,000 people to the building that now houses Chicago's Art Institute (Seager 1987,87; Bonney 1895,337; Barrows 1897, 301). The cosmopolitan speakers, the receptive audiences, and the (usually) tolerant spirit combined to make up a meeting at once affirmative and universal, intellectual and emotional, and seemingly amenable to the ideas of the religion of science. Surely, wrote Carus in its afterglow, the parliament signified "the extinction of the old narrowness and the beginning of a new era of broader and higher religious life" (1916, 19). Here Carus met the people who stimulated him to help popularize Eastern philosophies and religions in the United States-one of the works for which he is best remembered today. Here he became convinced that the parliament was "The
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Dawn of a New Religious Era," as he titled his essay on it. For the next several years he donated much magazine space to the amorphous "Religious Parliament Extension" movement, of which he was secretalY. Unfortunately, as Carus finally acknowledged in 1916 (19n), "all attempts to continue the Parliament of Religions were failures." In part the problem was organizational: the successor groups were loosely structured and had vague objectives; some key people made strategic mistakes; others became sick and died. But even a better-organized effort might have borne little fruit, as significant portions of the Western Christian community decided that the parliament was one surprise they didn't need repeated. Carus's own profound faith in the inevitability of religious progress sustained his efforts against all reverses hut it also clouded his vision of the Religious Parliament Extension movement. Even before Congress awarded the World's Columbian Exposition to Chicago, the prominent city attorney Charles C. Bonney wrote that such a fair should include "something higher and nobler" than the mere "material triumphs, industrial achievements, and mechanical victories of man." He proposed a "World's Congress" of "statesmen, jurists, financiers, scientists, literati, teachers, and theologians" to discuss a number of themes, among them religion. The World's Congress Auxiliary that evolved from this proposal ultimately oversaw twenty different congresses during the summer of 1893, of which the Parliament of Religions proved the largest. In preparation, the General Committee on Religious Congresses-ably headed by Rev. John Henry Barrows of Chicago's First Presbyterian Church - sent out some ten thousand letters promoting the parliament (Druyvesteyn 1976, 10-13, 17-18; Barrows 1893,1:30). From the beginning the Congress was structured both to placate those who feared too much from it and to encourage those who expected too little. The planners made it clear that they were not trying to force any unity on the invited religions.
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And they discouraged debate, controversy, or speaking negatively of any other person's religious views. These rules (although not always adhered to) set a mostly peaceful tone for an unprecedentedly diverse gathering (Bonney 1895,323-33). Carus did not ignore the World's Congress Auxiliary, but his part in it was limited. He did some work for the Committee on Folk-Lore (P. Cams to Bonney, 31 Oct. 1892) and the Committee on Philosophy, but he and Bonney were not then in close communication. When the summer of the fair arrived, Carus attended several of the congresses and spoke at three. On 18 July 1893 he delivered a lecture, "The Philosophy of the Tool," to the Department of Manual and Art Education. On 24 August he presented "Our Need of Philosophy" to the Philosophical Section. (Both addresses were published in The Open Court and in separate form by Open Court [1893b, 1893c].) He tentatively declined an invitation to speak to the International Congress of Freethinkers, pleading press of business (J. R. Charlesworth to P. Carus, 9 Aug. 1893; P. Carus to J. R. Charlesworth, 10 Aug. 1893). Although the passage of time moderated his views, during the summer of 1893 Carus was less than pleased with the work of the World's Congress Auxiliary. "It is a pity that these congresses have not been organized with more discrimination," he wrote to his friend Dr. Edmund Montgomery on 12 August. "So far none of them has been a success, and I fear that both the Psychological as well as the Philosophical Congress will be as much a failure as all the rest." Montgomery was planning a trip up from Texas, and Carus advised him "to be prepared for a disappointment." Not until 3 July 1893 did Carns receive a form letter from Rev. Barrows appointing him to the "AdviSOry Council on Religious Congresses." (More than three thousand such advisory councillors were appOinted [Drnyvesteyn 1976, 30].) Shortly thereafter, he and Barrows agreed that he should speak in the evening of the ninth day (19 September), which was to be devoted to "Religion in Its Relation to the Natural Sciences"
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(P. Carus to J. H. Barrows, 11 July, 17 July 1893; J. H. Barrows to P Carus, 14 July 1893). Freethinkers of the Robert Ingersoll stripe, unlike Carus, would have taken little interest in a gathering intended to "unite all Religion against all irreligion" (Druyvesteyn 1976, 19) and one from which controversy was specifically excluded. But the parliament seemed to mirror the deepest impulse behind the Open Court Publishing Company: the meeting of minds in mutual search for truth, with that truth emerging not de novo but through sifting out the best from existing traditions. "When some nine years ago The Open Court was first brought out," Carus reflected later, "its founder planned nothing else than a Parliament of Religions in the shape of a periodical" (1895b). But no mere periodieal could match the spectacle of the parliament's opening on 11 September 1893, which dazzled Carus and many other observers: "Cardinal Gibbons, when he delivered the prayer at the opening of the first public session, wore his official crimson robes. The prelates of the Greek Church, foremost among them the Most Rev. Dionysios Latas, Archbishop of Zante, looked very venerable in their sombre vestments and Greek cylindrical hats. The Shinto High Priest Shibata was dressed in a flowing garment of white, decorated with eurious emblems, and on his head was a strangely-shaped cap wrought apparently of black jet, from the top of which nodded mysteriously a feather-like ornament of unknown significance. Pung Quang Yu, a tall and stout man, an adherent of Confucius, and the authorized representative of the Celestial Empire, appeared in Chinese dress. There were present several Buddhist bishops of Japan, in dress which varied from violet to black. The turbaned Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda, in a long, orange gown ... ; Dharmapala, the Ceylonese Buddhist, in his robe of white; -these and many more ... appeared upon the stage and spoke their minds freely on subjects over which in former ages cruel wars were waged" (P Carus 1916, 4-
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5). And the spectacle was significant; this was the first time in history that so many non-Christians had spoken to a Western audience. Carus's own speech- "Science a Religious Revelation" was characteristic: 'A scientist ... knows that the science of mechanics does not come to destroy the mechanical inventions of the past .... In the same way a scientific insight into religious truth does not come to destroy religion; it will purify and broaden it" (1916, 32). It made few ripples at the parliament or afterwards. The newspapers gave it a brief paraphrase while devoting most of that day's ink to the charismatic Vivekananda and to a Rev. Haweis's talk on "music, emotion, and morals." In his two-volume record of the parliament Barrows condensed Carus's speech to less than half its original length (Barrows 1893, 2:978-81); other sources cut it to two paragraphs (Houghton 1894, 450) or omitted it altogether (Hanson 1894). Carus's primary role during the parliament itself was on the floor and in the hallways, not at the podium. Like many others, he compared the gathering to the Christian Pentecost: 'A holy intoxication overcame the speakers as well as the audience; and no one can conceive how impressive the whole proceeding was, unless he himself saw the eager faces of the people and imbibed the enthusiasm" (1916, 18). When it ended, "The multitudes that filled the halls ... were animated with a feeling that the Parliament had not lasted long enough ... and that we should stay and continue the work" (1916, 2). That eagerness propelled Carus and others in their ultimately futile efforts to stage a second parliament. But as at many another conference, what happened away from the podium had the most lasting effect. Carus found himself overworked, he wrote to J. G. Hertwig on 23 August, because the parliament "has brought me in contact with many people to whom I have to devote a considerable part of my time." Perhaps the most important of these meetings came when a longtime Monist subscriber, Merwin-Marie Snell, pointed Carus out to the reform-minded Buddhist monk Shaku Soyen, the Zen master of Engaku temple in Kamakura, Japan. Accord-
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ing to Soyen, Snell advised the monk that "to persuade [Carus] in favour of the Buddhistic religion was far better and more effective than to preach a thousand vulgar minds" (Snell to P. Carus,1O Nov. 1891; Fields 1981, Ill, 113; Soyen n.d.). Although there is no record of the conversations between Carus and Soyen, it is clear that their thoughts and hopes dovetailed to an amazing degree. "The late Parliament I think is the forerunner of the future universal religion of science," Soyen wrote to Carus on 16 December 1893 after his return to Japan; "the more frequently will such a meeting be opened, the more favourable will be the result to the birth of that ideal religion .... I, though a man of no consequence, have too a great mind to propagate the tidings of Truth together with you." Of their work togethel~ more in the next chapter-here the point is that few parliamentarians more closely mirrored Carus's own view of Buddhism, the parliament, and religious progress itself What better proof could he have asked that he was on the right evolutionary track than that his own advanced views - derived from German universities and American experiences-should coincide so closely with those of a Buddhist monk trained in Ceylon and Japan? But Carus and Soyen's view of the parliament-as the precursor of an ultimate, universal religion of science - was far more liberal than most other perceptions. The majority of those present, speakers and audience alike, believed that the ultimate, universal religion had arrived 1,893 years earlier. Accordingly, few objected when the parliament proved to be "distinctively Christian in its spirit, conceptions, prayers, doxologies, benedictions, and in its prevailing language, arguments, and faith" (Barrows 1897, 312). Carus did not object to this pervasive Christianity (among other things, sessions opened with the Lord's Prayer) because he saw Christendom as divided into two parties: a narrow, bigoted, exclusive branch destined for extinction; and a broad, tolerant, inclusive group willing to follow the truth where it led. "Heretofore, the broad Christianity has always bcen re-
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garded as heretical," he gloated; "but as this Parliament proves, ... there are still representatives of the narrow spirit left, but their position becomes more and more untenable" (1916, 7-8, 10). But the broad-minded Christians, typified by Barrows, were far closer in substance to the "narrow" preachers than they were to Carus, Soyen, or Vivekananda. At the parliament, "Christianity was presented as the one, true, absolute, and universal religion," writes Kenten Druyvesteyn (1976, 170). "Rhetorically, procedurally the Parliament was liberal; sub. stantively, fundamentally it was conservative." HCarus thought the parliament more liberal than it was, he also believed that it was more representative than it was. In fact, only six groups sent "official representatives" to the parliament: "The Committee's appeal was usually made to individuals and not to organizations," wrote Barrows. The parliament was a representative body in only the loosest sense: Barrows's own Presbyterian General Assembly went on record against it, and Soyen's fellow disciples opposed his traveling to such an uncivilized country. Superficially the parliament appeared to be a gathering of groups-the denominational congresses held alongside it hclped reinforce this impressionbut in fact it was a gathering of invited individuals, self-selected by their willingness to take the time and energy to risk mingling with unbelievers (Barrows 1893, 2:1568, 1:60-61, 1:19; Fields 1981,113). These ambiguities mattered less on the occasion, when the thrill of the meeting and Barrows's diplomacy could smooth them over. But they dogged the steps of those who tried to recreate what Carus later (1916, 18) called "the most noteworthy event of modern times."z The parliament's would-be sequel began even before that body itself had adjourned. Near its end Bonney appOinted both a men's and a women's committee to follow up on its work (Good Tidings Series n.d.). The two committees met jointly on occasion; their original project was to form a "World's Reli-
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gious Association" to promote the exchange of ideas and the study of comparative religion (World's Congress Auxiliary n.d.). At some point the men's committee was renamed the "Religious Parliament Extension". 3 Bonney wrote later that he and Barrows had "held the [Religious Parliament Extension] movement back ... as a reasonable safeguard against action stimulated merely by the enthusiasm engendered by the Parliament; and also to secure time for rest and recuperation" (Bonney 1895,341). But within a year the enthusiasm stemming from its sessions appeared to be sufficiently in check: Cams couldn't find a chair for the extension. On 12 October 1894 he explained to Bonney that Reformed Episcopal Bishop Samuel Fallows-who had chaired the World's Congress Auxiliary general educational committee-would not take the job. "He is in his denomination, so he told me, the ONLY one who is not bitterly opposed to the Parliament of Religions. Do you know of one who could take his place?4 ... Most of our friends are in hearty sympathy "vith the cause, but are as afraid of touching it as of hot iron." On the evening of 1 January 1895 Cams and Bonney put together a reunion celebration of the World's Congress Auxiliary at Chicago's Auditorium. The turnout was satisfactory: Cams described it as "a stately gathering of thousands of eager people" (1895d, 346). But because the meeting was a reunion of all twenty departments of the auxiliary, the purpose that loomed largest to Cams - the formal launching of the Religious Parliament Extension - was obscured. Carus's reading of "messages from absent friends" was the sixth of nine items in the second half of the program (World's Congress Auxiliary 1895) and received little notice in the press. The vagueness that hampered the extension on occasions like this alternated with some unpleasant exclusionism at other postparliament gatherings. The sponsors of the Pan-American Congress of Religion and Education (Toronto, 18-25 July 1895) were reluctant to admit any non -Western religion and adamant about not allowing Vivekananda to speak Cams worked be-
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hind the scenes to get the Hindu in while maintaining a positive view of the event in public. "Personally, I do not agree with Vivekananda, either in his religious views or in his general aspect of life," Carus wrote to the Toronto organizer Rev. S. Sherin on 8 June 1895. "I am in many respects antagonistic to him, but it is my sincere opinion that it is our moral duty to listen to our antagonists .... The Religious Parliament of Chicago was a triumph of Christianity because Christians called the Parliament and listened patiently to all kinds of antagonistic opinions .... To be hospitable to antagonistic views is a symptom of strength; whenever people fear to have an adversary express his opinions there you may be sure something is wrong. It is a symptom of weakness" (1895a, 4645). The Toronto clergy preferred weakness. During 1895 Carus and Bonney also collaborated on articles restating the aims of both the original parliament and the extension. Their work appeared first as two articles leading off The Monist for April 1895 (Bonney 1895; Carus 1895d) and then-with a preface and a third article by Carus, "The Progress of the Movement" - as a very elegant, oversized book, The Worlds Parliament of Religions and the ReligiOUS Parliament Extension, published early in 1896 by Open Court in a limited edition of five hundred copies on "Dutch Hand Made Paper" for distribution to top political and religious dignitaries worldwide. The articles themselves were mostly quotations. Bonney defended the parliament against conservative detractors by quoting extensively from its early statements of purpose and method (Bonney 1895). Carus quoted at length from the congratulatory letters he had read at the reunion on 1 January 1895, portions of which sounded rather odd in a volume published more than a year later. Cardinal Gibbons wrote, "My official duties render it impossible for me to leave home at this time. I take this occasion to tender you my sincere and cordial congratulations." Anagarika Dharmapala: "The spirit that animated me to take part in the deliberations of the Parliament of Religions still urges me on." Shaku Soyen: "I hail the move-
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ment of the Religious Parliament Extension which you have started. It is a new proof that progress cannot be checked." Rev. Joseph Cook: "Christianity of the scholarly, Biblical, and aggressive type stood forth in the World's Parliament of Religions among non Christian faiths and philosophies as the sun among candles." And Rev. George Candlin wrote from Tientsin, China: "Our present aim must be to get the mutual tolerance [between different religions] which subsists already between the sections of Christendom. We must begin by ... [agreeing] personally never to speak slightingly of the religious faith of one another" (P. Carus 1895d, 346, 347, 349, 351, 352; emphases in original). Carus allowed the letters to "speak for themselves," not remarking on the obvious differences between Cook on the one hand and Soyen and CandHn on the other. But he himself wavered between his own objective and the more limited goals that might pass public scrutiny. The Religious Parliament Extension, he wrote at one pOint, is "above all to facilitate the final and universal attainment of religiOUS truth" (1895d, 346, 345), and of course that truth could only be one and the same for all. But in concluding the book, he hedged: "The ReligiOUS Parliament does not propose an obliteration of the differences of the various religions, but on the contrary it proposes to render the differences distinct and make them better understood" (World's Parliament of Religions 1896, 41-45). Despite such waffling, Cams does seem to have had a consistent strategy. He believed that a premature attempt at religious union based on vague sentiments would fail. First a parliament must make the differences between existing religions clear; then, somehow, the single religious truth would emerge from these differences, most likely as a melding of the best elements of each tradition. (In Carus's normal mode he would say that this melding comes about through friendly but vigorous argument; here he couldn't endorse argument because of the parliament's ground rules.) Although Carus did not state his strategy in so many words-probably because his view of religious truth might
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have offended the more conservative parliamentarians (not to mention those outside the movement!)~-neither could he refrain from revealing his ultimate vision: "The essence of religion can only be one and must remain one and the same among all nations, in all climes, and under all conditions. The sooner mankind recognises it, the better it will be for progress" (1895d, 353).5 The resulting apparent inconsistencies between Carus's short-term and long-term goals might well have caused would-be participants to wonder if they were being asked to welcome a Trojan horse. In any case, even in Chicago there seems to have been no functioning committee other than the Carus-Bonney duo. The two agreed that reprints of the Monist articles should not include a list of committee members, because it had been "a very loose organization" (P. Carus to C. C. Bonney, 29 Mar. 1895; C. C. Bonney to P. Carus, 30 Mar. 1895). And so it remained: Bonney acknowledged in a letter of 11 March 1897 that the extension committees had never been completed, "and I am unable to put my hand on the list of those who were invited to become members, and who accepted a place on the committees." Carus and Bonney never actually called for a second parliament in the Monist articles or in their book, but it was on their minds. They both wanted to make any second parliament "much more complete and authoritative" than the first (c. C. Bonney to P. Carus, 16 Apr. 1895). In April 1895 Carus wrote to The Monist's French correspondent, Lucien Arreat, asking him how best to get in touch with the Paris exposition being planned for 1900. But they did not have the easy access to French fair authorities that Bonney had quickly gained in Chicago; throughout 1895 they received confusing and discouraging messages from Paris. At various points they considered trying Great Britain instead or even a "World's Congress Pilgrimage" to the sacred places of the world (P. Carus to C. C. Bonney, 9 Apr. 1895; C. C. Bonney to P. Carus, 16 May, 9 Sept. 1895; P. Carus to Dharmapala, 14 Jan. 1896).
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Meanwhile, the second parliament did find an energetic Parisian chmTlpion in Abbe Victor Charbonnel. "The Universal Congress of Religions should be a congress for accurately expounding the religious idea," he wrote in La Revue de Paris (1 Sept. 1895), as translated in Th,e Open Court later that fall. "It would be doubting the efficacy of the Gospel of peace and love to believe that approach between Christians is impossible" (CharbonneI1895, 4680, 4682). Caws had written of the first parliament, 'All uncertainty as to the feasibility of the gathering vanished when the Roman Catholic Church most cordially accepted the invitation to take part" (1916, 3). In a Catholic country, where the church would in some sense be host rather than guest, such cordial acceptance would be indispensable. Charbonnel seemed to be on finn ground: he claimed the support of two French cardinals as well as George Bonet-Maury (Protestant) and Rabbi Zadoc Kahn (Jewish). He quoted Cardinal Gibbons: "The Pope will be with you. Of that I am sure" (CharbonneI1895, 4683). Charbonnel's vigorous article provoked equally vigorous responses, by no means all favorable. Carus followed the controversy in The Open Court, but he seems to have gone beyond the available evidence in his anxiety to make the French climate of opinion appear favorable. "The success of the projected Second Religious Parliament in Paris seems to be assured," he wrote jubilantly in February 1896. 'Among [the letters received by CharbonneI] ... there are only two that doubt the advisability of holding a Second ReligiOUS Parliament." He reprinted eight letters under the title "European Opinions on the Second Parliament of Religions." But of the eight, two were flatly opposed (not merely "doubting the advisability"), one was in favor, one was from Bonney and therefore not a "European opinion" at all, and the remaining four were doubtful at best. (Worse yet, only three letters were from France, the would-be host country, and two of those three were opposed!) Even Bonet-Maury, who had attended the Chicago parliament, was wobbly: "Paris seems to me to offer a less favorable soil for such a gathering than Chicago or any
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other American city, or a federal country like Switzerland." The letters make Carus's glee seem at best premature; with the one exception they don't even convey enthusiasm, much less assurance (p. Carus 1896b). Meanwhile-it is uncertain whether Carus was aware of this contretemps as it happened-the cardinal archbishop of Paris had responded to Charbonnel's article by threatening to punish him if he continued to advocate such a "heretical" project (Charbonnel1899, 37). Finding organizational support difficult to come by, Charbonnel scaled down his ambitions to what had in fact been the level of the Chicago parliament - a gathering of individuals rather than official delegates. "He turned to the leading lay advocates of liberal Catholicism," explained Theodore Stanton in The Open Court (1898, 295), "and put before them a very conciliatory declaration in which the aim and plan of the proposed Congress was given in its chief outlines. They approved the idea, the form, everything, in a word, connected with the undertaking, but dared not assume the responsibility of publicly putting their names at the bottom of the circular." Still, Charbonnel could count on at least tacit support from the Pope and from the United States, right? Wrong. On 10 September 1897, two years after Charbonnel had quoted him on the Pope's support, Cardinal Gibbons wrote La Revue de Paris emphatically denying that he had ever thought or said anything of the kind (Charbonnel 1899, 39). The following month, in exasperation and despair, Charbonnel angrily broke with the Catholic Church, thereby torpedoing any hope of a Paris parliament in 1900. Carns's role in the aftermath of the Charbonnel affair is disturbing. In the May 1898 Open Court he published first an account of the debacle by Charbonnel's friend Theodore Stanton. Carns followed with his own six-page explanation, entitled "The Reason Why Abbe Charbonnel Failed" (1898b). Charbonnel replied the following January. According to Carus-who apparently had never met the man-Abbe CharbonneI, despite his "noble nature," had
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proven himself impatient, indiscreet, and possessed of a personality "undesirable as the chairman of a Religious Parliament." Apparently Carus felt that Charbonnel had been too obvious about his desire to use the parliament to promote liberalism in the Catholic church. Carus could hardly object to such a goal; he blamed Charbonnel ("a grain of discretion might have averted the conflict") and the Zeitgeist ("probably the scheme is premature" -a sentiment not heard earlier from him). He took great care, however, not to blame the Catholic church. Gibbons's strangely delayed denial had the flavor of backpedaling in the face of reactionary pressures from the Vatican, but Carus remained serenely confident that "the Pope's friendly attitude during the Chicago Religious Parliament" proved that he did not oppose "the Parliament idea as such" (1898b, 301-5), In reply, Charbonnel produced as a witness Bonet-Maury, who confirmed Gibbons's original statement (Stanton 1898, 295). Carus waved it all away: "We believe that the accusation of duplicity which he [Charbonnel] lays at the doors of some high dignitaries of the Church are mainly conditioned by the disparity of his own sentiments. First he interpreted the Cardinal's words in the light of his sanguine optimism and now he is embittered by the pessimism which naturally results from his disappointment. It sometimes happens that a man's very enthusiasm renders him unfit to accomplish the cherished ideal of his life" (1898b, 304). This patronizing dismissal "nettled" Charbonnel (1899, 36), as well it might: Carus had been guilty of excessive enthusiasm himself, and his statement muddled the facts of the case. Cardinal Gibbons did not claim to have been misinterpreted; he denied making any statement at all. And no pessimism could exaggerate the emphasis of his later denial. No doubt Carus was in a difficult position. Gibbons, Charbonnel, and Bonet-Maury had all been supporters of the parliament idea. Now that they had fallen out, Carus was bound to make enemies whichever side he favored. He might· have published Stanton's account and let it go at that-but
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reticence was never his style. He might have taken the occasion to support a fellow religious liberal in a tight spot and make an Ingersoll-style attack on the organized church and its "raison d' eglise." Instead he wrote submissively, "The leaders of the Church alone can know whether the time is ripe" for it to host a parliament (1898b, 302). It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he sacrificed Charbonnel (and logic) in the hopes of patching things up with the highest-ranking prelate in the United States. Carus had built his philosophy of religion on finding the evolutionary potential in traditions that other radicals trashed. He couldn't summon up any iconoclasm even when it might have been called for. Nor could he acknowledge that he had shared in Charbonnel's reckless optimism. But he consoled himself that "the Parliament idea itself will not suffer, for the Parliament idea is a movement that no man, no institution, no reactionary policy can hinder or check in its evolution" (1898b, 303). The idea of a parliament may not have been damaged, but no other candidate for a second such gathering came even as close to fruition as the Paris proposal had. And when, in 1897, Carus and Bonney asked prominent parliament delegates "whether in the circles of your activity the brotherly spirit among the different denominations has increased," Carus found that the answers required judiciOUS editing. As he wrote to Professor Estlin Carpenter (2 Oct. 1897), "If we were to publish the replies which we received from various quarters, it would result in a religious war, and it would rather increase the religious hatred than further the aims of the Religious Parliament. It was comical enough to receive on the very same day a letter from a Mohammedan sheik and a superintendent of Christian schools in Armenia, the one glOlifying God for the victories he had given to a righteous cause, and the other complaining about the persecution of the Mohammedans." Similarly, in September 1901 Bonney published a story in The Open Court about a Baptist seminary helping rebuild the
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Catholic church that served the town's Catholic minority (Bonney 1901). Bonney offered it as an example of the parliament idea-the Golden Rule in religion-but without claiming that the Chicago meeting had in any way impelled the Baptists' generosity. And Carus indirectly acknowledged that the parliament idea had more active enemies than friends: "Mr. Bonney," he wrote (1901b), "deemed it wise to omit names, because there are always captious fault-finders who might expose the parties concerned to hostile criticism, on account of the very breadth shown by them." The 1900 Paris Exposition did after all include what was called the First International Congress of the History of Religions, which met 3-9 September 1900; Carus published a preview of the congress by Jean Reville (1900) and attended it himself. But it was a scholarly meeting, not another parliament. "It will be intellectually an important meeting," sighed Barrows in a letter of7 Apri11900 to Caruso "I hope that it will take on some religiOUS Significance." Barrows himself moved on and away, to the presidency of Oberlin College, where he died prematurely in June 1902. "We have practically no one to take his place," Carus lamented to H. S. Olcott (25 Aug. 1902). By this time Bonney was suffering from progressive paralysis; he outlasted Barrows only a little more than a yem; dying on 23 August 1903. In his eulogy Carus credited the parliament's realization to Bonney's tact, impartiality, and conciliatory spirit. "The Religious Parliament was so unique, that a repetition of it is not probable for some time to come," he reflected, "but it took place and no one can make it undone. It will remain a land-mark in the histOlY of religion, the Significance of which can hardly be realised by the present generation" (1903b, 573)-this just ten years into the new eral In an effort to build up a file of religious leaders interested in the parliament, the three had cosigned a letter sent out in the summer of1902 (e.g., P. Carus to G. Seailles, 12 July 1902). "So far, the replies to our circular have been favorable with the exception of the Roman Catholics," Carus wrote Olcott on 25 August 1902, "and I do not yet know how to deal with them,
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whether to make a last conciliatory attempt, or to let them go." On 12 January 1908 Carus corresponded with Mme. Emile Hyacinthe Loyson, urging her to find more backers for a proposed second parliament and to move it to The Hague (adding, "after all the English speaking people are the only international people"). In her behalf he asked Andrew Carnegie to back a second parliament, but Carnegie promptly declined (P. Carus to Carnegie, 14 Jan. 1908; James Bertram to P. Carus, 16 Jan. 1908). After Bonney's death Carus began to distance himself from this failure as he had from the efforts of Charbonnel. "The Parliament of Religions is gone out of existence," he explained to C. A. Osborne on 11 October 1907 at the Abraham Lincoln Centre in Chicago, which had received mail addressed to the parliament. "Mr. Bonney kept up an extension of the Parliament of Religions which he called
Paul and Mary Hegeler Carus at the time of their marriage in 1888. (Courtesy Alwin C. Carus.)
Edward Carl Hegeler (1835-1910), who founded The Open Court journal and the publishing company of the same name in 1887 to propagate his views on philosophy, ethics, science, and religion. (Courtesy Alwin C. Carus.)
The Edward C. Hegeler house in La Salle, Illinois, designed by Chicago architect W. W. Boyington in 1874. The first floor of the house was the center of Open Court's editorial work.
The Open Court. A
FORTNIGHTLY JOURNAL,
DE.VOT£D To TUB \VORK OP ESTA8LISIU'SC ETIIlCS AXD RsuOioS UPO!'l A SCIENTIFIC BASIS.
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CHICAGO, FEBRUARY I;, 1887.
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THE LITERARY WORLD. A FOa.T"NIGltTLY JOUIlNAL 011' LITIl".\TU .... Dt:\'OT&:t .SPUIA L1.Y TO REVI:r.W" 011'
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The premier issue of The Open Court, 17 February 1887. (Courtesy Open Court Publishing Company.)
VOl.. I.
OCTOBER, 1890·
No. I .
THE MONIST. A QUARTERLY MAGAZINE PUBLISH ltD BY
The Open Court Publishing Company. CONTENTS: .,ACa.
MA.. A . R. W ALLACIt ON PHYSIOLOGICAL SltLtCTION. n GEORGE J. ROMANES, LL. D., F. R. 5., f i t h.MORTALlTY Ott INl"USORlA. BY ALFRED BINET, ON THIt MATItRIAL RItLATIONS OF SItX IN HUNAN SOClltTY. BY Paol'. E. D. COPE, filt ANALYSIS 01' THE SItNSATION_ANTllfItTAPHYSICAL. n PROtt. ERNST MACH, TIlIt OalGIN or MIND. BY DR. PAUL CARUS, THt MAGIC MIRROR. BY MAX DESSOIR, HllrFDUlO ON THt RtLATION OF TBt MWD TO THt BODY. BY W. M. SALTER,
118
LITItItAR y CoRRItSPONDENCB--FIUoNCE. BY LUCIEN ARREAT.
I~
Boox RItVlltwa,
139-1.7
PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICAN CoLLaoES AND UNIVItItSlTlItS,
148-156
PtIUODICALS.
1 57-160
CHICAGO:
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO . .......1F lallNdpUo.. ,I.".
The premier issue of The Monist, October 1890. (Courtesy Open Court Publishing Company.)
One of the sessions of the World's Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago during the World's Fah~ 1893; delegates from many religions and nations are shown seated on the stage. It was through contacts at the parliament with representatives of Eastern religions that Carus became deeply interested in Buddhism. He later published many commentaries on and translations of classic Eastern religious texts. His own compilation, The Gospel of Buddha, became one of Open Court's best-sellers. (Courtesy Open Court Publishing Company archives, Special Collections, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.)
D. T. Suzuki (1870-1966), a prominent scholar of Zen Buddhism, with one of Car us's children. Suzuki spent eleven years of his remarkable career at Open Court Publishing Company (1897- 1908). He was introduced to Carus by his teachel~ Shaku So),en, soon after the World's Parliament of Religions. Suzuki's first book was published by Open Court in 1908. (Courtesy Open Court Publishing Company archives, Special Coliections, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.)
Ernst Mach (1838-1916), a distinguished Austrian physicist, psychologist, and philosopher. Carus published translations of many of Mach's works, both as articles and as books. (Courtesy Open Court Publishing Company archives, Special Collections, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.)
Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), founder of the American school of pragmatism. His five-part series of articles published in the early issues of The Monist offered his definitive philosophical articulation of an evolutionary cosmology that led him to question the dogma of physical determinism. (Courtesy Indiana University Peirce Edition Project.)
A family photo of Paul Carus with his youngest son, Alwin Clemens Caruso (Courtesy Alwin C. Carus.)
A selection of Open Court titles showing their special cover artwork Since its founding in 1887, Open Court Publishing Company has published more than 640 books. The Gospel of Buddha (left) has been among the company's best-selling books, going through numerous editions and printings. (From Open Court: A Centennial Bibliography by Ralph McCoy, by permission of Open Court Publishing Company, La Salle, Illinois. Copyright © 1993 by Open Court Publishing Company.)
"OW it happellS that Illy iricnd. ~Ir. Francis C. Russell of Chicago. received a I~t{cr on 5undry t01>lc~ of modern logic from MI'. Charles S. S. Peirce, kno\\,l1 as one of tll<' most prominent iog-icians, and it contains a most interesting which sounds like an answer to this challer1ll': mine. With lhe permission tl"~ 1t:.I1. ~
.sl"'~S~·~I~~~ ~ 1. -:J3, J . ,dore I took up the gCllcrni study of relatives. l>I-IlW-<:il1ll:S;:-_ ••
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invcstigatlon into the consequences of the to be diffcrent froll1 what tIw\' I1re. It was a of non-i\ristoleliat? logic. in the sense in which we speak of nOll~Ettcljdcall geometry. Some- of the: developments were somewhat illtel'csting. but
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not sufficlcnU), so lo induce me to publish them. The gcncra~ idea was. of conrse, obvious to anybody of sufficicltt glllSp of log-kal ':t* . analysis to sec thnt logic reposes \iPOIl certain positive f~...aud-- 'Ifn 6~ is not mere formalism. I--ffil.l-y--mclltion i~-l\'t\i;~\!ritcl' ~
~~. 'lftl'l"\vtl.rd sngge~·'.~d s~!'.':h ~ hl~e 10~i{'.
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wildest lunacy. instead of being a plain and l!aturai hypoth~ csiswo(,tillookillgillt ~~ I . '~t~lg."
.'Y
Galley proof of a note by Paul Carus that appeared in 'the Monist for JanualY 1910, as corrected and expanded by Charles S, Peirce, Carns and Peirce frequently sparred over philosophical and The Monist was the fornm for their debate, Their articles and correspondence, archived at Southern Illinois University, show that Carus was an unusually sympathetic editor to a sometimes difficult contributor. His insistence on publishing Peirce's writings, despite Edward Hegcler's objections, illustrates the seriousness with which Carns took his editorial responsibilities, Here, Peirce sheds some light on his philosophical development. (Courtesy Open Court Publishing Company archives, Special Collections, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.)
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Of all the ways in which Paul Carus sought to promote the religion of science, by far the most consequential was Open Court's patronage of Oriental religion and philosophy, especially Buddhism. Carl Jackson, author of The Oriental Religions and American Thought: Nineteenth-Century Explorations (1981), has described Carus as "one of the most important and one of the earliest popularizers of Oriental thought in America" (1968,74,78). UnderCarus's direction, between 1893 and 1915 Open Court published thirty-eight books on the subject, fifteen ofthem by Carus himself The Open Court and The Monist gave Easteru religions and societies more extensive and sympathetic coverage than any U.S. publications had before-and, according to Jackson, more than any others did until after World War II. Although complete sales records have never been located, the available evidence indicates that Carus's compilation The Gospel a/Buddha was his, and the company's, runaway all-time best-seller. It went through more printings and editions, and more translations, than any other Open Court work. In 1915 Carus knew personally of translations into German, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Urdu and had granted rights for translations into Russian, "Czechic," Italian, Siamese, and "other Oriental tongues" (McCoy 1987, 9, 89-91; P. Carus 1915b, vi). For the one year for which we have firm sales figures (1 Feb. 1896-1 Feb. 1897), books on Buddhism made up more than one-quarter of Open Court's total sales (McCormack 1897). The company's best-seller that year was Carus's tale Karma
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(1894b; 1,360 copies), which indeed enjoyed such popularity that it was pirated in at least ten languages, including a version attributed to Leo Tolstoy (Fullenwider 1987). Of the three books by Carus that remain in Open Court's recent catalogues, one deals with Buddhist and one with Chinese thought. Until the World Parliament of Religions, howevel; there was little evidence that Carus would become a particular advocate of Buddhism at all, let alone an ardent one. Just a month before it opened (7 Aug. 1893), he wrote to Professor Robert Smith of Birmingham, England, that he was interested "not in modern Buddhism, but in the old Buddhism of Buddha." That same day he elaborated in a letter to C. W. Pfounds, a possible contributor in Kyoto, Japan: "My interest in the Buddhism of today is not more intense than any other anthropological or ethnological or historico-religious subject .... It is a matter of course that [for publication] I want a cool, unbiased statement which should be benevolent but not enthusiastic." Carus was no stranger to Buddhism at this time. Although it is no longer possible to reconstruct his early intellectual history, we do know that in a scholarly climate already open to the East, he had studied under Hermann Grassmann, who in addition to his mathematical profession was also a Sanskritist (Jackson 1968, 75). Some time prior to his leaving Germany, Carus had discussed religion with a visiting Japanese Buddhist high priest, a "Rev. Kitabatake" whom he later described as "highly educated" (P. Carus to Pfounds, 7 Aug. 1893) and who gave Carus "much food for thought" by shOwing him a religion that" does not prescribe any dogma to be believed in" (P. Carus 1888d, 837). And a few years later he had published the sixtypage Lieder eines Buddhisten (1882). But this acquaintance had not flowered into anything more. Up to the fall ofl893 readers of The Open Court had had only a small taste of Orientalia. During the Underwoods' tenure, General J. G. R. Forlong described Buddhist influences on early Christianity (1887), a favorite theme throughout
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the magazine's history, and five years later Professor H. H. Williams (1892) described the psychology of Buddhism in the magazine. In The Open Court's first seven years Carus himself touched on Buddhism only twice, both times speaking from a distinctly Western standpoint. Buddhism and Christianity are quite simi1ar' he argued in January 1890: "Other religions require sacrifices of lambs and goats. Buddhism and Christianity demand the surrender of self' (1890b). He concluded that "the religion of the future will not be Christian dogmatism" without mentioning Buddhism. Carus's only other preparliament discussion of Buddhism was entitled "The Religion of a Forerunner of Christ" (1890a). In it Carus warned his readers that the idea ofN irvana could be "of a most dangerous charactCl; if it is conceived as mere pessimism .... It will in that case lead to apathy, to destruction and death." Although Carus did not believe that was its true meaning, he acknowledged that the Buddha "perhaps" meant it that way, and that certainly many of his followers did. Carus believed that this version of Buddhism had debilitated the societies where it prevailed-hence its "danger." And that was it for the first seven years of The Open Court. Its more scholarly twin, The Monist, in its first four years offered even less-one article by Richard Garbe, "Hindu Monism" (1892). And the book-publishing arm of Open Court, although it so far had issued thirty-four volumes, had published nothing that touched on the Orient. It is difficult to overestimate the impression that the Buddhists at the parliament made on Caruso He immediately set to work on The Gospel of Buddha (P. Carus to 1<-: C. Russell, 10 Nov. 1893) and on two articles for the next issue of The Monist-one, a poem by Shaku Soyen and its translation (1894), the other an exposition of the teachings of Buddhism by Zitsuzen Ashitsu (1894; P. Carus to Z. Ashitsu, 19 Oct. 1893). Readers of the January 1894 issue found Soyen's poem, in the original Chinese script, on the first page of the magazine.
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Nor was this enthusiasm brief In the following five years (1894-98) Carus wrote and published seven new books (as opposed to translations or second editions of previous works); five of the seven dealt with Buddhism, and the sixth was Chinese Philosophy (1898a).1 The magazines likewise began to overflow with articles "on Buddhism, Chinese thought, and Oriental mythology; regular reviews of new books on Oriental philosophy and religion; a spate of scholarly and not-sa-scholarly articles comparing the origins and doctrines of Buddhism and Christianity; popular essays on the social customs and religious practices of the Oriental societies; a running debate over the merits of Christian missions to the East and of Oriental missions to the United States; frequent reproductions of Oriental art; and regular accounts of Oriental movements in America." Behind this published work lay an even larger mountain of correspondence and conversation with many of the principals in the postparliament efflorescence of Oriental missionary work in the United States. "Perhaps no American at the turn of the century," writes Jackson, "had more extensive or more intimate contacts with Orientals" (1968, 78, 89). Carus was no longer merely "cool" or "benevolent" on the subject. To the dismay of one reviewer (Saunders 1919) he even referred to Buddha as "our lord" in The Gospel of Buddha (P. Carus 1894a, 1). Buddhism, Carus wrote in 1897, is not a myth but "religious mythology explained in scientific terms; it is the esoteric secret of all exoteric doctrines. It is the skeleton key which in its abstract simplicity fits all locks .... It offers food for thought to the philosopher, comfort to the afflicted, and affords a stay to those that struggle. It is a guide through the temptations of life and a lesson to those in danger of straying from the right path. And yet it demands no belief in the impossible" (1897a, 83). A key factor in Carus's change was his encounter at the parliament with Shaku Soyen, a Zen master three years younger than Carus who spoke little or no English and did not attract the publicity that other Oriental speakers there did
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(Fields 1981, 109, 126). Carus very likely approved of Soyen's talk on causality from a Buddhist perspective: "The law exists for an eternity ... independent of the will of Buddha .... Would you ask me about the Buddhist morality? I reply, in Buddhism the source of moral authority is the causal law" (Soyen 1893, 831). After the parliament Soyen spent a week in La Sane as Carus and Hegeler's guest As noted in the preceding chapter, Soyen and Carus were much of one mind about the parliament and everything else. Soyen described the parliament as "the greatest spiritual phenomenon ever produced," adding in a letter to Carus (18 Apr. 1894) that the Religious Parliament Extension would now have to fight" a religious battle against an old and superstitious faith by taking the spirit of science and philosophy as shield and the principle of universal brotherhood as sword.... I earnestly hope that your association would be as much successful as to unite all the religions of the world under onc perfect religiOUS system." Carus may have had the idea of compiling a "Gospel of Buddha" before the parliament (P. Carus to T. W Rhys Davids, 13 May 1895). In any ease, that gathering impelled him to bring together Buddhist scriptures already translated into French, German, and English and to combine their high points into one volume. (He lists forty-five separate sources [l894a, 260-70].) Published in 1894, the book consists of 100 chapters, each divided into verses. Chapters 1-3 and 98-100 were entirely Carus's composition. Elsewhere in the book he had made "a few purely original additions" and modernizations, done "with due consideration and always in the spirit of a legitimate development." Those rationalists among Carus's readers who had remained unaware of his poetic inclinations and strong religious feelings may have been surprised to find the book an actual gospel and not an explanation or critique. "The present volume," Carus noted carefully in his preface, "is not deSigned to contribute to the solution of historical problems. The compiler has studied his subject as well as he could under the circumstances [Le., not knowing Pali or San-
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skrit], but he does not intend here to offer a scientific production." Nor did he intend, surprisingly enough, to popularize Buddhism. His aim - both in the Gospel and in later effortswas to use Buddhism to "pUrify" Christianity of what he regarded as superstitions, to use Christianity to similarly purify Buddhism, and in the end to "bring out a nobler faith [beyond and above them both] which aspires to be the cosmic religion of universal truth" (p. Carus 1894a, vi, x-xi, xv). Carus was perhaps too circumspect about this strategy, as it often escaped his contemporaries. E. Washburn Hopkins (1898) wondered plaintively "why our authOl; after rejecting Christianityas an inferior creed, should be so extremely anxious to find points of similarity in the two religions." Worse yet was the fi'iendly but obtuse comment by Kenneth Saunders (1919), published after Carus's death. Carus, he observed, believed that "there is a higher truth than either [Buddhism or Christianity] which he calls 'The Religion of Truth.' By this he probably means theosophy, though he does not explicitly say so." Carus, who had looked down on theosophy and theosophists for years (P. Carus to Dharmapala, 11 Feb. 1897), would have been outraged. To achieve his goal of "a nobler faith," Carus first had to run the gauntlet of Western scholars of Buddhism whose concerns lay in the mundane realm of historical truth. George S. Goodspeed (1894) of the University of Chicago admired the book's intention and admitted its usefulness: "It is the only eollection of Buddhist material from so many sources that can be obtained in so convenient a form and at so reasonable a price." Goodspeed thought Carus unwise to have added six chapters of his own and gently rebuked his claim to have treated the Buddhist scriptures much as the author of the Gospel of John treated earlier accounts of Jesus: "With all respect to Dl: Carus, we can hardly regard him as so trustworthy a representative of the spirit of Buddhism as the beforementioned writer was of the spirit of Christ" (1894, 476). Goodspeed was especially unhappy with Carus's commingling of Buddhist sources from quite different dates and traditions, as if one were to compile" a 'Gospel of Christ' from
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the original and apocryphal Gospels indiseriminately.... If the work had been divided into two parts, the first presenting the Hinayana sources, and the second, the material from the Mahayana writings, nothing would have been lost from the point of view of the popular impression" (1894, 475). Shortly thereafter Oxford University's J. Estlin Carpenter repeated the same criticisms with eonsiderably more venom (1895). Carus responded angrily: «I am not quite so ignorant as Professor Carpenter thinks, and possess sufficient scholarly training to distinguish between historically reliable and unreliable accounts." Carus took a strikingly pragmatic view of his work, claiming that it was "historical in a higher sense of the word .... while I remained faithful to the spirit of the founder of Buddhism ... I introduced certain changes ... with a definite purpose .... [They] are neither errors nor adulterations. They are purifications, pointing out the way of reform in the line of a higher development of Buddhism .... The Gospel of Buddha . .. represents BUDDHISM UP TO DATE, in its nohler possibilities" (1895e, 4436). In fairness to Carus, he never pretended to the historical accuracy that Carpenter and Goodspeed condemned him for failing to attain. In fairness to his critics, howevel; Carus gave innoeent readers few clues by which to distinguish among Buddhist passages of various dates and traditions or to distinguish any of them from Carus's own "purifying" additions. In the East, among the reform-minded Buddhists who shared Carus's desire for Buddhism Up To Date, the response was far more friendly. Soyen was pleased that Carus, unlike many other Western writers, presented Nirvana "as relating to this life and as real, positive, altruistic, and rather optimistic" (Soyen to P. Carus, 17 May 1894). On 7 November 1894 Soyen wrote that the book had already been translated by "some of the students in our Imperial University": "The sacred books of Buddhism are so numerous that its beginners are at loss how to begin their study," he added, "and it has been our endeavor to sketch out Buddha's doctrines plainly and concisely. Your book just fills the place."
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On lO March 1895 Teitaro Suzuki wrote to Carus introducing himself as a student at the Imperial University, Soyen's translatOl~ and the translator of The Gospel of Buddha: "We are very glad that you as a Western thinker have ... rightly comprehended the principles of Buddhism while most of them are prejudiced to look at Buddhism as a nihilism or pessimism, as you 1mow. " Kakichi Ohara ofOmi, Japan, wrote on 26 December 1894, praising the Gospel to Carus as "the best book in english ever appeared in the West"; he subsequently translated it into Chinese. "The teachers in Hon-gwan-ji schools are willing to use it as a reader," he reported on 19 October 1895, "while those of Jo-do or Pure Land Seminary will use it as a book of instruction." Carus noted in 1895 that cheaper editions of the book were in demand in both Ceylon and Japan "so that the book could be introduced into the Buddhist schools as an English reader" and according to Dharmapala, it was used for this purpose (P. Carus to T. W. Rhys Davids, 13 May 1895; Dharmapala to P. Carus, lO Dec. 1895). Dhannapala reprinted several chapters in his Maha Bodhi Journal. "I believe among the European scholars you are the only one who have properly interpreted the doctrine," he wrote. Later he transmitted to Carus the request of a Mr. Tookaram Tatya for Carus's permission to publish an Indian edition (Dharmapala to P. Carus, 13 Feb. 1895, 18 Mal:, 15 July 1896). And in October 1896 his journal carried a letter from one Laucheng Chey (1896) seeking permission to translate" some useful or necessary portions of that book into romanized Malay." 'All who have read your book appreciate it," Dharmapala wrote on 22 January 1896. 'A Hindu writes me after reading it thus: 'It made me very much sad to think that that noble religion is not the religion now.'" More than sixty years later D. T. Suzuki concluded that "before the publication of The Gospel of Buddha, Buddhism had been treated either in too scholarly a manner or too popularly. Dr. Carus combined the spirit of science and philosophy, and his sympathy went beyond
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mere interest. Thus, he was able to check himself from becoming a fanatical sympathizer, and presented Buddhism impartially and justly" (Suzuki 1959a, xiii-xiv). Soyen visited the United States only once more after the parliament, but he and Carns continued to correspond frequently through the 1890s. Through him, Carns offered a $100 prize for the best illustration of the life of Buddha, and Soyen managed the judging and publicity of the competition in Japan. The results were not satisfactory-of the forty pictures submitted, Soyen considered only two worth sending on to Carus, saying that the best of them deserved only third prize-but the organizing of the affair does not seem to have strained their friendship. They exchanged books, Carus sending him among other things a complete set of The Open Cou'rt (Soyen to P. Carus, 20 Aug. 1895, 5 Feb. 1896, 16 Dec. 1893). When Russia and Japan clashed in 1904-5, Carus supported Japan (the enemy of Germany's enemy, Russia). In the summer of 1904 Soyen accompanied the Japanese army to Port Arthur, Manchuria, and that December, Cams published his uncritically patriotic account. Soyen wrote, "I ... wished to inspire, if I could, our valiant soldiers with the ennobling thoughts of the Buddha, so as to enable them to die on the battlefield with the confldence that the task in which they are engaged is great and noble. I wished to convince them of truths that this war is not a mere slaughter of their fellow-beings, but that they are combatting an evil." Very much like Carus, Soyen deplored war in theory but endorsed wars in practice when they (in Soyen's words) involved "no egoistic purpose, but seek the subjugation of evils hostile to civilisation, peace, and enlightenment" (Soyen 1904, 709, 708)-a condition satisfied with surprising frequency. Perhaps the most unusual episode of their friendship came as an indirect result of the parliament. Caroline Haskell, a wealthy parishioner of parliament chairman J. H. Barrows at Chicago's First Presbyterian Church, was moved by the parliament to donate $20,000 to the University of Chicago to endow
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the Haskell Lectures on Comparative Religion. Barrows became the first lecturer and delivered a total of four series of lectures between 1895 and 1898 (Druyvesteyn 1976, 81, 84).2 The second lecture of the second series, in January 1896, particularly disappointed Carus and roused him to battle. In it, Barrows found Buddhism to be "a dubious gospel" because its goal, Nirvana, "involves the extinction of love and life, as the going out of a flame which has nothing else to feed upon" (Barrows 1896). Skeptics like the late Matthew Mark Trumbull would have seized on this statement as evidence of how superficial the parliament's enlightening effects had been. If this was the considered thought of the parliament's presiding officer, who had later labored editing and condensing its proceedings into two hefty volumes, what could one expect of the casual listeners in the audience? But Carus's response was calm and constructive. "It is strange," he wrote to Soyen on 23 January 1896, "that he [Barrows] follows exactly the line of those Christian critics who know nothing of the spirit of Buddhism." Carus wanted to set Barrows straight but hesitated to do so himself, eVidently partly from fear of giving offense and partly from fear that Barrows might not think him, a fellow Westerner, sufficiently authoritative. 3 So Carus instead enclosed the Chicago newspaper accounts of Barrows's speech and asked Soyen to reply to Barrows himself. "No one is better fitted for it than you are, especially as you were a delegate of Buddhism to the Chicago Parliament. In order to make the work as easy as possible for you (for the reply ought to come soon) I enclose a reply such as I suppose might impress Dr. Barrows." In this typed, three and one-half page enclosure, Carus argued that "Nirvana means extinction of lust, not of love; extinction of evil, not of existence; of egotistic craving, not of life. The eradication of all that is evil in man's heart will set all his energies free for good deeds, and he is no genuine Buddhist who would not devote his life to active work, and a usefulness which would refuse neither his friends nor strangers, nor even his very enemies."4
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Cams encouraged Soyen to write his own letter ifhe chose and to add- "if you think that my 'Gospel of Buddha' is genuine Buddhism" -that "Dr. Barrows will find an orthodox and correct representation of genuine Buddhism in my booklet, 'The Gospel of Buddha.'" Finally and most strangely, Carus cautioned his friend to aet in accordance with his presumed national character: "P.S. The Japanese are commonly very polite, and I advise you to be as polite as possible in your letter." Soyen's reply to Carus (1 Mar. 1896) was scrupulously polite. After expressing his disappointmElnt in Barrows C'At first I thought Dr. Barrows is a liberal man ... [but] what a vague and one-sided statement he has made about his rival religion") and acknowledging that some "prejudiced Buddhists" might make similar errors about Christianity, he said that Carus's proposed letter "just[ly] and thoroughly expresses what we wish to utter.... I myself examined it repeatedly. Though I was more than once tempted to add my own opinion to that reply, yet I did no dare to do so, thinking that such a beautiful statement as this should not be defiled by touching with any unskilled hands. The only alteration I have made is the adding of the word Vainachana-Buddha next to the word Amithaba-Buddha." (This change did not appear in the published version.) Barrows's own reply to Soyen, made 14 April 1896 from Gottingen, Germany, is brief, polite, and diplomatically obtuse: "My interpretation of Nirvana is that of some of the most friendly students of Buddhism who have gained their views from reading the Buddhist SCriptures. But if modern Japanese B~ddhism teaehes conscious personal life after death and believes in a personal Heavenly Fathel; full of love, its divergence from Christianity is not so marked as we had supposed." Of course it didn't, and the Carus-Soyen letter had made no such claim. Barrows suggested that the scholar F. F. Ellinwood might make a more detailed reply than he had had time to do. Carus went to considerable trouble to get the reply, delaying publica-
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tion of the exchange and offering Ellinwood twenty dollars for a 2,500-word statement (P. Carus to F. F. Ellinwood, 3 Aug., 28 Sept., 13 Oct. 1896). Ellinwood's much longer statement ("There are as many different conceptions of Nirvana as there are Buddhisms") was published along with the Carus-Soyen and Barrows letters in The Open Court as "A Controversy on Buddhism" in January 1897 (Soyen, Barrows, and Ellinwood 1897), a year after Barrows's lecture was delivered-and with no hint to the readers of how feverishly Carus had had to work behind the scenes to set it all up. One of the greatest fruits of the Parliament of Religions came about as a result of Carus's penchant for sending copies of his books, gratis, to interested correspondents. So it was natural for him, in the spring ofl895 , to reply to Soyen's student and translator Teitaro Suzuki with a friendly letter and some of his own books -1'he Religion of Science (1893f), Primer of Philosophy (1893d), and "a few lectures of mine [probably those he delivered at the World's Congresses in 1893] which may interest you as a philosopher" (P. Carus to Suzuki, 11 Apr. 1895). The unexpected response arrived early the following year-15 January 1896-from Soyen himself. After mentioning the art competition, Soyen wrote, Now I have something to ask your kind consent relating to the person of Suzuki Teitaro whom you know as the translator of your 'The Gospel of Buddha.' ... He tells me that he has been so greatly inspired by your sound faith which is perceptible in your various works, that he earnestly desires to go abroad and to study under your personal gUidance. If you will be kind enough to sympathise with his ambitious intention and to consent to take him under your patronage, he will willingly obey to do everything you may order him, as far as he can. I deal with him here as my ordained diSciple .... [If you agree,] your and other eminent American thinkers' opinions will be introduced to Japan through him more favourably than evCl; and I believe your country may have also a good opportunity to know what the Japanese Buddhists would say. He
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understands English pretty well, and when he will study a little while to write and speak it, I think he will become able to do some works. (Soyen to P Carus, 17 Dec. 1895)
Carus spoke to Hegeler and replied to Soyen at once (17 Jan. 1896). "Mr. Hegeler sends his kindest regards to you and says that Ml~ Suzuki will be welcome. I hope that his visit will be profitable to him, and that thereby his services to religion and to the further development of Japan will become more effectuaL I myself anticipate much pleasure from meeting him, and shall be glad to assist him in his studies wherever I can be of use to him," Suzuki's own memory of the situation, some sixty years latel~ is different: "When The Gospel of Buddha was finished, Dr. Carus continued to be interested in things Oriental, and he began to translate the Tao Te Ching of Lao-tzu. For this task he needed someone who could read Chinese with him, and he wrote to Shaku Soyen, asking him to recommend someone. That is how I came to LaSalle in 1897" (Suzuki 1959a, xi). The accounts in Jackson (1968, 90), Layman (1976, 28), and Fields (1981, 128) follow this recollection. 5 And translating Tao Te Ching is in fact one of the first jobs Suzuki undertook when he arrived in La Salle. But the letter Suzuki mentions does not seem to exist, and-more to the point-none of the surviving correspondence makes sense if Carus had already writtmi to Soyen asking for a translator. Why then Soyen's tentative approach, and why Carus's hasty consultation with Hegelel~ neither one of them mentioning the project supposedly in view? And why would Carus write to Dharmapala on 25 January 1896 that "T. Suzuki ... has decided to pay me a visit at LaSalle and stay with me in order to study a philosophy that would be helpful to him in the comprehension of Buddhism"? On the eve of Suzuki's departure from Japan his means of earning a living remained so uncertain that Soyen wrote Carus on 2 February 1897, "I hope he will be able to assist you some way or other; and allow me to ask you humbly that he will get
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some business under your patronage in order that he may earn his own subsistence, for he is a poor student." Carus later wrote to Soyen (18 June 1897) that Suzuki "just came at a good time for I needed the assistance of someone who understood Chinese." Had Suzuki been brought to the United States for that purpose, the remark would have been odd indeed. The important point is that Suzuki was first drawn to the United Stateswhere his impact was later enormous- not by a translating job, but by Paul Carus's philosophy. Suzuki's departure from Japan, originally set for the spring of 1896, was repeatedly delayed. (Among other things, he was writing "a booklet on religion 'as I understand it," he wrote Carus on 14 May 1896. "What I am going to say is your philosophy plus Buddhism plus my own opinion.") He eventually left Yokohama on 6 February 1897 aboard the steamer China. His plans to meet Dharmapala in San Francisco and to be in La Salle before month's end were thwarted when the China was placed in smallpox quarantine on its arrival in port. Carus wrote to customs officials on Suzuki's behalf but was not greatly reassured by the news that the quarantine had been sparked by only a single case. He advised Suzuki to spend an extra week beyond the quarantine pel'iod in San Francisco, observing city life, visiting Christian church services, and studying. Carus apparently sent him books and expense money for this interlude. "It is not alone to make sure that there is no infection possible through you," he explained, "but also to give to the people, both in LaSalle and in Chicago, the assurance that their health is not endangered. Otherwise you cannot expect that they will be pleased with you" (P. Carus to Suzuki, 23 Feb., 26 Feb. 1897; to C. C. Bonney, 23 Feb. 1897; to Dhal'mapala, 26 Feb. 1897). After he arrived in La Salle, Suzuki became an editorial assistant and jack-of-all-trades. For room and board and three dollars a week he cooked, split firewood, ran errands to the store, typed, took photographs, read proof, pasted up Chinese characters for photographic reproduction, wrote, edited, and
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translated from the Chinese {Fields 1981,139).6 This last task was undoubtedly the most difficult. Carus wanted to render Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching into English and asked Suzuki to provide a character-by-character transliteration. But there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between the relatively concrete Chinese and the relatively abstract Indo-European expressions. "In order to translate passages from Lao-tzu," Suzuki recalled sixty years later, "1 had to explain to Dr. Carus the feeling behind each Chinese term. But being himself a German writing in English, he translated these Chinese ideas into abstract conceptual terms. If only 1 had been more literarily equipped then" -Suzuki was twenty-seven that year- "1 might have been better able to help him understand the original meaning! We struggled very hard ... [and Carus] vmy often succeeded in entering into the spirit of Lao-tzu's philosophy" (Suzuki 1959a, xi-xiii). Suzuld's nose was by no means always to the grindstone. He read in Carus's library, rode the family motorboat to Starved Rock, studied Sanskrit grammar, and bicycled out into the countryside in good weather (Fields 1981, 139; Suzuki 1959a, xii). "We are all very much pleased with Mr. Suzuki and with the gentleness of his character," Carus wrote Soyen on 18 June 1897. That fall Suzuki spent at least a month in Chicago, visiting Christian churches of all denominations, doing research at the Newberry Library, and sampling lectures and courses at the University of Chicago. (Perusing the fall catalog, he wrote Carus on 14 September, "1 did not find anything more interesting and instructive than those which 1 had already in the Tokyo University, or may learn from books.") He had begun working on his translation of the book Open Court published in 1900 as Acvaghosha's Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, but he was finding it more difficult than he had expected. The sojourn was not without its awkwardnesses. That fall Suzuki was embarrassed by the unannounced arrival of a Mr. Enjino Taminaga. (The two had been briefly acquainted in
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Japan.) Although Taminaga understood little or no English, Rev. Ashizu Jitsujen had written him a letter of introduction and apparently presumed that Carus and Hegeler could find him work. "When I saw him first I reproved him about his hasty and imprudent action," Suzuki wrote Carus from Chicago on 11 September 1897. "I greatly regret that both of them were so arrogant, but I can not help it at present." It probably did not help that Taminaga told Suzuki that his object in coming to the United States was not scholarly but "to learn some industrial work which may profit his own business." A month later Taminaga had gone through all his money and found some work at the Japan Tea Association. "As you know I could not do much for him, unless I starve myself," Suzuki wrote Carus (9 Oct.). "I am sure I have made him convinced that he must try to get some work himself, if he wishes to stay in this country, and not rely on you by any means." Suzuki's own dependence on the family became even greater late in 1898, when he fell victim to typhoid fever. "We have good reason to think that he will, after a few weeks, be beyond dangCl~" Carus wrote Soyen, rather alarmingly, on 2 January 1899. In a much-changed script Suzuki wrote to Cams from St. Mary's Hospital on 27 January, thanking him for his "kind and frequent visits," and saying that although he was not yet strong enough to leave his room, "I think I am all right now." He also asked for a raise of one dollar a week. "It is indeed beggar-like on my part to do such a request to you, while you have been already so kind and liberal-handed. You permit me to have access to your books; you assist me in my translation work, sparing,your precious time; you consent to the publication of my work; you try every means to get me a situation. For all that, if I make this request to add a little to my material comfort, I fear you might think me an ungrateful fellow who does not know his own situation." The raise was granted (Suzuki to P. Cams, 11 Feb. 1899), and his recovery was soon complete. In January 1900 The Open Court published Suzuki's article "The Breadth of Buddhism," in which he speculated that
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Christianity might he "a Buddhism so metamorphosed as to suit itself' to a new climate. But regardless of the historical question, he argued, Carus-like, that "Christianity and Buddhism, each in its own way, sprang out of the unfathomable depth of the human heart which is everywhere the same. Take away their prejudices, intellectual as well as historical, and we have the essence of religion in all its purity and magnificence" (Suzuki 1900). It should he added that Carus's published and unpublished writing shows little awareness of the;profoundly nonrational element in Zen Buddhism. Soyen and Suzuki may never have raised the subject with him. Certainly Suzuki's meditation on various koans during his American sojourn appears to have been uneonnected with most of his daily and scholarly activities (Fields 1981, 137-38, 140).7 Many years later Suzuki said, "Zen is the reversal of the ordinary way of thinking .... We say, ordinarily, A is A but never not-A or B. Zen, howevel~ would deny this, saying that A is not -A and, furthermore, that because of A being not-A, A is K (Suzuki 1959b, 279). Needless to say, this is not the Buddhism Carus embraced, and he would have regarded such statements as extraneous at best, a dispensable, primitive element rather like Christian belief in miracles or intercessory prayel: It does not seem to have been anyone's plan that Suzuki would spend a full eleven years in the United States or that La Salle would remain his home base and place of employment all that time. At some point (possibly between 1900 and 1905) Suzuki had some prospects of a job teaching Chinese classics at the University of Chicago. s In May and June of 1903 he visited Boston, New Haven, and New York. "I must most Sincerely thank you for your liberality," he wrote Carus on 8 June 1903, "as this trip has not a little enlarged my knowledge of the world." Late that summer Carus loaned him fifty dollars to go west to lecture at a San Francisco Buddhist mission, where he wound up spending two months. Suzuki's help must have been badly needed, although his earnings from lecturing there were less than expected: the Buddhist priests, he wrote, were recent
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arrivals from Japan, with little English, little understanding of their surroundings, and less money (Suzuki to P. Cams, 8 June, 4 Aug., 30 Aug., 27 Sept. 1903). The niission, Suzuki wrote on 27 SeptembCl; used Cams's Sacred Tunes (1899d) but found most of these hymns «too philosophical." But they loved his Gospel. "The 'Gospel of Buddha' takes here the place of Bible and is road at every serviee .... Especially among the Japanese Buddhists your name is VCly well known and I have had a cordial reception from them, as a shrub growing under a towering tree." Shaku Soyen returned to the United States in 1905-6, staying eight months with Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Russell outside San Francisco, where Suzuki met him. "The house is kept up almost in the fashion of a Buddhist monastClY," Suzuki wrote to Carus on 15 July 1905. "The diet is entirely vegetarian.... we hear nothing but the roaring of waves, ... which fact makes life here more secluded than in LaSalle." Soyen's secretmy had remained in Japan, their hostess fell ill, and Soyen was reluctant to travel during the winter, so Suzuki remained with him at the Russells (asking Cams for a $100 loan, qUickly granted [Suzuki to P. Cams, 7 Nov., 23 Nov. 1905]) until the following March. Then Soyen and Suzuki proceeded east to La Salle and a reunion with Carus and Hegeler. ("When two harp players meet," Soyen wrote Carus, "There are no strings needed / In their instruments" [Fields 1981, 173].) From there they continued by train to Niagara Falls (where Soyen caught cold), Washington, D.C. (where he had half an hour with President Roosevelt), and New York City, from which Soyen left for Europe, Ceylon, and horne (Suzuki to P. Carus, 7 Apr. 1906). Open Court published Soyen's lectures from the trip, translated and arranged by Suzuki, as Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot (Soyen 1906). In the fall of 1907, while Suzuki was on the East Coast again, the question bf his own return horne became imminent. He had heard from Japan, he wrote Cams on 11 September, and it appeared that he would be able to find some kind of position there provided he present himself to the authorities "and get
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acquainted with them .... For all this ... I have to thank you, for my relation to you has, greatly though of course indirectly, helped me. But the question is, how can I get back to Japan?" Carus replied on 13 September, saying that they could take that up when Suzuki returned to La Salle: 'At present get as much benefit out of your trip as you can. It will be helpful to you in all your later life." By February 1908 Suzuki was on his way. Open Court was just bringing out his first published book, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism. He spent time in both London and Paris, and for at least part of the trip he was still considered an Open Court employee (Suzuki to P. Carus, 11 Feb. 1908). Later that year (24 June) Suzuki wrote from Japan, seeking Carus's advice on how to make a religious congress part of Japan's <'national exhibition" scheduled for 1912 or 1913. He hoped that Carus might attend. "I gather from many sources that you (and to a certain extent myself through you) are very highly thought of by the Japanese Buddhists. When you come to Japan, they will probably greet you as one of themselves." But Carus never made the trip, and the two never met again. In later life Suzuki was a prolific author and acclaimed teachet; especially at Columbia University, where his seminars and his presence fueled a Zen "boom" in the late 1950s (Fields 1981,195-97,204-7). Carl Jackson writes, "If Suzuki's work has been one of the most important bridges to the West's modern understanding of Buddhism, Carus must be accounted one of the chief engineers" (1968,90). Young Suzuki would have had neither a host, nor an employer, nor a motive to come to the United States without Open Court Publishing Company. It seems fair to say that Suzuki's subsequent career would have been velY different, and might well not have occurred at all, without the philosophy and hospitality of Paul Caruso Carns's interest in Buddhism went far beyond the mostly scholarly work in which he and Suzuki engaged. He also offered time, magazine space, money, and connections to the emblyonic efforts of Buddhists to evangelize the West.
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This assistance does not necessarily imply that Carus himself was a Buddhist or even that he believed Buddhism to be marginally superior to Christianity. He believed that all serious religions should send out their own missionaries- "That religion is dead which does not missionarize" (P. Carus 1897a, 237)-and welcome those coming to them from other faiths, but only in his high-minded spirit of exchanging thoughts and joining in the search for truth. The ensuing competition, he believed, would tend to eliminate superstitions and unimportant differences; those beliefs that survived the free mutual influx of missionaries were bound to be purer and sounder than before. (Mutual might be too strong a word. On 21 November 1895 Carus wrote to Dharmapala, "The competition among all religions will have to be fought out on the ground of Western civilisation. That religion will be the last survivor of all which is able to take hold of the European races and among them the Teutonic races.") Still, there can be no question that Buddhism held a special place in Carus's heart. Although he remained interested in other faiths, neither Islam nor Hinduism ever captured much of his attention for any length of time. Carus did encourage reluctant Christians to invite Vivekananda to speak, but ultimately he found no attraction in the charismatic Hindu's philosophy. "I agree with you that his Vedantism is injuriOUS," Carus told Dharmapala on 23 August 1902, "that it led him to Hedonism and to a philosophy which lacked in seriousness."9 One suspects that most other religions, like Christianity, required belief in too many "impossibilities"; only Buddhism seemed t9 him to have taken the more scientific road. And of the Buddhists Carus kept up with, none maintained the connection longer than the Anagarika Dharmapala. Their correspondence persisted for, more than twenty years following the parliament, well after Carus's communications with Soyen, for instance, had dwindled to brief formal greetings. Dharmapala, born David Hewavitarne in Ceylon, became a leader in the movement tbat combined Sinhalese nationalism and reform Buddhism (Gokhale 1973). Appalled at the neglect
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and desecration of the shrine (Bodh-gaya) where Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment, Dharmapala made its restoration to Buddhist control a lifework, founding the Maha Bodhi Society for that purpose. The journal of the same name first appeared in May 1892, and on the strength of it Barrows invited Dharmapala to the 1893 Parliament of Religions. At the parliament Dharmapala was as outspoken and passionate as Soyen was cool and retiring. Of slight physique, with curly black hair, long fingers, piercing eyes, and a musical accent, he was second only to Vivekananda in the impression made on his hearers. The fact that he was often angry helped spark interest. "How dare you judge usP" he castigated one audience on learning that only a handful of the Christians there had ever read the life of Buddha (Fields 1981, 114-18, 122, 126, 128). After Dharmapala's return to the Orient he and Carus corresponded frequently. Dharmapala reprinted portions of The Gospel of Buddha in his journal and (2 July 1895) urged Carus to start a Maha Bodhi chapter in Chicago. Carus did so, designating Open Court's Chicago-based business manager, Matthew Sackstedel~ as its treasurer. Dharmapala's easily kindled indignation lashed out at both his fellow religionists and Americans. "I am trying my best to infuse life to the sleeping Buddhists," he wrote Carus on 30 September 1895, "but so far without success. They are dead." On 10 December of that year he added, "I wish to revisit America," although he remained unsure of the hearing he would receive even from intelligent people, who were "absorbed into the extreme phase of sensualism. They don't want to bother their heads about the purification of Mind; to live a joyous life and die is their religion." Carus, for his part, encouraged Dharmapala to return, advising him that a lecture tour need not lose money if properly managed, and that in any case "I could promise some help to you consisting of a pecuniary contribution towards paying your expenses, and I do not doubt that many other friends of yours will do the same" (13 Jan. 1896). Dharmapala gratefully ac-
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knowledged a £ 75 contribution from Hegeler that June and announced his plan to arrive in Chicago in September. "The terrible cold weather will I hope not interfere with my work," he wrote Carus on 8 June 1896. "You may not know perhaps that I am not strong in physique. I offer my life to Truth." In Chicago, in the midst of the busy 1896 presidential campaign in which he and Hegeler took much interest, Carus acted as Dharmapala's host-taking him to see C. C. Bonney, William Rainey Harper, Bishop Fallows, and reporters from the Tribune, Evening Post, and Chronicle (P. Carus to Subhuti, 26 Sept. 1896). He handled much of Dharmapala's correspondence,l° One of Dharmapala's checks got mixed up in a bank failure, and Sacksteder had to spend some time getting that straightened out (Dharmapala to Eckles, 23 Jan. 1897). Dharmapala also spoke at the University of Chicago's Haskell Museurn and at the Congregational Church in La Salle. "As soon as he has stood the first trials of his mission," Carus advised a compatriot back in Ceylon (26 Sept. 1896), "he can continue in his own way, and I hope that he will find sympathizers wherever he goes. His modest unassuming manner assures him the goodwill of all whom he meets." Not that Carus was trying to unload him-he wrote Dharmapala on 14 October, ''As soon as you wish to retire from the world you must know that you are always welcome in LaSalle where you may stay and study or rest, just as you see fit." Dharmapala's "modest unassuming nature" sometimes was transformed into denunciatory rhetoric on the platform. "The Pharisees and the priests were the vampires that sucked the blood of pure Humanity," he told an audience at Chicago's Kimball Hall,ll After one particularly notorious episode, on 28 November 1896 Carus cautioned him to "make it a rule never to speak without preparation." Winter or no, Dharmapala embarked on a long trip early in 1897, hitting Geneseo, Moline, Davenport, Iowa City, Des Moines (where a Unitarian minister enabled him to appeal to the state's governor and legislature for corn to relieve a famine in India), New Ulm, Minneapolis, Toledo, Dayton, Columbus,
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San Francisco, San Jose, and Stanford University. Nor had he had his fill of traveling for truth. He expressed a wish to go from the United States to Tibet and China, lecturing from The Gospel of Buddha. "I should wish to take with me a Kodak Camera, a Musical Box; a Phonograph and a Magic Lantern" (Dharmapala to P. Carus, 5, 18, 27 Feb. 1897). This request fit right in with Carus's lifelong fascination with new gadgets, and he responded (18 June 1897) in some detail, weighing the merits of each purchase and suggesting that the MaIm Bodhi Society might buy them for his trip. In New York City that June, Dhannapala founded the American Ethico-Psychoiogical Society, printed a four-page manifesto, and asked Carus how soon it could be sent to everyone on the Open Court mailing list. (It's not clear that thc manifestoes ever were sent [Dharmapala to P. Carus, 17 June, 30 June, 15 July 1897].) One of his less restrained speeches also found its way into the pages of the New York Herald. In it, "D'Hannapala" was quoted as blaming "the increases of poverty, crime, immorality, drunkenness and sensualism" on the failures of Christianity. Because a supposedly omnipotent deity had failed to remedy these problems, he said, thinking persons in all classes of society have been led to nore such an impotent being as Ruler of the World. Sunday schools where the little children are taught stupid mythological stories of Assyrian and Babylonian lore as truths are hothouses of hypocrisy, and churches where the people congregate once a week are institutions only intended for the feeble minded. The Sunday school and the church must be transformed to a laboratory and science halll 12
Carns was, predictably, appalled. He wrote promptly (22 June 1897), congratulating Dharmapala on attracting a sufficient group to start an association and also hoping that his remarks as reported would soon be forgotten. ("I know that Mr. Bonney will be very much grieved when he sees this state-
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ment.") The charges against Christianity, Carus wrote, were not true, "and even if they were true they ought to be expressed in a different way. Buddha certainly would not have used this language .... Whatever errors there may be in dogmatic Christianity, there are a great number of honest theologians and priests who seek the truth. Indeed you cannot complain about the unhospitable treatment you have received in Christian churches." Dharmapala's reply (24 June) was also typically contrite: "Please accept my heartfelt thanks for the kind criticisms.... I do not know my own failings and I therefore expect my friends to criticise me. I aim at pelfection and it requires several incarnations to become perfect." There was some truth in this: Dharmapala apparently changed little. As late as 3 April 1911 Carus still described him in correspondence as "antagonistic to western civilization. He ... is too narrow to accept from Christianity what is good." Nevertheless, Carus gladly expedited Dharmapala's later missionary visits in 1902-5 and 1913-14. And in 1913, when Carus proposed a modified religious parliament to the education department of the Panama Exposition, he wrote (30 June 1913) that he was hoping to be able to give Dharmapala "a prominent part." Carus's circle of Buddhist contacts ranged well beyond Soyen, Suzuki, and Dharmapala. Just as his letter box often seemed full of correspondence from small-town thinkers who felt keenly their isolation, he also received such mail from the Orient. Rev. S. Akashi, "a young minister of the Japanese Universalists," wrote on 14 July 1902 asking for references on Egyptian and Semitic mythology. Samana Purinananda, whose group was trying to promote Buddhism in India by erecting a monastery and guest house in Calcutta and Lucknow, wrote on 24 April 1909 asking for magazines. Some correspondents became importunate. Kakichi Ohara published the Journal of the SOCiety for the Propagation of the Doctrine of Enlightenment, which reprinted some of Carus's
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articles and portions of The Gospel of Buddha. He and Carns corresponded frequently and exchanged books and magazines during the late 1890s. He also brought out a Chinese translation of the Gospel, which Carus subsidized to some degree. They continued to discuss Buddhism and Buddhist evangelism-but when Ohara tried to sell him fifteen Chinese books for $50 and an elegant wall hanging containing "the poet Che's songs" for $25, Carns prudently demurred (K. Ohara to P Carus, 26 Feb., 19 May 1895, 19 Oct. 1895, 13 Jan. 1896, 15 Jan. 1898; P Carns to K. Ohara, 7 Feb. 1898). From the very beginning this opening to the East profoundly affected the contents of both magazines. Sometimes the result was like oil and wate1~ as in the The Open Court of 3 September 1896, where readers could move directly from the Romantic rhapsodies of Richard Wagner's "Pilgrimage to Beethoven" to "Four Brahman Pandits Anxious to Avoid Death," translated from the Chinese by D. Hayashi. At other times the oil practically overwhelmed the water, as in the magazine's October 1905 issue, described by Jackson: "Included was an article on 'Modern India' by A. Christina Albers, an American convert to Buddhism; a translation of a Chinese moral tale by D. T. Suzuki; an article-length review of textbooks used in Japan; and an article by Carus answering criticisms of his interest in Oriental religions. Other comments and book reviews dealing with the Orient were also included, as well as a reproduction of a modcrn Japanese painting of one of the Buddhist deities" (Jackson 1968, 78-79). Carns maintained special interest in conversions in both directions. Kinza Hirai, a Japanese Buddhist who had criticized Christianity at the parliament, became a Unitarian, a metamorphosis duly noted in The Open Court (P Carns 1900a). (Hirai also suggested that the magazine be translated into Japanese, since the religiOUS parliament idea had made "very little progress" in Japan: "the benefit done for our country would be incomparable.") Carus also spotlighted "Sister Sanghamitta," formerly Countess Canavarro; the wife of a Portuguese diplomat in Honolulu, Sanghamitta had converted to
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Buddhism and for a time worked with Dharmapala in Ceylon. "When I became a Buddhist," she told Carus in what might have been his own words, "I did not renounce Christianity. I am a Christian and will remain a Christian; but my Christianity widened, and my faith has expanded" (P. Carus 1901c). Such equanimity was not to be expected of most converts, or nonconverts for that mattel: Carus corresponded with Ananda-Maitreya (ne Allan McGregor), who converted on 8 December 1901 (P. Carus 1902a) and who objected to music in Buddhist services and to the spirit of Western commercialism in general. Carus was able to find some Buddhist texts endorsing music (Fields 1981, 142), and he admonished the young firebrand (28 July 1902) that commercial aptitude was essential for successful evangelism and that "even the very greatest commercial geniuses are deep and thoughtful men." At the same time that he sought to moderate the enthusiasm of the few, he had to contend with the ignorance of the many. As late as 1906 he found it necessary to publish an explanatory note, "Hinduism Different from Buddhism," to correct misstatements in the magazine Public Opinion (P. Carus 1906b). With so much to do and say, Carus was well aware that his interest might get out of hand and urged contributors to keep their articles brief: "I am very much inclined to accept all the good articles I can have on Buddhism," he wrote to one (C. pfounds, 22 Jan. 1896), "but I fear that I have already been publishing too much on Buddhism so as to render The Open Court a one-sided exponent of this religion, crowding out other investigations that ought not to be neglected." Perhaps the best indication ofCarus's changed postparliament view of Buddhism appears in Buddhism and Its Christian Critics, published in 1897. Before the parliament Carus had taken for granted that he was addreSSing Western Christians; in this book he at once acknowledged that "the present book ... is one-sided because it is addressed mainly to Christians .... When I think that this book may be read by such Buddhists of Japan, Ceylon, or Siam as are only superficially
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acquainted with Christianity, I feel like adding to its contents another chapter that might easily be extended into a book," correcting their misconceptions and urging them to send missionaries to Europe and North America. Before, he had discounted the value of present-day Buddhism; now "we do not look upon later Buddhism with the same contempt as is customary among many Buddhist scholars" (P. Carus 18f)7a, 6,230). Carus sometimes came perilously close to the line between enthusiasm and partisanship: "The dogma of the vicarious atonement through Christ's death is a survival of the age of barbarism; for it is based upon the savage's idea of religion which represents God as an Apache chieftain who, when offended, thirsts for the death of somebody and must be pacified with blood." The absence of such doctrines in Buddhism, he eoncluded, "indicates that it is the more advanced religion. That religion only which has overcome the pagan notions of a special revelation, of atonement through blood, of wiping out the past, of the miraculous power of prayer, of the ego-consciousness as a kind of thing-in-itself, and of a creation out of nothing by a God-magician, can eventually become the religion of mankind" (1897a, 301,306-7). Does this mean that Carus was himself a Buddhist? The short answer is, not quite. He resisted many attempts to pin him down and objected in later life to a published description of Open Court's work as "neo-Buddhistic." "For all his Oriental enthusiasms," writes Jackson (1968, 92), "he always insisted on the Western scientific perspective," and he held back from making a total commitment to anything but that ideal of truth. "In my opinion," wrote Carus to Dharmapala on 26 February 1896, "Buddha's intention was nothing else than to establish what we call a Religion of Science. 'Enlightenment' and 'science' are interchangeable words" - but if they are not, as many Buddhists would insist, Carus would surely have chosen the latter. It's not that he wasn't asked. "If you have accepted the doctrines of Buddha," wrote Dharmapala on 22 January 1896,
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"why not take a prominent part in the propaganda? As a scientific writer you are well-known and your adherence to the Cause openly will make Buddhism to be accepted by a large number in America. The people want a leadCl; a living example, and they will follow him." "I make my statements publicly," Carus replied in a threepage, single-spaced letter 26 February 1896, one of the longest and most introspective he ever wrote. "It is not for me to say that I am a Buddhist, but for you and for other Buddhists." Nevertheless, he had said it in the same letter. "I have said repeatedly that I am a Buddhist, but you must not forget that I am at the same time a Christian in so far as I accept certain teachings of Christ. I am even a Taoist, in so far as I accept certain doctrines of Lautsze. I am an Israelite, in so far as I sympathize with the aspirations of the Israelitic prophets. In one word, I am, as it were, a religious parliament incarnate. » He went on to argue that to declare himself exclusively a Buddhist would violate Buddha's own teaching never to say your own religion is the best. Carus also had a more sophisticated idea of the politics of evangelism than did his correspondents. "As soon as I declare myself [exclusively] a Buddhist," he wrote to Maitreya on 28 July 1902, "everything I wrote would be considered as a partisan statement. ... my appreciation of Buddhism would no longer be esteemed as important as it is now.... so I deem it neither in the interest of Buddhism nor in the interest of my own work to identify myself with one special movement. In my present position, I can be more helpful to you." Similarly, when Rev. B. A. Hills of Unity Church in Luverne, Minnesota, wrote Carus asking how to become a Buddhist clergyman, Carus dissuaded him (13 Aug. 1907): "You could easily build up a liberal congregation in which you might preach your Buddhist ideas ... as much as you see fit, but ... as soon as you call yourself a Buddhist, you will be abandoned by many who otherwise might be supporting members of your congregation." This studied ambiguity and calculation may give the impression that Buddhism was for Carus merely a system of
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doctrines to be manipulated and coerced into his preconceived framework. No doubt this was sometimes the case-one person's" purification" is another's bowdlerization, or worse - but Buddhism was the established religion that touched Carus most deeply in his maturity. "I have read almost all that is at present accessible to a Western reader upon Buddhism," he wrote in his long letter to Dharmapala, "and I have a definite and clear opinion of Buddha's teachings and of the spirit in which Buddha taught. Buddha as a teacher has become likc a living personality that lives in me as a part of myself. I can definitely consult him upon all the various qllestions."13
CD Mach
Paul Carus and Edward C. Hegeler agreed on more than the abstract doctrines of monism. In his first letter to Hegeler in January 1887 Carus proposed that he conduct a section of The Open Court to be called "Transatlantic Review," containing summaries of recent European publications, inventions, and discoveries, as well as "a translation of one or two articles of especial value." Thus, The Open Court could "form an important link between the Old and the New worlds." And Hegeler replied that "what you wish to carry into effeet, the transplanting of European (especially German) thought to America, is what I particularly desire" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 639-40). FollOwing up these ambitions, in later years Open Court published many books by European scholars, including the Orientalists Richard von Garbe (The Philosophy of Ancient India, Contributions of Buddhism to Christianity), Friedrich Delitzsch (Babel and Bible), Hugo Radau, and Hermann Oldenberg; the psychologists Alfred Binet (On Double Consciousness, The Psychology of Reasoning Based on Experimental Reseamhes in Hypnotism) and Theodule Ribot (The Diseases of Personality, The Evolution of General Ideas); the zoologist August Weisman (On Germinal Selection as a Source of Definite Variation); the mathematician Georg Cantor (Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, with an eighty-two-page introduction by Philip E. B. Jourdain); and the Sorbonne philosopher Lucien Levy-BmhI's History of Modern Philosophy (McCoy 1987). Open Court's first published volume-F. Max MUller's Three Introductory 118
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Lectttms on the Science of Thought (originally published in The Open COU1~t in the summer of 1887) - falls into this category. Herbert Schneider (1963, 290) concludes that "the chief serviee to Ameriean cosmology performed by men like Fiske, Youmans, Draper, Stallo, and Carus was to make known in this country the more important European philosophies of science." But perhaps the most eminent, and eertainly the most multifaceted, of these European thinkers was the physicist-philosopher Ernst Mach. He is also the one to whom Cams was closest, both personally and philosophically. Open Court translated and published his Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Exposition of Its Principles (1893), Popular Scientific Lectures (1895), Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations (1897), Space and Geometry in the Light of Physiological, Psychological and Physical Inquiry (1906), and History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Enel'gy (1911). Most of these went through more than one edition (McCoy 1987, 227-35). Many of Mach's "popular lectures" first appeared in The Open Court,l and his work appeared in The Monist from its first numbel:2 In philosophy proper, Mach is now best remembered as the godfather of the Vienna Circle oflogical positivists, through his insistence that all scientific propositions must in the end be reducible to simple statements about sensations (hence also his monism and the unity of science), But Mach also contributed to numerous subdisciplines of physics - including acoustics, electricity, hydrodynamics, mechanics, optics, and thermodynamics-and of psychology-perception and aesthetics. He also wrote on the photography of projectiles in flight, the chemistry of the ripening of grapes, and the place of classics in secondary education. In popular knowledge his name survives in the phrase "Mach number" (the ratio between a body's speed and the speed of sound); he also gave his name to "Mach's bands" (bright or dark bands seen by the eye w!lere two areas of differing brightness meet) and to "Mach's principle," the statement that the inertia of a body is not absolute but a relationship between that object and the rest of the matter in the universe (Alexander 1967).
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Mach seems to have been less dependent on Open Court as a help or as a philosophical platform than were, say, D. T. Suzuki or C. S. Peirce. John .Blackmore (1972, 124) notes that Mach's "philosophical ideas penetrated the English-speaking world very quickly and well before his books were translated into English. A few English and American thinkers who could read German and a surprising number of German immigrants to America helped give Mach a second philosophical home." Still, Open Court's translations were of great importance to him. His Popular Scientific Lectures, in fact, were first published in collected form in English by Open Court, and only after the book had had some success was it published in its original language (McCormack 1898, vii). After 1896, Mach quit granting his German publishers translation rights because, he wrote to Carus on 29 August 1910, "it has been my experience that these are used only for the prevention of translations, which are much more important to me than the German editions." K. S. Shin (1973, 244-45) argues that Carus played a larger role in introducing Mach's own thought than did William James or John Stallo, even though the latter two were more directly influenced by Mach. One of the immigrants alluded to by Blackmore was Edward C. Hegeler, who read Mach's Mechanics with enthusiastic appreciation when it first appeared in 1883. "Our English translation," Carns much later (26 Apr. 1911) acknowledged to Mach, "is due above all to the interest ... my father-in-law took in it, and I only carried out his wish to make the book accessible to the English speaking world." Carus agreed that the book had "enormous value," and for the most part he agreed with Mach's monism. But one always argues best with one's friends, and from 1890 on, he and Mach carried on a continuing dialogue on a number of questions. ''As soon as I became acquainted with Mach's works," wrote Carns (1906d, 331), "I at once recognized in him a kindred spirit, and my admiration has only increased by personal acquaintance. I am proud to count him among my dearest personal friends."
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The feelings were reciprocal. After Carus published a twentythree-page account, "Professor Mach and His Work," in The Monist (l9Ilc), Mach wrote (13 Apr. 1911) to thank Carus for this early "obituary." Philosophically, the two had less in common than their shared allegiance to something called "monism" might suggest. In particular, Carus - always a realist - was baffled by Mach's thoroughgoing phenomenalism and nominalism, and over the years he repeatedly attempted to explain away their differences. "When several months ago I met Professor Mach at Prague," he wrote in 1893, "Professor Mach assented to my speaking of scientific terms as abstracts. That, accordingly, must be considered as the point of agreement. But when I proposed that the term sensation also was according to my terminology an abstract term representing one feature of reality only and excluding other features, Professor Mach took exception to it, saying that he understands by sensation reality itself Very well then, this is the difference; and this difference is after all a difference of terms only" (1893e). Not really. Thirteen years later the disagreement was still perplexing Mach's faithful editOl: "Professor Mach regards the whole of rcality as sense-perception, and deems the distinction made between objects and sense-impressions inadmissible," Carus wrote in 1906 (1906d, 340). "To him sense-impressions contain the whole of reality," but not to Caruso "I would think that Professor Mach in speaking of the sense-perception of a stm~ includes with it the star itself and the whole immeasurable depth of celestial space which according to our scientific knowledge the light of the star has to travel. Professor Mach has informed me that such is not his view." Indeed not: for Mach, the star and the depths of spaee are both useful theories by means of which to connect our various sense impressions, and nothing more. As Mach had said in 1882, "It would not become physical science to see in its self-created, changeable, economical tools, molecules and atoms, realities behind phenomena, forgetful of the lately acq uired sapience of her older sistCl~ philosophy, in substituting a mechanical mythology for
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the old animistic or metaphysical scheme, and thus creating no end of suppositious problems. The atom must remain a tool for representing phenomena, like the functions of mathematics" (Mach 1895, 207)-a tool, not a picture. Mach and Carus also differed on the nature of the tools themselves-theories and generalizations. "I-Ie denies the reality of universals," wrote Carus, «and sufTers theory merely as a makeshift, as a scaffolding, temporarily erected for tentative simplification of a description of facts .... In criticism of these views I claim that while norninalism was right in objecting to the doctrine of realism which hypostatized universals, realism was right in insisting on their reality. In other words, while our formulation of universals is subjective, there is an objective feature in the world which corresponds to them and so justifies their construction. This objective feature is form" (1906d, 348). Carns argued that Mach "halts at the place where a philosopher ought to begin work" (1911c, 32). It was not enough, he felt, simply to elucidate how theories provide an admirable economy of thought. "While Professor Mach appears to rest satisfied with using it as a principle that has so far worked well in experience, I try to explain why economy of thought is possible at all, and my explanation is based on the idea that theory is not a purely subjective device to deal with experience, but that there is a feature in experience itself [that is, form] which justifies the formulation of theories." And Carus applied even to Mach the same breathtaking condescension he visited on the conventionally orthodox in religion: "With all due reverence to Professor Mach's prominence and fame, I must continue to hold my own [views], not because they are my own, but because they include all the truth propounded by Mach. I know why Mach halts, for I go beyond him and explain his views" (1906d, 337, 354). Although Carus does not seem to have exerted any noticeable influence on Mach's phenomenalism, he did affect the physiciSt's view of religion. In a letter of21 October 1892 Mach
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thanked Carus for sending him a copy of II omilies of Science. "I now see your peculiar development, and also the importance of the task which you have proposed for yourself and your literary organs," Mach himself had grown up in a freethinking home, and "for a long time I thought there was no conciliation possible between the religious and scientific world-conception, , . , I thought, should we be able to educate one Single generation in a scientific conception everything is gained, and the religious world-eonception is replaced by the scientific one. But you are right! the greater majority of mankind will be more accessible to your reforms which propose a natural way of evolution, while they would reject my ideas." Also, according to Blackmore (1972, 129), Mach read Carus's books on Buddhism and came to appreciate it as an at least quasi-scientific religion, No wonder that V. L Lenin, in his book-length tirade against Mach, identified Carus as "a leader of a gang of American literary rascals who are engaged in doping the people with religiOUS opium" (1964, 208), Carus and Mach also had a lengthy dialogue by mail on socioeconomic questions, sparked by Mach's remark in "The Economical Nature of Physical Inquiry" that "the business of science has this advantage over every other enterprise, that from its ~massment of wealth no one suffers the least loss" (1895,198). Carus took mild exception, arguing (in a letter of 23 Oct 1894) that even science could be abused, whereas business could not. If the workers were exploited, Carus argued rather naively, they would not subject themselves to world Mach (in replies dated 6 and 18 November) insisted on the point that the two realms must still differ in that intellectual property can be shared without harm to its originator, Their mutual affection was not always entirely highminded, In a letter of 14 September 1901 Carus shared his fascination with gadgets, sending Mach a pair of reel-and-green glasses he had found in a Chicago store "without any scientific reputation." The glasses sometimes gave a three-dimensional effect: "Perhaps you can give an explanation of this curious phenomenon." Their correspondence, sometimes by way of
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Mach's son Ludwig, continued into the 1910s, as they exchanged stories on the infirmities and indignities of old age. Carus published a brief appreciation of Mach on Mach's seventieth birthday in 1908, describing him as "one of the very first naturalists who ventured beyond the boundary of his speCialty, and proposed to comprehend its place in the economy of the whole. Thus hc became a philosopher and we may call his philosophy 'the philosophy of science'" (1908a, 125).3 Mach, for his part, dedicated his last book (published posthumously in 1921 and translated as l1w Principles of Physical Optics in 1926) to Carus and Hcgeler. On the dedication page (Mach 1926, vi) he reprodueed a letter he wrote to Carus in July 1913, a tribute that deserves to be quoted in full: 4 My esteemed fIiend, I call to mind the time when the first numbers of the "Open Court" failed to reach me and there slowly sprang up between us a correspondence which greatly influenced my life. We met on common ground in our endeavour to remove from different branehes of knowledge the restrictive barriers to progress. In consequence I became familiar with the educational work which your firm has accomplished to an ever-increasing extent. In this way you have attained to the only possible form of immortality. It is not too much to say that only through your interest in my work and your masterly translations could I get into touch with a large circle of people and feel that I have not lived in vain. If my name should be frequently quoted, may this always be done with a remembrance of your name and that of Edward C. Hegeler. Surrounded, perhaps for the last time, by the summer beauties of nature I send you and yours a farewell greeting. Your old friend, Ernst Mach
Peirce
Paul Carus had a way of taking up with incongruous people. His friend vv. E. Leonard wrote, "In turning over the pages of The Monist, The Open Court, or his numerous books, besides vigorous correspondence with such distinguished and ill-assorted friends as Ernst Haeckel, Tolstoy, and Pere Hyacinthe, one comes upon equally whole-hearted discussions with upstate clergymen in Michigan or small-town doctors in Illinois . . . , He took any thinking, or honest attempt at thinldng, seriously" (1919, 452). Carus took the time to respond to a plaintive query (29 Sept. 1892) from a barber and cigar dealer named Odenath who found himself "socially ostracized" by the church members of Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. Odenath asked where he might find "a large number of persons who read such books as Fundamental Problems & Homilies of Science," and Carns had to advise him that La Salle, like Birdsboro, was not such a place. Mrs. S. L. Wheeler of Pocasset, Massachusetts, asked, "What may be the object of the cosmos?" Carus essayed a thoughtful answer: "The Christian says the world exists for the glory of God. We might express the idea thus: something analogous to the satisfaction which fills a man by acting according to his nature, is taking place in the whole universe in the display of its being." Carus corresponded with W W. Tuttle, a young pastor of a Congregational church in Wancoma, Iowa, whose VOly liberal religiOUS views eaused him no trouble at all: "I translate my thoughts into their theological tongue .... My philosophy
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teacher [at Grinnell College] said no one will bother you if you don't brand yourself. I guess he is right." Carus sent him a copy of Goel and placed his name on the free list for a year of The Open Court (Tuttle to P. Carus, 14 May 1909; P. Carus to Tuttle, 4 May, 18 May 1909). A similar openness and patience held good in his editorial role. Unsolicited poetry is the bane of many editors' existence, but Carus seems to have been quite forbearing, perhaps because of his own tendency to commit poetry. He wrote several paragraphs to a Dl: T. T. Blaise (27 Feb. 1908) of Mason City, Iowa, before getting to the point: "Poetry is the language of sentiment, ... [which] ought not to be indulged in too long. For this reason I deem it a serious drawback that your poem is almost one hundred pages long. "1 In the early issues of The Monist Carus published both Cesare Lombroso's phrenological analysis-at-a-distanee of the Chicago anarchists (1891) and a coolly reasoned reply from one of their number, Michael Schwab (1891, 520-42), writing from Joliet prison., Later (19 Aug. 1901), William James \frote to Carus, passing along an article from Mrs. George Boole, "which I have read and advised her to send to you as the least convention-bound of editors" (Seott 1986). Carus needed all of his virtues during his twenty-four years of dealings with Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce, now acclaimed as "one of the greatest philosophers of all time" (Popper 1972, 212),2 often appeared to his contemporaries as a crank. Peirce was an academic outcast when Carus knew him, philosophizing from a remote, decaying Pennsylvania farmhouse. Nor was he easy to correspond with or to publish. Over time he proved himself perfectionistic, prickly, suspiciousquick to take offense but slow to perceive that he had given it. His proofs and manuscripts were often late; he was chronically short of money and often difficult over questions of payment. Carus had dealings with most of the well-remembered Ameriean philosophers of his time- Dewey, James, Roycebut he corresponded with Peirce more, and published more of
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his work, than those three combined (Sheridan 1957, 151). Carns did not care much for Peirce's metaphysics, but he admired his work in logic and philosophy of science. Carns solicited Peirce's contributions for The Monist and The Open Court (until 1900 the rate was $25 per 1,000 words [Peirce to F. C. Russell, ~ July 1890; Peirce to P. Carns, enclosure, 5 Nov. 1890]), advanced Peirce money when he needed it, and gave him other editorial work as available. He and Hegeler went to considerable trouble to publish Peirce's work in book form, although ultimately without success. Peirce wrote for many other publications. "I should really be ashamed to tell you how many articles I do write," he told the Chicago attorney Francis C. Russell (3 July 1890), who often acted as an intermediary between him and Carns; "for you would begin to think me superficial." But much of that writing consisted of reviews and hackwork. Some of his early philosophical work appeared in the 1870s in Popular Science Monthly. But Carus "published more of Peirce's philosophical articles during Peirce's lifetime than any other editor" -thirteen in The Monist and six in The Open Court (Sheridan 1957, 134).3 Many of these articles would not have found a publisher during Peirce's lifetime-some might not even have been written-had Carns not been interested. As Peirce's philosphical reputation has improved enormously in the years since his death in 1914, so must we value more highly Carns's willingness to support him and bring his work to light. Apparently Peirce's first contact with Open Court came through Francis Russell, an amateur philosopher and mathematician who had already established a correspondence with Peirce. Early in 1889 Russell sent Peirce some copies of The Open Court: "You might be interested to see a beginning of a style of comment on philosophical topics that under the influence of the mathematical speculation[s] ... is ... to enact a great part in the history of the next and coming generations" (22 Jan. 1889).4 Hegeler himself, Russell wrote, was "no mean philosopher," and as for his new editor, "Underwood has
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sneered much at Carus but I think that Carus will in the long run count for a sufficient substitute." Russell had given Carus one of his prized copies of Peirce's 1877 "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" and thought he could detect its influence on the new editor. Peirce's first public mention of Open Court was not so auspicious. In the summer ofl890 he reviewed Carus's Fundamental Problems in The Nation (Peirce 1890), giving it a combination of faint praise and sharp critique. The book, Peirce wrote, reflected "the average opinions of thoughtful men to-day.... if there be here and there an inconsistency, it only renders the book more suggestive." In a minimum of words Peirce skewered Carus's conflation of philosophy of science with philosophy as science: "The philosophy it advocates is superscientific. 'There is no chaos, and never has been a chaos,' exclaims the authOl; although of this no scientific evidence is possible." Peirce also questioned the conciliation of religion with science as "an endeavor to reach a foredetermined conclusion" and thus "an anti-scientific, anti-philosophical aim."5 None of this prevented Peirce from telling Russell (3 July 1890) that he regarded Open Court "with much respect" or from accepting Carus's invitation (2 July 1890, HPP) to write on modern logic, logic and ethics, or any other theme for The Monist. As a result, "The Architecture of Theories" -a "systematic study of the conceptions out of which a philosophical theory may be built" -appcared in January 1891 (Peirce 1891, 162). In the absence of Carus's proposal, it is possible that the essay might not have existed or might have been left in some other form in Peirce's unpublished papers. This was the first of what James K. Feibleman describes as "a series of brilliant essays" (1946, 22) that Peirce wrote between 1891 and 1893 for The Monist- "The Architecture of Theories" (1891), "The Doctrine of Necessity Examined" (1892a), "The Law of Mind" (1892b), "Man's Glassy Essence"(1892c), and "Evolutionary Love" (1893a). In them he expounded an evolutionary cosmology (apparently developed
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in order to work out difficulties in his earlier theory of know1edge) in which "the universe is itself a living organism possessed of feelings and habits" and "our laws of nature describe the habits of the universe" (Murphey 1967, 77). But habits are approximate regularities, not absolute; and this cosmology led Peirce to challenge the long-standing dogma of physical determinism. According to Karl POpPet~ Peirce was "the first postNewtonian physicist and philosopher" to do so. But at the time, nobody was listening-except Carus (Popper 1972,213; Shin 1973,342). In a paper that still retains its original excitement, "The Doctrine of Necessity Examined," Peirce trenchantly asked readers of The Monist to question "the common belief that every single fact in the universe is precisely determined by law" (1892a, 321). Peirce came to call his philosophical indeterminism "tychism." In sending the article to Carus (with a bill for $160, promptly paid), Peirce described it as "the strongest of argumentation I have ever done" (5 Nov. 1892). It ran sixteen pages in the April 1892 issue and was followed in the next issue by a twenty-two-page reply from Carus (1892b). In OctobCl; Carus added more thoughts on the subject (1892d). Peirce had asked that "whoever may detect any flaw in my rcasoning will point it out to me" (1892a, 337). As it turned out, Carus was the only "necessitarian" to do so. "For this," Peirce wrote (1893b, 526), "lowe him particular thanks and a careful rejoinder," so it is to Carus specifically that we owe Peirce's elaboration of his views. "Reply to the Necessitarians" encompassed forty-four pages and was followed in same issue by Carus's fifty-page parting shot (1893a). In these articles (Shin 1973, 343-44) Carus and Peirce rarely managed to engage one another directly. James Sheridan (1957, 134, 138) describes their dispute as "a weird mixture of sardonic commentary and tight argumentation .... it almost defies summary. The two men continually mix internal criticism with 'arguments' which are actually statements of their own positions." For instance, early in the exchange Peirce summed up the doctrine of necessity with unusual force:
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"Given the state of the universe in the original nebula, and given the laws of mechanics, a sufficiently powerful mind could deduce from these data the precise form of every curlicue of every letter I am now writing." Hence, a corollary must be that consciousness is a "fragmentary and illusive aspect of the universe" with no causal role (1892a, 323, 335; 1893b, 566). Carus at first did not seem to follow this thought, saying that, although he supported the doctrine of necessity, he agreed with Peirce in denouneing "the mechanical philosophy.... In some sense minds are part of the physical, Le., the natural, world, but they are not parts of that province of nature which constitutes the special domain of physics and mechanics. Ideas are not motions and cannot be explained by mechanical laws." Later on, after Peirce had reemphasized his point, Carus explained that "psychical phenomena" are just one category of abstraction from a whole, real phenomenon. Thus, to try to "explain" them using abstractions appropriate to physiology or physics is to invite hopeless confusion (1893a, 612-15). Carus mocked Peirce for needing such an elementary lesson in logic, but Carus himself had trouble keeping his abstractions straight. An idea, he wrote, "physiolOgically considered is a special brain-structure or combination of brain-structures," adding shortly that "brain-motions are perfectly explainable by the laws of molar and molecular mechanisms" (1893a, 614, 615). Yet he had just written that ideas were not so explicable. After lengthy argument Peirce rejected the view that necessity is a "'presupposition' or postulate of scientific reasoning .... If that is the best that can be said for it, the belief is doomed." Nor does empirical evidence support it. "Those observations which are generally adduced in favor of mechanical causation simply prove that there is an element of regularity, and have no bearing whatever upon the question of whether such regularity is exact and universal, or not. Nay, in regard to this exactitude, all observation is directly opposed to it" (Peirce 1892a, 329). In reply Carus characterized causation (necessity) as transformation or a change of form and then used this idea to try a
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flying leap over the problem of induction: "Form is a quality of this world, not of some samples of it, but throughout, so far as we know of existence even in the most superficial way, and thus we know beforehand or a p1'iori that the laws of form hold good so far as our telescopes sweep through space" (1892d, 568), Peirce replied in frustration at the non sequitur: "But does he not see that aU we do know, , . is nothing but a sample of our possible experience?" (1893b, 555). Both Carus and Peirce used scientific method as a touchstone, but they held radically different views of what it was and what it required. In his reply to the Nation review Carus asserted, "Upon the rigidity of law depends the unifOl'mity of nature, and without the uniformity of nature science would be impossible" (1890e, 2510). Peirce thought scientists could get along with a universe that was more or less uniform, one a bit ragged around the edges: "The conclusions of science make no pretence to being more than probable ... [never asserting] that anything is precisely true without exception throughout the universe" (Peirce 1892a, 324; Sheridan 1957, 138-40). Their views of philosophy itself differed, too. For Carus, his profession was the indispensable foundation of both science and ethics, Peirce took a view closer to that of some more recent analytic philosophers when he wrote Carus on 3 June 1892, "Philosophy has little practical value, It is a poor thing to base religion or eonduct or polities or business of any kind on." Ultimately, he hoped, as did Carus, that philosophy would issue in "some unquestionable result," Unlike Carus, however, he believed that "little or nothing of that kind has yet been reached," On the subject closest to Carus's heart, the conciliation of science and religion, Peirce gibed, "Such serious concern makes me smile; for I think the atonement [Carus] desires is a thing which will come to pass of itself when time is ripe, and that our efforts to hasten it have just that slight effect that our efforts to hasten the ripening of apples on a tree may have,
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Besides, natural ripening is the best" (1893b, 545). Carus turned Peirce's metaphor back on him: "Mr. Peirce forgets that the religious fruits of the conciliation between religion and science are our own sentiments. He who says that man should be indifferent about working out the truth, on the plea that truth will take care of itself, is comparable to the apple tree, that refuses to work out the ripening of the apples" (1893a, 617). Carus praised Peirce lavishly, even in criticism, comparing him to David Hume (Peirce did not take this as a compliment [1893b, 549-50]) and describing him as "one of the keenest logicians now living" (1892d, 561-62, 564). Peirce returned the favor, praising" our amiable editor ... whose admirable editorship springs so largely out of his amiability.... However hard he hits, he ... sincerely cares more to make the reader admire his antagonist when he is right than to condemn him when he is wrong" (1893b, 554). Each concluded the controversy on necessity confident that he had been vindicated. Carus, who got the last word, wrote that he still thought well of Peirce. In fact-a compliment with a rather sharp edge on the other side- "our admiration for him as a dialectitian has been greatly increased, for, in truth, we have never before seen propositions so untenable in their nature, so odd and almost bizarre, ... defended with greater adroitness." More kindly, Carus added that Peirce's "very errors are instructive" (1893a, 622). Carus continued to believe that Peirce's "hobby of tychism" detracted from his work in logic (P. Carus to Peirce, 16 Nov. 1896, 3 Apr. 1900, HPP). But he valued their exchange highly enough that seven years later (17 Mar., 3 Apr. 1900) he suggested that Open Court might publish it in book form: "The little incidental tilts of a personal nature will only add zest to the dry reading .... I remcmber especially a French magazine ... spoke of it as typically American that the cditor did not hesitate to publish attacks on himself and replying to them good-naturedly."
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After 1892 Peirce's relations with Open Court were rarely smooth. The correspondence on both sides varies unpredictably from protestations of friendship and loyalty to outbursts of exasperation, abject appeals, and sometimes bitter frictions on business, editorial, and philosophical matters. One suspects that Peirce may have chafed at being financially dependent on people he regarded as his intellectual inferiors. It is also true that Carus's interests shifted over time, moving away from Peirce's in the late 1890s and then (with the advent of James's brand of pragmatism) back toward them in the 1900s. In the spring of 1892 Carus hired Peirce to read the proof of T. J. McCormack's translation of Ernst Mach's Science of Mechanics and to convert the section of the book dealing with measures from metric to English units (McCormack 1892). Peirce also placed an advertisement in The Open Court offeI" ing its readers "Instruction in the Art of Heasoning by Correspondence" (Peirce to P. Cams, 5 Nov. 1892). Their letters touched on exciting possibilities-that Peirce might give a reading of a travel tale in Chicago or receive a professorship there. Carus even sent President William Rainey Harper of the University of Chicago a letter of recommendation on Peirce's behalf (Peirce to P. Cams, 5 May 1892; Peirce to F. C. Russell, 14 May 1892; P. Carus to E. Schr5del~ 10 Jan. 1893).6 At the same time Peirce was disappointed to hear Hegeler say "that he [Hegeler] disliked to see my book published by his publishing house, without a warning to readers expressing how far he and you did, and how far you did not, endorse my doctrine, I thought and said that that was remarkably narrow and sectarian .... One of these days, I think you will find out you are not really as narrow as you accuse yourselves of being" (Peirce to P. Carus, 13 May 1892). Carus's reply suggests that he had a fine line to tread between Hegeler's tendency toward dogmatism and the realities of philosophy and publishing. «Perhaps you know that Ml: Hegeler wants the MONIST to represent a definite world view," Carus wrote on 23 May 1892 (HPP), "and I edit the MONIST with the understanding to represent it. I accept
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articles from any standpoint. But when I publish articles that differ in some important point considerably from our position, I have to point out the difference." "Ml: Hegeler is not narrower than I am," he elaborated on 31 May (HPP), "but I should say that he is more positive. I would restrain editorial interference to matters of principle only, and leave the working out of our aim to the contributors, admitting, howev01; the editor as one of the contributors. As such, I would often abide my time longer than I do. So, for instance, my proposition was to name the new quarterly 'THOUGHT' and not 'THE MONIST'; but in Mr. Hegeler's opinion, the name 'THOUGHT' was unmeaning. He regarded it as an attempt at being non-committal. He wants to have the solution which he arrived at expressed unequivocally. The name of the journal is to him the flag; while to me it would be an invitation to the class of people who are welcome to contribute. Mr. Hegeler had the same objection to the name, 'THE OPEN COURT/" That summer (9 June) Peirce had to ask Carus for a $100 advance to "keep up appearances" while he negotiated for the sale of two inventions "for a very large sum." Carus promptly obliged and received Peirce's thanks. But the "negotiations" turned out badly. Peirce had improved an electrical bleaching process and was paid by a $500 check - which proved to be a dud. "I now find there is a combination of millionaires to use my work and pay me nothing" (Peirce to p. Carus 15 July, 25 Aug. 1892). Fortunately for Peirce, Carus had agreed to publish his "Critic of Arguments" series in The Open Court. Because he was to beeome a contributor, Peirce canceled the correspondence-course advertisement he had been running in the magazine: "I have never got a reply to it" (5 Nov. 1892). At Hegeler's invitation Peirce visited La Salle early in 1893, and soon thereafter they had made what seemed to be definite arrangements to publish two books by Peirce, a reprint of his articles on the logic of science and an arithmetic. "We are ready to commence at Chicago the printing of the two volumes (and
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are promised dispatch) as soon as all the copy rights of those papers which you want to go in are obtained by you," HegeIer wrote Peirce on 16 March 1893 (HPP). On 15 May (HPP) Hegelcr had to add that Peirce should not rewrite his papers but instead "concentrate yourself totally on the completion of the arithmetic. I request for your report of the status of this matter. It is a large sum of money that I am to invest therein." Peirce promptly obliged with an account of work done to date, and Hegeler must have been satisfied, for by August 1893 he had remitted $1,750 to Peirce in the form of a loan "to be repaid to me with interest @ 6% from future profits of your Arithmetic book" (Hegeler to Peirce, 24 Aug. 1893, HPP). But the relationship was already entering a sour phase. Garus had diffieulty with Peirce's insistence on repeatedly revising his contributions. "In my humble opinion," Peirce wrote that spring (3 Mar. 1893), "you are never likely to say again anything so false as that writings lose their freshness by being worked over.... I purposely took the snap out of my article." Carus replied-in a letter (6 Mar.) apparently not sent- "In my humble opinion you are never likely to propose again anything so egotistical as that the articles which you have sent in for reply should be worked over several times. You do not seem to be aware of the fact that you treble my work." Indeed, he continued, "Mr. Hegeler told me positively to refuse any further revision of your article, because he says that he wants my time for writing on other subjects." In May 1893 Hegeler asked what the payment should be for an Open Court article of Peirce's, and Peirce replied shortly (10 May), "I infer that the terms hitherto agreed upon for the Critic of Arguments no longer meet his views. In that case, it will only be necessary to return to me the two articles sent. I was to have mailed you today two more papers for the Critic of Arguments; but I can point them elsewhere." After a somewhat confusing exchange, Carus returned two of the three Peirce manuscripts he had on hand (6 Mar. 1893)-apparently with the intention that Peirce could return them for publication if he were satisfied with the conditions. The letter is not
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altogether clear, and Peirce seems to have taken it as a rejection. He and CanIS did not correspond again for over a year. On 25 June 1894 Peirce broke the silence because he had heard (wrongly, it seems) that Carus was mocking him in The Open Court in a way that might hinder the sale of a projected logic book of his. (The book never appeared.) Carus denied any hostility and offered to publish more of Peirce's work-adding (28 June), howevel; that "Mr. HegeIer has requested me to submit to him for his approval all matters of business between you and me." This must have been an ominous note: apparently Open Court never did receive a publishable version of Peirce's arithmetic. Peirce promptly sent two articles (12 July 1894), adding that he and his wife could use the money: "We are in want of food and light. I think it unlikely that we shall pull through. It is now near forty-eight hours since I tasted food and then not much. But ... whatever suffering there was is done .... Heel already far removed from the jealousies and vanities of this world .... If I do pull through I shall feel like a second Lazarus." Hegeler rejected the articles but sent Peirce, via Carus, a five dollar bill, which Peirce returned to Carus on 20 July 1894 in an equally prickly manner: "it seems plain that Mr. Hegeler is for some reason bent upon being as insulting as he can .... Kindly hand back to him the enclosed $5. My remark about being in need of money had reference to my receiving in cash a part or the whole of any money I might earn." Perhaps because of the arithmetic debacle, Hegeler wrote explicitly to Francis Russell (19 Sept. 1894, HPP) that he had no desire to enable Peirce to earn money: '1 will not enter again into any kind of business relation or correspondence with Mr. Peirce."7 Nevertheless, Carus still managed to have dealings with him, although, as Russell wrote to Peirce on 25 September 1894 (HPP), "he is I guess sometimes puzzled how to cut in between Mr. Hegeler and those against whom the latter has become offended." Peirce had not become noticeably easier to work with: in May 1896 he sent Carus a telegram demanding
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payment (the check was in the mail). In June his delay in returning the proofs of an article "greatly vexed" Carus and forced Carus "to rearrange the contents in The Monist in the very last moment and to replace your article by other material. This is the more disagreeable to us as we have announced your article, in several quarters, and are now obliged to disappoint our readers" (P. Carus to Peirce, 12 May, 2 June, 20 June, 22 June 1896). Despite these difficulties in July 1896 Carus went to considerable lengths to satisfy both his father-in-law and his valued contributor. Peirce, it seems, had submitted an unusually long manuscript (probably "The Logic of Relatives" [1897J). "Mr. Hegeler has his head full of cares and thoughts," Carus wrot~ to Russell on 23 July 1896. "Therefore I should like to accept Mr. Peirce's MS. without previous consultation. Mr. Hegeler granted the acceptance of Mr. Peirce's former MS. [probably "The Regenerated Logic" (1896) ], saying that that would do for a while. What he will say when I request the acceptance of a new and a long MS. before the other MS. has appeared can not be doubted." 1b avoid that, Carus had to be able to pay for this extra-long article out of available funds, without asking Hegeler for more. Therefore, he offered Peirce less than his usual rate (24 July 1896) and asked Russell to encourage Peirce to take it (23 July 1896): «The article is so long-much longer than is desirable for magaZine articles and there can be no doubt about it that he will not find another publisher who will pay him that much or more." In a separate note Carus suggested that Russell could get the message aeross by sending to Peirce the letter Carus had just written to Russell with an explanatory note, provided that Peirce returned the letter. "I wish to do for him and for his scientific labors all I can (consistently with the interests of the Monist) but the eondition on my part is that there must be no business complications.... Telegrams which seem to suggest there are claims [by Peirce on Open Court] serve no purpose except that they irritate." Unfortunately, the article over which Cams took such
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pains-and which Peirce himself modestly described as "a most brilliant contribution to thc subject" (Peirce to F. C. Russell, 16 July 1896, HPP)-proved to be too abstruse even for readers of The Monist. "You may not care for popularity," Carus wrote to Peirce a few years later (3 Apr. 1900, HPP), but if you had seen all the letters we received complaining about your article on 'The Logic of Relatives,' you would understand that an editor has also to look out for his readers. Even your stanchest friends wrote me that the article did not do you justice." Peirce's work did not appear in the magazine again for eight years, although it was not for lack of trying. On 3 December 1897 (HPP) Carus discouraged him from writing an article on Schroder's logic, pleading that the magazine ~as "exceedingly overcrowded" (often true, but also an excuse Carus often used in his correspondence with writers) and that the bank account was "pretty low, and I could not accept an article from you unless I had special assistance from Mr. Hegeler." How likely was that? Not very: "I will speak with him ifI can find a good opportunity to approach him on the subject, and in case I can procure the article I shall write you again. In the meantime I advise you to have the article accepted in some other quarters." The don't-call-us-we'll-call-you message was reinforced on 13 October 1898 (HPP), when Carus wrote frankly, 'Although your contributions are valuable, from a scientific standpOint, they are not so from a business standpoint, as the circle of readers is naturally quite limited. My endeavor at present is to reach a larger circle, and I am at the same time obliged to economise more than formerly." Two months later (9 Dec. 1898, HPP) Carus returned a Peirce manuscript, "Knotty Points on the Doctrine of Chance," with his regrets: "I have talked with Mr. Hegeler on the subject, and he has repeated to me that he wishes us not to swerve too much from the purposes to which our publications are devoted." Although Peirce for a time was accidentally cut off The Open Court mailing list (P. Carus to Peirce, 27 Aug. 1904,
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HPP), the two never quite lost touch. Peirce wrote a friendly testimonial for The Monist (2 Feb. 1900): "I do not believe any periodical in the world is doing more service to civilization and to this country.... I think it admirably edited." At almost exactly the same time he published anonymously a strongly worded review of Carus's Kant and Spencer in 11~e Nation (1900): "We shall not express approval of the acrid tone of the criticism, which is of a kind obsolescent even in Germany. To say that Herb~rt Spencer has been a man who' shirks the toil of research' is not to invite philosophical discussion, and is really too much." Carns, not knowing its authOl; wrote to Peirce about the "amusing little notice in The Nation . ... It is written by one who was hit" (3 March 1900). Peirce's work again began appearing in The Monist in January 1905-albeit at a lower rate of pay (Carns to Peirce, 3 Apr. 1900, 27 Aug. 1904). Old age did not make their sailing much smoother. "On my return home from a trip to Lake Michigan," Carns wrote on 8 September 1906, "I find my office staff in consternation and despair concerning your corrections. Thc compositors are in rebellion, but I have insisted to let your changes be made as you wanted." Carns himself would have preferred to see the article (probably "Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism" [1906]) revised. "I fear that I shall be again in receipt of a number of letters accusing me of partiality in publishing unintelligible articles. I appreciate your significance in the development of science, and I will publish your article exactly as you want it, but ... [in one sentence] the subject and the predicate are divided by fourteen lines, and I think you yourself would have trouble keeping it (the subject) all the time in mind, or if you have lost it to find it again. It beats even the worst involved German sentence" (P. Carus to Peirce, 8 Sept. 1906, HPP). Their ability to communicate with each other remained spotty. Carus astoni<>hed Peirce by remarking (15 Mal: 1909) that Peirce's idea of chance was "an inheritance from your father Benjamin Peirce, as appears from the preface in his mathemati-
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cal book. No wonder that it was deeply seated in your soul." A bewildered Peirce (5 Apr. 1909) csmld recall no such item from the preface of any of his fathm's six mathematical books. Peirce, for his part, horrified Carus by confiding (9 Mar. 1909) that "the style in which I have been writing for you has been greatly influenced by a remark you made to me in LaSalle when I was there. It was to the effect that you preferred an article which seemed to be written by a man 'struggling for expression,' rather than one which bespoke a mastery of language .... Accordingly, I contented myself to sending you first drafts." Carus replied (15 Mar. 1909) that this was "a very strange misconception. It is the very opposite." Still, in these later years their correspondence became more collegial, partly because of their shared disagreement with James's version of pragmatism. "You don't yet quite understand James," Peirce admonished Carus on 5 April 1909. "He is not a Poet. He is a man of scientific training ... [But] he slurs over and contemns many distinctions that the rest of us lookupon as important." Carus was still interested in repripting Peirce's 1877-78 "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" in book form. Typically; Peirce felt that they would require much revision, but he soon agreed to receive a $250 advance "on my solemn promise to devote all my energies ... exclusively to these two jobs for you." After a lapse of time and several reminders Peirce submitted the articles without revision. After editing by F. C. Russell and a review by Philip E. B. Jourdain, Carus wrote a preface for the proposed book (Peirce to P. Carus, 7 Jan. 1909 [misdated 1908]; P. Carus to Peirce, 30 Jan. 1907 [HPP], 30 Apr. 1910, 1 Aug. 1910,23 Aug. 1913). "I do not expect that the Open Court Publishing Company will make any money from your papers," he advised Peirce in 1913 (10 Sept.), "but my intention is to keep your thought before the public .... I propose to use [the book] mainly to send it out broadcast to lovers oflogic to make a propaganda for a sound study oflogic." The book never did appear, for reasons not explained in the surviving correspondence. Peirce's death
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the following spring may have been the reason, but as late as 1917 Carus was apparently still considering bringing it out (P. Carus to Irving Smith, 7 Dec. 1917). After two decades Peirce still thought of Carus as a sectarian and sent him some "lesser" articles because he assumed that Carns would "be averse to publishing any new contributions to my Tychistie theOlY" (Peirce to P. Carus, 9 Mar. 1909). Not so, protested Carus, as he had in the past. Although written in 1909 (15 Mar.), his reply makes an apt summaIY of the sometimes stormy relationships between the unorthodox thinker and his unconventional editor: «When did you ever sce me regret or dislike the appearance of theories to which I did not assent? I published your articles on Tychism, even when they were pOintedly formulated against me, and in criticism of my own views. The more you attack me the more I like it, and I prefer by far to carryon a fight with you than with some incompetent small fellow, who has little or no scientific knowledge or method to back him."
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Carus's Later Philosophy
"There must be a reason fo'r the reliability of knowledge," Carus wrote in The Philosophy of Form (1911b, 1), the most concise and systematic statement of his views. "The aim of all my writings centers in the endeavor to build up a sound and tenable philosophy, one that would be as objective as any branch of the natural sciences. 1 . . . The world in which we live is a cosmos, not a chaos.... its constitution is consistent in all its details.... In other words, the consistency of the world is both universal and eternaL At the same time what is true here is true everywhere, and what is true now is true forever" (1911b, 3, 4). Carus spent most of his philosophical time in later years defending these articles of faith against "anti-intellectual" assaults from Jamesian pragmatists, relativity physicists, Bergsonian vitalists, and others. Although Carus's philosophical views had not changed radically since Monism and Meliorism (1885), he had changed his flag. In 1885 "form" got only the briefest mention; by 1911 the tables had turned, and" monism" appeared only rarely (1911b, 3, 22) in the forty-three-page text. 'All science," he wrote, "consists in describing forms and tracing their changes" (4). "Forms" are crucial to Carus's explanations of metaphysics, the physiology of perception, and mathematics, but it is not easy to get a cIear idea of what they are. In Monism and Meliorism Carus had sought to explain the world using three "principles of cognition" - "space, matter, movement" (1885, 48). After 1887, and under Hegeler's influence, he came to insist that matter and form are coequal realities, each an
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equally legitimate abstraction from experience. "Form and matter, as they exist in reality, are inseparable," he proclaimed in Fundamental Problems (1889b, 136) and again in Primer of Philosophy (1893d, 105). By 1911, however, the forms had become almost Platonic: a group of lines, not touching, is just a group of lines, but "two lines that cut one another ... produce something entirely new. They form four angles, and an angle ... is a quality that can not be deduced from the nature of the line." Similarly, a triangle is not the sum of three lines but a new entity resulting from their combination. '1\ watch, a steam engine, a dynamo, a motor, an aeroplane and likewise an organism, a living creature of any kind, are things whose parts possess a definite arrangement not to be measured quantitatively as the sum of their parts. They must be appreciated qualitatively because these units possess new qualitative values" (1911b, 12, 13). From these observations Carus then made a Significant leap: it is only bemuse the pure form of a triangle exists that three crosscutting lines have their unique geometric properties. Even though pure forms "do not exist as such," they are "possibilities," and "according to the law of their combination the things of the material world are molded .... in this sense pure forms are more important than material and actual things. They are superreal and this superreality contains the norms of all existence .... Pure form looks like a nonentity, and yet the laws of pure form are the factors that determine existence in all its details" (1911b, 13, 41). This is a long way from Carus's earlier insistence that (for instance) order "is immanent in the universe" (1889b, 49), Just as a triangle is more than three lines, so "man is not the sum total of the matter of which he consists, he is form; and the main feature of this form consists in those thought structures which embody his will, his aspirations, his purposes, his ideals."2 And what are these forms but "an image of the cosmic order reflected in the mirror of sentiency," which has "built up the history of the world and guides the evolution of mankind"? Our own forms-our ideas-survive our physical death. "They continue to live according to the way in which we have
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impressed them on others. They become building stones in the temple of humanity. The seeing of millions of our ancestors lives in our eye, their hearing lives in our ear, and our present civilization is built up of the best ideas of the greatest thinkers of the past." Even soin Carus's own work, where "I endeavor to let the heart-pulse of the best philosophers and scientists of the past, as well as of the present, beat in my own thinking" (1911b, 34,42-43). Inseparable from The Philosophy of Form is a serene, sweeping faith in progress that is difficult to recapture eighty years later. "The spirit of the Middle Ages," wrote Carus, "with its penal code of barbaric punishments, its cruelty in pedagogy, its narrowness in nationalism and religion, retreats step by step, while truer and broader views that are being more and more universally recognized, herald the advent of an age of science." This was no mere recent trend, but a manifestation of the structure of the universe: "Mind ... [is] the necessary outcome of the intrinsic nature of existence," and 'All the phenomena oflife ... [reach their] climax in the development of humanity" (1911b, 42, 15). But was the allegedly narrow and dogmatiC spirit of the Middle Ages in retreat even when Carus wrote? His own projects had flomished only modestly. All efforts to hold a second World's Parliament of Religions had failed. The Monist and The Open Court were not self-supporting, and their circulations were small and stagnant -1,500 and 2,500, respectively (Ayer 1885-1936). The publishing company as a whole was losing about $16,000 a year (P. Carus to Collector of Customs, New York City, 1 May 1912). After almost a quarter-century of unremitting effort Carus's philosophy-which aspired to the same universal assent as natural science-had attracted few followers. On a less personal level a new generation of thinkers was questioning, qualifying, and rejecting Carus's formal certainties in philosophy, phYSics, and even mathematics. Carus did battle on all three fronts, and no discouragement seriously challenged his overall view. His affirmations of progress were,
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after all, assertions of attitude, not descriptions of the future. "Let the world be bad!" he had written twenty-six years earlier (1885, 71). "Our duty is to work with steady labor for its improvement. " "There is a divinity in mathematics," Carus wrote in 1893, "of which the modern idolater of dogmatic Christianity has no idea" (1893d, 207). And if anyone should appreciate that divinity, it would be an accomplishe9- mathematician like Bertrand Russell. No such luck. In "Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics," Russell had opined, "Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true" (1918, 75). Carus took this comment very seriously and accused Russell of being "unfair" -adding that he, Carus, did not hold with the "Italian mathematicians" who proceeded hypothetically - "If A, then B" - without inquiring into the truth of A. "I propose to avoid the vicious 'if which leaves the entire science of mathematics in the air, and to dig down to the bottom rock of our mode of thought and build the foundation that is needed for the superstructure of this noblest and loftiest of all the sciences" (P. Carus 191Oa,49, 50). Carus's view, which he attributed to Herman Grassmann, was that geometry was true "by construction" and that therefore it required no unproven axioms or postulates other than the assumption of a "field of anyness" and the possibility of motion therein. s "I have endeavored to ... build up mathematics without resorting to assumptions, self-evident statements, or asseverations of any kind," Carus wrote, adding with uncharacteristic wistfulness, "I wish Professor Russell would not describe mathematics as consisting of' asseverations'; the very idea is jarring on my conception of the nature of mathematics" (191Oa, 53). These views made little impression on Russell, even though he himselfhad begun his mathematical career in hopes of finding just such a bedrock certainty. His review of Carus's Foundations of Mathematics was not overtly hostile, and Carus
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saw it as "gentlemanly." Russell pigeonholed the book as "a more or less popular exposition of a philosophy of geometry" mainly" derived from Kant"; pointed out a few inconsistencies; and finisheq with a deadpan paragraph whose dismissive nature was not likely to be missed by mathematicians accustomed to keeping their theology in a separate compartment: "The book concludes with an epilogue, in which the existence and attributes of the Deity are deduced from the nature of mathematical truth" (Russell 1910). In a letter to Philip E. B. Jourdain sometime latel~ Russell described Carus as "amusing": "I like his solemnly proving that when he talks about mathematics he knows what he is talking about, and whether what he is saying is true. I am surprised that he thought my review of him favorable!" (Grattan-Guihness 1977, 128-29). It may be that Carus's long-standing facility in mathematics actually made it more difficult for him to understand or accept these innovations. "My method of dealing with mathematical problems," he told one correspondent on 31 May 1909, "... is always geometrical. I think mathematics more with my eyes than in the logical way." He was aware that this method could pose a problem, but the awareness didn't help. When Russell adduced the famous proof that there are just as many integers as there are even integers, Carus simply balked (1910a, 59, 62). He had many times expounded on the knowability of the infinite: "not a thing to be worshiped, but a mathematical or arithmetical process" (1888f, 668; see also 1893d, 93; 1911a, 286). But when mathematicians actually began to describe itwhen it became a matter of logic and not of vis l1 alization - he would not, or could not, follow. 4 Carus was somewhat less charitable in his view of the physicists who were propounding the notion of relativity (what we would now call the special theory of relativity; Einstein did not formulate the general theory until 1916, shortly before Carus's death). "The relativity physicists are perfectly right," he wrote in The Principle of Relativity in the Light of the
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Philosophy of Science (1913b, 3);5 "what they claim is really and truly a matter of course, and if they only would present their proposition without dressing up their theory in paradoxical statements, nobody would in the least hesitate to accept thc new view." In fact, Carus seems not to have understood Einsteinian physics. He could agree with the relativity physicists only if their views were reduced to the trivial statement of the need to compensate for the motion of one's own standpoint. One of the key consequences of the theory, that a body's mass would increase measurably as its velocity approached the speed of light, he found entirely incredible. "We must be on our guard to avoid mystification, for it would seem as if the law of the conservation of matter and energy [which he regarded as an a priori truth] were upset and all objectivity of scientific truth were lost." Carus did faithfully mention the results of certain experiments tending to confirm the increase, but he qualified them and then dropped the subject (1913b, 3, 23). It should be noted that Carus was in considerably more respectable company than he was in his views on mathematics. Many scientists of his own generation did not follow Einstein (Bernstein 1973, 103-6).6 At one point Carus even asked the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Michelson to write a critique of relativity. Michelson declined, but not, according to Carus, because he had nothing to say. In 1913, in a conversation recounted by Carus, Michelson characterized the relativists as reasoning from premises, drawing absurd conclusions, and then-instead of rejecting the premises-proudly displaying the conclusions as true. "But," he told Carus, "this would not do for printing" (P. Carus to E. Cants, 2 Apr. 1913). Carus was not so inhibited, chastising the new breed of physicists as ignorant trespassers into philosophy: "The strangest thing about it is that the question is seriously debated whether or not this theory is true, and the answer is expected from experiments .... Thc relativity problem would never have originated had the philosophy of science been clearly and distinctly understood by physiCists" (1913b, 18, 2, 52).
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By this time-19l3-Carus had spotted a trend, and it was not to his liking. "There is at present a tendency in the world of thought, noticeable in pragmatism and other anti-intellectual movements, which seems to annihilate the very existence of objectivity, and with it science .... Everything is relative, and the general belief has spread that an absolutely objective description is impossible .... size has become to the present generation merely the result of measurement." Despite the superficial differences, Carus felt that "the relativists have much in common with pragmatists, because both cancel the ideal of objectivity" (1913b, 70, 85). Relativity, like pragmatism, was not just a mistaken theory: it was antiscientific. The first, and in some ways the most significant, of Carus's battles against the "anti-intellectuals" was his dispute with William James's version of pragmatism. At first Sight Carus and James seem philosophically as well as personally congeniaL They both referred admiringly to the early work of Charles Peirce (James 1907, 46), elaborating on it in their own ways. Wrote one, "There can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere-no difference in abstract truth that doesn't express itself in a difference in concrete fact:' The other: "The existence of a thing implies the manifestations of its existence. It exists only in so far as it manifests itself. Absolute existence which is not manifested in some way means non-existence" (James 1907, 49-50; P. Carus 1888f, 667). Both men adopted the same nominalistic metaphor to describe the relationship of abstractions to specific facts: "The facts of nature are specie and our abstract thoughts are bills which serve to economize the ... exchange of thought .... if the values of our abstract ideas are not ultimately founded upon the reality of positive facts, they are like bills or drafts for the payment of which there is no money in the bank." And: "Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs 'pass,' so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them. But this all pOints to direct face-to-face verifications somewhere, with-
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out which the fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash-bases whatever" (P. Carus 1889a; James 1907, 207-8). They both no doubt would have agreed that "the purpose of thinking is adaptation to surrounding conditions .... If it does not, it is not the right kind of thought" (P. Carus 1891b, 361). Despite these similarities Carus took vigorous issue with James in the July 1908 issue of The Monist and several more times in the next two years (1908c, 1909b-c, 190ge-g, 19lOc-f). These essays he then packaged together in Truth on Trial (191Id). According to Carus, James's pragmatism took a true-even obvious-notion, "that our philosophy must be tested by its practical application," but then "emphasize[ d] it so onesidedly that it overlook[ed] a more important truth" (1908c, 327, 361). James's Pragmatism is subtitled "Popular Lectures on Philosophy," and in it James was more illuminating than rigorous. Carns pounced repeatedly on the loose talk, quoting James directly and at length before refuting him. Huseful and true are synonyms (James 1907, 204), then what about useful lies? If astrology seems "useful" to some, how can we claim that astronomy instead is James substituted psychology for logic and glorified an actual source of scientific error- "the personal equation." For this reason, wrote Carus, "I would deem it a misfortune if his philosophy would ever exercise a determining and permanent influence upon the national life of our country" (1908c, 324, 358-59,362; 190ge, 82-83). Most obnoxious to Carus was James's insistence that truth is not found but made. James wrote that natural laws, which at first had seemed like the very thoughts of God, were now seen as "only approximations .... investigators have become accustomed to the notion that no theory is absolutely a transcript of reality, but that anyone of them may from some pOint of view be useful. Their great use is to summarize old facts and to lead to new ones" (1907,57). Carns simply could not imagine such a messy universe. "If we are confronted with a scientific problem, we seek a solu-
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tion, and if the problem is genuine and legitimate, there will be but one solution of it that is right, all others are either false or perhaps at best approximations. The solution that is predetermined, at which all inquirers that do not go astray must arrive, is the ideal of truth, and this ideal must be discovered" (1908c, 328-29). In the end Carus was driven to say that pragmatism "does not believe in conSistency" (1910e, 510). This may not be quite fair to James's account of how theories function to bring new experience hatmoniously into line with existing truths; clearly, logical consistency is an important part of what he meant when he wrote, "Between the coercions of the sensible order and those of the ideal order our mind is thus wedged tightly. Our ideas must agree \vith realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration" (1907, 211; see also 62-63). But Carus was getting at what he saw as James's cardinal sin: his denial of an overarching, conclusive unity of all truths in a single immutable structure. Truth, wrote James, is "only the expedient in the way of our thinking .... The 'absolutely' true, meaning what no farther experience will ever alter, is that ideal vanishing-point towards which we imagine that all our temporary truths \'Yill some day converge" (1907, 222-23). Carus would have none of this. 'All truths must agree," he replied, and "the truth of yesterday will be the truth of tomorrow. Here lies the rock of ages which is the basis of science. If this rock should prove an illusion, then indeed pluralism would be established for good, and pluralism would look very much like nihilism" (1908c, 345). To Carus pluralism and nihilism had long been synonymous. In 1888, he had written that "monism does not represent ... a sect or school of philosophy. Its principle is the basis and very core of science." In 1910, responding to C. O. Warren's essay (which he had published) on scientific method, Carus refused to call her position" a philosophical conception of science" because "her views are unphilosophical and even antiphilosophical; they are pluralistic" (1888a, 694; 1910d,232).
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It seems characteristic of Carus's later thought that he could not stop at refuting James's errors and imprecisions or affirming the principle of noncontradiction (the basis of his later monism). He went on, rising first into metaphysics and finally into worship. "The more we know of truth," he wrote, "the higher shall we rise in the course of evolution, the better adapted shall we be to the conditions of life, the more powerful shall we become, the higher shall be our dignity and our worth, and the nearer shall we be unto God, - for what is God but that systematic unison of all the correlates of truth? God is the. oneness of all the verities of existence" (191Oe, 511). Truths, he said, correspond to God the Son, as they are "incarnations of the verities," that is, God the Father. Should the reader try to pass over this passage as a rhetorical flourish, Carus concluded his article with a prayer: "How ineffably great art thou, 0 Truth, and yet thou hidest thyself in things small .... And yet thou alone possesest dignity, thou alone art worthy to be called divine, and thou are the son of that All-One whom thou revealest, that One in All who sways motes and stars and moulds the destinies of all the worlds" (1910e, 509, 514). William James surely would have been the last to quarrel with this reverent state of mind, but he might have remarked that it did little to enhance Carus's position as the defender of strict rationality in their dispute.
Sooner or later few people in any field can avoid changing roles from Young Turk to Old Fogy: it doesn't even necessarily require that they change at all, but only that the times change around them. Carus's amazing energy and inquisitiveness did not diminish, but after about 1908 they were directed more to defending his views rather than actively trying to propagate them. The passage of time has not been kind to his opinions on relativity or mathematics, and popular fashion ("it's true for me, but it may not be true for you") at any rate has not been kind to his strictures on William James. Even so, one must be impressed with his willingness to publish his opponents and with his willingness to do battle with them, even when (as
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perhaps in the case of Bertrand Russell) Carus may have suspected he was out of his depth. His occasional prolixity and vagueness are easier to forgive when combined, as they were, with an open good nature and a zest for truth.
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Much of the same logic that led Carus to reject hedonism also led him to reject pacifism. "There are good,s in this world which are higher than human lives," he wrote in reaction to the second National Peace Congress, held in Chicago in May 1909. "There are super-individual interests, there are ideals dearer than our own persons for which it is worth while struggling, suffering, fighting and dying." Although not an advocate of war in the abstract, Carus held that is was a necessary part of the evolutionary struggle. Pacifism made no sense to him: "No one has a right to appear as a peaeemaker except he be a man of power." Again, "life is not a play for fun like children's games. Life is a serious conflict for success and sometimes a VelY strenuous competition among all those who have a chance of survival." By this route Carus arrived at a rather conventional view of war as a necessary evil: "If ever I were in any position to influence a decision on war or peace, I would always endeavor to avoid Wal~ provided there would be no sacrifice of honor or the legitimate rights of the nation. But I know too well that this world is one in which we have to maintain our place" (1909h, 331, 338, 337). These exceptions proved sufficiently broad that we have no record of Carus's ever opposing any war in principle (as opposed to favoring one side over another). In particular, he was an enthusiastic supporter of that least creditable of U.S. military adventures, the Spanish-American War of 1898. The United States' quick victories, the threatening German naval presence in Manila harbOl~ and the European criticism of the
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United States all fueled his preoccupation that spring and summer. On 23 May 1898 he sent an article defending the U.S. position to his French correspondent Lucien Arreat, asking him to translate it from German to French and try to place it in Revue des deux mondes or some comparable publication. (It does not seem to have appeared.) The European critics of the WaI~ he wrote to An'eat, should not think they had any leverage in the immigrant nation: "If the German government believe that they could, in case of a conflict, rely on the Germans of this country to aid them or to sympathise with them they will be greatly mistaken. The Germans in this country are first Americans and then Germans." Carus himself was "so greatly disgusted with the German newspapers and their unfriendliness towards America" that he canceled a planned summer trip to Europe (P. Carus to Edward Karow, 19 July 1898). He had plenty to do at hOHle. In May, inspired by Admiral Dewey's victory at Manila and by the request of a visiting musician, Dr. Robert Goldbeck, Carus wrote five verses and two choruses entitled "Unfurl the Flag: A New National Hymn." Goldbeck declined to set the words to music, saying they were "too closely reasoned" (P. Carus to O. H. P. Smith, 15 June 1898).1 Thereupon Carus sent the words to Oliver H. P. Smith, a Congregationalist minister and correspondent with an interest in the fourth dimension, and Charles C. Converse, a hymn writer (author of "What a Friend We Have in Jesus") and Monist contributor (Converse 1895)-and to his smprise they both sent back quite different musical settings (P. Carus to C. C. Converse, 25 June 1898). Carus printed both in an eighteen-page supplement to the July 1898 Open Court, which he rushed out in hopes of getting the "hymn" to subscribers in time for the Fourth of July (T. J. McCormack to M. Sacksteder, 25 June, 28 June 1898). He had it sung at the local Congregational Church and promoted it to professors at Ann Arbor, where Albert A. Stanley, director of the music school, promised to have it performed if copies arrived in time (P. Carus to O. H. P. Smith, 5 July 1898; P. Carus
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to M. Sackstedel~ 27 June 1898; P. Carus to R. Goldbeck, 20 Ylay 1898; P. Carus to A. Stanley, 24 May 1898; P. Carus to F Kelsey, 31 May 1898). He also had the song published in pamphlet form (P. Carus 1898c), urging business manager Matthew Sacksteder (1 July 1898) to give away "a great numbel' ... as sample copies, which will serve the double purpose of introducing Goldbeck's war march and advertising the Open Court. By the by, I would send a batch of them to our sailors in Manilla [sic}." Hegeler's involvement was apparently limited to cautioning Carus against going overboard. "I am constantly exposed to criticisms as to whether music is justifiable in The Open Court," Carus wrote to Smith on 6 June 1898. Less cryptically, he explained to Converse (18 July 1898) his hesitancy about taking on another musical project: "Music does not belong to the sphere of the Open Court, and I ventured into it only as an exception, because I am personally interested in it. Mr. Hegeler, who is practically the Open Court Publishing Co., takes less interest in music, and so I have to be careful not to go too far in this line." Nothing in this 1898 episode hinted how Carus would react to the crisis of 1914. To judge from his "war hymn," he could conceivably have fallen in with Woodrow Wilson's pro-British "neutrality" : Old England and the United States, The freedom-loving nations, Have a common aim that consecrates Their labor and plodding patience . . . . Hurrah for the people of Saxon speech, Who laws of freedom practise and preachl Join hands, and the word of the Saxon O'er all the world shall reach. (P. Carus, 1898c)
And in 1901, observing that "the nation that rules the sea owns the world," he urged Congress to "duplicate the naval academy" so that the United States might keep colony-hungry
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Europeans out of the New 'World: "Germany by reason of her naval strength and progressive spirit is the only nation that could become dangerous to the United States, and there is only one way of preserving peace, viz., by being strong enough to render any infringement upon the traditions of the Monroe Doctrine inadvisable" (190la). "The war threat will probably cause great excitement in Berlin, and we wonder what the outcome of it will be," Paul Carus wrote to Martha Carus in Berlin on 29 July 1914, adding his own preference: "I wish that Russia would give up some of its provinces in the west, especially Finland to Sweden, and would make Poland an independent kingdom under German sovereignty. " Within a few days the war threat had become the Great War, with Austria piling on Serbia, Russia on Austria, Germany on Russia and France, England on Germany, and so forth. In response, Carus's sirigle-mindedness once more transformed The Open Court. The September 1914 issue (already prepared) included an article on Napier's invention oflogarithms, a piece entitled "Philology and the Occult in Roger Bacon," and Carus's review of a new comparison between Christianity and Buddhism. By contrast, the October issue contained almost nothing but discussion of the war, and from a definite point of view. "I have investigated the conditions and motives which led to it with sincere impartiality," wrote Carus (1914a, 646), "but I ... place the gUilt first of all, mainly and almost exclusively at the door of English diplomacy.... I am open to conviction and I shall carefully study all answers which contain actual points worth considering ... and, in case I shall have to change my views, promise to confess my errors openly and without reluctance." Along with his own fifty-page article, he reprinted a London magazine's 1897 anti-German screed, a Professor Burgess's pro-German letter to the Springfield Republican, and Ernst Haeckel's unrestrained proclamation of "England's Blood-Guilt in the World War."
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Carus was furiously disappointed at the outbreak ofhostilities; "I have been, for almost my entire life, sinee I began to think, an advocate of the federation of the great Teutonic nations, as a guarantee of the peace of the world,-Great Britain and her colonies, Germany with Austria, and the United States. This political idea of mine is not founded upon pan-Germanism, though it does not in the least exclude it. Modern civilization has been worked out in England, Germany and the United States. Here are the centers of progress .... So long as they do the right, al1 the smaller nationalities, states and groups of states will have to behave, and the peaceful realization of a highly cultured civilization will most assuredly be ours" (1914a, 643-44). Because they had dashed this hope, Carus could not find expletives enough to damn "the men of England who have advocated the war": they" are guilty of the blackest crime; they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, that sin which can never be forgiven. If I were an English citizen, I would ... have them. indicted for high treason against Great Britain" (1916, 645, 646). Carus's intemperate language was not unusual for the times. war brought out the worst in everyone. Most Christians and socialists, whose allegiances supposedly transcended mere national boundaries, were transformed overnight into raving nationalists. Just so, the philosopher who had done so much to bring Eastern thought into the West and who had treated it with unusual respect and admiration now began to fall back into the commonplace racism of his time: "The Germanic civilization, represented by Germany, England, and the United States, is leading now, but the Slav hopes to take their place, and the Japanese, the most aetive people of the yellow raee, are filled with ambition also to enter the field. An internecine war of the Germanic nations is apt to pave the way for both Slav and Asiatic ascendancy" (1914a, 645). In response to the October issue Carus received the predictable mix of support and abuse. More interesting, he also heard from a few readers who asked, in a sad, quiet way,
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whether Carus might have done well to rise above the turmoil of the moment. 'As one of your old subscribers," wrote Rabbi Max Heller from New Orleans on 22 October 1914,. "I am puzzled whether to classify your October number as falling under the head of Science of Religion, Religion of Science or Religious Parliament idea.... It is a sad spectacle to see a man of your philosophic clearheadedness and humanitarian breadth lapsing into the blind partisanship which credits eVeIY unsubstantiated rumor against one side and hides all serious offences of the other." Charles Howard Shinn took that thought one step further. Let history judge, he suggested on 1 Novembel: y~u have a higher calling. 'All which we can do towards ending this war on a reasonable basis, and preventing future wars we ought to do, heart and souL Let us not cast oil on the flames; there is a high philosophy which sees beyond even these world-storms, and you have expressed it in your life and writings. Can you not rest upon it now?" Canls neither printed nor publicly replied to these deeper criticisms of his course. In fairness, it would have been philosophically as well as personally difficult for him to rise above the "world-storm." The idea that conflict itself might be dangerous to civilization had no place in his thinking: war was the continuation of evolution by other means, perhaps regrettable but sometimes necessary. And to the monistically minded, it was unthinkable that philosophy could lie unruffled on troubled waters. "We learn from India's fate," Carus had written years before in his Primer of Philosophy (1893d: 24-25), "how important are our basic reHgio-philosophical convictions." The , Hindu philosophy of "world-flight and pessimism" had weakened India and finally reduced it to "the most wretched state of helpless dependence," he argued. How could this great struggle be irrelevant to philosophy, or philosophy stand above it? True to his word, Carus published many replies to his arguments on the wal: Also true to his word, because he found none of them convincing, he did not modify his stance in the slightest, continuing to maintain that Germany had been the
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victim of a conspiracy inspired by English envy and that Belgian neutrality was indeed a mere scrap of paper: "It is an acknowledged principle that in case of war the natural law of self-pre~ervation demands of evelY power the completion of the war ... with the utmost dispatch and by the easiest method" (1914a, 601). As the months wore on and the tenor of debate grew uglier, Carus found himself increasingly enmeshed in that least enlightening of enterprises, the weighing of national characters. Open Court's English manager, Philip E. B. Jourdain, contributed a temperate note to the January 1915 Open Court, his main point being that "discovery of the truth is only to be reached by promoting the mutual understanding of nations .... we are all really velY much alike and all seek very much the same ends" (1915, 11). In reply, Carus found it necessary to argue, for instance, that "liberty in England is a fiction," whereas "German militarism makes the German people peaceful" (1915a, 13, 14). The month before, he had already advised his critics that "the Germans have imbibed Hellenism into their souls in its purest form .... the Germans were always more cosmopolitan than others .... If the English would outdo the Germans, they can do it not by killing them but by imitating them. They must adopt the Germandom which they now despise. They must learn from the Germans. They must adopt their methods, they must introduce reforms which will best be modelled after German patterns, they must imitate German efficiency also in defense, or in other words, they must copy German militarism" (1914b, 772). Later on, as positions hardened, Carus published even less conciliatory and more conspiratorial material, including COl'fieHa Steketee Hulst's "Our Secret Alliance," which traced British treachery back to an 1894 London article in which Cecil Rhodes allegedly proposed" a division of the world before 1920 between the Russians and the united Anglo-Saxon peoples." She identified WilHam McKinley and John Hay as prime movers in making the "secret alliance" and in "adopting an imperialist national policy" (Hulst 1916, 578, 581-82) -a policy
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that had been enthusiastically endorsed by a younger Paul Carus at about the same time. According to Alwin Carus (pers. corom., 24 SepL199l), this article more than any other seems to have excited U.S. government displeasure with Open Court. At the beginning, in 1914, Carus had reason to think that he was writing from a neutral country. He had no qualms, even in 1916 (26 Feb.), about offering a quantity of free reprints to the German AmClican Literary Defense Committee in New York City. Gradually the United States' neutrality became more fiction than fact, but Carus was in no position to back down and of no mind to do so in any case. Even after the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, he maintained that "to have remained strictly and honestly neutral in this war ... would have set the United States at the head of civilized mankind" (1917, 658). But wartime hysteria was taking hold. On 17 September 1917 the New York Tribune published a letter from H. Roger Thomas of Ann Arbor, Michigan, lambasting The Open Court as seditious. It contained "pro-Central Powers" articles. It chose the wrong sort of books to review. Even "the advertisements are not such as are usually seen in loyal papers." Therefore, wrote Thomas, "if your pro-German readers are dissatisfied with the half-hearted treason of the various Zeitungs and Herolds, le~ them drop a line to 122 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, of course, and get a monthly that will be fest und tn?u fur Deutschland." Carus replied in a letter more than twice as long as his accuser's but conSiderably more cogent: "If I say anything about England, do I pay homage to the Kaiser? Or ifI publish a review of a German book on England and her usurpation of the seas, does that stamp me as an unfaithful citizen of the United States? Assuredly not. I would sow sedition only if I delivered over the interests of my country to a foreign power, be it Germany or England.... The worst I can say about myself is that I do not sympathize with our policy in entering into this war, and if that is a crime make the worst of it" (1917, 655-57).
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Not a crime, perhaps, but something worse, for even criminals receive a hearing. Tribune refused to print Carus's letter. "I am returning herewith, not very regretfully, the tract you have sent us," wrote Garet Garett on 8 October. "We do not feel obliged to print it. ... The war is the herd's business, we are in it, and before anything else we must win it, and that is not a matter to be reasoned about." Characteristically, Carus published the entire exchange and put a cheerful face on the subject- "with the permission of The Tribune, we shall continue to consider ourselves good and faithful Amerieans" (1917, 661-62)-but from that time on he remained publicly silent on the wal: In the increasingly repressive climate The Open Court published no more material on the war. Early in 1918 Carus had set in type a "very good" article by Joseph Pennypacker- "War Thoughts of an American Traitor" -but the magazine's lawyer advised Carus "not to publish it because it would be offensive to the authorities," and it never saw the light of day (P. Carus to H. Carus, 27 Mar., 12 Apr. 1918). As he moved-or was moved-from renown toward outcast status, Carus also had to suffer the indignities of age. In December 1914 he was hospitalized, apparently for high blood pressure and obesity. ("I just get enough [food] so as not to die or vanish," he wrote to his son Edward on 10 December.) His eyes troubled him so that his wife sometimes read his correspondence to him (P. Carus to M. Carus, 14 Jan. 1915). He suffered from high blood pressure, and early in 1918 he suffered a mild stroke, which left his right arm lame (P. Carus to Emma Carus Everall, 18 June 1917,30 Jan.1918). After the United States entered the Wal~ American civil liberties also became rather lame. War-born fanaticism led to the eradication of much German-American culture and of some individual German-Americans. The governor of Iowa banned the use of any language other than English in public places. Robert Goldstein was jailed for including in his film The Spirit of '76 footage of British redcoats shooting at women and
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children. Most ominously, in southern Illinois an innocent but gruff young coal miner named Robert Prager was lynched outside Maryville with minimal police intervention (Kirschbaum 1986, 121, 141, 16-23). Such chilling events would make any outsider paranoid, and with good reason. As early as March 1917 the Department of Justice's Bureau ofInvestigation (the forerunner of the FBI) had begun taking note of and filing anonymous allegations against Carus and his family. This activity began a series of surveillance and sabotage actions directed against them (which, incidentally, turned up nothing of relevance to the war effort). The reports involved both the Bureau and its volunteer auxiliary, the American Protective League (APL); and included ludicrous errors-e.g., that Carus owned a zinc mine, that he was eighty-two years old in 1918, and that "subjects are atheists."2 The agents' actions were less humorous. EVidently they at first found it easier to spy on Carus at the family's summer home at Higman Park, near St. Joseph, Michigan, rather than in La Salle. A Dr. Charles Green of the Postum Cereal Company met Carus on a stroll through the neighborhood, drew him out by seeming to agree with his ideas, and promptly wrote up a three-paged single-spaced memo to Special Agent Charles W. Smith 19 June 1918. Green was hardly an unbiased observer: he described Carus's philosophy as "a typical German philosophy, permeated with Kaiserism and superman stuff' and denounced the man himself as "wickedly dangerous in spirit and an enemy of America in this war." But even in Green's account of the conversation, the worst Carus supposedly said was that President Wilson had sold the United States to England and that Germany would win the war because it was in the right. Green also offered the "information" that two of Carus's sons "are in Germany and can't get out. This latter information was volunteered by a caretaker at the hotel whom I think is intimate with the Carus gardenCl:"3 Third-hand gossip not being sufficient for the government's high purposes, three "operators" from the APL's Ben-
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ton Harbor division were assigned to "eover" aCarus-hosted benefit for the Greek Red Cross on the evening of 17 August 1918. They were advised to "keep ears open for vibrations in air. These have noticed in Higman Park vicinity since the arrival of Caruso It is possible they may have a small wireless installed for their private use." A few days later the APL man reported, "Nothing transpired at the entertainment to excite suspicion although a great deal of German was spoken."4 Undaunted, Bureau agent H. G. Edmands ten days later instituted a search for the wireless by arranging to have the electric line to the Carus home cut. "In company with a lineman I proceeded to the Carus home. I found the Carus family very anxious that the trouble should be found and service restored as soon as possible as they had no other means of lighting. During the two hours that the house was in darkness, I was able to cover every part of the house looking for the supposed 'ground.' The cupola which has been under suspicion is entirely empty. There are no wires or connections here, nor any evidence of there ever having been any. There are only four trunks in the house, two large and two small, the latter bearing the initials of the Carus family. There are fourteen bcds in house, twelve of which are ready for occupance; also four cots. Inspection of suitcases, drawers, letters, boxes, and closets failed to disclose anything suspicious. The rumor that there is a full sized picture of the Kaiser on one of the walls of this house also failed to materialize." But never mind: "It was deemed advisable that a second search should be made at a later date."5 During 1918 the agents conducted lengthy interviews with Teresa Nugent, a stenographer and proofreader employed by Open Court; Edward Cams, Paul andMary's oldest son; Dean Kinsley, vice-president of the University of Illinois; A. H. Daniels, ehair of the philosophy department at the same university; and Thomas McCormack, a former editorial assistant and translator for Open Court. The agents had no difficulty in finding that Carus held unpopular opinions and no success whatever in finding any acts of his against the u.s.
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government. In fact, judged by actions reported by the Bureau in its memoranda, the Carus family might well have been considered loyal, even in the narrow wartime sense. True, Paul Carus had protested the declaration of war; the family had gone bail for an accused conspirator; and in 1914 Mary Carus had subscribed to a German loan. HowevC1~ Edward Carus, his Carus Chemical Company, and the zinc works all had "subscribed largely for Liberty Bonds." Mary Carus reportedly had "contributed largely to the Hed Cross in La Salle and had agreed to furnish wool to anyone who desires it for the purpose of knitting articles for the Red Cross organization, and also has furnished blankets to the men who joined the army from LaSalle." Commented one APL officer, "It is done for effect. "6 In this the Caruses, like many other German-Americans, were victims of what one author calls "the ultimate Catch-22: if they displayed their loyalty to the United States, they were thus accused of feigning patriotism, and persecuted. Or if they did not display overtly their loyalty, they were quickly denounced, and persecuted, as traitors" (Kirschbaum 1986, 103). Paul Carus escaped the Catch-22 only with his death from Bright's disease on 11 February 1919-and his family not even then. Two days later Edward felt compelled to write the Chicago Tribune: "We can understand that there should be differences of opinion, both in religiOUS and political views, but we are absolutely unable to understand that these should influence you to put slurs into a death notice the way you have done .... my grandfather ... you now slam as a zinc magnate . . . . We really would not object to any attacks on Dr. Carus while living, but that you should say he spent a fortune in the publication of religious books, especially at the present time, is really not worthy of a respectable paper." Had Paul Carus been alive, he would gladly have engaged the Tribune in editorial combat. Now that he was gone, there was no one to take up his cause-or his other causes-with anything like the same zest.
Epilogue Outside of his own family circle, Paul Carus had no successors. This might have been partly by design, for he had disclaimed any intent of founding a philosophic "school." But even had he wanted to do so, it would have been difficult. A war-tired but still jingoistic nation was not in a mood for serious philosophy in 1919, still less for anything that might be labeled "German" philosophy. And it would have been difficult to find anyone to match the breadth ofCarus's interests. He spent a significant amount of time on subjects other than philosophy, science, and gion, often tackling vexed issues in other fields and offering his own, sometimes offbeat, solutions. He devoted some space in The Monist to proposed artificial languages and went so far as to construct his own elaborate "pasigraphy," a supposedly universal writing system (P. Carus 1904a, 1904c, 1906a, 1909a). He found time to write a number of mildly progressive articles on childrearing, collected in Our Children: Hints from Pmctical Experience for' Parents and Teachers (1906c), although it is difficult to be sure how much of his advice came from his own "practical experience." In 1900 Carus's poetic bent even led him to comment on the controversial Walt Whitman. Carus did not complain of Whitman's "lack of verse and rhyme" or even his "expression of immoral penchants"; instead, he objected to "his lack of poetical strength and general sentiment." Lists, Carus insisted, were not real poetry (1900d). Carus also wrote a number of hymns and songs, often in a patriotic vein. In 1904, provoked by a contributor's article, he devoted forty-one well-illustrated pages of The Open Court to
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the question, "Who Wrote Shakespeare?" (1904d), concluding tentatively that the well-educated author of the plays {"Shakespeare") might have been a different person from the illedueated, rather miserly maker of the famous will C'Shaksper") . In later years Carns and The Open Court gave an inereasing amount of space to more purely historical concerns. His book The History ofthe Deml and the Idea of Evil (1900c) was almost entirely devoted to sueh an illustrated catalog of devils and past devil-related excesses. Not that he lost interest in ideas. In 1913, for instance, in a brief note in The Open Court he adduced both Schopenhauer and Freud as examples of overgeneralizations in philosophy. "The Freudian theory is practically the same mistake that Sehopenhauer commits, only in its reverse aspect. Freud generalizes the lower tendency so as to cover the highest efflorescence of mental life. The general public given to being satisfied with mere words is pleased to have an answer.... but on the whole his explanations do not explain; they leave the problem where it was before" -a view that may be coming back into fashion after three-quarters of a century (1913d, 150-51). Any would-be successor to Carus would also have had to emulate his long-standing passion for reconciling opposites. The Open Court, he wrote in 1907, "has eombined a fearless radicalism with a reverent conservatism" (Open Court 1907, iii), especially with respect to religion. This combination, of course, could also be seen as ambivalence, especially when Carus turned to politics. In The Nature of the State (1894d, 54) he found himself unable even to distinguish between treason and reform. "It is very difficult to draw any well-defined lirie between treason and reform, especially when it is remembered that every reform appears necessarily as treason to a conservative mind. As to would-be reformers, who commit acts of treason in the vain hope of doing a good work of progress, we can only say that they take their chances. "1 Some observers have described Carns as relatively uninterested in social and political issues. R. E. Stevens, for instance,
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found that the Underwoods had published twenty-three articles and sixteen editorials on social and political problems during their ten-month tenure at 1ne Open Court (February to November 1887), whereas Carus published only seventeen such articles and one such editorial between December 1887 and December 1888 (Stevens 1943, 45-47).2 But this statistic seems to be misleading. In later years Carus took a vigorous interest in social and political matters, although his positions were not predictable. In 1890 he visited two of the imprisoned Haymarket anarchists, Oscar Neebe (" a vigorous character and shows much intelligence") and Michael Schwab Ca goodnatured, Simple-minded fellow, with a taste for reading and study"), and supported the movement for their pardonadding prudently that pardon was" advocated by many influenHal men who have no sympathy with anarchism" (1890d, 2538). In the pivotal 1896 presidential election he and Hegeler used the pages of The Open Court to oppose the Populist-Democratic presidential candidacy of William Jennings Bryan. "He would have us substitute a greater evil for a lesser evil," wrote Carus of Bryan's proposed free-silver policy (1896f). Carus supported women's suffrage (P. Carus to Gen. Hermann Lieb, 11 Aug. 1893) but added the quixotic proviso that "married men should have a second vote, perhaps even a third if they have children .... It might be advisable to give an extra ballot to the educated man ... [and] to the man who pays taxes" (1910g, 244-46). Although he had married a woman of unusual and substantial education and business initiative, Carus's conservatism kept him from anything approaching feminism: "We cannot better describe a wife," he wrote in a tribute to Lydia Pratt Bonney, "than by showing the effect of her influence upon husband" (1903a, 41). Similarly, he did not speak out against the insensitivity to racial questions common among white people of his time, despite his repeated generosity to Oriental visitors and missionaries and his reported lack of "racial feelings" in personal life (Alwin Carus, pel's. comm., 24 Sept. 1991). At one point he commented on the "outrage" that "a [white] woman who has
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property in her own right and who is perhaps in command of a large household should not be permitted to make her opinion felt in elections, while her butler or colored servant takes an active part in political life" (1910g, 244). At what was perhaps its lowest point, The Open Court published an anonymous, accepting review of R. W. Shufelclt's The Negro, A Menace to American Civilization (Anonymous 1908). As mentioned above, Carus strongly supported the Spanish-American War. In its aftermath he did not duck the question of what to do with its spoils in Cuba, the Philippines, and Samoa. In a series of articles in 1899 and 1900 he sought to reconcile the expansionists and the anti-imperialists. The United States had to expand, he urged. Expansion was integral to the nation's history and the only course consistent with its ideals of liberty, which if valid anywhere, must be valid everywhere. "The idea that the business of the United States is at home, and that the Illinois farmer has no interest beyond the tenitory which he plows, is a grave mistake. The world is one great organism, and if we want to stand up for our principles in contrast to European principles, ... we must be in possession of those points of strategic importance." In fact, "to surrender any of these facilities would be treason toward the mission of the United States" (1899a, 220; 1900b, 90). But imperialism was also unacceptable: "It is therefore a matter of course that wherever the American flag is to he raised we shall endeavor to gai~ the consent of the governed. Should we within a reasonable time be unable to gain the confidence and good will of the inhabitants of the newly acquired territories, we should give them up" (1899a, 221). The United States should make Cuba and the Philippines "confederate republics of the United States" with a maximum ofinternal self-government. Unfortunately, in the Philippines, where Aguinaldo led armed resistance for years, the two principles could not easily be reconciled, and in practice Carus stayed with the imperialists, choosing realpolitik over the voluntary renunciation of a strategic base.
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There was no ambivalence about Carus's interest in his adopted country and its people. Carus's great-grandson Andre Carus has argued that Paul Carus was isolated in La Salle and able to "ignor[e] the America that was really there .... Paul Carus lived in a Victorian mansion out in the country.... Socially and mentally, he as well have been on a north German country estate" (1987,3). But Paul Carus was nothing if not gregarious. His bitterest enemies, the Underwoods, implicitly granted him that much (Underwoods 1887,24,27). During the national railroad strike in 1894 he wrote a straightforward, unshocked journalistic account of his and his fellow passengers' experience when the train from Chicago to La Salle was stranded overnight after its locomotive was derailed at Blue Island (1894e). He was an inveterate "networker" wh~rever he went: that was, in a sense, the pUlpose of his nearly annual trips to Europe. He even liked the long ocean passage, according to his son Alwin (A. and E. Carus 1988): "He liked to meet people, he liked to talk." Early in 1914 (17 Mal:) he wrote to his son Edward, "I have found out during our last trip through Italy that Penziones are by far preferable to hotels, not only on account of cheapness, but also for the sake of comfort and coming in touch with other people." His letters to his older children and to colleagues about to travel are laced with suggestions of people they should look up, usually old acquaintances or connections of his. 3 And there was scarcely anyone he hesitated to look up on his own account. For years, without a trace of shyness (but also without success) he tried through various intermediaries to get in touch with the Dalai Lama in Tibet. "I have repeatedly tried to reach him by sending him some of my Buddhist books," Carus wrote to one possible intermediary in 1911, "but I never received an answer and I do not know whether the mails reach Thibet at all. You may be able to reach him and you could write to him in Thibetan .... I wish you would inform him about my books on Buddhism .... if he would write me a kind letter I would publish it in the Open Court, or presumably in The
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Monist, and it would help call the attention to my Buddhist work. ... It is not impossible that I shall travel in the coming year and visit Oriental countries. [This dream was never realized.] If I could see the Dalai Lama and would have access to Llhassa under the protection of the Dalai Lama, I would be very glad to visit him."4 Closer to home, Carus was active in a La Salle "center for university extension" that sponsored speakers; in a club devoted to skat, a card game; and in the organization of a "debating club" around 1900.5 In 1897, when one Alfred W. Martin wrote to him from Tacoma about the possibilities of visiting and lecturing in the area, Carus displayed considerable familiarity with the regional religious scene. In a detailed twopage reply (19 Jan. 1897) Carus listed churches in Aurora, Elgin, and Englewood that might accept Martin as a speaker. In northern Illinois, he said, "I expect that you will speak at Mr. Duncan's church in Streator (the Church of Goodwill), or at Ml: Marsh's church in Peoria, or at Mr. Penney's church at Freeport, Illinois .... You might speak in LaSalle also, but there is no congregation that wouId correspond to your Free Church here. Mr. Penney's attempts to found a liberal church here have not been very successful. The most liberal church here is the Congregational church. It would not be impossible that the Rev. Mr. Bayne of the Congregational Church would let you speak in his church, but I doubt it, for he has sometimes to suffer under illiberal criticisms." At this Congregational church Carus was well enough acquainted to get his "Unfurl the Flag" performed to Oliver H. P. Smith's music on Sunday, 4 July 1898; in the following year he attempted to get Smith the ministerial job (P. Carus to O. H. P. Smith, 5 July 1898, 2 Feb. 1899). Even the presumably less liberal Lutheran pastors of the town took Carus's death very hard: "I don't think I've ever heard people give such serious sermons," recalls Alwin Carus (A. and E. Carus 1988). In the larger intellectual world, as the years passed, Carus was increasingly swimming against the tide. In the institutional
Epilogue
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realm, university presses began to appear in significant numbers in the 1910s (TebbeI1975, 535-39), and they may have begun to take over some of Open Court's scholarly functions. In the realm of philosophy, as various kinds of relativism, positivism, and pluralism infected mathematics, science, and philosophy, Carus's resolute monism and realism began to appear dated and unsophisticated. His association with Mach is symptomatic: Carus found incomprehensible or absurd precisely those features of Mach's thought that commended him to the Vienna Circle of logical positivists. In religion, Carus suffered the ironic fate of other "modernists" as described by the historian Martin Marty (1986, 43): they were "almost instantly dated" (318) despite their efforts to be scientifically up-to-date in their thinking. Personally, Carus represented a disappearing species - the generalist, the independent thinker for whom philosophy was a calling more than an academic job (Kuklick 1977, xxii-xxiii, 565). Of all Carus's concerns, his interests in Peirce and in Eastern thought have been most abundantly vindicated, but he died a generation too early to savor this development. In any case, he had hoped that increasing intercultural contact would purify Christianity of superstitious residues; it is not at all clear that this hope has been fulfilled. Finally, there was no ambivalence in Carus's ability to absorb himself in one topic after another. Having produced a series of articles or a book, or both, he then proceeded to another subject, be it Buddhism, or the symbolism of the cross, or the foundations of geometry, or the best method of teaching courage to a small child. In each subject it was his aspiration to focus on the formal-lasting-aspects of his subject. And when absorbed, he was truly absorbed. D. T. Suzuki recalls riding with him on motorboat trips up the Illinois River to Starved Rock. "He was usually wholly absorbed in his thoughts," Suzuki wrote many years later, "and having forgotten to carry with him a notebook or papel~ he would pull out his stiffly starched shirt -cuff and would jot down his thoughts on it.
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When we returned from such trips, the people in the office would talk about his cuffs being smeared with pencil marks again" (Suzuki 1959a, xii-xiii). Perhaps that is the most fitting image to remember him by. Whenever anyone is so fired with an idea that he or she can't wait to write it down, there the spirit of Paul Carus remains, as he would have wished, active in the world.
Notes References Index
Notes Introduction 1. The number of books can be adjusted up or down according to definition. For instance, McCoy lists some translations separately, whereas I have not. He also includes brief pamphlets, such as the fourteen-page Our Need of Philosophy (McCoy 1987, 99), and a collection of Buddhist art reproductions (104), which I have included. Most of Carus's books were derived from his previously published articles; even so, the total output remains dauntingly 2. Carus's name does not appear in the Werkmeister (1949), Cohen (1954), Stroh (1968), White (1972), or Flower and Murphey (1977). He is mentioned very briefly in Blau (1952, 218) and in the bibliography by Anderson and Fiseh (1939). 3. Carus gets five paragraphs in Paul Edwards's eight-volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Hay 1967,2:43). The Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Weiner 1968) includes a brief discussion of his monism as it relates to Buddhism (3:435b, 1:256b), as well as an erroneous item identifying him as a "German writer of Hegel's time" (1:256b). More recently, Mircea Eliade's sixteen-volume Encyclopedia of Religion mentions Carus three times-onee in relation to D. T. Suzuki, once to be dismissed as an "ephemeral" author of "semipopular books on Taoism and Buddhism," and finally and most inaccurately as an "Illinois industrialist and amateur Orientalist" (1987,2:438,3:318, 14:184). 4. Appropriately enough, in 1988 a chapter from Carus's Dawn of a New Religious Era was reprinted in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science (23[2]:193-202), a journal pursuing many of the same kinds of questions as did Caruso
1. Paul Carus's Early Life 1. Open Court Publishing Company, Records, 1886-1953 (hereafter cited as OCR); unless otherwise specified, all letters cited
175
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herein derive from this source. 2. In its obituary (15 Feb. 1919) of Carus the New York Times mistakenly gave Strasbourg as the degree-granting university. On the class basis of education, Craig (1978, 191) writes, "The cost of a complete higher education, according to Fritz Ringel~ was between 4,000 and 8,000 R.M., a sum b~yond the means of most working-class and lowel'-middle-class families, and a chancy speculation even for those of them who could afford it. ... German secondmy schools were designed in such a way as to place a heavy emphasis upon learning with the help of one's parents, and ... the drop-out rate ... was highest among children whose parents had not gone to Uppel'-schools." 3. The quoted phrase ("the classics and philosophy") appeared in the Chicago Graphic for 16 or 17 December 1887, in an item apparently supplied by Carus and reprinted in The Open Court 1(24):694. In the National Cyclopedia ofAmerican Biography (P. Carus 191Ob) he says he studied "philosophy and classical philology." Goebel (1919) gives "philosophy; classical philology and the natural sciences." 4. "Militarism is dangerous in France," Carus wrote (1900b, 91n), "because there is something rotten in the Republic, but it is not dangerous in Germany." 5. It has generally been thought that the offending publication was Metaphysik in Wissenschaft, Ethik und Religion (P. Carus 1881; Sheridan 1957, 2, citing P. Carus 1883, iii-v). But Metaphysik bears a publication date of 1881, and von Billow, in his letter of 17 February 1881, refers to a pamphlet "which appeared last summer." 6. Carus's son Alwin says, "There was something between him and his father, I'm not sure what. The fact that he wasn't going into the church I think was primary" (pers comm., 24 Sept. 1991). 7. Her letters are in OCR, 32/1/1.
3. Open Court's First Year 1. According to The Cause, "Mr. Hegeler was one of the old-time members of the Chicago [Ethical Culture] Society and a free-handed supporter of it in all its work. It was he who with a present of $50 founded the Ethical School Library, which was named after him" (Cause, Apr. 1896, in OCR 27/119/1). See also Francis Russell's letter to Charles S. Peirce (22 Jan. 1889, HPP): "Mr. Hegeler is no mean philosopher.... [He is] up in the classical German philosophers he is also up in the various German philosophic essays and monographs.
Notes to Pages 25-32
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And all these are not merely acquired but digested in and by a mind of great vigor and grasp." 2. Hegeler (1887, 18n) acknowledged the assistance of four people, including his daughter Mary and B. F. Underwood, in preparing "The Basis of Ethics." 3. The original letter is in OCR, 27/1/2. When it was published (Hegeler et al.1887, 624), the original's phrase "the monistic philosophy" was mistranscribed as "a monistic philosophy." 4. See, e. g., Sugden 1987, 16; Stevens 1943, 23-24. 5. The original letter is in OCR, 27/1/2. When it was published (Hegelcr et al. 1887, 628), this sentence was omitted. 6. The original letter (Underwood to HegeIer, 3 Nov. 1886) is in OCR, 2711/2. When it was published (Hegeler et al. 1887, 626), this passage was omitted. 7. The original letter (Underwood to Hegeler, 18 Nov. 1886) is in OCR, 2711/2. When it was published (Hegeler et al. 1887,626-27), "The Radical Reasoner" was mistranscribed as "The Radical, Rea8oner;" and "say" was mistranscribed as "think" in the last query. 8 .. The annotated version is in OCR, 27/1/2; it was published in Hegeler et al. 1887, 628-30. See also Hegeler's letter ofll December 1886 to Underwood: "Last evening I then have thoroughly read your letter December 7 and made pencil notes thereto." 9. Bracketed words are likely interpolations for words obscure in the original. 10. Both parties modified this statement slightly but significantly before it appeared in the magazine. In a later letter (2 Feb. 1887) Hegeler dropped the words "endeavor to" and altered the concluding phrase to read, "a religion that embraces what is good and true in the religion we were taught in our childhood. " Evidently the Underwoods declined to be included in the we. The published version, which ran in the first twenty-one issues of The Open Court (17 Feb.-24 Nov. 1887), read "a religion which embraces all that is true and good in the religion that was taught in childhood to them and him." The final version is more awkward, but it leaves no room for any careful reader to suspect that it includes the Underwoods. This phrasing probably resulted from a crisis meeting in February 1887 between Hegelel~ B. F. Underwood, and Hegeler's attorney (Hegeler et aL 1887, 635-36). 11. B. F. Underwood was already in Chicago attending a meeting on 14 January 1887 (see Open Cou·rt 1[1]:23), so it seems unlikely that
.l78
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Notes to Pages 33-46
he mailed the poems to Hegeler. Apparently Underwood had sent Hegeler a copy of Monism and Meliorism, at Carus's request, some time earlier (Underwoods 1887, 23). 12. Underwood may well have reeommended Carus to Hegeler as secretary and tutor (Underwoods 1887, 24), but the available evidence strongly suggests that Underwood had no knowledge of the equivocal nature of Hegeler's letters to Caruso Especially compelling is the fact that in the aftermath of the Underwoods' resignation, Hegeler-anxious to show the justice ofbis position-never claimed to have consulted with the editors. Instead, he stated that when Carus arrived in Chicago, Underwood had been informed by Carus "that he, 01: Carus, expected to have an official connection with The Open Court" (Hegeler et al. 1887, 621)-truly a strange hiring procedure. 13. Unfortunately, Carns himself never saw fit to reply to this or to other accusations of the Underwoods, so we have no coherent picture of how this episode appeared to him. 14. A preliminary announcement of the book appeared in Open Court 1(14):381, 18 Aug. 1887. 15. This document is in OCR, 27/1/5. 16. Cf. the contents page of Open Court 1(21), 24 Nov. 1887. 17. Sara Underwood thought it inappropriate that these "mere compilations made up from English translations of Ribot's works" were published on a par with original contributions to the magazine (Underwoods 1887,28). 18. The couple were definitely engaged by December (Hegeler et al. 1887, 621). 19. Because they felt that they had smoothed his path to the job as Hegelcr's secretmy-tutor, the Underwoods also viewed his pushing for an editorial position as ungrateful at best. B. F. Underwood later accused him of having altered his philosophical and political views to conform with Hegeler's (Underwoods 1887, 34-35). 20. The Open Court Records (2711) contain a form card addressed to E. C. Hegeler, announcing three lectures be given by B. F. Underwood in Peru, Illinois, 27-29 January 1888, on religion, science, agnosticism, and monism.
to
4. The Religion of Science 1. Carns gives similar accounts in 1892a (vi-vii), 1904b (460-66), and 1908b (196-97).
Notes to Pages 47-70
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2. Cams came to detest freethinkers as a party and, in a letter of 11 February 1899, urged Karl Pearson to omit the phrase from one of his book titles: "If you continue to use the words, free thought, as a label of your ... view, I would give you this advice: Look out for your friends; they will do more harm to your cause than your worst enmnies." 3. This is probably the piece to which Sara Underwood referred when she said that only one of Carus's 1887 contributions to the magazine had been accepted on its merits (Underwoods 1887, 28). 4. Carus had similar problems with his terminology in Fundamental Problems, as the Chicago Standard (11 July 1889) pointed out: "The DoctOl~ after fluttering a while hetween Materialism and Supernaturalism, rejects, or rather forgets, them both, and settles down into the stalest Pantheism. Not only is the 'order of the world in its mechanical regularity immanent: but ... 'God is immanent; God and the universe are one.' This we are told on page 91, but on page 49 we learned that 'order is immanent in the universe, and, in fact, it is God.' This tangles things, but so learned a man does not mind tangles. Moreover, we are told that 'this order (which is God) is due to the laws of form.' So God is due to the laws of form. Not only so, but 'it (ordel~ i.e. God) can be ascertained and comp-rehended by an application of the laws of formal thought.' It is plain that the good Doctor is splashing about beyond his depth in a misty sea" (OCR clipping scrapbook, 27, package 1). 5. Cf. P. Carus 1904b, 463; "All formulas of scientific certainty, if correctly stated, are finally just as intrinsically necessary as the equation 2 X 2 = 4 .... We might as well take any complicated equation, for instance, the formula of the Newtonian law of attraction or the result of calculations by which we predict with great precision the movements of the celestial bodies, or events in physics, or the result of any natural process." 6. See, for instance, P. Canis 1904b, 463; 189gb, xiii.
5. The World's Parliament of Religions 1. Carus's essay on parliament, "The Dawn of a New Religious Era," appeared in slightly different forms in his book of that title (1916), in Forum 16:388-96. (Nov. 1893), and ill Monist 4(3; Apr. 1894); appendiX. 2. In the 1894 version of his essay Carus more cautiously
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Notes to Pages 71-105
described it as "undoubtedly the most noteworthy event of this decade" (Monist 4[3]: app.16). The Forum's version qualified it even more (16:395): "deserves to rank among the most noteworthy affairs of this decade." 3. Cf. George Boardman to P. Cams, 7 May 1894; J. H. Barrows to P. Carus, 4 May 1894. Carus was also somewhat active in one other outgrowth of the parliament-Jenkin Lloyd Jones's American Congress of Liberal Religious Societies, which first met in May 1894 and approximately yearly for at least the next decade. See the notice in Open Court 10:4982; ACLRS "Dear Friend" lettel; 15 May 1895, in OCH, 32A128; and Unity, 16 Mal: 1905 reprint, in OCR, 27/121/2. 4. Eventually Bonney himself did so. 5. These same words appear in the report of the committee, which Carus chaired, to set forth the purposes of the American Congress of Liberal Heligious Societies.
6. Looking Toward the East L They are P. Carns 1894a, 1894b, 1894d, 1896a, 1896e, 1897a, and 1898a. Carus also brought out a German version of The Gospel in 1895 and of Karma in 1897. The chronological list of his books and articles is in Sheridan 1957, 1 6 4 - 2 2 8 . ' 2. Carus himselflatcr sought the appointment, without success. See C. C. Bonney to P. Carus, 30 July, 31 July, 13 Aug., 27 Aug. 1902; P. Carus to C. C. Bonney, 23 Aug. 1902. 3. Carus crossed out the first reason in revising the typescript. 4. Two copies of this enclosure, in different stages of revision, with changes to the typescript in Carus's hand, are in OCR, 27/10/2, 27/10/3. It is no doubt passages of this type that caused Carl Jackson (1968,92) to remark that "the Buddhism one finds in his books and journals is Buddhism with a difference. It is a Buddhism that owed as much to Carus as it did to Buddha." 5. Fields (1981, 128) claims that Soyen suggested Suzuki during Soyen's visit to La Salle in 1893, a version equally at variance with the contemporary correspondence. 6. This statement may not be accurate for all of Suzuki's stay: Carus's letter oflB June 1897 to Soyen indicates that Suzuki was then staying at a different house in La Salle. 7. Fields (1981, 136) hints that Suzuki did discuss koans with Caruso
Notes to Pages 105-127
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8. Suzuki got so as to see President William Rainey Harper, but nothing came of it. Cf. Suzuki to P. Carus, 12 Feb, 28 Feb., 9 Mar., 21 Mar., 30 Mar. (year undetermined), in OCR, 27, reel 41. 9. Donald Bishop (1974) has pOinted out that some of Carus's beliefs paralleled Vedantism, but this letter would seem to qualify Bishop's conclusion that Carus "was attracted to the Vedanta school of Hinduism because of its rationalism and monism." 10. See OCH, 27/127:595-98. 11. Notes for a lecture 3 Jan. 1897, in OCH, 27, ree112. 12. A clipping of this article is in OCR, 27, reel 12. 13. Cams had originally written, "It is as if I could definitely consult," but he then crossed it out in favor of "I can definitely consult."
7. Mach 1. Mach was one of the most frequent contributors to magazine during its first twenty years (Open Court 1907). 2. Carus's influence also extended to urging Mach to visit and lecture at American universities (which never happened). Cf P. Carus to E. Mach, 2 June 1897; 13 Mal: 1899; 27 Sept. 1899. 3. This is close to Philip Frank's assessment (1949, 88-89). 4. The letter has also been reprinted in Isis 62(2; Summer 1971):208-9.
8. Peirce 1. See also P. Carus to P. Krishnaswamy Pillaz (lODec. 1896): "1,000 lines of Consolation are in my opinion too many." 2. Ketner (1981) describes Peirce as internationally significant philosopher of the equal rank of Plato or Kal1t." William B. Ewald, in the Times Literary Supplement (8-14 June 1990), contends that "Peirce had a wider range of interests, a deeper knowledge of the history of philosophy, a greater command of the scientific culture of his day than any philosopher since Leibniz." 3. Peirce's Open Cou·rt contributions were "Pythagorics" (6[36]:3375-77); "The Critic of Arguments 1. Exact Thinking" (6[38]:3391-94); "Dmesis" (6[39]:3399-3402); "The Critic of Arguments II. The Header Is Introduced to Helatives" (6[41]:3415-18); "The Marriage of Religion and Science" (7[7] :3559-60; and "What Is Christian Faith?" (7[30]:3743-45).
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Notes to Pages 127-146
4. This letter is in the Harvard Peirce Papers; this collection is henceforth cited as HPE 5. Carus and Hegeler took the criticisms seriously, Hegeler replying on 28Aug.1S90 (Open Court 4[27]:2473-74), and Carus on 11 Sept. 1890 (Open Court 4[29]:2501-2). 6. The Carus-Schroder letter was partially transcribed and summarized by Jurgen Stein and Stein's mother. Enclosure in Hngh Muldoon to Max Fisch, 7 Jan. 1971, Peirce Edition Project files, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. 7. The letter is a copy made by E C. Russell. The rejection was so definite that Peirce suggested (17 Oct. 1894, HPP) that he send his writings to Russell, who would then revise them to suit himself, submit them to Carus as his own, and send Peirce whatever Russell felt was his fair share.
9. Carn's Later Philosophy 1. Carus believed that this philosophy should have three branches: methodology (explaining scientific method), ontology (summarizing scientific findings), and pragmatology (applying those results in fields ranging from sociology to art, political economy to "the science of conduct in the broadest sense of the word"); P. Carus 1911b,5-6. 2. In Carus's system, perception is the transfer of the form of the perceived into an analogous form in the gray matter of the brain; memory is the preservation and recall of such forms; causation is the change of form; and the soul itself "would not be possible, without a preservation of form in organized substance." This concept of the soul is the nexus between Carus's basic technical philosophy and his grand vision of life and history, but he did not explain it very precisely. At various places in The Philosophy of Form he eharacterized the soul as "the sum total of all the feelings of an organism," "the Significance of feelings," and "the interpretation of sense-impressions." Later on, "the soul is form," but no, "not even the forms of [the] brain, but their significance" (1911b, 25, 23, 17, 26, 34). 3. One Yoshio Mikami (1911) protested in The Monist that Carus had thereby introduced "not a single assumption only, but ... a group of assumptions." 4. During Carus's lifetime Open Court's two most important mathematical publications were a 1901 translation of Richard De-
Notes to Pages 147-167
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183
dekind's Essays on the Theory of Numbers and a 1915 translation 'of Georg Cantor's Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, with notes and an eighty-two-page introduction by Jourdain (McCoy 1987,128, 73-74), 5. The book consists of three articles reprinted from The Monist with minor rearrangements: "The Principle of Relativity" (22[2]: 188-229); "The Philosophy of Relativity in the Light of the Philosophy of Science" (22[ 4]:540-79); and "The Principle of Relativity as a Phase in the Development of Science" (23[3]:417-21). 6. Bernstein (1973, viii) also quotes W. F. Magie's 1911 presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science: "I do not believe that there is any man now living who can assert with truth that he can conceive of time which is a function of velocity oris willing to go to the stake fOl' the conviction that his' now' is another man's future or still another man's 'past.'"
10. The Great War 1. Perhaps Goldbeck had in mind the third verse: "What means the blue of the starry field? I The blue is a vision of heaven. I To genuine faith which in deeds is revealed, I The promised land is given. I And the silvery stars in the fields of blue, I Like the stars in the sky that are real, I Are our trusting hopes, our gUides so true, I Our aspirations ideal" (P. Carus 1898c). 2. National Archives (NA), Bureau of Investigation (BI) memo stamped 5 Apr. 1917; H. R. George, B1 memo stamped 16 Feb. 1918. 3. NA, BI memo from Special Agent Charles W. Smith, Battle Creek, Mich., 19 June 1918. 4. NA, BI memo from William S. Fitch, Grand Rapids, Mich., 30 Aug. 1918. 5. NA, B1 memo from H. G. Edmands, 27 Aug. 1918. 6. NA, BI memos from H. R. George, 10 Feb. 1918; Clyde Capron, 4 Sept. 1918; W. H. Kerrick, 12 Nov., 6 Dec., 11 Dec. 1918; William S. Fitch, 29 Aug., 30 Sept. 1918; and APL operative 1. Berg, stamped 3 Jan. 1918.
Epilogue 1. See also the critical review by Dunning (1895). 2. The totals are from the table on page 45 (Stevens 1943), including his categories "SOCiology," "Political Problems," and
184
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Notes to Pages 169-170
"Rights of Women." 3. For instance, Paul Carus's letters to Paula Carns, 8 Feb. 1918; Edward Carus, 17 Jan. 1914; Herman Carus, 27 Mar. 1918; Gustave Carus, 20 Dec. 1918; and Prof. Edwin Tausch, 31 May 1909. 4. Paul Carus to Right Rev. Swami Mazziniananda, 3 Apr. 1911. This was a project of more than ten years' standing: see Paul Carus to Satis Chandra Acharyya Vidyabhersan, 8 Feb. 1899. 5. P. CanIs, 1892c; Twin City Skat Club, 1896 banquet announcement, in OCR, 32/6; debating club constitution, membership list, and form letter from "Paul Car us, PrOl11otel~" in OCR, 32A/28.
References Archives Harvard Peirce Papers (HPP). Harvard University, Cambridge. National Archives Record Service (NA). Record Croup 65, Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Investigation Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation, 1908-22. Microfilm series M 1085. Dc Paul Carus file no. OC 5409. National Archives, Washington, D.C. Open Court Publishing Company Records, 1886-1953 (OCR). Manuscript collections 27, 32, 32A. Morris Library, Special Collections, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Other Sources Alexandel~
P. Ernst Mach. In Encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. P. Edwards, 5:115-19. New York: Macmillan, Free Press. Anderson, P., and M. Fisch 1939 Philosophy in America: From the Puritans to James. New York and London: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Anonymous 1908 Review of The Negm, a menace to American civilization, by R. W Shufeldt. Open Court 22(11):702-3. Ashitsu, Z. 1894 The fundamental teachings of Buddhism. Monist 4(2):163-75. Ayel~ N. W, & Son 1885-1936 American newspaper annual. 1885, 1890, 1893-94, 1896,1900,1902-3,1905-1936. Barrows, J. H. 1893 The Worlds Parliament of Religions; An illustrated and popula·r story ofthe worlds first parliament ofl-eligions, held in Chicago in connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893. 2 vols. Chicago: Parliament Publishing Co. 1967
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Lecture. Quoted in Chicago Tribune, 13 Jan. 1896; also quoted in Open Court 11(1):43. 1897 Christianity the wodd-religion. Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Co. Bernstein, J. 1973 Einstein. New York: Viking. Bishop, D. H. 1974 The Carus-James controversy. Journal ofthe History of Ideas 35:509-20. Blackmore, J. T. 1972 Ernst Mach: IIis work, life, and influence. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Blau, J. L. 1952 Men and movements in American philosophy. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-HalL Bonney, C. C. 1895 The World's Parliament of Religions. Monist 5(3):321-44. 1901 The Religious Parliament idea: A true story of an orthodox example. Open Court 15(9):513-16. Calpentel~ J. E. 1895 Review of The gospel of Buddha, by P. Caruso New World 4:157-58. Carus, Alwin, and Elisabeth Carus 1988 Interview with author. La Salle, Ill., 15 Mar. 1988. Carus, Andre W 1987 Address. Hundredth anniversary Open Court observance. Chicago, Dec. Carus, G. 1888 Christianity and monism: A criticism of the work of The Open Court. Open Court 2(44):1379-81. Carus, P. 1881 Metaphysik in Wissenschaft, Ethik und Religion. Dresden: R. von Grumbkow. 1882 Lieder eines Buddhisten. Dresden: R. von Grumbkow. 1883 Ursaohe, Grund und Zweok. Dresden: R. von Grumbkow. 1884 Aus dem Exil. Allerhand Mittheilungen. Dresden: R. von Grumbkow. Typescript translation by Sally E. Robertson, From exile: News of all sorts. Author's files. 1885 Monism and meliorism: A philosophical essay on causality and ethics. New York: F. W Christern. 1896
References 1886a 1886b 1887a 1887b 1887c 1887d 1887e 1887f 1887g 1888a 1888b 1888c 1888el 1888e 1888f 1889a 1889b
1890a 1890b 1890c 1890d 1890e 1891a 1891b
1891c 1892a 1892b 1892c
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Ein Leben in Leiderll, Gedichte eines Heimathlosen. Milwaukee: Freidenker Publishing Co. Principles of artJrom the standpoint ofnwnisl'n and meliorism. Boston [?]: The Industrial Art Teachers' Association [Pl. The harmony of the spheres. Open COtt'rt'1(2):33-35. Monism, dualism, and agnosticism. Open Court 1(8):209-12. Review of The Religious Sentiment, by D. G. Brinton. Open Court 1(6):167-68. Science and religion. Open Court 1(15):'105. Th. Ribot on diseases of memory. Open Court 1(13):344-48. Th. Ribot on memory. Open Court 1(10):264-67. Th. Ribot on will. Open Court 1(17):455-58, 1(18):487-90. Monism and religion. Open Court 1(24):694-95. The oneness of man and nature. Open Court 2(21):1107-10. The religious character of monism: In reply to the criticism of Dr. Gustav Caruso Open Court 2(44):1381-84. Supcrstition in religion and science. Open Court 2(4):83739. SupplementalY note. In Monism and melio'rism, November. The unknowable. Open Court 1(23):667-69. Cognition, knowledge, and truth. Open Court 2(50):1458. Fundamental problems: The method of philosophy as a systematic arrangement cifknowledge. Chicago: Opcn Court Publishing Co. The religion of a forerunner of Christ. Open Court 4(43):2635-36. The religion of rcsignation. Open Cowrt 3(48):2051-52. Thc unity of truth. Open Court 4(29):2501-2,2510. A visit to Joliet. Open Court 4(31):2538-39. The vocation. Open Court 3(46):2027-28. The pope's encyclical. Open Court 5(21):2877-80. The soul ofman: An investigation ofthe facts of phYSiological and experimental psychology. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. Spencerian agnosticism. Open Court 5(30):2951-57. Homilies of science. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. The idea of necessity, its basis and its scope. Monist 3(1):6896. Letter to W. R. Harpel; 28 Feb. 1892. W R. Harper Papers, box 1, folder 22. Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.
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Neely's history of the Parliament of Religions and religiOUS congresses. Chicago: F. Tennyson Neely. Hulst, C. S. 1916 Our secret alliance. Open Court 30(10):577-609. Jackson, C. T. 1968
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James, w. 1907 Pragmatism, a new name for some old ways of thinking: Popular lectures on philosophy, New York: Longmans, Green, Jourdain, P. E. B. 1915 Note on the European war. Open Court 29(1):7-11. Judson, A. A. 1894 Article. Banner of Light, 15 Sept. (Copy in clipping scrapbook, OCR.) Ketn81~ K. L. 1981 Peirce as an interesting failure? In Graduate Studies Texas
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D. H. Paul Carus and the religion of science. Ame'rican Quarterly 14:597-607. Mikami, Y. 1910 Remarks on Dr. Carns's view concerning geometry. Monist 21(1):126-31. Murphey, M. C. 1967 Charles S. Peirce. In Encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. P. Edwards, 6:70-78. New York: Macmillan, Free Press. Obituary 1889 Obituary of C. Caruso Open Court 3(29):1834. (First published in Ostpreussische Zeittlng, 21 Aug. 1889.) Open Court Publishing Co. 1907 TIventy years ofthe Open Court: An index ofcontributed and editorial articles. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. Peirce, C. S. 1890 Review of Fundamental problems, by P. Caruso Nation 51:118-19. 1891 The architecture of theories. Monist 1(2):161-76. 1892a The doctrine of necessity examined. Monist 2(3):321-37. 1892b The law of mind. Monist 2(4):553-59. 1892c Man's glassy essence. Monist 3(1):1-22. 1893a Evolutionary love. Monist 3(2): 176-200. 1893b Reply to the necessitarians. Monist 3(4):526-70. 1896 The regenerated logic. Monist 7(1):19-40. 1897 The logic of relatives. Monist 7(2):161-217. 1900 Review of Kant and Spencer, by P. Caruso Nation 8 Feb. 1900. 1906 Prolegomena to an apology for pragmaticism. Monist 16(4):492-546. Persons, S. 1947 Free religion: An American faith. New Haven: Yale University Press. Poppel~ K. 1972 Of clouds and clocks. In Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach, 206-55. London: Oxford University Press. Religio-Philosophical Journal 1890 Religio-Philosophical Journal, 31 May, 26 July. Reville, J. 1900 The International Congress of the History of Religions. Open Court 14(5):271-75. 1962
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Soyen, S. N.d. Preface. For the Japanese edition of Gospel of Buddha. In OCR, 27, reel 40. 1893 The law of cause and effect, as taught by Buddha. In Barrows 1893, 829-31. 1894 The universality of truth. Monist 4(2):161-62. 1895 Letter on Religious Parliament Extension. Monist 5(3):34748. (Quoted in P. Carus 1895d.) 1904 At the battle of Nan-Shan Hill. Open Court 18(12):705-9. 1906 Sermons of a Buddhist abbot: Addresses on religious subjects. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. Soyen, S., J. H. Barrows, and F. F. Ellinwood 1897 A controversy on Buddhism. Open Court 11(1):43-58. Stanton, T. 1898 Victor Charbonnel. Open Court 12(5):293-99. Stevens, R.E. 1943 The Open Court Publishing Company, 1887-1919. M. A. thesis, University of Illinois. Stroh, C. W. 1968 American philosophy from Edwards to Dewey: An introduction. New York: Van Nostrand. Sugden, S. J. B. 1987 Historical introduction. In McCoy 1987, 11-27. Suzuki, D. T. 1900 The breadth of Buddhism. Open Court 14(1):51-53. 1908 Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. 1959a Introduction: A glimpse of Paul Caruso In Modern trends in wodd religions, ed. J. M. Kitagawa, ix-xiv. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Co. 1959b Zen Buddhism. In Modern trends in wodd religions, ed. J. M. Kitagawa, 261-79. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Co. Tebbel, J. 1975 A history of book publishing in the United States. Vol. 2, The expansion of an industry, 1865-1919. New York: R. R. Bowker. Truth Seeker 1889 Truth Seeker, 26 Jan. 1889. OCR, clipping scrapbook, 27, package 1.
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Index Agnosticism, 60-61; Carus on, 16-17, 38-39; in Hegeler-Underwood controversy, 31-32 Akashi, Rev. S" 112 Albers, A. Christina, 113 American of Liberal Religious Societies, 180nn. 3, 5 American Protective 162-64 Anandu Maitreya, 114, 116 Anarchists, 126, 167 A priori, 15-16, 147; in Carus-Peirce controversy on necessity, 131; synthetic,51 Aristotle, 61 An'eat, Lucien, 74, 154 Aus dem Exit (Carus), 8, 9-10, 46 Barrows, John Henry, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71; on Buddhism, 97-100; death of, 79 "Basis of Ethics, The" (Hegeler), 2324,32,35 Billia, L. M., 60 Binet, Alfred, 118 Bishop, Donald, 181n.9 Blackmore, John, 120, 123 Blaise, T. T., 126 Bonet-Maury, 75-76, 77 Bonney, Charles C., 66, 70-72, 74, 75, 78-79,80; death of, 79; and DhaI~ mapala, 110, 111; World's Congresses, on need for, 65 Bonncy, Lydia Pratt, 167 Boole, Mrs. George, 126 "Breadth of Buddhism, The" (Suzuki), 104-5 Bryan, William Jennings, 167 Buddha, 92, 109, 112, 115--17 Buddhism, 64, 68-69, 89-117; Carus
on, 2, 5, 89-100, 107-8, 114-17; and Christianity, 90-91, 104-5, 114-15, 156; irrational aspects of, 105; and psychology of self, 54
Buddhism and Its Christian Critics (Carus),114-15 Bureau of Investigation (U.S. ment of Justice), 162-..64 Candlin, Rev. George, 73 Canto!; Georg, 118, 182-83n.4 Carnegie, Andrew, 80 CarpenteI; Estlin, 78, 95 Carus, Alwin, 160, 167, 169, 170, 176n.6 Carus, Andre, 169 Carus, Edward, 163, 164, 169 Carus, Gustav, 4, 8-9, 47 Carus, Laura Krueger, 4, 9 Carus, Martha, 156 Garus, Mary Hegeler (see also Mmy), 49, 163, 164 Carus, Paul-: achievements, 2-3, 170-71; on agnostieism, 16-17, 3839, 6061; on artificial language, 165; as "atheist who loves God," 47; on Buddhism, 2, 5, 89-100, 107-8, 11417; Chicago, first arrival in, 35, 36; on child-rearing, 165; on Christianity, 6-7, 45-47, 50-51., 53, 114IS, 170; condescension of; 61-62, 122; confession of error by, 17; Conway, Moncure, reply to, 59-{)0; courtship of, 41; death of, 164; depm'ture from Germany of, 7-9; and Dharmapala, 108-12; education of, 4-5; England, attitudes toward, 9, 10, 156-57, 159; Ethical Culture Society, speech to, 57-58; all ethics
199
200
o
based on facts, 57-60; on evolution, 18, 59-60, 144; on freethinkers, 179n.2; on Freud, 166; gadgets, fondness fOl; 111, 123; Germany, attitudes toward, 9-10, 153, 154, 15659; Great Wal; response to outbreak of, 156-59; health problems of, 124, 161; and HegelCl; E. C., 22, 32-35, 133-38, 155; Hegelel; E. c., influenced by, 22, 38-39, 46, 52, 61, 142; HegelelcUnderwood controversy, role of in, 27, 31, 38-39, 41-43; on immortality, 54-56; on imperialism, 168; Index, The, contribution to, 26; on infinity, 17, 146; interests, variety of, 165-68; isolation of, 169-70; and James, William, 148-51; and Kakichi Ohara, 112-13; La Salle, first arrival in, 36; and Mach, 120-24, 171; on mathematics, 49-52, 145-46; on metaphysics, 12, 15; middle ground, preference fOl; 16, 19, 46, 51, 77-78, 166; military experience of, 5; on missionaries, 108; as modernist, 171; New York Times obituary of, 176n.2; and Open Court, 41--43; paradox of, 1-2; on pasigraphy, 165; and Peirce, Charles S., 126-41; personal beliefs of, 6-7, 45-46; personality of, 1; on philosophy, 13, 150, 182n.l; on pluralism, 150; on poetry, 126, 165; popular writing style of, 13; previous works on, 3; "racial feelings," lack of, 167; relations with parents, 4, 89; on relativity, 146-48; ReligiOUS Parliament Extension, as secretmy of, 65; on Schopenauer, 166; on scientific method, 131; on Shakespeare, 165-66; sociopolitical interests of, 166-67; and Soyen, Shaku, 68-69, 92-93, 95, 97-106, 108; on Spanish-American War, 15356; on Spencer, Herbert, 61-62, 139; and Suzuki, 96-97, 100-107, 171-72; as teachel; 1, 5-6, 9, 10; and UndClc woods, 22,27,31,32-35,36-39,4144, 177-78nn. 11-13, 17, 19; United States, attitude toward, 10, 12--13,
Index 153, 155, 160-61; and Vedantism, 181n.9; on war and peace, 97, 153, 158; on Whitman, 165; on women's suffrage, 167; works of, 1 (see also specific titles); at World's Congress Auxilimy reunion, 71; on World's Parliament of Religions, second, 74-78; World's Parliament of Religions, speech given at, 64, 66-67,68 Carus Chemical Co., 164 Certainty, 25, 32, 53-54, 60, 131, 145, 179n.5 Charbonnel, Abbe VictOl; 75-78 Chicago Standard, 47, 179n.4 Chicago Tribune, 40, 164 Chinese Philosophy (Carus), 92 Christ, 53, 115 Christianity, 6-7, 45-47,50-51,53,57, 64, 114-15, 170; and Buddhism, 9091, 104--5, 114-15, 156; at World's Parliament of Religions, 69 Comte, Auguste; 14 Confucianism, 64 Converse, Charles C., 154-55 Conway, Moncure, 22, 26, 29, 40; on Carus's ethical theOlY, 59-60 Cook, Rev. Joseph, 73 Copernicus, 14, 53, 57 Dalai Lama, 169-70 Daniels, A. H., 163 Darwin, Charles, 18, 25 "Dawn of a New Religious Era," (Carus), 64-65, 179n.l Dawn of a New ReligiOUS Era (Carus), 80,175n.4 Dedekind, Richard, 182-83n.4 Delitzsch, Friedrich, 118 Determinism, 18-19, 129-31 Dewey, John, 13, 126 Dharmapala, 67, 72, 101, 102, 108-12, 114,115-17; on Christianity, 109, 110, 111; on Gospel on Buddha, 96 "Doctrine of Necessity Examined" (Peirce, Charles S.), 129-31 Druyvesteyn, Kenten, 70
Index Edmands, H. G., 163 Ein Leben in Ltedem, Gedichte cines Heimathlosen (Carus), 32 Einstein, Albert, 146 Ellinwood, F. E, 99-100 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 26 Ethical Culture Society, 23, 33, 57, 58, 176n.1 Ethical Problem, The (Carus), 60 "European Opinions on the Second Parliament of Religions" (Carus), 75-76 Evolution: and ethics, 59-60; of form, 23-24; mechanism of, 18; progress and,144-45 Ewald, William B., 181n.2 Fallows, Bishop Samuel, 71, lIO Feibleman, James K., 128 Fields, Rick, 120, 180nn. 5, 7 Finis, 17-18 First International Congress of the History of Religions, 79 Forlong, Gen. G. R., 90 Form, 23-24, 182n.2; in CarusMach controversy 122; in Carus Peircc controversy, 130-31; in Carus's philosophy, 142-44, 18211.2; Hegeler's view of, 23-24 Forum, The, 179n.1, 179-80n.2 Foundations of Mathematics (Canis), 145-46 Frank, Philip, 181n.3 Frederick the Great, 7 Free Religious Association, 23, 26, 27, 28 Freethinkers, International Congress of, 66 Freud, Sigmund, 166 Freytag, G., 48 Fundamental Problems (Carus), 52, 143; reviewed, 13, 47, 128, 131, 179n.4 Garbe, Richard, 91, 118 Garett, Garet, 161 George, Henry, 10 German-American culture, 161-62 German American Litermy Defense Fund,160
o
201
Gibbons, Cardinal, 67, 76, 77; quoted, 72,75 Goethe, 24 Goldbeck, Dl~ Robert, 154-55 Goodspeed, George S., 94-95 Gospel of Buddha, The (Carus), 91, 92, 93-97, 99, 100, 109, lll; Buddhists' reception of, 95-97, 106; Dhm~ mapala on, 109; Goodspeed on, 9495; Ingersoll on, 56; Kakichi Ohara on, 112-13; as Open Court best-seiler, 89; reviewed, 94-95; Soyen on, 95; Suzuki on, 96-97 Grassmann, Hermann, 5, 52, 90, 145 Great Wm; 156-61 Green, Dr. Charles, 162 Grumbine, Rev. J. C. E, 48 Haeckel, El'Ilst, 125, 156 "Harmony of the Spheres, The" (Carus), 49-50 Harpel', William Rainey, 110, 133, 18111.8 Haskell, Caroline, 97 Hay, John, 159 Hayashi, D., 113 Hegeler, Edward Carl, 11, 14, 20, 21-44, 49, 52; on agnosticism, 24, 31-32, 42; autocratic tendencies of, 22, 133-34; "Basis of Ethics, The," 2324, 32, 35; Carus, influence on, 22, 38-39,46,52, 61, 142; Carus, negotiations with, 32-35; and Dharmapala, 110; and Ethical Culture Society, 23, 176-77n.1; and European thought, 33-34, 118, 17677n.1; on form, evolution of, 23-24; and freethought, Anglo-American, 22-25; on Index, The, 29; and Mach, Ernst, 120; on music in Open Court, 155; and Peircc, Charles S., 127, 133-38; on philosophy, 32; Russell, Francis C., on, 176-7711.1; and Soyen, Shaku, 93, 106; on Spencel; Herbert, 24; and Suzuki, Teitaro, 101; and Underwoods, 25-44, 17778nn. 2, 8, 10-12 Hegelcr, Mmy (see also Carus, MalY Hegeler), 20, 41, 49, 177n.2
202 Heller, Rabbi Max, 158 Hering, Oswald, 39 Higman Park, 162, 163 Hills, Rev. B. A., 116 Hinduism, 64, 108, 114, 181n.9 "Hinduism Different from Buddhism" (Carns), 114 lliStOl'Y of the Devil, The (Carus), 166 Hoffding, Harold, 60 Holland, F. M., 48, 60 Homilies of Science (Carus), 8-9, 59, 123 Hopkins, E. Washburn, 94 Hulst, Cornelia S., 159-60 Hume, David, 14, 15, 16, 132 Ibsen, Henrik, 48 Idea of God (Carns), 47 "I Do Not Know" (Underwood, Sara), 42 Illustrated Graphic News, 44 "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" (Peirce, Charles S.), 128, 140-41 Immortality, 54-56 Index, 1118, 26-29, 30, 39; clOSing of, 28-29 Ingersoll, Robert, 26, 54, 67, 78; con'espondence with Carus, 56 InqUisition, 60 Islam, 64, 108 Jackson, Carl, 3, 101; quoted, 89, 92, 107, 113, 115, IBOn.4 Jainism,64 James, William, 120, 126, 133, 140, I4&51 Jodi, Friedrich, 60 Jones, Jenkin Lloyd, I80n.3 Jourdain, P. E. B., 118, 140, 146, 18283n.4; on Great Wal; 159 Judaism, 64, 116 Kahn, Rabbi Zadoc, 75 Kakichi Ohara, 96, 112-13 Kant, Immanuel, 1, 14, 15, 19, 146,
IB1n.2 Kant and Spencer (Carns), 61-62, 139 Karma (Carns), 89-90
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Index Kinsley, Dean, 163 Kinza Hirai, 113 Layman, Emma, 101 Lenin, V. r., 123 Leonard, William EllCly, 1-2, 13, 125 Levy-Bruhl, Lucien, 118 Lewins, Robert, 60 Lieder eines Buddh/sten (Carus), 90 Lombroso, Cesare, 126 Loyson, Mme. Emile Hyacinthe, 80 Loyson, Pere Hyacinthe, 50,125 McCormack, Thomas J., 49, 133, 163 McCoy, Ralph, 3, 175n.1 Mach, Ernst, 2, 3, 24, 119-24, 133, 171; and Carus, 120-24; letter of tribute to Hegeler and Carus, 124 Mach, Ludwig, 124 McKinley, William, 159 Maddock, John, 60 Magie, W F., 183n.6 Maha Bodhi Journal, 96 Maha Bedhi Society, 109 Marty, Martin, 171 Matthiessen, F. W, 21-22 Meliorism, 19, 47 Metaphysik in Wissensohajt, Ethik, und Religion (Carus), 176n.5 Meyer, Donald Harvey, 3 Michelson, Albert, 147 Mikami, Yoshio, 182n.3 Mill, John Stuart, 14 Minton, Henry Collin, 62 Monism, 13-14, 15-16, 38-39, 142; Carus, Gustav, criticism of, 47; Carns-Mach controversy on, 121-22; Carus's changing definitions of, 14, 20; Hegelel~Underwood controversy on, 30, 42; in mathematics, 49-51 Monism and Meliorism (Carus), 11, 1420,32,38,46,61,142,177-78n.11; on ethics, 19-20, 57; moderation of, 46; on religion, 46 «Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism" (Carns),37-39 Monist, The, 1, 9, 13, 22, 68, 72, 74, 121, 124,125,126,127,128,129,138,139,
Index 149,154, 165, 182n.3, 183n.5; circulation of, 144; as Hegeler's prefened title, 29--31, 134; Mach in, 119; Oriental coverage in, 89, 91; Peirce testimonial [01; 139; practical aims of, 12; Soyen in, 91 Monroe Doctrine, 156 Montgomery, Dl: Edmund, 26, 29, 66 Miillel; F. Max, 40, 118-19 Nation, The, 40, 128, 139 National Peace Congress (1909), 153 Natural law, 51-52,149 Nature of the State, The (Carus), 166 Neebe, Oscar, 167 Negro, A Menace to American Civilization, The, 168 New York Herald, 111 New York Times, 176n.2 New York 'Ilibune, 160-61 New York Voice, 48 Nirvana, 91, 95, 98-100 Nugent, Teresa, 163
Olcott, H. S., 79 Oldenberg, Hermann, 118 Open Court, The, 1, 9, 13, 20, 22, 34, 39,40,41,46,47,49,50,59,66,67, 75, 76, 78, 97, 124,125, 126, 127, 133,134,136,138,154,159,161,165, 166, 167,168,178nn. 12,14, 16; advertising for, 35--36; Carus, hope for editorial position on, 36, 37; circulation of, 36, 40-41, 144; contents of, 48-49, 113, 156, 165-67; as European- U.S. link, 118; expenses of, first yea!; 40-41; first issne of, 35; first isliue of, under Carns, 43; Index, The, successor of, 29; liberals and conservatives, aloofness from, 47; Mach in, 119; monthly version of (1897), 46; Oriental coverage in, 89, 90-91, 92; origin of name of, 29-31; Peirce in, 181n.3; practical aims of, 12; sizes of pages of, 48, 49; standing notices fOl; 31,44, 177n.1O Open Court Publishing Co., 2, 20, 67, 128,140,155; and European au-
o
203
thOl'S, 118-19; first book by, 40; founding of, 21-32; moneylosing condition of, 144; origin of name of, 29-31; Oriental coverage by, 91; and univerSity presses, 2, 171 Oswald, Dr. Felix, 26 Om' Children (Carus), 165 "Our Need of Philosophy" (Carus), 1213,66 Pacifism, 97, 153, 158 Panama Exposition, 112 Pan-American of Religion and Education, Pantheism, 24, 179n.4 Parseeism, 64 Pearson, Karl, 179n.2 Peirce, Benjamin, 139-40 Peirce, Charles S., 2, 120, 126-41, 171, 181n.2; "Doctrine of Nccessity Examined," 129·-32; evolntionary cosmology, articles on, 128-29; and Hegeler, E. C., 133-38; "Illustrations of the of Scicnce," 128, 140-41; influence on and Carus, 148; Monist, testimonial for, 139; Open Court, contributions to, 181n.3; Open Court, relations with, 133-41; 1'Cview of Fundamental Problems, 13,128,131; review of Kant and SpenoI'll', 139; on science and religion, 131-32; on scientific method,131 Pennypacker, Joseph, 161 Pentecost, 68 Persons, Stow, 23 Pfonnds, C. w., 90, 114 Philippines, 168 Philosophy (IjJ a Science (Carus), 14 Philosophy of form (Carus), 14, 142, 144, 182n.2 "Philosophy of the Tool, The" (Carus), 66 Plato, 50, 181n.2 Popper, Karl, 126, 129 PotteI; William J., 26,29, 35 Pragmatism, 142, 148-51 Primer of Philosophy (Carus), 13, 57, 100,143,158
204 Principle of Relativity, The (Carus), 146-47 "Professor Mach and His Work" (Carus), 121 Public Opinion, 114 Purinanda, Samana, 112 Radau, Hugo, 118 "Reason Why Abbe Charbonnel Failed, The" (Carus), 76-78 Religion and science, 3, 52-54, 56 "Religion of a Forcrunncr of Christ, TIlC" (Carus), 91 Religion of science, 25, 45--63, 115 Religion of Science (Carus), 55, 100 Religio-Philosophical Journal, 44 Religious Parliament Extension, 65, 71, 80; purpose of, 72-73; Soyen on, 93 Reville, Jean, 79 Revue de Paris, 75, 76
Revue Philosophique, 23 Rhodes, Cecil, 191 Ribot, Theodule, 23, 39,118, 17Bn.17 Royce, JOSiah, 126 Russell, Ml: and Mrs. Alexandcl; 106 Russell, Bertrand, 145-46, 152 Russell, Francis C., 127-28,140; on Hegeler, E. C., 176-77n.l; intermedimy betwecn Peirce and Open Court, 136--38, 182n.7 Russo-Japanese Wm; 97 Sackstedm; Matthew, 109, 110, 155
Sacred ll.tnes for the Consecration of Life (Carus), 54, 106 Sales, Open Court book, 89-90 Salter, William M., 29, 33, 60; roply to Carus on ethics, 58 Sanghamitta, Sister, 113-14 Saunders, Kenneth, 94 Schneider, Herbert, 2, 120 Schopenhauer, 166 Schwab, Michael, 126, 167 "Science a Religious Revelation" (Carus),68
Scientific American, 40 Scientific method, 131 Shakespearc, 165-66
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Index Sheridan, James, 3, 129 Shin, K. S., 14, 120 Shinn, Charles Howard, 158 Shintoism, 64 Smith, Charles 162 Smith, Oliver H. P., 154-55, 170 Snell, Merwin-Marie, 68 SOciety for Ethical Culture. See Ethical Culture Society Soul, 24, 54-56 Soyen, Shaku, 68-69, 97-106, 112, 180nn. 5, 6; and Barrows on Buddhism, 97-100; Carus, meetings with, 68-69, 92, 93, 108; on Gospel of Buddha, 95; and Hegelel; E. C., 93, 106; poem in Monist, 91; on Russo-Japanese War, 97; visit to United States (1905-6), 106; World Parliament of Religions, attendance at, 70 Spanish-American War, 153-56, 168 Spencer, Herbert, 14, 16, 17, 22; criticized by Carus, 61-62, 139; criticized by Hegcler, 24 Stallo, John, 119, 120 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady; 22, 26, 29, 37 Stanton, Theodore, 76, 77 Stevens, Roland E., 166-67 Sugden, Sherwood, 3 Suzuki, Teitaro, 2, 3, 96--97, 100-107, 112, 113, 120, 171-72; on Christianity and Buddhism, 104-5; on Gospel of Buddha, 96-97; La Salle, Illinois, activities of in, 102-3, 104; reasons for coming to United States, 100102, 107, 180n.5; return to Japan of, 106--7; and Taminaga, Enjino, 1034; and University of Chicago, 103, 105,lBln.8
w.,
Taoism, 64, 116 Tao Te Ching, 101, 102-3 Theosophy, 94 Thomas, H. Roger, 160 Tolstoy, Leo, 90, 125 Topinard, Dr. Paul, 57 "Transatlantic Review," 33, 118 Trumbull, Matthew Mark, 39-40, 48, 98
Index
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205
Truth on Trial (Carus), 149 Truth Seeker, 47 Tuttle, W. w., 125-26
Vedantism, 108, 181n.9 Vienna Circle, 119, 171 Vivej
Underwood, Benjamin and Sara, 20, 26-44, 167, 169, 178nn. 12, 13, 19; Hegelel; E. C., agreement with, 28; Hegelel; E. C., negotiations with, 26-32; as Open Court editors, 3243; and Open Court standing notice, 177n.l0 Underwood, Benjamin Franklin, 23, 25-26, 33-44, 127-28, 177-78nn. 2, 8, 11, 12, 19, 20; on Carus's desire for editorial position, 34-35, 36-37; later career of, 43-44; works of, 26 Underwood, Sara, 22, 26, 178n.17, 179n.3; Carus, dislike of, 36, 62; death of, 44; "1 Do Not Know" (poem), 42; as originator of name "Open Court," 29; on resignation from Open Court, 43 "Unfurl the Flag" (Carus), 154-55 Unitarianism, 26, 27, 113 Unknowable, the, 16-17,39
Wagnm; Richard, 113 Weisman, August, 118 Wheelm; Mrs. S. L., 125 Whence and Whither (Carus), 62 Whitman, Walt, 165 Williams, H. H., 91 Wilson, Woodrow, 3, 155, 162 World's Columbian Exposition, 65 World's Congress Auxiliary, 65-66, 71 World's Parliament of Religions, 63, 6470, 90, 97, 109; "distinctively Christian," 69-70; Pentecost, compared with, 68; second, 68, 70-80, 144
Worlds Parliament of Religions, and the Religious Parliament Extension, The, 72
Zickels Novellen-Schatz und FamilienBlatter, 10 Zinc manufacturing, 21-22, 49, 164 Zitsuzen Ashitsu, 91
Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 175n.4
Biography / Philosophy “I am not a common atheist; I am an atheist who loves God.” —Paul Carus, “The God of Science” In the summer of 1880, while teaching at the military academy of the Royal Corps of Cadets of Saxony in Dresden, Paul Carus published a brief pamphlet denying the literal truth of scripture and describing the Bible as a great literary work comparable to the Odyssey. This document was Carus’s first step in a wide-ranging intellectual voyage in which he traversed philosophy, science, religion, mathematics, history, music, literature, and social and political issues. In 1885, Carus published his first philosophical work in English, Monism and Meliorism. The book was not widely read, but it did reach Edward C. Hegeler, a La Salle, Illinois, zinc processor who became his father-in-law as well as his ideological and financial backer. Established in La Salle, Carus began the work that would place him among the prominent American philosophers of his day and make the Open Court Publishing Company a leading publisher of philosophical, scientific, and religious books. Harold Henderson is a staff writer for the Chicago Reader.
Southern Illinois University Press 1915 University Press Drive Mail Code 6806 Carbondale, IL 62901 www.siu.edu/~siupress Cover illustration: Paul Carus holding a copy of Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, published by the Open Court Publishing Company in 1898. Courtesy Open Court Publishing Company archives, Special Collections, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. ISBN 0-8093-2904-2 ISBN 978-0-8093-2904-5
Printed in the United States of America