in the acquisition of political freedom. The Czar is still an absolute Sovereign; his Ministers still remain responsible to no will but his, and their agents have to answer only to their superiors for the manner in which they exercise authority.

. . The sanguine youth of the nation, eager for a career, and burning for activity, finds itself debarred from any course of distinction save that of arms, or that official existence which too often places men in Russia in antagonism to their own countrymen. . . . The old method of government-of police supervision, of private espionage, of imprisonment, of exile, of political silence-has been tried, and the result is discontent and extensive conspiracy. We fear that even the confession of sensualistic atheism by Solovieff will not prevent his memory from being cherished by thousands of his countrymen. They will forget everything, save his desire to endow them with more freedom. Whatever his faults, they will consider that he perished in their cause, and what they will be most disposed to blame will be the unsteadiness of his hand and the uncertainty of his aim.”

The Times also, whilst pleading for Solovieff's execution, acknowledged the fact of the sway of Czardom being rotten to the core, in the following words:" It cannot be disputed that whole classes in Russia are penetrated almost to desperation with a sense of social oppression and wrong. . . . . A social condition like this is the natural soil in which the brooding temperament which seeks a remedy in assassination is nourished."

When all the safety-valves are closed, Nature takes its revenge, and ever and anon occasions the inevitable outburst. Russia is at present under a state of siege from St. Petersburg to Moscow and Warsaw, from Kieff to Kharkoff and Odessa. An Army of Porters, about 15,000 strong, must watch the streets of the capital, day and night; and policemen are set to watch the watchers. Under General Gurko, the crosser of the Balkans, who is now Vice-Emperor, the last lines of legality have also been crossed-if the word "legality" applies at all to Russian institutions. He is invested with unlimited powers, in the place of the disheartened tyrant. The very Grand Dukes are under his orders. Arrests among officers of the army have been the immediate consequence of General Gurko's satrap rule. In several cases, compromising letters and prints were discovered, and executions. both of officers, like Lieutenant Dubrovin, and of privates, have followed. The gallows are in permanent activity. But perhaps the most significant feature-and a promising one too-is the order issued, under court-martial law, that in all the barracks a list of the soldiers' arms is to be drawn up, and to be handed over to the police! the strongest sign of a suspicion against the army itself; and army the whole power of Czardom reposes.

This is on the

When we hear of the arrest of a Senator, of a Director of the Imperial Bank, of Professors, of the son of the Chancellor of the dreaded "Third Section," of the wife of the procurator of a Military Court, of the nephew of the Chief of the Secret Police, and many other such cases, we are driven to the conclusion that, in spite of its furious acts of repression, the autocratic system has become untenable-that it must sooner or later fall. Like the Roman Emperor, Alexander II. might

be glad if revolt had but a single neck. But is it possible for him to imagine that there exists but one party of malcontents? Do not the very arrests just mentioned belie such an assertion?

Conspirators are laid hold of by the Czar's sbirri together with men who would not think of armed resistance. Despotism is frightened, in fact, by the very shadows on the wall. Even the Slavophil and Panslavist parties-still the ready instruments of aggressive policy -have both become imbued with Constitutional ideas that look like sacrilege in the eyes of the Pope-Czar. The revolutionists of Land and Liberty ("Zemlja i Wolja"); the Socialist Jacobins who follow the doctrines of the Tocsin ("Nabat"); the Nihilists, properly speaking; and the moderate Constitutionalists, are all alike the enemies of the present form of Government. In some districts the peasantry have risen; and, remarkable to say, the first troop of Cossacks that was led against the insurgents, refused to fight them. These are portents whose gravity cannot be mistaken.

Ten years ago, when the Napoleonic Empire still stood erect, I said, in an article on "The Condition of France," in the Fortnightly Review:

"A mighty change is undoubtedly hovering in the air. There may be short and sharp shocks and counter-shocks for a little while; but, unless all signs deceive, the great issue cannot be long delayed. The calmest observer is unable to deny the significance of the electrical flashes occasionally shooting now across the atmosphere. It is as if words of doom were traced in lurid streaks, breaking here and there through the darkened sky. We are strongly reminded of the similar incidents which marked the summer of 1868 in Spain. Those incidents were then scarcely understood abroad; yet they meant the subsequent great event of September. Even so there are now signs and portents in France-only fraught with a meaning for Europe at large."

This was published in December, 1869. In the following year, September, 1870, Bonapartist rule was a thing of the past.

Czardom, on its part, may play out its last card by embarking upon a fresh war. It will only thereby hasten its doom. Though in Russia concentrated action, for the sake of overthrowing a system of Government, is surrounded with greater difficulties than in France, I fully expect that the day is not far distant when Autocracy must either bend by making a concession to the more intelligent popular will, or be utterly broken and uprooted. "Terror for Terror!" is a war-cry of despair; but on such a principle a nation's life cannot continue. The moment may come when the Tyrant will be driven to bay in his own palace. And loud and hearty will be the shout of freemen when that event occurs of the men striving for liberty in the great prison-house of the Muscovite Empire itself, as well as of all those abroad who have still some pity left in their hearts for the woes of a host of down-trodden nations.

KARL BLIND.

THE FIRST SIN,

AS RECORDED IN THE BIBLE AND IN ANCIENT ORIENTAL TRADITION.

THE

HE idea of the Paradisiacal happiness of the earliest human beings constitutes one of the most universal of traditions. According to the Egyptians, the terrestrial reign of the God Ra, by which the existence of the world and of humanity was inaugurated, was an age of gold, to which Egyptians ever recurred regretfully; so that in order to convey the idea of any given thing transcending imagination, they were in the habit of affirming that "nothing had ever been seen like unto it since the days of the God Ra."

This belief in an age of innocence and bliss, by which the career of humanity began, is also to be met with amongst all peoples of Aryan or Japhetic race, and was theirs anterior to their separation, the learned having long agreed that this is one of the points on which Aryan traditions are most plainly derivable from one common source with those of the Semitic race, of which last Genesis affords us the expression. But with Aryan nations this belief was closely linked with a conception specially their own-that, namely, of four successive ages of the world; and we find this conception attain to fullest development in India. Created things, and among them humanity, are destined to endure for 12,000 divine years, each of which contains 360 years as reckoned by men. This enormous period of time is divided into four ages or epochs: the age of perfection, or Kritayuga; the age of the threefold sacrifice—that is, the perfect accomplishment of all religious duties, or Trêtayuga; the age of doubt or of the obscuration of religious notions, Dvaparayuga; finally, the age of perdition, or Kaliyuga, which is the present age, only to be brought to a close by the destruction of the world.* The Works and Days of Hesiod show us that

* The system is thus expounded in the "Laws of Manu," i. 68-86. For its ulterior developments see Wilson, Vishnu-Purāna, pp. 23-26, and 259–271.

precisely the same succession of ages was held by the Greeks, but without their duration being calculated by years, and with the supposition of a new humanity being produced at the beginning of each; the gradual degeneracy, however, which marks this succession of ages is expressed by the metals after which they are named-gold, silver, brass, and iron. Our present humanity belongs to the age of iron, and is the worst of all, although it began with the heroes. Zoroastrian Mazdeism also admits this theory of the four ages, and we find it expressed in the Bundehesh, but under a form less nearly akin to the Indian conception than was Hesiod's, and was Hesiod's, and without the without the same spirit of crushing fatalism. Here the duration of the universe is fixed at 12,000 years, divided into four periods of 3000. In the first all is pure; the good God Ahuramazda reigns over his creation, in which as yet evil has not appeared; in the second, the evil spirit Angromainyus issues from the darkness in which he had up to this time remained inert, and declares war against Ahuramazda, and then begins their conflict of 9000 years, which occupies three of the world's ages. During the first 3000 years Angromainyus has but little power; during the second, the success of the two principles remains pretty evenly balanced; finally, during the last age, which is that of historic times, evil prevails, but this age is to terminate with the final defeat of Angromainyus, to be followed by the resurrection of the dead and the beatitude of the risen just. The advent of the prophet of Iran, of Zarakhustra (Zoroaster) is placed at the close of the third age, or exactly in the middle of that period of 6000 years which is assigned to the duration of the human race under their actual conditions.

Certain learned authorities-as, for instance, Ewald and M. Mauryhave striven to discover in the general order of Biblical history traces of this system of the four ages. But impartial criticism must admit that they have not made out their case; the foundations on which they have tried to establish their demonstration are so entirely artificial, so opposed to the spirit of the Scripture narrative, that they break down of themselves. And, indeed, M. Maury is the first to allow that there is a

Theopompus, cited by the author of the treatise "On Isis and Osiris," attributed to Plutarch (c. 47), already pointed out this doctrine as existing among the Persians.

+ Ewald calculates the four ages of the world which he believes he has discerned in the Bible as follows:-1. From the Creation to the Deluge; 2. from the Deluge to Abraham ; 3. from Abraham to Moses; 4. from the Promulgation of the Mosaic Law. Such epochs have scarcely any resemblance to the Ages of Hesiod or of the Laws of Manu. And, moreover, it is well to note that wherever we meet simultaneously, as we do with Indians, Iranians, and Greeks, with the existence of the four ages and the tradition of the Deluge, these are completely independent of each other, have no connection whatever, which indicates a difference of origin, from sources having nothing in common. Nowhere does the Deluge coincide with the transition between two of these ages.

Nevertheless, there is a point where a certain approximation may be established between the theories of India and those of the Bible. The Laws of Manu say that in the four successive ages of the world the duration of human life goes on decreasing in the proportion of 4, 3, 2, 1; in the Bible we have the antediluvian patriarchs, with the exception of Enoch, who was translated to Heaven, living about 900 years. Subsequently Shem lives 600, and his three first descendants between 430 and 460; to the four succeeding generations there is assigned a life of between 200 and 240 years; finally, from the time of Abraham the existence of the patriarchs comes nearer to normal data, and no longer reaches a maximum of 200 years.

fundamental opposition between the Biblical tradition and the legend of Brahminical India or of Hesiod. In this last, as he himself remarks, we see "no trace of a predisposition to sin transmitted by inheritance from the first man to his descendants, no vestige of original sin."

No doubt, as Pascal has so eloquently said, "it is in this abyss that the problem of our condition gathers its complications and intricacies, so that man is more inconceivable without this mystery than this mystery is inconceivable to man;" but the truth of the fall and of original sin is one of those against which human pride has most constantly rebelled, is, indeed, the one from which it spontaneously seeks to escape. Hence of all portions of primeval tradition as to the beginnings of humanity it has been the earliest obliterated. As soon as men felt the sense of exultation to which the progress of their civilization and their conquests in the material world gave birth, they repudiated the idea. Religious philosophers springing up outside the revelation which was held in trust by the chosen people took no account of the Fall; and, indeed, how could that doctrine have been made to harmonize with the dreams of Pantheism and emanation? By rejecting the notion of original sin, and substituting the doctrine of emanation for that of creation, most of the peoples of pagan antiquity were led to the melancholy theory of the four ages, such as we find it in the Sacred Books of India and the poetry of Hesiod. It was by the law of decadence and continual deterioration that the ancient world believed itself so heavily laden. In proportion as time passed and things departed further and further from their point of emanation, they corrupt themselves and grow ever worse. This is the effect of an inexorable fate and of the very force of their development. In this fatal evolution towards decline, there is no room left for human freedom; the whole revolves in a circle from which there is no means of escaping. With Hesiod, each age marks a decadence from the one that preceded it; and, as the poet explicitly declares regarding the iron age inaugurated by heroes, each of these ages taken separately follows the same descending scale as does their totality. In India the conception of the four ages or Yuga, by developing itself and producing its natural consequences, engenders that of the Manvantara. According to this new theory the world, after having accomplished its four ages of constant degeneration, undergoes dissolution (pralaya), things having reached such a pitch of corruption as to be no longer capable of subsisting. Then there springs up a new universe, with a new humanity-doomed to the same cycle of necessary and fatal evolution, which the four Yugas in turn go through, till a new dissolution takes place; and so on to infinity. Here we have, indeed, fatalism under the most cruelly inexorable form, and also the most destructive of all true morality. For there can

responsibility where there is no freedom, nor is there in any good or evil where corruption is the effect of an irresistible evolution.