The Martyrdom of Man
A while back we had a discussion of popular and/or highly-thought-of books of the past that we’ve never heard of, and that don’t seem all that great if we try to tackle them now.
Well, I recently came across The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade, which may just be the most influential book you never heard of. I had certainly never heard of it before. Nevertheless:
It is not an exaggeration to say that it provided a view of History as revolutionary as Darwin’s view of Science – an entirely new and non-religious way of looking at the subject. It was very popular and influential on publication in the 1870’s and long after – Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells and George Orwell were all heavily influenced.
Even Sherlock Holmes said “Let me recommend this book, — one of the most remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade’s ‘Martyrdom of Man.'”
I came across it in a biography of Churchill—I forget which one—that said Churchill thought it to be an important work.
If you want to have a go at it, you can find it online here.
We have seen that Reade’s longing to achieve something which should cause him to be remembered after his death was an abiding passion, and how all the efforts that he consciously made towards this end failed, in his own judgment, to achieve it. Yet a book that he wrote in great measure to ease his conscience was destined, in spite of the most violent opposition, to make its way where his other endeavours failed, and is still read with pleasure by a large and apparently increasing public among the generation which sprang up after his death. Such a phenomenon is almost without parallel in the history of literature, and cannot, I think, be attributed merely to the subject-matter of the book. Perhaps Reade’s style had benefited, as sometimes happens, by the long period of literary idleness that it underwent at Falaba, when, as he tells us, he found it impossible to write anything intended for the public; or perhaps it was purified by the abandonment of the conscious striving after effect noticeable in his earlier works;””the fact remains that the Martyrdom of Man shows just that touch of genius which is lacking in its author’s romances and travel-books, and merits in full measure the eulogies which such different critics as Sir Henry Rawlinson, Charles Reade, and Sir Harry Johnston have bestowed upon its literary style.
It’s interesting that I’m unfamiliar with those three guys mentioned in that last sentence, too.
I just couldn’t get through the first few pages of the book; you can read about it here. Sounds fairly leftist and anti-religion in nature, but that Churchill endorsement gives me pause on that. Here’s an even more thorough description, one that doesn’t incline me to read the book, either.
The ex-classics website where the book can be found has an interesting concept:
The Ex-Classics project was founded in 2000 to fill an unmet need. When reading the blurb etc. to a book by Charles Dickens or Charlotte Bronte, say, we would often come across sentences like “Favourite reading included . . .” If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us. So off we go to the library or bookshop, to be met first with blank stares and then with the information that the book has been out of print for decades. Our first two books were Gil Blas and Hudibras, which are prime examples of this. This web site is dedicated to rescuing these works from obscurity and making them available online, both for reading directly, and for downloading.
It takes a lot to stand the test of time. Homer, The Bible, Plato, Shakespeare—how many others are there, really?
Years ago I read everything i could find by Orwell. He mentioned a history book that influenced him greatly to be an atheist. I purchased the book used and found it to be unreadable.
I like to think that if Orwell and Camus had lived to an old age they would have become believers as they were interested in the Truth just as you are.
Thanks, keep on
Many things are best left upon history’s ash heap.
“He had a presumptive belief in a Creator, but one ineffable and unapproachable, far beyond the grasp of the human intellect or the reach of petty human prayers.”
He was a deist.
“Deism … derived from Latin “deus” meaning “god”) is a philosophical position that posits that a god does not interfere directly with the world. It also rejects revelation as a source of religious knowledge and asserts that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a single creator of the universe.”
Yes, Moses, all the prophets, Jesus and the Buddha many of exemplary character… were all either liars or deluded. Right.
How logical is it to pronounce judgement upon what others report having experienced, that one has not?
Can a blind man rationally discount the ‘revelations’ of the sighted?
I can’t recall who said it, but the best, (and certainly the most succinct), definition of true art I have ever come across is: “great truth, greatly told”.
I hold those words at the fore of my mind whenever I read a new book or watch a new play or tour a gallery.
Both elements – truth and greatness in the telling – need to be present in the work – be it a novel or a painting, a statue or a piece of music. The presence of only one of the two criteria will not suffice to elevate a work to the status of true art.
Truth of course is to be distinguished from its counterfeit, merely fashionable or modish thought, although the latter will often seem like abiding truth to those around when the idea at the heart of the work or its style of rendering happen to be in vogue.
Most fashionable pieces, however popular in their time will not stand the test of time. It sounds to me as though Mr Reade’s work falls into that category.
Like you, Neo, I revere Churchill – but he was nothing if not a man of his own age so his recommendation, though influential, is not conclusive to me.
I was struck by a sentiment in your posting about Reade’s very human longing to remembered after his death.
It’s a more or less universal truth I find to be very poignant – probably because I have never married and will leave behind no children and also perhaps because as a lawyer I built no physical monuments.
I like the way the ancient Romans approached the subject of posterity. I’m paraphrasing, but they believed that a man or woman dies not once but three times and no-one is truly dead until the third of these passings away.
The first death was that of the body and was in some ways the least consequential to them. The second occurred when the very last person who personally knew you dies. The third and truest death occurred only when your name was for the very last time spoken or written.
We’re still discussing Mr Reade so he hasn’t done too badly in his quest for immortality.
Stephen Ippolito:
I’ve heard that Roman saying before, and I find it very moving.
Heck my Scot-Irish hillbilly forefathers knew instinctualy about the 3 deaths. Physical death, those who knew you are gone, and when no one remembers your name. There are a lot of tombstomes in Kentucky around the Cumberland Gap that bear the names of my ancestors going back to the 1760s. We maintain those tombstones and gather every few years to recite their names. We remember and pass it down to the next generation.
It does not take ‘great minds’ to know truth. And most truths tend to be simple.
Stephen Ippolito,
Regarding your lack of descendants, I like Groucho Marx’s attitude, “Why should I do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?”
Stephen and Parker:
The need to be remembered past the “second death” surely drove the creation of the great epics and poems, such as those by Homer, and the lesser known works of the bards in courts throughout the world and ages of mankind.
That only a few have been rescued and published, and fewer of them known outside the narrow niches of academia, attests to the difficulty of getting past that third marker.
I have had the honor (it is too moving to be called a “pleasure”) of seeing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, which has sometimes been derided for its simplicity and lack of martial significance, but which has become greatly loved and respected: all it does is list names on a granite wall, open to all who choose to read them, and in a location that cannot easily see them defaced or removed, which may be as close as we can get to a warding off of the third death.
Another in the list of influential but now unreadable books, IMO, are the novels of George MacDonald, favorites of C. S. Lewis. The stories I have read had to be “translated” from MacDonald’s heavy Scots idiom, and the plots are unexceptional, although perhaps the modern generation could benefit from the moral lessons that drive them.
However, his children’s books about “The Princess and The Goblin” and “The Princess and Curdy” are charming fairy tales, a genre which seems to weather aging better than others.
Stephen Ippolito Says:
November 18th, 2017 at 6:50 pm
I can’t recall who said it, but the best, (and certainly the most succinct), definition of true art I have ever come across is: “great truth, greatly told”.
I hold those words at the fore of my mind whenever I read a new book or watch a new play or tour a gallery.
* * *
Sadly, even the great ones have to be curated for contemporary readers (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Homer, etc.). I am sometimes amazed at the continued accessibility of Austen’s and Doyle’s work, along with some of Twain and Dickens, and wonder how long it will last.
Of course, just because Neo and we, (her loyal commentariat), are thoughtful and intellectual and therefore naturally incline towards the immortal greats for sustenance doesn’t mean that we can’t also enjoy our occasional pulp fiction too.
For one, I really enjoy me some Jack Reacher novels, (but not the films – not as long as they star the diminutive Tom C – fellow devotees will of course understand why his casting is blasphemy).
I also very much enjoy Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti series – though even Ms Leon is on record saying that, except for the first, she has only written them for the money and doesn’t see them lasting.(Signorina Electra is my type of ragazza).
There is a lot to be said for those books and songs and films and paintings that amuse us for a moment only and which will not endure. Like champagne bubbles they also serve a useful purpose.
Stephen Ippolito Says:
November 18th, 2017 at 11:11 pm
There is a lot to be said for those books and songs and films and paintings that amuse us for a moment only and which will not endure. Like champagne bubbles they also serve a useful purpose.
* * *
Very true; and yet, many of our now-classic novels were once dismissed by the cognoscenti as ephemeral (Dickens was just a popular hack, until he wasn’t).
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/dickens-our-contemporary/302494/
“In her new biography Jane Smiley argues that Dickens may have been “the first true celebrity”
…
The prestige of the Jamesian poetics of fiction in the modern period, reinforced in England by the rather humorless and puritanical school of the critic F. R. Leavis (he famously dismissed Dickens as an “entertainer” in The Great Tradition [1948], though he offered a more generous estimate later), inhibited critical appreciation of Dickens. Smiley suggests that our postmodernist age is more receptive to his kind of “flat,” larger-than-life, often grotesque characterization.”
I’ve often wondered what the effective lifetime of our “bubble” fiction really is: given how dated I deemed most books in my Grandmother’s shelf, what sets apart the ones which are still reprinted today, and how many will our own grandchildren read, absent the pressure of parents or teachers?
AesopFan,
Excellent point you make about Dickens.
I had quite forgotten about his place in the popular culture of his day.
I’m not sure, but wasn’t he the first novelist to serialise his work in magazines?
From memory, the publication in England of the final installment of one of his novels coincided with his arrival in the US on a lecture tour and so he was inundated everywere he went with massed crowds yelling at him to let them know how the final chapter turned out.
That reminds me. My mother was confined to bed for my last couple of years at university so I timed my classes to allow me to be with her as much as possible during the days.
The result was that, against all expectations, I became addicted to the soap operas/tele-novellas she liked – Days of Our Lives was her particular favourite and really hooked me. The story lines were surprisingly compelling.
(Trivia: I recall mum and I being devastated when Dr Marlena was killed by the Salem Strangler – until she was resurrected. Fans of DOOL will understand what I mean).
This book sounds somewhat like a book I recently read, “The Silk Roads,” by Peter Frankopan.
Here’s a bit of insight into it from a review that is written much better than I could put it:
“This “new history of the world” is a strangely myopic one for it starts by ignoring thousands of years of documented human achievement to look at the rise of the Persian empire. But Frankopan is quick to make a point of this apparently arbitrary opening: he wants to recalibrate our view of history, to challenge assumptions about where we come from and what has shaped us. The traditional view, taught in our schools and supported by the layout of many of our museums, is that we are the heirs of the glorious Romans, who were in turn heir to the Greeks, who, in some accounts, were heirs to the Egyptians. Seen in this way, the Mediterranean well deserves its name for it is literally the middle of the world. Frankopan disagrees with the Eurocentric view and places the centre of the world some way to the east, beyond Mesopotamia and the Caucasus, in Iran and the “stans”.
I enjoyed reading the book as it covered a lot of history that I was unfamiliar or only slightly familiar with.
Another bit from the review:
“……there is a particularly good chapter on the rise of the Mongols, who wreaked havoc as they went, and another on the spread of the Slavs and the rise of the Rus, and on British and American meddling since the 19th century. The spread of plague, the black death, is also well handled, with Frankopan pointing out that the decimation of Europe’s population had its advantages: because there were fewer workers, the price of labour rose, wealth was spread (a little) more evenly and, as a result, the cultural flowering that was the Renaissance happened.”
Who has seen the plague mentioned as the cause for the Renaissance?
I read the book for more insight into the Middle East and the Stans. I found it interesting that he believes that the world’s center of gravity is moving back to that area. Certainly the Mullahs in Iran and the Chinese believe it. They see history quite differently than we do, as does Peter Frankopan.
Been giving you names of such fur ages from doing the same thing for decades… But they book if no where as influential as Philip dru… The hayes tilden book is like that…. The Freda Utley was and is like they and more so after you read it and then can see the references hi ignore.
This of such similar things and revelations from the same period and a bit later… But because I recommend it they will never be read.. I’m used to that now… Send with the things at work, if someone else would do it then it would be liked… It just can’t be liked if from me..
I read this ages ago
But im not Churchill
In death he can recommend better than I ever could with friends and family in life
Sucks a lot…
I downloaded the book and will give it a try.
its verging on 2018.. i tried for over 8 years!!!
and yet i am too impatient… have to wait for 20 years just to have one comment to have with someone else who read something!!
IF you knew orwell, and these others you would know this piece, but you didnt, so you dont – til you trip over it
wow, you found old crap… but you dont know where to place it… funny..
now your going to discuss it completely out of context!!!! oh boy…
in fact, the title of orwells piece that mentions this and other things is In Front of Your Nose
here is what he says about the bS you find, and of course, you dont hear of Churchills fascism
for that you have to go to certain other unsanitized pieces that make things more complicated
it was Fascism it was all about.. but you need other books to know..
damn… can someone close my blockquote.
or just delete the whle thing.. not like adadeia and such arent trying to delete autistics and what they say or do or contribute for not matching others… or so on, erasing us.. [of course. you have to remember that they tel you its for your own good, and they have great reasons… but if your the one there and the system has great reasons, like back at the shoa, do you just accept them? or do you not? my family chooses not… as we remember what others dont… too bad.. for others..
have to go
my writing sucks anyway
The writing isn’t that long ago, but it’s practically opaque now. A lot of contemporary academic writing is opaque too, but influential. Such as anything written in international art English.
It would be so interesting to see how future generations (god willing, as my mom would say) look back at us. What if everyone in the future will write in international art English? Bleak.
A little-known, not well remembered book that I view as a classic of sorts is The Tangled Bank, by Stanley Hyman, which examines Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, James Frazier and Charles Darwin as imaginative writers. In other words, the focus is not on what they wrote about, the content, but on how they wrote, their style. Because whatever the novelty of their thought when seen in the context of their time, the primary reason, perhaps, that they made such an impact was because they were such good writers.
Hyman looks at each of them closely, and finds that this one has Biblical resonance, this one has vivid, colorful metaphors, this one is surprisingly poetic, and so on.
I found it a fascinating book.
Not too many years ago a reviewer reread the best sellers list from sometime in the early 40’s, 1941 perhaps, to see how the books held up. He found the serious “literature” books dull, but the forgotten, trashy, fun novel was still a pretty good read. Sic transit gloria mundi.
The question of “great truth, greatly told” is who determines what is great truth and what is greatly told? About serious literature, I find that some supposedly brilliant books aren’t IMO. I share Neo’s dislike of The Great Gatsby. It’s a beautifully written novel, but that’s about it.
On the other hand, books no one’s heard of but me seem brilliant.
Okay, just finished skimming it. I focused more thoroughly on items touching on religion.
It seemed sophomoric to me. I suppose that’s because its ideas closely parallel what college sophomores say these days when they get overly impressed with their great learning.
But I suppose to say those kinds of things back then, in his day, represents an achievement of sorts.
Esther,
There is a book written by Chuck Klosterman that deals with the broad topic of how future generations may look at the stuff we think is important.
You might find interesting: “But What if We’re Wrong.”
Thanks Tuvea, that sounds like just the ticket, I will give it a read.
chuck (November 19th, 2017 at 8:54 pm):
You may be interested in some inexpensive Kindle books that collect long-ago bestselling books by year. Search Kindle for “bestselling” (one word, no hyphen) to find them; also try “bestsellers” [the titles from one publisher are worded “20 Bestselling Classic Novels in (year)]. I have 13 of these books on my Kindle so far; each has about 20 novels, most priced at $1.99 per collection. The earliest year I have is 1895, and the rest are from the early 1900s up to about 1920. Many of the authors and titles are still familiar to people who love old books, but most of them are not as well known today. I enjoy reading these old books — I like the kind of people who made them bestsellers when they were newly published AND the kind of people who want to collect and read them today. I also like find authors who are new to me and whose other books I can search for online.
Stephen Ippolito Says:
November 19th, 2017 at 12:19 am
…
I’m not sure, but wasn’t he the first novelist to serialise his work in magazines?
* * *
I believe that is so. He had an amazing life, really, which would make a roaring good novel itself.
chuck Says:
November 19th, 2017 at 8:54 pm
Not too many years ago a reviewer reread the best sellers list from sometime in the early 40’s, 1941 perhaps, to see how the books held up. He found the serious “literature” books dull, but the forgotten, trashy, fun novel was still a pretty good read. Sic transit gloria mundi.
* *
Found something similar here but the paywall came down before I finished the first graf.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/books/the-best-seller-list-55-years-ago.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=80547AD6B3172FE4440D28A9BAE9B735&gwt=pay
“To Kill a Mockingbird” was #6, IIRC.
R.C. Says:
November 19th, 2017 at 11:09 pm
Okay, just finished
skimming it. I focused more thoroughly on items touching on religion.
It seemed sophomoric to me. I suppose that’s because its ideas closely parallel what college sophomores say these days when they get overly impressed with their great learning.
But I suppose to say those kinds of things back then, in his day, represents an achievement of sorts.
* * *
This is the fate of a lot of “firsts” — just consider how we deem old movies to be using “trite” formulas or cinematography, because they pioneered something that is now ubiquitous.
I’m a little late to this conservation, but have a book to add. It is Answer To Job by Carl Jung. It was written when he was old and after the horrors of WW2 as a kind of answer to the question of evil. If a psychologist can be passionate in his writing, Jung was certainly that with this little book. I don’t know if it will live on outside of theology and comparative religion classes, but it is one of those mini-classics that no one ever reads. The sad take away I got out of it is that Jung spent so much intellectual effort at the end of his life to absolve his guilt of complicity with Nazis. It may have been a tour de force, but self-serving, and for that reason will probably be forgotten in a few years.
The Other Chuck:
It doesn’t sound to me as though Jung was all that complicit with the Nazis.
Neo:
From what I’ve read he wasn’t complicit in action, friendships, or specific writings that would constitute propaganda. Further down in the Wiki article you link there is this:
Evidence contrary to Jung’s denials has been adduced with reference to his writings, correspondence and public utterances of the 1930s.[107] Attention has been drawn to articles Jung published in the Zentralblatt fur Psychotherapie stating: “The Aryan unconscious has a greater potential than the Jewish unconscious” and “The Jew, who is something of a nomad, has never yet created a cultural form of his own and as far as we can see never will”.[108] His remarks on the superiority of the “Aryan unconscious” and the “corrosive character” of Freud’s “Jewish gospel” have been cited as evidence of an anti-semitism “fundamental to the structure of Jung’s thought”.
I should have said that he appeared to have feelings of guilt which the Answer To Job was his magnum effort to assuage. Else why the passionate intensity rather than his usual clinical detachment? Maybe I read something into it that can be explained otherwise, but that is my take on it.
Fascinating. I checked the catalog of our metropolitan public library, and Martyrdom of Man was not to be found. I then turned to the library catalog of our Very Major University Library, expecting to find, perhaps, a few old editions and an e-book. Nope, nothing. A certain librarian is going to get an e-mail in a few minutes…
Can a blind man rationally discount the ‘revelations’ of the sighted?-GB
As a former Deist of several decades, the problems with people claiming religious authority from dead people claiming visions is that you are not directly testifying as to your experience. It is not a primary source but a tertiary one at best.
Thus it is not the visionary prophet vs the Deist that believes in a Clockwork God, but the copycat derivative followers of said visionary prophet vs the followers of a Clockwork God. Equal authority in human terms.
The followers of the “revealed truth” are deaf, slighting the Deist for being blind, and the Deist criticizes the other followers for not hearing what can be heard.
Many of the Founding Fathers were Deists, or acted with this Masonic ideal of the “G”, to create a government that did not have the problems of the Vatican or Church of England or Byzantine’s churches. It had a practical purpose, Deism: not just a theological bludgeon to beat heretics like Jean of Arc on the head with or used to steal people’s property in Salem.
Religious freedom is not all that seen much in the Bible, whether pre crucifixion or post. The Pilgrims did not even understand what the community of Christ meant in the Bible, as they failed to recreate it and thus adopted socialism which starved them until they forced their own laws to change.
The first two commandments carries with it the penalty for death for those worshiping other gods before the Most High and for idol crafting vis a vis the Most High. It is a completely different covenant than the US Constitution was. A different dispensation as some Protestants might call it.
my lack of communication skills in autism means i can never influence anyone to that they all resist as a rule… really) — if you would have read utley you could have found a lot of this-Art
I told you what the issue was Art, when you discussed certain things with me. And btw your “lack of communication skills” is only a fundamental barrier break for those without the ability to translate what you are writing. As for those of us that can translate it… we translate what we need to make our point. Either change the world or change yourself. Since you cannot change the world…
“Reading” is not what you think it is. Someone reading Sun Tzu’s Art of War does not understand Sun Tzu or the Art of War or even just art of war. You may understand a little bit more than the normal human on the IQ norm curve, and a Mensa or Circle Nine high IQ society member may understand more or less than you and me, but that does not mean they understand it in totality as if they were the writer.
That is why Christianity is the way it is, fractured into various churches and “christians”.
my writing sucks anyway
When autistic go into a habit, they don’t like breaking out of it. It is worse than O C D. Which is why you don’t even capitalize your sentences. An easy way for me to tell what you are writing and what you are quoting.
I think you quote a lot of things because you are not confident in your ability to communicate by writing. And that is mostly because you copied too many elements from Leftists and academics in your life. Copying the mannerisms of the worst in humanity, even with your IQ or specialized absorption skills, isn’t going to do anything good.
You think I can’t tell? Whenever I told you that your beliefs were wrong, you adopted the same Alinsky tactics as the Leftists you decried and criticized. Just as VoxDay did. For people of a certain IQ level, mimicking other people is easier than trying to come up with your own unique communication ideals. IQ is more of a fantasy than a tool meant for the average of users to use.
Mimic Alinsky and Leftist sub human trash in the lower quartile of human ability too long… Humans are what they eat, drink and do. And those on the autistic spectrum or those with higher than average human abilities, are who they mimic, learn from, and model. It is unfortunate the truly intelligent of the human race didn’t interact with you, Art, in your formulate staging cycle. But then again, that is like an adult complaining about how they were raised.
chuck Says:
November 19th, 2017 at 8:54 pm
Not too many years ago a reviewer reread the best sellers list from sometime in the early 40’s, 1941 perhaps, to see how the books held up. He found the serious “literature” books dull, but the forgotten, trashy, fun novel was still a pretty good read. Sic transit gloria mundi.
* * *
Here is a list, although just a very brief idea of the contents of each book, not a review.
Interesting to see how tastes changed over time.
Most remarkable to me was that Stephen King and John Grisham “cornered the market” in their heyday.
It’s not surprising, really, how many best-sellers are unknown today, although I remember reading many of those from the forties and fifties because that’s what my Grandma had on her shelf (somewhat scandalously, “Valley of the Dolls” was among them).
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/smart-living/the-most-popular-book-the-year-you-were-born/ss-BBEPiSS?ocid=spartandhp#image=85
(kind of in the middle of the listings, but one everyone should recognize)