The Socialism of to-day

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

194 THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. The early Christians for a long time expected the “ pan destruction ” and the coming of the Kingdom. But as the suffer, the wicked triumph, the world is full of strife : whence does this arise if God is good and just? The question is profoundly treated in the splendid poem of Job, as M. Renan has so well pointed out. The nev^- ending controversy between optimism and pessimism was taken up by Voltaire and Rousseau, with reference to the famous poem on the earth quake at Lisbon. The belief that the world, fundamentally bad, must perish in flames, in order to make way for a new heaven and a new earth, is found in all the old religions. In Mazdeism the successive cycles of the development of humanity on earth end in a general conflagration, followed by a universal renewal. In the Wolospa of the Eddas the palingenesis is conceived almost exactly as in our Gospels:— {Signs of the Doom.) ‘ ‘ The sun shall grow black. The earth shall sink into the sea. The bright stars shall vanish from the heavens. Smoke and fire shall gush forth. The terrible flame shall play against the very sky.” ( The Sibyl of the world to come.) “ I can see earth rise a second time, fresh and green out of the sea. The waters are falling, the erne hovering over them. The bird that hunts the fish in the mountain streams. The fields unsown shall yield their fruit ; All ills shall be healed at the coming of Balder. The Anses shall meet on the Field of Ith, And do judgments under the mighty Tree of the world. [I have taken this translation of the Sibyl’s prophecy from the reconstructed version of the Wolospa in the admirable work of Messrs. Vigfusson and Powell {Corpus Poeticum Boreale, vol. ii. 625). These learned editors think that the lines, “Then there shall come One yet mightier. Though 1 dare not name him,” evidently alluding to the coming of Christ, belong to a separate poem, the shorter Wolospa, which they have also pieced togeth^. — TV.] In the splendid lines of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue are to be found the echo of the aspirations after a new world met with in all antiquity and especially in the Sibylline songs :— “ Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo. Jam nova progenies cselo demittitur alto. . . . ae toto surget gens aurea mundo. . . . omnis feret omnia tellus.” Virgil depicts the regeneration of Nature ; the Edda and the Gospel dwell rather on social regeneration and the triumph of Justice. Courier has also his palingenesis with its anti-lions, its anti-whales, and its ocean of lemon ade • but we may prefer the Wolospa and the Gospel. Pierre Leroux, >0 his book IJHumanité, ii. 6, has well pointed out how the ideas of paljd- genesis, common to all antiquity, are connected with astrology and with certain theories about cosmical periods.

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: The Socialism of to-day

Monograph

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation