Edited by James Hastings, M.A., D.D., with the Assistance of John A. Selbie, M.A., and other scholars. Vol. I: A-Art. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1908.1
The first volume of Dr. Hastings’ new “Encyclopædia” makes a very handsome appearance. The type and the column are apparently the same as in the “Dictionary of the Bible” and the “Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels”; and we are sorry to say we cannot commend this type, which seems to make a singularly severe demand upon the eyes. But by the omission of the ruling around the page and an increase in the width of the margin, and above all by a change in the paper, a much clearer and more attractive page is secured than in the earlier “Dictionaries.” More is done also to render the use of the “Encyclopædia” convenient. The list of authors who have contributed to the volume contains an intimation of the articles written by each. This is an excellent innovation. A still more excellent innovation is the printing of a page (p. xv.) of topic-headings, which do not occur in the “Encyclopædia,” but the topics represented by which are treated under other heads. This will enable the reader to find “Aben Ezra,” for example (under “Ibn Ezra”), or “Adventism” (under “Chiliasm”), or “Affinity” (under “Blood Relationship”), and not hastily conclude that the “Encyclopædia” has overlooked such topics. The articles are ordinarily, moreover, divided into numbered sections, with headings in black type; and sometimes a summary of their contents is given at the outset in a sort of “table of contents.” These expedients place the substance of the articles more readily at the command of the reader.
The cosmopolitanism of scholarship is illustrated anew by the list of writers whom Dr. Hastings has called to his aid in the preparation of the matter of the volume. Nearly two hundred have been engaged on the work. About a sixth of these are Americans (some thirty-three); about a tenth Germans (some twenty); something over a twelfth Frenchmen (some fourteen); while a few more are derived from still other foreign sources—two or three each are Dutchmen, Belgians, Finns, Scandinavians, Hindoos; and there are also Armenians, Japs, and even an Apache Indian. It belongs also to the emancipation of scholarship from conventional bonds that we meet in this list of presumable authorities on questions of religious and moral erudition such names as Mrs. Rhys Davids, Catherine Julia Gaskell, Mary Alicia Owen, Mary Mills Patrick, Bertha Maud Horack Shambaugh, Florence Melian Stawell. Place aux dames! It is a principle Dr. Hastings seems to have acted on when he gave Miss Shambaugh twenty-one columns in which to tell about the “Amana Society”—a type of religious thought the influence of which is apparently confined within the narrow limits of eighteen hundred souls. Dr. Hastings in his Preface offers no doubt an explanation of this generous allotment of space to an insignificant movement; but it is questionable if the explanation will not read to most of us more as an apology than as a justification.
The question of the proportionate distribution of space in a book like this is to be sure one of the most difficult which confronts an editor. It certainly is not a simple question. There are many other things which have to be considered besides the relative importance of the topics; and all judgments of the relative importance of the topics are not likely to agree. For the critic to object to the editor’s assignment of space commonly means little more, therefore, than that he and the editor think differently in the matter. Even so, however, it is not unfair to say that Dr. Hastings’ assignments of space seem sometimes bewildering. There are few greater topics than Art, and there is a great deal that is very important said in the two great articles “Architecture,” “Art,” in this volume. But the volume, which covers nearly the whole of the letter A, has only nine hundred pages in it; and nearly one hundred ninety of these—about one-fifth of the whole—are given to these two topics “Architecture” and “Art.” In an “Encyclopædia” specifically of religion and ethics, that strikes us as excessive. This is not the only instance in which the special character of the “Encyclopædia” seems to be lost sight of. Here is an article—a most excellent article—for example, on “A Priori,” extending to sixteen columns, much of it cast into fine type. There are applications of the a priori, no doubt, both to ethics and religion: but does the article itself, or the topic itself, fall naturally into either category? And here is an admirable article on “Aristotle, Aristotelianism,” one of the shorter articles—shorter, though one of them is on “Arianism” and another on “Arminianism,” both of which, if they do not deserve well of religion, yet loom large in the history of that religion which we call Christianity—which seem to keep “Architecture” and “Art” from running into each other and absorbing the volume. Aristotelianism also has certainly played a great part in the history of that same religion: but we hear nothing of that here, though, to be sure, we are bidden to look for “Scholasticism,” where no doubt the story will be told. Aristotle, too, had an ethical system, which is very appropriately (and finely) outlined here, but not as if it were the main matter of concernment. In short, the article is just what an article on “Aristotle, Aristotelianism” ought to be—in a general encyclopædia, or an encyclopædia of philosophy or of classical biography. It has no particular adjustment to this special “Encyclopædia.” And here is a good short article on “Anæsthesia”; we have profited from reading it—but we have looked in vain in it for any allusion to or connection with ethics or religion. The editor, it will be seen, has interpreted the scope of the “Encyclopædia” broadly. This has its advantages—and its disadvantages. We get much more in the book than the title gives us right to expect—much of which, perhaps, as it was not to be looked for in this “Encyclopædia,” will possibly not be looked for in it. But, as a consequence, we get perhaps less than the title might lead us to expect—the articles more properly falling in its special field being unduly compressed to make room for those which possibly might just as well be reserved for another place.