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Page 77
What is _b�bion_ but the English _baby_, what _b�bia_ but
the English _babies?_ We can hardly suppose that our English words
are derived from Syriac words in use fourteen centuries ago, or that the
latter were "modified from _maqui_" by "infantine" or other
influences. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that they were
alike "formed from the infantine sound _ba_," unless we accept
Damascius's derivation from _Bab�a_.
Unfortunately, we know no more concerning this goddess than did the
learned John Selden, who, writing two hundred and twenty-odd years ago,
"De Dis Syris," says, on page 296 of that work, "I cannot conjecture
whether _Bab�a,_ who seems to have been reverenced among the
Syrians as goddess of childhood and youth, is identical with the Syrian
Venus or not, and I do not remember to have met with any mention of this
deity except in Damascius's Life of Isidorus."
Selden's memory was not at fault: the words _b�bion, b�bia_, and
_Bab�a_ occur only in the passage above quoted.
In the absence of other evidence than Damascius's own, we may well
question whether he has not inverted the etymological relation between
the goddess and the babies. Most divinities owe their names to the
attributes or functions imputed to them by their worshippers. It seems,
therefore, more probable that the Syrian protectress of babies owes her
name to the _b�bia_ than that they were called _b�bia_ in her
honor. If, however, we accept Damascius's theory of their relation, what
forbids us to conjecture that the goddess's name was itself "formed from
the infantine sound _ba_"? In any case, the little domestic scene
between the priggish father and the dandling mother is amusing and
instructive to parents as well as to etymologists.
S.E.T.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
"The Russian Revolt: its Causes, Condition, and Prospects."
By Edmund Noble.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The internal condition of Russia, though a matter of more than
speculative interest to its immediate neighbors, is not likely to become
what that of France has so often been,--a European question. The
institutions of other states will not be endangered by revolutionary
proceedings in the dominions of the Czar, nor will any oppression
exercised over his subjects be thought to justify foreign intervention.
Even Polish insurrections never led to any more active measures on the
part of the Western powers than delusive expressions of sympathy and
equally vain remonstrances. In these days, not Warsaw, but St.
Petersburg, is the centre of disaffection, and the ramifications extend
inland, their action stimulated, it may be, to some extent from external
sources, but incapable of sending back any impulse in return. Nihilism,
being based on the absence, real or supposed, of any political
institutions worth preserving in Russia, cannot spread to the
discontented populations of other countries. Even German socialism
cannot borrow weapons or resources from a nation which has no large
proletariat and whose industries are still in their infancy. In the
nature of its government, the character of its people, and the problems
it is called upon to solve, Russia stands, as she has always stood,
alone, neither furnishing examples to other nations nor able,
apparently, to copy those which other nations have set. The great
peculiarity of the revolutionary movement is not simply that it does not
proceed from the mass of the people,--which is a common case
enough,--but that it runs counter to their instincts and their needs and
rouses not their sympathy but their aversion. The peasants, who
constitute four-fifths of the population, have no motive for seeking to
overturn the government. Their material condition, since the abolition
of serfdom, is superior to that of the Italian peasantry, who enjoy the
fullest political rights. As members of the village communities, they
hold possession and will ultimately obtain absolute ownership of more
than half the soil of the country, excluding the domains of the state.
In the same capacity they exercise a degree of local autonomy greater
than that which is vested in the communes of France. They are separated
from the other classes by differences of education, of habits, and of
interests, while the autocracy that rules supreme over all is regarded
by them as the protecting power that is to redress their grievances and
fulfil all their aspirations. The discontent which has bred so many
conspiracies, and which aims at nothing less than the subversion of the
monarchy, is confined to a portion of the educated classes, and proceeds
from causes that affect only those classes. Among them alone is there
any perception of the wide and ever-increasing difference between the
Russian system of government and that of every other European country,
any craving for the exercise of political rights and the activity of
political life, any experience of the restrictions imposed on thought
and speech and the obstacles to the advancement and diffusion of
knowledge and ideas, any consciousness that the corrupt, vexatious, and
oppressive bureaucracy by which all affairs are administered is a direct
outgrowth of unlimited and irresponsible power. Nor are they united in
desiring to destroy, or even to modify, this system. Apart from those
who find in it the means of satisfying their personal interests and
ambitions, and the larger number in whom indolence and the love of ease
stifle all thought and aspiration, there are many who believe, with
reason, that the country is not ripe for the adoption of European
institutions, that the foundations on which to construct them do not yet
exist, and that any attempt to introduce them would lead only to
calamitous results; while there is even a large party which contends
that, far from needing them, Russia is happily situated in being exempt
from the struggles and the storms, the wars of classes and of factions,
that have attended the course of Western civilization, and in being left
free to work out her own development by original and more peaceful
methods. No doubt the great majority of thinking people feel the
necessity for some large measures of reform and look forward to the
establishment of a constitutional system and the gradual extension of
political freedom to the mass of the nation. But there is no evidence
that the revolutionary spirit has spread or excited sympathy in any such
degree as its audacity, its resoluteness, and the terror created by its
sinister achievements have seemed at times to indicate. The active
members of the propaganda are almost exclusively young persons, living
apart from their families, of scanty means and without conspicuous
ability. They belong to the lower ranks of the nobility, the rising
_bourgeois_ class, and, above all, that large body of necessitous
students, including many of the children of the ill-paid clergy, whom M.
Leroy-Beaulieu styles the "intellectual proletariat." Classical studies,
German metaphysics, and the scientific theories and discoveries of
recent years have had much to do with the fermentation that has led to
so many violent explosions, the universities have been the chief
_foci_ of agitation, and in the attempts to suppress it the
government has laid itself open to the reproach of making war upon
learning and seeking to stifle intellectual development.
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