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 vehicle of great truths. So he will argue as the essence of the matter that (iv.) he who has occupied Christ’s place in history, and won such reverence from the purest souls, was what he claimed to be, and that his many-sidedness comes to focus and harmony when we recognize him as the Christ of God and the Saviour of the world.

To a less extent, similar problems and alternatives arise in regard to the church:—Catholicism a compromise between Jewish Christianity and Pauline or Gentile Christianity (F. C. Baur, &c.); Catholicism the Hellenizing of Christianity (A. Ritschl, A. Harnack); the Catholic church for good and evil the creation of St Paul (P. Wernle, H. Weinel); the church supernaturally guided (R. C. apologetic; in a modified degree High Church apologetic); essential—not necessarily exclusive—truth of Paulinism, essential error in first principles of Catholicism (Protestant apologetic).

APOLOGUE (from the Gr. , a statement or account), a short fable or allegorical story, meant to serve as a pleasant vehicle for some moral doctrine or to convey some useful lesson. One of the best known is that of Jotham in the Book of Judges (ix. 7-15); others are “The City Rat and Field Rat,” by Horace, “The Belly and its Members,” by the patrician Menenius Agrippa in the second book of Livy, and perhaps most famous of all, those of Aesop. The term is applied more particularly to a story in which the actors or speakers are taken from the brute creation or inanimate nature. An apologue is distinguished from a fable in that there is always some moral sense present, which there need not be in a fable. It is generally dramatic, and has been defined as “a satire in action.” It differs from a parable in several respects. A parable is equally an ingenious tale intended to correct manners, but it can be true, while an apologue, with its introduction of animals and plants, to which it lends our ideas and language and emotions, is necessarily devoid of real truth, and even of all probability. The parable reaches heights to which the apologue cannot aspire, for the points in which brutes and inanimate nature present analogies to man are principally those of his lower nature, and the lessons taught by the apologue seldom therefore reach beyond prudential morality, whereas the parable aims at representing the relations between man and God. It finds its framework in the world of nature as it actually is, and not in any grotesque parody of it, and it exhibits real and not fanciful analogies. The apologue seizes on that which man has in common with creatures below him, and the parable on that which he has in common with God. Still, in spite of the difference of moral level, Martin Luther thought so highly of apologues as counsellors of virtue that he edited and revised Aesop and wrote a characteristic preface to the volume. The origin of the apologue is extremely ancient and comes from the East, which is the natural fatherland of everything connected with allegory, metaphor and imagination. Veiled truth was often necessary in the East, particularly with the slaves, who dared not reveal their minds too openly. It is noteworthy that the two fathers of apologue in the West were slaves, namely Aesop and Phaedrus. La Fontaine in France; Gay and Dodsley in England; Gellert, Lessing and Hagedorn in Germany; Tomas de Iriarte in Spain, and Krilov in Russia, are leading modern writers of apologues. Length is not an essential matter in the definition of an apologue. Those of La Fontaine are often very short, as, for example, “Le Coque et la Perle.” On the other hand, in the romances of Reynard the Fox we have medieval apologues arranged in cycles, and attaining epical dimensions. An Italian fabulist, Corti, is said to have developed an apologue of “The Talking Animals” to the bulk of twenty-six cantos. La Motte, writing at a time when this species of literature was universally admired, attributes its popularity to the fact that it ménage et flatte l’amour-propre by inculcating virtue in an amusing manner without seeming to dictate or insist. This was the ordinary 18th-century view of the matter, but Rousseau contested the educational value of instruction given in this indirect form.

APOLOGY (from Gr. , defence), in its usual sense, an expression of regret for something which has been wrongfully said or done; a withdrawal or retraction of some charge or imputation which is false. In an action for libel, the fact that an apology has been promptly and fully made is a plea in mitigation of damages. The apology should have the same form of publicity as the original charge. If made publicly, the proper form is an advertisement in a newspaper; if made within the hearing of a few only, a letter of apology, which may be read to those who have heard what was said, should be sufficient. By the English Libel Act 1843, s. 2, it was enacted that in an action for libel contained in a newspaper it is a defence for the defendant to plead that the libel was inserted without actual malice and without gross negligence, and that before the commencement of the action and at the earliest opportunity afterwards he inserted in the newspaper a full apology for the libel, or, where the newspaper in which the libel appeared was published at intervals exceeding one week, he offered to publish the apology in any newspaper selected by the plaintiff. The apology must be full and must be printed in as conspicuous a place and manner as the libel was.

The word “apology” or “apologia” is also used in the sense of defence or vindication, the only meaning of the Greek , especially of the defence of a doctrine or system, or of religious or other beliefs, &c., e.g. Justin Martyr’s Apology or J. H. Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua. (See .) APONEUROSIS (Gr., away, and  , a sinew), in anatomy, a membrane separating muscles from each other. APOPHTHEGM (from the Gr.  ), a short and pointed utterance. The usual spelling up to Johnson’s day was apothegm, which Webster and Worcester still prefer; it indicates the pronunciation—i.e. “apothem”—better than the other, which, however, is more usual in England and follows the derivation. Such sententious remarks as “Knowledge is Power” are apophthegms. They become “proverbs” by age and acceptance. Plutarch made a famous collection in his Apophthegmata Laconica.