Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/698

 680 HERCULES' CLUB HERDER remote region of the west. Hercules, with the aid of Atlas, obtained the apples, which on his return he gave to Eurystheus. 12. The seiz- ure of Cerberus, the dog that guarded the entrance to Hades. On arriving in Hades, Hercules asked permission of Pluto to take Cerberus, and the god yielded his assent, pro- vided he could do so without having recourse to arms. Seizing Cerberus, Hercules bore him to the upper world, showed him to Eurystheus, and immediately carried the monster back to Hades. in the original legends, Hercules fig- ures as a mighty chieftain, who subdues Troy, and wages successful war against Argos and Lacedfflmon ; who dethrones princes, and gives away kingdoms and sceptres. The worship of Hercules prevailed especially among the Dori- ans ; and the sacrifices offered to him were chiefly bulls* boars, rams, and lambs. He was also worshipped at Rome, and, under various names, in many other parts of the ancient world. In works of art he is represented in all the various stages of life ; but whether he ap- pears as a child, a hero, or a celestial, his char- acter is always that of supernatural strength and energy. He is most frequently represent- ed clothed in a lion's skin and carrying a club. HERCULES' CLUB, a trivial name for three widely different plants : 1. Xanthoxylum clava- Her culls, a large West Indian tree of the same genus with our prickly ash ; its smaller branch- es, thickly covered with short, straight, per- sistent prickles, are often made into walking canes. 2. A remarkable variety of the com- mon gourd, lagenaria vulgaris, the fruit of which often exceeds 5 ft. in length ; its great- est diameter is 4 or 5 in., and it is quite small near the stem. 3. Aralia spinosa, a large na- tive shrub with an exceedingly prickly stem, also called angelica tree, and frequently culti vated on account of the tropical character of its foliage. IIKIU YMA SILVA, the ancient name of a for- est of Germany, covering a mountain range whose position and extent are very different- ly described by various writers. It probably comprised the whole mountain system of cen- tral Europe, extending from the sources of the Danube to Transylvania, and thus inclu- ding the Hartz, which seems to have retained a trace of the ancient name. The term Hercy- nian Forest was afterward restricted to the ranges which connect the Thuringian Forest with the Carpathians. HERDER, Johaiin Gottfried TOD, a German au- thor, born at Mohrungen, Aug. 25, 1744, died in Weimar, Dec. 18, 1803. He was the son of a schoolmaster and chorister, and became the amanuensis of a clergyman named Trescho, under whom he made wonderful progress in study and various reading. At the age of 18 his philosophical and literary erudition gained him the friendship of a Russian physician, who sent him to Konigsberg, whence he was to go to St. Petersburg as a lecturer on surgery. But he renounced his intended profession after wit- nessing a single operation, and devoted himself to theology. In 1765 he became a preacher at Riga, where the fervor and power of his dis- courses quickly made him an object of general enthusiasm. His Fragmente tiber die neuere deutsche Literatur (1767), and his Ki'itische Walder (1769), were manifestoes against the artificial spirit and literature of his age, as com- pared with the grander inspirations of the early Orient and of ancient Greece. In 1769 he re- signed his pastorate in order to travel in Ger- many, France, and Italy. At Strasburg he was intimately associated with Goethe. In 1771 he was called as court preacher to Buckeburg, and in 1776 was appointed court preacher and member of the consistory at Weimar. By his Aelteste Urlcunde des menschlichen Geschlechfa (1774) he had already given a new impulse to theology by seeking poetic sentiments in re- ligious traditions, and by tracing in the primi- tive world the sublime instincts of human na- ture and the foreshadowings of human destiny. At Weimar he passed the remainder of his life, in association with the leading minds in that most brilliant period of German literature, and occupied with constant labors in theology, po- etry, and history. As a theologian he coope- rated with Lessing in opposing the despotism of the letter and of dogmas, and brought the instincts of piety and of poetic fancy, illustra- ted by a wide erudition, rather than the dia- lectics of the schools, to bear upon the ques- tions of religion. This tendency appears in his Geist der Ebraischen Poesie (Dessau, 1782; translated into English by Dr. James Marsh, 2 vols., Burlington, 1833), in which he treats the Hebrew writings as productions at once of primitive poetry and of religious inspiration. He translated many legends and songs from Arabian, Indian, Italian, Spanish, and ancient German poets, among which were the Spanish romances of the Cid. His most important work is the unfinished Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Memchheit (4 vols., Riga, 1784-'91 ; translated into English byT. Church- ill, under the title of " Outlines of a Philoso- phy of the History of Man," 4to, London, 1800, and 2 vols. 8vo, 1803), which is one of the principal and standard treatises on the subject. He traces the course of humanity as of an in- dividual placed on the earth by an unseen hand, changing its forms and objects as it pass- es from country to country and from age to age, protesting everywhere against the finite world which enchains it, seeking the triumph of the infinite, the victory of the soul, tending in spite of detours and through a series of revo- lutions to civilization, and preparing for the blossoming of life in another world. His nu- merous writings have been collected in 45 vols. (Stuttgart, 1806-'20), and in other editions, in- cluding one of his select works by H. Kurtz in 4 vols. (1871). A monument, with the inscrip- tion Licht, Liebe, Leben, was erected to his memory by Grand Duke Charles Augustus at Weimar in 1818. His biography was written