Thus the certitude of Astronomy as a Science arises largely from the fact that ourtimesare so brief compared with Celestial periods. The proper periods of Celestial changes are to be reckoned by thousands, perhaps millions, of years; but we, ignoringthataspect of the problem, fix our observations on one little point of time, and are quite satisfied with the result!
As another illustration of my meaning, consider the Fixed Stars, so-called. These stars in their groups and clusters, which we know so well by sight, have remained apparently in the very same, or nearly the same, relative positions during all the 2,000 or 3,000 years that we have any record of the shapes of the Constellations. Yet now by minute telescopic and spectroscopic examination we know that they are moving, and have been moving all the time, in various differing directions with great velocities, amounting to miles per second. Nevertheless, so great are the spaces concerned, so great the times, that all this long period has not sufficed to bring them into any greatly changed attitude with regard to each other! What would you think of an intelligent foreigner who, coming to England to study the game of cricket, remained on the cricket field for a quarter of a minute—during which time the players would have hardly changed their positions—and having noted a few points, went away and wrote a volume on the laws of the game? And what are we to think ofpoor little Man who, having noted the stars for a few centuries, is so sure that he understands their movements, and that he is versed in all the "ordinances of heaven."
Thus it would appear that every Nature-problem is so enormously complex that it can only be got at by what we have called the Method of Ignorance. Let us take a practical Science problem like that of Vaccination. The question here, put in its simplest terms, seems to be, Whether Vaccination, with calf or human lymph, prevents or alleviates Smallpox; and if it does, whether it does so without engendering other evils at least as great. At first sight this may appear to you a very simple question, and easy to solve; but the moment you come to think about it, you see its extreme complexity. In the first place, it is obvious that in a question like this, individual cases afford no test. It is obvious that the fact that A. is vaccinated and has not taken small-pox proves nothing, for there is nothing to show that he would have taken it if he had not been vaccinated. And when you have got people vaccinated by the hundred and the thousand, you still are not certain; for these people may belong to a certain class, or a certain locality, or may have certain habits and conditions of life, which may account for their comparative immunity, and these causes must be eliminated before any definite conclusion can be reached. Thus it is not till the great mass of the population is vaccinated that we can expect reliable statistics. But the introduction of apractice of this kind on so great a scale necessarily takes a long period of years, and meanwhile changes are taking place in the habits of the people, Sanitation is being improved, customs of Diet are altering, possibly (as so often happens in the history of an epidemic) the disease, having run its course, is beginning spontaneously to decline. And thus another series of possible causes has to be discussed.
Then, supposing the question, notwithstanding all these difficulties, to be so far settled in favour of the present system—there still arises that whole other series of difficulties with regard to the possibility of the spread ofotherdiseases by the practice, and with regard to theextentof such spread, before we can arrive at any finale. This series of questions is almost as complex as the other; and it includes that great element of uncertainty—the question what interval of time may elapse between inoculation with a disease and its actual appearance. For if in several cases children break out with erysipelas immediately after vaccination, of course there is a certain presumption that vaccination has been the cause; but if the erysipelas only appears some years after, its connection with the operation may, though real, be impossible to trace.
The matter standing thus, it seems to us almost a mystery how it was that the medical authorities of the early days of Jennerism were so cocksure of their conclusions—until we remember that in arriving at those conclusions they practicallyignoredall these other points that I have mentioned, like changes of Sanitation, spontaneous decline of Small-pox, the spread of other diseases, etc., and simply limited themselves to one small aspect of the problem. But now, after this interval of time, when the neglected facts and aspects have meanwhileforcedthemselves on our attention, how remarkable is the change of attitude as evidenced by the finding of the late Royal Commission! (1896).
From all this do not understand me to deride Science—for I have no intention of doing that; on the contrary, I think the debt we owe to modern investigation quite incalculable; but I only wish to warn you how complex all these problems are, how impossible that notion of settling even one of them by a cut-and-dried intellectual formula.
But you will ask (for this is the second point I mentioned some little time back)howpeople's emotions and feelings come in to colour their scientific conclusions? And the answer is—very simply, namely by directing their choice as to what aspects of the problem they will ignore and what aspects they will envisage; by determining their point of view, in fact. To return to that illustration of several portrait-painters painting the same face; just as each painter is led by his feeling, his sympathies, his general temperament, to select certain points in the face and to pass over others, so each group of scientific men in each generation is led by its sympathies, itsidiosyncrasies, to envisage certain aspects of the problems of the day and to ignore others.
The whole history of Science illustrates this. We are all familiar with the way in which the predilections of religious feeling in the time of Copernicus and Galileo retarded the progress of astronomical Science. As long as people believed that a divine drama of redemption had been enacted on this earth alone, they naturally concluded that this earth was the centre of the universe, and refused to look at facts which contradicted their conclusion. When Galileo turned his newly-made telescope on Jupiter and saw it circled by its satellites, he saw in this an image of the Copernican system and of the planets circling round the central Sun; but when he asked others to share his observation and his inference, they would not. "O, my dear Kepler," he writes in a letter to his fellow astronomer, "how I wish we could have one hearty laugh together. Here at Padua is the principal Professor of Philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass; but he pertinaciously refuses to do so. What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly!"
And though we laugh at the folly of those before us, we do the same things ourselves to-day. Take the science of Political Economy. A revolution has taken place in that, almost comparable to the change from the geocentric to the heliocentric view in Astronomy. During the distinctivelycommercial period of the last 100 years, the leading students of social science, being themselves filled with the spirit of the time, have been fain to look upon the acquisition of private wealth as the one absorbing motive of human nature; and so it has come about that the economists, from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill, have founded their science on self-seeking and competition, as the base of their analysis. To-day another series of economists coming to the front—their minds preoccupied with the great facts of Community of life and Co-operation—have discovered that Society is in the main an illustration of these latter principles, and have evolved a quite new phase of the science. It is not that Society has changed so much during this period, as that the altered point of view of the students of Society has caused them simply to fix their attention on a different aspect of the problem and a different range of facts.
I have alluded already to the way in which the prevalent use of Machinery in practical life has affected our mental outlook on the world. It is curious that during this mechanical age of the last 100 years or so, we have not only come to regard Society in a mechanical light, as a concourse of separate individuals bound together by a mere cash-nexus, but have extended the same idea to the universe at large, which we look upon as a concourse of separate atoms, associated together by gravitation, or possibly by mere mutual impact. Yet it is certain that both these viewsare false, since the individuals who compose Society arenotseparate from each other; and the theory that the universe, in its ultimate analysis, is composed of a vast number of discrete atoms is simply unthinkable.
When we come to a practical and modern question like Medicine, the influence of the spirit in which it is approached on the course of the science is very easy to see. For if the science of Medicine is approached (as it perhaps mostly is to-day) in a spirit of combined Fear and Self-indulgence—fear for one's own personal safety, combined with a kind of anxiety to continue living in the indulgence of habits known to be unhealthy—if it is approached in this uncomfortable and contradictory state of mind, it is pretty obvious that its course will be similarly uncomfortable: that it will consist for the most part in a search for drugs which shall, without effort on our part, palliate the effects of our misconduct; in the discovery, as in a kind of nightmare, that the air round us is full of billions of microbes; in a terrified study of these messengers of disease, and in a frantic effort to ward them off by inoculations, vaccinations, vivisections, and so forth, without end.
If, on the other hand, the science is approached from quite a different side—from that of the love of Health, and the desire to make life lovely, beautiful and clean; if the student is filled not only with this, but with a great belief in the essentialpowerof Man, and his command in creation, tocontrol not only all these little microbes whose name is Legion, but through his mind all the processes of his body; then it is obvious enough that a whole series of different facts will arise before his eyes and become the subject of his study—facts of sanitation, of the laws of cleanly life, diet, clothing and so forth, methods of control, and the details and practice of the influence of the mental upon the physical part of man—facts quite equally real with the others, equally important, equally numerous perhaps and complex, but forming a totally different range of science.
In conclusion, you begin to see doubtless that I do not believe in a science of mere Formulas, which can be poured from one brain to another like water in a pot. I believe in something more organic to Humanity—which shall combine Sense, Intellect and Soul; which shall include the keenest training of the Senses, the exactest use of the Brain, and the subordination of both of these to the finest and most generous attitude of Man towards Nature.
To come to quite practical aspects, I think that Physical Science, and for that matter Natural History too, ought to be founded on the closest observation and actual intimacy with Nature. It is notorious that in many respects the perceptions, the Nature-intuitions, of savage races far outdo those of civilised man. We have let that side go slack, and too often the man of science when he comes out of his study is a mere babyin the external world. I look back with a kind of shame when I think that I studied the mathematical side of Astronomy for three or four years at Cambridge and absolutely at the time hardly knew one star from another in the sky. But such are the methods of teaching that have been in use. They ought however to be reversed, and practical acquaintance with the facts should come a long way first, and then be succeeded by inductive and deductive reasoning when the difficulties of the subject have forced themselves on the student's mind.
Then in Natural History and Botany I think that we have hitherto not only neglected the perceptive side, but also what may be called the intuitive and emotional aspects. If any one will attend to the subject, I believe they will perceive that there are dormant in the mind the finest intuitions and instincts of relationship to the various animals and plants—intuitions which have played a far more important part in the life of barbaric races than they do to-day.[41]Primitive peoples have a remarkable instinct of the medicinal and dietetic uses of herbs and plants—an instinct which we also find well developed among animals—and I believe that this kind of knowledge would grow largely if, so to speak, it were given a chance.The formal classification of animals and plants—which now forms the main part of these sciences—would then come in simply as an aid and an auxiliary to the more direct and human study.
Again, let us take the science of Physiology. At present this is mainly carried on by means of Dissection or Vivisection. But both these methods are unsatisfactory. Dissection, because it amounts to studying the organisation of a living creature by the examination of its dead carcase; and Vivisection, because it is not only open to a similar objection, but because it necessarily violates the highest relation of man to the animal he is studying. There is, I believe, another method—a method which has been known in the East for centuries, though little regarded in the West—which may perhaps be called the method of Health. It consists in rendering the body, by proper habits of life, pure and healthy, till it becomes, as it were, transparent to the inner eye, and then projecting the consciousnessinwardso as to become almost as sensible of the structure and function of the various internal organs, as it usually is of the outer surface of the body. Of course this is a process which cannot be effectuated at once, and which may need help and corroboration by external methods of study, but I believe it is one which will lead to considerable results. There is no doubt that many of the Yogis of India attain to great skill in it.
Similarly, from what we have already saidabout Political Economy, it is obvious that satisfactory results in that science must depend immensely on the high degree of social instinct and feeling with which the student approaches it, and on the thoroughness of his acquaintance with theactual lifeof a people; and that the development of these factors is fully as important a part of the science as that which consists in the logical ordering and arrangement of the material obtained.
I need not, I think, go any further into detail of new methods in each Science. You remember what I said at the beginning about the Cell studying the Body of which it formed a part. We may imagine, if we like, three stages in this process. In the first stage the Cell regards the other cells and the Body simply from the point of view of how they affectit, and its comfort and safety. This might be taken to correspond to the Old-time Science. In the second stage the Cell, with its tiny experience of the other cells and the small part of the body in which it is placed, becomes highly intellectual, and professes to lay down the laws of the structure of the body generally. This corresponds to the attitude of Modern Science. In the third stage the Cell, growing and evolving, and coming daily into closer sympathetic relationship with all parts of the body, begins to find its true relation to the other cells, not to usethem, but to fulfil its part in the whole. Gradually drawing all the threads together and coming more and more, so to say, into a central position,it at last in its little brain spontaneously and inevitably reflects the whole, and becomes the mirror of it. This would answer to what we have called a really rational and humane Science.
Man has to find and tofeelhis true relation to other creatures and to the whole of which he is a part, and has to use his brain to further this. Scienceis, as we all know, the search for Unity. That is its ideal. It unites innumerable phenomena under one law; and then it unites many laws under one higher; always seeking for the ultimate complete integration. But (is it not obvious?) Man cannot find that unityofthe Whole until he feels his unitywiththe Whole. To found a Science of one-ness on the murderous Warfare and insane Competition of men with each other, and on the Slaughter and Vivisection of animals—the search for unity on the practice of disunity—is an absurdity, which can only in the long run reveal itself as such.
I do not know whether it seems obvious to you, but it does to me, that Man will never find in theory the unity of outer Nature till he reaches in practice the unity of his own. When he has learnt to harmonise in himself all his powers, bodily and mental, his desires, faculties, needs, and bring them into perfect co-operation—when he has found the true hierarchy of himself—then somehow I think that Nature round him will reflect this order, and range itself in clear and intelligible harmony about him.
But I can say no more. I have dragged youby the neck, as it were, through a recondite and difficult subject; and even so I do not feel that I have by any means done justice to it. But it is possible, perhaps, that I have cast the germ of an idea among you, which, if you think over it at leisure, may develop into something of value.
FOOTNOTES:[40]Afterwards reprinted in a modified form, as"Modern Science—a Criticism", in the first edition (1889) of the present book.[41]Elisée Reclus, in his remarkable paper,La Grande Famille, points out the wide-reachingFriendship, and free alliance for various purposes, of primitive man with the animals, existing long before the so-called "domestication" of the latter. SeeHumane Review, January, 1906.
[40]Afterwards reprinted in a modified form, as"Modern Science—a Criticism", in the first edition (1889) of the present book.
[40]Afterwards reprinted in a modified form, as"Modern Science—a Criticism", in the first edition (1889) of the present book.
[41]Elisée Reclus, in his remarkable paper,La Grande Famille, points out the wide-reachingFriendship, and free alliance for various purposes, of primitive man with the animals, existing long before the so-called "domestication" of the latter. SeeHumane Review, January, 1906.
[41]Elisée Reclus, in his remarkable paper,La Grande Famille, points out the wide-reachingFriendship, and free alliance for various purposes, of primitive man with the animals, existing long before the so-called "domestication" of the latter. SeeHumane Review, January, 1906.
The tendency of the Evolution Theory, as it penetrates human thought, is to rub out lines—the old lines of formal classification. We no longer now put in a class apart those animals which have horns or cloven hooves, because we find that continuous descent and close kinship weave relations which are not bounded by horns or hooves. And, for a not dissimilar reason, modern thought, based on the theory of evolution, is tending to rub out the hard and fast lines between moral Right and Wrong—the old formal classifications ofactionsas some in their nature good, and some in their nature bad.
The Eastern, or at least Indian, thought and religion rubbed out these lines long ago. Its philosophy indeed was founded on a theory of Evolution—the continuous evolution or emanation of the Many from the One. It could not therefore regard anyclassof beings or creatures as essentially bad, or anyclassof actions as essentially wrong, since all sprang from a common Root. The only essential evil was ignorance (avidya)—that is, the fact of thebeing or creature not knowing or perceiving its emanation from, or kinship with, the One—and of course any action done under this condition ofavidya, however outwardly correct, was essentially wrong; while on the other handallactions done by beings fully realising and conscious of their union with the One were necessarily right.
Of this attitude towards Right and Wrong there are abundant instances in the Upanishads. The choice of the path does not liebetweenGood and Bad, as in thePilgrim's Progress, but it lies above and in a region transcending them both. "By the serenity of his thoughts a man blots outallactions, whether good or bad."[42]"He does not distress himself with the thought, Why did I not do what is good? Why did I do what is bad?"[43]All religions indeed, by the very fact of their being religions, have indicated a sphere above morality, to which their followers shall and must aspire. What else is St. Paul's reiterated charge to escape from the dominion of sin and law, into the glorious liberty of the children of God? And in all ages the great mystics—those who stand near the fountain-sources of evolution and emanation—have seen and said the same. Says Spinoza:—"With regard to good and evil, these terms indicate nothing positive in things considered in themselves, nor are they anything else than modes of thought, or notionswhich we form fromthe comparison of one thing with another. For one and the same thing may at the same time be both good and evil, or indifferent."[44]
Here indeed, in these pregnant words, we come upon the very root of the matter. A thing, an action, may be called good or bad in respect to a certain purpose or object; but in itself, No. Wine may be good for the encouragement of sociability, but may be bad for the liver. The Sabbath-day may be pronounced a beneficial institution from some points of view, but not from others. A scrupulous respect for private property may certainly be a help to settled social life; but the practice of thieving—as recommended by Plato—may be very useful to check the lust of private riches. To speak of wine as in its nature good or bad is manifestly absurd; and the same of a pious respect for private property or the Sabbath-day. These things are good under certain conditions or for certain purposes, and bad under other conditions or for other purposes. But of course it belongs and goes with the brute externalising tendency of the mind, to stereotype the actual material thing—which should be only the vehicle of the spirit—and giveita character and a cult as good or bad. The Sabbath ceases to be made for man, and man is made for the Sabbath. Law, Custom, Pharisaism, and Self-righteousness spring up and usurp the sphere of morality, and all the histories of savageand civilised nations, with their endless fetishes and taboos and superstitions and ceremonies, and caste-marks and phylacteries, and petty regulations and proprieties,—including bitter scorn and persecution of those who do not fulfil them,—are but illustrations of this process.
All the prophets and saviours of the world have been for the Spirit as against the letter—and the teachings of all religions have in their turn become literalised and fossilised! Perhaps there has been no greater anti-literal than Jesus of Nazareth, and yet perhaps no religion has become more a thing of forms and dogmas than that which passes under his name. Even his counsels of Gentleness and Love—which one would indeed have thought might escape this process—have been corrupted into mere prescriptions of morality, such as those of Non-resistance, and of philanthropic Altruism.
It seems strange indeed that so great a man as Tolstoy should have lent himself to this process—to the pinning down of the excellent spirit of Christ (who by the way was man enough to drive the money-changers out of the Temple) to a mere formula, as one might pin a dragon-fly to a labelled card—Thou shalt not use Violence: thou shalt not Resist!And all the while to cleave to a formula only means to admit the evil in some other shape which the formula does not meet—to forswear the stick only means to resort to rebuke and sarcasm in self-defence, which may inflict more pain and a deeper scar, and in somecases more injury, than the stick; or if self-defence in any shape is quite forsworn then that only means to resign and abandon one's place in the world completely.
And the same of the somewhat spooney Altruism, which was at one time much recommended as the maxim of conduct. For all the while it is notorious that the specially altruistic people are as a rule painfully dull and uninteresting, and afford far less life and charm to those around them than many who are frankly egotistic; and so by following a formula of Altruism it seems they wreck the very work they set before themselves to do—namely, that of making the world brighter!
Against these weaknesses of Christianity Nietzsche was a healthy reaction. It was he insisted on the terms "good" and "bad" being restored to their proper use, as terms of relation—"good" for what? "bad" for what? But his reaction against maudlin altruism and non-resistance led him towards a pitfall in the opposite direction, towards the erection of the worship of Force almost into a formula, Thoushaltuse Violence, thoushaltResist. His contempt for the feeble and the spooney and the knock-kneed and the humbug is very delightful and entertaining, and, as I say, healthy in the sense of reaction; but one does not get a very clear idea what the strength which Nietzsche glorifies is for, or whither it is going to lead. His blonde beasts and his laughing lions may represent the Will to Power; but Nietzsche seems to have felt, himself, that thislatter alone would not suffice, and so he passed on to his discovery or invention of the Beyond-man,—i.e.of a childlike being who, without argument,affirmsand creates, and before whom institutions and conventions dissolve, as it were of their own accord.[45]This was a stroke of genius; but even so it leaves doubtful what the relation of such Beyond-men to each other may be, and whether, if they have no common source of life, their actions will not utterly cancel and destroy each other.
The truth is that Nietzsche never really penetrated to the realisation of that farther state of consciousness in which the deep underlying unity of man with Nature and his fellows is perceived and felt. He saw apparently that there is a life and an inspiration of life beyond all technical good and evil. But for some reason—partly because of the natural difficulty of the subject, partly perhaps because the Eastern outlook was uncongenial to his mind—he never found the solution which he needed; and his outline of the Superman remains cloudy and uncertain, vague and variously interpreted by followers and critics.
The question arises, What doweneed? We are to-day, in this matter, in a somewhat parlous state. The old codes of Morality are moribund; the Ten Commandments command only a veryqualified assent; the Christian religion as a real inspiration of practical life and conduct is dead; the social conventions and Mrs. Grundy remain, feebly galling and officious. What are we to do? Are we to bolster up the old codes, in which we have largely ceased to believe, merely in order to have a code?—or are we to let them go?
Of course, if we have decided what the final purpose or life of Man is, then we may say that what is good for that purpose is finally "good," and what is bad for that purpose is finally "evil." The Eastern philosophy, as I have said, deciding that the final purpose of Man is identification with Brahm, declaresallactions to be evil (even the most saintly) which are done by the self as separate from Brahm; and all actions as good which are done in the condition ofvidyaor conscious union. But here, though a final good and evil are allowed and acknowledged, as existing respectively in the conditions of vidya or avidya, those conditions altogether escape any external rule or classification.
Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, taking up this subject not long ago in a criticism[46]of Mr. Orage's little book on Nietzsche, said that all this talk about "beyond good and evil" was nonsense; that we must have some code; and that in effect, any code, even a bad one, was better than none. And one sees what he means. It is perfectly true, in a sense, that the harness, the shafts, and theblinkers keep a large part of the world on the beaten road and out of the ditch, and that folk are always to be found who, rather than use their higher faculties, will rely on these external guides; but to encourage this kind of salvation by blinkers seems the very reverse of what ought to be done; and one might even ask whether salvation by such means is salvation at all—whether the ditch were not better!
Besides, whatcanwe do? It is not so much that we are deliberately abandoning the codes as that they are abandoning us. With the gradual infiltration of new ideas, of Eastern thought, of Darwinian philosophy, of customs and creeds of races other than our own, with Bernard Shaw lecturing on the futility of the Ten Commandments, and so forth, it is not difficult to see that in a short while it will be impossible to rehabilitate any of the ancient codes or to give them a sanction and a sense of awe in the public mind. If with Gilbert Chesterton we should succeed in bolstering up such a thing for a time—well, it will only be for a time.
And the question is, whether the time has not really come for us to stand up—like sensible men and women—anddo without rules; whether we cannot trust ourselves at last to throw aside the blinkers. The question is whether we cannot realise that solid and central life which underlies and yet surpasses all rules. For truly, if we cannot do this, our state is pitiable—having ceased tobelieve in the letter of Morality, and yet unable to find its spirit!
It is here, then, that the New Morality comes in, as more or less clearly understood and expressed by the progressive sections to-day. Modern Socialism, in effect, taking up a position in its way somewhat similar to that of Eastern philosophy, says: Morality in its essence is not a code, but simply the realisation of the Common Life;[47]and that is a thing which is not foreign and alien to humanity, but very germane and natural to it—a thing so natural that without doubt it would be more in evidence than it is, did not the institutions and teachings of Western civilisation tend all along to deny and disguise it. To liberate this instinct of the Common Life, freeing it from hard and cramping rules, and to let it take its own form or forms—grafted on and varied of course by the personal and selective element of Affection and Sympathy—is the hope that lies before the world to-day for the solution of all sorts of moral and social problems.
And the more this position is thought over, the more, I believe, will it commend itself. The sense of organic unity, of the common welfare, the instinct of Humanity, or of general helpfulness, are things which run in all directions through the very fibre of our individual and social life—just as they do through that of the gregarious animals.In a thousand ways: through heredity and the fact that common ancestral blood flows in our veins—though we be only strangers that pass in the street; through psychology, and the similarity of structure and concatenation in our minds; through social linkage, and the necessity of each and all to the others' economic welfare; through personal affection and the ties of the heart; and through the mystic and religious sense which, diving deep below personalities, perceives the vast flood of universal being—in these and many other ways does this Common Life compel us to recognise itself as a fact—perhaps the most fundamental fact of existence.
To teach this simple foundational fact and what flows from it to every child—not only as a theory, but as a practical habit and inspiration of conduct—is not really difficult, but easy. Children, having this sense woven into their very being, grow up in the spirit and practical habitude of it, and from the beginning possess the inspiration of what we call Morality—far more effectually indeed than copy-book maxims can provide. Respect for truth, consideration towards parents and elders, respect for the reasonable properties, dignities, conveniences of others, as well as for one's own needs and dignities, become perfectly natural and habitual. And that this is no mere hypothesis the example of Japan has lately shown where every young thing is brought up so far drenched in the sentiment of community that to give one's life for one's country is looked uponas a privilege.[48]The general lines, I say, of morality would be secure, and much more secure than they now are, if we could only bring the children up in an educational and practical atmosphere of that solidarity which as a matter of fact is demanded to-day by socialism and the economic movement generally.
And on this ground-work, as I have hinted, Personal Affection and Sympathy would build a superstructure of their own; they would outline a society as much more beautiful, powerful and closely knit than the present one founded on the Cash-nexus, as, say, the Athenian society of the time of Pericles was superior to that of the Lapithæ who first bitted and bridled the horse.
While the general Life, equal, pervasive, and in a sense undifferentiated, is a great fact which has to be acknowledged; so this personal Love and Affection, choosing, selecting, and giving outline and form to that life, is equally a fact, equally undeniable, equally sacred—and one which has to be taken in conjunction with the other.
I say equally sacred: because there has been a tendency (no doubt due to certain causes) to look upon personal affection, in its various phases from slight inclinations of sympathy to the stronger compulsions of passion, as something ratherdubious in character, at best an amiable weakness not to be encouraged. Tolstoy, in one of his writings, figures the case of a little household in days of famine not really having bread enough for their own wants. Then a stranger child comes to the door and pleads for food. Tolstoy suggests that the mother ought to take the scanty crust from her own child to feed the stranger withal, or at least to share the food equally between the two children. But such a conclusion seems to me doubtful.
Whatever "ought" may mean in such a connexion, we know pretty well that such neverwillbe the rule of human life, we may almost say never can be; perhaps we should be equally justified in saying, never "ought" to be. For obviously there must be preferences, selections. Our affections, our affinities, our sympathies, our passions, are not given us for nothing. It is not for nothing that every individual person, every tree, every animal has ashape, a shape of its own. If it were not so the world would be infinitely, inconceivably, dull. Yet to ask that a mother should in all cases treat strange children exactly the same as her own, that a man from the oceanic multitude should single out no special or privileged friends, but should love all alike, is to ask that these folk in their mental and moral nature should become as jellyfish—of no distinct shape or satisfaction to themselves or any one else. Profound and indispensable as is the Law of Equality—the law, namely, that there is aregion within all beings where they touch to a common and equal life—the other law, that of Individual predilection, is equally indispensable. Try to reduce all to the one motive of the general interest, and you might have a perfect morality, but a morality woodeny, hard and dull, without form and feature. Try to dispense with this, and to found society on individual affection and love, and on individual initiative, without morals, and you would have a flighty, unstable thing, without consistency or backbone.
My contention, then, is that our hope for the future society lies in its embodiment of these two great principles jointly: (1) the recognition of the Common Life as providing the foundation-element of general morality, and (2) the recognition of Individual Affection and Expression—and to a much greater degree than hitherto—as building up the higher groupings and finer forms of the structure. And in proportion as (1) provides a solider basis of morals than we have hitherto had, so will it be possible to give to (2) a width of scope and freedom of action hitherto untried or untrusted. Conjointly with the strengthening of these principles of Solidarity and Affection in society must of course come the strengthening of Individuality—the right and the desire of every being to preserve and develop its own propershape, and so to add to the richness and interest of life—and this involves the right of Resistance, and (once more) the relegation of the formula of non-resistance into the background.
These considerations, however, are leading us too far afield, and away from the special subject of our paper. I mention them chiefly in order to show that while we are considering Morality as a foundation-element of Society, it must never be lost sight of that it is not the only element, and that it would be comparatively senseless and useless unless grafted on and complemented and completed by the others.
The method of the New Morality, then, will be to minimise formulæ, and (except as illustrations) to use them sparely; and to bring children up—and so indirectly all citizens—in such conditions of abounding life and health that their sympathies, overflowing naturally to those around, will cause them to realise in the strongest way their organic part in the great whole of society—and this not as an intellectual theory, so much as an abiding consciousness and foundation-fact of their own existence. Make this the basis of all teaching. Make them realise—by all sorts of habit and example—that to injure or deceive others is to injure themselves—that to help others somehow satisfies and fortifies their own inner life. Let them learn, as they grow up, to regard all human beings, of whatever race or class, as ends in themselves—never to be looked upon as mere things or chattels to be made use of. Let them also learn to look upon the animals in the same light—as beings, they too, who are climbing the great ladder of creation—beings with whom also we humans have a common spirit and interest.And let them learn to respectthemselvesas worthy and indispensable members of this great Body. Thus will be established a true Morality—a morality far more searching, more considerate of others, more adaptive and more genuine than that of the present day—a morality, we may say, of common-sense.
For it may indeed be said that Morality—taking a downright and almost physiological view of it—is simplyabundance of life. That is, that when a man has so abounding and vital an inner nature that his sympathies and activities overflow the margin of his own petty days and personal advantage, he is by that fact entering the domain of morality. Before that time and while limited to the personal organism, the creative life in each being is either non-moral like that of the animals, or simply selfish like that of the immature man; but when it overflows this limit it necessarily becomes social, and moves to the support and consideration of the neighbour. Having formerly found its complete activity in the sustentation of the personal self it now spreads its helpful energies into the lives of the other selves around. Altruism, in fact, in its healthy forms, is the overflow of abounding vitality. It is a morality without a code, and happily free from limiting formulæ.[49]
And if it be again said that a morality of this kind, which rests on a principle and a mental attitude only, is a danger, let us pause for a moment to consider how much more dangerous is one which rests on formulæ. If morality without a code is a serious matter, how much more serious is one which is nailed upwithina code! For looking back on history it would sometimes seem that the black-and-white, the this-thing-right-and-that-thing-wrong morality has been the most wicked thing in the world. It has been an excuse for all the most devilish deeds and persecutions imaginable. A formula of the Sabbath-day, a formula about Witchcraft, a formula of Marriage (regardless of the real human relation), a formula concerning Theft (regardless of the dire need of the thief)—and burnings, hangings, torturings without mercy! The terrible thing about this Right-and-Wrong morality is not only that it leads to these dreadful reprisals; but that it brands upon the victim as well as upon the oppressor the fatuous notions that a certainthingis right or wrong, and that what one has to do is to saveoneself—two notions both of which are directly contrary to true Morality. A boy tells a verbal lie—perhaps through fear, perhaps through inadvertence. He has broken a formula and is immediately caned. Moral: he will keep to verbal truth afterwards—however mean or insidious it may be—and be pharisaically self-satisfied; but he will never realise that the importance of truth and lies rests not in the words,but in the confidence and mutual trust which they either create or destroy. The peculiarly English worship of Duty is open to the same objection. "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds," and splendid as is the conception and practice of Duty, as a self-oblivious inspiration and enthusiasm, it becomes a truly revolting thing when it takes the all-too-common form "I have donemyDuty, I'm all right!" "I am going to domyDuty, whatever becomes of you." Can anything be imagined more disintegrating to society, more certain to split it up into a dustheap of self-regarding units, than a formula of this kind? "It is my painful Duty to condemn you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead," says the Judge to the wretched girl who, in a frenzy of despair, has drowned her baby. What he really means is that while he perfectly recognises the monstrosity of the Law which he has sworn to administer, and the soul-killing effect on the girl which his sentence may have, yet in order to savehimselffrom the risk or the wrong of breaking that Law, he is willing and ready to pronounce that sentence. "It is my duty to burn you," says the Inquisitor to the heretic; and the implication is really, "I am afraid that if I do not burn you I shall get burnt myself, in the next world."
The sooner an end can be made of this sort of morality, the better—which under the cloak of public advantage or benefit is only thinking about self-promotion and self-interest, either in thisworld or the next, and which truly is calculated not to further human solidarity but to destroy it. It runs and trickles through all of modern society, poisoning the well-springs of affection, this morality which, having paid its domestic servants their regular wages, is quite satisfied with itself, and expects them to dotheirduty in return, but is silent about their real needs and welfare; which treats its wage-workers as simple machines for the grinding out of profits, and lifts its eyebrows in serene surprise when they retaliate against such treatment; which can only regard a criminal as a person who has broken a formula, and in return must be punished according to a formula; and a pig as an animal for which you provide reasonable provender and a stye, and which in return you are entitled toeat. Pharisaical, self-centred and self-interested, materialistic to the last degree, and really senseless in its outlook, this current morality is indeed, and very seriously, a public peril.