However, supposing the account of the origin of the moral sense and of moral life, given inThe Descent of Man, to be true, it is an account of the origin only. Though profoundly significant, as well as profoundly interesting, it is not more significant, compared with the subsequent development, than is the origin of physical life compared with the subsequent history of living beings. Suppose a mineralogist or a chemist were to succeed in discovering the exact point at which inorganic matter gave birth to the organic; his discovery would be momentous and would convey to us a most distinct assurance of the method by which the governing power of the universe works: but would it qualify the mineralogist or the chemist to give a full account of all the diversities of animal life, and of the history of man? Heroism, self- sacrifice, the sense of moral beauty, the refined affections of civilized men, philanthropy, the desire of realizing a high moral ideal, whatever else they may be, are not tribal self-preservation subtilized into etiquette; nor are they adequately explained by reference to the permanent character of one set of impressions and the occasional character of another set. Between the origin of moral life and its present manifestation has intervened something so considerable as to baffle any anticipation of the destiny of humanity which could have been formed for a mere inspection of the rudiments. We may call this intervening force circumstance, if we please, provided we remember that calling it circumstance does not settle its nature, or exclude the existence of a power acting through circumstance as the method of fulfilling a design.
Whatever things may have been in their origin, they are what they are, both in themselves and in regard to their indications respecting other beings or influences the existence of which may be implied in theirs. The connection between the embryo and the adult man, with his moral sense and intelligence, and all that these imply, is manifest, as well as the gradual evolution of the one out of the other, and a conclusive argument is hence derived against certain superstitions or fantastic beliefs; but the embryo is not a man, neither is the man an embryo. A physiologist sets before us a set of plates showing the similarity between the embryo of Newton and that of his dog Diamond. The inference which he probably expects us to draw is that there is no essential difference between the philosopher and the dog. But surely it is at least as logical to infer, that the importance of the embryo and the significance of embryological similarities may not be so great as the physiologist is disposed to believe.
So with regard to human institutions. The writer on legal antiquities before mentioned finds two sets of institutions which are now directly opposed to each other, and between the respective advocates of which a controversy has been waged. He proposes to terminate that controversy by showing that though the two rival systems in their development are so different, in their origin they were the same. This seems very clearly to bring home to us the fact that, important as the results of an investigation of origins are, there is still a limit to their importance.
Again, while we allow no prejudice to stand in the way of our acceptance of Evolution, we may fairly call upon Evolution to be true to itself. We may call upon it to recognise the possibility of development in the future as well as the fact of development in the past, and not to shut up the hopes and aspirations of our race in a mundane egg because the mundane egg happens to be the special province of the physiologist. The series of developments has proceeded from the inorganic to the organic, from the organic upwards to moral and intellectual life. Why should it be arrested there? Why should it not continue its upward course and arrive at a development which might be designated as spiritual life? Surely the presumption is in favour of a continued operation of the law. Nothing can be more arbitrary than the proceeding of Comte, who, after tracing humanity, as he thinks, through the Theological and Metaphysical stages into the Positive, there closes the series and assumes that the Positive stage is absolutely final. How can he be sure that it will not be followed, for example, by one in which man will apprehend and commune with the Ruler of the Universe, not through mythology or dogma, but through Science? He may have had no experience of such a phase of human existence, nor may he be able at present distinctly to conceive it. But had he lived in the Theological or the Metaphysical era he would have been equally without experience of the Positive, and have had the same difficulty in conceiving its existence. His finality is an assumption apparently without foundation.
By Spiritual Life we do not mean the life of a disembodied spirit, or anything supernatural and anti-scientific, but a life the motives of which are beyond the world of sense, and the aim of which is an ideal, individual and collective, which may be approached but cannot be attained under our present conditions, and the conception of which involves the hope of an ulterior and better state. The Positivists themselves often use the word "spiritual," and it may be assumed that they mean by it something higher in the way of aspiration than what is denoted by the mere term moral, though they may not look forward to any other state of being than this.
We do not presume, of course, in these few pages to broach any great question, our only purpose being to point out a possible aberration or exaggeration of the prevailing school of thought. But it must surely be apparent to the moral philosopher, no less than to the student of history, that at the time of the appearance of Christianity, a crisis took place in the development of humanity which may be not unfitly described as the commencement of Spiritual Life. The change was not abrupt. It had been preceded and heralded by the increasing spirituality of the Hebrew religion, especially in the teachings of the prophets, by the spiritualization of Greek philosophy, and perhaps by the sublimation of Roman duty; but it was critical and decided. So much is admitted even by those who deplore the advent of Christianity as a fatal historical catastrophe, which turned away men's minds from the improvement of their material condition to the pursuit of a chimerical ideal. Faith, Hope, and Charity, by which the Gospel designates the triple manifestation of spiritual life, are new names for new things; for it is needless to say that in classical Greek the words have nothing like their Gospel signification. It would be difficult, we believe, to find in any Greek or Roman writer an expression of hope for the future of humanity. The nearest approach to such a sentiment, perhaps, is in the political Utopianism of Plato. The social ideal is placed in a golden age which has irretrievably passed away. Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, even if it were a more serious production than it is, seems to refer to nothing more than the pacification of the Roman Empire and the restoration of its material prosperity by Augustus. But Christianity, in the Apocalypse, at once breaks forth into a confident prediction of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, and of the realization of the ideal.
The moral aspiration—the striving after an ideal of character, personal and social, the former in and through the latter—seems to be the special note of the life, institutions, literature, and art of Christendom. Christian Fiction, for example, is pervaded by an interest in the development and elevation of character for which we look in vain in theArabian Nights, where there is no development of character, nothing but incident and adventure. Christian sculpture, inferior perhaps in workmanship to that of Phidias, derives its superior interest from its constant suggestion of a spiritual ideal. The Christian lives, in a manner, two lives, an outward one of necessary conformity to the fashions and ordinances of the present world; an inner one of protest against the present world and anticipation of an ideal state of things; and this duality is reproduced in the separate existence of the spiritual society or Church, submitting to existing social arrangements, yet struggling to transcend them, and to transmute society by the realization of the Christian's social ideal. With this is necessarily connected a readiness to sacrifice present to future good, and the interests of the present to future good, and the interests of the present world to those of the world of hope. Apart from this, the death of Christ (and that of Socrates also), instead of being an instance of "sweet reasonableness," would be out of the pale of reason altogether.
It is perhaps the absence of an ideal that prevents our feeling satisfied with Utilitarianism. The Utilitarian definition of morality has been so much enlarged, and made to coincide so completely with ordinary definitions in point of mere extent, that the difference between Utilitarianism and ordinary Moral Philosophy seems to have become almost verbal. Yet we feel that there is something wanting. There is no ideal of character. And where there is no ideal of character there can hardly be such a thing as a sense of moral beauty. A Utilitarian perhaps would say that perfect utility is beauty. But whatever may be the case with material beauty, moral beauty at all events seems to contain an element not identical with the satisfaction produced by the appearance of perfect utility, but suggestive of an unfulfilled ideal.
Suppose spiritual life necessarily implies the expectation of a Future State, has physical science anything to say against that expectation? Physical Science is nothing more than the perceptions of our five bodily senses registered and methodized. But what are these five senses? According to physical science itself, nerves in a certain stage of evolution. Why then should it be assumed that their account of the universe, or of our relations to it, is exhaustive and final? Why should it be assumed that these are the only possible organs of perception, and that no other faculties or means of communication with the universe can ever in the course of evolution be developed in man? Around us are animals absolutely unconscious, so far as we can discern, of that universe which Science has revealed to us. A sea anemone, if it can reflect, probably feels as confident that it perceives everything capable of being perceived as the man of science. The reasonable supposition, surely, is that though Science, so far as it goes, is real, and the guide of our present life, its relation to the sum of things is not much more considerable than that of the perceptions of the lower orders of animals. That our notions of the universe have been so vastly enlarged by the mere invention of astronomical instruments is enough in itself to suggest the possibility of further and infinitely greater enlargement. To our bodily senses, no doubt, and to physical science, which is limited by them, human existence seems to end with death; but if there is anything in our nature which tells us, with a distinctness and persistency equal to those of our sensible perceptions, that hope and responsibility extend beyond death, why is this assurance not as much to be trusted as that of the bodily sense itself? There is apparently no ultimate criterion of truth, whether physical or moral, except our inability, constituted as we are to believe otherwise; and this criterion seems to be satisfied by a universal and ineradicable moral conviction as well as by a universal and irresistible impression of sense.
We are enjoined, some times with a vehemence approaching that of ecclesiastical anathema, to refuse to consider anything which lies beyond the range of experience. By experience is meant the perceptions of our bodily senses, the absolute completeness and finality of which, we must repeat, is an assumption, the warrant for which must at all events be produced from other authority than that of the senses themselves. On this ground we are called upon to discard, as worthy of nothing but derision, the ideas of eternity and infinity. But to dislodge these ideas from our minds is impossible; just as impossible as it is to dislodge any idea that has entered through the channels of the senses; and this being so, it is surely conceivable that they may not be mere illusions, but real extensions of our intelligence beyond the domain of mere bodily sense, indicating an upward progress of our nature. Of course if these ideas correspond to reality, physical science, though true as far as it goes, cannot be the whole truth, or even bear any considerable relation to the whole truth, since it necessarily presents Being as limited by space and time.
Whither obedience to the dictates of the higher part of our nature will ultimately carry us, we may not be able, apart from Revelation, to say; but there seems no substantial reason for refusing to believe that it carries us towards a better state. Mere ignorance, arising from the imperfection of our perceptive powers, of the mode in which we shall pass into that better state, or of its precise relation to our present existence, cannot cancel an assurance, otherwise valid, of our general destiny. A transmutation of humanity, such as we can conceive to be brought about by the gradual prevalence of higher motives of action, and the gradual elimination thereby of what is base and brutish, is surely no more incredible than the actual development of humanity, as it is now, out of a lower animal form or out of inorganic matter.
What the bearing of the automatic theory of human nature would be upon the hopes and aspirations of man, or on moral philosophy generally, it might be difficult, no doubt, to say. But has any one of the distinguished advocates of the automatic theory ever acted on it, or allowed his thoughts to be really ruled by it for a moment? What can be imagined more strange than an automaton suddenly becoming conscious of its own automatic character, reasoning and debating about it automatically, and coming automatically to the conclusion that the automatic theory of itself is true? Nor is there any occasion here to entangle ourselves in the controversy about Necessarianism. If the race can act progressively on higher and more unselfish motives, as history proves to be the fact, there can be nothing in the connection between our actions and their antecedents inconsistent with the ascent of man. Jonathan Edwards is undoubtedly right in maintaining that there is a connection between every human action and its antecedents. But the nature of the connection remains a mystery. We learn its existence not from inspection, but from consciousness, and this same consciousness tells us that the connection is not such as to preclude the existence of liberty of choice, moral aspiration, moral effort, moral responsibility, which are the contradictories of Necessarianism. The termscause and effect, and others of that kind, which the imperfection of psychological language compels us to use in speaking of the mental connection between action and its antecedents, are steeped from their employment in connection with physical science, in physical association, and the import with them into the moral sphere the notion of physical enchainment, for which the representations of consciousness, the sole authority, afford no warrant whatever.
Another possible source of serious aberration, we venture to think, will be found in the misapplication of the doctrine ofsurvivals. Some lingering remains of its rudimentary state in the shape of primaeval superstitions or fancies continue to adhere to a developed, and matured belief; and hence it is inferred, or at least the inference is suggested, that the belief itself is nothing but a "survival," and destined in the final triumph of reason to pass away. The belief in the immortality of the soul, for example, is found still connected in the lower and less advanced minds with primaeval superstitions and fancies about ghosts and other physical manifestations of the spirit world, as well as with funeral rites and modes of burial indicating irrational notions as to the relations of the body to the spirit. But neither these nor any special ideas as to the nature of future rewards and punishments or the mode of transition from the present to the future state, are really essential parts of the belief. They are the rudimentary imaginations and illusions of which the rational belief is gradually working itself clear. The basis of the rational belief in the immortality of the soul, or, to speak more correctly, in the continuance of our spiritual existence after death is the conviction, common, so far as we know, to all the higher portions of humanity, and apparently ineradicable, that our moral responsibility extends beyond the grave; that we do not by death terminate the consequences of our actions, or our relations to those to whom we have done good or evil; and that to die the death of the righteous is better than to have lived a life of pleasure even with the approbation of an undiscerning world. So far from growing weaker, this conviction appears to grow practically stronger among the most highly educated and intelligent of mankind, though they may have cast off the last remnant of primitive or medieval superstition, and though they may have ceased to profess belief in any special form of the doctrine. The Comtists certainly have not got rid of it, since they have devised a subjective immortality with a retributive distinction between the virtuous and the wicked; to say nothing of their singular proposal that the dead should be formally judged by the survivors, and buried, according to the judgment passed upon them, in graves of honour or disgrace.
With regard to religion generally there is the same tendency to exaggerate the significance of "survivals," and to neglect, on the other hand, the phenomena of disengagement. Because the primitive fables and illusions which long adhere to religion are undeniably dying out, it is asserted, or suggested, that religion itself is dying. Religion is identified with mythology. But mythology is merely the primaeval matrix of religion. Mythology is the embodiment of man's childlike notions as to the universe in which he finds himself, and the powers which for good or evil influence his lot; and, when analysed, it is found beneath all its national variations to be merely based upon a worship of the sun, the moon, and the forces of Nature. Religion is the worship and service of a moral God and a God who is worshipped and served by virtue. We can distinctly see, in Greek literature for instance, religion disengaging itself from mythology. In Homer the general element is mythology, capable of being rendered more or less directly into simple nature- worship, childish, non-moral, and often immoral. But when Hector says that he holds omens of no account, and that the best omen of all is to fight for one's country, he shows an incipient reliance on a Moral Power. The disengagement of religion from mythology is of course much further advanced and more manifest when we come to Plato; while the religious faith, instead of being weaker, has become infinitely stronger, and is capable of supporting the life and the martyrdom of Socrates. When Socrates and Plato reject the Homeric mythology, it is not because they are sceptics but because Homer is a child.
But it is in the Old Testament that the process of disengagement and the growth of a moral out of a ceremonial religion are most distinctly seen:—
"'Wherewith shall I come before Jahveh,And bow myself down before God on high?Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,With the sacrifice of calves of a year old?—Will Jahveh be pleased with thousands of rams,With ten thousands of rivers of oil?Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?''—He hath showed thee, O man, what is good,And what Jahveh doth require of thee;What but to do justly to love mercy,And to walk humbly with thy God?'"
Here no doubt is a belief in the efficacy of sacrifice, even of human sacrifice, even of the sacrifice of the first-born. But it is a receding and dying belief; while the belief in the power of justice, mercy, humility, moral religion in short, is prevailing over it and taking its place.
So it is again in the New Testament with regard to spiritual life and the miraculous. Spiritual life commenced in a world full of belief in the miraculous, and it did not at once break with that belief. But it threw the miraculous into the background and anticipated its decline, presaging that it would lose its importance and give place finally to the spiritual. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing…. Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." Clearly the writer of this believes in prophecies, in tongues, in mysteries. But clearly, also, he regards them as both secondary and transient, while he regards charity as primary and eternal.
It may be added that the advent of spiritual life did at once produce a change in the character of the miraculous itself, divested it of its fantastic extravagance, and infused into it a moral element. The Gospel miracles, almost without exception, have a moral significance, and can without incongruity be made the text of moral discourses to this day. An attempt to make Hindoo or Greek miracles the text of moral discourses would produce strange results.
Compared with the tract of geological, and still more with that of astronomical time, spiritual life has not been long in our world; and we need not wonder if the process of disengagement from the environments of the previous state of humanity is as yet far from complete Political religions and persecution, for instance, did not come into the world with Christ; they are survivals of an earlier stage of human progress. The Papacy, the great political Church of mediaeval Europe, is the historical continuation of the State religion of Rome and the Pontificate of the Roman emperors. The Greek Church is the historical continuation of the Eastern offset of the same system. The national State Churches are the historical continuations of the tribal religions and priesthoods of the Northern tribes. We talk of the conversion of the Barbarians, but in point of fact it was the chief of the tribe that was converted, or rather that changed his religious allegiance, sometimes by treaty (as in the case of Guthrum), and carried his tribe with him into the allegiance of the new God. Hence the new religion, like the old, was placed upon the footing of a tribal, and afterwards of a state, religion; heresy was treason; and the state still lent the aid of the secular arm to the national priesthood for the repression of rebellion against the established faith. But since the Reformation the process of disengagement has been rapidly going on; and in the North American communities, which are the latest developments of humanity, the connection between Church and State has ceased to exist, without any diminution of the strength of the religious sentiment
Whether there is anything deserving of attention in these brief remarks or not, one thing may safely be affirmed: it is time that the question as to the existence of a rational basis for religion and the reality of spiritual life should be studied, not merely with a view of overthrowing the superstitions of the past, but of providing, if possible, a faith for the present and the future. The battle of criticism and science against superstition has been won, as every open-minded observer of the contest must be aware, though the remnants of the broken host still linger on the field. It is now time to consider whether religion must perish with superstition, or whether the death of superstition may not be the new birth of religion. Religion survived the fall of Polytheism; it is surely conceivable that it may survive the fall of Anthropomorphism, and that the desperate struggle which is being waged about the formal belief in "Personality," may be merely the sloughing off of something that when it is gone, will be seen to have not been vital to religion.
There are some who would deter us from inquiring into anything beyond the range of sensible experience, and especially from any inquiry into the future existence of the soul, which they denounce as utterly unpractical, and compare with obsolete and fruitless inquiries into the state of the soul before birth. We have already challenged the exclusive claim of the five bodily senses to be the final sources of knowledge; and we may surely add that it is at least as practical to inquire into the destiny as it is to inquire into the origin of man.
If the belief in God and in a Future State is true, it will prevail. The cloud will pass away and the sun will shine out again. But in the meantime society may have "a bad quarter of an hour." Without exaggerating the influence of the belief in Future Reward and Punishment, or of any form of it, on the actions of ordinary men, we may safely say that the sense of responsibility to a higher power, and of the constant presence of an all-seeing Judge, has exercised an influence, the removal of which would be greatly felt. Materialism has in fact already begun to show its effects on human conduct and on society. They may perhaps be more visible in communities where social conduct depends greatly on individual conviction and motive, than in communities which are more ruled by tradition and bound together by strong class organizations; though the decay of morality will perhaps be ultimately more complete and disastrous in the latter than in the former. God and future retribution being out of the question, it is difficult to see what can restrain the selfishness of an ordinary man, and induce him, in the absence of actual coercion, to sacrifice his personal desires to the public good. The service of Humanity is the sentiment of a refined mind conversant with history; within no calculable time is it likely to overrule the passions and direct the conduct of the mass. And after all, without God or spirit, what is "Humanity"? One school of science reckons a hundred and fifty different species of man. What is the bond of unity between all these species and wherein consists the obligation to mutual love and help? A zealous servant of science told Agassiz that the age of real civilization would have begun when you could go out and shoot a man for scientific purposes.Apparent dirae facies. We begin to perceive, looming through the mist, the lineaments of an epoch of selfishness compressed by a government of force.
There appears to be a connection between the proposed substitutes for religion and the special training of their several authors. Historians tender us the worship of Humanity, professors of physical science tender us Cosmic Emotion. Theism might almost retort the apologue of the specter of the Brocken.
The only organized cultus without a God, at present before us, is that of Comte. This in all its parts—its high priesthood, its hierarchy, its sacraments, its calendar, its hagiology, its literary canon, its ritualism, and we may add, in its fundamentally intolerant and inquisitorial character—is an obvious reproduction of the Church of Rome, with humanity in place of God, great men in place of the saints, the Founder of Comtism in place of the Founder of Christianity, and even a sort of substitute for the Virgin in the shape of womanhood typified by Clotilde de Vaux. There is only just the amount of difference which would be necessary in order to escape servile imitation. We have ourselves witnessed a case of alternation between the two systems which testified to the closeness of their affinity. The Catholic Church has acted on the imagination of Comte at least as powerfully as Sparta acted on that of Plato. Nor is Comtism, any more than Plato'sRepublicand other Utopias, exempt from the infirmity of claiming finality for a flight of the individual imagination. It would shut up mankind for ever in a stereotyped organization which is the vision of a particular thinker. In this respect it seems to us to be at a disadvantage compared with Christianity, which, as presented, in the Gospels, does not pretend to organize mankind ecclesiastically or politically, but simply supplies a new type of character, and a new motive power, leaving government, ritual and organization of every kind to determine themselves from age to age. Comte's prohibition of inquiry into the composition of the stars, which his priesthood, had it been installed in power, would perhaps have converted into a compulsory article of faith, is only a specimen of his general tendency (the common tendency, as we have said, of all Utopias) to impose on human progress the limits of his own mind. Let his hierarchy become masters of the world, and the effect would probably be like that produced by the ascendency of a hierarchy (enlightened no doubt for its time) in Egypt, a brief start forward followed by consecrated immobility for ever.
Lareveillere Lepaux, a member of the French Directory, invented a new religion of Theo-philanthropy which seems in fact to have been an organized Rousseauism. He wished to impose it on France but finding that in spite of his passionate endeavours he made but little progress he sought the advice of Talleyrand. "I am not surprised" said Talleyrand "at the difficulty you experience. It is no easy matter to introduce a new religion. But I will tell you what I recommend you to do. I recommend you to be crucified and to rise again on the third day." We cannot say whether Lareveillere made any proselytes but if he did their number cannot have been much smaller than the reputed number of the religious disciples of Comte. As a philosophy, Comtism has found its place and exercised its share of influence among the philosophies of the time but as a religious system it appears to make little way. It is the invention of a man not the spontaneous expression of the beliefs and feelings of mankind. Any one with a tolerably lively imagination might produce a rival system with as little practical effect. Roman Catholicism was at all events a growth not an invention.
Cosmic Emotion, though it does not affect to be an organized system, is the somewhat sudden creation of individual minds set at work apparently by the exigencies of a particular situation and on that account suggestiveprima facieof misgivings similar to those suggested by the invention of Comte.
Now is the worship of Humanity or Cosmic Emotion really a substitute for religion? That is the only question which we wish in these few pages to ask. We do not pretend here to inquire what is or what is not true in itself.
Religion teaches that we have our being in a Power whose character and purposes are indicated to us by our moral nature, in whom we are united and by the union made sacred to each other, whose voice conscience however generated, is whose eye is always upon us, sees all our acts, and sees them as they are morally, without reference to worldly success or to the opinion of the world, to whom at death we return, and our relations to whom, together with his own nature, are an assurance that according as we promote or fail to promote his design by self improvement and the improvement of our kind, it will be well or ill for us in the sum of things. This is a hypothesis evidently separable from belief in a revelation, and from any special theory respecting the next world, as well as from all dogma and ritual. It may be true or false in itself, capable of demonstration or incapable. We are concerned here solely with its practical efficiency, compared with that of the proposed substitutes. It is only necessary to remark, that there is nothing about the religious hypothesis as here stated, miraculous, supernatural, or mysterious, except so far as those epithets may be applied to anything beyond the range of bodily sense, say the influence of opinion or affection. A universe self-made, and without a God, is at least as great a mystery as a universe with a God; in fact the very attempt to conceive it in the mind produces a moral vertigo which is a bad omen for the practical success of Cosmic Emotion.
For this religion are the service and worship of Humanity likely to be a real equivalent in any respect, as motive power, as restraint, or as comfort? Will the idea of life in God be adequately replaced by that of an interest in the condition and progress of Humanity, as they may affect us and be influenced by our conduct, together with the hope of human gratitude and fear of human reprobation after death, which the Comtists endeavor to organize into a sort of counterpart of the Day of Judgment?
It will probably be at once conceded that the answer must be in the negative as regards the immediate future and the mass of mankind. The simple truths of religion are intelligible to all, and strike all minds with equal force, though they may not have the same influence with all moral natures. A child learns them perfectly at its mother's knee. Honest ignorance in the mine, on the sea, at the forge, striving to do its coarse and perilous duty, performing the lowliest functions of humanity, contributing in the humblest way to human progress, itself scarcely sunned by a ray of what more cultivated natures would deem happiness, takes in as fully as the sublimest philosopher the idea of a God who sees and cares for all, who keeps account of the work well done or the kind act, marks the secret fault, and will hereafter make up to duty for the hardness of its present lot. But a vivid interest—such an interest as will act both as a restraint and as a comfort—in the condition and future of humanity can surely exist only in those who have a knowledge of history sufficient to enable them to embrace the unity of the past, and an imagination sufficiently cultivated to glow with anticipation of the future. For the bulk of mankind the humanity worshippers point of view seems unattainable at least within any calculable time.
As to posthumous reputation good or evil it is and always must be the appendage of a few marked men. The plan of giving it substance by instituting separate burial places for the virtuous and the wicked is perhaps not very seriously proposed. Any such plan involves the fallacy of a sharp division where there is no clear moral line besides postulating not only an unattainable knowledge of men's actions but a knowledge still more manifestly unattainable of their hearts. Yet we cannot help thinking that on the men of intellect to whose teaching the world is listening this hope of posthumous reputation, or to put it more plainly, of living in the gratitude and affection of their kind by means of their scientific discoveries and literary works exercises an influence of which they are hardly conscious, it prevents them from fully feeling the void which the annihilation of the hope of future existence leaves in the hearts of ordinary men.
Besides so far as we are aware no attempt has yet been made to show us distinctly what humanity is and wherein its holiness consists. If the theological hypothesis is true and all men are united in God, humanity is a substantial reality, but otherwise we fail to see that it is any thing more than a metaphysical abstraction converted into an actual entity by philosophers who are not generally kind to metaphysics. Even the unity of the species is far from settled, science still debates whether there is one race of men or whether there are more than a hundred. Man acts on man no doubt, but he also acts on other animals, and other animals on him. Wherein does the special unity or the special bond consist? Above all what constitutes the holiness? Individual men are not holy, a large proportion of them are very much the reverse. Why is the aggregate holy? Let the unit be a complex phenomenon, an organism or whatever name science may give it, what multiple of it will be a rational object of worship?
For our own part we cannot conceive worship being offered by a sane worshipper to any but a conscious being, in other words to a person. The fetish worshipper himself probably invests his fetish with a vague personality such as would render it capable of propitiation. But how can we invest with a collective personality the fleeting generations of mankind? Even the sum of mankind is never complete, much less are the units blended into a personal whole, or as it has been called a colossal man.
There is a gulf here, as it seems to us, which cannot be bridged, and can barely be hidden from view by the retention of religious phraseology. In truth, the anxious use of that phraseology betrays weakness, since it shows that you cannot do without the theological associations which cling inseparably to religious terms.
You look forward to a closer union, a more complete brotherhood of man, an increased sacredness of the human relation. Some things point that way; some things point the other way. Brotherhood has hardly a definite meaning without a father; sacredness can hardly be predicated without anything which consecrates. We can point to an eminent writer who tells you that he detests the idea of brotherly love altogether; that there are many of his kind whom, so far from loving, he hates, and that he would like to write his hatred with a lash upon their backs. Look again at the severe Prussianism which betrays itself in the New Creed of Strauss. Look at the oligarchy of enlightenment and enjoyment which Renan, in hisMoral Reform of France, proposes to institute for the benefit of a select circle, with sublime indifference to the lot of the vulgar, who, he says, "must subsist on the glory and happiness of others." This does not look much like a nearer approach to a brotherhood of man than is made by the Gospel. We are speaking, of course, merely of the comparative moral efficiency of religion and the proposed substitutes for it, apart from the influence exercised over individual conduct by the material needs and other non-theological forces of society.
For the immortality of the individual soul, with the influences of that belief, we are asked to substitute the immortality of the race. But here, in addition to the difficulty of proving the union and intercommunion of all the members, we are met by the objection that unless we live in God, the race, in all probability, is not immortal. That our planet and all it contains will come to an end appears to be the decided opinion of science. This "holy" being, our relation to which is to take the place of our relation to an Eternal Father, by the adoration of which we are to be sustained and controlled, if it exist at all, is as ephemeral compared with eternity as a fly. We shall be told that we ought to be content with an immortality extending through tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of years. To theargumentum ad verecundiamthere is no reply. But will this banish the thought of ultimate annihilation? Will it prevent a man, when he is called upon to make some great sacrifice for the race, from saying to himself, that, whether he makes the sacrifice or not, one day all will end in nothing?
Evidently these are points which must be made quite clear before you can, with any prospect of success, call upon men either to regard Humanity with the same feelings with which they have regarded God, or to give up their own interest or enjoyment for the future benefit of the race. The assurance derived from the fondness felt by parents for their offspring, and the self-denying efforts made for the good of children, will hardly carry us very far, even supposing it certain that parental love would remain unaffected by the general change. It is evidently a thing apart from the general love of Humanity. Nobody was ever more extravagantly fond of his children, or made greater efforts for them, than Alexander Borgia.
It has been attempted, however, with all the fervour of conviction, and with all the force of a powerful style, to make us see not only that we have this corporal immortality as members of the "colossal man," but that we may look forward to an actual though impersonal existence in the shape of the prolongation through all future time of the consequences of our lives. It might with equal truth be said that we have enjoyed an actual though impersonal existence through all time past in our antecedents. But neither in its consequences nor in its antecedents can anything be said to live except by a figure. The characters and actions of men surely will never be influenced by such a fanciful use of language as this! Our being is consciousness; with consciousness our being ends, though our physical forces may be conserved, and traces of our conduct—traces utterly indistinguishable—may remain. That with which we are not concerned cannot affect us either presently or by anticipation; and with that of which we shall never be conscious, we shall never feel that we are concerned. Perhaps if the authors of this new immortality would tell us what they understand by non-existence, we might be led to value more highly by contrast the existence which they propose for a soul when it has ceased to think or feel, and for an organism when it has been scattered to the winds.
They would persuade us that their impersonal and unconscious immortality is a brighter hope than an eternity of personal and conscious existence, the very thought of which they say is torture. This assumes, what there seems to be no ground for assuming, that eternity is an endless extension of time; and, in the same way, that infinity is a boundless space. It is more natural to conceive of them as emancipation respectively from time and space, and from the conditions which time and space involve; and among the conditions of time may apparently be reckoned the palling of pleasure or of existence by mere temporal protraction. Even as we are, sensual pleasure palls; so does the merely intellectual: but can the same be said of the happiness of virtue and affection? It is urged, too, that by exchanging the theological immortality for one of physical and social consequences, we get rid of the burden of self, which otherwise we should drag for ever. But surely in this there is a confusion of self with selfishness. Selfishness is another name for vice. Self is merely consciousness. Without a self, how can there be self-sacrifice? How can the most unselfish motive exist if there is nothing to be moved? "He that findeth his life, shall lose it; and he that loseth his life, shall find it," is not a doctrine of selfishness, but it implies a self. We have been rebuked in the words of Frederick to his grenadiers—"Do you want to live for ever?" The grenadiers might have answered, "Yes; and therefore we are ready to die."
It is not when we think of the loss of anything to which a taint of selfishness can adhere—it is not even when we think of intellectual effort cut short for ever by death just as the intellect has ripened and equipped itself with the necessary knowledge—that the nothingness of this immortality of conservated forces is most keenly felt: it is when we think of the miserable end of affection. How much comfort would it afford anyone bending over the deathbed of his wife to know that forces set free by her dissolution will continue to mingle impersonally and indistinguishably with forces set free by the general mortality? Affection, at all events, requires personality. One cannot love a group of consequences, even supposing that the filiation could be distinctly presented to the mind. Pressed by the hand of sorrow craving for comfort, this Dead Sea fruit crumbles into ashes, paint it with eloquence as you will.
Humanity, it seems to us, is a fundamentally Christian idea, connected with the Christian view of the relations of men to their common Father and of their spiritual union in the Church. In the same way the idea of the progress of Humanity seems to us to have been derived from the Christian belief in the coming of the Kingdom of God through the extension of the Church, and to that final triumph of good over evil foretold in the imagery of the Apocalypse. At least the founders of the Religion of Humanity will admit that the Christian Church is the matrix of theirs so much their very nomenclature proves and we would fain ask them to review the process of disengagement and see whether the essence has not been left behind.
No doubt there are influences at work in modern civilisation which tend to the strengthening of the sentiment of humanity by making men more distinctly conscious of their position as members of a race. On the other hand the unreflecting devotion of the tribesman which held together primitive societies dies. Man learns to reason and calculate and when he is called upon to immolate himself to the common interest of the race he will consider what the common interest of the race when he is dead and gone will be to him and whether he will ever be repaid for his sacrifice.
Of Cosmic Emotion it will perhaps be fair to say that it is proposed as a substitute for religious emotion rather than as a substitute for religion since nothing has been said about embodying it in a cult. It comes to us commended by glowing quotations from Mr. Swinburne and Walt Whitman and we cannot help admitting that for common hearts it stands in need of the commendation. The transfer of affection from an all loving Father to an adamantine universe is a process for which we may well seek all the aid that the witchery of poetry can supply. Unluckily we are haunted by the consciousness that the poetry itself is blindly ground out by the same illimitable mill of evolution which grinds out Virtue and affection. We are by no means sure that we understand what Cosmic Emotion is even after leading an exposition of its nature by no ungifted hand. Its symbola so to speak are the feelings produced by the two objects of Kant's peculiar reverence—the stars of heaven and the moral faculty of man. But after all these are only like anything else aggregations of molecules in a certain stage of evolution. To the unscientific eye they may be awful because they are mysterious, but let science analyse them and then awfulness disappears. If the interaction of all parts of the material universe is complete we fail to see why one object or one feeling is more cosmic than another. However we will not dwell on that which as we have already confessed we do not feel sure that we rightly apprehend. What we do clearly see is that to have cosmic emotion or cosmic anything you must have a cosmos. You must be assured that the universe is a cosmos and not a chaos. And what assurance of this can materialism or any non theological system give? Law is a theological term, it implies a lawgiver or a governing intelligence of some kind. Science can tell us nothing but facts, single or accumulated as experience, which would not make a law though they had been observed through myriads of years. Law is a theological term, and cosmos is equally so, if it may not rather be said to be a Greek name for the aggregate of laws. For order implies intelligent selection and arrangement. Our idea of order would not be satisfied by a number of objects falling by mere chance into a particular figure, however intricate and regular. All the arguments which have been used against design seem to tell with equal force against order. We have no other universe wherewith we can compare this, so as to assure ourselves that this universe is not a chaos, but a cosmos. Both on the earth and in the heavens we see much that is not order, but disorder; not cosmos, but acosmia. If we divine, nevertheless, that order reigns, and that there is design beneath the seemingly undesigned, and good beneath the appearance of evil, it is by virtue of something not dreamed of in the philosophy of materialism.
Have we really come to this, that the world has no longer any good reason for believing in a God or a life beyond the grave? If so, it is difficult to deny that with regard to the great mass of mankind up to this time Schopenhauer and the Pessimists are right, and existence has been a cruel misadventure. The number of those who have suffered lifelong oppression, disease, or want, who have died deaths of torture or perished miserably by war, is limited though enormous; but probably there have been few lives in which the earthly good has not been outweighed by the evil. The future may bring increased means of happiness, though those who are gone will not be the better for them; but it will bring also increase of sensibility, and the consciousness of hopeless imperfection and miserable futility will probably become a distinct and growing cause of pain. It is doubtful even whether, after such a raising of Mokanna's veil, faith in everything would not expire and human effort cease. Still we must face the situation: there can be no use in self-delusion. In vain we shall seek to cheat our souls and to fill a void which cannot be filled by the manufacture of artificial religions and the affectation of a spiritual language to which, however persistently and fervently it may be used, no realities correspond. If one of these cults could get itself established, in less than a generation it would become hollower than the hollowest of ecclesiasticisms. Probably not a few of the highest natures would withdraw themselves from the dreary round of self mockery by suicide, and if a scientific priesthood attempted to close that door by sociological dogma or posthumous denunciation the result would show the difference between the practical efficacy of a religion with a God and that of a cult of "Humanity" or "Space."
Shadows and figments, as they appear to us to be in themselves these attempts to provide a substitute for religion are of the highest importance, as showing that men of great powers of mind, who have thoroughly broken loose not only from Christianity but from natural religion and in some cases placed themselves in violent antagonism to both, are still unable to divest themselves of the religious sentiment or to appease its craving for satisfaction. There being no God, they find it necessary, as Voltaire predicted it would be, to invent one, not for the purposes of police (they are far above such sordid Jesuitism), but as the solution of the otherwise hopeless enigma of our spiritual nature. Science takes cognizance of all phenomena, and this apparently ineradicable tendency of the human mind is a phenomenon like the rest. The thoroughgoing Materialist, of course, escapes all these philosophical exigencies, but he does it by denying Humanity as well as God and reducing the difference between the organism of the human animal and that of any other animal to a mere question of complexity. Still, even in this quarter, there has appeared of late a disposition to make concessions on the subject of human volition hardly consistent with Materialism. Nothing can be more likely than that the impetus of great discoveries has carried the discoverers too far.
Perhaps with the promptings of the religious sentiment there is combined a sense of the immediate danger with which the failure of the religious sanction threatens social order and morality. As we have said already, the men of whom we specially speak are far above anything like social Jesuitism. We have not a doubt but they would regard with abhorrence any schemes of oligarchic illuminism for guarding the pleasures of the few by politic deception of the multitude. But they have probably begun to lay to heart the fact that the existing morality, though not dependent on any special theology, any special view of the relations between soul and body, or any special theory of future rewards and punishments, is largely dependent on a belief in the indefeasible authority of conscience, and in that without which conscience can have no indefeasible authority—the presence of a just and all-seeing God. It may be true that in primaeval society these beliefs are found only in the most rudimentary form, and, as social sanctions, are very inferior in force to mere gregarious instincts or the pressure of tribal need. But man emerges from the primaeval state, and when he does, he demands a reason for his submission to moral law. That the leaders of the anti- theological movement in the present day are immoral, nobody but the most besotted fanatic would insinuate; no candid antagonist would deny that some of them are in every respect the very best of men. The fearless love of truth is usually accompanied by other high qualities; and nothing could be more unlikely than that natures disposed to virtue, trained under good influences, peculiarly sensitive to opinion and guarded by intellectual tastes, would lapse into vice as soon as the traditional sanction was removed. But what is to prevent the withdrawal of the traditional sanction from producing its natural effect upon the morality of the mass of mankind? The commercial swindler or the political sharper, when the divine authority of conscience is gone, will feel that he has only the opinion of society to reckon with, and he knows how to reckon with the opinion of society. If Macbeth is ready, provided he can succeed in this world, to "jump the life to come," much more ready will villainy be to "jump" the bad consequences of its actions to humanity when its own conscious existence shall have closed. Rate the practical effect of religious beliefs as low and that of social influences as high as you may, there can surely be no doubt that morality has received some support from the authority of an inward monitor regarded as the voice of God. The worst of men would have wished to die the death of the righteous; he would have been glad, if he could, when death approached, to cancel his crimes; and the conviction, or misgiving, which this implied, could not fail to have some influence upon the generality of mankind, though no doubt the influence was weakened rather than strengthened by the extravagant and incredible form in which the doctrine of future retribution was presented by the dominant theology.
The denial of the existence of God and of a Future State, in a word, is the dethronement of conscience; and society will pass, to say the least, through a dangerous interval before social science can fill the vacant throne. Avowed scepticism is likely to be disinterested and therefore to be moral; it is among the unavowed sceptics and conformists to political religions that the consequences of the change may be expected to appear.
But more than this, the doctrines of Natural Selection and the Survival of the Fittest are beginning to generate a morality of their own, with the inevitable corollary that the proof of superior fitness is to survive—to survive either by force or cunning, like the other animals which by dint of force or cunning have come out victorious from the universal war and asserted for themselves a place in nature. The "irrepressible struggle for empire" is formally put forward by public writers of the highest class as the basis and the rule of the conduct of this country towards other nations; and we may be sure that there is not an entire absence of connection between the private code of a school and its international conceptions. The feeling that success covers everything seems to be gaining ground and to be overcoming, not merely the old conventional rules of honour, but moral principle itself. Both in public and private there are symptoms of an approaching failure of the motive power which has hitherto sustained men both in self- sacrificing effort and in courageous protest against wrong, though as yet we are only at the threshold of the great change, and established sentiment long survives, in the masses, that which originally gave it birth. Renan says, probably with truth, that had the Second Empire remained at peace, it might have gone on forever; and in the history of this country the connection between political effort and religion has been so close that its dissolution, to say the least, can hardly fail to produce a critical change in the character of the nation. The time may come, when, as philosophers triumphantly predict, men, under the ascendancy of science, will act for the common good, with the same mechanical certainty as bees; though the common good of the human hive would perhaps not be easy to define. But in the meantime mankind, or some portions of it, may be in danger of an anarchy of self-interest, compressed for the purpose of political order, by a despotism of force.
That science and criticism, acting—thanks to the liberty of opinion won by political effort—with a freedom never known before, have delivered us from a mass of dark and degrading superstitions, we own with heartfelt thankfulness to the deliverers, and in the firm conviction that the removal of false beliefs, and of the authorities or institutions founded on them, cannot prove in the end anything but a blessing to mankind. But at the same time the foundations of general morality have inevitably been shaken, and a crisis has been brought on the gravity of which nobody can fail to see, and nobody but a fanatic of Materialism can see without the most serious misgiving.
There has been nothing in the history of man like the present situation. The decadence of the ancient mythologies is very far from affording a parallel. The connection of those mythologies with morality was comparatively slight. Dull and half-animal minds would hardly be conscious of the change which was partly veiled from them by the continuance of ritual and state creeds; while in the minds of Plato and Marcus Aurelius it made place for the development of a moral religion. The Reformation was a tremendous earthquake: it shook down the fabric of mediaeval religion, and as a consequence of the disturbance in the religious sphere filled the world with revolutions and wars. But it left the authority of the Bible unshaken, and men might feel that the destructive process had its limit, and that adamant was still beneath their feet. But a world which is intellectual and keenly alive to the significance of these questions, reading all that is written about them with almost passionate avidity, finds itself brought to a crisis the character of which any one may realize by distinctly presenting to himself the idea of existence without a God.
(This Lecture was delivered before the Mechanics' Institute of Montreal, and the Literary Society of Sherbrooke, and published in the CANADIAN MONTHLY, December, 1872. The allusions to facts and events must be read with reference to the date.)
We are in the midst of an industrial war which is extending over Europe and the United States, and has not left Canada untouched. It is not wonderful that great alarm should prevail, or that, in panic-stricken minds, it should assume extravagant forms. London deprived of bread by a bakers' strike, or of fuel by a colliers' strike, is a serious prospect; so is the sudden stoppage of any one of the wheels in the vast and complicated machine of modern industry. People may be pardoned for thinking that they have fallen on evil times, and that they have a dark future before them. Yet, those who have studied industrial history know that the present disturbance is mild compared with the annals of even a not very remote past. The study of history shows us where we are, and whither things are tending. Though it does not diminish the difficulties of the present hour, it teaches us to estimate them justly, to deal with them calmly and not to call for cavalry and grapeshot because one morning we are left without hot bread.
One of the literary janissaries of the French Empire thought to prove that the working class had no rights against the Bonapartes, by showing that the first free labourers were only emancipated slaves. One would like to know what he supposed the first Bonapartes were. However though his inference was not worth much, except against those who are pedantic enough, to vouch parchment archives for the rights and interests of humanity, he was in the right as to the fact. Labour first appears in history as a slave, treated like a beast of burden, chained to the door- post of a Roman master, or lodged in the underground manstables (ergastula) on his estate, treated like a beast, or worse than a beast, recklessly worked out and then cast forth to die, scourged, tortured, flung in a moment of passion to feed the lampreys, crucified for the slightest offence or none. "Set up a cross for the slave," cries the Roman matron, in, Juvenal. "Why, what has the slave done?" asks her husband.
One day labour strikes; finds a leader in Spartacus, a slave devoted as a gladiator to the vilest of Roman pleasures; wages a long and terrible servile war. The revolt is put down at last, after shaking the foundations of the state. Six thousand slaves are crucified along the road from Rome to Capua. Labour had its revenge, for slavery brought the doom of Rome.
In the twilight of history, between the fall of Rome and the rise of the new nationalities, we dimly see the struggle going on. There is a great insurrection of the oppressed peasantry, under the name of Bagaudae, in Gaul. When the light dawns, a step has been gained. Slavery has been generally succeeded by serfdom. But serfdom is hard. The peasantry of feudal Normandy conspire against their cruel lords, hold secret meetings, the ominous namecommuneis heard. But the conspiracy is discovered and suppressed with the fiendish ferocity with which panic inspires a dominant class, whether in Normandy or Jamaica. Amidst the religious fervour of the Crusades again breaks out a wild labour movement, that of the Pastoureaux, striking for equality in the name of the Holy Spirit, which, perhaps, they had as good a right to use as some who deemed their use of it profane. This is in the country, among the shepherds and ploughmen. In the cities labour has congregated numbers, mutual intelligence, union on its side; it is constantly reinforced by fugitives from rural serfdom; it builds city walls, purchases or extorts charters of liberty. The commercial and manufacturing cities of Italy, Germany, Flanders, become the cradles of free industry, and, at the same time, of intellect, art, civilization. But these are points of light amidst the feudal darkness of the rural districts. In France, for example, the peasantry are cattle; in time of peace crushed with forced labour, feudal burdens, and imposts of all kinds; in time of war driven, in unwilling masses, half-armed and helpless, to the shambles. Aristocratic luxury, gambling, profligate wars—Jacques Bonhomme pays for them all. At Crecy and Poictiers, the lords are taken prisoners; have to provide heavy ransoms, which, being debts of honour, like gambling debts, are more binding than debts of honesty. But Jacques Bonhomme's back is broad, it will bear everything. Broad as it is, it will not bear this last straw. The tidings of Flemish freedom have, perhaps, in some way reached his dull ear, taught him that bondage is not, as his priest, no doubt, assures him it is, a changeless ordinance of God, that the yoke, though strong, may be broken. He strikes, arms himself with clubs, knives, ploughshares, rude pikes, breaks out into a Jacquerie, storms the castles of the oppressor, sacks, burns, slays with the fury of a wild beast unchained. The lords are stupefied. At last they rally and bring their armour, their discipline, their experience in war, the moral ascendency of a master-class to bear. The English gentlemen, in spite of the hostilities, only half suspended, between the nations, join the French gentlemen against the common enemy. Twenty thousand peasants are soon cut down, but long afterwards the butchery continues. Guillaume Callet, the leader of the Jacquerie, a very crafty peasant, as he is called by the organs of the lords, is crowned with a circlet of red-hot iron.
In England, during the same period serfdom, we know not exactly how, is breaking up. There is a large body of labourers working for hire. But in the midst of the wars of the great conqueror, Edward III., comes a greater conqueror, the plague called the Black Death, which sweeps away, some think, a third of the population of Europe. The number of labourers is greatly diminished. Wages rise. The feudal parliament passes an Act to compel labourers, under penalties, to work at the old rates. This Act is followed by a train of similar Acts, limiting wages and fixing in the employers' interest the hours of work, which, in the pages of imaginative writers, figure as noble attempts made by legislators of a golden age to regulate the relations between employer and employed on some higher principle than that of contract. The same generous spirit, no doubt, dictated the enactment prohibiting farm labourers from bringing up their children to trades, lest hands should be withdrawn from the land-owner's service. Connected with the Statutes of Labourers, are those bloody vagrant laws, in which whipping, branding, hanging are ordained as the punishment of vagrancy by lawgivers, many of whom were themselves among the idlest and most noxious vagabonds in the country, and the authors of senseless wars which generated a mass of vagrancy, by filling the country with disbanded soldiers. In the reign of Richard II., the poll tax being added to other elements of class discord, labour strikes, takes arms under Wat Tyler, demands fixed rents, tenant right in an extreme form, and the total abolition of serfage. A wild religious communism bred of the preachings of the more visionary among the Wycliffites mingles in the movement with the sense of fiscal and industrial wrong. "When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the gentleman?" is the motto of the villeins, and it is one of more formidable import than any utterance of peasant orators at Agricultural Labourers' meetings in the present day. Then come fearful scenes of confusion, violence and crime. London is in the power of hordes brutalized by oppression. High offices of state, high ecclesiastics are murdered. Special vengeance falls on the lawyers, as the artificers who forged the cunning chains of feudal iniquity. The rulers, the troops, are paralyzed by the aspect of the sea of furious savagery raging round them. The boy king, by a miraculous exhibition of courageous self- possession, saves the State; but he is compelled to grant general charters of manumission, which, when the danger is over, the feudal parliament forces him by a unanimous vote to repudiate. Wholesale hanging of serfs, of course, follows the landlords' victory.
The rising under Jack Cade, in the reign of Henry VI., was rather political than industrial. The demands of the insurgents, political reform and freedom of suffrage, show that progress had been made in the condition and aspirations of the labouring class. But with the age of the Tudors came the final breakup in England of feudalism, as well as of Catholicism, attended by disturbances in the world of labour, similar to those which have attended the abolition of slavery in the Southern States. This is the special epoch of the sanguinary vagrancy laws, the most sanguinary of which was framed by the hand of Henry VIII. The new nobility of courtiers and upstarts, who had shared with the king the plunder of the monasteries, were hard landlords of course; they robbed the people of their rights of common, and swept away homesteads and cottages, to make room for sheep farms, the wool trade being the great source of wealth in those days. By the spoliation of the monasteries, the great alms-houses of the Middle Ages, the poor had also been left for a time without the relief, which was given them again in a more regular form by the Poor Law of Elizabeth. Hence in the reign of Edward VI., armed strikes again, in different parts of the kingdom. In the West, the movement was mainly religious; but in the Eastern countries, under Kett of Norfolk, it was agrarian. Kett's movement after a brief period of success, during which the behaviour of the insurgents and their leader was very creditable, was put down by the disciplined mercenaries under the command of the new aristocracy, and its suppression was of course followed by a vigorous use of the gallows. No doubt the industrial conservatives of those days were as frightened, as angry, and as eager for strong measures as their successors are now: but the awkwardness of the newly liberated captive, in the use of his limbs and eyes, is due not to his recovered liberty, but to the narrowness and darkness of the dungeon in which he has been immured.
In Germany, at the same epoch, there was not merely a local rising, but a wide-spread and most terrible peasants' war. The German peasantry had been ground down beyond even an hereditary bondsman's power of endurance by their lords generally, and by the Prince Bishop and other spiritual lords in particular. The Reformation having come with a gospel of truth, love, spiritual brotherhood, the peasants thought it might also have brought some hope of social justice. The doctors of divinity had to inform them that this was a mistake. But they took the matter into their own hands and rose far and wide, the fury of social and industrial war blending with the wildest fanaticism, the most delirious ecstacy, the darkest imposture. Once more there are stormings and burnings of feudal castles, massacring of their lords. Lords are roasted alive, hunted like wild beasts in savage revenge for the cruelty of the game laws. Munzer, a sort of peasant Mahomet, is at the head of the movement. Under him it becomes Anabaptist, Antinomian, Communist. At first he and his followers sweep the country with a whirlwind of terror and destruction: but again the lords rally, bring up regular troops. The peasants are brought to bay on their last hill side, behind a rampart formed of their waggons. Their prophet assures them that the cannon-balls will fall harmless into his cloak. The cannon-balls take their usual course: a butchery, then a train of torturings and executions follows, the Prince Bishop, among others, adding considerably to the whiteness of the Church's robe. Luther is accused of having incited the ferocity of the lords against those, who, it is alleged, had only carried his own principles to an extreme. But in the first place Luther never taught Anabaptism or anything that could logically lead to it; and in the second place, before he denounced the peasants, he tried to mediate and rebuke the tyranny of the lords. No man deserves more sympathy than a great reformer, who is obliged to turn against the excesses of his own party. He becomes the object of fierce hatred on one side, of exulting derision on the other; yet he is no traitor, but alone loyal to his conscience and his cause.
The French Revolution was a political movement among the middle class in the cities, but among the peasantry in the country it was an agrarian and labour movement, and the dismantling of chateaux, and chasing away of their lords which then took place were a renewal of the struggle which had given birth to the Jacquerie, the insurrection of Wat Tyler, and the Peasants' War. This time the victory remained with the peasant, and the lord returned no more.
In England, long after the Tudor period, industrial disturbances took place, and wild communistic fancies welled up from the depths of a suffering world of labour, when society was stirred by political and religious revolution. Under the Commonwealth, communists went up on the hill side, and began to break ground for a poor man's Utopia; and the great movement of the Levellers, which had in it an economical as well as a political element, might have overturned society, if it had not been quelled by the strong hand of Cromwell. But in more recent times, within living memory, within the memory of many here there were labour disturbances in England, compared with which the present industrial war is mild. [Footnote: For the following details, see Martineau's "History of the Peace."] In 1816, there were outbreaks among the suffering peasantry which filled the governing classes with fear. In Suffolk nightly fires of incendiaries blazed in every district, thrashing machines were broken or burnt in open day, mills were attacked. At Brandon large bodies of workmen assembled to prescribe a maximum price of grain and meat, and to pull down the houses of butchers and bakers. They bore flags with the motto, "Bread or Blood". Insurgents from the Fen Country, a special scene of distress, assembled at Littleport, attacked the house of a magistrate in the night, broke open shops, emptied the cellars of public-houses, marched on Ely, and filled the district for two days and nights with drunken rioting and plunder. The soldiery was called in; there was an affray in which blood flowed on both sides, then a special commission and hangings to close the scene. Distressed colliers in Staffordshire and Wales assembled by thousands, stopped works, and were with difficulty diverted from marching to London. In 1812, another stain of blood was added to the sanguinary criminal code of those days by the Act making death the penalty for the destruction of machinery. This was caused by the Luddite outrages, which were carried on in the most systematic manner, and on the largest scale in Nottingham and the adjoining counties. Bodies of desperadoes, armed and disguised, went forth under a leader, styled General Ludd, who divided them into bands, and aligned to each band its work of destruction. Terror reigned around; the inhabitants were commanded to keep in their houses and put out their lights on pain of death. In the silence of night houses and factories were broken open, machines demolished, unfinished work scattered on the highways. The extent and secrecy of the conspiracy baffled the efforts of justice and the death penalty failed to put the system down. Even the attempts made to relieve distress became new sources of discontent and a soup kitchen riot at Glasgow led to a two days conflict between the soldiery and the mob. In 1818, a threatening mass of Manchester spinners, on strike came into bloody collision with the military. Then there were rick burnings, farmers patrolling all night long, gibbets erected on Pennenden heath, and bodies swinging on them, bodies of boys, eighteen or nineteen years old. Six labourers of Dorsetshire, the most wretched county in England, were sentenced to seven years' transportation nominally for administering an illegal oath, really for Unionism. Thereupon all the trades made a menacing demonstration, marched to Westminster, thirty thousand strong, with a petition for the release of the labourers. London was in an agony of fear, the Duke of Wellington prepared for a great conflict, pouring in troops and bringing up artillery from Woolwich. In 1840, again there were formidable movements, and society felt itself on the crust of a volcano. Threatening letters were sent to masters, rewards offered for firing mills, workmen were beaten, driven out of the country, burned with vitriol, and, there was reason to fear, murdered. Great masses of operatives collected for purposes of intimidation, shopkeepers were pillaged, collisions again took place between the people and the soldiery. Irish agrarianism meanwhile prevailed, in a far more deadly form than at present. And these industrial disturbances were connected with political disturbances equally formidable, with Chartism, Socialism, Cato Street conspiracies, Peterloo massacres, Bristol riots.
Now the present movement even in England, where there is so much suffering and so much ignorance, has been marked by a comparative absence of violence, and comparative respect for law. Considering what large bodies of men have been out on strike, how much they have endured in the conflict, and what appeals have been made to their passions, it is wonderful how little of actual crime or disturbance there has been. There were the Sheffield murders the disclosure of which filled all the friends of labour with shame and sorrow, all the enemies of labour with malignant exultation. But we should not have heard so much of the Sheffield murders if such things had been common. Sheffield is an exceptional place; some of the work there is deadly, life is short and character is reckless. Even at Sheffield, a very few, out of the whole number of trades, were found to have been in any way implicated. The denunciation of the outrages by the trades through England generally, was loud and sincere; an attempt was made, of course, to fix the guilt on all the Unions, but this was a hypocritical libel. It was stated, in one of our Canadian journals, the other day, that Mr. Roebuck had lost his seat for Sheffield, by protesting against Unionist outrage. Mr. Roebuck lost his seat for Sheffield by turning Tory. The Trades' candidate, by whom Mr. Roebuck was defeated, was Mr. Mundella, a representative of whom any constituency may be proud, a great employer of labour, and one who has done more than any other man of his class in England to substitute arbitration for industrial war, and to restore kindly relations between the employers and the employed. To Mr. Mundella the support of Broadhead and the criminal Unionists was offered, and by him it was decisively rejected.