"But, after all, He made the laws, and He could have made different ones." Certainly; but a moment's reflection will show that He could not have made laws ofanykind, disobedience to which would have had the same consequences as obedience. He might—for all we can say to the contrary—have made strychnine nutritious, and wheat deadly to us; but even in that case an indulgence in wheat would have brought about the unpleasant effects at present associated with an overdose ofnux vomica. He might have made a raw, damp atmosphere, with easterly winds, the most conducive to health; but even then it would have been rash to take up one's residence in a warm, dry climate. Pain is an indication that the processes of life are suffering some more or less serious disturbance; given, therefore, any set of natural laws, and the necessity of obeying them as the condition of life itself, and we see that disobedience to them would always and inevitably mean pain. We repeat that God might have made different laws; but whatever they were, their breach must have recoiled upon the breaker.
Yet even if reflections like these demonstrate to us the necessity for pain, we are still left to face those greater calamities and disasters which sweep away human lives by the hundred and thousand, catastrophes like the Sicilian {115} earthquakes, that are marked by an appalling wantonness of destruction; must not such events as these also be attributed to God, and how are they to be reconciled with His alleged benevolence? Certainly, no one would attempt to minimise the horrors of the Sicilian tragedy; the human mind is overwhelmed by the suddenness, no less than the magnitude, of an upheaval of nature resulting in the blotting-out of whole flourishing communities. And yet we venture to say, paradoxical though it sounds, that it is, partly at least, owing to a certain lack of imagination that such an event looms so immense in our thoughts. Most of us do not make the ordinance of death in itself an accusation against the Most High; we are not specially shocked or outraged by the thought that the whole population of the globe dies out within quite a moderate span of time, nor even by the reflection that several hundred thousand persons die every year in the United Kingdom alone. We know quite well that every one of those who perished in Messina must have paid his debt to nature in, at most, a few decades. So, then, the whole point in our arraignment is this—It would not have been cruel had these deaths been spread over a period of time, but it is cruel that they should have taken place simultaneously; it would not have been cruel had the victims of the earthquake died of illnesses—in many cases prolonged and painful—but it is cruel {116} that death should have come upon them swiftly, instantaneously, without menace or lingering pain; it would not have been cruel had children survived to mourn their parents, husbands their wives, brother the loss of brother, as in the ordinary course—but it is cruel that by dying in the same hour they were spared the pang of parting. We repeat that it is because we ordinarily use our imaginations too little that we are so apt to lose our balance and sense of proportion in the presence of these catastrophes; and it may be permissible to point out that there is probably, quality for quality, and quantity for quantity, more grey, hopeless suffering, more wretchedness and tragedy, in London to-day than was caused by the Sicilian catastrophe—suffering and wretchedness that are due not to nature, but to sin, though not necessarily on the sufferer's part.
And there is, in justice, something more to be said when we speak of these dire visitations. While every instinct of humanity inspires us with sympathy for the victims buried under the ruins of Messina and Reggio, it is, of course, a matter of common knowledge that the soil on those coasts is volcanic, and liable to such commotions; if men will take the risk of living in such localities, we may pity them when the disaster comes, but we cannot very fitly impeach Providence. There is a village near Chur in Switzerland, which has twice been wiped out by avalanches, yet each time re-built {117} on the same spot; year by year material is visibly accumulating for a third deadly fall, and when it takes place, as take place it will, men will speak of the dispassionate cruelty of nature. Time after time the lava from Mount Vesuvius has overwhelmed the localities that nestle on its slopes, but human heedlessness proves incurable. If the Sicilians, knowing the nature of the soil, had built their towns of isolated, one-storied, wooden structures, at a reasonable distance from the shore, the effects of earthquake and tidal wave would not have been one hundredth part as terrible; yet Messina is being re-built on its former site, and apparently in the old style of architecture—a proceeding which simply invites a repetition of the same kind of disaster. It is literally true that these greater calamities are in nearly every instance capable of being averted or their incidence minimised; to give an obvious instance, one is almost weary of seeing it repeated that the famines and consequent epidemics which visit India could be immensely reduced by a wise and generous expenditure on irrigation, the improved cultivation of the land, the enlargement of the cultivable area, and so forth. But men find it easier to turn accusing glances to the sky than to bestir themselves and to use more wisdom, foresight and energy in directing and subduing the forces of nature.
We are well aware that what has been written in the pages of this chapter is no {118} more than a series of scattered hints; we do not for a moment imagine that, in the aggregate, they amount to more than a most fragmentary resolution of the difficulty presented by the reality of evil—indeed, we have already expressed our belief that a full solution must in the nature of things lie beyond our ken. But if it should appear from the foregoing considerations that some aspects of our problem—such as the existence of sin and of pain—are not as irreconcilable with the goodness of God as may have seemed to be the case, reflection should lead us to the reasonable hope that if we understood more, we should receive fuller and fuller proof of the truth that God is Love. And when we remember that that Love shines out most brightly from the Cross, and that the world's greatest tragedy has been the world's greatest blessing, the turning-point in the history of the race, we may well hush our impatience, refrain over-confident criticisms, and commit ourselves to the Father's hands even while we can only see His purposes as in a glass, darkly. We may believe, with the psalmist of old, that by and by we "shall behold His face inrighteousness; we shall be satisfied, when we awake, with His likeness."
[1] R. A. Armstrong,God and the Soul, pp. 161-162.
[2]Op. cit., p. 21.
[3]Ibid, p. 82.
[4]Through Nature to God, pp. 36, 37.
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We closed our last chapter with a confession and an appeal—a confession of the incompleteness of our answers to the questions suggested by the fact of evil, and an appeal for patience in recognising that that incompleteness is inevitable, having regard to our constitutional limitations. "There is," as Newman said, "a certain grave acquiescence in ignorance, a recognition of our impotence to solve momentous and urgent questions, which has a satisfaction of its own." [1] That, however, is an attitude to which all will not resign themselves. If a knot cannot be unravelled, their one idea of what to do is to cut it; if evil cannot be explained, it can at any rate be denied. Thus we find a distinguished living essayist, with a large constituency of cultured readers, writing as follows:—
The essence of God's omnipotence is that both law and matter are His and originate from Him; so that if a single fibre of what we know to be evil can be found in the world, either God is responsible for that, or He is {120} dealing with something He did not originate and cannot overcome. Nothing can extricate us from this dilemma, except that what we think evil is not really evil at all, but hidden good.
If the views of Divine power and responsibility set forth in this book are true—if,i.e., we are justified in having recourse to a theory of Divine self-limitation—it will be clear that Mr. Benson's "dilemma" is, to say the least, overstated; but were that dilemma as desperate as he depicts it, it has strangely escaped him that his suggested mode of extrication is more desperate still. For what he asks us to do is quite simply to abdicate our judgment in respect of both physical and ethical phenomena—not merely to withhold our decision upon this or that particular occurrence, but to admit in general terms that evil is only apparent and not real. But see to what such an admission commits us: if we have no grounds for saying that evil is evil, we can have no grounds either for saying that good is good; if our faculties are incompetent to diagnose the one kind of phenomena accurately, they cannot be any more competent to diagnose and deliver reliable verdicts upon the other kind. It is quite a mistake to think that by getting rid of the reality of evil we preserve or affirm the more emphatically the reality of good; if we confidently pronounce our experience of evil an illusion, what value can there attach to our finding that our {121} experience of its opposite is a fact? Such is the Nemesis which waits on remedies of the "heroic" order.
Nevertheless this particular remedy seems to be enjoying a considerable popularity at the present time; indeed, in discussing some aspects of the doctrine which affirms the "allness" of God, and the allied one of Monism, we have already seen that where these are professed, evil must be explicitly or implicitly denied. This denial is common to the various confused movements—all of them the outcome of a misconceived idealism—which under the names of "New Thought," "Higher Thought," "Joy Philosophy," "Christian Science," etc., etc., find their disciples chiefly amongst that not inconsiderable section of the public which has been aptly described as dominated by a "longing to combine a picturesque certainty devoid of moral discipline with unlimited transcendental speculations." All these cults combine a vague optimism with an extravagant subjectivity; all would have us believe that so far from things being what they are, they are whatever we may think them to be; all with one accord treat evil in its various manifestations as unreal, and maintain, as it has been neatly phrased, that "the process of cure lies in the realisation that there is nothing to be cured." The attraction of such a doctrine for that large number of persons who dislike strenuous effort—either intellectual or {122} moral—is easily accounted for. Evil as a fact is not conducive to the comfort of those who contemplate it—how pleasant to be told that it exists only in disordered imaginations; the sense of sin has always interfered with the enjoyment of life—what a relief to learn that it is merely a chimaera; pain is grievous indeed—what benefactors are those who teach us how to conjure it away by the simple process of declaring that there is no such thing! A creed promising to accomplish such desirable objects could be sure of votaries, if proclaimed with sufficientaplomb; here, we may surmise, is the main explanation of the welcome given to those monistic ethics to which we referred in an earlier chapter, and of the vogue of so-called "Christian Science," which invites consideration as the most typical and important of a whole group of movements.
We repeat that the nature of the Christian Science appeal largely explains the rapid spread of this cult. Christian Science is quite unlike other religions in this, that while they promise at most salvation—an intangible boon—Mrs. Eddy promises her followershealth, relief from bodily pain and sickness, and thus addresses herself to a universally and urgently felt want. A merely spiritual message may fail to obtain listeners; but—to state the truth baldly—a person need not be particularly spiritually-minded in order to be drawn towards Christian Science. The natural man would much rather {123} be made well than made good, and a creed which professes to be able to do the former will touch him in his most sensitive part. Certainly, this was one of the difficulties of Christ's public ministry,viz., that the people flocked to Him to be cured rather than to be taught. But while He declined to place the emphasis on His works of healing—while He left Capernaum by Himself before sunrise in order to escape the importunities of the mob, and refused Peter's request that He should return thither with the words, "Let us go elsewhere into the next towns that I may preach there also; for tothisend came I forth"—Christian Science addresses its sure appeal to man's material nature. The contrast is significant.
And yet the true essence of Christian Science is not "faith-healing" in the ordinary sense. It does not say,e.g., "Here is a case of genuine, unmistakeable rheumatism or consumption, but faith is able to dispel it"; on the contrary, it says, "This alleged rheumatism or consumption is a mere illusion, a phantasm of the imagination; and the way to be cured is for the 'patient' to discover his mistake. There are no maladies—there are onlymalades imaginaires." Mrs. Eddy states in plain words that "Mortal ills are but errors of thought" [2]; it is from this point of view that Christian Science as a system has to be approached and understood.
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With the fantastic exegesis of Scripture on which this creed professes to be based, we are not directly concerned; else something might be said of the method of interpretation which is to be found in the official text-book of the movement—a method which sees in the serpent the symbol of malicious animal magnetism, which identifies the Holy Ghost and the New Jerusalem with Christian Science, and the little book brought down from heaven by the mighty angel with Mrs. Eddy's ownmagnum opus,Science and Health. As Mr. Podmore drily remarks, "In these holy games each player is at liberty to make words mean what he wants them to mean"; at the same time, these grotesque and arbitrary constructions are not precisely calculated to inspire the confidence of balanced minds.
Let us, however, turn at once to the fundamental axioms of ChristianScience:—
(1) God is All in all.
(2) God is Good. Good is Mind.
(3) God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
(4) Life, God, Omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease.
In other words, Christian Science begins—and, for the matter of that, ends—with the categorical statement that the one and only Reality is Mind, Goodness, God, all three of which terms it uses synonymously and interchangeably. So much being granted, the rest follows "in a concatenation according"; the {125} possible permutations are many—the result is always one.God is All: hence, says Mrs. Eddy, "All is God, and there is naught beside Him"; butGod is Good, and as He isAll, it follows thatAll is Good; and if all is good,there can be no evil. Again, Mrs. Eddy propounds the following three propositions:God is Mind; Good is Mind; All is Mind; therefore, once more, all is good, all is God, andthere can be no evil. Or, to introduce another variation—God is All, andGod is Mind; thereforeMind is all; thereforethere is no matter. Grant the Christian Science premises, and there is no escaping the Christian Science conclusions.
But do we grant these premises—do we grant Mrs. Eddy's fundamental pantheistic assumption of "the allness of God" [3]? We have shown again and again why we do not; and with the rejection of the basal tenet of Christian Science the superstructure follows. But now let us show how all Mrs. Eddy's juggling with words, all her assertions of the goodness of all and the allness of good, do not help her to get rid of evil. Granting for argument's sake that Mind is the only reality, then the test of reality must be this—that something exists in or for a mind; in so far, {126} then, as evil, pain, and so forth exist, as Christian Science tells us, "only" in some mind—in so far as "disease is a thing of thought" [4]—evil, pain, disease, etc., mustpro tantobe real, nay, the most real of realities, for where except in mind could they exist? And even if we can successfully annihilate them by denying their existence, whence did they come in the first place? From "malicious animal magnetism"? But if God is All in all, and All-good, what is that malicious animal magnetism which is somehow not God and not good? Does not this whole tangle serve yet once more to illustrate the futility of that doctrine of Divine allness which we have seen successfully masquerading as Divine immanence?
Let us test the worth of these speculations in yet another way. Christian Science declares evil to be non-existent, illusory, an "error of thought." But that which is true of a species must be true of all its genera; if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, it follows that Socrates is mortal; if evil as a whole is nonexistent, that which applies to the general phenomenon must equally apply to each and all of its manifestations. But error is undoubtedly a form, and even a serious form, of evil; from which it would follow that if evil is not real, error is not possible—and in that case one opinion is as good as its opposite, and black and white are only different {127} descriptions of the same thing. But if that is so, if one thing is as true as another, we shall conclude that,e.g., the rejection of Christian Science is no more erroneous than its affirmation. Will Christian Scientists acquiesce in that inference? And if they will not, by what means do they propose to show that it is not a legitimate deduction from their own axiom, the unreality of evil? If error is a real fact, evil must be so to that extent; on the other hand, how can it be an error to believe that evil is real, if error, being an evil, must itself be illusory?
But it is time we turned from our examination of the principles of Christian Science to their application. So far as the wholesale declaration of the illusoriness of physical evil—the ravages and tortures of disease—is concerned, the implicit belief extended to the pretensions of this creed to master all such ills is proof, if proof were wanted, of the success which rewards those who act on the maxim, "de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!" Given the right kind and amount of faith, we are assured, Christian Science treatment will prove effective in a case of double pneumonia, or compound fracture, or malignant tumour, without the assistance of the physician—above all, without "drugs," which are pronouncedtabooby Mrs. Eddy; "and that," to quote Mr. Podmore again, "is a postulate which can never be contradicted by experience, for failure can always be {128} ascribed—as it is, in fact, ascribed by the Christian Scientist to-day—to want of faith or 'Science' on the part of the sufferer." Nothing could be more entirely simple or unanswerable: if the patient improves or recovers, the credit goes to Christian Science; if he gets worse or dies, the unfortunate result is debited to his lack of faith. The only thing Christian Science fails to answer is, as we have already seen, the preliminary question,viz., what caused the disease—or at any rate the semblance, the malignant hallucination of disease—in the first instance. If God is all and all is God; if God is Mind and there is nothing but Mind; if all therefore is mind and all is good—whence in a good Mind comes even the hallucination of pain and evil? "The thoughts of the practitioner," says Mrs. Eddy, "should be imbued with a clear conviction of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God; . . . and hence, that whatever militates against health . . . is an unjust usurper of the throne of the Controller of all mankind." [5] But if God is omnipresent, His presence must be displayed in the disease; if He is omnipotent, how can there be a usurper on His throne? If He is All, how can there be aught beside Him? These are points on which we wait in vain for enlightenment from the Boston mysteriarch.
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We shall be told, however, that whatever flaws there may be in the theory of Christian Science, this cult could not possibly have obtained its vogue if it were all promise and no performance; and as a matter of fact, testimonies to the curative effect of the treatment abound, furnished by those who say they have been restored to health by these methods, and as convincing as such testimony can be. We use the latter phrase advisedly; it is impossible to read these documents without being convinced of the entire good faith of the writers in relating what they themselves believe to be true; it is impossible not to be convinced by the perusal of their accounts that cures of some sort took place: the one thing of which it is possible to remain quite unconvinced is the fundamental contention of Christian Science,viz., that there was no disease to be cured. Speaking quite generally, if one is going to be impressed by testimonials there is of course, no patent pill of respectable advertising power which cannot produce such by the wastepaper-basketful; and perfectly sincere and unsolicited testimonials, too. What these prove, however, is neither that the patients have been cured of the particular diseases they may name—and in the diagnosis of which they may very likely be mistaken—nor above all that it is the taking of a particular preparation to which they owe their cures; they prove the enormous power of suggestion and auto-suggestion, in {130} virtue of which many ailments yield to the patient's firm assurance that by following a certain course he will get better. Everyone knows that a manner which inspires confidence, a happy blend of cheerfulness and suave authority, is of at least equal value to a physician as his skill and diplomas; and it is probably true, approximately at any rate, that a man can no more be cured of a serious illness unless he believes in his curability, than he can be hypnotised against his will. But between the recognition of such a fact, and the description of a cancer as an obstinate illusion, or a crushed limb as an "error of thought," there is just the difference which separates sanity from extravaganza.
In short, that which is of truth in Christian Science is not peculiar to it; while what is peculiar to its teaching, the denial of the reality of shattered legs, wasted lungs, diseased spines, etc., is not true. The power of mind over body, the possibility of healing certain diseases by suggestion, is not the discovery of Mrs. Eddy; the assumption on the other hand, thatalldiseases are susceptible to such treatment is characteristic of the school of which she is the latest and best-known representative—only it is false. "All physicians of broad practice and keen observation realise that certain pains may be alleviated or cured, and that certain morbid conditions may be made to disappear, provided a change in the mental {131} state of the patient can be brought about. . . . It does not require special learning to build up a psychotherapeutic practice based upon the observation of such cases; and the Christian Science healers, narrowly educated and of narrow experience, have done just this thing, resting upon the theory that the mental influence of the healer is the effective curative agent. It is easy to see how a development of this theory would lead to the assumption that all kinds of diseases may be curable by mental influence emanating from a healer, this leading to the practice of the so-called 'absent-treatment,' with all its follies and dangers." [6] When it is added that the Christian Science healer is a professional person, and that the cost of "absent-treatment" may come to as much as ten dollars an hour, we need say no more about the "dangers" alluded to.[7] That the quasi-religious formulas of Christian Science may prove extremely effective in bringing about such a change in the mental state of certain patients as will cause pains {132} to be alleviated or cured, and morbid conditions to disappear, one need have no hesitation in believing; moreover, as the medical author just quoted acutely observes, it is quite possible that some patients would not be cured unless they were "allowed to believe that their cures are due to some mysterious or miraculous agency." But even such an admission does not mean that Christian Science does more than apply the principle of suggestion, increasing its efficacy by utilising the religious faculty of the patient; nor, above all, does it give countenance to the root-contention of the creed,viz., that pain and disease are unreal. Once more, if mind be the only reality, then pain, seeing that it can only be experienced by a mind, is real in exact proportion as it is intense.
It might seem unnecessary to add anything more to what has been said in refutation of the claims of Christian Science so far as physical healing is concerned; but one or two very simple considerations will complete our case without greatly detaining us.
In stating categorically and without qualification that "mortal ills are but errors of thought," Mrs. Eddy seems to have overlooked two classes of patients to whom it would be somewhat difficult to apply this sweeping generalisation. We wonder, for instance, how this theory could be made to cover the large category of infantile ailments. How, we are {133} entitled to ask, would Christian Science deal with the teething-troubles which attend babyhood? Is it seriously suggested that a feverish, wailing child is merely the victim of an hallucination—and how would the Christian Scientist undertake to convince him of his illusion? On the face of it, such an enterprise does not look hopeful. But further, it so happens that human beings are not the only sufferers from pain and sickness; animals are subject to diseases, and often to the same diseases as men. We disclaim all intention of treating the subject otherwise than seriously—but if a man's rheumatism is an illusion, what causes the same affection in a dog or a chimpanzee? And if an embrocation may be used with good effects in the latter case, why may it not be used in the former? We need not press these questions; they will serve as they stand to show once more how this whole pretentious philosophy about the unreality, the imaginary nature, of pain breaks down as soon as we subject it to simple tests. So also with the Christian Science attitude towards "drugs," the prescribing of which Mrs. Eddy places in the same category as the denial of God.[8] An obvious comment suggests itself: If drugs cannot cure, it follows that they cannot hurt; will some adherent to this teaching show his consistency in the faith by swallowing a small, but sufficient quantity {134} of oxalic acid? And so, finally, with Mrs. Eddy's singularly futile question, "As power divine is in the healer, why should mortals concern themselves with the chemistry of food?" [9] Without unkindliness, one feels tempted to reply that this kind of language will begin to be convincing when Christian Scientists show their readiness and ability to sustain life on substances chemically certified to be without nutritive properties.
But it is not its denial of physical evil that makes this and allied movements a real menace; dissent as we may from the Christian Science theory of bodily illness, and deplore as we must the fatal results of which we read every now and again when a patient has been persuaded to substitute the Christian Science "healer" for the trained physician—these results concern, to put it rather bluntly, no one but the sufferer and his immediate friends. But when we remarked that the natural man desired to be made well rather than to be made good, we were not merely thinking of one side of Christian Science teaching; we were bearing in mind that the author ofScience and Healthdeclares the illusoriness of pain only as part of the illusoriness of all evil, moral as well as physical.Christian Science explicitly denies the reality of sin: and that denial follows with inexorable logic from its first principle—that {135} God is All, and All is Good. And here rather than in the material domain lies the danger we have to face; this is the side of Mrs. Eddy's doctrine which, the moment it is attractively presented to, and grasped by, half-educated and unstable minds, will, we fear, exercise a fatal fascination over large numbers. For one person who will seriously persuade himself that there is no matter, or that his sore throat is imaginary, there will be a number to welcome the good tidings that what they had hitherto regarded as sin wears in reality no such sinister complexion—that, as Mrs. Eddy openly states,what seems "vice" is to be explained as "illusions of the physical senses." That is precisely what every sinner would like to believe. "I have done that, says my memory. I cannot have done that, says my pride, and remains obdurate. In the end, my memory gives in." So wrote Nietzsche, keenly and cynically observant of his kind. As a matter of fact, men would give almost anything to be able to convince themselves that they "have not done that"—not necessarily from pride, but in order to be rid of shame, of remorse, of self-contempt; will not many of them only too eagerly accept this fatal anodyne when it is offered to them in the pretended name of religion?
We have but one comment to urge, one protest to make. It has taken long ages to develop and heighten man's sensitiveness to {136} the distinction between good and evil; we say with the most solemn emphasis that anything calculated to dull that sensitiveness, to wipe out that distinction, to drug the conscience, is nothing less than a crime of high treason against humanity. Better call evil an unfathomable mystery, so long as we also regard it as a dread reality, a foe we must conquer or be conquered by; but to solve the problem by denying its existence, to get over the fact of evil by declaring that all is good—that way not only madness but moral disaster lies. Let us at least understand what this doctrine is, which is being so energetically pressed upon us to-day; and if we see the direction in which that ill-digested pseudo-revelation is likely to lead those who consistently accept it, let us meet this insidious propaganda with equal energy and better arguments. Our first and simplest duty in dealing with the specious doctrine which asserts that evil is "not-being"—a mere illusion which, like the idols spoken of by the Apostle, is "nothing in the world"—is to point out promptly and uncompromisingly that whatever such a reading of the facts may be, and from whatever quarter it may be offered, it is not Christian, but at the furthest remove from Christianity. Shall we be told that "the question is not whether these opinions are dangerous, but whether they are true?" We reply that we are well aware that truth is the highest expediency; but we are not {137} acquainted with any other test of the truth of an opinion save this—whether and how it works. If a speculative theory, when carried into practice, should appear to make straight for pernicious results, in what intelligible sense of the word can it be "true"?
It is the immense merit of Christianity that it has spoken out with no uncertain voice upon this subject; it has never sought to minimise or explain away the fact of moral evil; on the contrary, it has consistently pointed to the true nature of sin, by connecting it vitally and causally with the sacrificial death of the Son of God:tanta molis erat(if we may slightly vary the immortal line)humanam solvere gentem. A gospel which lightly dismisses this terrible reality, and seeks to hide its hideousness behind a rose-coloured mist of fine words,—such an emasculated gospel is not a message of life, but has the answer of death within itself. That in the past, in a doctrine such as that of man's total depravity, the fact of sin has been over-emphasised, may be readily granted; but in the present all the symptoms indicate that the peril we have to meet is itsunder-emphasis. Against this whole tendency we must resolutely re-assert the Christian standpoint and attitude. Christianity is that religion which affirms in unfaltering accents the reality of evil—but it sets over against it the greater Reality of atoning Love; it proclaims unsparingly the sinfulness and deadliness {138} of sin, but offers us the victory over sin and death through Jesus Christ our Lord.
"O Timotheus, guard your trust, and eschew the irreverent empty phrases and contradictions of a mis-called 'Science,' professing which some have missed their true aim in regard to the faith."
In order to afford an illustration of Christian Science as a thing in being, we reproduce without comment the following report of an inquest, as published in theTribune, on January 9th, 1908:—
Remarkable questions were put by the coroner to witnesses at a Richmond(Surrey) inquest yesterday on Mary Elizabeth Dixon, 58, a ChristianScientist, who died of bronchitis.
Mrs. E. D., of St. John's Road, said that at the request of Mrs. Dixon she gave her Christian Science help—prayer which she had faith would be answered.
The Coroner (Dr. Michael Taylor): Was it?—She was in a state of collapse on Saturday night, but revived much. When Mrs. Dixon had a cold previously it improved wonderfully under Christian Science.
Then Christian Science is effectual if not much is the matter, but is not in the case of a serious illness?—I don't think she wanted to get better.
Is that the way you look at it?—No, I don't. I know God is all-power and ever present.
But if God is all-powerful, as you say, and as we all know, why did you have no response?—I suppose it was my lack of trust in that all-power.
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It comes to this, that although He is all-powerful, unless the person praying for another has perfect faith the patient will not recover?—Nothing is impossible to God. The doctor was called in because it was the law.
Then it was too late. It was as much the law to have called him in when the woman was alive. What is the practice with regard to illness?—It is prayer.
If you had a broken leg, would you send for a doctor?—Yes, to set it. I have not sufficient understanding.
Continuing, witness said she did not believe in drugs, but she did in food at present, because her understanding was not sufficient, as she was only a student.
By a Juror: The reason Mrs. Dixon got worse was because of lack of understanding on witness's part.
The Coroner: When she got worse, why did you not send for a doctor?—I asked her if she wanted a doctor to tell me.
Yet she was getting worse owing to your lack of understanding?—I didn't look at it in that light.
B. H., who attended Mrs. Dixon, said she was a trained nurse with nine years' experience. Witness had, during the past two years, become a Christian Scientist nurse. She was not a practitioner.
The Coroner: Has a practitioner any special qualifications?—No, a practitioner is one who prays for another.
The Coroner: Would you give a patient a mustard poultice?—No.
But you would give her a hot-water bottle?—Yes.
Then where do you draw the line? You don't believe in material aid?—No,I believe the other is better.
Do you believe in a judicious continuation of both?—No.
Did you give her beef tea?—Yes, as a nourishment.
But, nurse, you ought to know what every medical man knows, that beef tea is a stimulant. Do you believe in stimulants?—Not at all.
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Then why did you give her beef tea?—(After a pause) It was simpler to get.
But it is contrary to your principles. Would you givesal volatile?—No.
Witness explained that she called in no other help because she believed prayer was the most effectual.
Why didn't you call in a doctor?—I think the patient should judge for herself.
Even though her brain is clouded and she is dying?—Yes.
On another point the Coroner said: Did our Saviour use food and stimulants?—He gave wine.
Why don't you give wine?—He did not give it in illness, but at a marriage feast.
You want us to believe He gave wine to people who could do without and withheld it from those who wanted it.
Asked a question as to calling in a doctor for surgery purposes, witness said he would only be called in for setting bones and not for an operation.
The Coroner: It amounts to this: you believe the Almighty is a bad surgeon, but a good physician?—Our faith is not yet strong enough.
Dr. Cockell deposed that death was due to acute bronchitis.
Would she have recovered with medical attendance for a week before?—Yes.
The Coroner, in summing up, said there was no doubt Mrs. Dixon was grossly neglected.
The jury returned a verdict of "Death from acute bronchitis, accelerated by gross neglect by Mrs. D. and especially by Nurse H."
The Coroner: I am afraid that will mean manslaughter, which would be too severe. Will you alter it, gentlemen? The jury then altered the verdict to one of "severe censure on Mrs. D. and Miss H. for neglecting to obtain medical aid."
[1]The Grammar of Assent, p. 201.
[2]Rudimental Divine Science, p. 10.
[3]Op. cit., p. 10. Mrs. Eddy is so incredibly ignorant of the meaning of words in common use that she says, "Mind in matter is pantheism." It has apparently never dawned on her that her own doctrine, "God is All—All is God" is pantheism pure and simple!
[4]Ibid.
[5]Op. cit., p. 9.
[6] Dr. Henry Rutgers Marshall, on "Psychotherapeutics," in theHibbert Journal, January, 1909.
[7] The Christian Science healer is supposed to have had his or her powers trained by special tuition, for which, in the ordinary course, a fee is charged. Mrs. Eddy states that she has "never taught a Primary class without several and sometimes seventeen free students in it," but adds significantly "The student who pays must, of necessity, do better than he who does not pay" (op. cit., p. 14). The "necessity" is not quite obvious, but the statement sets one wondering whether it would hold true if for "student" the word "patient" were substituted.
[8]Op. cit., p. 3.
[9]Ibid., p. 13.
{141}
The under-emphasis of sin, we said, is one of the special dangers which threaten the present age; and nothing is more remarkable or disquieting to observe than the number of attacks that are being made to-day from quarter after quarter, all of them converging upon the same point. Now the cry is raised that sin is a mere mistake, due to ignorance; or that it is merely the absence of something, as a shadow indicates the absence of light[1]; or we are assured that "what we call 'evil' is only incidental to the progress and development of the [universal] order" [2]—a necessary step in evolution. Now again the burden of responsibility is shifted from the shoulders of the individual on to heredity and environment; or compromise with what is known to be moral evil is not only excused as a necessity, but commended as a duty; or the average person's feelings are considerately soothed by {142} the pronouncement that "the mass of a Christian congregation are about as innocent as men and women can well be in a world where natural temptations are so rife, and so many social adjustments discountenance heroic saintliness" [3]—the latter a truly admirable feat of circumlocution. And sometimes, as we have seen, sin and evil are themselves in essence negated—generally in virtue of some pseudo-philosophic or pseudo-scientific "doctrine of a universe"—as when we read that "in a universe . . . there cannot be any room for independent and creative wills, actually thwarting the Good Will." [4] Doubtless, these various statements, whether made in the name of Monism or Determinism, or some form of neo-Christianity, represent a reaction against that over-emphasis which taught that man was by nature under God's wrath and deserving of everlasting torments; but there can be no question that this reaction has gone very far in the direction of the opposite extreme, and that the time has come for reconsideration and a return to more balanced views.
So far as the virtual denial of human freedom, human sin, and indeed of human selfhood, {143} flows from a perversion of the doctrine of Divine immanence, we need not add anything to the observations made in earlier chapters upon this subject; we might, however, quote some pertinent words of Martineau's, affirming and explaining that distinction between the Divine and human personality which can only be ignored to the hopeless confusion of thought:
"The whole external universe, then (external, I mean, to self-conscious beings), we unreservedly surrender to the Indwelling Will, of which it is the organised expression. From no point of its space, from no moment of its time, is His living energy withdrawn, or less intensely present than in any crisis fitly called creative. But the very same principle which establishes aUnityof all external causality makes it antithetic to the internal, and establishes aDualitybetween our own and that which is other than ours; so that, were not our personal power known to us asone, the cosmical power would not be guaranteed to us as theother. Here, therefore, at the boundary of the proper Ego, the absorbing claim of the Supreme will arrests itself, and recognises a ground on which it does not mean to step. Did it still press on and annex this field also, it would simply abolish the very base of its own recognisable existence, and, in making itself all in all, would vanish totally from view. . . Are we, then, to find Him in the sunshine and the rain, and to miss Him in our thought, our duty and our love? Far from it; He is with us in both: only in the former it is Hisimmanentlife, in the latter Histranscendent, with which we are in communion." [5]
Only where this fundamental principle of the non-identity of God and man is recognised, can the facts of human personality, {144} freedom and responsibility for willed acts be rationally based and defended.
At the same time this "otherness" of God, while it is the condition, is not necessarily the guarantee, of our freedom. Determinism is quite compatible, in theory, and has been so found in history, with belief in the Divine transcendence; but it is scarcely compatible with belief in the Divine goodness. There is noa priorireason making it inconceivable that the doctrine of absolute predestination might be true; but such a doctrine is not reconcilable with the belief that the Eternal Other is also the Eternal Father. The Divine Autocrat of Calvinism, who pre-ordained some of His creatures to eternal damnation—not for any demerit of theirs, but "just choosing so"—is not unthinkable; what is unthinkable is that we could love such a One—a God who had predestined all human sin and woe, who had fore-ordered things in such a manner that unnumbered hapless souls were doomed evermore to stumble and to suffer. Such a God might inspire a shuddering, wondering, abject awe, but never affection. Only a good God, aiming at the evolution of goodness, the making of character, could have endowed us with freedom, for only through such an endowment can such an aim be realised.
And hence there are perhaps few attitudes so entirely irrational as that which affects to see in a determinist interpretation of man's {145} nature a special reason for optimism. Occasionally one is invited to rejoice in the "great and glorious thought that every man is wholly a product of the Master Workman"; it is even urged that such a conception cannot change our appreciation of what is fine in human thought and action, just as "we do not admire a rose the less because we know that it could no more help being what it is than could a stinging nettle or a fungus." We can only say that such a superficial optimism seems infinitely more open to objection than the temper which, in the face of so much suffering and sin, has to struggle hard sometimes to preserve its faith in the Father's love, and half-wonders if some personal power of evil is not actively engaged in marring God's workmanship. Anyone who can believe that every man, just as he is, represents the Divine intention in concrete form—anyone who can believe this, and glory in the thought—must inhabit a strange world, remote from reality. He can never have learned anything of the greed which condemns myriads of human beings to sunless and degraded lives; he can never have been inside a police-court; he can never have seen hapless womanhood flaunting its be-rouged and be-ribboned shame under the electric light of West End thoroughfares—he can never even have reflected upon any of these things, and rejoiced in the thought that every human being was "wholly the {146} product of the Master Workman." If such a thought does not produce something like despair, it ought to do so; if it does not, then it represents not a conviction but a pose.
As a matter of fact, the determinist creed, with all its professions of charitableness towards the transgressor, and while pretending to soothe us by absolving us from responsibility for wrong-doing, fatally paralyses our endeavours. It is a message, not of liberation from guilt, but of despair. Christianity, even while condemning sin, in its very condemnation speaks of hope; it says to the sinner: "You are guilty—you ought to have done better, and you know it; you are guilty—you ought still to do better,and you can." That is a rousing, vitalising call: the very censure implies the possibility of better things. But Determinism says to the moral wreck: "Not only are you a wreck, but that is all you ever could have been; you not only cannot help being what you are, but in your wretchedness and degradation you are what you could not help being—this was your pre-ordained destiny from the beginning of time. We are not angry with you, any more than we are angry with tigers for being fierce, or with thorns for not bearing grapes; only, being what you are, you nevercouldhave borne, and never will bear, grapes." Truly a "great and glorious thought"! Determinism makes of the whole world of erring men a hospital, and pronounces {147} every patient an incurable—it is ready to grant kindly, considerate treatment to each, but holds out hopes of recovery to none. Who would not rather submit to a sterner physician, whose ministrations promised to medicine him back to health again! A consistent Determinism, prepared to look stedfastly at things as they are, can, we repeat, lead nowhere but to despair; a conclusion from which determinists, fortunately for themselves, escape by means of the most patent inconsistency.
But we turn to the further contention which we already mentioned in passing,viz., that the acceptance of Determinism would by no means change our admiration of what was fine in human thought and action—just as we did not admire a rose the less because it could not help being fragrant and beautiful. Here we have a very palpable, but all the more significant confusion between things totally different—aesthetics and ethics. Our admiration for a rose is aesthetic; our admiration for goodness is ethical, and we give it with the implicit understanding that the quality we admire is the result of voluntary acts and decisions. All moral judgments imply this; and in practice we know that the experience of moral struggle and moral conquest is intensely real, not to be argued away any more than we can be argued out of any other primary fact of consciousness, which is its own sufficient evidence. Let anyone ask himself quite {148} candidly whether the feeling called forth by some rare work of art resembles remotely the emotion with which he reads of some deed of humble heroism or self-sacrifice; the psychology which discerns here no difference is singularly shallow.
But when the would-be optimistic determinist is shown the sheer fatuity of pretending to rejoice in that everything is just as it is—a singular compliment to the "Master Workman"—he executes avolte-faceand falls back upon the plea that his doctrine is at any rate a pre-eminently practical one. Instead of vainly deploring imaginary "sins," Determinism would simply have us recognise plain facts: it would arrange for healthy hereditary influences to cradle the coming generations; it would adopt the most enlightened educational, hygienic, reformatory methods; it would provide for all the citizens of the State such an environment as would steadily make for health and beauty and happiness. There are no "sinners," it says, but only the unhappy products of conditions which foster anti-social proclivities as automatically as dirt fosters disease; instead of punishing the products, let us attack the producing conditions, and by sweeping them away bring in the millennium.
Such a plea, it must be admitted, harmonises well with our modern tolerance, our modern zeal for reform; and yet it rests upon a fundamental fallacy. No one, of course, denies the {149} moulding power of heredity and environment; no one denies such an obvious truism as that we cannot expect to grow fine specimens of humanity in the reeking slum or the sweater's workshop. But as environment is a greater power than heredity, so there is only one power greater than environment—and that is our power to alter environment. "But that," protests the determinist, "is just what we hold ought to be done." Certainly; only it is just what, on his presupposition, cannot be done. For if the slum-dweller cannot help being what he is, owing to his environment, neither can the slum-owner, or the legislator, or the community, help being what they are, owing to the self-same cause. In fact, we cannot get the word "ought" from Determinism; it is as much out of place in that connection as a free worker in a slave-compound. But every reform springs from a sense of "oughtness"; and the sense of moral obligation is itself the spontaneous expression of the consciousness of moral freedom. So far as we believe in the duty of reform—or in "duty" itself,sans phrase—we have already renounced Determinism, and proclaimed our belief in liberty. Let it be said once more, before we pass from this particular aspect of our subject, that too much may be set down to, or expected from, even environment; everybody knows that from gentle homes, surrounded by what seemed the most favouring influences, {150} there have sprung vicious and depraved characters. We ask ourselves, in encountering such cases, "Wanting is—what?" And the answer must be given in Kant's famous dictum: that which is "the only good thing in the world—a good will."
In one sense, paradoxical as it may sound, much of the strenuous modern advocacy of Determinism or semi-Determinism is a kind of inverted acknowledgment of man's consciousness of freedom,viz., where that consciousness appears as the sense of sin. Of course, when a writer like Mr. Dole assures us that "there is no objection to a moral and spiritual Determinism that binds all things over into the unity of good," [6] we merely reply that on the contrary there is the very serious objection that "all things" are not good. But most advocates of the determinist position are, to do them justice, well aware of the existence of wrong and discord in human life; and their object is, by emphasising the influence of heredity and environment, to remove or at least materially to lighten, the crushing burden of the sense of sin. The same intention underlies the effort, occasionally made, to persuade men that, seeing they are such as God created them, it is not for them to repine at being what they are, nor to "take too serious a view" of any "penchant for {151} revolt"—another delightful phrase—they may discover within themselves; as a recent writer has it, "The responsibility of its presenceand actiondoes not rest with us, nor are we justified in insulting God who made us, by repenting of what He has done.We might as well repent of the tiger and the snake, the earthquake and the tempest in nature." [7] What are we to say of this attempt to make God answerable, not merely for the presence, but for the action, of whatever impulse to "revolt" of which we may be conscious?
To be quite frank, we cannot think the utterance we have just quoted other than extraordinarily ill-considered. The simple fact that we cannot followallthe impulses which arise in us, but have to choose between higher and lower—the fact that we are well aware of this conflict of unharmonisable elements within ourselves, some of which can only triumph at the expense of others—seems sufficiently to dispose of this writer's main contention. We may not be responsible for the presence of these warring instincts, but we are undoubtedly responsible for translating one kind into action while holding the other kind in check. The earthward and the heavenward are in each of us, striving for mastery; but no imagination is vainer than that we can indulge both, or practise the impartiality with which Montaigne's singular devotee lighted one candle {152} to St. George and another to the dragon. If we would realise the type of perfect in the mind, we must not gratify "the penchant for revolt," but exert ourselves to lay—
The ghost of the brute that is walking and haunting us yet and be free;
we must
Arise and flyThe reeling Faun, the sensual feast;Move upward, working out the beast,And let the ape and tiger die.
Granted that the lower impulses, the inheritance from our animal ancestry, are left in us by Divine decree, they are there, not to be indulged on the plea that to repent would be tantamount to "insulting God who made us," but to be conquered by the exercise of that freedom which is the earnest of our call to claim our birthright as children of God.
But when we are further told that, as well as repent of our actions, we might repent of the tiger and the snake, we are immediately conscious of a double confusion of thought behind that statement; for in the first place, we are not even called upon to repent ofeach other'sfailings but only of our own, and in the second there is no analogy between ourselves and the tiger and snake, creatures which act according to their animal natures, and are incapable of desiring to be other than they are. Our capacity of, and desire for, better things attest our possession of a measure of liberty, and {153} indicate at once our responsibility for the course we take, and the essential distinction between the animal creation and ourselves—a distinction wittily expressed in the remark that "everybody would admit that very few men are really manly; but nobody would contend that very few whales were really whaley."
But those who seek to spare us the discomfort of repentance by teaching us to declare with a new inflection, "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves," forget that there is another side to this argument. It is, of course, very alluring to be told that we are not really blameworthy for acts which hitherto we have blamed ourselves for—that our impulses are God-given—that "the sinner is merely a learner in a lower grade in the school," [8] and so forth; one can understand how grateful is such a morphia injection for deadening the pangs of an accusing conscience. The art of making excuses, as old as the Garden of Eden, will never lack ardent professors or eager disciples. Says Cassius to Brutus:—
Have you not love enough to bear with meWhen that rash humour which my mother gave meMakes me forgetful?
And Brutus answers with a smile:—
Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth,When you are over-earnest with your Brutus,He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so!
{154} But, after all, we none of us do exclusively things for which we wish to escape being blamed; there is hardly anyone who could not name some occasion on which he has made some sacrifice, foregone an unfair advantage, declined to listen to selfish promptings, or held some baser impulse in check. None of these things were done for the sake of receiving praise; nevertheless, and quite inevitably, the doer felt praise_worthy_, conscious of an inner accord whose self-attesting power stamped it a reality, and not an illusion. But Determinism leaves no room for this emotion, any more than for that of remorse or blame-worthiness; we cannot get rid of the sense of sin, yet retain the sense of righteousness. The determinist sponge passes over the whole moral vocabulary, not only over the inconvenient parts; it obliterates the terms self-indulgence, dishonesty, cowardice, but the same fate overtakes self-conquest, integrity, bravery. To vary the phrase slightly, we must not, on the determinist hypothesis, insult God by taking credit to ourselves for what He has done. Are we prepared to surrender the approval of our conscience, the new-won self-respect which rewards the successful resistance offered to temptation, as having no basis in fact? And if we are not, what is this but to affirm our freedom and our responsibility alike in doing and forbearing?
{155}
And this inner sense of peace or discord, according as we have acted thus or thus—this immediate consciousness that it lay with us to choose aright or amiss—is both anterior and superior to all argument; it asserts itself victoriously against all merely intellectual perplexities, such as are apt to arise when we ask ourselves how man could be free to commit or not to commit an act, in view of the Divine omniscience. The contradiction seems a stubborn one, yet in practice we never feel our freedom circumscribed by it. Probably our difficulty arises largely from the mistake of applying time-relations to God at all, and thinking of eternity as an enormously long period instead of timeless Present, excluding both "unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday." We, of course, have to think under the category of time, remembering and looking forward; but the Divinemodus cognoscendiexcludes either of these processes, being the timeless act of One who "knoweth altogether"—in whose sight a thousand years are as a day, and a day as a thousand years. To the Eternal Intelligence, living in an unbeginning and unending Present, "past" and "future" must be equally unmeaning; to such a One we cannot but think that all events must be equally and simultaneously present, "for all live unto Him." If we could behold the drama of existencesub specie aeternitatis, we might be able to understand how {156} Divine omniscience can co-exist with human freedom; as it is, we can only say, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for us—it is high, and we cannot attain unto it." We know that we cannot know. In any case, even while the Divine omniscience may present itself to us as a necessity of thought, human freedom remains a reality of experience and a postulate of morals.[9]
There are, however, those to whom human freedom presents itself, not as a contradiction to Divine omniscience, but as a contradiction in terms. Man's choice of a course of conduct, they argue, cannot be thought of as other than {157} determined by an efficient cause; but if it is so determined, in what sense can it be free? An uncaused act is strictly speaking unthinkable; but do we not affirm that acts are uncaused when we speak of them as free—in other words, is not the only alternative to Determinism what might be called _in_determinism? The answer is (a) that every choice is certainly the result of an efficient cause; but (b) the fact of this being so interferes in no wise with the reality of liberty, nor does it contradict the universality of the law of causation. Forthe efficient cause is the man himself, and the fact that he can choose is attested in the very act of choice—which would not be "choice" if there were not at least two real alternatives. We do not quarrel with the obvious truth, stated by Mill, that the will is determined by motives; we contest the assumption that a "free" act is an "uncaused" act. The act is caused or determined by the free choice of a causal self; in strict parlance, indeed, we should have to say that neither acts nor wills, but only human selves, are free. The will is not self-determined, but determined by a self; and this self is able not only to choose between different motives, but to attend to one set of motives to the neglect of others, and even to create motives in order to become able to make a difficult decision.
Let us, however, guard against a possible misconstruction by saying that there is all the difference between this conception offreedom{158} and the merespontaneitywhich is recognised by the followers both of Spinoza and Hegel, a difference which was luminously brought out by Martineau.[10] The Spinozist doctrine of spontaneity, as Mr. Picton points out, means that the individual follows an impulse which "has its antecedents . . . in the chain of invariable sequences." [11] Man, in this view, is "free" to do what he wants, because he wants it; he isnotfree in the sense that hecouldhave wanted something different.[12] Nothing could be more frank than Mr. Picton's statements on this point—as when he speaks of the "freeman's" sense that "all things are of God, andcould not have been otherwise:"
Of course the obvious retort occurs, (he continues,) that if indeed everything . . . occurs by invariable sequence, all this intellectual gospel of freedom is vain, and exhortations to its acceptance thrown away. And to those who are not satisfied with the freedom of conscious spontaneity, a condition in which we do just as we want to do, though our will is a link in an endless series of untraceable sequences, I suppose this objection must still be final.[13]
The objection is undoubtedly final, because it is absolutely valid; for by freedom we mean the ability to do or leave undone, to act thus or thus, and apart from such an ability moral judgments are quite unthinkable. Where we pronounce praise or blame, the tacit {159} presupposition is always that the object of the pronouncement could have acted differently; and this Spinozism denies.
The same remark applies to the teaching of that modern Absolute Idealism which declares, with Green, that man is his motives, and that he is "free" inasmuch as it is by his own motives that he is governed. It would be as accurate to call an automatic machine "free" on the ground that it is by its own works that it is moved. This is only, as Professor William James aptly calls it, "soft Determinism." If the automaton could decide to slacken or increase its rate of speed, to go or to stop as it liked and where it liked—above all, if it could aim at and devise improvements in its own mechanism so as to make itself a better automaton—it would then be appropriate to speak of it as free; only it would no longer be appropriate to call it an automaton. And similarly it is only if man is able to determine his course of action—if he can "choose" in any real sense,i.e., in the sense that he might choose differently, if he wished to do so—that it can be anything but an abuse of language to speak of him as free; for only in that case can he be an object of approbation or condemnation. If he is merely the sum-total of his motives, he is as little free to act other than he does as a number of chemical elements combined in certain proportions are free to form anything but a definite chemical substance. As {160} Mr. Balfour has well expressed it,[14] "It may seem at first sight plausible to describe a man as free whose behaviour is due to 'himself' alone. But without quarrelling over words, it is, I think, plain that whether it be proper to call him free or not, he at least lacks freedom in the sense in which freedom is necessary in order to constitute responsibility. It is impossible to say of him that he 'ought,' and therefore he 'can,' for at any given moment of his life his next action is by hypothesis strictly determined." But the freedom of which we are conscious—e.g., in every experience of conflict between inclination and duty—is something altogether different; we know that we can yield or resist, choose between, reinforce, and if necessarymake, our motives.[15]
{161}
But is not sin, it is sometimes asked, inevitableper se, and in that sense natural to man, and if so, how can we be blamed for what we could not avoid? And again, is there not some truth in the statement that much that we call evil has been incidental to the progress of the race, just as the discords produced by the learner on a musical instrument are necessary incidents in the process which will teach him by and by to charm the ear with the perfect harmony? Such questions are frequently put forward; let us see if we are able to clear away the misunderstandings to which they bear witness.
(1) Admitting that a free moral being must be able in theory to choose the wrong as well as the right, it should in the first place be observed that the possibility of that or any course does not render itinevitablefor him to take it, and it is only the possibility that is given. But it may be justly argued that since as a matter of fact all men sin, we cannot pretend that we are merely dealing with a theoretical possibility, but must pronounce sin to bede factonatural to man as well as inevitable—for who has ever avoided it? Let us observe what follows: this, and no more, that sin is "natural" only in the sense in which disease is "natural"—viz., as a disorder to which the human frame may become subject, but nevertheless a disorder. As physical disease entails a diminution of physical life, so sin entails a diminution of {162} our moral and spiritual life, an alienation of the soul from God; and while anyone may thus choose to describe sin—the wilful misuse of faculties lent us for other ends—as natural, it is significant that the result of sin is quite _un_natural,viz., a state of disunion between the soul and God. So much is this the case that the aim of all religion is to bring about a cessation of this unhappy state, and to effect the healing of the discord created by man's transgression. True religion treats sin, not as an error to be explained away, but as a wall of partition to be broken down; the essential aim of religion is atonement, man's reconciliation to God.
(2) But it is further urged that in historical retrospect, and in the light of evolution, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in the course of man's development from a savage and barbaric condition all manner of ills—bloodshed, slavery, etc.—have been necessary stages; may not, then, sin be claimed as constituting part of the Divine plan? And if such was the case once, may it not be the case still? Here we are dealing with a very obvious confusion; for while man is in a low and undeveloped state, a good many acts which would be sins if committed by people on a higher level, have not that character at all. It is quite impossible,e.g., to read the Homeric poems and find in them any trace or indication that deceit, war and massacres are {163} regarded with so much as moral distaste; the men of the Homeric age had simply not risen to that moral height, and it would be futile to judge them by the standards of a more advanced civilisation. Undoubtedly, in its slow evolution from sub-human origins, the race passes through long sub-moral stages during which the animal instincts—"moods of tiger or of ape"—are still in the ascendant; it is only gradually that man becomes aware of certain practices with shame, disgust or remorse, and it is only then that we can begin to speak of the indulgence of the passions which prompt those practices as "sin." When Paul calls the law the strength of sin, or says that the law came in that the trespass might abound, he states a truth, but sees it, if one may say so, out of focus; for the law was not arbitrarily imposed in order to brand a multitude of harmless acts as offences, but in proportion as the moral law is discerned by man's mind, acts which formerly were merely non-moral begin to range themselves on this side or that, as right and wrong. True, even when our moral perceptions have thus been quickened, we shall not always "rule our province of the brute" with a strong hand—true also that, owing to our earthly nature, "in many things we all stumble;" but so far from viewing these failures complacently, they ought to spur us to more earnest endeavours to leave our lower inheritance behind. The truth {164} concerning the "inevitableness" of sin was stated by our Lord when He said, "It must needs be that occasions"—viz., of stumbling—"come; but woe to that man through whom the occasion cometh." Sin as such, as an "occasion," is inevitable; but for any particular sin, for acting contrarily to the known best, the individual is responsible—and greatest of all is the responsibility of one who knowingly and of design becomes an "occasion of stumbling" to another, making sin more difficult to avoid, or positively inciting another to wrong-doing. We do not forget the inequalities of moral endowment, nor do we leave out of sight that a temptation which for one man scarcely so much as exists may prove well-nigh irresistible to another; but the judgment upon each is in the wise and Fatherly hands of Him who knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust.
We have seen that Determinism, in spite of its humanitarian and even optimistic pretensions, when it is consistently applied falsifies every one of its promises; it is worth while to ask ourselves yet once more what is likely to be the effect of this doctrine upon the characters of those who seriously entertain it. Mill, in his frigid and precise, yet scrupulously just manner, expressed the opinion that
The free-will doctrine, by keeping in view precisely that portion of the truth which the word necessity puts {165} out of sight, namely the power of the mind to co-operate in the formation of its own character, has given to its adherents a practical feeling much nearer to the truth than has generally (I believe) existed in the minds of necessarians. The latter may have had a stronger sense of the importance of what human beings can do as to shape the characters of one another; but the free-will doctrine has, I believe, fostered in its supporters a much stronger spirit of self-culture.[16]
If for "self-culture" we substituted self-reliance, buoyancy, a sense of responsibility, we should scarcely go too far; for, indeed, it would be difficult to say from what sources the consistent determinist is to derive these qualities. He regards himself as the inevitable product of forces which have moulded him into that particular shape and no other; he cannot help himself or change his character by one hair's-breadth; he views his own life, as has been well said, not in the light of a story which he can carry on as he may choose, but as a sum which must finish in a given way; and his one dismal consolation is that he is not responsible for his shortcomings. He can but say with his favourite sage:—
The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,But Here or There as strikes the Player goes;And He that toss'd you down into the Field,He knows about it all—Heknows—HE knows!
But to believe that no effort can avail will certainly not inspire anyone to make such an effort; on the contrary, the likelihood is only {166} too great that such a belief will upon occasion serve as a welcome excuse for not making it. It has been said that Determinism, if not a very heroic creed, will at any rate make for tolerance and charity towards human failings; but nothing is more certain than that this kind of charity will, in practice, begin—while its tendency will be also to end—at home.
This estimate, it is true, is often warmly challenged; in actual life, we are told, many of those who profess determinist principles are notorious for their strenuous moral calibre, and certainly not open to the charge of laxity. Let that statement be ungrudgingly accepted; what it proves is no more than that prussic acid is entirely harmless—provided it is not taken. We are quite willing to admit that Determinism, provided it is not put into practice, is nothing more than a mistaken theory. So long as men are content to be determinists in their studies and libertarians everywhere else, no particular mischief is likely to ensue; and it is matter of common experience, and for much congratulation, that our theoretical determinists should so far obey the instinct of moral self-preservation as to be for the most part practical libertarians, freely pronouncing praise and blame on human conduct, and feeling praise- and blameworthy themselves. But if they were logical and consistent determinists, they would do and feel no such thing; for the praise we give to a {167} well-poised spring-cart is one thing, and the praise we give to a well-poised character is another. And again, given a man who really believed, or whom it suited to believe, that he was quite irresponsible for his actions, and that no morally valid censure could attach to him for gratifying some appetite or passion, one cannot help suspecting that the result would be something much worse than mere laxity. That most persons who argue in favour of Determinism do not act up to its principles, is surely nothing in the doctrine's recommendation; on the other hand there is always the unpleasant possibility that some day they may begin to take their philosophy seriously. And just as one would not like prussic acid to lie about promiscuously where all and sundry could have access to it, lest there should be a great deal of accidental poisoning, so we are justified in viewing the broadcast dissemination of determinist theory not merely with the antipathy one may feel towards intellectual error, but with the apprehension excited by a moral danger. Every system or movement which involves the denial of evil or of freedom—the denial or under-emphasis of sin—menaces not only religion in the narrower sense, but the structure of civilisation itself.