As a matter of fact, this is rather a defect of style and expression than of the inner sentiment. It is part and parcel of the realist temper to blurt out the thought in all the clothing or nakedness with which it first surges up into consciousness, before it has been submitted to the censorship of reason; in a word, to do its thinking aloud, or on paper; to give utterance not to the tempered and mature judgment—the last result of refinement and correction, but to display the whole process and working by which it was reached. As it is part of M. Zola's art to linger lovingly over each little horror of some slaughter-house scene, until the whole lives for us again as in a cinematograph, so M. Huysman, engaged in the portrayal of a spiritual conflict, spares us no link in the chain of causes by which the final result is produced; he bares the brain, and exposes its workings with all the scientific calmness of the vivisector.
Whether we like or dislike this realism, we must allow for it in forming our judgment on these volumes, nor must we treat as final and approved opinions what are often the mere spontaneous suggestions and first thoughts of the mind, the oscillations through which it settles down to rest. Over and over again we shall find that Durtal subsequently raises the very objection to his own view that was on our lips at the first reading of it.
But even making such allowance, it none the less remains a matter of regret that one who, with perhaps some justice, considers that in point of art-appreciation "the Catholic public is still a hundred feet beneath the profane public," and chides them for "their incurable lack of artistic sense," who speaks of "the frightful appetite for the hideous which disgraces the Church of our day," who himself in many ways, in a hundred passages of sublime thought, of tender piety, of lyrical poesy, has proved beyond all cavil his delicacy of sentiment, his exquisite niceness in matters of taste, his reverence for what is chaste and beautiful, should at times be so deplorably unfaithful to his better instincts, so forgetful of the close and inseparable alliance between restraint and elegance. What can be weaker or uglier, more unbecoming an artist, more becoming a fish-wife, than his description of Lochner's picture of the Virgin: "The neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream or hasty-pudding, that quivers when it is touched;" or of the picture of St. Ursula's companions, by the same hand: "Their squab noses poking out of bladders of lard that did duty for their faces;" not to speak of the characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult not to answer with atu quoqueas far as this word-painting is concerned—difficult not to see here some morbid and "frightful appetite for the hideous" struggling with the healthy appetite for better things.
However lame and ridiculous an artist's utterance may be, yet there is a certain reverence sometimes due to what he is endeavouring to say, and even to his desire to say it. We do not think it very witty or tasteful or charitable to laugh at a man because he stammers; still less do we overwhelm him with the coarsest abuse. One may well shudder at most presentments of the Sacred Heart, but even apart from all consideration for the artist, a certain reverence for the idea there travestied and unintentionally dishonoured, should forbid our insulting what after all is so nearly related to that idea, and in the eyes of the untaught very closely identified with it.
But an occasional trespass of this kind, however offensive, is not enough to detract materially from the value of so much that is meritorious; nor again will that outspoken treatment of delicate topics (less observable inThe Cathedralthan inEn Route), which makes the book undesirable for many classes of readers, prevent its due appreciation on the part of others—unless we are going to put the Sacred Scriptures on the Index. In this vexed question, M. Huysman takes what seems the more robust and healthy view, but he appears to be quite unaware how many difficulties it involves; and consequently lashes out with his usual intemperance against the contrary tradition, which is undeniably well represented. It is not as though the advocates of the "flight" policy in regard to temptations against this particular virtue were ignorant of the general principle which undoubtedly holds as regards all other temptations, and bids us turn and face the dog that barks at our heels. This counsel is as old as the world. But from the earliest time a special exception has been made to it in the one case of impurity by those who have professedly spoken in the light of experience rather than ofà prioriinference. Both views are encompassed with difficulty, nor does any compromise suggest itself.
What seems to us one of the most interesting points raised by the story of Durtal's spiritual re-birth and development is the precise relation between the Catholic religion and fine art.
God has not chosen to save men by logic; so neither has He chosen to save them by fine art. If the "election" of the Apostolic Church counted but few scribes or philosophers among its members—and those few admitted almost on sufferance—we may also be sure that the followers of the Galilean fishermen were not as a body distinguished by a fastidious criticism in matters of fine art. In after ages, when the Church asserted herself and moulded a civilization more or less in accordance with her own exigencies and ideals, it is notorious how she made philosophy and art her own, and subjected them to her service; but whether in so doing she in any way departed from the principles of Apostolic times is what interests us to understand.
There is certainty no more unpardonable fallacy than that of "Bible Christians," who assume that the Church in the Apostolic age had reached its full expansion and expression, and therefore in respect of polity, liturgy, doctrinal statement and discipline must be regarded as an immutable type for all ages and countries; from which all departure is necessarily a corruption. They take the flexible sapling and compare it with aged knotty oak, and shake their heads over the lamentable unlikeness: "That this should be the natural outgrowth of that!O tempora, O mores!"
Like every organism, in its beginning, the Church was soft-bodied and formless in all these respects; but she had within her the power of fashioning to herself a framework suited to her needs, of assuming consistency and definite shape in due time. The old bottles would not serve to hold the new wine, but this did not mean that new bottles were not to be sought. Because the philosophy, the art, the polity of the age in which she was born were already enlisted in the service of other ideas and inextricably associated with error in the minds of men, it was needful for her at first to dissociate herself absolutely from the use of instruments otherwise adaptable in many respects to her own ends, and to wait till she was strong enough to alter them and use them without fear of scandal and misinterpretation.
The Church is many-tongued; but though she can deliver her message in any language, yet she is not for that reason independent of language in general. There is no way to the human ear and heart but through language of some kind or another. It is not her mission to teach languages, but to use the languages she finds to hand for the expression of the truths, the facts, the concrete realities to which her dogmas point. This does not deny that one language may not be more flexible, more graphic than any other, more apt to express the facts of Heaven as well as those of earth. It only denies that any one is absolutely and exclusively the best.
It is no very great violence to include rhetoric, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, ritual, and every form of decorative art in the category of language and to bring them under the same general laws, since even philosophy may to a large extent be treated in the same way. Christ has not commissioned His Church to teach science or philosophy, nor has He given her an infalliblemagisteriumin matters of fine art. She uses what she finds in use and endeavours with the imperfect implements, the limited colours, the coarse materials at her disposal to make the picture of Christ and His truth stand out as faithful to reality as possible; and—to press the illustration somewhat crudely—as what is rightly black, in a study in black and white, may be quite wrongly black in polychrome; so what the Church approves according to one convention, she may condemn according to another. May we not apply to her what Durtal says of our Lady: "She seems to have come under the semblance of every race known to the middle ages; black as an African, tawny as a Mongolian;"—"she unveils herself to the children of the soil … these beings with their rough-hewn feelings, their shapeless ideas, hardly able to express themselves"? The more we study the visions and apparitions with which saints have been favoured and the revelations which have been vouchsafed to them, the more evident is it that they are spoken to in their own language, appealed to through their own imagery. Indeed, were it not so, how could they understand? Our Lady is the all-beautiful for every nation, but the type of human beauty is not the same for all. The Madonna of the Ethiopian might be a rather terrifying apparition in France or Italy.
There is no art too rough or primitive, or even too vulgar, for the Church to disdain, if it offers the only medium of conveying her truth to certain minds. Though custom has made it classical, her liturgical language, whether Latin or Greek, when first assumed, was that of the mob—about as elegant as we consider the dialects of the peasantry. She did not use plain-chaunt for any of those reasons which antiquarians and ecclesiologists urge in its favour now-a-days, but because it was the only music then in vogue. Even to-day the breeziest popular melodies in the East are suggestive of theOratio Jeremiæ. Her vestments (even Gothic vestments!) were once simply the "Sunday best" of the fashion of those days. If to-day these things have a different value and excellence, it is in obedience to the law by which what is "romantic" in one age becomes "classical" in the next, or what is at first useful and commonplace becomes at last ceremonial and symbolic; and by which the common tongue of the vulgar comes by mere process of time to be archaic and stately. To "create" ancient custom and ritual on a sudden, or to resuscitate abruptly that which has lapsed into oblivion, is, to say the least, a very Western idea, akin to the pedantry of trying to restore Chaucer's English to common use.Nascitur non fit, is the law in all such matters.
While we assert the Church's independence of any one in particular of these means of self-expression, her indifference to style and mode of speech so long as substantial fidelity is secured, we must not deny that some of them are, of their own nature, more apt to her purpose than others and allow a fuller revelation of her sense; and that in proportion as her influence is strong in the world she tends to modify human thought and language, to leaven philosophy and fine art, so as to form by a process of selection and refusal, and in some measure even to create, an ever richer and more flexible medium of utterance.
In this sense we can with some caution speak of "Catholic art" in music, architecture, and painting, so far, that is, as we can determine the extent and nature of the Church's action, and therefore the tendency of her influence in the way of stimulus and restraint with regard to subject and treatment. We do not unjustly discern an author's style as a personal element distinct from the language and phraseology of which no item is his own. The manner in which he uses that language, his selections and refusals make, in union with the borrowed elements, a tongue that may be called his, in an exclusive sense. The Church, too, has her style, which, though difficult to discern amid her use of a Pentecostal variety of languages, is no doubt always the same—at least in tendency.
Salvation-Army worship is certainly not of the Church's style, but I do not think, were there no absolute irreverence and scandal to be feared, that she would hesitate to use such a language, were it the only one understood by such a people. St. Francis Xavier's "catechisms" were often hardly less uncouth. Still, her whole tendency would be towards restraint, order, and exterior reverence. Again, the stoical coldness and formalism of a liturgical worship, centered round no soul-stirring mystery of Divine love where there can be feeling so strong as to need the restraint of liturgy and ritual, has still less of the Church's style about it. For she is human, not merely in her reason and self-restraint, but in the fulness of her passion and enthusiasm; and restraint is only beautiful and needful where there is something to restrain.
We are now in a position to consider the surface objection that will present itself to many a reader concerning Durtal's conversion. "He has been converted," it will be said, "by a fallacy. He has identified the Catholic religion with the cause of plain-chaunt and Gothic architecture, and of all that is, or that he considers to be, best in art. He has laid hold not of Catholicism, but of its merest accessories, which it might shake off any day, and him along with them. Indeed, he scarcely makes any pretence at being in sympathy with the Catholicism of to-day, which he regards as almost entirely philistine and degenerate, if we except La Trappe and Solesmes and a few other corners where the old observances linger on. 'It was so ugly, so painfully adorned with images, that only by shutting his eyes could Durtal endure to remain in Notre Dame de la Brèche.' Yes, but what sort of convert is this who is so insensible to substantials, so morbidly sensitive about mere accidentals? We come to the Church for the true faith and the sacraments, not for 'sensations.' In fine, Durtal has not observed the route prescribed by the apologetics for reaching the door of the sheep-fold, but has climbed over in his own way, like a thief and a robber; he has not (as a recent critic says of him)tombé entre les bras maternals de l'Eglise selon toutes les régles."
Without for a moment denying one of the legitimate claims of scientific apologetic, we may at once dismiss the idea that it pretends to represent a process through which the mind of the convert to Christianity either does or ought necessarily to pass. Its sole purport is to show that if it is not always possible to synthetize Christianity with the current philosophy, science, and history of the day, at least no want of harmony can be positively demonstrated. As secular beliefs and opinions are continually shifting, so too apologetic needs continual adjustment: and as that of a century back is useless to us now, so will ours be in many ways inadequate a century hence. It is fitting for the Church at large that she should in each age and country have a suitable apologetic, taking cognizance of the latest developments of profane knowledge. It is needful for her public honour in the eyes of the world that she should not seem to be in contradiction with truth, but that either the apparent truth should be proved questionable, or else that her own teaching should be shown to be compatible with it. But in no sense is such apologetic always a necessity for the individual, still less a safe or adequate basis for a solid conversion, which in that case would be shaken by every new difficulty unthought of before.
Our subjective faith in the Church must be like the faith of the disciples of Christ, an entirely personal relation; an act of implicit trust based on no lean argument or chain of reasoning, but on the irresistible spell, the overmastering impression created upon us by a character manifested in life, action, speech, even in manner; as impossible to state in its entirety and as impossible to doubt as are our reasons for loving or loathing, for trusting or fearing.
No doubt we hear of men of intellect and learning "reading" or "reasoning" themselves into the Church; but others as able have read and reasoned along the same line, and yet have not come; for in truth, reason at the most can set free a force of attraction created by motives other than reason.
What this attraction is in each case is impossible to specify accurately—"Ask me and I know not," one might say, "do not ask me and I know." Each soul is hooked with its own bait, called by its own name, drawn in its own way; and as the attractiveness of Christ is virtually infinite in its multiformity, so is that of His Church, nor is there a more unpardonable narrowness than that of insisting that others shall be drawn in the same way as we ourselves, or not at all.
Let it also be noticed that a very prolonged and minute intimacy is not always necessary in order that we should feel the spell of personality. Much depends on our own gifts of sympathy, insight and apprehension, on the simplicity and strength of the personality in question, on the nature of the incidents by which it is disclosed to us. We know one man in a moment, another only after years of intimacy, while others in regard to the same individuals might experience the converse. We must not then suppose that because in one case the impression is the result of slowly-accumulated observations, and in another the work of an instant, it is less trustworthy in the latter instance than in the former. It may be, or it may not be. St. Augustine needed years to feel the spell that one word, nay, one glance from Christ cast upon St. Peter. Nor again is it always in some striking and notable crisis that a character reveals itself abruptly, but often in the merest nuance—a manner, an intonation, something quite unintentional, unpremeditated. We know well, if we know ourselves at all, how irresistible is the impression created on us at times by such trifles, and yet how more than reasonable it often is.
Who shall say, then, that to an eye and heart attuned to quick sympathy, any indication is too small to betray the inward spirit and character of the Catholic Church, or to magnetize a soul and render it restless, until it obeys her attraction and rests in union with her?
To a sensitively artistic temperament such as Durtal's, the indications of the Church's "style," revealed in her influence upon art, in her creations, in her selections and refusals, would be eloquent of her whole character and ethos; it would be to him what the very tone of Christ's voice was to the Baptist, or what His glance was to Peter, or what His silence was to Pilate. We have known too many instances of deep-seated and entire conviction, based on seemingly as little or less, to wish for one moment to indulge in any foolish rationalizing or to question the possibility or probability of God's drawing souls to Himself by such methods.
We must, however, remember that it is not merely by the Church's mediæval art that Durtal is attracted, but still more by that mysticism which created it, and by which it was served and fostered in return. Mysticism must necessarily excite the sympathy of one who is in devout pursuit of the highest and most spiritual forms of æsthetic beauty. Whatever be the long-sought and never-to-be-forgotten definition of the Beautiful, of this much at least a mere process of induction will assure us, that men count things beautiful in the measure that they are released from the grossness, formlessness, and heaviness of matter, and by their delicacy, shapeliness, and unearthliness, betray the influence of that principle which is everywhere in conflict with matter and is called spirit. Man at his best is most at home, where at his worst he is least at home, namely, in the world of those super-realities which are touched and felt by the soul, but refuse to be pictured or spoken in the language of the five senses. A hard, "common-sense," labour-and-wages religion, such as is consonant with the utilitarianism of a commercial civilization, could never appeal to a temperament like Durtal's.
Doubtless Catholic Christianity admits of being apprehended under the narrower and grosser aspect, which however inadequate and unworthy, is not absolutely false. The Jews were suffered to believe not merely that God rewards the just and punishes the wicked—which is eternally true—but that He does so in this life, which is true only with qualification; and that He rewards them with temporal prosperity and adversity—which is hardly true at all. Catholic truth, in itself the same, can only be received according to the recipient's capacity and sensitiveness. What one age or country is alive to, another may be dead to; nor can we pretend that here all is progress and no regress, unless we are prepared to say that in no respect have we anything to learn from the past. The Ignatian meditation on the "Kingdom of Christ" evoked heroic response in an age impregnated with the sentiments of chivalry, but to-day it needs to be adapted to a great extent, and some have vainly hoped to gather grapes from a thistle by substituting a parable drawn from some soul-stirring commercial enterprise—a colossal speculation in cheese.
Whatever signs there may be of a reaction, yet the whole temper and spirit of our age is unfavourable to that mysticism which is the very choicest flower of the Catholic religion. The blame is not with the seed, but with the soil. Even where least of all we should look for such indifference, among those who have built up the sepulchres and shrines of the great masters of mysticism, we sometimes observe a profound distrust for what is esteemed an unpractical, unhealthy kind of piety, while every preference is given to what is definite and tangible in the way of little methods and industries, multitudinous practices, lucrative prayers, in a word, to what a critic already quoted describes asles petitesses des cerveaux étroits et les anguleuses routines. [3]
It is one of the narrownesses of Durtal himself to ascribe all this to the wilful perversity of a person or persons unknown, and not to see in it the inevitable result of the vulgarizing tendency of modern life upon the masses. Things being as they are, surely it is better that the Church should do the little she can than do nothing at all. The "meditative mind" is incompatible with the rush and worry of a busy life, especially where educational methods substitute information for reflection, and so kill the habit, and eventually the faculty, of thought in so many cases. But if the higher prayer is impossible, the lower is possible and profitable. Again, if the liturgical sense has in a great measure become extinct among the faithful owing to the unavoidable disuse of the public celebration of the Church's worship, it is well that they should be allowed devotions accommodated to their limited capacity. As the Church would never dream of expecting a keen sympathy with her higher dogmas, her mystical piety, her artistic symbolism, her transcendent liturgy, on the part of a newly-converted tribe of savages, so neither is she impatient with the civilized Philistine, but is willing to speak to him in a language all his own, hoping indeed to tune his tongue one day to something less uncouth. None can sympathize more cordially than the writer does with Durtal in his horror of unauthorized devotions, of insufferable vernacular litanies, of nerveless and sickly hymns, of interminable "acts of consecration" void of a single definite idea, more especially when these things are brought into the very sanctuary itself, with stole and cope and every apparent endeavour to fix the responsibility on the Universal Church. But if the Church is willing to go in rags to save those who are in rags, she is only using her invariable economy. We know well the sort of robe that befits her dignity, and no doubt it is this contrast that makes the trial of her present humiliation more difficult for us to bear.
We do not for a moment allow that the difference between bad taste and good is merely relative, or that a language or art which is externally vulgar can ever be the adequate and appropriate expression of the Catholic religion, whose tendency when unimpeded is ever to refine and purify. But it is perhaps another narrowness to suppose that a reform can only be effected by a return to the past, to mediæval symbolism and music and architecture. No effort of the kind has ever met with more than seeming success. What is consciously imitated from the past is not the same as that natural growth which it imitates, and which was as congenial to those days as it is uncongenial to ours. It is all the difference between the Mass ceremonial in a Ritualist church and in a Catholic church—the historical sense is violated in one case and satisfied in the other.
What is once really dead can never revive in the same form—at best we get a cast from the dead face. No doubt the old music and the old symbolism always will have a beauty of antiquity that can never belong to the new; but it was not this beauty—the beauty of death, of autumn leaves, that made them once popular, but the beauty of fresh green life and flexibility. The effort to make antiquity popular is almost a contradiction in terms. What we may hope for at most is an improvement in the æsthetic tastes of the Catholic public which comes from freer and healthier surroundings, from saner ideas and wider opportunities of education and liberal culture. When they begin to speak a richer language, the Church will take that language and find in it a fuller expression of her mind than she can in the presentpatois; she will be able again to say to them in other words, as yet unknown, what she said to the middle ages in Gregorian chaunt and Gothic cathedral. She, who in virtue of her Pentecostal gift of tongues, speaks in sundry times and divers manners, may in due season find words as eloquent of her heart and mind as those which she spoke to Durtal in the aisles of Chartres and in the cadences of Solesmes.
July, 1898.
Footnotes:
[Footnote 1: Introduction to Sordello.]
[Footnote 2:The Cathedral. By M.T.K. Huysman. Translated byClare Bell.]
[Footnote 3: R. P. Pacher, S.J.,De Dante à Verlaine.]
The paradoxes of one generation are the common-places of the next; what the savants of to-day whisper in the ear, the Hyde Park orators of to-morrow will bawl from their platforms. Moreover, it is just when its limits begin to be felt by the critical, when its pretended all-sufficingness can no longer be maintained, that a theory or hypothesis begins to be popular with the uncritical and to work its irrevocable ill-effects on the general mind. In this, as in many other matters, the lower orders adopt the abandoned fashions of their betters, though with less of the well-bred taste which sometimes in the latter makes even absurdity graceful. In this way it has come to pass that at the very moment in which a reaction against the irreligious or anti-religious philosophy of a couple of generations ago is making itself felt in the study, the spreading pestilence of negation and unbelief has gained and continues to gain possession of the street. Some fifty years ago religion and even Christianity, seemed to the sanguine eyes of Catholics so firmly rooted in England that the recovery of the country to their faith depended almost entirely on the settlement of the Anglo-Roman controversy; to which controversy they accordingly devoted, and, in virtue of the still unexhausted impetus of that effort, do still devote their energies, almost exclusively. But together with a dawning consciousness that times and conditions have considerably changed, there is growing up in certain quarters a feeling that we too shall have to make some modifications in order to adapt ourselves to the altered circumstances. It is becoming increasingly evident that even could the said Anglo-Roman controversy be settled by some argument so irresistibly evident as to leave nolocus standito the opponents of the Petrine claims, yet the number of those Anglicans who admit the historical, critical, philosophical, and theological assumptions upon which the controversy is based and which are presumed as common ground, is so small and dwindling that, were they all gained to the Church, we should be still a "feeble folk" in the face of that tidal wave of unbelief whose gathering force bids fair to sweep everything before it. Also the lingering impression left from "Tractarian" days as to the intellectual pre-eminence of the Catholicizing party in the Anglican Church, which pre-eminence might make amends for their numerical insignificance, is gradually giving way to the recognition of the sobering fact that at present that party in no exclusive sense represents the cultivated intellect of the country. It is no disrespect to that party to say that while scholarship and intelligence are therein well represented by scattered individuals, yet it is cumbered, like most religious movements after they have streamed some distance from their source, with a majority of those whose adhesion has little or no pretence to an intellectual basis; and whose occasional accession to the Catholic Church is almost entirely their own gain.
To give the last decisive push to those who are already toppling over the border-line that divides England from Rome, to reap and gather-in the harvest already ripe for the sickle, is a useful, a necessary, and a charitable work; one that calls for a certain kind of patient skill not to be underestimated; but there is a wider and perhaps more fruitful field whose soil is as yet scarcely broken. It may even be asserted with only seeming paradox that the best religious intelligence of the country is to be found in the camp of negation rather than in that of affirmation; among Broad Churchmen, Nonconformists, Unitarians, and Positivists, rather than among those who seek rest in the unstable position of a modified Catholicism. The very instability and difficulty of that position elicits much ingenuity from its theological defenders, though it also divides their counsels not a little; nor do we quarrel with them for affirming instead of denying, but for not affirming enough. But this attempt at compromise, this midway abortion of the natural growth of an idea, even were it justifiable as sometimes happens when legitimate issues are obscured through failure of evidence, repels the great multitude of religious thinkers who are not otherwise sufficiently drawn towards Catholicism to care to examine these claims. To say that there is no logical alternative between Rome and Agnosticism is a sufficiently shallow though popular sophism. At most it means that from certain given premisses one or other of those conclusions must follow syllogistically—a statement that would be more interesting were the said premisses indisputable and admitted by all the world. Still it may be allowed that a criticism of these premisses, which is a third alternative, opens up to religious thought a number of roads, all of which lead away from, rather than towards the extreme Anglican position, and hence that the more searching religious intelligence of the country is as adverse to that position—and for the same reasons—as it is to our own. And by the "religious intelligence" I mean all that intelligence that is interested in the religious problem; be that interest hostile or friendly; be it, in its issue, negative or constructive. For it must not be forgotten that the enemies of a truth are as interested in it as its friends; or that the friendliest interest, the strongest "wish to believe," may at times issue in reluctant negation. So far then as the great mass of religious intelligence in this country is not "Anglo-Catholic" in its sympathies; and so far as it is chiefly on the "Anglo-Catholic" section that we make any perceptible impression, the conversion of England, for what depends on our own efforts, does not seem to be as imminent a contingency as it would appear to be in the eyes of those foreign critics for whom Lord Halifax is the type of every English Churchman and the English Church co-extensive with the nation—save for a small irreclaimable residue of Liberals and Freemasons.
Those who, influenced by such considerations, would have us extend our efforts from the narrowing circle of Anglo-Catholicism to the ever-widening circle of doubt and negation, are not always clear about the practically important distinction to be drawn between the active leaders of doubt, and those who are passively led; the more or less independent few, and the more or less dependent many; between the man of the study and the man of the street—a distinction analogous to that between theEcclesia docensandEcclesia discens, and which permeates every well-established school of belief, whether historical, ethical, political, or religious.
Dealing first with the latter, that is, with those who are led; we are becoming more explicitly conscious of the fact that in all departments of knowledge and opinion the beliefs of the many are not determined by reasoning from premisses, but by the authority of reputed specialists in the particular matter, or else by the force of the general consent of those with whom they dwell. There may be other non-rational causes of belief, but these are the principal and more universal. And when we say they are non-rational causes, we do not mean that they are non-reasonable or unreasonable. They provide such a generally trustworthy, though occasionally fallible, method of getting at truth, as is sufficient and possible for the practical needs of life—social, moral, and religious. There is an inborn instinct to think as the crowd does and to be swayed by the confident voice of authority. If at times it fail of its end, as do other instincts, yet it is so trustworthy in the main that to resist it in ordinary conditions is always imprudent. That our eyes sometimes deceive us would not justify us in always distrusting their evidence. If a child is deceived through instinctively trusting the word of its parents, the blame of its error rests with them, not with it. And so, whatever error the many are led into by obeying the instinct of submission to authority or to general consent, is their misfortune, not their fault. Of course there are higher criteria by which the general consent and the opinion of experts can be criticized and modified; but such criticism is not obligatory on the many who have neither leisure nor competence for the task. For here, as elsewhere, a certain diversity of gifts results in a natural division of labour in human society; those who have, giving to those who have not; some ministering spiritual, others temporal benefits to their neighbours. Not that a man can save another's soul for him any more than he can eat his dinner for him, but he can minister to him better food or worse.
The Mussulman child, then, may be bound, during his intellectual minority, to accept the religious teaching of its parents, just as is the Christian child. That one, in obeying this natural but fallible rule, is led into error, the other into, truth, only verifies the principle that right faith is a gift of God,—a grace, a bit of good fortune. None of those who are not professedly teachers of religion and experts, can be morally bound to a criticism above their competence, or to more than an obedience to those ordinary causes of assent to whose influence they are subjected by their circumstances. The ideal of a Catholic religion is to provide, by means of a divinely guided body of authorities and experts, an universal, international, inter-racial consensus regarding truths that are as obscure as they are vital to individual and social happiness; and thus to afford a means of sure and easy guidance to those uncritical multitudes whose necessary preoccupations forbid their engaging in theology and controversy. This ideal was sufficiently realized for practical purposes in the "ages of faith," when the whole public opinion of Europe, then believed to be coterminous with civilization, was Catholic; when dissent needed as much independence of character, as in so many places, profession does now. And surely it is a narrow-hearted criticism to prefer the primitive conditions in which none but those strong enough to face persecution could reap the benefits of Christianity. The weak and dependent are ever the majority, and if Christianity had been intended to pass them by or sift them out, "its province were not large," nor could it claim to be the religion of humanity. The Christian leaven was never meant to be kept apart, but to be hidden and lost in that unleavened mass which it seeks slowly to transform into its own nature. The majority, in respect to religion and civilization, are like unwilling school-boys who need to be coerced for their own benefit, to be kept to their work till they learn (if they ever do) to like it, and to need no more coercion. The support that Catholic surroundings give to numbers, who else were too weak to stand alone, cannot be overvalued, although it may weaken a few who else had exerted themselves more strenuously, or may foster hypocrisy in secret unbelievers who would like to, but dare not withstand public opinion.
Now it is the gradual decay of this support—of this non-rational yet most reasonable cause of belief, that is rendering the religious condition of the man in the street so increasingly unsatisfactory. Not only is there no longer an agreement of experts, and a consequent consensus of nations, touching the broad and fundamental truths of Christianity, but what is far more to the point, the knowledge of this Babylonian confusion has become a commonplace with the multitudes. No doubt there are yet some shaded patches where the dew still struggles with the desiccating sun—old-world sanctuaries of Catholicism whose dwellers hardly realize the existence of unbelief or heresy, or who give at best a lazy, notional assent to the fact. But there are few regions in so-called Christendom where the least educated are not now quite aware that Christianity is but one of many religions in a much larger world than their forefathers were aware of; that the intellect of modern, unlike that of mediæval Europe, is largely hostile to its claims; that its defenders are infinitely at variance with one another; that there is no longer any social disgrace connected with a non-profession of Christianity; in a word, that the public opinion of the modern world has ceased to be Christian, and that the once all-dominating religion which blocked out the serious consideration of any other claimant, bids fair to be speedily reduced to its primitive helplessness and insignificance. The disintegrating effect of such knowledge on the faith of the masses must be, and manifestly is, simply enormous. Not that there is any rival consensus and authority to take the place of dethroned Catholicism. Even scepticism is too little organized and embodied, too chaotic in its infinite variety of contradictory positions, to create an influential consensus of any positive kind against faith. Its effect, as far as the unthinking masses are concerned, is simply to destroy the chief extrinsic support of their faith and to throw them back on the less regular, less reliable causes of belief. If in addition it teaches them a few catchwords of free-thought, a few smart blasphemies and syllogistic impertinences, this is of less consequence than at first sight appears, since these are attempted after-justifications, and no real causes of their unbelief. For they love the parade of formal reason, as they love big words or technical terms, or a smattering of French or Latin, with all the delight of a child in the mysterious and unfamiliar; but their pretence to be ruled by it is mere affectation, and the tenacity with which they cling to their arguments is rather the tenacity of blind faith in a dogma, than of clear insight into principles.
And this brings us to the problem which gave birth to the present essay.
The growing infection of the uneducated or slightly educated masses of the Catholic laity with the virus of prevalent unbelief is arousing the attention of a few of our clergy to the need of coping with what is to them a new kind of difficulty. Amongst other kindred suggestions, is that of providing tracts for the million dealing not as heretofore with the Protestant, but with the infidel controversy. While the danger was more limited and remote it was felt that, more harm than good would come of giving prominence in the popular mind to the fact and existence of so much unbelief; that in many minds doubts unfelt before would be awakened; that difficulties lay on the surface and were the progeny of shallow-mindedness, whereas the solutions lay deeper down than the vulgar mind could reasonably be expected to go; that on the whole it was better that the few should suffer, than that the many should be disturbed. The docile and obedient could be kept away from contagion, or if infected, could be easily cured by an act of blind confidence in the Church; while the disobedient would go their own way in any case. Hence the idea of entering into controversy with those incompetent to deal with such matters was wisely set aside. But now that the prevalence and growth of unbelief is as evident as the sun at noon—now that it is no longer only the recalcitrant and irreligious, but even the religious and docile-minded who are disturbed by the fact, it seems to some that, a policy of silence and inactivity may be far more fruitful in evil than in good, that reverent reserve must be laid aside and the pearls of truth cast into the trough of popular controversy.
But to this course an almost insuperable objection presents itself at first seeming. Seeing that, the true cause of doubt and unbelief in the uncritical, is to be sought for proximately in the decay of a popular consensus in favour of belief, and ultimately in the disagreements and negations of those who lead and form public opinion, and in no wise in the reasons which they allege when they attempt a criticism that is beyond them; what will it profit to deal with the apparent cause if we cannot strike at the real cause? In practical matters, the reasons men give for their conduct, to themselves as well as to others, are often untrue, never exhaustive. Hence to refute their reasons will not alter their intentions. To dispel the sophisms assigned by the uneducated as the basis of their unbelief, is not really to strike at the root of the matter at all. Besides which, the work is endless; for if they are released from one snare they will be as easily re-entangled in the next; and indeed what can such controversy do but foster in them the false notion that, belief in possession may be dispossessed by every passing difficulty, and that their faith is to be dependent on an intellectual completeness of which they are for ever incapable. Indeed the unavoidable amount of controversy of all kinds, dinned into the ears of the faithful in a country like this, favours a fallacy of intellectualism very prejudicial to the repose of a living faith founded on concrete reasons, more or less experimental.
As far as the many are concerned, much the same difficulty attends the preservation of their faith in these days, as attended its creation in the beginnings of Christianity, before the little flock had grown into a kingdom, when the intellect and power of the world was arrayed against it, when it had neither the force of a world-wide consensus nor the voice of public authority in its favour. In those days it was not by the "persuasive words of human wisdom" that the crowds were gained over to Christ, but by a certainostensio virtutis, by an experimental and not merely by a rational proof of the Gospel—a proof which, if it admitted of any kind of formulation, did not compel them in virtue of the logicality of its form. Further, when the conditions and helps needed by the Church in her infancy, gave way to those belonging to her established strength, it was by her ascendency over the strong, the wealthy, and the learned, that she secured for the crowd,—for the weak and the poor and the ignorant,—the most necessary support of a Christianized, international public opinion, and thereby extended the benefit of her educative influence to those millions whom disinclination or weakness would otherwise have deterred from the profession and practice of the faith.
If the Church of to-day is to retain her hold of the crowd in modernized or modernizing countries, it must either be by renewing her ascendency over those who form and modify public opinion, who even in the purest democracy are ever the few and not the many; or else by a reversion to the methods of primitive times, by some palpable argument that speaks as clearly to the simplest as to the subtlest, if only the heart be right. An outburst of miracle-working and prophecy is hardly to be looked for; while the argument from the tree's fruits, or from the moral miracle, is at present weakened by the extent to which non-Christians put in practice the morality they have learnt from Christ. Other non-rational causes of belief draw individuals, but they do not draw crowds.
If we cannot see very clearly what is to supply for the support once given to the faith of the millions by public opinion, still their incapacity for dealing with the question on rational grounds will not justify us altogether in silence. For in the first place it is an incapacity of which they are not aware, or which at least they are very unwilling to admit. A candidate at the hustings would run a poor chance of a hearing who, instead of seeming to appeal to the reason of the mob should, in the truthfulness of his soul, try to convince them of their utter incompetence to judge the simplest political point. Again, though unable to decide between cause and cause, yet the rudest can often see that there is much to be said on both sides—though what, he does not understand; and if this fact weakens his confidence in the right, it also weakens it in the wrong; whereas had the right been silent, the wrong, in his judgment, would thereby have been proved victorious. This will justify us at times in talking over the heads of our readers and hearers, and in not sparing sonorous polysyllables, abstruse technicalities, or even the pompous parade of syllogistic arguments with all their unsightly joints sticking out for public admiration. Some hands may be too delicate for this coarse work; but there will always be those to whom it is easy and congenial; and its utility is too evident to allow a mere question of taste to stand in the way.
Moreover, it must be remembered that while many of the class referred to are glad to be free from the pressure of a Christianized public opinion, and are only too willing to grasp at any semblance of a reason for unbelief; others, more religiously disposed, are really troubled by these popular, anti-Christian difficulties, the more so as they are often infected with the fallacy, fostered by ceaseless controversy, which makes one's faith dependent on the formal reason one can give for it.
Though this is not so, yet moral truthfulness forbids us to assent to what we, however falsely, believe to be untrue. Hence while the virtue of faith remains untouched, its exercise with regard to particular points may be inculpably suspended through ignorance, stupidity, misinformation, and other causes.
In the interest of these well-disposed but easily puzzled believers of the ill-instructed and uncritical sort, a series of anti-agnostic tracts for the million would really seem to be called for. Yet never has the present writer felt more abjectly crushed with a sense of incompetence than when posed by the difficulties of a "hagnostic" greengrocer, or of a dressmaker fresh from the perusal of "Erbert" Spencer. Face to face with chaos, one knows not where to begin the work of building up an orderly mind; nor will the self-taught genius brook a hint of possible ignorance, or endure the discussion of dull presuppositions, without much pawing of the ground and champing on the bit: "What I want," he says, "is a plain answer to a plain question." And when you explain to him that for an answer he must go back very far and become a little child again, and must unravel his mind to the very beginning like an ill-knit stocking, he looks at once incredulous and triumphant as who should say: "There, I told you so!" Yet the same critical incompetence that makes these simple folk quite obtuse to the true and adequate solution of their problems (I am speaking of cases where such solutions are possible), makes them perfectly ready to accept any sort of counter-sophistry or paralogism. A most excellent and genuine "convert" of that class told me that he had stood out for years against the worship of the Blessed Virgin, till one day it had occurred to him that, as a cause equals or exceeds its effect, so the Mother must equal the Son. Another, equally genuine, professed to have been conquered by the reflection that he had all his life been saying: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," and he could not see the use of believing in it if he didn't belong to it. If their faith in Catholicism or in any other religion depended on their logic, men of this widespread class were in a sorry plight. Like many of their betters, these two men probably imagined the assigned reasons to be the entire cause of their conversion, making no account of the many reasonable though non-logical motives by which the change was really brought about. Hence to have abruptly and incautiously corrected them, would perhaps but have been to reduce them to confusion and perplexity, and to "destroy with one's logic those for whom Christ died."
That we do not sufficiently realize the dialectical incompetence of the uneducated is partly to be explained by the fact that they often get bits of reasoning by rote, much as young boys learn their Euclid; and that they frequently seem to understand principles because they apply them in the right cases, just as we often quote a proverb appropriately without the slightest idea of its origin or meaning beyond that it is the right thing to say in a certain connection. As we ascend in the scale of education, there is more and more of this reasoning by rote, so that critical incompetence is more easily concealed and may lurk unsuspected even in the pulpit and the professorial chair, where logic alone seems paramount. The "hagnostic" greengrocer, in all the self-confidence of his ignorance, is but the lower extreme of a class that runs up much higher in the social scale and spreads out much wider in every direction.
But when we have realized more adequately how hopelessly incompetent the multitude must necessarily be in the problems of specialists, we shall also see that it is only by inadequate and even sophistical reasoning that most of their intellectual difficulties can be allayed; that the full truth (and the half-truth is mostly a lie) would be Greek to them. If, then,Tracts for the Millionseem a necessity, they also seem an impossibility; for what self-respecting man will sit down to weave that tissue of sophistry, special-pleading, violence, and vulgarity, which alone will serve the practical purpose with those to whom trenchency is everything and subtlety nothing? Even though the means involve a violation of taste rather than of morals, yet can they be justified by the goodness of the end? Fortunately, however, the difficulty is met by a particular application of God's universal method in the education of mankind. In every grade of enlightenment there are found some who are sufficiently in advance of the rest to be able to help them, and not so far in advance as practically to speak a different language. What is a dazzling light for those just emerging from darkness, is darkness for those in a yet stronger light. A statement may be so much less false than another, as to be relatively true; so much less true than a third, as to be relatively false. For a mind wholly unprepared, the full truth is often a light that blinds and darkness; whereas the tempered half-truth prepares the way for a fuller disclosure in due time, even as the law and the prophets prepared the way for the Gospel and Christ, or as the enigmas of faith school us to bear that light which now no man can gaze on and live. Thus, though we may never use a lie in the interest of truth, or bring men from error by arguments we know to be sophistical, yet we have the warrant of Divine example, both in the natural and supernatural education of mankind, for the passive permission of error in the interest of truth, as also of evil in the interest of good. Since then there will ever be found those who in all good faith and sincerity can adapt themselves to the popular need and supply each level of intelligence with the medicine most suited to its digestion, all we ask is that a variety of standards in controversial writings be freely recognized; that each who feels called to such efforts should put forth his very best with a view to helping those minds which are likest his own; that none should deliberately condescend to the use of what from his point of view would be sophistries and vulgarities, remembering at the same time that the superiority of his own taste and judgment is more relative than absolute, and that in the eyes of those who come after, he himself may be but a Philistine.
We conclude then that all that can be done in the way ofTracts for the Millionshould be done; that seed of every kind should be scattered to the four winds, hoping that each may find some congenial soil.
But even when all that can be done in this way to save the masses from the contagion of unbelief has been done, we shall be as far as ever from having found a substitute for the support which formerly was lent to their faith by a Christianized public opinion. Can we hope for anything more than thus to retard the leakage? The answer to this would take us to the second of our proposed considerations, namely, our attitude towards those who form and modify that public opinion by which the masses are influenced for good or for evil. But it is an answer which for the present must be deferred. [1]
Nov.1900.
Footnotes:
[Footnote 1: The Introduction to the First Series of these essays attempts to deal with this further question.]
"A man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand" and "did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the floor…. Then said Christiana, 'Oh, deliver me from this muck-rake.'"—Bunyan.
Naturalism includes various schools which agree in the first principle that nothing is true but what can be justified by those axiomatic truths which every-day experience forces upon our acceptance, not indeed as self-evident, but as inevitable, unless we are to be incapacitated for practical life. It is essentially the philosophy of the unphilosophical, that is, of those who believe what they are accustomed to believe, and because they are so accustomed; who are incapable of distinguishing between the subjective necessity imposed by habits and the objective necessity founded in the nature of things. It is no new philosophy, but as old as the first dawn of philosophic thought, for it is the form towards which the materialistic mind naturally gravitates. Given a population sufficiently educated to philosophize in any fashion, and of necessity the bent of the majority will be in the direction of some form of Naturalism. Hence we find that the "Agnosticism" of Professor Huxley is eminently suited to the capacity and taste of the semi-educated majorities in our large centres of civilization. Still it must not be supposed that the majority really philosophizes at all even to this extent. The pressure of life renders it morally impossible. But they like to think that they do so. The whole temper of mind, begotten and matured by the rationalistic school, is self-sufficient: every man his own prophet, priest, and king; every man his own philosopher. Hence, he who poses as a teacher of the people will not be tolerated. The theorist must come forward with an affectation of modesty, as into the presence of competent critics; he must only expose his wares, win for himself a hearing, and then humbly wait for theplacetof the sovereign people. But plainly this is merely a conventional homage to a theory that no serious mind really believes in. We know well enough, that the opinions and beliefs of the multitude are formed almost entirely by tradition, imitation, interest, by in fact any influence rather than that of pure reason. Taught they are, and taught they must be, however they repudiate it. But the most successful teachers and leaders are those who contrive to wound their sense of intellectual self-sufficiency least, and to offer them the strong food of dogmatic assertion sugared over and sparkling with the show of wit and reason.
Philosophy for the million may be studied profitably in one of its popular exponents whose works have gained wide currency among the class referred to. Mr. S. Laing is a very fair type of the average mind-leader, owing his great success to his singular appreciation of the kind of treatment needed to secure a favourable hearing. We do not pretend to review Mr. Laing's writings for their own sake, but simply as good specimens of a class which is historically rather than philosophically interesting.
We have before us three of his most popular books:Modern Science and Modern Thought(nineteenth thousand),Problems of the Future(thirteenth thousand),Human Origins(twelfth thousand), to which we shall refer as M.S., P.F., H.O., in this essay; taking the responsibility of all italics on ourselves, unless otherwise notified.
Mr. Laing is not regretfully forced into materialism by some mental confusion or obscurity, but he revels in it, and invites all to taste and see how gracious a philosophy it is. There is an ill-concealed levity and coarseness in his handling of religious subjects which breaks,
At seasons, through the gilded pale,
and which warns us from casting reasons before those who would but trample them under foot. It is rather for the sake of those who read such literature, imprudently perhaps, but with no sympathy, and yet find their imagination perplexed and puzzled with a swarm of minute sophistries and difficulties, collectively bewildering, though contemptible singly, that we think it well to form some estimate of the philosophical value of such works.
Nothing in our study of Mr. Laing surprised us more than to discover [1] that he had lived for more than the Scriptural span of three-score and ten years, a life of varied fortunes and many experiences. It seems to us incredible that any man of even average thoughtfulness could, after so many years, find life without God, without immortality, without definite meaning or assignable goal, "worth living," and that "to be born in a civilized country in the nineteenth century is a boon for which a man can never be sufficiently thankful." [2] [Thankful to whom? one might ask parenthetically.] In other words, he is a bland optimist, and has nothing but vials of contempt to pour upon the pessimists, from Ecclesiastes down to Carlyle. Pessimism, we are told confidentially, is not an outcome of just reasoning on the miserable residue of hope which materialism leaves to us, but of the indisposition "of those digestive organs upon which the sensation of health and well-being so mainly depends." "It is among such men, with cultivated intellects, sensitive nerves, and bad digestion, that we find the prophets and disciples of pessimism." [3] The inference is, that men of uncultivated intellects, coarse nerves, and ostrich livers will coincide with Mr. Laing in his sanguine view of the ruins of religion. The sorrowing dyspeptic asks in despair: "Son of man, thinkest thou that these dry bones will live again?" "I'm cock-sure of it," answers Mr. Laing, and the ground of his assurance is the healthiness of his liver.
Carlyle, who in other matters is, according to Mr. Laing, a great genius, a more than prophet of the new religion, on this point suddenly collapses into "a dreadful croaker," styling his own age "barren, brainless, soulless, faithless." [4] But the reason is, of course, that "he suffered from chronic dyspepsia" and was unable "to eat his three square meals a day." A very consistent explanation for an avowed materialist, but slightly destructive to the value of his own conclusions, being a two-edged sword. Indeed he almost allows as much. "For such dyspeptic patients there is an excuse. Pessimism is probably as inevitably their creed, as optimism is for the more fortunate mortals who enjoy themens sana in corpore sano." [5] However, there are some pessimists for whom indigestion can plead no excuse, [6] but for whose intellectual perversity some other cosmic influence must be sought "behind the veil, behind the veil,"—to borrow Mr. Laing's favourite line from his favourite poem. These are not only "social swells, would-be superior persons and orthodox theologians, but even a man of light and learning like Mr. F. Harrison." "Religion, they say, is becoming extinct…. Without a lively faith in such a personal, ever-present deity who listens to our prayers, … there can be, they say, no religion; and they hold, and I think rightly hold, that the only support for such a religion is to be found in the assumed inspiration of the Bible and the Divinity of Christ." "Destroy these and they think the world will become vulgar and materialized, losing not only the surest sanction of morals, but … the spiritual aspiration and tendencies," &c. [7] "To these gloomy forebodings I venture to return a positive and categorical denial … Scepticism has been the great sweetener of modern life." [8] How he justifies his denial by maintaining that morality can hold its own when reduced to a physical science; that the "result of advancing civilization" and of the materialistic psychology is "a clearer recognition of the intrinsic sacredness and dignity of every human soul;" [9] that Christianity without dogma, without miracles [or, as he calls it, "Christian agnosticism"], shall retain the essential spirit, the pure morality, the consoling beliefs, and as far as possible even the venerable form and sacred associations of the old faith, may appear later. At present we are concerned directly with pointing out how Mr. Laing's optimism at once marks him off from those men who, whether believing or misbelieving or unbelieving, have thought deeply and felt deeply, who have seen clearly that materialism leaves nothing for man's soul but the husks of swine; who have therefore boldly faced the inevitable alternative between spiritualistic philosophy and hope, and materialism with its pessimistic corollary. That a man may be a materialist or atheist and enjoy life thoroughly, who does not know? but then it is just at the expense of his manhood, because he lives without thought, reflection, or aspiration,i.e.,materialistically. Mr. Laing no doubt, as he confesses, has lived pleasantly enough. He has found in what he calls science an endless source of diversion, he betrays himself everywhere as a man of intense intellectual curiosity in every direction, and yet withal so little concerned with the roots of things, so easily satisfied with a little plausible coherence in a theory, as not to have found truth an apparently stern or exacting mistress, not to have felt the anguish of any deep mental conflict. His intellectual labours have been pleasurable because easy, and, in his own eyes, eminently fruitful and satisfactory. He has adopted an established cause, thrown himself into it heart and soul; others indeed had gone before him and laboured, and he has entered into their labours. Indeed, he is frank in disclaiming all originality of discovery or theory; [10] he has not risked the disappointment and anxiety of improving on the Evolution Gospel, but he has collected and sorted and arranged and published the evidence obtained by others. This has always furnished him with an interest in life; [11] but whether it be a rational interest or not depends entirely on the usefulness or hurtfulness of his work. He admits, however, that though life for him has been worth living, "some may find it otherwise from no fault of their own, more by their own fate." [12] But all can lead fairly happy lives by following his large-type platitudinous maxim, "Fear nothing, make the best of everything." [13] In other words, the large majority, who are not and never can be so easily and pleasantly circumstanced as Mr. Laing, are told calmly to make the best of it and to rejoice in the thought that their misery is a necessary factor in the evolution of their happier posterity. This is the new gospel:Pauperes evangelizantur—"Good news for the poor." [14] "Progress and not happiness" is the end we are told to make for, over and over again; but, progress towards what, is never explained, nor is any basis for this duty assigned. Indeed, duty means nothing for Mr. Laing but an inherited instinct, which if we choose to disobey or if we happen not to possess, who shall blame us or talk to us of "oughts"?
And now to consider more closely the grounds of Mr. Laing's very cheerful view of a world in which, for all we know, there is no soul, no God, and certainly no faith. Since of the two former we know and can know nothing, we must build our happiness, our morality, our "religion," on a basis whereof they form no part. He believes that morality will be able to hold its own distinct, not only from all belief in revelation, in a personal God, and in a spiritual soul, but in spite of a philosophy which by tracing the origin of moral judgments to mere physical laws of hereditary transmission of experienced utilities, robs them of all authority other than prudential, and convicts them of being illusory so far as they seem to be of higher than human origin.
Herein, as usual, he treads in the steps of Professor Huxley, "the greatest living master of English prose" (though why his mastery of prose should add to his weight as a philosopher, we fail to see). "Such ideasevidentlycome from education, and are not the results either of inherited instinct [15] or of supernatural gift…. Given a being with man's brain, man's hands, and erect stature,it is easy to seehow … rules of conduct … must have been formed and fixed by successive generations, according to the Darwinian laws." [16]
He tells us: "We may read the Athanasian Creed less, but we practiseChristian charity more in the present than in any former age." [17]"Faith has diminished, charity increased." [18]
Of moral principles, he says: "Why do we say that … they carry conviction with them and prove themselves?… Still, there they are, and being what they are … it requires no train of reasoning or laboured reflection to make usfeelthat 'right is right,' and that it isbetterfor ourselves and others to act on such precepts … rather than to reverse these rules and obey the selfish promptings of animal nature." [19] "It isclearlyour highest wisdom to follow right, not from selfish calculation, … but because 'right is right.' … For practical purposes it is comparatively unimportant how this standard got there … as an absolute imperative rule." [20] As to the apprehended ill effect of agnosticism on morals, he says: "The foundations of morals [21] are fortunately built on solid rock and not on shifting sand. It may truly be said in a great many cases that, as individuals and nations become more sceptical, they become more moral." [22] "If there is one thing more certain than anotherin the history of evolution, it is that morals have been evolved by the same laws as regulate the development of species." [23]
These citations embody Mr. Laing's opinions on this point, and show very clearly his utter incapacity for elementary philosophic thought. Here, as elsewhere, as soon as he leaves the bare record of facts and embarks in any kind of speculation, he shows himself helpless; however, he tries to fortify his own courage and that of his readers, with "it is clear," "it is evident," "it is certain."
To say that "right is right," sounds very oracular; but it either means that "right" is an ultimate spring of action, inexplicable on evolutionist principles, or that right is the will of the strongest, or an illusory inherited foreboding of pain, or a calculation of future pleasure and pain, or something which, in no sense, is a true account of what mendomean by right. To say that moral principles "carry conviction with them, and prove themselves"(i.e., are self-evident), unless, as we suspect, it is mere verbiage conveying nothing particular to Mr. Laing's brain, is to deny that right has reference to the consequences of action as bearing on human progress and evolution, which is to deny the very theory he wishes to uphold. No intuitionist could have spoken more strongly. Then we are assured that we "feel" rightness, or that "right is right"—apparently as a simple irresoluble quality of certain actions—and with same breath, that "it isbetterfor ourselves and others to act on these rules," where he jumps off to utilitarianism again; and then we are forbidden to "obey the selfish impulses of our animal nature"—a strange prohibition for one who sees in us nothing but animal nature, who denies us any free power to withstand its impulses. Then it is "clearly our highest wisdom to follow right"—an appeal to prudential motives—"not from any selfish calculations"—a repudiation of prudential motives—"but because 'right is right'"—an appeal to a blind unreasoning instinct, and a prohibition to question its authority. We are told that for practical purposes it matters little whence this absolute imperative rule originates. Was there ever a more unpractical and short-sighted assertion! Convince men that the dictates of conscience are those of fear or selfishness, that they are all mere animal instincts, that they are anything less than divine, and who will care for Mr. Laing's appeal to blind faith in the "rightness of right"?
As long as Christian tradition lives on, as it will for years among the masses, the effects of materialist ethics will not be felt; but as these new theories filter down from the few to the many, they will inevitably produce their logical consequences in practical matters. No one with open eyes can fail to see how the leaven is spreading already. Still the majority act and speak to a great extent under the influence of the old belief, which they have repudiated, in the freedom of man's will and the Divine origin of right. It is quite plain that Mr. Laing has either never had patience to think the matter out, or has found it beyond his compass. Having thus established morality on a foundation independent of religion and of everything else, making "right" rest on "right," he assumes the prophetic robe, and on the strength of his seventy years of experience and philosophy poses as aCato Majorfor the edification of the semi-scientific millions of young persons to whom he addresses his volumes. We have a whole chapter on Practical Life, [24] on self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, full of portentous platitudes and ancient saws; St. Paul's doctrine of charity, and all that is best in the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, is liberated from its degrading association with the belief in a God who rewards and punishes.[25] We are "to act strenuously in that direction which, afterconscientiousinquiry, seems the best, … and trust to what religious men call Providence, and scientific men Evolution, for the result," and all this simply on the bold assertion of this sage whose sole aim is "to leave the world a little better rather than a little worse for my individual unit of existence." [26]
And here we may inquire parenthetically as to the motive which urges Mr. Laing to throw himself into the labours of the apostolate and to become such an active propagandist of agnosticism. We are told[27] that the enlightened should be "liberal and tolerant towards traditional opinions and traditional practices, and trust with cheerful faith to evolution to bring aboutgraduallychanges of form," &c.; that the influence of the clergy is "on the whole exerted for good," and it is frankly acknowledged that Christianity has been a potent factor in the evolution of modern civilization. It has, however, nearly run its course, and the old order must give place to the new,i.e., to agnosticism. But even allowing, what we dare say Mr. Laing would not ask, that the speculative side of the new religion is fully defined and worked out, and ready to displace the old dogmatic creeds, yet its practical aspect is so vague that he writes: "I think the time is come when the intellectual victory of agnosticism is so far assured, that it behoves thinking men tobegin to considerwhat practical results are likely to follow from it." [28] In the face of this confession we find Mr. Laing industriously addressing himself to "those who lack time and opportunity for studying," [29] to the "minds of my younger readers, and of the working classes who are striving after culture," [30] "to what may be called the semi-scientific readers, … who have already acquired some elementary ideas about science," "to the millions;" [31] and endeavouring by all means in his power to destroy the last vestige of their faith in that religion which alone provides for them a definite code of morality strengthened by apparent sanctions of the highest order, and venerable at least by its antiquity and universality. [32] And while he is thus busily pulling down the old scaffolding, he is calmlybeginningto consider the practical results. This is his method of "leaving the world a little better than he found it." He professes to understand and appreciate "In Memoriam." Has he ever reflected on the lines: "O thou that after toil and storm," [33] when the practical conclusion is—
Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,Her early Heaven, her happy views;Nor thou with shadowed hint infuseA life that leads melodious days.Her faith through form is pure as thine,Her hands are quicker unto good;O sacred be the flesh and blood,To which she links a truth divine.
On his own principles he is convicted of being a lover of mischief. No, one is sorely tempted to think that these men are well aware that the moral sense which sound philosophy and Christian faith have developed, is still strong in the minds and deeper conscience of the English-speaking races, and that were they to present materialism in all its loathsome nudity to the public gaze, they would be hissed off the stage. And so they dress it up in the clothes of the old religion just for the present, with many a quiet wink between themselves at the expense of the "semi-scientific" reader.
We have already adverted to Mr. Laing's utter incapacity for anything like philosophy, except so far as that term can be applied to a power of raking together, selecting, and piling up into "a popular shape" the scraps of information which favour the view whose correctness he was convinced of ere he began. A few further remarks may justify this somewhat severe estimate. After stating that in the solution of life and soul problems, science stops short at germs and nucleated cells, he proceeds with the usual tirade against metaphysics: "Take Descartes' fundamental axiom:Cogito ergo sum…. Is it really an axiom?… If the fact that I am conscious of thinking proves the fact that I exist, is the converse true that whatever does not think does not exist?… Does a child only begin to exist when it begins to think? IfCogito ergo sumis an institution to which we can trust, why is notNon cogito ergo non sum?" [34] Here is a man posing before the gaping millions as a philosopher and a severe logician, who thinks that the proposition, "every cow is a quadruped," is disproved by the evident falsehood of, "what is not a cow is not a quadruped," which he calls "the converse." He sums up magnificently by saying: "These are questions to which no metaphysical system that I have ever seen, can return the semblance of an answer;" giving the impression of a life devoted to a deep and exhaustive study of all schools of philosophy. Mr. Laing here surely is addressing his "younger readers."