strongly dwells, entitling it “the central feature of human history.” A
very startling feature of his treatment is that in religious matters he
seemingly sets no value on the difference between truth and falsehood,
for he groups all religions together. In a would-be teacher of ethics
such an attitude warrants severe rebuke; for it is essentially
dishonest and immoral. Throughout his book he treats all religious
beliefs from the same standpoint, as if they were all substantially
similar and substantially of the same value; whereas it is, of course,
a mere truism to say that most of them are mutually destructive. Not
only has he no idea of differentiating the true from the false, but he
seems not to understand that the truth of a particular belief is of any
moment. Thus he says, in speaking of the future survival of religious
beliefs in general, that the most notable result of the scientific
revolution begun by Darwin must be “to establish them on a foundation
as broad, deep, and lasting as any the theologians ever dreamed of.” If
this sentence means anything it means that all these religious beliefs
will be established on the same foundation. It hardly seems necessary
to point out that this cannot be the fact. If the God of the Christians
be in very truth the one God, and if the belief in Him be established,
as Christians believe it will, then the foundation for the religious
belief in Mumbo Jumbo can be neither broad, deep, nor lasting. In the
same way the beliefs in Mohammed and Buddha are mutually exclusive,
and the various forms of ancestor worship and fetichism cannot all be
established on a permanent basis, as they would be according to Mr.
Kidd’s theory.
Again, when Mr. Kidd rebukes science for its failure to approach
religion in a scientific spirit he shows that he fails to grasp the
full bearing of the subject which he is considering. This failure
comes in part from the very large, not to say loose, way in which he
uses the words “science” and “religion.” There are many sciences and
many religions, and there are many different kinds of men who profess
the one or advocate the other. Where the intolerant professors of a
given religious belief endeavor by any form of persecution to prevent
scientific men of any kind from seeking to find out and establish
the truth, then it is quite idle to blame these scientific men for
attacking with heat and acerbity the religious belief which prompts
such persecution. The exigencies of a life and death struggle unfit
a man for the coldness of a mere scientific inquiry. Even the most
enthusiastic naturalist, if attacked by a man-eating shark, would
be much more interested in evading or repelling the attack than in
determining the precise specific relations of the shark. A less
important but amusing feature of his argument is that he speaks as if
he himself had made an entirely new discovery when he learned of the
important part played in man’s history by his religious beliefs. But
Mr. Kidd surely cannot mean this. He must be aware that all the great
historians have given their full importance to such religious movements
as the birth and growth of Christianity, the Reformation, the growth of
Islamism, and the like. Mr. Kidd is quite right in insisting upon the
importance of the part played by religious beliefs, but he has fallen
into a vast error if he fails to understand that the great majority of
the historical and sociological writers have given proper weight to
this importance.
Mr. Kidd’s greatest failing is his tendency to use words in false
senses. He uses “reason” in the false sense “selfish.” He then, in a
spirit of mental tautology, assumes that reason must be necessarily
purely selfish and brutal. He assumes that the man who risks his life
to save a friend, the woman who watches over a sick child, and the
soldier who dies at his post, are unreasonable, and that the more their
reason is developed the less likely they will be to act in these ways.
The mere statement of the assertion in such a form is sufficient to
show its nonsense to any one who will take the pains to think whether
the people who ordinarily perform such feats of self-sacrifice and
self-denial are people of brutish minds or of fair intelligence.
If none of the ethical qualities are developed at the same time with
a man’s reason, then he may become a peculiarly noxious kind of wild
beast; but this is not in the least a necessity of the development of
his reason. It would be just as wise to say that it was a necessity
of the development of his bodily strength. Undoubtedly the man with
reason who is selfish and unscrupulous will, because of his added
power, behave even worse than the man without reason who is selfish
and unscrupulous; but the same is true of the man of vast bodily
strength. He has power to do greater harm to himself and to others;
but, because of this, to speak of bodily strength or of reason as in
itself “profoundly anti-social and anti-evolutionary” is foolishness.
Mr. Kidd, as so often, is misled by a confusion of names for which he
is himself responsible. The growth of rationalism, unaccompanied by any
growth in ethics or morality, works badly. The society in which such a
growth takes place will die out, and ought to die out. But this does
not imply that other communities quite as intelligent may not also be
deeply moral and be able to take firm root in the world.
Mr. Kidd’s definitions of “supra-natural” and “ultra-rational”
sanctions, the definitions upon which he insists so strongly and at
such length, would apply quite as well to every crazy superstition
of the most brutal savage as to the teachings of the New Testament.
The trouble with his argument is that, when he insists upon the
importance of this ultra-rational sanction, defining it as loosely as
he does, he insists upon too much. He apparently denies that men can
come to a certain state at which it will be rational for them to do
right even to their own hurt. It is perfectly possible to build up
a civilization which, by its surroundings and by its inheritances,
working through long ages, shall make the bulk of the men and women
develop such characteristics of unselfishness, as well as of wisdom,
that it will be the rational thing for them as individuals to act in
accordance with the highest dictates of honor and courage and morality.
If the intellectual development of such a civilized community goes on
at an equal pace with the ethical, it will persistently war against
the individuals in whom the spirit of selfishness, which apparently
Mr. Kidd considers the only rational spirit, shows itself strongly.
It will weed out these individuals and forbid them propagating, and
therefore will steadily tend to produce a society in which the rational
sanction for progress shall be identical in the individual and the
State. This ideal has never yet been reached, but long steps have been
taken towards reaching it; and in most progressive civilizations it
is reached to the extent that the sanction for progress is the same
not only for the State but for each one of the bulk of the individuals
composing it. When this ceases to be the case progress itself will
generally cease and the community ultimately disappear.
Mr. Kidd, having treated of religion in a preliminary way, and with
much mystic vagueness, then attempts to describe the functions of
religious belief in the evolution of society. He has already given
definitions of religion quoted from different authors, and he now
proceeds to give his own definition. But first he again insists
upon his favorite theory, that there can be no rational basis for
individual good conduct in society, using the word rational, according
to his usual habit, as a synonym of selfish; and then asserts that
there can be no such thing as a rational religion. Apparently all
that Mr. Kidd demands on this point is that it shall be what he calls
ultra-rational, a word which he prefers to irrational. In other words
he casts aside as irrelevant all discussion as to a creed’s truth.
Mr. Kidd then defines religion as being “a form of belief providing
an ultra-rational sanction for that large class of conduct in the
individual where his interests and the interests of the social organism
are antagonistic, and by which the former are rendered subordinate
to the latter in the general interest of the evolution which the
race is undergoing,” and says that we have here the principle at the
base of all religions. Of course this is simply not true. All those
religions which busy themselves exclusively with the future life, and
which even Mr. Kidd could hardly deny to be religious, do not have
this principle at their base at all. They have nothing to do with the
general interests of the evolution which the race is undergoing on this
earth. They have to do only with the soul of the individual in the
future life. They are not concerned with this world, they are concerned
with the world to come. All religions, and all forms of religions, in
which the principle of asceticism receives any marked development are
positively antagonistic to the development of the social organism.
They are against its interests. They do not tend in the least to
subordinate the interests of the individual to the interests of the
organism “in the general interest of the evolution which the race is
undergoing.” A religion like that of the Shakers means the almost
immediate extinction of the organism in which it develops. Such a
religion distinctly subordinates the interests of the organism to the
interests of the individual. The same is equally true of many of the
more ascetic developments of Christianity and Islam. There is strong
probability that there was a Celtic population in Iceland before the
arrival of the Norsemen, but these Celts belonged to the Culdee sect
of Christians. They were anchorites, and professed a creed which
completely subordinated the development of the race on this earth to
the well-being of the individual in the next. In consequence they died
out and left no successors. There are creeds, such as most of the
present day creeds of Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, which
do very noble work for the race because they teach its individuals to
subordinate their own interests to the interests of mankind; but it is
idle to say this of every form of religious belief.
It is equally idle to pretend that this principle, which Mr. Kidd says
lies at the base of all religions, does not also lie at the base of
many forms of ethical belief which could hardly be called religious.
His definition of religion could just as appropriately be used to
define some forms of altruism or humanitarianism, while it does not
define religion at all, if we use the word religion in the way in
which it generally is used. If Mr. Kidd should write a book about
horses, and should define a horse as a striped equine animal found wild
in South Africa, his definition would apply to certain members of the
horse family, but would not apply to that animal which we ordinarily
mean when we talk of a horse; and, moreover, it would still be
sufficiently loose to include two or three entirely distinct species.
This is precisely the trouble with Mr. Kidd’s definition of religion.
It does not define religion at all as the word is ordinarily used, and
while it does apply to certain religious beliefs, it also applies quite
as well to certain non-religious beliefs. We must, therefore, recollect
that throughout Mr. Kidd’s argument on behalf of the part that religion
plays he does not mean what is generally understood by religion, but
the special form or forms which he here defines.
Undoubtedly, in the race for life, that group of beings will tend
ultimately to survive in which the general feeling of the members,
whether due to humanitarianism, to altruism, or to some form of
religious belief proper, is such that the average individual has an
unselfish--what Mr. Kidd would call an ultra-rational--tendency to
work for the ultimate benefit of the community as a whole. Mr. Kidd’s
argument is so loose that it may be construed as meaning that, in
the evolution of society, irrational superstitions grow up from time
to time, affect large bodies of the human race in their course of
development, and then die away; and that this succession of evanescent
religious beliefs will continue for a very long time to come, perhaps
as long as the human race exists. He may further mean that, except
for this belief in a long succession of lies, humanity could not go
forward. His words, I repeat, are sufficiently involved to make it
possible that he means this, but, if so, his book can hardly be taken
as a satisfactory defence of religion.
If there is justification for any given religion, and justification for
the acceptance of supernatural authority as regards this religion, then
there can be no justification for the acceptance of all religions, good
and bad alike. There can, at the outside, be a justification for but
one or two. Mr. Kidd’s grouping of all religions together is offensive
to every earnest believer. Moreover, in his anxiety to insist only on
the irrational side of religion, he naturally tends to exalt precisely
those forms of superstition which are most repugnant to reasoning
beings with moral instincts, and which are most heartily condemned by
believers in the loftiest religions. He apparently condemns Lecky for
what Lecky says of that species of unpleasant and noxious anchorite
best typified by St. Simeon Stylites and the other pillar hermits. He
corrects Lecky for his estimate of this ideal of the fourth century,
and says that instead of being condemned it should be praised, as
affording striking evidence and example of the vigor of the immature
social forces at work. This is not true. The type of anchorite of
which Mr. Lecky speaks with such just condemnation flourished most
rankly in Christian Africa and Asia Minor, the very countries where
Christianity was so speedily overthrown by Islam. It was not an example
of the vigor of the immature social forces at work; on the contrary,
it was a proof that those social forces were rotten and had lost their
vigor. Where an anchorite of the type Lecky describes, and Mr. Kidd
impliedly commends, was accepted as the true type of the church, and
set the tone for religious thought, the church was corrupt, and was
unable to make any effective defence against the scarcely baser form of
superstition which received its development in Islamism. As a matter
of fact, asceticism of this kind had very little in common with the
really vigorous and growing part of European Christianity, even at that
time. Such asceticism is far more closely related to the practices of
some loathsome Mohammedan dervish than to any creed which has properly
developed from the pure and lofty teachings of the Four Gospels. St.
Simeon Stylites is more nearly kin to a Hindoo fakir than to Phillips
Brooks or Archbishop Ireland.
Mr. Kidd deserves praise for insisting as he does upon the great
importance of the development of humanitarian feelings and of the
ethical element in humanity during the past few centuries, when
compared with the mere material development. He is, of course, entirely
right in laying the utmost stress upon the enormous part taken by
Christianity in the growth of Western civilization. He would do well
to remember, however, that there are other elements than that of merely
ceremonial Christianity at work, and that such ceremonial Christianity
in other races produces quite different results, as he will see at
a glance, if he will recall that Abyssinia and Hayti are Christian
countries.
In short, whatever Mr. Kidd says in reference to religion must be
understood as being strictly limited by his own improper terminology.
If we should accept the words religion and religious belief in their
ordinary meaning, and should then accept as true what he states, we
should apparently have to conclude that progress depended largely upon
the fervor of the religious spirit, without regard to whether the
religion itself was false or true. If such were the fact, progress
would be most rapid in a country like Morocco, where the religious
spirit is very strong indeed, far stronger than in any enlightened
Christian country, but where, in reality, the religious development
has largely crushed out the ethical and moral development, so that
the country has gone steadily backward. A little philosophic study
would convince Mr. Kidd that while the ethical and moral development
of a nation may, in the case of certain religions, be based on those
religions and develop with them and on the lines laid down by them,
yet that in other countries where they develop at all they have to
develop right in the teeth of the dominant religious beliefs, while in
yet others they may develop entirely independent of them. If he doubts
this let him examine the condition of the Soudan under the Mahdi,
where what he calls the ultra-rational and supra-natural sanctions were
accepted without question, and governed the lives of the people to the
exclusion alike of reason and morality. He will hardly assert that the
Soudan is more progressive than say Scotland or Minnesota, where there
is less of the spirit which he calls religious and which old-fashioned
folk would call superstitious.
Mr. Kidd’s position in reference to the central feature of his argument
is radically false; but he handles some of his other themes very
well. He shows clearly in his excellent chapter on modern socialism
that a state of retrogression must ensue if all incentives to strife
and competition are withdrawn. He does not show quite as clearly as
he should that over-competition and too severe stress make the race
deteriorate instead of improving; but he does show that there must be
some competition, that there must be some strife. He makes it clear
also that the true function of the State, as it interferes in social
life, should be to make the chances of competition more even, not to
abolish them. We wish the best men; and though we pity the man that
falls or lags behind in the race, we do not on that account crown him
with the victor’s wreath. We insist that the race shall be run on
fairer terms than before because we remove all handicaps. We thus tend
to make it more than ever a test of the real merits of the victor, and
this means that the victor must strive heart and soul for success. Mr.
Kidd’s attitude in describing socialism is excellent. He sympathizes
with the wrongs which the socialistic reformer seeks to redress, but
he insists that these wrongs must not be redressed, as the socialists
would have them, at the cost of the welfare of mankind.
Mr. Kidd also sees that the movement for political equality has nearly
come to an end, for its purpose has been nearly achieved. To it must
now succeed a movement to bring all people into the rivalry of life on
equal conditions of social opportunity. This is a very important point,
and he deserves the utmost credit for bringing it out. It is the great
central feature in the development of our time, and Mr. Kidd has seen
it so clearly and presented it so forcibly that we cannot but regret
that he should be so befogged in other portions of his argument.
Mr. Kidd has our cordial sympathy when he lays stress on the fact that
our evolution cannot be called primarily intellectual. Of course there
must be an intellectual evolution, too, and Mr. Kidd perhaps fails in
not making this sufficiently plain. A perfectly stupid race can never
rise to a very high plane; the negro, for instance, has been kept down
as much by lack of intellectual development as by anything else; but
the prime factor in the preservation of a race is its power to attain a
high degree of social efficiency. Love of order, ability to fight well
and breed well, capacity to subordinate the interests of the individual
to the interests of the community, these and similar rather humdrum
qualities go to make up the sum of social efficiency. The race that
has them is sure to overturn the race whose members have brilliant
intellects, but who are cold and selfish and timid, who do not breed
well or fight well, and who are not capable of disinterested love of
the community. In other words, character is far more important than
intellect to the race as to the individual. We need intellect, and
there is no reason why we should not have it together with character;
but if we must choose between the two we choose character without a
moment’s hesitation.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[22] _North American Review_, July, 1895.
[Illustration]
XV
THE LAW OF CIVILIZATION AND DECAY[23]
Few more melancholy books have been written than Mr. Brooks Adams’s
_Law of Civilization and Decay_. It is a marvel of compressed
statement. In a volume of less than four hundred pages Mr. Adams
singles out some of the vital factors in the growth and evolution of
civilized life during the last two thousand years; and so brilliant
is his discussion of these factors as to give, though but a glimpse,
yet one of the most vivid glimpses ever given, of some of the most
important features in the world-life of Christendom. Of some of the
features only; for a fundamentally defective point in Mr. Adams’s
brilliant book is his failure to present certain phases of the life
of the nations,--phases which are just as important as those which he
discusses with such vigorous ability. Furthermore, he disregards not a
few facts which would throw light on others, the weight of which he
fully recognizes. Both these shortcomings are very natural in a writer
who possesses an entirely original point of view, who is the first
man to see clearly certain things that to his predecessors have been
nebulous, and who writes with a fervent intensity of conviction, even
in his bitterest cynicism, such as we are apt to associate rather with
the prophet and reformer than with a historian to whom prophet and
reformer alike appeal no more than do their antitypes. It is a rare
thing for a historian to make a distinct contribution to the philosophy
of history; and this Mr. Adams has done. Naturally enough, he, like
other men who break new ground, tends here and there to draw a devious
furrow.
The book is replete with vivid writing, and with sentences and
paragraphs which stand out in the memory as marvels in the art of
presenting the vital features of a subject with a few master-strokes.
The story of the Crusades, the outline of the English conquest of
India, and the short tale of the rise of the house of Rothschild, are
masterpieces. Nowhere else is it possible to find in the same compass
any description of the Crusades so profound in its appreciation of the
motives behind them, so startling in the vigor with which the chief
actors, and the chief events, are portrayed. Indeed, one is almost
tempted to say that it is in the description of the Crusades that Mr.
Adams is at his best. He is dealing with a giant movement of humanity;
and he grasps not only the colossal outward manifestations, but also
the spirit itself, and, above all, the strange and sinister changes
which that spirit underwent. His mere description of the Baronies
set up by the Crusaders in the conquered Holy Land, with their loose
feudal government, brings them before the reader’s eyes as few volumes
specially devoted to the subject could. It is difficult to write of a
fortress and make a pen-picture which will always stay in the mind;
yet this is what Mr. Adams has done in dealing with the grim religious
castles, terrible in size and power, which were built by the Knights of
the Temple and the Hospital as bulwarks against Saracen might. He is
not only a scholar of much research, but a student of art, who is so
much more than a mere student as to be thrilled and possessed by what
he studies. He shows, with a beauty and vigor of style not unbecoming
his subject, how profoundly the art of Europe was affected by the
Crusades. It is not every one who can write with equal interest of
sacred architecture and military engineering, who can appreciate alike
the marvels of Gothic cathedrals and the frowning strength of feudal
fortresses, and who furthermore can trace their inter-relation.