THE RESULTS OF ETHICAL INQUIRY ON AN EVOLUTIONAL BASIS
In Professor Alexander's statement that "the good man of former days was
as good as the good man of to-day,"[256] the standard applied to the two
cases compared is not the same; the comparison is not a direct one
between the two men, according to some common rule, but resembles a
mathematical statement of proportion, or comparison of ratios; the man
named good according to the standard of one age stands to the social
conditions of that age as the man named good by the standard of a later
age to the social conditions of his age. The implication of this double
standard is, however, easily overlooked, so that the statement stands in
danger of the reproach of misleading as a begging of the question; in
"the good man of former days," the moral verdict is already delivered. A
question of moral expediency arises here. How are we to define "the good
man of former days"? Shall we declare, for instance, that that cannibal
who fulfilled the ideal of pity in his society by sparing his conquered
foe to abject and miserable slavery, instead of cooking him for dinner,
was good, and as good as the man of highest benevolence of the present
day? Or suppose an Australian savage who varies the tribal custom of
wooing by carefully carrying home his victim after reducing her to
unconsciousness, instead of dragging her over the ground at risk of life
and limb, thus fulfilling a high tribal ideal; shall we compare such a
man with lovers like Mill or Browning and pronounce him as good as the
latter? Or, to take less extreme cases, shall we compare the Spartan of
one period, with his ideal of successful theft, with a Socrates or a
Bruno dying for sake of what they believed to be the truth, and
pronounce one no better than the other? No one denies the right of the
individual to fix the significance of his own terms, provided he adheres
to this significance consistently; but mankind thinks slowly and
painfully, and the double purpose of language, in the communication of
thought to others and the registration of it as a stepping-stone to our
own further reasoning, is likely to be frustrated by a too peculiar use
of terms. In Ethics, this question of expediency takes on a moral
aspect; and Alexander's definition of absolute right and wrong as action
in accordance with, or opposition to, a standard fixed by the age and
nation is likely to lead to moral as well as intellectual confusion--to
the excuse of wrong-doing because of circumstances, on the one hand, and
the dogmatic assertion of infallibility on the other, or at least to the
confusion of the ideal standard with the easy-going standard of the
average man of his age.
But it is true that this criticism is scarcely conclusive alone. For the
definitions criticised are on a line with the idea of progress as at
each moment establishing the equilibrium of the society, and fulfil the
demand for self-consistency. A criticism of the use, in ethical theory,
of a continually changing standard of moral judgment, must concern the
more fundamental idea of a continually established equilibrium.
To the practical considerations of the possible confusion of the ideal
with the average standard through Alexander's idea of the judgment of an
age by its own standard, it might be objected that the moral standard
implied in his theory is not at all the average standard, but the
standard as represented by the ideal in the mind of the good man of his
age.[257]
To this may be answered that he whom we regard as the good man of his
age is by no means necessarily in harmony with his age, as is proved by
the persecution that many good men endure; and the statement that the
good man is not in harmony with his age means that he does not represent
the character of his society as a whole, and cannot, therefore, be said
to express an attained equilibrium of the society. His sentiments and
ideal are not the sentiments and ideal of the society as a whole
considered as an adjustment of sentiments and ideals. If it be replied,
to this, that the good men of their age who undergo persecution must be
regarded, according to Alexander's theory, as only prospectively
good,--as representing an ideal that has not yet been proved to be the
victorious variety,[258] then we are driven to return to the conclusion
that, by the good man of his age who represents the social equilibrium,
Alexander designates, not the man who leads the moral van, or he who
plans an advance, but he who is carried on by it, the man who represents
the preponderating mass of opinion, the ideal of the majority or the
average ideal; and the practical criticisms above made hold good.
Whatever may be said of our judgment of a past age by present standards,
the standard by which we judge present action is not at all the average
standard, but the highest moral ideal we can discover; and in this fact
lies the whole significance of Ethics.
Or there is another form in which Alexander combines his idea of the
good man and that of a social equilibrium. According to this
interpretation, the equilibrium the good man represents is not an
actually attained equilibrium, but merely one that would be secured were
his ideal universally carried out,--an equilibrium realized only in so
far as men are good.[259] In this case, indeed, the ideal may be rescued
from the reproach of representing only the average, easy-going morality;
but, at the same time, all the remarks that make present morality
absolute because it represents and maintains a present social
equilibrium, and the argument in a line with such remarks that all
maintenance of existence means adjustment to the conditions, or
equilibrium, become inapplicable. It might be contended that the whole
dilemma is avoided by Alexander in the assertion that wickedness has but
little share in the life of society[260]--that is, that goodness
prevails; but such a statement may be disputed, except as morality is
judged by the average standard; and, in this case, the argument begs the
question, and the old problem recurs. It may further be added that the
action of the good man in any other sense cannot represent the course
that would be followed by every man, were all men good like himself, for
his action takes into consideration the fact that all men are not good
like himself and is a compromise with inideal conditions.
There is, in fact, and has been up to the present time, no "full"
equilibrium of any society as a whole, and certainly no absolute
equilibrium such as must coexist with an absolute right, which would be
its expression. Du Prel, to illustrate his conception of the evolution
of the systems of the heavens, imagines a group of dancers, each of
whom sets out to dance a figure of her own without reference to the
movements of the others; and he points out that if, in all cases of
collision, the colliding parties either withdraw from the group or else
move from this point together, a harmony of movement must finally be
attained.[261] We may conceive of momentary equilibrium of small
portions of a society, just as, in the case of such a group of dancers,
we may conceive of any moment as possibly representing an absence of
collision in some one part of the company, although, in other parts,
many collisions are taking place. But there is, at present, no general
equilibrium of ideals, no common ideal for any society as a whole, but,
on the contrary, a mass of conflicting ideals continually at war with
one another; although, of course, there may be calculated an average
ideal made up from all extremes, and there may be discerned a
preponderating ideal in smaller portions of a society that form a body
by themselves. The isolation of such portions is, however, only
relative, and any equilibrium that can be spoken of as attained by them
is most imperfect. The "good man," in so far as we regard his goodness
as inherited, may be said to represent an equilibrium; but it is only
the equilibrium of some one favored line of descent, and not an
absolute, but a relative, equilibrium. In so far as we regard the "good
man's" goodness as the further result of especial association with good
men, it may be, to a large extent, in harmony with their ideals, and may
hence represent a certain equilibrium among men who preserve themselves
from intimacy with individuals of low ideals or only average morality,
thus forming a partly isolated body; but this equilibrium, again, is
only a relative equilibrium, just as the isolation of the group is only
partial. If our definition of morality is progressive and not statical,
the good man must be he who leads the advance. But such a man is not
representative of his society as a whole.
Alexander regards the infliction of incidental pains as of little
consequence for the absolute rightness of conduct. But the necessity of
these pains has a reactive influence on character. That, in order to do
the work which I can do best and which, therefore, I ought to do for
society, I must pass many beggars in the street without inquiry into
their cases, and much misery of all sorts without materially lessening
it, has a certain detrimental result to myself. All pain, the sight of
which is endured without the taking of active measures for its
alleviation, vitiates the sympathies; and, on the other hand, a certain
hardness of heart is necessary to the endurance of mere existence, at
the present time; a certain selfishness to the enjoyment even of a life
spent in moral effort; for perfect sympathy would make life unbearable
in sight and hearing of the suffering of many of our fellow-creatures.
The need for self-defence has been felt at all stages of the world's
progress--in olden times for self-defence of a brutal sort, in modern
days for a less and less brutal self-defence; such self-defence is at
present imperative, lest the yielding to one person result not only in a
lack of fulfilment of our own duties to others than the one, but also in
the strengthening, in that one, of a selfishness and dogmatism which may
issue in further evil to others. And yet all resistance, where and in so
far as carried out, vitiates temper and benevolence.
Alexander's position is positivistic in that it aims not to go beyond
the facts; and this position might seem to lead naturally to the
judgment of each age by a standard possible to the individuals of that
age, that is, existent, in some form, in the society judged; and it
might seem to lead, also, to the assertion of an absolute right where
the existence of wrong is unfelt. But to this might be answered that, as
soon as the higher standard does exist, the wrong may be judged by it;
and that the judgment of a right as yet including elements of wrong
implies the existence of another and higher standard as one of the
facts. If Du Prel's company of dancers were automata, incapable of
forecasting collisions, we might regard a momentary absence of collision
in some one part of the company, from the standpoint of the automata
concerned, as absolute equilibrium, since our judgment would have no
regard to the rest of the company or the next move of the figures at
present in equilibrium. But human beings are not automata, and the
theory which regards the moral evolution from the standpoint of the
ideals actually existent in society must take into consideration the
actual realization which enters into the practical ideals of a large
part of society, of the contrast of those ideals with a conceived higher
standard at present impracticable. It is true that the consciousness of
past ages, not comprehending in so great a degree the complexity of
human interests, or looking so far into the future to distant results
as does present mankind, had not so strong a sense of this contrast. But
the contrast has arisen, was vaguely conceived even in far-distant
times, and has continually grown more definite and pronounced in human
thought. So far from its being true, as Professor Alexander conceives,
that conscience always asserts the possibility of an absolutely right
course,[262] it may be said that, although doubtless the mind always
conceives, amongst the courses open to choice, some best course, there
is a growing realization of the evil to conduct and character, of self
and others, involved in any course possible under present conditions.
The assertion of an absolute right, with an exact boundary-line dividing
it from wrong, belongs to past Ethics; the appreciation of present evil
doubtless differs in degree in different persons; but it is increasing
both in extent and in intent, and is the explanation of the tendency to
believe the present age worse than all past ages. It is not the sign of
growing evil, but is, on the contrary, a part of a growing good;
nevertheless, it registers the existence of present evil. There are few
men of the present date, excepting the very young and exceptionally
healthy and happy, who would agree with Alexander, that "it is
ridiculous to suppose that wickedness occupies a considerable space in
the life of a society."
Professor Alexander himself acknowledges the progress of society towards
a state of good that shall be good not for a part of the human race
merely but for the whole; and he recognizes also the fact that this
extension of the ideal to the whole race means a progress in intent
also. Such an ultimate state is certainly not ultimate in the sense that
it is eternal; but it may be considered permanent in the same sense as
the equilibrium of the solar system is permanent--in the sense that it
remains practically the same for a period long to human thought. It
expresses a perfect, though not an absolute, equilibrium. As such, it
does not involve absolute happiness any more than absolute preservation
of existence, immortality: it implies only the reduction of pain to a
minimum through increasing wisdom and sympathy; through the endeavor, on
the one hand, of a far-seeing and sympathetic society to protect the
individual from disappointment, and through such increase, on the other,
of the ethical pleasures that what Alexander terms "incidental pains"
become inappreciable by contrast.
The evolution of human society is not an evolution of one state or
country alone but of the habitable globe; a condition of full
equilibrium can be reached only when, in one way or another, all
countries are gathered into the circle of civilization and sympathy.
Until this happens, the isolation of single societies must be repeatedly
broken in upon and the process of equilibration disturbed by the
introduction of new elements to which adjustment must take place; the
new adjustment being in the sense of progress towards a higher system of
equilibrium, that is, one of more elements, and the whole process
constituting a continual progress in the direction of a full stability
of Life upon the earth. While despotisms exist to pour into other, freer
countries their hunted and miserable subjects, unused to the
responsibilities of self-government, and often as unfit for peace as is
the dog who has been always chained and tormented, democracy must feel
the evils of tyranny even in her own system. While uncivilized, or
mentally, morally, and physically degraded human beings exist in one
country, men in other parts of the world are not secure from contact
either directly with these lowest orders, or, at least, with those who
have been rendered less honorable or more callous to suffering by their
influence or habituation to their suffering. And while war rouses
hatred, and hatred results in war, there will also be, in societies,
internal fluctuations, jealousies, hatreds. Lack of sympathy, violence,
or indifference to suffering in one respect or direction is likely to be
accompanied by lack of sympathy, violence, indifference, in other
respects: while, again, violence is likely to beget violence,
indifference indifference, between individuals, classes, parties, or
nations. Different degrees of progress may be visible in different
countries; but the more facilities of communication increase, the more
inevitable it will become that the evils existing in any one nation will
affect all, as also that the progress of any one nation will affect all;
in other words, progress must tend, more and more, to equalization in
all countries. Fechner's ideas of the Tendency to Stability thus explain
the loss of Greek and Roman civilization, as well as the insoluble
mystery which Wallace finds in the fact of the attainment of greatness
among earlier peoples, there being "no agency at work, then or now,[263]
calculated to do more than weed out the lower types."[264]
Increasing sympathy is a continual accompaniment of the increasingly
close relations of men to each other through the gradual peopling of all
parts of the earth, but especially through the increasing facilities of
communication by which the distant is brought into contact with us; but
the sympathy is of gradual growth, and the continual renewal of the
struggle for existence induces renewed evils, so that it might seem, at
first glance, as if the evil must continue indefinitely and
undiminished, only changing its form. As long as no absolute equilibrium
has been attained, doubtless evil of some sort must exist; change is
inevitably accompanied by disadvantages as well as advantages,
everywhere. But several facts are to be noticed. First: The statement
which has often been made, that the severity of the struggle for
existence is increased in the social state and grows with the growth of
society, is erroneous. That is to say, more is doubtless continually
demanded of the individual, but it is no abstract "principle" or "law"
outside man which makes this demand: it is the increased power of the
average of society which makes it; or, that is, the increased
requirements of the age are met with increased capacity, and this would
still remain true if we reckoned capacity as merely dependent upon the
inheritance of knowledge and implements. Cooeperation increases
resources; and the average length of life is shown to increase with the
progress of civilization. There is a lagging minority who suffer, for
one reason or another, in the advance; these represent the inherently
inferior types, or the types which suffer temporarily from outer
disadvantage. The evils of competition in human society are not greater,
they are simply more evident to human beings than the evils elsewhere in
nature. The tragedies of the woods are bloody but short; death puts a
speedy end to sufferings, and the earth quickly hides the victims. In
society, on the other hand, cooeperation preserves not only the aged and
feeble, the deformed and idiotic, of the more privileged classes; it
even suffices to enable the most miserable to drag out a forlorn
existence somewhat longer. It forbids the mother who finds her child a
burden simply to leave it by the roadside as the savage mother does, and
it will give a penny or two against starvation where it will not bestow
enough for comfort. This prolongation of suffering is thus the sign of
an increased but not yet sufficient sympathy; in other words, evil not
only changes its form with social evolution; it also gradually loses
its force. To suppose, indeed, that renewed progress must always be
attended with as great evils as to-day attend it, is to make the
erroneous supposition that character has no constancy, and the sympathy
for one's fellow-men gained in one relation will wholly fail to act in
others.
Again, it might possibly be thought that increase in density of
population, even as condition of the closer contact necessary to
increase of sympathy, must go on _ad infinitum_, with ever-increasing,
or at least ever-renewed, misery, until the individual be left with
barely standing-room; indeed, the picture of such a _denouement_ has
occasionally been drawn. But it is to be remembered that the conditions
of mutual comprehension, dependence, and sympathy, come to lie, in later
social stages, less and less in mere density of population and more and
more in those many devices of modern life which we have termed means of
communication. The increase of the human species must tend, in time, to
self-correction; the only alternative is the extinction of the race
through growing unhealthfulness of conditions. But this alternative is
an impossibility; the human species cannot be annihilated as a whole
except through some catastrophic event which interferes with the present
course of evolution by the destruction of the earth--or through that
final gradual decay which must accompany the earth's decline in power of
nourishment. From internal causes we cannot expect the species to
perish; for again in this case it is impossible that a struggle should
be continued until the last individuals are destroyed. Indeed, the idea
of destruction through insanitary crowding gives us at once a
contradiction of the supposition of limitless increase, and a partial
solution of the question. But the later and higher solution of the
question is another. The fittest will survive; and the fittest will be
those who perceive the evils of overcrowding and take active measures to
avoid it. The fittest will be those who perceive that they are acting
for the good of their children, and that of society as a whole, if they
do not bring into the world more offspring than they can furnish with a
healthy constitution, good moral training, and a sufficient education
for self-support and comfort under conditions of normal labor. The term
"health" is not an absolute one; but if we once suppose a start made in
the direction of the decrease of pressure, we must suppose, other things
being equal, that those lines of descent and parts of society in which
it arises will be favored in the struggle for existence, and will come
to supplant other parts. To suppose that the increase of pressure can go
on _ad infinitum_ is, indeed, to reckon--if we look at the matter from
the purely psychological side--without man's reason. Social development
and moral theory have not favored any limitation of progeny as long as
population was sparse. But certain facts are beginning to be recognized:
(1) that the propagation of their kind by the criminally constituted and
by the hopelessly diseased is immoral; (2) that the propagation of
offspring to such poverty and ignorance as stunts them physically, and
makes their entrance into the criminal or pauper classes a probability,
is also immoral; and (3) that duty does not demand of men and women that
they shall sacrifice health and happiness, and drag out a miserable,
overworked, joyless existence in illy rearing an over-large and probably
weakly family. The greatest favor, privilege, and luxury that parents
can confer upon children is that of health, and the next greatest is
that of healthy parents, neither ill-tempered with care nor morbid and
dull with overwork, but alert to perceive and ready to sympathize in all
their trials and aspirations, and endowed with sufficient leisure
to give some attention to that quite as important duty as
child-bearing--the character-training of children. Selfishness is, of
course, possible in the direction of limitation of increase as in every
other direction, and in this case it must defeat the end to a great
extent; but such selfishness must tend to correct itself as sympathy
develops and society, in its approval, recognizes and demands more and
more what is for the good of all.
The course of our reasoning does not pretend to predict an absolute
social equilibrium, which must include the immortality of man on the
earth, together with the prevention of every accident and of every
disappointment whatsoever. A word has already been said as to the
probable necessity of the death of the individual; and with death are
given also disease and age and their attendant mental evils. We may
suppose, however, under an increased healthfulness of general
conditions, an increase of vitality which shall make death, in an ever
greater proportion of cases, rather the issue of a gradual failure of
the powers than the result of violent illness. That the tendency is in
this direction is demonstrated by the gradual increase of the length of
life. A high degree of mental, moral, and physical harmony in human
society is no more "wonderful" or inconceivable than the high degree of
harmony already attained in the movements of our own solar system. On
the one hand, social progress means the attainment of results which call
less and less for reform; and, on the other hand, we are accustoming
ourselves to social change; reforms, the like of which would once have
convulsed the world are now accomplished with little inconvenience, and
we are able to go forward with a rapidity of which no former age was
capable.
We may look at social development from still another point of view, as a
process by which the preservation of the individual gradually becomes
cooerdinate with the preservation and welfare of the species. Darwin
surmises that the work of the benevolent or intellectually great man for
his people may be as important for its welfare and the determination of
its conquest in the struggle for existence as is the propagation of
offspring. As social organization progresses, and the relations of men
become more intimate and complex, all the acts of the individual grow to
be of greater and greater significance for his kind, while,
reciprocally, the health and happiness of the individual increase in
importance for his kind. And thus, from both sides, virtue and health,
virtue and happiness, also tend towards coincidence in the individual
life, and environment comes more and more to favor the virtuous.
Sympathy, which is for the general good in many relations, increases in
strength as inward characteristic and acts with more and more certainty
and universality, so that the society which has been merciful and
helpful in a degree towards many individuals comes to show mercy and
helpfulness in a greater degree, and with more uniformity, towards more
and more individuals; while, at the same time, the welfare and the
happiness of the individual become more and more cooerdinate with the
welfare of society as a whole, and the latter is accordingly more
universally sought. This does not necessarily mean that it is sought
from motives of self-interest; on the contrary, as society progresses,
the individual is more and more moulded to such harmony with its needs
that he finds his happiness in seeking its welfare.
The earlier punishments of offenders were extreme and cruel; the
majority, in endeavoring to protect itself, had little regard for the
individual, as the individual also had little regard for the welfare of
the majority. With social progress, however, the majority become more
humane even towards their enemy, the criminal. The checks which the fear
of extreme physical punishment alone could impose at an earlier period
are gradually succeeded by the checks furnished in the approval and
disapproval of society as a whole, and of those to whom the individual
is bound by ties of affection and of respect. That is, in the
sympathetic feelings themselves a dependence on others is developed
which acts as an effectual preventive and stimulus, and must become more
and more effectual as society advances and the range of sympathy widens.
This increasingly altruistic form of even the checks to evil is taken no
account of by the pessimist. As the necessity for severity decreases,
severity even in social disapproval must lessen; as the individual comes
to yield more readily and promptly to a slight spur, extremer methods
will be discarded. Thus fear will be, by degrees, replaced by hope. This
development is seen not only in sectarian matters but also in the
history of religious thought; nearly every religion has had its heaven
and its hell, but with social progress and the broadening of sympathy,
the hell falls more and more into disrepute, the motive of heavenly
reward being rather emphasized.
As sympathy broadens, we come to feel, not alone pain at the pain of
others, but in an increased degree and with regard to ever wider
circles, pleasure also in their pleasure. The altruistic pleasure
afforded by the relief of pain, as the more necessary to the
preservation of existence, has been the earliest developed. A great good
in its province, it may contain, nevertheless, an element of vanity that
opposes itself to a further evolution. There is no doubt that a certain
kind of benevolence would greatly miss the gratification and
self-aggrandizement experienced in the relief of poverty and suffering.
The higher but not yet so universal capacity is that of rejoicing in
others' good and happiness as well as sympathizing in their sorrow. This
capacity shows itself as yet chiefly in the more intimate relations of
love and friendship. In these, too, the influence of approval and
disapproval is powerful, and the pleasure we give a friend in being
worthy of his esteem may make our best happiness. Here we have a hint of
an increasing union of love for the individual and love for the ideal
which must tend to raise friendship itself to the highest plane.
As a result of our considerations, we may deny the truth of Rolph's
assertion that the stimulus of want will be forever necessary in order
to secure exertion--that is, if by want is meant misery or great pain of
any sort; if merely desire is meant, which the anticipation and early
accomplishment of satisfaction may prevent from becoming pain, we may
admit the statement. In this case, however, the argument which Rolph
deduces against the possibility of a final state of social harmony is
invalid.
But it is not the intention of our argument to assert that all desires
without exception will be fulfilled in any future condition of society.
What may be said is that, in an increasing degree, sympathy will
endeavor to satisfy the wants of the individual, while, on the other
hand, the approval and fellow-feeling of society, and the consciousness
of having performed his duty, will come to represent to the individual,
in a greater and greater degree, recompense for personal loss. This
change of direction in desire and gratification is no weakening of it:
it is no more necessarily true that the man of perfect principle is
poorer in emotion than the man whose passions lead him to sacrifice his
fellow men than it is true that the average man of civilized society is
poorer in emotion than the brutal savage. Merely, human evolution is a
continual development of higher and more complex emotions, which rise
into force on the proper occasion to modify the more primitive ones, or,
more accurately speaking, the lower emotions of the savage themselves
take on a higher form through organization with later ones.
Spencer, in criticising theories of altruistic morals, endeavors to show
that time and energy are lost in the distribution, through others, of
the happiness or means of happiness which might with more profit,
because a better understanding of need, be sought by the individual
himself; and he remarks, that it is a question how much of the happiness
which means also vitality the individual may rightly sacrifice to
society. But the refusal of individuals to sacrifice anything of
personal gratification must lead, under present conditions of desire, to
extreme sacrifice on the part of other individuals; so that the
principle of the illegitimacy of sacrifice logically contradicts itself.
It is not perfectly clear what is meant by a "division and
redistribution" of happiness, or the means of happiness, against which
Spencer directs his argument. It is probable that the author has in
mind, and is especially opposing, a particular school of theorists whose
ideas we will consider later on. Suffice it to say, at this point, that
social harmony can never be reached by the stubborn continuance of each
in his line of inharmonious conduct, but can only be attained by such
gradual moulding of habit and desire that by natural organization
individuals will come to be in harmony with each other. It is the
history of social evolution that the individual, though always
determining what are his own needs, as it is obvious that he can best
do, is increasingly aided in satisfying them by cooeperation, while he
also gives increasing aid in return. Against the list of the advantages
of egoism enumerated by Spencer and others, I would muster the
advantages of altruism, for by cooeperation alone can the individual
attain the pleasures which now so often lie beyond his reach; by it
alone can society attain a higher plane; and the pleasures of altruism
are the highest and the most unfailing. The selfish man will suffer
disappointment and loss as well as the benevolent man, and he will lack
the refuge of sympathy and of the power to find happiness in the
happiness of others. What man who has felt the joys of sympathy would
exchange even the hardships it brings for the brutal liberty and unmoved
selfishness of the savage! what man who has known the joys of the
higher, the more unselfish love, would exchange them for the ungoverned
and quickly-palling pleasures of the profligate! These joys first lend
life worth and meaning; through association and altruism, cooeperation in
action and feeling, man first becomes a power in the world. Yet the man
who is capable of the higher sympathy is incapable of a selfish
calculation of its personal advantages to him.
Wundt has an objection to Evolutional Ethics as it is understood by this
treatise, on the score of the assumptions with regard to moral
inheritance involved. "How, out of tendencies stored up in the nervous
system, moral conceptions arise, is, and remains, a mystery," he
says.[265] The problem is nothing more or less than that of the
connection of brain-function and psychical process, in inheritance; and
we may say again that we no more perceive the necessity of explaining
the "how" of this before accepting the evident facts, than we see the
necessity of explaining, in the same sense, the connection between light
and heat, or between the seen vibrations and the heard note. Moreover,
the "mystery" belongs as much to the conservation of character in the
individual life as to its conservation in the race; if an explanation be
necessary before acceptance of the facts in the one case, it is
assuredly necessary in the other also; and its necessity must be fatal
to Physiological Psychology. It is time that that ancient scarecrow of
superstition, "a mystery," were removed from the field of science. When
Wundt further proceeds to interpret Spencer's theory of heredity as one
of the inheritance of distinct and definite ideas in their original
form, he reads into the theory what Spencer himself, with his
conceptions of instinct and reflex action, never put there, and what,
moreover, no modern writer on philosophy has distinctly asserted. This
present treatise is much more open to Wundt's criticism than is
Spencer's work, though it makes no positive assertion as to the nature
of "instinct" and so-called "automatism," but leaves the question as to
their unconscious character open. The appearance of common psychical
phenomena at the period of puberty, and with characteristics peculiar,
moreover, to the particular lines of descent, would be enough to
establish the fact of heredity, if no other testimony were forthcoming;
and yet no one can "explain" the sudden appearance of these phenomena at
a certain age.
But the most of the objections to Evolutional Ethics are not on such
score as this. A while ago, the conservatives in Ethics declared that
the theory of Evolution, even if true, had nothing to do with morals,
which occupied a region far above the plane of science. Now, the most of
the conservative schools content themselves with merely asserting that
evolution may be true even in application to Ethics, but that it is
useless in this province, since it adds nothing of value to theory or
practice. It may be well to examine into this assertion. _A priori_, we
could scarcely suppose that increased knowledge in any branch could fail
to be of importance to that branch and to affect it in some manner.
Knowledge is power, and we should presume not less so in Ethics than in
any other science.
The assertion that Evolution adds nothing to theory would indeed be as
just with regard to other sciences as with regard to Ethics; or, rather,
it would be more just with regard to the natural sciences. For they at
least recognized, before the appearance of the theory of Evolution, the
element of constancy ordinarily called law, and attempted to formulate
this constancy as a basis of thought and action. To these concepts of
constancy and the predictions founded upon them, the theory of Evolution
merely added greater certainty and a more extended range, supplying the
bond of union between various branches, and showing the inner relation
of many before disconnected theories; its whole force was one of
clarification. But the work of Evolution for Ethics, though of a similar
nature, has been of even greater degree and significance; it has unified
and clarified the attempts made to discover a basis for moral principles
and has rendered that foundation for the first time secure; it has
cleared away, with one sweep, the rubbish of ancient superstition, made
exact methods possible, and raised Ethics to the plane of a Science. If
it had added anything absolutely new and entirely unconnected with
previous theory, it would be as unintelligible to us as Calculus to a
Fiji-Islander; if it had no intimate and vital connection with foregoing
ideas, it would meet with no comprehension or acceptance. Science, too,
is an evolution, not a creation. The value of the theory of Evolution
lies in the very fact that it is simply an addition, though a large one,
to previous thought, a higher phase of conception which rises naturally
out of the old. But the cavillers say on the one hand: "It teaches a
theory of conscience as instinct, therefore we may still cling to the
old and unaltered doctrine of the veiled and sacred 'mystery of
Feeling'"; and on the other hand: "We already accepted a basis of reason
and Utility, therefore our theory, not being overthrown, needs no
alteration." Both schools forget that, in science as elsewhere, the new
develops from the old, but evolution brings with it, nevertheless, a
difference of degree that finally issues in difference of kind. It has
been said even by one belonging to the advanced school of Ethics, that,
if the course of Evolution could be shown to prescribe immoral conduct,
the duty of the moral man would be to oppose evolution even if he
perished in the attempt. The conception which lies at the basis of this
assertion is as erroneous as that which asserts that man must go forward
on the path taken by evolution whether he will or no.[266] To suppose
the will of society opposing the course of Evolution is to suppose a
self-contradiction. Nature and man's will are not two different things
in this process; man _is_ the part of nature which is involved in the
evolution considered. Our prediction of the direction of social
development is a prediction of his will; he _will_ will in certain ways
constant in the broad sense in which all nature is constant, constant as
character and reason are constant. The individual has assuredly the
power to oppose himself to all other individuals, if he so wills; and
his influence will not be lost; _but it is exactly this willing and the
mutual influence of individuals upon each other which the theory of
Evolution, as applied to Ethics, endeavors to take into account_. The
result in prediction cannot be properly likened, as it is likened by
Stephen,[267] to the inference of the future of an organic whole from
its present parts. It does not define the progress in society as a whole
from a study of the individual; it is, on the contrary, an inference of
the future of the whole from its past and present considered in the
light of general natural laws, and is as legitimate as the computation
of the future position of heavenly bodies from their observed past
movements and present position; though we can doubtless make only
general predictions from general observations. Or, if we approach the
question from another side, we may say that the science of Ethics
endeavors to ascertain the ideal by which the welfare of all may be
attained, and that the solution of this problem cannot be given
otherwise than through rules for the attainment of the general health in
the broadest sense of the word; for this corresponds to a final harmony
of desires through survival of the fittest.
The power of prediction is, thus, evidently not to be interpreted as if
the evolution of morality would go on except through the human will, and
through this will in individuals. In any assertion to the contrary, the
same old contradictory division is assumed, of nature as active opposed
to nature as passive; man is first regarded as a part of nature and then
again as outside nature and compelled by it. We divide him into two
parts: the one necessarily coincident with the nature in himself, the
other antagonistic to it; the one absolutely passive, the other active;
and yet these two are the same, and we regard them as the same from
other points of view. Nor does prediction impose any "laws" upon the
will from without; it is simply inference from the observed relations in
the action of individuals: it does not create or alter those relations.
It reckons, not from man as compelled by "Necessity," but from man as
possessing will and acting from reason. If man is reasonable, he will
perceive that it is for the good of himself as well as for that of the
rest of his race to attain a state of harmony; as he is reasonable, he
will perceive that social progress is for his benefit as well as for
that of others. The increasing solidarity of society continually
rendering progress desirable, and the line of the fittest, that is, of
those who will in a manner that best fits them for social conditions,
continually tending to coincidence with the line of moral progress, the
final triumph of the moral is assured. It is not in any way denied that
man chooses this course of advancement. On the contrary, wherever we
begin in our analysis, we come round finally to the variation of reason,
emotion, and will.
As above noticed, the false interpretation of the significance of
Evolutional Ethics on the subject of man's will in relation to progress
sometimes gives rise to the opposite erroneous impression to that just
noticed, to the impression, namely, that progress will go on whether men
strive for it or not, and that it is of no particular consequence what
the individual does, or at least that Evolutional Ethics can furnish
nothing but statistics and predictions, never motives to right-doing.
This confusion has caused much self-contradiction, has given rise to the
most of the discussion on the subject of Absolute and Relative Ethics,
and has impelled certain authors to close their books with something
very like a half doubt of the efficacy of their own method except as one
of observation. But the value of Evolutional Ethics lies not only in the
fact that it goes deeper than any other system and analyzes more clearly
the ground of moral conduct,--thus removing doubt with those who are
open to conviction, and furnishing a less fallible criterion to those
who desire to perceive where right lies in order to perform it,--but in
that it also renders obvious the fact that conduct opposed to the
welfare of society becomes, with time, more and more disadvantageous.
The individual may escape punishment for his misdeeds: but the chances
against him are greater, the greater these misdeeds and the longer they
are persisted in; it is the "average of the line of moral progress" that
is favored by natural selection. A system of Ethics is a part of the
environment which acts on the individual; its force is no more lost than
is that of any other part of the environment, although the result in the
particular case will depend, also, on the character of the individual
appealed to. But if Evolutional Ethics cannot bring any such force to
bear on the individual as will change his character in an instant,
rendering him apt and ready to act according to the ideal, whatever may
have been his previous character, there is neither any other system of
Ethics which can do this, and there has seldom been one so sanguine as
to hope to do it. Theological Ethics, or rather, Theology, has asserted
the possibility of such instant transformation, and the doctrine of
Socrates that the knowledge of right will secure its performance is a
much less extreme instance of a similar idea. But Evolutional Ethics,
while rendering manifest the necessity of unceasing endeavor, affords us
encouragement by its assurance of the possibility of progress, and its
demonstration of the fact that the force of endeavor can no more be lost
than any other force. It adds dignity to the smallest acts, and lends
earnestness and worth to life. It neither contains any excuses for
inaction nor leaves any reason open to pessimism except a selfish one;
to the man to whom his own selfish gratification is all in all, the
knowledge of social evolution is not a matter of encouragement and
rejoicing; but to the lover of his kind it must be. Evolutional Ethics
admonishes us to labor, yet teaches us the necessity of patience, since,
however the individual will, nothing arises all at once, and the
evolution of morals in society as a whole must, like all other
evolutions, be a gradual, because a many-sided one. It admonishes us,
too,--and this is well,--that we cannot sin without leaving ineffaceable
stains upon our own character. The past is never dead, either in its
results outside ourselves or in our habit; and it is not the drunkard
only who one day awakens to find himself irrevocably moulded, by steps
of habit so slight as to have been almost imperceptible, to that which
he once loathed and detested. "Our deeds are like children that are born
to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be
strangled, but deeds never; they have an indestructible life both in and
out of our consciousness."[268] We may not be a mere spectator of the
struggle for existence even if we will; the dead weight of inaction is
itself a force opposed to other force. Willy, nilly, so long as we live
we must bear the responsibility of taking a part for or against the
progress and welfare of the world.
But there is, as I have said, a system which asserts the possibility of
instant entire change of character, as well as of the forgiveness and
obliteration of past sins. What manner of obliteration is this? Not the
obliteration of the consequences of the acts, since that is impossible,
but an obliteration of responsibility for them such that the doer may
erase them from his conscience. The innocent on whom the evil results
fall are, then, according to this view, the only ones who shall suffer
for them. The doctrine of the Atonement takes away that sense of
personal responsibility which is most essential to morality, and this
removal of responsibility explains the ease with which Christians of all
ages have combined a fervid religiosity with vice and crime. Christian
theories of morals of the present day forbid the issue of indulgences;
but the consciousness that full and free forgiveness is always waiting
to receive the offender whenever he gets ready to repent, even if it is
not until his death-bed, is most pernicious in its results. So we learn,
for instance, that the "Mollie Maguires," a league formed in the mines
of Pennsylvania a few years ago, for the express purpose of murder by
cooeperation, were in the habit of opening their meetings with prayer,
and of withdrawing regularly from the society, for one quarter of the
year, to attend church, in order then to murder with an easy conscience
for the other three quarters. The senior member of Conan Doyle's "Firm
of Girdlestone" is no mere fiction of the imagination. I have no desire
to join with those who pronounce all Christians, or everything in
Christian doctrine, morally unsound; I only maintain that the doctrine
of the Atonement is in itself pernicious, and is shown to be so by its
easy reconciliation with evil action.
Theological Ethics is defective in other respects also. A system which
represents God as accomplishing his own will in the world in "mysterious
ways," to question which is sacrilege, has necessarily led to the
excusing of much evil as punishment or discipline, and so to inaction
against it. "Men can do so little themselves to make the world better,"
said a fervent Christian to me not long since; "we must leave these
things to God." So, poverty has been held to be a mysterious
dispensation of Providence which it was not necessary to do away with
even if its abolishment were possible, but the slight alleviation of
which was counted among the means of atonement for other sin. Thus it
has been in other ways than in itself a curse to mankind, furnishing a
sort of indulgence for the immoralities of the rich. Poverty has even
been represented as a blessing, since it was to be compensated with
double joy in the hereafter. The Christian, pointing the miserable and
starving to Heaven as a recompense for pain, experienced, without
largely inconveniencing himself, a sense of his own piety and desert,
and exerting himself to no radical cure but only to a meagre dole of
charity, shifted all responsibility of the cure or its omission, by
prayer, to God. So Salter is led to exclaim: "If we must pray, let us
pray to men; for there all the trouble lies. Could you, O churches, but
open the hearts of your worshippers as you seek to move the heart of
God, the need for all other prayer would soon be gone."[269]
Again, Theology has continually taught that man's first duty was to save
his own soul from hell, and in this doctrine, ideas of repentance and
redemption, faith and worship, have played a larger part than "mere
morality." The tendency has, therefore, been towards an
"other-worldliness," an egoism of the Hereafter, rather than a
fulfilment of the commandment of love. Faith has been exalted above love
of Truth, and blind obedience above reasoning morality. Thus it was that
Christians entered, with such zeal, into the persecution of heretics.
Had the commandment of justice: "do unto others as ye would that they
should do unto you," been followed, the Inquisition could never have
taken place. But Christians forget, when they point to this commandment
in evidence of the superiority of Christian Ethics, that it is not the
only command or doctrine that the Bible contains. Nor is this conception
of love to others, which Christians have continually cited as testimony
of the divine origin of their religion, confined to Christianity or even
original with it. Many other religions contain it. The Buddhist religion
enjoins towards all creatures such love as that with which a mother
"watches over her own child, her only child."
It is true that the majority of the objectionable points of Christian
Ethics are found in the Old Testament. This testament is, however,
accepted as the exponent of divine truth, though the authority it now
possesses is slight in comparison with that which it formerly held. Yet
Christ himself says: "Think not I am come to destroy the Law (_i.e._,
the Pentateuch),[270] or the Prophets, I come not to destroy, but to
fulfil. For, verily, I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot
or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments and
shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of
heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called
great in the kingdom of heaven." Repeatedly, Christ shows himself a
strict conformant to the Jewish code. But if we examine the Pentateuch,
the Jewish Law, we shall easily find on what grounds the burning of
heretics and witches, and all the other cruelties of the Middle Ages
were committed in the name of Christianity. Lubbock writes, for
instance:[271] "Among the Jews, we find a system of animal sacrifice on
a great scale, and symbols of human sacrifice which can, I think, only
be understood on the hypothesis that the latter were once usual. The
case of Jephthah's daughter is generally looked upon as exceptional; but
the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth verses of the twenty-seventh chapter
of Leviticus appear to indicate that human sacrifices were at one time
habitual, among the Jews." See also 2 Sam. xxi. 1, 5-9, 14. In Lev. xx.
27; Ex. xxii. 18, the stoning of witches is commanded. In Ex. xxii. 20;
Deut. xiii. 1-5, 6-10, 14, 15; xvii. 1-5; xviii. 20, it was commanded
that men be put to death for idolatry or heresy or for "dreaming dreams"
in the service of another god, and that idolatrous cities should be
utterly destroyed even to the cattle within them. Superstition and
insanity must have fared ill among the Jews. Ex. xxxi. 14, 15; xxxv. 2,
3; sentence of death is pronounced on any who shall perform even so much
labor as the kindling of a fire on the Sabbath; and Num. xv. 32-36,
describe how a man was put to death, by God's command to Moses, for
gathering sticks on that day. Death was also commanded for murmuring and
for all sorts of ceremonial offences; see, for instance, Ex. xii. 15,
19; xxx. 33-38; Lev. vii. 20-27; xvii. 8-10, 13-16; xix. 5-8; xxiii. 29,
30; xxiv. 10-16, 23; Num. i. 51; iii. 10, 38; iv. 15, 18-20; xi. 1;
xvii. 13; xviii. 3, 7, 22; see also especially Deut. xxviii. 15-68;
xxxii. 22-42. Command of subjection to the priesthood on pain of death
is found in Deut. xvii. 8-12, and examples of fearful punishment for
protest against its supremacy are given in Num. xvi. 3-15, 20, 21,
26-35, 41-47, 49. It may be noticed, that here the children are
represented as perishing with the parents by God's express command and
miracle. Many instances of the stoning and putting to death of whole
families for the sins of some member or members of the family are
recorded in the Old Testament, and prove that the expression "visiting
the sins of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's
children, unto the third and to the fourth generation," is not to be
interpreted as a mere reference to heredity, as many have endeavored to
prove it to be. See on this point Is. xiv. 21; also Ps. cix. 7-20;
cxxxvii. 9. The origin of ordeals may be traced to Num. v. 11-31.
The Old Testament also sanctions slavery, and makes no protest against
the selling of children into slavery; see Ex. xxi. 2-6, 7; Lev. xxv.
44-47; although the Israelites were to treat slaves and servants of
their own nation with much greater kindness than that used towards those
of other nations. Ex. xxi. 20, 21, prescribes that a man shall not be
punished for beating his servant to death, provided the servant does not
die directly under his hand, but linger a day or two; "for he is his
money." Christians have often protested that their religion cannot be
held responsible for the sins of the prophets,--for David's murder of
Uriah in order to obtain the wife with whom he had already committed
adultery; for his torture of the Ammonites with saws and axes and
harrows and fire, and his houghing of the horses of a thousand Moabitish
chariots; for Solomon's concubinage and his slaughter of Joab according
to David's last orders; for Elijah's wholesale slaughter of the priests
of Baal; or for the thousand other vices, crimes, and atrocities
described in the Old Testament as committed by God's chosen men,
generally without punishment or protest from him. However, the case is
not so easily dismissed when we find just as great cruelties and
atrocities directly ascribed to God's express command or miraculous
interposition. A large number of such are included in the passages
already noticed; and we further find descriptions of a destruction from
God for the crime of census-taking[272]--1 Chron. xxi. 1, 11-15--for
touching the ark in the endeavor to save it from a fall--2 Sam. vi. 6,
7,--and for many other trifling offences. God is always represented as
favoring the Israelites in their wars and massacres, and often as
commanding the slaughter of thousands; so that we can easily understand
how it happened that the cowardly murderers of the Duke of Gloucester,
in the time of Richard II., swore "upon the Body of Christ before a
certain chaplain of St. George in the church of Our Lady of Calais, that
they would not disclose the murder they were about to perpetrate,"[273]
as also, on what precedent Russia, at the present day, has her
war-engines blessed by priests of the "God of Battles." Deut. xx. 10-15,
commands the slaughter of males captured in a siege, but the sparing
alive of women and children as booty; and Num. xxxi. describes a case in
which the command was carried out, with the reservation of a certain
portion of young girls for the priests. See also Deut. xxi. 10-14.
Furthermore, a religion that makes man absolute ruler of the earth and
all living things, and sanctions animal sacrifice, cannot conduce to a
sense of the duty of self-restraint towards other species, and is, in
fact, often used as an excuse for the autocracy and cruelty of man.
It is, indeed, strange to see civilized peoples of the nineteenth
century proclaiming the divine origin of laws and beliefs like
these--laws and beliefs at least as barbarous as those of the Greeks and
Romans whose gods the Christians deride, and far behind the Ethics of
some philosophical systems produced among those "heathen" peoples. As
has been said, various attempts have been made to explain away these
barbarities, or to withdraw all responsibility for them from God, to
whom the Old Testament often directly ascribes them. But in the light of
what we know of other primitive peoples the customs of the Jews are only
too easily comprehensible; the same barbarities of human and animal
sacrifice, slavery, murder without pity, and unscrupulous cruelty of
every sort, were to be found, as we have seen, among many other ancient
peoples. As for withdrawing the responsibility from the God of the Jews,
Christians forget that, in denying the divine origin of the cruel,
brutal, and obscene laws ascribed to God together with other laws of
less barbarity but of organic growth with these, they are forever
destroying the grounds of belief in any assertion of divine supervision,
and throwing doubt, by implication, on the New Testament as well, since
Christ and his followers were believers in the Law and the Prophets,
and often refer to their assertions and accounts of divine direction.
But most religions have claimed, and do claim, the divine origin and
ratification of their laws, as a means of enforcing them.
The God of the Jews, Jehovah, was originally a nature-god, the god of
the heavens, like Zeus, Jupiter, and many other of the greatest gods of
other peoples. Science has exploded ancient ideas of the sky; but the
Christians still cling to the old terms brought into use at a time when
men believed in a flat earth and a region of spirits above floored by an
opaque heaven. The God of the Jews was, like the gods of all primitive
peoples, a "jealous" and revengeful god, rather to be "feared" than
loved; for to such peoples, possessing few resources against the powers
of nature and ignorant of their character, the destructive forces of the
elements appeared at first rather evil than good, and therefore to be
conciliated and appeased; the gods take on their friendly character only
as man comes to learn how the forces of nature may be employed for his
benefit, and as he slowly attains, in himself, to sympathetic and moral
feeling. Accordingly, the Jews were continually occupied with all manner
of propitiatory offerings of their most valuable possessions--their
herds and the fruits of the earth; and these were burnt under the
impression common to nearly all primitive and savage tribes, that they
suffered by fire a sort of death and entered the spiritual world.
Gradually, the Jews became more civilized, and took on the higher ideals
of Eastern religions with which they came in contact; but even to very
recent date, the "fear" of God was regarded as the chief essential
emotion on the part of the worshipper. Of late, as social ideals have
become higher, and sympathy more general, the idea of love, lost for a
time through the mixture of Eastern peoples with more barbaric ones, has
come to the fore. That a doctrine of polytheism is clearly taught in
Gen. iii. 22; vi. 1-4, Christians do not generally even notice. The idea
of demigods, found in the latter verse, is called by them, when they
meet with it in the Greek or Roman religion, a "myth"; and the idea of
sexual intercourse between men and gods, also taught in these verses, is
held worthy of all abhorrence, when these "heathen" religions are under
consideration. The fact is, that exegesis, forced to advance by
progressing civilization, has left far behind the simple original
meaning of bible-texts,--such obvious meaning as Christians find in the
Buddhist, Persian, or Egyptian Scriptures, when they peruse them. This
is true of the New Testament as well as of the Old. The Christian
religion has indeed developed into a system of Christian philosophy as
different from the Christianity warranted by the Old and New Testaments
as were the later Buddhist philosophies from original Buddhism.
When Christ conferred upon his Apostles the power to forgive sins, he
laid the foundation for papal authority, and confirmed the ancient
authority of the priesthood, preparing the way for that organization of
priestcraft which figured so prominently in all the sorrowful history of
the Middle Ages. Moreover, the vein of sadness and the subordination of
natural modes of life which mark his teaching as they mark only in a
greater degree those of the Buddha, easily led to the celibacy and
mortification of the flesh which so long condemned the most aspiring
from a moral point of view, the most gentle and conscientious, to a life
of loneliness, and peopled the world with the progeny of the less moral.
Indeed, if we read Matt. xix. 12 correctly, Christ distinctly taught
emasculation as a high religious virtue.
The New Testament tolerated the slavery upheld by the Old Testament, and
we not only find no protest whatever against it, but we even find Paul
returning a runaway slave to his master. Not only Paul, but John also,
taught both predestination and hell-fire for idolaters and unbelievers,
as well as for the fearful and doubtful, equally with murderers,
whoremongers, and liars: Rev. xvii. 8; xx. 15. Christ himself plainly
proclaims the damnation of unbelievers--Matt. xxii. 13, 14; xxiii. 14,
33; Mark xvi. 16; etc.--and he at the same time asserts a very positive
doctrine of predestination, avowing that he himself takes special pains
that many of those to whom he preaches shall not be able to understand
him, believe, and be saved: Mark iv. 11, 12; John xii. 39, 40. His
language on these subjects is very clear, and bears no sign of being
intended as figurative, though modern Christians prefer to regard it as
such rather than to relinquish a religion the morals of which would, by
other interpretation, be proved inadequate to the demands of the
standards of higher civilization; the same method of exegesis applied to
the sacred books of Confucianism or of Buddhism, from which it now
appears probable that very many of the Christian ideas were derived,
would suit them ill. But even if Christ's language were figurative, it
must have some meaning; the wrath and vengeance of God are continually
spoken of in the New Testament as well as in the Old. Such expressions
were not looked upon, until of late, as figurative, and they doubtless
did much to justify, to the minds of earlier Christians, the burning of
heretics. The justification of all sin in God's elect, a permanent
indulgence, is plainly taught by Paul, Rom. viii. 33; iv. 5-8; 1 Cor.
vi. 12. Let us take the Buddhist Scriptures, and, in the light of the
better passages, or in the light of Siddhartha's devotion to truth and
to his fellow men, interpret the passages which, morally, we find
wanting, and we shall find this religion as beautiful as the Christian.
A chief reason often advanced by Christians for continued faith in their
religion, is the comfort conferred by a belief in immortality and the
forgiveness of sins through Christ; that is, the rescue of men from the
"wrath of God" through the offering of an innocent being, a "human
sacrifice," which was to bear this wrath, and appease it, according to
the old Jewish idea of the scapegoat. The morality of the last doctrine
we have already condemned; there is no real making atonement in this
world; we should recognize this fact, bear the responsibility of our
deeds, and in the light of past experience, avoid the repetition of our
old sins. And the moral question as to mortality or immortality is not:
"What is the pleasanter to believe?" but "What is the truth?" In this
recommendation of the pleasant in belief, we have but an illustration of
one of the chief defects of Christian theory, which lays most stress
upon faith and far less upon a love of the Truth at all costs. The peace
of the Christian's death-bed is often made one of the chief arguments in
favor of the Christian religion. But the mind in which there exists the
noble love of truth will seek this only at the cost of all peace and
blind content.
On the general connection of faith and morals, Clifford writes: "Belief
in God and in a future life is a source of refined and elevated pleasure
to those who can hold it. But the foregoing of a refined and elevated
pleasure, because it appears that we have no right to indulge in it, is
not in itself, and cannot produce as its consequences, a decline of
morality."[274] Indeed, Christianity, as has been already remarked, and
as is conclusively shown by any conscientious and unprejudiced
examination of the Bible itself, leaves room for an ease of conscience
and a self-excuse in even very great sins, which no high standard of
morals can tolerate. How many of those who attend church regularly, on
Sunday, are restrained by their religion from practising vice and
injustice on week-days, under the consolation, if their conscience
troubles them at all, that their prayers for forgiveness and the
bestowal of charity, or even, in extremity, a death-bed "repentance"
will make their peace with God? In place of an attempt at reparation
towards men, against whom sin is really done, Christians are taught to
seek the "forgiveness" of God. Some there are, indeed, who remember only
the law of love and endeavor to follow it. All honor to them. But they
are adherents of a modern Christian Philosophy, the product of many good
men who have winnowed out the wheat of their religion and left the
chaff; they are not followers of the Bible, or even of the New
Testament, as a whole. Many there are who are perceiving this, and the
old system needs replacement with a newer and higher--with a system
which affords clear and evident grounds for moral action, leaves no room
for mysticism, self-justification, or inaction, offers no opiate to
conscience. Such a system must be founded on the solid rock of
scientific Truth; not on any doctrine of blind obedience to traditions;
it must take into account man's evolution, that it may progress with his
progress.
Many term the Ethics of science dry and uninspiring, and turn, with
preference, to religions which, if they give us mysticism or pessimism,
give us poetry also; for man is an emotional as well as an intellectual
being; and there may be much poetry in pessimism. But again, it may be
said that the Truth is that which we should first seek. And especially
let it be remembered that, if poetry is lacking, it may be that the
deficiency is in ourselves. It is a history many times repeated, that
men call their age and its ideas dry and uninteresting, and seek their
ideals and inspirations in the past, until the master-mind arises, who
boldly faces and interprets the realities about him; and then men
exclaim and wonder, and find that their own blindness, and not the age,
was at fault. We cling by habit to the old and fear the new; and so we
have yet to inspire these new ideals with the beauty gained by
association and habit; in themselves, they do not lack beauty. In
truth, as I believe that there is more of poetry in the gray wires
strung across our streets and guiding the swift, silent, fearful forces
in which lies power to light a city or destroy a life, than ever was in
any feeble-flamed Grecian lamp, so I believe also that, in the dry,
hard, cold-seeming facts of modern science there lurks more poetry than
all the ages gone have known; though we may need the poet to interpret
it to us. The highest poetry is that of love; and it is the realization
of this poetry that the Ethics of Evolution teaches, promises, and
enjoins. Certainly the superficial Utilitarianism which looks only at
external forms of government and customs and the arithmetically
calculated relations of men, not at their inner character and the
organic complexity of moral questions, cannot satisfy in the long run.
Nor can the bald Materialism satisfy which, standing by its analysis in
physical terms like the physiologist in the dissecting-room with his
chemicals about him and the dead nerves and muscles in his hand,
exclaims with a triumph that is half a sneer: "This is all." It is not
all. The synthesis of nature and of life cannot be represented by its
parts merely; the bond of organization wanting, all is wanting. Nor is
the action in the brain more real, more forceful, more spontaneous, or
freer, than the love for a friend, the thought of him, or the will to do
him a kindness.
FOOTNOTES:
[256] "Moral Order and Progress," p. 292; Part I., this book, pp. 250,
251.
[257] "Moral Order and Progress," p. 287, etc.; Part I. p. 249, this
book.
[258] "Moral Order and Progress," pp. 307, 312; Part I. pp. 250, 252,
253, this book.
[259] "Moral Order and Progress," Book I. Chap. II.; Part I. pp. 231,
232, this book.
[260] "Moral Order and Progress," p. 332.
[261] See "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls."
[262] "Moral Order and Progress," p. 270; Part I., this book, p. 247.
[263] On the theory of Weismann.
[264] "Human Progress, Past and Present," "The Arena" for Jan., 1892.
[265] "Ethik," p. 344.
[266] See Part I. p. 147.
[267] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 32-34.
[268] George Eliot, "Romola."
[269] Salter, "Ethical Religion."
[270] It is strange that even enlightened Christians often, without
thinking, interpret the "Scriptures" referred to by Christ as if they,
in some way, included the New Testament, which was not written till long
after his death.
[271] "The Origin of Civilization," p. 373.
[272] Superstitious fears are often awakened in savage tribes, and among
the ignorant of our own more advanced societies, by attempts at
census-taking.
[273] Pike, "History of Crime," I. p. 405.
[274] Essays and Lectures, "The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in
Religious Belief."