Produced by Al Haines
MORALITY AS A RELIGION
AN EXPOSITION OF SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES
BY
W. R. WASHINGTON SULLIVAN
"Religion is Morality recognised as a Divine command."
--IMMANUEL KANT
"The mind of this age has fallen away from theology to
morals. I conceive it an advance."
--EMERSON
LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIM.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
1898
[_All rights reserved_]
PREFACE.
A recent work by M. Guyau was originally announced under the title of
_The Non-Religion of the Future_, and, doubtless, an impression is
generally prevalent that, with the modification or disappearance of
traditional forms of Belief, the fate of Religion itself is involved.
The present volume is a plea for a reconsideration of the Religious
question, and an inquiry as to the possibility of reconstructing
Religion by shifting its basis from inscrutable dogmas to the
unquestionable facts of man's moral nature. It is now some fifty years
since Emerson wrote that "the progress of Religion is steadily towards
its identification with Morals," and foretold "a new Church founded on
Moral Science . . . the Church of men to come". It is more than a
century since the immortal Immanuel Kant startled Europe by the
betrayal of the immensity of the emotion whereby the contemplation of
"man's sense of law" filled his soul, shedding henceforth an unfading
glory about the ideal of Duty and Virtue, and elevating it in the
strictest sense to the supreme height of Religion. What these men--the
prophet and philosopher of the New Idealism--thought and did has borne
fruit in the foundation in America, Great Britain and Ireland, in
France, Germany, Austria and Italy, of Centres or Societies of Ethical
Culture which assume as axiomatic that there is, there can be, no
Religion but that which makes us one with the Moral Progress of
Humanity, by incessant co-operation with "the Power that makes for
Righteousness". If Religion be, what its name signifies, the unifying
principle of mankind, in no other wise can we be possibly made One with
each other and with the Universal Power than by so living as to secure
the ends for which worlds and men exist. As the great Ethical prophet
of the West expressed the truth: "My Father worketh even until now, and
I also work". In such co-operation by moral life we place the very
essence of Religion.
With a view to propagating such a conception of Religion, wholly based
on Morality, a Society was founded in the autumn of the past year which
assumed the title of "The Ethical Religion Society," and described
itself as a branch of "The Ethical Church," "the Church of men to
come," which is one day to emerge from the united efforts of all who
believe in the everlasting "Sovereignty of Ethics," the unconditioned
Supremacy of the Moral Law. The Ethical Movement is now beginning to
spread in Europe and America. It is represented very largely in the
United States, where, indeed, it was inaugurated some twenty years ago
by Dr. Felix Adler, of New York; in Germany, by a score or more of
Societies; in Italy, in Austria, in Hungary, and quite recently in
France and Norway. London, of course, is represented by numerous
Societies, and Ireland possesses one at Belfast. So far, there has
been nothing definite accomplished towards a federation of these
representative Bodies, though some preliminary steps have been taken in
the formation of an international committee. The various Societies are
quite independent, nor are their speculative opinions always in
agreement. One only principle is universally and unreservedly
acknowledged, namely, _the absolute supremacy and independence of
Morality_, whatever philosophical differences may exist as to
speculative matters connected therewith. The Movement stands for
freedom. _In certis, unitas; in dubiis, libertas._
As regards the Ethical Religion Society, which meets at Steinway Hall,
Portman Square, and for which alone the present volume has any claim to
speak, it may be said that it expresses the Ethical interpretation with
which the teaching of Kant and Emerson, and the Idealist school
generally, have made us familiar. During the year of its existence it
may be said to have met a certain need, and to have gained numerous
adherents from amongst those who, finding it impossible to "stand upon
the old ways," were yet in need of an Idealism and an inspiration of
life. The teaching given weekly at its Sunday Services is summarised
in the following chapters, which are published under the impression
that some information respecting a Body which is content to make the
Moral life its ideal and reverence Conscience as "the highest, holiest"
reality, may be welcome to religious idealists generally. The volume
is altogether of an introductory character, and merely aims at
conveying the central truth of Ethical Religion expressed by Immanuel
Kant in the well-known words--_Religion is Morality recognised as a
Divine command. Morality is the foundation. Religion only adds the
new and commanding point of view._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. ETHICS AND RELIGION
II. ETHICS AND SCIENCE
III. ETHICS AND THEISM
IV. IMMANUEL KANT, THE ETHICAL PHILOSOPHER
V. THE ETHICAL DOCTRINE OF COMPENSATION
VI. CONSCIENCE THE VOICE OF GOD AND THE VOICE OF MAN
VII. PRIESTS AND PROPHETS
VIII. PRAYER IN THE ETHICAL CHURCH
IX. THE ETHICAL ASPECT OF DEATH
X. THE ETHICAL ASPECT OF WAR
XI. THE ETHICS OF MARRIAGE
XII. THE ETHICAL CHURCH AND POSITIVISM
XIII. THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW AS SEEN IN "HELBECK OF BANNISDALE"
XIV. THE RELIGION OF TENNYSON
XV. "THE UNKNOWN GOD"
XVI. "A CHAPEL IN THE INFINITE"
XVII. "THE OVER-SOUL"
MORALITY AS A RELIGION.
I.
ETHICS AND RELIGION.
Some fifteen years ago a discussion was carried on in the pages of one
of our leading monthlies on the profoundly important question, "The
Influence on Morality of a Decline in Religious Belief". Men of every
shade of opinion, from Roman Catholicism to Agnosticism, contributed
their views, and, as might well have been expected, they came to the
most contradictory conclusions. The Roman Catholic and Anglican
writers appeared to think that the mere husk of morality would be left
with the disappearance of Christianity; that a sort of enlightened
epicureanism, a prudent animalism, would sway the greater part of
mankind; in a word, that we should be "whited sepulchres," fair to look
on without, but "inside full of dead men's bones, and all filthiness".
The agnostic was no less certain that morality, which had outgrown the
cumbrous garments manufactured by theology, would get on equally well
in the handy raiment provided by science. The Rev. Dr. Martineau,
speaking as a theistic philosopher, accurately delineated the
boundaries of religion and morality, proceeded to show the
untenableness of these two extreme positions, and nobly vindicated the
complete autonomy or independence of ethics, whether of theological or
scientific doctrines.
Before stating the views which an ethical society advocates as to the
relations between religion and ethics, it would be very opportune to
remark that in the symposium or discussion referred to, sufficient
emphasis was not laid on an extremely important distinction which
should be borne in mind when we estimate the comparative importance of
religion and ethics. It is this. Religion, to ninety-nine out of
every hundred men who talk about it, does not mean religion in its
genuine character, but philosophy. A man's religion is merely a
synonym for the reasoned explanation of the universe, of man, and their
destiny, which he has learnt from the particular ecclesiastical
organisation to which he belongs. Thus, the Christian religion means
to the Anglican the Bible as interpreted by the Thirty-nine Articles;
to the Dissenter, the same book, as interpreted by some confession,
such as the Westminster, the Calvinistic, or the like. To the Roman
Catholic it is synonymous with what has been, and what in future may
be, the verdict of a central teaching corporation whose judgment is
final and irrevocable. Similarly, religion for the Mohammedan is the
precise form which his founder gave it, whilst the Buddhist is equally
persistent in upholding the version of Sakya Mouni. Now, it is plain
that religion itself is one definite thing, and cannot be made to cover
a multiplicity of contradictory statements. What, then, are these
Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan and Buddhist religions? They are not
religions at all: they are merely philosophies, or systematised
accounts of God, the world, and of man, which have obtained large
support in earlier stages of the world's history. Religion itself is a
thing apart from these ephemeral forms in which it has been made to
take shape. It is the great sun of reality, whose pure and authentic
radiance has been decomposed in the spectrum of the human brain, each
man seizing on an individual ray of broken light and making that the
sum and substance of his belief.
Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.
It is the aim of this movement, for the establishment of ethical
religion, to re-discover to man's wondering eyes the imperishable
beauty of a religion allied to no transitory elements, wrapped up in no
individual philosophy, bounded by no limitations of time, place or
race, but ever the self-same immutable reality, though manifesting
itself in most diverse ways, the sense of the infinite in man, and the
communion of his spirit with that alone.
Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with spirit can meet,
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands or feet.
What has philosophy, creed or council to say to that high and ennobling
conception? Shall "articles" and "confessions" venture to intrude
there in the innermost sanctuary of man's spiritual being and dictate
to him what he shall hold or not hold of a reality about which he alone
is conscious? What has the conflict about the Hebrew cosmogony, of
Genesis, baptismal regeneration, or the validity of orders to do with
that serene peace in which religion alone can dwell? It were profanity
surely to intrude such strife of words in a sanctuary so sacred as that.
One of our saddest thoughts as we reflect on the "little systems," so
called, of the day, must be that they have so inconceivably belittled
religion, tearing away that veil of reverence which should ever
enshrine the Holy of Holies. The only atmosphere in which religion can
really live is one of intense reverence, and when we hear of revivals,
pilgrimages, elaborate ritualism (I am afraid Emerson describes it as
"peacock ritual"), we may safely doubt whether the soul of religion be
there. It is an excitement, a large advertisement for one or other of
the many ecclesiastical corporations of the age, but where is the
lonely communing with the Unseen, as revealed in the story of Jesus or
the Buddha? The reason why Jesus is so fascinating a memory to his
church disciples is that he is so wholly unlike them. So little is
there really spiritual and suggestive of the higher life in what is
exclusively ecclesiastical, that in their best moments men
instinctively turn away from it, and find inspiration and peace in
quiet thoughts about the Master, who said, "The Kingdom of God," that
is the kingdom of righteousness, or the ethical church, "cometh not
with observation," and "The Kingdom of God is within you". The more
inward religion is, the less formalism it employs, the more ethical it
becomes, the nearer it approaches the ideal of the great Master. A
pure and saintly inspiration, an ennobling and yet subduing influence,
a solemn stillness and hushing of the senses that would contend for
mastery, an odour blown from "the everlasting hills," filling life with
an indescribable fragrance; such is religion as professed and taught by
Jesus, and such is the ideal of the Church of Emerson, builded on the
purified emotions of the human heart.
Perhaps I have now indicated what I mean by religion, "pure and
undefiled," though I know too well what truth lies hid in those words
of the "Over-soul," "Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act
of the soul". The spoken word does but suggest, and that faintly, what
the inner word of the soul expresses on matters so sublime. Still, so
far as the limitations of thought and speech permit, we have shown how
religion is the communion of man's spirit with the "Over-soul," the
baring of his heart before the immensities and eternities which
encompass him, the deep and beautiful soliloquy of the soul in the
silence of the Great Presence.
Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line
Severing rightly His from thine,
Which is human, which Divine.
--_Conduct of Life_.
Let us now pass on to inquire what are the relations between religion
so conceived and ethics or morality. In the first place, it must be
laid down as clearly as words will permit that religion and morality
should always be conceived as separate realities. Of course, there can
be no such thing as religion "pure and undefiled" without morality or
right conduct; nevertheless, the two words connote totally distinct
activities of the soul of man. We shall best explain our meaning by
pointing to the obvious fact that there have not been wanting men in
all times who have exhibited an almost ideal devotion to duty without
betraying any sympathy whatsoever with religious emotion such as has
been described. They have no sense of the infinite, as others have no
sense of colour, art or music, and in nowise feel the need of that
transcendent world wherein the object of religion is enshrined. I
should say that the elder Mill was such a man, and his son, John Stuart
Mill, until the latter years of his life, when his views appear to have
undergone a marked change. Some of his disappointed friends ascribed
the change to the serious shock he suffered at his wife's death. There
may possibly be truth in that opinion; "the winnowing wings of death"
often bring about a searching change. No one yet has ever been able to
seriously live up to the Hedonistic rule, "eat and drink for to-morrow
we die". If death were announced, the very last thing man would do
would be to eat and make merry.
However, it is notoriously possible to "bring forth fruits of
righteousness," or, to use modern language, to live the good life,
without seeking any help from that world of the ideal in which religion
lives. This teaching, of course, is diametrically opposed to that of
the Churches, who lay it down almost as an axiom that without such
extraneous assistance as "grace," generally conveyed in answer to
direct supplication, or through the mystery of Sacramental agencies,
such as Baptism or the Lord's Supper, it is fairly impossible to keep
the moral law. To the credit of humanity, this dark theology has been
falsified by results in countless instances, and never more frequently
than to-day. Men whose names are in the mouth of everybody have lived
and died in the enjoyment not merely of the esteem, but of the reverent
admiration of their age, whose lives were wholly uninspired by
religious motives. I need only mention Charles Darwin, and when we
remember that not even sectarianism ventured to dispute his right to
rest within the hallowed precincts of an abbey-cathedral, ecclesiastics
themselves must be fast forgetting the deplorable narrowness of old
views which made morality and dogmatism inter-dependent terms.
Nevertheless, it must be conceded, and such men as I have spoken of
were the first to admit it, that lives such as these are necessarily
imperfect. The stunting or the atrophy of the religious instinct, the
hunger and thirst for something beyond the sphere of sense when left
totally unsatisfied, produces at length a restless, tormented feeling,
which turns the very joy of existence to sadness, and dims the light of
life. Such men may plunge into pleasure, absorb themselves in their
books or research, wear and waste themselves in the making of wealth,
and for a time they are satisfied. But the imperious craving reasserts
itself at length; there is the cry of the soul for some lost
inspiration, some transfiguring influence to soften the hard way of
life, console a lonely hour, comfort a bereavement, inspire that
tenderness and sympathy, without which we are scarcely even human. One
remembers Darwin's sorrowful admission, that the deadening of his
spiritual instincts left him incapable of enjoying, or even tolerating,
the rhythm of the poet's verse. The world has heard the note of
weariness with which Mr. Spencer absolved himself from further effort
on behalf of science and man. The late Prof. Romanes, in his volume
entitled _A Candid Examination of Theism_, made the melancholy
declaration that the admission of a philosophy of pure mechanism or
materialism had, for him at least, "robbed the universe of its soul of
beauty". In later years, as is well known, the same writer came to see
things with other eyes. Mind took the place of force as the ultimate
fact of creation, and with it the sun of loveliness returned once more.
Have we ever sufficiently reflected that the purely negative philosophy
has done nothing for idealism in any shape or form? It has inspired no
art, music or poetry. With nothing to draw upon but the blind whirl of
infinite atoms and infinite forces, of which man is himself the
haphazard and highest production, it has contented itself with the
elementary work of destruction, without even attempting to dig the
foundations for anything which it is proposed to erect in the place of
what has been destroyed. "Scepticism," says Carlyle, "is, after all,
only half a magician. She calls up more spectres than she can lay."
Scepticism was, nay is, sometimes, a necessary attitude of the human
mind. But man cannot live on doubt alone, and therefore, though we
profoundly believe the possibility of living the good life
independently of religious sanctions, we unhesitatingly affirm the deep
need man has of religious emotion to satisfy the ineradicable instinct
of his nature towards communion with the unseen world. Here are the
words of a man who had exhausted the possibilities of life before he
wrote them, conveying in the simplest, though most penetrating way, a
most momentous truth: "_Fecisti nos Domine ad Te, et irrequiêtum est
cor nostrum donec requiescat in Te_". "_Thou hast made us, O Lord, for
Thyself, and our heart is restless until it find rest in Thee_." And
if we would have a modern commentary upon this saying of the fourth
century writer, Augustine of Hippo, here are a few words of Victor
Hugo, spoken in the French Parliament of the forties: "_Dieu se
retrouve à la fin de tout_".
Before leaving this point, it would be well to complete the argument by
distinctly stating that, as morality is possible without religion,
religion--or rather we should call it religiosity--is possible without
morality. This is a matter of very great importance, and what has been
asserted will help us to understand the curious phenomena one meets
with in all periods of the world's history--men and women, apparently
of undeniable religious instincts, exhibiting a most imperfect
appreciation of the far more weighty matters concerned with moral
conduct. I am not speaking of downright hypocrites who make religion
merely a cloak for the realisation of rascally designs. I speak rather
of such individuals, who, while betraying a marked religious fervour,
showing itself in assiduous attention at church services,
proselytising, and religious propaganda generally, manifest on the
other hand little or no delicacy or sensitiveness of conscience on
purely ethical matters. Take for example such men as Torquemada and
the inquisitors, or Calvin amongst the Protestants; take the orgies of
sensuality which were the necessary accompaniment of much religious
worship in Pagan times, and, if we may believe travellers, are not
wholly dissociated with popular religion in India and China to-day.
Or, again, take such a case as that of the directors of the Liberator
Building Society, men whose prospectuses, annual reports, and even
announcements of dividends, were saturated with the unction of
religious fervour. Or, take the tradesman who may be a churchwarden or
deacon at his church or chapel, but exhibits no scruples whatever in
employing false weights, and, worst of all, in adulterating human food.
An incalculable amount of this sort of thing goes on, and, whether it
be accurate or not I cannot say, it is often ascribed to small dealers
in small towns and villages, "pillars of the church," as a rule, which
they may happen to attend.
Now, in all these cases there is no need to suppose conscious
hypocrisy. Unconscious, possibly; but, though the heart of man be
inscrutable, we need not necessarily believe that such phenomena are
open evidence of wilful self-deceit. The far truer explanation is,
that religious emotion is one thing and moral emotion quite another.
The late chairman of the Liberator Building Company, I can well
conceive, was a fervent and devoted adherent of his sect, and was not
consciously insincere, when, in paying dividends out of capital, he
ascribed his prosperity to the unique care of a heavenly providence
which especially occupied itself about all he personally undertook.
The rascality of Saturday was entirely forgotten on Sunday, when, with
bowed head, he recited his metaphysical creed or received the parting
blessing. The Sunday service, the surpliced choir, those melting
hymns, the roll of the organ's mysterious tones throughout the holy
edifice, the peculiar sense of spiritual well-being and prosperity
which it all combined to produce was probably a joy of his life, and by
no means the meanest. The mischief was that he had no moral sense, and
the word honesty and duty connoted nothing real to his mis-shapen mind.
He was a morally deficient being.
Now, the ethical Church has come for this great purpose, to make us see
the repulsiveness of a religion of that kind, to assure every man that
no religious services, any more than the eager subscription of
antiquated formularies, constitute the essence of religion. That is
built on the moral law, and unless it come as the crown and glory of a
life of duty, then that religion is a shameful thing, the sacrilegious
degradation of the highest and holiest thing on earth. It has come,
this ethical Church, to reinforce the wholly forgotten teaching of the
Hebrew prophets of the utter emptiness of all religion devoid of moral
life, the vanity of sacrifices, oblations and rites, the hollowness of
formularies, creeds and confessions, the indispensable necessity of an
ethical basis for all religious belief and practice. "What more," asks
Micah, "doth the Lord require of thee than to do justice, love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God?"
It has come also to indicate the true relations between ethics and
religion. Ethics are truly the basis on which religion is built, but
when once the sacred edifice is fully raised, a beautiful reaction is
set up (at least in the ideal good life), and religion becomes one of
the strongest incentives to a dutiful and virtuous life. This is the
explanation of the truly ideal lives lived by men and women of deep
personal religion, in all sects and creeds, European and Asiatic.
This, too, is the justification of that oft-repeated and profoundly
true saying, that all good men and women belong to the same religion.
It is to that one true, pure, and aboriginal religion we wish to get
back, in which we discover the best ally of morality, the all-powerful
incentive to a life wholly devoted to duty and the service of the human
brotherhood. The allegory of the Last Judgment, as it is called, as
depicted by Jesus himself in the Gospel according to Matthew,
emphasises this ethical truth in words of great solemnity. The sheep
and the goats are distinguished, not by the possession or
non-possession of miraculous spiritual powers, professions of belief or
Church membership, but by the humble devotion exhibited to suffering
humanity, and steadfast perseverance in the path of duty. How was it
possible, we ask again and again, for such a religion as that to be
transformed into the thing of shreds and patches of bad philosophy as
set forth in the Nicene and Athanasian Creed?
Forget all that, we would fain exhort men, forget all but the words
that made music on the Galilean hills, the life "lived in the
loveliness of perfect deeds," the veritable exemplar of a religion
founded on the moral sentiment. To be touched by the influence of
religious emotion is to approach in greater or less degree to the image
and character of Christ. To live a life of devotion to duty, however
humble our station may be, is to range ourselves, with that great
Master of ethics, on the side of an eternal order of righteousness
which can never fail. It is to work with that soul of reason
dominating everything in the animate and inanimate world, to co-operate
with it towards the fulfilment of those high ends which are predestined
for humanity. Every man must make his choice. Either he will ally
himself with all that makes for moral advancement--his own, that of
others, and consequently of the world--or he will fight for the powers
of retrogression and decay. He will live for the hour and its
momentary pleasures, fight for his own hand alone, forget mercy and
pity, seldom think, never reflect, and at length, sated and yet
dissatisfied with all he has experienced, sink impotently and ignobly
into the grave. Immanuel Kant lays it down as an axiom that the moral
law must inevitably be fulfilled one day in every individual human
being. It is the destiny of man to be one day perfect. What a
searching change must sometime pass over those who have taken the wrong
side in this earth-life, who have helped on the process of
disintegration, and contrived to leave the world worse than they found
it! They fight for a losing cause: they lose themselves in fighting
for it.
It has been said, I have heard it said myself, that "ethics are cold".
Possibly to some they are; but at any rate they are grave and solemn
when they hold language such as this to the pleasure-loving, the
light-hearted, and the indifferent. To tell a man to do his duty in
spite of all, to love the good life irrespectively of any reward here
or hereafter, may sound cold after the dithyrambics of the Apocalypse
or the Koran, but of one thing we are assured by the experience of
those who have made the trial of it themselves, that any man who "will
do the doctrine," that is, live the life, shall know at once "whether
it be of God"--that alone is the unspeakable peace, passing all
understanding.
But ethics are not alone. As I have endeavoured to point out,
religious emotion which grows out of the moral sentiment is the most
powerful stimulus towards the realisation of the good life, and I
consequently urged the supreme value of true religion, as both
satisfying the emotional side of man's nature and stimulating him
towards that sacrifice of self--that taking up of a "cross," as Jesus
put it--which in some measure is indispensably necessary for the
attainment of character.
But I in no wise concede that ethics are "cold"; I in no wise admit
they are uninspiring. The consciousness that a man possesses of being
one with the great Power of the universe in making for righteousness is
surely an overwhelming thought. If man would but think, he would come
to feel with Emerson "the sublimity of the moral laws," their awful
manifestation of the working of infinite mind and power, and of man's
nearness to, or rather oneness with, that Power, when he obeys them.
He would come to thrill with an indescribable emotion with Kant, as he
thinks of the infinite dignity to which fellowship with those
mysterious laws elevates him. He would realise the truth of the solemn
words:--
Two things fill me with ceaseless awe,
The starry heavens, and man's sense of law.
Ethics cold! Then what else is left to inspire to us? We are
bankrupt. What is there in all the Churches to help humanity if not
their ethics--ethics which are not the perquisite of any sect, no mere
provincialism of any Church or nation, but the heirloom of mankind?
What, we ask, is there to cheer the heart in the Thirty-nine Articles,
the Vatican decrees, or the Westminster Confession? What mysterious
inspiration lurks in the dogmas of the Oriental councils of 1600 years
ago, dogmas to be believed to-day under peril of perishing
everlastingly? We do not concede that the ethical Church has no
message to the heart, no comfort for the emotions, no solace to the
deeply tried and afflicted. A Church which preaches the
imperishability of every good deed, the final and decisive victory of
the good; which reveals to us not only mind, but beneficence, as the
character of the supreme Power in the universe; which bids us remember
that as that Power is, so are we, moral beings to our heart's core,
and, in consequence, to take the place which belongs to us at the side
of the infinite righteousness for the furtherance of the good--such a
Church, such a religion is not destitute of enthusiasm and inspiration.
A philosophy such as this, a religion such as this, will one day sweep
the English-speaking countries in a tempest of enthusiasm. It will be
welcomed as the final settlement of the conflicting claims of mind and
heart in man, the reconciliation of the feud too long existing between
religion and science. Everything points to its immense future. Within
the churches its principles are tacitly accepted as irrefutable. We
claim such men as Stanley, Maurice and Jowett as preachers of the
ethical Church, and their numbers are increasing every year among the
cultured members of the Anglican clergy. Leading men of science are no
longer committed to a purely negative philosophy, while one and all
would be prepared to admit that if religion we are to have it must be
one in complete harmony with the moral sentiment in the best men; in
other words, a Church founded on moral science, the ideal of the
saintly Jesus, and of all the prophets of the race.
NOTE.--"I can conceive the existence of a Church in which, week by
week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract
propositions in theology, but to the setting before men's minds of an
ideal of true, just and pure living: a place in which those who are
weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment's rest in the
contemplation of the higher life which is possible for all, though
attained by so few; a place in which the man of strife and of business
should have time to think how small after all are the rewards he covets
compared with peace and charity. _Depend upon it, if such a Church
existed, no one would seek to disestablish it._"--HUXLEY. I know not
what better words could be chosen wherewith to describe the ethical
Church.
II
ETHICS AND SCIENCE.
Since the era of the re-birth of learning, each successive century has
been generally distinguishable by some marked intellectual development,
by some strong movement which has taken deep hold of the minds of men.
Thus the Renascimento period was followed by the century of the
Reformation, and that again by the inauguration of the era of modern
philosophy, while the eighteenth century has been claimed as the
_Saeculum Rationalisticum_, the age of rationalism, in which the claims
of reason were pushed to the forefront in the domains of religion and
politics. Nothing remained after that but an age of physical science,
and surely enough has been given us in the nineteenth century which may
with equal accuracy be termed the _Saeculum Scientificum_.
It cannot be doubted that a sort of mental intoxication has been set up
as a result of the extraordinary successes which have rewarded the
efforts of scientific investigators. Everything now-a-days is
expressed in terms of science and its formulae. Evolution is the
keynote to the learning of the age. Thus Mr. Spencer's system of the
Synthetic Philosophy is a bold and comprehensive attempt to take up the
whole knowable, and express it anew in the language of development. It
is emphatically, professedly, the philosophy of evolution, the rigid
application of a purely scientific formula to everything capable of
philosophical treatment. Now, having discussed the question of ethics
and religion, their distinction and their intimate relations; having
shown how that religion comes as the crown and glory of the ethical
life, the transfiguration of the ethical ideal and the most powerful
stimulus towards the realisation in practice of what is conceived as
theoretically desirable, it remains for us to complete our treatment of
this aspect of the ethical problem and determine the relations existing
between morals and science.
This question we conceive to be of vital importance. Just as we must
be inexorable in refusing to base our ethic on religion, and still less
on theology, so must we be equally determined in repudiating the claim
often put forward, that morality is a department of physics, or in any
way founded on physical science. The scientific professor, feeling the
ground strong under his feet, and sure of the applause of his very
numerous public, has made a bold bid for the control of the moral
order. He has made a serious attempt to capture the ethical world, and
to coerce morality into obedience to the inflexible formulae of
physics. The evolutionist, in particular, is consumed with an
irresistible desire to stretch the ethical ideal on his procrustean
couch and to show how, like everything else, it has been the subject of
painfully slow growth and development, and that when the stages of that
growth have been accurately ascertained by research into the records of
the past, the essence of morality is fully explained. Originally
non-extant, it has become at length, after aeons of struggle, the chief
concern of man, the "business of all men in common," as Locke puts it,
all of which philosophy is tantamount to saying, that morality is
merely a flatter of history. When you know its history, you know
everything, very much as a photographer might claim to exhaustively
know an individual man, because he had photographed him every six
months from his cradle to his grave. A very inadequate philosophy of
ethic, this.
But, before coming to close quarters with this extremely interesting
problem, I would protest that we are sincere in our loyalty and
enthusiasm for physical science, sincere in our deep admiration for its
chief exponents. We claim to be students of the students of nature,
for, after all, nature herself is the great scientist. The secrets are
all in her keeping. The All-Mother is venerable indeed in the eyes of
every one of us. "The heated pulpiteer" may denounce modern science as
the evil genius of our day, the arch-snare of Satan for the seduction
of unwary souls and the overthrow of Biblical infallibility, but we are
not in that galley. As true sons of our age, we are loyal to its
spirit, and that spirit is scientific. The late Professor Tyndall said
of Emerson, the veritable prophet and inspiration of ethical religion:
"In him we have a poet and a profoundly religious man, who is really
and entirely undaunted by the discoveries of science, past, present and
prospective, and in his case poetry, with the joy of a bacchanal, takes
her graver brother science by the hand, and cheers him with immortal
laughter. By Emerson scientific conceptions are continually transmuted
into the finer forms and warmer lines of an ideal world." It is in no
spirit, therefore, of hostility to physical science or her methods that
we venture to point out that the term science is not synonymous with
experimental research. The most brilliant work of Darwin, Kelvin or
Edison in no wise alters the fact that there are more things in heaven
and earth than are revealed by their microscopes or decomposed in their
crucibles. Mental science, and above all moral or ethical science,
have a claim to be heard as well as physics. Philosophy, strictly
speaking, working by the light, not of the senses, as does physical
science, but by the higher light of the intelligence alone, must be
reckoned with by the thoughtful man. Yet this is precisely what so
many of the lesser luminaries of science, the popularisers of the great
discoveries made by other and greater men, appear to be wholly unable
to see. They have borrowed their foot-rule for the mensuration of the
universe, and they apply it indiscriminately. Everything, from the
dead earth to the glowing inspiration of the prophet's soul, must be
labelled in terms of that infallible instrument. If it cannot be
reduced to their exiguous standard, so much the worse for it. Science,
or rather "the heated pulpiteer" of science (for these inflammatory
gentlemen are found both in the pulpit and at the rostrum), can take no
account of it, and that settles the matter once for all.
We may proceed to offer a few illustrations of the attempt of the
scientist to capture the domain of ethics. The late Professor Huxley,
of whom we would speak with all the respect due to his high position as
a scientific expositor, roundly asserts that "the safety of morality is
in the keeping of science," meaning, of course, physical science. The
same authority considers science a far "better guardian of morality
than the pair of old shrews, philosophy and theology," in whose keeping
he evidently thinks everybody, not a scientist, believes morality to
rest. The teaching of such men as Mr. Spencer, Mr. Bain, and Mr.
Leslie Stephen, though they lack the vigour and picturesqueness of Mr.
Huxley's unique style, comes to much the same thing. Under the
extraordinary delusion that all the world, excepting a few enlightened
scientific men, believes morality to be under the tutelage of a "pair
of shrews," to wit, philosophy and theology, they at once proceed to
fly to the opposite extreme error, and to proclaim that it is under the
guardianship of physical science. We have already satisfied ourselves
that morality is not based on religion, but contrariwise that religion
is built on the sanctified emotions of the human heart, that is on the
moral ideal--"a new church founded on moral science"--and as to
theology, I should not waste my time in attempting to show that
morality is not based on that. But it will be worth our while to show
that Mr. Huxley and his brethren are under a serious misapprehension
when they suppose that having dispossessed theology of a property which
no sane man believes it ever possessed, they are at once entitled to
appropriate the same themselves in the name of physical science. We
shall see that there is a third claimant in the field of whom the
extremists on either side appear to have lost sight, and that when the
case is fully set forth a verdict in its favour will be inevitable.
Meanwhile, let us look at the scientific claim. Is the criterion of
conduct in the custody of the scientific experimenter? If a man wanted
to know whether a certain act was good, bad or indifferent, such a
course of conduct permissible or not, is he to consult the biologist or
the chemist?
I venture to affirm, in language of the most explicitness, that
physical science can know absolutely nothing about morality; that
ethics are a matter of profound indifference to it, that, as Diderot,
the encyclopaedist--certainly not suspect in such matters--says, "To
science there can be no question of the unclean or the unchaste". You
might as well ask a physician for an opinion about law as to put a case
of conscience before an astronomer.
There has been, as a matter of fact, an extraordinary amount of loose
thinking concerning the precise relations between science, ethics and
religion. The churches, having become irretrievably discredited in
their doctrinal teaching (their very ministers, in the persons of
Stanley and Jowett, openly avowing disbelief in their articles and
creeds), religion has come to be looked upon as a sort of no man's
land, and therefore the legitimate property of the first occupier.
Science, as the enterprising agency _par excellence_ of the century,
has stepped in, and in claiming to exhaustively explain religion,
virtually claims to have simultaneously annexed morality, erroneously
looked upon as a department of religion.
But a little more careful thinking ought to convince the most eager of
the advance-agents of physical science that the discipline they serve
so loyally is altogether unconcerned with the moral life, and wholly
incompetent to deal with its problems. Mr. Frederic Harrison once
asked, and with extreme pertinence, what the mere dissector of frogs
could claim to know of the facts of morality and religion? Positively
nothing, _as such_, and in their more sober moments "the beaters of the
drum" scientific would appear to be well aware of the fact. For
instance, Mr. Huxley himself, oblivious of all he had claimed in the
name of physical science, asked with surprise, in what laboratory
questions of aesthetics and historical truth could be tested? In what,
indeed? we may well ask. And yet the physical science which is
avowedly incapable of deciding the comparatively insignificant matters
of taste and history is prepared to take over with the lightest of
hearts the immense burden of morality and to become the
conscience-keeper, I had almost said the Father Confessor, of humanity!
I imagine Mr. Huxley himself would have shrunk before the assumption of
such responsibility.
But let us approach the matter more closely. To physical science, one
act is precisely the same as another; a mere matter of molecular
movement or change. You raise your arm, you think with the energy and
profundity of a Hegel; to the physicist it is all one and the same
thing--a fresh distribution of matter and motion, muscular contraction,
and rise and fall of the grey pulp called brain. A burglar shoots a
policeman dead and the public headsman decapitates a criminal. To
physical science, those two acts differ in no respect. They are
exercises of muscular energy, expenditure of nervous power, the
effecting of molecular change, and there the matter ends. But surely,
you would urge, the scientist would discriminate between those two
acts. Most assuredly. The one he would reprobate as immoral, and the
other he would approve as lawful. But, be it carefully noted, he would
do this, not as a scientist, but as a citizen respecting law and order
and upholding good government based on morality and justice. As a
moralist, then, but not as a scientist does he pass judgment, for there
is no experimental science which deals with such matters. Physics
concerns itself solely with what it can see and handle--nothing else.
The actions, therefore, of right and wrong, justice and injustice,
morality and immorality are simply unintelligible to it, just as
unintelligible as they are to the most highly developed animal. It is
the fully developed mind or intelligence alone which apprehends the
sublime conception of duty, and the indefeasible claims which it has
upon the allegiance of the will, and, in consequence, the scientist who
denounces injustice and iniquity is no longer on the tripod of the
professor, but in the rostrum of the ethical teacher. If I may say so,
it supplies us with an admirable illustration of a quick-change
performance. The same man performs a double part, and so adroitly is
the change managed, that the performer himself is deceived into
thinking that he is still the scientist, whereas he has become for the
moment the moral professor. But he did not acquire that new teaching
in the laboratory; he learnt it in the study.
But there is distinctly one point of close contact between science and
morality, which we must not omit to point out. Physical science,
particularly physiology, from its intimate acquaintance with the human
organism, is admirably adapted for the function of a danger-signal, so
to speak, to warn the ignorant and indifferent that a life
undisciplined and ill-regulated cannot but end in irretrievable
disaster. It thus most powerfully subserves the ends of private and
individual morality, just as historical science, which, as Professor
Huxley accurately noted, can in no wise be tested in a retort or a
crucible, can point the moral when the lawless actions of public bodies
or nations threaten the foundations upon which society rests. The
physiologist can preach a sermon of appalling severity to the drunkard;
he can describe internal and external horrors (as certain to ensue in
the victim's case, as night follows day), compared with which the
imaginings of a Dante are comparatively tame. He can likewise depict a
deplorable future of disease and decay as reserved for the vicious. He
can point to a veritable Gehenna strewn with the corpses of unnumbered
victims. He can prove to demonstration, if we listen to him, that no
organisation such as ours can resist the awful strain put upon it by
the poison of alcohol, and the enervating results of an undisciplined
existence. "Reform," he can tell us, "or go to perdition;" and most
valuable his sermon will be.
Would that men, so favourably endowed with this intimate knowledge of
the intricacy of the workings of our bodily frame, so utilised their
great powers in the service of ethics, pointing out to the reckless
transgressor what a scourge nature has in store for him, what
indescribable disasters he is preparing for himself by his audacity in
venturing to break her holy laws. In the Church which is to be, "the
Church of men to come," the scientist will fill this very _rôle_. As
the best interpreter of nature, he will be most fitly chosen to
discourse to us of nature's laws. The priests of humanity in days to
be will not be consecrated by a magical transmission of imaginary
powers, but by their ascertained capacity to open a door in heaven and
earth and reveal to us the secret workings of the Soul of the World.
We shall meet in united worship in the great cathedrals, but no more to
repeat the dead formulae of a past which is gone, but to hear the
living word of to-day, the last revelation the Supreme has made, be it
through the mouth of poet, prophet, philosopher or scientist. Then,
and only then, shall the Catholic or Universal Church be born, "coming
down out of heaven from God," visibly embracing all humanity, because
excluding none prepared to subscribe the aboriginal creed of the
supremacy of ethic, the everlasting sovereignty of the moral law.
But while we candidly acknowledge the priceless services which science
can render to morality in the way indicated, this in no way warrants
our assenting to Mr. Huxley's dictum that science is the guardian of
morality. As a matter of fact, science points at the deplorable
results of excess without any regard to morality whatsoever. She
announces them as definite facts, as certain as to-morrow's sunrise,
because she is intimately acquainted with the human organisation and
the laws which control it. But she ventures on no opinion as to the
moral worth of the acts in question; she registers results and there
her work ends. If the scientist does happily go farther, and point out
that conduct conducing to such disastrous consequences must be
irredeemably bad in itself, he is doing most praiseworthy work, but he
is no longer the scientist. He has slipped off his tripod, and is
repeating the lesson of the moralist. Let us suppose the acts in
question were not followed by unfortunate results. Say, for example,
that by uttering a falsehood, by altering a figure in a will, or on a
draft, one could inherit a fortune, what physical science could prevent
our doing so, or instruct us as to the honesty or dishonesty of the
contemplated action? Put thus, we see at a glance that the matter is
outside the province of science, and quite beyond its jurisdiction.
Morality, therefore, so far from being in the custody of science, has
nothing whatsoever to do with it, but belongs to an entirely different
order, and is ascertained by totally different methods.