THE ETHICS OF MONISM
To say that religious thought is passing to-day through a period of
peculiar stress is to utter a commonplace so threadbare that one
apologises for repeating it. Even the man in the street--or perhaps we
ought to say even the man in the pew, the average member of a Christian
Church--is aware that certain potent forces have been for some time
past directing a series of sustained assaults upon what were until
recently all but unquestioned beliefs; nor, if he is capable of
appreciating facts, will he deny--though he may deplore it--that to all
seeming these attacks have been attended by a considerable measure of
success. If, however, our man in the pew were asked to specify what
forces he had in his mind, he would probably in nine cases out of ten
point to two such, and two alone, _viz._, natural science and Biblical
criticism, which, he would tell us, had between them created an
atmosphere in which the old views of Scriptural authority found it more
and more difficult to maintain themselves.
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Such an estimate of the situation would be true so far as it went; yet
it would omit to take account of a third factor, a solvent far less
obvious in its workings, but far more disintegrating in its effects.
The factor to which we are referring is philosophy; while science and
criticism have overthrown certain traditional ramparts, a type of
philosophy has sprung up, slowly undermining the very foundations; or,
to vary the simile, while the former two have captured certain
outworks, the latter has made its way to within striking distance of
the citadel, and that the more unobserved because attention has been
focussed almost exclusively upon the more imposing performances of the
critic and the biologist.
As a matter of fact, religion never had, nor could have, anything to
fear from these two quarters, which--as we can now see--could not in
any way touch the essence of religious faith, as distinguished from
some of its temporary forms; on the other hand, that very essence might
be imperilled by a false but plausible philosophy, and grave practical
consequences in the domain of conduct might arise from its spread. For
if it is accurate to say that behind every ethic there stands--whether
avowed or unavowed--a certain metaphysic, the converse holds true no
less; every philosophy, in the exact proportion in which it is _ex
animo_ accepted, will tend to produce its ethical counterpart. What we
{55} submit in all seriousness is that the only real danger to religion
that is to be apprehended to-day--a danger to which it is impossible to
blind ourselves--is that involved in a certain metaphysical outlook,
whose continued growth in popularity cannot but ere long produce its
own results in the field of practice.
The philosophy in question is intimately related to that Pantheism at
some of whose implications we were glancing in our last chapter; if we
refer to it here and subsequently by the name of Monism, under which it
has of late obtained a considerable vogue in this country, it must be
understood that we do not mean what Dr. Ballard calls _Theo_monism, but
a far less carefully thought-out and tested theory of life, which at
the present time is making a successful appeal to multitudes of inexact
thinkers. The fundamental idea common to this school is that the
universe, including our individualities or what we think such,
constitutes only one being, and manifests only one will, which all its
phenomena express. Separateness of existence, according to such a
view--which, after all, represents only the extreme logic of
Pantheism--is, of course, a chimaera, and so, _a fortiori_, must
separate volition be. The only real will--_i.e._, the will of the
universe--is regarded as good and right; and since there is no other
will but that one, and seeing that none resists or inhibits it, it is
ever being carried out, continuously operative. {56} To call this will
even "prevailing" would be a misuse of language, since there is no
other will for it to prevail against.
Now, regarded merely in the abstract, this conception might be treated
as a harmless eccentricity or speculative aberration, and is likely to
be so treated by the ordinary "practical" man, with his contempt for
"theories," and his pathetic conviction that speculation does not
matter; let us, however, see what is implied in this particular
speculative theory. From the primary assumption of this philosophy it
follows with an irresistible cogency that there is no such thing as
real, objective evil. Sin, if the term be retained at all, can at most
be only a blunder. Evil is only an inexact description of a lesser
good, or good in the making. Indeed, properly considered--_i.e._, from
the monistic standpoint--evil is a mere negation, a shadow where light
should be; or to be quite logical, evil is that which is not--in other
words, there is no evil, except to deluded minds, whose business is to
get quit of their delusion. The one and only cosmic will being
declared good, it follows that for the monist "all's right with the
world," in a sense scarcely contemplated by Browning when he penned
that most dubious aphorism. We propose briefly to show how this creed
works out--what is its ethical counterpart or issue--not by arguing _in
vacuo_ what it _must_ be, but by presenting to the reader three {57}
selected illustrations taken from the writings of as many exponents of
this type of Monism.
In his volume _First and Last Things_--a work which he significantly
calls "a confession of faith and rule of life"--Mr. H. G. Wells avows
himself a believer in the "Being of the Species," and, prospectively at
least, in "the eternally conscious Being of all things." The
individual as such is merely an "experiment of the species for the
species," and without significance _per se_; we are "episodes in an
experience greater than ourselves," "incidental experiments in the
growing knowledge and consciousness of the race." Mr. Wells's
fundamental act of faith is a firm belief in "the ultimate rightness
and significance of things," including "the wheel-smashed frog on the
road, and the fly drowning in the milk." In other words, all is just
as it has to be; regrets, remorses and discontents exist only for the
"unbeliever" in this truth, while, speaking for himself, the author
frankly says, "I believe . . . that my defects and uglinesses and
failures, just as much as my powers and successes, are things that are
necessary and important." "In the last resort," he concludes his book,
"I do not care whether I am seated on a throne, or drunk, or dying in a
gutter. I follow my leading. In the ultimate I know, though I cannot
prove my knowledge in any way whatever, that everything is right, and
all things mine."
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Certainly, this is uncompromising candour; but it is also,--though Mr.
Wells, strangely enough, calls himself a believer in freewill--the most
uncompromising Determinism conceivable. And this Determinism follows
quite inevitably from Mr. Wells's monistic premises--belief in a cosmic
"scheme" every part of which is ultimately right. An end in the gutter
or on the gallows may be as necessary to that scheme's perfection as a
life spent in strenuous goodness. Whatever is, is right. It can be
hardly necessary to point out that such a belief, consistently
entertained, puts an end to all moral effort; we "follow our
leading"--_i.e._, we do not drive, but drift. Arguing from his own
premises, it is absolutely vain for Mr. Wells to wax indignantly
eloquent over social abuses, as when he says:--
I see the grimy millions who slave for industrial production; I see
some who are extravagant and yet contemptible creatures of luxury, and
some leading lives of shame and indignity; . . . I see gamblers,
fools, brutes, toilers, martyrs. Their disorder of effort, the
spectacle of futility, fills me with a passionate desire to end waste,
to create order. (p. 99.)
But why, we ask, should Mr. Wells feel this passionate desire, if all
the failures and uglinesses of life are "necessary and important"?
How, on this assumption, are existing social ills to be remedied--nay,
why _should_ they be remedied, why should they be stigmatised as ills,
seeing that "everything is right"? Let {59} Mr. Wells once take his
principles seriously enough to apply them, and personal as well as
social reform is at an end. Perhaps it may be permissible to say that
of all forms of Determinism the most irrational is that optimistic form
which deprecates discontent with things as they are as a mark of
"unbelief."
Mr. Wells, however, while his influence is a very considerable one,
utters his teaching from outside the Christian Church, and very
properly disavows the Christian name; what must give us pause is to
find the monistic ethics being preached and taught by official
exponents of the Christian religion. What, _e.g._, can we think of a
statement like the following, which we quote from the columns of a
religious journal?
There are people who think it is an evidence of superior Culture to
show themselves pained by certain things; but it is not really that;
they are pained because they are not cultured enough, or in the right
way. . .
Nothing is good or ill
But thinking makes it so.
They think it desirable to dislike things because they dislike them; if
they thought it desirable not to dislike them, they would not dislike
them.
Again, no one will accuse this writer of want of frankness; according
to him, there is simply no such thing as objective evil--acts and
individuals have no moral qualities or characters, but are such as we
think them, and our business is so to think of them that they will not
pain us. {60} If we only knew aright, we should not regard anything as
bad. If we are pained by the thought of fifty thousand hungry children
in London elementary schools, or by the condition of Regent Street at
night, it is because we are not "cultured" enough--we have not the
right _gnosis_. When we reflect that anyone who consistently believes
that "nothing is good or ill, but thinking makes it so," will
inevitably, first or last, apply that comforting maxim to his own acts,
we can see in what direction the ethics of Monism--in reality a return
to the ultra-subjectivism of the Sophists, who made man the measure of
all things--are likely to lead men. And yet, if the monistic
presuppositions are valid--if the universe in all its phases expresses
only one will--we do not see how these conclusions can be repelled.
But it is, perhaps, our last illustration, drawn from yet another
writer of the same school, which will exhibit both the teaching under
discussion and its practical dangers in the clearest light. We are
told that--
_There is no will that is not God's will_. I do not mean that yours is
not real, or that any man's is not real, but I do mean that nothing can
happen to any of God's children--no matter how evil the intention of
the person who does it, or how seemingly meaningless the calamity that
causes it--which is not in some way the sacrament of God's love to us,
and His call upon our highest energies. In a true and real sense,
therefore, it is God's own doing and meant for our greater glory; . . .
I believe in the infinitude of wisdom and love; _there is nothing else_.
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Those who will take the moderate trouble of translating these words
from the abstract into the concrete will need no further demonstration
of the moral implications of this type of Monism. "There is no
will"--not even the most brutalised or the most debauched--"that is not
God's will." "Nothing can happen to any of God's children"--say, to
the natives of the Congo or to a Jewish community during a Russian
_pogrom_--but is God's call upon their highest energies: wherefore they
ought, assuredly, to be thankful to King Leopold's emissaries and the
Tsar's faithful Black Hundreds! But let us apply this thesis to yet
another case, which will bring out its full character: if an English
girl--one of God's children--is snared away by a ruffian, under pretext
of honest employment, to some Continental hell, then we are to
understand that the physical and moral ruin which awaits the victim is
"in some way the sacrament of God's love" to her--"in a true and real
sense it is God's own doing," and meant for her greater glory! We have
no hesitation in saying that such teaching strikes us as fraught with
infinite possibilities of moral harm, the more so because of the rather
mawkish sentimentality with which it is decked out; for if any
scoundrel is really the instrument of God's will, why should he be
blamed for his scoundrelism? And we observe how yet once more, by a
glib and vapid phrase--"I believe in the {62} infinitude of wisdom and
love; _there is nothing else_"--the fact of evil has been triumphantly
got rid of. In words, that is to say, but not in reality; for in
reality there is a great deal else--sin, and shame, and remorse, and
heartbreak, and despair; against the first of which we need to be
warned, in order that we may escape the rest.
We are quite prepared to be told that our anxieties are groundless,
because "no one will ever draw such inferences as these." To this we
reply, firstly, that these are the logical and legitimate inferences
from the principles enunciated; and secondly, that we do not at all
share the particular kind of optimism which trusts that good luck will
prevent the application of these theories to practical life. We are
living in an age of wide-spread intellectual unsettlement, an age
presenting the difficult problem of a vast half-educated public, ready
to fall an easy prey to all manner of specious sophistries, especially
when they are dressed up in the garb of a pseudo-mysticism; we must
above all remember that human nature is habitually prone to welcome
whatever will serve as an excuse for throwing off the irksome
restraints of moral discipline. That is why we repeat that the one
real danger religion has to face to-day is the danger arising from the
spread of a false philosophy, whose tenets are ultimately incompatible
with Christian morals. The worst heresies are moral {63} heresies; and
of the views we have been discussing we say roundly that their
falseness is sufficiently proved by their ethical implications. "A
good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; therefore by their fruits ye
shall know them." Against all the insidious attempts that are made
to-day to minimise or explain away moral evil--attempts with which we
shall deal in greater detail at a later stage--we have to reaffirm the
reality and exceeding sinfulness of sin; more particularly, in
combating the preposterous notion of man's oneness with God as
something already realised, we have to insist with renewed emphasis
that salvation, so far from being self-understood, is a prize only to
be won by a hard struggle, nor shut the door upon the dread possibility
of that prize being missed. There are perhaps few truths to which it
is more desirable that we should pay renewed attention than that
expressed in the saying, "_When belief waxes unsound, practice becomes
uncertain._" Certainly, the ethics of Monism supply a case in point.
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