[Illustration: FRANCES POWER COBBE.
_From “Life of Frances Power Cobbe.” By Herself._]
THE PEAK IN DARIEN,
WITH SOME OTHER INQUIRIES TOUCHING CONCERNS OF THE
SOUL AND THE BODY.
AN OCTAVE OF ESSAYS
BY
FRANCES POWER COBBE.
“Das Leben ist der Güter höchstes nicht;
Der Uebel grösstes aber ist die Schuld.”
_Die Braut von Messina._
BOSTON:
GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET.
LONDON: WILLIAMS & NORGATE.
1882.
PREFACE.
My last little book, _Lectures on the Duties of Women_, was addressed
principally to the young of my own sex. The present volume is intended
for my contemporaries who are daily brought face to face with some of
the darker problems of the time, or are led by their advancing years to
ponder ever more earnestly on the mystery of the great transition. In
these various papers,--some new, some already published in different
periodicals,--I have striven to meet fairly the questions whether the
denial of God and immortality be indeed (as Agnostics and Comtists
are wont to boast) a “magnanimous” creed, whether life be truly (as
Leopardi and Schopenhauer and hundreds of their English disciples din
daily in our ears) a burden and a curse, and whether (as much recent
legislation and newspaper literature would seem to teach) bodily health
be after all the _summum bonum_ for which personal freedom, courage,
humanity, and purity ought all to be sacrificed?
To these discussions, I have added one on the “Fitness of Women for
the Ministry of Religion,”--a subject, I believe, destined soon to
acquire importance,--with two or three less serious papers on other
matters touching moral questions; and, in conclusion, I have returned
to a speculation concerning the immediate entry into the life after
death which I find has possessed interest for many readers. That “Peak
in Darien,” which we must all ascend in our turn,--the apex of two
worlds, whence the soul may possibly descry the horizonless Pacific of
eternity,--is the turning-point of human hope. And it appears to me
infinitely strange that so little attention has been paid to the cases
wherein indications seem to have been given of the perception by the
dying of blessed presences revealed to them even as the veil of flesh
has dropped away. Were I permitted to record with names and references
half the instances of this occurrence which have been narrated to me,
this short essay might have been swelled to a volume. It is my wish,
however, that it should serve to suggest observation and provoke the
interchange of experiences, rather than be considered as pretending to
decide affirmatively the question wherewith it deals.
Perhaps it may be as well to forestall any misapprehension by stating
plainly that I utterly disbelieve, and even regard with intense
dislike, all so-called “Spiritualist” manifestations and attempts to
recall the dead; and that I have never found any sufficient testimony
for stories of ghosts or apparitions of the departed beheld by men and
women still in the midst of life. Only at the very moment when we are
passing into their arms does it seem to me that the law of our being
may permit us to recognize once more the beloved ones who are “not
lost, but gone before.” The lines of W. J. Fox precisely express my
thought on this subject:--
Call them from the dead!
Vain the call must be;
But the hand of death shall lay,
Like that of Christ, its healing clay
On eyes which then shall see
That glorious company.
FRANCES POWER COBBE.
JULY, 1882.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. MAGNANIMOUS ATHEISM, 11
II. HYGEIOLATRY, 77
III. PESSIMISM, AND ONE OF ITS PROFESSORS, 89
IV. ZOOPHILY, 125
V. SACRIFICIAL MEDICINE, 151
VI. THE FITNESS OF WOMEN FOR THE MINISTRY OF RELIGION, 179
VII. THE HOUSE ON THE SHORE OF ETERNITY, 235
VIII. THE PEAK IN DARIEN: THE RIDDLE OF DEATH, 245
MAGNANIMOUS ATHEISM.
“Be of good cheer, brother!” said John Bradford to his fellow-martyr
while the fagots were kindling: “we shall have a brave supper in heaven
with the Lord to-night!” “Be of good cheer, everybody!” cry an army of
modern confessors, seated in library chairs: “there is no heaven and
no Lord, and when we die there will be an end of us all, _in saecula
saeculorum_; but the generations who come after us will be greatly
edified by our beautiful books and our instructive example.”
Perhaps the moral vitality of our age is in no way better exemplified
than by the fact that certain doubts, which seem to strike mortal
blows at the head and heart of human virtue, yet leave it breathing,
and even pulsating with aspirations after some yet loftier excellence
than saints and heroes have hitherto attained. To look back to the
“infidels” with whom Massillon and Jeremy Taylor had to do, and compare
them with the Agnostics of our time, is indeed more encouraging than
to compare the “faithful” of past centuries with those of the present
age. While the old Atheist sheltered his vice behind a rampart of
unbelief where no appeals could reach him, the new Agnostic honestly
maintains that his opinions are the very best foundations of virtue. No
one can for a moment say of him that he chooses darkness rather than
light _because_ his deeds are evil. If it be (as we think) darkness
which he has chosen, there can be no question that his deeds are good,
and that his conceptions of duty are truly elevated and far-reaching,
and enforced by every argument which he has left himself at liberty
to use. Renouncing faith in God and in the life hereafter,--that
is to say, in _Goodness Infinite_ and _Goodness Immortalized_,--he
retains the most fervent faith in goodness as developed in human
life,--that is to say, in _goodness finite_ in degree and in duration.
If we are to accept his own statement of the case, the Agnostic has
completely turned the front of the theological battle. It is now the
pagans who have seized and hold aloft the sacred labarum of duty and
self-sacrifice, and _in hoc signo_ are destined to victory.
The claim is one of the gravest which can be put forth between man
and man. It was not easy--it was, alas! often beyond our strength--to
combat our doubts or those of others, while yet we fought against them
as a sailor fights against enemies cutting his anchor cable on a stormy
night. We stand amazed and disarmed by the strange intelligence that,
when these doubts have done their work, and cast us adrift altogether
from allegiance to God and hope of another life, _then_, when all seems
lost, we shall suddenly discover that we have touched the Fortunate
Isles of virtue and peace. Only the thorough sceptic, we are assured,
can be the perfect saint. Nobody can disinterestedly serve his brother
on earth till he is entirely persuaded he has no Father in heaven. The
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (of course it is always assumed that
it _is_ a tree of genuine knowledge on which Atheism grows) is to be
desired, not only because it will make us “wise,” but because it will
make us _good_. Who will hesitate any more to pluck and eat?
To the consideration of this now common pretension of Agnosticism to be
the true FRIEND OF VIRTUE, in the room of the old delusion of religion,
the following pages will be devoted. For the purposes of our particular
argument and to avoid entangling ourselves with too many collateral
questions, I shall treat it here as the _Assumption of the Moral
Superiority of Atheism over Theism_. Is that assumption justifiable?
I, for one, am entirely ready to admit that, _if_ there be anything
in the faith in God and immortality which detracts from the highest
conceivable perfection of human virtue,--if, in short, Atheism have a
better morality to teach than Theism,--then the case of Theism must be
abandoned. The religion which is _not_ the holiest conceivable by the
man who holds it is condemned _ipso facto_.
For the present, I may assume that no important difference of opinion
exists as to the practical rules of morality. It is the proper
_motives_ to a virtuous and self-sacrificing life which Agnostics claim
to place on higher ground than that which has been hitherto given to
them. They propose to tell us to “do justice and love mercy” both
in a better and more disinterested way than while we added to those
unquestionable duties the mistaken attempt to walk humbly with our God.
The question lies in a nutshell,--Can they do it? Is there anything
in the true Theistic faith detracting from the disinterestedness
of virtue, or calculated to rob it of a single ray of purity and
glory? This must be our first contention, since religion now stands
on its defence as a basis of morality. When it is settled, it may
perhaps appear that religion may justly again assume the offensive,
and challenge Atheism to prove its capacity for serving equally
efficiently as a support for the virtue of humanity; and, if it appear
that to such a challenge no satisfactory reply can be given, then it
will be manifest that, in their expressions of satisfaction and joy at
the anticipated downfall of religion, Atheists display disregard of the
moral interests of their race.
Let the lists be cleared in the first place. I shall not be
expected to defend all the base and demoralizing things which, in
the misused name of Christianity, have been inculcated concerning
“Other-worldliness,”--the doing good for the sake of getting to
heaven, and avoiding evil from fear of hell. Since the day, recorded
by Joinville, when the mysterious old woman carried her waterpot and
torch before St. Louis, and told him she intended to put out the fires
of hell and burn up heaven, so that men might learn to love God for his
own sake, and not from fear or hope,--since that distant time, there
have not been wanting righteous souls who have girned and spurned at
the vile lessons current in the Churches, and asked with Kingsley,--
“Is selfishness,--for time, a sin,--stretched out into eternity,
Celestial prudence?”
Beyond a doubt, one of the heaviest charges against the popular
creed is that, while its ministers have raged against the smallest
theological error, and convulsed the world by their ridiculous
disputes concerning mysteries altogether beyond the reach of human
comprehension, they have complacently endured and even fostered moral
heresies which withered up the very roots of virtue. The whole tone of
ordinary Romish exhortation, _faire son salut_, is often base beyond
expression; and the teaching of the Church of England in the last
century was no better. Here are some specimens of it. Rutherford says
(_Nature and Obligations of Virtue_, 1744), “Every man’s happiness is
the ultimate end which reason teaches him to pursue, and the constant
and uniform practice of virtue becomes our duty _when_ revelation
has informed us that God will make us finally happy in a life after
this.” Paley is no better. He says:[1] “Virtue is the doing good
to mankind in obedience to the will of God and _for the sake of
everlasting happiness_. According to which definition, the good of
mankind is the subject, the will of God the rule, and _everlasting
happiness the motive of virtue_.” Waterland, the great champion of
Trinitarianism, went even further. He says that “being just and
grateful without future prospects has as much of moral virtue in it
_as folly or indiscretion has_.” These are the kind of doctrines which
have been placidly admitted among the recognized teachings of the great
Christian Churches. Nor have some of the philosophers proved a whit
more conscious of the simple notion of duty. Bentham, for example,[2]
plainly lays it down that for a man to give up a larger pleasure of his
own for a smaller one of his neighbor’s is an act not of virtue, but of
_folly_.
Certainly, if the new Agnostics had no types of religion or morality
save these thoroughly debased ones wherewith to compare their system,
they might well claim to be the evangelists of a purer gospel. Better,
assuredly better, would it be to believe in no God than to pay homage
to the all-adorable Author of Good for the sake of the payment we
expect him to give us. Better, assuredly better, to expect no life
beyond the grave than to poison every act of courage, justice, or
beneficence by the vile notion of being rewarded for it in heaven; or
to refrain from treachery and cruelty and lies, merely, like a beaten
hound, from dread of the bloody scourge of hell.
But it would be an insult to the well-informed and widely-read
advocates of Agnosticism, if we were to assume for a moment that
they were ignorant that this base alloy of religion has been almost
universally repudiated by the higher class of English divines of
the present day, of every shade of Orthodoxy; while, outside of the
Churches, there is not a religious man who does not regard them with
unmitigated disgust. The question really is, not whether religion _may_
be made to corrupt morality with bribes and threats, but whether it
properly does so; whether a religious man _ought_, in accordance with
his theology, to be less disinterested than an Atheist. To reply to
this question, it seems only necessary to recall what a Theist believes
about God and immortality as concerned with his own virtue.
A Theist believes, then, that the goodness and justice, which the
Agnostic recognizes and loves so well in their human manifestations,
have existence beyond humanity, and are carried to ideal perfection in
a Being who is, in some sense, the Soul and Ruler of the universe.
_This_ belief, at all events (whether legitimately held or only
a dream), cannot, I presume, so far as it goes, be charged with
detracting from the purity of virtue. Goodness cannot be esteemed less
good, or justice less just, because there exists One who is supremely
good and just.
Further, as regards himself, the Theist believes that this supremely
good and just Being so constituted his nature and the world around him
as that the law of goodness and justice should be _known_ to him as the
sacred rule, whereby he is inwardly bound to determine his actions and
sentiments. In other words, he believes that he has acquired his moral
sense of God, and not from any undesigned, fortuitous order of things
which may have impressed it as an hereditary idea on his brain.
I am at a loss to guess how _this_ step further can be supposed to
be hostile to the disinterestedness of virtue. It is easy to see how
the opposite theory of the origin of conscience, as exhibited in
Mr. Darwin’s _Descent of Man_,--whereby the authority of the human
intuition, “Thou shalt do no murder,” is traced to the same origin as
the bees’ intuition of the duty of killing their brothers, the drones
(namely, the hereditary transmission of ideas found conducive to the
welfare of the tribe),--should dethrone Conscience from her assumed
supremacy, and place her among the crowd of other hereditary notions,
neither more nor less deserving of honor. And, on the other hand, the
attribution of our moral ideas, directly or indirectly, to the teaching
of a Being immeasurably above us,--a theory which represents conscience
as a ray shot downward from a sun, instead of a marsh-fire illumined
under special conditions of social existence, and liable to blaze up,
die down, or flit hither and thither as they may determine,--must
inevitably elevate and sanctify the laws of morals to our apprehension.
In truth, it is obvious that, had the first hypothesis (of the
hereditary transmission of useful ideas) been heard of in the days of
our ancestors, the “mystic extension” (as Mr. Mill calls it) of utility
into morality could never have been accomplished, and repentance and
remorse would have been unknown experiences. But all this refers to the
practical _authority_ of moral laws. It is with the _disinterestedness_
of the man who obeys them that we are at present concerned; and this
disinterestedness is not, that I perceive, influenced one way or the
other by the theory he may hold of how he comes by his knowledge of
them.
But now we reach the point where, it is to be presumed, the Atheist
finds ground for his claim to superior disinterestedness. The Theist
believes not only that goodness and justice are attributes of God,
and that God has taught him to be good and just, but that God further
holds what the old Schoolmen called the _Justitia Rectoria_ of the
universe,--that he so ordains things as that, sooner or later, good
will surely befall the good, and evil the evil. So much as this is
included in the simplest elements of Theism. In its fuller development,
Theism teaches more: namely, that God takes the interest of a Father
in the moral welfare of his children; that he has created every human
soul (and doubtless thousands of races of other intelligent beings)
for the express purpose that each should attain, through the teaching
and trials of existence, to virtue, and so enter into the supreme
bliss of sympathy and communion with himself. Theism thus understood
teaches that God is perpetually training each soul for that sublime
end, inspiring it with light, answering its prayers for spiritual aid,
punishing it for its errors, hedging up its way with thorns to prevent
its wanderings, and finally certainly conducting it, through this life
and perhaps many lives to come, to the holiness and blessedness for
which it was made.
The position of a Theist differs therefore essentially from that of
an Atheist as regards the practice of virtue, inasmuch as the Atheist
thinks he has no superhuman spectator or sympathizer; that the thoughts
and feelings which awaken his conscience and move his heart do not
originate in any mind out of his own; that the woes of his life bear
with them no moral meaning of retribution or expiation; and finally
that, whether he be a hero or a coward, a saint or a sinner, it will
be all one, so far as himself is concerned, when the hour of his death
has sounded. His actions may and will have important consequences to
other men, but as regards his own destiny they can have no consequences
at all; for the grave will receive everything that remains of him.
The virtues he may have acquired with unutterable struggles will die
away into nothingness, like the sound of a broken harp-string. He will
neither rejoin his dead friends nor come into any fresh consciousness
of God. Neither dead friends nor God have any existence; and a little
sooner or later, as he may chance to be a more or less important
person, he will be altogether forgotten, and no being in the universe
will ever more remember that he once _was_.
Now, I think it would be idle to deny that it must be _far harder_
to be virtuous under the shadow of this Atheism than in the sunshine
of Theism. The tax and strain upon the moral nature of a man who
holds the views just indicated of the emptiness of the universe of
any One absolutely good and just, of the low and haphazard origin of
conscience, and of the utter loneliness and unaided state wherewith
man pursues his weary course from the cradle to the inevitable,
eternal grave, must be simply enormous. All honor, sincere and hearty
honor, and full recognition of their noble disinterestedness, be to
those Atheists who, under such strain, yet struggle successfully
and incessantly to do good and not evil all their days, and to die
bravely and calmly, letting go their grasp of life and joy and love,
and sinking without a groan under the waters which are to cover them
for evermore. There is something in the self-sustained, Promethean
courage of such a man which commands our admiration; and we can well
imagine him looking round on his suffering fellows pitifully, as on
his orphaned and disinherited brothers and sisters, with infinite
compassion, deeming them destined like himself to perish with all their
aspirations and capacities disappointed and unfulfilled. For such a man
to devote himself to the labors of practical benevolence and the relief
of the woe which surrounds him, whence he usually draws his strongest
arguments for his desolate creed, would seem to be the fittest, if not
the only fit pursuit; and, when we behold him engaged in it (as in
instances I could readily name), our whole hearts recognize his virtue
as absolutely beautiful and disinterested. But because the Atheist’s
virtue, when he is virtuous, is without alloy, is there any just reason
to hold that it is _more_ pure than that of the Theist? His task is,
as I have readily admitted, the _harder_ of the two; _so_ hard indeed
is it that there seem the gravest reasons for fearing that, if a few
noble spirits perform it, the mass of tried and tempted men who can
scarcely lift themselves from their selfishness even with the two wings
of Faith and Hope will lie prone in the very mire of vice when those
wings are broken. But, because the Atheist’s duty is harder to do, is
it consequently better done? Is the music which he draws from that one
string of philanthropy sweeter than the full chord of all the religious
and social affections together?
Let us revert to the points of difference between the two creeds as
above enumerated. Is a man necessarily _self-interested_ in doing
the will of a Being whom he _loves_ and hopes by serving to approach
and resemble? Of course, if he is looking for payment,--for health,
wealth, happiness on earth or celestial glory,--for any adventitious
reward outside of the fact of becoming better and nearer to God,--then,
indeed, his service is self-interested. He is a mercenary in the army
of martyrs. In strict ethics, his conduct, however exactly legal, is
not virtuous; for virtue can only be absolutely without side-looks to
contingent profit, present or future. I presume that, when Agnostics
boast of the superior disinterestedness of the virtue they inculcate
over that of religious men, they think (and cannot divest themselves
of the early acquired habit of thinking) of religion as of this kind
of labor-and-wages system,--hard duty below, high glory above,--with
perhaps the additional complication of certain scholastic doctrines of
imputed righteousness. But it is time this confusion should cease.
Love of goodness _impersonated in God_ is not a less disinterested,
though naturally a more fervent, sentiment than love of goodness in
the abstract. The Theist, in his attempt to obey by good deeds the
will of the Being he loves, acts as simply as the Atheist, who loves
the good deed, thinking that no being higher in the scale of existence
than himself has any appreciation of the difference between good and
evil. The Theist, indeed, adds to his love of goodness _per se_ a
love of goodness impersonated in God, who desires good actions to be
done,[3] and possibly also a hope that, by doing good now, he may be
given the power to do it again and again for ever; but it is all the
same charmed circle of _doing good for goodness’ sake_, out of which he
never emerges into any such motive as doing good for the sake of honor,
prosperity, or heavenly bliss in a golden city. The sole thing which
the Theist asks of God as the reward of obedience is the power to obey
better in future, the privilege of obeying forever. The payment of his
virtue is to be virtuous now and throughout eternity. Whether it be in
this life or another, there is no difference; no new principle comes
into play; no bribe unsought for here is hoped for there. He says to
God: “It is a joy to serve Thee, but infinitely greater is the joy to
serve Thee with the assurance that the term of my service will never
expire. Precious is the privilege of calling Thee Father. How glad
then am I that I shall be a child at Thy feet forever! Lord, I seek no
heaven hereafter. I covet no abode of bliss, no outward reward above.
To be with Thee is my heaven and my salvation and the only reward I
seek. As I abide in Thee now, may I continue to live in Thee, O Father;
and to grow in wisdom and love and purity and joy in Thee, time without
end.”[4]
Surely, it is altogether absurd to speak of this religion as involving
any, even the very slightest shade of interestedness or detraction
from the highest conceivable type of human virtue. If it deserve such
a condemnation, then must likewise stand condemned the most pure and
exalted human love which friend has ever felt for friend,--for this
also, by its very nature, seeks to serve for love’s sake, to arrive at
perfect harmony, to dwell with the beloved in unbroken and everlasting
union.
Turn we now to the other side of the subject. Theism has been, I hope,
vindicated from the charge of interestedness. What shall we say to the
general ethical aspect of Agnosticism, which assumes to be the nobler
system? Admitting the blameless conduct and the high aspirations of
some of its professors, what value shall we attach to their claim to be
the heralds of a higher morality?
If I may, without offence, condense their lessons in a very obvious
parallel, they amount to this “symbol”: “Whosoever will be saved,
before all things it is necessary that he cease to believe either
in one God or in three; and that he be fully assured that those who
have done good and those who have done evil shall alike go into
everlasting nothingness.” This creed piously accepted, he will advance
to perfection and outrun in two ways any excellence which has been
hitherto attained.
1st. While recognizing that, so far as he himself is concerned, death
means the annihilation of consciousness, he will act throughout his
life with a deep and conscientious concern for the consequences of
his actions to those who come after him or, as Mr. Frederick Harrison
expresses it, to his own posthumous activity.
2d. By welcoming the conclusions of Atheism, and especially the
doctrine of the annihilation of consciousness at death, not as a
sorrowful truth, but as the latest and brightest gospel of good
tidings; and proclaiming, on all suitable occasions, that they afford
a better stand-point and outlook for humanity than any faith or hope
which has been hitherto entertained.
The first of these doctrines was set forth, a few years ago, in two
eloquent and affecting papers, by Mr. Frederick Harrison, in the
_Nineteenth Century_. How much sympathy I feel with a great deal which
is said in these papers,[5] how sincerely I respect Mr. Harrison’s
noble conception of the aim of life, even where I most completely
misdoubt the validity of the method he proposes for attaining it, there
is scarcely need to say. It is precisely because such Positivists as he
and Mr. Morley and the late George Eliot, and such Agnostics as many
I could name, assume such really high ground in their teaching, and
appeal (though, as I think, in a fallacious way) to our very noblest
sympathies and aspirations, that I feel urged to raise my feeble voice
and call in question their guidance. There, in truth, stand, as they
point to them, the snowy summits of purity and goodness. But by what
path would they guide us to ascend them? Even if their own strong souls
may climb those arid crags, can they be in any possible sense a better
way than that by which millions of believers in God and immortality
have gone up on high?
Let us take Mr. Harrison’s doctrine of the “Posthumous Activities”
of the soul, and endeavor to estimate how far it is calculated to
act as an efficient motive of virtue on ordinarily constituted,
well-intentioned men and women. We must bear in mind that it is
formally proposed as a substitute for the old belief in the immortality
of the individual,--that is (according to the Theist creed), in the
immortality of the _virtue_ of the individual. While a Theist believes
that, having lighted that sacred torch, he shall be permitted to bear
it onward, burning more purely and brightly forever, the Comtist
thinks he must lay down his at the side of his grave, though other men
may ignite their own from it, and so carry on its light from age to age.
In the first place, I must remark that, like the promise on which such
stress is laid in Dr. Bridge’s _General View of Positivism_, that
attached husbands and wives may be solemnly interred side by side,
there is nothing _new_ in these anticipations. We have always known
that we might be buried in the same vault with our next friend, as
we have always known that our actions would continue to bear fruit
after our departure. We entertained the first hope (so far as such a
pitiful matter as the future position of our deaf and blind decaying
dust deserves to be considered a hope), and we were aware of the
responsibility,--_plus_ the belief that we ourselves should enjoy free
converse with the spirit of our friend, and afford to smile together
on our poor mouldering garments laid up side by side in the tomb,--and
_plus_ the belief that we might ourselves be cognizant of our
posthumous activities. There is nothing in the fact that both the hope
and the sense of responsibility must now stand by themselves for what
they are worth, to give them (so far as I can see) any fresh leverage
as motives of conduct. People who did not love each other better
while they expected to be at liberty to spend eternity in conscious
communion, as well as to be buried in the same grave, certainly will
not love each other better when their future prospects are limited to
the family vault. And people who have not regulated their conduct with
a view to their _post-mortem_ influence while they anticipated to be
living somewhere to know, or, at all events, to be obliged to think
about it, are very little likely to regulate it the better when they
are convinced that, if they leave the deluge behind them, they will
neither know nor care one iota. As to the good man, he will, under the
old creed and under the new alike (and neither more nor less, so far
as I can perceive), entertain a solemn sense of a responsibility to
do all the good and refrain from every evil in his power during his
threescore years and ten,--_not_ first, or chiefly, for the sake of
consequences near or remote to himself or other people in this world or
another, but because goodness, truth, courage, justice, and generosity
are good in themselves, lovable in his eyes and in the eyes of God, and
falsehood, impurity, cruelty, and treachery are bad and despicable,
hateful to him and to his Maker. Afterward, and as a reinforcement
of his choice of Scipio, he will reflect that every good act entails
good consequences in widening circles of loving-kindness, honor, and
honesty, and every bad one the reverse; and he will hope in dying to
reflect that the sum of the influence he leaves to work after him will
be wholly on the side of truth, justice, and love. It is monstrous for
Mr. Harrison to say that “the difference between our (Positivist) faith
and that of the orthodox is this. _We_ look to the permanence of the
activities which give others happiness. _They_ look to the permanence
of the consciousness which can enjoy happiness.” Why should looking to
the permanence of consciousness and happiness make a man care less for
the activities “which give others happiness”? Does A care less for B’s
welfare because he would like to be alive to see it, or even alive at
the antipodes at the same time?
Moralists and divines of all ages have not overlooked the remoter
consequences of our actions in rehearsing the motives in favor of
virtue. But it is idle to attach to it, as applied to the bulk of
mankind, more practical force than it possesses. In the first place,
when such an observer of things as Shakspere could say that
“The evil which men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,”
it is open to us all to doubt whether some of the very noblest
achievements of human virtue have left any other mark than on the
virtuous souls themselves, which (as we Theists think) enjoy even now
in a higher existence their blessed inward consequences. The martyrs
who perished unseen and unknown in the loathsome dungeons and amid the
protracted tortures of the Inquisition in Spain, where the Reformation
they would have established was absolutely extinguished and left no
ray of light behind,--could these men cheer themselves under the awful
strain of their agonies by a motive of such tenuity as the prospect of
their “posthumous activities”?
But admitting, for argument’s sake, that the motive would serve always
to support the heroic order of virtues, would it likewise aid the still
more important ones of every-day conduct? His own illustrations ought
surely to have made Mr. Harrison pause before he assumed it. He speaks
of Newton as “no longer destroying his great name by feeble theology
or querulous pettiness,” of Shakspere as “the boon companion and
retired playwright of Stratford,” of Dante as the “querulous refugee
from Florence,” and of Milton as “the blind and stern old malignant of
Bunhill Fields.” Now these are his chosen exemplars of the enormous
“posthumous activity” which a man may exert, and certainly nobody now
living can hope that he shall ever exercise one-tenth as much. But
_their_ “pettiness” and “querulousness” and “boon companionship” and
“sternness” in their lifetimes did not hinder, or even essentially
detract from, their stupendous “posthumous activity.” Why, then, should
lesser people have any scruple in being petty, querulous, or stern, or
indulging in pot-companionship, or any other faults of temper or habit,
on account of their little posthumous activities, whatever they may
hope that these may prove?
Obviously, Mr. Harrison has a misgiving as to the force which his
argument can be expected to exert on ordinary mortals or for the daily
purposes of life. Though he says that the truth he teaches “is not
confined to the great,” and adds the beautiful remark that “in some
infinitesimal degree the humblest life that ever turned a sod sends a
wave--no, more than a wave, a life--through the evergrowing harmony
of human society,” yet even while he alleges that a concern for such
posthumous activity is “no doubt now in England the great motive of
virtue and energy,” and asks, “Can we conceive a more potent stimulus
to daily and hourly striving after a true life?”[6] he says in the next
page that “it would be an endless inquiry to trace the means whereby
this sense of posthumous participation in the life of our fellows
_can be extended to_ _the mass_, as it certainly affects already the
thoughtful and refined.” Honestly, he admits that it is “impossible
it should become universal and capable of overcoming selfishness”
“without an education, a new social opinion without a religion; I
mean an organized religion, not a vague metaphysic.” “Make it,” he
cries, with almost the enthusiasm of a discoverer, “at once the basis
of philosophy, the standard of right and wrong, and the centre of a
religion,” and then it may perhaps be achieved.
But, in sober truth, what “education” or “organized religion” (_i.e._,
of course, Comtism) can possibly transform this remote anticipation of
the results of our actions after we are dead into a practical lever
for daily duty for the great bulk of mankind? It is the specialty of
all vice to be selfishly indifferent to the injurious consequences
of our actions, even to their immediate and visible consequences, to
those nearest to us. Is it not almost ludicrous to think of exhorting
the drunkard who sees his wife and children starving round him to-day,
or the ill-conducted girl who is breaking her mother’s heart, or the
hard task-master or landlord who is grinding the faces of the poor to
fill his pocket, to refrain from their misdoings on account of the evil
which they will cause fifty years hence to people unborn? Or let us try
to apply the principle to that sound mass of every-day English virtue
which is, after all, the very air we breathe,--the daily dutifulness,
the purity, the truthfulness, the loving-kindness of our homes, the
beautiful patience to be witnessed beside a thousand sick-beds.
Were we to ask the simple-hearted men and meek women who exemplify
these virtues whether they ever think of the excellent “posthumous
activities” which they will exert on their surviving acquaintances,
would they not be utterly bewildered? The clergyman (or let us have
the Comtist philosopher) who will go through a workhouse ward, or
round the cottages of a village, and offer such a suggestion as a
topic of encouragement, would, I think, effect a very small measure
of reformation. Nor do I think it is necessarily a low type of mind
which does not project itself much into the future, whether in this
world or the next; but which is vividly affected by the idea of a
_present_ righteous law claiming immediate obedience, and a _present_
adorable God watching whether that obedience be paid, but which takes
in even the idea of immortality more as adding an infinite dignity to
moral things and human souls than as a direct motive to moral action.
To such a person, the promise of “posthumous activities” is as remote
and inoperative a principle as it is possible to propose; and he
can scarcely help smiling at it, as he does at the observation of
Pliny, that the “happiest of all possible anticipations is the certain
expectation of an honorable and undying renown.” Posthumous activity
affords a far nobler motive than posthumous fame; but they both appeal
to sentiments which have little weight with the majority of minds, and
no weight at all with a great number not undeserving of respect.
The truth seems to be that the leading Comtists and Agnostics of the
day not only belong to an exceptional type of human nature, little
touched by grosser impulses and highly sensitive to the most rarefied
order of influences, but are unable to descend from such altitude, and
realize what ordinary flesh-and-blood men and women are made of. As
Mr. Darwin unconsciously betrayed that he had never once had occasion
to repent an act of unkindness, when he theorized about repentance as
_beginning_ by a spontaneous reversion to sympathy and good-will to
the people we have injured (in bold contradiction to Tacitus’ too true
maxim, “_Humani generis proprium est odisse quem laeseris_”), so the
disciples of Comte unwittingly allow us to perceive that they really
consider an exalted and far-reaching interest in the welfare of our
kind as the sort of motive which is already “now in England the great
motive of virtue and energy.”
Let me explain myself. I do not think there is any precept too high
to be accepted by the mass of mankind: nay, I think that the higher,
nobler, more self-sacrificing the lesson, the warmer response it
will draw forth from the heart of humanity. But this is the _moral_
excellence of the precept, the loftiness of the purity, the nobleness
of the generosity, the courageousness of the self-devotion, which are
demanded. It is quite another thing to choose to present, as the proper
motive of daily virtue, an idea requiring a trained _intellect_ to
take it in and a vivid _imagination_ to realize it. Every argument for
virtue, for sobriety, veracity, and so on, drawn from considerations of
future consequences, labors under this irremediable defect: _that it
appeals least to those whom it is most necessary to influence_. When we
go further, and place our fulcrum of moral leverage in the period after
the death of the man to whom we appeal, and candidly tell him that he
will neither enjoy the sight of any good he may have effected, nor
suffer from the spectacle of the results of his wrong-doing, we have
reached (as it seems to me) the _ne plus ultra_ of impracticability.
Woe to human virtue when its advocates are driven to attach primary
importance to such an argument, and dream it can be made “the centre of
a religion”!
To sum up this subject. To a man of high calibre and gifts, the
consideration of “posthumous activities” may act as a spur to doing
great actions, but scarcely as a motive to regulate his daily life
and temper. He will, perhaps, under its influence reform the prisons
of Europe, and at the same time break his wife’s heart; write a
great epic poem, and treat his daughters like slaves; paint splendid
pictures, and remain a selfish and sordid miser; fight heroically his
country’s battles, and lead a life of persistent adultery; be at once a
disinterested statesman in a corrupt age, and an habitual drunkard.
As to the mass of mankind, who are endowed neither with any superior
gifts to employ, nor vivid imagination to realize the results of their
actions hereafter, an appeal to them to act virtuously in consideration
of their posthumous activities would draw forth some such reply as
this: “Our conduct can, at most, leave after our deaths only very small
results on a very few people whom we shall never know. We find it hard
enough to make sacrifices for those whom we do know and love, and whose
happiness or misery we actually witness. It is asking too much of us
that, for remote, contingent, and evanescent benefits to our survivors,
we should undergo any pain or labor, or renounce any of the pleasures
which in our poor short lives (so soon to end forever in darkness) may
fall within our grasp.”
Thus, in its capacity of the _Friend of Virtue_, it seems that Atheism
begins by depriving virtue of some of the strongest, if not the very
strongest, motives by which it has hitherto been supported, and offers
in their room, as the best substitute for them and the future “centre
of religion,” a consideration of Posthumous Activities, whose force
is of necessity both partial as to the virtues it inculcates, and
extremely limited as to the persons over whom it can exercise any
influence. And _that_ force, such as it is, appears to be in no way
specially connected with the Atheistic view of human destiny, but
belongs to every moral system in the world.
* * * * *
Finally, as if to complete the nullity of the motive of Posthumous
Activities, there comes a reflection which must take erelong a
prominent place in disquisitions of this kind. Comtists talk of the
“immortality,” the “eternity,” of a dead man’s influence. But, if each
individual human soul is destined to be extinguished at death, then
there is _nothing_ wherewith man is concerned which is immortal or
eternal. Our race is destined irretrievably to perish _as a race_, if
it perish piecemeal with every soul which drops into the grave. Miss
Martineau’s wild talk about “the special destination of my race” being
“infinitely nobler than the highest proposed under a scheme of divine
moral government”[7] (an assertion in itself simply absurd, since
the believers in a scheme of divine government hold that whatever is
noblest is _by the hypothesis_ assuredly our destination), is rendered
doubly preposterous when we bear in mind what science teaches regarding
the inevitable lapse of this planet within a limited epoch into a
condition of uninhabitability. The following observations are made
on this subject in a little _jeu d’esprit_ which I may be pardoned
for quoting. It assumes to be an extract from a newspaper of the next
century, and the men of that period are supposed to look back upon the
doctrine of “Posthumous Activities” with very little respect:--
It is needless to repeat that the delusive exhortations of some
amiable but short--sighted philosophers of the last century to “labor
for the good of Humanity in future generations” (a motive which they
supposed would prove a substitute for the old historic religions) have
been once and for all answered by the grand discovery of astronomers
that our planet cannot long remain the habitation of man (even if it
escape any sidereal explosion), since the solar heat is undergoing
such rapid exhaustion. When the day comes, as come it must, when the
fruits of the earth perish one by one, when the dead and silent woods
petrify, and all the races of animals become extinct, when the icy
seas flow no longer, and the pallid sun shines dimly over the frozen
world, locked, like the moon, in eternal frost and lifelessness,--what
in that day, predicted so surely by science, will avail all the works
and hopes and martyrdoms of man? All the stores of knowledge which we
shall have accumulated will be forever lost. Our discoveries, whereby
we have become the lords of creation and wielded the great forces of
Nature, will be useless and forgotten. The virtues which have been
perfected, the genius which has glorified, the love which has blessed
the human race, will all perish along with it. Our libraries of books,
our galleries of pictures, our fleets, our railroads, our vast and
busy cities, will be desolate and useless forevermore. No intelligent
eye will ever behold them, and no eye in the universe will know or
remember that there ever existed such a being as man. _This_ is what
SCIENCE teaches us unerringly to expect, and in view of it who shall
talk to us of “laboring for the sake of Humanity”? The enthusiasm
which could work disinterestedly for a Progress destined inevitably
to end in an eternal Glacial Period must be recognized as a dream,
wherein no man in a scientific age can long indulge.[8]
The second counsel of perfection of the Agnostic teachers is, as
above said, “to welcome the conclusions of Atheism, and especially
the doctrine of annihilation of consciousness at death, not merely as
truth, but as the latest gospel of good tidings.”
This lesson, though repeated more or less by nearly all Agnostic and
Comtist writers, has been perhaps most prominently brought to the front
in the Life of Harriet Martineau. I shall take her observations and
example as the text for the remarks I wish to offer upon it, as I have
done the papers of Mr. Frederick Harrison for those just made on the
doctrine of Posthumous Activities. These are some of her utterances
which touch on the matter:--