Dr. Marett has carefully examined into this matter, and his

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SCIENCE AND MORALS

SCIENCE AND MORALS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

BY

SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE

M.A., M.D., Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., K.S.G.

OF ST. MICHAEL'S COLLEGE, TORONTO, ONT.

LONDON

BURNS & OATES, LTD

28 ORCHARD STREET, W

1919

* * * * *

TO

JOHN ROBERT and MARY O'CONNELL

A TOKEN OF SINCERE FRIENDSHIP

LISTARKIN

September 1919

* * * * *

These Essays have all in one form or another appeared elsewhere; and I

have to thank the Editors of the _Dublin Review_, _Catholic World_,

_America_, and _Studies_ respectively for kind permission to reproduce

them. Some of them appear as they were published, others have been

almost rewritten.

B. C. A. W.

* * * * *

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. Science and Morals 1

§ 1. The Gospel of Science 1

§ 2. Science as a Rule of Life 14

II. Theophobia and Nemesis 26

§ 1. Theophobia: its Cause 26

§ 2. Theophobia: its Nemesis 44

III. Within and Without the System 56

IV. Science in "Bondage" 74

V. Science and the War 106

VI. Heredity and "Arrangement" 125

VII. "Special Creation" 142

VIII. Catholic Writers and Spontaneous Generation 152

IX. A Theory of Life 160

Index of Names 175

General Index 177

* * * * *

SCIENCE AND MORALS

I. SCIENCE AND MORALS

§ 1. THE GOSPEL OF SCIENCE

In the days before the war the Annual Address delivered by the President

of the British Association was wont to excite at least a mild interest

in the breasts of the reading public. It was a kind of Encyclical from

the reigning pontiff of science, and since that potentate changed every

year there was some uncertainty as to his subject and its treatment, and

there was this further piquant attraction, wanting in other and

better-known Encyclicals, that the address of one year might not merely

contradict but might even exhibit a lofty contempt for that or for those

which had immediately preceded it.

During the three years immediately preceding the war we had excellent

examples of all these things. In the first of them we were treated to a

somewhat belated utterance in opposition to Vitalism. Its arguments were

mostly based upon what even to the tyro in chemistry seemed to be rather

shaky foundations. Such indeed they proved to be, since the deductions

drawn from the behaviour of colloids and from Leduc's pretty toys were

promptly disclaimed by leading chemists in the course of the few days

after the delivery of the address.

Further, the President for the year 1914 in his address (Melbourne, p.

18)[1] told us that the problem of the origin of life, which, let us

remind ourselves, in the 1912 address was on the point of solution,

"still stands outside the range of scientific investigation," and that

when the spontaneous formation of formaldehyde is talked of as a first

step in that direction he is reminded of nothing so much as of Harry

Lauder, in the character of a schoolboy, "pulling his treasures from his

pocket--'That's a wassher--for makkin motor-cars!'" Nineteen hundred and

twelve pinned its faith on matter and nothing else; Nineteen hundred and

thirteen assured us that "occurrences now regarded as occult can be

examined and reduced to order by the methods of science carefully and

persistently applied."[2] Further, the examination of those facts had

convinced the deliverer of the address "that memory and affection are

not limited to that association with matter by which alone they can

manifest themselves here and now, and that personality persists beyond

bodily death." Nineteen hundred and fourteen proclaimed telepathy a

"harmless toy," which, with necromancy, has taken the place of

"eschatology and the inculcation of a ferocious moral code." And yet it

is on telepathy, if we are to believe the daily papers, that Sir Oliver

Lodge largely relies for his proofs. Here, at any rate, is a pleasing

diversity of opinion which fully bears out what was said at the

beginning of this paper. It is, however, with the third address, or

rather pair of addresses, that we are concerned; for the meeting of

1914, not only was the first to be held at the Antipodes, but also the

first to be honoured with two addresses--one in Melbourne, the other in

Sydney.

Their deliverer is a very distinguished and a very independent man of

Science. It was he who insisted, at a time when the domination of a very

rigid form of Darwinism was much stronger than it is to-day, that the

picture of Nature as seen by us is a Discontinuous picture, though

Discontinuity does not exist in the environment. And it was he who asked

whether the Discontinuity might not be in the living thing itself, and

prefixed to the monumental work[3] in which he discussed this question

the significant text from the Bible: "All flesh is not the same flesh;

but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another

of fishes, and another of birds." Nearer to our own times, he was one of

a small body of men of science who almost synchronously disinterred the

forgotten works of Abbot Mendel, and proclaimed them to the world, as

containing discoveries of the first value. He was thus always something

of a "Herald of Revolt," and maintains that character in these

addresses. "We go to Darwin for his incomparable collection of facts. We

would fain emulate his scholarship, his width and his power of

exposition, but to us he speaks no more with philosophical authority. We

read his scheme of evolution as we would those of Lucretius or Lamarck,

delighting in their simplicity and their courage" (M., p. 9).

"Naturally, we turn aside from generalities. It is no time to discuss

the origin of the Mollusca or of Dicotyledons, while we are not even

sure how it came to pass that _Primula obconica_ has in twenty-five

years produced its abundant new forms almost under our eyes" (_ib._,

_ib._). And so on. To take one other example: there is nothing which was

more insisted upon by Darwinians than the fact that all the various

races of domestic fowl known to us came from _Gallus bankiva_, the

jungle-fowl of India; in fact I think I have seen that form enthroned

amongst its supposed descendants in more than one museum. "So we are

taught; but try to reconstruct the steps in their evolution and you

realise your hopeless ignorance" (M., p. 11). If we cannot construct a

"tree" for fowls, how absurd to adventure into the deeper recesses of

Phylogeny. If all that Professor Bateson says is true, is not Driesch

right when he speaks of "the phantasy christened Phylogeny"?[4]

The addresses, however, were not solely concerned with throwing contempt

upon views which were yesterday of great respectability, and which even

to-day are as gospel to many. They devoted themselves chiefly to the

consideration of the question of heredity, viewed, as might be expected,

from the Mendelian standpoint.

Now, at this point it may be said that there are at least two things

which we should like to know about heredity--the vehicle and the laws.

It is clear that we might know something, perhaps even a good deal,

about one of these without knowing anything about the other.

Such in fact is the case; for we know, it may fairly be said, nothing

about the vehicle. There are two very widely distinct opinions on this

point. There is the mnemic theory, recently brought before us by the

republication of Butler's most interesting and suggestive work with its

translations of Hering's original paper and Von Hartmann's discourse and

its very illuminating introduction by Professor Hartog.[5]

And there is the continuity theory which teaches that in some way or

another the characteristics of the parents and other ancestors are

physical parts of the germ. An attempt to explain this was made by

Darwin in his theory of Pangenesis. Others have essayed what Yves Delage

calls "micromeristic" interpretations. As to all of these it may be said

that when they are reduced to figures the explanation becomes of so

complex a character as utterly to break down. We shall see that

Professor Bateson adopts a third very nebulous explanation. But as

regards the laws of heredity there is something else to be said; for

here we really do know something, and that something we owe in large

measure to the innumerable experiments which have been made on Mendelian

lines since the re-discovery of the methods first adopted by the

celebrated Abbot of Brünn. It is no intention of the writer of this

paper to describe the Mendelian theory,[6] which is well known, at least

to all biological readers, though one or two points in connection with

it may yet have to be touched upon.

The point of cardinal importance in connection with Mendelism is that it

does reveal a law capable of being numerically stated, and apparently

applicable to a large number of isolated factors in living things.

Indeed it was this attention to isolated factors which was the first and

essential part of Mendel's method. For example, others had been content

to look at the pea as a whole. Mendel applied his analytic method to

such things as the colour of the pea, the smooth or wrinkled character

of the skin which covered it, its dwarfness or height, and so on.

Now, the behaviour of these isolated factors seems to throw a light even

upon the vehicle of heredity. We often talk of "blood" and "mixing of

blood," as if blood had anything to do with the question, when really

the Biblical expression "the seed of Abraham" is much more to the point.

For it is in the seed that these factors must be, whether they be mnemic

or physical. Professor Bateson (M., p. 5) thinks it obvious that they

are transmitted by the spermatozoon and the ovum; but it seems to him

"unlikely that they are in any simple or literal sense material

particles." And he goes on to say, and this, I think, is one of his most

important statements: "I suspect rather that their properties depend on

some phenomenon of arrangement."

Now, if there be a law behind the phenomena made clear to us by

Mendelian experiments (as Mendelians are never tired of asserting), then

it becomes in no way impertinent to ask how that law came into

existence, and who formulated it. Darwinism, according to Driesch,[7]

"explained how by throwing stones one could build houses of a typical

style." In other words, it "claimed to show how something purposively

constructed could arise by absolute chance; at any rate this holds of

Darwinism as codified in the seventies and eighties." Of course the

Blind Chance doctrine breaks down utterly when it comes to be applied to

selected cases, and nothing more definitely disposes of it than the very

definite law which emerges as the result of the Mendelian experiments.

That is obvious to the prophets of Mendelism; but, whilst they admit

this, they will have nothing to say to the lawgiver. That is the

"rankest metaphysics," as Dr. Johnstone puts it,[8] or "mysticism," as

others prefer to call it. And yet nothing is more clear than the

logical sequence that, if you have a law, someone must have made it,

and if you look upon something as "a phenomenon of arrangement," someone

must have arranged it. But for reasons not obvious nor confessed, there

is an objection to make any such admission. Perhaps it is the taint of

the monism of the latter half of the last century which still persists.

At any rate, as I have elsewhere pointed out, there is a most curious

passage in another paper by the same author in which he says: "With the

experimental proof that variation consists largely in the unpacking and

repacking of an original complexity, it is not so certain as we might

like to think that the order of these events is not pre-determined." The

writer hastens to denounce the horrid heresy on the brink of which he

finds himself hesitating, by adding that he sees "no ground whatever for

holding such a view," though "in the light of modern research it

scarcely looks so absurdly improbable as before."[9] It is curious that

the writer in question does not seem to have been in any way influenced

by the eliminative argument so potent in connection with the discussion

on Vitalism. We ask for an explanation of the occurrences--say of

regeneration. We find that no physical explanation in the least meets

the needs of the case, and we are consequently obliged to look for it in

something differing from the operations of chemistry and physics. Of

this argument Dr. Johnstone[10] says: "It is almost impossible to

overestimate the appeal which it makes to the investigator."

Now, this matter of "arrangement" or of "pre-determination," when put

forward as an explanation, even tentatively, necessitates a step

further. That step might possibly be in the direction of pantheism,

though, according to Driesch,[11] pantheism is the doctrine "that

reality is a something which makes itself ('_dieu se fait_,' in the

words of Bergson), whilst theism would be any theory according to which

the manifoldness of material reality is predetermined in an immaterial

way." And he concludes "that those who regard the thesis of the theory

of order as necessary for everything that is or can be, must accept

theism, and are not allowed to speak of '_dieu qui se fait_.'" It is

difficult to see how anyone who has studied the rigid order exhibited by

experiments on Mendelian lines can resist the logic of this argument

unless indeed he takes a place on Plate's platform, which admits that a

law entails a lawgiver, but declares that of the Lawgiver of Natural

Laws we can know nothing.[12]

There is a further point in connection with Mendelian theories which is

worth noting in this connection. It would appear that no new factor is

ever brought into being, that is, no _addition_ is ever made by

variation. According to this theory the things which appear to be

added--a new colour or a new scent--were there all the time. They were

"stopped down" or inhibited by some other factor, which, when

eliminated, allows them to come into play, and thus to become obvious to

the observer from whom they had been hidden. Thus, Professor Bateson

(M., p. 17) has confidence "that the artistic gifts of mankind will

prove to be due, not to something added to the make-up of an ordinary

man, but to the absence of factors which in the normal person inhibit

the development of these gifts. They are almost beyond doubt to be

looked upon as _releases_ of powers normally suppressed. The instrument

is there, but it is 'stopped down.'"

That all sorts of things may exist in a very small compass no doubt

is true. Professor Bateson reminds us that Shakespeare was once

"a speck of protoplasm not so big as a small pin's head." The

difficulty--insuperable on ordinary monistic lines--is how all these

things got into the germ if no additions ever take place. It was so

difficult to account, for example, for artistic appreciation on the part

of man or for gifts of an artistic character that Huxley was fain to

describe them as gratuitous; but on this showing all characters are

gratuitous in the sense that they are not acquired. We may reasonably

inquire not merely how all these characters and factors got themselves

"arranged" or "packed," but where they came from, and how they came to

be in the germ at all, matters on which we receive no information in

these addresses. No doubt the author of the addresses would say that it

was no part of his business to explain this matter; that he took this

system of Nature as a going system and did his best to explain it as

such and without attempting, perhaps even without desiring, to explain

how it got a-going. If that be the case, and if ignorance on this head

must be his confession, it is a little difficult to understand the

confidence with which he sets himself to discuss the "extraordinary and

far-reaching changes in public opinion [which] are coming to pass." We

shall find these, as we pass them in review, to be extraordinary enough,

though not very new.

In the first place, "genetic research will make it possible for a nation

to elect by what sort of beings it will be represented not very many

generations hence, much as a farmer can decide whether his byres shall

be full of shorthorns or Herefords. It will be very surprising indeed if

some nation does not make trial of this new power. They may make awful

mistakes, but I think they will try" (S., p. 8). It is curious how the

war, which had just commenced when these addresses were being delivered,

has absolutely disposed, or ought to have disposed, of some of the

prophecies of the President. Nothing, at any rate, seems more certain

than that one result of this most disastrous struggle will be an urgent

demand by all the States engaged in it for at least as many male

children as the mothers of each country can supply, without special

regard to their other characters, breedable or not breedable. We are

even told that Germany is resorting to expedients which cannot be

justified on Christian principles to fill her depleted homes. Whether

this be true or not the fact remains that nothing is now more to be

desired by all the combatant nations than what we call in Ireland "long

families." But even if there had been no war, there is one other factor

which makes it quite certain that no country ever will try, or if it

ventures to try, will ever succeed in any such experiment, and that

factor, forgotten by philosophers of this kind, is human nature. Mr.

Frankfort Moore years ago wrote a pleasant story, called "The Marriage

Lease," in which doctrinaire legislation of a somewhat similar kind was

described, and its inevitable failure most amusingly depicted. The war

disposes of another of the President's maxims (S., p. 10), that the

decline in the birth-rate of a country is nothing to be grieved about,

and that "the slightest acquaintance with biology" shows that the

"inference may be wholly wrong," which asserts that "a nation in which

population is not rapidly increasing must be in a decline" (S., p. 10).

Human nature was neglected in the first-mentioned case, and here it is

the turn of history to pass into the shade, history which, _pace_ the

President, has really a good deal more bearing upon a question of this

kind than the "school-boy natural history" which he thinks capable of

settling it. Thus we advance from breeding to Malthusianism. It is

perhaps not wonderful that our next step should be the quiet, and of

course painless, extinction of the unfit.

"Thou shalt not kill, but needs't not strive

Officiously to keep alive."

Thus wrote Clough; but our author, it appears, would go further than

this. "The preservation of an infant so gravely diseased that it can

never be happy or come to any good is something very like wanton

cruelty. In private life few men defend such interference" (S. 10). And

so such unfortunates should be got rid of, and will be "as soon as

scientific knowledge becomes common property"--when "views more

reasonable, and, I may add, more humane are likely to prevail." Lest we

should be depressed by this massacre of the innocents, we are told that

"man is just beginning to know himself for what he is--a rather

long-lived animal, with great powers of enjoyment if he does not

deliberately forgo them" (S., p. 9). In the past, poor fool that he has

been, he has not availed himself of his opportunities: "Hitherto

superstition and mythical ideas of sin have predominantly controlled

these powers." Let us, however, take heart: "Mysticism will not die out;

for those strange fancies knowledge is no cure; but their forms may

change, and mysticism as a force for the suppression of joy is happily

losing its hold on the modern world" (_ib._, _ib._). Let us eat and

drink--and, it may be added, sin--for to-morrow we die. Such is the new

gospel of science, an old enough gospel, tried and found wanting years

before its latest prophet arose to proclaim it to the world. Surely no

more ridiculous utterance ever was made; for its author evidently did

not pause to consider that the sins which make life pleasant to some

(for example, Thuggery) are apt to have quite another aspect to those

through whose victimisation the pleasure is obtained. There is also here

such a thing as the conscience, which has to be taken into account. Even

the biological hedonist must originally possess such a thing and, it may

be supposed, must deal with it as he would with the gravely diseased

children, and as something which would "predominantly control his powers

of enjoyment."

Seriously, it may be doubted if a more pagan code of morals has ever

been laid down, and this in the Encyclical of Science for the year, a

code bad enough to make poor Mendel turn in his grave could he--good,

honest man--be aware of it, and imagine that he was in any way

responsible for it, which, by the way, is in no way the case.

§ 2. SCIENCE AS A RULE OF LIFE

Saint or sinner, some rule of life we must have, even if we are wholly

unconscious of the fact. A spiritual director will help us to map out a

course of action which will assist us to shake off some little of the

dust of this dusty world; and a doctor will lay down for us a dietary

which will help us to elude, for a time at least, the insidious onsets

of the gout. Even if we take no formal steps, spiritual or corporeal,

some rule of life we must achieve for ourselves. We must, for example,

make up our minds whether we are to open our ears and our purse to tales

of misery, or are to join ourselves with those whose rule of life it is

to keep that which they have for themselves. What is true of each of us

is none the less true of each and every race--even more true; for each

race must make up its mind definitely as to which rule it will follow.

And at the moment there is still doubt and indecision in this matter.

"The moral problem that confronts Europe to-day is: What sort of

righteousness are we, individually and collectively, to pursue? Is the

new righteousness to be realised in a return to the old brutality? Shall

the last values be as the first? Must ethical process conform to natural

process as exemplified by the life of any animal that secures dominancy

at the expense of the weaker members of its kind?"[13] Such are the

questions raised by a man of science occupying the Presidential Chair of

an important society and speaking to that society as its President.

As to the Christian ideals little need be said, since we know very well

what they are, and know this most especially, that practically all of

them are in direct opposition to what we may call the ideals of Nature,

and exercise all their influence in frustrating such laws as that of

Natural Selection. "Nature's Insurgent Son," as Sir Ray Lankester calls

him,[14] is at constant war with Nature, and when we come to consider

the matter carefully, in that respect most fully differentiates himself

from all other living things, none of which make any attempt to control

the forces of Nature for their own advantage. "Nature's inexorable

discipline of death to those who do not rise to her standard--survival

and parentage for those alone who do--has been from the earliest times

more and more definitely resisted by the will of man. If we may for the

purpose of analysis, as it were, extract man from the rest of Nature, of

which he is truly a product and a part, then we may say that man is

Nature's rebel. Where Nature says 'Die!' man says 'I will live.'"[15]

To this it may be added that, under the influence of Christianity, man

goes a step further and says: "I will endeavour that as many others as

may be shall live, and live happy, healthy lives, and shall not untimely

die." The law of Natural Selection could not be met by more direct

opposition. I have said that this is under the influence of

Christianity, yet the impulse seems to be older than that, to be part of

that moral law which excited Kant's admiration, which he coupled with

the sight of the starry heavens, an impulse, we can scarcely doubt,

implanted in the heart of man by God Himself. It is a remarkable fact

that in many--some would say most--of the less civilised races of

mankind we find these social virtues, which some would have us believe

are degenerate features foisted on to the race by an enervating

superstition.

Dr. Marett has carefully examined into this matter, and his conclusions

are of the greatest interest.[16]

"My own theory about the peasant, as I know him, and about

people of lowly culture in general so far as I have learnt

to know about them, is that the ethics of amity belong to

their natural and normal mood, whereas the ethics of enmity,

being but 'as the shadow of a passing fear,' are relatively

accidental. Thus to the thesis that human charity is a

by-product, I retort squarely with the counter-thesis that

human hatred is a by-product. The brute that lurks in our

common human nature will break bounds sometimes; but I

believe that whenever man, be he savage or civilised, is at

home to himself, his pleasure and pride is to play the good

neighbour. It may be urged by way of objection that I

overestimate the amenities, whether economic or ethical, of

the primitive state; that a hard life is bound to produce a

hard man. I am afraid that the psychological necessity of

the alleged correlation is by no means evident to me. Surely

the hard-working individual can find plenty of scope for his

energies without needing, let us say, to beat his wife. Nor

are the hard-working peoples of the earth especially

notorious for their inhumanity. Thus the Eskimo, whose life

is one long fight against the cold, has the warmest of

hearts. Mr. Stefanson says of his newly discovered 'Blonde

Eskimo,' a people still living in the stone age: 'They are

the equals of the best of our own race in good breeding,

kindness, and the substantial virtues.'[17] Or again, heat

instead of cold may drive man to the utmost limit of his

natural affections. In the deserts of Central Australia,

where the native is ever threatened by a scarcity of food,

his constant preoccupation is not how to prey on his

companions. Rather he unites with them in guilds and

brotherhoods, so that they may feast together in the spirit,

sustaining themselves with the common hope and mutual

suggestion of better luck to come. But there is no need to

go so far afield for one's proofs. I appeal to those who

have made it their business to be intimate with the folk of

our own countryside. Is it not the fact that unselfishness

in regard to the sharing of the necessaries of life is

characteristic of those who find them most difficult to come

by? The poor are by no means the least 'rich towards God.'

At any rate, if poverty sometimes hardens, wealth,

especially sudden wealth, can harden too, causing arrogance,

boastfulness, and the bullying temper. 'A proud look, a

lying tongue, and the shedding of innocent blood'--these go

together."

On the whole, then, we may perhaps conclude that the natural bias of

mankind is towards kindness to his neighbour, however much the brute in

him may sometimes impel him to uncharitable words or actions. And

certainly this natural bias is intensified and made into a binding law

by the teachings of Christ. But there is the other point of view set

forward in the philosophy of Nietzsche--if indeed such writings are

worthy of the name philosophy. "The world is for the superman. Dominancy

within the human kind must be secured at all costs. As for the old

values, they are all wrong. Christian humility is a slavish virtue; so

is Christian charity. Such values have become 'denaturalised.' They are

the by-product of certain primitive activities, which were intended by

Nature to subserve strictly biological ends, but have somehow escaped

from Nature's control and run riot on their own account."

The prophets of this group of ideals, or some such group of ideals, have

no hesitation in telling us how they would direct the affairs of

humanity if they were entrusted with their conduct. It will not be

without interest to consider their plans and to endeavour to form some

sort of an idea of what kind of place the world would be if they had

their way. We can then form our own opinion as to whether a world

conducted on such lines would be in any way a tolerable place for human

existence.

First of all we may dwell briefly on Natural Selection as a rule of

life, since it has been put forward as such by quite a number of

persons. Never, let it at once be said, by the great and gentle-hearted

originator of that theory, who during his life had to protest as to the

ignorant and exaggerated ideas which were expressed about it and who,

were he now alive, would certainly be shocked at the teachings which are

supposed to follow from his theory and the dire results which they have

produced.[18]

In the first place such a doctrine leads directly to the conclusion that

war, instead of being the curse and disaster which all reasonable

people, not to say all Christians, feel it to be, is, as Bernhardi puts

it, "a biological necessity, a regulative element in the life of mankind

that cannot be dispensed with." It is "the basis of all healthy

development." "Struggle is not merely the destructive but the

life-giving principle. The law of the strong holds good everywhere.

Those forms survive which are able to secure for themselves the most

favourable conditions. The weaker succumb." Humanity has had at times

evidences of the results of this teaching which are not, one may fairly

say, of a kind to commend themselves to any person possessed of a

moderately kindly, not to say of a Christian, disposition. Fortunately,

or unfortunately, we have the opportunity of studying the experiment in

actual operation in a race which, of course in entire ignorance of the

fact, is actually putting into practice the teachings of Natural

Selection, though it must be admitted that the practice has not been

successful, nor does it look like being successful, in raising that race

above the very lowest rung of the ladder of civilisation. Captain

Whiffen[19] has given a very complete and a very interesting account of

the peoples whom he met with during his wanderings in the regions

indicated by the title of his book. And he tells us that "the survival

of the most fit is the very real and the very stern rule of life in the

Amazonian forests. From birth to death it rules the Indians' life and

philosophy. To help to preserve the unfit would often be to prejudice

the chances of the fit. There are no arm-chair sentimentalists to oppose

this very practical consideration. The Indian judges it by his standard

of common sense: why live a life that has ceased to be worth living when

there is no bugbear of a hell to make one cling to the most miserable of

existences rather than risk greater misery?" Let us now see the kind of

life which the author, freed himself no doubt from "the bugbear of

hell," considers eminently sensible--the kind of life of which only an

"arm-chair sentimentalist" would disapprove; a kind of life, it may be

added, which will appear to most ordinarily minded people as being one

of selfishness raised to its highest power.

To begin with the earliest event in life. If a child, on its appearance

in the world, appears to be in any way defective, its mother quietly

kills it and deposits its body in the forest. If the mother dies in

childbirth the child, unless someone takes pity on it and adopts it, is

killed by the father, who, it may be presumed, is indisposed to take the

trouble, perhaps indeed incapable of doing so, of rearing the motherless

babe. That the child, in any case, immediately after birth, is plunged

into cold water, is not perhaps a conscious method of eliminating the

weak, though it must operate in that direction. At a later period of

life should any disease believed to be infectious break out in a tribe,

"those attacked by it are immediately left, even by their closest

relatives, the house is abandoned, and possibly even burnt. Such

derelict houses are no uncommon sight in the forest, grimly desolate

mementoes of possible tragedies." When a person becomes insane, he is

first of all exorcised by the medicine man, and if that fails is put to

death by poison by the same functionary. The sick are dealt with on

similar lines, unless there is or seems to be a probability of speedy

recovery. "Cases of chronic illness meet with no sympathy from the

Indians. A man who cannot hunt or fight is regarded as useless, he is

merely a burden on the community." Under these circumstances he is

either left at home untended or hunted out into the bush to die, or his

end is accelerated by the medicine man. The same fate awaits the aged,

unless they seem to be of value to the tribe on account of their wisdom

and experience.

All these things placed together give us a perfect picture of life under

Natural Selection, and having studied it we may fairly ask whether such

a rule of life is one under which any one of us would like to live. In

every respect it is the antipodes of the Christian rule of life, and of

that rule of life which civilised countries, whether in fact Christian

or not, have derived from Christianity and still practise. The

non-Christian rule of the Indians is one under which might is right and

no real individual liberty exists, all personal rights being sacrificed

to the supposed needs and benefit of the community.

So much from the point of view of Natural Selection, but it would appear

that those who have given up that factor as of anything but a very minor

value, if even that, have also their rule of life founded on their

interpretation of Nature. Thus Professor Bateson, the great exponent of

Mendel's doctrines, who has told us in his Presidential Address to the

British Association that we must think much less highly of Natural

Selection than some would have us do, has, as has been set forth in the

previous section of this essay, his opinion as to the rule of life which

we should follow.

Professor Conklyn, an American enthusiast for extreme eugenistic views,

has also set down in print his ideas as to the lines on which our lives

are to be run under a scientific domination, and these are to be dealt

with in another article.[20] His scheme entails a forcible visit, not,

it may be supposed, to the Altar, but to the Registry Office, for all

persons held to be fit to perpetuate the race, and forcible restraint,

whether by imprisonment or by sterilisation, for all others.

The first thing which all these essays towards a scientific conduct of

life reveal is a total want of perspective, for they proceed on the

hypothesis--which no doubt their authors would defend--that this world

and its concerns are everything, and that the intellectual and physical

improvement of the human race by any measures, however harsh, is the

"one thing needful." But beyond this the persons who hold such views

seem to have entirely overlooked the fact that their proposed State

would be one conducted on principles of the bitterest and most galling

slavery imaginable by the mind of man, a form of slavery that never

could persist if for a moment it be conceded that it could ever come

into operation. The fact is that the whole thing is ludicrous when

looked at from the point of view of common sense, but how few take the

trouble to contemplate these schemes as they would be in operation! Were

they thus to contemplate them, they would see that, apart altogether

from any religious considerations, they are wholly impossible, even from

a purely political point of view. That such ideas are intolerable to

Catholic minds, indeed to any Christian mind, goes without saying.

Driesch (_Science and Philosophy of the Organism_, vol. ii., p. 358) has

pointed out very clearly that "the mechanical theory of life is

incompatible with morality," and that it is impossible to feel "morally"

towards other individuals if one knows that they are machines and

nothing more. Again, Professor Henslow (in _Present Day Rationalism

Critically Examined_, p. 253) very pertinently asks those who discard

all religious considerations and claim to rely for guidance on the

lessons of Nature, "If you have no taste for virtue, why be virtuous at

all, so long as you do not violate the laws of the land?"

Yet, in the face of these surely obvious facts, we find persons making

such absurd claims as that made in a recent book by Rignano, an Italian

writer (_Essays in Scientific Synthesis_, 1917). It is not often that

one meets a book so full of philosophical fallacies as this. "We are

certain of one fact," he says, "that the only organ actually brought

into play to fight immorality is the organ of the collective conscience

and not the religious organ." I suppose no more ludicrously inaccurate

remark ever was set down in print; for, to begin with, the "collective

conscience," whatever that may be, does not exist in Nature, _teste_ the

farmyard and the fowl-run; and again, whatever force is connoted by

those words must have been set agoing--by what? By Nature? Oh, most

emphatically No! Nature has no law against immorality; there is no

Categorical Imperative in Nature commanding us to be chaste or kindly or

considerate or even just. We must go elsewhere if we are to look for

teaching in the virtues. That is the fact that we must keep clearly

before our minds when endeavouring to estimate at their proper value the

nostrums of writers such as those with whose works we have been dealing.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Two addresses were delivered in 1914--one in

Melbourne, the other in Sydney. These will be referred to in

this article as M. & S.]

[Footnote 2: Sir Oliver Lodge: _Continuity_, p. 90.]

[Footnote 3: _Materials for the Study of Variation_, London,

1894.]

[Footnote 4: _The History and Theory of Vitalism_, p. 140.]

[Footnote 5: _Unconscious Memory._ Fifield. 1910.]

[Footnote 6: Those who desire further information may be

referred to _A Century of Scientific Thought_, by the present

writer. Burns & Oates.]

[Footnote 7: _Op. cit._, pp. 137-8.]

[Footnote 8: _The Philosophy of Biology_, p. 64.]

[Footnote 9: In an article in the volume _Darwin and Modern

Science_, p. 100.]

[Footnote 10: _Op. cit._, p. 319.]

[Footnote 11: _Op. cit._, pp. 238-9.]

[Footnote 12: See the discussion on this subject in Wasmann's

_The Problem of Evolution_.]

[Footnote 13: R. R. Marett, Presidential Address to Folk-Lore

Society, 1915. _Folk-Lore_, vol. xxvii., pp. 1-14.]

[Footnote 14: _The Kingdom of Man._ London: Constable & Co.

1907.]

[Footnote 15: Lankester, _op. cit._, p. 26.]

[Footnote 16: _Op. cit._, pp. 21-27.]

[Footnote 17: _My Life with the Eskimo_ (1913), p. 188.]

[Footnote 18: For a discussion of this question, see _Bernhardi

and Creation_, by Sir James Crichton-Browne, F.R.S. Glasgow:

James Maclehose & Sons. 1916.]

[Footnote 19: _The Northwest Amazons._ London: Constable & Co.

1915.]

[Footnote 20: _Science and the War_, p. 120.]

II. THEOPHOBIA AND NEMESIS

§ 1. THEOPHOBIA: ITS CAUSE

_Initium sapientiæ timor Domini_; no doubt, but such fear is only the

beginning, and is not the kind of fear--which also exists--a fear which

engenders an actual revulsion against the idea of God.

It is to this kind of fear which the eminent Jesuit writer Wasmann

alludes when he says that "in many scientific circles there is an

absolute _Theophobia_, a dread of the Creator. I can only regret this,"

he continues, "because I believe that it is due chiefly to a defective

knowledge of Christian philosophy and theology."

That he is entirely right as to the existence of this feeling there can

be no doubt; no one can read at all widely in scientific literature

without becoming aware of it. Contrary to all the tenets of science

there is even a bias against any such idea as that of a Creator, though

science is supposed to confront all problems without bias of any kind. I

need not cite instances of this feeling; I have dealt with it elsewhere.

We may take it for granted, and proceed to look for an explanation for

the phenomenon. Wasmann attributes it to ignorance, and he is, I feel

sure, right; but let us examine the matter a little more closely. Why

should persons--even if ignorant--have the bias which some obviously

present against the idea of a God? Why should they wish to think that

there is no such Being, no future existence, nothing higher than Nature?

Some persons maintain that precedent to a denial of God there must be a

moral failure. That I am sure is quite wrong. I should be far from

saying that in some materialists there is not a considerable weakening

of moral fibre, or perhaps it would be better put, a distortion of moral

vision, as evidenced by many of the statements and proposals of

eugenists, for example, and by the political nostrums of some who wrest

science to a purpose for which it was not intended. This no doubt is

true, but it is not quite the argument with which I am now dealing, and

that argument, if it implies moral failure in the persons concerned, has

little if any genuine foundation in fact. Mr. Devas, in that very

remarkable book, _The Key to the World's Progress_, gives us the useful

phrase "post-Christians." These people are really pagans living in the

Christian era, retaining many of the excellent qualities which they owe

neither to Nature nor to paganism, but to the inheritance--perhaps

involuntary and unrecognised--of the influences of Christianity. Many of

these people are kind, benevolent, scrupulously moral. They have not

learned to be such from Nature, for Nature teaches no such lessons. Nor

have they learnt them from paganism, for these are not pagan virtues.

They are an inheritance from Christianity. Those, therefore, who build

arguments as to the needlessness of religion on the foundation that

persons without any belief in God do exhibit all the moral virtues,

build on sand. At any rate the answer to the question which we are

discussing is not to be found in this direction.

Others again will perhaps maintain the thesis that fashion has a great

deal to do with this. It is not fashionable to believe in God, or at

least it was not. It was highly fashionable to call oneself an agnostic;

perhaps it is not quite so much the vogue now as it was. No doubt there

is something in this, though not very much. It is much easier to go with

the tide than against it, and there are scientific tides as truly as

there are tides in the fashion of dress. There was a Weismann tide, now

nearly at dead water; there was an anti-vitalistic tide, now ebbing

fast. When these were in full flow it was a hazardous thing for a young

man who had to make his own way in the scientific world to swim against

either or both of them. Fashions change, and fashion is not so set

against the idea of a God as it was. The materialistic tide is "going

out," and we shall see that there is some truth in the view which holds

that the incoming tide is largely that of occultism, a thing disliked

and despised--and indeed with some reason--by the materialistic school

even more than it dislikes and despises theistic opinions.

Fashion, however, is not in any way a complete answer to the question we

are proposing to ourselves, nor is the unquestionable fact that

scientific men have a strong objection to putting their trust in

anything which cannot be subjected either to scientific examination or

to experiment. In this attitude there is more than a germ of truth.

"Occam's razor" is as valuable an implement to-day as it ever was, and

everyone will admit that we must exhaust all known causes before we

proceed to postulate a new one.

We have gone beyond the day of the absurd statement that thought (which

is of course unextended) is as much a secretion of the brain as bile

(which, equally of course, is extended) is of the liver. No one nowadays

would commit himself to such a statement, and men in general would be

chary of urging that we should not believe anything which we cannot

understand. I have myself heard a distinguished man of science of his

day--he is dead this quarter of a century--make that statement in

public, wholly ignoring the fact that any branch of science which we may

pursue will supply us with a hundred problems we can neither understand

nor explain, yet the factors of which we are bound to admit. But there

is undoubtedly a dislike to accepting anything which cannot be proved by

scientific means, and a tendency to describe as "mysticism"--a terrible

and damning term to apply to anything, so its employers think!--any

explanation which postulates something more in the universe than

operations of a physical and chemical character.

My own opinion is that the state of things which we are considering

finds its explanation in history, and I propose to devote a short space

to developing this view. Of course we might, and in some ways should,

go back to the Reformation and to the destruction of religion which then

took place. Let us, however, pass from that period to a time some

hundred and fifty years ago and commence our investigations there, and

in carrying them out I propose to make considerable use of the novels of

different periods.

It is a truism that very little but the dry bones of history can be

learnt from histories.

Nowadays people are sick of reading about more or less immoral monarchs,

and more or less corrupt politicians, and it may be suspected that most

of us have had our bellyful of wars now that the recent contest has come

to an end. What one really wants to learn from history is how the

ordinary folk, like ourselves, were getting on; what their ideas were;

how the world wagged for them. Such information we are much more likely

to get from memoirs and, since such works have been published, from

novels. The novelist is not to be supposed to be committed to acceptance

of all the remarks put into the mouths of his characters, but, if he is

of the second, not to say the first flight (and, if he is not, he is not

worth quoting), his characters and the general tone of his book will not

be out of touch with the times to which they belong. Since the novel

came into existence as something more than an occasional rarity, it is

the novelists and not the players who are "the abstract and brief

chronicles of the times," and it is to them that we shall apply for some

of the information we desire.

To commence with the Georgian period, it is not too much to say that

anything like real religion was scarcely ever at a lower ebb in England.

This is not to say that there was an absolute dearth of religion. Law

wrote his _Serious Call_ during that period, and there are few books of

its kind which have had a greater and more lasting effect. There were

others of like but lesser character than Law, but, on the whole, no one

will deny that the clergy of the Established Church (Catholics were, of

course, in the catacombs) and the religion which they represented were

almost beneath contempt. Look, for example, at _Esmond_, the typical

novel of its period. Is there a single clergyman in it who is not an

object of contempt, with the sole exception of the Jesuit, who, though a

good deal of the stage variety, at least gains a measure of the reader's

sympathy and respect? Thackeray was not himself a Georgian, it may be

urged. That of course is true, but no one that knows Thackeray and knows

also Georgian literature will deny that he was saturated with it and

understood the period with which his book dealt better perhaps than

those who lived in it themselves. But examine the novelists of the

period; what about Fielding? Parson Adams is respectable and lovable,

but the general average of parson and religion is certainly about as low

as it can be. Fielding was not a religious man. Possibly, but what then

of Richardson? We do not find religion at a very high level there; can

anything well be more degraded than the figure cut by Mr. Williams in

_Pamela_, for example--the miserable curate upon whom the heroine calls

for help in her distress? But apart from that, look at the whole

atmosphere of the book. Why, the moral is that if you resist the immoral

onslaughts of your master long enough he will give in and marry you, and

you will be applauded for your successful strategy by all the

countryside. Such is the book which all agreed to praise as an example

of all that a book ought to be from the point of view of virtue.