"Science can tell us that oxygen and hydrogen will unite under certain
conditions to produce water, but it cannot tell us why they do so; the
mystery of their affinity is as dark as ever."
Mr. Le Gallienne has a whole chapter on the Relative Spirit, yet his
"long and ardent thought" does not enable him to see that he is
himself a slave of metaphysics. All this "mystery" is nothing but the
"meat-roasting power of the meat-jack." He question of _why_ oxygen and
hydrogen form water is a prompting of anthropomorphism. Intellectually,
it is simply childish. It could only be put by one who has _not_ grasped
the great doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge. Man can no more get
beyond his own knowledge--which is and ever must be finite--than he can
get outside himself, or run away from his own shadow.
"The sacred mystery of motherhood," of which Mr. Le Gallienne speaks,
is a pretty expression. It may pass in the realm of poetry, with the
"everlasting hills" and the "eternal sea," which are but transient
phenomena in the infinite existence of the universe. The "mystery" of
human motherhood is no greater than the "mystery" of any other form of
reproduction, while its "sacredness" depends on circumstances; the term,
in short, being a compendium of a great variety of personal and social
feelings, which may or may not be present in any particular case. What
becomes of the "sacred mystery of motherhood" when a poor servant girl
brings her child into the world unaided, and casts it into the Thames?
What becomes of it when violation takes the place of seduction, and a
woman bears a child to a man she loathes and hates?
"Mystery," like other words we inherit from the theological and
metaphysical stages, is only fit for use in poetry; it is out of place
in science or philosophy; and we advise Mr. Le Gallienne to get a
comprehension of this truth before he takes fresh excursions in the
"realm of long and ardent thought." The subjective ideas of poetry
cease to be admirable and stimulating when they are projected into the
external world, and become our masters instead of our servants.
Mr. Le Gallienne follows the beaten track of theology in talking about
"mysteries," which are only subterfuges to cover the retreat of a
nonplussed debater, or a warren for the fugitive game of the hounds
of reason. He also follows the beaten track in arguing--or rather
assuming--that the elect spiritualists have a "sense" which is lacking
in the reprobate materialists. There is nothing like a good lumping
assumption for begging the question at issue. It settles the discussion
before it opens, and saves a world of trouble. But even an assumption
may be looked in the face; nay, it is best looked in the face when you
suspect it of being an imposture.
According to Mr. Le Gallienne, the religious sense--or, as he also
writes it, the SPIRITUAL SENSE, with capital letters--is not after all
a special faculty, but a special compound, or interaction, of common
faculties. He does, indeed, treat these common faculties as
"tribautaries" of the Spiritual Sense; but it is very evident that the
tributaries make the stream, which is merely a name without them. First,
there is the Sense of Wonder, which is nothing but the positive side of
ignorance; second, the Sense of Beauty, which "is not necessarily a
religious sense," but may be pressed into its service; third, the Sense
of Pity, which really originates, as we conceive, in parental affection,
and has even been noticed in rats as well as in religionists; fourth,
the Sense of Humor, which is a peculiarly "candid" friend of religion,
so that Mr. Le Gallienne is obliged to give its devotees an impressive
warning against running into Ill-nature and Sacrilege; fifth, the Sense
of Gratitude, which in religion, so far as we can see, appears to
consist in a lively sense of favors to come, through the medium of
prayer, to which thanksgiving is only a judicious preliminary, like the
compliments and flatteries that are addressed to an oriental despot by
his humble but calculating petitioners.
Now all these senses are perfectly natural. Every one of them is found
in the lower animals as well as in man. How then can there be anything
supernatural, supersensible, or "spiritual,", in their combination? Is
it not evident that Religion works, like everything else, upon common
materials? Chiefly, indeed, upon the unchastened imagination of
credulous ignorance. We may prove this from Mr. Le Gallienne's own
testimony.
"Are there not impressions borne in upon the soul of man as he stands
a spectator of the universe which religion alone attempts to formulate?
Certain impressions are expressed by the sciences and the arts. 'How
wonderful!'--exclaims man, and that is the dawn of science; 'How
beautiful!'--and that is the dawn of art. But there is a still higher, a
more solemn, impression borne in upon him, and, falling upon his knees,
he cries, 'How holy!' That is the dawn of religion."
Mr. Le Gallienne does not see that this is all imagination. "The heavens
declare the glory of God," exclaims the Psalmist. On the other hand,
a great French Atheist exclaimed, "The heavens declare the glory of
Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton."
Mr. Le Gallienne does not see, either, that man did not exclaim, "How
holy!" when he first fell upon his knees. His feeling was rather, "How
terrible!" The sense of holiness is a social product--a high sublimation
of morality. Man had to possess it himself, and see it highly
exemplified in picked specimens of his kind, before he bestowed it upon
his gods. Deities do not anticipate, they follow, the course of human
evolution.
Mr. Le Gallienne is an Optimist. He is young and prosperous, and,
judging from his poetry, happily married. He is therefore satisfied that
all is for the best--if properly understood; just as when an alderman
has dined, all the world is happy.
There are such people, however, as Pessimists, and Mr. Le Gallienne
hates them. Schopenhauer, for instance, he rails at as a "small
philosopher." whose ideas were only the "formulation of his own special
disease, the expression of his own ineffably petty and uncomfortable
disposition." At which one can only stare, as at a mannikin attacking a
colossus. Spinoza too can be treated jauntily if he does not fall into
line with Mr. Le Gallienne. George Meredith is treated with abundant
respect, but he is wronged by being enrolled as a facile optimist, and
"the strongest of the apostles of faith." He is certainly nothing of the
kind, in Mr. Le Gallienne's sense of the words. He has faith in reason
and humanity, but this is a very different thing from faith in the
idols--even the greatest idol--of the Pantheon.
"There is too much pain in the world," said Charles Darwin, who knew
what he was talking about, and always expressed himself with moderation.
In the moral world, pain becomes evil; and the problem of evil has ever
been the crux of Theism. It cannot be solved on Theistic grounds, and
accordingly it has to be explained away. Pain, we are told, is the great
agent in our development; in the ethical sphere, it is the "purifying
fire," which purges the gold in us from its dross. All of which sounds
very pretty in a lecture, and looks very pretty in a book; but is apt to
excite disgust when a man is suffering from incurable cancer, or utter
destitution in the midst of plenty; or when a mother stands over the
corpse of her child, mangled in some terrible accident, or burnt to a
cinder in a fatal fire.
Certainly, pain subserves a partial purpose. It is sometimes a warning,
though the warning is often too late. But its function is immensely
overrated by Mr. Le Gallienne and other religionists. It is all very
well to talk about the "crucible," but half the people who go into it
are reduced to ashes. Mr. Le Gallienne will not accept Spinoza's view
that "pain is an unmistakable evil; joy the vitalising, fructifying
power." But the great mystic, William Blake, said the same thing in,
"Joys impregnate, sorrows bring forth." George Meredith has expressed
the same view in saying that "Adversity tests, it does not nourish
us." Even the struggle for existence does not add any strength to the
survivors. It sometimes cripples them. By eliminating the unfit--that
is, the weak--it raises the average capacity. But what a method for
Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Goodness! There was more sense, and less
cruelty, in the ancient method of infanticide.
Mr. Le Gallienne seems to feel that his theory of pain is too fantastic,
so he falls back on "mystery." "We can form no possible conception,"
he says, "of the processes of God." Why then does he talk about them
so consumedly? Ignorance is a good reason for silence, but none for
garrulity.
We must be "humble," says Mr. Le Gallienne, and recognise that we
only exist "to the praise and glory of God." We are his servants and
soldiers, and the pay is life!--"Had he willed it, this glorious gift
had never been ours. We might have still slept on unsentient,
unorganised, in the trodden dust." Very likely; but who could lose what
he never possessed? It is a small misfortune that can never be realised.
Mr. Le Gallienne leaps the final difficulty by exclaiming that "Man has
no rights in regard to God." He shakes hands with St. Paul, who asserts
the potter's power over the clay. Yes, but man is not clay. He lives and
feels. He has rights, even against God. The parent is responsible for
his child, the creator for his creature. The opposite doctrine is fit
for cowards and slaves. It comes down to us from the old days, when
fathers had the power of life and death over their children; it dies out
as we learn that the first claim is the child's, and the first duty the
parent's.
Mr. Le Gallienne's god is the old celestial despot of theology in a new
costume. On the question of a future life, however, we are pleased to
find a vein of heterodoxy and common sense. Mr. Le Gallienne asks, with
respect to the "hereafter," whether we "really care about it so much
as we imagine." We talk about meeting our old friends in heaven, for
instance, but do we not "meet them again already on earth--in the new
ones"! It is said that if fine, cultivated personalities do not survive
death, they are wasted, and have existed in vain. Mr. Le Gallienne's
reply to this objection is clear, sufficient, and well expressed:--
"But how so? Have they not been in full operation for a lifetime? 'Tis
a pity truly that the old fiddle should be broken at last; but then
for how many years has it not been discoursing most excellent music? We
naturally lament when an old piece of china is some sure day dashed to
pieces; but then for how long a time has it been delighting and refining
those, maybe long dead, who have looked upon it.--If there were no
possibility of more such fiddles, more such china, their loss would be
an infinitely more serious matter; but on this the sad-glad old Persian
admonishes us:--
.... fear not lest Existence, closing your
Account and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from the bowl has pour'd
Millions of Bubbles like us, and shall pour.
Nature ruthlessly tears up her replicas age after age, but she is slow
to destroy the plates. Her lovely forms are all safely housed in her
memory, and beauty and goodness sleep secure in her heart, in spite of
all the arrows of death."
Without saving what they are, or which of them he considers at all
convincing, Mr. Le Gallienne observes that the arguments as to a future
life are "probably stronger on the side of belief"--which is rather a
curious expression. But, whichever theory be true, it "does not really
much matter." Very likely. But how does this fit in with the teaching of
Christ? If he and his apostles did not believe in the "hereafter," what
_did_ they believe in? "Great is your reward in heaven," and similar
sentences, lose all meaning without the doctrine of a future life, about
which the early Christians were intensely enthusiastic. It was not in
_this_ world, as Gibbon remarks, that they wished to be happy or useful.
Mr. Le Gallienne argues that Christ taught in parables. He promised
heaven, and threatened hell, but he spoke in a Pickwickian sense.
However he used such phrases, it is "certain" that the evangelists "have
distorted their importance out of all proportion to the rest of his
teaching." By "certain" we are not to assume that Mr. Le Gallienne has
access to occult sources of information. We are only to infer that he
deals with the gospels arbitrarily; accepting them, or rejecting them,
as they accord or disagree with his preconceptions. Indeed, this is what
"essential Christianity" must always be. What each picker and chooser
likes is "essential." What he does not like is unessential, if not a
positive misrepresentation.
Short and easy is Mr. Le Gallienne's criterion for deciding when Christ
is literal and when parabolical. "It is only Christ's moral precepts
that are to be taken literally"--"all the rest is parable." What a pity
it is that the Prophet of Nazareth did not give us a clear hint to this
effect! The theory is one of admirable simplicity. Yet, for all that
demure look of his, Mr. Le Gallienne is not so admirably simple as
to work it out in practice. Accepting the moral precepts of Christ
literally, a Christian should hate his father and mother, take no
thought tor the morrow, live in poverty to obtain the kingdom of heaven,
and turn his left cheek to everyone who takes the liberty of striking
him on the right. Mr. Le Gallienne does not ask us to do these things;
he does not say he performs them himself, He would probably say, if
pressed, that allowance should be made for oriental ways of speaking.
But, in that case, what becomes of the "literal" method of reading the
"moral precepts" of Christ?
Mr. Le Gallienne, who despises "thinkers," is all at sea in his chapter
on Essential Christianity. He does not know his own mind. He declares
that Christ "combined" in his own person and teaching "the intense
spirituality of the Hebrew, the impassioned self-annihilation of the
Hindoo, the joyous naturalism of the Greek." Yet he also remarks that
there is something beautiful in "such presences as Pan, Aphrodite, and
Apollo," which we do not find in Christianity; though he is careful to
add that there is not "actually any strife between them and the sadder
figure of the Galilean." "All the gods of all the creeds," he says,
"supplement or corroborate each other." Perhaps so; but what becomes
of that "masterful synthesis," in which Christ gathered up the "joyous
naturalism of the Greek," no less than other ancient characteristics? It
is well to have a good memory (at least) when you are setting the world
to rights.
Christianity has been historically a failure. Mr. Le Gallienne more than
admits the fact; he emphasises it, and tries to explain it. In the first
place, he says the priests have been too many for Christ; they got hold
of Christianity, and turned it into the channel of their interests. In
the next place, the world was not ready for "essential" Christianity; an
argument in flat contradiction to the doctrine of "preparation," which
has placed so important a part in Christian apologetics ever since the
time of Eusebius. In the third place, "essential" Christianity is an
idealism, and "a throng of idealists is an impossibility." The horde of
earthly-minded people have simply trodden upon the precious pearls of
Christ's teaching. It is not true that the world has tried the Gospel
of Christ and found it wanting; the world has never tried it at all, and
"in this nineteenth century of the so-called Christian era, it has yet
to begin."
Supposing all this to be true, what does it prove? On the theory
that Christ was God, or sent by God, it proves either that Providence
interfered too soon, or that it is incapable of making any real
impression upon the stubborn inhabitants of this planet; either
alternative being a reflection on the wisdom or the power of the deity.
On the theory that Christ was only a man, it proves that he taught an
impossible gospel. After all these centuries it is still contested and
still to be explained. Would it not, after all, be better to put aside
this source of confusion and quarreling, and to rely upon reason and
the common sentiments of humanity? Mr. Le Gallienne admits that in some
respects "such a book as Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_ is more helpful
than _The New Testament_--for it includes more." Why then all
this chatter about Christ? Can we ever be united on a question of
personality? Is it not absurd, and worse than absurd, to thrust this
object of contention into the arena where the forces of light should be
fighting, like one man, the strong and disciplined forces of darkness?
All this talk about "the sublime figure of Christ" is a reminiscence
of his faded deity. We do not indulge in heated discussions as to the
personality of any other _man_. We speak of other "sublime" figures, but
the expression is one of individual reverence. We do not say that those
who do not share our opinion of Buddha, Socrates, Mohammed, Bruno,
Cromwell, Danton, or even Plato or Shakespeare, are grovelling
materialists and candidates for perdition. No, the chatter about Christ
is only explicable on the ground that he was, and still is by millions,
worshipped as a god. The glamor of the deity lingers round the form of
the man.
It is impossible for persons of any logical trenchancy to remain in
this stage. Francis Newman gave up orthodox Christianity, and also the
equivocations of Unitarianism, but he clung to "the moral perfection of
Christ." In the course of time, however, the scales fell from his eyes.
He had been blinded by a false sentiment. Letting his mind play freely
upon the "sublime figure" of the Prophet of Nazareth, he at length
perceived that it had its defects. No mortal is endowed with perfection.
Such monsters do not exist. Indeed, the teaching of Christ is as
defective as his personality, Its perfection and sufficiency can only be
maintained by those who never mean to incur the perils of reducing it to
practice. Who really tries to carry out the Christianity of Christ? Only
one man in Europe that we know of, and his name is Count Tolstoi; but
he is saved from the worst consequences of his "idealism" by the more
practical wisdom of his wife, who will not see him, any more than
herself and her children, reduced to godly beggary.
Mr. Le Gallienne seems to us to belong to the sentimentalists, though
we hope he will grow out of their category. He appears to dread accurate
thinking, and to imagine that knowledge destroys the charm of nature.
"Which," he asks, "comes nearest to the truth about love--poor
Lombroso's talk about pistil and stamen, or one of Shakespeare's
sonnets?" The root, he says, is no explanation of the flower.
This may be fine, but it is fine nonsense. Lombroso and Shakespeare are
both right. The physician does not contradict the poet. And if the root
is no explanation of the flower, what will happen if you are careless
about the root and the soil in which it is planted? Does a gardener act
in that way? Is it not the horticulture of Fleet-street sentimentalists?
Mr. Le Gallienne is great on what he calls the "root" fallacy. Wishing
to keep the "irreligious instinct" in mystery, or at least obscurity, he
objects to anthropological "explanations." He cannot tolerate talk about
ancestor-worship, and other such "rude beginnings of religion," although
it comes from the lips of his intellectual superiors, such as Tylor,
Lubbock, and Spencer. Even if they are right, he falls back upon his old
exclamation, "What does it matter?" If the flower began as a root, he
says, that is no argument against "the reality of the flower." But this
is a shifting of ground. The reality of the flower, the reality of the
"religious instinct," is not in dispute. The question is, What is its
explanation? No one denies that man idealises and reveres. The question
is, How did he come to let these faculties play upon ghosts and gods?
And the explanation is to be found in his past. It cannot possibly be
found in his present, unless we take him as a savage, in which case he
is an embodiment of the past of our own ancestors, from whom we derive
every vestige of what we call our "religion."
Man's nature, like his destiny, is involved in his origin. However he
may be developed, he will never be more than "the paragon of animals."
And it is the recognition of this unchangeable truth which makes all the
difference between the evolutionist, who labors for rational progress,
and the sentimentalist, who fritters away his energies in cherishing the
delusions of faith.