Authority will of course devolve on these committees chosen by members

of the household from among themselves. Every relic of primitive

despotism must be banished from the home: it is a self-acting republic.

Since children reared in the home will be one day responsible citizens

of a republican state, it were well to enlist them early in the work of

committees. They will learn thereby to subordinate personal desire to

the will of the majority, and to co-operate in action for the common

weal. The amusements and conduct of children are well within range of

their own understanding, and although supervision by adults is

necessary, great freedom should be allowed them in the management of

their conduct clubs and amusement committees.

The relinquishment of personal property is not desirable at the present

stage of social evolution; for individuals—and there may be some—who,

however willing, are unable to adapt themselves to the new system,

should possess the power to return to the old system without let or

hindrance.

Nevertheless, be it sooner or later, the ideal collectivist home of the

future will realize, though at first imperfectly, the beautiful

conception held by Isaac Taylor of the ideal family home of the past.

Here is the picture: “Home is a garden, high-walled towards the

blighting northeast of selfish care. In the home we possess a main means

of raising the happiest feelings to a high pitch and keeping them there.

No disparagement, no privation is to be endured by some for the

aggrandizement or ease of others. Along with great inequalities of

dignity, power and merit, there is yet a perfect and unconscious

equality in regard to comforts, enjoyments and personal consideration.

There is no room for grudges or individual solicitude. Whatever may be

the measure of good for the whole the sum is distributed without a

thought of distinction between one and another. Refined and generous

emotions may thus have room to expand, and may become the fixed habits

of the mind. Within the circle of home each is known to all, and all

respect the same principles of justice and love. There is therefore no

need for that caution, reserve or suspicion that in the open world are

safeguards against the guile, lawlessness and ferocity of a few.”[14]

There, too, may be wholly discarded that reticence with which, as with a

cloak, the modern, civilized man, says Lucas Mallet, strives to hide the

noblest and purest of his thought.

Footnote 14:

_Home Education_, Isaac Taylor, pp. 33 and 34.

The new system fully worked out will make homes permanent instead of

transitory. It will check the premature sending of girls out into the

world and the tendency of young life generally to drift. It will develop

industrial activities and give effective household labour. It will

lessen the sordid cares of humanity and increase its social joys. It

will create an environment calculated to restrain tempestuous youth and

cause every selfish passion to subside in the presence of mutual love.

It will perfect education by co-ordinating the life of the young and

securing that the entire juvenile orbit is governed by forces of fixed

congruity. It will provide every comfort for old age and garner its

dearly-bought experience. It will promote healthy propagation causing

the birth of the fit; it will facilitate marriage of the affections and

make early marriage possible. It will tend infancy in a wholly superior

manner, and by scientific breeding, rearing, training, produce future

citizens of the State of a higher intellectual, moral and spiritual

type.

_PART VII_

RELIGION AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE

PRIMAL ELEMENTS IN HUMANITY’S EVOLUTION

SECTION 1

Is this material universe self-sufficient and self-contained, or is

not the “other conception,” the true one, viz. “that of a universe

lying open to all manner of spiritual influences, permeated through

and through with a divine spirit, guided and watched by living minds

acting through the medium of law indeed, but with intelligence and

love behind the law; a universe by no means self-sufficient or

self-contained, but with feelers at every pore groping into another

supersensuous order of existence where reigns laws hitherto unimagined

by science, but laws as real and as mighty as those by which the

material universe is governed?”—SIR OLIVER LODGE, “The Outstanding

Controversy between Science and Faith,” _Hibbert Journal_ for October,

1902.

To the man of Western civilization, whose environment in youth was a

domestic atmosphere of Sabbath-day Christian orthodoxy and week-day

religious indifference along with a social atmosphere of commercial

individualism and the steady pursuit of sense pleasures, it is no easy

task to form a correct judgment regarding the true position of religion

and its relative worth in evolution.

A study of the subject reveals that not only the more and less civilized

races of mankind have each some specialized form of religion, but the

non-civilized savage tribes of the earth are similarly endowed. Their

worship may be degraded to the last degree, but it holds them in its

grasp, and in studying these facts we are compelled to believe that

humanity is so constituted that its deepest needs are only to be

expressed through and by religion.

The various religions of the world must have been essential to

evolution, since evolution, as applied to man, signifies the ample,

thorough development of every integral part of human nature in each

individual. But while recognizing religion as a necessary expression of

human nature and a supreme characteristic of man, we have also to

realize that its forms are as various as the distinctive differences

amongst men, and that changes from time to time inevitably occur for

good or evil in every religion. None are stationary, none are perfect.

And the spiritual verities which lie at the base of all are constantly

overlaid by superstitions, while the external forms harden and grow

inoperative for good.

Now, on the theory that religion is in effect necessary to evolution,

and further, that it represents fundamentally an emanation from the

plane of spirit, i.e. from a region transcending our phenomenal

existence, what would nineteenth century intelligence _a priori_ expect

of the various divergent religious systems? That amid variations, some

striking similarities would exist to indicate the identity of their

original source. It would expect also to find some statement of facts in

nature not otherwise known to man, some recognition of the stupendous

movement of evolution—the elucidation of which in its physical aspect is

the grand achievement of modern science—and some hint of the laws

governing that movement. Further, it would expect to find guidance to

right conduct and some indications of the paramount purpose and end of

universal life.

Hitherto, as it happens, the investigating spirit of modern science has

concerned itself little with theological matters; and the recognized

exponents of our own racial theology are incompetent judges here. Their

training has made of them religious specialists so interpenetrated by

sectarian dogma that they are incapable of assuming the mental attitude

of a genuine criticism claiming no superiority for Christianity over

other great religions, save such value of position as lies in its later

birth and development. Outside the churches, however, comparative

theology is not neglected, and it is freely admitted now by many earnest

students of the subject that all the great religions of the world

possess spiritual, ethical and philosophical ideas in common.

Hinduism deals with startling facts of the invisible world. In the

Vedas[15] it teaches that consciousness is the foundation or groundwork

of all nature, that matter and force are instinct with conscious life.

Behind these is the great unmanifested Deity—the “Unknowable” of our own

Spencerian philosophy—the Illimitable, Eternal, Absolute, Unconditioned

Source of the Universe, incognizable and inconceivable to the finite

faculties of man. With manifestation there appears the threefold aspect

of Deity—the supreme Logos of the Universe—a Unity in Trinity and a

Trinity in Unity, the reflection of which as Consciousness, Substance,

Force, runs throughout nature, and is also shown in the Christian and

other creeds and the Pauline description of man’s triune

constitution—body, soul and spirit. The doctrine of evolution is taught

in Hinduism on far wider lines than the modern intellectual conception

lays down. The latter, dealing with outward appearance, bases itself on

physical phenomena. The former transcends phenomenal existence and human

experience. It embraces the superlatively great, the infinitely small

and complex, and presents a cosmogony evolutional throughout, while it

points to a spiritual development for the individual so extensive and

sublime that the Western mind, unused to metaphysical thought, is unable

to grasp and clothe it in words. In this philosophy there is no

stultifying of human endeavour by the view of the soul’s opportunities

as confined to three score years and ten. That span of life makes but a

single page in the soul’s vast evolutional history, for at the centre of

Hinduism lies a rock-bed of belief in re-incarnation—that process of

nature which accomplishes the gradual growth and spiritual elevation of

humanity by means of the individual soul’s successive returns to

physical life, with intervening periods of spiritual rest or latency.

The threefold nature of man gives him touch with three levels of

existence, and Hindu religion represents him bound to a wheel

unceasingly turning in three worlds, viz. a world of waking

consciousness or the physical body, and of two other worlds to which he

passes successively at and after death, and in which he works out his

latest earthly experience and assimilates all its fruit, then returns

through the gateway of birth to begin a fresh course of discipline and

learning.

Footnote 15:

It is from the study of the Vedas that the educated Hindu seeks to

derive his creed. I refer my reader to Mr. J. E. Slater’s _Higher

Hinduism in relation to Christianity_.

Turning from the transcendental to the scientific and practical sides of

Hinduism, we find an external worship and broad polity calculated to

regulate human conduct in every relation of life, religious, national,

social, family and personal—the entire system founded on the law of

causation on all planes of being. By our own scientists, that law is

recognized on the physical plane as the invariable sequence of cause and

effect. Hinduism regards it as working also on higher planes, and terms

it the law of action or Karma—the moral retribution which brings out

inexorably in one life the results following from causes arising in

previous lives. Responsibility therefore rests with every

self-conscious, reflective being, and divine justice is shown

reconcilable with the free-will of man through the union of Karma and

re-incarnation. “God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall

he also reap.”

The religion of the Parsis, i.e. the modern form of Zoroastrianism, has

equally with Hinduism a metaphysical philosophy, and an outward worship,

while mingled with all there is an astronomical teaching based on the

same conception of nature as is found in Hinduism, viz. that it is the

manifestation, in infinitely varied forms, of the one universal

consciousness or mind. The constitution of humanity is two-fold. Spirit

and matter are two distinct and different principles, both are in man;

and he is capable of siding definitely with either. The ethic of

Zoroastrian faith is based on the belief that he will throw himself on

the side of the pure, that he will battle for it and maintain it. To be

at all times actively on the side of purity is a clear personal duty.

The devout Zoroastrian must keep the earth pure and till it religiously.

He must perform the functions of agriculture as a service to the gods,

for the earth is the pure creature of Ahura Mazdao—the Supreme Spirit to

be guarded from all pollution. And passing from the outer to the inner

life of the individual, the constantly-repeated maxim is this: I

withdraw from all sins by pure thoughts, pure deeds, pure words.

In Taoism, a religion of China of earlier date than Hinduism or

Zoroastrianism, there exists a fragment of ancient scripture called the

Classic of Purity, wherein man is regarded as a trinity, viz. spirit,

mind, body. To quote from Mr. Legge’s translation: “Now the spirit of

man loves purity, but his mind disturbs it. The mind of man loves

stillness, but his desires draw it away. If he could always send his

desires away, his mind would of itself become still. Let his mind be

made clean, and his spirit will of itself become pure.” (Here we have

the idea, expressed in all religions, of the conflict between the higher

and lower nature in man and the necessity for spirit to dominate mind

and body. Refer to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, vii. 15, 21, 22 and

23.)

Again, Buddhism has absorbed the attention of modern Oriental scholars

through the fascination of the Buddha’s purity and elevation of thought.

There are two divisions of this faith, viz., the Mahayana, that of the

Northern Church, found in Tibet, Nepaul, China, Corea, and Japan, and

the Hinayana, that of the Southern Church, found in Ceylon, Burmah,

Siam, etc. The Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) is closely allied to Hinduism

in its teachings regarding the spiritual world, the continuing ego of

individual man, the life after death, the rites and ceremonies of

worship, and the mystic side of personal religion. In the Hinayana

(Lesser Vehicle) of the Southern Church, much of this mystic teaching

has been dropped, nevertheless it retains a wonderful system of ethics,

with appeals made to human reason, and a constant attempt to justify and

render intelligible the foundations on which the morals are built.

Buddhism is clearly the daughter of the more ancient Hinduism. Its

scriptures are the echo of the Hindu scriptures, and the general

teachings, while thrown into a less metaphysical form, are penetrated

with the Hindu spirit. Causation is in both an unbroken law. In the

Dhammapada, for instance, it is written: “If a man speaks or acts with a

pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.

If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him as the

wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage. He who has

done what is evil cannot free himself of it, he may have done it long

ago or afar off, he may have done it in solitude, but he cannot cast it

off.”

Buddha taught that evil is overcome only by its opposite, i.e. good:

“Let every man overcome anger by love, let him overcome the greedy by

liberality, the liar by truth,” etc., etc. And here the religion is

closely in touch with Christian ethics: “Love your enemies, bless them

that curse you, do good to them that hate you,” etc. “Love is the

fulfilling of the Law.” With regard to man’s destiny, Buddha’s teachings

build on his hearers’ acceptance of the Hindu doctrine of

re-incarnation.

(In the Pali Canon occur these words: “The Bhikshee [the disciple] sees,

with eye divine, beings dropping away and reappearing, he knows them

reaping according to their several karma, degraded and ennobled,

beautiful and ugly, well-placed and ill-placed.” From this and many

other passages of the Pali Canon “it is clear and evident and beyond a

shadow of doubt,” says J. C. Chatterji, “that the Buddha taught the

identity of the re-incarnating ego, though he did not give it that name.

He called it Consciousness or Vignana.”—_Theosophical Review_, Jan.,

1898, p. 415.) Without that his system falls to the ground. The path of

salvation he points to implies a persistent course of personal effort,

and he who would tread that path must open his mind to discriminate

between things that are transitory and those that are real and

permanent. To the former belong all the pleasures of sense, every

earthly desire and ambition, and every selfish thought.

Deep within man’s nature, however, there lies hid a germ or seed of the

permanent. This will persist throughout all the ages amid the fleeting

phantasmagoria of many lives, and this he must cherish, nourish,

develop. He must resist and renounce the corrupting influences of the

flesh. He must master his passions, steady his mind, and control,

enlighten and elevate his thoughts. Further, he must purify his emotions

and actions, pervading the world with a “heart of love, far-reaching,

grown great and beyond measure.” (The Tevijja Sutta.) Finally, the

individual consciousness will expand, until, able to function in subtler

vehicles than those of physical matter, the man passes out of the

chrysalis state of formal existence to emerge upon higher levels of life

and reach at length the Buddhist Nirvana—that supreme crown of

immortality and acme of conscious bliss.

This pilgrimage of the soul through many births and deaths, with its

steadfast struggles and gradual liberation from all earthly debasing

entanglements, forms a striking contrast to certain teachings of the

modern Christian Churches. Dogma there presents to us an undeveloped

helpless soul, as playing—within a circumscribed area of earth’s

surface—its one little game of experimental life. The fate of the soul

for all eternity hangs in the balance, all its chances for weal or woe

depending on a single throw of the dice. And what are the terms of the

game? Conditions of life so adverse, in millions of cases, that defeat

is a foregone conclusion. No wonder civilized men with a seedling of

justice in the soul, reject the whole scheme of nature allied with this

dogma, and frankly disavow religious faith.

But the question arises, how does it happen that Christianity, with an

ethic fundamentally the same as that of every other great religion of

the world, diverges so completely here? Is it conceivable that

Christianity, while of Divine origin, has become in process of time

dwarfed and deformed to the extent even of losing some _essential_

features? It holds, as sectarian pulpits represent it, no doctrine of

re-incarnation, and appears to have no clear basis of metaphysical or

philosophic thought. Moreover, it has elements impossible to reconcile

with the mental and emotional developments of a scientific and

intellectual age. The anthropomorphic conception of Deity, the almost

literal interpretation of the Jewish allegory of creation, the

personalization of the metaphysical and mystic Trinity; the approval of

the barbarous sacrifices and vengeful Deity of the Old Testament; the

anti-evolutional doctrine of the vicarious Atonement in the New

Testament; the crude ideas concerning the soul, heaven and hell; and the

absence of any evolutional theory applied to human destiny—all these,

and above all the ignorance and pride that claim for this particular

form of religion a unique position in the world’s history, and assume

that it alone and no other religion is the revelation of God to man,

show an ample justification for the fact that the most intelligent men

and women of Western civilization stand outside the Christian Churches

to-day, or are in them from motives that have nothing to do with devout

religious feeling.

If, however, we turn to the history of the Church and search its ancient

records, or if unable ourselves to grapple with the problem, we place

confidence in the evidence of students who have done so, we find that an

entirely new light is thrown on Christianity and its real position. In

the writings of the Christian Fathers, there is a constant reference

made to grades of members and teaching within the early Church. First,

the general members, and from those the pure in life went into a second

grade. The latter formed the “few chosen” from the many called. But

beyond these were the “chosen of the chosen,” who, “with perfect

knowledge lived in perfection of righteousness according to the law.”

Clement of Alexandria, one of the greatest of the Fathers of the Church,

wrote: “It is not to be wished that all things should be exposed

indiscriminately to all and sundry, or the benefits of wisdom

communicated to those who have not, even in a dream, been purified in

soul ... nor are the mysteries of the word to be expounded to the

profane.” Origen tells us that Jesus conversed with His disciples in

private, and especially in their most secret retreats, concerning the

Gospel of God; but the words He uttered have not been preserved. And

when Celsus assailed Christianity as a secret system, Origen replied

such a notion was absurd, “but that there should be certain doctrines

not made known to the multitude and which are revealed after the

exoteric doctrines have been taught, is not a peculiarity of

Christianity alone, but also of philosophic systems, in which certain

truths are exoteric and others esoteric.” Elsewhere he explains that

Scripture is threefold in meaning, that it is the “flesh” for simple

men, the “soul” for the more instructed, the “spirit” for the “perfect,”

and in corroboration he quotes from Scripture the words of St. Paul, “We

speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom,” and “we

speak wisdom amongst them that are perfect.”

We have here, then, more than a trace of some deeper teaching than

appears on the surface of Christianity, some mine of hidden truth too

sacred and profound for open display to the undiscerning multitude. Is

it not evident that Christianity contains at its centre, known only to

the few, the same transcendental and spiritual conceptions, the same

supra-physical and mystical philosophy as the ancient religions contain?

But if this be so, how came the most precious truths of religion to be

apparently lost?

They were lost through the uncomprehending ignorance of the early

followers of the Master, Christ, and the sectarian bigotry of

ecclesiastics who cut themselves apart from the holders of the inner

teaching and, becoming a majority, overcame the learned few, stamping as

heretics the last remnants known as Christian Gnostics, Manicheans,

Pelasgians, and Arians, all of whom, counted schismatics, were

eventually crushed out through cruel persecution by the victorious

orthodox Latin and Greek Churches. Nevertheless, some fragments of the

hidden wisdom of the early teaching have survived in the uncomprehended

symbols of the creeds and ceremonies of the Churches. (I refer my reader

to Mr. C. W. Leadbeater’s work, _The Christian Creed_.)

That re-incarnation and Karma formed part of the original teaching is, I

think, abundantly evident. In Gnosticism and Manicheism they were

apparent. The Christian Fathers speak plainly of these doctrines, and

Origen refers to Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles as holding them.

Moreover, Jesus Christ is made to utter a clear statement concerning

John the Baptist, that implies the doctrine of re-incarnation, and his

answer to the question about a blind man, “who did sin, this man or his

parents, that he was born blind?” shows the acceptance in the early

Church of both doctrines. The whole incident reveals that the subject of

re-incarnation was familiar to the followers of Christ, and Josephus

expressly states that the Pharisees held the doctrine of re-birth. There

is then little doubt that in the _early_ Church the belief was widely

spread, but later at a General Council—a Council held after darkness had

begun its reign—it was formally condemned and stamped as a heresy.

Bearing in mind the view that all the great religions come from the same

spiritual source, it is significant to find the following in the

writings of a rigid Roman Catholic historian, viz. A. F. Ozanam: “Having

burst over the borders of the country to which it had once been

confined, Buddhism at the year 61 B.C. made a new appearance on the

scene, and invaded all Northern Asia.... This great movement could not

but influence the West. It effected its entrance (into Christendom)

through the Gnostic sects. The Gnosis was the designation of a higher

science or initiation reserved for a handful of chosen spirits.” Again,

speaking of the Manicheans, he says: “It is difficult to decide whether

Manes drew his system originally from these Buddhist sources or found

the teaching which he handed down to his disciples held by former

Gnostic sects, themselves impregnated with the Oriental doctrine.”

(Ozanam’s _History of Civilization in the Fifth Century_, vol. i. pp.

247 and 254.) It is easy to see that this Oriental doctrine was none

other than the hidden wisdom of Jesus and Paul as well as of Buddha.

The special doctrine of re-incarnation is said to be absent in the

fragments of the Avesta and in the Zend commentaries, and absent also in

the latter Pahlavi doctrines. It is not held by the modern Parsis. “On

the other hand,” says G. R. S. Mead, B.A., M.R.A.S., “Greek writers

emphatically assert that the doctrine of re-incarnation was one of the

main tenets of the Magian tradition.” The same author elsewhere remarks:

“Since Bardaisan, like all the great Gnostics, believed in

re-incarnation, such a conception as the resurrection of the physical

body was nothing but a gross superstition of the ignorant.” (The

_Theosophical Review_ for March, 1898, p. 17.)

To judge Christianity fairly, it was necessary to know something of its

origin, its antecedents and the early phases of its life. We had to

follow the history of its early sects and observe the changes effected

in the Church by forces playing upon it from without. The Church

gradually rose into a position of social influence and authority, from

which it again declined, and it was during the latter condition that in

its struggles to maintain power and supremacy amid adverse forces it

dropped out the mystic beliefs difficult of apprehension by Western

minds; it ceased to order and classify its adherents, and it ultimately

adapted its doctrines to the materialistic spirit of the dawning era of

modern science.[16] Nevertheless, the Church retained its pure _ethical_

teaching. It has held up to view the noble unselfish life of its founder

Jesus of Nazareth. No one could deny that during the period even of its

degradation, this religion has proved to millions of human beings a

source of vital comfort and joy, and to some extent of spiritual light.

Footnote 16:

Tertullian complains: “They have all access alike; they hear alike,

they pray alike, even heathens if any such happen to come among them.”

The tendency of Protestantism was to assert the claims of all men—the

weak and childish as well as the thoughtful and intellectually strong—to

a clear understanding of the Church’s whole teaching. In pursuance of a

policy to meet this demand, the Church gave forth a simplified

presentation of God and Nature that contradicts the plainest facts of

science, and creates within minds of deeper, more expanded faculty, a

conscientious revolt from the Christian faith to an attitude of honest

scepticism. Outside the Church, however, other forces of evolution have

prevailed to carry man forward, and to-day there exists an earnest and

devout spirit of inquiry, and a strong dissatisfaction with the purely

materialistic theory of Nature.

Conspicuous among the forces of change are, first, the study of physical

phenomena on scientific methods, a study which, by convincing the

Western mind of a profound mystery behind all phenomena, gives fresh

impulse to speculative thought, and rouses effort to reach and apprehend

the law of evolution. Second, the study of psychic phenomena revealing

modes of consciousness hitherto ignored, and impelling science to

penetrate the hidden recesses of our psychic activities and investigate

some of the heights and depths of man’s inner constitution. Third, the

historical studies that throw new light on the marvellous civilizations

of the past and those religions that are more ancient than Christianity.

Whatever the ultimate outcome of these studies may prove, it is clear

that the perspective of early faiths—their range and reach—was vaster

than that of current Christianity, and this perception is creeping into

our popular literature and laying hold of public thought. For instance,

a recent writer remarks: “The modern scientific revelation of stellar

evolution and dissolution seems a prodigious confirmation of Buddhist

theories of cosmical law.” And again, “With the acceptance of the

doctrine of evolution old forms of thought crumbled, new ideas arose to

take the place of worn-out dogmas, and we have a general intellectual

movement in directions strangely parallel with Oriental philosophy.”

(Lafcadio Hearn’s _Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life_.)

This movement necessarily will advance only by carrying with it, i.e.

convincing step by step, the reason of man, and seeing that Oriental

philosophy has the doctrines of re-incarnation and Karma at its

foundation, these must be tested and the fact ascertained whether or not

they are consistent with the laws of phenomenal existence already

discovered and believed in by the Occidental mind. “To-day,” says

Lafcadio Hearn, “for the student of scientific psychology, the idea of

pre-existence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of fact,”

and he quotes in corroboration of this statement Professor Huxley’s

opinion of the theory—“None but very hasty thinkers will reject it on

the ground of inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself,

that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality, and it may

claim such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of

supplying.” (_Evolution and Ethics_, p. 61, Ed. 1894.)

At this epoch of the world’s history, the humanity that exists is of an

infinitely varied character. At one end of the scale, we have in savages

the simplest forms of racial types, at the other the most complex forms,

and between these every conceivable variant. The distinctions go deeper

as we ascend the scale, and there are no two beings alike in their

powers of abstract thinking, the nature of their intellectual, emotional

and moral qualities, and the groupings of these qualities—in a word,

their individualities. Now one thing demanded by the developed

intellects of this age is a generalization that will cover and explain

these perplexing differences. The law of heredity does this to a very

limited extent only. So far as the physical structure is concerned it

explains much; but when we come to the mental and moral developments,

its insufficiency is apparent. Genius and idiocy may be found springing

up from the same parent stock and under identical conditions of training

in childhood. Variety of character will appear in children of the same

family from almost the moment of birth. One infant comes into the world

handicapped by a sullen temper and vicious disposition, another with the

most lovable traits. It is inconceivable that these incongruous effects

flow from congruous causes on the physical plane. And were we able to

logically accept these physical causes as adequate, no civilized being

could morally respect the ordering of a universe wherein innocent souls

newly created enter life handicapped by vicious propensities. Either the

Power behind all phenomena is a malevolent Power, or the universe is a

chaos—the inconsequent outcome of random chance.

These painful alternatives cease their troubling, however, and all

perplexities gradually disappear as the mind of man grows into a clear

apprehension of evolution in its full significance. The basic law of

evolution is that all existence proceeds in cycles, each having its

objective and subjective arc. In other words, there is a constant flow

of motion and consciousness from without within and from within without.

On the lowlier levels of life, this law is observed and science based

upon it. In the vegetable kingdom, the leaves, stalk and flower of a

specific plant perish as completely as though they had never existed;

but the subjective entity remains, and in due course it reappears,

clothed in a different vestment of cells, the same in all the details of

its intricate form.

In the insect kingdom, all the wonderful changes that transform a

crawling slimy caterpillar into a glorious vision of beauty and grace

takes place in silence and darkness—from within without. Here the law of

evolution takes a wider range than in the vegetable kingdom. Form,

function, habit, all are changed, yet we know by actual observation that

the soaring butterfly and crawling caterpillar are intrinsically one and

the same. Moreover, the whole process of change is accomplished in the

pupa stage independently of that food supply which—to the scientific

conception—seems indispensable in the generation and continuation of

vital force. (I must here refer my reader to the full discussion of this

subject in chapters v. and vi. of Dr. Jerome A. Anderson’s

_Re-incarnation—A Study of the Human Soul_.)

Now in our habit of regarding humanity in its higher aspect as the acme

or crown of terrestrial life, we are apt to forget the potent connexions

that link it with life in general. But re-incarnation, if we would judge

it philosophically, must not be wrenched from its place in the order of

nature and studied as an isolated fragment.

“All evolution consists,” says Mrs. Besant, “of an evolving life passing

from form to form as it evolves, and storing up the experience gained

through the forms; the re-incarnation of the human soul is not the

introduction of a new principle into evolution, but the adaptation of

the universal principle to meet conditions rendered necessary by the

individualization of the continually evolving life.” (_The Ancient

Wisdom_, p. 234.) The doctrine of human evolution summed up in the term

re-incarnation cannot be proved in the same sense as a new discovery in

physics can be proved—that goes without saying. But we may claim that it

can be so nearly proved by reasoning that no intelligent being who

correctly apprehends the idea and applies it with patience to the

experience of existence, whether in or out of the body, can fail to

believe it as fully, for example, as the modern scientific world

believes in the electro-magnetic theory of light. That theory is no

longer argued about. It is the only theory that will explain all the

facts. And of re-incarnation in a higher domain we may equally affirm it

is the only theory that explains the facts and is consonant with all the

known laws of nature. It is luminous with a truly scientific aspect. It

satisfactorily accounts for the inherent differences in character that

heredity leaves unexplained, and it renews our faith in love and wisdom

as underlying the phenomena of earthly existence, notwithstanding

present appearances.

But add to this the fact that every great religion of the world, except

modern Christianity, holds it more or less completely, whilst

Christianity also originally held it; and if a spiritual and ethical

theory of the universe be tenable, then cultured minds rejecting

re-incarnation must either have failed to study the subject in its

antecedents and bearings, or they must be by constitution profoundly

unphilosophical. (I refer my reader here to chap. iii. of Mr. A. P.

Sinnett’s _Growth of the Soul_.)

After all, it is a comparatively few men and women who seek intellectual

clearness of vision, and are restless of soul till they grasp a theory

of the universe and an interpretation of life that alike may satisfy

head and heart—the mass of mankind is unthinking. And as we contemplate

the stupendous task of evolution in developing each individual soul out

of the embryonic condition of the savage to a conscious control and

exercise of all the divine potencies of a perfected spiritual man, we

feel no surprise that the major part of humanity stands yet in its

childhood. Unequal development is the natural corollary of general

evolution. The heart of modern man, however, is for the most part in

advance of his head, and it is here, viz. on the emotional side of human

nature, that religion—no matter what the specific form may have been—has

ministered to man’s needs and proved an all-important factor of

evolution.

Revelation, as Lessing (who believed in re-incarnation) declares, has

been the education of the human race. “It did not,” he says, “give

anything that human reason left to itself would not arrive at, but it

gave the most important of these things earlier”—that is, before the

reasoning faculties were fully developed in man. (Lessing’s Treatise:

_The Education of the Human Race_, translated by the Rev. F. W.

Robertson.)

The founders of every religion—the great and wise ones of the earth—have

guided the race in its slow and gradual ascent from infancy to manhood,

and even through the degeneration to which every religion has been

subjected from human ignorance and selfishness.

SECTION 2

We have now to turn from racial religions to personal religion, and as

the springs of individual conduct lie earlier in the heart than in the

head, spiritual developments begin there. It is in accordance with

natural order that the right conduct and simple devotion of millions of

human beings, intellectually blind, should yet aid the steady advance of

evolution towards its highest goal.

The pilgrim soul pressing forward through a long series of births and

deaths has a chequered career of conquest and defeat, until, experience

guiding effort and overcoming waywardness, the animal stage of existence

has been distanced and left behind. But each of these pilgrim souls

pursues a path specifically its own, that is, differing from that of

every other pilgrim soul. The paths pursued are divided by Eastern

thought into three distinct classes. First, that of action; second, that

of devotion; third, that of wisdom. In the first class are to be found

men and women of infinitely varied powers taking part in all the

activities of the world, and striving with keenness to attain certain

desired results. Commencing, it may be, with low, selfish, narrow

motives of action, these gradually alter and improve, till motive and

action alike have become pure, unselfish and directed to the widest

beneficence. Such types of humanity tread the first path, that of

action, and in it are harvesting precious experience. They are

developing interiorly the powers that make for righteousness.

To the second class belong all the world’s sincere religionists, those

beings whose regard—whether of fear or love—goes out to an ideal person.

The person, observe, may be of low or of high grade in accordance with

the subjective development of the individual worshipper. As the object

of devotion becomes purified, love casts out fear, and advance on this

path proceeds. Men and women adoring their conception of Krishna, or

Buddha, of Ahura Mazdao, or of Jesus Christ, are treading the path of

devotion, and may rise to the highest emotions of altruism, the most

selfless service of the Supreme, thus harmonizing ever more and more the

human will and the Divine will.

Pilgrims of the third and smallest class are men and women whose

constant desire and endeavour is to search out the truth of things. In

the earlier grades of this path will be found scientific investigators

of physical phenomena; more advanced on the path are materialist

philosophers and all individuals directing their efforts to an

examination of man in the regions of emotion and mind. Above these again

are the men and women whose search is into the innermost nature of

things, and who, in the intensity of that search, lose more and more

their feeling of self, and merge themselves in Divine knowledge.

To summarise the three paths: The first is a progress through human

activities from motives of self to motives of highest altruism. The

second is a progress through religious emotions, from fear of an

invisible demon, to the most selfless love of an ideal person and

unswerving devotion to true ideals. The third is a progress from the

simplest efforts to discover truth to the acquisition of Divine wisdom

by means of the immensely increased faculties of the perfected man.

These three paths, like different ways up a mountain, meet at the top,

where pilgrims attain to the qualities of all, and not only of the one

path mainly traversed by each. All attain in the end to the fullest

development of human power and faculty, and to complete liberation from

the chain of births and deaths. That personal goodness and religious

zeal are the measure of spiritual development is only the Church’s view,

and it ignores a large part of human efforts and activities. Without

personal goodness certainly no spiritual life is possible, but beyond

the acme of personal goodness to lofty heights of knowledge, of wisdom,

of transcendent love and benevolence, rises the pilgrim human soul under

Divine tuition.

We have now to inquire wherein the pilgrims resemble one another? The

feature common to all is the inner attitude of self-surrender. It may

spring from impulse or a half-unconscious sense of duty. Or, it may

result from the reasoning faculty, from reason controlling and directing

conduct with a full consciousness of responsibility. Again, it may be

allied with all the sacred aspirations and inspirations that follow upon

a long course of development, but whatever the cause and degree, this

attitude of mind makes it possible for the spiritual forces working in

and through humanity as a whole to manifest there, expanding the heart

and mind, and creating a further soul-evolution.

There is a law in nature which has been well called the pulse of our

planetary system, a law of giving out. It involves no absolute and

ultimate sacrifice; and it is the only law by which progress and

exaltation in nature can be actually achieved. Now this law is a central

part of the teaching of every great religion. The Logos, we are told, in

bringing into existence an infinitude of centres of consciousness, made

the voluntary sacrifice of limiting His own boundless life. This thought

is expressed in the Christian Scriptures thus: “The Lamb slain from the

foundation of the world.” This first great outbreathing of the life of

the Logos is the earliest presentation of the law of sacrifice—that law

which prescribes that at every stage of evolution life and energy shall

be given out for the benefit of some consciousness on a lower grade than

the giver. This great principle of evolution is manifest in the

unselfish benevolence of all good men and women; even when they are

working as yet in blind obedience to the scarcely articulate impulses of

their awakening spiritual natures. (I refer my reader to p. 452 of Mr.

A. P. Sinnett’s _The Growth of the Soul_.)

To our minds pain seems necessarily connected with sacrifice, but pain

proceeds wholly from discord within the sacrificer, i.e. from antagonism

between the higher part of his nature which is willing to give, and the

lower part whose satisfaction lies in grasping and keeping. The process

required in each case is a turning from the selfish, individualistic

attitude to that of a social, altruistic giving—a giving joyfully for

love’s sake. The transition naturally involves some pain, for the

conscious will has to gradually master the animal part of the nature,

and subordinate it to the higher self.

Man is, in the order of evolution, primarily subject to animal desires.

His consciousness moves on the sensuous plane of existence, and he

clings to the physical elements in nature. By-and-bye he learns to

relinquish an immediate material good for a future good equally

material—it may be a greater worldly prosperity for himself or his

family. This sacrifice is not essentially noble, but it prepares the way

for a harder lesson, and one that calls out a deeper faculty within him.

Here again the process is one of exchange, but not of one form of

sensuous good for another. It is the exchange of material possessions or

sense pleasures for something of an entirely different order in nature—a

reward not visible, nay, possibly far off beyond the tomb.

When humanity was in its childhood, religion inculcated and pressed upon

it this form of sacrifice; and as we ponder the martyr lives that stud

the pages of history we recognize the fact that thousands of human

beings practised the precept, and learned to endure, as seeing the

invisible, to stand morally upright without earthly prop, to value

spiritual companionship and joy in an inner life of purity and peace

when outward conditions were adverse and dark.

A later, far higher phase of the law of sacrifice, is that wherein no

reward is thought of, or desired. Reaching manhood, humanity grapples

with the duties and accepts all the grave responsibilities of an

advanced evolutional stage. Duty becomes the motor of action,

self-mastery and love of one’s fellows the very keynotes of man’s music.

The animal part of his nature becomes subordinate to the higher self.

The third great lesson of sacrifice works within, the lesson, viz. to do

right simply because it is right, to give because giving is owed by each

to all, and not because giving will in any shape be pleasing to or

rewarded by God.

During the various stages of progress, the pain aspect of sacrifice is

clearly seen. Nevertheless, a soul’s passionate grip upon things

physical and sensuous relaxes, and a day arrives when to give

spontaneously, freely, lavishly, is purest joy. Then is man’s life

merging into Divine life, and sacrifice is no more pain. Vital

dissonances cease to rend man’s heart, for his inner consciousness has

soared above the selfish separateness of phenomenal existence into

realms of nature where unity and love are the all-prevailing principles

of life. We know these principles in action through the beautiful,

selfless earthly pilgrimage of Him we call the Saviour of Mankind, whose

whole career was an At-one-ment with the Divine.

The “Vicarious Atonement” doctrine of Western faiths to-day is both an

ecclesiastical device for increasing priestly power and a

misapprehension of the law we have been considering—the law of

sacrifice, by which the worlds are made, by which the worlds are living

now, and by which alone the union of man with God is brought about. That

noble doctrine of antiquity was changed by Mediæval Christianity into a

picture of the Godhead—Father and Son, in opposition to one another—a

picture that “shocks all reverence, and outrages reason by bringing all

manner of legal quibbles into the relationship between the Spirit of God

and man.” (_Four Ancient Religions_, Annie Besant, p. 166.) Again, a

race whose reasoning faculties are developed must needs repudiate the

Church’s dogma of “Imputed Righteousness”—a righteousness not inwrought

or attained to, but applied externally—a covering to what is corrupt and

base, yet deemed sufficient to secure a perfunctory pardon of sin, a

non-merited Divine favour.

The real At-one-ment with the Divine, whereof Jesus the Christ is our

Archetype, admits of no substitutions, no subterfuges, makes no

fictitious claims. It signifies an actual transformation or process of

change, the inner consciousness passing from the lower to function on

higher levels of being.

It is easy, however, to apprehend how the necessity of thinking of all

supra-physical things, i.e. the finer phenomena of existence, by means

of analogies and figures of speech that are purely physical, led to much

of error in the earlier stages of human development; and there is a

sense in which the “robe of righteousness” is a not inapt analogy or

figure. When speaking of the pilgrimage of the soul, the picture

presented is that of a concrete toiler, ascending slowly, breathing

heavily, sighing and evidencing effort to all our outer senses, yet we

know that the soul’s best efforts are mostly hidden from sight and

hearing and touch. But no confusion arises. The mental conception to

which the figure points is that of efforts as great though directed to

evils that are chiefly mental, emotional, moral, not physical.

Similarly, the “robe of righteousness” figure must not be overstrained.

Man’s soul is clothed upon by, or clothes itself in (it matters not

which, we say) robes or garments of flesh, and of finer physical

elements than flesh, elements intangible to his five senses. The flesh

garment or body is constantly changing, and so are the bodies of desire

and of thought. The changes occur through the action and interplay of

diverse subtle forces. Fresh elemental matter is borne in from without

to replace the atoms of structures tending to decompose, while a process

of selection, determination and assimilation proceeds through the action

of forces within.

But the same laws of growth apply to realms of nature less open to

observation, and a careful selection and choice of material is as potent

and necessary in building the bodies of desire and thought as in

building the body of solid flesh. And what are the available materials

here? In the hidden life of our own thought and feeling we are conscious

of an unceasing flow of transient states, or we may express it, currents

of emotional and mental vibrations reaching us from we know not whence,

waves breaking upon us from without. If we deliberately choose the

elevated moods, the purest, swiftest vibrations, and seek habitually to

retain these and make them our own, sweetness and light must inevitably

characterize the habitation we are slowly building for our inner

consciousness. In other words, the vehicles of our feeling and thought

will become as “robes of righteousness.”

Desires, passions, emotions form what has been called the astral

body;[17] aspiration and thought or the action of reason, imagination

and the artistic faculties, create a still subtler, or mind-body, while

the blend of the two is what we are accustomed to observe as ruling

character. And when the physical is cast off at death, man’s

consciousness passes into his subtle bodies and into regions of bliss

whither we may not follow, but of which St. Paul gives us a glimpse when

he says “we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, Eternal

in the Heavens.”

Footnote 17:

A real body of subtle matter interpenetrating the flesh body and

visible to some clairvoyants.

Now, to minds permeated by cruder ideas of man’s body and soul the above

will seem mystical and unreal. Nevertheless, there are many minds,

scientifically trained to a close observation of the manifold phenomena

of life with all the finer forces and elements in nature, that are ready

to accept a truer conception of the complex constitution of man. To all

such, the proof of the actual existence of these transcendental vehicles

of consciousness lies in hypnotic and other psychic phenomena, and in

the evidence of experience. For, given a certain amount of intimate

intercourse, and the man within the man shows himself to the eye of his

friend through expression, attitude, gesture. But what the mental eye

sees behind the veil of flesh must exist in some form. Hence the eye

discerns not the consciousness, but its phenomenal garment or vehicle,

and the texture organized is coarse, brutal, degraded or animal,

sensuous, selfish, or of a finer and purer nature, divinely human,

indicating the grade and quality of the animating principle or soul

within.

SUMMARY

Passing back once more from personal religion, or the rise and

purification of the inner nature of the individual man, to the great

subject of religion in general, we must again have recourse to physical

analogies or figures of speech. A mighty stream or current of spiritual

vibrations has flowed from the beginning behind the circumstances of

history; and each branch of the human family has caught up, retained,

and manifested a portion thereof. But the manifestations have at all

times been governed by the receptive capacity of the particular race and

its inherent distinctions. Every formulated religion is of dual

complexion: first, the initial motive, which is spiritual; second, the

expression, which is due to ideas, and these are furnished by the mind.

The creeds, dogmas, rituals, are outgrowths of the age, civilization and

locality.

Christianity has ostensibly been the religion of Western Europe during a

long period of development in all the material appliances of a civilized

life when mental and physical forces, engaged in accumulating wealth,

have dominated this development and tended to depress and destroy the

higher impulses and aspirations of man. Christianity, already weakened

by errors that had crept in, was unable to withstand the corrupting

influences of a money-making age. It adapted itself to the sternly

practical business-like son of the West, and dropped out much of the

imaginative and reflective side of its teaching. But the “old order

changeth,” and, as has been shown in previous chapters, one great

department of civilized life, viz. the prevailing system of industry, is

hastening to its dissolution. That system has been tried in the furnace

of a longsuffering, patient experience, and found to create national

wealth in abundance, while utterly failing to subserve general

well-being, and bring about a just arrangement of social conditions.

Through all the channels of the nation’s best thinking there has sounded

low, but clear as a clarion note, a call to social reform, and now, in

the depths of industrial confusion, amid dumb despair and loud-voiced

public discontent, the still small voice of conscience speaks audibly,

and a stirring of dry bones over the whole field of action, betokens the

awakening to a new era of existence. Spiritual vibrations have loosened

the foundations of our materialized, selfish life, and pierced through

the crust of callous indifference to the heart of the nation. A new

tenderness lurks there. It prompts to the entire overthrow of our

hideous industrial warfare and the substitution of a well-ordered system

based, reared and maintained through the action of wide-reaching love.

But love was the distinguishing feature of early Christianity, and the

genius of its teaching. Through the figure of family life, with its

tender ties, unselfish actions and unity of interests and feeling, did

Christianity strive to allure to the broader, higher, deeper love that

embraces all mankind and manifests throughout all human relations.

Pioneers of the social revolution may abjure the churches, creeds and

rituals, and boast themselves agnostic, but none the less are they

aiding the reembodiment, on this material plane, of the true religious

spirit, or the birth of a religion fitted for the nation’s age and

civilization.[18]

Footnote 18:

Mr. Lester F. Ward (in his new work published in 1903) formulates a

distinction between human and animal societies by saying that the

environment transforms the animal while man transforms the

environment. This transformation constitutes what he calls

“achievement,” and is the characteristic feature in human progress.

The products of “achievement” are not material things. They are

methods, ways, principles, devices, arts, systems, institutions.

The Church, it is true, gives no formal countenance to the industrial

revolution, but that does not disprove my contention that it is the

_distinctive religious movement of this age_, and that it is in line and

harmony with the religious movements of former ages. These may seem to

have been less secular than this, but they always embraced a reformation

of social and individual life. The actual distinction arises from the

Church’s own deficiencies, and from the greater elaboration of modern

society, causing an almost undue prominence to be given to the outward

changes necessary at the beginning of a modern reformation. The Church

must inevitably conform itself to the industrial revolution. It must

reform itself from within; and this is clearly perceived by many of its

members.

Whilst I write a conference of the Young Men’s Christian Association is

taking place. A question discussed was: “What is the cause of young

men’s drifting away from the Church?” One speaker remarked that to his

mind the cause was the want of fixity of opinion on the great

fundamentals of their common Christianity. Young men found that

ministers were not agreed upon what they preached, and until the Church

made up its mind as to what was really the truth, there could be no

remedy for this drifting. Another speaker said he knew young men who

hated the Church, and said it was not consistent. They pointed to the

slum dwellings in their great cities, and asked what the Church was

doing to remedy the state of affairs there disclosed. In fact, they

said: “Salvation is hardly worth the taking, it’s so mixed up with

money-making. If the Church was to reach young men, it must take up a

more consistent attitude with regard to all social questions.” (From the

_Scotsman_.)

But religion is not of the Church alone, religion appertains to the

_totality_ of life; and the right ordering of all the conditions of the

nation’s material existence is the first step in the attainment of a

national religious life. For, observe, the broad current of spiritual

vibrations encompassing the race can have no free course and ingress to

thrill the nerves and quicken the pulse of the nation so long as there

endures a fierce, brutal struggle for the means of potential life—a

struggle that hardens the heart and coarsens the fibre of rich and poor

alike. The movement we call Economic Socialism is a veritable recurrence

of the cry of the Prophet Esaias: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make

His paths straight.”[19]

Footnote 19:

What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of

heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the

air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his

very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction?—HUXLEY.

The Church militant must adjust itself without and within to the social

industrial revolution, to a wider development than hitherto in man’s

reasoning powers, and to a profound impulse in man—an impulse born of

experience—that is carrying him towards the vast region of philosophic

mysticism which lies behind the common Christian creeds and doctrines.

The poet caught the shadow of coming events when he wrote—

So all intolerable wrong shall fade,

No brother shall a brother’s rights invade,

But all shall champion all:

Then shall men bear with an unconquered will

And iron heart the inevitable ill;

O’er pain, wrong, passion, death, victorious still

And calm, though suns should fall.

Oh priests who mourn that reverence is dead,

Man quits a fading faith, and asks instead

A worship great and true.

I know that there was once a church where men

Caught glimpses of the gods believed in then:

I dream that there shall be such church again—

O dream, come true, come true.

—W. M. W. CALL.

SYNOPSIS

The world has a purpose.... That purpose aims not at man as an end,

but works through him to greater issues.—H. G. WELLS.

Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half

unconsciously and for his own personal advantage, but he has not yet

risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so

deliberately and systematically.—FRANCIS GALTON.

More than a century has elapsed since Pope’s line was written: “The

proper study of mankind is man,” yet it is only of recent years that

physiology has entered upon the proper method of that study. Discoveries

made in the last century have thrown fresh light on individual human

nature. The marvellous potency of thought has been demonstrated, and the

momentous fact of diverse states of basic consciousness made

apparent—the fact, namely, that the mind of individual man is not

functionally limited to his physical consciousness.

Again, that every human being should have freedom to be happy was

realized by many at an earlier epoch; but what the essential nature

might be of a happiness that could satisfy the conflicting desires of

humanity differentiated in all its units—seemed an insoluble problem.

Psychology, however, indicates the solution of that problem, for it

shows that individual happiness is intimately bound up with, and

dependent upon, _general happiness_. The “subliminal or unconscious

mind,” otherwise termed the super-physical consciousness that is common

to all mankind knows no settled peace and comfort while the areas of

physically conscious life are scenes of perpetual conflict. Man to be

truly happy must be so collectively and not merely individually or

sectionally.

Now the scheme of social reform I advocate points the way to a

unification of thought that working itself out through the diverse

channels of visible life will eject the causes of evil, bring order

where chaos has reigned, and slowly but surely establish the foundations

of universal peace. As Richard Harte has well said: “Human beings at

present are like a number of little magnets thrown promiscuously into a

heap, with their poles pointing in every direction, and wasting their

strength in opposing each other. These little magnets have to point in

the same direction that they may become bound together into one great

magnet, all powerful to attract good, all powerful to repel evil.”

The new system of action bases its thought on the complexity of human

nature. It recognizes that the component cells of the physical body are

lives which must suffer if the laws of their well-being are not

subserved, and the suffering translates itself into pain or into

sub-conscious distressful melancholy. It perceives that the social

instincts of man hitherto thrust back and crushed are: “the various

needs of universal attraction all tending towards unity, striving to

meet and mingle in final harmony” (Zola). And further it apprehends that

a lofty aspiration—a divine impulse—hovers on the threshold of

consciousness waiting to enter as brutal passions and vicious

propensities are conquered and dispossessed.

The evils that infest and corrupt our social life and that man must

deliberately uproot and eliminate before general happiness becomes

possible are—poverty, i.e. a life-long struggle to obtain food, shelter,

clothing; the birth of individuals weak and unfit; disease, premature

death; enforced celibacy; late marriage; drunkenness; disorganization of

family life; prostitution; war; and industrial competition; social

injustice and inequality; individual tyranny; crime; barbarous treatment

of criminals; disrespect of natural function and consequent injury to

health; conventional folly; social repression of innocent enjoyment;

religious bigotry; the feebleness of religious guidance and confusion of

religious thought.

Partial views of society as well as of individual human nature have

hitherto prevailed and given birth to specifics of all kinds for the

cure of the diseases of society, and these in the growing tenderness of

humanity, have been eagerly adopted and applied, to prove disappointing

in the main. The new system deals with society as a whole and throughout

all its parts. It requires a full comprehension of each and all the

groups or classes of social phenomena and their inter-relations.

Viewing society as a whole, we realize that there are no remedial

specifics in the case, that general happiness will be obtained only by a

process of evolution, and that the process is one of continual

readjustment of multitudinous relations, or unceasing adaptation of

individual human life to a social environment, and of social environment

to individual human life. The evolution of social environment proceeds

towards the highest ethical state which implies a system of society

based upon justice and equality. But the realization of this state

requires a perfected humanity, hence the path of progress is also in the

gradual improvement of individuals—the creation of a superior race whose

spontaneous impulses will construct and support a perfected social

system.

Unconscious evolution has carried us forward from savagery through many

transitions to a state of civilization which, though grossly imperfect,

contains within it a new element of advance. Here and there throughout

society the power of love and reason combined has become strong, and

aided by a scientific knowledge of man and the conditions of his life,

it is capable of design, and of intensifying the action of evolutionary

forces and immensely increasing their momentum. Reason, however, must

invent an effective policy of meliorism which so unites the practical

methods of reform as that each will add strength to all, and the result

prove a powerful factor of change in the society on which it is brought

to bear.

The strife of competition throughout the whole sphere of industrial life

gives free play to selfishness and the passion of militancy, and

permeates society with the warlike spirit.

Advance in morals is the sure step to a better and happier future; but

man’s moral nature is largely conditioned by heredity, training and

environment, while these, at present, are all unfavourable to a high

moral state. A progressive system of general reform therefore has to

embrace and combine rational breeding, rational training and a rational

order of life in which sympathy and co-operation will take the place of

individual competition, and general happiness—not wealth—be the clear

aim of man.

The conscious element in evolution is as yet too weak to alter society

much or rapidly, but in all civilized countries—Germany, France,

Belgium, etc., as well as Great Britain,—changes towards the collective

control of land and capital and the reorganization of industry on

collectivist principles, have begun, and it is of supreme importance

that other changes, equally necessary, should be initiated to advance

_pari-passu_ with those.

A central source of corruption is to be found in the disintegration of

the ancient family group—the unfitness of an archaic domestic system to

achieve the ends of rational training and the acquiring of habits of

rational breeding. At the same time there is a growth in social feeling

and a spread of public opinion in favour of industrial socialism with

some legislative and local action to carry it out, that together,

present conditions propitious to change in domestic living and sexual

custom. Consequently a reconstruction of domestic life on modern

principles among educated people fitted to adapt life to moral ends is

pre-eminently a feature of the new order.

At present excessive labour on the part of the proletariat, and enforced

idleness on the part of many men and women within the classes, are fatal

to progress. Vital forces are exhausted on the one hand, repressed on

the other, while the sub-conscious feeling that craves unity and

solidarity is outraged and restrained. To restore _work_ to its

legitimate place in human life is a primary aim of the new domestic

system. That system must be built up on the principle that work for the

benefit of all is the duty and privilege of each, and without a due

share of social labour no normal man or woman in health can attain to

inward peace.

As regards religion, man’s abstract thought must purge itself from

materialized ideals, his concrete thought from selfish aims, for he is

essentially a religious being and psychical studies affirm that within

him there lie latent faculties that relate him to worlds unseen—worlds

as yet unrealizable in human consciousness.

In the visible world religious forces must be directed to the great work

of social reform. To unselfishly promote the welfare of generations

unborn is a profoundly religious course of action. The purest, noblest

feelings of man may be enlisted in the cause of progress through

union—for social reconstruction, scientific education, gentle training

of the young, associated domestic life, facilitation of happy

marriage—and for the comfort of all mankind, whether good or bad, clever

or dull, fortunate or unfortunate.

Co-operation in work to the banishment of idleness and its accompanying

misery _ennui_ is the primary object of the new domestic system, but

other ends to attain are—economy, by means of joint labour and joint

expense to the relief of monetary anxieties and domestic worries;

stability of social position, i.e. no member needing to fear that his

home will break up independently of his wishes; social intercourse and

enjoyment relieved of conventional etiquette or tyranny; freedom for

friendship between the sexes and such conditions of family union as will

promote mental capacity and altruistic sentiment in each individual;

early marriage without disregard of social responsibility and based upon

mutual knowledge of character, habits and tastes; a fitting refuge for

old age, rendering impossible the premature destruction of valuable

social forces which age alone can supply, and securing the material,

intellectual and emotional surroundings necessary for comfort up to the

last moment of life.

In the lower social strata where any reconstruction of family life is

not yet possible, what is immediately required is a gradual rise of

wages with steady improvement in all the conditions of industrial

labour. Society also must relinquish such patronage of the poor as

fosters their too rapid increase, undermines their self-dependence and

tends generally to deterioration of race. Parental responsibility must

be strongly inculcated and strictly upheld. Public teaching should be

given in all natural laws affecting society, especially the laws of

health, increase, and heredity; and, under conditions respectful to

human dignity, Malthusian doctrine should be taught, and a knowledge of

neo-Malthusian method very carefully imparted.

In the higher social strata within the newly constructed modern homes

sexual conduct and parentage with its far-reaching results for good or

evil must be controlled or guided into the path of racial regeneration.

The scientific study of man’s nature gives sexual passion an honourable

position relatively to human life. It rests on the conscience of each

adult generation as an imperative social duty to influence the young

generation in such wise as that this great passion shall subserve

physical and social health and cease to create degradation.

A due activity in growing organs strengthens organic function;

therefore, with early marriages and freedom to young love, checked only

by scientific knowledge of the laws of health, propagation at the age of

maturity is bound to put forth vitality of good quality. In conscious

evolution sexual functions are no longer regarded as essentially allied

with propagation. They are regarded, however, as properly subject in

youth to parental and social control; and that control acts as a

perpetual restraint upon licentious, dissolute tendencies and a shield

to the young love that seeks personal happiness consistent with domestic

purity.

No less potent is the action of control in another direction. Physiology

of sex and the laws of inheritance are carefully studied by guardians of

domestic peace who, rejecting the ordinary and vulgar conception accept

the teaching of science, and science points to philoprogenitiveness, or

love of offspring, as the proper motor force in reproduction. Were this

force the antecedent cause of parentage throughout the nation, disease

and premature death would be undermined and gradually subside.

“Indiscriminate survival” gives way before that “rational selection and

birth of the fit” which is a fundamental condition of social

well-being—the master-spring to a rapid evolution of general happiness.

The transition, however, from our present state of confused sentiment,

illogical thought, and disastrous action in the field of _eugenics_ or

stirpiculture, to clearness of purpose and consistency of life, must

necessarily be a work of extreme delicacy and patient endeavour. Its

achievement requires the nuclei of collectivist homes. Its nurture must

take place in the bosom of a superior domestic life. The process, in

short, implies an alteration in humanity itself, to be brought about by

such preparatory alteration in outward conditions as will set up and

bring into play the constant interaction of new social forces.

Individualism in domestic life vitiates the movement towards socialism

outside domestic life, for it gives us misshapen units unfit for a

better social system—a system that seeks to banish tyranny, despotism,

pride, self-will and every anti-social emotion in order to establish the

perfect justice and equality that are essential to the highest ethical

state. It is a necessity of socialism to lay hold of the family and

fashion it anew so that it may produce a superior material of human

life, i.e. individual men and women whose enjoyments lie chiefly in

sympathy and whose spontaneous impulses are towards an essentially

social life.

And further, not only is our present domestic system wholly incapable of

dealing with sex relations so as to adapt them to stirpiculture, not

only is it so feeble as to be absolutely impotent in the regulation of

the conduct of masculine youth outside its boundaries, but it is

destitute also of elements required in the organizing of a progressive

educational system.

Home education has almost disappeared in the disintegration of family

life, while in society the strong forces of aggregation which under

diverse conditions of industry and convention group mankind in sections

have moulded schools to massive proportions. The youth of the nation is

in a great measure cut off from the home influences which are calculated

to teach mankind “humanities, not in the academic but in the real

sense.” It is congregated in universities and large schools for superior

culture and day schools for culture of a less exalted order. In the

former, young men and maidens are separated. Domesticity—the quality in

human nature on which depends the consolidation of society, is

disregarded, whilst to the development of mutual interests, affinity of

tastes, harmony of habits and unanimity of social aims between the sexes

no attention is paid during the plastic period of life when individual

character is in process of determination. In day schools boys and girls

are often associated, but under such conditions of mechanical routine,

cramming, conflicting and alternating authorities, irregular and erratic

forces of moral control, as to make these schools provocative of evil,

fostering every anti-social instinct of man.

Co-ordination in the life of the young is the demand of the new system

of general reform. The nursery, school and playground must be

harmonized, and the entire juvenile orbit, within and without the home,

governed by intellectual and moral forces of fixed congruity. The object

and aim of true education is the fullest development of an individual’s

best powers of thought, feeling, action, by means of their happy

exercise at every stage of growth from childhood to maturity. Now

book-learning or culture in schools accomplishes very little, but a

direct study of nature is an incomparable aid to this end. Each object

and process in nature from that of the infinitely great to the

infinitely small—if fittingly dealt with by teachers—is instinct with

charm for the young of an intelligent race. It excites imagination,

awakens thought, kindles enthusiasm, stimulates every latent mental

faculty, while the endless variation of beauty in nature—under training

to close observation—makes aesthetic appeal to the sense perceptions,

and in calling forth wonder, admiration, delight adds richness

immeasurably to the quality of human life. Nevertheless the springs and

checks of a true education lie deep in a world of feeling. For their

exercise home-life is indispensable. Family love is the primary motor

force in the education of the feelings, and without the presence of a

wide domestic circle habitually fostering the sympathetic and repressing

the selfish emotions no high water-mark of civilization will be reached.

There is in man a group of emotions of comparatively recent origin

requiring scientific treatment of the utmost delicacy and precision. On

the further development of that group depends in a very special manner

the rapid evolution of an ethical social system. The group is

threefold—egoistic, altruistic, moral. It comprises a sense of personal

rights, a sympathetic jealousy for the rights of others, an intellectual

and moral sentiment of justice, or equivalence of liberty and social

comfort for all mankind. The first element is already very perceptible

throughout society. The second is more rare; it must be strengthened or

assiduously created in the nursery, schoolroom and domestic circle by a

system of training whose characteristic is extreme gentleness. The

tender shoots of sympathetic jealousy are incapable of growth in an

environment of harsh sound or brutal force. Hence the authority that

begets antagonism has no place in the perfected education of the future.

As the young emerge from childhood the responsibilities of life become

aids in education, and immensely develop the above emotions. Discipline

of conduct within their own order appertains to the young; whilst

society, within and without the domestic circle, demands the thorough

regulation of young life. Conduct clubs and combinations for a variety

of social ends, both sexes taking part, arise among the young; and these

promote in the highest degree the healthy growth of such virtuous

emotion and habits in the individual as are indispensable to ethical

socialism. The method adopted is a just and intelligent criticism to

which the youthful mind has previously been trained.

Since pride of birth, pride of wealth and habits of domination and

luxury are all unfavourable to the growth of a moral sentiment of social

justice, it is not in the upper ranks of society we need look for the

public spirit that will devise methods of gradually equalizing the

labour of life and its rewards and undermining present class

distinctions. As little likely is the sentiment of social justice to

spring spontaneously in a fortunate capitalist class where pride of

acquisition strongly opposes the principle that reward should not be

proportioned to personal capacity—that mental labour has no title to

inordinate distinction, but that other useful exertion ethically

requires fullness of reward. Reconstruction is necessarily a growth from

below. From the proletariat comes the impulse towards industrial

reconstruction, and it is in the middle class—and the less wealthy

section of that class—that the beings exist who by segregation may form

collectivist homes capable of by-and-bye aggregating into the solid

foundation of a pure and elevated republican society.

Education in these homes where mixture of ages, from the white-haired

centenarian to the infant in arms, creates all manner of tender ties,

where gentleness and love are the main stimuli in training, where

authority is exercised consistently and reasonably, and replaced at

maturity by reason and self-control—must eventuate in the production of

a superior moral and intellectual type.

The order of social evolution, computed roughly, is as follows: In the

first stage, social equality exists; it is an epoch of savagery. In the

second stage, differentiation issuing in class distinctions takes place;

the birth of social inequality and injustice arising naturally through

exercise of superior brute force and cunning. Civilization has here its

genesis; and coercion, tyranny, robbery, injustice, avarice, love of

power, inequality, are stimuli of civilization and prime elements in the

formation of strong nations. Individuals who are inferior, then whole

classes socially weak, are compelled by forces, individual and social,

to minister to the wants of the strong and superior. Civilization

nurtured by inequality and injustice develops in the superior classes of

society and slowly spreads downwards. In the third stage, reaction

occurs, prompted by civilization itself! Justice and liberty develop in

the lower or inferior social classes and spread very slowly upwards

without destroying a civilization, become inherent in the superior type

of man. The fourth stage is one of readjustment in which civilization

becomes general and there is a gradual return to social equality.

Ultimately society will have no class distinctions of the present order,

no idlers or parasites, no poor and no coercive government. Voluntary

co-operation or concerted action for social ends is a self-regulating,

self-controlling force which, when fully developed in the new domestic

and industrial systems is able to dominate society throughout its length

and breadth.

The path of social reform I advocate has now, in its main features, been

placed before my readers.

Outside the general policy that will cause the direct action of the

system to become a great factor of social change, however, there are

sundry courses of less direct action, it is bound to pursue. These bear

relation to, first, pauperism and patronage of the poor; second, the

proletariat; third, the criminal classes; fourth, the position of woman;

fifth, the young; sixth, conventionalism; seventh, political action.

In the first relation the specific policy is to carefully discriminate

between benevolence that is beneficial and benevolence that is

mischievous in its results on social well-being. Whilst exercising the

former, it gives no support to charities that hurt the independence of

the poor, or relieve them of parental responsibility. In reproduction it

discountenances and opposes the social force of _indiscriminate

selection_ which results in survival of the unfit. It seeks to initiate

and press forward the counteracting social force of _intelligent

selection_, which brings about the birth of the fit.

In the second relation, the specific policy strenuously supports

combinations of workers for the raising of wages, mutual help and

democratic political aims preparatory to general socialism.

In the third relation, the specific policy strives to enlighten public

opinion upon the nature of crime and the philosophic principles of its

treatment. It elaborates a new method in which vindictiveness, the

essence of punishment, has no existence; but gentleness towards all

evil-doers issues in, first, the effectual protection of society;

second, the reform of corrigible criminals; third, the gradual

extinction of crime. It urges upon government a cautious deliberate

adoption of this method.

In the fourth relation, the action of the policy is to promote the

enfranchisement of women, and at every point aid the movement of advance

to the position of social equality of sex.

In the fifth and sixth relations, it inculcates by admonition and

example, and especially among the young, a return to simplicity of

manners, habits and dress. It repudiates conventional etiquette, and

opposes the tyranny of fashion. It promotes the association of the sexes

in youth under condition of adult control, whether the union be that of

marriage, of friendship or of simple intercourse and companionship. It

discountenances and takes no part in the excitements of an artificial,

frivolous society, but it creates and fosters the vigorating excitements

of useful labour, alternating with unconstrained and “tranquil

delights.”

In the seventh relation, the specific policy agitates for alteration of

the marriage laws, the laws of inheritance of property and the land

laws. Equality of sex is required as the basis of the marriage law,

accompanied by the condition of easy divorce in order to facilitate the

dissolution of false ties in favour of the true. The laws affecting

children require adaptation to the ethics of social justice and sex

equality. Laxity must give way to strictness in respect of parentage;

and child-birth be recognized as an event bearing directly upon the

interests of the general public. Hence modification here entails the

recognition of illegitimate children and the counteracting of the

vicious tendency to shirk parental duty and social responsibility. The

land and property laws must be adjusted to a levelling process—the

action of paring down large estates and diminishing the massive

proportions of private property so slowly as to create no individual

suffering or social confusion, such legislative measures being directed,

however, to land nationalization and nationalization of capital as their

final aim.

In conclusion, let me add, I claim to have shown that “science in the

economic field gives certain facts from which a line of social evolution

may be foreshadowed,” and that religion and science give, in wider

fields, facts and principles that point to lines of illimitable

progression for man. “Whether these lines will be followed depends not

upon immutable laws beyond our control, but upon the _human will_.” The

general policy I advocate is distinctly reliable so long as it rests on

scientific methods and knowledge, but no question is finally exhausted.

In the sphere of rational reform free-thought must ever be considered

and respected.

New occasions teach new duties;

Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still and onward,

Who would keep abreast of truth.

INDEX

A

Abyssinians, The, 134

Acquisitiveness, 213

Adler, Hermann, 218

Adolescence, 257–266, 335, 341

Adulteration, 45

Aesthetic sentiment, 197–200, 203, 211, 215

Aged, The, 269–272, 331, 338

Allen, Dr. Nathan, 120

Amiel, 10

Anderson, Dr. J. A., 306

Anxiety, 117

Arabs, The, 134

Arians, 299

Arifura, The, 205

Aristotle, 235

Arkwright, 26

Arnold, Matthew, 150, 249

Asceticism, 15, 98, 105, 110, 113, 146, 156

Associated Homes, 276–283

Association, Young Men’s Christian, 322

Astral body, 317

Atonement doctrine, 315

B

Balfour, A. J., 231

Bardaisan, 301

Bebel, August, 112, 119, 149

Besant, Annie, 306, 315

Bickerton, A. W., 268, 272

Birth-rate, 80–93, 109, 265

Bishop, Mrs., 264

Blackley, Canon, 91

Bon, Dr. Le, 197, 211

Bosanquet, Mrs. B., 65

Bread-baking, 72

Buddhism, 293–295, 300, 303

Bushmen, The, 132

C

Capital, 25, 41, 55, 329

Capitalists, 26, 41, 208, 338

Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 163

Carpenter, Edward, 16, 19, 142–144, 148

Carr, G. Shoobridge, 85, 92

Celibacy, 90, 95, 111, 126–129, 138, 172

Celsus, 298

Chatterji, J. C., 1, 295

Chesterfield, Lord, 199

Children, 3, 233, 238–253, 281

Children, Training of, 176–179, 188–194, 197, 237–253, 264, 281, 282,

331, 335–338

Church, The, 321–323

Civilization, 38–40, 44, 204, 206, 216, 233, 248, 250, 297, 319, 328,

339

Clairvoyance, 9

Clarke, William, 23, 46

Clement of Alexandria, 298

Cochrane, Baillie, 180

Combe, George, 170

Communism, 59

Consciousness, 290–295, 303, 313–318, 325

Co-operation, 51, 331, 339

Craig, E. T., 178

Criticism, Personal, 278

Crime, 121, 163–182, 340

Criminals, 67, 82, 121, 122, 164–182, 340

Crockett, S. R., 174

Culture, 7, 13, 95

D

Dairy produce, 70

Dalton, 205

Darwin, Charles, 80, 83, 91, 93, 96, 125

Death-rate, 89–93, 110

Degeneration of race, 83, 91, 115, 123, 159, 332

Dhimal, The, 205

Disease, 91, 99, 115–120, 124, 150, 170, 215

Divorce, 135, 136, 341

Domestic reform, 244, 265, 268–283, 330, 334, 338

Du Cane, Sir E., 164

Duncan, Mathews, 126

E

Easton, Abel, 279

Economics, 21–75

Education, 115, 166, 174, 177–179, 182, 234–253, 331, 335–338

Education, State, 66–69, 244, 269

Ellis, Havelock, 103–105, 142

Eliot, George, 5, 6, 12, 115, 222

Emerson, R. W., 139

Emigration, 93

Empedocles, 299

Environment, 204, 239, 250, 253, 321, 328

Escott, T. H. S., 273

Estlake, Allan, 279, 280

Eugenics, 114–130, 196, 283, 330, 333, 334, 340

F

Fabian Essays, 25

Factories, 25, 27–30, 55, 209

Fashion, 200, 245, 331, 341

Finck, Henry, 264, 265

Fitz-Stephen, Judge, 164, 167

Food, 23, 34, 39, 79, 84, 92

Freedom, 16

Free-will, 292

G

Galton, Francis, 94, 126–129, 172, 325

Gaskell, G. A., 109, 157

Geddes, Patrick, 94, 157

George, Henry, 32, 43

_Ginx’s Baby_, 155

Gnostics, The, 299–301

Goodness, 4, 18, 105, 206

Government, 211

Greg, W. Rathbone, 99, 100

H

Happiness, 1–19, 98, 146, 188, 218, 232, 266, 270, 272, 325–329

Hardy, Thomas, 258, 263

Harmony, New, 30

Harrison, Clifford, 253

Harrison, Frederic, 45

Harte, Richard, 131, 326

Health, 116, 129, 196, 333

Hearn, Lafcadio, 303, 304

Henry, Arthur, 239

Heredity, 108, 114, 120–124,158, 169, 237, 304, 305, 307, 329

Hill, Frederick, 168, 169, 171

Hinduism, 289, 291, 292

Hinton, James, 103

Hobson, John A., 21, 33, 46, 51, 74, 232

Hooker, Sir W., 205

Horticulture, 195

Hos, The, 205

Hottentots, The, 134

Howells, W. D., 213

Huxley, T. H., 9, 12, 79, 92, 96, 214, 241, 249, 258, 304, 323

I

Ibsen, H., 104

Individual Rights, 185–200, 233, 250, 339

Industry, Organized, 48, 51–75, 210

Industrial Revolution, 23–50

Industries, Routine, 72

Interest, 54, 57

J

Jakuns, The, 205

Jamieson, Mrs., 223

Jealousy, 137, 138, 203, 218–228, 239

Jews, The, 134

Joli, Henri, 122

Josephus, 300

Justice, 188–196, 230, 233, 250, 282, 291, 296, 305, 328, 338

K

Kandyans, The, 132

Karma, 291, 294, 299, 303

L

Labourers, 25, 31, 34, 36, 40–43, 72

“Laissez-faire,” 81, 82, 98, 166

Lange, 125

Landlords, 24, 33–44, 54, 209

Land Problem, 33–44, 329, 342

Laveleye, Emil de, 11

Law of Causation, 291

Leadbeater, C. W., 299

Lecky, W. E. H., 111, 138, 202

Legge, 293

Legislation, 61–65, 339

Lepchas, The, 205

Lessing, 308

Letourneau, Charles, 33

Levy, J. H., 200

Lewes, G. H., 102

Liszt, Von, 122

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 9, 287

Lofft, Capel, 248

Logos, The, 290, 312

Luxury, 7

M

Machinery, 26, 55, 240, 272, 275

Maeterlinck, M., 103

Mahan, Captain, 230

Mallet, Lucas, 282

Malthus, 79, 83, 93, 96, 127

Manicheans, 299, 300

Marriage, 126–128, 131–148, 219, 283, 331, 341

Marriage-rate, 86–90, 126

Martineau, Harriet, 110, 268, 270

Massart, Jean, 274

Massingham, H. W., 262, 265

Mathews, Justice, 164, 165

Maudsley, Dr. Henry, 117, 123, 237

Mead, G. R. S., 301

Meredith, George, 196

Militancy, 206–210, 222, 229, 231, 329

Mill, John Stuart, 30, 41

Milton, John, 140

Mischler, Dr., 122

Morrison, W. D., 121, 123

Municipalism, 66, 72, 273

Mysticism, 298–303, 318, 323

N

Nairs, The, 132, 137

Natural Selection, 81, 83, 130, 159

Nirvana, 295

Nordau, Max, 185

Noyes, J. H., 279

O

Obermair, 180

Ogle, Dr. Wm., 86, 88

Oneida Community, 108, 278–280

Origen, 298, 299

Owen, Robert, 28–32

Owen, R. Dale, 26–29

Ozanam, A. F., 300

P

Paget, Sir James, 119

Parasitism, 274

Parentage, 149–160, 237, 269, 333, 341

Parsis, The, 292, 301

Paths of the Soul, 309–311

Patriotism, 228–233

Patronage, 7, 242, 332, 340

Pauperism, 42, 90, 271

Peace, 210, 230, 326

Pelasgians, 299

Pharisees, 300

Philanthropy, 58, 82, 160

Plato, 299

Pleasure, 2, 14

Podhalians, The, 197, 211

Political Economy, 53, 54, 82

Population, 56, 83–96, 109, 128, 265, 269

Positivism, 9–12

Poverty, 24–32, 41, 81, 90, 95, 108, 116, 150, 158, 169, 213, 240

Priesthood, 38

Profits, 24, 37, 54–56

Property, Private, 24, 39, 55, 210–217, 242, 342

Prostitution, 111, 112, 135, 136, 142, 145

Protestantism, 302

Psychic phenomena, 303, 318, 326

Punishment, 163–168, 176–178, 246

Puritanism, 110

Pythagoras, 299

R

Rapacity, 207–210

Reade, Chas., 260

Reclus, Elisee, 133

Redskins, The, 134

Re-incarnation, 291, 294, 296, 299, 301–308

Religion, 10, 285–323, 330

Rent, 54–57

Responsibility, 291

Richardson, Dr. W. B., 114, 118

Rights, Individual, 185–194

Ritchie, David G., 183

Robertson, John M., 17, 124, 126, 231

Robertson, F. W., 309

Robe of Righteousness, 316

Rogers, Thorold, 271

Rowntree, 31

Ruskin, John, 8, 12, 175

S

Sacrifice, 312–315

Santals, The, 205

Schooling, J. Holt, 109

Science, 9

“Scientific Meliorism”—Preface, 101, 114

Servant problem, 274–277

Sexual instinct, 95, 97–113, 144, 332, 333

Shakespeare, 221

Shareholders, 24, 55

Sinnett, A. P., 308, 313

Slater, J. E., 289

Slavery, 36, 219

Sloan, J. McGavin, 217

Smith, Goldwin, 32

Socialism, 30, 52–60, 82, 199, 259, 265, 320, 323, 329, 330, 340

Social justice, 44, 52, 59, 185–200, 334

Somerville, Mary, 270

Spencer, Herbert, 14, 84, 93, 95, 96, 99, 125, 132, 136, 140–1, 152,

158, 175, 181, 185, 206, 211, 290

Stephenson, R. L., 193

Stirpiculture, 114–130, 196, 283, 330–334, 340

Swan, Howard, 243

Sympathetic Selection, 83, 125, 159, 283, 333

Sympathy, 82, 102, 125, 188, 191, 194, 199, 205, 224, 264, 266, 313,

322, 329, 334

Syphilis, 119

T

Taoism, 292

Taylor, Isaac, 281, 282

Telepathy, 9

Tennyson, Alfred, 161, 213, 257, 267

Tertullian, 302

Thompson, D’Arcy W., 246

Thompson, A. M., 218

Thomson, J. B., 169

Thoreau, 104

Tibetans, The, 132

Tolstoi, Leo, 138

Trinity, The, 290, 297

Trollope, Anthony, 257, 262

Trusts, 47, 70

Tyranny, 207, 210, 334

U

Unitary Homes, 276–283

Unknowable, The, 290

V

Vedas, The, 289

Vedas, The, 132

Venereal disease, 119

W

Wade, 26

Wages, 24, 26, 42, 45, 56, 68, 70

Ward, Lester F., 49, 108, 321

Watt, James, 26

Wealth, 7, 41, 44, 57, 81, 123, 208, 212–216, 242, 273, 274, 319, 337

Webb, Sidney, 41, 45, 56

Wells, D. A., 122

Wells, H. G., 325

Whitman, Walt, 105

Wines, Howard, 122

Woman, 219–227, 248, 259, 265, 269, 340

Wordsworth, William, 198

Worship, 288, 293

Z

Zola, Emile, 97, 114, 327

Zoroastrianism, 292, 301

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in

spelling.

2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.

3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.