malady than that which I have been depicting: I have spoken of the effect
of intellectual culture on proud natures; but it will show to greater
advantage, yet with as little approximation to religious faith, in amiable
and unaffected minds. Observe, Gentlemen, the heresy, as it may be called,
of which I speak, is the substitution of a moral sense or taste for
conscience in the true meaning of the word; now this error may be the
foundation of a character of far more elasticity and grace than ever
adorned the persons whom I have been describing. It is especially
congenial to men of an imaginative and poetical cast of mind, who will
readily accept the notion that virtue is nothing more than the graceful in
conduct. Such persons, far from tolerating fear, as a principle, in their
apprehension of religious and moral truth, will not be slow to call it
simply gloom and superstition. Rather a philosopher’s, a gentleman’s
religion, is of a liberal and generous character; it is based upon honour;
vice is evil, because it is unworthy, despicable, and odious. This was the
quarrel of the ancient heathen with Christianity, that, instead of simply
fixing the mind on the fair and the pleasant, it intermingled other ideas
with them of a sad and painful nature; that it spoke of tears before joy,
a cross before a crown; that it laid the foundation of heroism in penance;
that it made the soul tremble with the news of Purgatory and Hell; that it
insisted on views and a worship of the Deity, which to their minds was
nothing else than mean, servile, and cowardly. The notion of an
All-perfect, Ever-present God, in whose sight we are less than atoms, and
who, while He deigns to visit us, can punish as well as bless, was
abhorrent to them; they made their own minds their sanctuary, their own
ideas their oracle, and conscience in morals was but parallel to genius in
art, and wisdom in philosophy.
6.
Had I room for all that might be said upon the subject, I might illustrate
this intellectual religion from the history of the Emperor Julian, the
apostate from Christian Truth, the foe of Christian education. He, in whom
every Catholic sees the shadow of the future Anti-Christ, was all but the
pattern-man of philosophical virtue. Weak points in his character he had,
it is true, even in a merely poetical standard; but, take him all in all,
and I cannot but recognize in him a specious beauty and nobleness of moral
deportment, which combines in it the rude greatness of Fabricius or
Regulus with the accomplishments of Pliny or Antoninus. His simplicity of
manners, his frugality, his austerity of life, his singular disdain of
sensual pleasure, his military heroism, his application to business, his
literary diligence, his modesty, his clemency, his accomplishments, as I
view them, go to make him one of the most eminent specimens of pagan
virtue which the world has ever seen.(24) Yet how shallow, how meagre,
nay, how unamiable is that virtue after all, when brought upon its
critical trial by his sudden summons into the presence of his Judge! His
last hours form a _unique_ passage in history, both as illustrating the
helplessness of philosophy under the stern realities of our being, and as
being reported to us on the evidence of an eye-witness. “Friends and
fellow-soldiers,” he said, to use the words of a writer, well fitted, both
from his literary tastes and from his hatred of Christianity, to be his
panegyrist, “the seasonable period of my departure is now arrived, and I
discharge, with the cheerfulness of a ready debtor, the demands of
nature.… I die without remorse, as I have lived without guilt. I am
pleased to reflect on the innocence of my private life; and I can affirm
with confidence that the supreme authority, that emanation of the divine
Power, has been preserved in my hands pure and immaculate.… I now offer my
tribute of gratitude to the Eternal Being, who has not suffered me to
perish by the cruelty of a tyrant, by the secret dagger of conspiracy, or
by the slow tortures of lingering disease. He has given me, in the midst
of an honourable career, a splendid and glorious departure from this
world, and I hold it equally absurd, equally base, to solicit, or to
decline, the stroke of fate.…
“He reproved the immoderate grief of the spectators, and conjured them not
to disgrace, by unmanly tears, the fate of a prince who in a few moments
would be united with Heaven and with the stars. The spectators were
silent; and Julian entered into a metaphysical argument with the
philosophers Priscus and Maximus on the nature of the soul. The efforts
which he made, of mind as well as body, most probably hastened his death.
His wound began to bleed with great violence; his respiration was
embarrassed by the swelling of the veins; he called for a draught of cold
water, and as soon as he had drank it expired without pain, about the hour
of midnight.”(25) Such, Gentlemen, is the final exhibition of the Religion
of Reason: in the insensibility of conscience, in the ignorance of the
very idea of sin, in the contemplation of his own moral consistency, in
the simple absence of fear, in the cloudless self-confidence, in the
serene self-possession, in the cold self-satisfaction, we recognize the
mere Philosopher.
7.
Gibbon paints with pleasure what, conformably with the sentiments of a
godless intellectualism, was an historical fulfilment of his own idea of
moral perfection; Lord Shaftesbury had already drawn out that idea in a
theoretical form, in his celebrated collection of Treatises which he has
called “Characteristics of men, manners, opinions, views;” and it will be
a further illustration of the subject before us, if you will allow me,
Gentlemen, to make some extracts from this work.
One of his first attacks is directed against the doctrine of reward and
punishment, as if it introduced a notion into religion inconsistent with
the true apprehension of the beauty of virtue, and with the liberality and
nobleness of spirit in which it should be pursued. “Men have not been
content,” he says, “to show the natural advantages of honesty and virtue.
They have rather lessened these, the better, as they thought, to advance
another foundation. They have made virtue so mercenary a thing, and have
talked so much of its rewards, that one can hardly tell what there is in
it, after all, which can be worth rewarding. For to be _bribed_ only or
_terrified_ into an honest practice, bespeaks little of real honesty or
worth.” “If,” he says elsewhere, insinuating what he dare not speak out,
“if through hope merely of reward, or fear of punishment, the creature be
inclined to do the good he hates, or restrained from doing the ill to
which he is not otherwise in the least degree averse there is in this case
no virtue or goodness whatever. There is no more of rectitude, piety, or
sanctity, in a creature thus reformed, than there is meekness or
gentleness in a tiger strongly chained, or innocence and sobriety in a
monkey under the discipline of the whip.… While the will is neither
gained, nor the inclination wrought upon, but awe alone prevails and
forces obedience, the obedience is servile, and all which is done through
it merely servile.” That is, he says that Christianity is the enemy of
moral virtue, as influencing the mind by fear of God, not by love of good.
The motives then of hope and fear being, to say the least, put far into
the background, and nothing being morally good but what springs simply or
mainly from a love of virtue for its own sake, this love-inspiring quality
in virtue is its beauty, while a bad conscience is not much more than the
sort of feeling which makes us shrink from an instrument out of tune.
“Some by mere nature,” he says, “others by art and practice, are masters
of an ear in music, an eye in painting, a fancy in the ordinary things of
ornament and grace, a judgment in proportions of all kinds, and a general
good taste in most of those subjects which make the amusement and delight
of the ingenious people of the world. Let such gentlemen as these be as
extravagant as they please, or as irregular in their morals, they must at
the same time discover their _inconsistency_, live at _variance_ with
themselves, and in _contradiction_ to that principle on which they ground
their highest pleasure and entertainment. Of all other _beauties_ which
virtuosos pursue, poets celebrate, musicians sing, and architects or
artists of whatever kind describe or form, the most delightful, the most
engaging and pathetic, is that which is drawn from real life and from the
passions. Nothing affects the heart like that which is purely from itself,
and of its own nature: such as the beauty of sentiments, the grace of
actions, the turn of characters, and the _proportions and features_ of a
human mind. This lesson of philosophy, even a romance, a poem, or a play
may teach us.… Let poets or the men of harmony deny, if they can, this
force of nature, or withstand this _moral magic_.… Every one is a virtuoso
of a higher or lower degree; every one pursues a grace … of one kind or
other. The _venustum_, the _honestum_, the _decorum_ of things will force
its way.… The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth;
for all beauty is truth.”
Accordingly, virtue being only one kind of beauty, the principle which
determines what is virtuous is, not conscience, but _taste_. “Could we
once convince ourselves,” he says, “of what is in itself so evident, viz.,
that in the very nature of things there must of necessity be the
foundation of a right and wrong _taste_, as well in respect of inward
character of features as of outward person, behaviour, and action, we
should be far more ashamed of ignorance and wrong judgment in the former
than in the latter of these subjects.… One who aspires to the character of
a man of breeding and politeness is careful to form his judgment of arts
and sciences upon right models of perfection.… He takes particular care to
turn his eye from every thing which is gaudy, luscious, and of false
taste. Nor is he less careful to turn his ear from every sort of music,
besides that which is of the best manner and truest harmony. ’Twere to be
wished we had the same regard to a _right taste in life and manners_.… If
civility and humanity be a taste; if brutality, insolence, riot, be in the
same manner a taste, … who would not endeavour to force nature as well in
this respect as in what relates to a taste or judgment in other arts and
sciences?”
Sometimes he distinctly contrasts this taste with principle and
conscience, and gives it the preference over them. “After all,” he says,
“_’tis not merely what we call principle_, but _a taste_, which governs
men. They may think for certain, ‘This is right,’ or ‘that wrong;’ they
may believe ‘this is a virtue,’ or ‘that a sin;’ ‘this is punishable by
man,’ or ‘that by God;’ yet if the savour of things lies cross to honesty,
if the fancy be florid, and the appetite high towards the subaltern
beauties and lower orders of worldly symmetries and proportions, the
conduct will infallibly turn this latter way.” Thus, somewhat like a
Jansenist, he makes the superior pleasure infallibly conquer, and implies
that, neglecting principle, we have but to train the taste to a kind of
beauty higher than sensual. He adds: “_Even conscience_, I fear, such as
is owing to religious discipline, will make but a slight figure, when this
taste is set amiss.”
And hence the well-known doctrine of this author, that ridicule is the
test of truth; for truth and virtue being beauty, and falsehood and vice
deformity, and the feeling inspired by deformity being that of derision,
as that inspired by beauty is admiration, it follows that vice is not a
thing to weep about, but to laugh at. “Nothing is ridiculous,” he says,
“but what is deformed; nor is any thing proof against raillery but what is
handsome and just. And therefore ’tis the hardest thing in the world to
deny fair honesty the use of this weapon, which can never bear an edge
against herself, and bears against every thing contrary.”
And hence again, conscience, which intimates a Law-giver, being superseded
by a moral taste or sentiment, which has no sanction beyond the
constitution of our nature, it follows that our great rule is to
contemplate ourselves, if we would gain a standard of life and morals.
Thus he has entitled one of his Treatises a “Soliloquy,” with the motto,
“Nec te quæsiveris extra;” and he observes, “The chief interest of
ambition, avarice, corruption, and every sly insinuating vice, is to
prevent this interview and familiarity of discourse, which is consequent
upon close retirement and inward recess. ’Tis the grand artifice of
villainy and lewdness, _as well as of superstition and bigotry_, to put us
upon terms of greater distance and formality with ourselves, and evade our
_proving_ method of soliloquy.… A passionate lover, whatever solitude he
may affect, can never be truly by himself.… ’Tis the same reason which
keeps the imaginary saint or mystic from being capable of this
entertainment. Instead of looking narrowly into his own nature and mind,
that he may be no longer a mystery to himself, he is taken up with _the
contemplation of other mysterious natures_, which he never can explain or
comprehend.”
8.
Taking these passages as specimens of what I call the Religion of
Philosophy, it is obvious to observe that there is no doctrine contained
in them which is not in a certain sense true; yet, on the other hand, that
almost every statement is perverted and made false, because it is not the
whole truth. They are exhibitions of truth under one aspect, and therefore
insufficient; conscience is most certainly a moral sense, but it is more;
vice again, is a deformity, but it is worse. Lord Shaftesbury may insist,
if he will, that simple and solitary fear cannot effect a moral
conversion, and we are not concerned to answer him; but he will have a
difficulty in proving that any real conversion follows from a doctrine
which makes virtue a mere point of good taste, and vice vulgar and
ungentlemanlike.
Such a doctrine is essentially superficial, and such will be its effects.
It has no better measure of right and wrong than that of visible beauty
and tangible fitness. Conscience indeed inflicts an acute pang, but that
pang, forsooth, is irrational, and to reverence it is an illiberal
superstition. But, if we will make light of what is deepest within us,
nothing is left but to pay homage to what is more upon the surface. To
_seem_ becomes to _be_; what looks fair will be good, what causes offence
will be evil; virtue will be what pleases, vice what pains. As well may we
measure virtue by utility as by such a rule. Nor is this an imaginary
apprehension; we all must recollect the celebrated sentiment into which a
great and wise man was betrayed, in the glowing eloquence of his
valediction to the spirit of chivalry. “It is gone,” cries Mr. Burke;
“that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a
stain like a wound; which inspired courage, while it mitigated ferocity;
which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which _vice lost half its
evil by losing all its grossness_.” In the last clause of this beautiful
sentence we have too apt an illustration of the ethical temperament of a
civilized age. It is detection, not the sin, which is the crime; private
life is sacred, and inquiry into it is intolerable; and decency is virtue.
Scandals, vulgarities, whatever shocks, whatever disgusts, are offences of
the first order. Drinking and swearing, squalid poverty, improvidence,
laziness, slovenly disorder, make up the idea of profligacy: poets may say
any thing, however wicked, with impunity; works of genius may be read
without danger or shame, whatever their principles; fashion, celebrity,
the beautiful, the heroic, will suffice to force any evil upon the
community. The splendours of a court, and the charms of good society, wit,
imagination, taste, and high breeding, the _prestige_ of rank, and the
resources of wealth, are a screen, an instrument, and an apology for vice
and irreligion. And thus at length we find, surprising as the change may
be, that that very refinement of Intellectualism, which began by repelling
sensuality, ends by excusing it. Under the shadow indeed of the Church,
and in its due development, Philosophy does service to the cause of
morality; but, when it is strong enough to have a will of its own, and is
lifted up with an idea of its own importance, and attempts to form a
theory, and to lay down a principle, and to carry out a system of ethics,
and undertakes the moral education of the man, then it does but abet evils
to which at first it seemed instinctively opposed. True Religion is slow
in growth, and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgement; but its
intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself: it springs up suddenly, it
suddenly withers. It appeals to what is in nature, and it falls under the
dominion of the old Adam. Then, like dethroned princes, it keeps up a
state and majesty, when it has lost the real power. Deformity is its
abhorrence; accordingly, since it cannot dissuade men from vice, therefore
in order to escape the sight of its deformity, it embellishes it. It
“skins and films the ulcerous place,” which it cannot probe or heal,
“Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.”
And from this shallowness of philosophical Religion it comes to pass that
its disciples seem able to fulfil certain precepts of Christianity more
readily and exactly than Christians themselves. St. Paul, as I have said,
gives us a pattern of evangelical perfection; he draws the Christian
character in its most graceful form, and its most beautiful hues. He
discourses of that charity which is patient and meek, humble and
single-minded, disinterested, contented, and persevering. He tells us to
prefer each the other before himself, to give way to each other, to
abstain from rude words and evil speech, to avoid self-conceit, to be calm
and grave, to be cheerful and happy, to observe peace with all men, truth
and justice, courtesy and gentleness, all that is modest, amiable,
virtuous, and of good repute. Such is St. Paul’s exemplar of the Christian
in his external relations; and, I repeat, the school of the world seems to
send out living copies of this typical excellence with greater success
than the Church. At this day the “gentleman” is the creation, not of
Christianity, but of civilization. But the reason is obvious. The world is
content with setting right the surface of things; the Church aims at
regenerating the very depths of the heart. She ever begins with the
beginning; and, as regards the multitude of her children, is never able to
get beyond the beginning, but is continually employed in laying the
foundation. She is engaged with what is essential, as previous and as
introductory to the ornamental and the attractive. She is curing men and
keeping them clear of mortal sin; she is “treating of justice and
chastity, and the judgment to come:” she is insisting on faith and hope,
and devotion, and honesty, and the elements of charity; and has so much to
do with precept, that she almost leaves it to inspirations from Heaven to
suggest what is of counsel and perfection. She aims at what is necessary
rather than at what is desirable. She is for the many as well as for the
few. She is putting souls in the way of salvation, that they may then be
in a condition, if they shall be called upon, to aspire to the heroic, and
to attain the full proportions, as well as the rudiments, of the
beautiful.
9.
Such is the method, or the policy (so to call it), of the Church; but
Philosophy looks at the matter from a very different point of view: what
have Philosophers to do with the terror of judgment or the saving of the
soul? Lord Shaftesbury calls the former a sort of “panic fear.” Of the
latter he scoffingly complains that “the saving of souls is now the heroic
passion of exalted spirits.” Of course he is at liberty, on his
principles, to pick and choose out of Christianity what he will; he
discards the theological, the mysterious, the spiritual; he makes
selection of the morally or esthetically beautiful. To him it matters not
at all that he begins his teaching where he should end it; it matters not
that, instead of planting the tree, he merely crops its flowers for his
banquet; he only aims at the present life, his philosophy dies with him;
if his flowers do but last to the end of his revel, he has nothing more to
seek. When night comes, the withered leaves may be mingled with his own
ashes; he and they will have done their work, he and they will be no more.
Certainly, it costs little to make men virtuous on conditions such as
these; it is like teaching them a language or an accomplishment, to write
Latin or to play on an instrument,—the profession of an artist, not the
commission of an Apostle.
This embellishment of the exterior is almost the beginning and the end of
philosophical morality. This is why it aims at being modest rather than
humble; this is how it can be proud at the very time that it is
unassuming. To humility indeed it does not even aspire; humility is one of
the most difficult of virtues both to attain and to ascertain. It lies
close upon the heart itself, and its tests are exceedingly delicate and
subtle. Its counterfeits abound; however, we are little concerned with
them here, for, I repeat, it is hardly professed even by name in the code
of ethics which we are reviewing. As has been often observed, ancient
civilization had not the idea, and had no word to express it: or rather,
it had the idea, and considered it a defect of mind, not a virtue, so that
the word which denoted it conveyed a reproach. As to the modern world, you
may gather its ignorance of it by its perversion of the somewhat parallel
term “condescension.” Humility or condescension, viewed as a virtue of
conduct, may be said to consist, as in other things, so in our placing
ourselves in our thoughts on a level with our inferiors; it is not only a
voluntary relinquishment of the privileges of our own station, but an
actual participation or assumption of the condition of those to whom we
stoop. This is true humility, to feel and to behave as if we were low;
not, to cherish a notion of our importance, while we affect a low
position. Such was St. Paul’s humility, when he called himself “the least
of the saints;” such the humility of those many holy men who have
considered themselves the greatest of sinners. It is an abdication, as far
as their own thoughts are concerned, of those prerogatives or privileges
to which others deem them entitled. Now it is not a little instructive to
contrast with this idea, Gentlemen,—with this theological meaning of the
word “condescension,”—its proper English sense; put them in
juxta-position, and you will at once see the difference between the
world’s humility and the humility of the Gospel. As the world uses the
word, “condescension” is a stooping indeed of the person, but a bending
forward, unattended with any the slightest effort to leave by a single
inch the seat in which it is so firmly established. It is the act of a
superior, who protests to himself, while he commits it, that he is
superior still, and that he is doing nothing else but an act of grace
towards those on whose level, in theory, he is placing himself. And this
is the nearest idea which the philosopher can form of the virtue of
self-abasement; to do more than this is to his mind a meanness or an
hypocrisy, and at once excites his suspicion and disgust. What the world
is, such it has ever been; we know the contempt which the educated pagans
had for the martyrs and confessors of the Church; and it is shared by the
anti-Catholic bodies of this day.
Such are the ethics of Philosophy, when faithfully represented; but an age
like this, not pagan, but professedly Christian, cannot venture to
reprobate humility in set terms, or to make a boast of pride. Accordingly,
it looks out for some expedient by which it may blind itself to the real
state of the case. Humility, with its grave and self-denying attributes,
it cannot love; but what is more beautiful, what more winning, than
modesty? what virtue, at first sight, simulates humility so well? though
what in fact is more radically distinct from it? In truth, great as is its
charm, modesty is not the deepest or the most religious of virtues. Rather
it is the advanced guard or sentinel of the soul militant, and watches
continually over its nascent intercourse with the world about it. It goes
the round of the senses; it mounts up into the countenance; it protects
the eye and ear; it reigns in the voice and gesture. Its province is the
outward deportment, as other virtues have relation to matters theological,
others to society, and others to the mind itself. And being more
superficial than other virtues, it is more easily disjoined from their
company; it admits of being associated with principles or qualities
naturally foreign to it, and is often made the cloak of feelings or ends
for which it was never given to us. So little is it the necessary index of
humility, that it is even compatible with pride. The better for the
purpose of Philosophy; humble it cannot be, so forthwith modesty becomes
its humility.