Every one of manly mind, every person of thought and determination,
takes sides upon important questions. Those who say they are indifferent
which side prevails, are indifferent whether good or evil comes
uppermost. Those who are afraid to choose a side, command only the cold
respect accorded to cowardice. Those who sit upon a fence to see which
side is likely to prevail before they jump down, are not seeking the
success of a principle, but their own interests. In most questions--as
in business--there is a side of honesty and a side of fraud. Some do
not take either separately, thinking they can better take both at
discretion. If they profit by their dexterous duplicity, they command no
regard. Some persons have no fervour for the right, and would rather see
the wrong prevail than take the trouble to prevent it. They would be on
the side of truth altogether if it gave them no discomfort, and caused
them no outlay. They belong to the large Laodicean lukewarm class, of
whom he who sought their allegiance said he would "spue them out of his
mouth." Not a pleasant simile, but it is not mine. It shows that no one
is enthusiastic about those who are undecided where decision interferes
with advancement.
If the selfish, or the politic, or the supine do not care to take sides
with right, they have no cause to complain if the triumph of wrong
involves them in discredit or disaster. But whatever be their fate, I am
not concerned with them. What I am concerned with is the omission of
all information of what may follow to him who shall take the right side.
These consequences ought never to be out of sight.
It is too often forgotten that in this world virtue has its price as
well as vice, and neither can be bought cheap. Vice can be bought on
the "hire system," by which a person gets into debt pleasantly--which
introduces shiftlessness into life. Wrong is a money-lender, whose
concealed charges and heavy interest have to be paid one day at the
peril of ruin. Right doing may be said to pay as it goes along, which
implies conscience, effort, and often sacrifice of some immediate
pleasure. But independence lies that way, and no other. Right principle
incurs no deferred obligation. Debt is a chain by which the debtor binds
himself to someone else. The connection may be disregarded, but the
chain can never be broken, except by restitution. Many persons are
beguiled into doing right under the impression that it is as pleasant
as doing wrong. This is not so, and the concealment of the fact has
injurious consequences. When a person who has been, as it were, betrayed
into virtue, without being instructed as to the inconvenience which
may attend it, when he encounters them, he suspects he has been imposed
upon, and thinks he had better give vice a turn. It was this that made
Huxley declare that the hardest as well as the most useful lesson a man
could learn, was to do that which he ought to do, whether he liked it
or not. Character, which can be trusted, comes that way, and that way
alone. He who enters on that path reaps reward daily in the pleasure and
strength which duty imparts, while sooner or later follow advantage and
honour. The most useful character George Eliot drew was that of Tito,
who was wrecked because he had no sense that there was strength and
safety in truth. The only strength he trusted to lay in his ingenuity
and dissimulation. The world is pretty full of Titos, who all come to
one end, and nobody mourns them.
A few instances may be relevantly given in which rightness has been
attended by disadvantages, when wrongness appeared to have none--yet
wrongness was found to bring great unpleasantness in the end.
When there were petitions before the House of Commons to change the
oath which excluded Jews, and petitions to permit persons to make
affirmations who had conscientious objections to taking an oath, it was
represented to me that if both claims were kept before Parliament at the
same time both would be rejected. The Jewish claim was the older, and
concerned the enfranchisement of a race. I therefore caused the omission
for several years of any petition for affirmation--though my disability
of being unable to take the oath excluded me from justice and rendered
me an outlaw.
When the Jews had obtained their relief, Sir Julian Goldsmid, a Jew,
became a candidate at Brighton. Mr. Matthews, a political friend of mine
in the town, went to Sir Julian and asked whether, as Mr. Holyoake and
those of his way of thinking had deferred their claim for affirmation
that the Jews might become eligible for Parliament, would he vote for
the Affirmation Bill? He said, "No! he would not" Mr. Matthews then
wrote to ask me whether he and others who were in favour of Affirmation
should vote for Sir Julian. I answered, "Certainly, if he in other
respects was the best candidate before the constituency. However
strongly we might be persuaded our own claim was just, we had no right
to prefer it to the general interest of the State."
Speaking one night with Mr. John Morley when we both happened to be
guests of Mr. Chamberlain at Highbury, Birmingham, I remarked that
Cobden and Bright, without intending it, had introduced more immorality
into politics than any other politicians in my time. Mr. Morley
naturally demanded to be informed when, and in what way. I answered,
"When they advised electors to vote for any candidate, irrespective
of their political opinion, who would vote against the Corn Laws. This
incited every party to vote for its own hand--the priest for the church,
the brewers for the barrel, and the teetotalers for the teapot, the
anti-vaccinators for those who were against the lancet. Even women
proposed to vote for any candidate who would give them the suffrage,
regardless whether they put out a Ministry of Progress and put in a
Ministry of Reaction. This was ignoring the general good in favour of a
personal measure. The error of the great Anti-Corn Law advocates lay in
their not making it plain to the country that when the population were
deteriorating and dying from want of sufficient food, politics must give
way to the claims of existence. That was the justification of Cobden and
Bright, and had it been stated, smaller politicians with narrower aims
could never then have pleaded their example for crowding the poll with
rival claims in which the larger interests of the State are forgotten.
Like Bacon's maxim that 'speaking the truth was so excellent a habit,
that any departure from that wholesome rule should be noted.' The
Anti-Corn Law League election policy needed noting."
However many instances may be given of the kind before the reader,
the moral will be the same. Taking sides involves some penalty which
enthusiasts are apt to overlook, and when it arrives ruddy eagerness is
apt to turn pale and change into ignoble prudence. Taking the side of
honesty or fraud, unpleasantness may come. But on the side of right the
consciousness of integrity mitigates regret and commands respect; while
the penalties of deceit are intensified by shame and scorn. Many think
there is safety in a judicious mixture of good faith and bad, but
when the bad is discerned, distrust and contempt are the unevadable
consequences. Besides, it takes more trouble to conceal a sinister life
than to act uprightly. It is true, an evil policy often succeeds, but
the interest of society is to take care that he who does evil shall
be overtaken by evil. As this sentiment grows, the chances of illicit
success continually decrease. Rascality--refined or coarse--would have
fewer adherents if society took as much trouble to secure that the
rightdoer shall prosper, as it takes to render the career of the knave
precarious.
The point of importance, I repeat, is--that persons should remember,
or be taught to remember, that the course of right, like the course of
wrong, is attended by consequences. Many who are honourably attracted by
the right are disappointed at finding that it has its duties as well as
its pleasures--which, had they known at first, they would have made up
their minds to do them; but not being apprised of them, when they first
encounter inconvenience, they think they have been deceived, falter, and
sometimes turn from a noble course upon which they had entered.
Any one would think there was no great peril to be encountered by taking
sides with veracity. Let him avoid the sin of pretension, and see what
will happen.
The sin I referred to is not the common one of declaring that to be true
which you know to be untrue--that has long been known by an appropriate
name, and does not require any new epithet to denote its scandalousness.
The sin of pretension in question consists in assuming, or declaring
that to be true, which one does not know to be true. Years ago this
was a very common sin, and everybody committed it. You heard it in the
pulpit more frequently than on the stage. Nobody complained of it, or
rebuked it, or resented it. It was not until the middle of the last
century that public attention was drawn to it. It was Huxley who first
raised the question of intellectual veracity, and he devised the term
Agnostic (which merely means limitation) to express it. Limitationism
does not mean disbelief, but the limitation of assertion to actual
knowledge. The theist used to declare--without misgiving--the absolute
certainty of the existence of an independent, active Entity, to whom
Nature is second-hand, and not much at that. The anti-theist--also
without misgiving--denied that there was such separate Potentiality.
The Limitationist, more modest in averment, not having sufficient
information to be positive, simply says he does not know. He does not
say that others may not have sufficient knowledge of a primal cause of
things; but lacking it himself, he concludes that veracity in statement
may be a virtue where omniscience is denied. There may be belief
founded on inference. But inference is not knowledge. The Limitationist
withholds assertion from lack of satisfying evidence. He is neutral--not
because he wishes not to believe, or desires to deny, but because
serious language should be measured by the standard of proof and
conviction.
So strange did this precaution in speech seem in my time, that it
was believed that reticence was not honest precaution, but prudent
concealment of actual conviction, intended to evade orthodox anger.
On problems relating to infinite existence and an unknown future, it
requires infinite knowledge to give an affirmative answer. No one said
he had infinite information, but everybody declaimed as though he had.
It appeared not to have occurred to many that there was a state of the
understanding in which lack of conviction was owing to lack of evidence.
Where the desire to believe is hereditary, it is difficult to realise
that there are questions upon which certainty may, to many minds, be
unattainable, and that an honest man who felt this was bound to say so.
An American journal, which needed forbearance from its readers for
its own heresy, published the opinion that Huxley was a "dodger" in
philosophy. Whereas Huxley was for integrity in thought and speech. He
was for scientific accuracy as far as attainable. His own outspokenness
was the glory of philosophy and science in his day. He never denied his
convictions; he never apologised for them; he never explained them away.
Is it over his noble tomb that we are to write, "Here lies a Dodger,"
because he invented an honest term to denote the measured knowledge of
honest thinkers? Dogmatism is not demonstration, but when I was young
nobody seemed to suspect it. It used to be said that "Darwin, Huxley,
and Spencer were not really in a state of unknowingness concerning the
great problem of the universe"--which meant that these eminent thinkers,
upon whose lives no shadow of unveracity ever rested, described
themselves as Limitationists when they were not so. They were not to
be believed upon their word. The term was a mask. Such are the social
penalties for taking sides with veracity.
The public has begun to discover that veracity of speech is not a mask,
but a duty. None can calculate the calamities which arise in society
from the perpetual misdirections disseminated by those who make
assertions resting merely upon their inherited belief or prepossessions,
with no personal knowledge upon which they are founded. This is the sin
of pretension, which recedes before the integrity of science and reason,
just as wild beasts recede before the march of civilisation.
Few would be prepared to believe that, in my polemical days, the desire
to avoid committing the sin of pretension was supposed to indicate
desperation of character, of which suicide would be the natural end.
This was a favourite argument, for a heterodox principle was held to be
for ever confuted, if he who held it hanged himself. The best proclaimed
champion of orthodox tenets, whom I met on many platforms, went about
declaring that I intended suicide, and it was generally believed that
I had committed it. The certainty of it, sooner or later, was little
doubted, whereas it was not at all in my way.
The suicide of Eugene Aram, to escape the ignominy of an inevitable
execution, is intelligible. If Blanco White, whose dying and hopeless
sufferings excited the sympathy even of Cardinal Newman, had done the
same thing, it would have been condonable. Suicide proceeding from
disease of the mind is always pitiable. When Italian prisoners were
given belladonna by their Austrian gaolers, to cause them to betray,
unconsciously, their comrades, some committed suicide to prevent this,
which was honourable though deplorable. When a murderer, knowing his
desert, becomes his own executioner, he is not censurable though
still infamous, since it saves society the expense of terminating his
dangerous career. But in other cases, self-slaughter, to avoid trouble
or the performance of inconvenient duty, is cowardly and detestable.
In my controversial days (which I hope are not yet ended) the clergy did
not hesitate to say that if a man began to think for himself, he would
end by killing himself.
When I thought the doctrine had died out, an instance recurred which led
me to address the following letter to the Rev. R. P. Downes, LLD. (May
18, 1899), who thought the doctrine valid:--
"Dear Dr. Downes,--It has been reported to me that in Wesley Place
Chapel, Tunstall (March 20, 1899), you, when preaching on the 'Roots of
Unbelief,' illustrated that troublesome subject by saying that 'when Mr.
Holyoake was imprisoned at Birmingham, he attempted suicide.' This
is not true, nor was it in Birmingham, but in Gloucester where the
imprisonment occurred. I never attempted suicide--it was never in my
mind to do it. I had no motive that way. I experienced no moment of
despair. Better men than I had been imprisoned before, for being so
imprudent as to protest against intolerance and error. Besides, I never
liked suicide. I was always against it Blowing out your brains makes an
ill-conditioned splatter. Cutting your throat is a detestable want
of consideration for those who have to efface the stains. Drowning is
disagreeable, as the water is cold and not clean. Hanging is mean and
ignominious, and I have always heard unpleasant The French charcoal plan
makes you sick. Indeed, every form of suicide shows want of taste; and
worse than that, it is a cowardly thing to flee from evils you ought to
combat, and leave others, whom you may be bound to cherish and protect,
to struggle unaided. So you see what you allege against me is not only
irrelevant--it implies defect of taste, which is serious in the eyes of
society, which will condone crime more readily than vulgarity.
"I am against your discourse because of its bad taste. Suicide is
no argument against the truth of belief. Christians are continually
committing it, and clergymen also. The Society for the Propagation of
Christian Knowledge used to bring this argument from suicide forward in
their tracts against heresy. But being educated gentlemen they abandoned
it long ago, and it is now only used by the lower class of preachers. I
do not mean to suggest that you belong to that class--only that you have
condescended to use an argument peculiar to uncultivated reasoners.
"Personally, I have great respect for several eminent preachers of
Wesleyan persuasion, but they think it necessary to inquire into the
truth of an accusation before they make it You must have borrowed yours
from the Rev. Brewin Grant, with whom in his last illness I had friendly
communications, and he had long ceased to repeat what he said in days
when it was not thought necessary to be exact in imputations against
adversaries.
"I do not remember to have written before in refutation of the statement
you made. No one who knows me would believe it for a moment; but as you
are a responsible, and I understand a well-regarded, preacher, I inform
you of the error, especially as it gives me the opportunity of putting
on record not only my disinclination, but my dislike and contempt for
suicide, and for those who, not being hopelessly diseased or insane,
commit it."
Dr. Downes sent me a gentlemanly and candid letter, owning that the
Rev. Brewin Grant, B.A., was the authority on which he spoke, whose
representations he would not repeat, and I have reason to believe he has
not.
Such are the vicissitudes of taking sides. He has to pay who takes the
right, but he has honour in the end. But he pays more who takes the
wrong side consciously, and with it comes infamy.