The Ethical Library
SOCIAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES
Addresses to Ethical Societies
by
LESLIE STEPHEN
In Two Volumes
VOL. I.
London
Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Limited
New York: MacMillan & Co.
1896
NOTE.
The following chapters are chiefly a republication of addresses
delivered to the Ethical Societies of London. Some have previously
appeared in the _International Journal of Ethics_, the _National
Review_, and the _Contemporary Review_. The author has to thank the
proprietors of these periodicals for their consent to the republication.
L. S.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE AIMS OF ETHICAL SOCIETIES, 1
SCIENCE AND POLITICS, 45
THE SPHERE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, 91
THE MORALITY OF COMPETITION, 133
SOCIAL EQUALITY, 175
ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE, 221
THE AIMS OF ETHICAL SOCIETIES.[1]
I am about to say a few words upon the aims of this society: and I
should be sorry either to exaggerate or to depreciate our legitimate
pretensions. It would be altogether impossible to speak too strongly of
the importance of the great questions in which our membership of the
society shows us to be interested. It would, I fear, be easy enough to
make an over-estimate of the part which we can expect to play in their
solution. I hold indeed, or I should not be here, that we may be of
some service at any rate to each other. I think that anything which
stimulates an active interest in the vital problems of the day deserves
the support of all thinking men; and I propose to consider briefly some
of the principles by which we should be guided in doing whatever we can
to promote such an interest.
[1] Address to West London Ethical Society, 4th December, 1892.
We are told often enough that we are living in a period of important
intellectual and social revolutions. In one way we are perhaps inclined
even to state the fact a little too strongly. We suffer at times from
the common illusion that the problems of to-day are entirely new: we
fancy that nobody ever thought of them before, and that when we have
solved them, nobody will ever need to look for another solution. To
ardent reformers in all ages it seems as if the millennium must begin
with their triumph, and that their triumph will be established by a
single victory. And while some of us are thus sanguine, there are many
who see in the struggles of to-day the approach of a deluge which is to
sweep away all that once ennobled life. The believer in the old creeds,
who fears that faith is decaying, and the supernatural life fading from
the world, denounces the modern spirit as materialising and degrading.
The conscience of mankind, he thinks, has become drugged and lethargic;
our minds are fixed upon sensual pleasures, and our conduct regulated
by a blind struggle for the maximum of luxurious enjoyment. The period
in his eyes is a period of growing corruption; modern society suffers
under a complication of mortal diseases, so widely spread and deeply
seated that at present there is no hope of regeneration. The best hope
is that its decay may provide the soil in which seed may be sown of a
far-distant growth of happier augury. Such dismal forebodings are no
novelty. Every age produces its prophecies of coming woes. Nothing
would be easier than to make out a catena of testimonies from great men
at every stage of the world's history, declaring each in turn that the
cup of iniquity was now at last overflowing, and that corruption had
reached so unprecedented a step that some great catastrophe must be
approaching. A man of unusually lofty morality is, for that reason,
more keenly sensitive to the lowness of the average standard, and too
easily accepts the belief that the evils before his eyes must be in
fact greater, and not, as may perhaps be the case, only more vividly
perceived, than those of the bygone ages. A call to repentance easily
takes the form of an assertion that the devil is getting the upper
hand; and we may hope that the pessimist view is only a form of the
discontent which is a necessary condition of improvement. Anyhow, the
diametrical conflict of prophecies suggests one remark which often
impresses me. We are bound to call each other by terribly hard names. A
gentleman assures me in print that I am playing the devil's game;
depriving my victims, if I have any, of all the beliefs that can make
life noble or happy, and doing my best to destroy the very first
principles of morality. Yet I meet my adversary in the flesh, and find
that he treats me not only with courtesy, but with no inconsiderable
amount of sympathy. He admits--by his actions and his argument--that
I--the miserable sophist and seducer--have not only some good impulses,
but have really something to say which deserves a careful and
respectful answer. An infidel, a century or two ago, was supposed to
have forfeited all claim to the ordinary decencies of life. Now I can
say, and can say with real satisfaction, that I do not find any
difference of creed, however vast in words, to be an obstacle to decent
and even friendly treatment. I am at times tempted to ask whether my
opponent can be quite logical in being so courteous; whether, if he is
as sure as he says that I am in the devil's service, I ought not, as a
matter of duty, to be encountered with the old dogmatism and arrogance.
I shall, however, leave my friends of a different way of thinking to
settle that point for themselves. I cannot doubt the sincerity of their
courtesy, and I will hope that it is somehow consistent with their
logic. Rather I will try to meet them in a corresponding spirit by a
brief confession. I have often enough spoken too harshly and vehemently
of my antagonists. I have tried to fix upon them too unreservedly what
seemed to me the logical consequences of their dogmas. I have condemned
their attempts at a milder interpretation of their creed as proofs of
insincerity, when I ought to have done more justice to the legitimate
and lofty motives which prompted them. And I at least am bound by my
own views to admit that even the antagonist from whose utterances I
differ most widely may be an unconscious ally, supplementing rather
than contradicting my theories, and in great part moved by aspirations
which I ought to recognise even when allied with what I take to be
defective reasoning. We are all amenable to one great influence. The
vast shuttle of modern life is weaving together all races and creeds
and classes. We are no longer shut up in separate compartments, where
the mental horizon is limited by the area visible from the parish
steeple; each little section can no longer fancy, in the old childish
fashion, that its own arbitrary prejudices and dogmas are parts of the
eternal order of things; or infer that in the indefinite region beyond,
there live nothing but monsters and anthropophagi, and men whose heads
grow beneath their shoulders. The annihilation of space has made us
fellows as by a kind of mechanical compulsion; and every advance of
knowledge has increased the impossibility of taking our little
church--little in comparison with mankind, be it even as great as the
Catholic Church--for the one pattern of right belief. The first effect
of bringing remote nations and classes into closer contact is often an
explosion of antipathy; but in the long run it means a development of
human sympathy. Wide, therefore, as is the opposition of opinions as to
what is the true theory of the world--as to which is the divine and
which the diabolical element--I fully believe that beneath the war of
words and dogmas there is a growth of genuine toleration, and, we must
hope, of ultimate conciliation.
This is manifest in another direction. The churches are rapidly making
at least one discovery. They are beginning to find out that their
vitality depends not upon success in theological controversy, but upon
their success in meeting certain social needs and aspirations common to
all classes. It is simply impossible for any thinking man at the
present day to take any living interest, for example, in the ancient
controversies. The "drum ecclesiastic" of the seventeenth century would
sound a mere lullaby to us. Here and there a priest or a belated
dissenting minister may amuse himself by threshing out once more the
old chaff of dead and buried dogmas. There are people who can argue
gravely about baptismal regeneration or apostolical succession. Such
doctrines were once alive, no doubt, because they represented the form
in which certain still living problems had then to present themselves.
They now require to be stated in a totally different shape, before we
can even guess why they were once so exciting, or how men could have
supposed their modes of attacking the question to be adequate. The Pope
and General Booth still condemn each other's tenets; and in case of
need would, I suppose, take down the old rusty weapons from the
armoury. But each sees with equal clearness that the real stress of
battle lies elsewhere. Each tries, after his own fashion, to give a
better answer than the Socialists to the critical problems of to-day.
We ought so far to congratulate both them and ourselves on the
direction of their energies. Nay, can we not even co-operate, and put
these hopeless controversies aside? Why not agree to differ about the
questions which no one denies to be all but insoluble, and become
allies in promoting morality? Enormous social forces find their natural
channel through the churches; and if the beliefs inculcated by the
church were not, as believers assert, the ultimate cause of progress,
it is at least clear that they were not incompatible with progress. The
church, we all now admit, whether by reason of or in spite of its
dogmatic creed, was for ages one great organ of civilisation, and still
exercises an incalculable influence. Why, then, should we, who cannot
believe in the dogmas, yet fall into line with believers for practical
purposes? Churches insist verbally upon the importance of their dogma:
they are bound to do so by their logical position; but, in reality, for
them, as for us, the dogma has become in many ways a mere
excrescence--a survival of barren formulæ which do little harm to
anybody. Carlyle, in his quaint phrase, talked about the exodus from
Houndsditch, but doubted whether it were yet time to cast aside the
Hebrew old clothes. They have become threadbare and antiquated. That
gives a reason to the intelligent for abandoning them; but, also,
perhaps a reason for not quarrelling with those who still care to
masquerade in them. Orthodox people have made a demand that the Board
Schools should teach certain ancient doctrines about the nature of
Christ; and the demand strikes some of us as preposterous if not
hypocritical. But putting aside the audacity of asking unbelievers to
pay for such teaching, one might be tempted to ask, what harm could it
really do? Do you fancy for a moment that you can really teach a child
of ten the true meaning of the Incarnation? Can you give him more than
a string of words as meaningless as magical formulæ? I was brought up
at the most orthodox of Anglican seminaries. I learned the Catechism,
and heard lectures upon the Thirty-nine Articles. I never found that
the teaching had ever any particular effect upon my mind. As I grew up,
the obsolete exuviæ of doctrine dropped off my mind like dead leaves
from a tree. They could not get any vital hold in an atmosphere of
tolerable enlightenment. Why should we fear the attempt to instil these
fragments of decayed formulæ into the minds of children of tender age?
Might we not be certain that they would vanish of themselves? They are
superfluous, no doubt, but too futile to be of any lasting importance.
I remember that, when the first Education Act was being discussed,
mention was made of a certain Jew who not only sent his son to a
Christian school, but insisted upon his attending all the lessons. He
had paid his fees, he said, for education in the Gospels among other
things, and he meant to have his money's worth. "But your son," it was
urged, "will become a Christian." "I," he replied, "will take good care
of that at home." Was not the Jew a man of sense? Can we suppose that
the mechanical repetition of a few barren phrases will do either harm
or good? As the child develops he will, we may hope, remember his
multiplication table, and forget his fragments of the Athanasian Creed.
Let the wheat and tares be planted together, and trust to the superior
vitality of the more valuable plant. The sentiment might be expressed
sentimentally as easily as cynically. We may urge, like many sceptics
of the last century, that Christianity should be kept "for the use of
the poor," and renounced in the esoteric creed of the educated. Or we
may urge the literary and æsthetic beauty of the old training, and wish
it to be preserved to discipline the imagination, though we may reject
its value as a historical statement of fact.
The audience which I am addressing has, I presume, made up its mind
upon such views. They come too late. It might have been a good thing,
had it been possible, to effect the transition from old to new without
a violent convulsion: good, if Christian conceptions had been slowly
developed into more simple forms; if the beautiful symbols had been
retained till they could be impregnated with a new meaning; and if the
new teaching of science and philosophy had gradually percolated into
the ancient formulæ without causing a disruption. Possibly the
Protestant Reformation was a misfortune, and Erasmus saw the truth more
clearly than Luther. I cannot go into might-have-beens. We have to deal
with facts. A conspiracy of silence is impossible about matters which
have been vehemently discussed for centuries. We have to take sides;
and we at least have agreed to take the side of the downright thinker,
who will say nothing that he does not believe, and hide nothing that he
does believe, and speak out his mind without reservation or economy and
accommodation. Indeed, as things are, any other course seems to me to
be impossible. I have spoken, for example, of General Booth. Many
people heartily admire his schemes of social reform, and have been
willing to subscribe for its support, without troubling themselves
about his theology. I will make no objection; but I confess that I
could not therefore treat that theology as either morally or
intellectually respectable. It has happened to me once or twice to
listen to expositions from orators of the Salvation Army. Some of them
struck me as sincere though limited, and others as the victims of an
overweening vanity. The oratory, so far as I could hear, consisted in
stringing together an endless set of phrases about the blood of Christ,
which, if they really meant anything, meant a doctrine as low in the
intellectual scale as that of any of the objects of missionary
enterprise. The conception of the transactions between God and man was
apparently modelled upon the dealings of a petty tradesman. The "blood
of Christ" was regarded like the panacea of a quack doctor, which will
cure the sins of anybody who accepts the prescription. For anything I
can say, such a creed may be elevating--relatively: elevating as
slavery is said to have been elevating when it was a substitute for
extermination. The hymns of the Army may be better than public-house
melodies, and the excitement produced less mischievous than that due to
gin. But the best that I can wish for its adherents is, that they
should speedily reach a point at which they could perceive their
doctrines to be debasing. I hope, indeed, that they do not realise
their own meaning: but I could almost as soon join in some old pagan
ceremonies, gash my body with knives, or swing myself from a hook, as
indulge in this variety of spiritual intoxication.
There are, it is true, plenty of more refined and intellectual
preachers, whose sentiments deserve at least the respect due to tender
and humane feeling. They have found a solution, satisfactory to
themselves, of the great dilemma which presses on so many minds. A
religion really to affect the vulgar must be a superstition; to satisfy
the thoughtful, it must be a philosophy. Is it possible to contrive so
to fuse the crude with the refined as to make at least a working
compromise? To me personally, and to most of us living at the present
day, the enterprise appears to be impracticable. My own experience is,
I imagine, a very common one. When I ceased to accept the teaching of
my youth, it was not so much a process of giving up beliefs, as of
discovering that I had never really believed. The contrast between the
genuine convictions which guide and govern our conduct, and the
professions which we were taught to repeat in church, when once
realised, was too glaring. One belonged to the world of realities, and
the other to the world of dreams. The orthodox formulæ represent, no
doubt, a sentiment, an attempt to symbolise emotions which might be
beautiful, or to indicate vague impressions about the tendency of
things in general; but to put them side by side with real beliefs about
facts was to reveal their flimsiness. The "I believe" of the creed
seemed to mean something quite different from the "I believe" of
politics and history and science. Later experience has only deepened
and strengthened that feeling. Kind and loving and noble-minded people
have sought to press upon me the consolations of their religion. I
thank them in all sincerity; and I feel,--why should I not admit
it?--that it may be a genuine comfort to set your melancholy to the old
strain in which so many generations have embodied their sorrows and
their aspirations. And yet to me, its consolation is an invitation to
reject plain facts; to seek for refuge in a shadowy world of dreams and
conjectures, which dissolve as you try to grasp them. The doctrine
offered for my acceptance cannot be stated without qualifications and
reserves and modifications, which make it as useless as it is vague and
conjectural. I may learn in time to submit to the inevitable; I cannot
drug myself with phrases which evaporate as soon as they are exposed to
a serious test. You profess to give me the only motives of conduct; and
I know that at the first demand to define them honestly--to say
precisely what you believe and why you believe it--you will be forced
to withdraw, and explain and evade, and at last retire to the safe
refuge of a mystery, which might as well be admitted at starting. As I
have read and thought, I have been more and more impressed with the
obvious explanation of these observations. How should the beliefs be
otherwise than shadowy and illusory, when their very substance is made
of doubts laboriously and ingeniously twisted into the semblance of
convictions? In one way or other that is the characteristic mark of the
theological systems of the present day. Proof is abandoned for
persuasion. The orthodox believer professed once to prove the facts
which he asserted and to show that his dogmas expressed the truth. He
now only tries to show that the alleged facts don't matter, and that
the dogmas are meaningless. Nearly two centuries ago, for example, a
deist pointed out that the writer of the Book of Daniel, like other
people, must have written after the events which he mentioned. All the
learned, down to Dr. Pusey, denounced his theory, and declared his
argument to be utterly destructive of the faith. Now an orthodox
professor will admit that the deist was perfectly right, and only tries
to persuade himself that arguments from facts are superfluous. The
supposed foundation is gone: the superstructure is not to be affected.
What the keenest disputant now seeks to show is, not that the truth of
the records can be established beyond reasonable doubt; but that no
absolute contradiction in terms is involved in supposing that they
correspond more or less roughly to something which may possibly have
happened. So long as a thing is not proved false by mathematical
demonstration, I may still continue to take it for a divine revelation,
and to listen respectfully when experienced statesmen and learned
professors assure me with perfect gravity that they can believe in
Noah's flood or in the swine of Gadara. They have an unquestionable
right to believe if they please: and they expect me to accept the facts
for the sake of the doctrine. There, unluckily, I have a similar
difficulty. It is the orthodox who are the systematic sceptics. The
most famous philosophers of my youth endeavoured to upset the deist by
laying the foundation of Agnosticism, arbitrarily tagged to an orthodox
conclusion. They told me to believe a doctrine because it was totally
impossible that I should know whether it was true or not, or indeed
attach any real meaning to it whatever. The highest altar, as Sir W.
Hamilton said, was the altar to the unknown and unknowable God. Others,
seeing the inevitable tendency of such methods, have done their best to
find in that the Christian doctrine, rightly understood, the embodiment
of the highest philosophy. It is the divine voice which speaks in our
hearts, though it has caught some accretion of human passion and
superstition. The popular versions are false and debased; the old
versions of the Atonement, for example, monstrous; and the belief in
the everlasting torture of sinners, a hideous and groundless
caricature. With much that such men have said I could, of course, agree
heartily; for, indeed, it expresses the strongest feelings which have
caused religious revolt. But would it not be simpler to say, "the
doctrine is not true," than to say, "it is true, but means just the
reverse of what it was also taken to mean"? I prefer plain terms; and
"without doubt he shall perish everlastingly" seems to be an awkward
way of denying the endlessness of punishment. You cannot denounce the
immorality of the old dogmas with the infidel, and then proclaim their
infinite value with the believer. You defend the doctrine by showing
that in its plain downright sense,--the sense in which it embodied
popular imaginations,--it was false and shocking. The proposal to hold
by the words evacuated of the old meaning is a concession of the whole
case to the unbeliever, and a substitution of sentiment and aspiration
for a genuine intellectual belief. Explaining away, however dexterously
and delicately, is not defending, but at once confessing error, and
encumbering yourself with all the trammels of misleading associations.
The more popular method, therefore, at the present day is not to
rationalise, but to try to outsceptic the sceptic. We are told that we
have no solid ground from reason at all, and that even physical science
is as full of contradictions as theology. Such enterprises, conducted
with whatever ingenuity, are, as I believe, hopeless; but at least they
are fundamentally and radically sceptical. That, under whatever
disguises, is the true meaning of the Catholic argument, which is so
persuasive to many. To prove the truth of Christianity by abstract
reasoning may be hopeless; but nothing is easier than to persuade
yourself to believe it, if once you will trust instinct in place of
reason, and forget that instinct proves anything and everything. The
success of such arguments with thoughtful men is simply a measure of
the spread of scepticism. The conviction that truth is unattainable is
the master argument for submitting to "authority". The "authority," in
the scientific sense of any set of men who agree upon a doctrine,
varies directly as their independence of each other. Their "authority"
in the legal sense varies as the closeness of their mutual dependence.
As the consent loses its value logically, it gains in power of
coercion. And therefore it is easy to substitute drilling for arguing,
and to take up a belief as you accept admission to a society, as a
matter of taste and feeling, with which abstract logic has nothing to
do. The common dilemma--you must be a Catholic or an atheist--means,
that theology is only tenable if you drill people into belief by a vast
organisation appealing to other than logical motives.
I do not argue these points: I only indicate what I take to be your own
conviction as well as mine. It seems to me, in fact, that the present
state of mind--if we look to men's real thoughts and actions, not to
their conventional phrases--is easily definable. It is simply a tacit
recognition that the old orthodoxy cannot be maintained either by the
evidence of facts or by philosophical argument. It has puzzled me
sometimes to understand why the churches should insist upon nailing
themselves down to the truth of their dogmas and their legendary
history. Why cannot they say frankly, what they seem to be constantly
on the verge of saying--Our dogmas and our history are not true, or not
"true" in the historical or scientific sense of the word? To ask for
such truth in the sphere of theology is as pedantic as to ask for it in
the sphere of poetry. Poetical truth means, not that certain events
actually happened, or that the poetical "machinery" is to be taken as
an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of
truths upon the cloudland of imagination. It reflects and gives
sensuous images of truth; but it is only the Philistine or the
blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? Some such position seems
to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. Put aside the
prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, and we may all
agree to use the same symbolism, and interpret it as we please. This
seems to me to be actually the view of many thoughtful people, though
for obvious reasons it is not often explicitly stated. One reason is,
of course, the consciousness that the great mass of mankind requires
plain, tangible motives for governing its life; and if it once be
admitted that so much of the orthodox doctrine is mere symbolism or
adumbration of truths, the admission would involve the loss of the
truths so indicated. Moral conduct, again, and moral beliefs are
supposed to depend upon some affirmation of these truths; and excellent
people are naturally shy of any open admission which may appear to
throw doubt upon the ultimate grounds of morality.
Indeed, if it could be really proved that men have to choose between
renouncing moral truths and accepting unproved theories, it might be
right--I will not argue the point--to commit intellectual suicide. If
the truth is that we are mere animals or mere automata, shall we
sacrifice the truth, or sacrifice what we have at least agreed to call
our higher nature? For us the dilemma has no force: for we do not admit
the discrepancy. We believe that morality depends upon something deeper
and more permanent than any of the dogmas that have hitherto been
current in the churches. It is a product of human nature, not of any of
these transcendental speculations or faint survivals of traditional
superstitions. Morality has grown up independently of, and often in
spite of, theology. The creeds have been good so far as they have
accepted or reflected the moral convictions; but it is an illusion to
suppose that they have generated it. They represent the dialect and the
imagery by which moral truths have been conveyed to minds at certain
stages of thought; but it is a complete inversion of the truth to
suppose that the morality sprang out of them. From this point of view
we must of necessity treat the great ethical questions independently.
We cannot form a real alliance with thinkers radically opposed to us.
Divines tell us that we reject the one possible basis of morality. To
us it appears that we are strengthening it, by severing it from a
connection with doctrines arbitrary, incapable of proof, and incapable
of retaining any consistent meaning. Theologians once believed that
hell-fire was the ultimate sentence, and persecution the absolute duty
of every Christian ruler. The churches which once burnt and
exterminated are now only anxious to proclaim freedom of belief, and to
cast the blame of persecution upon their rivals. Divines have
discovered that the doctrine of hell-fire deserves all that infidels
have said of it; and a member of Dante's church was arguing the other
day that hell might on the whole be a rather pleasant place of
residence. Doctrines which can thus be turned inside out are hardly
desirable bases for morality. So the early Christians, again, were the
Socialists of their age, and took a view of Dives and Lazarus which
would commend itself to the Nihilists of to-day. The church is now
often held up to us as the great barrier against Socialism, and the one
refuge against subversive doctrines. In a well-known essay on "People
whom one would have wished to have seen," Lamb and his friends are
represented as agreeing that if Christ were to enter they would all
fall down and worship Him. It may have been so; but if the man who best
represents the ideas of early Christians were to enter a respectable
society of to-day, would it not be more likely to send for the police?
When we consider such changes, and mark in another direction how the
dogmas which once set half the world to cut the throats of the other
half, have sunk into mere combinations of hard words, can we seriously
look to the maintenance of dogmas, even in the teeth of reason, as a
guarantee for ethical convictions? What you call retaining the only
base of morality, appears to us to be trying to associate morality with
dogmas essentially arbitrary and unreasonable.
From this point of view it is naturally our opinion that we should
promote all thorough discussion of great ethical problems in a spirit
and by methods which are independent of the orthodox dogmas. There are
many such problems undoubtedly of the highest importance. The root of
all the great social questions of which I have spoken lies in the
region of Ethics; and upon that point, at least, we can go along with
much that is said upon the orthodox side. We cannot, indeed, agree that
Ethics can be adequately treated by men pledged to ancient traditions,
employing antiquated methods, and always tempted to have an eye to the
interest of their own creeds and churches. But we can fully agree that
ethical principles underlie all the most important problems. Every
great religious reform has been stimulated by the conviction that the
one essential thing is a change of spirit, not a mere modification of
the external law, which has ceased to correspond to genuine beliefs and
powerful motives. The commonest criticism, indeed, of all projectors of
new Utopias is that they propose a change of human nature. The
criticism really suggests a sound criterion. Unless the change proposed
be practicable, the Utopia will doubtless be impossible. And unless
some practicable change be proposed, the Utopia, even were it embodied
in practice, would be useless. If the sole result of raising wages were
an increase in the consumption of gin, wages might as well stay at a
minimum. But the tacit assumption that all changes of human nature are
impracticable is simply a cynical and unproved assertion. All of us
here hold, I imagine, that human nature has in a sense been changed. We
hold that, with all its drawbacks, progress is not an illusion; that
men have become at least more tolerant and more humane; that ancient
brutalities have become impossible; and that the suffering of the
weaker excites a keener sympathy. To say that, in that sense, human
nature must be changed, is to say only that the one sound criterion of
all schemes for social improvement lies in their ethical tendency. The
standard of life cannot be permanently raised unless you can raise the
standard of motive. Old-fashioned political theorists thought that a
simple change of the constitutional machinery would of itself remedy
all evils, and failed to recognise that behind the institutions lie all
the instincts and capabilities of the men who are to work them. A
similar fallacy is prevalent, I fancy, in regard to what we call social
reforms. Some scheme for a new mode of distributing the products of
industry would, it is often assumed, remedy all social evils. To my
thinking, no such change would do more than touch the superficial
evils, unless it had also some tendency to call out the higher and
repress the lower impulses. Unless we can to some extent change "human
nature," we shall be weaving ropes of sand, or devising schemes for
perpetual motion, for driving our machinery more effectively without
applying fresh energy. We shall be falling into the old blunders;
approving Jack Cade's proposal--as recorded by Shakespeare--that the
three-hooped pot should have seven hoops; or attempting to get rid of
poverty by converting the whole nation into paupers. No one, perhaps,
will deny this in terms; and to admit it frankly is to admit that every
scheme must be judged by its tendency to "raise the manhood of the
poor," and to make every man, rich and poor, feel that he is
discharging a useful function in society. Old Robert Owen, when he
began his reforms, rested his doctrine and his hopes of perfectibility
upon the scientific application of a scheme for "the formation of
character". His plans were crude enough, and fell short of success. But
he had seen the real conditions of success; and when, in after years,
he imagined that a new society might be made by simply collecting men
of any character in a crowd, and inviting them to share alike, he fell
into the inevitable failure. Modern Socialists might do well to
remember his history.
Now it is, as I understand, primarily the aim of an Ethical Society to
promote the rational discussion of these underlying ethical principles.
We wish to contribute to the clearest understanding we can of the right
ends to which human energy should be devoted, and of the conditions
under which such devotion is most likely to be rewarded with success.
We desire to see the great controversy carried on in the nearest
possible approach to a scientific spirit. That phrase implies, as I
have said, that we must abandon much of the old guidance. The lights by
which our ancestors professed to direct their course are not for us
supernatural signs, shining in a transcendental region, but at most the
beacons which they had themselves erected, and valuable as indications,
though certainly not as infallible guides, to the right path. We must
question everything, and be prepared to modify or abandon whatever is
untenable. We must be scientific in spirit, in so far as we must trust
nothing but a thorough and systematic investigation of facts, however
the facts may be interpreted. Undoubtedly, the course marked out is
long and arduous. It is perfectly true, moreover, as our antagonists
will hasten to observe, that professedly scientific reasoners are
hardly better agreed than their opponents. If they join upon some
negative conclusions, and upon some general principles of method, they
certainly do not reach the same results. They have at present no
definite creed to lay down. I need only refer, for example, to one very
obvious illustration. The men who were most conspicuous for their
attempt to solve social problems by scientific methods, and most
confident that they had succeeded, were, probably, those who founded
the so-called "classical" political economy, and represented what is
now called the individualist point of view. Government, they were apt
to think, should do nothing but stand aside, see fair-play, and keep
our knives from each other's throats and our hands out of each other's
pockets. Much as their doctrines were denounced, this view is still
represented by the most popular philosopher of the day. And undoubtedly
we shall do well to take to heart the obvious moral. If we still
believe in the old-fashioned doctrines, we must infer that to work out
a scientific doctrine is by no means to secure its acceptance. If we
reject them we must argue that the mere claim to be scientific may
inspire men with a premature self-confidence, which tends only to make
their errors more systematic. When, however, I look at the actual
course of controversy, I am more impressed by another fact.
"Individualism" is sometimes met by genuine argument. More frequently,
I think, it is met by simple appeal to sentiment. This kind of thing,
we are told, is exploded; it is not up to date; it is as obsolete as
the plesiosaurus; and therefore, without bothering ourselves about your
reasoning, we shall simply neglect it. Talk as much as you please, we
can get a majority on the other side. We shall disregard your
arguments, and, therefore--it is a common piece of logic at the present
day--your arguments must be all wrong. I must be content here with
simply indicating my own view. I think, in fact, that, in this as in
other cases, the true answer to extreme theorists would be very
different. I hold that we would begin by admitting the immense value of
the lesson taught by the old individualists, if that be their right
name. If they were precipitate in laying down "iron laws" and
proclaiming inexorable necessity, they were perfectly right in pointing
out that there are certain "laws of human nature," and conditions of
social welfare, which will not be altered by simply declaring them to
be unpleasant. They did an inestimable service in emphatically
protesting against the system of forcibly suppressing, or trying to
suppress, deep-seated evils, without an accurate preliminary diagnosis
of the causes. And--not to go into remote questions--the
"individualist" creed had this merit, which is related to our especial
aims. The ethical doctrine which they preached may have had--I think
that it had--many grave defects; but at least it involved a recognition
of the truth which their opponents are too apt to shun or reject. They,
at least, asserted strenuously the cardinal doctrine of the importance
of individual responsibility. They might draw some erroneous
inferences, but they could not put too emphatically the doctrine that
men must not be taught to shift the blame of all their sufferings upon
some mysterious entity called society, or expect improvement unless,
among other virtues, they will cultivate the virtue of strenuous,
unremitting, masculine self-help.
If this be at all true, it may indicate what I take to be the aim of
our society, or rather of us as members of an ethical society. We hold,
that is, that the great problems of to-day have their root, so to
speak, in an ethical soil. They will be decided one way or other by the
view which we take of ethical questions. The questions, for example, of
what is meant by social justice, what is the justification of private
property, or the limits of personal liberty, all lead us ultimately to
ethical foundations. The same is, of course, true of many other
problems. The demand for political rights of women is discussed,
rightly no doubt, upon grounds of justice, and takes us to some knotty
points. Does justice imply the equality of the sexes; and, if so, in
what sense of "equality"? And, beyond this, we come to the question,
What would be the bearing of our principles upon the institution of
marriage, and upon the family bond? No question can be more important,
or more vitally connected with Ethics. We, at any rate, can no longer
answer such problems by any traditional dogmatism. They--and many other
questions which I need not specify--have been asked, and have yet to be
answered. They will probably not be answered by a simple yes or no, nor
by any isolated solution of a metaphysical puzzle. Undoubtedly, a vast
mass of people will insist upon being consulted, and will adopt methods
which cannot be regarded as philosophical. Therefore, it is a matter of
pressing importance that all people who can think at all should use
their own minds, and should do their best to widen and strengthen the
influence of the ablest thinkers. The chaotic condition of the average
mind is our reason for trying to strengthen the influence, always too
feeble, of the genuine thinkers. Much that passes itself off for
thought is simply old prejudice in a new dress. Tradition has always
this, indeed, to say for itself: that it represents the product of much
unconscious reasoning from experience, and that it is at least
compatible with such progress as has been hitherto achieved. Progress
has in future to take place in the daylight, and under the stress of
keen discussion from every possible point of view. It would be rash
indeed to assume that we can hope to see the substitution of purely
rational and scientific methods for the old haphazard and tentative
blundering into slightly better things. It is possible enough that the
creed of the future may, after all, be a compromise, admitting some
elements of higher truth, but attracting the popular mind by
concessions to superstition and ignorance. We can hardly hope to get
rid of the rooted errors which have so astonishing a vitality. But we
should desire, and, so far as in us lies, endeavour to secure the
presence of the largest possible element of genuine and reasoned
conviction in the faith of our own and the rising generation.
I have not sought to say anything new. I have only endeavoured to
define the general position which we, as I imagine, have agreed to
accept. We hold in common that the old dogmas are no longer tenable,
though we are very far from being agreed as to what should replace
them. We have each, I dare say, our own theory; we agree that our
theories, whatever they may be, are in need of strict examination, of
verification, it may be, but it may be also of modification or
rejection. We hope that such societies as this may in the first place
serve as centres for encouraging and popularising the full and free
discussion of the great questions. We wish that people who have reached
a certain stage of cultivation should be made aware of the course which
is being taken by those who may rightly claim to be in the van. We
often wish to know, as well as we can, what is the direction of the
deeper currents of thought; what genuine results, for example, have
been obtained by historical criticism, especially as applied to the
religious history of the world; we want to know what are the real
points now at issue in the world of science; the true bearing of the
theories of evolution, and so forth, which are known by name far beyond
the circle in which their logical reasoning is really appreciated; we
want to know, again, what are the problems which really interest modern
metaphysicians or psychologists; in what directions there seems to be a
real promise of future achievement, and in what directions it seems to
be proved by experience that any further expansion of intellectual
energy is certain to result only in the discovery of mares' nests.