SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY.
Society, says Professor Clifford, is the highest of all organisms;[9]
and its organic nature, he tells us, is one of those great facts which
our own generation has been the first to state rationally. It is our
understanding of this that enables us to supply morals with a positive
basis. It is, he proceeds, because society is organic, '_that actions
which, as individual, are insignificant, are massed together into ...
important movements. Co-operation or_ band-work _is the life of it_.'
And '_it is the practice of band-work_,' he adds, that, unknown till
lately though its nature was to us, has so moulded man as '_to create in
him two specially human faculties, the conscience and the intellect_;'
of which the former, we are told, gives us the desire for the good, and
the latter instructs us how to attain this desire by action. So too
Professor Huxley, once more to recur to him, says that that state of man
would be '_a true_ civitas Dei, _in which each man's moral faculty shall
be such as leads him to control all those desires which run counter to
the good of mankind_.' And J.S. Mill, whose doubts as to the value of
life we have already dwelt upon, professed to have at last satisfied
himself by a precisely similar answer. He had never '_wavered in the
conviction_,' he tells us, even all through his perplexity, that, if
life had any value at all, '_happiness_' was its one '_end_,' and the
'_test of its rule of conduct_;' but he now thought that this end was to
be attained by not making it the direct end, but '_by fixing the mind on
some object other than one's own happiness; on the happiness of
others--on the improvement of mankind_.' The same thing is being told us
on all sides, and in countless ways. The common name for this theory is
Utilitarianism; and its great boast, and its special professed strength,
is that it gives morals a positive basis in the acknowledged science of
sociology. Whether sociology can really supply such a basis is what we
now have to enquire. There are many practical rules for which it no
doubt can do so; but will these rules correspond with what we mean by
morals?
Now the province of the sociologist, within certain limits, is clear
enough. His study is to the social body what the study of the physician
is to the individual body. It is the study of human action as
productive, or non-productive, of some certain general good. But here
comes the point at issue--What is this general good, and what is
included by it? The positive school contend that it is general
happiness; and there, they say, is the answer to the great
question--What is the test of conduct, and the true end of life? But
though, as we shall see in another moment, there is some plausibility in
this, there is really nothing in it of the special answer we want. Our
question is, What is the true happiness? And what is the answer thus
far?--That the true happiness is general happiness; that it is the
happiness of men in societies; that it is happiness equally distributed.
But this avails us nothing. The coveted _happiness_ is still a locked
casket. We know nothing as yet of its contents. A happy society neither
does nor can mean anything but a number of happy individuals, so
organised that their individual happiness is secured to them. But what
do the individuals want? Before we can try to secure it for them, we
must know that. Granted that we know what will make the individuals
happy, then we shall know what will make society happy. And then social
morality will be, as Professor Huxley says, a perfectly legitimate
subject of scientific enquiry--then, but not till then. But this is what
the positive school are perpetually losing sight of; and the reason of
the confusion is not far to seek.
Within certain limits, it is quite true, the general good is a
sufficiently obvious matter, and beyond the reach of any rational
dispute. There are, therefore, certain rules with regard to conduct
that we can arrive at and justify by strictly scientific methods. We can
demonstrate that there are certain actions which we must never tolerate,
and which we must join together, as best we may, to suppress. Actions,
for instance, that would tend to generate pestilence, or to destroy our
good faith in our fellows, or to render our lives and property insecure,
are actions the badness of which can be scientifically verified.
But the _general good_ by which these actions are tested is something
quite distinct from happiness, though it undoubtedly has a close
connection with it. It is no kind of happiness, high or low, in
particular; it is simply those negative conditions required equally by
every kind. If we are to be happy in any way, no matter what, we must of
course have our lives, and, next to our lives, our health and our
possessions secured to us. But to secure us these does not secure us
happiness. It simply leaves us free to secure it, if we can, for
ourselves. Once let us have some common agreement as to what this
happiness is, we may then be able to formulate other rules for attaining
it. But in the absence of any such agreement, the only possible aim of
social morality, the only possible meaning of the _general good_, is not
any kind or any kinds of happiness, but the security of those conditions
without which all happiness would be impossible.
Suppose the human race were a set of canaries in a cage, and that we
were in grave doubt as to what seed to give them--hemp-seed, rape-seed,
or canary-seed, or all three mixed in certain proportions. That would
exactly represent the state of our case thus far. There is the question
that we want the positive school to answer. It is surely evident that,
in this perplexity, it is beside the point to tell us that the birds
must not peck each other's eyes out, and that they must all have access
to the trough that we are ignorant how to fill.
The fault then, so continually committed by the positive school, is
this. They confuse the negative conditions of happiness with the
positive materials of it. Professor Huxley, in a passage I have already
quoted, is caught, so to speak, in the very act of committing it.
'_Theft, murder, and adultery_,' all these three, it will be remembered,
he classes together, and seems to think that they stand upon the same
footing. But from what has just been pointed out, it is plain that they
do not do so. We condemn theft and murder for one reason. We condemn
adultery for quite another. We condemn the former because they are
incompatible with any form of happiness. We condemn the latter because
it is the supposed destruction of one particular form; or the
substitution, rather, of a form supposed to be less complete, for
another form supposed to be more complete. If the '_highest good_,' if
the best kind of happiness, be the end we are in search of, the truths
of sociology will help us but a very short way towards it. By the
practice of '_band-work_' alone we shall never learn to construct a
'_true_ Civitas Dei.' Band-work with the same perfection may be
practised for opposite ends. Send an army in a just war or an unjust
one, in either case it will need the same discipline. There must be
order amongst thieves, as well as amongst honest men. There can be an
orderly brothel as well as an orderly nunnery, and all order rests on
co-operation. We presume co-operation. We require an end for which to
co-operate.
I have already compared the science of sociology to that of medicine;
and the comparison will again be a very instructive one. The aim of both
sciences is to produce health; and the relation of health to happiness
is in both cases the same. It is an important condition of the full
enjoyment of anything: but it will by no means of itself give or guide
us to the best thing. A man may be in excellent health, and yet, if he
be prudent, be leading a degrading life. So, too, may a society. The
Cities of the Plain may, for all we know to the contrary, have been in
excellent social health; indeed, there is every reason to believe they
were. They were, apparently, to a high degree strong and prosperous;
and the sort of happiness that their citizens set most store by was only
too generally attainable. There were not ten men to be found in them by
whom the _highest good_ had not been realised.
There are, however, two suppositions, on which the general good, or the
health of the social organism, can be given a more definite meaning, and
made in some sense an adequate test of conduct. And one or other of
these suppositions is apparently always lurking in the positivist mind.
But though, when unexpressed, and only barely assented to, they may seem
to be true, their entire falsehood will appear the moment they are
distinctly stated.
One of these suppositions is, that for human happiness health is alone
requisite--health in the social organism including sufficient wealth and
freedom; and that man's life, whenever it is not interfered with, will
be moral, dignified, and delightful naturally, no matter how he lives
it. But this supposition, from a moralist, is of course nonsense. For,
were it true, as we have just seen, Sodom might have been as moral as
the tents of Abraham; and in a perfect state there would be a fitting
place for both. The social organism indeed, in its highest state of
perfection, would manifest the richest variety in the development of
such various parts. It might consist of a number of motley communes[10]
of monogamists and of free-lovers, of ascetics and sybarites, of saints
and [Greek: paiderastai]--each of them being stones in this true
_Civitas Dei_, this holy city of God. Of course it may be contended that
this state of things would be desirable; that, however, is quite a
different question. But whatever else it was, it would certainly not be
moral, in any sense in which the word has yet been used.
The second supposition I spoke of, though less openly absurd than this
one, is really quite as false. It consists of a vague idea that, for
some reason or other, happiness can never be distributed in an equal
measure to all, unless it be not only equal in degree but also the same
in kind; and that the one kind that can be thus distributed is a kind
that is in harmony with our conceptions of moral excellence. Now this is
indeed so far true, that there are doubtless certain kinds of happiness
which, if enjoyed at all, can be enjoyed by the few alone; and that the
conditions under which alone the few can enjoy them disturb the
conditions of all happiness for the many. The general good, therefore,
gives us at once a test by which such kinds of happiness can be
condemned. But to eliminate these will by no means leave us a residue of
virtue; for these so far from being co-extensive with moral evil, do in
reality lie only on the borders of it; and the condemnation attached to
them is a legal rather than a moral one. It is based, that is, not so
much on the kind of happiness itself as on the circumstances under which
we are at present obliged to seek it. Thus the practice of seduction may
be said to be condemned sufficiently by the misery brought by it to its
victims, and its victims' families. But suppose the victims are willing,
and the families complacent, this ground of condemnation goes; though in
the eye of the moralist, matters in this last will be far worse than in
the former. It is therefore quite a mistake to say that the kind of
happiness which it is the end of life to realise is defined or narrowed
down appreciably by the fact that it is a general end. Vice can be
enjoyed in common, just as well as virtue; nor if wisely regulated will
it exhaust the tastes that it appeals to. Regulated with equal skill,
and with equal far-sightedness, it will take its place side by side with
virtue; nor will sociology or social morality give us any reason for
preferring the one to the other.
We may observe accordingly, that if happiness of some certain kind be
the moral test, what Professor Huxley calls '_social morality_'--the
rule that is, for producing the negative conditions of happiness, it is
not in itself morality at all. It may indeed become so, when the
consciousness that we are conforming to it becomes one of the factors of
our own personal happiness. It then suffers a kind of apotheosis. It is
taken up into ourselves, and becomes part and parcel of our own personal
morality. But it then becomes quite a different matter, as we shall see
very shortly; and even then it supplies us with but a very small part of
the answer.
Thus far what has been made plain is this. General, or social happiness,
unless explained farther, is simply for moral purposes an unmeaning
phrase. It evades the whole question we are asking; for happiness is no
more differentiated by saying that it is general, than food is by saying
that everyone at a table is eating it; or than a language is by saying
that every one in a room is talking it. The social happiness of all of
us means nothing but the personal happiness of each of us; and if social
happiness have any single meaning--in other words, if it be a test of
morals--it must postulate a personal happiness of some hitherto
unexplained kind. Else sociology will be subsidiary to nothing but
individual license; general law will be but the protection of individual
lawlessness; and the completest social morality but the condition of
the completest personal un-morality. The social organism we may compare
to a yew-tree. Science will explain to us how it has grown up from the
ground, and how all its twigs must have fitting room to expand in. It
will not show us how to clip the yew-tree into a peacock. Morality, it
is true, must rest ultimately on the proved facts of sociology; and this
is not only true but evident. But it rests upon them as a statue rests
upon its pedestal, and the same pedestal will support an Athenè or a
Priapus.
The matter, however, is not yet altogether disposed of. The type of
personal happiness that social morality postulates, as a whole, we have
still to seek for. But a part of it, as I just pointed out, will, beyond
doubt, be a _willing_ obedience by each to the rules that make it in its
entirety within the reach of all. About this obedience, however, there
is a certain thing to remember: it must be willing, not enforced. The
laws will of course do all they can to enforce it; but not only can they
never do this completely, but even if they could, they would not produce
morality. Conduct which, if willing, we should call highly moral, we
shall, if enforced only, call nothing more than legal. We do not call a
wild bear tame because it is so well caged that there is no fear of its
attacking us; nor do we call a man good because, though his desires are
evil, we have made him afraid to gratify them. Further, it is not
enough that the obedience in question be willing in the sense that it
does not give us pain. If it is to be a moral quality, it must also give
us positive pleasure. Indeed, it must not so much be obedience to the
law as an impassioned co-operation with it.
Now this, if producible, even though no further moral aim was connected
with it, would undoubtedly be of itself a moral element. Suppose two
pigs, for instance, had only a single wallowing-place, and each would
like naturally to wallow in it for ever. If each pig in turn were to
rejoice to make room for his brother, and were consciously to regulate
his delight in becoming filthy himself by an equal delight in seeing his
brother becoming filthy also, we should doubtless here be in the
presence of a certain moral element. And though this, in a human
society, might not carry us so far as we require to be carried, it
would, without doubt, if producible, carry us a certain way. The
question is, Is this moral element, this impassioned and unselfish
co-operation with the social law, producible, in the absence of any
farther end to which the social law is to be subordinate? The positive
school apparently think it is; and this opinion has a seeming foundation
in fact. We will therefore carefully examine what this foundation is,
and see how far it is really able to support the weight that is laid
upon it.
That fact, in itself a quite undoubted one, is the possession by man of
a certain special and important feeling, which, viewed from its passive
side, we call sympathy, and from its active side, benevolence. It exists
in various degrees in different people, but to some degree or other it
probably exists in all. Most people, for instance, if they hear an
amusing story, at once itch to tell it to an appreciative friend; for
they find that the amusement, if shared, is doubled. Two epicures
together, for the same reason, will enjoy a dinner better than if they
each dined singly. In such cases the enjoyment of another plays the part
of a reflector, which throws one's own enjoyment back on one. Nor is
this all. It is not only true that we often desire others to be pleased
with us; we often desire others to be pleased instead of us. For
instance, if there be but one easy chair in a room, one man will often
give it up to another, and prefer himself to stand, or perhaps sit on
the table. To contemplate discomfort is often more annoying than to
suffer it.
This is the fact in human nature on which the positive school rely for
their practical motive power. It is this sympathy and benevolence that
is the secret of the social union; and it is by these that the rules of
social morality are to be absorbed and attracted into ourselves, and
made the directors of all our other impulses.
The feelings, however, that are thus relied on will be found, on
consideration, to be altogether inadequate. They are undoubted facts, it
is true, and are ours by the very constitution of our nature; but they
do not possess the importance that is assigned to them, and their limits
are soon reached. They are unequal in their distribution; they are
partial and capricious in their action; and they are disturbed and
counterbalanced by the opposite impulse of selfishness, which is just as
much a part of our nature, and which is just as generally distributed.
It must be a very one-sided view of the case that will lead us to deny
this; and by such eclectic methods of observation we can support any
theory we please. Thus there are many stories of unselfish heroism
displayed by rough men on occasions such as shipwrecks, and displayed
quite spontaneously. And did we confine our attention to this single set
of examples, we might naturally conclude that we had here the real
nature of man bursting forth in all its intense entirety--a constant but
suppressed force, which we shall learn by-and-by to utilise generally.
But if we extend our observations a little farther, we shall find
another set of examples, in which selfishness is just as predominant as
unselfishness was in the first set. The sailor, for instance, who might
struggle to save a woman on a sinking ship, will trample her to death to
escape from a burning theatre. And if we will but honestly estimate the
composite nature of man, we shall find that the sailor, in this latter
case, embodies a tendency far commoner, and far more to be counted on,
than he does in the former. No fair student of life or history will, I
think, be able to deny this. The lives of the world's greatest men, be
they Goethes or Napoleons, will be the first to show us that it is so.
Whilst the world's best men, who have been most successful in conquering
their selfish nature, will be the first to bear witness to the
persistent strength of it.
But even giving these unpromising facts the least weight possible, the
case will practically be not much mended. The unselfish impulses, let
them be diffused never so widely, will be found, as a general rule, to
be very limited in power; and to be intense only for short periods, and
under exceptional circumstances. They are intense only--in the absence
of any further motive--when the thing to be won for another becomes
invested for the moment with an abnormal value, and the thing to be lost
by oneself becomes abnormally depreciated; when all intermediate
possibilities are suddenly swept away from us, and the only surviving
alternatives are shame and heroism. But this never happens, except in
the case of great catastrophes, of such, for instance, as a shipwreck;
and thus the only conditions under which an impassioned unselfishness
can be counted on, are amongst the first conditions that we trust to
progress to eliminate. The common state of life, then, when the feelings
are in this normal state of tension, is all that in this connection we
can really be concerned in dealing with. And there, unselfishness,
though as sure a fact as selfishness, is, spontaneously and apart from a
further motive, essentially unequal to the work it is asked to do. Thus,
though as I observed just now, a man may often prefer to sit on a table
and give up the arm-chair to a friend, there are other times when he
will be very loth to do so. He will do so when the pleasure of looking
at comfort is greater than the pleasure of feeling it. And in certain
states of mind and body this is very often the case. But let him be
sleepy and really in need of rest, the selfish impulse will at once
eclipse the unselfish, and, unless under the action of some alien
motive, he will keep the arm-chair for himself. So, too, in the case of
the two epicures, if there be sufficient of the best dainties for both,
each will feel that it is so much the better. But whenever the dainties
in question cannot be divided, it will be the tendency of each to take
them furtively for himself.
And when we come to the conditions of happiness the matter will be just
the same. If without incommoding ourselves we can, as Professor Huxley
says, repress '_all those desires which run counter to the good of
mankind_,' we shall no doubt all willingly do so; only in that case
little more need be said. The '_Civitas Dei_' we are promised may be
left to take care of itself, and it will doubtless very soon begin '_to
rise like an exhalation_.' But if this self-repression be a matter of
great difficulty, and one requiring a constant struggle on our part, it
will be needful for us to intensely realise, when we abstain from any
action, that the happiness it would take from others will be far greater
than the happiness it would give to ourselves. Suppose, for instance, a
man were in love with his friend's wife, and had engaged on a certain
night to take her to the theatre. He would instantly give the engagement
up could he know that the people in the gallery would be burnt to death
if he did not. He would certainly not give it up because by the sight of
his proceedings the moral tone of the stalls might be infinitesimally
lowered; still less would he do so because another wife's husband might
be made infinitely jealous. Whenever we give up any source of personal
happiness for the sake of the happiness of the community at large, the
two kinds of happiness have to be weighed together in a balance. But the
latter, except in very few cases, is at a great disadvantage: only a
part of it, so to speak, can be got into the scale. What adds to my
sense of pleasure in the proportion of a million pounds may be only
taxing society in the proportion of half a farthing a head.
Unselfishness with regard to society is thus essentially a different
thing from unselfishness with regard to an individual. In the latter
case the things to be weighed together are commensurate: not so is the
former. In the latter case, as we have seen, an impassioned
self-devotion may be at times produced by the sudden presentation to a
man of two extreme alternatives; but in the former case such
alternatives are not presentable. I may know that a certain line of
conduct will on the one hand give me great pleasure, and that on the
other hand, if it were practised by everyone, it would produce much
general mischief; but I shall know that my practising it, will, as a
fact, be hardly felt at all by the community, or at all events only in a
very small degree. And therefore my choice is not that of the sailor's
in the shipwreck. It does not lie between saving my life at the expense
of a woman's, or saving a woman's life at the expense of mine. It lies
rather, as it were, between letting her lose her ear-ring and breaking
my own arm.
It will appear, therefore, that the general conditions of an entirely
undefined happiness form an ideal utterly unfitted to counterbalance
individual temptation or, to give even willingness, let alone ardour, to
the self-denials that are required of us. In the first place the
conditions are so vague that even in the extremest cases the individual
will find it difficult to realise that he is appreciably disturbing
them. And in the second place, until he knows that the happiness in
question is something of extreme value he will be unable to feel much
ardour in helping to make it possible. If we knew that the social
organism in its state of completest health had no higher pleasure than
sleep and eating, the cause of its completest health would hardly excite
enthusiasm. And even if we did not rebel against any sacrifices for so
poor a result as this, we should at the best be resigned rather than
blest in making them. The nearest approach to a moral end that the
science of sociology will of itself supply to us is an end that, in all
probability, men will not follow at all, or that will produce in them,
if they do, no happier state than a passionless and passive
acquiescence. If we want anything more than this we must deal with
happiness itself, not with the negative conditions of it. We must
discern the highest good that is within the reach of each of us, and
this may perhaps supply us with a motive for endeavouring to secure the
same blessing for all. But the matter depends entirely on what this
highest good is--on the end to which, given the social health, the
social health will be directed.
The real answer to this question can be given, as I have said before, in
terms of the individual only. Social happiness is a mere set of ciphers
till the unit of personal happiness is placed before it. A man's
happiness may of course depend on other beings, but still it is none the
less contained in himself. If our greatest delight were to see each
other dance the _can-can_, then it might be morality for us all to
dance. None the less would this be a happy world, not because we were
all dancing, but because we each enjoyed the sight of such a spectacle.
Many young officers take intense pride in their regiments, and the
character of such regiments may in a certain sense be called a corporate
thing. But it depends entirely on the personal character of their
members, and all that the phrase really indicates is that a set of men
take pleasure in similar things. Thus it is the boast of one young
officer that the members of his regiment all spend too much, of another
that they all drink too much, of another that they are distinguished for
their high rank, and of another that they are distinguished for the
lowness of their sensuality. What differentiates one regiment from
another is first and before all things some personal source of happiness
common to all its members.
And as it is with the character of a regiment, so too is it with the
character of life in general. When we say that Humanity may become a
glorious thing as a whole, we must mean that each man may attain some
positive glory as an individual. What shall I get? and I? and I? and I?
What do you offer me? and me? and me? This is the first question that
the common sense of mankind asks. '_You must promise something to each
of us_,' it says, '_or very certainly you will be able to promise
nothing to all of us_.' There is no real escape in saying that we must
all work for one another, and that our happiness is to be found in that.
The question merely confronts us with two other facets of itself. What
sort of happiness shall I secure for others? and what sort of happiness
will others secure for me? What will it be like? Will it be worth
having? In the positivist Utopia, we are told, each man's happiness is
bound up in the happiness of all the rest, and is thus infinitely
intensified. All mankind are made a mighty whole, by the fusing power of
benevolence. Benevolence, however, means simply the wishing that our
neighbours were happy, the helping to make them so, and lastly the being
glad that they are so. But happiness must plainly be something besides
benevolence; else, if I know that a man's highest happiness is in
knowing that others are happy, all I shall try to procure for others is
the knowledge that I am happy; and thus the Utopian happiness would be
expressed completely in the somewhat homely formula, '_I am so glad that
you are glad that I am glad_.' But this is, of course, not enough. All
this gladness must be about something besides itself. Our good wishes
for our neighbours must have some farther content than that they shall
wish us well in return. What I wish them and what they wish me must be
something that both they and I, each of us, take delight in for
ourselves. It will certainly be no delight to men to procure for others
what they will take no delight in themselves, if procured by others for
them. '_For a joyful life, that is to say a pleasant life_,' as Sir
Thomas More pithily puts it, '_is either evil; and if so, then thou
shouldest not only help no man thereto, but rather as much as in thee
lieth withdraw all men from it as noisome and hurtful; or else if thou
not only mayest, but also of duty art bound to procure it for others,
why not chiefly for thyself, to whom thou art bound to show as much
favour and gentleness as to others?_' The fundamental question is, then,
what life should a man try to procure for himself? How shall he make it
most joyful? and how joyful will it be when he has done his utmost for
it? It is in terms of the individual, and of the individual only, that
the value of life can at first be intelligibly stated. If the coin be
not itself genuine, we shall never be able to make it so by merely
shuffling it about from hand to hand, nor even by indefinitely
multiplying it. A million sham bank notes will not make us any richer
than a single one. Granting that the riches are really genuine, then the
knowledge of their diffusion may magnify for each of us our own pleasure
in possessing them. But it will only do this if the share that is
possessed by each be itself something very great to begin with. Certain
intense kinds of happiness may perhaps be raised to ecstasy by the
thought that another shares them. But if the feeling in question be
nothing more than cheerfulness, a man will not be made ecstatic by the
knowledge that any number of other people are cheerful as well as he.
When the happiness of two or more people rises to a certain temperature,
then it is true a certain fusion may take place, and there may perhaps
be a certain joint result, arising from the sum of the parts. But below
this melting point no fusion or union takes place at all, nor will any
number of lesser happinesses melt and be massed together into one great
one. Two great wits may increase each other's brilliancy, but two
half-wits will not make a single whole one. A bad picture will not
become good by being magnified, nor will a merely readable novel become
more than readable by the publication of a million copies of it. Suppose
it were a matter of life and death to ten men to walk to York from
London in a day. Were this feat a possible one, they might no doubt each
do their best to help the others to accomplish it. But if it were beyond
the power of each singly, they would not accomplish it as a body, by the
whole ten leaving Charing Cross together, and each of them walking one
tenth of the way. The distance they could all walk would be no greater
than the distance they could each walk. In the same way the value of
human life, as a whole, depends on the capacities of the individual
human being, as an enjoying animal. If these capacities be great, we
shall be eager in our desire to gratify them--certainly for ourselves,
and perhaps also for others; and this second desire may perhaps be great
enough to modify and to guide the first. But unless these capacities
_be_ great, and the means of gratifying them definite, our impulses on
our own behalf will become weak and sluggish, whilst those on behalf of
others will become less able to control them.
It will be apparent farther from this, that just as happiness, unless
some distinct positive quality, gains nothing as an end of action,
either in value or distinctness, by a mere diffusion in the present--by
an extension, as it were, laterally--so will it gain nothing further by
giving it another dimension, and by prospectively increasing it in the
future. We must know what it is first, before we know whether it is
capable of increase. Apart from this knowledge, the conception of
progress and the hope of some brighter destiny can add nothing to that
required _something_, which, so far as sociology can define it for us,
we have seen to be so utterly inadequate. Social conditions, it is true,
we may expect will go on improving; we may hope that the social
machinery will come gradually to run more smoothly. But unless we know
something positive to the contrary, the outcome of all this progress may
be nothing but a more undisturbed ennui or a more soulless sensuality.
The rose-leaves may be laid more smoothly, and yet the man that lies on
them may be wearier or more degraded.
_To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death._
This, for all that sociology can inform us to the contrary, may be the
lesson really taught us by the positive philosophy of progress.
But what the positivists themselves learn from it, is something very
different. The following verses are George Eliot's:
_Oh may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In lives made better by their presence. So
To live is heaven....
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing us beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, groaned, and agonised
With widening retrospect, that bred despair....
That better self shall live till human time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread for ever. This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, and be to other souls
That cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense;
So shall I join that choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world._
Here is the positive religion of benevolence and progress, as preached
to the modern world in the name of exact thought, presented to us in an
impassioned epitome. Here is hope, ardour, sympathy, and resolution,
enough and to spare. The first question is,--How are these kindled, and
what are they all about? They must, as we have seen, be about something
that the science of sociology will not discover for us. Nor can they
last, if, like an empty stomach, they prey only upon themselves. They
must have some solid content, and the great thing needful is to discern
this. It is quite true that to suffer, or even to die, will often seem
_dulce et decorum_ to a man; but it will only seem so when the end he
dies or suffers for is, in his estimation, a worthy one. A Christian
might be gladly crucified if by so doing he could turn men from vice to
virtue; but a connoisseur in wine would not be crucified that his best
friend might prefer dry champagne to sweet. All the agony and the
struggles, then, that the positivist saint suffers with such enthusiasm,
depend alike for their value and their possibility on the object that is
supposed to cause them. And in the verses just quoted this object is
indeed named several times; but it is named only incidentally and in
vague terms, as if its nature and its value were self-evident, and could
be left to take care of themselves; and the great thing to be dwelt upon
were the means and not the end: whereas the former are really only the
creatures of the latter, and can have no more honour than the latter is
able to bestow upon them.
Now the only positive ends named in these verses are '_the better
self_,' '_sweet purity_,' and '_smiles that have no cruelty_.' The
conditions of these are _beauteous order_,' and the result of them is
the '_gladness of the world_.' The rest of the language used adds
nothing to our positive knowledge, but merely makes us feel the want of
it. The purest heaven, we are told, that the men of any generation can
look forward to, will be the increased gladness that their right conduct
will secure for a coming generation: and that gladness, when it comes,
will be, as it were, the seraphic song of the blessed and holy dead.
Thus every present, for the positivist, is the future life of the past;
earth is heaven perpetually realising itself; it is, as it were, an
eternal choir-practice, in which the performers, though a little out of
tune at present, are becoming momently more and more perfect. If this be
so, there is a heaven of some sort about us at this moment. There is a
musical gladness every day in our ears, our actual delight in which it
might have been a heaven to our great-grandfathers to have anticipated
in the last century.
Now it is plain that this alleged music is not everywhere. Where, then,
is it? And will it, when we have found it, be found to merit all the
praise that is bestowed upon it? Sociology, as we have seen, may show us
how to secure to each performer his voice or his instrument; but it will
not show us how to make either the voice or the instrument a good one;
nor will it decide whether the orchestra shall perform Beethoven or
Offenbach, or whether the chorus shall sing a penitential psalm or a
drinking song. When we have discovered what the world's highest gladness
can consist of, we will again come to the question of how far such
gladness can be a general end of action.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Vide _Nineteenth Century_, October, 1877.
[10] '_As Mr. Spencer points out, society does not resemble those
organisms which are so highly centralised that the unity of the whole is
the important thing, and every part must die if separated from the rest;
but rather those that will bear separation and reunion; because,
although there is a certain union and organisation of the parts in
regard to one another, yet the far more important fact is the life of
the parts separately. The true health of society depends upon the
communes, the villages and townships, infinitely more than on the form
and pageantry of an imperial government. If in them there is band-work,
union for a common effort, converse in the working out of a common
thought, there the Republic is._'--Professor Clifford, _Nineteenth
Century_, October, 1877.