appear to sanction a soothing optimism. We cannot be happy, it is said,
unless we believe that our wishes will be fulfilled; and we endeavor to
convert our wishes into a guaranty for their own fulfilment. If we
cannot make up our minds to say "never," neither can we resolve to admit
that there is really evil. We passionately assert that the past will
come back and that pain will turn out to be an illusion. The argument
against the infidel comes essentially to this; you tell me that my hopes
will not be realized, and therefore you make me necessarily and
needlessly miserable. For God's sake, do not disperse my dreams. People
are not satisfied with the answer that the nightmare has gone as well as
the vision of bliss, and that fears are destroyed as much as hopes;
because, as a matter of fact, they can contrive to dwell upon that part
of the doctrine which is comfortable for the moment. We have power over
our dreams though we conceal its exercise from ourselves. But the
argument itself involves the fundamental fallacy. To destroy a
groundless hope is not to destroy a man's happiness. The instantaneous
effort may be painful: but it is the price which we have to pay for a
cure of deep-seated complaints. The infidel's reply is substantially
this: I may destroy your hopes; but I do not destroy your power of
hoping. I bid you no longer fix your mind on a chimera but on tangible
and realizable prospects. I warn you that efforts to soar above the
atmosphere can only lead to disappointment, and that time spent in
squaring the circle is simply time spent. Apply your strength and your
intellect on matters which lie at hand and on problems which admit of a
solution. The happiest man is not the man who has the grandest dreams,
but the man whose aspirations are best fitted to guide his talents: the
most efficient worker is not the one who mistakes his own fancies for an
external support, but he who has most accurately gauged the conditions
under which he is laboring. Trust in Providence may lead you to pass
successfully through dangers which would have repelled an unbeliever, or
it may lead you to break your neck in pursuing a dream. It makes heroes
and cowards, patriots and assassins, saints and bigots who each mistake
their wisdom or their folly for divine intimations. Providence for us
can only be that aggregate of external forces to which willingly or
unwillingly we must adapt ourselves. We should calmly calculate by all
available means the conditions of our life, and then dare, without
ignoring, the dangers that are inevitable. Through all human affairs
there runs an element of uncertainty which cannot be suppressed, and we
seek in vain to disguise it under names consecrated by old associations;
there are evils which are only made more poignant by our efforts to
explain them away; and to each of us will very speedily come an end of
his labors in the world. We can best fortify ourselves by recognizing
and submitting to the inevitable and by anchoring our minds on the
firmest holding ground. Science will tell us that by working with the
great forces that move the world, we may contribute some fragment to an
edifice which will not be broken down; that to think for others instead
of limiting our hopes to our petty interests is the best remedy for
unavailing regret. We can take our part in the long warfare of man
against the world, which is nothing else but the gradual accommodation
of the race to the conditions of its dwelling-place. By so disciplining
our thoughts that we may fight eagerly and hopefully, we have the best
security for happiness, and not in encouraging an idle dwelling upon
visions which can never be verified, and which are apt to become most
ghastly when we most wish for consolation.
To the question, then, from which I started, it seems that an
unequivocal reply can be given. Why help to destroy the old faith from
which people derive, or believe themselves to derive, so much spiritual
solace? The answer is, that the loss is overbalanced by the gain. We
lose nothing that ought to be really comforting in the ancient creeds;
we are relieved from much that is burdensome to the imagination and to
the intellect. Those creeds were indeed in great part the work of the
best and ablest of our forefathers; they therefore provide some
expression for the highest emotions of which our nature is capable; but,
to say nothing of the lower elements which have intruded, of the
concessions made to bad passions, and to the wants of a ruder form of
society, they are at best the approximations to the truth of men who
entertained a radically erroneous conception of the universe.
Astronomers who went on the Ptolemaic theory managed to provide a very
fair description of the actual phenomena of the heavens; but the solid
result of their labors was not lost when the Copernican system took its
place; and incalculable advantages followed from casting aside the old
cumbrous machinery of cycles and epicycles in favor of the simpler
conceptions of the new doctrine. A similar change follows when man is
placed at the centre of the religious and moral system. We still retain
the faiths at which theologians arrived by a complex machinery of
arbitrary contrivances destined to compensate one set of dogmas by
another. The justice of God the Father is tempered by the mercy of God
the Son, as the planet wheeled too far forward by the cycle is brought
back to its place by the epicycle. When we strike out the elaborate
arrangements, the truths which they aim at expressing are capable of far
simpler statements; infinite error and distortion disappear, and the
road is open for conceptions impossible under the old circuitous and
erroneous methods.
We have arrived at the point from which we can detect the source of
ancient errors, and extract the gold from the dross. One thing, indeed,
remains for the present impossible. The old creed, elaborated by many
generations, and consecrated to our imaginations by a vast wealth of
associations, is adapted in a thousand ways to the wants of its
believers. The new creed--whatever may be its ultimate form--has not
been thus formulated and hallowed to our minds. We, whose fetters are
just broken, cannot tell what the world will look like to men brought up
in the full blaze of day, and accustomed from infancy to the free use of
their limbs. For centuries all ennobling passions have been
industriously associated with the hope of personal immortality, and base
passions with its rejection. We cannot fully realize the state of men
brought up to look for a reward of heroic sacrifice in the consciousness
of good work achieved in this world instead of in the hope of posthumous
repayment. Nor again, have we, if we shall ever have, any system capable
of replacing the old forms of worship by which the imagination was
stimulated and disciplined. That such reflections should make many men
pause before they reveal the open secret is intelligible enough. But
what is the true moral to be derived from them? Surely that we should
take courage and speak the truth. We should take courage, for even now
the new faith offers to us a more cheering and elevating prospect than
the old. When it shall have become familiar to men's minds, have worked
itself into the substance of our convictions, and provided new channels
for the utterance of our emotions, we may anticipate incomparably higher
results. We are only laying the foundations of the temple, and know not
what will be the glories of the completed edifice. Yet already the
prospect is beginning to clear. The sophistries which entangle us are
transparent. That faith is not the noblest which enables us to believe
the greatest number of articles on the least evidence; nor is that
doctrine really the most productive of happiness which encourages us to
cherish the greatest number of groundless hopes. The system which is
really most calculated to make men happy is that which forces them to
live in a bracing atmosphere; which fits them to look facts in the face
and to suppress vain repinings by strenuous action instead of luxurious
dreaming.
And hence, too, the time is come for speaking plainly. If you would wait
to speak the truth until you can replace the old decaying formula by a
completely elaborated system, you must wait for ever; for the system
can never be elaborated until its leading principles have been boldly
enunciated. Reconstruct, it is said, before you destroy. But you must
destroy in order to reconstruct. The old husk of dead faith is pushed
off by the growth of living beliefs below. But how can they grow unless
they find distinct utterance? and how can they be distinctly uttered
without condemning the doctrines which they are to replace? The truth
cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood. Pleasant as the
process might be of announcing the truth and leaving the falsehood to
decay of itself, it cannot be carried into practice. Men's minds must be
called back from the present of phantoms and encouraged to follow the
only path which tends to enduring results. We cannot afford to make the
tacit concession that our opinions, though true, are depressing and
debasing. No; they are encouraging and elevating. If the medicine is
bitter to the taste, it is good for the digestion. Here and there, a
bold avowal of the truth will disperse a pleasing dream, as here and
there it will relieve us of an oppressing nightmare. But it is not by
striking balances between these pains and pleasures that the total
effect of the creed is to be measured; but by the permanent influence on
the mind of seeing things in their true light and dispersing the old
halo of erroneous imagination. To inculcate reticence at the present
moment is simply to advise us to give one more chance to the development
of some new form of superstition. If the faith of the future is to be a
faith which can satisfy the most cultivated as well as the feeblest
intellects, it must be founded on an unflinching respect for realities.
If its partisans are to win a definitive victory, they must cease to
show quarter to lies. The problem is stated plainly enough to leave no
room for hesitation. We can distinguish the truth from falsehood, and
see where confusion has been reproduced, and truth pressed into the
service of falsehood. Nothing more is wanted but to go forward boldly,
and reject once for all the weary compromises and elaborate adaptations
which have become a mere vexation to all honest men. The goal is clearly
in sight, though it may be distant; and we decline any longer to travel
in disguise by circuitous paths, or to apologize for being in the right.
Let us think freely and speak plainly, and we shall have the highest
satisfaction that man can enjoy--the consciousness that we have done
what little lies in ourselves to do for the maintenance of the truths on
which the moral improvement and the happiness of our race depend.
FOOTNOTES
[1] It is objected that geology is a science: yet that geology cannot
foretell the future changes of the earth's surface. Geology is not a
century old, and its periods are measured by millions of years. Yet, if
geology cannot foretell future facts, it enabled Sir Roderick Murchison
to foretell the discovery of Australian gold.
[2] February, 1864.
[3] I am here applying to this particular purpose a line of thought
which both myself and others have often applied to other purposes. See,
above all, Sir Henry Maine's lecture on "Kinship as the Basis of
Society" in the lectures on the "Early History of Institutions"; I would
refer also to my own lecture on "The State" in "Comparative Politics."
[4] While the Swiss Confederation recognizes German, French, and Italian
as all alike national languages, the independent Romance language, which
is still used in some parts of the Canton of Graubünden, that which is
known specially as _Romansch_, is not recognized. It is left in the same
position in which Welsh and Gaelic are left in Great Britain, in which
Basque, Breton, Provençal, Walloon, and Flemish are left within the
borders of that French kingdom which has grown so as to take them all
in.
[5] On Rouman history I have followed Roesler's _Romänische Studien_ and
Jirecek's _Geschichte der Bulgaren_.
[6] It should be remembered that, as the year 1879 saw the beginning of
the liberated Bulgarian state, the year 679 saw the beginning of the
first Bulgarian kingdom south of the Danube.
[7] Published in the _North American Review_ for September, 1878.
Republished by permission.
[8] This topic was much more largely handled by me in the Financial
Statement which I delivered, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, on May 2,
1866. I recommend attention to the excellent article by Mr. Henderson,
in the _Contemporary Review_ for October, 1878: and I agree with the
author in being disposed to think that the protective laws of America
effectually bar the full development of her competing power.--W. E. G.,
Nov. 6, 1878.
[9] See Hor., Od. I., 16.
[10] This subject has been more fully developed by me in an article on
"England's Mission," contributed to _The Nineteenth Century_ for
September of the present year.--W. E. G., December, 1878.
[11] This is a proposition of great importance in a disputed
subject-matter; and consequently I have not announced it in a dogmatic
manner, but as a portion of what we "seem to perceive" in the progress
of the American Constitution. It expresses an opinion formed by me upon
an examination of the original documents, and with some attention to the
history, which I have always considered, and have often recommended to
others, as one of the most fruitful studies of modern politics. This is
not the proper occasion to develop its grounds: but I may say that I am
not at all disposed to surrender it in deference to one or two rather
contemptuous critics.--W. E. G., December, 1878.
[12] Gray's "Bard."
[13] _Quarterly Review_, April, 1878, Art. I.
[14] Hor. Od., I, xii, 18.
[15] Henriade, I.
[16] Vol. v, pp. 94, 95. Ed. London, 1877.
[17] Heber's "Palestine." The word "stately" was in later editions
altered by the author to "noiseless."
[18] [In reply to the intended work of Mr. Adams on the Constitution of
the United States, Mr. Livingstone, under the title of a Colonist of New
Jersey, published an Examination of the British Constitution, and
compared it unfavorably as it had been exhibited by Adams, and by
Delolme, with the institutions of his own country. In this work, of
which I have a French translation (London and Paris, 1789), there is not
the smallest inkling of the action of our political mechanism, such as I
have endeavored to describe it. On this subject I need hardly refer the
reader to the valuable work of Mr. Bagehot, entitled "The English
Constitution," or to the Constitutional History of Sir T. Erskine
May.--W. E. G., December, 1878.]
[19] Ego cùm audio quenquam bono ingenio præditum, doctrinisque
liberalibus eruditum, quamquam non ibi salus animæ constituta sit, tamen
in _quæstione facillima_ sentire aliud quàm veritas postulat, quo magis
miror, eò magis exardesco nosse hominem et cum eo colloqui; vel si id
non possim, saltem litteris quæ longissimè volant [to the nineteenth
century?] attingere mentem ejus atque ab eo vicissim attingi desidero.
Sicut te esse audio talem virum, et ab Ecclesiâ Catholicâ, quæ sicut
Sancto Spiritu pronunciata est, toto orbe diffunditur, discerptum doleo
atque seclusum.--Ep. 87. _vid._ ep. 61.
[20] This is an exaggeration; I have reconsidered the whole subject in
my essay on "Development of Doctrine," in 1845; and in my letter to Dr.
Pusey in 1866.
[21] This passage proves, on the one hand, that such worship as St. John
offered is wrong; on the other, that it does not unchurch, unless we can
fancy St. John guilty of mortal sin.
[22] All these are merely points of discipline or conduct; but whether
there is a visible Church, and whether it is visibly one, is a question
which as it is answered affirmatively or negatively changes the
essential idea and the entire structure of Christianity.
[23] Epp. 93, 144.
[24] As has been said above, this statement is too absolute; at least,
Athanasius was reconciled to Meletius.