RELIGION AND MORALITY

As long as morality is regarded as a Divinely implanted principle,

subject to no laws beyond the caprice and changing mood of a personal

Deity, the essentials which underlie our conduct are lost sight of.

Morality, that is to say those moral codes which are observed and

recognized, consists of the imposition of values; but the meaning and

the virtue of those values lie in the policy which will produce desired

results. Moral values are subject to constant revision as world

influences affect our outlook. Our endeavour should always be to probe

the essentials. As long as morality is thought to depend on "Revelation"

and religious superstition, the essentials are lost sight of. The

connexion between Religion and Morality is arbitrary, and since

Religions owe their power to the fear of the Unknown, and the virtue of

Morality depends upon the necessity of conforming to that mode of

conduct which will produce known results, Religions tend to mask the

essentials in Morality and make it unreal.

Morality is held to include two distinct principles; moral obligation,

or conduct towards others, and conduct towards, or the debt we owe,

ourselves. We are here concerned chiefly with the first; the

second--those rules of conduct which concern only ourselves, are bound

up with the purpose of existence, with the ultimate end. Moral

obligation has arisen out of the necessity for co-ordination and system

in our mutual relationships. Without a moral code, social life would

become chaotic and impossible, comparable only to the state of Russia

under mob rule in the year of grace 1918--a state immeasurably more

degraded than that of Britain in the era B.C.; the early Briton like the

modern Kafir, at any rate, gave vent to his predatory and murderous

instincts, for the most part, outside his own little tribe. The

imposition of some recognized rules of conduct, safeguarding the

security of life and property, is as necessary to the community as the

existence of a coinage for the negotiation of commercial bargains; in

fact it is more so. The two are analogous: the moral code must give

effect to that first and universal principle of ethics expressed thus,

"Do unto others as you would they should do unto you," which is only

another way of saying, "You may expect others to treat you as you intend

to treat them in similar circumstances." Hence the standardization of

rules of conduct becomes a principle of Utility. Altruism has nothing

whatsoever to do with it. Even indignation at the spectacle of acute

suffering needlessly inflicted on animals, where considerations of

reciprocal treatment on the part of the animal do not apply, is

correctly based on the offence such a "discordance" causes to the

æsthetic sensibility of the cultivated, or the induced sympathetic

discomfort of the many. In many natures the pain-suggesting spectacle,

or even the mere thought of it, spontaneously evokes anger, which seeks

satisfaction in the punishment of the author of its occurrence. The only

rational or intellectual process involved in the resulting "moral

judgment" is, as a rule, confined to a realization of the

pain-suggesting idea, and the direction of vengeful impulses against the

offender, while the consequences or ends of conduct in no way determine

the judgment. The particular idiocy of the anti-vivisection agitation is

obvious. We are here, of course, purposely considering, _not_ actual and

arbitrary morality, but the essentials upon which all moralities are

based. We shall deal more fully as we proceed with those psychic and

emotional factors which do, in fact, colour and distort all moral

values. To return to our analogy--we may say then, that a conventional

moral rule stands for the credit of national morality, much as a

five-pound note stands for the credit of national wealth.

However wise a code of morality may be, it is necessarily artificial. It

has grown up to suit the peculiar circumstances and demands of race,

climate and time. The basic reason for its existence is too often

encrusted and disguised by fears, superstitions and illusions,

perpetual creatures of the human mind; the essentials are often lost

sight of or forgotten, and Truth is parodied as the principle that gave

birth to the ecclesiastical chimera which forms the edifice of modern

cults. Is it surprising, then, that morality is garbed in the changing

coat of a chameleon? That what is held moral to-day is immoral

to-morrow, and that what is held immoral here is moral elsewhere?

The second and deeper morality concerns ourselves only. It demands an

answer to the eternal question: What is the Ultimate Good? One great

imperative stands out pre-eminent: we must be true to ourselves. He who

would seek the truth must himself be true. Without truth there is no

creation, no progress. But before we can be true to ourselves, we must

know ourselves; that is the problem we are considering--knowledge of the

ego.

Some men are content to supply synonyms for the Ideal--for Perfection,

the goal of endeavour--imagining they are thereby showing the way.

Others realize the first task must be to cleanse the way of the

inadequacies and perversions which masquerade as the whole Truth, as the

"word of God."

The Ultimate Good cannot be translated into the petty codes of human

convenience, neither can it be deduced from the wanton phantoms of man's

wild fancy, called religion, which, by attempting to expound everything,

explains nothing.

What is religion? Is it the search for truth? Is it not an attempt to

clothe our conception of the Infinite in terms finite?--the result being

grotesque, bearing no relation to existence, a lawless chimera, born of

man's dread of the unknown, an amorphous fantasy fashioned out of the

distorted visions of man's hopes and fears, modelled, amended and shaped

in course of time in accordance with the postulate of man's nature--man

the religious animal!

Science cannot give us the whole truth and admits it! "Absolute

beginnings or origins are beyond the pale of science."[34] But religion

professes to know and is disproved at every step. It is when Religion

refuses to learn that she is harmful; because her values are false and

her thought retrospective that she is inadequate. It is not because the

religions of the past and their legacies to-day cannot prove the

Transcendent that they should be discarded, but because they attempt to

prove it and turn the world into chaos in so doing. It is not only

because, in the words of Huxley, "everywhere priests have broken the

spirit of wisdom and tried to stop human progress by quotations from

their Bibles or books of their Saints," that the old religion is

outgrown, but because it is daily growing more and more impotent.

Whether for good or evil the influence of religion on the conduct of men

daily grows less. Religious fanaticism is gradually giving place to

secular and political fanaticism, whose votaries shriek in the name of

Democracy, Socialism or other watchword of Utopia, ever attempting to

impose new moral values bearing as little correspondence to reality as

the old values. Neither can recent attempts to express the old religion

in terms of modern thought revive that which is perishing of inanition.

Huxley wrote thus of the attempt: "If the religion of the present

differs from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present

has become more scientific than that of the past, not because it has

renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the

necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of _books_ and

traditions, and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs, and of cherishing the

noblest and most human of man's emotions by worship, 'for the most part

of the Silent Sort,' at the altar of the _unknown and unknowable_...."

We have no desire to follow in the wake of an unprovoked attack on the

churches, our concern is the defence of a rational, against the

imposition of an irrational, code of morality.

But ethical systems are still built upon the fantastical dogmas of

religious or political visionaries. "Ethics," say the former, "cannot be

built securely upon anything less than the Religious Sanctions." The

rules which govern the practical conduct of life must conform to "divine

laws" which in their interpretation have passed through a metamorphosis

as varied and dissimilar as the habits and customs which distinguish

the twentieth century from the second! Was it a sign of the security and

infallibility of ethics founded on religious beliefs that Christian

England as late as the beginning of the Eighteenth Century[35]

sanctioned the execution and torture of harmless old women for the

imaginary crime of witchcraft? It must be remembered that the moral code

of the period, enforced by the laws of the land, reflected contemporary

religious thought. Lecky, referring to the causes upon which witchcraft

depended, says:[36] "It resulted, not from accidental circumstances,

individual eccentricities, or even scientific ignorance, but from a

general predisposition to see Satanic agency in life. It grew from, and

it reflected, the prevailing modes of religious thought; and it declined

only when those modes were weakened or destroyed." 5.

The fact is, as most impartial students of psychology admit, that both

religious and political ethics owe far more of their character to the

"emotional cravings" combined with the interested propaganda current in

the age, than to any real value they may possess from a utilitarian or,

assuming the Divinity to be rational, from a Divine point of view. Ibsen

has truly said that moral values are dependent on power-conditions;

morals, politics and law are to a great extent shaped and propelled by

might-conditions, by the fancied needs and interests of dominant

classes; but the greatest factor in power-condition is psychic; the

greatest world-propellant, the _ultima vires_, is more mind than muscle;

it is this great world force which I have spoken of as Cosmic

Suggestion.[37] Too little may yet be known of this force to trace its

means of transmission, but the reality of its existence can no longer be

doubted. It has been described in the following way: there exists an

effluence or force generated by, or resulting from, the molecular

activity of each individual brain. These forces are constantly

influencing the souls of men, encountering, overcoming, and repelling

opposition, and reacting upon the conscious intelligence of the authors

of their generation; or they may unite themselves into groups and

operate collectively, forming a psychic stream of power.[38]

The fact of this power must be received into the monistic system as part

of the one great law. A purely materialistic monism cannot contain it.

Though we postulate a single law with a dual aspect or duality within

unity, whatever hypothesis we assume will be of less importance than the

discovery and co-ordination of the invariable laws of its operation. We

accept the principle of "monism" not, I fancy, because we are compelled

to do so by the logic of Haeckel, the great exponent of modern monism,

or of his fellow-scientists, but because we are driven to do so without

their help. The principle of oneness and unity, alone, is capable of

satisfying our intellect, our sense of order and logic. There cannot be

conflicting truths; there cannot exist true systems which disprove each

other; all knowledge is complementary; there cannot be true objective

facts and equally true subjective ideals which contradict them;

otherwise the world is chaos and there is no reality. But if we know

anything we know that matter is real and thought is real, and the law of

their inter-relationship is within the same reality. No commonplace of

science is more widely known or more firmly established than the law of

the conservation of energy or of the persistence of force and of matter,

which Haeckel calls the law of substance. Can we be content to believe

that no force exists that is not susceptible to physical analysis? Or

does the first step towards the elucidation of the ultimate and unsolved

riddle of existence, that is, the real character of substance or the

cosmos, lie (as we believe) in the direction of reconciling the

metaphysical with the monistic system?

We seek no escape from the underlying principle of one universal law

which determines all matter, life and energy; but our monism must

comprise the psychic factor. For us this cannot be stated in

physiological terms. Force cannot be regarded as a pure attribute of

matter. Recent advances in psychological research appear to endorse this

view. It is, in any case, less important to insist upon one particular

hypothesis, when much, at the present stage of knowledge, is insoluble,

than to appreciate by observation and introspection the laws that appear

to evolve from it.

Haeckel cannot conceive mind apart from matter or, conversely,

protoplasm without mind (for him they develop concurrently); yet why

should the fact that both are subject to the same cosmic law invalidate

the idea of the persistency of an immaterial force, which may even under

certain conditions, or metamorphoses, break the partnership with matter;

provided that the unit of psychic force is in itself immaterial?[39]

This psychic unit Haeckel terms _psychoplasm_, that is, the

materialistic basis of mind in protoplasm. The laws of psychic

phenomena, however, only appear intelligible when we concede that the

_psychoplasm_ possesses an immaterial aspect which, at a certain stage

of development, may persist as "force," even after the disintegration of

matter into its chemical components. On the other hand, it may, below a

certain stage of development or intensity, lose cohesion and dissipate;

organic matter, however, is never without it. The wonderful discoveries

of recent psychological research, especially in the department of

hypnotism, in the facts of memory and above all in the evidence lately

forthcoming of the existence of telepathy, should encourage us to adopt

a hypothesis which, to the materialistic philosopher, appears

chimerical.[40] A final decision of the ultimate problem remains at

present unattainable, its discussion is therefore of necessity

speculative in character. But the need for recognizing the existence of

a psychic factor, whose phenomena cannot be reconciled on a

materialistic basis, makes its inclusion in the cosmic system

imperative. This need is the greater in view of the tendency amongst an

ever-increasing class to relegate all psychic phenomena to the chaotic

realms of emotional thought, resulting in the propagation of the wildest

fanaticism under such titles as Spiritualism, Christian Science or

Theosophism.

There are two modes of thought and they lead in opposite directions:

emotional assumption and analytical investigation; the two systems are

illustrated by the world phenomenon of religious beliefs arising from a

common source, and in their development splitting up, breaking away and

variating, whilst all scientific knowledge unifies and becomes

reconciled during its progress, all laws eventually resolving themselves

into one. It is often said, and it is well to remember, that no system

of human belief is without some fact to sustain it. But when the great

variety of antagonistic beliefs that have sprung from different

conceptions of the same facts are taken into account, one must realize,

as too few educationalists do, that the value of human opinions and

beliefs depends far more on habits of mind and methods of assimilation

than on the ultimate facts on which they are based, or the conviction

with which they are held.

There are many people so ignorant of human nature and psychological fact

that they imagine the truth of a statement may be demonstrated by the

credulity with which it has been received, forgetting that faith fills

the void of ignorance where scepticism is reserved for new ideas.

So long as education comprises the inculcation of beliefs founded on

emotional assumption (it should be clear to any one who thinks on the

subject that few beliefs outside the analytical and exact sciences are

logically reasoned out from fundamental principles) and the facile

repetition of archaisms is appraised as intellectual thought; in short,

so long as our methods are retrospective rather than critical, emotion

and fanaticism will triumph over reason.