Balfour draws a kind of parallel between the scientific creed, which is,
as he would put it, "based upon" a metaphysical doctrine, and the
theological creed, which has a similar foundation. If the metaphysical
foundation is so uncertain in both cases, must not the scientific be as
uncertain as the theological? If we know nothing about atoms, or, on the
other hand, about souls, we must be either sceptical in both cases, or
credulous in both. There are the same underlying difficulties, and if we
manage to overlook them in the case of science, why not overlook them in
the case of theology? Conversely, if we elect to be sceptics in
theology, how can we escape from scepticism in science? And, as a
thorough-going scepticism is, doubtless, an impossible state of mind in
practice, the conclusion of many people will be to accept belief in
spite of certain gaps in our logical foundations. This, no doubt, is
eminently convenient for the "constructive" process adumbrated by Mr.
Balfour, which I certainly regard as extra-logical. But is any such
dilemma really offered to us? The obvious answer is, that scientific
truth, as Mr. Balfour admits, is not "based upon" metaphysical theory.
The astronomical doctrine of a Newton remains equally valid, whatever is
the ultimate nature of space or laws or atoms; whether we are
materialists or empiricists or idealists. The philosophical "basis" is
not really a set of truths which we must know before we can know the
astronomical theory; but simply a set of hypotheses which have to
conform to the truths given by experience. The unassailable truths are
just the facts which we observe, and which science enables us to
describe accurately and state systematically. If a metaphysical doctrine
has any bearing upon these facts, which seems to be doubtful, it must
conform to the facts, and not the facts to it. So long as no such theory
is proved, we can afford to remain metaphysically sceptical without
losing our hold upon the scientific truth. Now, I should say, what is
true of the physical sciences is true of all our knowledge. We may study
the moral sciences as we can study the physical sciences. We can observe
and colligate the facts of emotion and volition, as we can observe the
position of the stars and the laws of heat. Therefore, in so far as
theology is an attempt to give a theory of the universe in general, we
must accept or deny the doctrines just in so far as they serve to
explain or fail to explain the facts. But, in any case, the facts will
remain unaltered, and will not vanish because we may be unable to
understand them. But theology corresponds, also, not to the scientific
method, but to the ontological inquiries which are represented by Mr.
Balfour's "naturalism". Both doctrines, as I should say, lead to
incoherence, to contradictions covered by ambiguous language, and to
hopeless difficulties, which, in theology, are described as inscrutable
mysteries. I am, therefore, quite ready, with Mr. Balfour, to reject
naturalism, but, on the same grounds, I also reject the transcendental
theology. Attainable truth is equally independent of all such theories;
and were it otherwise, we should be doomed to hopeless scepticism. Mr.
Balfour's analogy, therefore, apparently upsets his conclusion. I
believe in heat, and I believe in the conscience. I reject the atoms,
and I reject the doctrine of atonement. I reject it, if it be meant for
science, because, so far from explaining the facts, the facts explain
how the false doctrine was generated. I reject it, if it is meant for
philosophy, because, like other transcendental theories, it leads to
hopeless controversies, and appears to me to be incredible as soon as
any such theology as is tenable by a philosopher is substituted for the
crude theology of a savage.
We are driven to scepticism, then, if we first declare that scientific
knowledge depends upon metaphysical theory; and then that all
metaphysical theory is moonshine. I do not accept the first principle;
and I hold that the danger to morals from metaphysical difficulties is
pretty much the same as the danger that the stars will leave their
courses if we adopt a wrong theory of an astronomy. We fancy that when
we are explaining facts, we are, somehow, creating them; as the
meteorologist in _Rasselas_ observed the clouds till he came to think
that he caused the rain. The facts upon which morality depends are the
facts that men have certain emotions; that mothers love their children;
that there are such things as pity, and sympathy, and public spirit; and
that there are social instincts upon the growth of which depends the
vitality of the race. We may, of course, ask how more precisely these
emotions act, and what functions they discharge. We may make historical
and psychological and metaphysical inquiries; and we may end, if ever we
reach such a consummation, by establishing what we may call a science of
ethics. But the facts do not depend upon the explanation. The illusion
of their dependence is easily produced. You make your theory of
morality, and then you define morality as a belief in the object
required by your theory. It follows, of course, that morality will
disappear with the belief--or else that your theory is wrong. Morality,
said some people, is a belief in future rewards and punishments. If that
belief disappears, morality--that is, their morality--must disappear
too. But that morality--taken as the actual sentiment which they have
erroneously defined--should disappear also, no more follows than it
follows that heat will disappear when we discover that there is no such
thing as the old imaginary substance of heat. The doctrine is now more
generally urged in a different form. Theology, it is said, is essential
to morality. Such bold assertions may be best met by a dogmatic
assertion of the inverse case. Theology, as I hold, is not the source of
the moral instincts, but, under certain conditions, derives its real
power from them. Theology, in the first place, is a word including not
only heterogeneous but contradictory meanings,--Baal and Jehovah, the
Mumbo-jumbo of the negro and Spinoza's "ens absolute infinitum". To the
enormous majority of the human race, the more metaphysical conception is
hopelessly unintelligible. When a savage expresses his crude sense of
duties to the tribe under the form of belief in an ancestral ghost, is
the morality made by the belief, or the belief generated by the
incipient moral emotion? Does he believe in God or really in a man like
himself, and respected precisely because he is like himself? Is not the
truth tacitly acknowledged by the more philosophical religions? Their
adherents admit that the God of philosophy is too abstract a Being to
excite any emotion; he fades into Nature or the Unknowable, and it is
impossible to love one whom, by his very definition, you can neither
benefit nor injure and whose omnipotence makes even justice a mockery.
Therefore, they make a God out of a man, and by boldly combining in
words two contradictory sets of attributes, make what in theology is
called a mystery, and in common sense called by a different name. Does
not that amount to confessing that the true source of morality is in the
human affections of like for like, and not in that sentiment towards a
transcendental object of which you have chosen to make your definition?
And, finally, if we ask what is the relation of theology to morality,
from a historical point of view, we see the same result. Undoubtedly,
theology has been a bulwark of morality in one way. It has expressed the
veneration of mankind for the most deeply-seated customs of the race. It
has been the form through which, though not the cause owing to which,
men have expressed the importance of adhering to certain established
institutions of the highest importance to mankind. Briefly, therefore,
it represents the conservative instincts. But, for that reason, it has
naturally lagged behind an advancing morality. The newer religions have
been precisely protests against the objectionable conduct of the
old-fashioned deities who retained the manners and customs of a more
barbarous period; and have, therefore, been regarded by the older faith,
sometimes with justice, as atheistic. Without referring to the familiar
cases, I am content to appeal to the present day. What are the relative
positions of the theologian and his opponent during the modern phase of
evolution? The theologian has, in the main, maintained the sanctity of
old institutions and customs; and I do not doubt that he has rendered a
useful service. But the demand for justice, for the abolition of
slavery, of the hardships of the poor and oppressed, the desire to
construct society upon a wholesomer ideal, has been generated, not by
theological speculation, but by the new relations into which men have
been brought and the new sentiments developed. It has been accepted most
fully by men hostile to all theology, by the free-thinker, the atheist,
and the materialist, whom the orthodox denounces as criminal. Doubtless
the denouncer has excuses: the reformer may err in the direction of
excessive demolition; but the very survival of the older creeds depends,
as we all see, upon their capacity for assimilating and finding
utterance for the moral convictions which have arisen outside of their
limits, and, generally, in defiance of their authority. To say,
therefore, that the morality depends upon the survival of the
metaphysical theory, seems to me to be inverting the true relation.
I end by suggesting what is to my mind the true moral of these
speculations. The vanity of philosophising means the vanity of certain
philosophical pretensions; of the chimerical belief that the philosopher
lays down the first principles of belief in ethics or in other
departments of life, in such a sense that the destinies of the race or
of knowledge depend upon accepting and applying his principles. His
function is a humbler one, though one of vast importance. The great
philosophical systems have vanished, though they have cleared the air.
They were primitive attempts at construction; results of the fact that
we have to act before we can think; and to assume postulates which can
only be verified or falsified by the slow experience of ages. But the
process by which truth is advanced is not confined to the philosopher;
or perhaps we should rather say that some sort of crude philosophy is
embedded even in the feeblest and earliest speculations of mankind. Our
thoughts are guided by an implicit logic long before we have even a
conception of logic in the abstract, or have the least thought of
codifying and tabulating its formulae. So every savage who begins to
make a tool is exemplifying some mechanical principle which will not be
put into accurate and abstract language till countless generations have
passed. Every one at the present day who is using his wits is
philosophising after a fashion, and is contributing towards the
advancement of philosophy. He is increasing the mass of still more or
less chaotic knowledge, the whole of which is to that philosopher what
the particular set of facts is to the student of physical science. The
philosopher has not to evolve first principles out of himself, so much
as to discover what are the principles which have been unconsciously
applied; to eliminate the obsolete elements; to bring the new into
harmony; to verify them, or describe how they may be verified; and so to
work towards the unification and systematisation of knowledge in
general. Probably he will make a great many blunders in his task; but it
may be some comfort to reflect that even blunders are often useful, and
that he is not in the terribly responsible position of really framing
laws for the universe or for man, but only of clearing up or codifying
the laws which are already in operation.
FORGOTTEN BENEFACTORS.
I was reading not long ago some remarks[A] which impressed me at the
time, and upon which, as it came to pass, I have had reason to reflect
more seriously. The writer dwelt upon the vast services which have been
rendered to the race by men of whom all memory has long since faded
away. Compare, he said, the England of Alfred with the England of
Victoria; think of the enormous differences which have been brought
about in thirty generations; and then try to estimate how large a share
of all that has been done in the interval should be put to the credit of
thousands who have long sunk into oblivion, and whose achievements, by
the very necessity of the case, can never be properly estimated. A few
great names mark every period; the great statesmen, the great churchmen
and warriors, are commemorated in our official histories; they are
placed upon exalted pedestals; and to them is attributed everything that
was done in their time, though, but for the co-operation of innumerable
nameless fellow-labourers, they would not have been provided even with
the foundations upon which their work was necessarily based.
This remark recalls the familiar discussion about the importance of the
individual. Is the hero whom we are invited to worship everything, or is
he next to nothing? Is it true, as some writers put it, that had
Cleopatra broken her nose, or had a cannon ball gone a hair's breadth
further to the right or left when Napoleon was directing the siege of
Toulon, "the whole course of history would have been changed"? Or is it
rather true that, as some philosophers would say, no man is
indispensable, nor even any man very important: that, if any even of the
greatest of men had died of the measles in his infancy, we should have
carved a different set of letters upon the pedestals of our statues, but
the course of affairs would have run in much the same channel? I will
not seek to discuss that old theme, to which it is evident that no very
precise answer can be given. It is clearly a question of degree. Nobody
can deny that a great man has an influence in the spheres of action and
of thought; but to attempt to say how great an influence he has, how far
he depends upon others or could be replaced by others, involves
considerations lying in the unprofitable region of vague conjecture.
This only I wish to note. It seems often to be suggested that there is
something degrading or ungenerous in taking a side against the
importance of the hero. It raises a suspicion that you are a valet,
capable of supposing that men are distinguished by the quantity of lace
on their coats, and not by the intensity of the fire in their souls.
And, moreover, the view is fatalistic: it supposes that the destinies of
the race are determined by what are denounced as blind "laws," and not
by the passions and aspirations which guide their energies. To me it
seems that it would be easy enough to retort these imputations. I cannot
feel that a man of generous sympathies should be therefore inclined to a
doctrine which would tend to make the future of the race a matter of
chance. The more you believe in the importance of the great men, the
more you have to admit that our progress depends upon the innumerable
accidents which may stifle the greatest as easily as the smallest
career. If some great social change was so absolutely dependent upon the
leader who first put into words the demand upon which it is based, or
who led the first forlorn hope which made victory possible, that his
loss would have been the loss of his cause, it follows that the cause
might have been lost if a crust of bread had gone the wrong way. It
ought surely to be pleasanter if we are entitled to hold that we have a
stronger ground of confidence; that the great victories of thought and
action prove the diffusion of enthusiasm and courage through a wide
circle; and that the fall of the chief is sure to make room for a worthy
successor. The wider and deeper the causes of progress, the more
confidently we can derive hope from the past, and accept with
comparative equanimity even the most painful catastrophes.
Nor can I agree that such a view implies any want of susceptibility to
the claims of the hero. I do not think that we can pay homage too
cheerfully to the great men who form landmarks in history. I admit, most
gladly, that the admiration which we feel for such men; the thrill which
stirs us in reading of the great patriots and martyrs of the past; the
reverence which we are now and then able to pay to a contemporary--to a
Lincoln, proving that political action may represent real faiths, not
party formulae; to a Gordon, impersonating the sense of duty; or a Father
Damien, sacrificing his life for the lepers--is one of the invaluable
elements of moral cultivation. But I do not see the connection between
this and the desire to exalt the glory of the great man by ignoring the
unknown who followed in his steps, and often made them possible. I have
not so far attained to the cosmopolitan point of view that my blood is
not stirred by the very name of Nelson. Nay, however cosmopolitan I
might become, I hope that my sympathies would never blind me to the
greatness of the qualities implied in his patriotic devotion. My
cosmopolitanism would rather, I hope, lead me to appreciate more
generously the similar qualities in his antagonists, and, also, the
similar qualities in the "band of brothers" whom he was proud to lead. I
should be sorry so to admire Nelson as to forget the sturdy old race of
sea dogs who did their duty, and helped him to do his in a memorable
way, some ninety years ago. I would rather believe than not that, had
Nelson been killed at the Nile, there were many among his followers who,
had the chance come to them, would have led the _Victory_ at Trafalgar,
and have made England impregnable. "I trust we have within this realm
five hundred good as he" is surely the more heroic tone. But, to drop
the old-fashioned appeal to patriotic spirit, is it not true that, in
every department of life, it is more congenial to our generous feelings
to remember the existence and the importance of those who have never won
a general reputation? This has come to be a commonplace in the sphere of
scientific discovery. We find, over and over again, that the great
discoverer has been all but anticipated by his rivals; that his fame, if
not his real greatness, depends upon the circumstance that he has just
anticipated by a year, or, perhaps, in extreme cases, by a generation,
results to which a comparatively second-rate thinker would have been
competent a few years later. The winner of the race is apt to monopolise
the glory, though he wins only by a hair's breadth. The familiar
instance of Darwin and Mr. Wallace is remarkable, not because the
relation of the two thinkers was unique, but because, unfortunately, the
generosity with which each acknowledged the merit of the other was
exceptional. A great discovery is made when the fertile thought is
already going through the process of incubation in a whole circle of
intelligent minds; and that in which it first comes to the birth,
claims, or, at least, receives, the whole merit, by a right of
intellectual primogeniture not much more justifiable than the legal
right. Admitting, again, in the fullest sense, the value and the
difficulty of that last step which has to be made in order to reach the
crowning triumph, it would surely be ungenerous to forget the long
series of previous explorations by which alone it was made possible.
There must have been countless forgotten Newtons and Descartes', who, in
their day, had to exert equal powers in order to discover what are now
the most familiar truths; to invent the simplest systems of arithmetical
notation, or solve the earliest geometrical problems, without which
neither a Newton nor a Descartes would have been possible. And what is
true in science is, surely, equally true of activities which touch most
of us more nearly. Of all undeniable claims to greatness I suppose the
most undeniable to be the claim of the founders of religions. Their
disciples are so much impressed by their greatness that they regard them
as supernatural beings, or, in other words, as beings who are the sole
and indispensable causes of all the consequences attributed to the
prevalence of their doctrines. We are told, constantly, and often as
though it were too obvious to need proof, that every moral improvement
which has taken place in the world since the origin of Christianity, is
due to Christianity, and that Christianity itself is entirely due to its
founder. Human nature was utterly corrupt until the Deity became
incarnate in the form of a Jewish peasant; and every social or moral
step which has since been made in advance--and not one of the
unfortunate backslidings by which the advance has since been
trammelled--is a direct consequence of that stupendous event. This is
the theory of the importance of the individual, raised, so to speak, to
its very highest potence. We not only attribute the most important and
far-reaching of all changes to a single agent, but declare that that
agent cannot have been human, and indeed cannot have been less than the
first cause of all changes. I shall not, of course, discuss the
plausibility of a doctrine which, if accepted, breaks the whole chain of
cause and effect, and makes the later history of the world not an
evolution of previously operative process, but the result of an abrupt,
mysterious interference from without, incommensurable with any other set
of spiritual forces. I am content to say that to my mind the doctrine
becomes daily more impossible to any one who thinks seriously and tries
to picture to himself distinctly the true nature of the great world
processes. What is to my purpose is, that it seems to me to be not only
infinitely more credible, but also more satisfactory and more
generous--if there be properly a question of generosity--to do justice
to the disciples as well as to the master--to believe that the creed was
fermenting in the hearts and minds of millions of human beings; and
that, although the imperfect and superstitious elements by which it was
alloyed were due to the medium in which it was propagated, yet, on the
other hand, it succeeded so far as it corresponded to the better
instincts of great masses of men, struggling blindly and through many
errors to discover rules of conduct and modes of conceiving the universe
more congenial than the old to their better nature, and prepared to form
a society by crystallising round the nucleus which best corresponded to
their aspirations. When so regarded, it seems to me, and only when so
regarded, we can see in the phenomenon something which may give us solid
ground for hopes of humanity, and enable us to do justice to countless
obscure benefactors. The corruption of human nature, as theologians
sometimes tell us, expresses a simple fact. Undoubtedly, it expresses a
fact which nobody, so far as I know, ever thought of denying--the fact
that there are bad instincts in human nature; that many men are cruel,
sensual, and false; and that every man is more or less liable to succumb
to temptation. But the essential meaning of the old theological dogma
was, I take it, something different. It meant that man was so corrupt
that he could only be made good by a miracle; that even his apparent
virtues are splendid sins unless they come from divine grace; and, in
short, that men cannot be really elevated without supernatural
interference. If all that is good in men comes from their religions, and
if religions are only explicable as inspirations from without, that, no
doubt, logically follows. I prefer, myself, to believe that, though all
men are weak, and a good many utter scoundrels; yet human nature does
contain good principles; that those principles tend, however slow and
imperfect may be the process, gradually to obtain the mastery; and that
the great religions of the races, while indicating the intellectual and
moral shortcomings of mankind, indicate also the gradual advance of
ethical ideals, worked out by the natural and essential tendencies of
the race. And thus, as it seems to me, this conception of the mode of
growth of religions and of morality, which gathers strength as we come
to take a more reasonable view of the world's history, is closely
connected with the doctrine that, instead of ascribing all good
achievement to the hero who drops from heaven, or springs spontaneously
from the earth, we should steadily remember that he is only possible,
and his work can only be successfully secured, by the tacit co-operation
of the innumerable unknown persons in whose hearts his words find an
echo because they are already feeling after the same ideal which is in
him more completely embodied.