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 Humanitarianism or Human Happiness ? 
 
 BY j 
 
 OWEN FRANCIS ‘DUDLEY 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY 
 GO Ky CHESTERTON 
 
 THIRD IMPRESSION 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 TORONTO, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 1925 
 
 Made in Great Britain 
 
Nihil obstat: 
 
 INNOCENTIUS APAP., O.P., 
 Censor deputatus. 
 
 Imprimatur : 
 
 EDM. CAN. SURMONT, 
 Vic. Gen. 
 
 Westmonasteril, 
 die 28 JULII, 1924. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 IN writing a few prefatory words to Father Dudley’s 
 apt and spirited criticisms, I may be allowed rather 
 to emphasize and expand one or two of his sugges- 
 tions than to add anything to them. His book is 
 concerned with a highly practical and even topical 
 point in the controversies of the day. It is the ques- 
 tion implied in the Utopias of Mr. H. G. Wells and in 
 most of the new religions or new substitutes for 
 religion. Father Dudley reviews all that humani- 
 tarianism which is so much connected with hedonism, 
 and questions whether it is very much connected 
 with happiness. Would the world even be happy, 
 if it gave up all that has been counted holy ? In this 
 connection I would suggest only one query. The 
 study of one of the Wellsian Utopias, or indeed of any 
 other Utopias has often been interesting; but did 
 anyone ever find it exhilarating ? Does anyone feel 
 those descriptions to glow in his memory like the real 
 memories of human enjoyment? Does he, as Mr. 
 Tony Weller said, feel his spirits rose ; does he feel it 
 half as much in the atmosphere of Utopia as in the 
 atmosphere of a tavern with Mr. Tony Weller him- 
 self? There is something wanting in these ideals ; 
 
iv INTRODUCTION 
 
 and here the critic finds it in the very limitation of 
 humanity to human things. It is all the more irre- 
 ligious because it is a religion ; that is, because it is 
 taken seriously. Father Dudley practically identifies 
 the humanitarianism of Wells with the humanity- 
 worship of Comte. In this concentration he finds 
 the key to its failure to produce happiness. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting of the suggestions of 
 Father Dudley, at least so far as I am concerned, is 
 one that concerns the paradox of taking an irreligious 
 humanity as a religion. It is actually much more 
 dificult to worship a humanity that is not wor- 
 shipping. So much of what is best in our race is 
 bound up with its religious emotions and traditions, 
 that to worship it without those intimations of the 
 best would come very near to worshipping it at its 
 worst. Itisnotso much that mankind is not enough 
 as that mankind has never felt it enough to be enough. 
 Man is maimed as well as limited by arresting those 
 upward gestures that are so natural to him. Even if 
 mankind could become such a mutual admiration 
 society, men would in fact find each other less admir- 
 able. A self-contained and self-centred humanity 
 would chill us in the same way as a self-contained and 
 self-centred human being. For the spiritual hungers 
 of humanity are never merely hungers for humanity. 
 They are never merely aspirations for a completely 
 humanised humanity, even as they exist in humani- 
 tarians. The proof of this is not peculiar to theology 
 
INTRODUCTION V 
 
 or even to religion ; it is equally apparent in poetry 
 and all imaginative arts. The child in the field, if 
 left entirely to himself, does not merely wish to find 
 the perfect parish ruled over by the perfect parish 
 council. The child in the field wants to find fairy- 
 land ; and that type of fancy must either be satisfied 
 or thwarted ; but it cannot be turned into something 
 totally different. The poet does not merely wish to 
 be with men ; though the sanest sort of poet will wish 
 this also on suitable occasions. But even the sanest 
 sort of poet will often wish to be away from men and 
 alone with something else. If he is a philosopher as 
 well as a poet, he will probably want some intelligent 
 identification of that something else ; and if he looks 
 for it, he will probably become a theologian as well as 
 a philosopher. But even if he is only a poet, he will 
 be haunted by something which is emphatically not 
 human; and which he could really only rationally 
 explain by calling it superhuman. In other words, 
 it is impossible to turn all the eyes of that mutual 
 admiration society inwards. Any number of their 
 eyes always have been and always will be turned 
 outwards, if only to a vague elemental environment 
 of primeval mysteries and natural magic. To teach 
 people to believe in God may be in its highest sense a 
 hard task even among Christians. But to prevent 
 people from thinking about God will be an impossible 
 task even among agnostics; or perhaps especially 
 among agnostics. It will be particularly impossible 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 among agnostics who are also artists. Ifit has some- 
 times been difficult to keep the poet tied to home, it 
 will be ten times more difficult to keep him tied to 
 humanity. Comte, like Plato, will certainly have to 
 expel poets from his Republic. 
 
 The other important part of the thesis, to my mind, 
 concerns, not so much this paradox which is false, as 
 another paradox which is true. It is the paradox 
 that it is more possible to love men indirectly than 
 to love them directly. There is such a thing as a 
 passionate enthusiasm or tenderness for the ordinary 
 man. But generally speaking it is rather an extra- 
 ordinary man who feels it. Or, if this be not neces- 
 sarily true, it is at least only felt by the ordinary man 
 at extraordinary moments ; that is, in extraordinary 
 moods. Now if those moods and moments be sym- 
 pathetically considered, I fancy it will always be 
 found that they are what may be called mystical 
 moods and moments. I mean that they are ex- 
 periences in which the external manifestation of man- 
 kind seems to mean more than meets the eye; in 
 which a crowd takes on a corporate character like a 
 cloud ; or in which a human face has the mask and 
 the secret of a sphinx. Few are fired with a direct 
 individual affection for the five people sitting on the 
 other side of a railway-carriage ; let us say a wealthy 
 matron, given to snorting and sneering, a bright 
 little Jew stockbroker, a large and vacant farmer, a 
 pale and weary youth with a limp cigarette and a 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 young woman perpetually powdering her nose. All 
 these are sacred beings of equal value in the sight of 
 God with the souls of Hildebrand and Shakespeare ; 
 but a man needs to be a little of a mystic to think so ; 
 or even to feel anything like it. In a vacuum of 
 absolute agnosticism, in an utterly dry lght of 
 detached objectivity and positive knowledge, it is 
 questionable whether he would feel it at all. If, as 
 it is, he feels it occasionally and vaguely, it is really 
 because he feels the remains of the old religious senti- 
 ment occasionally and vaguely. In the right mood 
 he can still see a halo round humanity, because he 
 still half-believes that humanity is half-divine. But 
 that the stockbroker can be positively proved to be 
 half-divine there is no proof. That the halo will in 
 any case shine out of the interior of the fat farmer, 
 by itself, and be visible to anybody anywhere, has 
 never been scientifically demonstrated. 
 
 Now just as that vague hope that we call romance 
 or poetry points to a paradise even if it be called 
 elfland, so this vague charity or sense of sacred human 
 values really points to a higher standard of sacredness. 
 We have to look at men in a certain light in order to 
 love them all; and the most agnostic of us know that 
 it is not exactly identical with the light of common 
 day. But the mystery is immediately explained 
 when we turn towards that light itself; which is 
 the light that lighteth every man that cometh into 
 the world. Ordinary men find it difficult to love 
 
vill INTRODUCTION 
 
 ordinary men; at least in an ordinary way. But 
 ordinary men can love the love of ordinary men. 
 They can love the lover of ordinary men, who loves 
 them in an extraordinary way. It may be difficult 
 to get a fat burgess and a fierce and hungry robber 
 to love each other ; but it is much easier to get them 
 both to love St. Francis of Assisi for being able to 
 love them both. And what is true of St. Francis is 
 more true of his Divine model; men can admire 
 perfect charity before they practise even imperfect 
 charity ; and that is by far the most practical way of 
 getting them to practise it. It is not to leave men 
 merely staring at each other and standing face to 
 face to criticize and grow weary ; it is rather to see 
 them standing side by side and looking out together 
 at a third thing; the world’s desire and the love- 
 affair of all humanity; which is really a human 
 sun that can shine upon the evil and the good. 
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON. 
 
IT may be of interest to note the recent arrival of 
 four scientific books which seemingly hit as hard 
 at Humanitarian hopes as this present volume. 
 
 I refer to the Democracy and Leadership of Pro- 
 fessor Babbitt, the Dedalus of Mr. Haldane, the 
 Icarus of Mr. Russell and the Tantalus, or the Future 
 of Man of Dr. Schiller. 
 
 Their pessimistic outlook on the future of Hu- 
 manity merely confirms the contention of Wull 
 Men be like Gods ? as well as the inability of modern 
 science to solve the problem of human happiness. 
 
 AUTHOR. 
 
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CHAPTER 
 
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 VIII. 
 
 XII. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE HUMANITARIAN APPEAL - 
 
 THE HUMANITARIAN HOAX - - - 
 
 THE DETHRONEMENT OF REASON 
 
 THE ENTHRONEMENT OF MAN - 5: 
 
 THE HUMOURS OF UTOPIA ~ - - 
 
 THE GOODNESS OF THE GODLESS 
 
 ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE - 
 
 MEN “AS THEY ARE “= - - - = 
 
 SOFT SAYINGS AND HARD FACTS 
 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY - = me S 
 
 THE HUMANITARIAN CHALLENGE AND AN 
 ANSWER - “ * ~ “ = 
 
 HUMAN HAPPINESS - - - ~ - 
 
 PAGE 
 
 68 
 
 76 
 

 
CHAPTER 1 
 THE HUMANITARIAN APPEAL 
 
 EN dislike being fooled. Men are in danger 
 
 of being fooled to-day. And not merely 
 
 fooled, but hoaxed. Not merely hoaxed, 
 
 but utterly deceived. Men are in danger of staking 
 their all upon what would prove to be the greatest 
 delusion ever foisted on humanity, were it generally 
 accepted. Men are being told that there is a certain 
 road to human happiness in this world; that those 
 who tread this road will find an Utopia of earthly 
 bliss; that they will become ‘‘ men like Gods.” 
 It is not the first time men have been so told. ‘‘ You 
 shall be as Gods,” urged Satan in the Garden of Eden. 
 But he lied. And the man and woman were fooled. 
 So also will it be with the men and women who 
 allow themselves to be caught in the snares of 
 those who are repeating that invitation to-day. To 
 expose those snares is the purpose of this book. We 
 shall also make it our endeavour to prove that this 
 road to Utopia is no road to human happiness, but 
 to misery untold. There 7s a way to human happi- 
 ness—one only way. We shall tell of that way later. 
 This mystifying prelude must first unveil itself. 
 
 a 
 
2 THE HUMANITARIAN APPEAL 
 
 The world’s present evil plight has drawn its 
 attention to itself. The ensuing process of intro- 
 spection is fostering a certain movement quietly and 
 unobtrusively in our midst. Its name is Humani- 
 tarianism. It began in its modern form with Auguste 
 Comte, some ninety years ago. Comte invented a 
 human object of worship. Man, he said, should 
 worship the “ great being’’—Humanity. Though 
 the movement of Comte did not develop to any 
 great extent, yet his idea remained. In England, 
 Humanitarianism, as a positive philosophical system, 
 has been ably expounded by positivists, such as 
 Stuart Mill, Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall. Its 
 principles were popularised in 1886 by James Cotter 
 Morison in a work entitled The Service of Man, 
 described as “‘an essay towards the religion of 
 the future.” In a prefatory note the author writes : 
 “The object of the book is to show how the Service 
 of God, or of Gods, leads by natural evolution to the 
 Service of Man; from Theolatry to Anthropolatry.” 
 
 The appeal of Morison is to the reason and will of 
 man that he shall put off belief in God and put on 
 belief in Humanity. The Civitas Dei is a dream of 
 the past, we must now strive to realise the Regnum 
 Hominits. Many of the theological dogmas of 
 Christianity, so he argues, are now felt to be morally 
 repulsive by the more humane conscience of modern 
 times. In the whole scheme of Christian redemp- 
 tion there are moral iniquities of which no good 
 
THE HUMANITARIAN APPEAL 3 
 
 man of the present day would willingly be guilty 
 himself. Christianity is hostile to morality in this 
 world, for it offers salvation to a man who leads a 
 life vile and injurious to society, and only repents 
 at the last moment. It preaches salvation in the 
 next world, not morality in this. The highest crown | 
 the Christian can win is that of martyrdom for his 
 Faith ; what benefit does this confer on men? The 
 Christian principle is to regard pain and disease as 
 trials sent by God: the true principle, the principle 
 of science, is to fight and conquer them. The Christian 
 works for a reward—for God in Heaven. Unalloyed 
 altruism is higher. Only to his fellows can man be 
 completely altruistic, “hoping for nothing again.”’ 
 The heavenward gaze is detrimental to Humanity. 
 It takes man’s mind off men. The Service of Man 
 must be substituted for the Service of God. Thus 
 James Cotter Morison. 
 
 And now to-day we have Mr. H. G. Wells before us 
 as the avowed champion of Humanitarianism. When 
 Mr. Wells wrote his Outline of History, he did it with 
 a definite purpose. He intended to draw the atten- 
 tion of men to what he considers the true end of all 
 human progress, the end towards which the human 
 race is half-blindly, half-consciously struggling—the 
 reign of universal happiness on earth; that glorious 
 Utopia wherein men shall be like Gods. In his Men 
 like Gods (advertised in flaring letters in Oxford Street 
 as advocating ““ No clothes, no marriage .. .,’’ which, 
 
4 THE HUMANITARIAN APPEAL 
 
 no doubt, increased the sale), Mr. Wells pictures the 
 Humanitarian Utopia actually attained. Man has 
 found his freedom. Hehasconquered and won. He 
 has boldly freed himself from the Christian supersti- 
 tion. He has found his happiness in the service of 
 Man. Everybody is happy because everybody else 
 is happy, each generation inheriting and adding to 
 the happiness of the last. We can almost hear the 
 applause of the babes yet unborn. Weare leit with a 
 huge Mutual Admiration Society on earth. Thus 
 Mr. H. G. Wells. 
 
 Now, curiously enough, Humanitarianism is being 
 recruited at the present time from most unexpected 
 quarters. For instance, Bolshevism is recruiting it, 
 because ultimately it stands for the same principles 
 and the same end. No doubt many Humanitarians 
 would disown Bolshevism as too vulgar and violent, 
 rather as we try to disown a vulgar relation ; and yet 
 in reality it is merely trying a short cut to their ima- 
 gined Utopia. Bolshevism attempts to do away with 
 the Christian religion and all belief in anything 
 beyond this world. Religion is the opium of the 
 people. It isin the way of Humanity. This is the 
 only world that matters. Men must get everything 
 they can in this world and spit at the next. Bolshe- 
 vism is certainly successful in getting things. So far, , , 
 however, it has not succeeded in giving very much, - 
 except misery, to Humanity. However, since its 
 purpose is to put Man in place of God, Humanitarians 
 
THE HUMANITARIAN APPEAL 5 
 
 should at least be grateful. to it for supporting their 
 own cause, however abrupt and violent the methods 
 employed. 
 
 Again, in the non-Catholic religious world, we find 
 Modernism lending its aid to the movement. What 
 is the one perpetual theme of the Modernists ? That 
 Christianity must be made acceptable to the modern 
 mind. Man’s reason is the standard of truth. One 
 by one the revealed truths of God are being thrown 
 overboard. Christianity must be rationalised for the 
 sake of man. The Moderists, all unconsciously 
 perhaps, are putting man in place of God. And that 
 is what Humanitarians want. Further, Protestant- 
 ism as a whole is now being infected. It began with 
 “ Faith without works ”’ ; it is ending with “ Works 
 without Faith.”” The shibboleth of to-day is: “It 
 does not matter what a man believes, it is what he 
 does that matters. Give me a man who lives for his 
 fellow-men! That’s Christianity !’’ In other words, 
 God’s Revealed Truth, and therefore God, comes 
 second. Man comes first. 
 
 We find, too, that modern social reformers and 
 philanthropists outside the Catholic Church take it 
 for granted that the first and last end of Christianity 
 is the improvement of social conditions. Without 
 entering upon an argument with the “ Humanitarian 
 Christians,’ we would like to remind them that it is 
 useless to try and square Christianity with Humani- 
 tarianism. The two are contradictories. They are 
 
6 THE HUMANITARIAN APPEAL 
 
 aiming at opposite ends. We would remind them, 
 too, that Christ did not make His Church a mere 
 philanthropical society. Christianity does not exist 
 to establish man in security and prosperity on earth. 
 Its purpose is to establish the Kingdom of God on 
 earth. Material prosperity may, and in a general 
 way does, follow accidentally when the laws of the 
 Kingdom of God are obeyed. It is also a matter of 
 fact that the Catholic Church has done more for 
 humanity than all the Humanitarians put together. 
 But that is by the way. What we wish to emphasize 
 is that the object of Christianity is to put men in 
 - possession not of the things of this world, but of the 
 things of Heaven; and to lead them to their final 
 end, eternal union with God. Seeing that the object 
 of Humanitarianism is to turn men from their final 
 end to this world as an end in itself, it is clear that you 
 cannot be a Humanitarian and a Christian at the same 
 time. And the real genuine full-fledged Humani- 
 tarilan recognises this. He knows that Christianity 
 stands for something quite different from what he 
 stands for. The real Humanitarian is a positivist. 
 He tells you frankly that we must confine ourselves to 
 the positive facts of physical science. We must rid 
 ourselves of all supernatural religion. Physical 
 science cannot discover God. We must not worry as 
 to whether there is a God or not. God does not 
 matter. Leave God alone. Leave Eternity alone. 
 Leave the next world alone. Even if there is a next 
 
THE HUMANITARIAN APPEAL We 
 
 world it does not concern us. This is the world that 
 matters. Heavenisadream. This world is a fact. 
 We must therefore confine our attention to 7. 
 
 We have given, then, a rough sketch of the aims and 
 _end in view of the Humanitarian movement. Men 
 by their own efforts are to establish the Kingdom of 
 Man on earth, the reign of universal happiness. Man 
 is to be his own saviour. The Saviour of men is to 
 be ousted from the position He has held for nigh 
 upon two thousand years. The Kingdom of Man is 
 to take the place of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Now we admit that at first glance the Humani- 
 tarian Utopia appears rather attractive. From a 
 worldly standpoint it would be wonderful if all men 
 could be scientifically trained without bothering 
 about religion ; trained to live for one another and 
 to love one another to such an extent that all selfish- 
 ness would vanish. It would be a glorious thing if 
 the petty self-interests of individuals and nations 
 could sink into an abyss of shame before the great 
 ideals, of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth. In the 
 Humanitarian scheme men would be scientifically 
 educated in the pursuit of those ideals. The ‘‘ Highest 
 Good ” of Humanity would be held like a flaming 
 torch of glory before the eyes of every man, woman 
 and child. Against suffering and pain and all the 
 apparent brutalities of Nature, man, trained to the 
 finger-tips, would wage a ceaseless warfare. All that 
 hurt the individual or harmed society would be ruth- 
 
8 THE HUMANITARIAN APPEAL 
 
 lessly cut down by an army of Eugenists. No longer 
 would men weep and whine beneath the Cross of 
 Christ. Christianity has taught men to accept suffer- 
 ing. They shall now be taught to resist it and con- 
 quer. No longer shall men be martyred for the Faith 
 of Christ, for Faith shall be no more. For nigh upon 
 two thousand years men have been enslaved by the 
 Christian superstition. Humanity’s childhood was 
 held in bondage by priest and Pope. They told it 
 fairy-tales. But Humanity is growing up—thinking 
 for itself. It has reached the age of reason. The 
 priests must know their day is done. Men must 
 learn the truth. What good is God, Who hides His 
 face in silence? Look at the world! Look at its 
 wars! Look at its cruelties! Look at its disease 
 and pain! What does the God of the Christians 
 care? Is He all-powerful? Then what has He 
 done? The wailing of Humanity has reached the 
 vaults of Heaven and echoed back unheard. No, 
 Humanity is now awaking fromitsdream. No longer 
 shall it trust in God, but trust in Man it shall. And 
 Man shall win where God has failed. This world of 
 men shall set the world aright. No God shall inter- 
 fere. Science shall teach all men to know themselves, 
 to know their powers, to know how wonderful they 
 are. Men shall create a new God in their own image 
 and likeness. Humanity shall be their God! 
 That is the Humanitarian appeal. 
 
CHAPTER Ii 
 THE HUMANITARIAN HOAX 
 
 ROM a worldly standpoint the Humanitarian 
 appeal is very seductive. Many are listening 
 to it who have become indifferent to Christian- 
 
 ity. It is intruding itself whenever and wherever it 
 can find expression: in the press, in novels, in 
 “Higher Thought,” in Christian Science, in pseudo- 
 Science, in pseudo-psychology, in pseudo-Eugenics, 
 and in pseudo-Christianity. Many are yielding to 
 its seductions. Many are wavering ; for many must 
 pause on the brink and shiver who realise what 
 accepting the full Humanitarian creed involves. It 
 involves a complete burning of boats. It means 
 deliberately disowning any responsibility to a Per- 
 sonal God and, instead, owning yourself responsible 
 solely to your fellow-men. It means putting Man 
 in place of God. It is ultimately that deliberate 
 defiance of God so clearly portrayed in a recent 
 Humanitarian work called Light. It is the supreme 
 revolt of the rational creature against His Creator. 
 It is transferring to Man what is due to God. It is 
 idolatry. And let no man be deluded because the 
 
Io THE HUMANITARIAN HOAX 
 
 exponents of Humanitarianism so often couch their 
 theme in such moderate language and make their 
 appeal in so reasonable a manner. The end to be 
 attained is exactly the same whether urged in the 
 quiet tones of a Morison or in the shrill blasphemies 
 of Light. 
 
 Before exposing the falsity of the Humanitarian 
 arguments, we would like to suggest the following 
 questions :—What would Humanity be like in a 
 Godless Utopia ? Would men really find Humanity 
 worth worshipping, a Humanity that had turned 
 away from all hopes and aspirations outside itself; 
 a Humanity supposedly entrapped by some blind 
 force in this fragment of the universe, chained to this 
 earth—an earth once called the vale of tears and 
 yet the floor of Heaven, but now become a dungeon- 
 cell? Would men really attempt to live the moral 
 life which, as Humanitarians admit, is necessary for 
 happiness ? Would they really strive for an abstract 
 idea of the ‘‘ Highest Good ” without a belief in God, 
 with no eternity ahead ? Even if this were possible, 
 even if all that is inimical to social welfare were re- 
 moved, even if every man had all this world could 
 give, would happiness be then attained? Would 
 Humanity be happy in its own homage and service ? 
 Could it bring forth from its own womb the happiness 
 for which men crave ? If not, then men would turn 
 and rend their God ! 
 
 We venture to suggest that Humanitarianism will 
 
THE HUMANITARIAN HOAX II 
 
 lead men into a stupendous hoax ; for its imaginary 
 Utopia is based, all unconsciously perhaps, on the 
 negative conditions of happiness, not on its positive 
 materials. Happiness is not necessarily attained 
 when all that is not consistent with it is removed. 
 These will-o’-the-wispers have yet to discover what 
 happiness is in itself. They ignore the claim of all 
 the millions of Christians, from the time of Christ and 
 onwards to the present day, that happiness is within 
 and not without. The unvarying spiritual experience 
 of two thousand years has taught a vast body of men 
 that real happiness can only come from the union of 
 the soul with God, that it does not depend on outward 
 circumstances. Their consentient and consistent 
 witness to this experience is a simple historical fact. 
 The Humanitarians sneer at Christianity as a myth ; 
 but the “ myth” has actually produced what they 
 have yet to find, and what in their way, according to 
 all the past experience of men, they never will find. 
 What kind of happiness would any rational being find 
 in working solely for a Humanity doomed to extinc- 
 tion? For the extinction of human life on earth is 
 scientifically a matter of time. Of what value would 
 be all the moral efforts of all the individuals in the 
 world, if the fruits of all those efforts were fated to 
 fade like a shadowy pageant, leaving no trace behind ? 
 
 We venture to suggest that the last state of Hu- 
 manity, its life stripped of all abiding value, would be 
 worse than the first; a state of dull despair. Its 
 
12 THE HUMANITARIAN HOAX 
 
 final condition might well be that predicted in the 
 Dunctad of Pope: 
 
 “‘ Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, 
 And unawares Morality expires. 
 Nor public flame, nor private dares to shine} 
 Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine ! 
 Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos, is restor‘d ; 
 Light dies before thy uncreating word : 
 Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall ; 
 And universal darkness buries all.” 
 
CHAPTER IIIT 
 THE DETHRONEMENT OF REASON 
 
 HE introduction of this chapter is necessary 
 
 _iIn order that we may understand what under- 
 
 lies Humanitarian thought. It is the only 
 
 one in the book which concerns itself with technical 
 
 philosophy. A study of its brief contents will cer- 
 
 tainly do no harm, and may even be of profit to those 
 
 who enjoy the exercise of reason. Those who do not 
 would be wiser to pass on to Chapter IV. 
 
 We have already shown how the advocates of Hu- 
 manitarianism rest their doctrines on the basis of 
 Positivism. It is our purpose here to undermine that 
 basis by exposing the falsity of the Positivist way of 
 thinking. We shall set forth the basic doctrines of 
 Positivism as briefly as possible and, to save repeti- 
 tion, deal with them one by one as we present them. 
 We do not intend to give the philosophical arguments 
 for the existence of God, or for the existence and 
 immortality of the soul. These can be studied in the 
 innumerable works of Catholic philosophers. We 
 intend to expose Positivistic Humanitarianism merely 
 to the extent of exhibiting the folly of those who put 
 their trust in it. 
 
14 THE DETHRONEMENT OF REASON 
 
 in the first place Positivism is an attempt to confine 
 the human mind exclusively to the positive facts of 
 physical science: to the truths of mathematics, 
 astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and sociology, 
 and this to the exclusion of metaphysics and theo- 
 logy. Only facts which are accessible to observation 
 by the senses are the object and criterion of know- 
 ledge. The knowable is thus identified with the 
 sensible. Since God is not among the positive facts 
 of physical science, the enquiry into His existence or 
 non-existence is useless and irrelevant to mankind. 
 In practice the existence of God is to be ignored as 
 unknowable. | 
 
 And Positivists are quite consistent in ignoring 
 God, seeing that for them only the sensible is the 
 object of knowledge. If their philosophy is true, 
 then it is a waste of breath to argue about the exis- 
 tence of God as the First Cause of all things. To 
 them a “ cause ’’ is merely that which is perceived by 
 our senses as regularly preceding anything, not, as 
 we should teach, ‘‘ that which makes a thing to be 
 what it is,” i.e., that which confers being. Positi- 
 vism maintains that, since the senses cannot perceive 
 the notion of causality, causality is a mere word, 
 nothing more. Hence the road to all arguments for 
 the existence of a First Cause is blocked at the en- 
 trance. It is, therefore, that very dogmatic asser- 
 tion that we can only know in one way, by way of 
 the senses, that first needs our attention. 
 
THE DETHRONEMENT OF REASON 15 
 
 Do we know by the senses alone? Sensible ex- 
 perience undoubtedly supplies us with the primary 
 material of all our knowledge. But after receiving 
 this primary material what do we do with it? Are 
 we content with so many sensations and nothing 
 more ? A mere accumulation of sensible experiences ? 
 A mere picture-gallery of images? No, most cer- 
 tainly not. On examination we find that we make 
 use of this empirically acquired material. We ab- 
 stract ideas from the concrete. And we disengage 
 these ideas from their material setting. These ab- 
 stract ideas are quite distinct and quite different 
 from pictures formed in the imagination. For in- 
 stance, I could not ask my grocer for a piece of fresh 
 bacon, unless I had an abstract idea of freshness 
 which is distinct from all the images of all the pieces. 
 of bacon I have ever seen. It is obvious, too, that 
 our senses have not the power to form these abstract 
 ideas. Our senses can only perceive the sensible 
 qualities of a thing. This process of abstraction is 
 the work of the mind, not of the senses. How do we 
 know that ? Because every object perceived by the 
 senses is a material thing determined by certain par- 
 ticularising notes, e.g., so much quantity, such and 
 such a quality. Weare conscious, however, of having 
 cognitions other than these ;} cognitions in which the 
 object is stripped of these particularising notes, i.e., 
 abstract ideas. There must be, then, a faculty, 
 distinct from the faculty of sense, which does this 
 
16 THE DETHRONEMENT OF REASON 
 
 work of stripping or abstracting. We call this faculty 
 the intellect. 
 
 And it is here, we think, that Positivists of the 
 sensationalist school of thought go astray. They 
 fail to perceive that the faculty of intellect is dis- 
 tinct from the faculty of sense. Hence their further 
 failure to perceive that the intellect knows things 
 which the senses cannot know. They have, as it 
 were, shut themselves up in a box by flatly refusing 
 to admit any knowledge other than sense-knowledge. 
 They have pulled the lid down upon themselves and 
 latched it fast. That is the explanation of their error. 
 That is why the abstract ideas formed by the intellect 
 do not constitute real knowledge for them. And yet 
 it is as clear as daylight, when we look into our con- 
 sciousness, that we have abstract ideas and real 
 knowledge derived from them. Are not such ideas 
 as goodness, justice, love, realities ? Men prove that 
 they are by pursuing them. Our intellect can no 
 more escape from these ideas than the eye can 
 escape from seeing things. 
 
 The very essence then, so it seems to us, of the 
 Positivists’ error is this: 7 1s a refusal to accept the 
 dictates of conscious experience. Their whole system 
 of philosophy is thus vitiated at its very source. 
 They have cut themselves off from vast realms of 
 knowledge. The whole kingdom of inner realities 
 is closed. For the senses cannot produce abstract 
 ideas. To them the notion of the abstract is a 
 
THE DETHRONEMENT OF REASON 17 
 
 chimera. The ideas of substance or being (i.e., the 
 innermost reality of things), causality, the universal, 
 are words, no more. The particular sciences, which 
 are their forage-ground, stop short before the enquiry 
 into the fundamental problems. And, since Positi- 
 vists refuse to recognise the science which fearlessly 
 institutes that enquiry, we mean metaphysics, they 
 are limited to the shallows of knowledge. 
 Metaphysics has for its object the abstract. It is 
 the science which gazes upon the being itself of things. 
 The metaphysician can launch out into the deep, into 
 the innermost principles of nature and thought, into 
 the ultimate causes of existence, into the ultimate 
 realities. The particular sciences, such as physics, 
 mathematics, chemistry, biology, all add their quota 
 to thought and knowledge, but it is left to meta- 
 physics to make a synthesis of the knowledge ac- 
 quired. We would like here to note a curious fact. 
 Positivists, although they affirm the metaphysical 
 world unknowable, yet argue about it. How could 
 they do even that much without representing it to 
 themselves first ? The Positivist thinker, who once 
 accused the writer of being guilty of a ‘‘ metaphysical 
 error,” must have had some idea of a metaphysical 
 world to be able to make the accusation. Even more, 
 surely Positivists, who proclaim the doctrines of 
 monism and evolutionism, are actually presenting a 
 metaphysic of their own! Monism stands for the 
 unity of composition in beings, evolutionism for their 
 
18 THE DETHRONEMENT OF REASON 
 
 oneness of origin. Surely wumity or oneness are 
 abstract metaphysical ideas! The plain truth is 
 that you cannot escape metaphysics. 
 
 Now, lest we become wearisome, we will broach 
 what we have been leading up to. We have seen 
 that the intellect can apprehend what the senses 
 cannot. Amongst the primary apprehensions of the 
 intellect are the notions of being, and of cause. Beingis 
 that which is, that which exists. Cause is that which 
 makes a thing to be what tt 1s, that which confers being. 
 On these two notions rests what Kant called the cos- 
 mological argument for the existence of God. The 
 intellect also perceives the close relation of cause to 
 being, when it perceives the self-evident principle of 
 causality. This principle may be expressed thus: 
 “All contingent being must have a cause.” By 
 contingent being we mean that which is capable of 
 non-existence. We will bring this philosophical 
 excursion to an end by indicating how the intellect 
 can reason out the existence of God with the aid of 
 this principle of causality. 
 
 It is manifest that things which exist in this uni- 
 verse are capable of non-existence ; for we see things 
 come into existence and pass out of it. But things 
 which are capable of non-existence do not exist of 
 necessity. There is no absolute need for them to 
 exist. I can lay my finger on one thing after another 
 and say, “‘ there is no need for this to exist.””’ And 
 yet these things do exist. Now the principle of 
 
THE DETHRONEMENT OF REASON Ig 
 
 causality tells me that things which are capable of 
 non-existence must have a cause, something which 
 confers their being. These things cannot come into 
 existence of themselves out of nothing. That would 
 be unthinkable. Therefore something must have 
 caused their existence. And that something must be 
 absolutely necessary to their existence, otherwise 
 they would not exist. In other words, the existence 
 of contingent beings cannot be explained without the 
 existence of a necessary being. And just as contin- 
 gent beings are not self-existent, so also a necessary 
 being 7s self-existent. That Necessary, Self-existent 
 Being is God. We may add two corollaries: (rz) If 
 God did not exist, then nothing would exist. (2) 
 Since things do exist, therefore God exists. 
 
 To sum up what has been said. The human mind 
 cannot be confined to the positive facts of physical 
 science, for, even when gauging the external, it 
 teaches far beyond the bounds of sense-perception. 
 Still more does it penetrate into the inner realities 
 of things. Unless self-chained like the Positivist 
 mind, it instinctively delves deep down into the meta- 
 physical world and finds—God. As we unmask 
 Positivism we find it to be but a system enslaving its 
 adherents to the superficialities of the age. To pro- 
 claim the existence of the Infinite Being unknowable 
 because undiscoverable by the microscope or by the 
 other means of physical science is mere puerility. 
 We might as well expect to discover the stars by 
 
20 THE DETHRONEMENT OF REASON 
 
 means of a cookery-book. The system which con- 
 fines knowledge to the senses is not worthy of the 
 name of philosophy. It contradicts true philosophy. 
 
 Its acceptance involves, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, intellectual suicide 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE ENTHRONEMENT OF MAN 
 
 E now come to the question of the influence 
 of Positivism. and of its relation to 
 Humanitarianism. 
 
 Why has it been so successful in moulding, 
 directly or indirectly, the minds of millions, in 
 spite of its manifest superficialities ? What is the 
 secret of its power? Ifthe Positivist way of thinking 
 (or of not thinking) were confined to the compara- 
 tively small number of its philosophical exponents, 
 it would not matter so much. We should look upon 
 these enthusiasts as so many unfortunates enclosed 
 in the box of their senses, not meriting serious atten- 
 tion. But, unhappily, vast numbers of people are, 
 all unwittingly, surrendering to the seductions of 
 these sophistries, the influence of which is largely 
 responsible for the general decay of religion which we 
 are witnessing to-day. The masses are not, of course, 
 interested in the philosophical teaching of Positivism, 
 but theyare intensely interested in the consequences 
 of that teaching. Why are the writings of Mr. H. G. 
 Wells so popular? He has a clever and absorbingly 
 interesting way of writing, it is true. But is that 
 
22 THE ENTHRONEMENT OF MAN 
 
 the only secret of his hold on the popular mind? We 
 think not. We think his power lies even more in 
 this: he is giving people what they want. That the 
 masses in England are drifting into paganism is a 
 truism. But whether they are quite comfortable in 
 conscience about doing soisa matter of doubt. They | 
 read authors such as Mr. Wells and find the road to 
 irreligion made smooth and their qualms laid low. 
 They learn that progress in human knowledge seals 
 the doom of religion and that the death of Christian- 
 ity is but a matter of time. Christianity passes like 
 all else. Humanitarianism will take its place. 
 Herein, we think, lies the secret of the influence of 
 Positivism. It offers a substitute for what it would 
 take away, Humanity as a substitute for God. And 
 it argues so glibly for that substitute. Religion is 
 now seen to be but an anthropomorphic interpreta- 
 tion of the universe, justified perhaps at the outset 
 by the necessity of securing some initial ideals for 
 mankind. Gradually, however, it has been forced 
 to make way for a scientific, objective, Positivistic 
 mode of thought which will obtain complete victory 
 in the end. Thus the religion that is left to-day is 
 but a survival from the past. This theory rests on 
 Comte’s famous “ Law of Three Stages.’’ Comte 
 maintained that there is a stage in human knowledge 
 when we give a “ theological” explanatiem of things 
 by assigning them to a supernatural agency; we 
 then give a “‘ metaphysical,”’ and finally a “‘ positive ”’ 
 
THE ENTHRONEMENT OF MAN 23 
 
 explanation, associating phenomena together accord- 
 ing tolaws. With the advance of knowledge religion 
 will take a back place and finally disappear ; it will 
 vanish like smoke in the air. God will go. 
 
 But, if God is no longer to be worshipped, some 
 object of worship must take His place; for man 
 inevitably tends to worship. Clearly that object of 
 devotion should be Man himself—the highest product 
 of Nature. Humanity-worship is a logical conse- 
 quence of the principles of Positivism, as its leading 
 exponents have so clearly recognised. A substitute 
 must be given for what is taken away. And Comte, 
 as the founder of Positivism, was not foolish but quite 
 consistent in proclaiming himself the first pontiff of 
 the religion of Humanity. It is true that some of 
 his followers, led by Emile Littré, were somewhat shy 
 of the new cult and professedly accepted Positivism 
 in its scientific aspect alone. Littré declared, how- 
 ever, that the true end of man was to work for the 
 progress of humanity by studying, loving, and enrich- 
 ing it; and surely to make devotion to the human 
 race the end of man comes very near to the worship 
 of Humanity. In the broad sense to worship 
 Humanity means to acknowledge it as the supreme 
 object of our attention and devotion. Comte’s sys- 
 tem of “sacraments’’ and ceremonies is not the 
 essential of that worship. The more orthodox 
 followers of Comte, led by Pierre Laffitte, accepted 
 the full cult of Positivism, as well as its philosophical 
 
24 THE ENTHRONEMENT OF MAN 
 
 system. Frederic Harrison, James Cotter Morison, 
 and others imbued with the ideals of Comte have 
 striven for the cause of Humanitarianism in England. 
 And they have not toiled in vain. What Harrison 
 calls ‘our faith’? and ‘‘ the Human Religion ”’ is 
 making rapid way in our midst. Morison seems to 
 see his vision realised already. He exclaims, some- 
 what prematurely, ‘‘ Thus the worship of deities has 
 passed into the ‘ Service of Man.’ Instead of Theo- 
 latry, we have Anthropolatry. The divine service 
 has become human service.”’ 
 
 The issues, then, are clear. Men are now faced by 
 the choice of two offers. Humanitarianism is the one 
 offer, Christianity is the other. By “ Christianity ” 
 we mean true Christianity—Catholicism. As a form 
 of Christianity, Protestantism scarcely counts to-day 
 in the world of thought. Its Christian doctrines are 
 watered down to the point of insipidity. At its best 
 it has but a jumble of contradictory opinions to offer. 
 Divisions have more or less nullified whatever in- 
 fluence it may have had in the past. Even the 
 reunion movement is a part-attempt to close up the 
 ranks in face of danger. Not only this, but thousands 
 are feebly surrendering to the enemy. Even now 
 Protestantism is honeycombed with Humanitarian 
 thought. Its very foundations are being sapped 
 away. But the Catholic Church stands before the 
 world undivided, unmoved, unashamed, and un- 
 afraid. Hated by her enemies and loved by her 
 
THE ENTHRONEMENT OF MAN 25 
 
 children, she compels the attention of men. Old, 
 but amazingly alive, she refuses to die. She does 
 not even wear the seal of doom upon her brow. She 
 says she cannot die. She stands there like a rock. 
 The Catholic Church is a power to be reckoned with. 
 And the Humanitarian instinctively recognises her 
 as the enemy. Mr. Wells in his Men like Gods sig- 
 nificantly chose, not a Protestant clergyman, but a 
 Catholic priest, to represent the Christian religion as 
 the enemy of his Utopia. The representation was 
 childish, but its meaning was quite clear. Mr. Wells 
 was quite right in choosing a Catholic priest. The 
 Catholic Church and Humanitarianism are deadly 
 enemies. They each stand for what the other hates. 
 One stands for the Worship of God, the other for the 
 Worship of Man. They each offer what the other 
 rejects. 
 
 One offers the Kingdom of God, the other the 
 Kingdom of Man. 
 
CHARTER UW. 
 THE HUMOURS OF UTOPIA 
 
 FE examined in a previous chapter the basis 
 on which Humanitarianism rests—the basis 
 of a false system of philosophy commonly 
 
 called Positivism. A building that rests on a rotten 
 foundation is not likely to be very reliable in its 
 upper stories. It is therefore a matter of common 
 prudence that the dazzling Utopia which crowns the 
 Humanitarian edifice should be put to the test of 
 critical examination. Will it stand the test, or will 
 it prove to be constructed of so much flimsy tinsel ? 
 The devotees of Humanity bid us go and sell all that 
 we have for the sake of this Utopia on earth offered 
 in exchange for the Kingdom of Heaven. The fool 
 will jump at the glittering bait. The wise man will 
 pause and consider. 
 
 We have seen how, in the Humanitarian scheme, 
 Christianity is to go and a new order to take its place. 
 In this new order the place of Christian moral teaching 
 is to be taken by the scientific morality of social 
 utilitarianism. Man’s worldly well-being is to be the 
 sole motive-force of all our actions and the ultimate 
 
THE HUMOURS OF UTOPIA 27 
 
 criterion of morality. Man must be scientifically 
 trained to conform his actions to the welfare of the 
 community. When he acts thus his actions are 
 morally good. Actions harmful to the community 
 are morally bad. In the Humanitarian Utopia each 
 man’s happiness is bound up in the happiness of all 
 the rest. The amelioration of humanity, therefore, 
 must be our ceaseless pursuit. We must perpetually 
 strive for social happiness. Everything injurious to 
 that happiness must be weeded out. Thus will the 
 new order be attained. Mr. Marshall Gauvin, writing 
 in The Literary Guide (January, 1924), says: 
 
 “A new ideal stands at the door of the human 
 heart. It is the ideal of a salvation that can be 
 realised in this world. This world, and not an- 
 other, is man’s home. This life, and not another, 
 is man’s supreme concern. . . . The heaven that is 
 to be will be in this world, when humanity comes 
 to enjoy enlightened freedom, blessed with truth 
 and crowned with love.” 
 
 And Mr. Wells has drawn a vivid picture of this new 
 order realised in the Utopia of his visions. In his 
 Men like Gods he leads us into the Promised Land of 
 human desires—a wonderful world wherein all that 
 men seek is found, and all that men dream is fulfilled. 
 There has been a systematic training of the race in 
 scientific morality. The worship of God has gone. 
 The inhabitants of Utopia are freed from all “ the 
 lies of dogmatic religion and dogmatic morality.” 
 The marriage bond is a thing of the past. Free-love 
 
28 THE HUMOURS OF UTOPIA 
 
 reigns supreme. It is recognised that man is funda- 
 mentally an animal, that his appetites must be satis- 
 fied and his instincts released. These children of 
 light have taken hold, soul and body, of the life and 
 destiny of the race. By a scientific elimination of 
 almost all that is unpleasant and distressing, a maxi- 
 mum of physical ease and comfort has been secured. 
 Everything goes without a hitch. The eye and the 
 ear are at peace. Even dogs have given up barking. 
 Whether this has been accomplished by breeding 
 non-barkers or by the tuning-up of all dogs to the 
 Utopian level, Mr. Wells does not say. There has 
 also been a great cleansing of the world from “‘ nox- 
 ious insects, from weeds and vermin and hostile 
 beasts.” Even Dr. Saleeby, the great Eugenist, 
 would be satisfied with the precautions taken against 
 disease-carriers. We read: “ The attack upon the 
 flies had involved the virtual rebuilding of a large 
 proportion of Utopian houses and a minute cleansing 
 of them all throughout the planet.”’ 
 
 And, glory be to the Goddess Eugenia, there has 
 been “‘a certain deliberate elimination of ugly, 
 malignant, narrow, stupid and gloomy types ”’ of men 
 and women. The standard of beauty required for 
 Utopia is not actually specified, but we take it that 
 the number of unsuccessful candidates has been con- 
 siderable. There are ‘‘ no really defective people in 
 Utopia.’’ Only the fittest and finest have survived. 
 Stark Apollos wander to and fro in Olympian nudity, 
 
THE HUMOURS OF UTOPIA 29 
 
 marvels of grace and physical splendour. These 
 beautiful creatures move about their Garden of Eden 
 absorbed in the task of installing the latest improve- 
 ments. Soliloquising in the person of one of his 
 characters, Mr. Wells exuberantly exclaims: ‘“‘ Life 
 marched here ; it was terrifying to think with what 
 strides. . . . And pervading it all must be the happy 
 sense that it mattered ; it went on to endless conse- 
 quences.”’ Towards what it marched, why it mat- 
 tered, and what the endless consequences were, we 
 cannot discover. Mr. Wells and his Utopians seem 
 to be equally in the dark. The future is left hazy in 
 a smoke-screen of rhetoric. In a final vision we are 
 bidden to note the Humanitarian movement even now 
 progressing in this world: “‘ the Great Revolution 
 that is afoot on earth ; that marches and will never 
 desist nor rest again until old Earth is one city and 
 Utopia set up therein.’”’ The day is coming when 
 men will “ laugh at the things they had feared, and 
 brush aside the impostures that had overawed 
 them ’’; when the “Sons of Earth . . . would go 
 proudly about their conquered planet and lift their 
 daring to the stars.” 
 
 That is, then, a vision of the new order which is to 
 replace the Christian order. And it represents very 
 adequately the imagined fulfilment of Humanitarian 
 hopes. We do not mean to be profane, but we must 
 say that Mr. Wells’ solemn description of Utopia 
 strikes us as irresistibly funny. We are not surprised 
 
30 THE HUMOURS OF UTOPIA 
 
 that one of the Worldlings who visited Utopia was 
 found to be several inches longer on his return to 
 Earth, evidently the result of swallowing such a tall 
 story. These Gods and Goddesses, strutting about 
 their Wonderland, doing their tremendous work of 
 making it more and more comfortable and pleasant 
 to live in, are really very funny people. They take 
 themselves and their solemn task so seriously. But 
 why? Whatisitallfor? Whyallthisfuss? Why 
 is everybody being made so comfortable and fit and 
 beautiful ? For what purpose is this world of men 
 being made so perfect ? If I go into an engine-shed 
 and see an engine being polished up and oiled, the 
 nuts being tightened, defective parts repaired, weak 
 bearings replaced, and the whole mechanism put in 
 perfect working order, I immediately understand why 
 itis being done. The engine is going to do a journey 
 to some definite place. The mechanics who are doing 
 the job do not strike me as being funny. They know 
 why they are doingit. But these wonderful Utopians 
 do not know why they are making so much ado about 
 their world and working it up to such a pitch of 
 perfection. A Humanitarian dare not answer: 
 “They are doing it for themselves.’ He would 
 answer: “ They are doing it for the next generation.”’ 
 But that is what the last generation said, and that is 
 what the next generation will say, and the genera- 
 tion after that. I want to know the final purpose of 
 it all, the final end. To work without a real goal in 
 
THE HUMOURS OF UTOPIA 31 
 
 view is folly. What good can all this hubbub serve 
 when each generation knows that it, and each suc- 
 ceeding generation in turn, will become extinct ? 
 Moreover, these Utopians not only do not know 
 where their world of Humanity is going, but they 
 don’t know why it is going. The only thing they do 
 know is that they and their planet may stop going. 
 But what matter as long as there is “ progress ”’ ? 
 Onwards! Onwards! Onwards! 
 
 And Mr. Wells invites us, nay, storms at us, to 
 emulate these mad ’bus-drivers careering wildly 
 ahead, why and whither they know not! It is diffi- 
 cult to believe that the future generations of the 
 human race will ever sink to such depths of imbecility. 
 I sincerely hope these ‘‘ Men like Gods ”’ will be like 
 “gods.” I sincerely hope they will be myths. If 
 we refuse to be carried away by the rhetoric of Mr. 
 Wells and probe beneath the surface of his visionary 
 Utopia, we shall perceive that its realisation is su- 
 premely unlikely. Whether Humanitarians, carry- 
 ing all before them, could achieve another kind of 
 Utopia, very different from that of their aspirations, 
 is another question. If so, it would prove no Eden 
 of happiness, but an ash-heap of dead hopes and dis- 
 illusionments. But that is by the way. In criticis- 
 ing so ruthlessly this ideal world of Mr. Wells and 
 other Humanitarians we have incurred the onus of 
 justifying that criticism. Why do we consider the 
 attainment of this de-Christianised order of perfection. 
 
32 THE HUMOURS OF UTOPIA 
 
 so unlikely? Can it be shown that the whole 
 theory of social utilitarianism is fallacious through 
 and through, from beginning to end; that, as Posi- 
 tivism is essentially a refusal to face the facts of con- 
 scious experience, so also is Humanitarianism essen- 
 tially a refusal to face the facts of life ? 
 
 We shall proceed forthwith to the task which we 
 undertook in writing this book—the highly con- 
 genial task of exploding the Humanitarian Utopia. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE GOODNESS OF THE GODLESS 
 
 HE salient feature of the utilitarian scheme of 
 the Humanitarians is the general happiness 
 of mankind on earth, which they urge us to 
 
 seek as the supreme end of human life, and in which 
 is supposedly bound up the happiness of each one of 
 us. 
 
 Confronted by that appeal my mind naturally 
 responds with the query: ‘‘ What 7s this general 
 happiness of mankind for which I am asked to 
 strive?’ If I am to make the happiness of others 
 the directing force of my conduct in life as well as the 
 principle of my own happiness, I must first know in 
 what the happiness of others consists. Social happi- 
 ness is obviously the happiness of so many indivi- 
 duals. I find on examination that happiness is 
 essentially relative to the individual person and 
 varies in each case. The happiness of one person is 
 not the happiness of another. Thus at the offset 
 I am faced by the difficulty of not knowing at what 
 Iam aiming. What sort of happiness shall I secure 
 for others? And what sort of happiness will others 
 
34 THE GOODNESS OF THE GODLESS 
 
 secure for me? We cannot all make each other 
 happy in our own way. Each man can, or can try 
 to, make himself happy in his own way. That is all. 
 Humanitarians, then, are asking us to aim at a collec- 
 tive happiness for men before they can tell us in what 
 it consists. And if each man’s happiness is really 
 bound up in the happiness of all the rest, in the 
 knowledge of the happiness of others, then, at its 
 best, this Utopian happiness would mean: “I am 
 happy because you are happy that I am happy.” 
 Could any rational being mistake such a transparent 
 absurdity for the happiness of Humanity ? 
 
 At this juncture the enthusiasts of the vogue we 
 are considering would probably urge that the highest 
 forms of human happiness can be produced by the 
 faithful pursuit of truth, kindness, love, and, above 
 all, of pure altruism, without any aid from religion. 
 But surely to disconnect these ideals from religion is 
 to rob them of all reality. Human nature is ever 
 demanding an answer to the question: “‘ Why should 
 I be good? Why should I be true? Why should 
 I love?”’ To reply merely: ‘“‘ For the sake of 
 Humanity ”’ is to prompt a further query: ‘‘ Why 
 for the sake of Humanity ?”’ Under what obligation 
 am I to be good for the sake of Humanity ? What 
 absolute or obligatory value can Humanity give to 
 
 “morality isolated from religion? Humanitarians — 
 
 proclaim to me a moral imperative which, put to the 
 test, reduces itself to an empty vaunt. From whom 
 
THE GOODNESS OF THE GODLESS 35 
 
 would they, any more than our modern rationalists 
 and materialists, obtain authority to make and 
 execute moral laws in the Godless world of their 
 dreams—moral laws without which all organised 
 society would be reduced to chaos? They deny any 
 authority derived from God. Do they expect to 
 derive moral authority from themselves ? 
 
 These irreligionists are powerless to enforce what 
 they perceive to be necessary. Their ‘ morality,” 
 moreover, being confined within the narrow limita- 
 tions of space and time, is stripped of all permanent 
 value ; for its end is foreseen with the death of the 
 human race on earth. Humanitarians cannot even 
 offer me a serious inducement to lead a moral life. 
 
 And these very people are to-day setting forth 
 with a great beating of drums to imbue the world 
 with their notion of “ morality ”’ for the ousting of 
 Christian moral teaching. Mr. F. J. Gould, writing 
 in The Literary Guide (February, 1924), declares: 
 “Humanist forces, gradually accumulating and co- 
 operating all over the world, will evolve an Inter- 
 national of Education, with a front as resolute, with 
 banners as proud, with resources as solid, as the 
 International of the Cross;...” They may succeed 
 in “educating”’ the unthinking, but a very low 
 intellectual level must be reached before the majority 
 of men are gulled into accepting ‘‘ moral laws ”’ which 
 carry with them no sanction or obligation. The 
 folly of looking for morality without religion has been 
 
36 THE GOODNESS OF THE GODLESS 
 
 ably exposed by Professor Otto Pfleiderer, a non- 
 Catholic thinker of great weight. We will quote a 
 short passage taken from his Evolution and Theology 
 and Other Essays (Essay IX) : 
 
 ‘““ Morality stands or falls with the absolute obli- 
 gatoriness of the consciousness of duty, which 
 renders the general laws and purposes of society 
 binding on the individual, and with the certainty 
 that the ethical end can be attained in the world. 
 Some basis or sanction for the unconditional au- 
 thority of duty must therefore be found, and this 
 cannot be discovered in the will of the individual, or 
 in that of anumber of individuals. Still less can it 
 be derived from that which is lower in the scale of 
 existence than man, namely nature. Natural laws. 
 and impulses by no means correspond exactly with 
 those of morality, and indeed must be subordinated 
 to the latter, and given a moral character from 
 them. Hence the moral sanction must have a 
 transcendental ground ; it must have as its basis 
 some absolute super-subjective rational will, ie., 
 God.” 
 
 The argument may be reduced to this : Why should 
 I be responsible to my fellow-men for my moral 
 actions? Something outside and above a number 
 of individuals, something to which I perceive myself 
 responsible, must demand my allegiance. I have 
 no moral responsibility except to God. No God, no 
 moral responsibility. 
 
 And yet, in spite of this fact, which, to those who 
 believe in God, is as plain as the sun in the heavens, 
 Humanitarians rely for the attainment of their Utopia 
 
THE GOODNESS OF THE GODLESS 37 
 
 on heroic unselfishness in men, arising from an intense 
 conviction of moral responsibility to their fellows, 
 without any rational basis for such a conviction. 
 Further, even if what Mr. G. A. Smith, in his Little 
 Essays in Religion, calls the “ religion of Humanism 
 that is gradually but surely superseding the religions 
 of supernaturalism ”’ were to be so strongly impressed 
 upon men that theoretically they accepted it, would 
 the appeal to Humanity present. a strong enough 
 motive for heroic unselfishness in actual life ? Would 
 the appeal be strong enough to repress in men all 
 those desires which run counter to the worldly good 
 of mankind? Take the case of adultery. Adultery 
 is undoubtedly a bad thing for social life. It is an 
 abominably selfish kind of crime. How would the 
 Humanitarian appeal affect an adulterer in real life ? 
 I will imagine, for argument’s sake, that I am a 
 Humanitarian. I come across a man running off with 
 someone else’s wife. He and the lady are on the 
 point of stepping into a first-class carriage at Padding- 
 ton Station. I grasp the situation. I advance, 
 raise my hat, and address the gentleman as follows: 
 “Sir, adultery undoubtedly causes much confusion 
 in family life and society. If you give vent to your 
 desire for this lady, grievous harm to posterity may 
 result. You are running counter to the good of man- 
 kind in embarking on this course of action. I there- 
 fore appeal to you in the name of Humanity to 
 desist.”” How would the gentleman reply? I am 
 
38 THE GOODNESS OF THE GODLESS 
 
 strongly of the opinion that the only response to my 
 appeal would be a forcible slamming of the carriage- 
 door and, possibly, a generous Aeneas of adjec- 
 tives to Humanity. 
 
 In real life the appeal to Humanity without God 
 could only have successful results if it openly took the 
 form of an appeal to self-interest. A mere vague 
 appeal to a fanciful Utopia of happiness, to be some- 
 how attained at some time in the future, if men will 
 conform their lives to an even vaguer standard of 
 pseudo-morality, can carry no force with it. Man, 
 prone to evil, needs a powerful deterrent, not milk- 
 and-water sentiment. The appeal to “pure al- 
 truism ”’ is more futile still, as we shall prove later. 
 
 We see, then, that Humanitarianism can neither 
 propose a satisfactory deterrent from evil nor offer 
 a serious inducement to good. Until it can, Utopia 
 may wait. Religion, on the contrary, offers me a 
 solid rational basis for morality. Religion tells me 
 why I should avoid evil and why I should do good. 
 Religion tells me that in God alone can I find the 
 principle of moral obligation: that God is the su- 
 preme legislator of the moral order. God is my 
 Creator. J am His subject. He has absolute rights 
 over me. God is my First Beginning and my Su- 
 preme End. I owe everything to Him, the homage 
 of soul and body. From Him I receive my being, my 
 faculties, my activity ; hence I must direct to Him 
 all my aspirations and devote to Him my whole moral 
 
THE GOODNESS OF THE GODLESS 39 
 
 life in complete submission to His Will. The realisa- 
 tion of the happiness which I necessarily pursue 
 demands the employment of my entire nature in His 
 service. If I disobey His moral laws, I miss my final 
 end. If I obey them, I win Eternal Life and ever- 
 lasting happiness. Religion thus gives my moral 
 actions an absolute and eternal value. Humani- 
 tarianism gives them no value at all. 
 
 Religion treats me as a rational being. Humani- 
 tarianism treats me as an unthinking dupe. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE 
 
 the Humanitarian appeal to mankind could 
 
 never carry with it sufficient conviction 
 either to deter men from evil or induce them to lead 
 the moral lives so essential to the establishment of a 
 worldly Utopia. And now, in order to drive home the 
 folly of those who are allowing themselves to be 
 victimised by the loose-thinking prevalent to-day, 
 we shall investigate the doctrine of zrreligious altruism 
 so fondly cherished by these devotees of Man. 
 
 This doctrine inculcates sacrifice of self for the in- 
 terests of others, without any religious incentive for 
 the same. We are assured that there is a natural 
 impulse in man towards self-sacrifice. True; but 
 observation proves that this impulse accounts for 
 very few acts of a self-sacrificing nature, and those 
 too of a special class. In the vast majority of cases, 
 when men sacrifice themselves in the interests of 
 others, they do it for an ideal, or for a religious motive, / 
 or under the influence of a Christian environment. 
 And therefore, human nature left to itself, as it 
 
 W. have given the reasons for our belief that 
 
ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE AI 
 
 actually is in the Humanitarian scheme, would be 
 bereft of almost all the conditions requisite for pro- 
 ducing self-sacrifice. Ideals would ebb away. The 
 religious motive would be there no longer. As for 
 Christian environment, we need not reckon with its 
 influence as a stimulus to altruism, because in the 
 Godless system under discussion, Christianity would 
 be relegated to the realms of outer darkness. We 
 have to imagine a condition of things in which the 
 thoughts of men are not even coloured by religion ; 
 that blissful state around which the supporters of 
 the Literary Guide form an imaginary circle and dance 
 for joy. Probably the majority of those, however, 
 who to-day profess the Humanitarian creed, are still 
 under the influence of emotions which have borrowed 
 their glow from some religious association or other. 
 All unconsciously they are pursuing religious ideals. 
 A small minority, it is true, may be gifted with a 
 temperamental capacity for self-sacrifice. But it is 
 with the mass of men we are concerned, and with 
 whom also the Humanitarians are concerned. 
 
 The masses, robbed of religion and religious in- 
 fluence, would tend to selfishness, not self-sacrifice, 
 however urgently it were pressed upon them that the 
 road to general happiness must be paved with the 
 latter virtue. If I were to choose any twelve men 
 and, conceivably, deprive them of all religion and all 
 religious influence, I am morally certain that from 
 that moment worldly self-interest and not self- 
 
42 ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE 
 
 sacrifice would dominate their actions, in spite of 
 every Humanitarian argument I were to put before 
 them. To quote cases of noble self-sacrifice amongst 
 the heathen is valueless, because the heathen are not 
 deprived of all religion. On the contrary the natural 
 law of God is written in their hearts. Those of them 
 who do live up to ideals are the very ones who are 
 observing the natural law, and therefore living with 
 a certain divine light in their souls. 
 
 On what grounds, then, do we believe that, nor- 
 mally, self-sacrifice is very difficult of accomplishment 
 without the stimulus of the religious motive? To 
 sacrifice himself for the sake of others, a man has to 
 enjoy the happiness of others more than his own. 
 He has to be capable of vicarious happiness. Is this 
 possible? Yes, when, under certain conditions, 
 what is gained for others far exceeds in value what is 
 lost by self. Why does a man give his life for another 
 in a shipwreck ? Because the life of the other man 
 becomes invested with an immense value compared 
 with which the saver’s own life seems to matter 
 little. At the moment under the stress of heroic 
 impulses, he actually prefers the happiness of the 
 other man to his own. In a word, under abnormal 
 conditions, men are capable of acts of heroic self- 
 sacrifice. But, under normal conditions, men, left 
 to themselves, are not capable of acting in this heroic 
 manner ; and still less of continually sacrificing them- 
 selves. Modern commercial and business life afford 
 
ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE 43 
 
 ample proof for this. Moreover, in cases like that 
 mentioned, the act of heroism may be due to the man 
 acting on an ideal, which, though he may not know 
 it, is implanted in his heart by his Creator. 
 
 In ordinary hum-drum life it will be found that the 
 less religious men are, the more selfish; the more 
 truly religious men are, the more self-sacrificing. The 
 life of continuous self-effacement is the normal thing 
 within the Religious Orders of the Catholic Church. 
 That is why it is possible for thirty men or thirty 
 women to live together in peace. The same number 
 of irreligious men or women cooped together for life 
 would probably be squabbling, if not scratching, at 
 the end of the first week. Outside the Religious 
 Orders self-effacement is found only among the few. 
 In the world, as a general rule, men take a back place 
 in the interests of others or push for their own worldly 
 happiness just in so far as they are more or less reli- 
 gious. Intense unselfishness always attracts atten- 
 tion, thus proving its rarity. The common thing 
 escapes notice. Selfishness is a common thing. Only 
 two men in ten give up their corner-seats in a railway 
 carriage from sheer unselfishness. Five out of ten 
 would do it from shame. Nine out of ten if the lady 
 were attractive. The two do it from a religious 
 motive—for the love of God. They may also do it 
 because of an ideal, i.e., because, unconsciously, they 
 are acting Godwards. The five might not doit at all, 
 if they could decently avoid the shame. The nine do 
 
ae ernie 
 
 44 ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE 
 
 it to obtain the lady’s favour, i.e., from a selfish 
 motive. That is, roughly, what happens in all the 
 affairs of ordinary everyday life. Take away religion, 
 and you would have no genuine self-sacrifice left ; 
 for ideals would vanish rapidly as well. 
 
 Do Humanitarians expect to change human nature 
 radically ? Search their system from top to bottom, 
 from end to end, and you will find in it nothing which 
 could change a selfish man into an unselfish one. The 
 futility of their appeal even to keep a man from evil 
 has already been exposed. Much less will that appeal 
 induce men to lead the lives of “ pure altruism” 
 needed for the very first stages of the journey to the 
 Promised Land. 
 
 Driving pigs to market becomes child’s-play befor 
 the task of driving Humanity to Utopia. You can 
 compel the pigs to reach the market-place, but you 
 cannot compel men to attain ideals. You cannot 
 compel them into unselfishness. Morison, apparently 
 intending to suggest that somehow or other unselfish- 
 ness can be compelled, pictures the selfish man, who 
 refuses to sacrifice himself for Humanity, arraigned 
 before an imaginary tribunal of idealists. From the 
 lofty heights of pure altruism they address him in 
 terms of withering scorn: ‘‘ From you, sir, we expect 
 nothing ; but you may expect that your shameless 
 confession of selfishness will not go unpunished.” 
 That is a typical instance of loose-thinking. How 
 can the man be punished? Given a caning ? 
 
ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE 45 
 
 ‘Hardly. Social ostracism? Impossible; for then 
 the majority of men would have to suffer the same 
 fate. A majority ostracised by a minority would be 
 too ludicrous. Moreover, why should the poor man 
 
 be punished at all on Humanitarian principles? To | 
 
 Morison and the like-minded all virtues and vices are — 
 
 but inherited instincts: ‘‘ Their presence or absence 
 in the individual is no merit or fault of his. Nothing 
 
 is more certain than that no one makes his own _ 
 
 character. That is done for him by his parents and 
 ancestors.’ If these premisses were true, why should 
 the selfish man even be ashamed? He cannot be 
 blamed for what is not his fault. Why be annoyed 
 with him? The same petulancy is noticeable in Mr. 
 Wells when inveighing against such traits in human 
 nature as he deems inimical to the advance of his 
 schemes. It is perhaps a subconscious impatience of 
 the impotency of his principles to compel men to 
 sacrifice themselves for the sake of Humanity. The 
 painful truth will, sooner or later, force itself on the 
 Humanitarian mind that the self-sacrificing tendency 
 is so rarely found without religion that, rather than 
 build upon a negligible quantity, it would be almost 
 wiser to pigeon-hole it as an unknown quality. 
 
 We see, then, what this doctrine of irreligious 
 altruism is worth. Its propagators are not merely 
 counting their chickens before they are hatched, 
 but counting without the eggs. 
 
 And here we have a bone to pick. Morison speaks 
 
 ee 
 
46 ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE 
 
 of ‘‘ the love and sacrifice even now to be found in 
 the nobler hearts,’’ of acts done for others with no 
 “thought tending to self-advantage’”’ or reward. 
 Now why should he refer to acts of “love’’ and 
 “sacrifice ’’ as if they were nobler than selfishness 
 and greed, seeing that, in his view, men have no free- 
 will? The acts of beings, who are no more than 
 animated automatic machines, are neither virtuous 
 nor vicious. I might as well extol ‘ the love and 
 sacrifice’ of the penny-in-the-slot machine which 
 supplies me a piece of chocolate with no “ thought 
 tending to self-advantage.”’ 
 
 Further, Morison relies on evolution to produce in 
 the dim future a race of pure altruists. We must 
 confess our complete failure to perceive how Humani- 
 tarianism can ensure the future generations inheriting 
 the virtues of love and self-sacrifice from their an- 
 cestors. The ancestors will need a little guidance in 
 the matter themselves. We are also left utterly in 
 the dark concerning the means by which mankind is 
 to be scientifically trained in the cultivation of these 
 qualities. The Catholic Church has been training 
 men successfully in acts of love and sacrifice on behalf 
 of others for two thousand years—witness her Reli- 
 gious Orders ; but she has succeeded because she has 
 taught them to love others for the love of God. Will 
 Humanitarians succeed with no intelligible motive to 
 offer for such acts? But stay! There is such a 
 thing as giving up in order to gain. The motive of 
 
ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE 47 
 
 gain is intelligible. A sincere materialist once wrote : 
 4 . when we strive to make the world a better 
 place to live in, it is really that we ourselves may have 
 a larger measure of happiness.”” There may be a 
 race of “‘ pure altruists”’ yet. 
 
 Now it is sometimes suggested that it is Christians 
 who are selfish ; that, after all, they are only seeking 
 their own eternal happiness ; they are good only for 
 the sake of the reward they hope to gain. Those who 
 challenge Christianity on this score think they have 
 revealed the real motive of Christian goodness. On 
 the contrary they have revealed their own ignorance. 
 What is the aim and object of all our endeavour ? 
 Is it our own happiness ?. Our own self-satisfaction ? 
 Is that all the Catholic Church can hold before us ? 
 Have all her Saints and Martyrs, all her devout 
 millions, lived and died solely for themselves ? Does 
 the whole Christian system, when tested, shrivel into 
 a society of pure egoists ? A very elementary know- 
 ledge of Catholic teaching would suffice to show that 
 the object of our efforts is not our own selfish happi- 
 ness. Our object is God. Why are we good? For 
 the sake of God. All our actions, as Christians, tend 
 towards God, our supreme end, our Sovereign Good. 
 We love God, not for ourselves, but for Himself; not 
 for our own reward, but for His Glory. This truth 
 is hymned by old and young, lisped from the lips of 
 children : 
 
48 ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE 
 
 “My God, I love Thee, not because 
 I hope for Heaven thereby, 
 
 Not with the hope of gaining aught ; 
 Not seeking a reward ; © 
 
 Solely because Thou art my God, 
 And my Eternal King.”’ 
 
 The end of Christianity is to love, not to 5 eal 
 Eternal happiness is the consequence of attaining God, 
 and is desired only in its relation to Him. It is true 
 that the average Christian’s love for God undergoes 
 a progressive purification. He begins by loving God 
 for his own sake, for the sake of his own happiness. 
 He ends by loving God for God’s sake, for what He 
 is. The Christian has then become a pure altruist, 
 because a pure lover. His own interests have been 
 absorbed in the interests of God. We would ask our 
 critics, therefore, to judge us, not by our failure, but 
 by our intention, to love perfectly. Let them also 
 judge of Christianity by what it teaches, not by the 
 frailties of its followers. 
 
 There are others too, the “‘ Humanitarian Christ- 
 ians,’’ who look upon Catholics as too much absorbed 
 in the next world. Wecan but reply: “ No, you are 
 too absorbed in this.’’ These well-meaning Modernist- 
 Protestant philanthropists have half an eye on 
 Heaven, but one eye and a half on the earth. They 
 are really putting man’s life on earth before his life 
 in Heaven. They are putting man first and God 
 
 c¢ 
 
ALTRUISM, FALSE AND TRUE 49 
 
 second. As in the twilight objects are distorted, so 
 in the gloom of Modernism Man looms large and 
 God seems small. Ultimately, for those who follow 
 this path, the darkness will blot out the last rays of 
 the glory of God. It will then be all Man and no God. 
 In the Catholic Church, where men live in the full 
 blaze of Heaven’s light, they see God’s Immensity 
 and the nothingness of man. They put God first and 
 their fellow-men second ; and that is why they love 
 them better than those who put them first. To love 
 men for the love of God is better than to love them 
 for the love of themselves. It is a higher way of 
 loving them. It is loving them from a higher 
 motive. And from the only adequate motive. 
 
 In the long run men do not love others sufficiently 
 to serve them except from the love of God. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 MEN AS THEY ARE 
 
 T is a question whether, eventually, men could 
 love one another at all without the love of God. 
 Listen once more to the sapience of Professor 
 
 Pfleiderer. We quote from the same Essay IX, as 
 before : 
 
 “When love for mankind in general is no longer 
 the result of religious belief, as it is with Christians, 
 but rather a substitute for it, it is a serious question 
 whether human beings as we actually find them are 
 so amiable that we can continue to love them, and 
 devote all our energies to their service. When the’ 
 philanthropist is rewarded by bitter ingratitude and | 
 
 } 
 | 
 
 his noblest endeavours are frustrated by man’s dull- 
 
 ness and wickedness, will not his courage fail and, 
 
 his enthusiasm be quenched, if he is not inspired by 
 
 a belief in the Good which transcends this world 
 
 of appearance.”’ 
 
 That piece of wisdom is worth considering. It is 
 pathetic to see a brilliant spokesman for Humanity, 
 like Mr. Malcolm Quin, pouring out his prevailing 
 passion on paper, and all to no purpose. This fer- 
 vent writer has actually produced two large volumes 
 urging the Catholic Church to let go her hold upon the 
 
MEN AS THEY ARE 51 
 
 supernatural, and instead, placing herself at the head 
 of the Humanitarian movement, lead men onwards, 
 amidst the acclamations of the world, to the glories 
 of “the Human Republic.’”” How can she deny what 
 she has known from the beginning, that the love of 
 God must come first and the love of man will follow ? 
 It is futile to retort: ‘‘ Why then has the Catholic 
 ‘Church failed to establish the brotherhood of man ? ” 
 It is not the Catholic Church which has failed, but the 
 world. Men have failed to sacrifice themselves for 
 the love of God; to subordinate their temporal to 
 their eternal interests. They have refused to loosen 
 their hold on the glittering baubles of earth. Once 
 that grip is loosened, self-sacrifice in the interests of 
 others becomes easy. The more fondly men cling to 
 the world, the more fondly they hug its gifts to them- 
 selves, the more selfish, the more worldly they 
 become. And that is exactly what Humanitarians 
 want men to be—worldly. It is the wildest folly to 
 expect a world concentrated exclusively on itself to 
 breed unselfishness. As well expect a brothel to 
 breed purity! To urge altruism and worldliness in 
 the same breath is like urging a man to walk in two 
 opposite directions at the same time. 
 
 In addition to the external difficulties confronting 
 “pure altruism,” there is a certain factor to be 
 reckoned with, which will prove an even more formid- 
 able barrier to the efforts of those who call for self- 
 sacrifice without religion. That factor they ignore 
 
52 MEN AS THEY ARE 
 
 or deny. Itisthis. There is a persistent tendency in 
 human nature to turn to selfishness and vice. The, 
 incontrovertible facts of history testify to this painful | 
 truth. This evil inclination of the human will is as| 
 strong to-day as in the ages of the past. Were the! 
 Humanitarian Eugenists to weed out all the bach 
 
 \ 
 ‘ 
 ; 
 
 ward, unfavourable, criminal, megalo-maniacal, and 
 vice-ridden types in the world, nevertheless in the > 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ; 
 
 select remainder this tendency to selfishness and | 
 evil would still cropup. And Humanitarians have no, 
 means wherewith to counteract it. Were the most| 
 perfect civilisation conceivable achieved, it could bu 
 cleanse the surface of human life: underneath cor 
 ruption would still pursue its course. Men would be! 
 merely whited sepulchres. There is surely some-~/ 
 thing wrong with human nature. And as wrong’ 
 to-day as ever, in spite of all “‘ progressive evolution.” 
 What it is we shall subsequently explain. Human 
 nature, left to itself without religion, is strangely 
 averse to altruism. 
 
 That is manasheis. In vain will Humanitarians 
 harp to him the sweet strains of ‘‘ pure altruism.” 
 Deaf ears will be turned to the harping. But sound 
 the loud note of the world and its pleasures, and ears | 
 will be deaf no longer. Persuade men to serve, 
 Humanity for the sake of their own individual in- 
 terests, and they will understand and respond. Not 
 a single conscience among them will be bluffed by the | 
 doctrine of irreligious altruism. It rings false and | 
 
MEN AS THEY ARE 53 
 
 will deceive no one. As we read Morison and Wells, 
 it becomes more apparent in every line that this 
 appeal to man’s nobility is mere white-wash, un- 
 recognised as such by themselves, maybe. Remove 
 the white-wash, and the summons to Mankind reveals 
 itself as a summons to the individual to secure for 
 himself the maximum of worldly happiness. In the 
 case of Wells, the appeal is largely to man’s sensual 
 nature and the gratification of his passions. These 
 worshippers of Man could but turn men into wor- 
 shippers of themselves. That, and no more. Were 
 it possible for the Kingdom of Man ever to be realised, 
 it would prove to be, not what they picture it, but a 
 kingdom of diabolical selfishness, wherein men would 
 defiantly serve Humanity to secure for themselves 
 the highest possible measure of this world’s pleasures. 
 A veritable Kingdom of Hell on earth. 
 
CHAPTER TX 
 SOFT SAYINGS AND HARD FACTS 
 
 SERIES of essays destructive of the Humani- 
 
 tarian theories but unproductive of a solu- 
 
 tion of the essential problem concerned— 
 the problem of human happiness—would be of little 
 value. We shall, therefore, make it our business to 
 offer the true solution of that problem. 
 
 It is to be found in the acceptance of truth. So 
 strangely seductive is the flame of falsity to the 
 ready moths of our modern world, that only a power- 
 ful counter-attraction, if any, can lure them from 
 their danger. That counter-attraction is truth. 
 Truth is wondrously alluring to her lovers. The false 
 philosophers, false theorists, and false religionists of 
 to-day, although the enemies of truth, yet call them- 
 selves her lovers. That is why they gain a hearing. 
 In reality they love not the truth, for the truth is not 
 in them. They purr forth soft sayings for the liking 
 of a soft generation. Stern facts are not for such as 
 these. Truth comes, not softly clothed, but clad in | 
 mail. Those who would win her must face facts 
 fearlessly. It is a stern fact we now intend to 
 propound. 
 
SOFT SAYINGS AND HARD FACTS 55 
 
 We have seen that there is a persistent tendency 
 in man towards selfishness and vice, which will prove 
 a grave obstacle to the progress of Humanitarianism. 
 The fact of this tendency, though it does not actually 
 prove, at least renders agreeable to reason that re- 
 vealed truth of God which is commonly called the 
 Fall—the Fall of man into sin. This revelation dis- ~ a 
 closes that human nature is not as God originally 
 intended it to be. It has fallen. Human nature 
 created to crown the universe has fallen from its 
 majestic heights into the abyss of sin. It lies weak 
 and wounded, wallowing in the mire. The mire of 
 evil holds it, sucks it down. That revealed truth, 
 at any rate, offers a satisfactory explanation of man’s 
 peculiar tendency towards selfishness and sin. 
 
 The modern world, of course, blatantly rejects the 
 Catholic doctrine of the Fall into sin. The writer of 
 a recent article in a weekly paper informs us that 
 “The modern science of psychology has no use for 
 the doctrine of original sin, ...’ Possibly not. 
 I have no use for psycho-analysis, as practised by 
 certain quacks ; but, for all that, it exists and does 
 untold harm. Weare also assured by the enlightened 
 ones of to-day that “sin ’’ can be explained by the 
 theory of evolution; that man is evolved from the 
 monkey; “sin” is merely the relics of monkey- 
 nature, old monkey-habits breaking out. We cannot 
 help wondering why these modern lights are so des- 
 perately anxious to prove us evolved mind and body 
 
 
 
56 SOFT SAYINGS AND HARD FACTS 
 
 from the monkeys. Of course, if we are, it relieves 
 us of all responsibility for our moral conduct. We 
 can blame the monkeys for anything we do. A 
 criminal is merely a person with monkey-habits still 
 too strong. A man, for instance, induces his rich 
 aunt to make her will in his favour. He then pro- 
 ceeds to hit aunty on the head with a hammer. It 
 is unfortunate for aunty ; but, after all, it cannot be 
 helped. It is merely an old monkey-habit coming 
 out. These monkey-tricks will be evolved out of us 
 in time. We can assure these materialists that they 
 will not. 
 
 Man is not evolved from the ape. His body may 
 be: but manisnotabody. Heisarational soul and 
 body. A rational soul cannot be evolved from an 
 ape. However, we are not concerned to prove that. 
 A gratuitous assumption is sufficiently met by a 
 gratuitous denial. We should also like to point out 
 that experience of life contradicts the materialist’s 
 theory of sin being due to an animal origin. Man is 
 possessed of reason and will. And yet, in defiance of 
 right reason and with full consent of the will, men 
 act contrary to the right ends of animal nature. 
 They pervert animal nature. Witness the drunkard 
 lying helpless on the pavement. Witness the drug- 
 sodden maniac. Witness the lovers of Sodom and 
 
 Gomorrha. There are men to-day who practise un- | 
 
 natural vices of the vilest kind. They act as no 
 animals would act. They may be highly civilised, 
 
 J 
 
 | 
 
 : 
 
 | 
 
| 
 
 SOFT SAYINGS AND HARD FACTS = 57 
 
 but they are not fit to associate with pigs. This 
 capacity in man for descending below the level of the 
 ape is scarcely compatible with the theory of his 
 ascending from the same. When will these shallow 
 theorists cease from doping the masses with the 
 notion that “‘ sin ’”’ is merely the monkey coming out ? 
 Why persist in duping the credulous into the belief 
 that evolution and the veneer of civilisation will cure 
 the evil that isin the world ? As well expect to cure 
 consumption by putting brilliantine on the hair! 
 Why is the present-day world fevered with this 
 anxiety to put itself right, without the help of the 
 Almighty ? To save itself without asking God to 
 save it? For the simple reason that it refuses to 
 admit itself a fallen world in need of God’s help. And 
 so men struggle and muddle along, immersing them- 
 selves more deeply in the mire, pretending there is 
 nothing really wrong, crying “‘ progress ’’ when there 
 is no “‘ progress,’ calling for a new world which ever 
 tarries and does not come, pursuing a fantastic idea 
 of some future Utopia of happiness on earth, fooled 
 by false deceivers who may thank the intellectual 
 decadence of the age for whatever acceptance their 
 tomfooleries may win. There is no hope for the 
 world but in the acceptance of the revealed truths of 
 the Fall and Original sin ; for, strangely enough, to 
 accept them is to discover the entrance-gate to human 
 happiness. From that entrance-gate there runs a 
 royal road laid by God, wending its way from earth 
 
58 SOFT SAYINGS AND HARD FACTS 
 
 to Heaven. A way of sorrows passing through a 
 vale of tears; a way of thorns that turn to roses ; 
 a way of peace that passes understanding ; a way of 
 faith foreseeing the unseen ; a way of hope piercing 
 death’s dread portals; a way of love losing itself 
 in Love Eternal; a way of unearthly beauty illu- 
 mined by the dawn-light of eternity ; a way of happi- 
 ness undimmed by any shadow of an ending, entering 
 the Heart of the Everlasting. It is called the way 
 of grace. 
 
 But enough of that way now. We must first tell 
 of this world’s tragedy—made known to us by God 
 Himself. In the knowledge of this tragedy lies our 
 safety. Believe in the Fall and you will believe in 
 Christianity. Deny it, and you deny Christianity. 
 For if the Fallis but a myth, then the life and teaching 
 and death of Christ are meaningless, we need no 
 Saviour or salvation, the whole of the Christia 
 religion is sheer folly, Christians are a pack of fools 
 and we may as well consign Christianity to the gutter. 
 The Fall happens to be true, however. God has 
 told us so Himself. God ought to know. 
 
 Why not face it ? i 
 
CHAPTER X 
 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY 
 
 HAT happened at the Fall ? 
 To understand what it was we will look 
 at man, first before the Fall, and then after 
 it ; at man as God made him, and then at man as he 
 has made himself. And we will look, not from 
 within, but from without; from, say, an angel’s 
 point of view. 
 
 . . . One day, thousands of years ago, an angel 
 hovered in his course over a garden. It was the 
 Garden of Eden. And in the garden a man and 
 woman were walking. The angel descended into the 
 garden and looked at the man and the woman. They 
 were very beautiful. And the angel looked at the 
 animals in the garden. They were beautiful, too; 
 but not in the same way as the man and the woman. 
 And the angel saw the difference. ‘ God,” said the 
 angel, “has breathed on the man and the woman, 
 and made them living souls ; and in their souls they 
 are like God.” For the angel knew what God was 
 like. He could see God face to face. And the angel 
 perceived that their souls were pure and white, and 
 
60 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY 
 
 there was no stain of sin upon them. He knew what 
 sin was like. It was black. He had seen Satan cast 
 down to Hell all blackened with sin. And the angel 
 saw a golden radiance in the souls of the man and the 
 woman that never ceased from shining. ‘“ That,” 
 said the angel, ‘‘is God’s gift to them—sanctifying 
 grace. It is the secret of their beauty and holiness. 
 It is the secret of their friendship with God.”’ And 
 he noticed that, though they had passions, yet those 
 passions were under the control of their reason. He 
 noticed how God had enlightened their reason with 
 great knowledge. Nothing hurt or harmed the man 
 and the woman. They had power over all the animals 
 in the garden. No suffering touched them. No 
 shadow of death lay across their pathway. For they 
 ate of the Tree of Life. ‘‘ Yes,’ said the angel, 
 “they are very beautiful. There is nothing in the 
 world like them.’”’ And the angel passed out of the 
 garden and upwards, and gave glory to God. 
 
 But, in the garden below, there was another tree, 
 the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And 
 in its shadow a dark form stood. Satan was watching 
 the man and the woman. 
 
 * £ * * * KK K 
 
 One night, thousands of years later, the same angel 
 hovered in his course over a great city. He looked 
 down upon the city, and descended into it. Instead 
 of one man and one woman, there were vast multi- 
 tudes of men and women. And everywhere were 
 
THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY 61 
 
 glaring lights and places of amusement, cinemas, 
 theatres, music-halls, night-clubs. People were rush- 
 ing about feverishly in search of pleasure. Painted 
 women were bargaining with men for the price of their 
 bodies. Newspaper placards boomed the latest 
 sensations, the latest scandals, the latest divorces, 
 swindles, and robberies. 
 
 The angel passed down a side street. From out of 
 a drinking saloon came two men. They were drunk 
 and quarrelling about some woman. They lurched 
 down the street hurling filthy abuse at each other. 
 They entered a house together. Inside they grew 
 more violent. One of them drew out a knife and 
 struck at the other. Ina frenzy of hatred he stabbed 
 him again and again and cut at his throat, until the 
 other fell down dead. Then he kicked the dead body 
 and spat on it. He went out, locked the door, and 
 staggered away. 
 
 The angel came to a large building. It was a 
 chemical-works. Inside one of the rooms a man was 
 working. His head was bent over some glass tubes. 
 He was inventing a new form of poison-gas. And, as 
 he worked, he muttered: “ If I can get this right, my 
 fortune is made; it would kill off a whole city.” 
 
 The angel passed into an open space. A man was 
 addressing a great crowd. He was telling them that 
 men who believed in God were fools. From time to 
 time he broke out into blasphemy. He sneered at 
 religion. Suddenly he held up a crucifix and spat at it. 
 
62 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY 
 
 The angel passed down more streets. He noticed 
 so many evil faces, selfish faces, faces of animals. 
 He noticed how the crowds were absorbed in the 
 pursuit of sin; that the things of the world mattered 
 so much, and the things of God so little. 
 
 The angel passed out of the city, and upwards. 
 And he thought of the man and the woman in the 
 Garden of Eden, and then of the men and women in 
 the city he had left. He looked down on the glitter- 
 ing lights below. ‘‘ Yes,” he said, ‘‘ they have fallen 
 as low as that.” ... | 
 
 That is a portrayal of man as God made him and of 
 men as they are now ; not of men who have risen from 
 their fallen condition, but of those who remain fallen 
 or have fallen back. What happened to man that he 
 should become so changed? Do you remember 
 Satan watching the man and the woman in the Gar- 
 den? He seduced them from their God. They 
 disobeyed the Divine command. They fell into sin. 
 Into the very sin that Humanitarians would see per- 
 petuated—the sin of preferring themselves to God, of 
 preferring the creature to the Creator. Do you re- 
 member how beautiful the man and the woman were 
 who walked in the Garden? Do you remember the 
 wondrous gifts with which God had endowed them— 
 the supernatural state of sanctifying grace, know- 
 ledge, control of the passions, freedom from suffering 
 and death, dominion over the animals? They lost 
 all those gifts when they fell into sin. They were 
 
THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY 63 
 
 stripped of their glorious garments. Their beauty 
 was marred. The image and likeness of God was 
 blurred. And all that they lost, we have lost too. 
 They represented the human race, and the human 
 race fell with them. Their sin is inherited by their 
 descendants. Itisafamily inheritance. It is called 
 Original Sin. That is the world’s tragedy. The 
 human race is a fallen race. 
 
 You say: “ But, it’s not just that I and the whole 
 human race should inherit the sin of Adam. It’s 
 cruel that the sin of one man should result in the 
 downfall of all men.”” One minute. Are you quite 
 clear as to what Original Sin is? It is neither per- 
 sonal sin, nor actualsin. Itisasin of nature, a bivth- 
 stain upon our human nature. You and I did not 
 inherit the personal, actual sin of Adam, but the 
 stain of it. And are you quite clear as to what 
 Original Sin consists in? It consists in this—that 
 we enter this world deprived of sanctifying grace and 
 of those other gifts with which God endowed Adam 
 and Eve before their fall. You say: ‘‘ Why should 
 not I have aright to those endowments ? ”’ I answer: 
 “ Because they are all God’s free gifts.’”’ We have no 
 right to the free gifts of God. Also they were be- 
 stowed upon the human race on condition that its 
 head remained faithful. Adam was not faithful. 
 Moreover, God has deprived us of nothing which 
 belongs to our human nature as such, for instance our 
 natural faculties. We have not been deprived of our 
 
64 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY 
 
 rights. We have lost privileges which might have 
 been ours. 
 
 Again, God does not leave us in our fallen state, 
 although, if we choose to remain in it we can. God 
 has placed the Catholic Church in this world to help 
 men escape from their fallen condition. By her 
 means He will wash men white and clean from the 
 stain of Original Sin in the laver of regeneration. At 
 the touch of her hands sanctifying grace is restored, 
 and lo, once more we become the friends of our 
 Creator, His children by grace, and heirs of Eternal 
 Life. Thus does the Catholic Church minister to 
 men in dire need on earth. And, through her lips, 
 there comes the solemn promise of God that those 
 other gifts, though lost awhile, shall yet be ours again 
 —that the beauty of the man and the woman who 
 once walked in the Garden shall one day be perfectly 
 restored to us in Heaven. 
 
 Yousay: ‘ If the stain is thus removed and sancti- 
 fying grace restored, why do so many of the cleansed 
 and sanctified fall back again? Why do even those 
 who are advanced in the way of grace still feel the 
 terrible attraction of sin?’’ I answer: ‘‘ Because 
 human nature has been shaken by its fall.”’ A man 
 who has fallen from a height is so shaken that the 
 effects of the fall may last for life. It is the same 
 with us. Until the end of life on earth, our human 
 nature feels the effects of the Fall. It has been 
 wounded. It is out of control. It suffers from a 
 
THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY 65 
 
 kind of mental blindness whereby sin seems so attrac- 
 tive. It suffers from a weakened will whereby it 
 tends towards evil. This tendency is diminished to 
 vanishing point when grace has raised a man to 
 heights of sanctity. It has full play in those who 
 remain fallen, those who have never taken the hand of 
 God held out to raise them from the morass. 
 
 Those are the plain facts about man which Humani- 
 tarians would do well to face. They are painful 
 facts. Accept them, and the key to the problem of 
 human happiness is found. Deny them, and the way 
 of release is closed and all hope gone. It is cruel bluff 
 to tell men that they are not fallen ; for if men do not 
 believe it, they will never seek the only way of escape 
 from their fallen state—the way of Redemption, the 
 way to happiness untold. We have no hesitation in 
 saying that Humanity’s worst enemies are those who 
 pose as its best friends, the Humanitarians them- 
 selves. Not only would they close the road to human 
 happiness by their denial of revealed truth, but they 
 open wide aroad toruininitsstead. Atits entrance 
 they plant a sign-post—‘‘ To Utopia.” It should 
 read—‘‘ Abandon hope, all you who enter here.” 
 For those who take that road their last state shall be 
 worse than their first. It is the open road to Hell. 
 
 The suicidal folly of denying the Fall is now 
 apparent. We willingly admit that there is much 
 relating to it which we cannot understand ; but let 
 no man for that reason “ lift his daring to the stars ” 
 
66 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY 
 
 and defy the Almighty for further explanations. It 
 is not ours to question, but submit. There are those 
 who think it a sign of intelligence to deny the revealed 
 truths they cannot fully understand. They are the 
 fools. The supreme folly is to make our own reason 
 the standard of truth. The supreme wisdom is to 
 recognise that our minds are finite, and that God is 
 Infinite. When God speaks, let men keep silence. 
 It is the fool who jabbers on with his everlasting 
 “why?” If the “ Rationalists ’’ would but reason, 
 they might discover that the highest rational act lies 
 in accepting the limitations of the finite mind. As 
 for demanding an explanation from Him by Whom 
 we live and breathe, upon Whose will we hang as a 
 stone upon a string ; surely it does not require a very 
 profound insight to perceive that the Creator is under 
 no obligation to explain to His creatures. 
 
 Can we not rest content to understand in Eternity 
 what is hiddenin Time ? And, if ever we feel baffled 
 by the great mystery of the Fall of man, or, if ever 
 we are tempted to murmur at God for allowing such 
 a tragedy to take place as the downfall of our human 
 nature, then, lest we question Infinite Love, let the 
 remembrance of an even mightier mystery prevail 
 and stem tempestuous doubts :— 
 
 It was the same Eternal God of love, Who, looking 
 down in pity on us, came down from His throne in 
 Heaven, took our human nature upon Himself, and 
 was made Man. And, as Man, He suffered under 
 
THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY 67 
 
 the Fall, not as we suffer, but immeasurably more, 
 andin agony unspeakable. The curse of Adam rested 
 on the sinless Son of God. 
 
 And He never murmured. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE HUMANITARIAN CHALLENGE AND AN ANSWER 
 
 EST enthusiasts for social reform should deem 
 these essays to be unappreciative of the same, 
 we would hasten to assure them of their mis- 
 
 take. We have ignored the question of social reform, 
 not to belittle the efforts of sincere philanthropists, 
 but to fix attention on the problem of human happi- 
 ness, which, in itself, is quite independent of social 
 conditions. Our arguments are directed against the 
 Humanitarian scheme for the world’s reformation 
 and salvation. 
 
 That scheme is inimical to human happiness. It 
 omits deliberately God and religion. Whether the 
 world could put itself right without God, as far as 
 material prosperity is concerned, is open to question. 
 It might be allowed to dosoforatime. Buta state 
 of society resultant from such irreligious efforts, 
 however prosperous, would not be happy. A mon- 
 strous business concern for the sharing of profits 
 would be achieved, no more. An Utopia of calcu- 
 lated self-interest. Men serving Man for the sake of 
 themselves. The great God, Humanity, might find 
 
THE HUMANITARIAN CHALLENGE — 69 
 
 men prostrate beneath his pedestal ; but the homage 
 offered would be that of greedy time-servers. Though 
 stocked with earthly goods the Kingdom of Man 
 would yet be empty of the unum necessarium. The 
 world would not be really right. The world could 
 never save itself. Its salvation does not lie in 
 material prosperity at all. There is only one salva- 
 tion that matters for this world, and that is salvation 
 from sin. Sin, as a matter of fact, is the root-cause 
 of almost all social evils. Humanitarians think 
 otherwise. ‘“‘ How enormously,” says Mr. William 
 Archer (Literary Guide, April, 1924), “‘ would the 
 political problems of Europe be simplified if the idea 
 of sin ... could by some miracle be eliminated 
 from the minds of the various populations!’’ On 
 the contrary, Mr. Archer may congratulate himself 
 on the fact that the political problems of Europe 
 have been enormously complicated by the elimination 
 of the idea of sin. To ignore this is merely to put 
 one’s head in the sand. We should have thought 
 that the notion of sin was conspicuously absent from 
 the minds of men to-day. 
 
 The world is shelving the unpleasant idea. Even 
 Modernist “‘ Christians ”’ are putting sin in the back- 
 ground. Social reform seems of more importance 
 than salvation from sin. That is why Christ is looked 
 upon, outside the Catholic Church, as a mere social 
 reformer instead of a Saviour. The Sermon on the 
 Mount is patronised. Calvary is ignored. Calvary 
 
70 THE HUMANITARIAN CHALLENGE 
 
 reminds us of sin. The world is only interested in the 
 Cross to the extent of inviting Christ to descend from 
 it: ‘‘ Come down from the Cross, and we will believe 
 in you! Come and reform social life. Come and 
 settle between Capital and Labour. Come and stop 
 war. We will accept you as a social reformer, but 
 not asa Saviour. We are not interested in the Cross 
 and salvation from sin.’’ That is a fairly accurate 
 voicing of what the world asks of Christ to-day, if 
 it asks anything of Him at all. His crucifixion and 
 all that it stands for barely interest the mass of men. 
 There is a certain public holiday which was once a 
 public Holy Day. It is called Good Friday. That 
 public holiday in England has become a public insult 
 to Christ crucified. The pathos of all this folly is 
 enough to make the angels weep. As if the world 
 could be put right by social reform! As if the world 
 could be put right without men being put right! As 
 if men could be put right without God! 
 
 What is God’s way of putting men right ? God’s 
 way is to put men right with Himself. God’s way 
 is called—the Redemption. 
 
 When the human race fell into sin, an injury was 
 done to God. An insult was offered by the creature 
 to his Creator. An infinite wrong—because the 
 Infinite Majesty of God was offended. And an | 
 infinite satisfaction had to be made to God, before 
 men could once more be put right with their Creator. 
 Who was to make this infinite satisfaction? No 
 
AND AN ANSWER rp 
 
 mere finite man could. It needed an Infinite Being 
 to make the infinite satisfaction. And only God is 
 Infinite. What did God do? He became Man. 
 He who knows human nature in all the nakedness of 
 its sins yet found it so lovable as to assume it Him- 
 self. God the Son took our human nature upon Him- 
 self. He became “ bone of our bone ”’ and “ flesh of 
 our flesh.” He became one with us. Why? To 
 restore our human nature by sharing it with us; to 
 undo the tragedy of the Fall ; to represent the human 
 race to His Father ; to offer the infinite satisfaction 
 for the wrong done. The God-Man, Jesus Christ, 
 took our human nature and united it to His Divine 
 Nature. He placed the hand of man in the hand of 
 God. He linked together Heaven and earth. And 
 only the God-Man could do that. How was the in- 
 finite satisfaction rendered? How were we put 
 right with God ? How did the God-Man redeem us ? 
 He died for us a bloody death. The Precious Blood 
 was the price paid. He gave His life, as He Himself 
 declared, a ransom for us. His Father had so willed 
 it. He obeyed. 
 
 That is the Catholic doctrine of the Redemption 
 put in the very simplest form. And it is against the 
 Redemption that Humanitarians and Rationalists 
 thunder their special indictment. On their own 
 principles, of course, they must necessarily object to 
 a doctrine which enshrines the Divinity of Christ. 
 The objection, however, as actually formulated, is 
 
72 THE HUMANITARIAN CHALLENGE 
 
 grounded upon their own twisted notion of the 
 method employed by God to redeem mankind. Will 
 these good people never take the trouble to read a 
 little Catholic Theology ? Why insist on presenting 
 perversions of Christian doctrines ? Why endeavour 
 to make out that the idea of the Redemption is brutal 
 and repellent? Listen to Morison: “ The notion 
 that God wanted to be propitiated by the death of 
 the innocent Christ is a thoroughly base and bar- 
 barous one; . . . Hardly the most depraved man, in 
 his right mind, would accept the vicarious punishment 
 of one who had not offended him in lieu of one who 
 had. ... Yet this cruel and barbarous notion is 
 the centre of the Christian religion; ...’’ Notice 
 the implication that Christ was brutally dealt with, as 
 if His own will in the matter were not taken into 
 account. This argumentum ad populum is an excel- 
 lent specimen of the methods employed against 
 Christian doctrines. The charge might be justified 
 had God the Father forced His Son against His will 
 to die for us. Do those who pour such contempt on 
 the idea of the Redemption imagine such to be the 
 case? Their argument is shattered by the simple 
 fact that it was equally the will of God the Son to die 
 for us. He did it of His own free-will, gladly, lov- 
 ingly : ‘‘ I lay down My life for My sheep. . . . Ilay 
 it down of Myself,” declared the Son of God. ‘“ And 
 I have power to lay it down; and IJ have power to 
 take it up again.” It was a free-will offering. The 
 
AND AN ANSWER 73 
 
 voluntary offering of the Precious Blood is of the 
 very essence of the Sacrifice of the Cross. Moreover, 
 since the Son of God is God Himself, His will is one 
 with His Father’s. The Son, whose human body 
 died on the Cross, 1s God. The foolish cavilling of 
 our opponents is equivalent to charging God with 
 brutality to Himself. No, the Redemption does not 
 reveal cruelty or barbarity. It reveals love. God 
 must love His human creatures with a love that 
 passes understanding to give His only-begotten Son 
 to die for love of them. 
 
 The Redemption is God’s answer to those who 
 challenge His love. 
 
 We would note, en passant, the despicable attitude 
 adopted by many at the present moment who chal- 
 lenge the love of God. Encouraged by the Positivist 
 and Humanitarian teaching of half a century, the 
 world succeeds in ousting God and His revealed truths 
 from its midst. The only adequate bond of brother- 
 hood, the love of God, is broken. Then, instead of 
 acknowledging the horrors of the European War to 
 be the consequence of its own act, the world accuses 
 Christianity of failure and defies the Almighty to 
 defend His reputation for love. A gang of school 
 boys, listening to evil counsels, refuse to acknowledge 
 their master’s authority and teaching. Disrespectful 
 to the master, they become disrespectful to one 
 another. Squabbling ensues. Then, instead of ack- 
 nowledging the trouble to be the consequence of their 
 
74 THE HUMANITARIAN CHALLENGE 
 
 own act, they turn on the rest of the school, accuse it 
 of failure, and defy the master to defend his reputa- 
 tion. That gang of school boys would be treated 
 with scorn by all fair-minded people. Their attitude 
 would be considered despicable. We leave the moral 
 to be drawn. 
 
 To return. Why is the world challenging the love 
 of God, challenging His goodness, challenging His 
 supposed silence and indifference to evil and suffering, 
 challenging His very existence? The Redemption 
 has been forgotten or denied. That is why. Of 
 course there are evil and pain and suffering in this 
 world. There zs the problem of evil. There zs the 
 mystery of suffering. Do Christians deny it? We 
 neither deny it, nor do we deny God because of it. 
 And, at least, we do admit sin, the only evil, strictly 
 speaking, to be our failure, not God’s. And we do 
 know that God is not silent to His lovers. For the 
 rest, we are content to wait a while without under- 
 standing. Do“ Atheists ”’ solve the problem of pain 
 and suffering by denying God? They merely place 
 themselves and their dupes in a worse position than 
 before. To sulk at the Infinite God because He has 
 not chosen to reveal how these things are worked into 
 His eternal purpose is hardly a rational proceeding. 
 The Catholic Church answers the world’s challenge 
 by proclaiming the Redemption. She reminds us 
 that the God Who created this world, in which there 
 is evil and suffering, is the very same God Who 
 
AND AN ANSWER 75 
 
 redeemed it by sharing that burden in person. She 
 silences the derisive taunt—‘‘ Where is now thy 
 God ?”’ by pointing to Christ agonising and dying on 
 the Cross: ‘“ Here, here in the very heart of the 
 world’s evil and pain, here is our God!” 
 
 Yes, Christ hangs there on the Cross. 
 
 And that is the one thing that matters. Did the 
 European War matter compared with that? Do 
 politics matter? Does scientific progress matter ? 
 It is the Crucified Who matters. The eternal destiny 
 of every living soul hangs on that pale, blood-stained 
 Figure. 
 
 Yes, He hangs there. 
 
 And there are thousands to whom it means nothing. 
 It means nothing to them that their God hangs on the 
 Cross. That is why a pagan cenotaph, and not a 
 crucifix, stands in the middle of Whitehall. 
 
 Yes, He hangs there. 
 
 And all the while men are conscious of some great 
 burden resting on this world. They feel it pressing 
 them down. They seem almost unable to perceive 
 what itis. It is the same burden that rested on the 
 God-Man in Gethsemane. The burden of sin. The 
 burden which He bore to Calvary. There is only one 
 way in which men can be released from that burden 
 —hby taking their sins to Calvary. It is humiliating, 
 of course, to come and kneel beneath the Cross. 
 
 But it is more humiliating to hang there. 
 
CHAPTER Xll 
 HUMAN HAPPINESS 
 
 E now approach the problem which, above 
 all, occupies the world’s attention at the 
 present time—the problem which Humani- 
 
 tarians hope to solve, but cannot—the problem of 
 human happiness. Its solution is quite simple— 
 divinely simple. To accept the doctrines of the Fall 
 and the Redemption is to find the entrance-gate to 
 human happiness. We will explain. 
 
 The Redemption, which is Eternal Love countering 
 the Fall, alone gives entrance to the way of grace. 
 That way is the way of happiness, the way of eternal 
 life. It leads into a supernatural world. Many to- 
 day assume a blank air when “ grace” and the. 
 ““ supernatural world ’’ are mentioned. Some vaguely 
 imagine that the “‘ supernatural’”’ is what Theoso- 
 phists and Christian Scientists and Spiritists deal 
 with ; whereas these pseudo-mystics in reality are 
 dealing either with the psychical or with humbug. 
 The supernatural world, or the world of grace, is an 
 inner Kingdom. A Kingdom, not of this world, but 
 
 9 
 
HUMAN HAPPINESS 77 
 
 from above. A Kingdom of living, quivering, intense 
 reality. A Kingdom within which God admits those 
 who respond to the Redemption. Admittance is 
 gained by co-operation with the Redeemer; by the 
 acceptance and reception of the grace won back on 
 the Cross—the grace lost through the Fall. 
 
 What is grace? It is the life-power of those souls 
 within the Kingdom. A gift of God—a special crea- 
 tion—unseen, but utterly real. Nothing in the order 
 of nature can produce it. Only God can create it. 
 It is a super-natural help given by God to our souls. 
 With it we can work out our salvation. Without it 
 we are as helpless as a bird without wings. Grace is 
 the gift of gifts from God to men, because it saves 
 men, not only from the effects of original sin, but of 
 allactual sin. And the way of grace is the Kingdom’s 
 highway. By grace, and grace alone, we enter into 
 friendship with God, the friendship forfeited through 
 the Fall. By grace we become His children. By 
 grace we become the heirs of Heaven. By grace we 
 enter Heaven. By grace we see and possess God 
 eternally in Heaven. By grace we attain unending 
 happiness. The unutterable value of the gift of 
 grace won back upon the Cross is now apparent. A 
 beggar in rags who possesses grace is immeasurably 
 greater than a king without it: for the beggar is 
 within God’s Kingdom; the king is outside. As 
 Eternity is above time, as God is above His creatures, 
 so is grace above all the things of this world. In this 
 
78 HUMAN HAPPINESS 
 
 supernatural Kingdom of grace alone is to be found 
 that perfect happiness which God intends for His 
 human creatures. 
 
 This Kingdom is none other than the Catholic 
 Church of Christ—not as a visible body, but as an 
 invisible realm. Even as God Himself is not seen 
 with the outward eye, so also is His innermost mys- 
 tery of grace veiled from the rude gaze of the world. 
 And the Kingdom, though not of this world, is yet 
 within it. The walls and gates and ramparts can be 
 seen, but not that which is inside. The inner realm 
 of grace is for those alone who enter. The hidden 
 treasure is within. Humanitarians may pour their 
 scorn upon the Catholic Church, but they are per- 
 petually baffled by her peculiar hold on the souls of 
 men. Her secret is hidden. A holy secret. Are 
 pearls to be cast before swine, or that which is holy 
 given to the dogs ? The mysteries of God are hidden 
 from the wise and prudent and revealed to the babes 
 and sucklings. It is the humble of heart who enter 
 and understand and learn the power of grace. And 
 millions and millions of fallen men have proved for 
 themselves, and are proving for themselves to-day, 
 that the Catholic Church can and does lift them 
 right out of the mire in which they are struggling. 
 She bids them in the Name of Jesus Christ arise. 
 And they do arise. She gives them God’s grace to 
 do so. She leads them to the Crucified. She wields 
 the power of the Cross. She has the power to apply 
 
HUMAN HAPPINESS 79 
 
 to the souls of men the graces of Redemption. From 
 the Cross there flow seven streams, seven streams of 
 life, seven streams of grace—the seven Sacraments of 
 the Catholic Church. She can wash the robes of men 
 and make them white in the Blood of the Lamb. 
 She, and she alone, is commissioned by the Crucified 
 to do so. Every single sin-laden man or woman has 
 but to come to the Catholic Church and cry to her: 
 ** Let me in, set me free from the dominion of Satan, 
 give me life!’’ And the gates of the Kingdom are 
 opened and she sets them free and gives them life— 
 the Life of their Saviour and Redeemer. 
 
 It is only left to us to indicate the nature of that 
 perfect human happiness found within the Kingdom 
 of God’s grace. When we say “ found,” we do not 
 mean that those who enter the Kingdom instantly 
 attain to perfect happiness. A journey lies before 
 them. The King’s highway passes through this vale 
 of tears. The way of grace is, at its outset, the Way 
 of the Cross. The sanctified are privileged to share 
 with the Crucified. But suffering so shared is haloed 
 with divine light, and sorrow turned to joy. From 
 Calvary the soul first sights Eternity—and God. 
 And in the bliss of this preliminary experience all 
 earthly pomps and pleasures and promised Utopias 
 fade away into petty insignificance. Gone is the 
 glamour of the world at the first glimpse of its Creator. 
 Creation pales before the Uncreated. The human 
 soul set free from sin and graced perceives what the 
 
89 HUMAN HAPPINESS 
 
 world blindly ignores—the Object of all desires, the 
 Source of all happiness—God Himself. 
 
 With unerring instinct the sanctified soul “‘ senses ”’ 
 God as its final end and supreme happiness. Even 
 at the early stages of the way of grace there is vouch- 
 safed a foretaste of That which alone can satisfy all 
 the aspirations of human nature—the Infinite. The 
 finite can never satisfy the soul of man. Humani- 
 tarians think otherwise. The whole of their Utopian 
 edifice is erected on the erroneous supposition that 
 human happiness can be attained here on earth. It 
 cannot, and it never will be. All the things of the 
 world and all their vanishing glory could never satisfy 
 one single human being: a truth the world seems 
 almost incapable of appreciating. One by one life’s 
 trumperies are grasped by greedy hands. One by 
 one they turn to ashes. One by one each long-sought 
 treasure fails to satisfy. ‘“‘ Lo here, lo there is happi- 
 ness,’ men cry, and clutch and clasp. But in the 
 very clasp it’s gone ; and men are left—-still craving ! 
 
 No created thing can constitute man’s happiness. 
 The object capable of providing happiness must 
 satisfy all desires and must endure. In no created 
 things are these conditions verified. Their insuffi- 
 ciency to satisfy is due to a deficiency of intrinsic 
 quality. Wealth, honour, renown, power, bodily 
 health, beauty, sensual pleasure—all that men count 
 so dear—not only are these perishable, but of a lower 
 order than man himself. The goods of life are im- 
 
HUMAN HAPPINESS 81 
 
 perfect, as lacking the whole perfection of which man 
 is capable and for which his being yearns. Man tends 
 naturally towards something higher than himself— 
 towards the Perfect Good. This tendency is im- 
 planted in the innermost recesses of hisnature. That 
 Perfect Good can alone fulfil all his aspirations and 
 desires: therein rational beings can find their rest. 
 To possess that Perfect Good is to possess Perfect 
 Happiness. The Perfect Good has no ending. It is 
 God. And God is Eternal Happiness. 
 
 Thus does perfect happiness await the pilgrims of 
 the way of grace. God Himself is the solution of the 
 problem of human happiness. 
 
 SRY i sagetkd at PEL Pi se Ve Rega) AG 2 ln ete ae 
 
 Our task is now accomplished. We have endea- 
 voured to delineate as accurately as possible the two 
 ways which lie before humanity to-day. As far as 
 can be judged, the majority of people in England, 
 unseeing the fateful issues, are hesitating as to their 
 choice. Protestantism has been tried and found 
 wanting. It is being quietly deserted. Humani- 
 tarianism and Catholicism, which is Christianity, 
 remain. The Christian way looks hard and rough, 
 yet leads to happiness. The Humanitarian way 
 looks smooth and alluring, yet leads to disaster—to 
 the greatest disaster that can befall a human being— 
 the everlasting loss of Eternal Happiness—of God. 
 Those who choose this latter way and make this world 
 
82 HUMAN HAPPINESS 
 
 their end are cutting themselves off from the end for 
 which they were created. And their choice will be 
 final. There can be no undoing of this life’s choice. 
 The consequences are eternal. Every man can choose 
 or refuse the Divinely appointed way to happiness. 
 Every man fixes his eternal destiny for himself. 
 Every man, who wishes, can find happiness in God’s 
 way. No man can find it in the Humanitarian way. 
 
 Of what avail, then, the defiant boastings of 
 Humanity’s braggadocios, their puny pretences, and 
 high-sounding sophistries? Humanitarians may 
 sneer at the Christian “‘ myth,’’ undermine the weak 
 of faith, succeed in hoaxing thousands. What then ? 
 Let men “ laugh at the things they had feared ” and 
 “lift their daring to the stars”’; let the “‘ Great 
 Revolution that is afoot on Earth ” capture the very 
 world itself ; let the Kingdom of Man be proclaimed 
 and the Kingdom of God cast aside! What then ? 
 Let Eugenists breed the finest and fittest—Gods and 
 Goddesses ; let free-love reign supreme ; let science 
 eliminate all that is painful and distressing! What 
 then? Fiat Regnum Hominis! Fiat Utopia! Fiat 
 a world of “men like Gods”’! What then? What 
 gained ? What won? A glut of all this world can 
 give—no more. What lost? The one thing sought 
 —the happiness of man. And with it all is lost. 
 That Kingdom too will vanish, Gods, Goddesses, and 
 all; sink to the nethermost depths of Hell. They 
 flouted God, flung back His love, denied His truth. 
 
HUMAN HAPPINESS 83 
 
 They made their choice and fixed their fate—eternal 
 banishment. 
 So shall men end who make themselves “‘like Gods.”’ 
 
 2 
 
 In the dim ages of the past God said: “ Let us 
 make man to our image and likeness.” Thereby He 
 crowned creation. Thereby He raised man above all 
 created things of earth. Thereby man’s soul was 
 created a spirit to be ike God. By grace the likeness 
 is perfected :— 
 
 There, in eternal realms beyond, divinely dignified, 
 
 Illumined with God’s glory, God’s Nature shared by 
 grace, 
 
 Pervaded through and through by Love, and Holiness 
 and Truth, 
 
 The finite face the Infinite, men see God face to face : 
 
 Partaking God’s own happiness, transfigured, deified — 
 
 Not to become that which God is, but sons, co-heirs 
 with Christ, 
 
 Sharing the Royal Sovereignty, crowned with the 
 crown of Life: 
 
 So shall men end whom God makes gods to the image 
 of Himself, 
 
Printed at The Bowering Press, Plymouth. 
 
Ne 
 
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