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FAITH AND CONDUCT 
 
% 
 FAITH AND CONDUCT 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 ON VERIFIABLE RELIGION 
 
 Lonvon 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 
 1887 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
“‘ God or Eternal is here really, at bottom, nothing but a deeply- 
 moved way of saying, ‘The power that makes for conduct or 
 righteousness. ‘Trust in God’ is, in a deeply-moved way of 
 expression, the trust in the law of conduct; ‘delight in the 
 Eternal’ is, in a deeply-moved way of. expression, the happiness 
 we all feel to spring from conduct. Attending to conduct, to 
 judgment, makes the attender feel that it is joy to doit. Attend- 
 ing to it more still, makes him feel that it is the commandment 
 of the Eternal, and that the joy got from it is joy from fulfilling 
 the commandment of the Eternal.” 
 
 MatTTHEW ARNOLD, Literature and Dogma. 
 
 “The thought of God, as Theists entertain it, is not gained 
 by an instinctive association of His presence with any sensible 
 phenomena ; but the office which the senses directly fulfil as 
 regards the external world, that office devolves indirectly on 
 certain of our mental phenomena as regards its Maker. These 
 phenomena are found in the sense of moral obligation. 
 
 From the perceptive power which identifies the intimations of 
 conscience with the reverberations or echoes (so to say) of an 
 external admonition, we proceed on to the notion of a Supreme 
 Ruler and Judge.” 
 
 Carp. J. H. Newman, The Grammar of Assent. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Those readers will entirely misjudge the present 
 work who suppose that it professes to be a com- 
 plete account of religion. It is no complete 
 account, but a sketch from one point of view. 
 
 It is very unlikely that any person would 
 believe just so much as is set forth in these 
 pages, and believe no more. The author, a lay 
 member of the English Church, certainly does 
 not thus limit his beliefs. He divides the field 
 of religion into three parts, of which in the pre- 
 sent work he concerns himself only with one. 
 
 There is an old-established division of religion 
 into natural and revealed. It would, however, 
 be better to contrast with the revealed religion, 
 which is accepted on the authority of the Church 
 or the Bible, religion which can be verified, 
 which can be judged of by the reason and 
 scientifically examined. It is evident that a 
 
vi Preface 
 
 religion which is based on authority is by that 
 very fact removed from the application of reason 
 and science. Verifiable religion, on the other 
 hand, claims investigation, and it is of this 
 alone that we intend to treat. The difficulty 
 of course arises that many of the doctrines 
 which we regard as verifiable are due, historic- 
 ally speaking, to the teaching of the founders 
 of the Christian doctrine and Church. But this 
 difficulty need not be fatal, nor even serious, if 
 we do not accept these doctrines on authority, 
 but investigate them as we might doctrines due 
 to any great teacher. It is conceivable that the 
 result of our investigation might be to establish 
 the truth of the whole body of doctrine which is 
 commonly spoken of in this country as Chris- 
 tianity. But for those who, without investi- 
 gation, accept that body of doctrine, we of 
 course do not write. Treating thus of verifiable 
 religion only, we have carefully excluded from 
 each chapter, even from that which deals with 
 the future life, all appeals to authority. 
 
 But we do not profess to treat of the whole 
 even of verifiable religion. Religion is both a 
 social and an individual thing. It is rather 
 social than individual; and he who treats of it 
 
Preface vii 
 
 only in relation to persons and not in relation 
 to societies will take but a very one-sided view 
 of it. This is, however, the aspect in which 
 religion is regarded in this volume. 
 
 Thus we leave on one side, for the present, 
 any consideration of religion as a_ historical 
 erowth ; and we postpone all dealing with the 
 religious side of human relations, the relations 
 of the family, the society, the state, and man- 
 kind. It is possible that the reader may be 
 occasionally surprised to see how little is here 
 said of the love which binds society together, 
 and the higher love or charity which is at the 
 root of all satisfactory relations between man 
 and man. We say nothing of the Church as 
 a constituted organism, of its doctrines, its 
 ministers and ceremontes. 
 
 It may be that, if he finds it possible, the 
 writer of these pages will hereafter attempt to 
 supplement his investigation of Faith and Con- 
 duct with some account of the social and _his- 
 torical aspects of religion, an investigation of 
 Foth and Charity, and of Faith and Progress. 
 At present he has made but scattered notes 
 on those high subjects, and it is his hope that 
 they are destined for worthier pens than his own. 
 
viii Preface 
 
 We are compelled also to postpone the treat- 
 ment of the relations of religion to science and 
 art. For the history of science and of art must 
 be considered as part of that general growth of 
 mankind of which we are determined to avoid 
 speaking ; while, on the other hand, the relations 
 of science and of art to us in the present day, 
 and their connections with the beliefs which make 
 life possible to us, can only be spoken of when it 
 is human society at large, and not the individual, 
 which is in question. 
 
 The case is otherwise with conduct. Conduct 
 is by the very necessities of the case a purely 
 personal matter. It can be approached from the 
 side of the individual consciousness, and treated 
 of apart from theories of the Church or of human 
 development. And since conduct makes up, in 
 the view of the most clear-sighted writers among 
 us, the chief part of the hfe of man, and right- 
 doing is his great concern, the present writer 
 cannot help feeling that if he can help but a few 
 to understand better the meaning and the neces- 
 sities of conduct, he will have indeed been 
 fortunate. 
 
 The general argument of the book may be 
 followed, even if some of the chapters which it 
 
Preface ix 
 
 contains be passed over. ‘Thus those who do not 
 care to follow the writer’s brief summary of the 
 aroument from evolution may omit Chapters V. 
 and VI.; those who have no interest in meta- 
 physical discussions will probably prefer to pass 
 Chapters [X., X., and XI. On the other hand, 
 to the specialists in biology and in metaphysics 
 these two groups of chapters respectively will 
 probably seem slight and defective, perhaps quite 
 inadequate. It was, however, impossible, in tra- 
 versing so wide a ground, to do more than indi- 
 cate a position and determine a point of view. 
 On the other hand, Chapters L-IV., VII.-VIIL, 
 XIV.-XXVI., constitute a chain of which no link 
 can fairly be judged apart from those which pre- 
 cede and follow it. 
 
 The reflections and experiences of succeeding 
 years have continually strengthened the convic- 
 tion held by the writer of these pages, that the 
 views they contain are consistent one with the 
 other, as well as with the constitution of the 
 world. But this confidence does not extend to 
 approval of the form in which the views are put 
 forth. Chapters written at intervals over a long 
 period, in the rare leisure hours allowed by a 
 laborious profession, are not likely to be perfect 
 
i Preface 
 
 in development. If the author could hope for a 
 long period of leisure, he would reserve them in 
 the intention of entirely recasting them. But he 
 sees no prospect of long rest for many years to 
 come. And it may fairly be claimed that these 
 pages, in the absence of all external grace of style, 
 at least possess the merit of having been written 
 without any settled intention of publication, and 
 in the simple and direct intention of finding and 
 setting forth so much of the truth as the faculties 
 of the writer can with severe diligence discover. 
 In renouncing all attempt at a graceful style, 
 he has been saved from the temptation to put 
 down anything of doubtful truth because 1t 
 seemed at the moment attractive. 
 
 It is one of the pleasantest of duties in writing 
 a preface to say to whom the author is most in- 
 debted for aid in his task. To the present writer 
 this is not an easy thing to do. Personal aid he 
 has received from one friend only, who necessarily 
 remains anonymous. Probably he is by no 
 means the best judge to decide to whom he owes 
 most in his views and his mental habits. He 
 feels a debt of gratitude especially to Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold’s Interature and Dogma; and among 
 
 lesser writers to Mr. Murphy and Mr. A. J. 
 
Preface xi 
 
 Balfour. But it is likely that he may really be 
 indebted equally to Butler, or Kant, or Mansel, 
 or Mill, or Comte, or even to some of those writers 
 with whom he agrees the least. In every case in 
 which a view of this book is consciously taken 
 from the writings of others the fact is stated. 
 As, however, the author has had for many years 
 little time for reading books on ethics and 
 philosophy, it is likely that much of the furni- 
 ture of the mind, which he supposes that he has 
 made, was really imported in college days, and 
 has so often been made use of that its origin is 
 forgotten. 
 
 Lonpon, September 1887. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 . CONDUCT REGARDED FROM WITHOUT . 
 . WHAT IS RIGHT ConpDuUcT ? 
 
 . How CAN WE KNOW WHAT IS RIGHT ?. 
 . How SHALL WE DO WHAT IS RIGHT? . 
 . HIGHER PURPOSE IN EVOLUTION 
 
 . HIGHER PURPOSE IN HIsToRY . 
 
 . DIvInE AID AS EXPERIENCE 
 
 . THE DENIAL OF SELF 
 
 . THe History OF SCEPTICISM 
 
 . THe PRACTICAL GROUNDS OF BELIEF 
 . ReLicious IDEALISM 
 
 . SUMMARY AND ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 . A Priori THEOLOGY 
 
 : EXPERIENCE IN RELIGION 
 
 . THE POWERS OF GOOD AND EVIL 
 XVI. 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 HuMAN RESPONSIBILITY . 
 KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH . 
 
 LAWS OF THE HIGHER LIFE 
 
 108 
 115 
 128 
 152 
 173 
 185 
 
 193 
 203 
 212 
 224 
 231 
 241 
 
xiv Contents 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XIX. 
 XX. 
 XXI. 
 XXIL 
 XXIII. 
 XXIV. 
 XXV. 
 XXVI. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 XXIX. 
 
 Tuer TEsts oF FAITH 
 GRACE : : 
 PRAYER AND TRUST 
 PROVIDENCE 
 
 NATURAL PIETY 
 
 OpriMIsM AND Evin 
 
 Tue Furure LIFE aa 
 Tae Furore or MANKIND 
 TESTIMONY IN RELIGION 
 AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 
 
 CONCLUSION : : 
 
GHA PTER 
 CONDUCT REGARDED FROM WITHOUT 
 
 THERE are two proverbs, whereof one says that man 
 is a creature of circumstance, another that he is a 
 bundle of habits. Neither of these phrases pretends 
 to any scientific exactness; they are aphorisms, and 
 like other aphorisms express half-truths with vigour 
 and clearness, but will not altogether bear a close 
 examination. Man is a creature of circumstance. No 
 doubt we all know what we should do under certain 
 circumstances, or if we do not, friends who look from 
 outside, and know us better than we know ourselves, 
 will easily tell us what we should do under these 
 circumstances or those. We feel, indeed, in any con- 
 junction of circumstances, as if our path of action 
 were open, and we were free to do what we choose; 
 but a little reflection shows us that we are not really 
 free to do an absurd thing without a motive for doing 
 it. We have the power, when walking to catch an 
 important train, to sit down on a doorstep and wait 
 until it has gone, but we can scarcely be really said 
 to be free to do so, for it is a moral impossibility to 
 do a foolish thing which we do not want to do. 
 Again, we all feel how from the first entry into life 
 B 
 
2 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 the force of circumstances has gradually pent us in 
 and driven us along until we have come to occupy 
 the position which we now hold. We think we can 
 swim as we will, but, after all, the net of circumstance 
 hems us in, and cuts off one by one all our chances of 
 choosing our own path in life. 
 
 And as circumstances form an outward bar or limit 
 to our action, so habit forms an inward bias. Alike in 
 mind and body we inherit a set of tendencies the grasp 
 of which only becomes stronger as we grow up. And 
 to the inherited bias we add and add every year some 
 new tendency. The seed determines the species of the 
 plant; soil and weather limit and direct its growth, 
 and every fresh bud and leaf which it puts forth hem 
 its possible growth within closer limits. It is the 
 same with men; they too inherit possibilities and are 
 limited by the conditions of their life; and in addition 
 every day adds to their habits and the tendencies 
 which as they grow older they can less and less resist. 
 
 As the body of a new-born infant is already endued 
 with tendencies which, as time passes by, will cause it 
 to develop in some special direction, to become slight 
 or stout, tall or short, so the mind of the infant is 
 destined to become vigorous or weak, fond of theory or 
 fond of fact, Platonic or Aristotelian. And as the infant 
 thus inherits traits, bodily or mental, which are sure to 
 grow with its growth, so it also inherits a certain moral 
 frame or constitution. There are certain views which 
 must needs powerfully attract it. If the parent never 
 controlled bodily passion, the child will grow up in- 
 continent; if the parent loved slander, the child will 
 as much inherit a tendency to slander as a tendency 
 to fair or dark hair. Of course we do not say that 
 
I Conduct regarded from without 3 
 
 the child must graw up like the parent, but there will 
 be in all the fibres of his nature a tendency to do so. 
 
 It is obviously merely for the sake of simplicity 
 that we speak of children as inheriting only from their 
 parents. It would be more exact to say that the 
 nature with which each starts in life is the result of 
 the doings and feelings of his ancestors through count- 
 less ages. But as the influence of parents on their 
 children is the most direct of inherited influences, it 
 is convenient to make it stand for all. And again, it 
 is clear that we have here no space to distinguish 
 between mere superficial characteristics and those 
 which reach down to the roots of the nature. If the 
 child of a thief, for instance, be early removed into 
 a state of society in which stealing is out of fashion, 
 we need not expect him to retain a custom as unusual 
 in his new state of life as it was usual in the previous 
 state. Thieves constitute in large cities a class; and 
 there are among them many degrees and kinds of 
 virtue and vice as in other classes. Again, the 
 drunkard may be driven into drunkenness by the 
 stress of intolerable anxiety; but his children, if free 
 from anxiety, may not feel the need of the stimulus. 
 Leaving out of view all such distinctions, which are 
 here as superfluous as they would be necessary in a 
 formal work on psychology, we may venture on the 
 broad assertion that the child’s nature is determined 
 by his descent. 
 
 Thus all of us start in life, like bowls on a lawn, 
 not smoothly and roundly, but with a certain inherited 
 bias. That bias we can never wholly set aside. But 
 education and circumstance, though they cannot 
 wholly remove bias, may greatly modify it. The 
 
4 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 wolf, if taken from its mother very young, and 
 brought up among dogs, will never wholly lose its 
 savage instincts, yet in externals at least will assume 
 much of the habits of a dog. So the son of 
 a drunkard may be brought up to dislike the sight 
 of wine. Or the son of a slanderer may, by being 
 shown the ugliness of the habit of slander, acquire a 
 fixed dislike to it. 
 
 A man’s nature being thus fixed by inheritance 
 and modified by circumstance and education, the 
 course of his action will follow, in general, the bent 
 of his nature. Ifthe beast nature be strong in him, 
 he will act like a beast. The French proverb says, 
 Chassez le naturel et il revient aw galop ; and never was 
 there a truer proverb. People do not, as a rule, find 
 themselves able on any occasion to throw aside the 
 sum of their past feelings and pleasures and_ start 
 afresh. Usually, quite usually enough to give rise to 
 generalisations and to give validity to calculations of 
 the action of masses, men act at each crisis of their 
 lives in accordance with the impulse of their inherited 
 nature, as modified by circumstance and education. 
 
 Out of the abundance of the heart a man’s deeds 
 will come. The covetous man will act covetously, the 
 envious man will be carried away by his envy. The 
 self-indulgent man will sacrifice his real interest to his 
 momentary pleasure; the strongly sympathetic man 
 will help those whom he loves at the cost of his own 
 advantage, or even at some sacrifice of principle. The 
 man of high principle will do what he feels to be right 
 though it may seem to disadvantage himself and others. 
 Each will, as a general rule, move on the path he has 
 made for himself. Rivers do not flow back towards 
 
I Conduct regarded from without 5 
 
 their sources, nor trees grow again towards the ground ; 
 nor is it often that a man changes in the midst of life 
 the tendency of his conduct. He does so, indeed, 
 sometimes; but this is a phenomenon with which we 
 shall hereafter deal as with an exception. 
 
 Some Necessarians think, or seem to think, that the 
 course of life is wholly determined by the inter-action 
 of habit within and circumstance without. They 
 think that if they knew precisely what nature any 
 person inherited, and could precisely trace the course 
 which his life would have to pursue, they could then 
 foretell, or at least that some wiser being than man 
 could foretell, what habits that person would form, and 
 how he would act at any given turn or crisis of his 
 life. In this case our feeling of freewill would be 
 altogether delusive. We should be as much under the 
 control of natural law as the bullet when shot from the 
 gun, or as the tides of the sea. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that if we agreed with 
 this view, the present book would not have been 
 written. From the first page to the last it maintains 
 that man is within certain limits free—free to choose 
 between courses of action which lie open to him, free 
 to rise to a higher or sink to a lower level. The 
 limits of that freedom may not be very wide, but they 
 are sufficiently wide to make man a moral and respon- 
 sible being, and to introduce into the world and into 
 conduct infinite possibilities of good and bad. 
 
 In the next few chapters we shall try to show how 
 these views are established by an examination of the 
 nature of conduct. In the meantime we wish to point 
 out that looking at life merely from the outside, 
 observing it as we observe the phenomena of the 
 
6 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 eer aaa oY ieee 
 material world, we shall find that human action is not 
 entirely determined by forces that are without. The 
 same man, placed in the midst of the same circum- 
 stances, will sometimes act in one way and sometimes 
 in another. It is found by experience that even when 
 human action is treated of in the general, and by 
 means of statistics merely, there are yet variations 
 which seem to.show an element of disturbance in all 
 calculation. 
 
 Let us take an illustration to make this clear. Two 
 boys are born in two neighbouring villages ; they 
 inherit an equally promising and healthy physique, and 
 crow up equally capable of exertion and fatigue. 
 Their circumstances of life are the same, and an 
 observer might think that the courses of their lives 
 will flow in parallel streams to the end. But one 
 applies himself with energy and persistency to all 
 athletic sports, and learns in their practice to excel all 
 about him; he becomes a noted athlete, and perhaps 
 founds a race of men who carry on from generation to 
 generation the skill of body for which he was famous. 
 The other lad gives way more and more to habits of 
 physical indolence, prefers resting to exertion, perhaps 
 mental to physical development; his muscles grow 
 flaccid and his chest contracts, until he seems but as 
 the shadow of his sturdy contemporary. ; 
 
 We see the same kind of differentiation going on 
 around us in moral matters. Men start as it were 
 side by side with equal ingenuousness and natural 
 goodness, and their path in life seems to lead them in 
 the same direction, yet one seems steadily to grow 
 better as the years pass by, to rise higher and_ higher 
 in the esteem of those whose esteem is worth having, 
 
I Conduct regarded from without 7 
 
 while the other seems to fall to a lower and lower 
 level, and ends by making shipwreck of the better 
 purposes of his nature, and perishing on the barren 
 rocks of life. And we are all, in all our lives, rising to 
 better or falling to worse things—usually rising and 
 falling alternately. The course of our conduct is like that 
 of the lines in a chart of temperatures or of prices, full 
 of constant fluctuations, yet on the whole tending, over 
 long periods, gradually to rise or gradually to sink. 
 And as the fluctuations of the thermometer are deter- 
 mined by the contest of hot air and cold, so the course 
 of a man’s life as regards conduct is the result of a 
 conflict between good and evil impulses and tendencies. 
 
 Looking on the world from without we see that the 
 current of history is the sum of the lives of individuals; 
 and the life of each individual is a line of conduct. 
 The line of conduct again may be resolved into a series 
 of individual actions, in each of which a better or a 
 worse course may be pursued. Thus the ultimate 
 factors into which history may be resolved are indefinite, 
 vague, and not to be reckoned on. 
 
 But in saying this we do not intend to deny the 
 possibility of a science of history. Science is simply 
 orderly knowledge. To become matter of science a 
 subject must be known, and must be known in orderly 
 fashion. Now a great part of history can be known, 
 if not with absolute certainty, at least with a certainty 
 practically sufficient. And many of the main ideas or 
 laws according to which the course of history takes 
 place have been discovered, and more will be hereafter 
 discovered. It is even possible that these laws may 
 some day be so well understood that able observers 
 may foretell with something approaching to certainty 
 
8 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 part of what will happen in the immediate future. In 
 fact, in some branches of historical science attempts to 
 foretell the future are made, and are considered reason- 
 able. Sir Stafford Northcote when Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer constructed his budget on his belief in a 
 certain expansion of the revenue. And in all western 
 countries far-sighted people have made large fortunes 
 by rightly forecasting the spread of population into 
 certain districts. As knowledge increases and becomes 
 more systematic, such forecasts will become more 
 common and more exact, and will perhaps spread from 
 the field of economics into that of social and constitu- 
 tional fact. 
 
 But that is all. History can never become an 
 exact science. There are limits set in nature alike to 
 our knowledge of the past and to our forecasting of 
 the future. The idea that there are no such limits 
 arises merely from confusion of thought, and from a 
 hasty transference into the historical field of ideas 
 acquired in the study of material phenomena. 
 
 The physical sciences, in consequence of their greater 
 simplicity, have reached maturity far earlier than those 
 which have man for their subject-matter. And as a 
 consequence they often claim the monopoly of scientific 
 method. Such branches of historical science as the 
 nistory of political forces or archeology are quietly 
 relegated to the domain of literature. We English are 
 in this matter sinners beyond all nations. Academies 
 of sciences on the Continent consist of two sections—of 
 an academy of natural and an academy of historical 
 sciences. But our English Royal Society, after a few 
 spasmodic efforts to be more comprehensive, is fast 
 settling down to exclusive concern with physical and 
 
I Conduct regarded from without 9 
 
 biological studies. The University of Cambridge has 
 of late years established two degrees—the degree of 
 Doctor of Science for mathematicians and physicists, 
 and the degree of Doctor of Letters for philologists, 
 psychologists, and the like. When in London assemblies 
 men of science are spoken of, it does not occur to 
 those present that the phrase means any but those 
 concerned with the aspects of nature, and may with 
 equal propriety be applied to those who study man, 
 the historian, the philologist, and the archeologist. 
 
 So deeply rooted is this way of looking at things 
 that those who cultivate the historical sciences are 
 very slow to recognise the necessity of placing them 
 on an entirely new footing in accordance with the 
 advance of knowledge in the world. Many walk in 
 the old paths, and a dilettante spirit reigns in their 
 works. When some more energetic young man talks 
 much of their duties to science, they set him down as 
 a quack and a sciolist. And it is to be feared that 
 very often they are right, and he really is a sciolist. 
 
 And the natural result is that those who seriously 
 set themselves to bring scientific method into any 
 branch of moral and historical science often import 
 their methods direct and unaltered from physical 
 science. There is no tendency of our day more 
 alluring, nor any more dangerous. It is easy to 
 find in this country (for abroad the tendency is less 
 clearly marked) original and energetic books dealing 
 with such subjects as philology or archeology which 
 are led into occasional absurdities on this account. 
 The writers assume that human affairs proceed in 
 certain fixed ways, as if man were a machine, and 
 had no power of choosing between one way and 
 
IO Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 another. Tendencies in human affairs may of course 
 be observed and described, but a tendency is not a 
 fact, and human will and choice can at every moment 
 step in to counteract the tendency. 
 
 The moral and historical sciences will never be 
 placed on a sound basis until it is recognised that 
 they have two sets of phenomena to take into account ; 
 first, the natural course of evolution, as it would pro- 
 ceed if man were a mere passive machine; and 
 secondly, the innumerable deviations from that course 
 produced by the free actions of men, more especially 
 of great men. 
 
 A few instances must be cited. In the early cen- 
 turies of the Christian era the great movements of 
 nations were mainly determined by competition and 
 survival of the fittest. But some of those movements 
 were the results of the personal policy of rulers. 
 Trajan, in pursuance of a fixed idea of policy, de- 
 stroyed the Dacian nation, and put in its place the 
 nation of the Roumans. It is simply beyond all cal- 
 culation what changes in the history of past times, 
 and even of future times, would have resulted had 
 Trajan made peace with Decebalus instead of making 
 war on him, and so had not driven a strong wedge 
 of alien population between north and south Slavs. 
 Perhaps it will be said that if Trajan had not destroyed 
 the Dacians the Roumans would have done the same 
 work under another leader. This is, however, by no 
 means likely, since the policy of Trajan’s immediate 
 successor, Hadrian, was to reduce, not to increase, the 
 size of the Roman Empire. The historian who believes 
 in Providence may hold that in this case Trajan ful- 
 filled a purpose of a higher power; the historian who 
 
I Conduct regarded from without II 
 
 does not believe in Providence will have to ascribe an 
 enormous share in the history of Europe to the results 
 of the reflections of Trajan. But the historian who 
 sees in the matter nothing but the working of natural 
 law in human development is simply ignorant of his 
 subject. 
 
 If there be one part of history wherein the action 
 of natural law can be clearly traced, it is the history 
 of art; and in no branch of art can the succession of 
 phenomena be more clearly traced to law than in 
 sculpture. We can see clearly that the development 
 of the sculptural types in Greece, from the very begin- 
 nings of plastic art down to the times of Alexander 
 the Great, is an orderly and gradual process subject to 
 definite laws. But in his day we find that the physical 
 peculiarities of his body had a marked effect on the 
 development of sculpture, an effect which art never 
 entirely shook off. Can it be maintained that any 
 conqueror of Asia must necessarily have had precisely 
 that physique? If not, we can scarcely deny the 
 interference of personal peculiarities on the whole 
 history of art at this time. At a later time, in the 
 reign of Hadrian, a strongly-marked influence of a 
 similar kind originated in the strong affection of the 
 Emperor for the youth Antinoiis; a fact of personal 
 caprice, yet a fact which dominated for a time the 
 history of sculpture, nay, even in all probability, by 
 altering the ideal of human beauty, greatly influenced 
 the course of the physical history of mankind on which 
 that ideal is always working. 
 
 It would be as easy to produce a thousand examples 
 as these two, but these are sufficient. The course of 
 history is not determined, as Carlyle thought, by the 
 
12 Fatth and Conduct ~ CHAP. 
 
 decisions of great men; and it is not, as many far 
 eruder minds fancy, independent of all influences of 
 personal character. It is in accordance with natural 
 law, but modified by the will and character of indi- 
 viduals; and the only point of view in which natural 
 tendencies and individual volitions can be referred to 
 a common origin is the point of view of those who 
 believe that the same Power which rules the universe 
 works for good purposes in the hearts of men. 
 
 An extreme instance of the danger of purely physi- 
 cal methods in historical sciences is to be found in Mr, 
 Cotter Morrison’s work on Zhe Service of Man. Much 
 of that book is in accordance with reason, and it is 
 written in an earnest and manly spirit; but the main 
 views are entirely vitiated by his denial of freewill 
 and his hypotheses that man is an automaton, and 
 that no Deity works in the world. Given these pre- 
 misses, there is no escaping from Mr. Morrison’s con- 
 clusion, painful as a nightmare, that the only chance 
 for the future of the human race lies in the cultivation 
 of the race of man as the races of animals are cultivated. 
 What ideal of mankind is to dominate this process of 
 cultivation is not clearly stated. One lays down the 
 book with the momentary impression that there are 
 many vicious tendencies in the world, and many classes 
 of men who should be ruthlessly exterminated, but 
 that the nature of good is hidden for ever from human 
 understanding. 
 
 But this nightmare, like nightmares of a more 
 vulgar kind, comes merely from neglecting the teaching 
 and despising the ordinances of nature. Man has, it 
 is true, departed far from nature and found out many 
 inventions. We have allowed a state of society to 
 
I Conduct regarded from without 3 
 
 arise among us to which, in many aspects, no lighter 
 word than accwrsed seems applicable. While hasting 
 to be rich the nations of the west have, like many 
 men who are in haste to be rich, forgotten to look to 
 their mental and moral health, and terrible symptoms 
 in all countries show how far disease has made inroads 
 on our social condition. But we have not yet reached 
 the state spoken of by Tacitus in which remedy is no 
 less intolerable than disease. Return to a better state 
 is yet possible. But it is possible only in one way— 
 by admitting into our lives more of the good impulses 
 and tendencies which flow down on mankind in a 
 never-ceasing stream. So long as the doors are shut, 
 the stables of Augeas are full of filth, but if they be 
 opened to admit the stream it will sweep in with 
 purifying force. 
 
 However, we must not allow ourselves to be led, 
 by a strong feeling as to Mr. Morrison’s book, into 
 such discussions of social questions as are excluded 
 by the plan of this work. We cannot here consider 
 possible remedies for social ills. We will only, before 
 beginning our investigation of conduct, point out what 
 is Involved in the mere fact that the history of morality 
 is an evolution. 
 
 It is not difficult to see whence come the evil 
 impulses of which all of us must be but too conscious. 
 For the gradual evolution of the human race through 
 long ages has been undoubtedly, on the whole, a pro- 
 gress towards a higher level. One by one the vices 
 which make the lives of savages hideous have died 
 out or become rare. One by one the virtues which 
 make civilised life possible have become established 
 among us. We are still far enough from perfection, 
 
14 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 and have allowed many vices to grow among us to a 
 height which they do not reach in less highly-de- 
 veloped communities. But the root-vices of human 
 nature, improvidence, lust, and cruelty, are the pre-emi- 
 nent characteristics of barbarians. And it is well known 
 that there is a strong tendency in all species of animals 
 sometimes to revert to ancestral forms. The race never 
 forgets, but always bears about with it traces of 
 every stage of development through which it has 
 passed, As the whale has rudimentary feet as a relic 
 of the actual feet possessed by his ancestors, so each 
 man bears about in his heart relics of all the foul vices 
 which deformed his ancestors, and still retains the 
 possibility of being possessed and controlled by them. 
 They are like sleeping dogs which may at any time 
 be awaked; lke genii imprisoned in a vase which 
 may be shattered by any of the shocks of active life, 
 so as to let them loose on society. 
 
 Thus men’s temptations to evil naturally arise from 
 the known facts of atavism. That there is no other 
 source of evil inspiration we do not for a moment 
 assert; on this point we have more to say in our 
 fifteenth chapter. But the obvious facts of inheritance 
 will in themselves account for much of the power of 
 evil wish and passion. 
 
 But it is important to note that the impulses 
 which bear us towards what is better cannot be thus 
 accounted for. Every person acquainted with history 
 knows how small a part even of historic time is 
 occupied by such deeds on the part of our ancestors 
 as we should wish to copy. Nor could a mere repeti- 
 tion of such virtuous deeds as they have done advance 
 us to a higher level of virtue than that which they 
 
I Conduct regarded from without 15 
 
 occupied. How then is moral progress possible? It 
 is evident that there must be a strong force drawing 
 us upwards if, in spite of all these backward tendencies, 
 mankind have continued, on the whole, to improve, at 
 least in countries controlled by Europeans. What is 
 this force ? 
 
 It is either a fortuitous force acting through natural 
 selection, or it is a divine power overruling natural 
 force for higher purpose. To Mr. Cotter Morrison it 
 is the first; in the present work it is maintained to 
 be the last of these. And these are really the two 
 alternatives between which every man must in these 
 days make his choice; it is of no more avail now 
 than it was in the time of Elijah to halt between two 
 opinions. 
 
GHA PTERBLE 
 WHAT IS RIGHT CONDUCT ? 
 
 Ir is from the practical side rather than from the 
 theoretical that we shall approach morals. We shall 
 not greatly concern ourselves with those deep meta- 
 physical problems connected with ethics, which have 
 in all ages exercised the highest faculties of man. 
 These great questions we shall avoid, as not directly 
 lying in our path. We are like travellers in haste, 
 who search out the best and most accessible roads for 
 passing through a country, and have no leisure to stay 
 and ascend the various snow-crowned mountains which 
 lie to the right and left. Our journey is long enough, 
 and the ground we have to traverse rough enough, to 
 excuse us from such digressions, however they might 
 tempt a mind which loves philosophy. 
 
 We single out, then, in the field of ethics three 
 questions wherewith to concern ourselves—three in- 
 tensely practical questions of great concern to every 
 human being. They are these :—(1.) What is right 
 conduct? (2.) How can we know what is right ? 
 (3.) How shall we compass what is right ? 
 
 Taking up these questions in succession we shall 
 consider what solutions of them are offered by the 
 
CHAP. 11 What ts right conduct ? 17 
 
 most widely-followed ethical schools of our days, 
 such as the School of Utility and the School of 
 Natural Selection. To consider all the solutions 
 which have been proposed, even by modern writers, 
 would of course take us beyond all moderate limits ; 
 we therefore select those which especially represent 
 the course of thought in this age. Afterwards we 
 shall propound our own solution; no one, therefore, 
 can accuse us of pulling down but not building up, 
 rather we only pull down to obtain the space necessary 
 for our own foundations. 
 
 The School of Utility has had many representatives 
 in recent days who have widely differed among them- 
 selves. This very fact makes their position harder to 
 attack. Like Douglas, who at the battle of Shrews- 
 bury slew in succession several leaders wearing the 
 arms and semblance of the king, and yet could not 
 meet the true king, so those who attack the camp of 
 the Utilitarians must always expect that a victory 
 over one champion of the cause will only reveal the 
 fact that the rest repudiate his claim to be their re- 
 presentative. But it seems that two propositions at 
 least must be maintained by all followers of the doctrine 
 of Utility. The first is, that attainment of the greatest 
 happiness by the greatest number is the sum of good, 
 and all conduct which tends to that result virtuous. 
 And the second is, that happiness is a definite thing, as 
 to the nature of which people have made up their 
 minds. This second proposition may not seem quite so 
 essential to the position of the School of Utility as 
 the first; but really it is indispensable if Utilitarian 
 ethics are to be of any use in the world. For if 
 happiness be a thing by nature as vague and indefinite 
 
 C 
 
18 faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 as virtue, we gain nothing by putting it in the place 
 of virtue; we do but try to explain an obscure idea 
 by one equally obscure. 
 
 If these two propositions could be established, no 
 doubt much would be done towards the production of 
 a really scientific scheme of ethics. But can they be 
 established ? We will begin by examining the second. 
 And we shall find after very little examination that 
 not only is happiness a thing not definite and measure- 
 able, but that even the Utilitarians themselves differ 
 greatly in the conception of it. If one is content with 
 easy dogmatism, like that with which Bentham draws 
 up a list of the kinds and degrees of happiness, then 
 happiness may seem a simple thing. But to a more care- 
 ful and candid inquiry it appears anything but simple. 
 
 The tone taken by Utilitarians in fact depends 
 very much on the interpretation given to the am- 
 biguous word happiness. When moralists talk of pro- 
 moting the happiness of the most, we must carefully 
 inquire exactly what is intended by the phrase. For 
 happiness may, in the first place, be regarded merely 
 as the sum of pleasures, the gratification of the desires 
 of common life. Utilitarians who take this view, and 
 form what may be termed the School of Pleasure, will 
 naturally maintain our duty in matters lying outside 
 the range of personal affection to consist in furthering 
 the satisfaction of the wishes of others and making 
 their ends our own. But it will easily be seen where 
 maxims like these will land us. The most prominent 
 and general desire among men is the attainment of 
 money. In this view, then, it will appear that he is 
 the most commendable, nay, the ethically best man, 
 who does most to increase the wealth of the com- 
 
1 What ts right conduct ? 19 
 
 munity, say, the daring engineer or the energetic 
 merchant. Most people’s most earnest desire is to be 
 clothed and fed; those therefore who do most to diffuse 
 food and raiment will be admirable beyond all others. 
 Jompared with these pressing desires of the many, the 
 love of political freedom or of religious life is but 
 slightly diffused and dim. Therefore, although it may 
 doubtless be moral to supply these more vague and 
 unusual needs, after the really urgent ones are satisfied, 
 yet he who ministers to them must be content to stand 
 on a far lower platform of desert than the multipliers 
 of physical resources. Our ideal heroes must be not 
 Francis of Assisi, Milton, and Washington, but Ark- 
 wright, Hudson, and Soyer. We shall fill our heaven 
 not with those who have taught of heaven, but with 
 those who have succeeded in making life go on easy 
 wheels and filled it with material comforts. 
 
 Now there is, no doubt, a good deal of feeling of 
 this kind abroad in an age of great material develop- 
 ment. Nevertheless the view of those who make plea- 
 sure all in all, and value pleasures according to their 
 distinctness and directness, is not true. No outward 
 prosperity can make mental and spiritual emptiness 
 anything but a hideous state of misery. It were a 
 mere waste of words to dwell on a truth so obvious, a 
 truth enforced by every moralist, and forming the basis 
 of almost every keen satire since the world began. 
 Why quote Hesiod, Plato, Horace, and the rest down 
 to Lord Byron and Robert Browning? Surely, with- 
 out producing authorities, we may safely assert that 
 those who aim only at improving directly the physical 
 wellbeing of mankind will assuredly utterly fail even 
 of their purpose, the very accomplishment of which 
 
20 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 might not hinder men from falling into the utmost 
 abyss of misery. 
 
 It is this truth which lies at the bottom of the 
 general feeling against Utilitarianism. In their desire 
 to get at definite results, and establish morality on a 
 basis of palpable fact, some Utilitarians have made too 
 much of results which can be measured and weighed, 
 have thought too highly of pleasures of which every 
 one must know the value. This has led them natu- 
 rally into the habit of looking very much at the surface, 
 and neglecting all the finer springs of action, building 
 on nothing which can possibly be denied. Spiritual 
 delights, moral pleasures, mental enjoyments, the love 
 of truth and of liberty, are things which cannot be 
 weighed or measured by any invented scale, and a 
 shallow cynicism might throw doubt even on their 
 sohd reahty. Thus they are first thrust into the back- 
 ground, and finally put almost out of sight by the 
 moralists of a hedonic turn. And all Utilitarianism 
 which professes to reach definite results and give con- 
 crete advice must needs somehow set them aside. The 
 ill consequences of such pernicious preference of the 
 definite to the immense, and the obvious to’ the real, 
 can scarcely be exaggerated. If it became universal, 
 all lofty aspiration and heroic action would cease, and 
 life would fall to a dead level of meanness, on which it 
 is painful to dwell even in thought. 
 
 It is true that the removal of extreme physical 
 misery from the life of a man is a necessary prelim- 
 inary before he can be expected to appreciate any 
 noble pleasure or indulge any high aspiration. There 
 are in our great cities whole classes of people who live 
 below that line, and to whom therefore no benefit can be 
 
It What ts right conduct ? 21 
 
 so great as the raising of their standard of material 
 comfort, as the securing of some outward decency in 
 their dwellings, and the removal of the constant pangs 
 of hunger. It may be said that great heroes and 
 saints have borne more bitter privations, and under- 
 gone harder daily miseries, than the poorest of our 
 days, and yet have all the time lived and breathed in 
 a high and pure air of enthusiasm. But the remark is 
 not to the point: a saintly and heroic life is possible 
 amid physical pains and privations in a desert, but it 
 could scarcely exist amid the squalor and all-surround- 
 ing sordidness and vulgarity of a modern court in a 
 ereat city. At all events, it must be in such surround- 
 ings of phenomenal rarity. It is the crowding, the 
 dirt, the indecency which prevail in the crowded parts 
 of great towns which form a crust almost impervious 
 to moral ideas. Poverty in the country, or in small 
 towns where a man is after all a man, is by no means 
 so unfavourable a soil for the seeds of noble living. 
 And if we grant that to very poor labouring families in 
 ereat cities some degree of improvement in physical 
 surroundings is necessarily the first step in the ladder 
 of good, yet this does not apply to those who are less 
 poverty-stricken. If ever a man’s life consists in the 
 abundance of the things which he possesses, it is only 
 at a very low level. In case of most dwellers in cities, and 
 nearly all dwellers in the country, the goodness, the real 
 happiness of life, depends far less on material satisfaction 
 than on a thousand things which cannot be measured or 
 weighed—on disposition and habit,on domestic affection 
 and the attachment of friends, on feelings and beliefs. 
 These are the things which with the bulk of mankind 
 make life noble and successful or base and miserable. 
 
22 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 But there are other Utilitarians beside the School of 
 Pleasure. These might be termed the School of Well- 
 being. While making the happiness of the most the 
 true end of action, these are careful not to make happi- 
 ness consist of those enjoyments which are merely 
 outward. They make it synonymous with a certain 
 balance of the faculties and satisfaction of all the parts of 
 man’s nature. They think with Plato that some parts 
 of man are by nature higher and better than others; 
 and that he cannot be really happy unless the due 
 subordination of part to part be maintained. Thus 
 they set a truer and higher value on intellectual 
 pleasures, on the satisfaction of a good conscience, and 
 on spiritual delights. We feel at once that writers of 
 this school have a noble aim and a fitting sense of 
 man’s place in creation, and if we differ from them do 
 so with circumspection and regard. 
 
 Yet this scheme of ethics will not bear examination. 
 It is evident, at first sight, that it must lose all definite- 
 ness and clearness by taking a higher flight and sur- 
 veying a more comprehensive field. The pleasures 
 which it most highly esteems cannot be taken into 
 account in any calculation of consequences. They 
 cannot be weighed in the balance or dissected by the 
 knife. But there is yet a far more radical objection. 
 It is obliged to assume a normal or healthy condition 
 of man, towards which every one should strive to 
 approach, and in attaining which every one will realise 
 his best happiness. It is obliged to assume that from 
 a mere inspection of human nature it can be deter- 
 mined which parts of man are of a higher and which 
 of a lower grade. Yet if man has a higher and a lower 
 nature, it can be at once determined what he ought to 
 
e) 
 
 11 What ts right conduct ? 23 
 
 do without any of the calculations of Utilitarianism ; 
 clearly he must follow what is best within him; the 
 voice of conscience and of his higher nature is sure to 
 cuide him aright. 
 
 There are thinkers, Mill at the head of them, who 
 have tried to amalgamate the two kinds of Utilitarian- 
 ism above described. This attempt, which can scarcely 
 be called happy, has taken the following form :— 
 Though it can never be our duty to promote anything 
 but the pleasures of others, yet pleasures are of very 
 different kinds, and some of a very superior character 
 to others. Of course these better pleasures have a 
 ereater claim on us, and what they are may be judged 
 from the testimony of mankind; by the verdict, that 
 is, of all who have experienced both them and the 
 worse. It is assumed that under this test mental and 
 moral pleasures will turn out more desirable than 
 mere physical comforts, and therefore have a better 
 claim than they on our activities. Unfortunately, at 
 the touch of fact, this house of cards comes clattering 
 down. It is not true that most people would, apart 
 from a feeling of duty, prefer higher to lower pleasures. 
 Some would, but only a few; certainly not the half of 
 those who can appreciate both. Virtue and wisdom 
 must compete at disadvantage with material pleasures 
 in the highways of life; here and there a man will 
 follow them, but the masses will crowd after their 
 rivals. And why should the verdict of the few be 
 truer than that of the many? Why, unless men have 
 a higher and a lower nature? which phrases Mill re- 
 jects. Is it because the few only can appreciate both 
 kinds of pleasure—the spiritual and the material ? 
 Surely not. The number of those who, while yet 
 
24 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 capable of material enjoyments, abandon them for 
 higher pleasures, is exceedingly small, while the number 
 of those who, quite aware of the nature of these better 
 delights, abandon them for the worse, is very large. 
 Take a youth with mind and body well developed, 
 offer him on the one side wealth, ease, luxury, a con- 
 stant stream of enjoyments, and on the other poverty, 
 celibacy, wisdom, and an uncorrupt life, and then bid 
 him choose between these, not in the light of duty, 
 but of pleasure; which will he prefer? The fact is, 
 that, without some appeal to an ideal standard, it is 
 impossible to find a reason why we should prefer the 
 pleasures which we know to be nobler to those which 
 we feel to be baser, but which attract us all the same. 
 And further, can anything be more unscientific than 
 the appeal to opinion for a fact? What should we 
 think of a physician who should try to settle the 
 question whether a patient was or was not in a con- 
 sumption, not by use of the stethoscope, but by asking 
 the opinions of all that patient’s relations and friends, 
 and deciding with the majority? What should we 
 think of the moralist who, when asked to do an act of 
 dubious character, should appeal, not to principles and 
 tendencies, but (say) to the first fifty people he happens 
 to meet, and do or abstain as twenty-six of them ad- 
 vise? After all, certain modes of action must be best 
 fitted for the reasoning and conscientious creature man : 
 his business is to discover what these are by a study 
 of his nature and his circumstances, and the opinion 
 of all the world will never make what does not fit 
 man right, or in the end pleasing, any more than it 
 can make black white. It is the nature of a magnetic 
 needle to point to the north, and all the surmising and 
 
It What ts right conduct ? 25 
 
 fancying in the world will not make it turn to the 
 east, or keep time like a watch. Just so the fact of 
 certain courses of action tending to wellbeing is fixed 
 in human nature. Opinion changes; now happiness is 
 supposed mainly to lie in this, and now in that, but 
 the changes of fashion, unless human nature radically 
 change, have no more effect on the nature of well- 
 doing and wellbeing than the clouds of the world 
 have on the body of the sun, which warms us all the 
 same if we go blind, or if we fancy that it has been 
 swallowed by a dragon. 
 
 This paper bridge breaking down, it would seem 
 that Utilitarians have to choose between the School of 
 Pleasure, which infinitely degrades human nature by 
 putting the better parts of it on a level with the 
 worse, and the School of Wellbeing, which, by allow- 
 ing the distinction between higher and lower pleasure, 
 does away with the essential characteristics of Utili- 
 tarlanism, and deprives it of any advantage it might 
 possess as a scheme of working ethics. 
 
 If, however, we were to grant for the moment that 
 happiness is a thing of obvious and easily discernible 
 nature, we should soon come to another difficulty. 
 For the first proposition of the School of Utility, that 
 happiness should be the end of action, will no more 
 support a serious examination than does the second 
 proposition. That happiness has a right to be the 
 guiding principle of our lives may be assumed by any 
 one who chooses to assume it, but it cannot be proved 
 to an objector. And clearly, unless it can be so 
 proved, the basis of the Utilitarian ethics is very 
 unsound. Mull, indeed, has tried to prove it by an 
 argument which has gained considerable notoriety. 
 
26 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 “The only proof capable of being given that an object 
 is visible is that people actually see it. The only 
 proof that a sound is audible is that people hear it: 
 and so of the other sources of our experience. In 
 like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is pos- 
 sible to produce, that anything is desirable, is that 
 people do actually desire it. . . . No reason can be 
 given why the general happiness is desirable, except 
 that each person, so far as he believes it to be attain- 
 able, desires his own happiness. This, however, being 
 a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case 
 admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that 
 happiness is a good; that each person’s happiness is a 
 good to that person, and the general happiness, there- 
 fore, a good to the aggregate of persons.” On this Mr. 
 Sidewick * justly observes: “It must be borne in mind 
 that it is as a ‘standard of right and wrong,’ of ‘ direc- 
 tive rule of conduct, that the Utilitarian principle is 
 put forward by Mill. Hence in giving as a statement 
 of this principle that ‘the general happiness is desir- 
 able, he must be understood to mean (and his whole 
 treatise shows that he does mean) that it is what each 
 individual ought to desire, or at least to aim at realis- 
 ing in action. The proof he offers of this is that each 
 one actually does desire his own happiness. But it 
 may surely be objected that the natural immediate 
 conclusion from this, on Mill’s own method, is that 
 Own Happiness, not Universal Happiness, is what 
 each one ought to desire: the argument leads primarily 
 to the principle of Egoistic instead of Universalistic 
 Hedonism.” This is incontrovertible, and a heavy 
 blow at the foundations of Mill’s whole ethical teach- 
 
 1 Methods of Ethics, p. 365. 
 
11 What ts right conduct ? 27 
 
 ing. The fact is, that there is an ambiguity in Mill’s 
 words, such a fallacy as he, above all men, delighted 
 in detecting in others. The termination -able or -ible 
 in English has more than one meaning. Sometimes it 
 implies the possibility of the action implied in the 
 verb to which it is appended ; sometimes the excellence 
 or goodness of that action. Audible is apphed to 
 things which can be heard, visible to things which can 
 be seen; but these words do not in the least imply 
 that things ought to be heard or seen. But the term 
 desirable usually does not mean that the thing of 
 which it is asserted can be desired, but that it should 
 be desired, that it is men’s business to desire it. Muill’s 
 argument is clearly only a play upon words. Of course 
 any one would allow to him that people can desire 
 happiness, and that they do desire it; but to assume 
 that therefore they ought to desire it is to make the 
 fatal leap from the fact to the ideal. It requires the 
 major premiss whatever is, 7s right to make it at all 
 conclusive, and Mill would have been the last to pass 
 that thesis. Nothing, then, can be clearer than that 
 there is no path whatever for argument from the 
 psychological statement that men desire their own 
 happiness, to the Utilitarian precept that we ought to 
 seek the happiness of the greatest number. 
 
 It is the more important to disentangle this knot 
 of fallacies, because there can be no sort of doubt that 
 Utilitarianism owes very much of its success among 
 modern thinkers to the belief that it possesses some 
 sort of proof derived from experience; that it does 
 not, like other ethical systems, boldly assume a certain 
 end of life as the most desirable, but rather finds its 
 end from a study of human nature and the constitution 
 
28 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 of society. People who are tired of ideals of all kinds 
 seek refuge in it to escape the pain of the contempla- 
 tion of what ought to be, and to rest wholly in what is 
 and has been. Vain hope! So long as man acts at all 
 he must act for an object, and it is impossible that he 
 should find that object anywhere save in the realm of 
 the imagination, among the things which are not, but 
 ought to be. 
 
 Thus both the propositions on which the system 
 of ethics advocated by Utilitarians is based, turn out 
 to be worthless, and entirely unfit to bear a super- 
 structure of theory. Happiness is not a definite and 
 unmistakable thing, nor is there any obvious reason 
 why happiness and that alone should be the one 
 thing to be sought. 
 
 Let us here leave the theories of Utility, which, 
 after all, belong to the times before the unfolding of 
 those luminous ideas of evolution and development 
 which have of late served to remodel the sciences 
 which deal with the physical world, and may here- 
 after remodel most of the historical sciences. From 
 the writings of the great teachers of the School of 
 Evolution we may expect light on the fundamental 
 problems of ethics with more confidence than from the 
 narrow and provincial school of the Utilitarian philo- 
 sophers. And light we shall scarcely fail to obtain, 
 though it may not be sufficient to illuminate for us all 
 the abysses of our subject. 
 
 To modern men of science two views are suggested 
 as to the nature of virtue. One of these we might 
 style the historical view, and connect specially with 
 the writings of Auguste Comte and others who main- 
 tain the continuity of all history. The other we may 
 
 — —_ 
 
 eee oe 
 
I What ts right conduct ? 29 
 
 eall the biological view, and connect with the writings 
 of Darwin and Spencer. From both views we may 
 learn much, but neither is entirely satisfactory, with- 
 out addition and enlargement. 
 
 Examination of conduct from the purely historical 
 point of view would seem to suggest that a careful 
 consideration of the course of moral development in 
 the past may show us what the nature of virtue is, 
 and by what landmarks we should guide our lives in 
 the future. Notoriously this view underlies the whole 
 teaching of Auguste Comte, and it has a great attrac- 
 tion for other writers, who, however they may differ 
 from him in principles and in results, agree with him 
 in looking on the history of man as the course of 
 development of an organism. From this point of view 
 it might seem that the mere fact, when fully estab- 
 lished, that the progress of human society is a regular 
 evolution following certain ascertainable laws, would 
 at once suggest a new theory in ethics. What have 
 we to do, a believer in evolution might say, but to 
 continue on into the future, in thought, the line 
 which we trace in the past? If we have observed 
 the direction in which a plant is growing we may 
 readily judge the direction of its future growth. If 
 we have traced the history of some variety of animal 
 since it branched off from the parent stem, we have 
 the best possible grounds for judging of its course of 
 development in the future. In the same way a 
 knowledge of the past history of a people must needs 
 help us to foretell the history of that people in the 
 future. And our observation of the course of ethical 
 development in the past will enable us to form an 
 opinion as to what will be its course hereafter. 
 
30 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 Thus it might seem that we have only to follow 
 on into the future one by one the converging lines 
 of the past history of ethics, in order to discover 
 the constituent parts of a perfect morality. For 
 example, it may be said, our age has witnessed in 
 many fields the abolition of exclusive privilege; it 
 therefore seems that democratic equality les before 
 as an inevitable goal, and therefore as something 
 desirable. Belief in unseen spiritual powers in the 
 world is not so common in modern days as it was in 
 the Middle Ages; its final extinction, therefore, may 
 be expected in the line of development. Reasoned 
 activity is usurping much of the province formerly occu- 
 pied by habit and instinctive action ; it is clearly, then, 
 in the line of human perfection that instinct should 
 make way for reason. Feelings of universal philan- 
 thropy are gaining on mere patriotism, and patriotism 
 is gaining on local interests and sympathies; therefore 
 the good man will expect broader sympathies to oust 
 narrower ones, and will do what he can to secure that 
 result. In short, let the observed line of human pro- 
 gress in the past, say the line A B, be continued in a 
 straight line to the point C, at C will be found the 
 ideal morality required. 
 
 The idea of development is very fruitful, but does 
 not make sufficient account of the fact that change 
 and improvement are not the same thing. A human 
 body develops, but occasionally the line of its changes 
 lies through disease and danger. A physician who is 
 called to attend a patient afflicted with consumption 
 has not to encourage, but to hinder, the ordinary course 
 of development. So the moralist may find himself in 
 a state of society in which habits are deteriorating, 
 
11 What ts right conduct ? 31 
 
 and in which the best thing he can do is to practise a 
 violent and unreasoning conservatism. Nor does it do 
 much good to bring in the distinction between healthy 
 and unhealthy, normal and abnormal, development. 
 Suppose a moralist, believing in the steady develop- 
 ment of human morality, to have lived in the times 
 so terribly painted by Tacitus, when the Roman world 
 could neither endure its vices nor their remedies, by 
 what tests would he distinguish the true and healthy 
 development of morality from its fevers and abscesses ? 
 From the modern point of view we should say that at 
 that time the world was growing better chiefly in two 
 respects ; the feeling of one universal humanity was 
 being fostered by the Stoics, and deeper notions of 
 virtue were being introduced by the Christians. But 
 there was no observer of the time who thought so. 
 The cosmopolitan equality of peoples at Rome, and the 
 influx of strange religions from the East, were just 
 two of the symptoms on which Juvenal dilates as 
 proving the utter corruption of Roman society. If 
 Epictetus, or some other of the great moralists of the 
 time, had produced in thought the lne leading from 
 Fabius Cunctator to Vespasian, where would it have 
 brought him? Assuredly not into the Middle Ages, 
 which we yet clearly see to have been times of real 
 greatness and improvement. And indeed, we need 
 not go back to Roman times, when our own may be 
 just as well instanced. Is it safe for us to assume 
 that we English are in all the points in which we 
 differ from the English of Hampden’s time better than 
 they ? Have we more steadfast courage, or must we 
 say that courage is a vice, which disappears in a 
 erowing society? Are we more courteous than the 
 
32 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 Black Prince, more enterprising than Raleigh? Is it 
 not absurd to suppose that every change in the morals 
 of society, or even every deep and lasting change, is for 
 the better? He who thinks so must be but a superficial 
 student of history. 
 
 It is not necessary, before admitting this reasoning, 
 to abandon all belief in the future of the race. If we 
 compare times distant enough one from the other, and 
 if we eliminate what is clearly unhealthy, we may see 
 enough to strengthen into belief our hope of the final 
 triumph of good in the world. When by long practice 
 a certain virtue has become innate in every child, it 
 will not easily again be lost; while vice, on the con- 
 trary, being never at one with itself, has a constant 
 tendency to break down. Great inventions like that 
 of printing raise to a far greater height the posszble 
 excellence of the masses, and by lhmiting the kingdom 
 of ignorance increase that of light. All here main- 
 tained is that our eyes cannot take a wide enough 
 view of the entire course of human growth and 
 development to distinguish its essence from its acci- 
 dents. As the tide comes in, to use a hackneyed but 
 excellent metaphor, the water gradually gains on the 
 land, but has seasons of apparent retrogression. And 
 compared with the length of time during which man 
 has existed on the earth, the portion of time spoken of 
 by history seems but a few moments. How sanguine, 
 then, to expect, as many do, to find a visible law of 
 progress operating in the last century or so. We are 
 of course at liberty to believe that we are on the crest 
 of an advancing, not in the wake of a receding wave ; 
 but if we do so believe, we must justify ourselves, not 
 by any attempt to deduce from mere inspection a law 
 
II What ws right conduct ? 33 
 
 of progress, but by an appeal to the ideals of man and 
 his aspirations. 
 
 It thus appears that although we should be very 
 foolish if we made light of the knowledge in regard to 
 conduct which is furnished by history, yet history is 
 not by itself capable of marking us out a course for the 
 future. Duty has a higher law than past history can 
 furnish. Nor shall we find an all-sufficient guide in 
 those general laws which modern sociology has dis- 
 covered, and which, wisely considered, are full of 
 instruction for all; such as, that progress is from 
 the indefinite to the definite, from the simple to the 
 complex, from homogeneity to heterogeneity, and the 
 like. These are facts which the moral philosopher 
 must ever bear in mind, but they are not concrete 
 and exact enough to help us much in determining the 
 future of morality, and of scarcely any use to us when, 
 as individuals, we desire to discover what is the path 
 of virtue for ourselves. At such a time intellect and 
 science lead us but a little way. 
 
 We must next turn to the English School of 
 Evolution, to see if, amid its teachings, we can find any 
 new light as to the nature of the supreme good. 
 
 The Darwinian discoveries make known not only 
 the fact of progress, but also the method in which it 
 takes place, namely, natural selection, with competition 
 and survival of the fittest. It would be easy to form 
 from such data an ethical law—TZhat conduct 1s the 
 best wn reality which tends to make the doer survive vm 
 the struggle for existence, and produce descendants fit for 
 the world in which we live. Or, if perhaps this defini- 
 tion may seem too narrow and egoistic, it may be 
 easily expanded into—TZhat conduct is the best which 
 
 D 
 
34 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 tends most to make the family or the community of the 
 doer likely to survive and multiply. Just as that mud- 
 fish is best which is most closely of the colour of mud, 
 so as to escape its enemies, and just as that wolf is 
 best which runs fastest and overtakes its prey most 
 easily, so that man is best who possesses most faculties 
 for doing the work of man and escaping man’s enemies 
 whether living or inanimate. ‘This may perhaps be as 
 well put in Mr. Spencer’s form as any: Zhe man 18 
 the best man whose internal organisation best accords 
 with his environment. | 
 
 Thus we get several formule for the definition of 
 perfect virtue. Some of them are very valuable, but 
 none, as hitherto interpreted, is fully satisfactory. 
 
 Let us consider the formula that right action is 
 action fitted to man’s environment—that the sum of 
 his duties is to make that which is within him cor- 
 respond to that which is without. By that which is 
 without is in this phrase meant the visible surrounding 
 world. If this be the case, it will seem that the true 
 and sufficient guide in matters of conduct will be 
 observation and experience. 
 
 Now the visible environment of man is twofold— 
 physical and social. He has to do with the world 
 of matter and the world of other selves. We shall 
 have to consider two questions in regard to each of 
 these spheres: first, as to the amount of influence 
 which each exercises over man; and second, as to 
 man’s faculties for learning how to adapt himself to 
 each. | 
 
 To begin with the power exercised over man by the 
 physical world, it is at once obvious that there is the 
 greatest and most essential difference between man’s 
 
1 What ws right conduct ? 35 
 
 relation to the scheme of nature and the relation borne 
 to it by the lower animals. To these latter it may be 
 the highest virtue to adapt themselves to physical 
 surroundings, at all events when they are in a wild 
 state. But to man this is evidently but a small part 
 of virtue, and the lowest kind of it, if indeed it can 
 properly be called virtue at all. If a man intends to 
 live on the earth at all he is compelled to make allow- 
 ance for, and bow to, the laws which regulate matter 
 and his own physical frame, which is made up of 
 matter. If he lives in filth and foul air, no wisdom 
 and no goodness will save him from disease and death. 
 If he eats and drinks unwholesome things, no good 
 intention will make them agree with him. But the 
 physical environment of man is not fixed, as it is for 
 animals, who cannot change it, but must merely wait 
 on nature. Man modifies his surroundings to a great 
 extent at his will; he acts upon nature just as nature 
 upon him. He can change the productions, the aspect, 
 the very climate of the country where he dwells. By 
 wearing clothes and building houses he makes a climate 
 for himself; by the invention of fire he makes all sorts 
 of food palatable and nutritious. As he advances 
 nature recedes before him. Every advance in civil- 
 isation involves a fresh victory over physical nature. 
 She starts as the mistress of man, but she becomes his 
 slave, a slave ever more obedient and humble as years 
 go by, and the power which she jealously guards of 
 retaliating on man for neglect of her directions grows 
 every day more restricted. To man alone of living 
 creatures there is opened an endless vista of victories 
 over the physical world. 
 
 Man’s power over the social world, the world of his 
 
36 Faith and Conduct OHAP. 
 
 fellow-creatures, is more limited. It might seem 
 easier to move men than physical forces, but it 1s not 
 so; human nature is a stubborn thing, and develops 
 according to laws which admit of but little change. 
 Very few are the men who in the course of history 
 have been able radically to alter the social medium 
 into which they were born. But, on the other hand, 
 though we cannot greatly alter the tendencies and tone 
 of society, yet we can to a great extent withdraw 
 ourselves from them. ‘The influence of others does not 
 follow us like the power of nature into solitude and 
 into the closet; there we can shut out intruders. And 
 the men who are strong can dare, even when among 
 their fellow-creatures, to act in defiance of their pres- 
 sure, to take a path and cleave to it in spite of the 
 opinion of men. The selfish man does it in pursuit of 
 his own interests, and the religious or moral reformer 
 does it in pursuit of what he considers a good end. 
 Still more have small coteries, when they agree among 
 themselves, the power of living outside of the general 
 stream of life and feeling, as an eddy maintains itself 
 in a river under the shelter of a shelving bank in spite 
 of the pressure of the river. 
 
 Thus it appears to be by no means a full account 
 of human virtue that it consists in self-adaptation to 
 our material and social surroundings. Such a view of 
 human excellence leaves out of account man’s power 
 to modify his surroundings, which is exactly the thing 
 wherein man differs most from animals, and wherein 
 resides the power of development and progress. 
 
 But having reached this point, we must point out 
 that if the view of man’s surroundings be extended to 
 its real limit, then the view that it is his highest duty 
 
II What ts right conduct ? 37 
 
 to accommodate himself to them becomes defensible 
 and true. For man belongs not only to the physical 
 frame of things, and to a surrounding world of other 
 selves, but also to an encompassing spiritual universe— 
 a universe quite different from that which is visible, 
 and above all different in this, that in the spiritual 
 universe the facts are ideas and possibilities. In it 
 that which might be is the reality, and that which at 
 present exists 1s the mirage; the possibility is the 
 spirit, and the actuality only the body in which it 
 dwells. 
 
 This is the greatest and deepest of all the facts of 
 our lives. Few indeed are those who do not recognise 
 it as a fact. But its very greatness makes it hard to 
 grasp. And a thousand writers, since men began to 
 speculate on themselves and their surroundings, have 
 expressed it in a thousand forms. It is like the air 
 around us, of which we in our ordinary moods are 
 scarcely conscious, yet without which we could not live 
 for a minute. It is like the force of gravity, seldom 
 the object of direct contemplation, yet conditioning 
 every movement and every thought. “In him,” said 
 St. Paul, “we lve and move and have our being.” 
 And the modern poet replies: “Closer is he than 
 breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.” In vari- 
 ous ages the spiritual power which rules the world 
 has been variously regarded and spoken of. And in 
 modern days there are some who suppose that we need 
 speak of it no longer. Vain dream! Let a man try 
 to live without food, to walk where there is no ground, 
 to live in contact with human beings without liking or 
 disliking them, but never let him try to act in independ- 
 ence of the spiritual power which sets the bounds of 
 
38 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 good and evil, and is the source of the ideas which 
 slowly, in the infinite ages, form the world and human 
 society after themselves. 
 
 This spiritual force is not only the most important 
 but the most real of all our surroundings. All else 
 may be illusion, this is an eternal fact. And while we 
 may change our physical and social surroundings, this 
 force remains unchanged. We may to some extent 
 turn our back upon it, and we may try to act independ- 
 ently, but it remains all the same eternal and un- 
 changed. Moral laws cannot be removed or altered. 
 That no one can do what he knows to be wrong without 
 remorse and misery, that no one can act unselfishly 
 without feeling better and more healthy—these are facts 
 as independent of man’s will as the facts of astronomy 
 or of electricity, and of infinitely greater practical im- 
 portance, since the facts of astronomy and of electricity 
 demand our attention but rarely, but the sanctions of 
 conduct may apply to every deed of our conscious 
 hours. And while man may make of electricity a mere 
 servant to do his will in the world, he is on the other 
 hand entirely subject to the moral laws of the world, 
 and cannot change them in the least degree. As then 
 we live in a threefold sphere, and two of the elements 
 of which it is composed are of a modifiable kind, while 
 the third is altogether unmodifiable, it is clear that this 
 last element must form the ultimate norm or standard 
 by which human progress must be guided and regulated. 
 
 It appears then to result that if man’s highest good 
 be to live in accordance with the laws of the universe 
 in which he lives, it is above all the laws of the 
 spiritual world to which he will have to give heed. It 
 will seem likely that the more completely our lives are 
 
II What ts right conduct 2 39 
 
 in accord with those laws, the more they will prosper 
 and be in health; the more they are at variance with 
 the highest laws, the more frail and unstable is their 
 condition, the more sure are they to be suddenly cast 
 down or to slowly decay. A life so at variance with 
 the power which ultimately rules it is in a chronic state 
 of insurrection, and will be certainly put down, is in a 
 perpetual disease and cannot be far from death. But 
 revolt and disease are conditions incompatible with any 
 sort of happiness; if then, as all moralists are agreed, 
 it 1s man’s business to be happy in the world, his only 
 safe course will be to seek wellbeing through submis- 
 sion to higher law. 
 
 It is well, however, in speaking of the spiritual 
 powers of the world as man’s environment to enter a 
 caveat against misconceptions. The phrase, if used 
 baldly, may seem inadequate, even presumptuous. For 
 in biology we have to consider the medium which 
 surrounds living things as a thing to be made use of 
 and appropriated. The living individual seizes on 
 parts of its environment and absorbs them for its own 
 purposes ; it grows by appropriating what is without, 
 and advancing its personality at the expense of the 
 medium. It need scarcely be pointed out that there 
 is in spiritual matters no such process of appropriation. 
 There the task is the opposite, to subordinate one’s 
 self to surrounding moral law; so that it shall live in 
 us and absorb us, instead of our absorbing any part of 
 it. This is a distinction so fundamental that we must 
 always use the utmost caution in transferring the 
 language of biology to this more exalted sphere. 
 
 The social medium is between the other two; it is 
 neither recklessly to be used for any mere personal 
 
40 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 Ope ae ig eg 
 development or advantage, as 1s the physical medium, 
 nor on the other hand are we right in entirely subordi- 
 nating to it our personalities. We have to live for 
 others, and yet to live according to the highest law we 
 can discover, so as not to be mere idle flatterers of 
 the desires and wishes of those about us, but rather a 
 power to raise the tone of the society in which we 
 dwell, and make it more fully show forth the will of 
 the moral ruler of the world. 
 
 With such explanations and limitations we are 
 willing to accept the phrase of evolution, making the 
 internal organisation correspond to the external environ- 
 ment, as an expression of the swmmum bonum or 
 supreme end of conduct. But it is clear that these 
 explanations and limitations are important, and go to 
 the root of the matter. They are quite fatal to any 
 hasty and materialistic attempt to place the virtue of 
 man on the same level as that of animals, or lightly 
 to deduce the true law of ethics from the mere con- 
 sideration of man’s surroundings at any point in his 
 long and complicated history. Let it be called man’s 
 virtue to adapt himself to the highest law of his being: 
 but then, What is that highest law ? 
 
 Our assertion is that in all the higher branches of 
 conduct there is an ideal element, that our conduct has 
 to be conformable to certain ideas which exist outside 
 us. For every man, every society, every nation, there 
 is a possible best; and the more nearly that possible 
 best is attained the better it will be for the man, the 
 society, and the nation. History and biography reveal 
 
 to us in the past an approach to the embodiment of . 
 
 these highest ideas in the lives of nations and men. 
 Religion, poetry, and art impress us from time to time 
 
IT What ts right conduct ? Al 
 
 with a sudden feeling of their reality, and their reality 
 for us; and we are raised and strengthened until the 
 vulgar motives of daily life regain sway over us. The 
 more we think of these ideas, the more do they seem 
 to us the only real things; and in comparison with 
 them the material world seems but a bubble, and the 
 lives of men like passing clouds. They live for ages, 
 we for a day. ‘They may become embodied in us in 
 some degree, but if we refuse to embody them they 
 none the less exist without us, and overshadow our 
 lives if they do not fill them. 
 
 We shall consider in the next chapter what faculties 
 we possess for the apprehension of these disembodied 
 ideas, how we are to supply the deficiencies of the 
 mere understanding, which can by no arrangement of 
 facts, and no observation of tendencies, find out the 
 path of virtue. 
 
CHAPTER HI 
 HOW CAN WE KNOW WHAT IS RIGHT? 
 
 To believers in the theory of utility the problem of 
 discerning what is right will seem to admit of an easy 
 solution. If the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number be the sum of good, and if happiness be a 
 thing quite definite and understood by all, then it is 
 quite clear that the reasoning faculties of any and all 
 of us are sufficient to tell us what it is right to do in 
 all affairs of life. The matter becomes one of calcula- 
 tion, rather elaborate calculation it is true, but still a 
 matter requiring only such faculties as are used in 
 mathematics. And this is certainly the view of 
 Bentham and Austin, and all the more uncompromis- 
 ing advocates of the principle of Utility. 
 
 To some of those, also, who maintain an evolutional 
 view in ethics, intellect will still seem an all-sufficient. 
 guide in matters of conduct, but that intellect will 
 turn its attention less to arithmetical calculations and 
 tables of statistics than to history. It will trace the 
 course of conduct in the past, and thence try to con- 
 tinue it into the future. That such proceedings may 
 at. times be useful and help us, more especially in 
 those parts of morality which are simple and definite 
 
cuar. in S7ow can we know what 7s right? 43 
 
 in character, is not to be denied. But we have shown 
 cause for thinking that they offer no test which is final 
 and complete. 
 
 Far more valuable for the discernment of right and 
 wrong than any mere train of reasoning is experience. 
 We are indeed most ready to admit that experience 
 does give us guidance in conduct, and guidance without 
 which we should be helplessly mazed in the conduct 
 of life. But experience alone is not all-sufficient ; we 
 need other guidance besides. 
 
 As regards living in accordance with the laws of 
 the physical world, experience is certainly an excellent 
 guide. The science of health and disease, however its 
 development falls short of what we might hope, is 
 yet firmly founded and fast advancing. Its general 
 principles, indeed, have been fixed since the days 
 of Hippocrates. If any man claimed to know by any 
 intuition or any analogical reasonings what food would 
 be good for the health, or what habits would preserve 
 it, rather than by citing the results of experience, we 
 should surely not listen to him. We can see and feel 
 health, and can judge by the ordinary faculties of 
 every day what causes produce it. We can see sick- 
 ness, and by questioning the sick man ascertain what 
 brought him into such misery. 
 
 Science which is essentially nothing more than well- 
 arranged experience, is in our days perfectly well aware 
 of its right to dictate to us in all matters relating to 
 our health and our relations to the forces of nature. 
 Indeed men of science are very apt not merely to 
 preach in the pulpit which really belongs to them, but 
 to dictate to us our duties in life generally. The needs 
 of the body are fixed and definite, and continually 
 
44 Fatth and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 obtrude themselves upon us, so that the philosophy 
 which understands them and shows how they may be 
 met, has a natural advantage, an advantage of the 
 greatest value in these days of moral chaos. Thus 
 sanitary authorities claim moral authority: and there 
 are hundreds amongst us who regard all laws and all 
 customs which appear to have a salutary tendency on 
 the physical health of the community as necessarily 
 moral and right. They regard a healthy mind as a sort 
 of corollary of a healthy body, and consider crime as a 
 kind of disease of the structure of the brain. It 1s 
 naturally among physicians that we find this material- 
 istic way of regarding human life most prevalent: but 
 after all it is a pedantry which must necessarily be 
 confined to the few. The course of life is too strong 
 and vigorous to be for long confined in so narrow a 
 channel. A few hypochondriacs may accept such views, 
 but the rough sense of mankind makes light of them. 
 Rather than holding that a healthy body makes a 
 healthy mind, we shall reverse the proposition, and make 
 a healthy body the corollary and result of healthy mind 
 and right conduct. Small indeed is the fear that a 
 people who live uprightly and honourably will physic- 
 ally degenerate ; but it would be possible, on the other 
 hand, to bring forward many cases in which a decay 
 of manners and morals has ruined the physique of a 
 whole race. Therefore a wise man will set bounds, 
 and not very wide bounds, to the interference of medical 
 science in his conduct in life: he will allow it to forbid 
 him many things but prescribe to him few. 
 
 When, however, we quit the physical surroundings 
 of man for his moral and social surroundings, then we 
 at once reach the realm of ideals, and science has to 
 
ree Flow can we know what rs right ? A5 
 
 content herself with a very subordinate task. Her 
 voice drops at once from the categorical imperative to 
 the conditional. She can no longer order us to do this 
 or that as a condition of flourishing or even of exist- 
 ence, but merely advise us that if we desire this or that 
 end we had best hear her advice as to the means by 
 which the end may be reached. Medicine tells us what 
 conduct in regard to the outer world must be good if 
 we would keep our health. But, as we have already 
 seen, history does not tell us thus clearly and distinctly 
 what conduct we must pursue in regard to our less 
 obvious surroundings. Parties and sects differ in these 
 matters as widely as possible. A man may of course 
 accept the teaching of the particular sect among whom 
 he is brought up. But if he quit that teaching, reso- 
 lutely determined to find out what it is right for him 
 to do, he will find it necessary to take a long voyage, 
 and is indeed fortunate if he at last reach a haven 
 where it is well with him. 
 
 Conduct is a personal matter: our will is ours to 
 act or not to act. It is our own selves and not another 
 who must discover what is the right course to pursue. 
 If then mere reasoning cannot guide us aright in this 
 matter, if the opinions of men differ widely one from 
 the other, and if there be here no science to prescribe 
 what is right for man as man, we must turn to the 
 consideration of our practical faculties and try there to 
 discover the law of conduct, to discern what is right, 
 and why we do the right. 
 
 The simplest of all accounts which can be given as 
 to our faculties of discovering right and wrong is that 
 which states right and wrong to be qualities of actions, 
 just as softness and hardness are qualities of material 
 
46 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 objects, and which asserts that each of us has a moral 
 sense whereby we can discern these moral qualities, 
 just as by sight we discern colour and shape, or by 
 touch warmth or cold. This is a view which has in its 
 day had able defenders; yet to state it is to show its 
 absurdity. It is misleading to speak of the faculty of 
 moral discernment as a sense. It is indeed like a sense 
 in its immediate and instinctive judgment ; but it differs 
 absolutely from a sense in the most important respects. 
 We are all agreed as to the facts of sense, European and 
 Asiatic, savage and civilised, rich and poor alike; they 
 are true for man as man. But as to the morality of 
 actions we diverge very widely; no two of us indeed 
 altogether agreeing. Each nation and sect and family 
 has its own scale of virtue. Take a Scotchman and a 
 Frenchman of ordinary cultivation and average virtue, 
 and question each of them as to the rightness of strictly 
 observing Sundays, or as to the comparative importance 
 of truth-telling and charity, and the result will be to 
 show the widest differences of view in elementary 
 matters of morality. And if it be so, they cannot both 
 have a moral sense. If we called the faculty a moral 
 sentiment we should use a phrase far more defensible. 
 
 When we listen to a strain of music, sense tells us 
 what are the sounds of which it consists, but it is not 
 sense but sentiment which tells us whether the strain 
 is pleasing or unpleasing. On the first point we do 
 not dispute; the latter is matter of infinite differences 
 of opinion. Our judgment of right and wrong in actions 
 far more nearly resembles the second of these judgments 
 than the first, for it also is a matter on which men 
 differ widely, and which involves the ideal. 
 
 The natural method in which to trace out the nature 
 
 a 
 
m1 Flow can we know what ts right ? A7 
 
 of the moral sentiments is introspection and an exam- 
 ination of our active faculties. If there be in usa 
 faculty of direction which leads us to good rather than 
 evil, which shows us what it is right for us to do, and 
 arouses us to follow that which is right, then it might 
 naturally seem that such a power would be visible to 
 a mind turned in on itself, that psychology could explain 
 its working and analyse its nature. And yet such a 
 hope is destined to a very partial fulfilment. 
 
 In all mental analysis we labour under serious dis- 
 advantages; we can only observe thought and will as 
 they are presented to consciousness,—that, is as if we 
 had to decide by means of anatomical study the facts 
 of physiology. The mind is ever active, and when we 
 bring it into the field of observation its action is 
 thwarted and distorted and turned from its original 
 character. Nothing is more destructive than self- 
 consciousness, not merely of vigorous and _ healthy 
 action, but even, as we see in everyday life, of graceful 
 or natural pose. Hence when we look in on our own 
 minds we are exposing ourselves to the risk of a mis- 
 take at every turn. And the more so when the very 
 subject of our investigation 1s active movement. It is 
 almost as if one should dissect a man’s leg in order to 
 discover his motive in going to this or that place. 
 
 We may indeed lay it down as a general rule that 
 the more healthy and vigorous conduct is, the less 
 it enters into consciousness. Consciousness implies a 
 lapse of time between impulse and action, and every 
 moment spent between the two tends more and more 
 to make the action feeble and constrained. The beauty 
 of conduct, like the beauty of active physical exercise, 
 consists in rapidity and grace of movement, and absence 
 
48 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 of hesitation and doubt. The man of strong will is 
 not he who long deliberates and finally determines in 
 one direction or another, but the man who directly he 
 has heard the circumstances of a case knows what he 
 means to do in it. The virtuous man is not he who 
 decides after long conflicts to do what he thinks to be 
 right, but the man to whom virtue has so much become 
 a second nature that he cannot hesitate to do rightly. 
 As in the arts so in conduct, the greater the personality 
 the more rapid and the more unerring the execution. 
 
 If any man pause long, and carefully consider the 
 right and the wrong of any contemplated deed until 
 the impetus which urged him to activity is entirely 
 exhausted, he will find the question from the specula- 
 tive point of view insoluble. Before long, unless the 
 matter be one of quite elementary morality, he will 
 learn to doubt what is right and what is wrong; and 
 -the longer he reflects the more he will doubt and 
 hesitate. In so simple a matter, for instance, as 
 voting for one candidate for Parliament or another, it 
 is quite easy, by considering every side of the question, 
 to make it impossible to vote at all. 
 
 But to think of life as a series of deeds planned 
 with a view to particular purposes is to take quite a 
 false view of it. Life is not an elaborate piece of 
 machinery, but a living and growing organism. Its 
 development is like that of a tree. And so if instead 
 of dissecting branches to discover the principles of hfe, 
 we observe which way the sap flows in winter and 
 which way in summer, how the flowers come forth 
 and how the fruit succeeds them, we may be able to 
 discern a law of growth and development. 
 
 Most men have at times in their life experienced a 
 
 ee — —— 
 
TI flow can we know what ts right ? AQ 
 
 voice which has suddenly made itself heard within 
 them forbidding them to perform some action on which 
 they were bent, and that with such clearness and force 
 that either they have turned back on the very thresh- 
 old of action, or else, persevering in their purpose, 
 they have felt a bitter sense of guilt and shame. 
 Socrates, sceptic as he was in some things, yet was fully 
 convinced that there dwelt in him a warning voice 
 ordering him back from whatever was wrong for him. 
 This voice, which the ancients called by the general 
 name Demon, which they applied to any person or 
 manifestation which seemed to them of more than 
 mortal dignity, is familiar to all of us under the name 
 of conscience. No one, unless he drown thought in 
 excess, or paralyse it by incessant activity, can do a 
 thing which he knows to be wrong without a distinct 
 protest from this inward monitor ; no one can obey its 
 voice without feeling the better and the happier, or 
 can disregard its warnings without feeling that he has 
 sunk in the scale of humanity and taken a step towards 
 the abyss of sin and misery. And those who know 
 the history of human lives, whether by experience of 
 men or from the discipline of books, know how great 
 a part in human affairs is played by the feelings of 
 content arising from the sense of time well spent, and 
 of remorse for past misdeeds,—feelings so strong that 
 they not only tinge the life, but mould the character, 
 and finally indelibly express themselves in the character 
 of the face. 
 
 But though conscience be most clear and strong in 
 its negative utterances, yet its voice is by no means 
 always negative. It not only tells us what to avoid, 
 but it incites us to do better things than we have done 
 
 E 
 
50 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 hitherto. And no one can work well and thoroughly 
 in any department of activity without often feeling 
 this strong call to what is best in that department. 
 Few pleasures are greater than that enjoyed by the 
 worker who feels the character of his work rising in 
 obedience to this impulse, nor can misery be more 
 complete than that felt by the worker who steadily 
 opposes the better impulse and keeps down his work 
 at the old level, or even sinks below it. When the 
 good impulse leads to very brilliant results it is in 
 ordinary language termed an inspiration, but when the 
 results are less marked the character which it shows is 
 the same. 
 
 The kind of work wherein we may trace the 
 prompting to better efforts most clearly is the work in 
 the world which we call conduct—our dealings with 
 each other and the world. The man who sees that his 
 conduct is false, cowardly, and selfish, and feels no 
 desire to alter it for the better, is a monster, and rare 
 as monsters are. A thousand times he may feel 
 prompted to raise the tone of his conduct, and a thou- 
 sand times he may fail from the force of habit, indo- 
 lence, and temptation, but the wish to do better is 
 nevertheless still present and survives many failures. 
 And however completely a man may stifle the better 
 impulses, yet he will now and again hear them in spite 
 of all. 
 
 Butler remarks with perfect justice that a mere 
 consideration of the scheme of man’s nature will show 
 that conscience should be obeyed. It is a faculty 
 which claims the direction of our conduct, and if it is 
 not allowed to direct conduct, it becomes a useless 
 incumbrance, an organ without a function. It is as 
 
 Se 
 
It flow can we know what ts right ? 51 
 
 evidently made for the guidance of our lives as a 
 rudder is for the guidance of a ship, or reins for the 
 guidance of horses. And, in fact, we need not occupy 
 ourselves with proving that men ought to follow the 
 dictates of conscience, for any one who systematically 
 disobeyed them would soon be destroyed by the course 
 of the world, and cease to exist. 
 
 But though men ought to follow their conscience it 
 does not follow that conscience is always right. The 
 writer of these pages does not contend, evidently no 
 one could contend, that every man at all times has 
 within him a monitor infallibly directing him to virtue. 
 This would be equivalent to maintaining that actions 
 done conscientiously can never be wrong—an obvious 
 absurdity, when we know that many of the worst 
 ' deeds recorded in history were done in pursuance of 
 conscientious feelings. This is a notorious fact, and it 
 is a notorious fact that people about us continually do 
 what is wrong, and what they afterwards allow to 
 have been wrong, without any qualms of conscience. 
 It will be necessary to explain that facts like these are 
 really no argument against our view of morals. 
 
 Virtue is a progressive revelation to man, and 
 deeds which to our apprehension seem wrong may not 
 have been so at the time they were done. It is as 
 unjust to judge the deeds of past ages by the moral 
 standard of to-day as it would be to condemn the 
 paintings of an Esquimaux or a Red Indian because 
 they did not conform to our notions of colouring and 
 perspective. Even highly-developed arts, such as that 
 of Japan, are in some respects childish; and in the 
 same way nations at a high stage of civilisation may 
 have a morality on some sides undeveloped. The first 
 
52 — Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 requisite for considering the history of morals is a 
 share of the historic or comparative spirit which insists 
 on judging the deeds of each age by the standard of 
 that age, and praising them when they rise above it, 
 even if in any way they seem to fall short of ideal 
 perfection. 
 
 Still, after making such allowances, we must admit 
 that many deeds recorded in history were wrongly 
 done, though done with the approval of conscience. 
 And to find such deeds we need not turn to history, 
 but just look at the deeds of our fellow-men, or recall 
 incidents in our own lives. What does this prove ? 
 
 It proves simply this, that we have not only to 
 obey our conscience, but we have also to keep our 
 conscience true to something outside us. A mariner 
 cannot do better than steer by his compass, yet the 
 compass may be out of order, and then he steers to de- 
 struction. A man must regulate his employments by 
 his watch, but his watch may be wrong, and then he 
 will reculate them badly. Just so must a man abide 
 by his conscience ; but if the conscience cease to corre- 
 spond to the highest facts of his environment, then he 
 will act to evil end. | 
 
 The only way in which our conduct can be brought 
 to conform to what is most fixed and highest in our 
 surroundings is not only by following conscience, but 
 also by producing a concord between our conscience 
 and the eternal purposes according to which man was 
 made and is sustained. These purposes may be to 
 some extent discovered by reasoning and experience, 
 as we showed at the beginning of this chapter. But 
 that which is highest in them can only be reached by 
 some kindof inspiration. The divine ideas must be 
 
III Flow can we know what ts rroht ? ote 
 
 revealed to the conscience before it can understand the 
 nature and the ends of virtue. 
 
 It is too early in this work to say much as to 
 the inspiration of conduct. We return to the subject 
 in a future chapter. And it is not a matter in which 
 investigation is very successful. Nature seems studi- 
 ously to hide from us all her most important and 
 wonderful processes. No one knows how or when the 
 infant becomes a separate personality from its mother, 
 or at what point of its life it first attains consciousness. 
 The most skilled observer will fail to trace the begin- 
 nings of a disease that soon grows strong enough to 
 destroy a strong man. Who can tell at what moment 
 he first felt the stirrings of the passion of love, or 
 when he became aware of the weight of moral respon- 
 sibility ? When some philosopher is able to tell us 
 how it was that George Eliot, living an uneventful 
 life amid a small circle of friends, was able to recall 
 and make real the feelings and emotions which stir 
 the hearts of people in utterly different conditions 
 from any she ever experienced, nay, how it was that 
 she even lived again the life of Florentines of the days 
 of Savonarola, then we may fairly look to that philo- 
 sopher for some account of the way in which the divine 
 ideas are revealed in the conscience of man. Mean- 
 time we must confess that the process is almost, though 
 not quite, as difficult to explain as is that other process 
 by which we become aware of the objects in the 
 material world, or of the existence of human beings 
 about us,—almost, though not quite, as mysterious as 
 the vital process by which the child develops into the 
 full-grown man. 
 
 Generally, then, we may say that when conscience 
 
54 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 i ee ee Ee 
 
 is in a good and healthy state its action in matters 
 outside reasoning and experience lies in the reception 
 of the divine impulses which urge man to be better 
 than he is,and in looking at the field of activity in the 
 light of those impulses. Its eyes should ever be turned 
 upwards. Only we must remember that we have, as 
 St. Paul says, “this treasure in earthen vessels.” 
 Though the light which shines in upon our lives be 
 pure and wholesome, it is reflected from cankered or 
 tarnished surfaces. If from the cradle one of our race 
 gave himself up wholly to better influences, and never 
 mingled a selfish or unworthy feeling with his motives 
 for action, then the impulses at least of such a man 
 would be purely virtuous, though even he might often 
 fail of the best course for want of fully understanding 
 all the circumstances of particular calls to action. But 
 none of us has a mind thus pure; from the very first 
 we neglect the better course and follow the worse; we 
 allow selfishness, idleness, and passion to fill us with 
 clamour until we cannot distinguish the gentle voice 
 which calls to right and to duty, and constantly mis- 
 take for it some promptings of our worse natures. We 
 are like water into which the light falls; the fouler 
 and muddier water utterly quenches it and prevents 
 its passage, the pure water at all events refracts it and 
 turns it aside. 
 
 It will occur to many readers that though some- 
 times, especially in momentous matters, they feel a 
 power within them distinctly pointing them to certain 
 courses of action rather than others, yet this is the 
 exception and not the rule. To experience so direct 
 an inspiration seems to belong rather to great and 
 exalted characters, or to characters of more ordinary 
 
 c= 
 
UT flow can we know what ts right ? 55 
 
 kind only at times of mental and moral exaltation. 
 In the ordinary choice between good and evil, which 
 occupies so much of our waking time, we act rather 
 from habit than conviction. And even in the case of 
 actions where we hesitate and only on deliberation 
 decide to pursue the better course, our choice may 
 seem to be guided by considerations of a more mun- 
 dane sort—desire to preserve a consistent character, 
 pride, the desire to secure the good opinion of other 
 men, or admiration for some noble deed of friends or 
 those of whom we have read. 
 
 All this may be true, and yet it may not form an 
 insuperable objection to the acceptance of the view 
 above set forth. This may be made clear by means 
 of a comparison. We know well that the source of 
 natural light and warmth is the sun. If it did not 
 daily shine in the heaven we should very soon perish 
 and fade away. And yet in our goings and doings in 
 the world we seldom, at least in this country, act in 
 the direct rays of the sun. In our houses we hardly 
 ever feel his direct influence. Often his rays only 
 reach us through thick cloud and mist; but when the 
 sky is cloudless, the light whereby we live does not 
 come straight, but is reflected from a thousand objects 
 about us, thrown from one surface to another, and 
 finally reflected to our eyes. It is diffused light which 
 makes life and action possible, and not solar beams. 
 Yet no one on such grounds denies the sun to be the 
 final source of light. 
 
 It is the same in the realm of conduct. It is 
 mainly through the inspiriting deeds and the _per- 
 suasive words of others that the power of righteous- 
 ness makes itself felt by us. The great moral heroes 
 
56 — Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 of the world have absorbed much of the direct influ- 
 ence of that power, and they reflect it far and wide, 
 standing up like beacons for all time. Their lives 
 and sayings must always be the strongest incentives 
 to goodness in the lives of most people. But besides 
 these well-known and lofty beacons, there are lesser 
 lights which serve to guide and inspirit us—lghts 
 whose proximity to our own lives makes up for their 
 want of illuminating power; a kind and patient friend, 
 an acquaintance who shows an unselfish disposition or 
 displays resignation and gentleness under the attacks 
 of some painful disease, a parent who sets the ex- 
 ample of a blameless life. These are the lights of our 
 homes; but it will usually be found that the brighter 
 and more steadfast their splendour shines, the more 
 fully are they aware that it is but a borrowed reflection. 
 
 Thus it is not only in our isolated state as con- 
 scious and moral creatures that we hear the inner 
 voice which speaks for righteousness. Indeed to many 
 men who are of an objective nature, and not given to 
 the probing of their own hearts, it is not at all in this 
 way that better impulses come to bear on their lives. 
 The conscience is not conversant only with the quality 
 of our own deeds as good and evil, but it is not less 
 energetic in approving or disapproving the deeds of 
 others. We are unable to observe deeds of cruelty 
 and injustice without feeling in our hearts the glow 
 of a rush of passion, of burning indignation against 
 the doer of such deeds. Even if we suspect that under 
 such circumstances we might ourselves behave as ill, 
 yet we feel that the deed is wrong, is an offence 
 against the light of heaven and the constitution of the 
 world; and if we would fain stifle the feeling we can- 
 
 = =o ee 
 
 a a 
 
II How can we know what ts right ? oF 
 
 not do so. On the other hand, it is impossible for us 
 to contemplate any deed nobly done, any act of mercy, 
 of self-sacrifice and self-control, without a warm feeling 
 of approbation, a feeling independent of will, spon- 
 taneously filling the heart, and urging it to follow 
 such precedent. 
 
 To the bulk of mankind this vision of themselves, 
 so to speak, in the mirror of the lives of others, is 
 the strongest incentive to virtue. The force of imita- 
 tion is very strong in all of us; and it is impossible 
 that we should see in any one a deed we admire, 
 without receiving a strong impulse to act in like 
 fashion when circumstances permit. The effect on 
 emotion, and through emotion on will, is direct and 
 powerful, and not weakened by having to pass through 
 the tortuous chambers of the mind. And so the 
 force of example is in all the world the most powerful 
 lever of conduct. 
 
 But we are at present speaking of this moral 
 approbation and disapprobation not as a source of 
 action but as a source of feeling and of perception. 
 From feeling what we ought to do ourselves, and from 
 admiring the good deeds of others, we pass to the per- 
 ception that alike our own hearts and the lives of 
 others are but mirrors which reflect a light which 
 shines above and beyond them, and which is itself 
 one though it glances upon us from a thousand facets. 
 
 The knowledge, then, of right and wrong, so far as 
 it cannot be reached by reasoning or by experience, 
 may be attained in some degree, in such degree as the 
 knowledge of good and evil is attainable by man, by 
 means of a twofold process. First we have to con- 
 sult our conscience, and secondly we have to keep our 
 
58 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 conscience true to the realities of the world. But 
 conduct is an entirely practical thing, and it is in 
 practice that the rules of right and wrong conduct 
 are discovered. If a man set himself, in an otiose 
 and speculative mood, to discover whether his con- 
 science did accord with the highest law, he would very 
 probably fail, and lose himself in words and fancies. 
 But in looking back on his conduct as it lies in the 
 past, he will find it comparatively easy to see whether 
 he acted conscientiously, and if so, whether rightly. 
 And amid the actual stress of living, many doubts and 
 difficulties, which in the study might seem serious, 
 erow cloudy and vanish. If a snail tried to think out 
 the form of his shell he would certainly fail; but 
 when, by the exercise of his noblest functions, he has 
 formed a shell, we can all of us see how well it conforms 
 to his surroundings. It is the same with much of the 
 highest human work. George Eliot. has recorded that 
 she sat down to write some of her noblest scenes with- 
 out any notion of the course they would take. In the 
 same way it is not for man to plan but to act, and in 
 acting to learn to act rightly, by keeping a certain 
 attitude of mind towards that to which his conscience 
 must learn to conform. 
 
 Before leaving the subject of this chapter we must, 
 in few words, meet an objection sometimes brought 
 from the practical point of view against a strongly 
 ideal view of ethics. Writers hike Mr. Henry Sidegwick, 
 who see clearly the speculative weakness of the reason- 
 ing schools of morality, turn on the opponents of those 
 schools with a sort of argumentum ad hominem. Any 
 of us, they say, who has practically to decide an im- 
 portant point of conduct, does so by considering the 
 
 ‘ 
 ile i te a, 
 
HI Flow can we know what rs right ? 59 
 
 advantages and disadvantages of various possible 
 courses, balancing the one against the other; and thus, 
 whatever be thought of the doctrine of Utility specu- 
 latively, the practical appeal to it is universal. 
 
 We cannot, however, allow that this 1s an accurate 
 statement of fact. Observation seems rather to show 
 that people in general do not balance consequences, 
 but follow the feeling at the time strongest. People 
 of a cool and reflective turn of mind may amuse them- 
 selves with reckoning up consequences; but even these 
 usually end, like Brennus, by throwing a sword into 
 the scale. Of course there are cases in which calcula- 
 tion is of use, but in those kinds of action which 
 especially come under the term conduct, it leads com- 
 monly only to endless hesitation and weak and vacil- 
 lating action. 
 
 What then is to be done, practically, when the 
 conscience gives no clear mandate? We should say 
 that two or three things may be done. First, a man 
 may look back over his life, and may try to discern 
 there the true thread of action which leads into the 
 future. He who doubts what he ought to do in the 
 future does not usually doubt whether he has done 
 rightly in the past, and may thus deduce the unknown 
 from the known. And secondly, a man may consider 
 carefully, and with some exertion of imagination, how 
 one or the other course of conduct will harmonise with 
 what is best in his surroundings. Or thirdly, he may 
 try to look on the alternative courses of action with 
 the dispassionate eyes of a mere spectator; for there 
 are many whose feeling of moral right and wrong 1s 
 far more easily excited by the deeds of others than 
 their own. 
 
60  Fatth and Conduct CHAP, III 
 
 None of these courses is infallible, but certainly 
 any of them is better than the helpless attempt to 
 reckon up consequences. And none of them will be 
 necessary, except in rare cases, to those in whom 
 conscience is healthy and active. They must be con- 
 sidered not as food for the healthy, but as dieting for 
 the diseased, since the beauty of conduct les most in 
 its freedom from self-consciousness. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 HOW SHALL WE DO WHAT IS RIGHT ? 
 
 WE turn next to the third great question in regard to 
 conduct, How can I compass what is right? And we 
 shall find that the reasoning schools of ethics are in 
 respect to this question even more hopelessly defective 
 than they were shown to be in regard to the discovery 
 and knowledge of right and wrong. 
 
 Supposing these ethical systems to have established 
 the rule of conduct, to have shown men how they 
 ought to behave, it is obvious that this is in itself not 
 enough: it is clear that they have to account for 
 something further—why men do what they think to be 
 right. If men be able of themselves, by mere reason- 
 ing and experience, to discover what they ought to do 
 and to do it, then religion must be confessed to be 
 either altogether unnecessary in the world, or at all 
 events to have nothing to do with conduct. But if, on 
 the other hand, men cannot discover what is right, nor 
 accomplish it without aid from above, religion stands 
 justified. And if such aid is necessary for one thing 
 of the two, either for knowing or doing, still religion 
 remains necessary. In the last chapter we tried to 
 show that a man must put himself into a certain rela- 
 
62 Fatth and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 tion towards his highest spiritual surroundings in order 
 to discern right and wrong. In the present chapter 
 we shall try to prove that he cannot choose the right 
 and avoid the wrong unless he be aided from above. 
 Is the teaching of Utility effective in the last-men- 
 tioned matter? Supposing, for the sake of argument, 
 that it has been proved that reason and observation 
 are able to show us what course of conduct we ought 
 to pursue in life, does reason help us practically to 
 follow it? The advocates of the Utilitarian theory 
 certainly try hard to show that there is a close 
 relation between thinking it right to forward the 
 happiness of the most and actually forwarding it. 
 But their efforts can scarcely be called successful. 
 Those who are in the habit of trying to bring 
 strong motives to bear on everyday people tell us 
 that the essential qualities, without which motives 
 have usually small weight, are distinctness and near- 
 
 ness. A promise of five pounds to-morrow will urge © 
 
 to exertion many a man who could never be roused by 
 an indefinite hope of getting his prospects improved. 
 It is notorious that a person who orders goods on 
 credit looks far less closely into their prices than if he 
 paid for them in hard cash. Even death, though a 
 certainty for every one, is yet by its obscurity and 
 remoteness hidden so far out of the ken of ordinary 
 people that they do not think of it unless they are ul 
 or disappointed. It is another phase of this same law 
 of human nature, that every one cares very much more 
 about the pains and pleasures that come under his 
 notice than about others of which he knows but 
 which he does not witness. JI may know that there 
 is a family dying of starvation at the other end of the 
 
IV Flow shall we do what ts right ? 63 
 
 town, but unless the case happen to strike my imagina- 
 tion, it gives me far less pain and is far less likely to 
 make me take some action than if I heard that my 
 dog had lost his dinner. The impulses to action arise 
 directly out of feelings, and feelings are not produced 
 by mere thought and reflection, but arise from experi- 
 ence, quite apart from the action of will. 
 
 Thus it is that feeling and fancy guide our conduct. 
 We cannot, with the greatest wish for justice in the 
 world, give a greater pleasure to A whom we hate 
 instead of a lesser one to B whom we love. Affection 
 is like a central sun warming and gladdening far more 
 readily and fully those bodies which are near than 
 those which are far off. We all range all that we 
 love about us in circles, circles growing larger and 
 larger as they recede farther from ourselves, and it is 
 really unreasonable to expect that our feelings for any 
 that lie beyond our immediate neighbourhood shall 
 prompt us to vigorous action. Nay, further, he whose 
 affections are centred in some half-dozen people will 
 make their good his end in life; he who has many 
 friends, none of them supremely beloved, will mostly 
 act either from selfish or from conscientious motives. 
 To expect any creature to count the happiness of 
 every person just as the happiness of one, and equally 
 to rejoice over it whether he witnesses it or not, 
 whether he wins gratitude through it or not, whether 
 he sympathises with it or not, is plainly the most 
 impracticable folly. This, then, is an impediment to 
 the theory that our one end should be the promotion 
 of the happiness of the most. If this be the recognised 
 end of all action, it must be right and proper to count 
 people by the head, and consider less whom we please 
 
64 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 than how many and how much. ‘Thus the ground is 
 cut away from action by the destruction of healthy 
 and natural motive, and mere sentiment is substituted 
 for active goodwill. Moreover, before passing on, we 
 must observe that if any teaching be immoral—that is 
 to say, productive of evil conduct, it is the teaching 
 which allows a man to weigh his own happiness 
 against that of his neighbour, and deliberately to 
 choose a greater happiness for himself instead of a | 
 lesser happiness for the other. The very basis and 
 root of all virtue is the denial of self, and if self- 
 denial for the sake of another be declared unnecessary, 
 nay even immoral, unless the happiness procured for 
 the other be greater than the happiness sacrificed by 
 oneself, there is an end to ideal virtue. It is not on 
 such principles that heroes and martyrs are bred; and 
 unless there were heroes and enthusiasts in virtue, the 
 virtue of the most would sink to a deplorable level. 
 Perhaps to the arguments of the last paragraph the 
 Utilitarian might reply that the road to the production 
 of general happiness is not a direct road, but an in- 
 direct. It may be asserted that the only safe and 
 right plan is not in each action to aim at an indis- 
 criminate production of pleasure, but to look to the 
 wellbeing of those nearest to us, convinced that such 
 a course must in the long-run best tend to the general 
 good. Now at first sight this reply may seem satis- 
 factory enough, but it is also true that explanations 
 and modifications of this sort completely destroy the 
 value of the Utilitarian theory in a scientific aspect. 
 But even if Utilitarianism could make to natural 
 feeling the concession that the nearer persons stand to 
 us the better is their claim on our service, it would 
 
IV How shall we do what ts right ? 65 
 
 reap small advantage from the admission. It would 
 simply amount to saying this, “You must not work 
 our principle to death, but temper it by means of your 
 common sense.” But still there is no line drawn where 
 common sense is to stop and Utilitarianism come in. 
 Of course to do good to our friends and neighbours, 
 however pleasant a part of morality, can scarcely be 
 reckoned the whole of it. “Do not even the publicans 
 the same ?” Everybody who is not drowned in selfish- 
 ness is in the habit of acting and abstaining in order 
 to please a few. But it scarcely occurs to anybody 
 that it is a case of moral desert. It is quite clear that 
 this habit of action may, just like the judging of indi- 
 vidual deeds by their utility to the world in general, 
 be carried a good deal too far. 
 
 We have already spoken of another kind of Utili- 
 tarianism which should take a higher view of happiness 
 than regarding it merely as the filling of material 
 needs, which should speak of higher and lower satis- 
 factions, and should consider human nature as an 
 organised frame with higher and nobler as well as 
 baser parts. Perhaps it may be contended that the 
 theory of Utility in this more enlightened form may 
 have greater power over the will, or supply a stronger 
 stimulus to virtue. We believe this notion to be 
 entirely unfounded. On the contrary, while the pro- 
 motion on purely Utilitarian grounds of the merely 
 physical and social wellbeing of men has been some- 
 times an inspiration quite strong enough to stimulate 
 to an energetic and self-sacrificing career, it will be 
 very hard to produce from the storehouse of history 
 a single satisfactory instance of a man’s having so 
 sacrificed himself for the sake, not of the comfort, but 
 
 F 
 
66 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 of the moral and spiritual wellbeing of his fellows, 
 merely on grounds of utility. The reformers and 
 saviours of society have always a very vivid sense of 
 their relations to the higher powers; what they have 
 wanted is not the development but the salvation of 
 men, and their motive, so far as it is self-respecting, 
 is the love of duty, and, so far as it is unselfish, a burn- 
 ing desire for the glory of God. Than desire of cul- 
 ture, when cut off from religion, nothing is more 
 egotistical, or more incapable of furnishing any ground 
 for healthy and vigorous action in the world. But if 
 Utilitarianism tries to rise to grasp such notions as 
 salvation and the divine glory, it will find itself quite 
 out of breath and paralysed. It is a solid bird of 
 heavy flight, and cannot mount towards the sun like 
 an eagle. 
 
 But Utilitarianism belongs properly to the period 
 before theories of evolution made their way in the 
 world and entirely altered the foundations of the 
 various sciences, not less of those concerned with 
 man and society than those which are concerned with 
 vegetable and animal organisms. It is probable that 
 few who have entirely understood and assimilated the 
 new views of society would accept the Utilitarian theory 
 of ethics in the form in which it is put by Mill. In- 
 deed, Mill himself, in spite of his high talents and 
 splendid honesty, must be regarded as one who missed 
 the drift of his time, and mistook a backwater for the 
 stream of human thought. No one can read his works 
 without feeling better and stronger, so manly and truth- 
 loving is the spirit which pervades them; but there 
 are few indeed among those who think who would 
 choose to be called his disciples. 
 
IV How shall we do what ts right ? 67 
 
 The ethics of evolution, if evolution neglect the 
 spiritual elements of life, remains as helpless in this 
 field as Utilitarian ethics. We have already seen that 
 this theory is not able to furnish us with a perfect 
 ideal of moral development. It is not, on the other 
 hand, able in itself to furnish to the will a sufficiently 
 strong impulse to make it strive with energy towards 
 the attainment of that ideal in oneself and in others. 
 A man does not take so keen an interest in his remote 
 descendants, who may probably never come into exist- 
 ence at all, as to be willing to guide his conduct in life 
 by the thought of what may be expedient for them. — 
 And however devoted he be to evolution as a theory, 
 he will scarcely be willing to sacrifice himself in order 
 to make the course of evolution in the human race 
 more speculatively perfect and uniform. 
 
 Darwin, however, has made a deliberate attempt to 
 prove that man’s intellect, combined with his social 
 instincts, is quite sufficient to impel him to virtue ;? 
 and it is due to the memory of so great a writer that 
 we should with care and respect examine his argument. 
 
 He points out, firstly, that man is a social animal, 
 and feels instinctive sympathy with those with whom 
 he comes in contact; and, secondly, that this social 
 instinct acts on the. mind continually and without any 
 intermission, whereas the lower and selfish instincts of 
 man act only from time to time, and their force is not 
 easily recalled to memory. As man, he remarks, is a 
 being of great mental activity, reflections on his past 
 conduct will be constantly passing through his mind ; 
 and if he perceives that he has on any occasion sacri- 
 ficed the gratification of the abiding social instinct to 
 
 1 Descent of Man, i. 70. 
 
68 Faith and Conduct OHAP. 
 
 the indulgence of some other instinct, such as hunger, 
 which passes away, leaving small memory of itself 
 behind, it is certain that such perception will cause 
 him considerable pain. Then, at a later stage of the 
 growth of moral sense among men, when they freely 
 express their feelings, such expression must more or 
 less constitute a law for whole communities; and 
 respect for public opinion will compel people to do 
 what is considered right. 
 
 The power of approbation and disapprobation by 
 our fellow-men on the course of conduct has long been 
 acknowledged by moralists; and it plays a still more 
 prominent part in the scheme of Bentham than in that 
 of Darwin. Sut the fact that the force of the social 
 instinct mainly consists in its abiding character has at 
 least never been so clearly stated before. And no one 
 can venture to deny that there is force in the argument 
 set forth by Darwin. But this is not tantamount to 
 saying that this one reason will account for men’s 
 right-doing and for the growth of morality. 
 
 His social and sympathetic nature may help a man 
 towards knowing what he ought to do, and even towards 
 wishing that he had done it; but every moralist knows 
 what an enormous gap there is between even the last 
 of these feelings and doing right. And as a matter of 
 historical fact a very great part of the impulse towards 
 moral action has come from feelings of a religious 
 character. Indeed so great has been their practical 
 power in matters of morality that we may well doubt, 
 considering how slow the improvement in human con- 
 duct has been from age to age, whether there would 
 have been any such progress at all without religion. 
 The fortress of virtue has, on the whole, held out against 
 
IV flow shall we do what ts right ? 69 
 
 the enemy; but would it have held out if half, and that 
 the most determined and energetic half, of the garrison 
 had been withdrawn? The ship of virtue has made 
 slow way against the opposing tide, but would it have 
 progressed at all if the mainsail had been cut down ? 
 The processes mentioned by Darwin do really take 
 place, but it does not follow that no other process is 
 involved. The great philosopher confesses in his later 
 works that in his earlier he attributed too much power 
 to certain tendencies of his own discovery. And were 
 he still alive he might perhaps be willing, with his 
 noble candour, to admit that in this case also he was 
 misled by a natural partiality for the discoveries of his 
 own genius, 
 
 In fact there are many sorts of virtue, and those 
 the highest, which are not encouraged by the social 
 feelings. These feelings will tend to make a man 
 courteous, gentle, and friendly, but they will not nerve 
 him to perform an unpopular duty or inspirit him in 
 those cases in which he has to follow his conscience in 
 despite of the opinions of those about him. Exclusive 
 attention to the social feelings will produce a character 
 charming and attractive in daily life, but weak, un- 
 truthful, even radically unjust. It will make a pleasant 
 comrade, but one unfit either to command or to obey, 
 and quite unequal to heavy responsibility. 
 
 Moreover, to recur to an argument already used, 
 the existence of social feelings, even if it could account 
 for the rise of the morality of individuals to the level 
 of what is expected of them, would certainly not account 
 for the rise of the moral tone of individuals far above 
 the level usual around them. Yet this higher level in 
 individuals is the first necessity for moral progress in 
 
70 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 the race. The gradual refinement of intellect does 
 indeed gradually refine morality, but it does not raise 
 its tone above selfishness and falsehood. 
 
 Thus, incompetent as are observation and reasoning 
 to point out the path of virtue to men, they are still 
 less competent to lead men along that path when it is 
 found. On the practical side the ethics of Utility and 
 of Darwinism are even more defective than they were 
 on the intellectual side. 
 
 To those who with us believe in divine aid bestowed 
 upon men in the course of conduct, the question, How 
 can I compass what is right? is quite as simple as that 
 other, How can I know what is right? For if there be 
 a power making for righteousness within us, then the 
 secret of success in reaching what is good will neces- 
 sarily be to get this power on our side, however that 
 be possible. Whatever progress in virtue we may make 
 by the exercise of our own will, we can certainly make 
 greater progress by the help of a power which is not 
 ourselves, which urges in the same direction. However 
 swiftly a vessel can go by the aid of oars or wheels, yet 
 if she spread her sails to a favouring breeze she must 
 needs go more swiftly still. However fast a man may 
 swim, if the tide is with him he will swim faster. 
 
 But the testimony of those who have risen to great 
 heights of virtue has usually been that their own will 
 has been able to make but very little progress, and that 
 all that they have accomplished is the work of a higher 
 power, coming to their aid when they were beaten and 
 baffled by the power of circumstance. There does not 
 seem any reason why we should refuse to believe this 
 evidence, or set it aside. In each art we allow those 
 to speak who are the greatest masters of that art. We 
 
Iv Flow shall we do what ts right ? 71 
 
 listen with respect to the testimony of a painter as to 
 what makes the essence of good painting. We read 
 eagerly what a good cricketer has to say about cricket 
 or a good oarsman about boating. Surely, then, those 
 who most excel in the art of conduct will best be able 
 to explain how they themselves reached that excellence, 
 and to show how others may reach it. 
 
 It may seem to some readers that the question, How 
 shall I do what is right? must needs be preceded by 
 another, Why should I do what 1s right? Why should 
 I not do what my inclinations prompt rather than that 
 which my conscience urges? We mention here this 
 question, lest we should seem entirely to have over- 
 looked it. But it will lead us into no lengthy discussion, 
 since we write for loyal souls anxious to play a good 
 and worthy part in the world, not for triflers who wish 
 by refinements of sophistry to escape the burden of 
 right-doing laid upon them at birth. The question, 
 Why should I do what is right? is really even more 
 otiose than the question, Why should I try to be cwred 
 of disease ? 
 
 John Stuart Mill observes in his Utilitarianism 
 that it is a question to which the answer must needs 
 be only partially satisfactory, whatever be our standard 
 of conduct. But this is true only with a qualification. 
 The answer, we would rather say, must needs be un- 
 satisfactory when it comes from the adherents of any 
 of the reasoning schools of morality. And the cause is 
 evident. The adherents of these schools trust to their 
 intellect only to discover what is the course of right 
 amid the complications of life. And as the intellect 
 of none of us is a perfectly pure and white lhght, but 
 swayed by emotions and by desires, there is room and 
 
12 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 opportunity at every moment for those emotions and 
 desires to suggest all sorts of doubts and hesitations, 
 and among others the doubt whether one’s own enjoy- 
 ment or immediate expediency may not be as good a 
 motive to act from as any other at the moment visible. 
 And when a man’s will is in this unsound and feeble 
 condition, the most ingenious and plausible theories as 
 to the sanctions of ethics will not greatly help him, or 
 strengthen the sinews of conduct. 
 
 But if a man believe, with us, in a voice within 
 which forbids or commands, the nature of which is to 
 reflect the purposes of the spiritual Ruler of the world, 
 the matter becomes simple. When it speaks in clear 
 tones, there is little room for hesitation or doubt as to 
 the comparative value and importance of various motives. 
 The voice within does not advise, but commands. We 
 are able to disobey it if we please, but we cannot hesi- 
 tate as to whether it ought or ought not to be obeyed. 
 And we may add, what is a matter of everyday 
 experience, that it not only commands, but commands 
 with a threat, so that we feel in our hearts that if we 
 obey it, it will be well with us; and if we disobey it, 
 it will be ill with us. The question where and when 
 punishment for disobedience will fall upon us—whether 
 sooner or later, whether in the present life or in some 
 future state of existence—is a matter of doubt and of 
 comparative unimportance. The essential thing is, that 
 we have gone wrong, have passed into a state of dis- 
 organisation and discord with our surroundings. Thus 
 the reason why we should do what is right is abun- 
 dantly clear. 
 
 This is, of course, the hard doctrine of mere moral 
 obligation. We shall hereafter come to considerations 
 
Iv How shall we do what ts right? vis 
 
 which modify and soften it. Men who reach virtue in 
 the world are commonly not driven to it by threat 
 and command, but led gently by the bonds of love, 
 whether it be the love of God, or the love of men, in 
 whom more or less imperfectly dwells the image of 
 God. On this aspect of the matter we shall have more 
 to say at another time. But we are now regarding 
 conduct in the severe light of strict ethical doctrine ; 
 and we say that conduct thus regarded bears in its 
 essential nature good reasons why “because right is 
 right, to follow right were wisdom, in the scorn of 
 consequence.” 
 
 We may now venture on a second and completer 
 analysis of conduct. 
 
 If conduct be examined, the forces which bear upon 
 it will be found to be three. First, we have the force 
 of motive; in which word we would sum up all the 
 tendencies existing in the mind at a given moment— 
 the moment preceding volition. We might again 
 analyse motive, as indeed we have already analysed it 
 in a past chapter, into various elements, such as in- 
 herited tendency, acquired tendency, and circumstance. 
 These elements constitute, as it were, the strands of 
 which the line of ordinary life is made up. Conduct 
 which follows motive may indeed fall short of the tenor 
 of the actor’s previous life; for there is in human 
 nature an inertness which acts upon conduct that goes 
 on regularly and mechanically, in much the same way 
 in which gravity acts on a bullet discharged from a 
 gun, bringing it nearer and nearer to the earth. And 
 as the bullet cannot rise higher than the line along 
 which it is fired, unless it be drawn upward out of its 
 course by some extraneous force, so it is with conduct. 
 
7A Fath and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 Conduct cannot rise above the dead level of motive, 
 unless it is drawn up by a power outside that 
 motive. 
 
 Secondly, we have the power of the divine ideas, which 
 tends ever to raise the tone of conduct, and to guide it 
 in the better course. These ideas not only act in the 
 mind, clearing the sight, and enabling us to discern 
 between good and evil, but also in will and _ heart, 
 helping us to do what is right and to avoid what is 
 wrong. They are an ever-present force making for 
 righteousness, and tending to mould the human world 
 after that which exists eternal in the world above—to 
 make the will of God done upon earth as it is done in 
 heaven. In some men at some times this power works 
 with a force which is irresistible-—as when the Hebrew 
 prophet declares that the word of the Lord was as a 
 fire within him, and gave him no rest until he spoke. 
 This feeling of dissatisfaction and of unrest, if felt ina 
 less keen degree, is still felt by those who make them- 
 selves deaf to the inner voice, and resist its impulses. 
 Such men are fighting against the law of their being; 
 are refusing to accommodate themselves to the environ- 
 ment which hems them in on every side. Their con- 
 stitution is in an unhealthy state, their nature at war 
 with itself, and they are following that lower will and 
 that immediate self-interest which are sure to plunge 
 them deep in the waters of guilt and misery. 
 
 We will not here discuss the question whether 
 there be not traceable amid the springs of action also 
 the. working of a power not ourselves, which makes 
 for wickedness. Many of the greatest and best of men 
 have recorded their experience of temptations to evil 
 attacking them from without, and sometimes even 
 
iv How shall we do what ts right ? 75 
 
 assuming the semblance of the powers of light. Are 
 we tempted to evil by our own hearts, or by inherited 
 tendencies, or by spiritual powers of wickedness? This 
 question we will merely mention and pass it by. It 
 is one on which the wisest and best of men have held 
 varying opinions. In our fifteenth chapter we shall 
 recur to it. 
 
 The third element in conduct consists in our will 
 itself. But it does not appear that our will is an 
 actual force, like the other forces mentioned, the force 
 of motive and of the ideal. Rather, its power is regu- 
 lative merely. It can add to or subtract from the 
 force which impels us to this side or to that. By 
 steadfastly inclining to one or another of the energies 
 which bear upon our personality, it can make 1t more 
 powerful. Will may be compared to the sliding-bar of 
 a stream, which lets the water through fast or slowly ; 
 or to the hand of a flute-player, which directs the 
 breath as to which of the holes it shall pass out by. 
 An evil-will will give full course to evil motive; a 
 good-will will listen to the voice which calls to righteous- 
 ness. He who steadily inclines to the inner voice 
 which urges him to do what is best, will rise constantly 
 to a higher moral level. On the other hand, he who 
 follows the voice of passion and selfishness, may find 
 his path turning more and more in the direction of 
 evil, until the better tendencies with which he started 
 are lost, and he sinks lower and lower in the waves of 
 out. 
 
 The power of the will must not be exaggerated. 
 It must not be supposed that it rests with a man at 
 any stage of his life to put aside the power of habit 
 and to take quite a new departure. In each individual 
 
76 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 action the power of willis very limited! We may 
 put the matter, if we please, in a mathematical form. 
 Let us say that will possesses the faculty of diminishing 
 or increasing the force of the motives which impel to 
 action by one-hundredth only. Then let us suppose a 
 case, such a case as occurs to many daily, in which 
 the impulses which drive a man towards some evil 
 deed, impulses derived from the whole course of his 
 lite and character, may be represented by 150, while 
 the preventive impulses, which also derive from his 
 character, are but as 149. If nothing interferes, the 
 man will surely do the ill deed; it is in the natural 
 line of his development. But if his will yield to the 
 power that supports morality, and admit it into the 
 heart to the extent of but one-hundredth of the evil 
 tendency, then the line of action will be entirely 
 reversed; for the forces tending to good will now be 
 represented by 149 plus 14, or 1504. 
 
 And we must further consider that no action ever 
 takes place without tending to make a custom. In 
 conduct as in war the result of a skirmish may decide 
 the result of a campaign. Every action tends to 
 smooth a road for future action in the same direction. 
 A man’s whole nature is modified for good by such an 
 interference as has been described. On the next occasion 
 the impulses towards good in the breast of the man 
 whose actions we are following will be stronger, and 
 his impulses towards evil weaker. He will find him- 
 self more disposed to do what is right, and at the same 
 time his will will have acquired a precedent for inter- 
 ference in the course of action. His whole character 
 
 1 What follows is suggested by Mr. Solly’s remarks on the will in 
 his excellent work, The Will, Human and Divine. 
 
IV flow shall we do what ts right ? veh 
 
 will have taken a turn for the better, a turn slight 
 indeed, and yet of vast importance; for with a suffi- 
 cient number of slight turns the whole character may 
 be changed. The wish to do rightly may act upon 
 the course of life as a rudder acts on a ship, bringing 
 it round by slow degrees into a new course. And as 
 in a steamship the very smallest turn of the rudder 
 will, if persisted in, soon turn round the whole ship, so 
 may a very feeble desire of virtue, if persistent, lead 
 every one from bad ways to good. And on the other 
 hand, if will sink in sloth and lethargy, the character 
 will move vaguely and inconsistently, like a ship which 
 has lost its rudder—sometimes moving in wide and 
 meaningless circles, and sometimes drifting back towards 
 its point of starting. 
 
 We scarcely seem to be stating more than the 
 ordinary facts of human life, which no one in his senses 
 would question. And indeed in practical matters no 
 one ever does question them. No one doubts that a 
 persistent and vigorous determination to do better will 
 lead to improvement in conduct, or that an unstable 
 will is destructive of high virtue. As, therefore, we 
 are at present entirely concerned with practice and 
 not with metaphysics, this admission will satisfy us. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 HIGHER PURPOSE IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Tue fundamental thesis of this work is that there is a 
 Power which works in the world in the interests of 
 righteousness. The phrase, “ A Power not ourselves 
 which makes for righteousness,” will be at once recog- 
 nised by readers as belonging to the greatest critic of 
 our time, Mr. Matthew Arnold. To his eloquent 
 words in regard to that Power the present writer owes 
 and gladly expresses a deep debt of gratitude. Yet a 
 sense of indebtedness to other writers who have not 
 indeed used this phrase, but have expressed the same 
 idea in other forms, will not allow him to claim to be 
 altogether Mr. Arnold’s disciple. 
 
 This fundamental thesis we must now endeavour 
 to justify, so far as by argument it can be justified. 
 In the present chapter we consider it in the light of 
 physical science, in the next chapter in the light of 
 history, and in the succeeding chapter in the light of 
 the experience of mankind. 
 
 Firstly, then, Does that methodical observation of 
 the external world which is called science give us any 
 reason for supposing that in the course of the evolution 
 of the universe, a higher Power is working his will and 
 
onar.v Ligher Purpose in Evolution 79 
 
 eradually realising plans which we may see to be 
 good ? 
 
 This work is not mainly concerned either with 
 physical or biological science, or with history. Its 
 main object is to deduce from an analysis of the facts 
 of consciousness, and from the nature of conduct, proof 
 of the truth and the necessity of religion. And the 
 writer, while he can claim some knowledge of mental 
 science and metaphysics, has but a slight acquaintance 
 with the methods of physical research. Nevertheless 
 he deems it necessary, before proceeding to the essen- 
 tial part of the task before him, to discuss as briefly 
 as possible the question whether modern scientific 
 discovery has shut out religion from the field of know- 
 ledge, or proved that the universe can be fully 
 explained without introducing the hypothesis of a 
 Deity. Our only attempt will be to show that physi- 
 cal science does not present a final barrier to our 
 attempts to build the foundations of faith. So much 
 seems to be necessary: unless the problem be attacked 
 from both sides, the half of mankind will be ready to 
 declare that it has not been attacked at all; for every 
 one has a strong tendency towards either the historical 
 or the metaphysical way of looking at the problems of 
 life and mind, and men in general will allow but little 
 weight to a line of argument unlike those to which 
 they are accustomed. 
 
 We must therefore endeavour to show in what 
 ways the working of the Deity may manifest itself in 
 the course of the development of the world as well as 
 of mankind. And this is the more necessary because 
 the defences of religion on the side of physics and 
 history are somewhat outworn, There has been a 
 
80 Fatth and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 great attack upon the battlements, and the defenders 
 have not yet formed in new order to resist the foe; 
 indeed they are still undecided as to who is friend 
 and who is foe. They do not clearly see which of the 
 new views set forth by eminent men of science are 
 inconsistent with religious belief, and which may be 
 safely admitted, or may even serve to strengthen the 
 defences. We speak, of course, of religious writers in 
 general, for some recent books have shown clear and 
 true insight in the matter. 
 
 We propose to speak of the world and its develop- 
 ment under three heads: first, we shall take inanimate 
 matter; secondly, living things; and, thirdly, human 
 beings. 
 
 In primeval times men supposed the several forces 
 of nature to be under the direct control of spiritual 
 agencies, who wielded them at their pleasure. Not 
 only were the seemingly capricious movements of rain 
 and wind and thunder regarded as mere instruments 
 wielded by higher powers than man; but even the more 
 constant features of the land, springs and rocks, as well 
 as things endowed with vegetative life, such as trees, 
 were supposed to be instinct with will and energy. 
 The savage at the stage of animism regarded them as 
 inhabited by the spirits of deceased ancestors. Ata 
 far higher stage of civilisation the pagan had outgrown 
 this kind of belief. He found it indeed quite unten- 
 able, in view of the regularity with which the forces of 
 nature acted, proving that the power which swayed 
 them was not one of caprice, but a regularly-moving 
 stream of influence. But he still supposed that many 
 of the great provinces of nature were swayed by certain 
 divine persons to whom they were allotted. A Spartan 
 
v Fligher Purpose tn Evolution 81 
 
 army did not cross a river until sacrifice had been 
 offered to its indwelling divinity, and until the favour- 
 able appearance presented by the victim proved that 
 the god of the stream was willing to allow the cross- 
 ing. Though the Greeks knew very well that it was 
 the wind which roused the waves of the sea, yet in a 
 tempest they would call upon Poseidon or the Great 
 Twin Brethren to still the force of the waves. And 
 the phenomena of thunderstorms in particular were 
 regarded by the masses in pagan countries as manifest- 
 ing in a marked degree the feelings of the deities. 
 That it was Zeus who thundered and Zeus who rained 
 they always believed, and it seemed to them impiety 
 to doubt it. 
 
 As monotheism gradually superseded the pagan 
 polytheism in Europe, beliefs again changed, in so tar 
 at least as polytheism really died out, and was not 
 merely changed into a closely-similar worship of saints. 
 As the various forces of the material world were in 
 constant antagonism one against the other, it was not 
 possible to regard them all as manifesting forth the 
 direct volitions of the Supreme Being, who must in 
 that case be divided against himself. The phenomena 
 of the heavens, indeed, the most sublime and the most 
 unaccountable of all, were transferred from the chief 
 god of the pagan mythology to the supreme Deity of 
 the new religion; and people still saw the immediate 
 effects of the wrath or the pleasure of God in storms 
 and in fair weather, and considered Him the direct 
 sender of comets, meteors, and volcanic eruptions, But 
 most material things were removed from the supposi- 
 tion of immediate spiritual interference ; it was allowed 
 that they were not swayed immediately by inscrutable 
 
 G 
 
82 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 volitions of an unseen power, but followed certain 
 regular paths of action, so that their action could be 
 with certainty foretold. So in place of the animistic 
 and pagan theories, the world accepted the Jewish 
 hypothesis of an original creation of the world by the 
 Deity ; though many supposed that after that creation 
 the Deity stood apart from the world of matter and 
 governed it from above, not interfering with it save in 
 rare and important cases. 
 
 From the time of Democritus of Abdera, and prob- 
 ably from earlier times still, certain thinkers set up 
 against one or other of these religious theories of the 
 divine origin of the material world the hypothesis that 
 matter had existed from all eternity, and possessed in 
 its very essence certain qualities which enabled it to 
 cohere into an orderly universe. Entirely denying the 
 intrusion into the world of supernatural powers, they 
 maintained the strict efficacy of physical law, and tried 
 to show that if matter were but possessed of a few 
 inalienable qualities, that fact would fully account for 
 all the phenomena of the universe. In short, they 
 supposed themselves to have proved that the hypothesis 
 of a god or gods was unnecessary; either the gods did 
 not exist, or they did not concern themselves with 
 human affairs. Many a time, and in many forms, has 
 the doctrine of Democritus been revived between his 
 day and ours. 
 
 If we were compelled to choose one of these two 
 kinds of view, and either to assert that the universe 
 moved by sheer inherent necessity, or else that it was 
 regulated by the capricious will of spiritual beings 
 external to it, we could not long hesitate to make our 
 choice. For the uniform laws of the material world 
 
 a ee 
 
v Fligher Purpose in Evolution 83 
 
 would obtrude themselves ever upon us in our daily 
 lives; and all the difficulties of the materialist theory 
 would seem small when compared with the fact that it 
 did not contravene the facts of lfe, whereas the theo- 
 logical theory did. 
 
 But scientific and religious thought have long been 
 erowing towards a compromise. All that is good in 
 both the theological and the materialist theories may be 
 combined into a new view of the world. Religious 
 thought has long ago reconciled itself to the view that 
 there is nothing capricious or unexpected in the move- 
 ments of the physical forces of the earth. We all now 
 believe that even the most apparently wayward of 
 natural phenomena, wind and rain, observe fixed laws, 
 and do not come and go at the bidding of irregular 
 volitions. It is true that the great majority of religious 
 people make exceptions to this rule. They still hold 
 that at certain stages of the world’s history miracles 
 were wrought in the world—that is to say, that the 
 ordinary laws of matter were temporarily and locally 
 violated. But this fact does not affect their way of 
 regarding the universe. They do not believe that 
 miracles are wrought now; and most of them are care- 
 ful to explain that even in the case of miracles the 
 laws of nature were not suspended, but that a new and 
 spiritual force came in, and by the agency of natural 
 laws wrought an effect contrary to what might have 
 been anticipated from a review of the visible causes— 
 which is quite a different thing. 
 
 And at the same time men of science have come 
 to see that the materialist theory also contained not a 
 little of superstition and unreason. In the old con- 
 ception of matter there was much absurdity. Setting 
 
84 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 aside for the present the metaphysical view of matter, 
 which must hereafter occupy our attention, mere 
 physical science has taught us this. “Matter,” says 
 Mr. Wallace,’ “is essentially force, and nothing but 
 force; matter, as popularly understood, does not exist, 
 and is, in fact, philosophically inconceivable.” To 
 modern physicists matter consists of an _ infinite 
 number of centres of energy. But what is that 
 energy, and whence comes it? Of course it is possible 
 to maintain that these centres have always existed, and 
 that it is part of their nature to exert force. But 
 this is no explanation; it is merely a dogmatic asser- 
 tion of a fact, not only beyond scientific proof, but 
 even, as Kant has shown, in itself unthinkable. 
 
 To sum up: the theory that matter is worked upon 
 by the capricious will of supernatural beings must be 
 given up; so must the theory that matter is the per- 
 manent objective thing that we imagine it. We must 
 hold that matter is a mere form of force, and that the 
 force which it embodies acts in certain fixed and 
 orderly methods. Beyond that, we cannot be said to 
 know anything, at least from observation and experi- 
 ment in the material world. 
 
 And yet one view as to the ultimate source of force 
 and of law in inanimate things must be regarded as 
 more reasonable than others. For the only kind of 
 force with which we are acquainted, which is not 
 originated but originates, is the force of will revealed 
 to us in consciousness—will, whether our own or that 
 of the Power which makes for righteousness. This 
 last is a real cause, we ourselves are real causes; but 
 we know of no other real causes in the wide universe. 
 
 1 Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 365. 
 
v Fligher Purpose in Evolution 85 
 
 Therefore, if we must form a theory as to the ultimate 
 source of force in the world, we are compelled to choose 
 between three alternatives.. Either the ego is that 
 source, or the Power that works for righteousness is 
 the source, or some other will entirely unknown to us 
 is the source. That the ego is not the source is too 
 obvious to need any demonstration. 
 
 Between the other two theories it is possible for 
 even a religious man to hesitate. And as a matter of 
 history, great religions have chosen sometimes the one 
 view and sometimes the other. The religion of the 
 Jews regarded the material world as manifesting the 
 power and glory of its Maker at every moment, as 
 absolutely under his control and swayed by him. 
 But the religion of the ancient Persians adopted quite 
 a different view, that matter was under the control of a 
 malignant being—the enemy of light and of righteous- 
 ness—against whom the Power of righteousness and 
 the spirit of man waged eternal war. In the early 
 Christian Church both views found advocates; but 
 that which taught the divine origin of material force 
 prevailed. And those who are accustomed to the 
 teachings of modern science will probably regard the 
 alternative theory as blasphemous. 
 
 But to the argument of this work it is not neces- 
 sary to decide between the two views. Gravitation, 
 electricity, and other such phenomena are modes of 
 action which we find by experience to be inherent in 
 matter. Those who believe the world to be under 
 divine control will naturally regard these properties of 
 matter as imparted to it by the divine Ruler. But 
 even of materialism there is a kind which is by no 
 means inconsistent with religion. Let a man regard 
 
86 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 inanimate matter as existing from all time, and en- 
 dowed by its very essence with the qualities which 
 we discern in it. He may even in that case be- 
 heve in a deity who is the cause and ruler of life, 
 and who brings out of dead matter things which grow 
 and creatures which move and feel. To him matter 
 will be a sort of incarnation of evil, as it was to the 
 Manicheans of old—a dead weight which is being con- 
 stantly rolled away and upwards by the pushing of 
 divine energy. We are not justifying this doctrine, 
 but we merely wish to point out that materialism 
 and religion are not necessarily opposed unless the 
 materialism is pushed up into the regions of life, and 
 unless matter is regarded as possessed of properties of 
 life and progress. 
 
 Now, whereas the atheistic theory of the origin of 
 material force only involves a difficulty in philosophy, 
 the atheistic theory of the origin of life in the universe 
 is a matter in which experiment is possible. And the 
 experiments, so far as they have hitherto gone, are 
 entirely on the side of the Theists. They seem to 
 prove that life could originate only by a direct fiat of 
 spiritual power. 
 
 Referring to the experiments of Tyndall and Dal- 
 linger, Mr. Drummond’ points out that they have 
 conclusively shown spontaneous generation to be a 
 process which does not take place. “The attempt to 
 get the living out of the dead has failed. Spontaneous 
 generation has had to be given up; and it is now 
 recognised on every hand that Life can only come 
 from the touch of Life. Huxley categorically an- 
 nounces that the doctrine of Biogenesis, or life only 
 
 1 Natural Law in the Spiritual World, p. 68. 
 
v Fligher Purpose m Evolution 87 
 
 from life, is ‘victorious along the whole line at the 
 present day.” And even whilst confessing that he 
 wishes the evidence were the other way, Tyndall is 
 compelled to say, ‘I affirm that no shred of trust- 
 worthy experimental testimony exists to prove that 
 life in our day has ever appeared independently of 
 antecedent life’” Thus, on the very threshold of 
 biology stands a proof, to all present appearance con- 
 clusive, of divine purpose and action in the material 
 world. Until this proof breaks down, it is legitimate 
 to appeal to it; though at the same time we must say 
 that should it hereafter break down, our arguments 
 would scarcely be perceptibly weakened. 
 
 That the history of the world is an evolution, is a 
 view advocated by all important schools of modern 
 thought. Towards this view we have been. growing 
 for centuries; and in our days, after long underlying 
 the scientific and philosophic thought of Europe, it 
 has appeared on the surface, and been on all sides 
 fully recognised as an essential part of any rational 
 theory of the universe. We can no more suppose 
 that the view will be ever again abandoned than that 
 the Chaldean system of astronomy will be re-intro- 
 duced, or that men will return to the belief that 
 eclipses result from the attempts of a dragon to 
 swallow sun or moon. We cannot doubt the truth of 
 the doctrine of Evolution ; and its truth is assumed in 
 every page of this book. 
 
 It is, however, an error, widely spread if vulgar, 
 to suppose that acceptance of evolution implies the 
 acceptance of the special biologic doctrines of Spencer 
 and Darwin. Of course scientific men do not fall 
 into this confusion, but so many of the ordinary 
 
88 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 run of mankind do, that it is necessary to draw 
 attention to it. Asin England Spencer and Darwin 
 have been the most notable advocates of evolution, 
 while their opponents have in many cases been 
 men who rejected the doctrine entirely, it is not 
 wonderful that ordinary minds should confuse the 
 essence and the accident, the essential doctrine of 
 evolution and the accidental accompaniment of the 
 peculiar opinions of these two great men of science. 
 Yet some of these peculiar opinions are very dis- 
 putable, and even a layman in science may venture 
 to call them in question. 
 
 The theory of Darwin is, that in organic beings of 
 all kinds there exists a tendency to fortuitous varia- 
 tion, and that those of the variations which are bene- 
 ficial confer such an advantage on the creature endowed 
 with them that he is successful in the struggle for 
 existence, and leaves descendants who inherit his ad- 
 vantages and perpetuate them far and wide. And 
 there can be no question that with great ability, and 
 by means of a vast array of facts, Darwin has proved 
 that this process plays a very great part in the history 
 of the animal world, and accounts for a vast number of 
 changes and developments which were before unin- 
 telligible. The special theory which Darwin attacked 
 was that which held that the Deity had directly 
 created from time to time new species of living 
 creatures, and carefully adapted them in each case for 
 the surroundings amid which they had to live. It 
 was contrivance and design which the theological 
 writers of the last century were never tired of dis- 
 covering and admiring; and they regarded living 
 things as mere pieces of mechanism made by a con- 
 
v Fligher Purpose mn Evolution 89 
 
 triver of like nature with ourselves, to fulfil some 
 purpose of his own. Against this view the Darwinian 
 polemic must be regarded as successful. It is now 
 proved that a vast number of changes which had been 
 attributed to the direct interference of Providence 
 arose from mere competition among various dissimilar 
 individuals of a species for existence, the more highly 
 endowed naturally surviving. And after tracing this 
 process in many cases, we cannot help believing that 
 it takes place in many other instances where we can- 
 not clearly trace it. 
 
 We must therefore give up the idea of repeated 
 creations of species by a sudden mandate of heaven. 
 But for all that, it does not follow that there is no 
 limit to the application of Darwin’s theory. It has 
 been denied, and strongly denied, that natural selec- 
 tion is the only working factor in evolution. The 
 denial has not come merely from the partisans of 
 established theological opinions, but from eminent 
 scientific men whose prejudices would be rather on 
 the side of Darwinism than against it—-G. H. Lewes for 
 instance, and Wallace. Mr. Murphy, in his able work 
 on Habit and Intelligence, appears to have clearly 
 shown the deficiency on some sides of the Darwinian 
 theory. 
 
 “According to the biological philosophy, whereof 
 Darwin and Spencer are the exponents, there are but 
 two possible kinds of cause for any vital function or 
 any morphological character. These may be described 
 with extreme brevity, as, firstly, self-adaptation, effected 
 according to the laws of habit; and secondly, spon- 
 taneous variations, produced according to unknown 
 laws, but probably by the agency of external circum- 
 
90 | Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 stances, and preserved, so as to become the characters 
 of species and of classes, chiefly, though not ex- 
 clusively, by natural selection ensuring the survival 
 of the fittest. Both of these agencies accumulate by 
 inheritance, through successive generations, to an in- 
 definite extent. 
 
 “There is no doubt that these are real agencies, 
 and that their agency is co-extensive with life. The 
 purpose of the present work, however” (Habit and 
 Intelligence), “is to show that these, though universally 
 acting, do not act alone, and that Intelligence is as 
 much an ultimate fact as Habit. These two agencies 
 which we call self-adaptation and natural selection, 
 though acting on living things and through the vital 
 forces, yet act mechanically; and, moreover, they are 
 unintelligent and therefore incapable of foresight. . . . 
 Habit, which is the acting power in the process of 
 self-adaptation, cannot fit an organism for a hfe on 
 which it has not yet entered, and natural selection 
 can only select what is «immediately useful. If it can 
 be certainly shown in a single instance that the form- 
 ative energies have acted with reference, not to the 
 then existing, but to an anticipated state of things, 
 this will amount to conclusive proof that there must 
 be a formative agency at work which cannot be 
 resolved into self-adaptation and natural selection, 
 and which must be intelligent.”} 
 
 We may select a few among the instances which 
 have been cited by Mr. Murphy and other writers as 
 proving that other forces govern the development of 
 
 animals besides natural selection. The arrangement . 
 
 of feathers in the wings of birds is a notable instance. . 
 1 Murphy, Habit and Intelligence, second edition, p. 339. 
 
 OE 
 
v Fligher Purpose in Evolution QI 
 
 Fully-developed feathers in a wing no doubt enable 
 birds to fly; but partly-developed feathers would be 
 of no use to them at all, and would in no way aid 
 the preservation or multiplication of the creatures 
 which had them, as compared with the creatures that 
 had them not. Are we to suppose that feathers were 
 developed in birds by a long process through ages, 
 erowing from a rudimentary to a complete form ? 
 This could only be the case if the prevision of use- 
 fulness in the future acted as a force among the 
 generations of birds. The structure would grow in 
 anticipation of function; and this, as Darwin himself 
 allows, could not be done by natural selection. But 
 perhaps the feathers came full grown to some definite 
 bird. If so, that was no mere variation, but an 
 actual miracle; and to gratuitously assume a miracle 
 is contrary to modern methods of reasoning. 
 
 Again, consider the eye of men or animals. It is 
 an extremely complex structure, and no improvement 
 in its structure could possibly take place without a 
 number of simultaneous changes in its different parts. 
 If variations be merely fortuitous it becomes almost 
 inconceivable that such a marvellous conjuncture of 
 changes should take place again and again, as the eye 
 developed into a better and better instrument. Mr. 
 Murphy! justly observes that by the laws of mere 
 chance the hope of procuring a distinct working 
 improvement in the eye which could be transmitted 
 by descent, is not “greater than the chance of ob- 
 taining a poem or a mathematical demonstration by 
 throwing letters at random on a table.’ We cannot 
 avoid the conclusion that in the development of the 
 
 1 Murphy, Habit and Intelligence, second edition, p. 383. 
 
92 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 eye of animals variation was “guided along beneficial 
 lines” by some sort of prevision and intention; or at 
 least by some power quite different from mere chance. 
 In this case it becomes legitimate to suppose that 
 certain variations, the co-operation of which was 
 needed for one result, were brought about by a 
 governing power. And even if we could allow that 
 in the course of infinite time, amid variations of all 
 possible kinds, sufficient chances of the right kind 
 may have turned up to produce our very complicated 
 organ of sight, yet we must remember that we have 
 not infinite time at our disposal, but only geologic 
 time, which is a comparatively brief period—a time 
 utterly inadequate for the purpose. 
 
 In the opinion of Mr. Wallace, the human brain 
 is one of the clearest instances of an organ which 
 could not be produced by natural selection. “We 
 are driven,”! he writes, “to the conclusion that in his 
 large and well-developed brain” (the savage) “ pos- 
 sesses an organ quite disproportionate to his actual 
 requirements—an organ that seems prepared in 
 advance, only to be fully utilised as he progresses in 
 civilisation. . . . We must therefore admit that the 
 large brain he actually possesses could never have 
 been solely developed by any of those laws of evolu- 
 tion whose essence is that they lead to a degree of 
 organisation exactly proportionate to the wants of 
 each species—never beyond those wants. ... The 
 brain of prehistoric and of savage man seems to me 
 to prove the existence of some power distinct from 
 that natural selection ””—-which in Mr. Wallace’s view 
 has guided the development of the lower animals. 
 
 1 Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 343. 
 
v Higher Purpose in Evolution 93 
 eee ees 
 
 In fact Mr. Wallace, who, as one of the first and 
 ablest promulgators of the theory of natural selection, 
 has every right to be heard in such a matter, distinctly 
 denies that that theory will account for man, or for 
 man’s progress. He maintains even in regard to 
 man’s physical frame that it could not have grown 
 to what it is by the mere action of natural selection. 
 Not only is the human brain far too large and too 
 complicated for the needs of the savage, but also the 
 human hand is a far more exact and delicate instru- 
 ment than he requires for his rough purposes. In 
 the same way in the structure of man's larynx, which 
 is complete quite beyond the needs of savages, Mr. 
 Wallace discerns an organ which could never have 
 been produced by natural selection. And the soft- 
 ness and sensitiveness of the human skin, and the 
 absence of a hairy covering, must have been to 
 primitive races a real disadvantage. But that this 
 peculiarity immensely tended to civilise and soften 
 them, by making them dependent upon shelter from 
 the weather and other contrivances which encouraged 
 dawning civilisation, is evident. That peculiarities 
 which were of no service to primitive man, but which 
 were destined to be of use to man in a higher state 
 of civilisation, grew and became prevalent in the 
 infancy of the race, can prove, according to Mr. 
 Wallace, but one thing, that “a superior intelligence 
 has guided the development of man in a definite 
 direction and for a special purpose, just as man guides 
 the development of many animal and vegetable forms.” 
 
 As a layman in biology and physiology the present 
 writer is quite content to accept Mr. Wallace’s dicta 
 upon these points. If he is right, the argument which 
 
94 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 we shall bring forward as to man’s moral nature will 
 have an independent support. But if he is wrong, 
 that argument will still have sufficient foundation in 
 itself to be fairly independent of the support of 
 biology. 
 
 It thus seems that we should have adequate support 
 from competent scientific men in contending that 
 natural selection is not the only path of development 
 in the living world. It is important to our purposes 
 that this thesis should be maintained; for it is undeni- 
 able that if all living structures could be shown to be 
 built up by a force which acts by pure chance, then 
 the share of chance in the regulation of the universe 
 would be very considerable. We do not say that the 
 Darwinian theory necessitates atheism, for there are 
 many ways in which a man might avoid inferring the 
 latter from the former, but it has a certain kinship 
 with atheism. 
 
 Of course the argument which we used in regard 
 to the material world still applies. Because the laws of 
 hfe act with great regularity it does not follow that 
 they are self-created or entirely incompatible with a 
 divine control. The laws of nature, as J. S. Mill has 
 observed, do not account for their own origin; and they 
 do not bear on the face of them their own sanction. 
 The world might be strictly under divine rule and yet 
 the Deity might choose to work his purposes in it by 
 means of natural selection as explained by Darwin. 
 But at the same time a theory which resolutely shuts 
 out from the field of hfe all action of intelligence and 
 foresight is perhaps as favourable to atheism as any 
 biological theory can be. 
 
 The case is very different if we can discern in 
 
v Fligher Purpose in Evolution 95 
 
 biological development the working of thought and 
 purpose. If we can show, firstly, that natural selection 
 does not proceed altogether at random, but is guided in 
 certain beneficial directions, and secondly, that foresight 
 may be observed in the living world in the preparation 
 of structure for functions which are as yet unnecessary, 
 then we certainly gain a clearer and more satisfactory 
 view of divine government in the world. We shall 
 readily feel that the power which guides and arranges 
 and foresees in the origin and development of species 
 is of divine origin. In that case we shall naturally 
 believe that variations of a beneficial kind are prompted 
 by purpose, and the inworking of a beneficial power. 
 Variations of a pernicious character we shall compare 
 to diseases in the frames of men and animals; and 
 shall consider them temporary revolts of the body 
 against the impulse of a higher law. What is meant 
 by the last phrase will more clearly appear when we 
 come to speak of the nature of evil. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 HIGHER PURPOSE IN HISTORY 
 
 In the inanimate world about us we see only the 
 working of certain invariable laws. We see effect 
 following cause with undeviating regularity, and all 
 this moving in an even succession which seems not 
 merely to exclude an external will, but even to exclude 
 the action of chance. What the secret of the force 
 which inheres in the material world may be we are 
 utterly ignorant of; science gives us no hint in the 
 matter; we discern from the outside its methods of 
 working and its effects, but we cannot see it from 
 within or dissect it into simple elements. 
 
 When in ascending the scale of being we come to 
 vegetable life, we find, in addition to the action of the 
 forces of the material world, a power of growth and of 
 assimilation ; by which power plants gather nutriment 
 from air and soil and make it part of their own being, 
 having in them an energy for reducing outward things 
 into dependence upon themselves and absorbing them 
 into a system. We also find in the history of plants 
 the process of evolution, whereby they change con- 
 stantly in certain directions in subordination to the 
 influences which surround them. The nature of this 
 
cuar. vi = LZzgher Purpose in FTrstory Q7 
 
 process is fully set forth by modern writers on biological 
 science. 
 
 Among animals we find less subordination than 
 amone plants to surrounding influences, and a greater 
 central power rendering them more capable of mastering 
 what is without them, and making them able to conquer 
 and feed upon vegetables and other animals. ‘Their 
 doings are guided by a certain light of intelligence, and 
 they know within limits what will be good and what 
 evil for them. In the history of animals we more 
 plainly trace the course of evolution, through which 
 from simple beginnings they have risen to their pre- 
 sent highly-developed state. And in this evolution 
 we may fairly trace, according to competent observers, 
 the control of an extraneous force, which appears to 
 euide variation in the better directions and to lead it 
 away from the worse, and to prepare organs for func- 
 tions which are still undeveloped. 
 
 Let us pass upwards from the phenomena of de- 
 velopment in the world of life to the highest class of 
 phenomena which lies open to our observation, the facts 
 of the conscious and voluntary life of man. Can we 
 there too discern the working of a power which shapes 
 the ends of the lives of individuals and of nations ? 
 Can we trace there the presence of a wise and fore- 
 seeing power which guides action in the direction most 
 suitable 2 Is there a providence manifested in the 
 human world as well as in that of nature ? 
 
 In these questions is involved the possibility of 
 religion. If a divine force acting in and on our lives 
 and the lives of our ancestors can be discerned, then 
 we are wise in making account of that force, and seek- 
 ing its aid to carry us to good ends. If such force 
 
 i 
 
98 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 cannot be discerned, then no power of fixed tradition, 
 or gorgeous ritual, or established interests, can maintain 
 religion in the world. It is impossible that modern 
 minds should accept any theory, however pleasing or 
 however useful, unless it will bear investigation, All 
 our beliefs must be founded on the solid rock of fact, 
 or the tempest of sceptical tendency which year by 
 year waxes stronger must necessarily before long sweep 
 them all away; and the love they inspire in mankind 
 will not be able to hinder their destruction. 
 
 Our inquiry should naturally fall into two branches. 
 In the first we might interrogate history to see whether 
 the records of human progress show us proofs of divine 
 control of the course of events. In the second we 
 might question men not in society but as individuals, 
 and seek for traces of divine influence in their lives. 
 
 It would be an interesting and important task to 
 try and discover whether there is to be discerned in the 
 history of mankind something similar to that guidance 
 of variation in the better directions, and that prepara- 
 tion of organ for function which many able men of 
 science find in the animal world. We might hope 
 dimly to discern amid the events of history the working 
 and interference of a higher Power leading men in 
 advance of their own thoughts and discoveries in the 
 path leading to higher developments of civilisation. 
 Something of the kind has already been attempted in 
 such works as Bunsen’s God in History, and Bishop 
 Temple’s well-known essay on the Education of the 
 World, in Essays and Reviews: in fact many historians 
 have pointed out in the course of their narratives what 
 seemed to them to be indications of the interference of 
 divine power in the course of human affairs. 
 
 _-_ 
 
VI fligher Purpose in F{rstory 99 
 
 Though these observations are legitimate enough, 
 yet we can hardly believe that any man can obtain so 
 perfect a mastery of historical facts as to be able to 
 make them with much confidence, from the purely 
 scientific point of view. If he bring to his historical 
 studies a full belief in the overruling power of divine 
 providence in the world, a belief gained from his own 
 life, then he may easily trace that power amid the 
 turmoil of human affairs. But if, on the other hand, 
 he starts with a profound disbelief in the divine 
 government of the world, he may almost as easily 
 account for the course of events without being forced 
 to recur to that hypothesis. The fact is that our 
 knowledge of history, especially if we go back a few 
 centuries, is so extremely limited and partial that it 
 does not furnish material for the solution of problems 
 of such difficulty. In each generation there are but a 
 very few historians who so thoroughly realise and live 
 in some period of the past by the action of that rare 
 quality, imaginative insight, that they can be said 
 thoroughly to understand it. And even these gifted 
 and fortunate men can so assimilate but a small period 
 in one or two countries. Even to them it is quite 
 impossible to form a complete estimate of all the moral 
 and intellectual and physical forces at work in any age 
 or country ; they can at best see the stream of life, at 
 that stage of its flow, from a long distance and by 
 means of a series of distorting mirrors. Those who have 
 longest loved history know best how difficult it is to be 
 sure even as to simple matters of fact in the distant past, 
 and how impossible to form a final judgment as to less 
 definite things,—the character of a man, the value of an 
 institution, or the full bearings of an event of importance. 
 
100 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 Thus while there is absolute certainty that no future 
 study of history can ever prove that there are no such 
 divine influences at work as those of which we have 
 spoken, there is yet much doubt whether their existence 
 will ever be proved in such a manner as to convince 
 those who do not wish to be convinced. ‘This line of 
 argument in favour of theism cannot be, therefore, of 
 much value. And this may be the less regretted when 
 we consider that after all it is utterly absurd to sup- 
 pose that people must wait to make up their minds 
 whether religion is reasonable until historians have 
 succeeded in fathoming all the abysses of the history 
 of the past. Such a supposition would be paralleled 
 if one could not determine what food and drink agreed 
 with him until he had ascertained the exact habits of 
 food and drink maintained by his ancestors since the 
 Saxon Conquest, with the effect on the constitution of 
 each. We are born for action and not, in the main, 
 for interminable controversies reaching to the limits of 
 history and the roots of the world. 
 
 History as written in books being too complicated 
 a congeries of phenomena to yield us the results of 
 which we are in search, we must change our line of 
 investigation. Instead of looking at the tapestry of 
 history we must try to select in that tapestry a few 
 threads, and trace them through all turns and amid all 
 patterns. We must try and discover the nature of 
 haman action and its laws, to see if thence we may 
 gain light on the course of human development, and 
 discern what forces guide and regulate it. And the 
 progress which most interests us is the moral progress, 
 whereby man rises from a lower to a higher stage of 
 morality. 
 
vi fiigher Purpose in [Listory IOI 
 
 Is this moral progress to be accounted for as a mere 
 result of competition with spontaneous variation and 
 survival of the fittest, or does it bespeak the control of 
 an overruling spiritual power? Does the practice of 
 virtue give a man such advantages in the battle of life 
 that he survives and leaves more descendants than 
 the man who contravenes the laws of virtue? If so, 
 there is a prumd facie case in favour of the evolution 
 of virtue by the processes of natural selection. But if, 
 on the other hand, it appears that virtue is not an 
 advantage in the immediate battle of life, then it would 
 seem that the evolution of virtue must be the work of 
 a controlling spiritual power. 
 
 Our contention is that while certain virtues, and 
 those by no means the loftiest, are a help to mankind 
 in the battle with the world, other virtues, which are 
 among the highest, are by no means a help, but rather 
 a hindrance. In considering the matter we will divide 
 virtues into three kinds: dealing well with one’s 
 self, dealing well with others, and dealing well with 
 the divine ideas, which are with us the soul of human 
 society. 
 
 Reasonable self-love seems to be formed of a 
 mixture of that desire of self-preservation and of happi- 
 ness which is the most primitive and enduring of all 
 our instincts, with coolness of intellect to judge of the 
 future, and power of imagination to realise that future 
 as if it were present. A man who thinks before he 
 acts, and sees things in their true perspective, will 
 seldom be wanting in this quality. No trait more 
 strongly marks one from the other, the barbarian and 
 the civilised man—the barbarian heedlessly pursuing 
 the pleasure of the moment at the risk of severe suffer- 
 
102 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 ing at a future time; the civilised man content to 
 labour and to undergo present privations with a view 
 to procuring himself solid satisfactions at a future 
 time. As regards the progress of society in all out- 
 ward comforts, no quality in man is so propitious as 
 this ; none is so helpful in the conquest of nature and 
 the foundation of physical prosperity. And as no 
 quality in man is more useful to society than a reason- 
 ing self-love, so none tends more directly and more 
 surely to the preservation of the person who possesses 
 the quality. Like a well-ballasted ship, such aman will 
 outride the gales of life and make his way steadily in 
 any direction he chooses. Yet this quality, so useful 
 to individuals and societies, is looked on by moralists 
 and the world at large scarcely as a virtue at all. It 
 is coolly commended, but awakens no emotions of 
 enthusiasm, kindles no aspirations, and attracts no affec- 
 tions. Sometimes it is even confused with selfishness. 
 
 Altruism is a result of warmth of sympathy with 
 others, an imagination which enters into their feelings 
 and desires, and finds happiness in supplying their 
 needs and seeing their enjoyments. In the opinion of 
 many people this is the essence of goodness. It is a 
 warmth to all who come near it, the sunshine of life. 
 And yet it is easy to see that this feeling, delightful 
 as it is, may yet, if the sympathies be confined in too 
 narrow a field, become a source of injustice, may 
 divide class from class, since class barriers commonly 
 form impediments to sympathy, and unfit men for 
 many of the most important duties of life. That 
 altruism when not carried to excess should be spread 
 through the world by the action of natural selection 
 is readily to be understood. For not only does the 
 
VI Fligher Purpose in FIistory 103 
 
 man who makes many friends stand more strongly in 
 the world and secure a better chance of survival, but 
 also societies among which the feeling is prominent 
 will have natural advantages over other societies among 
 which the sympathetic feelings are weak, and will 
 tend to supplant them in the battle of life. Whether 
 the theory of natural selection will fully account for 
 the gradual intensifying of the feelings of care for one’s 
 own future and love for one’s neighbour—that is, 
 will explain the rate of their growth—it is impossible 
 to say; but that the process of natural selection must 
 necessarily favour their growth is a matter of obvious 
 certainty. 
 
 When we reach higher kinds of virtue, ideal mor- 
 ality, the case is by no means so clear. It is not 
 easy to see how this can be spread by natural selection. 
 Rather would it seem that the tendency of natural 
 selection would be towards its extinction. As regards 
 a man’s own career, scruples of conscience and a high 
 ideal of conduct are a heavy weight to carry, more 
 especially in those barbarous and semi-civilised states 
 of society which virtue has to traverse in the course 
 of its evolution, In troublous times of struggle 
 between beliefs, it is those who are of most inflexible 
 principle who perish. In the great religious persecu- 
 tions, for instance, those who absolutely refused to 
 abjure their faith were commonly put to death, while 
 the more pliable were allowed to escape. It has been 
 pointed out by more than one writer that the want of 
 intellectual enterprise now characterising the Spanish 
 nation may be partly accounted for by the fact that 
 for centuries there flowed in Spain, under the hands 
 of the Inquisition, a constant stream of the blood of 
 
104 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 those who dared to think for themselves, while the 
 dull of mind and the bigoted were left to carry on the 
 race. But as amatter of fact this same process has 
 been going on in all countries, though with less inten- 
 sity. We do not mean only the process of putting to 
 death those considered as heretics, though this has 
 been done in all countries, but their persecution in 
 milder forms, which has been still more usual, and must 
 have told against them terribly in the struggle for 
 existence. In how many cases have men of unbend- 
 ing principles been deprived on their account of an 
 inheritance, a situation, or a bride? And in such 
 cases the advantages they lost have been secured for 
 the most part by others of more pliable nature. In 
 this way natural selection has constantly acted against 
 the spread of strong principle ;—yet with how little 
 success 1s implied in the old Christian proverb that 
 “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.” 
 
 But it may perhaps be thought that conscientious- 
 ness and high principle, though they are not of service 
 to individuals in the battle for existence, are yet of 
 advantage to the societies in which they prevail, and 
 enable those societies to outlive their competitors. 
 But this could scarcely be proved. Among barbarous 
 tribes we find in single districts the widest extremes 
 of falseness and love of truth, so that a man of one 
 tribe may be implicitly trustworthy, and a man of 
 another utterly unworthy of trust. In such cases, 
 the truth-loving tribe is usually the more unwarlike 
 and less enterprising, and by no means likely to spread 
 and prevail. Among civilised races the peoples that 
 stand by their word and have a high sense of honour 
 win no doubt the respect of their neighbours, but it 
 
; 
 
 vI Higher Purpose in Ffrstory 105 
 
 may be doubted whether they secure more solid 
 advantages. That good men on the whole are well- 
 to-do, and their children after them, was not a new 
 discovery even in the Psalmist’s time. But it not 
 unfrequently happens, though circumstances may be 
 much to blame, that for considerable periods of time 
 the worse type of man has more chances of succeeding 
 in life than the better. Those races of serpents best 
 survive which are most poisonous, and those kinds of 
 antelopes which are most cowardly. The Greeks at 
 Rome seem to have prospered in proportion to their 
 skilfulness at flattery, and the Jews in the Middle 
 Ages were preserved even more by their cringing 
 suppleness than their business talent. The Chinaman 
 in California seems likely to hold his own against 
 better races, partly because he is so much of a machine, 
 and so wanting in loftiness of mind. In fact, 1t must 
 be considered a delusion to suppose that competition 
 must necessarily preserve the better and eliminate the 
 worse. The savage tribes who are always fighting 
 are very bad fighters. No one supposes that the 
 soldiers of Aétius were better than the soldiers of 
 Augustus or of Alexander. The Chinese officials 
 who are examined and re-examined with immense 
 competition are not prodigies of wisdom. It is indeed 
 probable that as moderate and regulated exercise 
 strengthens the frame, while immoderate exertion 
 ruins it, so limited competition produces a healthy 
 and vigorous set of men, but excessive competition 
 does not. 
 
 Thus when Darwin asserts that natural selection 
 has had much influence in the development of the 
 altruistic impulses, we must allow much weight to his 
 
106 faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 view. But when Mr. Clifford, in an able paper in 
 the Fortnightly Review for 1875, writes as follows: 
 Conscience “has been evolved and preserved because 
 it is useful to the tribe or community in the struggle 
 for existence against other tribes, and against the 
 environment as a whole,” we must pause before con- 
 ceding a thesis which is apparently contrary to the 
 weight of evidence and reason; unless, indeed, by the 
 phrase “environment as a whole” we mean something 
 much wider than Mr. Clifford meant. 
 
 We must, however, insist on a distinction. If 
 natural selection will not account for the evolution of 
 conscience, then conscience must have been developed 
 by some higher power. But if, on the other hand, 
 Clifford is right in holding that races with more highly- 
 developed conscience will survive in the struggle for 
 existence, this does not in the least degree prove that 
 conscience is delusive, or a mere human invention. If 
 conscience come from divine influence, the source of 
 conscience may have so arranged the world as to 
 give an advantage in it to those who listen to its 
 voice. 
 
 Our examination of the evolution of morality on 
 the whole leads us to a negative conclusion. The 
 conclusion is this: that it is impossible to affirm 
 confidently that the law of natural selection and the 
 survival of the fittest will account for the growth of 
 morality in the world such as the growth of morality 
 has been. Indeed there seem to be many virtues, and 
 those some of the highest, which we might easily 
 suppose would be rooted out or at least discouraged 
 by the process of natural selection. 
 
 This conclusion seems to render it probable, though 
 
vI Fligher Purpose in Flistory 107 
 
 it does not prove, that the growth of human morality 
 is furthered by spiritual power working from without 
 on human life. 
 
 It may seem that the result of our arguments 1s 
 slight and unsatisfactory. It is slight; but this results 
 from the very nature of the case. For to examine 
 morality from outside is a difficult task, and one which 
 can bring little satisfaction and no conviction. Our 
 ideas as to conduct are based on the testimony of our 
 own individual consciousness ; and we must interrogate 
 that if we would arrive at any solid or satisfying con- 
 clusion as to its nature. It must be unsatisfactory to 
 analyse from without what we can never see from 
 without, for it is the results and not the facts’ of 
 conduct that we see. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 DIVINE AID AS EXPERIENCE 
 
 If is in inner experience, one might almost say by 
 experiment, that the existence of the Power which 
 makes for righteousness is known to men. It is a 
 point on which Mr. Arnold, with unequalled eloquence, 
 has insisted, that the matter is one in which verification 
 is possible. And he speaks the truth, as thousands by 
 daily experience can testify. “Taste and see,” says the 
 Hebrew Psalmist, “that the Lord is good.” And every 
 one can taste and see. Ifa man sets up a wheel in a 
 stream, and arranges matters so that the wheel turns 
 grinding-stones one upon the other, then the power of 
 the stream will grind that man’s corn for him. If a 
 sailor so arranges his sails that the wind fills them and 
 urges him the way he would go, he sails on and on by 
 no force of his own through the sea. In the same 
 way,—if things so sacred may without impiety be 
 likened to common things of earth,—in the very same 
 way, 1f a man earnestly and modestly tries to set aside 
 his own will, and to do that which his conscience 
 assures him to be right, he will find a power greater than 
 his own lifting him up and bearing him along towards 
 the accomplishment of his desires. The desire of those 
 
cpap. vir = Davine Aid as Experience 109 
 
 who hunger for righteousness shall be filled, and that 
 which fills the desire shall be handed from without. 
 
 This, we say, is the experience of thousands in every 
 age. But of course we must not be understood to put 
 spiritual experience on quite the same level as that of 
 natural things and of every day. To the miller who 
 sets up his wheel in the stream, to the sailor who 
 spreads his sails on the sea, it makes no difference 
 whether his character or his motive be evil or good ; 
 the force lies there, and he has but to seize it and 
 make it his slave to do his bidding. The wind wafts 
 the pirate as well as the merchantman, and the mill 
 will grind food or poison with equal readiness. Of 
 course it is quite otherwise in regard to the power 
 which leads to righteousness. That can by no man be 
 used for private purposes; it only uses us for a higher 
 purpose than ours. None but the will set on good 
 is lifted up and carried forward by its inspiring 
 force. 
 
 But it may be asked why, if the reality of the 
 power of righteousness be thus easily verified, and be 
 daily confirmed by the experience of thousands, so many 
 people are sceptical as to its existence—more people 
 practically than theoretically sceptical, but many both. 
 The main reason is the pressure of the daily life of care 
 and of struggle in which we are immersed, and whence 
 we seldom emerge. <A great part of the life of all of us, 
 and an even greater part of the lives of some, is taken 
 up in dealing with the pépsuva tod aidvos Tovrou, the 
 things of sense, and in maintaining our existence in 
 the midst of a toiling and competing world. Persons 
 may easily be so taken up with cares of the world and 
 the constant calls of physical necessity that their minds 
 
IIO Fatth and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 become entirely engrossed with the perceptions of sense; 
 and they may be so seldom at leisure to listen to the 
 inner voice that they come almost to doubt its exist- 
 ence. God appeals not immediately to the outward 
 sense, and if his voice be not heard in the stillness of 
 the heart, a man may come to doubt of his being. 
 
 We would not be understood to say that God is 
 made known to us only in the voice of conscience. 
 We hold that the working of the Deity may be traced 
 in the world of nature, and still more in the deeds 
 and words of our fellow-men. Were it otherwise, 
 practical atheism, at present the rarest of phenomena, 
 might become common. But God’s activity in the 
 world of nature is not thrust upon our observation, but 
 revealed rather to serious thought. And as we attribute 
 to persons about us a consciousness like our own, 
 imagining their minds to be like that mind of our own 
 of which alone we can have immediate knowledge, we 
 are not likely to trace in their actions and words the . 
 results of inward promptings, if to such promptings we 
 ourselves are dull. Thus the inner voice must always 
 remain the surest and clearest evidence of the existence 
 of God, and if the ears of our mind are dulled and 
 filled with outward noise we easily shall come to regard 
 the very being of God as doubtful, as a matter stand- 
 ing apart from and outside our ordinary lives, of which 
 we need take no practical account. If it were not for 
 death, which hovers before our eyes, now and again 
 striking down a relation or a friend, and if it were not 
 for those shadows of death, disease and weariness, which 
 at times make us all their prey, this kind of practical 
 unreligion would be far more usual among men than it 
 now ls, 
 
VII Divine Aid as E-xperrence 1st 
 
 And when a man is in this state of unconcern as 
 to things above mere sense, it will be hard to prove 
 to him that any God exists. But this throws not the 
 least difficulty in the way of those who believe in a 
 deity. They have the evidence of experience—experi- 
 ence inward, indeed, yet not for that reason less real and 
 trustworthy. If any other person say he has no such 
 experience, we can but pity him, but it does not make 
 us doubt. Many people in the world are colour-blind, 
 but that does not make us doubt our perceptions of 
 colour. We only say that he who lives in an un- 
 coloured world hves in a poorer and less beautiful 
 world than that with which we are acquainted. Robin- 
 son Crusoe in his island, occupied all day in fighting 
 for life against the forces of nature and wild beasts, might 
 easily, were he of sceptical humour, begin to doubt of 
 the existence in the world of other selves. That one 
 can live ina respectable fashion in this world of ours 
 if one merely believes in the outer world and other 
 selves, and denies a deity, is true. No one can doubt 
 it. But such a hfe is poor, stunted,and meagre. And 
 then after all there is the great fact of death. It is 
 not possible to express the truth of the matter more 
 clearly than it is expressed in the memorable words of 
 Victor Hugo: “Il y a une philosophie qui nie Vinfini. 
 Il y a aussi une philosophie qui nie le soleil. Cette 
 philosophie s’appelle cécité.” 
 
 But there are other characters, on whom one would 
 not dare to pass so severe a judgment, open to all the 
 best influences of human society, a blessing to those 
 about them, and full of ready sympathy for their 
 friends, who yet find it quite possible to go through 
 the world without recognising in their own hearts any 
 
112 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 divine voice as distinct from the call of human love 
 and friendship. A personality of this type seems to 
 be presented to us in the life of George Eliot. In 
 spite of her refusal to recognise a supernatural force as 
 working in the world, her biographer does not hesitate 
 to call her nature eminently religious. And we 
 may accede to his opinion, if the comparison already 
 instituted be allowed to be just, between the light of 
 divine influence and that of the sun. People can live 
 without the direct rays of the sun shining on them, 
 because those rays are reflected on them by everything 
 and every person round. It seems that George Eliot, 
 in virtue of her wonderfully sympathetic and imagina- 
 tive nature, lived always amid rays of divine influence, 
 reflected on her by friends and by books, and so the 
 less felt the necessity for the direct light of the divine 
 presence. Darwin must also have been singularly 
 susceptible to the warmth and light shed on hfe by 
 family affection and friendship, or he would not have 
 given utterance to that strange opinion of his that 
 religion is unnecessary to those who are surrounded by 
 domestic affections. Probably this feeling has been 
 shared by other prominent thinkers, who were of the 
 same class with these two,—that is, persons living an 
 uneventful and secluded life without any call on their 
 active faculties, and of an imaginative and contempla- 
 tive character. But as these were not in intellect 
 ordinary specimens of mankind, so neither are they fair 
 instances of the relations of human life to the divine 
 power. ‘Their whole nature was so entirely given up 
 to activities of a certain character that they had no 
 interest in, and felt no need for, experiences of another 
 
 kind. 
 
vit Divine Ard as Experience EE 
 
 It may, however, be urged, and rightly urged, that 
 there is another and a less pleasing side to this experi- 
 ence of the supernatural control of conduct. “There 
 be many that say, Who will show us any good ?” 
 There are some who have striven after what is right 
 and good, and fallen back constantly baffled and de- 
 feated. And when they are asked to explain their 
 failure, they will do so not only by citing the power of 
 circumstance. This is of course a real power in the 
 matter. And as it cannot be said that in every case 
 divine power will enable those who wish to do right 
 to do so in the teeth of all opposition of circumstance, 
 there seems to le in the presence of such hindrance 
 as this no real ditficulty for those who believe in the 
 divine inspiration of conduct. But often the men of 
 whom we are speaking will, over and above the opposi- 
 tion of circumstance, speak of other causes acting from 
 without, but not of a purely natural character. They 
 will commonly say that they wished to do well, but 
 were prevented by an evil spirit. We shall be obliged 
 hereafter to consider the meaning and validity of the 
 belief that a power of evil works upon human will in 
 conscience. But at the present moment it is sufficient 
 to say, that however solid be the testimony thus given, 
 it does not in the least invalidate that already spoken 
 of, but, indeed, confirms it; for it is only the lowest 
 savages who believe in evil spirits and not in good. 
 No modern writer would assert that the human will 
 is tempted from without to evil, but not strengthened 
 from without for good. And, indeed, if there were such 
 a writer, he would find it impossible to account for 
 human progress. No; the only question les between 
 those who believe in spiritual influences bearing on 
 
 I 
 
1I4 Faith and Conduct CHAP. VII 
 
 the human will, and those who entirely deny such 
 influence, who, like the Sadducees, acknowledge 
 neither angel nor spirit. And certainly the latter 
 school has to deny and set at naught a vast mass of 
 human testimony as best it can. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE DENIAL OF SELF 
 
 ACCORDING to the theory above set forth, the road of 
 virtue consists in the subordination of the impulses of 
 our lower and more obvious self to impulses of a higher 
 kind. We must therefore carefully consider what is 
 implied in that subordination; we must sketch the 
 natural history of self-denial, and the character of the 
 higher impulses. 
 
 The root of all ill-doing in the world, which does 
 not arise from ignorance or mistake, is selfishness,— 
 that is, following our own momentary inclinations 
 and the desires of our baser nature without higher 
 purpose. The more atrocious the crime, the more this 
 element appears in it. The robber who will injure or 
 kill a traveller to win the gratifications which can be 
 procured from taking his purse; the seducer who will 
 ruin a woman’s life in order to attain the guilty 
 pleasures of a few hours or days,—these are the typical 
 villains, the supremely accursed. But that which is 
 true of great crimes is true also in all the smaller 
 dealings of life. Those who through self-seeking injure 
 others, and those who through indolence fail to follow 
 what they know to be the better way, do what in them 
 
116 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 lies to produce misery and to degrade the human race. 
 On the other hand, goodness consists in overcoming 
 one’s immediate inclinations, and giving place to the 
 force that makes for goodness. .The road of virtue 
 shows us continual victories over the baser self, in the 
 interest of that which is outside self. 
 
 This is of course no new doctrine. Moralists have 
 set it forth since morality began to be a system. And 
 religious teachers have preached it in all ages and 
 countries with passionate fervour. 
 
 There are three ways in which the impulses leading 
 to momentary gratifications may be met and con- 
 quered. 
 
 The first is the way of self-control. To keep a 
 tight rein upon every impulse, and only to allow it free 
 course when it is expedient to do so, is among bar- 
 barians a high virtue. Even to the philosophers of 
 Greece this seemed an excellent thing. Plato con- 
 sidered the soul to be in a healthy condition when 
 passion and desire were entirely ruled by the reasoning 
 faculty. But as with growing civilisation the force 
 of passion becomes blunted, and the reasoning powers 
 take a higher development, self-control as a virtue 
 takes a lower and lower level. Among ourselves it is 
 but a moderate good; excessive self-control has even 
 an ill effect among many of us, and destroys the seeds 
 of action. Unless a horse be controlled, he is useless ; 
 but if he has too much of the rein and the whip his 
 spirit is broken, and he becomes but a poor-spirited 
 hack. Thus many moderns, by too constantly check- 
 ing their feelings, starve them, and make them unfit to 
 act as the motive power of life. But under the influ- 
 ence of religion, self-control changes its nature, and 
 
vit The Denial of Self Tg 
 
 becomes a positive rather than a negative thing. 
 Religion turns the control of self into hatred of self, 
 whence arise asceticism and self-torture. There have 
 been times in the world’s history when the hatred of 
 self was a noble virtue, and asceticism necessary as a 
 protest against the universal indulgence of impulse and 
 passion. In our days asceticism is nearly extinct, 
 and its revival is not a thing to be wished. For, after 
 all, it is but a caricature of virtue. And it seems to 
 be the testimony of those who have tried it, that 1t 
 leads to no lasting peace or happiness. Ascetics 
 never reach a point at which they are content to rest. 
 One self-torture leads to another. As those who are 
 addicted to drugs have to take a stronger and stronger 
 dose to produce a given result, so ascetics can procure 
 momentary peace only by increasing their pains. The 
 craving at the heart grows fiercer, and this is the best 
 proof that it is not in accordance with nature. 
 
 The second way is that of altruism, the merging of 
 one’s own wishes and desires in those of other people. 
 No one can deny that this way is admirable. The 
 altruist is beloved by every one, dear to friend and 
 onest, sought after while living, lamented and honoured 
 after death. Altruism has been the cure for the 
 diseases of the world which has been more and more 
 in fashion since the decay of the intense religious 
 beliefs of the seventeenth century. Great novelists, 
 who are in our days the chief guides of morality, have 
 never tired in depicting the beauty of the life devoted 
 to others. Thackeray, the idol of cultivated England, 
 and Dickens, the idol of the masses, have alike held it 
 up as the life of perfect virtue. George Eliot, though 
 her moral tone is far higher than that of Dickens or 
 
118 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 Thackeray, still in almost all her writings depicts pure 
 altruism as the highest life. George Sand and Victor 
 Hugo adopt the same creed, and support it with the 
 fire of a more impressible nationality. 
 
 And altruism has this great fact to support it, that 
 it leads through the promotion of the happiness of 
 others to the furtherance of one’s own. No one can 
 have tried, with however poor success, to live for a few 
 days in the spirit of altruism, seeking the happiness of 
 those around rather than his own, without discovering 
 that this striving sheds a delightful peace and enjoy- 
 ment through life, making it rich and full. The heart 
 is purified and refined, and -at every turn one finds 
 enjoyment, where before there had only appeared the 
 dull desert of life stretching on. Even the intellect 
 grows clearer when the mists of self-seeking are dis- 
 persed, and one is determined to value the good of 
 others as one’s own. 
 
 It is not wonderful that those religions, from 
 Buddhism to the Religion of Humanity, which have 
 rejected the supernatural element in life, have identified 
 virtue with altruism. And yet this view is defective, 
 Altruism is very beautiful and intensely human, but 
 it does not fill the measure of human excellence. 
 
 The acceptance of the caring for others as the sum 
 of goodness, if it be not combined with an intense care 
 for human progress, and the belief in divine influence 
 in the world, naturally tends to materialism, not in 
 belief but in practice. The outward needs of others 
 are so manifest that it is very easy to imagine there 
 can be nothing better than to fill them. So the 
 altruist is likely to treat those about him in the way in 
 which unwise parents treat their children,—to pamper 
 
VIII The Denial of Self 119 
 
 and indulge them, to give them what they ask for 
 without considering whether the gift be really for their 
 advantage, to neglect discipline and lessons in self- 
 control. And thus it may happen that altruism 
 becomes merely a somewhat enlarged self-seeking, if 
 the altruist regards the pleasure of others in receiving, 
 and his own consequent pleasure in giving, rather 
 than the greater and more permanent advantages to 
 which conduct should be directed. Again, as habits 
 of altruism rapidly mould the feelings, it will be 
 commonly found that those who devote themselves to 
 fulfilling the wishes of others do not spread their 
 activity over a wide circle, but only among friends and 
 neighbours. The fountain which might irrigate and 
 make fertile a district if it were guided in a stream in 
 one direction spreads outwards on every side, and 
 only forms a marsh where rank weeds grow and foul 
 vapours are bred. 
 
 In the state of society about us we may see many 
 traces of the working of materialist altruism. Children 
 are pampered and spoilt; parents devote to them their 
 whole lives, spend and are spent in their service, with 
 no result but to render them intolerable, and utterly 
 destitute of the habits of patience and self-control, 
 without which they must be quite unfit for the 
 battle of life. Weak sentiment so gets the better 
 of clear vision that it becomes almost impossible 
 severely to punish any crimes except those which 
 immediately disgust the feelings. Any tale of stern 
 treatment will arouse in the newspapers a storm of 
 anger against him who had dared to be stern, whether 
 he had justice on his side or not. It is one of the 
 best and noblest features of our time that so many 
 
120 faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 who might live in ease and luxury devote themselves 
 body and soul to the amelioration of the physical con- 
 dition of the poor. And yet this frequent devotion 
 seems to produce no result: on the whole, the wealthier 
 classes regard only their friends and equals as human 
 beings, and those who are poor and dirty as beings of 
 another metal; while on the other hand among the 
 poor there exists—there seems to be steadily increasing 
 —a fierce and bitter hatred against the upper classes, a 
 hatred which longs not to raise the standard of living 
 among the lowly, but to drag down the wealthy to a 
 lower standard, often to destroy the very framework of 
 society, from pure hatred to the existing order of 
 things. Certainly it has not been shown that altruism 
 pure and simple has force to regenerate or even to 
 preserve society. 
 
 The third way is that of religion. And as we hold 
 this to be the true and the best way, we must sketch 
 its nature in two aspects: first, as to the ideal which 
 it sets before us; and secondly, as to the way by which 
 that ideal is to be reached. 
 
 It is impossible to suppose that God takes pleasure 
 in the misery of men, or that he wishes anything but 
 their happiness and wellbeing. Yet neither history 
 nor observation reveals to us a deity who is simply 
 and purely benevolent, as a kind man might be 
 benevolent. Rather we find that though God would 
 have men happy, he would have them rightly happy— 
 happy in harmony with the laws of the world and of 
 human nature. He would have men not merely enjoy, 
 but grow towards a certain end, and in attaining that 
 end be at peace with themselves and him. We find 
 that God has an ideal for society, or rather an ideal 
 
vill Lhe Denial of Self 121 
 
 for society in each age. Those who learn what that 
 ideal is, and work to produce it, are the friends 
 and fellow-workers of God; those who oppose them | 
 are the enemies of God, and the frustraters of the 
 divine order in the world. 
 
 But we find that God has an ideal not only for 
 every society but for every individual. Every man is 
 born with a portion of the divine spirit in him. Every 
 man has the power of embodying in the world some 
 side of the supreme good. This it is our business to 
 discern in those with whom we come into contact, and 
 this it is our duty to foster and develop. Every 
 man bears in his bosom a possible heaven and a 
 possible hell. He who has an eager and intense soul 
 may become an intense egotist or an intense denier of 
 self. The same qualities which made Saul an efficient 
 persecutor made Paul a successful missionary. The 
 man who has the greatest capacity for good has also the 
 greatest capacity for evil. But those who are less highly 
 endowed have a similar choice between good and evil, 
 though the good and evil are of a more moderate degree. 
 
 Thus above all qualifications for co-operation with 
 divine power, one is necessary—a recognition of the 
 ideal of man in every man. If a high sense of the 
 essential nobleness of human nature, at least in its 
 possibilities, be ever present to the mind of a worker 
 in the world, he will naturally in all his work tend to 
 body forth that nobleness. Hence arises a love for 
 man as man, an enthusiasm of humanity, such as the 
 author of that admirable work Ecce Homo has shown 
 to be at the root of the teaching of Christ. And, 
 indeed, it lies at the root of all teaching which has 
 had power for the best ends in this world. 
 
[a2- Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 SS Se eee 
 
 Not only will a belief in the divine ideal in man 
 stimulate those who earnestly accept it to a burning 
 desire to co-operate with the spirit of God in improv- 
 ing the tone and raising the level of human life, but 
 it will. also shed a sweet light upon the history of 
 mankind and of the world as revealed to our investi- 
 gations. It will enable us to discern in the often sad 
 pages of history a progress and a design. We shall 
 hail with triumph the progress of evolution whereby 
 man has emerged from barbarism and misery into a 
 more happy and virtuous state, a state comparatively 
 good, though still full of causes for fear and regret. 
 It will supersede the frame of mind too common among 
 sensitive natures, in which the evils from which society 
 suffers seem past remedy and cure, and fit cause for 
 mere despair. For surely the Power which has led 
 mankind so far on the road to perfection will not now 
 desert them, but will bear them on to a condition still 
 better. Temporary relapses there may be—history has 
 many a sad page in store; but there is in the world 
 no force which can resist finally the long working 
 of the Power which works for righteousness. By 
 quick steps or slow, sooner or later, the ideas of 
 God shall more and more fully inform the world; 
 and that image, of which in the pages of history 
 we find dim suggestions here and there, shall be 
 revealed. 
 
 This is the end to which the life of virtue will be 
 directed. But that this is the end does not imply 
 that each of us devotes his time and his energy to 
 great schemes of world-bettering. Few indeed are 
 those who are called to so great things. Man is not 
 as God, to know good and evil, and to pour society 
 
Vit The Denial of Self 123 
 
 into new moulds. But when we turn from the dazz- 
 ling and perplexing view of the conflict of ideas and 
 of purposes in the world, and retire into the recesses 
 of our own heart and conscience, the matter becomes 
 plainer. The Power that moulds society speaks also 
 in the heart of man. We have to wait with patience 
 and with a loyal heart as the stream of our hfe, the 
 narrow stream of conduct, rolls slowly by, and to do 
 in each case and in each conjunction of circumstances 
 that which the inner voice bids us do. The force of 
 gravity which directs the course of the stars acts also 
 in our studies and our bedchambers. So the Power 
 which guides the destinies of nations leads also each 
 individual who is willing to be led. We need not 
 look far into the future to discern what lies before us, 
 or far abroad to learn what lies around us; but we 
 have just to keep doing that which is best, and we 
 shall grow daily nearer to the idea towards which our 
 life was intended to grow. If our own needle points 
 true to the north, we need the less disturb ourselves as 
 to the course of magnetism in the world. 
 
 Thus the way of religion does not lead so rapidly 
 outside self as the way of altruism, since, until a man 
 has realised the divine revelation of conduct in his 
 own heart, he will scarcely see that revelation in the 
 deeds of others. A brooding spirit which is occupied 
 with attaining in itself conformity to the divine will 
 usually precedes the rush of outward feeling which 
 makes the man who has himself attained to inward 
 peace a great force in the outward world. Nor can it 
 be said that the way of religion leads to one’s own 
 happiness so easily and swiftly as the way of altruism. 
 Rather it leads along a hard and thorny path through 
 
124 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 deep valleys of humiliation and almost of despair. 
 Profound melancholy is as often the character of the 
 intensely religious as the deep-set peace and joy which 
 finally spring out of the melancholy. But the happi- 
 ness which they reach at last is worthy of any pains 
 cost in the attainment. Wordsworth writes of Duty: - 
 “Nor know we anything more fair than is the smile 
 upon thy face”; and this is found by many to be 
 really true, though the noise and bustle of the world 
 make us forget its truth. 
 
 Religious self-devotion is free from the limitations 
 and the dangers which beset mere altruism. There 
 is no fear that he whom it inspires will fall into 
 materialism or a too ready adoption and indulgence 
 of the fancies and wishes of those whose good he 
 makes his chief end. Rather, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, he will be ever tending to raise their 
 standard, and stimulate them to the pursuit of things 
 above them. And yet by this road, though it seem 
 less direct, it may be that even the physical well- 
 being of mankind will be in the end best served. 
 Mrs. Browning has written: “It needs a high-souled 
 man to move the masses even to a cleaner sty”; 
 and if this be true we-shall have a fresh instance 
 of a fact familiar to all observers of life, that the 
 safest and quickest road to a desired end, is not 
 always that which looks most direct. And religi- 
 ous self-devotion is entirely opposed to that restric- 
 tion of self-denial to the service of those who dwell 
 nearest about one, to which ordinary altruism constantly 
 tends. It must needs look beyond the family and the 
 class, and even the nation, and bound its view only by 
 the limits of the whole human family. It will not 
 
VIII Lhe Denial of Self 125 
 
 merge self in the wider self of a clique, but annihilate 
 self in the love of mankind. 
 
 But perhaps some readers will think that we are 
 now going too far. Self-denial, they may think, is a 
 good thing, but self-annihilation is a doubtful good. 
 May not the distrust of self be carried too far? 
 According to the teaching of science, all life is a 
 struggle, and the fittest survives. But does not such 
 a struggle imply self-seeking? Could a community 
 exist if its members were lacking in a healthy vigour 
 of self-assertion? Would it not be soon driven to 
 the wall by more energetic natures and pass out of 
 existence ? 
 
 To which our reply is twofold. In the first place, 
 there is extremely small probability of there being a 
 lack, in any human community, of self-assertion. It 
 is so deeply ingrained in human nature by the experi- 
 ences and the struggles of a thousand generations that 
 it has become woven into its very texture. It can no 
 more be destroyed than can sexual desire or any of the 
 other primary forces of our nature. The fear is not 
 that we may ever succeed in destroying human self- 
 assertion, but that by severely checking it in one 
 generation we may produce in the next a violent 
 reaction which may bring down the opposite scale 
 of the balance’ too rapidly. Selfishness in man is 
 like a spring, and brief pressure on it will make its 
 recoil the more violent. But as a spring may be kept 
 down if a calm and steady pressure be brought to bear 
 upon it, so may human self-seekine be kept below the 
 level to which it still tends to rise if the steady force 
 of conviction and religious feeling play upon it. 
 
 But in the second place, there will be no fear at 
 
126 | Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 all of doing harm through the destruction of self- 
 assertion if the right feelings take its place. If ina 
 community or in an individual a nervous and self- 
 conscious timidity take the place of self-assertion, then 
 that community or individual does undoubtedly suffer, 
 and become less fit for the battle of life. But this is 
 not the annihilation of self at all. It is the preserva- 
 tion of selfishness with diminution of energy and 
 courage. It is the vice of self-seeking in a poor and 
 retiring instead of in an open and manly form. What 
 religion would put in the place of self-assertion is by 
 no means this weakness of spirit which will drift on 
 the waves of life at the sport of wind and tide. In 
 the place of desire of one’s own advantage it will set 
 love of mankind and love of duty. The heart and the 
 will, set free from the burden and profitless anxiety of 
 ever trying to find some good for one’s self, will be 
 invigorated and renewed day by day. A man will 
 then become not weak but far stronger. If he resists 
 his neighbour in the battle of life because he wishes 
 his own gain at the expense of that neighbour, he must 
 needs be weak, because his nature is divided against 
 itself. The strong social instincts, the noble feeling of 
 duty, will drag him back while self-assertion pushes 
 him forward. Unless he is of a very strong nature 
 he will soon become weary and depressed. But if on 
 the other hand he resists his neighbour because he 
 feels that it is right, and his duty to the world, that 
 even the love he bears to that neighbour himself com- 
 pels him, then indeed he is a strong man. In such 
 mood a man is all but irresistible; he speaks and acts 
 with a strength of conviction and a singleness of heart 
 which carry away the wills of those about him—‘“ He 
 
VIII The Dental of Self E27 
 
 alone has breathing force, the rest are fleeting shades.” 
 In fact the man who in every action tries to follow the 
 voice of love and of duty has all the strength of a 
 fanatic, without his unreason. <A few such men 
 banded together, and working with one mind, would 
 move the world in any direction,—we had almost said 
 in any direction they chose; but of course this phrase 
 would be absurd, since the very essence of their 
 strength would be that they did not choose, but 
 only went the way in which they were impelled by the 
 higher Power. If they possessed that “sweet reason- 
 ableness” which is in harmony with the laws of the 
 world and of human nature, then they would become 
 the very salt of the earth, and a vast power in the 
 raising and purifying of human life. That any such 
 society could ever number any large proportion of 
 mankind must seem quite incredible, but that there 
 can be any danger to society lest their influence 
 should weaken or corrupt it, need surely not be 
 fancied. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE HISTORY OF SCEPTICISM 
 
 Our ethical substruction being thus laid, we have next 
 to consider what sort of a superstructure it will bear. 
 The main object of this work is to show the reasonable- 
 ness of religion, and it might seem that the way was 
 now open for proceeding from ethics to religion, and 
 establishing its truth on the basis which we have set 
 up. But another task confronts us first. For religion 
 is concerned not with conduct only, but also with 
 knowing; therefore it is necessary that we should dis- 
 cuss, as a preliminary, not only the nature of action, 
 but also that of perception and knowledge. . We have 
 tried to satisfy the students of hfe and history, but we 
 have yet to deal with the philosophers and meta- 
 physicians, who will never be satisfied unless we 
 clearly lay down our views of the relations between 
 action and knowledge—who will allow us to make no 
 assertion as to the nature of God or the spiritual world 
 unless we prove that we have a right to make it. 
 Why, they may ask, are you sure that the supposed 
 experience of a power which makes for righteousness 
 is not a delusion? Prove that power to be independent 
 
CHAP. IX Lhe Flistory of Scepticism 129 
 
 of the perceiver before we allow you to say anything 
 in regard to it. | 
 
 So we shall not be able to avoid the discussion of 
 some of the problems of metaphysics, for on the solu- 
 tion which we have to offer of them rest the walls of 
 our ethical system. Action is the antithesis to know- 
 ledge, and knowledge of fact can never in itself give 
 us the rule of conduct; yet it may and must help us 
 to discern our path. A lamp does not invigorate our 
 limbs, yet without a lamp the vigour of our limbs may 
 on a dark night only hasten us into destruction. 
 
 But lest any reader should be alarmed at the pros- 
 pect of metaphysical discussion, we hasten to say that 
 our metaphysics shall savour as little as possible of the 
 schools. It would be easy to clothe the theories which 
 must be propounded in the language of the higher 
 philosophy. And in fact, as they are by no means 
 new, they have frequently appeared in philosophic 
 garb, And there can be no doubt that in philosophy, 
 as in other branches of knowledge, a technical language 
 is a great aid to both writers and readers, allowing 
 statements to be made more briefly, and opinions to be 
 set forth more clearly and with less ambiguity. In 
 many departments of philosophy the use of such 
 language is a necessity to any one who wishes to be 
 understood. But these departments are not always 
 the deepest and most fundamental. Hume treats of 
 the gravest and profoundest questions of philosophy in 
 a style which is easy and almost light. He says in 
 clear and fine English the same things which the 
 followers of Kant set forth in their difficult and techni- 
 cal language. We believe that it will not be difficult 
 to say what has to be said in language as simple, 
 
 K 
 
130 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 though not as elegant, as the English of Hume. And 
 if any metaphysician dislike the common language in 
 which we try to clothe reasonings, he can readily 
 translate it into the verbiage of the schools. 
 
 Let us then begin with the simplest of all facts ; 
 one of those perceptions in making which we spend 
 the greater part of our waking hours. I see a book. 
 Nothing could be more ordinary or more indubitable, 
 and yet on the meaning of the phrase hangs all our 
 theory of this world, and perhaps of the next too. 
 The physiologist readily explains the matter. Rays of 
 light, he says, having their origin in the sun or in 
 some incandescent object, strike upon the book either 
 directly or being reflected on to it from some other 
 thing. These rays glance from the book in every 
 direction, and some of them entering my eye pass 
 through the cornea and crystalline lens and fall upon 
 the retina, causing through the retina a commotion in 
 the optic nerve which transmits inwards a certain 
 agitation, which in turn produces a modification of 
 certain fibres in the brain, which modification produces 
 in my mind what is called a perception of the book. 
 This seems simple; but next comes the awkward ques- 
 tion, What is it which I really see? Is it the motion 
 of the brain, is it the disturbance in the optic nerve, 
 is it the impression on the retina, or is it the book 
 itself? It cannot be the book, for if by any means 
 an impression is produced on the retina the mind has 
 precisely the same perception. It cannot be the im- 
 pression on the retina, for if illness or pressure produce 
 the disturbance in the optic nerve the book becomes 
 quite as visible as if there were an image on the 
 retina: nor can it be the motion of the optic nerve or 
 
IX | Lhe H[estory of Scepticism 131 
 
 the brain, because the motion of nerve-matter is quite 
 a different thing from a book, 
 
 Every time then that we see and recognise an 
 object there is a process including six moments, a 
 chain comes into being made of at least six links. 
 There is the external thing, the effect produced by it 
 on the medium of light whatever it be, the impression 
 produced by the action of light on the retina, an 
 affection of the optic nerve, a modification of the brain, 
 a perception of the mind. And the nature of the 
 connection of each of these links with those which 
 precede and follow it is a matter of absolute mystery. 
 We know that they are connected together in orderly 
 sequence, but why and how falls as little within the 
 sphere of our knowledge as the nature of that side of 
 the moon which is turned away from the earth. Let 
 us begin again at the circumference and trace the 
 process towards the percipient person in the centre. 
 
 First, we have the mutual action of the external 
 object and light, as a consequence of which the rays 
 or waves of light are modified in a particular manner, 
 and rendered capable of producing a certain effect. 
 This is a process of which the method can be in some 
 degree traced, but the reasons of it are entirely hidden : 
 and it is not possible to trace any sort of necessary 
 connection between qualities in an object and the 
 particular kind of motion of the waves of light which 
 they cause, Then the rays of light produce on 
 the retina an impression which takes the form to the 
 
 * Throughout this discussion we use the simplest and most general 
 language. For instance, we speak of seeing with an eye instead of 
 two: in the science of optics a difference of this kind is of importance, 
 
 but in a philosophic discussion it is a detail quite immaterial ; we also 
 for the moment pass by the action of the muscles of the eye, 
 
132 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 spectator of a picture, their motion which arose in 
 form and colour producing form and colour in turn ; 
 only between the retinal image and the outward thing 
 there is the vast difference that whereas the one is 
 only in two dimensions—length and breadth—the 
 other is in three. Next, the optic nerve once more 
 transmutes an impression into motion, which motion 
 proceeding inwards produces in the brain a movement 
 of the nature of which we are naturally entirely 
 ignorant. Then by a process if possible more mysteri- 
 ous the brain-affection causes a perception in the 
 mind. In the whole process then we have a series 
 of transmutations of the most violent and inexplicable 
 character, form and colour passing into motion, and 
 motion into thought, in a manner which may be 
 observed but can never be understood. And at each 
 turn such a transmutation takes place that it would 
 seem we cannot venture an opinion whether the thing 
 which comes out of one of the processes we have 
 described is like the thing which goes into it, save 
 that it passes human understanding to conceive any 
 likeness between extension and colour on the one hand 
 and motion on the other, or motion on the one hand 
 and perception on the other. 
 
 The mind then, in so far as it perceives by sight, 
 appears to be absolutely shut off from any knowledge 
 of the outer world by the interposition of four great 
 and impassable barriers. It seems to be in no more 
 favourable position for learning anything in regard to 
 its real nature than is a blind man, asleep on a dark 
 night, for seeing what goes on on the other side of a 
 brick wall. 
 
 But it may be that others of our senses may stand 
 
Ix The F{istory of Scepticism 128 
 
 in better relations with the world without. Take hear- 
 ing. The process of hearing is closely similar to that 
 of sight. A rapid motion in an outer object causes a 
 vibration in the air, which vibration strikes upon the 
 drum of the ear, whence, through the agency of a com- 
 plicated mechanism of bones and membranes, follow 
 motions in the auditory nerve continued inwards to 
 the brain, and on the affection of the brain attends a 
 perception of sound by the mind. But here also we 
 come upon processes which utterly baffle thought—the 
 transmutation of a motion in the air to a nerve-move- 
 ment, and the production of mental perception as an 
 accompaniment of an affection of the brain. Hearing 
 does seem to bring us a little nearer to the outer world 
 than sight. But when two things are separated by 
 several impassable barriers it avails little to throw 
 down one or two of the barriers. If our blind man is 
 wide awake, and it is full day instead of night, he will 
 still be no better able than before to see what goes on 
 on the other side of the wall. 
 
 Taste and smell are but forms of touch, and only 
 profess to inform us as to what takes place on the 
 surface of our bodies. Let us then take up the group 
 of faculties included in the general word touch, and 
 see whether this notable sense is a source of more 
 trustworthy knowledge as to outward things. Touch 
 proper conveys to us perceptions of the surfaces of 
 bodies with which our body is in contact, whether 
 those surfaces are rough or smooth, hot or cold, and so 
 forth. And in fact the line of communication between 
 the mind and things does seem in this case to be most 
 direct. The object without is in all but immediate 
 contact with our bodily nerves, there being between it 
 
134 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 and the nerves only a layer of epidermis. Such con- 
 tact causes in the nerves motions transmitted inward 
 to the brain, and the affection of the brain is attended 
 by perception. And yet in this case too the relation 
 between cause and effect is of a wholly incompre- 
 hensible character. We do not know how the pressure 
 on the surface of man’s body is connected with motions 
 of the sensory nerves, and why with those particular 
 motions and no others. And we do not understand 
 the relations between motions in the brain and _ per- 
 ception in the mind; the two things seem to us of 
 utterly different kinds. 
 
 We are by no means unaware that to a modern 
 psychologist this account of the process whereby we 
 become aware of things in the outer world would seem 
 very incomplete. The ablest writers on psychology 
 now maintain that our perception of the size and shape 
 of bodies is mainly acquired by means of the sensa- 
 tions of muscular strain which arise when we come in 
 contact with them. Thus our bodies form as it were 
 a pair of compasses whereby we measure things about 
 us, and they are represented in our minds in terms of 
 the body. To such facts, for facts doubtless they are, 
 we shall return in the next chapter, when we have to 
 speak of the share taken in knowledge by will and 
 energy. At present we are speaking of perception in 
 its passive rather than in its active aspect, of things as 
 impressing our senses rather than as resisting our wiil. 
 And in this aspect it must be considered that all the 
 material world is known to us only by impressions 
 made on the surface of the body, and thence conveyed 
 through the nerves to the brain, and through the brain 
 to the mind. We may also observe that though the 
 
Ix The FTrstory of Scepticism 1s 
 
 body is the middle term between the mind and the 
 outer world, a means of measuring such as the sextant 
 is to the land-surveyor, yet of this body itself we only 
 become aware as we become aware of other extended 
 objects. Without the senses of sight and touch no 
 one could know that his body had shape and occupied 
 space; no one would recognise his body as something 
 different from his mind. 
 
 Some philosophers have, with Sir Wiliam Hamilton, 
 tried to shorten the process of perception by feigning 
 that the immediate concomitant of perception is not 
 the affection of the brain but the motions of the nerve 
 at the surface of the body—that the mind is directly 
 present to these. But the theory is easily refuted by 
 well-known facts of physiology. Supposing, however, 
 for the sake of argument, that it could be maintained, it 
 would not help matters: it would only remove one im- 
 passable barrier and leave others equally impassable in 
 the way. Let us even imagine that external objects 
 could be so rubbed directly on the brain that they could 
 produce, without any intermediary, the affections which 
 accompany thought. Yet this would not in any degree 
 help us. Even then the relations between thought 
 and brain motion would be absolutely unfathomable, 
 nor should we be able to discover any kind of neces- 
 sary or causal connection between the two. Still an 
 eternal and immutable barrier would stand between 
 the mind which perceives and the external world 
 which is perceived. And one barrier, if it be impass- 
 able, is as effectual as a hundred. If our blind man 
 be entirely blind, no interposed wall will be necessary 
 to prevent him from seeing: nor will he see better by 
 day and awake than by night and asleep. 
 
136 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 Many writers draw a broad line of distinction 
 between primary and secondary qualities of bodies. 
 They put in one category form and the occupation of 
 space, and say that these are real and necessary quali- 
 ties of objects in the external world, and in another 
 category heat and colour, and such qualities as those. 
 And they maintain that the quality in an outward 
 thing, which produces in us the perceptions of heat 
 and colour, may be of quite a different character from 
 those perceptions themselves—that there may be varied 
 and rapid motions of the surface of bodies, which pro- 
 duce certain effects on our nervous organisation. But 
 they hold that on the other hand extension in space 
 and consequent shape must be in the outward objects 
 of exactly the same character as in our perception. 
 To take a concrete instance, they think that when we 
 come in contact with a slab of black marble, the black- 
 ness and coldness which we find in the marble exist 
 in our perceptions rather than in the marble itself, but 
 its shape exists alike in the outer world and in our 
 perception. 
 
 Every one can see that there is some reason in 
 this distinction, and it is not hard to find its real 
 basis. The colour of an object is perceived by the 
 eyes, but does not appear to the touch; so that to 
 blind men the world appears uncoloured, and even to 
 the colour-blind it seems of hue quite different from 
 that which it wears to ordinary people. The heat of 
 an object on the other hand is perceived by the 
 touch but not at all by the sight; so that if we could 
 Suppose a man to see and not to feel, the world would 
 appear to him coloured, but not hot or cold. Thus 
 in cases where one sense contradicts or at least does 
 
IX Lhe F[rstory of Sceptictsm Iny 
 
 not confirm the testimony of another sense, we easily 
 perceive that the information which a sense furnishes 
 to us 1s but relative. We are in such cases ready to 
 admit that the cause of a perception need no more be 
 like a perception than gunpowder is like an explosion 
 or an acorn like an oak. But the case of extension 
 is different. In regard to it touch and the muscular 
 sense give us the same testimony. Sight, after it has 
 been trained by experience, fully confirms their 
 verdict, and hearing and the other senses of smell 
 and taste at all events do not in any way contradict 
 it. Thus every person who is endowed with senses 
 sufficient to enable him to perceive or to think at all 
 must necessarily consider all bodies to be possessed of 
 extension and shape, and cannot possibly imagine 
 bodies not possessed of these qualities. And as a 
 natural result we all consider shape to belong no less 
 to things without than to our mental perception of 
 those things. 
 
 But to explain how a thing comes to pass is not 
 to prove that it ought to come to pass, and is still less 
 to prove that nothing else could possibly be. It does 
 not follow that because we regard extension as a 
 necessary property of matter, reasonable creatures 
 with powers of perception differently constituted from 
 ours must hold this view; and still less does it follow 
 that extension is an actual property of outward things. 
 And in fact we have already shown that there is not, 
 and cannot be, any possible proof of the last-mentioned 
 thesis, seeing that all that any man can possibly know 
 is a perception of the mind, and that between mind 
 and brain there is an impassable gulf, and seeing that 
 we know only effects and have not the least right to 
 
138 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 assume that the causes of these effects resemble them 
 in nature. 
 
 It is an interesting speculation what might be the 
 result on our firm conviction of the reality of ex- 
 tension if a new sense were given us in addition to 
 those we now possess, a new sense of quite another 
 character from any which we have. Such a sense we 
 cannot of course imagine, because we can imagine 
 nothing of which we have not seen the like; but we 
 can in a certain degree conceive its possibility. If 
 such sense supplemented the testimony of touch on 
 the subject of extension, and trained the senses of 
 sight and of touch to agree with it in new and wider 
 perceptions than we now possess, it would work an 
 extraordinary revolution in our ideas of the external 
 world, and upset many of our most cherished habits of 
 thought. We must regret that an experiment so 
 interesting hes outside our powers. 
 
 But perception of outward things is not the only 
 way in which we come in contact with the world; 
 perhaps it is not even the most important way. Not 
 only does the outward world impress itself upon us 
 through the avenues of the senses, but we seek to 
 impress our wills on that world. Man not only sees 
 and feels, he also wills and acts. Now the process 
 which takes place when we act on objects without us 
 is fully as mysterious as the process of perception. 
 But in this case consciousness is the first and not the 
 last link of the chain. We determine on some action; 
 that determination takes place entirely in the recesses 
 of consciousness, yet it is in some mysterious manner 
 followed or accompanied by a motion of the brain, 
 which motion lets out a stream of force along the 
 
IX The FIrstory of Scepticism 139 
 
 motor nerves, the result being the motion of the hand 
 or some other part of the body, and as a consequence 
 a modification wrought in the order of nature. The 
 latter stages of the process seem to us not unin- 
 telligible. The law of extension, that two things 
 cannot be in the same place at once, seems to us to 
 account for the removal of objects by the motion of 
 our limbs, and the flow of energy through the nerves 
 presents a very close parallel to the action of elec- 
 tricity through wires. All the more completely does 
 the first spring of action baffle our thought: there 
 being, so far as human thought can tell, no sort of 
 hkeness and no point of contact between a volition 
 of the mind and a discharge of the energy accumu- 
 lated in the nerve-cells. 
 
 We must also not forget to read the facts of voli- 
 tion in the light of those facts as to perception on 
 which we have already dwelt. To say that our voli- 
 tion affects things in the outer world is a short and 
 convenient way of speaking, but it may be misleading. 
 For we can never know what takes place in the outer 
 world except through consciousness. It would there- 
 fore be more correct to say that the effects of our 
 willing appear in the perceptions of things as they 
 exist Im our consciousness, which perceptions we can- 
 not by any logically defensible method project out 
 of ourselves. Thus between will and the world, just 
 as between the perceptive faculty and the world, there 
 is a great gulf fixed, an eternal barrier of which in 
 our ordinary moods we are not conscious, but which 
 looms the higher and more impassable the more we 
 think of it. Philosophy touches cur eyes, and lke 
 Balaam we see the angel with the drawn sword in 
 
140 | Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 his hand and know that none living may pass that 
 way. 
 
 Perception and will are not of course all the 
 motions of mind. They are the most important of 
 those motions, however, to the present purpose, be- 
 cause they bring us at once face to face with things 
 outside and beyond us. The other mental actions are 
 emotion and reflection; and these do not so neces- 
 sarily carry us beyond consciousness. They have a 
 tendency to do so, but not a very marked tendency. 
 Emotion is a kind of abortive or incipient willing, and 
 not only strongly disposes us to such action as will 
 give it a vent, but even affects the bodily frame in 
 the same manner as, though in a less degree than, 
 volition itself. The angry man clenches his fist; he 
 who is afraid trembles if he does not run; pleasure 
 fills the limbs with energy and the eye with light. 
 And reflection is a mixture of remembered perception 
 and remembered emotion; we see again what we have 
 seen, hear what we have heard, and feel as we have 
 felt. Only in the higher kinds of thought the mind 
 advances from experience to possibility, from what it 
 has known to what it hopes or expects. If this were 
 a treatise on psychology, emotion and thought would 
 claim our attention in detail, but in the present con- 
 nection it is sufficient merely to mention them. 
 
 It would then appear that when we start with 
 ordinary common-sense ways of looking at the world 
 and our relation to it, and examine with a little care 
 and accuracy the grounds whereon these views are 
 based, we are at once dropped into a marsh of un- 
 certainty, if not into a sea of ignorance. We soon 
 find that we do not know what we fancied we knew; 
 
Ix The History of Scepticism 141 
 
 and worse still, that the means of learning the truth 
 seem to be denied us. Such are the first-fruits of 
 reflection. And such they have been known to be 
 for centuries, for of course there is nothing new in the 
 statements here made, unless the writer’s want of skill 
 may have betrayed him into some novel error of 
 detail And out of the wreck of common sense 
 springs philosophy, or rather spring all the systems 
 of philosophy. 
 
 For the main problem of philosophy is ever this: 
 to discern the relation between the mind which per- 
 ceives and the world which is perceived. If our 
 natural fancy that things are just what they seem to 
 us to be would bear investigation, then we should 
 need science indeed, but no philosophy. But because 
 we fancy that we know the exact nature of the things 
 in the world without, and because it can be clearly 
 shown that we have not the knowledge which we 
 fancy we have, it therefore becomes an interesting 
 problem to discover exactly what we can know as to 
 the outer world, and further to investigate the reasons 
 which make us so persistent in clinging, alike the 
 educated and the ignorant, to beliefs which seem to 
 have no solid foundation. 
 
 Philosophy in attempting these great problems of 
 cosmology has proceeded in either of two ways, entirely 
 opposed to one another. It is possible to make a 
 starting-point of either of the two links of which men- 
 tion has been above made at the two extremes of the 
 chain of perception, binding the perceiver to the world 
 perceived. Materialist philosophy starts from the cir- 
 cumference of the circle, from the outer world, and 
 assuming that it is possessed of the qualities, at least 
 
142 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 the primary and indispensable qualities, which we attri- 
 bute to matter, tries to show how the perception of 
 these qualities, and of the results of other qualities 
 possessed by matter, 1s conveyed to percipient minds. 
 Idealist philosophy starts from the centre of the circle, 
 and attempts, taking for granted only the facts of con- 
 sciousness as they occur in the mind, to demonstrate 
 how of those facts the mind builds up a universe of 
 material things, and endows them with the various 
 properties which we suppose them to possess. 
 
 To the materialist then the realities of the universe 
 are things which possess extension and shape, and by 
 their motions and mixtures produce the changing 
 world which surrounds us. To him the laws of 
 gravity, of chemical combination and of physical action, 
 are the eternal laws of the universe. To him space is 
 actually existing not merely as the law of our percep- 
 tions, but as a condition which regulates the whole 
 order of things. To him matter is a thing which has 
 ever existed, and which will exist to all eternity, 
 whether any sentient being be there to witness it or 
 not. EKach man is an animated organism placed in a 
 corner of the vast scheme of things, and bearing the 
 same relation to it which a mote in the sunbeam bears 
 to the sun itself. But this organism has a history. 
 It has gradually been formed in the course of endless 
 ages by the working of some of the laws of matter so 
 as to stand in a certain relation with its environment, 
 and to be in harmony with it. For this reason the 
 play of the forces of the world does not destroy it, and 
 does not beat upon it blindly. Man can adapt 
 himself so as to learn what is taking place about him, 
 and to avoid destruction, nay, even to use for the 
 
1x The Flistory of Scepticisne 143 
 
 furtherance of his life the energy of the forces of 
 nature. 
 
 Every system of materialistic philosophy must, 
 however ably it be constructed, labour under two 
 defects. In the first place, it must begin with great 
 assumptions which it cannot by any possibility prove 
 as to the nature of the outer world. It must neces- 
 sarily suppose things in that world to possess certain 
 qualities which there is no reason beyond the usual 
 and natural belief of mankind for supposing that they 
 do possess. But if the natural and usual belief of man- 
 kind be accepted as proof, then we want no philosophy 
 at all; besides which it is a proof which will prove a 
 great deal too much, and commit us to the acceptance 
 of many current popular delusions. We cannot accept 
 a proof which arises from mere counting of heads. 
 But if materialist philosophy go a step beyond talking 
 of natural and instinctive belief, and speak of its 
 primary assumptions as necessary beliefs, it will be 
 ~ sufficient to meet it with a direct negation. It is not 
 necessary to men to hold that extension is a real 
 quality of external things, seeing that many educated 
 men not only do not hold that belief, but even hold the 
 opposite. And in the second place, materialist philo- 
 sophy labours under the disadvantage that it cannot 
 in any degree explain the fact of consciousness. The 
 abyss which separates brain-motion from thought and 
 perception is an abyss which it can neither leap nor 
 bridge. It is quite idle to talk of the brain “secreting 
 thought as the liver secretes bile.” The liver of course 
 can take out of substances brought to it anything 
 which is in them, but it cannot take out of them 
 something which is not in them. Thought is not in 
 
144 Fath and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 the nerve-motions continued to the brain, and therefore 
 the brain cannot secrete thought out of them. Con- 
 sciousness is in fact a thing of so absolutely different a 
 character from any of the things in the outer world, 
 that no philosophy which is based on them can explain 
 it. And as a matter of history we may say that every 
 scheme of materialistic philosophy yet propounded 
 either passes over the facts of consciousness entirely, 
 or else so misrepresents and disfigures them as to show 
 ignorance of their nature. 
 
 Not only does materialism, by confusing thought 
 with cerebration, mistake its essential nature, and 
 leave the facts of consciousness out of account, but it 
 also is indisposed to recognise in the universe any 
 evidence of purpose or of thought. The laws of physi- 
 cal existence it is disposed to regard as ultimate facts 
 which need no explanation and suggest no cause. 
 Things happen thus, and no otherwise—why we know 
 not, but the fact suffices. For the word cause these 
 theorists substitute the vaguer term invariable ante- 
 cedent, knowing that in observing the material world 
 we can never find a trace of a closer connection 
 between things than juxtaposition in space and time. 
 Thus to them the wheels of nature roll on for ever un- 
 touched by any hand to guide or to stay, and man’s 
 province is merely to trace the complicated system 
 formed among themselves by those wheels, to time 
 their revolutions and examine their bearings, that by 
 the aid of such knowledge he may regulate the little 
 wheels of his own life in harmony with them. Thus 
 atheism, or a materialistic pantheism scarcely to be 
 distinguished from it, is the natural accompaniment of 
 materialism in philosophy. For those who neglect the 
 
1x Lhe f1listory of Sceptictsm 145 
 
 conscious and spiritual element in the facts of percep- 
 tion are scarcely likely to observe a spiritual element 
 in the material universe. 
 
 These difficulties have not been overlooked or un- 
 derrated by the philosophers who, since the days of 
 Descartes, have devoted themselves to the examination 
 of the question of the origin and basis of knowledge. 
 Indeed so strongly has the insufficiency and unsatisfac- 
 tory nature of materialist theories of the universe 
 impressed these thinkers that they have, in the great 
 majority of cases, taken refuge in idealism of some 
 form. But it might seem that idealism is as weak in 
 one direction as materialism in the other, and that it 
 must fail in the attempt to explain the outer world as 
 completely as the other in attempting to explain the 
 inner world. This, however, is not the case; in a 
 logical point of view the systems which start from 
 within have an incontestable superiority to those which 
 start from without. What may be called idealist 
 agnosticism, the simplest of all forms of idealist 
 philosophy, proceeds without any assumptions but such 
 as every one is under necessity to grant, that we 
 experience series of sensations, the source of which we 
 trace to what is without us, and that we suppose our- 
 selves to perceive objects under the relations of space 
 and time. It claims as real nothing except the 
 obvious facts of consciousness, of which men are more 
 certain than of their own existence. 
 
 It would not be easy to state the main position of 
 this crudest idealism more clearly than it is stated by 
 Professor Huxley in his lecture on Descartes. “ Nor 
 is our knowledge of anything we know or feel more or 
 less than a knowledge of states of consciousness. And 
 
 L 
 
146 Faith and Conduct OHAP. 
 
 our whole life is made up of such states. Some of 
 these states we refer to a cause called ‘self, others to 
 a cause or causes which may be comprehended under 
 the title of ‘not-self.” But neither of the existence of 
 ‘self’? nor that of ‘not-self’ have we, or can we by 
 any possibility have, any such unquestionable and im- 
 mediate certainty as we have of the states of conscious- 
 ness which we consider to be their effects. They are 
 not immediately observed facts, but results of the 
 application of the law of causation to those facts. 
 Strictly speaking, the existence of a ‘self’ and of a 
 ‘not-self’ are hypotheses by which we account for the 
 facts of consciousness.” 
 
 It is, however, scarcely necessary to say that ideal- 
 ist philosophers, though they start from this point, do 
 not usually remain at it. If philosophy taught that 
 all things were equally unknowable and uncertain 
 except the bare and absolute state of consciousness, it . 
 would become superfluous, because it would guarantee 
 only what could not possibly be denied, and take the 
 side of denial in every matter of dispute. Crude 
 idealism would become crude and barren scepticism. 
 
 From this centre of indifference idealist philosophy 
 emerges by maintaining that although knowledge of 
 the actual state of consciousness is the most certain 
 and direct of all knowledge, yet in that knowledge is 
 bound up and involved that of other things. And in 
 particular, idealism maintains that the knowledge of 
 self suppled us in consciousness is of a more accurate 
 and certain nature than is the knowledge of the ex- 
 ternal world. This is indeed not the view of all 
 idealist thinkers. Many of these regard matter and 
 mind as alike outside the circle of actual knowledge, 
 
Ix The F[rstory of Scepticisne 147 
 
 as alike in Professor Huxley’s phrase “ hypotheses.” 
 But nearly all of the philosophers of the same general 
 school think that there is a great and radical differ- 
 ence between the relations of mind to consciousness 
 and those of matter. 
 
 Every act of perception implies two elements, a 
 self which perceives and a not-self which is perceived. 
 In the same way every act of volition implies two 
 elements, a self which wills and a not-self which re- 
 sists the will, or it may be co-operates with it. But 
 ‘in both cases these elements stand by no means on the 
 same footing in regard to consciousness. For if we 
 try to discover, as we have tried in a previous page, 
 what the not-self which is perceived by our mind 
 really is, we fall into the utmost confusion and em- 
 barrassment; and the more we apply our reason the 
 more impossible do we find it to determine what rela- 
 tion exists between mind and the outer world, or what 
 is the thing really perceived, whether a motion of the 
 brain, an affection of the body, or an object outside 
 the body. But this difficulty does not occur in case 
 of the other element in consciousness, the self. It 
 appears to ordinary people of reflection that the self of 
 consciousness is the self actually present to conscious- 
 ness. The distinction between the phenomenal self 
 and the real self does not appear to them to be an 
 actual or a possible one. And some thinkers of high 
 power and keen insight, such as the late Dean Mansel, 
 have adopted this view as a philosophic conviction, and 
 maintained it with great energy and success against 
 attack. 
 
 Of course it is a view which may be controverted. 
 We may go further and say that, as it stands, 1t 1s mis- 
 
148 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 leading. For it seems to imply that self, which is the 
 subject of consciousness, can become an object of con- 
 sciousness ; and this appears to be incorrect. Ferrier? 
 writes, in his hasty but brilliant fashion: “Show a 
 man to himself as a material thing; take out of his 
 brain his pineal gland, or whatever else you please, 
 and presenting it to him on a plate, say, Zhat, sir, 1s 
 you, your ego: the exhibition (supposing it to be pos- 
 sible) would instantly prove that the self so shown was 
 not himself; because the man would say, I know 
 myself along with that material thing.” The same 
 argument applies to show the impossibility of cognising 
 self as an object of the mind; we cannot get it into 
 focus, and can no more examine it directly than we 
 can directly examine our own eyes. But as we may 
 see our eyes reflected in a glass, so we may see self 
 reflected in consciousness. Although we cannot actu- 
 ally contemplate it, we can feel all its workings, 
 measure its emotions, observe its volitions, Only that 
 we do all this directly, not. through the reflection of 
 consciousness in something else without us, in the 
 sense in which the looking-glass is without the eyes. 
 We found in examining the facts of perception that 
 the one essential attribute which all matter appears to 
 possess is extension or the occupation of space. We 
 can easily think of material things as deprived of other 
 qualities, but if we take from them the attribute of 
 extension we entirely destroy them. This is acknow- 
 ledged by the materialist philosophers when they make 
 extension a necessary quality of matter; and it is 
 acknowledged by the idealists when, with Kant, they 
 make space a necessary condition or “ form” of percep- 
 
 1 Institutes of Metaphysic, p. 226. 
 
Ix Lhe Ffrstory of Scepticism 149 
 
 tion. To the perception and recognition of mind or 
 self there is also a necessary condition or “ form,” that 
 of time. We cannot imagine our conscious life in its 
 various phases of perceiving, feeling, thinking, willing, 
 to go on except during time. We can form no idea of 
 the existence of any consciousness outside time. We 
 cannot assert such a thing to be impossible, only it is 
 entirely inconceivable to us. And just in the same 
 way that perception of self is more direct and involves 
 fewer difficulties than that of not-self, so to thought 
 the condition of time is far more essential than that of 
 space. If we can suppose space to cease to exist, 
 thought could even then go on, so long as time re- 
 mained ; nay, might even perceive an outer world, a 
 non-material world outside itself, under some new and 
 unimagined conditions. 
 
 The town in which these lines are written? is built 
 on a series of terraces, in which a line of lofty cliffs 
 breaks down to the sea. Its situation seems to offer 
 an excellent parallel to the possibilities of philosophic 
 thought. The breezy down at the top of the cliff 
 corresponds to the natural and healthy way of thinking 
 of those not addicted to the disease of speculation, who 
 imagine the outer world to be just such as it appears 
 to them, coloured and warm, as well as extended and 
 in motion. The first great ledge below the crest of 
 the hill is like the position of the materialists, who 
 regard the data of touch as more trustworthy than 
 those of sight and hearing, who distinguish the primary 
 from the secondary qualities of body, and suppose the 
 first to be really existent in the world as they exist in 
 our perceptions. The second great ledge, which over- 
 
 1 Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight. 
 
150 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 hangs the sea, may be compared to the position of the 
 idealists who discard matter as being not really know- 
 able, and regard space as merely a condition or law of 
 our own mind, but, on the other hand, maintain know- 
 ledge of self to be sound and concerned with realities, 
 and time to be a law and measure of all possible 
 thought or consciousness. On the top of the down 
 people walk freely and at large, hike the souls un- 
 trammelled by philosophic doubt. The two ledges are 
 covered with houses, which remind us of the innumer- 
 able systems constantly built up by the schools of 
 materialists and idealists. Below is the great sea of 
 scepticism ready to swallow those who fall from above, 
 but wherein no man can build or live; a great expanse, 
 offering no hold to the feet and rapidly wearing out 
 the strongest swimmer. 
 
 It was Berkeley, one of England’s greatest thinkers, 
 who first showed that no lasting philosophic system 
 can be built on the level of materialism, and it was 
 Hume who proved to the satisfaction of most students 
 of philosophy that the same course of argument which 
 was employed with fatal result against materialism 
 may be turned with scarcely less effect against the 
 idealists. The philosophic systems of Kant and his 
 successors may be compared, to carry on our metaphor, 
 to ships sailing on the ocean of scepticism, each hold- 
 ing a small band of disciples and converts, and 
 struggling to save men from the all-drowning tide. 
 
 To a reader who has thus far gone with us, the 
 question will naturally be suggested, What then does 
 this writer mean to do? Will he try to erect a 
 system on the ledges, or will he supply us with a new 
 ship of improved construction to bear us over the 
 
Ix The Flistory of Scepticism 151 
 
 waters of doubt? Our object is bolder still. All 
 philosophic thought tends more and more to scepticism ; 
 the sea is rapidly eating away the shore, and a ledge 
 or rock is scarcely to be found which is not sur- 
 mounted by the ruins of some ancient foundation. 
 Nay, let us rather plunge boldly into the inevitable 
 sea, and strike out in search of some land on the other 
 side, where we may find a surer and more permanent 
 resting-place. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 THE PRACTICAL GROUNDS OF BELIEF 
 
 ALL speculative thought tends to scepticism, and if 
 carried far enough will plunge us in complete agnosti- 
 cism. Does it then follow that we must resign our- 
 selves to our fate, and embrace conscious ignorance as 
 the only system of reasoned truth? It would appear 
 that we must do so, if we suppose that man’s intellect 
 is a measure of the universe, and capable, by its own 
 force, of discovering the real nature of things. But 
 this is not the case. It has been pointed out a 
 thousand times that our minds are of extremely limited 
 powers. They are lke calculating machines, con- 
 structed to give correct results up to a certain point, 
 but beyond that not to be reckoned upon. ‘They are 
 like plummets with string of a certain length, which 
 become useless as soon as the depth of the sea exceeds 
 their range. They are like bees, skilful to frame cells 
 of a kind to which they are used, but quite unable to 
 devise five-sided or nine-sided cells. 
 
 This is a matter which admits of easy proof. If 
 there be one thing which we should be able entirely 
 to grasp with the mind and comprehend, it is space, 
 seeing that its existence and its qualities are testified 
 
cnar.x Lhe Practical Grounds of Beltef 153 
 
 by the surest and most trustworthy of our senses, that 
 of touch; and we have unlimited opportunities of 
 making experiments with it, yet what do we know 
 in regard to it? As to its nature, various schools of 
 philosophy are utterly at variance, some holding it to 
 be an essential condition of the world, and others only 
 a form or condition of our own minds. And if we try 
 to analyse our ideas of it we fall into absurdity and 
 contradiction. Every one knows the argument of 
 Lucretius to prove that space is unlimited. It has 
 the force of a demonstration in Euclid. If space have 
 a limit, let us suppose a man to go up to that limit 
 and thence cast a javelin. Either it will pass freely 
 on, in which case space must extend beyond the limit 
 of space, or it must be stopped by something, which 
 thing also must be beyond that limit of space; but a 
 thing out of space is an absurdity. But yet if we 
 Suppose space to be infinite, then we are landed in 
 absurdities no less flagrant. For take any superficies 
 and produce it in all directions to infinity. We have 
 now cut our infinite space into two parts, limited in 
 one direction, infinite in all others; yet each of our 
 hew parts being infinite is equal to the undivided 
 space, a part to the whole, which is absurd. Space is 
 therefore neither limited nor unlimited; but every- 
 thing which exists is limited or unlimited: therefore 
 space does not exist. 
 
 Difficulties no less inhere in the problems of 
 volition. Man spends his whole life in willing and 
 acting, and yet since thought began has never been 
 able to determine whether he is really endowed with 
 freewill, or whether he is under the dominion of some 
 kind of necessity. The wisest men of all ages have 
 
154 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 spent their energies in maintaining one side or the 
 other of the argument, yet the matter approaches no 
 nearer to a settlement, nor do all the boasted dis- 
 coveries of science help us forward in the least in the 
 matter. Once more, the very basis of our knowledge 
 in all departments of science is the law of causation. 
 Yet what is a cause? Here again we have the 
 widest divergence between various schools and various 
 thinkers. Some make the connection between cause 
 and effect a mere case of invariable antecedence ; 
 others suppose a necessary connection. Those who 
 explain what is within man from the facts of the 
 outward world consider that the only relation to be 
 traced between our sensations and our volitions is one 
 of invariable accompaniment ; while those who explain 
 the facts of the world from those of consciousness 
 usually see in them something more than mere invari- 
 able order, and interpose in all the events of the world 
 a divine energy to connect cause and effect. 
 
 In fine, no illustration of the narrowness of the 
 limits wherein human thought is confined could be 
 more conclusive than is the argument of the last 
 chapter, showing how entirely the very process of 
 perception of the material world eludes our grasp and 
 defies our powers, openly presenting to us contradic- 
 tions which we cannot hope to reconcile, and obscurities 
 which we shall never penetrate. 
 
 It is asserted by those who have studied the 
 theory of acoustics that there is both upwards and 
 downwards a limit to the number of vibrations to the 
 second in the waves of air which the human ear can 
 interpret. When the number of vibrations exceeds 
 2000 to the second, or falls short of some 30 to the 
 
x Lhe Practical Grounds of Belief 155 
 
 second, the ear does not gain perception of sound at 
 all. We hear a shrill sound when the waves of air 
 are set rapidly working on the tympanum of the ear. 
 But if the rapidity of the vibrations be still further 
 ereatly increased, the result is not, after a time, a 
 shriller sound, but complete silence. Thus there may be 
 animals which hear sounds which on us produce no 
 impression. As regards sound, our perceptive faculties 
 may be compared to a pianoforte. If any of the notes 
 of the piano be touched, music results, but blows to 
 right or left of the keys have no result, nor can the 
 instrument produce any notes but such as it is con- 
 structed to produce. So the ear possesses but a 
 limited field in the expanse of possible perception, and 
 unknown sounds stretch on both sides to immeasurable 
 distance. 
 
 Now it is just the same in the case of mind. We 
 can but perceive and know that which we are by 
 nature fitted to perceive and know. 
 
 If then the mind be an instrument of limited 
 capacity, if it may be compared to the piano of so many 
 scales and so many notes, the question is naturally 
 suggested, What forms the limit? Can we discern any 
 principle by which our potentialities of knowing are 
 bounded ? And this question is by no means otiose 
 or unimportant. The doctrine of the limited nature 
 of mind, and of the relativity of knowledge, taken by 
 itself, may seem to lead but to misology and despair. 
 It may merely make us doubtful of the soundness of 
 all our results, and prone to suppose that certainty in 
 all high matters is not to be attained by man. Thus 
 it may debase our lives to a low and wretched level, 
 and lead us to that materialism in practice which is an 
 
156 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 infinitely more dangerous and destructive thing than 
 any mere speculative materialism. Nor is the question 
 a hard one to answer; for the answer seems to be 
 suggested by all the analogies of science and the 
 reason of the case. The limits of possible knowledge 
 are set by the facts of life. The knowledge which we 
 need for purposes of action we can attain; that which 
 we desire for the otiose enjoyment of the intellect is in 
 many cases placed entirely out of our reach. Our 
 minds, like all the other parts of us, are adapted to our 
 environment, and fitted to enable us to play our part 
 in practical life. This is surely no new or startling 
 statement, yet it may, when closely examined, turn 
 out to contain some new and perhaps not unimportant 
 principles of knowledge and action. 
 
 The first necessity of human life is that man should 
 be able so to protect himself in the presence of the 
 hostile powers of nature that he should not be de- 
 stroyed by them, but should, as the result of many 
 campaigns and a long series of victories, bring them to 
 his feet and rule as their master. For this result 
 many things are necessary. We need a certain degree 
 of physical robustness and force, or the cold winds of 
 spring and the damps of autumn would soon bring us 
 to dissolution. We need certain emotions of love of 
 parents and kindred, of devotion to a city or a country, 
 of kindliness towards our fellow-men, or human society 
 could not be sustained. But we are at present con- 
 cerned exclusively, or almost exclusively, with the 
 intellectual needs of man as an equipment for the 
 struggle with nature, and of these only we will speak. 
 
 One method of proceeding would be to detail the 
 intellectual needs of man in his gradual progress 
 
x The Practical Grounds of Belief 157 
 
 through the successive stages of savagery, barbarism, 
 and civilisation; to trace the gradual unfolding of his 
 powers of mind, and to mark his principal victories. 
 This is not our plan. Nor even do we propose to 
 trace the closely similar course of development of the 
 individual from infancy to youth and manhood, similar 
 because the life of the individual repeats on a small 
 scale all the chief features of the life of the race. 
 These histories are at once far too large to be here 
 attempted, and they are not. necessary, because we shall 
 have to speak in such wide generalities that we shall 
 consider rather human life in general than human life 
 at any particular stage of its existence. 
 
 If we can imagine a being purely passive in the 
 world, played upon by all the surroundings of life but 
 not seeking to control them, a mere recipient of sensa- 
 tion after sensation flowing in upon him from nature; 
 if we can stretch our fancy to enter into his experience 
 and make it actual to ourselves,—we shall see how 
 entirely the experiences of such a being would differ 
 from ours. We may suppose that he had the power 
 of classifying and comparing his sensations, and by 
 that means of attaining to a degree of scientific know- 
 ledge. Observation of the current and sequence of 
 events might dispose him to connect together cause 
 and effect, or to associate in thought the phenomena 
 which come together in experience. Then certain 
 experiences of a kind which he had before met with 
 might dispose him to anticipate that they would be 
 succeeded as on previous occasions by certain other 
 experiences. But this languid anticipation would not 
 rise to the degree of expectancy, for any kind of 
 expecting involves some action of the will. If the 
 
158 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 anticipation were not realised he would feel a mild 
 surprise, which would not stir his whole being, but 
 only weaken the force of his anticipation on the next 
 occasion. Easily he would slide into a state of com- 
 plete balance of mind, and from that, perhaps after 
 renewed experience, into a fresh state of anticipation. 
 
 How different from the state of such a conscious 
 automaton is that. of hving men! When we conjec- 
 ture the future from the past, it is in no lazy mood of 
 intellectual algebra, but with a strong desire to profit 
 by the knowledge. The truth or the falsehood of our 
 forecast is to all of us a matter of life and death. 
 The whole of human life is erected on the theory that 
 the properties of matter are constant, and that the 
 facts of nature will repeat themselves under given 
 conditions. The savage hunter draws his bow and 
 sets his snare in full reliance on the properties of 
 elasticity in wood and toughness in cord. If the 
 wood snap or the cord become loose he will perhaps 
 account for the accident in other ways than ours; 
 he may ascribe it to the influence of demons or of 
 incantations, but his faith in the permanent qualities 
 of matter will survive. If he lost that faith, and 
 came to regard the interactions of physical things as 
 matters ruled by caprice, he would lose all heart, and 
 sit down in his hut to starve. His whole force of 
 manhood sets his life on the issue that the ways of 
 nature are uniform and regular. With this belief he 
 is an energetic and enterprismg man; without it, he 
 is helpless and destined to speedy extinction. 
 
 In the same way the civilised man sets his faith 
 on the uniformity of nature’s laws, and shows by his 
 actions every day that he is prepared to live or die 
 
x Lhe Practical Grounds of Belief 159 
 
 according as that faith proves to have foundation or 
 not. He believes that day will follow night, summer 
 spring, and harvest seedtime. He believes that wood 
 will under usual circumstances float, and iron sink; 
 that bread will nourish and wine refresh him; that 
 his farm-stock will propagate and his fruit trees bear 
 fruit. This is with each man no matter of individual 
 opinion based on personal experience. It can scarcely 
 be said even to be an intellectual inheritance of belief 
 from the experience of our ancestors. Rather it is an 
 intense practical conviction that unless the course of 
 nature be uniform life will be an impossibility. Will 
 is involved in the belief we feel instinctively that this 
 faith is like the gate of hell, which must be kept 
 fast with adamantine grip, or a swarm of demons 
 will come rushing forth to waste and destroy our 
 lives. 
 
 And physical science, considered as an intellectual 
 structure, 1s based on acceptance of the necessary 
 character of causation. The universal reign of law in 
 the world is a fact which can never be proved. If 
 we found a million instances in which the effect B 
 followed the cause A, this would offer no sort of 
 logical proof that at the very next instance the cause 
 A might not be followed by the effect C. We have 
 no practical doubt in the matter, nor does science 
 hesitate for a moment to lay down her dogmatic law, 
 but for this justification is in the purely intellectual 
 aspect wanting. We act because we know, and we 
 know because we must act, but we cannot prove to 
 the silencing of scepticism. The tree grows and bears 
 fair fruit, and we do not doubt that it has good root ; 
 but if we insist on determining the fact, we shall but 
 
160 , Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 kill the tree. The life is proved by the fruit, and not 
 by counting and weighing the roots. 
 
 Thus we find strongly marked the contrast between 
 that knowledge which consists in otiose intellectual 
 speculation and belief. The more knowledge grows, 
 the more relentlessly she devours her own children. 
 Increase of speculation means increase of scepticism ; 
 and its logical consummation is a pure agnosticism 
 which confines man’s knowledge to the states of his 
 own consciousness. Belief on the contrary is in- 
 tensely practical: it is no languid awaiting of what 
 may come, but a gathering together of will and a 
 rousing of attention with a view to action. And as 
 we are born for action and conduct rather than for 
 knowledge, belief must be the state of mind in which 
 the great bulk of mankind will pass most of their 
 time, and must pass it unless the human race is to 
 disappear from the earth. 
 
 We have taken man’s belief in the uniformity of 
 the course of nature as an instance of the belefs 
 necessary to man’s existence: we will add another 
 instance of the same class. | 
 
 There is a distinction recognised by psychologists 
 on which hitherto we have not found it necessary to 
 insist, but which must now be mentioned, the dis- 
 tinction between sensation of things and their per- 
 ception. The distinction is one of logic and not of 
 fact, since sensation and perception are but the two 
 sides, the inner and the outer side, of every experience 
 of the world. We feel an impression conveyed from 
 our senses, and at the same moment we perceive that 
 which causes the impression. In every experience of 
 the world these two aspects may be distinguished. 
 
x The Practical Grounds of Belief 161 
 
 And it is a well-known law in psychology, that in 
 every experience sensation and perception are in 
 inverse proportion one to the other as_ regards 
 intensity. In those perceptions of sight and touch 
 which are the main source of our knowledge of the 
 outer world, we scarcely realise the fact of sensation 
 at all, but immediately pass to the perception. On 
 the other hand, the experiences which cause in us a 
 strong sensation are in a very small degree sources of 
 perception. If the surface of a body is brought 
 gently into contact with our hands we have no strong 
 sensation, but much perception. If it is brought 
 strongly into contact with them we have an acute 
 sensation, perhaps amounting to actual pain, but no 
 perception, or scarcely any, as to the kind of object 
 which has produced the pain. Those of our senses 
 which are most sensational as regards pleasure and 
 pain, the senses of taste and of smell, are of very little 
 value as means of perception of the qualities of objects; 
 the only thing they tell us about objects is the way 
 in which they can be sources to us of feeling, pleasur- 
 able or otherwise. 
 
 This notable fact, that in all experience sensation 
 and perception vary with one another inversely, is 
 one of the most important and fertile in instruction, 
 not only when we are considering our experience of 
 the qualities of bodies, but when we are investigating 
 any province of human experience. At present, how- 
 ever, we must refrain from saying more on that 
 subject. What we wish to point out is, that whereas 
 in sensation a man is merely passive, in perception he 
 is by no means merely passive. All perception is a 
 kind of activity, a reaction of the mind on its physical 
 
 M 
 
162 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 environment, a result of resistance by the material 
 world to the freely expanding activities of the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 Modern psychology fully recognises, what was 
 until recently little regarded, that in all perception 
 there is this strong element of activity. It is mainly 
 from a sense of muscular exertion that we gain our 
 notions of space, and of matter as occupying space. 
 We buy our knowledge of these things by sheer 
 expenditure of energy. A purely passive being 
 would see coloured surfaces, provided he had energy 
 enough to keep his eyes open, and would receive 
 impressions pleasant or painful from his ears, his nose, 
 and the surface of his body. But the solid shapes 
 and the distances of things he would not perceive by 
 a merely passive receptivity ; and so the outwardness 
 of the world would make no strong impression upon 
 him. 
 
 But when he begins to bustle about in the world 
 with a view to satisfying his curiosity and fulfilling 
 his needs, then the primary qualities of bodies become 
 very prominent to him, meeting him at every turn, 
 and doing daily battle with him. And the more keenly 
 he is aware of these qualities the more will the out- 
 wardness of the material world, and its total independ- 
 ence of any personal perception of it, be impressed 
 upon him. The more active his life the more real will 
 the world become. And its reality will not be based 
 on reasoning or speculation, but on a sense of energy 
 expended ; it will be a corollary of his own weariness. 
 
 Coleridge imagines the last survivor of the human 
 race addressing the sun and saying that the sun will 
 perish with himself, since no one will be left to see 
 
x Lhe Practical Grounds of Belief 163 
 
 and feel it: “ We are twins in death, proud sun.” This ~ 
 is philosophy, but it is not thus that those feel who 
 come in contact with the facts of the physical world. 
 Their feeling is that the sun would live on though 
 they perished. But this opinion is, as we insisted in 
 the last chapter, not merely one that cannot be proved, 
 but one which we have no speculative grounds what- 
 ever for supposing true. We even saw that very 
 common sense, with but a little intellectual training, 
 will see the absurdity of supposing a thing to exist 
 without a percipient person. Why then should all 
 mankind persist in maintaining a thesis which we can- 
 not prove true, but the truth of which involves many 
 absurdities ? Why, but because this belief is necessary 
 to our daily life amid material things. Practical needs 
 bear down speculative difficulties. 
 
 We might perhaps content ourselves with leaving 
 thus placed in sharp contrast the powers of the mind 
 and the needs of the life in regard to our belief in 
 outward things. We are not bound to find a reason 
 for the conflict between the two. Yet an opportunity 
 is offered for attempting to do so, and if the attempt 
 fail, the strength of the general argument is no way 
 broken. Let us see if any reason be observable why 
 pure idealistic scepticism is incompatible alike with 
 science and with action. And we begin with science, 
 for science after all belongs to the intellect, and in- 
 tellect, though constantly at variance with feeling, is 
 not utterly divided against itself. Speaking according 
 to strict logic, physical science is not irreconcilable 
 with subjective idealism, or even with scepticism. The 
 facts of physical science can be expressed in the 
 language of subjectivity. Instead of speaking of cause 
 
164 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 and effect in the material world, we can speak of them 
 in relation to perceptions of the mind. Instead of 
 saying that the combination of oxygen and hydrogen 
 produces water, we can say that if we combine the 
 object producing a certain set of sensations, which 1s 
 called oxygen, with that producing another set and 
 called hydrogen, we shall have as result the set of 
 sensations which we identify as constituting water, or 
 at least the potentiality of it. And in speaking of 
 such a fact as the existence of France, we may render 
 it in the language of subjectivity by saying that we 
 suppose that such and such a set of sensations, known 
 to us by the name of travel, would be succeeded by 
 the experience of such aspects of country and such 
 manners of men as experience or books have led us to 
 sum up in the term France. As a matter of fact, 
 this relation between our own sensations is all that 
 any of us can possibly learn from science. And yet 
 no man of science can really think from this point of 
 view. It is scarcely possible to frame an intelligible 
 sentence on this basis; and impossible to frame any 
 which does not require considerable thought to grasp 
 it, and many explanations and provisos to render it 
 satisfactory. It would take a volume to state on this 
 basis any of the ordinary generalisations of science. 
 It appears then that the subjective idealist view of the 
 world involves statements of facts and laws by far too 
 cumbrous and unintelligible to be of use to men of 
 science. If science is to progress at all, it must in all 
 thought be set aside in favour of the view which re- 
 gards the sensible world as existing altogether outside 
 and independently of our consciousness. As mathe- 
 maticians sometimes deal with terms in themselves 
 
x The Practual Grounds of Belief 165 
 
 without meaning, which yet enable them to reach 
 results which have practical validity, so the votaries 
 of physical science must be content to justify their 
 premises by the value of the conclusion. 
 
 The same thing applies with even greater force 
 when we pass from science, which is but systematic 
 knowledge, to action. The man of science who thought 
 as a subjective idealist would not progress; but the 
 man of practice who so thought would break down 
 immediately and irreparably. Imagine any man acting 
 but one day in the belief that the outward world only 
 existed as it came into his consciousness, and accepting 
 only the undeniable facts of experience. We do not of 
 course imagine such a man supposing that because things 
 only exist in him they must necessarily be subject to 
 his will. This is a thoroughly unreasonable assump- 
 tion, and entirely contrary to experience. But all 
 action requires clear and sharp opinions. And while 
 our philosopher was trying to translate what he had 
 usually regarded as perceptions of outer things into 
 relations between sensations, he would fall into a 
 thousand absurdities; and it might well be that one 
 day of philosophy would bring him into greater 
 dangers than ten years of folly. For a man may be 
 practically successful in spite of most absurd principles 
 and beliefs, but never if his principles are in a state of 
 flux and his beliefs a disordered chaos. 
 
 Perhaps these reflections may help us to discern the 
 reasons of the conflict between logic and practice, the 
 working of the pure intellect and the necessities of 
 life; but if they are without value we can still recur 
 without hesitation to the statement that, whether ex- 
 plainable or not, that conflict certainly exists. 
 
166 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 Let us travel once more over the ground in order 
 to arrive at an exact understanding of the nature and 
 limits of the controversy which we wish to set at rest. 
 
 The knowledge which we. possess of the material 
 world is afforded us by our senses, which assure us of 
 certain subjective facts. Intellect, which is entirely 
 trustworthy when acting in its own field and within due 
 limits, combines the data furnished by sense, and re- 
 arranges them so as to build up an orderly framework 
 of subjective knowledge. It makes observation after 
 observation, discovering both the points of likeness in 
 the phenomena of the world, and their points of un- 
 likeness, perceiving one law after another, until it has 
 drawn up schemes of what takes place in the world and 
 what does not, and until it is able, by observing the 
 exact and orderly procession of things, to foretell what 
 will probably happen in future. 
 
 But continually, onwards from our earliest child- 
 hood, and as a rule unconsciously, practical necessities 
 step in to give reality and objectivity to the world of 
 which sense gives us knowledge, to redeem us from 
 absolute scepticism, to show that material things are 
 not merely figments of the mind, and that the laws of 
 nature are not subjective fancies whereby we bring into 
 order the multiform data of the senses. But we have 
 yet to inquire more closely what it is which thus 
 acquires externality, and the nature of the externality 
 which it acquires. 
 
 There are in material things many qualities which 
 the educated are quite content to regard as belonging 
 rather to the subjective senses than to the outward 
 objects themselves. Such, for instance, is colour. We 
 are quite ready when we see a red or a blue object to 
 
x The Practical Grounds of Belief 167 
 
 suppose that the red or the blue are not properly 
 qualities of the things we see, but are merely kinds 
 of sensation produced in us by the chemical action of 
 the rays of light which strike upon those things, and 
 are then reflected to our eyes. Similarly when we 
 feel a thing to be hot or cold we fully understand that 
 the heat and cold is in us rather than in the object 
 we touch; and we can easily imagine that a slight 
 change in our nervous organisation might make things 
 which at present seem warm appear cold to us, and 
 things which now seem cold appear warm. 
 
 In this way we can set aside many of the qualities 
 of matter as seeming not really to exist in matter, but 
 rather in us. The educated mind can carry this 
 process further than the uneducated, and recognise 
 more easily and more completely how much we add, 
 and can prove that we add, to objects of sense. But 
 the process has a limit. It is practically impossible 
 to take this view of space or the occupation of space 
 by bodies, their shape and size and situation. And it 
 is equally impossible to think thus of the dynamic 
 qualities of bodies. Colour may seem subjective, but 
 not the chemical action of the surface of bodies which 
 we recognise as the cause of colour. Heat may seem 
 subjective, but not the expansion and rapid motion of 
 bodies which are hot. The force of life in a seed, in 
 virtue of which it becomes a plant of a particular 
 order, is not by any of us supposed to be lent by our 
 subjectivity to the seed, but rather belongs to its real 
 nature, and usually is undiscoverable by us, however 
 keenly or with whatever instruments we examine it. 
 And the force with which bodies are attracted or fall 
 appears necessarily to us to belong to them essentially, 
 
168 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 and to be independent of our presence or of the pres- 
 ence of any living spectator. We think that if the 
 human race were destroyed, no change would take 
 place in these respects. 
 
 It is then in their relation to space, and to the 
 forces hidden or embodied in them, that material things 
 seem to us to have real objective existence. But it is 
 clear that the reasons which lead us to the belief in 
 their objectivity have a reference only to corporeal 
 existence in the world of sense. It is by sense alone, 
 the ordinary senses of the body, that we come in con- 
 tact with the material objects of the world. And the 
 reasons which make us attribute objectivity to them 
 belong to the present life altogether. We are led to 
 the belief in that objectivity by sensations of muscular 
 strain, and we are driven to cling to it in order that 
 our life may be preserved in the world and made en- 
 durable to us. Hence we find no reason why we 
 should suppose disembodied spirits, supposing such 
 to exist and supposing them to be conscious, should 
 think as we do. Such spirits in losing their tie 
 to flesh would be absolved from relationship to space, 
 and for aught that appears they might lve in 
 utterly different conditions from ours; might suppose 
 space to have four dimensions, or matter to have a 
 thousand qualities and potentialities of which we have 
 no idea whatever. The whole fabric of our material 
 knowledge might, to an incorporeal apprehension, be 
 utterly transformed; so that our life on earth may 
 seem to have been spent among shadows and mys- 
 teries, and to have been clouded with utter ignorance. 
 
 There is one element in the outer world which we 
 fence off from the rest, and distinguish from animate 
 
x The Practical Grounds of Belief 169 
 
 and inanimate nature—human beings. Besides our- 
 selves and the world of nature wherein we dwell, we 
 suppose other selves to exist around us, perceiving 
 natural things as we perceive them, thinking, feeling, 
 and willing like ourselves. Of the bodies of other 
 people we of course become aware by the same process 
 of perception whereby we discover rocks and trees and 
 clouds. But we recognise in other people not only 
 outward forms, “men like trees, walking,” but also in- 
 telligence and perception ; and indeed a consciousness 
 like our own. Every physical shape which is like our 
 own we endow from a study which goes on in ourselves. 
 Here we pass beyond the mere attribution of outward- 
 ness, of existence independently of our thought. For 
 we not only endow other people with the qualities 
 which affect us thus and thus in perception, but also 
 with emotions and thoughts. But logically this 
 further step is even more illegitimate than we have 
 shown the first to be. Even supposing for a moment 
 that we could know the bodily forms of others to 
 people the world independently of our consciousness, 
 yet what possible means can we have of knowing that 
 they are not mere automata? Whether they act and 
 look as they do without consciousness or with con- 
 sciousness is a matter wholly beyond our finding out. 
 And in attributing to all a consciousness we embark 
 on a peculiar absurdity, because a little reflection will 
 at once show that it is most unreasonable to suppose 
 that the consciousness of all people is alike. What 
 resemblance can there be between the consciousness of 
 an educated man and a boor? or between that of an 
 Englishman and a Hindoo ? or between that of a Hindoo 
 and a Hottentot? or between that of a Hottentot and 
 
170 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 a dog ?—for to deny all consciousness to animals is 
 entirely unreasonable. Yet as we know but one con- 
 sclousness, our own, we are obliged to provide every 
 person whom we choose to consider conscious with a 
 consciousness formed on the model of our own. And 
 indeed it is a matter of everyday experience how a 
 teacher will endow a dull-witted pupil, a master a 
 callous servant, with emotions as strong and sensibili- 
 ties as keen as his own. Nay, those much addicted to 
 the society of animals sometimes end by fancying that 
 a favourite dog or cat can enter into their feelings and 
 be as completely possessed by painful or pleasurable 
 emotions as themselves. Nothing can be more certain 
 than that consciousness admits of degrees of intensity ; 
 yet how this can be entirely baffles the imagination, 
 since consciousness, as we know it, is a thing admitting 
 of no degrees, but in its kind perfect and complete. 
 
 Moreover, we constantly see people under the 
 influence of mental disease acting as if they were con- 
 scious, when we do not suppose them to be so. If this 
 be the case sometimes, why can we be sure that it is 
 not so always? It would seem then that a sceptic 
 might bring himself to believe, on intellectual grounds, 
 in the independent existence of a material world much 
 more easily than in the independent existence of con- 
 scious beings besides ourselves. But as from the in- 
 tellectual point of view the attribution of consciousness 
 to some of the creatures of the material world increases 
 the mass of the absurdities in which that world is em- 
 bedded, so from the practical point of view a belief in 
 the existence around us of other selves is still far more 
 necessary than a belief in the objectivity of things 
 about us. 
 
zt Lhe Practical Grounds of Belief 171 
 
 For, as we have seen, the outwardness of the 
 world is a postulate on which we have to act, a belief 
 necessary to our ordinary daily life among the things 
 of sense. This it is to us all; but to the philosophic 
 thinker this reality becomes thinner and more condi- 
 tional; until in the higher regions of thought it is 
 looked on rather as a necessary working hypothesis 
 than in any other light. 
 
 But the existence around us of other selves is to 
 our life in the world a matter of supreme necessity. 
 In an otiose or an exalted mood we may please ourselves 
 with the idea that rock and mountain, wood and stream, 
 are but fleeting forms of the surface of things, mere 
 shapes seen in the clouds, or faces in the fire, which 
 change and perish as we look at them. But no one 
 could feel thus in regard to the existence of other 
 selves, and more especially of others whom we love. 
 That they did not really live or really care for us, but 
 were mere phenomena of the moment, is a fancy which 
 no man could allow to dwell in his mind, unless he 
 would go mad. It is one thing to ascribe a merely 
 subjective existence to physical forces, and another 
 thing to ascribe a merely subjective existence to the 
 consciousness of our friends. The idea of purely 
 egoistic idealism—that the thinker alone in the uni- 
 verse 1s a conscious self—is so ghastly, that its very 
 mention may well send a shudder through a stout 
 heart. 
 
 The conduct whereon our happiness or misery 
 depends is concerned almost entirely with our rela- 
 tions to other human beings; and could we think 
 them dependent for very existence on our conscious- 
 ness, we should be instantly smitten with such a 
 
B72 Faith and Conduct CHAP. X 
 Tt ee 
 horrible palsy of indecision and want of purpose that 
 reason itself could scarcely survive the shock. Respect, 
 duty, affection towards any person would be utterly 
 levelled with the ground if we ceased to believe that 
 that person independently existed, or fancied that he 
 lived a blind automatic existence, without emotion or 
 will. Nay, we would venture to go further still, and 
 to suggest that the degree of our affection for any 
 person is measured by the intensity with which we 
 grasp and realise his or her reality of existence. The 
 more we enter, as it were, within the gates of the con- 
 sciousness of another person, see with his eyes, and feel 
 with his heart, the greater does our love for him 
 become. We speak of course not of mere sexual 
 passion, which may exist without love of the purer 
 sort, though in nobler natures usually inextricably 
 entwined with it. But of all other love, domestic 
 affection, charity, philanthropy, the statement holds 
 good; those we love most are those whose existence 
 apart from ourselves we feel with the greatest intensity 
 and the greatest constancy. Nor, unless the same 
 feeling and belief existed, in a less intense degree 
 indeed, but with unshaken force, in regard to all with 
 whom we come in contact, could civil and national and 
 social life go on for one instant. 
 
 Thus the longer the chain grows whereby intellect 
 keeps its hold on the world without, the more intense 
 becomes the strain of practical necessity, which with 
 magnetic force holds us still in our position in relation 
 to the world. The less we can understand, the 
 stronger is our need for believing. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 
 
 LET us now consider the question which we proposed 
 at the beginning of our ninth chapter: Whether our 
 belief in an external Monitor, a Power outside our- 
 selves urging to virtue, is or is not a purely subjective 
 illusion, a fancy of the individual, to which he has no 
 right to attribute any external reality ? 
 
 In whatever respects conscience differs from the out- 
 ward senses, it is exactly like them in this,—that it 
 suggests as its origin and source something outside and 
 beyond ourselves. We do not merely mean something 
 outside the will, though this is obviously true ; for it is 
 notorious that the utmost efforts of will do not avail to 
 silence the voice of conscience, though they may for a 
 moment drown it. If remorse could be stayed by an 
 effort of will, it would not play the part it does in 
 human affairs. We mean, however, more than this, 
 that the voice of conscience, speaking, as Kant says, in 
 categorical imperative, seems to us to come from some 
 source over and beyond us. It is of course only known 
 by us in consciousness, yet we cannot bring ourselves 
 to believe that it originates in consciousness. If we 
 could, we should be inclined to regard it in a less 
 
174 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 exalted light. To stifle what arises within us might 
 seem a task admitting hope; but to try to expel what 
 comes into us without the consent of our will does not 
 seem a reasonable effort. 
 
 Just as we naturally and inevitably assume an 
 external and independent world as the object and 
 cause of our perceptions by sense, so we assume an 
 external force as the cause and source of our better 
 impulses as to right and duty. What name are we to 
 give this Power? Scarcely any one would hesitate to 
 reply, “God.” For in almost all modern forms of 
 creed the doctrine most strongly insisted on is the 
 working of God in the hearts of men. We all feel 
 that it is but mockery to think of a deity who set the 
 world going and then left it to take care of itself; but 
 that if there be a God it is by his action we shall be 
 able to discern his nature. 
 
 The voice which speaks in conscience bears in itself 
 the claim to come from without in just the same way 
 in which the perceptions of sense do. Naturally and 
 instinctively we thus regard it; and if we come to 
 doubt of its external origin, it is only in virtue of 
 the same intellectual processes which have led men to 
 doubt of the externality of things of sense. 
 
 And we say further that just as disbelief in an 
 outer world would, if really accepted, paralyse and 
 destroy our life amid the scenes of sense, so disbelief 
 in the external origin of conscience if really accepted 
 would produce an entire moral paralysis, not by any 
 means necessarily leading to vice and immorality, but 
 leading to hesitation, uncertainty, and finally to the 
 entire ceasing of the moral and ideal character of 
 conduct. These effects might not be very conspicuous 
 
XI Religious [dealism 175 
 
 to the world, which is compelled to judge merely by 
 the outward show, but they would be none the less 
 real. And just as the world perceived by sense rouses 
 in us emotions, and impels us to action of which that 
 outer world is the object, so it is with regard to con- 
 science. The voice heard within causes the most 
 vivid feeling of pleasure and pain, of eager striving 
 and terrified avoidance, of triumph and remorse. But 
 how, it may be asked, do we act on the source of con- 
 science? We do it in the exercise called prayer, an 
 action wherein we bring the whole force of our heart 
 and will to bear—if the phrase may be used with 
 reverence—directly on the divine will, urging it with 
 what force we may command in certain directions. 
 The parallel to our action on the world holds, only with 
 a difference. The nobler and more highly developed 
 our action on the outer world, the more completely do 
 we bring it under our feet and become supreme over 
 it. The Hindus have imagined things similar in 
 regard to prayer, and supposed that by it devout men 
 gained actual power over the will of Heaven. But 
 those who pray are aware that the highest prayer is 
 that which completely subordinates the will of man to 
 that of God, and loses the human in the divine. This 
 is a difference indeed, but not of a character to affect 
 the analogy which we here propose to establish. 
 
 In many respects, however, our attribution of 
 objectivity to the inner voice may be compared more 
 justly not to our assertion of an independent external 
 world, but to our assertion of other selves as co-existing 
 with us. For it is not only the necessities of acting 
 which dominate us, but the needs of emotion and 
 affection. Just as we shrink with horror from the idea 
 
176 Faith and Conduct OHAP. 
 
 that our family and our friends are unconscious 
 automata, so do we with terror shrink from supposing 
 that the power which makes for righteousness is blind 
 or unconscious. We not only long, but are compelled, 
 to use of that power many of the phrases which we 
 apply to those persons of whose objective existence we 
 are most intensely conscious. And there seems no 
 valid reason why we should not do so, since the road 
 of experience is the same in both cases. But we are 
 here approaching a difficult subject, to which in a 
 future chapter we shall return. 
 
 The objectivity which we are thus brought to 
 attribute to the Deity is of a far more solid and _ last- 
 ing character than the objectivity which we attribute 
 to the mere things of sense. The latter, as we have 
 seen, is attached to the idea of space and bounded by 
 the limits of the present mortal life. But conduct is 
 in no way subordinate to the idea of space; it attaches 
 to us as living and acting human beings possessed of 
 wills, whether under the conditions of the present life 
 or under those of any future hfe which may await us, 
 so long only as it exists in time, and gives us oppor- 
 tunity of choice between good and evil. We do not 
 indeed thus gain absolute proof of a deity as existing 
 out of all relation to time. Such proof is perhaps not 
 possible in the present state of faculties; but this 
 reservation need the less alarm us, because with time 
 would disappear all consciousness, or at least any con- 
 sciousness which we are at all able to conceive. As 
 far as human intellect can discover, the destruction of 
 time would land us in an absolutely blank abyss, 
 without form or order of any kind. We can therefore 
 scarcely be surprised that our present faculties do 
 
XI Religious [dealism 417 
 
 not give us any assurance of a deity out of relation to 
 time. 
 
 It seems, then, that whereas intellect leaves us the 
 prey to a complete subjectivity, which is equivalent to 
 entire scepticism, practical necessity rescues us from 
 this depth, and justifies us in attributing what we may 
 term a practical objectivity to what is without us. 
 This objectivity is, as regards the world of sense, part 
 and parcel of our present corporeal existence ; as regards 
 other selves and the Deity, it is part of any existence 
 within time, or at least of any existence wherein 
 conduct has a place, and where men can follow a 
 better or a worse course of action. An objective deity 
 is a necessary condition of the moral world, in the 
 same way in which space is a necessary condition of 
 the world of sense, and time of all consciousness. 
 
 We may state the doctrine of the objectivity of the 
 source of the inner voice in two ways, which are to 
 the speculative intellect equivalent, but which are 
 very diverse in the light of conduct. We may say 
 that practical necessity compels us to assume an 
 external deity to exist; or we may boldly leap the 
 chasm which hems in our personality, and say that 
 there is a real and living Deity who chooses to reveal 
 himself to mankind. The one phrase is the expression 
 of a mere intellectual dead-lock, the other of a vital 
 faith. The one phrase is a directing-post pointing to 
 despair, the other phrase the expression of a belief, a 
 hope which will lead to a noble life and a fair death. 
 And as intellect is unable to choose between the two 
 statements, why should we hesitate to let the heart 
 and the life take the bread and reject the stone, take 
 the fish and reject the serpent? Why should we not 
 
 N 
 
178 faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 assume that our faculties are truthful and trustworthy 
 rather than false and deceitful? There can be no 
 reason ; and until one is found, let us, in the name of 
 all that is noble and happy, cling to the better belief 
 and carry it out in our lives. 
 
 We have now reached a point at which we can 
 sum up the argument of the three last chapters, and 
 trace the outline of the system which they develop— 
 a system distinctly idealistic, yet different from ordinary 
 idealism: we will call it religious idealism. 
 
 Idealism may take three forms,—egoistic, social, or 
 religious. 
 
 Pure egoistic idealism may be established almost 
 within the bounds of pure reason. Its one assump- 
 tion, if assumption it be, of a continuous self as the 
 subject of perceptions and the author of volitions, may 
 be pardoned, since it is the smallest assumption on 
 which a structure of philosophy can be built; pure 
 and absolute scepticism being no system of philosophy 
 at all, but only the negation of a system. But as 
 egoistic idealism, regarded as anything but an intel- 
 lectual dream, is a monstrosity,—as it is totally incom- 
 patible with life and action, and must needs thrust 
 any consistent supporter of it into a madhouse,—it 
 need not delay us. 
 
 But when we enlarge idealism to a social form it is 
 not to be thus lghtly flung aside. If we believe that 
 there are around us other conscious beings looking out 
 like us upon the world, we have already a view suffi- 
 ciently extended to save us from the extreme of despair, 
 from an absolute block in life. From this point of 
 view the externality and objectivity which we shall 
 attribute to the physical world will reside in this :—that 
 
 EEO 
 
XI Religious Ldealism 179 
 
 we shall believe things to appear to other conscious 
 beings as they appear to us. Thus we shall gain an 
 infinite relief. We are all like children who do not 
 mind being shut into a dark room in the company of 
 friends and comrades, but are overcome with terror if 
 they are shut in alone. We need that other selves 
 should feel what we feel and enjoy what we enjoy. 
 
 But social idealism of this kind is still utterly un- 
 satisfactory. In the first place, seeing that we know 
 people as part of the world of sense before we recog- 
 nise them as conscious beings, it must be altogether 
 illogical to make the objectivity of the world of sense 
 a mere consequence of such recognition, an utter 
 absurdity on which no rational system can possibly be 
 founded. And secondly, as we have shown, alike 
 practical life and physical science can accept for the 
 outer world no objectivity short of an entire inde- 
 pendence, not only of the ego, but of the perceptions 
 of the whole human race. Science can only exist and 
 progress if it is allowed to assume that the outer 
 world would still exist if the human race came to an 
 end—that things are not born of thought, but thought 
 of things. 
 
 We require, then, to attribute to the world of sense 
 a fuller objectivity than is contained in such phrases 
 as “The world exists independent of my perception,” 
 or even, “The world exists in the perceptions of other 
 persons as in mine.” And this fuller objectivity can 
 be given to the world only in two ways. We may 
 fall back on crude and harsh materialism, and throw 
 consciousness altogether into the background; or we 
 may do justice to consciousness as the first and most 
 certain of all facts, and yet secure for the world a full 
 
180 Fatth and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 objectivity, by adopting that religious idealism accord- 
 ing to which the material world is a manifestation of 
 God, and its objectivity resides, not in its materiality, 
 but in its relation to his fixed and eternal being. In 
 this view the world would survive if the human race 
 passed away, because God would not pass or decay. 
 And in this view our confidence in the persistence of 
 force and the changelessness of the laws of matter will 
 be a phase of trust in the changelessness of the divine 
 nature. Finally, in this view our conviction of the 
 real existence of other conscious beings, and of the 
 externality of the source of the voice that speaks in 
 conscience, will repose on our certainty that God would 
 not deceive us, that all his revelations are revelations 
 of truth and not of falsehood. 
 
 Before leaving this branch of our subject, we must 
 retrace our steps a little in order to meet an objection 
 which has doubtless arisen in the minds of many 
 readers. At first sight, our argument, which substi- 
 tutes as a support of belief practical necessity for 
 intellectual demonstration, may seem to bear a perilous 
 likeness to the doctrine which has in all ages attracted 
 the members of organised and established priesthoods, 
 the doctrine that expediency can be a fair test of 
 belief; that people may be taught what it seems 
 desirable that they should believe rather than that 
 which is really true. It may perhaps be thought that 
 in raising practical necessity into a test of truth, and 
 in maintaining that we are justified in accepting the 
 beliefs which we cannot live without, we are introduc- 
 ing into the field of faith a leaden rule which every 
 person can bend and twist according to his liking. 
 Each of us has his own ideas as to what beliefs are 
 
xt Religious Idealism 181 
 yp MME 
 necessary to him; so that it would seem that no 
 opinion in matters above sense will lack justification 
 if some person find or fancy that opinion to be neces- 
 sary to his proper feelings or right behaviour. Further, 
 it may be regarded as a very objectionable proceeding 
 to appeal to any kind of inner feeling as the support 
 and proof of a fact. Facts are, it will be said, or they 
 are not; and no amount of pleasantness or degree of 
 desirableness in a possibility will make it into an 
 actuality. 
 
 To objections of this sort we must make a brief 
 reply. It need be but brief, for their strength is but 
 apparent, not real; and at the touch of the cold steel 
 of argument they will vanish like ghosts. 
 
 The term truth is a wide one, and may be used in 
 many senses. There may be ideal truth, as in the 
 novel which is true to human nature, or in the poem 
 which is true to human feeling. But truth to fact is 
 a narrower thing, and can only be predicated of 
 phenomena which are held in by the bounds of space 
 and time. So in predicating the existence out of 
 relation to conscious beings of a real world and a real 
 Deity we cannot be held to state matters of fact at all. 
 Still less are they matters of opinion; for opinion is a 
 sort of shadow of fact. But matters of belief they 
 may be—ideas to which the heart and will cling © 
 strongly, though to the cold intellect they are not only 
 not evident, but are wholly without meaning. Let 
 facts then be judged of by scientific evidence; but let 
 beliefs, in which, as we have shown, there is always a 
 strongly practical element, and which are not, in strict 
 speaking, concerned with fact, be judged of by practical 
 necessities. 
 
182 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 But we must not for a moment be supposed in 
 maintaining this view to allow the foundation of true 
 belief to rest on private opinions or personal needs of 
 any kind. They rest not on individual necessities of 
 conduct, but on such as belong to the human race as a 
 race. We make, or profess to make, certain observa- 
 tions as to the nature of conduct, as conduct exists in 
 every creature of moral possibilities; and on _ that 
 knowledge we venture to build a structure of belief. 
 We affirm that because a belief in the objectivity of 
 the source of the inner voice is necessary to conduct, 
 therefore it is reasonable and right to cherish that be- 
 lief; but we do not say that only those should hold 
 that belief who consider it necessary to conduct. Our 
 appeal is to the ultimate and practically changeless 
 facts of human nature. 
 
 It may, however, be alleged that there are some 
 beliefs which are necessary to the vigour of life, and 
 even to the continuance of man on the earth, which 
 are shown by philosophy to have no sohd foundation. 
 And it may be suggested that religious beliefs are of 
 this class. ‘This objection merits a careful examination. 
 
 The belief which the objector would probably cite 
 is that on which our fear of death is based, the 
 belief that death is a great evil to man. It is clear 
 that.unless people held this view, they would be so 
 prone to submit to or to court death in the midst of 
 the numberless troubles of the world, that there might 
 be peril to the very existence of the human race. 
 Looking at history, we observe that any nation which 
 looked upon death with indifference and made no 
 great exertions to avoid it, must perish in the competi- 
 tion for existence. Thus it is easy to see that the 
 
 © 
 
XI Religious Idealism 183 
 
 fear of death must be perpetuated and intensified im 
 each generation by the action of natural selection, so 
 far as it is not counteracted by others of the influences 
 which affect human life. And in fact we have only 
 to observe what goes on about us to see that there is 
 truth in the saying of ancient cynicism, “All that a 
 man hath will he give for his life.” And yet it is 
 impossible not to feel the sublime truth of the reason- 
 ing of Socrates when he says that we have no true 
 reason for our fancy that death is an evil. There are 
 many men now living who earnestly believe that 
 death is not an evil at all, if it lie in the path of duty, 
 but rather a gain. Have we not then here an instance 
 of a widespread, fundamental, even necessary belief 
 which is, perhaps, at least a complete delusion? And 
 may not the same thing hold of our religious belief ? 
 
 This argument is specious, but not conclusive. For 
 we can point out strong lines of separation between 
 the particular belief which we have cited and religious 
 faith. 
 
 Firstly, the reasons of the growth and spread of the 
 fear of death-are so obvious that we need not add to 
 them the truth of the belief to explain its existence. 
 Without it, the human race would soon perish ; there- 
 fore, true or false, it must exist. The very fact that 
 religious belief is called upon in our days to find 
 justification for itself, proves that it does not stand in 
 the same line. The less a belief is the obvious result 
 of the struggle for existence, the more likely is it to 
 derive from a high source, and to be able to justify it- 
 self to the higher class of mind. When we find grass 
 in a garden we may easily suppose it to have come 
 there without any human aid, but when we light on a 
 
184 Faith and Conduct CHAP, XI 
 
 rare and beautiful flower we are justified in supposing 
 that it was placed there by the owner of the garden 
 for good purposes of his own. 
 
 Secondly, though it be wrong to fear death when 
 death comes into our path, yet no philosophy and no 
 religion can teach that death should be sought when it 
 does not come into our path. No man of high and 
 noble aspirations need fear to indulge the fear of death, 
 so long as the love of doing rightly and generously be 
 stronger still. Suicide he may still fear, as being a 
 base desertion of one’s post in the world, and death in 
 a selfish or a trivial cause. And the mere natural 
 shrinking of a sensitive nature from death he will not 
 regard with scorn or aversion, but try to whelm it in 
 loftier feelings. Thus there will never come a time in 
 the history of the race when it will be necessary to 
 preach that death is not an evil. But if religion were 
 not based on aright feeling of our relations to our 
 environment, then it would be one of the clearest and 
 nearest duties of every conscientious man to preach it 
 down and crush it. 
 
 It thus seems that the existence in the world of 
 certain beliefs, necessary to man’s existence, but not 
 philosophically defensible, cannot be used as an argu- 
 ment for the attack of religious faith. 
 
 wim 
 
CHAPTER XIl 
 SUMMARY AND ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 WE are now in a position to consider one by one the 
 various sceptical views which may be urged in regard 
 to the existence of a divine ruler of the universe. In 
 the course of the preceding chapters we have really 
 been examining their validity, and we shall now be 
 able in brief space to show the lines of defence which 
 may be raised against them on behalf of religion. 
 
 If we begin by looking at nature from without, 
 the first objection will arise from the bias of physical 
 science, and will appear in the shape of crude and 
 harsh materialism. It will assert the eternity of 
 matter, and that no force but material need be assumed 
 in order to explain the generation and sustentation of 
 the universe. On this argument we need not dwell, so 
 completely is it undermined by the progress of science 
 itself, which has destroyed the old notion of matter as 
 a hard and definite outer reality, and put in its place 
 juster views, according to which matter 1s but a con- 
 geries of centres of force, and the nature of that force 
 an absolute mystery to the wisest. Under these circum- 
 stances it is clear that the materialistic explanation of 
 the universe explains nothing and is entirely worthless. 
 
186 fFatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 Passing next to the biological field, we see more 
 necessity for moving cautiously, since great writers, to 
 whom the world owes a vast debt of gratitude, have 
 put forth a theory as to the evolution of living things 
 which attributes an almost sovereign sway to fortuitous 
 variation, and makes them the creatures of their 
 physical surroundings. And this theory, if not an 
 explicit denial of divine government in the world, at 
 least shuts the divine power within very narrow 
 limits, and practically asserts that it does not control 
 the history of creation. But, as we have shown, the 
 theory of evolution itself may be gladly accepted by 
 us, While yet we protest against the insufficient and 
 partial character of Darwin’s explanation of the course 
 taken in evolution. We are even able, quoting the 
 works of very competent students of biology, to point 
 out ways in which we may trace the control of evolu- 
 tion by a power from without, guiding it in good and 
 wise directions, and preparing organs for functions 
 before these are developed. 
 
 Turning next to history, we have to meet the 
 objections of those who think human progress suffi- 
 ciently accounted for by the circumstances of the 
 world and of society, without assuming the existence 
 of any power which works for righteousness. It is 
 peculiarly hard to meet this difficulty on account of 
 the extreme complexity of human _ history,—a com- 
 plexity so great that historians have as yet but seldom 
 tried to follow the course adopted by the biologists, 
 and to trace workings from without or above in residual 
 phenomena which cannot otherwise be explained. 
 That belief in deities or a deity has in the past greatly 
 aided the progress of morality, may be shown without 
 
x = Summary and Answer to Objections 187 
 
 great difficulty ; but of course this is by no means the 
 same thing as showing that such beliefs had justifica- 
 tion. 
 
 We must be content then, in regarding history 
 from outside, to leave but partly answered the question 
 whether any divine control of its course can be traced. 
 And we must take up, instead, the rough material 
 of history, conduct—a phenomenon which we must 
 regard from without and from within. Looking at it 
 first from without, we easily find reasons for doubting 
 whether the higher morality has made its way in the 
 world by natural selection merely ; there seems, on the 
 contrary, much likelihood that the action of natural 
 selection and the survival of the fittest would hinder 
 rather than help the spread of higher principles of 
 acting unless some force not merely human were 
 ranged on its side. And secondly, looking at conduct 
 from within, examining it as it goes on in the con- 
 sciousness of each of us, we have ventured to maintain 
 that we can discern something of the way in which 
 this power from without which interferes in conduct 
 makes itself felt by our hearts. 
 
 In dealing with the new range of phenomena which 
 comes before us when we turn from the outer world 
 to our own consciousness, and exchange the methods 
 of science for those of philosophy, we come upon fresh 
 difficulties. 
 
 First rises the ethical difficulty. For recent ethical 
 writers of great merit have maintained that the intel- 
 lect is quite capable of judging for itself what is good 
 and what evil in morals; that we have only to be 
 reasonable, and to follow our perceptions as to what 
 is pleasant and what painful in our lives, in order to 
 
188 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 arrive at right conduct. As to this contention we 
 have said enough in our second chapter. Of all the 
 views which explain the world without the assumption 
 of divine government, this is perhaps the flimsiest and 
 the easiest to destroy. 
 
 The last of the difficulties of which we have to 
 speak, or at least the last of the speculative difficulties, 
 is that which we would call metaphysical, which arises 
 from the supposed” subjective nature of conscience. 
 Conscience is in consciousness, and it may appear not 
 easy to rise beyond consciousness and assert an external 
 and divine origin for the inner voice. But unless all 
 our argument hitherto has been a chain of sand, the 
 same difficulty precisely occurs when we would assume 
 the externality and independent existence of the 
 material world, and of other persons besides ourselves. 
 The objective existence of a deity is a dictate of 
 practical need, and cannot be justified to the specula- 
 tive intellect. True; but the existence of the world in 
 which we live stands in precisely the same position. 
 That too must be established by practical and not by 
 speculative arguments. We cannot rigorously prove 
 that God is; but we can show that we have better 
 reason for believing him to be than we have for 
 believing in the existence of this world of ours, or even 
 of our own parents and wives and children. Scepti- 
 cism on the point, therefore, though it does not involve 
 speculative contradictions, will seem an attitude of 
 mind scarcely becoming to a reasonable man who has 
 his life to live in the world. 
 
 We are now prepared to deal with the argument of 
 those objectors who say that religion may have arisen 
 as the result of competition and natural selection in 
 
xt Summary and Answer to Objections 189 
 
 the history of the human race, and that its existence 
 is no sort of argument for its truth, We may meet 
 this theory with a bold accusation, the accusation that 
 it is merely an instance of the fallacy known to 
 logicians as the ignoratio elencht. It mistakes the 
 point at issue. For we are now considering not the 
 origin of the belief in a deity who is the source of the 
 voice which speaks within us, but the character and 
 necessity of that belief as it now exists among us. 
 No fallacy is more commonly met with than this in 
 books. People trace the origin of a belief, and then 
 think that they have disposed of it and abolished its 
 claim to acceptance. But this is no more to the 
 purpose than would be the argument of a zoologist 
 who believed in the development theory, and main- 
 tained that man’s natural food must be fruits because 
 the apes from which he descends lived on fruits. 
 Embryologists tell us that there are periods in the 
 development of human embryos in which they closely 
 resemble the embryos of the lower animals. But that 
 does not prove that adult men cannot be distinguished 
 from adult animals. 
 
 It is evident that if there be any truth in the 
 parallel above drawn between our belief in a deity 
 and our belief in an external world, the argument of 
 historical scepticism will apply with equal force to 
 both beliefs. Either of these beliefs may arise, and 
 may hereafter be shown to have been gradually formed 
 and matured in the mind of men in course of time by 
 outward pressure. But if this were shown in regard to 
 the belief in the externality of the outward world, 
 would it afford any sort of proof that we could aftord 
 to dispense with that belief? On the contrary, that 
 
190 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 necessity must be judged in the light of existing 
 facts. Only, if such belief has been eradually formed 
 by necessity, there is less likelihood that we, after so 
 many ages, shall be able to unlearn it. And we may 
 repeat exactly the same phrases in relation to the real 
 existence of a deity. This is a belief which also 
 must be judged in the light of present necessities. 
 Only the deeper its roots are fixed in the past, the 
 more likely is it to be a part of human nature which 
 cannot be removed without inflicting irreparable injury 
 on it. } 
 We may, if we please, sum up the argument as 
 hitherto set forth in a rather different form, and con- 
 sider it not merely as a systematic reply to possible 
 difficulties and objections, but as a survey of the actual 
 fortifications which surround the fortress of religion. 
 This great citadel we may regard as enclosed by a 
 series of walls one without the other, all of which 
 must be successively stormed before it can be 
 captured. 
 
 The outermost wall is the physical, and its strength 
 lies in the spiritual and immaterial nature of force as 
 revealed to recent investigation, which makes untenable 
 the old-fashioned materialistic denial of all religion. 
 
 Within this is the second wall, the biological. If 
 materialism could remodel itself, and be established on 
 a new basis from which it could explain, without 
 assuming any deity, the facts of the inanimate world, 
 yet it must make shipwreck in the fields of biology, if 
 it can be proved that variation is controlled by a wise 
 power which works for certain ends, and is not 
 regulated by mere chance and competition. 
 
 The third wall is the historical; for thinkers may 
 
x1 = =©6 Summary and Answer to Objections 191 
 
 consider non-theistic hypotheses tenable in regard to 
 life in general, and yet, with Mr. Wallace, decline to 
 extend them to include man. They may think that 
 in the evolution of the human powers, and more par- 
 ticularly in the moral growth of the race, we may 
 clearly trace wise and benevolent purposes. 
 
 But, in fact, it is only after successively passing 
 these three lnes of defence that an objector can fully 
 appreciate the defensive strength and majesty of the 
 real citadel of religion, which will then tower before 
 him in all its inexpugnable strength, firmly based on 
 that individual consciousness which each of us must 
 possess, and into which each of us can retire from out- 
 ward attacks. One cannot help feeling, in detailing 
 the mere outward defences of religion, as if one were 
 playing with the subject, when at any moment it is 
 possible to retire into the fastnesses of one’s own heart: 
 and there feel the reality of that which one would 
 wish to prove. Not that such retirement should often 
 be indulged in, or that it is healthy to indulge too far 
 the feeling of individual personality; but it is good 
 now and then to realise what that feeling is, and what 
 it implies, how entirely the J is with each of us prior 
 to the world, and how the very existence of that world 
 to each of us depends on our willingness to let it 
 exist. It is dangerous to live in egoistic solitude, but 
 a short stay there may strengthen the brain and in- 
 vigorate the heart. “The difficult air of the iced 
 mountain top” strengthens limbs and lungs, and we 
 are told by travellers that there is something very 
 invigorating in the air even of the burning sandy 
 desert. The best thing is, after fully realising that 
 marvellous individuality of consciousness, to say, not- 
 
192 Faith and Conduct CHAP, XII 
 
 withstanding : “The mere fact that I am I” shall never 
 make me egotistic or blind to the desires and hopes of 
 others, and I will strive to merge all that is isolated 
 and personal in my will in the will of that divine 
 Being in whom I live and breathe. 
 
CHAPTER: XIII 
 A PRIORI THEOLOGY 
 
 AT the outset of an attempt to advocate a more 
 reasonable method in theological science we can 
 scarcely do better than give a summary of the final 
 and decisive attack made in the last century by the 
 oreat founder of the critical philosophy, Kant, upon 
 the dogmatic theology which was in his day in vogue. 
 The historian of philosophy would say that he 
 destroyed the fabric which he attacked; and in fact 
 he did destroy it in the opinion of those who thought. 
 But established ways of thinking die hard. And when 
 Dean Mansel, not very many years ago, presented to 
 the world a new and in many respects improved and 
 expanded version of the Kantian polemic, he met 
 with the severest opposition, even from many who 
 would, if they had fully understood the scope of his 
 arguments, have sympathised with him. But in spite 
 of all opposition, Mansel’s logical victory was as com- 
 plete as had been that of Kant; and it would now be 
 impossible, in any educated community, to revive that 
 a priori and speculative method in theology which they 
 attacked. 
 
 In the immortal Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant 
 
 O 
 
194 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 mentions in order the principal proofs of the existence 
 of God which were in his day current in the schools. 
 First, there was the argument called by Kant 
 Cartesian, which was really of scholastic origin. You 
 erant, said the schoolmen, that God must be the sum 
 of all perfections, the highest being which we can 
 conceive. But to exist in fact is more than to exist 
 only in idea, therefore God must exist in fact. A 
 schoolboy would in our day see that this argument— 
 confusing, as it does, thought with things—must be 
 unsound. It is true that when we attribute all 
 perfection to the Deity, we should also attribute to 
 him real existence as greater than mere possible 
 existence. But from this attribution to conclude such 
 real existence to be a fact is a mere petitio principit. 
 When we say “The sum of all perfections must really 
 exist,’ is the Judgment explicative or ampliative? Is 
 the predicate already contained in the subject or not ? 
 If it is, then the judgment, like all explicative judg- 
 ments, adds nothing to our knowledge ; that is to say, 
 the idea of God includes his existence. But this is 
 absurd. If, on the other hand, the judgment is 
 ampliative, and asserts something new, then the 
 notion of the Deity does not include his existence, 
 and the whole argument falls to the ground. In 
 short, we may fairly say that the idea of all possible 
 perfection includes the idea of existence, but to say 
 that it includes the fact of existence is quite another 
 matter. 
 
 A second argument, which is associated with the 
 name of Leibnitz, infers the existence of a necessary 
 being from the existence of contingency in the world. 
 This necessary being is of course that sum of all 
 
XIII A Priort Theology 195 
 
 realities of which we have spoken, namely, the Deity. 
 But here the same fallacy is repeated. It is true that 
 from the existence of the contingent the reason does 
 infer the necessary, but here, once more, we reach only 
 a notion, not a fact. “It is something very remark- 
 able,” says Kant, “that on the supposition that some- 
 thing exists, I cannot avoid the inference that 
 something exists necessarily. Upon this—perfectly 
 natural, but not on that account trustworthy— 
 inference does the cosmological argument rest. But 
 let me form any conception whatever of a thing, I 
 find that I cannot cogitate the existence of the thing 
 as absolutely necessary, and that nothing prevents me 
 —he the thing or being what it may—from cogitating 
 its non-existence.” It always comes back to the same 
 thing; these speculative proofs can never demonstrate 
 anything but the mutual relations of notions. They 
 cannot lift us from the notion to the fact. 
 
 These scholastic arguments may seem dry and 
 fanciful. Yet they lie at the roots of much of our 
 popular divinity, and so could not be entirely passed 
 over. But the third proof mentioned by Kant is less 
 foreign to our modern notions, and to common sense. 
 Kant calls it the physico-theological; but we are 
 more familiar with it under the name of the argument 
 from design. The limbs of animals were held to 
 show a certain adaptation and contrivance; we are 
 all curiously and wonderfully made. And as the 
 existence of a house proves an architect, and the 
 existence of a watch a skilful and contriving watch- 
 maker, so it was held that the world in every part 
 testifies to one who designed and fashioned it. But 
 this argument is now out of date, at least in this 
 
196 faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 form. For, as Kant points out, looked at in a logical 
 point of view, it has two flaws. In the first place, it 
 involves transposing into a field above experience that 
 law of causality which holds in experience, but which 
 we cannot carry into another region; and in the 
 second place, if the argument were allowed to pass, it 
 would point not to a deity limitless and perfect, but 
 to a limited being, since all contrivance implies limita- 
 tion and the painful surmounting of obstacles. The 
 most that the argument could be held to prove would 
 be this:—that whencesoever comes the matter of 
 which the world is made, that matter has been 
 arranged by an architect, not necessarily a creator, 
 who understood how to accomplish certain results 
 which seem to us desirable. This is not enough to 
 make the argument of much value; since our need is 
 to prove the existence not of an architect but of a 
 creator, not a designer but a wise Deity, who not only 
 arranged the world, but made it, and still sustains 
 what he made. 
 
 Such is, in substance, the argument of Kant in 
 regard to the “ proof from design ” of the existence of a 
 deity. But that proof has since the time of Kant 
 encountered an even more formidable foe than his 
 logic, the progress of scientific discovery. In the old 
 form in which it was stated by Paley and other 
 writers, the proof from design is inconsistent with the 
 facts of evolution, and has become untenable. It may, 
 however, be very well revived in a modified form so 
 as no longer to be inconsistent with science. Mr. 
 Murphy has thus revived it in his theory that the 
 world alike of men and of animals is full of an 
 intelligence but partly conscious, which is eradually 
 
XIII A Priort Theology 197 
 
 adapting life to the environment. It is revived in 
 some degree in the two chapters of the present work 
 which treat of “Purpose in Evolution ” and “ Purpose 
 in History.” 
 
 We do not consider such revival to be rendered 
 untenable by Kant’s argument, which is only con- 
 clusive in a certain point of view. It is illegitimate 
 to carry the argument from design directly from the 
 world of phenomena to that of realities. And it ig 
 illegitimate to suppose that any argument from design 
 can establish the existence and the goodness of God 
 in such a way that these theses may form the bases 
 of deductive argument. But it is not illegitimate, as 
 we shall presently find, to proceed by a more cautious 
 and inductive route, and to establish our results not 
 as absolute but as relative truths. 
 
 Perhaps it may be said, in regard to the argu- 
 ments mentioned, that though speculation can furnish 
 no certain proof of a deity, yet at least it can 
 establish a probability. But this is quite illegitimate. 
 They purport to be scientific proofs of a fact, and such 
 proofs are either conclusive or worthless. Science 
 does not assert that probably two sides of a triangle 
 are greater than the third, or that possibly the world 
 revolves, Until it has proved these things it has 
 done nothing. It goes on the principle of Cesar, “ Nil 
 actum reputans dum quid superesset agendum.” The 
 argument of Descartes, for example, either proves a 
 deity to exist, or it proves nothing at all. Besides, 
 no one would be content with learning that the 
 hypothesis of the existence of a deity was somewhat 
 more probable than the opposite thesis; every one 
 must feel that this is a lame and foolish way of 
 
198 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 putting the matter. If speculation can prove such 
 existence, well and good; if not, we shall not accept 
 probabilities, but consider the other faculties of our 
 nature, to see if they give us a surer foothold. 
 
 Dean Mansel, followed by Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
 approaches the subject from another side, but with 
 the same negative results. The former writer’s work on 
 The Limits of Religious Thought incurred when it was 
 published no little hostile criticism, and not altogether 
 undeservedly. Yet the main propositions of the book, 
 leaving aside some of Mansel’s corollaries, are unre- 
 futed and irrefutable. The author clearly proves the. 
 attribution of any quality whatever to the Deity to 
 be logically inconsistent with the infinity and absolute- 
 ness which we naturally place among the divine 
 attributes. For example, to say that the Deity is 
 compassionate is to suppose him subject to painful 
 feelings and liable to changes of emotion which are 
 not to be reconciled with the idea of a being free 
 from change and passion. So, again, to think of God 
 as creating the world involves insuperable speculative 
 difficulties. For if God was perfectly happy before 
 the world was made, what need or longing could 
 induce him to make it? Needs and longings apper- 
 tain to the finite and aspiring, not to the infinite and 
 complete mind. Again, supposing the Deity to have 
 created the world, did he produce it from himself ? 
 In that case he must have taken it from his own 
 being, and diminished it. Or was the world produced 
 from nothing? Even then the Deity must have at 
 the creation withdrawn his glory into narrower 
 bounds, unless we affirm, with the Pantheists, that 
 the world is but a form of God. 
 
XIII A Priort Theology 199 
 
 Mansel starts with assuming that God must be the 
 first cause, must be infinite, and must be absolute. 
 Yet even these three initial propositions are not con- 
 sistent one with the other. “A cause cannot, as such, 
 be absolute; the Absolute cannot, as such, be a cause. 
 The cause, as such, exists only in relation to the effect. 
 On the other hand, the conception of the Absolute 
 involves a possible existence out of all relation.” 
 Again, no being can be a cause without volition and 
 consciousness, but to the Infinite and Absolute con- 
 sciousness is impossible, as implying at once relation 
 and limitation. “The Absolute cannot be conceived as 
 conscious, neither can it be conceived as unconscious : 
 it cannot be conceived as complex, neither can it be 
 conceived as simple: it cannot be conceived by differ- 
 ence, neither can it be conceived by absence of differ- 
 ence: it cannot be identified with the universe, neither 
 can it be distinguished from it.” Once more, to turn 
 to the infinity of the Deity, does there not reside a 
 formal contradiction in such phrases as infinitely holy, 
 infinitely great, infinitely loving? For every one of 
 these qualities implies in its very nature a limitation. 
 A limit is as necessary to virtue as to consciousness 
 itself; and as force cannot be shown unless there is 
 resistance, so there cannot be virtue except in a nature 
 possessing the potentiality of vice. 
 
 However, that we may not lose ourselves in gene- 
 ralities, let us take a few instances, and see if it is 
 possible to frame logically valid propositions as to the 
 Deity. Surely he is omnipotent. Can he then cause 
 to-day’s sun not to have risen? Surely not: but why 
 not, save because the thing is impossible? That is to 
 say, there are things impossible to omnipotence, and 
 
200 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 so in fact omnipotence is not omnipotence, but only a 
 certain degree of power. Again, we must needs allow 
 the Deity to be omniscient. He knows then what I 
 am about to say. But suppose, what is not absurd, 
 that the Deity informed me of what he knew. Then 
 I might alter my mind and say something else, and 
 the omniscience would prove not less than the omni- 
 potence to be limited. We may take a still simpler 
 instance. If we* know anything of the Deity, we 
 know he is perfectly happy. And yet the whole 
 fabric of Christianity is built on the theory that he 
 is capable of sympathy with human feelings. Yet 
 sympathy, at least for the moment, destroys the happi- 
 ness of him who feels it. It is absurd to suppose 
 sympathy without pain. Which then are we to give 
 up, the belief in the perfect happiness of the Deity, or 
 in his power of sympathy ? 
 
 Even from this shght summary of argument it will 
 sufficiently appear (1) that it is impossible to prove 
 by a purely logical train of reasoning the existence of 
 a deity; (2) that, even if such existence be assumed, 
 we cannot with any logical justice ascribe attributes 
 to that deity. It is to be feared—nay, it is certain— 
 that any one who tries to deduce from the abstractions 
 of metaphysics any scheme of natural theology will 
 fall into self-contradiction and self-stultification. 
 
 So far the way is clear, and so far we willingly go 
 with Dean Mansel. But we have now come to the 
 place where the ways divide; and here we shall part 
 company with him. Mansel thus argues :—that as it 
 is proved that the natural faculties of man are in- 
 capable of forming logically defensible propositions 
 with regard to the Deity, recourse must be had to 
 
XIII A Priort T; heology 201 
 
 revelation. ‘This revelation is supported not so much 
 by the inherent probability of its communications as 
 by the external testimony of miracles; and we may 
 unhesitatingly accept whatever propositions have had 
 miracles wrought in their support. Against this view 
 we cannot but strongly protest, considering it to be 
 radically immoral. For surely it is immoral for any 
 writer to assert that we are bound to accept doctrines 
 which shock our moral feelings on the faith merely of 
 external proof. It is an insult to our noblest feelings 
 to tell us that we must believe in the goodness of God 
 merely because certain religious teachers have said so, 
 and been able to back their assertions with miracles. 
 And it is immoral to say that when we call the Deity 
 good we mean by the term not what we mean in our 
 ordinary life, but something theological and supra 
 mundane. We cannot help sharing J. 8S. Mill’s honest 
 anger. “I will,” he says, “call no being good who is 
 not what I mean when I apply that term to my 
 fellow-creatures ; and if such a being can sentence me 
 to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.” ! 
 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer, who follows Mansel to the 
 point where we also leave him, takes from that point 
 quite a different line. He maintains that since intel- 
 lect can furnish us with no proof of the existence of a 
 deity, and still less can frame any sound scientific 
 statements as to the nature of that deity, therefore all 
 assertions of a religious nature must be regarded as 
 belonging to the domain of the unknowable. But this 
 line seems to be not less full of difficulty than that of 
 Mansel, since it makes religious truth matter of mere 
 opinion and of subjective feeling—a thing thoroughly 
 
 1 Kxamination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy, p. 124. 
 
202 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. XIII 
 
 repulsive to all religious minds, and, as we maintain, 
 really not philosophical. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that if the existence 
 of a deity cannot be proved, it certainly cannot be 
 disproved. Laplace said that he had no need of the 
 hypothesis of a deity, but he would certainly never 
 have said that the hypothesis was in itself absurd. It 
 is unnecessary that we should dwell on this, because 
 ageressive and dogmatic atheism is in our day almost 
 extinct, and has given place to positive and agnostic 
 theories that the whole matter is outside the pale of 
 knowledge. ? 
 
 Now if the facts of religion be not intellectually 
 deducible, yet be at the same time knowable, it must 
 be that there is knowledge of a kind which does not 
 lend itself to formule and cannot be stated in dogmatic 
 form, and yet is real and trustworthy. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 EXPERIENCE IN RELIGION 
 
 HITHERTO our efforts have been devoted to clearing 
 the ground and raising a foundation fit to bear some 
 superstructure of religion. Our work has been one of 
 criticism, directed to the search for a method rather 
 than to the attainment of results. We have been 
 negative rather than positive. But we now come to 
 a task, at once more pleasant and more invigorating, 
 of a constructive character. We must attempt to 
 raise a superstructure on our foundation, to reach 
 results not merely negative but positive. We shall 
 no longer content ourselves with mapping out ways, 
 but choose that one which seems to lead straightest 
 and furthest. 
 
 We have now to consider what are the data of 
 natural religion; that is to say, what are ordinary 
 human faculties able to discover in regard to God, 
 and to maintain against the assaults of scepticism ? 
 In this investigation we must, so far as is possible, 
 exclude such beliefs as belong altogether to Christi- 
 anity ; Christianity being, in the opinion of those who 
 accept it, a revealed religion, disclosing to men truths 
 which, by the unaided exercise of their faculties, they 
 
204 faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 could not have discovered. Yet it is not fair in ex- 
 cluding Christian doctrine to go back to the beliefs of 
 the pagan world before Christianity came into being. 
 This procedure would, beyond doubt, give us too 
 primitive and narrow a view of the data of natural 
 religion. We have confessedly vastly improved upon 
 the ancients in our methods of studying the pheno- 
 mena of nature and the depth to which we have 
 penetrated her secrets. No less have we distanced 
 them in the study of human nature and of society; 
 the field of our observations being incomparably wider 
 than theirs, and our mastery of our wider material 
 also much advanced from theirs. It is therefore 
 reasonable to expect that, if anything can be known 
 in religious matters, we should be in a far better 
 position than the ancients to know it, even-apart from 
 our possession of Christianity. In the use for all 
 purposes of that splendid machine, the brain, we are 
 as much superior to the Greeks as in the use of such 
 instruments as microscopes and telescopes. 
 
 In the argument about to be set forth there is not 
 much of novelty. It would not be difficult to quote, 
 in support of the various positions here maintained, 
 passages from many of the best-esteemed and most 
 widely-known of writers on religious matters. It is 
 a pleasure to find that teaching involving and imply- 
 ing the truth of the theories of this book is weekly 
 preached from a hundred pulpits and readily accepted 
 in a thousand homes. We believe our point of view 
 to be that towards which modern thought is rapidly 
 gravitating. All that is here attempted is to give 
 clearness and consistency to a current way of looking 
 at religious matters. The elements are mixed, and it 
 
XIV Lixperience in Religion 205 
 ce Sg ee a TS ES Oe 
 only remains to determine what kind of crystals will 
 result. 
 
 And yet though our point of view and our leading 
 principles be not new, they still lead to results which 
 are at least not generally sufficiently understood and 
 appreciated. There is abroad much confusion and in- 
 consistency of thought in regard to spiritual matters, 
 and many of those who are most eager in their adher- 
 ence to the new point of view yet fail to see what 
 havoc its adoption must bring about in old systems of 
 theology. They have long been accustomed to put 
 the new wine into old bottles, until the inconsistency 
 of the process does not any longer strike them. 
 
 For the widely-spread modern belief that religion 
 is a matter of action and of feeling rather than of) 
 intellect is altogether irreconcilable with the notions | 
 in regard to religious doctrine which have been current| 
 for at least fifteen hundred years. In fact it is time 
 that the science of theology followed the lead of the 
 other sciences, and was loosened from mere a priori 
 reasonings, to be hereafter based on the facts of life 
 and of human nature. The revolution which will be 
 produced in the doctrine of things spiritual when it is 
 cut away from the intellectual ground and attached 
 to the new moral ground will be complete. It will 
 be a revolution of the same kind as that produced in 
 Astronomy when Newton discovered the law of gravity ; 
 as that produced in International Law by the writings 
 of Grotius, or in Political Economy by the treatise of 
 Adam Smith. It will detach the whole of doctrinal 
 theology, so far as doctrinal theology is verifiable, from 
 its former centre, and cause it to revolve about a new 
 one. It will oblige us to search for new methods of 
 
206 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 inquiry and investigation, which will in turn lead us 
 to results of quite a novel character. 
 
 If religion takes its start from a definite series of 
 propositions stated in logical form, and offered to the 
 intellect as material to which it may apply its sagacity 
 according to the approved methods of demonstration, 
 then the production of systems of divinity, reasoned 
 out in the same way in which Euclid’s geometry is 
 reasoned out, 1s a legitimate effort. The attainment of 
 religious truth is, the premisses being given, as much 
 a matter of keen reasoning and clearness of head as 
 the attainment of truth in algebra and geometry. In 
 that case the best method of arriving at truth will be 
 to continue the discussions of the schoolmen, and the 
 greatest religious teacher will be a reasoner of the same 
 kind as Thomas Aquinas. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, reason fails in its attempt 
 to establish a priori the principles of religion, and 
 intellect seems vainly to flap her wings in the thin 
 air of spiritual fact, while on the other hand it is the 
 emotions and the facts of conduct which cause us to 
 be sure of the primary facts of religion, then we must 
 abandon these argumentative structures as unfit to 
 live in. Palmam qui meruit, ferat. Let us seek for 
 a logic of emotion and of conduct to guide us to right 
 views as to the nature of the Deity and our own higher 
 powers. Let us build our theological abodes of material, 
 not such as will readily please the eye of the intellect 
 and satisfy its sense of rotundity and _ proportion, 
 but rather such as will repel the storms of life and 
 furnish a secure refuge in times of danger and 
 affliction. 
 
 In this case, instead of starting from some abstract 
 
XIV Experience in Religion 207 
 
 proposition, such as “God is infinitely good,” or “God 
 is infinitely great,’ and thence arguing as to some 
 other fact in God’s dealings with men, or as to some 
 supposed necessity in his revelation to mankind, we 
 shall proceed with the utmost caution and care, and 
 shall learn not to wander far beyond our premisses. 
 For every proposition that we venture to make in 
 regard to the being of God, or indeed in regard to any 
 spiritual fact, we shall require the immediate evidence 
 of fact. And we shall not greatly care if some incon- 
 sistency appear between some of the propositions so 
 deduced: if each of these propositions be based on 
 some incontrovertible fact of spiritual life, we shall ~ 
 not be too careful to confront them one with the 
 other, or distress ourselves with logical difficulties. 
 There are two gates through which religious truth— 
 that is to say, religious truth so far as verifiable—may 
 enter the mind. Of these the first is the gate of 
 experience, of ordinary consciousness. By the phrase 
 ordinary consciousness is meant such as is not unusual 
 in our everyday life, such as does not imply any 
 special exaltation or expenditure of energy. No 
 thought, still more no conduct, is possible without 
 accompanying emotion: emotion is as certain to 
 accompany mental action as is friction to accompany 
 physical action. And just as we set aside friction in 
 working out the problems of mathematical physics, so 
 we may disregard the presence of emotion in all the 
 ordinary experiences of our lives. That this is the 
 case in our experience of the physical world is notori- 
 ous to every one. ‘The very possibility of physical 
 science which shall be true for all intellects rests on 
 the possibility of eliminating from our daily experi- 
 
208 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 ence of the properties of bodies those emotions which 
 invariably accompany it, but which are in their very 
 nature individual and not universal. And the same 
 thing is equally true in that higher experience 
 which does not properly belong to the material 
 world. 
 
 Thus if science is to be able to make any affirma- 
 tions at all in spiritual matters, they must be of a 
 kind which can be-verified, and they must be of such 
 a character that they can be regarded apart from the 
 emotion which accompanies them. We must analyse 
 conduct in a white hght. 
 
 But we shall find when we have finished a primary 
 analysis of conduct, that the number of spiritual facts 
 which it has revealed to us will not be very great. 
 We shall know certain fundamental facts as regards 
 the nature of God and of man, but we shall have 
 secured but the skeleton of a creed. It is certain 
 that the best part of religion is not that which no one 
 can deny, but that which people are often tempted to 
 deny, but to which, nevertheless, they cling with all 
 the energy of their being. 
 
 The second gate is that of faith. But if we at this 
 point stayed to examine the logic of faith we should 
 anticipate much of what is to come hereafter. It will 
 be better first to see what are the truths of religion 
 which are guaranteed by experience, when we exclude 
 as far as possible the element of emotion, before we 
 say anything of the religious doctrines which are based 
 not on mere unemotional experience, but on experience 
 interpreted through feeling. 
 
 Let us then consider what faculties we possess 
 which can assure us of spiritual facts, and especially 
 
XIV Experience in Religion 209 
 
 of the corner-stone of all spiritual fact, the existence of 
 God. 
 
 In this field outward or bodily sense can certainly 
 be of no avail. This may indeed to some seem a 
 truism, yet we must briefly speak on the subject in 
 order to avoid misconceptions. For certainly there 
 are persons who suppose that sense gives them 
 glimpses of a deity. Noble natural scenery, lofty 
 mountains, the sea in its majesty, the starry heavens 
 on a clear night, or some noble strain of music meet- 
 ing the ear, may seem to persons of an imaginative 
 mind to reveal to them the presence of a mighty 
 deity. This is a natural confusion of thought, but 
 still a confusion, for a little reflection shows us that 
 in such cases the Deity is not revealed to sense, but 
 that sense gives rise to emotion, and emotion leads 
 into the divine presence. But this is quite another 
 thing than sensuous perception. If the Deity were 
 revealed to sense, then the persons who possess bodily 
 sense in the highest perfection—savages, for instance, 
 or scientific men of highly-trained sensibility—would 
 most clearly and accurately be aware of him. This, 
 however, as we all know, is not the case. But the 
 analogy between the manner in which we become 
 aware of the external world, and that wherein we 
 become aware of the Deity, appears to be an important 
 and fruitful one. 
 
 In the cognition of the world of sense, as we have 
 seen, perception and sensation are the two sides, the 
 inner and the outer side of every cognition. The 
 sensation of a book or picture and its perception can 
 only be separated in thought, not in fact. But the 
 more powerful the sensation the less keen is the per- 
 
 P 
 
210 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 ception; and, on the other hand, the more complete 
 the perception the less does the sensation impress us, 
 
 In those cognitions which are the matter of religion 
 we have also two sides to each fact of cognition, an 
 inner and an outer side. The one side we call feeling, 
 the other perception. All perception of spiritual truths 
 is revealed to us by a feeling. Of this we shall soon 
 produce instances. And here again the force of feel- 
 ing is normally in inverse proportion to the keenness 
 of perception. Those who have no religious feeling 
 know nothing of religious fact, at all events from 
 their own experience; but, on the other hand, those 
 whose religious feelings are extremely keen are by 
 no means usually the best judges of religious truth. 
 More than other men they are liable to spiritual 
 aberrations and excesses, sometimes of the most fatal 
 character. On the other hand, persons whose religious 
 susceptibility is not so keen may often have juster 
 notions in spiritual matters. Of course the great 
 teachers of religion combine both faculties in a high 
 degree, just as great men of science have usually finely- 
 developed sensibilities in addition to clear and accurate 
 perceptions. 
 
 Through our bodily senses we become aware of 
 the qualities of matter. These qualities we divide 
 into primary—as extension; and secondary—colour, 
 heat, and the like. The primary qualities appear to 
 us to be most essential and necessary; the secondary 
 we regard as in a greater degree tinged by the medium 
 of our faculties of sense. We have already considered 
 the question how far the distinction between primary 
 and secondary qualities is well-founded, and what is 
 the psychological difference between them. Can we 
 
XIV Lixperience in Religion 211 
 
 trace any similar line of distinction among the qualities 
 which we recognise in the Deity? We think, speak- 
 ing with all humbleness and reverence, that we may 
 at least, for purposes of clearness and arrangement, 
 make some such distinction. 
 
CAPE Hess 
 THE POWERS OF GOOD AND EVIL 
 
 ALL that we can know of God, leaving apart the 
 question of special revelation, we must know on the 
 testimony of religious feelings. And the most general 
 of these, without which any religion at all is an im- 
 possibility, is that feeling of absolute insufficiency in 
 one’s self, and complete dependence upon a higher 
 spiritual power, which is called by Schleiermacher 
 Abhangigkeit. This is not merely a sense of weakness 
 in the presence of the vast forces of nature; sucha 
 sense 1s quite compatible with atheism, and produces 
 little but demoralisation and despair. It tends to 
 degrade rather than to raise a man. The feeling of 
 spiritual dependence is quite different. True, it reveals 
 to a man the full extent of his own weakness. It 
 shows him his smallness in relation to the world of 
 spiritual beings, and the Ruler of spirits. But he 
 becomes content with smallness. A feeling of insuffi- 
 ciency in the sight of God does not mean despair and 
 self-abandonment; but rather a full reliance ona power 
 greater than our own, and a belief that that power will 
 guide and protect us if we put ourselves towards it in 
 a relation of loyalty. In regard to the physical world 
 
cuar. xv Lhe Powers of Good and Fuil 2K 
 
 this emotion fills a man with a sense of superiority; 
 so that he no longer dreads the overwhelming forces 
 of nature, but knows that even if they slay him they 
 can yet never be greater than he, or do him a real 
 injury. In regard to other people, he feels that both 
 he and they are subjects of the same lord or even 
 children of the same parent. 
 
 It seems that a feeling of this kind must exist, at 
 least in rudimentary form, wherever religion can be 
 said to be. To inner cognition it bears the same 
 relation which is borne in regard to outward or 
 material cognition by our recognition that our body 
 is placed in a world of space and of physical forces, 
 and liable to be affected by outward objects. And 
 being thus fundamental, we find it present even among 
 savages at the lowest step of the ladder of civilisation. 
 A dim recognition of it prompts the fetishism of the 
 natives of Central Africa, though they are unable 
 clearly to discern what is physical and what spiritual 
 force. A rudimentary sense of it has given rise in all 
 ages to beliefs in witchcraft and spells. Man has felt 
 his own weakness and helplessness, but he has not 
 clearly known how to distinguish between his outward 
 weakness in the presence of the physical forces of the 
 universe, and his inner weakness in the presence of 
 the Ruler of spirits. And as civilisation has grown, 
 this feeling of spiritual dependence has grown too, has 
 become clearer and stronger, and been distinguished 
 from what is no real part of it, until it forms a deep 
 and ever-present background to all our most serious 
 thoughts and loftiest emotions. 
 
 To this emotional and subjective side of religious 
 cognition there corresponds an objective side or per- 
 
214 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 ception. We not only feel our need of a deity and 
 our entire dependence on him, but we also perceive 
 that he satisfies our need and claims our dependence. 
 It is perhaps not easy to find a word to express the 
 quality which these feelings lead us to recognise in 
 God, but we may perhaps best term it his power. 
 The greatness of God is of all characteristics that 
 which is most essential. If we let in the reason, to 
 move in a province for which it is unfit, we may call 
 this sense of God a recognition of him as the Eternal 
 and Almighty. Only we must remember that these 
 terms are supplied not by the speculative but by the 
 practical faculties of man. They cannot be used as 
 we use the definitions of Euclid or the specifications 
 of natural history, as fixed logical starting-points, as a 
 firm foundation whereon we may build a palace of 
 knowledge. The doctrine is revealed to us as a 
 reality, but when we try to body it forth in words we 
 seem to grope in the dark, and can find no formula 
 which will exactly contain the idea. If we use the 
 word eternal we do not imply any relation of the 
 Deity to that time which is a mere form of human 
 thought ; and if we use the word almighty we imply 
 no comparison with the physical forces of the world of 
 sense. 
 
 It thus seems essential in thinking of a deity to think 
 of him as possessing overmastering power as regards 
 our lives and destinies—power exerted, so to speak, 
 from within rather than from without. But in such 
 recognition as this there is not necessarily anything 
 refining or improving; it does not imply looking upon 
 him as the source of morality. It is from a recogni- 
 tion of the part which the divine influence plays in 
 
xv The Powers of Good and Evil 215 
 
 conduct that we learn to look upon God in a higher 
 and nobler light. This recognition is less universal 
 among savages than that of which we have spoken. 
 Sir John Lubbock maintains, and probably he is right, 
 that there are degraded tribes of savages among whom 
 there is no connection between religion and morality. 
 But by all peoples above the very lowest order, the 
 power of God in the heart over the course of conduct 
 is recognised. They read the tendency of his working 
 differently in different ages and countries, but they 
 allow fully that the tendency exists. 
 
 An important factor in the growth of morality in 
 individuals, and therefore also in the human race, is 
 the direct influence on the heart and will of a divine 
 power tending towards righteousness. This power 
 frequently sets itself in opposition to the force of 
 ordinary motive. It does not overbear the will of 
 man when that will resolutely opposes its entrance ; 
 but if man’s will stand on its side, then it may be a 
 mighty help in leading him up from worse to better 
 courses. It does not destroy the interests and the 
 passions which urge to what is worse, but it does over- 
 power and bear them down so that they lose strength 
 and heart. If the existence and inward working of 
 this divine energy be a real fact, then religion is alike 
 possible and reasonable. If it be not a fact, then we 
 do not say that religion is a delusion, for it were too 
 presumptuous to assert of any theory of the universe 
 that it must needs exclude religion, but it may at least 
 be said that the power and meaning will be gone 
 from religion as we and as our ancestors have under- 
 stood it. 
 
 It is in conduct that the Deity is revealed to us, 
 
216 Faith and Conduct OHAP. 
 
 and it is as the God of conduct that we must think of 
 him as an existing and eternal reality. That reality 
 we recognise as of great force and goodness, as a power 
 which contends within us on the side of virtue, as, in 
 Mr. Arnold’s well-known phrase, the Power, not our- 
 selves, which makes for righteousness. So, correspond- 
 ing to feeling and sensation in conduct, comes the per- 
 ceptive act whereby we know that goodness belongs 
 as an attribute to the Deity, that he loves good, and is 
 good, and that all evil-doing is hateful to him, and 
 foreign to his nature. Here we have another of the 
 divine attributes, but an attribute recognised, as we 
 must again and again insist, by the practical faculty of 
 man and not by his intellect. “As the heavens are 
 higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than 
 your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” 
 Most of our virtues we see clearly to be but human, 
 and to have clear reference to our human surroundings. 
 There are many among them which the most naive 
 anthropomorphist would hesitate to ascribe directly 
 to the Deity. Chastity, for instance, is based upon 
 certain physical facts of man’s constitution, and if 
 any one will take the trouble to reflect he will see that 
 without a sexual physical frame the virtue of chastity 
 would not be possible. Yet the Jewish Scriptures do 
 not hesitate to ascribe purity to the Deity, clearly in 
 the sense dictated by the practical reason that in us 
 the Deity aids in impulses towards a chaste life and 
 turns away from impurity with dislike and anger. 
 Bearing in mind such facts and such reserves as these, 
 we need not hesitate to declare that the God we 
 recognise is supremely good. 
 
 But not only do we feel that God rejoices in good 
 
XV Lhe Powers of Good and Evil 217 
 
 deeds and hates wickedness, but we also find that the 
 same power which urges us towards righteousness and 
 deters us from ill-doing, exercises a great retributive 
 force accordingly as we listen to or smother the inner 
 voice. If our self-will and evil passions overmaster 
 the voice of conscience and drive us into conduct 
 which we know to be wrong, then we suffer within us 
 the terrible lashes of an offended deity. If, on the 
 other hand, our will does its best in the direction in 
 which it is guided by the inner voice, we feel a satis- 
 faction which has scarcely its equal for purity and 
 exaltation among all human delights. This is a 
 notorious fact of experience, and has been a common- 
 place of ethics as long as ethics have existed. We have 
 but to look at the other side of the fact, to consider it 
 on the side of perception, to recognise another of the 
 divine attributes, justice. We discover that God is 
 severely righteous, ever following sin with punishment 
 and goodness with reward, ever tending to make a 
 man’s happiness equal to the measure of his love and 
 pursuit of what is right. 
 
 Thus we recognise the power of God from the 
 feeling of our own helplessness, and from the inter- 
 ference which he exercises in conduct we perceive his 
 righteousness and justice. To another of the divine 
 attributes also the inner sense bears ample testimony, 
 the attribute of knowledge. For it is part of the 
 primal consciousness of a deity to feel that a know- 
 ledge wide and deep beyond all our experience is 
 present with us. 
 
 Perhaps there is not any civilised people which has 
 supposed that the outward expression of a prayer is 
 necessary in order to its reaching the ear of the 
 
218 faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 Divinity. The Greeks thought, no doubt, that prayers 
 offered in the temples where the deities were in a 
 special manner present were more readily received by 
 them than prayers elsewhere offered. Yet even in the 
 Homeric poems we have many instances in which a 
 deity is addressed from the street or the battle-field; 
 as though they heard wherever man spoke. And 
 certainly when Greek monotheism was developed, men 
 believed that God could hear their vows wherever they 
 might be, and could understand their meaning even if 
 words were absent. Certainly all in our day who 
 believe in a deity at all, believe that he hears their 
 prayers and knows their thoughts. When we are 
 away from all men, in privacy and retirement, we feel 
 that we have not passed from the presence of God. 
 However we may deceive our fellow-men, nay, even if 
 we throw dust in our own eyes, we feel that we do 
 not deceive God, but that he sees us as we are. On 
 the perceptive side this feeling corresponds to a recog- 
 nition of the universal presence and knowledge of the 
 Deity. “Lo, there is not a thought in my heart, but 
 thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether.” Nothing, we 
 say, is too small or too secluded to be known to God 
 in its entirety. 
 
 Thus does the course of conduct lead us to three 
 of the divine attributes, power, goodness, and wisdom, 
 which in analogy to our perception of the qualities of 
 bodies in the physical world, we may perhaps venture 
 to term the primary qualities of the Deity. So far as 
 the human mind may strain there seems to us no 
 subjective element in the attribution of these qualities 
 to God. We can imagine that were we otherwise 
 circumstanced in the world we might speak of God 
 
Xv The Powers of Good and Evil 219 
 
 otherwise than as we do at present in many respects. 
 But so long as conduct is conduct, so long it will force 
 upon us a belief in a deity, great, wise, and good. 
 
 We must, however, observe in passing that our be- 
 lief in the divine wisdom need not be entirely based 
 on grounds of consciousness, if the philosophers are 
 right who maintain that we can actually trace in the 
 development of hfe on the earth the working of a 
 wisdom which adapts means to ends far off, which pre- 
 pares organs for functions of which those who possess 
 the organs are as yet wholly unconscious. It seems 
 in that case as if we could actually observe the divine 
 wisdom in its working by means of divine power in 
 the world. We should indeed hesitate to apply to a 
 wisdom which thus adapts means to ends the adjective 
 infinite, since in fact means and ends in themselves 
 are necessarily hmited and imperfect. But we must 
 allow it to be wisdom far beyond human standard, 
 and even human understanding. 
 
 There is a question which at this point meets us, 
 and which we are bound to examine openly and man- 
 fully. It rises out of the essential character of con- 
 duct. In conduct we are not only stimulated and 
 urged by the inner voice to choose the better part, but 
 we are also tempted to choose the worse part. Sug- 
 gestions of evil arise in us without any participation 
 of our will, and sometimes lead us away before we 
 have time to reflect into doing that whereof we bitterly 
 repent. In the Bible, and in the lives of Christian 
 worthies, this impulse towards evil is spoken of as 
 temptation by the devil. Men of strongly-developed 
 sense of spiritual things—Bunyan, for instance, or 
 Luther—have been quite as strongly convinced of the 
 
220 fFatth and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 actual and objective existence of a spirit of evil who 
 tempts, as of a good spirit who raises and helps. 
 
 In the field of emotion again, our moral faculties, 
 in looking out on the world of men and seeing their 
 vices and follies, the radical badness which seems to 
 inhere in many of them, cannot regard evil as a merely 
 negative thing, as the mere absence of good will and 
 the presence of baser appetites; we seem compelled to 
 regard the evil tendency as a permanent force con- 
 stantly working in the world and endeavouring to drag 
 conduct and feeling down to a lower level. It seems 
 then at first sight that the actual existence of a devil 
 or spirit of wickedness is guaranteed by the same 
 faculties as the existence of a deity, and his seducing 
 power testified to by emotions parallel to those which 
 give us assurance of the divine virtues. 
 
 And yet the conscience of Christendom, at least of 
 refined and educated Christendom, is very loath to 
 accept this view. Many men, excellent and full of 
 spiritual insight, could never bring themselves to 
 believe in the actual existence of a spirit of evil. 
 Even James the Apostle seems to throw doubt on the 
 working of such a spirit when he says that men who 
 are tempted are drawn away by their own lusts and 
 enticed. It is therefore the more desirable to examine 
 closely whether our arguments really guarantee the 
 existence of evil spirits as much as of good ones, or 
 whether there are decided differences in the two cases. 
 And we shall soon perceive that the latter is actually 
 the case. 
 
 Our argument is, that to virtuous conduct it is a 
 necessity to believe in the objective existence of the 
 inner voice. But no one can say that, to educated 
 
XV The Powers of Good and Evil 221 
 
 and well-disposed men, the actual existence of a devil 
 is a belief necessary to conduct. <A belief that fire will 
 burn and that iron will sink in water is necessary 
 to our living among material things. To believe that 
 the sun moves round the earth, or that the earth’s sur- 
 face is flat, may appear to uninstructed minds equally 
 necessary to physical existence ; but it is not so, as all 
 of us know. The beliefs which are really necessary 
 to man as man may carry with them their own sanc- 
 tion, but that sanction must not be accorded to the 
 fluctuating and unnecessary beliefs of individuals or 
 classes. The existence or non-existence of an evil 
 spirit has from the beginning been a question of dis- 
 pute between nations and between religions. We can- 
 not allow the affirmants to cite their own opinion as 
 decisive evidence. 
 
 Moreover, whereas we cannot explain the impulse 
 to goodness except by regarding it as the inspiration 
 of a better being than man, we can explain the im- 
 pulse to evil on historical grounds. For history most 
 abundantly shows that men have gradually arisen from 
 a worse intellectual and moral condition to a better. 
 And in the case of all descent there is a constant 
 tendency in the progeny to recur to the habits of mind 
 and body which marked the ancestor. This tendency 
 may long lie dormant and be suddenly aroused by cir- 
 cumstances. If a man in a moment of temptation by 
 appetite feel an ancient evil tendency of some unknown 
 ancestor rise, as it were, and take him by the throat, 
 what is more natural than that such mysterious and 
 wicked impulse should seem to him to come direct 
 from a spiritual source? It may be suggested that the 
 promptings to good may be the revival in similar 
 
222 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 fashion of the good habits of ancestors ; and this is no 
 doubt in some cases true; but if there were no other 
 source of good impulse it is impossible that progress 
 in morality could go on from age to age. 
 
 There is thus a very real and wide difference 
 between positing the real existence of a deity and 
 maintaining the actual reality of a devil; and it is 
 quite possible to believe in the one and to disbelieve 
 the existence of the other. Yet, nevertheless, the pre- 
 sence in the world of pain, of evil, and of sin, is so 
 conspicuous a fact, and one which has always been 
 considered so hard of explanation, that we can scarcely 
 venture with confidence either to assert or to deny 
 that there is around and in us a spiritual force which 
 actually loves that evil and promotes it. In view of 
 the facts of evolution and the struggles involved in the 
 very nature of conduct, we must allow that good in 
 the world has some terrible enemy to struggle against, 
 whether that enemy be, as has been variously main- 
 tained by various writers, our own evil wills, or the 
 inherent viciousness of matter, or evil spirits working 
 in and through matter and our minds. Perhaps, after 
 all, the thing which has specially shocked those who 
 have rejected the belief in a devil is the crude anthro- 
 pomorphic manner in which the spirit of evil has been’ 
 accepted. The horns and the hoofs which he has 
 inherited from the heathen Pan have somehow intro- 
 duced absurdity into the talk of a devil; and the ready 
 acceptance which the illiterate in all nations have been 
 ready to bestow on tales of diabolical apparitions and 
 Satanic possession have predisposed the more refined to 
 make a jest of such matters. But the great facts of 
 the case are sad and stern enough; the fact that man 
 
xv The Powers of Good and Evil 223 
 
 is constantly drawn as by unseen hands into paths of 
 vice and selfishness, and the fact that only by constant 
 watchful care and a ready attention to every good im- 
 pulse can he hope to rise above the innumerable snares 
 with which the path of life is so thickly strewn. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 In the religious view, recognition of the moral and 
 spiritual nature of man is as important as the acknow- 
 ledgment of the goodness and power of God. Kant 
 has clearly shown that when we regard man in the 
 light of conduct we pass into a realm wherein freewill 
 is as much the ruling law as is physical necessity in 
 the external world, But it is not our intention to dis- 
 cuss at any length the dispute as to the liberty or the 
 necessity of human action, because in our view that 
 dispute, however philosophically important, is not im- 
 portant from the practical point of view. 
 
 No one is so thorough-going a believer in freewill as 
 to think it superfluous to investigate the motives from 
 which men act; and no one is so complete a believer 
 in necessity as to regard all exhortations to moral exer- 
 tion as superfluous. Disciples of the two schools will not 
 greatly differ in their practical plans for acting on the 
 world, or in their exhortations to mankind to pursue 
 this or that end. For the fact of freewill must from 
 the practical point of view be conceded, and this is all 
 that the exhorter can require. If he can prove what 
 men ought to do, he need be under no anxiety as to 
 
CHAP, XVI Fluman Responsibility 225 
 
 their power to do as he recommends, provided they 
 want to. If ethics be an introduction to the Art of 
 Conduct, it is no more necessary to preface it by a 
 proof of the reality of freewill than it is to place such 
 a dissertation at the beginning of a treatise on any 
 other art. Let us suppose a man to be writing a book 
 on the art of shipbuilding. Would he begin with a 
 discussion to prove that men are capable of selecting 
 one plan for the construction of ships rather than 
 another, and are not mere automata? Or would he 
 consider it sufficient merely to show what form of 
 vessel and what disposition of parts will be most con- 
 ducive to swiftness and stability in ships, taking it for 
 granted that reasonable men, if they are convinced by 
 his arguments, will be able to follow his advice. Surely 
 he will take the latter course. Yet the dissertation is 
 really as suitable to a treatise on shipbuilding as to a 
 treatise on conduct. We may venture then to press 
 boldly on into the domain of ethics, expecting that 
 these uncouth metaphysical shapes which guard 
 the portals will vanish, as the wild beasts which 
 seemed to guard the Palace of Armida vanished at the 
 waving of Ubaldo’s wand. The question what is good 
 to be done, and why it is good, is a practical question, 
 and may as easily be cut loose from the endless specu- 
 lative questions about freewill and necessity, as may 
 the study of physics be treated of apart from the ques- 
 tion of the ultimate nature of space. 
 
 We have already pointed out in our fourth 
 chapter that it is one of the fundamental facts of 
 consciousness that will has the power of choosing among 
 the different motives, some better and some worse, 
 which are present before it on each occasion. We 
 
 Q 
 
226 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 have already compared it to the sliding bar of a stream 
 which regulates its flow, or to the hand in flute-play- 
 ing, which does not increase or decrease the volume of 
 the wind which produces sounds, but does interfere to 
 make that wind pass through this hole or that, and so 
 causes harmonies or discords to be formed at pleasure. 
 In every man at every crisis of his life—nay, at every 
 moment in which he takes conscious resolve—there is a 
 conflict of better and worse impulses; the former, as a 
 rule, coming from without, the latter from within; and 
 it rests with the will to give the victory to one faction 
 or the other, and so to raise or to depress the general 
 level of life. Now this simple fact, that we can do 
 better or worse as we choose to follow one path in life 
 or another, is a sufficient foundation whereon to build 
 the theory of the moral responsibility of man, and a 
 sufficient proof that he is a being of mingled merit and 
 demerit, 
 
 For every one of us starts in life at a certain 
 moral level, a level determined for us by the doings of 
 our ancestors, quite apart from our own feelings and 
 deeds; and then the circumstances of life, education, 
 and various social influences, tend also, apart from any 
 action of ours, to raise or to depress that level. There 
 is thus at every moment of a man’s life a sort of 
 normal or natural height of virtue which he would 
 have attained apart from any striving of will, if he 
 had merely been passive, and regularly followed the 
 strongest impulse. We do not, of course, mean to say 
 that this level can be fixed or laid down ; it is a purely 
 imaginary thing, a sort of algebraical formula invented 
 not to directly represent fact, but to help our calcula- 
 tions. Supposing, however, that in the case of any 
 
XVI Fluman Responsibility 327, 
 
 man, at any time of his life, we could determine what 
 that level was, and could compare with it the actual 
 level of his morality at that same moment, the differ- 
 ence between the two might be considered as represent- 
 ing the sum of his moral merit or demerit,—merit if 
 the actual level were higher than the normal level, 
 demerit in the alternative case. For the action of his 
 will would be the cause of the difference in whatever 
 direction it lay. So, too, in the case of individual 
 actions, a man’s merit would le in following the higher 
 impulses to a greater degree than his past history would 
 warrant one in expecting; his demerit in following the 
 lower impulses to a greater degree than their actual 
 force would compel him. That such comparison is 
 practically impossible we must allow; but if it could 
 be made, most people would allow that it was fair. 
 And indeed this view accords sufficiently well with 
 the natural feelings of mankind. We feel that it is 
 unjust to judge by the same absolute standard the 
 conduct of one brought up in a virtuous household and 
 of one bred among dissolute companions. If the child 
 of thieves and outcasts becomes himself a thief, we 
 punish him indeed, for we must protect society ; but we 
 cannot regard him as to blame in the same way in 
 which the child of good parents is to blame if he takes 
 to evil courses. We are perhaps less alive to the 
 parallel fact that one born of a line noted for high 
 maxims and noble actions becomes morally blame- 
 worthy if he sinks below the high level which he 
 inherited, even if he still remain no worse than his 
 neighbours. Not what a man is, but what he has 
 made of himself, is the thing we must look to in 
 apportioning our praise and our blame, if we would 
 
228 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 abide by the rules of severe justice. Kant says that 
 nothing human in the world is really good but a good 
 will; and from the strictly moral point of view he is 
 quite right. Other things may be pleasing, beautiful, 
 delightful, but cannot be called emphatically good. 
 
 This view has by some writers been attacked as 
 immoral. For it maintains that moral desert can only 
 find place in a nature at war with itself, and that 
 when right-doing has become habitual, and so become 
 easy, it 1s no longer meritorious. Hence it would 
 follow, say the objectors, that the only real way to 
 attain virtue is to try to make all good actions as hard 
 to one’s self as possible, and then by overcoming one’s 
 repugnance to them to gain merit. 
 
 The objection is, of course, very superficial. The 
 harder it is to a man to do rightly, the more merit he 
 acquires by so doing; but he does not acquire merit by 
 merely making himself difficulties in order that he may 
 overcome them. And, since custom makes all things 
 easy, it is not possible to keep up a habit of doing 
 right with difficulty, nor can we purposely sink to a 
 lower level of morality in order to become virtuous. 
 
 This mode of argument also overlooks an important 
 distinction. Ifa man possesses habits of virtue through 
 the continuous virtuous strivings of his ancestors, then 
 indeed persistence in those habits is not a matter of 
 much merit. But even in this case he is very for- 
 tunate, for without labour and striving he attains the 
 happiness which goes with virtue, and which others can 
 attain only as the result of long efforts. If, on the 
 other hand, a man has attained through his own course 
 of life a level of virtue at which right-doing becomes 
 easy, then, according to the view here set forth, he is 
 
XVI fluman Responsibility 229 
 
 highly meritorious. Only his merit lies in the past 
 rather than in the present. 
 
 It must be confessed that there is in the view of 
 merit and demerit here set forth a great speculative 
 difficulty. It is wholly impossible in the case of con- 
 duct to draw a clear line of distinction between the 
 admission by set purpose of will of better influences 
 into one’s life, and the intrusion of those influences 
 apart from the action of the will. No one can look on 
 his own virtuous doing with complacent confidence and 
 say that it is all due to himself, that it is his own 
 merit thus to have raised the tone of his life. On this 
 subject we shall have more to say in future chapters, 
 when we shall show that the rigid conclusions to 
 which we have been here led require great modifica- 
 tions before they correspond to the realities of the 
 moral world. Not only is colour wanting to our 
 picture, but even some of the essential figures in it 
 appear as yet not even in outline. 
 
 The perception of merit and of demerit in others is 
 based on the emotions which we feel in ourselves, an 
 emotion of inward satisfaction and delight when we do 
 right, and of discomfort and regret when we do evil. 
 Of this feeling, as feeling and as motive of action, we 
 have already spoken, but we are here concerned with 
 its perceptive side. It reveals to us ourselves as 
 beings of mingled merit and demerit, as deserving good 
 and evil. Perception cannot directly foretell the future, 
 or assure us that eventually our happiness shall be pro- 
 portional to our merit; but it can directly assure us 
 that if it were so it would be in accordance with the 
 requirements of strict justice. This feeling—that we 
 have free will, that we can use it to better ends, and 
 
230 faith and Conduct CHAP. XVI 
 
 that if we do not we are culpable and deserve to be 
 punished—this feeling is the sum of what the facts of 
 conduct reveal to us of our own nature. They show us 
 that we are moral and responsible creatures, apart from 
 and above the reign of mere physical law; connected 
 not only with the outer world but with God, and to 
 him responsible for following or disregarding his voice. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH 
 
 Ir seems then that experience, the ordinary experience 
 of everyday life, assures us of the truth of certain 
 elementary notions of religion. It may be said that it 
 rather assures us of the existence of morality, of right 
 and wrong in conduct. But we have tried to carry 
 the argument beyond this point; to show that right 
 and wrong are of divine origin and sanction, and that 
 their mere existence in our hearts as alternatives 1s a 
 sufficient proof of the existence and the goodness of God. 
 
 But we do not pretend that a religion thus based 
 upon experience, and penned in within so narrow 
 limits, would be of much avail. It would be to the 
 religion of holy men what mere bars of contrasted 
 colour are to the painting of a great master, what the 
 wind sighing among the trees is to the music of a 
 Beethoven. He who could not distinguish the bars of 
 colour could never become a great painter; he who 
 was deaf to the voice of the wind would never 
 appreciate music; yet the appreciation of the simple 
 facts which make the arts possible, though it be like 
 learning the alphabet of the arts, yet will take one but 
 a very little way. 
 
232 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 The primordial cell of consciousness, so to speak, 
 is the contrast of eyo and non-ego ; the primordial cell 
 of conduct is the contrast of the will and the Power 
 which works for righteousness. We have examined 
 this cell in detail and analysed its contents part by 
 part. But this has taken us but to the threshold 
 of our inquiry. 
 
 The fact is that the affirmations of experience in 
 religious matters are worthless, unless they are inter- 
 preted by the practical faculties. It has been said by 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold that religion is morality touched 
 by emotion—that is to say, right doing accompanied 
 by right feeling. And this seems a true account of 
 the matter. In one point of view emotion may be 
 considered as only rudimentary action; deeds, it may 
 be said, are the realities and emotions the shadows, 
 deeds are the fruit and emotion only the flower. But 
 there is equal truth in the converse view according to 
 which the emotion is the essential thing, and the aon 
 merely its reflection in the world of realities; the 
 emotion the soul, and the deed only the bane in 
 which that soul is revealed to the world. The fact is 
 that emotion and deed must be considered together ; 
 we cannot “divorce the feeling from her mate the 
 deed,” either in practical life or in speculation, without 
 great danger of error. 
 
 For the completion of the scheme of relfaon we 
 shall find two sources. The first is the practical 
 necessities of life and action, which dictate from with- 
 out certain beliefs to the consciousness; which, as it 
 were, hold a knife to the throat of reason, and compel 
 it to surrender at discretion. The second source is 
 experience, not pure and simple, but interpreted through 
 
XVII Knowledge and Faith 233 
 
 emotion rather than through intellect. In these two 
 ways does faith or belief, the practical reason if we 
 may so term it, fill up the bare outline guaranteed by 
 the mere understanding. 
 
 The expansion of knowledge by belief is by no means 
 exclusively a phenomenon of religious doctrine. The 
 fact is that not one of us could live a day in the world 
 without assuming what we cannot prove, and believing 
 what we do not know. Faith is as necessary to each 
 of us in the ordinary relations of life, as in those which 
 we bear to the Deity. And in some cases one, in 
 some cases the other, of the two processes of which we 
 have just spoken comes into use. Some of our beliefs 
 are actually based upon experience, but experience 
 interpreted through the haze of emotion, not by the 
 cold light of reason, Some of our beliefs transcend 
 experience altogether, and seem to arise directly from 
 the necessities of life. 
 
 Of this latter class the simplest instance is that on 
 which we have already dwelt—our belief in the uni- 
 formity of nature in the physical world which surrounds 
 us. It has been again and again pointed out by 
 logicians that we have no logical right to assume 
 that because effect B has in the past followed cause 
 A, therefore it will do so in future; if it has followed 
 a thousand times, that is no reason why, at the thousand 
 and first, things should not turn out otherwise. Or at 
 least the reason is in us and not in the world. We 
 must believe that the sequence of cause and effect will 
 be uniform, or action becomes totally impossible; but 
 this belief is an act of the will—is in fact an instance 
 of faith. So also it is matter of faith that the world 
 of sense exists apart from the subjective faculties of 
 
234 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 those who perceive it; this again, as we have shown 
 above, is an arbitrary assumption, but an assumption 
 without which we cannot live. 
 
 In our relations to other selves the same necessity, 
 or even a necessity of a more pressing character, reigns. 
 We have already had occasion to show that the very 
 existence of consciousness other than our own in the 
 world is a fact not discovered by reason, but dictated 
 to us by the necessities of existence. And not only 
 the existence of other selves, but also their general 
 fitness for love and trust is a conviction forced on us 
 by the needs of practical life. We see a man act in a 
 certain way, and we judge him to be just or humane 
 or truthful as the case may be, and confidently expect 
 from him conduct of the same kind on all future occa- 
 sions. This assumption of the uniformity of conduct is 
 a far greater assumption than that of the uniformity of 
 nature, and far less justified. For in physical matters 
 we seldom dare to judge of cause and effect from a 
 single instance; but in judging of character we often 
 form a conviction from one observation. And we 
 know that in the course of nature no arbitrary will 
 interferes between cause and effect, whereas in the 
 matter of conduct the will of the actor may at any 
 moment intervene and turn in another direction the 
 course of action. Yet if we acted but a single day on 
 the principle that we would trust people only on full 
 and complete evidence of their ways of acting, we 
 should end that day in a madhouse. Our faith in 
 those with whom we come in contact is regulated 
 not by the arguments of probability, but by the 
 necessity of acting in the world and being acted on 
 by it. 
 
XVII Knowledge and Faith 235 
 
 It is possible that practical necessity is thus the 
 ultimate cause of our belief in mankind, which runs 
 so easily and so far beyond the evidence. If, however, 
 we come to consider the means by which that belief is 
 acquired, we shall find that it is observation interpreted 
 through emotion. The fact is that none of us, however 
 he may confide in the coolness of his head or the dry 
 light of his intellect, looks on the deeds of men with 
 absolute indifference. We might as well try to see 
 things about us otherwise than through the medium of 
 the atmosphere. And as the varying light of the sun 
 tinges all earthly things with changing colour, so do 
 we dress in the hues of our own feelings and wishes 
 all that we see. This only amounts to saying that we 
 are men, and not unconcerned spectators of the world 
 from outside. 
 
 The fact is that the practical faculties of men have 
 to induce unity into the facts of experience, just as the 
 mind of man has to induce unity into the formless 
 testimony of sense. The will arranges the world from 
 its own point of view. We may compare the will to 
 a painter who, roaming amid a beautiful scene of 
 nature, fixes upon one particular spot from which he 
 determines to view the landscape before him, so as to 
 bring it into the field of his canvas. Or we may com- 
 pare it to a general who, seeing the enemy approach, 
 fixes on a particular spot as that on which he intends 
 to give battle. Thus will, in its dealings with the 
 world, is constantly deliberately taking up its ground ; 
 and when it has done so, experience seems to group 
 itself all around, and to be reduced from a chaos to a 
 cosmos by the indwelling vigour of unity which lives 
 in the will. Without such continual assumption of a 
 
236 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 standpoint, a consistent life would not be a _possi- 
 bility. 
 
 And it is more particularly in our dealings with 
 our fellow-men that will and feeling have to come to 
 the aid of the perceptive faculties, if these are to avail. 
 Observation without sympathy will never give us 
 insight into a man’s character. Cold observation will 
 always hold that every man’s deeds may be inspired 
 by good motives or by bad—that he may be seeking his 
 own advantage or that of others. It is easy to call 
 any given action prudent or cowardly, generous or 
 quixotic, magnanimous or pompous. Only feeling can 
 decide between the various interpretations of which 
 deeds admit. This is perfectly acknowledged in the 
 intercourse of ordinary life. Every one knows how 
 sympathy serves to make our understanding of the 
 characters of those with whom we have to do more 
 keen ; how rooted distrust will prevent us from ever 
 appreciating good in them. 
 
 This fact calls to mind the saying that we do not 
 fully know the value of a friend till we have lost him. 
 While he is with us, indeed, we use his society and 
 delight in it; we trust him, and feel that his company 
 lightens the way of life. But the poignant grief caused 
 by losing him is one of those strong emotions which 
 cast a bright light over the past; and by its brillianey 
 we often see—too late, alas!—that he was far better than 
 ran in our thoughts, more noble and unselfish, more 
 kind and considerate. We think with bitter regret of 
 the occasions when we vexed him, and of those cases, 
 which seem terribly frequent, when we did not give 
 him the credit he deserved. The enlightening power 
 of love is increased by the sense of hopeless longing ; 
 
_ XVII Knowledge and Faith 227, 
 
 bitter emotion burns away the clouds from our eyes, 
 and we see, and think that we were before blinded by 
 the mist of custom. 
 
 Such enlightenment is the natural fruit of bereave- 
 ment. But an enlightenment of the same kind, though 
 less in degree, takes place also every time our heart is 
 touched in the presence of a living friend. The whole 
 web of our lives is made of the crossing and interlacing 
 threads of experience and emotion; and without the 
 binding force of emotion the experiences of our lives 
 would be like detached parallel threads—an empty and 
 useless series, and unformed material. 
 
 The reverse process no doubt takes place also. 
 Love not only sometimes helps us to see merit in a 
 friend, but it also blinds us to his defects. Too ready 
 sympathy makes a man credulous and weak, and an 
 easy prey to the designing and unscrupulous. The 
 - love which naturally flows from close blood-relation is 
 more especially prone to blind us to folly and vice. 
 The glamour thrown over the senses by a passionate 
 sexual love is less lasting, but while it lasts even more 
 deceitful. It is not necessary to waste words on truths 
 so obvious. But what is notable is this :—poet and 
 novelist, moralist and preacher alike, have commonly 
 dwelt on the delusions fostered by love, and not on the 
 depth and truth which it adds to knowledge. Yet the 
 knowledge is a main process of nature, the delusions 
 are but a temporary disease. The atmosphere may 
 make things look too rosy or too gloomy, but without 
 the atmosphere we should not see them at all. Sym- 
 pathy and emotion may make us take too favourable or 
 too unfavourable a view of those with whom we have 
 to do; but without sympathy and emotion we should 
 
oes: Fratth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 form no view at all, or one so inadequate as to be 
 worthless. Thus it is not too strong an expression if 
 we say that our knowledge of our fellow-men is almost 
 entirely based upon belief. 
 
 Much to be regretted is our looseness in using the 
 word belief, which goes far to produce looseness of 
 thought also. We constantly say that we believe such 
 and such a thing to have happened; for instance, rain 
 to have fallen, or the wind to have changed, when we 
 merely mean that we think the event has probably 
 taken place. This is, from the philosophical point of 
 view, an unfortunate use of the phrase. It may be 
 justified by the history of language and by common 
 usage, but 1t is a source of confusion. It would tend 
 far more to clearness of thought if we discriminated 
 constantly between what we regard as probable and 
 what we believe by interpreting sensation through 
 emotion. 
 
 A further confusion arises from the neglect of dis- 
 tinguishing between belief and the acceptance of fact 
 on testimony. Testimony may be primarily regarded 
 as a mere extension of experience. In the acceptance 
 or non-acceptance of testimony, faith is to some extent 
 involved, since we should not accept the testimony of 
 any one unless we had belief in the truth and integrity 
 of his character. But, nevertheless, when we accept 
 on valid testimony some mere fact of experience, we 
 must not consider that such fact is received in faith, 
 using the word faith in what appears to be the best 
 sense. Such acceptance may rather be considered as 
 a vicarlous exercise of our senses. In our own persons 
 we see and feel but a very small part of what makes 
 up the sum of our knowledge; most of it results 
 
 ——— ss ar 
 
XVII Knowledge and Faith 239 
 
 from the experience of the race. But faith is con- 
 cerned not with what is mere matter of experience, but 
 with that which transcends non-emotional experience. 
 
 Of course in saying that the provinces of faith and 
 knowledge are distinct, we do not mean to assert it to 
 be impossible that what is at one time matter of faith 
 should at another time become matter of knowledge. If 
 we refuse to believe, in the absence of conclusive testi- 
 mony, that a friend of ours has done a dishonourable 
 action, that refusal is an act of faith. When we find 
 out the exact truth of the matter, faith gives place to 
 knowledge. The faith may turn out to have been 
 well-founded or ill-founded, but in any case it was 
 sharply contrasted with knowledge; it was distinctly 
 an act of the will—based, indeed, on experience, but 
 going quite beyond it. 
 
 Religious faith differs from the beliefs of which we 
 have hitherto spoken in two respects. First of all in 
 its object, as being concerned not with the physical 
 world nor with other selves, but with our own higher 
 natures and the Power which makes for righteousness. 
 And secondly, in the more spiritual nature of the ex- 
 perience on which it is based. Our faith in people 
 about us is constantly changing, now waxing and now 
 waning, undergoing a perpetual bombardment by the 
 facts of life; religious faith is of a nature less exposed 
 to the vicissitudes of daily life, and built in a region 
 not, indeed, above experience, but above sensible ex- 
 perience. 
 
 The knowledge which ordinary experience furnishes 
 us in religion,— knowledge of the attributes of God and 
 of his action in the world,—is mostly derived from the 
 facts of conduct. It is but scanty, as those will see 
 
240 Faith and Conduct CHAP, XVII 
 
 who have followed our reasonings on the subject ; but, 
 such as it is, it is the foundation-stone of all religious 
 doctrine. No belief which conflicts with it can have 
 a right to a moment’s existence. Faith may interpret 
 or transcend, but cannot alter or supersede it; but 
 with the bare knowledge derived from the facts of 
 conduct the human soul and will are not contented. 
 This is not enough food for the spirit to live on. It 
 insists on having faith, in interpreting those facts by 
 emotion and from the necessities of the spiritual life. 
 There are certain assumptions in religion which are so 
 necessary to human life that they may be considered 
 as established on the broad basis of human necessity. 
 First of these assumptions, which faith asserts and 
 knowledge cannot deny, is, as we have already tried to 
 prove, the objectivity of the moral power which works 
 in the human heart—a truth necessary to moral life 
 and energetic action. It may be that no other religious 
 belief has the same universality and clearness as this, 
 but there are many beliefs which to individuals who 
 adopt them seem to be at least as binding on heart and 
 conscience. We find that in religious knowledge, as 
 in the knowledge of mankind, a great part is played 
 by will and by emotion. Of all the phenomena of 
 conduct, and of our relations to the sensuous and 
 spiritual worlds, it is possible to take a low and cynical 
 or a nobler and more expansive view. Further dis- 
 cussion of this fundamental fact demands a separate 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 LAWS OF THE HIGHER LIFE 
 
 We are told by those accustomed to ascend in 
 balloons that the wind at a certain height above the 
 ground is frequently found to blow in quite a different 
 direction from that which prevails on the surface of the 
 earth. And in fact no one can be in the habit of 
 watching the course of the clouds without observing 
 that this must often be the case. Phenomena of a 
 not dissimilar kind take place in relation to life and 
 conduct. We may observe the facts of the world and 
 the events of our own experience with dry and worldly 
 eyes, and think that we fully understand them. But 
 by some force or other we are one day raised to a 
 higher sphere of feeling. And lo! when we look 
 about us everything is changed; the whole order of 
 the world is arranged differently; what seemed the 
 natural order of events now appears strange and un- 
 real, and what before seemed to be visionary and 
 mystic stands out as real and enduring. 
 
 Between the world’s way of looking at events and 
 the way which belongs to the spiritual life there is the 
 most complete contrast. It is not merely a contrast 
 of tastes and feelings. Of course there is in these 
 
 R 
 
242 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 respects a strong contrast. He who loves the world, 
 its pleasures and its successes, is not likely to love also 
 the pleasures of the spiritual life, and to be fired with 
 its loftier ambitions. And he who is strongly con- 
 trolled by the forces which raise the life above its 
 ordinary course is not likely to be contented with the 
 life of ordinary sensuous existence. But there is a 
 contrast as strongly marked in the field of knowledge 
 also. In the light of everyday carnal existence, the 
 facts which appear fundamentally true to the spiritually- 
 minded look like a mere string of paradoxes. And on 
 the other hand, in the light of the spiritual life, the 
 empirical laws which the worldly man regards as the 
 most solid and plain of facts seem superficial and slight, 
 mere shells to cover an inner emptiness. 
 
 There are certain sciences concerned with human 
 life and behaviour which assume as data certain char- 
 acteristics in human nature. Political Economy, for 
 instance, is as a science built on the supposition that 
 men seek each their own advantage, and take no super- 
 fluous pains to reach the ends which they set before 
 them. And as Political Economy deals only with the 
 outer and sensuous life of man, and with that only in 
 the rough, it may well be justified in assuming such a 
 premiss. And yet we all know, even apart from the 
 question whether one’s own advantage be the highest 
 alm a man can set before him, that, as a matter of 
 fact, the great bulk of mankind are ruled chiefly by 
 motives of quite another kind, by custom and affec- 
 tion and sentiment. He who lived a life entirely 
 based on Political Economy might make a fortune, 
 but would scarcely be a human soul. 
 
 In the same way we ordinarily act as menof the world, 
 
XVIII Laws of the Higher Life 243 
 
 doing what we think will please us and ours, pushing 
 for our own advantage, loving our friends and avoiding 
 our enemies. And in our ordinary moods we judge men 
 on this same low basis, approving those who agree with 
 us, those who are pleasant, those who help us, and con- 
 demning those who thwart us and put us to trouble. 
 And yet, surely, in the hght of calmer reflection, we 
 must see that a society which acted from:such motives 
 only would be utterly hollow and worthless, a house 
 of cards without real power of coherence, a body with- 
 out salt to keep it from hideous putrefaction. A world 
 full of unworldliness might be a strange place—a 
 phenomenon which none of us are likely to see; but a 
 world full of nothing but worldliness would be little 
 better than a pandemonium. 
 
 But amid the pressure and the stress of ordinary 
 life we come from time to time across glimpses of 
 something above the ordinary—revelations of a higher 
 order amid the lower, which help us, and raise, at least 
 for a time, the tone of our lives. And if we carefully 
 consider these fragments of a higher order, they seem to 
 form themselves into a whole, and to emerge from the 
 dull background of ordinary life, like Scripture texts 
 quoted from time to time in the course of a dull 
 sermon. 
 
 It would scarcely be possible to illustrate this state- 
 ment with more pertinent examples than those offered 
 by the wonderful string of apophthegms with which 
 the Sermon on the Mount, in the fifth chapter of St, 
 Matthew’s Gospel, begins. If weread them at a lower 
 level they appear a series of paradoxes, noble and high- 
 sounding indeed, but impracticable, out of relation to 
 life and conduct, the utterances of a visionary young 
 
244 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 enthusiast who has not yet learned by hard experience 
 what the world is like. But if we raise our point of 
 view and regard them in a moment of spiritual exalta- 
 tion, how different do they then appear! No longer do 
 they seem to contradict experience, but only to transcend 
 it. They then seem the clear though impassioned 
 statement of the ordinary facts of the spiritual life. 
 
 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 
 Absurd! one might-exclaim. Even in our day we see 
 the meek, the forgiving and gentle, put aside in the 
 struggle for existence; at every step they are passed 
 and thrust aside by the strong men who know what 
 they want and mean to get it. To the latter go the 
 honours and riches of the world ; they it is who gain 
 power and call the lands after their own names. And 
 if it be so even now in our comparatively quiet and 
 gentle times, what must have been the case when the 
 world was trampled by the Roman legions, and might 
 was universally recognised as the only right? Prophet 
 of Galilee, speak of the spiritual things as to which 
 thou knowest something; but do not tell men of the 
 world what is the secret of power and success in the 
 visible earth ! 
 
 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteous- 
 ness sake. That, one might declare, is going a little 
 too far! One may feel virtuous in being persecuted 
 for righteousness’ sake, but how can one feel happy ? 
 To lose all that one cherishes—vwealth and honour 
 and love, to be sent to prison and to death for prin- 
 ciple, well becomes the hero and the martyr; but we 
 eannot regard him as blessed. Though he suffers for 
 the good of others, his sufferings are none the less real 
 and keen. He is miserable that others may be happy ; 
 
 —_— 
 
 ae i 
 
XVIII Laws of the Fligher Ltufe 245 
 
 a noble specimen of self-sacrifice. But to call him 
 blessed is to use a misnomer ! 
 
 If our objectors had lived in the days of Christ 
 they would have felt in regard to his teaching and 
 his mission just as the Pharisees felt. They would 
 have been convinced that the first duty of every Jewish 
 patriot must be to throw off the galling and brutalising 
 yoke of Rome; to establish national independence by 
 the strong hand, and then to set about building up a 
 kingdom of righteousness. The Messiah they would 
 have longed for would be a just and powerful ruler, 
 not a mere teacher of religion. And in justification 
 of their views they would have appealed to the most 
 obvious facts. Certainly as long as the Roman prefect 
 and the Roman tax-gatherer controlled Palestine it 
 could never be a kingdom of righteousness. “I knew 
 how it would end,” must have been the thought of 
 many a Pharisee when he saw Jesus hanging on the 
 cross. 
 
 And yet that was not the end; the unanimous voice 
 of eighteen centuries has declared that Jesus was right 
 and the Pharisees were wrong; have maintained that, 
 in this matter at all events, obvious facts are not 
 always the most important, and appearances not always 
 realities. And if Jesus was right in the crowning 
 paradox of his whole career, his death on the cross, it 
 is possible that he may have been right in the spoken 
 paradoxes with which he seems to have begun his 
 function as a teacher. 
 
 And it has been felt by thousands and by millions 
 ever since that He was right, and that phrases which 
 sounded like paradoxes were really simple statements 
 of higher law. Science has her paradoxes, as when 
 
246 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 she says that the earth goes round the sun, when all 
 of us every day see the sun goround the earth. Philo- 
 sophy has her paradoxes, as when she declares that in 
 the perception of the most ordinary of outward objects 
 man adds a subjective element of his own; that no 
 two people see the same moon. Like science and like 
 philosophy, religion too has her paradoxes, which in 
 this case as in the others are really the statement of 
 a higher truth lying- behind the obvious appearance. 
 In each of the sentences which we have quoted 
 from the Sermon on the Mount it is not difficult to 
 see the exact word on the interpretation of which 
 depends the difference of opinion. The worldly man 
 sees in the phrase they shall inherit the earth a state- 
 ment that the success of the meek shall be outward 
 and obvious; that they shall have estates and flocks 
 and herds and great houses. If the phrase meant this 
 it would no doubt be untrue. But to inherit the earth 
 is to enjoy it, to possess that healthful and peaceful 
 mind which finds beauty and delight in the manifesta- 
 tions of God in the world, both the natural world and 
 the human. A cottager who lives on the borders of a 
 great park may have far more enjoyment of that park 
 than its owner. A contented soul may have more 
 pleasure in owning a quarter of an acre than an am- 
 bitious soul in owning a square mile. A man’s life, 
 after all, consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 he possesseth. If, then, we interpret the phrase about 
 inheriting the earth as meaning that the forgiving and 
 gentle shall have the best enjoyment of the earth,—that 
 it will be more to them than to others,—we shall see 
 that it does not embody an absurdity, but a truth which 
 we all acknowledge in our moments of reflection, how- 
 
XVII Laws of the Fligher Life 247 
 
 ever much we are disposed to forget it in the bustle of 
 the world. 
 
 It is the same with the other phrase as to those 
 who suffer for righteousness sake. Of course persecu- 
 tion, imprisonment, and death are in themselves evil ; 
 and not one man in ten thousand can ever be so filled 
 with the passion for righteousness as to be cheerful and 
 happy when in their actual presence. Yet acquiring 
 a love of righteousness is a process so full of happiness, 
 so entirely blessed, that the man who does acquire it, 
 even at the cost of much suffering in the world, is a 
 man to be envied, to be counted blessed. In the 
 majority of cases the acquirement of a love of 
 righteousness strong enough to conquer death is 
 cheaply purchased at the cost of suffering and of death 
 itself. And on the basis of this majority of cases is 
 founded the general rule enunciated by Christ that 
 those who suffer for righteousness’ sake are blessed. 
 Of course there may be instances to the contrary,— 
 natures unable fully to rejoice in righteousness and 
 very keenly alive to suffering, who are broken by 
 persecution, and cannot properly be called blessed. If 
 there be a life beyond the grave, the balance for these 
 unfortunates will be there redressed: as to this we 
 shall have more to say in a future chapter. We may, 
 however, if we please, regard such cases as excep- 
 tions, which weaken but do not destroy the general 
 rule. In this case, too, the apophthegm of Christ is the 
 statement of an unobvious but not the less real law of 
 inner experience. 
 
 Perhaps the strongest statement of this class which 
 is recorded by the evangelists is the sublime paradox of 
 Mark viii. 35, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose 
 
248 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 it; but whosoever shall lose his lfe for my sake and 
 the gospel’s, the same shall save it.” These words 
 come to us robbed of their virile force by the clothing 
 of traditional interpretation. We are used to think of 
 them as furnishing a justification to the martyr who 
 lays down his life to testify the power of his faith ; 
 and the life gained we think of as bestowed in some 
 future world where the will of Christ is the highest 
 law. But if we put such future life for a moment out 
 of the question, the statement rather gains force than 
 loses it. The man who grasps his seeming advantage, 
 holds only the shadow of happiness; real happiness is 
 reached by the path of self-renunciation. He who 
 gives up worldly prospects for love of mankind and the 
 thirst for virtue will experience a deepening and 
 strengthening of his nature which will make his life 
 a life indeed. A great poet has really repeated the 
 Christian paradox in the sublime lines: “ Und so Jang 
 du das nicht hast, Dieses; Stirb und werde! bist du 
 nur ein triiber Gast Auf der dunklen Erde.” The 
 insight of the poet led him to see the reality of the 
 higher law shining through the deceptive mirage of 
 worldly experience. 
 
 But in most cases intellectual insight is not far- 
 seeing enough to penetrate the shews of things; sense 
 and intellect only make one sceptical and discontented ; 
 it is faith which transcends the obvious and sees the 
 invisible. This fact is stated by Christ himself in 
 another passage, where he says that God has hidden 
 these things from the wise and prudent and revealed 
 them to babes. This is a paradox in the sphere of 
 knowledge parallel to the ethical paradoxes which we 
 have already cited. Cold thought, however keen, will 
 
XVIII Laws of the [Higher Life 249 
 
 not penetrate the thick mists which hang over us ; the 
 more we look at these mists the thicker and more 
 real they seem to become; it is faith which in a 
 moment raises us as on eagle’s wings above them, so 
 that we can see clear sunlight. And this faith con- 
 sists in strong and right feeling, which may well go 
 with undeveloped mind or slow intelligence. The 
 great man of science is one who has a genius for taking 
 pains; but faith is the result of insight and of sudden 
 inspiration. 
 
 The writings of St. Paul are almost as strongly 
 marked by the presence of these sublime paradoxes as 
 the Gospel narratives themselves. There is, indeed, a 
 difference of tone, since Christ speaks always the 
 language of the Master; St. Paul speaks as one whose 
 power is derived. But there is an intense feeling for 
 the higher realities in such a phrase as this: “I take 
 pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, 1n 
 persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when 
 I am weak, then am I strong.”* Impassioned as are 
 the words, they do not express a mere wish or aspira- 
 tion, but an experience—an experience of everyday 
 life penetrated and glorified by emotions of love and 
 religion. We cannot doubt that St. Paul means 
 exactly what he says, that reproaches and persecutions 
 brought him not pain but pleasure, being accompanied 
 by and lost in an intense love of Christ, and a joy at 
 being counted worthy to suffer in his service. Surely 
 the analogy of earthly love, which has in a thousand 
 cases made men rejoice in bearing pain in order to 
 benefit those whom they love, may suffice to render 
 this paradox anything but extravagant. Yet if a man 
 
 1 9d Corinthians, xii. 10. 
 
250 faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 can by faith reach such a frame of mind that he glories 
 in persecution, then all the sober facts of rejoicing and 
 suffering, whereof life is made up, must be of very 
 flimsy texture. We fancy them hard as diamonds 
 when they are perhaps as slight as soap-bubbles. 
 
 And even long before the days of Christianity we 
 may find in the Jewish Scriptures and the writings of 
 Greek philosophers paradoxes of the same kind, even 
 if of less sublime insight. Some of the sayings of 
 Socrates, for instance, show a wonderful perception of 
 the deeper realities of things as contrasted with their 
 outward show. In Plato’s Apology, a work the inspira- 
 tion of which may almost compare with that of St. 
 Paul's Epistles, we find sentences full of that profound 
 insight which belongs to faith only. To fear death, 
 says the Sage, is to pretend to know what one does not 
 know. SBut to act unjustly is to do what one knows 
 to be evil. “TI shall never, then, fear or shun things 
 which may, for aught I know, be good, rather than evils 
 which I know to be evils.” A little farther on 
 Socrates expresses his conviction that it is not possible 
 for a better man to be injured by a worse. These are 
 indeed Greek views rather than Jewish, and belong 
 rather to the philosopher than the prophet, yet they 
 are views to which a man could only rise through 
 an intense religious emotion; and indeed the whole 
 Apology is thrilled from end to end by the profoundest 
 religious conviction. The claim of Socrates, that he 
 believes far more, and not less, than his accusers, 18 
 fully justified. 
 
 But there is surely no need that we should take all 
 our instances of the higher and the lower truth from 
 the Bible, or even the Apology of Socrates. Many of 
 
 , 
 ¢ 
 
XVIII Laws of the Higher Life 251 
 
 the sayings which have been current coin with moralists 
 and satirists of all ages will answer the purpose quite 
 well. Let us begin with the lower view, and then pass 
 to the higher. Every man has in him a taste and a 
 love for various enjoyments. He feels desires which 
 can be stopped only by supplying them with certain ap- 
 propriate objects. And in the supplying comes pleas- 
 ure. He is thirsty; he drinks, and in the drinking 
 comes delight. He loves, and finds an exquisite satis- 
 faction in the presence of the object of his affection. 
 He desires a house, a child, an office; and, in general, 
 wealth and good fame, and the acquisition of these is a 
 pleasure. Happiness being the sum of pleasures, that 
 life must be called happy which presents to us a large 
 variety of appropriate satisfactions and few unsatisfied 
 yearnings. How simple and how obvious! A child 
 can understand the theory ; and the great mass of wise 
 and energetic men in the world practically endorse it, 
 and spend their lives in trying to exemplify the law. 
 Then comes the man of deeper insight with his 
 paradox, and tells us that happiness can never be 
 found by seeking for it; that the true and higher road 
 to happiness lies through neglect of self; that to reach 
 true wellbeing we must turn our backs on enjoyment, 
 not refusing it indeed when it naturally comes to us, 
 but turning neither to the right hand nor to the left 
 hand to seek it. He who wishes to be really happy, 
 says our moralist, must reckon the happiness of others 
 and his own duty as his first concern, and his own en- 
 joyments quite in the second place. And lest we 
 should ridicule him as a visionary fanatic, he brings 
 with him the testimony of thousands and tens of 
 thousands who declare that they have by experiment 
 
205 Faith and Conduct OHAP. 
 
 discovered the truth of this thesis. They affirm that 
 they have tried self-seeking and self-renunciation, and 
 found that the latter leads to greater happiness. And 
 witnesses on the other side will scarcely be found, 
 whether in life or in literature. Here again, then, we 
 seem to have a paradox which can be shown to be a 
 statement of higher law. 
 
 It thus appears that in all knowledge of matters 
 outside the testimony of ordinary sense there is a 
 higher and a lower knowledge, real laws and appa- 
 rent laws. What we have to do in the matter of con- 
 duct, and the knowledge based on conduct, is to discern 
 what is real and what apparent, to ascertain not merely 
 what are the noblest ideas as to God and man, but 
 what are the true ones. 
 
 But in order that we may not offend by overstating 
 our case, and by seeming to assume that the lower 
 view has never any justification, we will take up 
 another instance in which it is certainly able in some 
 degree to hold its own, and in which to rise above it 
 does require some exercise of faith. This is well illus- 
 trated by that wonderfully powerful chapter of Ezekiel 
 (the eighteenth) which sets forth in language of the 
 oreatest force the contrasted powers of inheritance and 
 of personal conduct. It begins with citing as current 
 in Israel that proverb of bitter wisdom, “The fathers 
 have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set 
 on edge.” But we now know abundantly that this is no 
 mere saw of popular experience, but the exact state- 
 ment of a scientific law. As a matter of fact, children 
 do suffer alike in physical constitution and in moral 
 tendency by the evil deeds of their parents. The 
 effects of evil deeds done by our ancestors constitute a 
 
 — 
 
XVIII Laws of the Fligher Life 253 
 
 fixed dead weight which has to be rolled slowly before 
 us up the hill of virtue. This is perfectly true, a scientific 
 fact, and yet not the whole truth. People who ima- 
 gined it to be the whole truth would take a profoundly 
 melancholy view of life. Nor does the truth become 
 complete when we add to the melancholy facts of 
 inheritance the power which every man possesses of 
 constantly following the better tendency until he 
 slowly undoes the evil done him by those who gave 
 him being. For our power of thus improving ourselves 
 is but very small, and very slowly can we, grain by 
 grain, move away the weight that presses us in the 
 dust. He who reforms himself, the man of the world 
 will say, is most meritorious; his efforts constantly 
 diminish the evil stain, but for all that he must bear 
 the punishment for the sin for which he is not respon- 
 sible. But if we read on in the Jewish prophet there 
 comes rushing upon us a wind from quite another 
 sphere. “As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not 
 have any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, 
 all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also 
 the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it 
 shall die. But if a man be just, and do that which is 
 lawful and right . . . he is just, he shall surely live, 
 saith the Lord God. . . . The son shall not bear the 
 iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the 
 iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous 
 shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked 
 shall be upon him.” 
 
 It is likely that many of us have heard these words, 
 so often read in English churches, with a certain an- 
 tagonism, as a preaching of smooth things which does 
 not correspond to the actual facts of life. And many 
 
254 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 more of us, taking the phrases in a certain non-natural 
 sense, in which they were certainly never meant to be 
 taken, limit their validity to the world beyond the 
 erave, and fancy that some superhuman power will 
 intervene at death to suddenly obliterate all the trac- 
 ings of experience, and undo all the fruits of natural 
 and human law. And yet, surely, in the words as 
 they stand, when applied to mere human conduct and 
 human happiness, there is a meaning deep enough and 
 real enough, though not on the surface. Indeed, the 
 prophet who uttered them was speaking things truer 
 than he knew; like so many inspired men, he was 
 uttering words which embodied the whole of a truth 
 which he saw only on one side. Ezekiel was doubt- 
 less thinking partly, perhaps principally, of worldly 
 happiness and success as the result of a man’s own 
 personal change of heart and purpose. The words so 
 interpreted are not more than half true. But if they 
 be read in a broader spirit, then, indeed, they are true 
 to human nature. Not all the dire effects of sins of a 
 man’s ancestors and of his own misdoings can prevent 
 his soul from being saved alive when it has learned to 
 hate what is evil and to love what is good. Nor can 
 any inherited advantages or acquired reputation prevent 
 the death of the soul in one who has learned to love 
 what is evil. 
 
 Our next chapter will return to this theme; but 
 meantime we must observe that those men of the 
 world who pride themselves on their acuteness, and 
 do not see below the surface, might live for years 
 beside one who had passed from death to life or from 
 life to death and never notice the change. It is pos- 
 sible not to look at men and women, but only at their 
 
XVIIT Laws of the Higher Life 255 
 
 clothes ; and it is possible never to look at a man’s 
 inner self, but only at his circumstances and _ habits. 
 And as most men are creatures of outward law, there 
 will be many who will always go on saying, “The 
 fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s 
 teeth are set on edge,” and imagining that they are 
 uttering the quintessence of human wisdom. 
 
 Looked at from within, the Church as opposed to 
 the World may be regarded as the union among them- 
 selves of those men who choose to stand by the higher 
 way of regarding mundane affairs, and to reject the 
 lower way. ‘This is the bond which unites really 
 religious souls; this is the test which shows, when 
 applied to any character, whether it is of gold or 
 of silver or of worthless alloy. In the churches 
 which are outwardly organised there is, of course, a 
 large proportion of worldly members, and a large 
 share of the worldly spirit. And on the other hand, 
 those who refuse to join themselves to any church are 
 not unfrequently led to that resolve by an idealism of 
 character which will allow no merit in any organisa- 
 tion of which the general tone is low or frivolous. 
 But if we may regard the true Church as the body of 
 faithful men, however organised, or holding whatever 
 opinions, then the Church will consist of those who 
 accept and follow higher law. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 THE TESTS OF FAITH 
 
 Ir must be allowed that faith often misleads us. This 
 is the difference between faith and experience; ex- 
 perience, so far as it goes, is always right ; faith may 
 be true or false, may extend our vision or may lead us 
 into error. Nor have we at all implied that faith 1s 
 always justified ; but only that, whether justified or not, 
 faith must be in us, or we cannot exist as citizens of 
 the world. 
 
 But this brings us to the all-important question as 
 to the means of distinguishing between right and wrong 
 faith. If we first speak of the faith of every day, the 
 belief in persons about us, it ought not to be impos- 
 sible to discover a criterion. 
 
 The views which a man takes of his fellows, either 
 as individuals or in the mass, depend on his assump- 
 tion of a standpoint. And such assumption is, as we 
 have shown, an act of the will. Everything, therefore, 
 depends upon how the will acts. If it acts m con- 
 formity with a man’s surroundings, according to the 
 truth of things, then his life will flourish and prosper. 
 If it acts unwisely, takes falsehood for truth and truth 
 for falsehood, then he will perish and decay. Which of 
 
CHAP. XIX The Tests of Faith 257 
 
 these lines a man’s life will follow must in the main 
 depend on his knowledge of character, a quality by no 
 means merely intellectual, but in good part practical— 
 the rudder by which we have to steer our course in 
 life past the rocks and shoals which beset us on every 
 side. The test of right or wrong belief in man is fur- 
 nished by the course of life in human society—that 
 mixed course of life which is made up partly of thought 
 and perception, partly of emotion and will, which 
 develops like a tree always in certain definite direc- 
 tions, determined by innate tendency and by actual 
 surroundings. 
 
 Religious faith is clearly analogous to faith in our 
 fellow-men, like it in essential nature, and not unlike 
 it in its tests. Religious faith also may be founded 
 on a rock or built on the sand. Men may believe 
 rightly or wrongly; some may be converted from false 
 belief to true, and some may fall away from true belief 
 to false. 
 
 The spiritual life, like that of every day, is made up 
 partly of perception which leads to knowledge, and 
 partly of perception interpreted through emotion which 
 leads to faith, And here also, if knowledge be clear, 
 it has the first claim upon us. Belief has no right to 
 stand in the place of experience, but only to fill up its 
 deficiencies. 
 
 To give up a belief which was dear to one’s heart 
 because the growth of knowledge makes it untenable, 
 must always be a painful process. We all become 
 used to it in the course of our lives, but 1t can never 
 cease to pain. Any sacrifice of the emotions to the 
 intellect must be grievous; it is like depriving a child 
 in order to bestow on a stranger. It may rack our 
 
 s 
 
258 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 very hearts; for there are beliefs which become part of 
 ourselves, to lose which is like losing a near friend, or 
 one of our limbs. But there is no doubt as to what 
 is right in such a case. No honourable man would 
 venture to maintain that we ought to cherish a faith 
 when it can be shown to be contrary to knowledge. 
 The friend must be given up if to retain him is not 
 consistent with honour; the limb must be cut off if it 
 is a mere harbour of disease. But the knowledge that 
 a thing is right does not make it pleasant; and the 
 necessity of abandoning faith which we once cherished 
 is among the saddest and deepest shadows which cross 
 the path of life. 
 
 And the religious belief which is not contrary but 
 only superior to knowledge, has further tests to under- 
 go,—the great test of the spiritual life, the course of 
 relations between the individual will and the great 
 moral world of which it forms a part. Beliefs which 
 fade away and disappear as the spiritual life grows 
 stronger and more robust are by this test condemned 
 and set aside. Beliefs which tend to hinder or to 
 stunt that life will be by its growing energy and 
 widening experience cut down and doomed to perish. 
 Belief which arises from experience informed by emo- 
 tion is tested by further experience informed by higher 
 and purer emotion. Zhe necessities of conduct are the 
 ultemate justification of religious belief. 
 
 We must, however, at this point strongly guard our- 
 selves against a possible misunderstanding. It is not 
 impossible that a hasty reader may, when we speak of 
 necessities of conduct as justification of religious belief, 
 carry away the idea that according to that doctrine a 
 man is at liberty to believe what he finds it expedient 
 
XIX The Tests of Faith 259 
 
 to believe ; that pleasant and comfortable doctrine must 
 be true. Not only do we entirely repudiate this 
 doctrine, but we utterly abhor it, and regard it as 
 immoral and degrading. 
 
 In the first place, belief is not a matter of arbitrary 
 choice. Our beliefs come into us from without, and 
 we cannot adopt them as we might adopt a fashion in 
 dress. Belief, as we have shown, arises from the 
 interpretation of fact through emotion; which of these 
 elements is arbitrary? Certainly not the fact, which 
 is presented to us by a power over which we have no 
 control: certainly not the emotion, which comes to us 
 often when we would very gladly be without it. We 
 cannot help becoming hot if we approach a fire; nor 
 can we, except in a small degree, modify the emotions 
 which rise in us at the various crises of our life, and 
 which, indeed, have their roots in the history of our 
 ancestors of centuries ago. 
 
 So we could never by accepting a wrong belief 
 make it right. Of course if our beliefs were purely 
 subjective, and there were nothing in the universe to 
 which they were bound to conform, then their truth or 
 falsehood might be a matter of small moment. But if 
 we hold that there are realities of religion, then the 
 first duty of belief is to take hold on those realities. 
 Of course a man may say that such and such a belief 
 is necessary to his moral life; but we should only 
 allow that this tended to establish the truth of that 
 belief if we were convinced that it was really so neces- 
 sary. A man’s merely saying so, unless he can prove 
 it, is nothing to the point; we can never take a fact on 
 a mere assertion. This may be illustrated by the 
 analogy of the digestion. If any one choose to main- 
 
260 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 tain that some unwholesome dish is necessary to his 
 physical growth and health, does that assertion make 
 the dish wholesome? Instead of food becoming 
 wholesome or the opposite, in accordance with the 
 wishes of the eater, it is the business of the eater to 
 make, if possible, his wishes, or at all events his habits 
 in the matter of foods, conform to their actual nature 
 and their effects on the human body. If he does this 
 he will grow and thrive, but if his opinions as to what 
 is Wholesome drift far away from the realities of the 
 case he will become diseased and perish. In the same 
 way right beliefs as regards religious matters arise out 
 of right appreciation of the relations which exist 
 between God and man and the world; and he who 
 attains to them will be in a state of moral and spiritual 
 health, while he who fails of them will be in a state of 
 disease. 
 
 It will be expected that we should not only state 
 what are the practical tests of the emotions which be- 
 get faith, but also give some account of their source 
 and origin. To do this fully would involve the 
 repetition of most of what has above been said in 
 regard to conduct. It is the same power which in 
 conduct directs us to choose the better and avoid the 
 worse, which in matters of belief stirs in us the right 
 emotion whereby we may interpret the colourless fact. 
 The impulses to right-doing come from God.. From 
 God also come the right emotions which enable us to 
 see through the outward aspects of things into their 
 higher and spiritual meanings. And as the impulses 
 to evil conduct come from our inherited tendencies and 
 our evil passions, so do the failings in faith of which 
 we are conscious, which make us unable to read the 
 
XIX The Tests of faith 261 
 
 realities hidden under the surface of experience, come 
 from our coldness of heart, our cynicism, our dislike to 
 being carried above the level of daily life; above all, 
 from that selfishness which shows itself in a thousand 
 forms, and is at the bottom of most of the sins and 
 the ills of life. 
 
 In matters of conduct the divine energy displays 
 itself by impelling the will—-acts as a motive power in 
 the human soul and on human life. In matters of 
 knowledge it displays itself as an inspiring power 
 which at once warms the heart and enlightens the 
 eyes, which enlightens the eyes through warming the 
 heart, and kindling emotions which enable us to 
 know what, apart from emotion, we could never have 
 learned. 
 
 Thus once more the analogy which we have so often 
 traced holds good—the analogy between our relations 
 to people in the world around us and to the moral 
 Ruler of the world. As sympathy is necessary to the 
 right understanding of the characters of friends and 
 relatives, so unless love and reverence for God be in 
 the soul, it will not be fit to receive the pure emotions 
 which are necessary to faith. And thus it will be 
 unable to gain the knowledge which comes from belief, 
 and will suffer even in intellect from the coldness of 
 its affections and the obtuseness of its susceptibility to 
 divine influence. 
 
 If this account of faith be true, we must entirely 
 reform the idea of it which is generally current. For 
 us faith will be not merely right opinion on certain 
 supernatural subjects: it will be matter of feeling and 
 action rather than of thought. But the difference be- 
 tween right and wrong belief will by no means dis- 
 
262 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 appear, but rather will become far deeper and more 
 emphatic. Right faith in our fellow-men is due and 
 sympathetic appreciation of their nature and _ their 
 relations to one another and to us. Right faith in 
 religion is susceptibility to the divine influences which 
 play upon human life, and loyalty of heart to follow 
 their leading. To be able to fully discern the nature 
 of those influences belongs to the intellectual side of 
 faith ; but faith may exist in a high degree without 
 having an intellectual side at all. <A loyal vassal is 
 the better for fully understanding the law which binds 
 him to his liege; but a loyal vassal, however unin- 
 structed, is far better than the wisest of unloyal re- 
 tainers. 
 
 The introduction of this new element of emotion 
 obliges us once more to consider the use of the will in 
 religion, which now appears in a new light. In speak- 
 ing of conduct we regarded it as the business of the 
 will to set itself on the side of the higher impulse, and 
 by that means to raise by degrees the tone and the 
 level of conduct. By this process the action which is 
 visible to the world approximates to the convictions as 
 to right and wrong which are nourished in the heart. 
 As perceptions of right and wrong belong to all 
 healthy natures at every stage of their lives, the will 
 receives constant admonitions as to what it ought to 
 do. It has but to be in the habit of following the 
 good impulse and despising the evil impulse. 
 
 But when the motive for action rises out of a belief — 
 that is, a conviction arising out of one of the higher 
 emotions—then will has a further function. For in 
 the case of all but rarely-constituted natures these 
 emotions come and go, and do not remain at a fixed 
 
xIx The Tests of Faith 263 
 
 level. So the convictions based on them are also apt 
 to vary in energy from time to time; now fixed and 
 strong as a mountain-chain, now vague and unreal as 
 the mountains of cloud on a May horizon. If the 
 springs of action were to vary in the same degree, so 
 that the convictions of faith only moved to action at a 
 time of strong religious emotion, then the life must 
 become halting and feeble and inconsistent. Action 
 would follow now the lines of faith and now those of 
 despair, and any sort of continuous progress towards a 
 better end would be impossible. 
 
 For this evil and danger remedies have been dis- 
 covered, Of some of these we shall be unable to 
 speak in the present volume. Perhaps in a future 
 work we may try to show how the incorporation of 
 convictions into dogmas, and their association with 
 religious observances and with religious art, tend to 
 make their power more present and more lasting in 
 the lives of men. These considerations belong to the 
 history of religion—to its dynamics as contrasted with 
 its statics. But there is also a personal remedy, con- 
 nected with the individual will, which it is necessary 
 here to mention. There is a personal strength of 
 character which enables man to act in the absence of 
 emotion as if that emotion were present. In this 
 respect man differs wonderfully from man, as the com- 
 mon experience of the human race will at once testify. 
 This strength of character seems to consist of more 
 than one element. It is not mere headstrong obstinacy, 
 which insists on going on in the way it has begun, 
 although perhaps a toughness of mental fibre and a 
 robustness of will are important ingredients in it. 
 But real force of character includes more than this 
 
264 fatwth and Conduct CHAP, XIX 
 
 bull-like persistency. It includes also imagination to 
 revive at will impressions not immediately present to 
 the mind, and self-control to throw into the back- 
 ground of the consciousness the impressions which are 
 at the moment in the foreground. It includes self- 
 respect, which maintains that past moods of feeling 
 have a claim to regard when only their memory re- 
 mains, and are not to be thought lightly of by an easy 
 cynicism. 
 
 When this strength of character is applied to 
 matters of religious belief, it is called consistency or 
 steadfastness. Possessing it, men become heroes and 
 martyrs ; without it they remain feeble and inconstant. 
 But it is probably possessed in a high degree by but 
 very few, which is one reason why hero-worship is so 
 prominent a feature in all religious sects. 
 
CHAPTER XxX 
 GRACE 
 
 THERE are, between the Power which makes for 
 righteousness and the individual, relations of a more 
 gentle and more genial character than that of com- 
 mand on the one side and obedience on the other. 
 The moral merit and demerit of man, the goodness 
 and the wisdom of God, require to be dwelt on; but 
 there are other aspects of spiritual matters which also 
 require consideration. The stern and hard truths 
 whereon we dwelt in previous chapters belong to 
 what, in the language of theologians, has been called 
 law as opposed to gospel. They belong to morality 
 rather than religion. 
 
 Let us turn from these moral principles to consider 
 the love and the grace of God whereby he does away 
 our offences, and the providence whereby he leads us 
 to happiness and good. 
 
 Such perceptions of God arise not from a mere 
 calm consideration of the facts of life, but only when 
 these facts are viewed through a particular kind of 
 medium, that of emotion. When we look into our 
 own souls through this medium we find there the 
 action of divine grace; when we look at our course in 
 
266 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 the world through this medium we find the working 
 of providence. Grace is discerned by us in action; 
 providence we recognise on reflecting on the facts 
 of life. 
 
 We have spoken of virtue as a moral level in- 
 herited from the nobler strivings of one’s ancestors, or 
 worked up to by long struggles of a will bent on 
 goodness. But if the heights of virtue were to be 
 attained only by those who had strength and energy 
 for the laborious climb by which they must be reached, 
 few, indeed, would be those who ever dwelt there. 
 And we have spoken of the good impulses of the 
 inner voice as of a power ever present indeed at the 
 heart, yet which can be admitted into it only through 
 the narrow channel of a will inclined to what is good, 
 and making way for their entrance. 
 
 But the Power without us which makes for righteous- 
 ness does not deal thus charily and coldly with human 
 souls. A will bent on evil can indeed always be an 
 effectual bar to its ennobling influences. But in the 
 case of the bulk of mankind the will is not conspicu- 
 ously evil, but frail, changeable, uncertain, loving good 
 and yet shrinking from it, disliking evil and yet dwell- 
 ing with it and embracing it. If such feeble wills 
 could be saved only by their own exertions they would 
 have little chance of being saved at all. The divine 
 justice will but destroy them; their only hope is in 
 divine grace. Their only chance is that the divine 
 force of the righteousness which is not our own may 
 come in a flood into their heart, overwhelming and 
 making light of the poor human will, and carrying 
 them on to goodness, not indeed against their will, but, 
 as it were, above and outside it God’s grace often 
 
XX Grace 267 
 
 flows in on a human life in a mighty stream, turning 
 it from evil and low things and bearing it upwards, 
 not by the slow and conscious steps of moral pro- | 
 egress, but as the advancing tide bears the seaweed 
 up the beach, or as a mighty wind carries away the 
 birds. 
 
 We do not mean to say that the divine grace 
 which suddenly floods and turns a man’s life is really 
 different in kind from the quiet and constant in- 
 fluence exerted upon the course of life of all moral 
 beings by the constant pressure of the divine ideas. 
 The difference is not one of kind, but rather one 
 of degree; but a difference in degree so marked 
 that it may almost be treated as one in kind. That 
 which we should single out as the exact dzffer- 
 entia between the gradual and the sudden action of 
 the good influence of God is its relation to the human 
 will. The gradual action enters through the gate of 
 the human will, the sudden action makes light of that 
 gate. If we recur to our previous comparison of man’s 
 will to the lock of a stream, we may compare the 
 sudden power of God’s grace to a great flood which 
 comes down and rushes not through the lock but 
 over it. 
 
 In the lives of almost all men who have been great 
 and good we find times of such flooding. Such men 
 have laboured after righteousness, and bent all the 
 forces of their will to its attainment, often with so 
 little success that they have been driven to the verge 
 of despair. The path of virtue has seemed like a way 
 up a hill of sand where the foot finds nothing certain 
 to rest on, and at every step one slides back again. 
 Thus they have reached the extreme of self-distrust, 
 
268 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 the bottom of the valley of humiliation, and felt as if 
 it were useless to attempt ever to struggle out of it. 
 Then a Power from without has sometimes, when 
 they least expected it, lifted them up and impelled 
 them forward, so that in a few minutes they have 
 attained a height which just before seemed entirely 
 out of their reach, and they have looked back on 
 their past struggles from above as if they were those 
 of some other person. After long and vainly trying 
 to enter the harbour in the teeth of an adverse 
 wind, they have suddenly been lifted into it by a 
 great wave. 
 
 This experience has belonged to many of various 
 ages and different religions; and in describing it they 
 have used varying language. ‘To some it has presented 
 itself as the forgiveness of sin. That is to say, there 
 has been a sudden weakening in the power of evil 
 tendencies, which are the result of evil deeds in the 
 past, or, which is the same thing, a great and sudden 
 increase in the opposite tendencies which make for 
 good, until they seem easily to bear down all force 
 which opposes them, almost without the help of the 
 will. The chain composed of a thousand acts of 
 negligence and selfishness, which has been gradually 
 formed and has held men down in the slough of un- 
 righteousness, is suddenly broken, and they have 
 strength to stand upright and to walk. ‘This aspect 
 of divine grace has especially struck those men of 
 fervid and energetic temperament, on whom temptation 
 takes strong hold, and who seldom reach virtue until 
 they have sounded the deeps of vice. 
 
 But there are other natures whose tendency is not 
 towards open transgressions of virtue, but rather to- 
 
Xx Grace 269 
 
 wards slothfulness and egotistic depression, who read 
 in the revelation of grace not so much the forgiveness 
 of the past as a new infusion of life and energy which 
 rouses to noble exertions for the sake of others, and 
 lifts above that brooding egotism which is a kind of 
 numbness of the inner life. It is easy to understand 
 that to those who love much, much is forgiven; but 
 those who can love but little are also visited by a 
 divine favour which raises to purity and loftiness of 
 character by teaching such virtues as are possible to 
 a character which cannot easily learn self-abandonment. 
 When people of this kind think and speak of salvation, 
 they mean less salvation from ill tendencies than from 
 dulness and sloth and want of energy, from a negative 
 rather than a positive self. 
 
 Thus man recognises himself as a being capable of 
 divine inspiration, in the same way in which a bar of 
 iron is hable to magnetic attraction, or as a metal rod 
 is capable of receiving and transmitting the lightning. 
 And from the same experiences he learns that God is 
 merciful and compassionate, not abandoning men to 
 the consequences of their evil deeds, but often aiding 
 them past all their hope and belief in putting away 
 those consequences. 
 
 These may be and are called experiences of the 
 spiritual life. But when we begin to look at them 
 closely, we shall find that they are not mere experi- 
 ences of fact, but arise from that contemplation of fact 
 through emotion which we call faith. They take place 
 at a definite point in men’s lives, and their results are 
 visible even to the world, yet they really belong to a 
 sphere altogether beyond sense, the realm not of know- 
 ledge but of emotion. These sudden invasions of the 
 
270 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 soul by divine light do not, as a rule, come without 
 warning nor to the indifferent; rather they come to 
 those who have hungered and thirsted after righteous- 
 ness, to those who are eager to receive them, who have 
 long watched and prayed and striven to remove the 
 obstructions of evil tendency and torpid will which 
 frustrate and keep out the divine influence. To the 
 mere dull eye of observation the gift of the grace of 
 God is an incomprehensible thing ; only those can in 
 any degree understand it who have felt in their own 
 souls such motions. | 
 
 If we consider the human society in the midst of 
 which we live, with a view to discovering something 
 resembling the gift of grace, we shall not fail to find 
 it. Not unlike it in action is human love. It isa 
 thrice-told tale how the inspiration of love will work 
 in the redemption of an evil character; how in a 
 thousand cases the entry of this feeling will have 
 power to do away with the temptations to vice; so 
 that a lascivious man may find it not hard to become 
 chaste, or a slothful man may learn to delight in 
 activity in the service of her he loves, or a selfish man 
 may cease to give a thought to his own pleasure, but 
 forget it in fulfilling the wishes of another. ‘The entry 
 of love, we know, works miracles, not indeed in viola- 
 tion of the laws of the world, but entirely superseding 
 them, and giving tendencies and impulses which seem 
 to be outside their limits. Nor is the love which thus 
 acts by any means in all cases of the sexual character. 
 The love of a father for a daughter, of a child for a 
 parent, may have the same working ; many a time the 
 mere fact of meeting with a friend who really cares for 
 his welfare has been, as we say, the salvation of some 
 
XX Grace 271 
 
 degraded outcast, and restored him to virtue and use- 
 fulness. 
 
 Those who have felt the grace of God restoring and 
 invigorating their tendencies to good, and lifting them 
 out of the slough of filth and sin, have said, interpret- 
 ing their experience in the light of their exalted and 
 purified feeling, that they have been redeemed by the 
 love of God. In the everyday course of conduct we 
 easily recognise the justice of God, but his love we can 
 discern only when our hearts are warm and our spirits 
 exulting in a rush of fresh life from some divine im- 
 pulse. It is a doctrine of faith. 
 
 This brief account of the nature of human virtue 
 and of divine grace is not without bearing on some of 
 the great doctrinal controversies which are familiar to 
 those who have studied the history of Christianity, yet 
 which do not, in fact, belong at all exclusively to 
 Christianity, but to any scheme of religion which can 
 be taught or accepted in the world. One of these 
 controversies is in regard to the respective shares in 
 man’s salvation played by the will of man and the 
 grace of God. The other, which, indeed, is the same 
 controversy in a slightly changed form, is in regard to 
 the respective value of faith and works. 
 
 The ordinary experience of conduct in our every- 
 day lives reveals the better life to us as a struggle, a 
 means of rising every day to something better. Though 
 will cannot be said to be the raising power, yet it is 
 through will that we rise. And hence, from the point 
 of view of morality, freewill is the essential attribute 
 of man regarded as an improvable being, 
 
 But looking at man from the point of view which 
 we have now reached, he appears to us not as active 
 
272 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 but as passive; not as a being who is constantly oc- 
 cupied in choosing the better and rejecting the worse, 
 but as a mere channel of divine inspiration. If we 
 compare in both aspects the man to a piece of iron, in 
 the first case he will seem like an axe which can hew 
 its way through stubborn opposition; in the second 
 case he will be regarded as a medium through which 
 electricity can work its miracles in the world. In the 
 light of divine grace, man seems no longer vigorous 
 and self-reliant, but as one that waits until a blessing 
 shall be poured on him from on high. His highest 
 privilege will seem to be to sit still, his greatest strength 
 to acknowledge his own weakness, and to lean upon an 
 arm mightier than his own. 
 
 Now it is not hard to discern what differences 
 varieties of experience in this matter will produce, 
 both in the characters and the opinions of different — 
 men. One class of men, through continual, active war 
 with evil, will become strong and self-reliant, energetic 
 in action and intolerant of mere contemplation. They 
 will regard life as a battlefield in which every one has 
 to prove his manhood, and in which the weakling goes 
 to the wall. They will have strong opinions as to the 
 power of any one to conquer the faults of his inherited 
 nature and the misfortunes of his surroundings. Their 
 morality will probably be of a somewhat hard, cold, 
 and unsympathetic character. The other class of men 
 —those whom divine grace has visited—will be of a 
 softer, but at the same time a more lofty and enthusi- 
 astic character. They will not only disbelieve in men’s 
 powers slowly to reform themselves, but they will also 
 nourish something akin to contempt for laborious and 
 slowly progressive virtue; it will seem to them cold, 
 
XX Grace 273 
 
 egotistic, and exclusive. Their eyes will be raised 
 above, and the roughnesses of the way along which the 
 mere moralist is laboriously plodding will for them 
 disappear. They will fly rather than walk, and some- 
 times, by a sad relapse, will prove that there are dangers 
 in flying which the slower and more prudent walkers 
 avoid. 
 
 The two camps in the field of speculation will be as 
 clearly marked off as the sorts of men in active life. 
 These camps indeed are well known, and have been 
 marked out at least as long as Christian philosophy has 
 existed, probably for longer still. The partisans of 
 slowly progressive morality will be strong believers 
 in human liberty; freewill must seem to them the 
 corner-stone of the edifice of philosophy. But those 
 who have experienced the divine grace and seen its 
 workings will have lived in another order of pheno- 
 mena. They see the mercy of God falling upon men 
 they know not whence nor why. Hence it appears to 
 them that there is with God a deliberate choice of 
 certain persons who shall be thus visited; persons set 
 apart by a divine decree to be vessels of mercy, and to 
 be saved almost without their own consent. To them 
 the doctrine of election, as set forth by Paul and inter- 
 preted by Augustine, will seem to correspond to the 
 truth. Men, they will say, are chosen by the deter- 
 minate counsel of God to be saved, or else destined, in 
 his inscrutable wisdom, to be abandoned to the evil 
 which rules in the world, and which will certainly 
 master their feeble struggles when the arm of divine 
 aid is withdrawn. It is, in fact, well known how the 
 two schools of Libertarians and Necessarians, of Ar- 
 minians and Calvinists, have divided the whole Chris- 
 
 Ab 
 
274 Fatth and Conduct OHAP. 
 
 tian Church from the earliest times; and they must go 
 on dividing it so long as men are different one from 
 the other in nature, and in the experiences which they 
 pass through in the course of conduct. 
 
 Closely related to this controversy is that in regard 
 to the respective value of faith and works in the pro- 
 cess of human salvation. This dispute had, as is well 
 known, grown into definite shape in the very earliest 
 days of Church history; since we find on the one side 
 St. Paul declaring that “a man is justified by faith 
 without the deeds of the law,’ while on the other side 
 St. James declares that “by works a man is justified, 
 and not by faith only.” 
 
 It is likely that if Paul and James spoke together 
 on the subject they would have considered their differ- 
 ences irreconcilable. Those who see and feel intensely 
 a truth belonging to one aspect of human life are 
 very seldom capable of appreciating the truth which 
 belongs to the opposite aspect. And in all the history 
 of the Church there have been teachers who held with 
 Paul and disliked the doctrine of James, such as Luther, 
 who even doubted the genuineness of the epistle which 
 contains the doctrine; while on the other hand other 
 teachers have openly or secretly regarded the doctrine 
 of Paul as likely to lead to Antinomianism and all sorts 
 of practical vice. 
 
 Yet the wiser and more tolerant Christian casuistry 
 has not regarded the difference between the two apostles 
 as final or fatal. And in fact it is easy to see that 
 each is right in what he asserts, and only wrong in 
 what he may by implication deny. The righteousness 
 which is salvation consists in action, and no faith 
 which did not raise the character of the life would be 
 
XX —~ Grace 275 
 
 of any avail. But, on the other hand, the character of 
 the life cannot be really raised without faith, To a 
 man’s growth in righteousness two things are absolutely 
 essential. The first requisite is that his will should 
 range itself on the side of the Power that makes for 
 righteousness. But this by itself will lead but to a 
 bare and perfunctory doing of duty. It is, in the 
 second place, requisite that his heart should be touched 
 and purified, so that he may through emotion feel a 
 sympathy with that Power, and through emotion may 
 learn the law of the higher life, and learn to love that 
 law. Faith of this kind leads to righteousness as 
 surely and naturally as human love leads to a wish to 
 eratify the person beloved. But as it is fair to judge 
 of a man’s love for a woman by the degree to which 
 he will sacrifice himself for her, so it is Just to judge 
 of faith by the works to which it prompts. A faith 
 which is a mere sentiment, and which does not lead to 
 righteousness, is, as St. James says, dead; but yet faith 
 in the Pauline sense of the term—a faith which is ani- 
 mated by love—does immediately lead to righteousness, 
 and justifies the possessor in the true sense of the 
 word, not proving that he is good, but making him 
 eood. 
 
 So long of course as by the term faith is under- 
 stood the acceptance of certain forms of words, the 
 doctrine of justification by faith might lead to any 
 enormity of practice. And so long as by the term is 
 understood a mere sentiment without any reference to 
 action, the doctrine remains immoral. But when faith 
 is taken, as it was taken by St. Paul, to signify an 
 enthusiasm, a stirring of emotion and will, then the 
 doctrine becomes true and noble. 
 
276 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 There is another antithesis which frequently recurs 
 in religious writings and discourse. Men speak not 
 only of the contrast between man’s will and God’s 
 erace, but also of the contrast between nature and 
 erace. By this talk it is not implied that grace is 
 something contrary to nature, but that it is something 
 outside and above nature, as nature is commonly under- 
 stood. Nature works on one steady level, interruptions 
 and cataclysms are foreign to her; but the action of 
 erace is essentially something unaccountable and mi- 
 raculous. It may proceed by law, but such law is very 
 high, and scarcely ascertainable by man, least of all to 
 be ascertained by those trained in the study of the 
 physical world. It belongs to a sphere beyond the 
 comprehension of what St. Paul calls the natural 
 man. 
 
 The contrast between nature and grace cannot be 
 better illustrated than by reference to the passage 
 already cited (chapter xvii.) from the eighteenth chapter 
 of the Book of Ezekiel. The strict inheritance of the 
 level of morality, the punishment of children for the 
 ill deeds of their parents, the continuity of moral pro- 
 gress,—these are the essential features of the natural 
 history of ethics; and those who regard ethics as a 
 section of natural history will think that, in explaining 
 the gradual processes whereby manners and morals 
 change from generation to generation under the stress 
 of outward circumstance, they have exhausted the 
 subject. And yet such explanations must needs leave 
 much unexplained ; they do not penetrate to the kernel 
 of the matter; their probes search man from without, 
 but do not reach the secret of his existence. 
 
 The proof of the interpenetration of the moral 
 
XX Grace Dey 
 
 history of mankind by the searching force of divine 
 erace is not to be found by intellectual investigation, 
 but is revealed in action. It is one of those problems 
 to which may be rightly applied the old maxim, Sol- 
 vitur ambulando. 
 
CHAPTER XxXI 
 PRAYER AND TRUST 
 
 WHEN the grace of God has visited a man’s heart it 
 excites within him the strongest stirrings of emotion. 
 He longs once more to experience an aid which he 
 feels to be the noblest and best thing which has ever 
 come within his observation. Thus he is led to prayer, 
 to entreaty that he may not again be abandoned to the 
 tyranny of his worse self. And he is filled with a deep 
 trust in the Power which makes for righteousness—a 
 trust which makes him long to rid himself as far as 
 he can of the burden of struggling against evil, and 
 to follow the divine voice with docile steps. Prayer 
 and trust are the twin children of the revelation of 
 divine grace. 
 
 It is true enough that if we turn to the teaching 
 of history we shall find that the custom of prayer 
 among our rude forefathers had an origin in no such 
 lofty emotions ; rather in the imperious needs of every- 
 day sensuous existence. The deceased ancestor, to 
 whom originally prayers were addressed, was implored 
 by his descendants to aid them in warfare and in the 
 chase, as he had done while yet alive, but with the 
 added power arising from his ghostly condition. It 
 
CHAP. XXI Prayer and Trust DAG 
 
 was considered natural and reasonable that he should 
 protect his children from danger, that he should 
 feed those who brought to him the constant offerings 
 to the dead, which were so essential a part of primitive 
 cultus, and that he should save the fields wherein his 
 own grave and abiding-place was erected from passing 
 into the hands of an alien race, who would no longer 
 bring him offerings or render him honour. 
 
 And all through the times of developed paganism 
 and growing Christianity religious people have been 
 accustomed rather to ask of their deities and heroes, 
 of their saints and intercessors, or of their Heavenly 
 Father himself, such gifts as they might ask of parent, 
 or friend, or patron. Men have prayed for wealth, for 
 health, for happiness, or those things which they ex- 
 pected to lead to happiness. Or they have asked that 
 these things might be granted to others whom they 
 loved. And surely no man who had either wisdom or 
 modesty would ever dare to condemn such prayers, or 
 to say that they could have no effect. Amid the pure 
 and perfect spirituality of the Lord’s Prayer itself, one 
 such petition, that for daily bread, is inserted, lest that 
 prayer should seem to be fit rather for angels than for 
 men. Yet if we consider the essential nature of prayer 
 we shall understand how it is that in that model of all 
 prayers the request for daily bread stands isolated 
 among a number of petitions which ask not for any 
 outward good for ourselves, but for the revelation of 
 God’s glory in the world, and the coming of his 
 kingdom. 
 
 There is already recognised by religious minds, at 
 least in this country, a sort of gradation in the right- 
 ness of prayers to God. There is a strong and a grow- 
 
280 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 ing conviction among men of the wiser sort that it is 
 wrong to ask God to interfere in that material course 
 and order of nature which we have reason for beliey- 
 ing to proceed by fixed and changeless courses. To 
 bee that the weather may change, or that the sea may 
 become calm, would seem to educated people like pray- 
 ing that a stone should float, or that the sun should 
 delay his setting—would be at once recognised as a 
 presumptuous and unreasonable thing. But where the 
 hearts and intentions of men are concerned, the reason- 
 ableness of prayer stands on another footing. If we 
 believe in a power working for righteousness at all, we 
 must needs believe that that power can turn the heart 
 of one about to commit a crime, and save him from its 
 commission, or in fact influence in any direction the 
 conduct of human beings. Where human motives and 
 human actions are involved prayer is not on the face 
 of it unreasonable. But of course even then merely 
 to express our private wishes and hopes in prayer is a 
 somewhat crude proceeding, since we cannot have the 
 least idea whether the granting of such petitions would: 
 tend to the good of the world at large, or even to our 
 own good in the final issue. 
 
 But there is one province wherein prayer is not 
 merely not unreasonable, but wherein it is the natural 
 and the only mode of action. In beseeching the power 
 of righteousness to guide us into righteousness, to show 
 us what we ought to do and help us to do it, we 
 take the proper means to secure the object we wish, so 
 far as human power or wisdom can secure it. There 
 is, as we have shown, in the operation of God’s grace 
 an unexpected and unaccountable element; yet there 
 can be no doubt that its entry into the soul of man is 
 
XXI Prayer and Trust 281 
 eee 
 made easier by prayer, since he who prays for grace 
 will be looking out to welcome it, will accept it as a 
 thirsty plant accepts the rain. Those who hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness shall be filled. Other eood 
 things in the world we can procure for ourselves by 
 forethought and energy; but for this we can only ask 
 and wait. And surely the more impassioned our ask- 
 ing, the more likely is it that we shall have an answer. 
 Otherwise our case were ill indeed, and the workings 
 of divine grace utterly unlike the course of the world. 
 Of course in this matter testimony must have great 
 weight with us, and surely the testimony of those who 
 have been given to prayer is that prayers for aid in the 
 pursuit of righteousness do not fall idle. 
 
 The case is the same with our altruistic petitions. 
 When we pray for the mere external good or prosperity 
 of our friends, it cannot be certain that such a concen- 
 tration of heart and will has no tendency to produce 
 the end we desire, since no one has any knowledge of 
 the limits of the action of mind on mind, or of thought 
 and wish in forming purpose and character. But of 
 course petitions of this kind are of an unmoral, not 
 immoral, character. They are natural and childish 
 utterances of feeling without much relation to conduct. 
 On the other hand, prayers for the moral and spiritual 
 development of others must surely have effect, if it 
 be the same divine power which works for righteous- 
 ness in all hearts. In such cases we are asking not 
 anything for ourselves, nor anything for the baser 
 selves of others, but only that the will of God may 
 work in the world, and divine order shape more and 
 more the moral chaos. 
 
 Of course to speak of prayer as consisting of de- 
 
282 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 finite petitions is to take a very slight and partial 
 view of it. Prayer includes much more, is indeed the 
 channel of communion between man and the Power 
 which makes righteousness and highest happiness pos- 
 sible to him. But to enter at greater length into this 
 subject does not belong to the scope of the present 
 work, 
 
 The conviction of moral responsibility, the feeling 
 that our actions have lasting and inevitable effects on 
 our own moral nature and on the world around us, 
 stimulates us to activity, and lays a heavy burden on 
 heart and conscience. It makes life hard for us to 
 know that the moral quality of no deed is indifferent, 
 but even trivial actions tend at every moment to raise 
 or to lower us in the scale of existence. Such a burden 
 is too heavy for human nature to bear, and it would 
 break the strongest of us were there no escape. But 
 there is a possibility of escape. If we can rise into 
 feeling a thorough trust in the divine voice and the 
 divine power which works in us for righteousness, we 
 may rid ourselves of the excessive burden of responsi- 
 bility by a complete trust in that power. 
 
 Such trust is to a great degree the result of ex- 
 perience—experience alike of our own unwisdom and 
 weakness, and of the wisdom and strength of God. 
 
 So complicated is the web of human affairs that it 
 is quite impossible for any of us to see our way far 
 ahead. There are many men who spend a large part 
 of their lives in considering what they shall do under 
 certain circumstances likely to arise. The time so 
 spent is usually lost, for circumstances never turn out 
 as we expect. One might as well try to foretell the 
 weather for a month on as try to prognosticate the 
 
XXI Prayer and Trust 283 
 
 particular problems of conduct which will come before 
 us for solution at a future time. A man who, with 
 quiet and impartial judgment, will compare at any 
 time the course of his life as it has really proceeded 
 with the course he had expected his life to take, will 
 usually come to the conviction that plans for the 
 future are really of very little use. We are not of 
 course speaking of such plans as involve mere worldly 
 considerations—schemes, for example, for the extension 
 of a business or the education of a child. Even such 
 plans are very commonly wrecked on some unforeseen 
 obstacle, yet it is natural to prudent men to form them 
 with deliberation and pursue them with energy. But 
 in matters of another kind, where the main element 
 involved is right or wrong conduct, it is usually of 
 little use to lay plans beforehand. Indeed, those who 
 in such matters scheme and arrange succeed only 
 in blinding and misleading themselves. Instead of 
 occupying themselves with considering what is the 
 right thing to do under the circumstances as they arise, 
 they try to arrange circumstances so as to fit their 
 intended line of action, and so fall away from that 
 simplicity and sincerity which are the noblest traits 
 of practical life. In ordinary life no man is more 
 distrusted than the schemer; and in nine cases out of 
 ten, at the least, his scheming does not answer, nay, 
 often tends to bring about the very result which he 
 feared. 
 
 Thus mere worldly wisdom, enlightened by every- 
 day experience, warns us not to try to look far ahead 
 in the conduct of our lives, but to content ourselves 
 with settling the practical issues one by one as they 
 come before us ready for solution. But if we add to 
 
284 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 the teachings of worldly wisdom an element of which 
 the world is incognisant, the case will be far stronger. 
 If we may trust that at all moments when we have to 
 decide upon a course of conduct a divine monitor is at 
 hand willing to aid our judgment and fortify our will, 
 if only our heart be honestly bent on doing what is 
 right, then we have far more abundant cause for re- 
 fraining from harassing our souls with plans for the 
 future. And religious experience justifies such trust. 
 It guarantees that in volition and action we may, if we 
 will, hear the voice of a better and wiser adviser than 
 the best and wisest of human beings. 
 
 This is not a doctrine peculiar to Christianity. 
 There is a noble expression of it in a Hebrew pro- 
 verb, “ Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean 
 not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways 
 acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths ”—a 
 proverb which a man would do well to repeat to him- 
 self a hundred times a day, until it had been deeply 
 engraved on his very heart. And he who fully be- 
 heved in it would go to every day’s work, however 
 complicated or difficult, with a light heart, caring for 
 and thinking of but one thing, at every moment of 
 the day to be listening and waiting, and trying to 
 follow the better light. He would feel entirely con- 
 vinced that, in doing so, he would be guided to action 
 that was right and fitting, and that, however results 
 turned out, he would have done the best he could for 
 the world and for his own highest interests. And 
 surely it will not be maintained that those who do 
 thus live are under a sad delusion, or make shipwreck 
 of themselves. 
 
 This, however, is not an easy stopping-point for 
 
XXI Prayer and Trust 285 
 
 human beings. <A trust of this kind may well carry a 
 man through a time of stress or of danger. Energy 
 and courage may enable him for a few days or weeks 
 to live in this frame of mind, thinking not of happiness 
 nor of the future, but only intent with all his soul on 
 rightly doing a piece of work which is given him to 
 do. But when the stress is over, and the blood cools 
 after the battle, he will seek to understand and to 
 justify the experience of divine aid, which he well re- 
 members as an intense and vivid reality, but of which 
 at a more languid moment he is apt to lose sight. 
 He knows that a hand has led him and supported him 
 when without it he would have failed and fallen; but 
 he cannot be satisfied thus to lean merely upon a hand 
 stretched from the clouds. Of course the writer of 
 the Jewish proverb had quite a definite meaning; he 
 supposed himself to possess in concrete form, written 
 in books, the actual and definite rules ordered by 
 Jehovah. Certainly the Jews believed in the personal 
 inspiration of conduct, but they supposed such inspira- 
 tion to be a sort of supplement to the revelation of the 
 law, which to keep was their first duty. With us, too, 
 the trust in divine leading would seem to need some 
 firmer basis than the feelings of the moment. Such a 
 basis is offered by the doctrine of Providence. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 PROVIDENCE 
 
 THE feeling of confidence in the divine protection and 
 aid is closely connected with the doctrine of a divine 
 providence in life. We use the rather vague term 
 connected because it is not right to regard the feeling 
 as directly based on the doctrine, nor the doctrine as 
 wholly derived from the feeling. The two act mutually 
 one on the other. 
 
 The fact is that the experience of divine aid in 
 conduct produces a certain frame of mind, gives birth 
 to emotions; and, if the course of life be observed in 
 the light of these emotions, we discover in it a tend- 
 ency and a meaning which seem to prove it to be the 
 object of divine care and forethought. Usually we do 
 not see this meaning in the part of our lives nearest 
 to us; it is when we look at that which is farther off, 
 which les spread like a landscape in the past, that we 
 see the relation of part to part, and a line of tendency 
 visible in the whole. 
 
 This has made itself felt by thousands of men, 
 among whom must be included those of mankind most 
 noteworthy for piety and insight into divine things. 
 It is a feeling which such men have often expressed 
 
CHAP, XXII Providence 287 
 
 that the course of their lives is, after all, not of their 
 own making; that while they have been intent on less 
 worthy ends, a Power from above has, as it were, 
 taken over from them the direction of their lives, and 
 guided them with apparent view to ends and purposes 
 wider and higher than any of which themselves were 
 aware. It is not in regard to worldly success usually 
 that this higher leading can be traced, but in regard 
 to the greater and nobler ends of life. One man tries 
 hard to shape himself a life in such and such a 
 direction; time after time he is foiled, until at last 
 he falls back in despair into the only course open to 
 him. And then, after long years of labour, he looks 
 back, and sees that all was for the best, and that the 
 very thing which he coveted and strove after would, if 
 attained, have been to him a spiritual ruin. Another 
 man finds unexpected success and openings ready-made 
 to his hand which lead him into a position where he 
 can be of real service to those around him—a position 
 which he feels certain he could never have won but 
 for such leading of circumstance, 
 
 Thus both in failure and success men often in the 
 end come to see that their steps were guided in the 
 way best for them, and that the thing given them to 
 do was the thing which they really needed to do. 
 
 It is quite imaginable that such a belief as this 
 might, if rested in, become a kind of fatalism. Men 
 might cease, if it occupied all their mind, to struggle 
 towards the right, and might drift with the tide of 
 events, always hoping to be carried without exertion 
 of their own into the right harbour, No doubt the 
 world has witnessed many an instance of this kind ; 
 and those who fear the danger of a too passive belief 
 
288 farth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 in providence working in a heart without energy have 
 before them a danger not chimerical but real. 
 
 But the danger on the other side is at least as 
 great. No man can long bear the strain of believing 
 that his future is entirely in his own hands; this is a 
 burden too terrible for human nature to endure. Those 
 who do not take refuge from the strain in belief in 
 providence will take refuge in some form of fatalism. 
 And in fact history teaches that those men who have 
 been greatest in practical life have been believers in a 
 mighty controlling power working around and through 
 them, and using them as its instruments for the accom- 
 plishment of certain purposes in the world. It is 
 sufficient to mention the well-known instances - of 
 Cromwell and Napoleon. The force of individual will 
 is not, at least in Europe and America, a tender plant 
 which needs to be nourished and protected from strong 
 winds, but a hardy shrub which needs cutting in, and 
 which grows the more vigorously for the buffetings of 
 the storm. To feel one’s own weakness and narrow- 
 ness of aim is a very healthy thing; and the natural 
 pushing of individual vigour may be trusted to prevent 
 this mistrust of self from becoming a despair of self, 
 A soldier in battle does not grow lazy and cowardly 
 from a strong confidence in the wisdom of his com- 
 mander and the valour of his associates. He does 
 not say, “ The cause will win without me,” but becomes 
 twice as energetic through the sure hope of victory. 
 On the other hand, one who believes that the only 
 hope of success lies in his individual activity and 
 prowess, will be overburdened and broken down by 
 Wearing anxiety. A too implicit reliance on the will 
 of heaven may be a danger amid the apathetic popula- 
 
XXII Providence 289 
 
 tions of Asia Minor or Hindustan, but not with us. 
 With us a strong belief that man is entirely under the 
 dominion of natural law may damp energy and ruin 
 enthusiasm, but this will not be the fruit of a belief 
 in an overruling providence. 
 
 The case is the same in regard to our dealings with 
 other people over whom we may have influence, or 
 whom we may be bound to control. The habit of 
 regarding all about us as being, so to speak, at school, 
 as in course of training by divine forethought for 
 purposes which we can but partly grasp or know, 
 will naturally tend to make us more thoughtful and 
 circumspect in our intervention between them and 
 circumstance. Here again it is logically possible that 
 a belief intensely realised in the divine control of 
 every life might make a too timid soul afraid of doing 
 anything which might possibly tend to frustrate the 
 divine purposes in the lives of others, and so greatly 
 restrict his power for good in the world. But in this 
 case also the danger is not one which need practically 
 be much considered. It would be an excellent thing 
 if all of us were more in the habit of considering what 
 was to all appearance the real higher purpose of the 
 lives of those about us, in order that we might do our 
 best to promote that higher purpose. 
 
 Now, although in this case faith goes beyond ex- 
 perience, it is in no way in conflict with it. It is 
 true that in the physical world revealed to sense we 
 find unvarying law, and no control by any power 
 from without; but in the facts of biology we find it to 
 be at the least doubtful whether there be immunity 
 from control of this kind; and when we deal with the 
 phenomena dependent on human will we should be 
 
 U 
 
290 faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 very rash indeed if we assumed such immunity. If a 
 divine providence works in the world, the main field 
 of its activity is a certain action and reaction between 
 man and his environment, between each of us and the 
 various human beings with whom we come in contact ; 
 and to assert @ priori that these relations are governed 
 by laws as unvarying as those by which the stars 
 move and the tides rise must be the merest and most 
 unjustified dogmatism. Thus the matter before us is 
 one in which science is unable to give a definite solu- 
 tion; and the field in which science is silent is pre- 
 cisely that in which faith flourishes and prevails. 
 
 But while we maintain that, so far as science has 
 at present proved, there is no certainty that the work- 
 ings of divine purpose may not be actually traced in 
 the world of sensible experience, yet it is likely that if 
 we considered that world alone we should not arrive 
 at the belief in providence. Certainly we should never 
 arrive at that intense conviction ‘of its reality which 
 has existed in the minds of many of the greatest men 
 of all times. That conviction belongs to quite another 
 sphere. It arises in the profound abysses of person- 
 ality, and grows on the sense of personal relations of 
 the soul with the highest spiritual power. The same 
 course of events which may seem to the eyes of out- 
 ward observation a mere ordinary sequence of cause 
 and effect may seem to the higher inward perception 
 fraught with a meaning and a lesson, and with a pur- 
 pose far beyond man’s purpose. Every event of life 
 has an outward and visible as well as an inner and 
 spiritual meaning: those who choose only to see the 
 first can do so; but it by no means follows that they 
 are wiser than those who see both sides. There are 
 
XXII Providence 291 
 
 many men in the world to whom Wordsworth’s saying 
 applies, “A primrose by the river’s brim A yellow 
 primrose was to him, And it was nothing more.” But 
 the poet who sees much beside in the primrose is not 
 a lesser man than the callous and ordinary observer, 
 but a greater anda better man. So to see more in 
 the events of our lives than the working of blind cause 
 and effect, than the tyranny of circumstance and the 
 conflict of wills, is not a sign of a feeble and visionary 
 but rather of a noble and energetic character. 
 
 It is indeed poor and unhealthy to retain in our 
 belief in providence the purely individual standpoint, 
 and to regard all that goes on about us as destined 
 merely for the benefit of our own spiritual progress. 
 This is no doubt egotism—egotism imported into the 
 highest sphere, and therefore more hideous than ever. 
 Though belief in a providence must start from the ego- 
 istic standpoint, it need not stay there. The noble 
 soul will at once say, “ What is true of me is true of 
 others,” and will study, so far as it can, to trace the 
 dealings of the Power which makes for righteousness 
 in all the lives which have contact with its own. 
 
 In a sense it is true that the ego is the centre of 
 the universe, but every personality is such a centre, 
 Thersites no less than Agamemnon. I, who am to 
 myself a centre, am in the circumference of all the 
 rest of mankind. But if this be so, how can there be 
 a providence for the individual? how can the course of 
 events adapt itself to the good of one without turning 
 to the harm of another ? 
 
 The doctrine of providence can only be either re- 
 concilable with fact or consistent with morality if a 
 wide enough and high enough view be taken of the 
 
292 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 nature of good. It is a doctrine of the spiritual not 
 of the physical world; it is the teaching of faith and 
 not of unemotional experience. If any one believe in 
 a providence which will lead him to his own highest 
 good, he will find nothing in the course of events to 
 conflict with or overthrow that belief, unless, of course, 
 the religious teachers are all wrong. But if any one 
 believes that providence will provide him with all 
 sorts of things which he would fain have, at the ex- 
 pense of other people who have to do without them, 
 that man is certainly in an anti-social state, and not 
 far from a terrible shipwreck. 
 
 In fact, if we consider the nature of good, higher 
 and lower, this will become very clear. The good 
 which is higher in character has, by the constitution of 
 the world, an immense natural advantage in that it is 
 capable of infinite expansion. Ordinary material satis- 
 factions are definite in quantity. He who receives one 
 of them, by receiving excludes from it the rest of the 
 world. He fences in part of the common happiness of 
 the human race, and makes of it a park for himself, 
 He drinks deep of the cup of satisfaction, and by so 
 doing leaves the less for his fellow-guests. 
 
 But all good of the higher kind, which does not 
 consist in the gratification of material need, is an 
 addition to the sum of human happiness. Every deed 
 of kindness and charity is, as we know on high 
 authority, “twice blessed; it blesses him that gives 
 and him that takes.’ The happiness springing from 
 such sources as this might be multiplied tenfold with- 
 out in any way diminishing the stock of pleasures in 
 the world. Altruistic pleasures are not a diminution 
 of the general good, but an addition to it. 
 
XXIT Providence 293 
 
 Even more than this may be asserted in regard to 
 the happiness, or, as it may better be termed, the 
 blessedness, which arises from the religious denial of 
 self. For this way of life has something in it exceed- 
 ingly contagious. It is so much in accordance with 
 nature that those who see it can scarcely fail to be led 
 at least to desire to imitate it. From a single indl- 
 vidual the infection spreads to a family, or a social 
 circle, or a church. Thus self-seeking benefits.at the 
 most one, altruism two or three, but religious devotion 
 may benefit multitudes, even of those who never saw 
 the person who has become the source of their higher 
 life. 
 
 If this distinction in the nature of the good be 
 borne in mind, and if divine providence be regarded as 
 having relation to the higher and not to the lower 
 good, then there will be nothing anti-social in the 
 doctrine. To the higher good all men may alike be 
 led by divine forethought, and yet there may be no 
 clashing. It would be of course impossible for human 
 wisdom, or for any wisdom which can be in the least 
 comprehended by human thought, to arrange the course 
 of the world for the best for millions of beings with 
 various interests and various natures. Nor do we 
 assert here that everything is thus arranged for the 
 absolute best; on that subject we have more to say in 
 the chapter which deals with optimism and evil. All 
 that is now maintained is that any person who traces 
 in his own life or the lives of his friends the working 
 of divine providence need not fall into scepticism on 
 the subject, either because the doctrine is contrary to 
 reason, or because it is anti-social. 
 
 A mere corollary of the belief in a providence 
 
294 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 which guides individual lives is the belief in a pro- 
 vidence which guides nations and society generally ; a 
 belief that, in spite of the evil and meanness which 
 meet all of us who have to do with the world at every 
 turn, things will yet turn out better than we fear; 
 that the reins of the world are in the hands of a 
 sovereign merciful and mighty, who will know how to 
 prevent it from falling back from the level to which it 
 has as yet attained, and will lead it to yet better things 
 in future. There is much of this feeling existing, 
 though often in unconscious and merely instinctive 
 form, in the minds of most men. It exists strongly in 
 nearly all those who are by nature reformers, who give 
 their energies and their lives to improve the condition 
 of their fellows or enlarge the boundaries of their 
 activity. It seems almost impossible that any one 
 could exist so full of self-conceit and audacity as to 
 suppose that by the force of his own intellect alone he 
 could really guide a nation or the human race to better 
 things. <A general disbelief in providence would prob- 
 ably lead to a conservatism more hard and close and 
 selfish than any of which we have had experience. 
 
 In an earlier chapter of this work, the sixth, we con- 
 sidered the question whether the hand of God was to 
 be seen in history. We had shown reason from the 
 writings of eminent men of science for maintaining 
 that in the development of animal forms there could 
 be actually traced the working of a power which guided 
 the course of development along beneficial lines, and 
 which prepared organs for functions not yet in exist- 
 ence. We therefore suggested it as probable that in 
 the course of human history also control of the same 
 kind might be traced, guiding man to better things 
 
XXII Providence 295 
 
 than his intellect was aware of. But we pointed out 
 that the extreme complexity of historical events, and 
 the shghtness of our knowledge of history, must form 
 an effectual bar to any attempt to actually trace such 
 control, or make it clear to those not disposed to accept 
 its existence without proof. Such was our decision, 
 and even now we have no right to modify it. To 
 prove divine purpose in history against objectors must 
 still remain impossible. 
 
 Yet when we approach the same problem from the 
 side not of historical observation but of the conscious- 
 ness of individuals, it appears less hopeless. A man 
 may clearly see in his own hfe the working of a bene- 
 volent providence; and, if he does so, he will not be 
 able to avoid the belief that the same thing happens in 
 the lives of those around him; and in the course of 
 the history of society, too, society being only made up 
 of individuals. Belief in providence must be always 
 matter of faith; but it may be faith based on a keen 
 appreciation of facts observed within. 
 
 It will be observed that the language we have been 
 using is guarded and moderate. We have not in this 
 place asserted it to be a doctrine guaranteed by faith 
 that everything is for the best in the world. To this 
 question we may return hereafter; all that we are now 
 asserting is that faith recognises a Power working in 
 the order of events for the good of men, and especially 
 for their higher good. So much is asserted by the 
 beliefs of the spiritually-minded of our race, whether 
 more than this be asserted or not. Of course there is 
 another side to the picture. “There be many that say, 
 Who will shew us any good?” Many will be found 
 harshly to deny that any high or good purpose can be 
 
296 Fatth and Conduct OHAP. 
 
 discerned in the outward ordering of their lives. Many 
 who have wished to find in their outward surroundings 
 the signs of divine forethought for their good have 
 been unable to do so, and have fallen under a cloud of 
 despair from which they have not emerged before the 
 grave has hidden them from our sight. And, indeed, 
 apart from private experiences, which so often drown 
 faith in passionate sorrow and bitter disappointment, no 
 man can read certam chapters of history, or passages in 
 certain biographies, without being overwhelmed and 
 carried away, for a time at least, by a flood of bitter 
 reflections on the apparent injustice of human lots; the 
 startling inequality with which the ruler of the world, 
 if ruler there be, arranges the circumstances of life for 
 different people. Even those who believe in a life 
 after death, though they may more easily reconcile 
 these strange and terrible phenomena with divine 
 Justice and providence, yet will often feel the strength 
 of their belief in these attributes of God weakened and 
 in peril. 
 
 Thus may the facts of our lives and the teachings 
 of history be read in opposite ways, according to the 
 emotion in the light of which they are viewed. They 
 may be made the matter of high hopes or the index 
 pointing to despair. Which of these views is the true 
 one? Certainly intellect cannot decide between them, 
 since unless emotions in some form come in to colour 
 the facts, they are entirely indistinct and point to 
 nothing in particular, And at many crises of our 
 lives we may feel that even will is powerless to decide 
 between them, for that one of the two views which is 
 supported by the emotions of the time may often be so 
 strong as at the moment to carry away and overpower 
 
XXII Providence 297 
 og SS el 
 the will. But let us suppose a man at a time of calm 
 retrospection, when he is free from violent and pas- 
 sionate emotion, trying to discover which view is truer 
 to the nature of things. Is it possible to offer such a 
 man a criterion or a test whereby he may judge 
 them ? 
 
 It will be evident that unless our last chapters 
 have been written in vain, we are able to produce such 
 a test. First from the personal point of view. Every 
 man can compare the emotions which lead him to 
 a belief in divine providence with those which lead 
 him to deny it. He can judge which of them are the 
 higher, the purer, the nobler—which are most in accord- 
 ance with the impulses of the Power that works for 
 righteousness. And in few cases would any one hesi- 
 -tate to decide the matter in favour of those emotions 
 which lead to faith rather than those which lead to 
 despair, Indeed a man will hardly be found to assert 
 that it is nobler to disbelieve in this case than to 
 believe; but many men will say that they wish to 
 believe, but are prevented by the facts. As, however, 
 the facts in themselves are quite inconclusive one way 
 or the other, this means that they have not vigour and 
 manliness of soul sufficient to look at facts in the way 
 which they hold to be noblest. 
 
 But the bulk of mankind go less in these matters 
 by their own experience than by the teaching of those 
 whom they have learned to respect. Moral elevation 
 exercises on the minds of all a sort of magnetic 
 attraction, and gains a preponderance like that ac- 
 quired by a man of indomitable will among weaklings. 
 We learn to believe what is believed by those to whom 
 we look up, and can no more help being influenced by 
 
298 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 those we admire than we can help taking a disease if 
 we dwell amid infection, or than we can help acquiring 
 in speaking the accent belonging to those with whom 
 we constantly converse. In the case of the belief in 
 providence it is easy to see in which direction this 
 influence will tend. For though here and there a man 
 of remarkable character may be found who does not 
 believe in the divine regulation of the world, the very 
 great majority of those who by personal authority or 
 by their writings have influence in the world do cherish 
 such belief, and set great store by it. 
 
 There is also the final and popular test—that of 
 fruits. It may and will be asked whether the belief 
 or its denial tend more to vigorous’ conduct, to happi- 
 ness and usefulness in the world. And it would seem 
 that this question, if put, can scarcely be answered except 
 in one way; for it seems impossible that despair should 
 be a better principle of conduct than a_ healthful 
 and hopeful belief. Of course it does not follow 
 because a belief is helpful that therefore it is justified ; 
 such a doctrine as that would of course be immoral. 
 But the fact of its being helpful is a probable indication 
 that it is something quite different from helpful, trae— 
 true to the facts of the spiritual life and the nature of 
 the Power that works for righteousness. 
 
 The workings of grace and providence seem to bear 
 evidence of another of the divine attributes—person- 
 ality. We cannot bring ourselves to think of the 
 power which comes to pour a flood of new power and 
 life into our hearts except as a conscious power. And 
 still more does consciousness, and with it conscious 
 volition, seem to belong necessarily to the divine 
 power which orders the events of our lives, and some- 
 
XXII Providence 299 
 ee ee oe at, i pe 
 times plans them with a wisdom greater far than our 
 own. Where there is so evidently divine purpose and 
 plan, there must, we think, be divine thought; God 
 must will and mean these things before he performs 
 them. And meaning and willing are to us utterly 
 inconceivable except as existing in consciousness, 
 
 Of course it is easy to reply that all this is matter 
 of argument and inference, and in matters in which 
 inference is very dangerous if not entirely fallacious. 
 It is easy to show that we have no right to assume 
 design when we see a complicated system, or to 
 infer consciousness from design in any matters which 
 transcend experience. This argument sounds well, but 
 it has the fatal vice of proving too much. For the 
 only case in which we are really thus justified in 
 arguing from plan to intention, and from intention to 
 consciousness, 1s in our own individual inner experience. 
 Strictly speaking, we have no logical right to infer, 
 when we see a system, a design in the mind of another 
 human being, or to assume that a design carried out by 
 another person implies in that person consciousness 
 like our own consciousness. Other people may, for 
 aught we know, carry out intricate plans without 
 intention, or have intentions without consciousness. 
 We may make this clearer by an illustration. No one 
 supposes that the bee thinks out the form of its 
 cell, or that the spider calculates the mechanical 
 conditions of its web; yet these creatures produce the 
 cell and the web. We say that these are cases of 
 instinct, not of reason, and suppose ourselves to explain 
 something by the phrase. Why then, logically, should 
 not the world of our fellow-creatures: act by instinct 
 rather than reason, and consciousness belong to me the 
 
300 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 egoonly. This question has come up before us already 
 in various forms, and we have tried to solve it. We 
 have tried to show that whatever be the logical aspect 
 of the matter, human beings are compelled by practical 
 necessity to believe in the existence and working of 
 other conscious selves outside them. 
 
 Why should not this practical necessity be held a 
 sufficient justification for attributing conscious working 
 and design to the Deity as well as to our fellow-men ? 
 We believe that there are reasons to the contrary. 
 When we speak of the justice of God, and the goodness 
 of God, we are merely summing up well-known pheno- 
 mena. But when, discontented with phrases so vague, 
 we speak of God as a person who is just and good, 
 then something tells us that we are going very far. 
 For if divine grace and providence stand in the same 
 relation to thousands of lives in which they stand to 
 our own, then the source of grace and providence, if 
 conscious, must have a consciousness so infinitely above 
 anything which we can conceive on the analogy of our 
 own poor mind that we stand aghast at the very thought. 
 It is of the essence of consciousness, as we know it, to 
 think of only one thing at a time; itis like a line with 
 length but not breadth. But if our own consciousness 
 is like a line, we must suppose a divine consciousness to 
 be not merely like a plane or a cube, but like a thing 
 of a thousand dimensions. If it will please us to call 
 by the name of personality something so immeasurably 
 beyond the flight of our utmost imagination, we may 
 perhaps use that term; yet the use will help us but 
 little. 
 
 And in fact the term personality, as we know it 
 and use it, so directly implies limits and imperfections 
 
XXII Providence 3201 
 
 that 1t seems strange men should wish to apply it to 
 the eternal source of goodness and of love. That they 
 insist on doing so, in spite of all the objections of the 
 reason, is not the result of acceptance of the argument 
 from design, but the result of the longing of the soul 
 not merely to know but to love God. As we have 
 seen, the more we love our fellow-creatures, the more 
 intensely we realise their personality ; and when we 
 extend love from man to God, this shadow of person- 
 ality necessarily accompanies it. Hence that religion 
 which first spoke of loving God—the Jewish—used the 
 language of strong anthropomorphism in regard to him; 
 more than any other religion did it distinguish between 
 God and the world; placing the soul of man as it were 
 between the Creator and the created world. We may 
 speak of loving the laws of God or the divine order, 
 but love in such a case cannot rise above content and 
 acquiescence ; it is only when we think of God as 
 a personality like ourselves that our love for him can 
 ever glow with fervour, or stimulate to energy. 
 
 In this matter, then, beyond all others, we find a 
 sharp and irreconcilable quarrel between our faculties _ 
 of knowing and our faculties of action. That neither 
 must be allowed the final and complete victory is quite 
 clear. Intellect is in this whole field go feeble, and 
 our previous investigations have so utterly discredited 
 it, that we shall be thoroughly indisposed to allow its 
 scepticism as to the divine personality. But, on the 
 other hand, if we say that we have exactly as much 
 right to ascribe personality to the Deity as to ascribe 
 personality to wife or child, even faith itself will be 
 shocked ; for we instinctively feel that, though such a 
 proposition might be maintained against open objection, 
 
302 Faith and Conduct CHAP, XXII 
 
 it is a most presumptuous overstatement. In fact, we 
 must each of us learn, as best we can, to think of God 
 as a person, and yet asa person whose personality bears 
 no resemblance to that feeble and limited consciousness 
 with which we are acquainted. “As the heavens are 
 higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than 
 your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” 
 
 7 EEE 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 NATURAL PIETY 
 
 Ir appears, then, that the facts of conduct teach us 
 not only that God is wise and a lover of goodness, 
 but also that he is merciful and compassionate, and 
 of great kindness, Yet it will naturally seem to many 
 readers that there is still much wanting in our delinea- 
 tion of God, even as regarded in the light of natural 
 religion only. We may well seem to have taken too 
 human a view of the divine nature, and to run into 
 that way of speaking of the Deity on which, under the 
 name anthropomorphism, modern science and modern 
 thought pour so much contempt. We may seem to 
 have spoken of God as nearer to men, as easier to find 
 out, as more like one of ourselves than he can possibly 
 appear to those who are accustomed to consider the 
 universe as a whole, and to have regard to man’s 
 position in it. 
 
 And we are quite willing to allow that there is 
 solidity in this objection. Treating of conduct, and of 
 religion in the light of conduct, we have been naturally 
 and inevitably led to lay most stress on that side of 
 the divine nature which is revealed in conduct. But 
 we are quite ready to allow that there are other sides 
 
304 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 which need also to be dwelt on. More especially, it 
 is certain that those who approach religion from the 
 side either of science or of art will not primarily regard 
 the nature of God in the way in which we here 
 regard it. 
 
 We have already declared in the Preface, and must 
 again and again repeat, that in the present volume we 
 make no attempt to escape the reproach of one-sided- 
 ness. Our aim has been to set forth clearly a set of 
 the phenomena of life, and thence to draw such con- 
 clusions as are legitimate; not to map out the whole 
 field of religious knowledge. If we were to speak at 
 all of science and of art, and of the knowledge with 
 which they furnish us as to the nature of God and 
 the destinies of man, we should have entirely to re- 
 model this work. 
 
 In the light of history we can see that it makes 
 a great difference whether a man or a nation derive 
 religious ideas from science and art, or from the facts 
 and necessities of conduct. Religion based upon con- 
 tact with the physical world tends everywhere to 
 pantheism ; hesitates to ascribe to God the best human 
 feelings, such as justice and mercy; commonly ends 
 by identifying the Deity with the world, or with some 
 formative force in the world. Such was essentially 
 the religion of the ancient Greeks, a people who were 
 naturally more susceptible to the divinity of beauty in 
 nature and art than to the divinity of right action ; 
 who could easily imagine Zeus or Apollo to have done 
 an unrighteous deed, but could not imagine Zeus or 
 Apollo as clad in any but a beautiful body. And 
 Greece, as every one knows, has left us a gospel of 
 her own, a divine revelation of beauty, so that to the 
 
XXIII Natural Prety 305 
 8 Sone ae a LT lll a a 
 end of time painters and sculptors and poets will love 
 and venerate the remains of Greek art. So long as 
 man lives in a human body and amid natural scenes, 
 so long will the name of Greece awake an echo in 
 every heart that is not base or vulgar. Yet the gospel 
 of Greece affords but an insufficient sanction to virtue, 
 and tells us very little of God. A few Greek philoso- 
 phers passed beyond this point, but they were never 
 able to raise any large number of the people to their 
 own higher level. 
 
 The religion of Israel, on the other hand, is based 
 on the facts of conduct. It does not despise the outer 
 world, as is abundantly shown by the 104th Psalm 
 and the Book of Job; but righteousness is always 
 put in the first place. And the consequence is that 
 just as the religion of Hellas tends to pantheism, so 
 does that of Judea to anthropomorphism. In some 
 passages, indeed, of the Old Testament we find an 
 anthropomorphism which is absolutely grotesque; to 
 cite instances would be an ungrateful task, but they 
 will occur to most readers. It is the best proof of the 
 reality of the inner voice that the nation most fully 
 conscious of it sometimes sinned on the side of liken- 
 ing it too completely to a human voice, though it must 
 be allowed that on other occasions the Jewish writers 
 speak of it with as much awe as language is capable 
 of expressing. 
 
 As the growth of scientific thought, the legacy of 
 Greece, makes anthropomorphism in our day impossible, 
 so the facts of conduct show that mere pantheism is 
 not enough for human life. It does not meet the 
 necessities of action; and action is a more important 
 part of our existence than knowledge. Mr. Matthew 
 
 x 
 
306 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 Arnold’s well-known formula that conduct is three- 
 fourths of life, and art and science together one-fourth, 
 is not, of course, a scientific truth, but it is a literary 
 approximation. And because conduct is so great a 
 part of life, the religion of conduct will necessarily 
 prevail by the right of the stronger, or, as we say in 
 these days, by the method of natural selection. 
 
 So in our own days among those who are disposed 
 to religion we see- two currents—men of study and 
 thought drifting towards pantheism, men of action 
 towards anthropomorphism. Both are natural tend- 
 encies, yet at the end of each is a disease which may 
 be fatal to religion itself: and philosophy is called 
 upon to find a remedy, and, so far as she can, to recon- 
 cile the extremes. Such aid as we can give is given 
 in this book; and perhaps the thing most in our 
 favour is that we cannot be accused of sacrificing 
 conduct to thought. It is thought, on the other hand, 
 which must confess that it has been unfair to conduct, 
 and claimed in the woof of religion a far greater share 
 than rightly falls to it. 
 
 There is, however, a way of looking at the external 
 world which is not the way of science or of scientific 
 art, but which is rather the way of conduct. Nature 
 may be contemplated not with the idea of penetrating 
 its deepest secrets, and not with the idea of selecting 
 what is most beautiful in it for representation by art, 
 but with a love and reverence which make its glories 
 a kind of revelation to the individual heart. It is 
 possible to read in the face and hear in the voice of 
 nature fresh utterances of the Power which works for 
 righteousness in the human heart. The apostle of 
 this kind of contemplation of nature is of course 
 
XXIII Natural Prety 307 
 
 Wordsworth. And the heading of the present chapter, 
 Natural Piety, is the phrase used by him to express 
 the habit of looking on the outer world in the hight of 
 religious emotion and of conduct. 
 
 In surveying many of the features of the external 
 world, especially mountains and the sea, which embody 
 more than any other features of the earth a certain 
 natural sublimity, susceptible natures are frequently 
 overwhelmed by a feeling of the grandeur of the 
 spiritual basis of the universe. It is not the mere 
 size and power of material forces which oppress us, 
 but their majesty and nobility, which lift us out of 
 and above ourselves. Kant thought of this mood 
 when he wrote that two things are sublime—the 
 starry heaven above us and the moral law within. 
 We experience also a feeling which is, as it were, the 
 reverse and the complement of this when we closely 
 observe small things which are full of beauty and 
 Ssymmetry—a flower or a shell or a snowflake: then 
 we feel that nature is not only vast, but exquisitely 
 planned and moulded in the least things as in the 
 greatest. ‘The sight of really lovely things fills us 
 with an unselfish but irrepressible delight, and makes 
 us sure that life is really worth living, and that it is 
 worth while to try and make it worthy of its exquisite 
 surroundings, both in deed and in feeling. 
 
 These emotions are by no means confined to those 
 who are commonly classed as religious, yet they have 
 long been recognised as thoroughly religious emotions. 
 Wordsworth, a poet much inspired by them, is always 
 regarded as religious. And when we try to put our 
 emotions into words, it is surprising how easily we slip 
 into the language of religious feeling, “ When I consider 
 
308 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the 
 stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is man, that thou 
 art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou 
 visitest him?” “If God then so clothe the grass of 
 the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into 
 the oven, shall he not much more clothe you?” Un- 
 less our theory of the universe is that crudest kind of 
 materialism which will not tolerate even the presence 
 of wonder, we pass-naturally and readily from delight 
 in and admiration of natural scenes to gratitude to 
 that Deity whom we feel to be the source of beauty 
 and grandeur in the world. A writer who will scarcely 
 be accused of prejudice in favour of religion, Strauss, 
 maintains in his later writings that the feelings aroused 
 by true poetry are eminently religious, and will keep 
 religion up when many of its other props are with- 
 drawn. 
 
 It is probable that the conscious indulgence of such 
 feelings belongs only to times of high culture and to 
 races penned into great cities. The shepherd and the 
 ploughman do not usually find themselves thrown into 
 a passion of admiration and delight at the daily pheno- 
 mena of the mountains and the plains in which they 
 pass their days: but yet even such rude and un- 
 cultured natures will, if taken away from the natural 
 scenes amid which they dwelt, feel in the heart a 
 terrible want, which cannot be pacified by material 
 satisfactions. Hence people born in a mountainous 
 land are, when taken away from it, frequently the 
 prey of an actual disease, nostalgia, which may easily 
 prove fatal. And when their desire for the scenes of 
 childhood does not become so strong as to cause actual 
 disease, it causes oppression of spirits and a sentiment 
 
XXIII Natural Prety 309 
 
 of longing. We find an instructive example of this in 
 Greek history. So long as the Greeks lived scattered 
 over their own beautiful country, in daily contact with 
 nature, they had indeed a love of nature, but that love 
 did not take the form of a passion or even of a senti- 
 ment. When, in the days after Alexander the Great, 
 they began to be cooped up in the great cities of Asia, 
 cities like Antioch and Alexandria, their longing for 
 nature was at once strongly developed, and showed 
 itself in many ways, partly in the formation of artificial 
 parks in the neighbourhood of the cities, partly in the 
 rise of pastoral poetry, partly in the growing custom 
 of painting on the inner walls of their houses out-of- 
 door scenes. So the present century, which has wit- 
 nessed the growth of cities of a size unexampled before 
 in the history of the world, has also been marked by 
 an extraordinary development of the poetry of nature 
 alike in idyll and novel, and the rise of landscape- 
 painting as an art to a perfection never before 
 dreamed of. 
 
 The childhood of our race has been nurtured by the 
 life of nature; its constantly-recurring changes have 
 been a perpetual source of interest and pleasure to our 
 forefathers, until the enjoyment arising from them has 
 entered into the blood and fed the nerves, and become 
 a radical part of ourorganism. Andas a grown man 
 cannot revisit the home in which the happy hours of 
 child-life were spent without the ghosts of all past 
 enjoyments crowding into his heart, and filling his 
 nerves with an echo of delight, so those of us who are 
 constrained to live away from open nature feel when 
 now and again we are able to return to it. To lie in 
 heather or grass and look over meadow and hill seems 
 
310 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 to us like lying down in the child’s bed over which our 
 mother prayed. When we wander amid the solemn 
 aisles of a pine-wood we find the feelings of awe which 
 such experiences first formed in the ancestors of ages 
 ago arising again in a gentler and more shadowy form. 
 The measured beat of the sea revives the feelings of 
 melancholy which perhaps such monotonous sounds 
 first aroused in the breasts of men. The sight of the 
 mountains still arouses the sentiment of worship which, 
 three thousand years ago, it so strongly stimulated that 
 the rude nations which then dwelt in Europe and 
 Asia fancied every hill to be a throne for the gods 
 to sit on. 
 
 The practical form taken by this sentiment for 
 nature in those who are most susceptible to its in- 
 fluence is devotion to the arts of landscape-painting 
 and descriptive poetry. Every painting which en- 
 deavours after some higher end than a photograph- 
 like reproduction of nature endeavours to body forth 
 some of the natural emotion which the sight of a 
 landscape or scene has produced in the painter, and 
 which he in turn tries to produce in the mind of the 
 beholder. If we compare the enjoyment of nature to 
 the participation in the service of a great cathedral, 
 we may compare a picture or a poem suggested by a 
 natural scene to a prayer which goes up in private, 
 which expresses not the want of the human race, but 
 the longing of an individual. And as it is of the 
 nature of every unselfish emotion to purify and refine 
 the feelings of him who experiences it, we can easily 
 understand that he who occupies himself in embodying 
 natural emotions in words or in visible shape becomes 
 in the process exalted and refined. It is thus that 
 
XXIII Natural Prety 311 
 
 the love of natural scenes may act on a man’s char- 
 acter almost with the force of religious enthusiasm ; 
 may elevate him above even the temptation to do 
 what he knows to be base and mean; may fill him 
 with sympathy for mankind and a desire to help them. 
 
 But at this point a painful reflection suggests 
 itself. Many of the facts of conduct are the same 
 for all men above the stage of barbarism. The grace 
 of God visits the hovels of the poor no less than the 
 homes of the wealthy ; and earnest prayer and confident 
 belief in the good providence of God are as often found 
 in the lane and the back street as in the square and 
 the park. But in case of the religious feelings fostered 
 by love of nature it is not so. The enjoyment of 
 nature, indeed, and communion with it, belong alike to 
 squire, farmer, and labourer. All feed at the breast of 
 the same mother, and drink in fellowship with the 
 physical life of the world as easily and as unconsciously 
 as they drink in bodily vigour and strength. But 
 when masses of people are cooped up within the 
 narrow streets of a great city, a terrible process of 
 differentiation begins. Those who have the power of 
 occasionally returning to the hfe of nature, the wealthier 
 and more leisured classes, retain, as we have shown, 
 some sympathy with the life of the physical world 
 retain it even in a strong degree, though it be mixed 
 with sentiment and tinged with unreality and a too 
 ereat consciousness. But how of the toiling many 
 who cannot even occasionally escape from the factory 
 and the crowded court, to whom the nearest approach 
 to enjoyment of nature is to sit on their doorsteps in 
 the warm sun of summer amid the squalor and the 
 crowd ? 
 
312 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 Rapid and terrible, indeed, is the revenge which 
 nature executes on those who thus cease to do her 
 homage. Their meagre and stunted frames, their pale 
 cheeks and dull eyes, soon show how the roots of life 
 are cut off. They dwindle from generation to genera- 
 tion, until they cease altogether. Great cities keep up 
 their population only by feeding, vampire-like, upon the 
 fresh blood of those brought up in the country. In- 
 cessantly there pours into them a stream of healthy 
 and vigorous life; but how few ever emerge from them 
 not broken in body and ruined in nature. There is a 
 French proverb that “the Parisian workman has no 
 grandchildren,’ and the same may be said of all great 
 manufacturing cities; or where the city-bred race 
 lingers on, it is of so miserable a kind that it had 
 far better been extinct. Modern philanthropists trace 
 the unhealthiness of town life to bad drainage, to bad 
 air, to the use of spirits. But the real cause lies 
 deeper still. 
 
 But it is necessary that we should confine our at- 
 tention to the effects of this city life on the religious 
 feelings of the masses. And these effects are suffici- 
 ently obvious. The absence of natural emotion soon 
 reacts on conduct. With unhealthy physical life goes 
 an unhealthy craving for religious excitement. Re- 
 ligion is not regarded as having anything to do with 
 nature whether physical or human, but as a matter 
 outside ordinary life, a kind of spiritual intoxication, 
 which comes at times with an overpowering force, and 
 then recedes, and leaves the dull level of life where it 
 was before. 
 
 And yet such is the power in the world of the 
 spirit of righteousness that it still carries life and peace 
 
XXIII Natural Prety aie! 
 
 into the crowded alleys of the city, as of old it carried 
 them into the districts visited by the plague. In many 
 a squalid room in London every day deeds are done 
 and feeling is displayed which would be an honour to 
 monk’s cell or bishop’s palace. It may even be that 
 in the growth of great cities, wherein the eye of reason 
 sees nothing but a curse, may be planted the seeds of 
 great movements which shall bring priceless good to 
 the human race, and of virtues which shall raise the 
 level of human morality. 
 
 And although to most of the dwellers in vast cities 
 the noble and healthful influences of the life of physical 
 nature are unattainable, there are within their reach in- 
 fluences of a not dissimilar kind. There is a beauty 
 in personality and in the character and life of human 
 beings which can scarcely be included under the term 
 conduct, yet which is capable of arousing enthusiastic 
 admiration and love. The graces of personal compan- 
 ionship, social charm, and the exhibition of beauty of 
 character, occupy a great share in the attraction of the 
 world and the delight of life. With these sources of 
 admiration of a more- human kind we may associate 
 the more human of the arts, especially music, the pur- 
 suit of which produces a harmony in the mind and a 
 devotion of the powers to other than sordid ends. 
 
 The enjoyments of natural and of human beauty, 
 and of those arts which are based upon the love of 
 beauty, play an enormous part in human life. Without 
 them life becomes sordid, mean, and poor, destitute of 
 emotions, sad and unhealthy. They are the salt which 
 keeps society from falling into decay, the wheels on 
 which life moves gently and swiftly. And it is fully 
 proved by the testimony of history that these natural 
 
314 Fatth and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 emotions are religious, dispose men to believe in the 
 existence of a spiritual world and of a divine ruler of 
 the universe. But when we ask what is the percep- 
 tive result of these feelings, what positive information 
 they give us as to the nature of the Deity, the reply is 
 not easy or certain. We can only say generally that 
 they reveal to us a God who loves beauty in all forms, 
 and rejoices in his works; who fills all things living 
 and inanimate with loveliness, and then imparts to 
 certain men the power to enter into his feelings and 
 designs to a partial extent, and to recreate the minor 
 world of art on the same plan on which the vast world 
 of nature has been created. 
 
 This is vague, no doubt, and we can scarcely be 
 surprised that hard and dry religionists have spoken 
 contemptuously of the “religion of gush.’ When the 
 stream of religion quite loses itself amid the beautiful 
 flowers of natural emotion, it may no doubt spread into 
 a marsh and become only the more dangerous because 
 its stagnant and impure waters are hidden by blossom 
 and leaf. But if the river runs clearly and strongly 
 it is the sweeter and more pleasing for the flowers on 
 its banks. Conduct must ever furnish the main test 
 of the value of religious feeling; but conduct of the 
 most upright kind may be rendered unattractive and 
 even repulsive if it despises the beautiful things of the 
 world. The religion which is hard and definite has a 
 crushing power in the world, and can scarcely fail to 
 prevail; but that which is vague and sentimental has 
 also its place. But of course it can claim but small 
 notice in a work like the present, which aims at being 
 logical and clear and fenced against the assaults of 
 scepticism. 
 
XXIII Natural Prety 315 
 
 The reflections of the last few pages seem to sug- 
 gest a partial solution of one of the greatest and most 
 important problems of religious philosophy. We find 
 in the physical world a ruling and controlling power, 
 which we call by the name of God; and we find in 
 our hearts a power working for righteousness in con- 
 duct to which we give the same name. But it may be 
 said that we have no right to assume that forces. mani- 
 fested so differently and in so different spheres are the 
 same. Are we right in referring “the starry heaven 
 above us and the moral law within us” to one Being, 
 possessing at once the sum of the seemingly uncon- 
 scious forces of nature and the high attributes of ideal 
 humanity which are suggested to the soul ? 
 
 Hitherto this question has more than once been 
 suggested to us, but it has appeared insoluble. And, in 
 fact, it is Insoluble in the light of pure reason. When 
 the external world is our starting-point we stretch on- 
 wards till we find traces of a God of nature; but when 
 we would learn about the God of spirits we have to 
 retrace the whole of our course and start in the opposite 
 direction, from our personal and individual conscious- 
 ness. There is no means by which logically these two 
 spheres of thought and experience can be made to 
 intersect one another. 
 
 But the question now arises whether we may not be 
 enabled by emotion to solve a question which thus 
 baffles the reasoning powers. Can we so look on the 
 two fields of experience through the medium of some 
 emotion as to bring them into one focus? And to 
 pose this problem is to see some hints towards its 
 solution. For it will at once occur to most people 
 that something precisely similar happens in the daily 
 
316 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 life of all of us. ‘There is no logical means of con- 
 necting our own consciousness with our own body ; 
 logically there is an impassable gulf between the two; 
 but the necessities of practical life often make short 
 work of a logical gulf, and we do not any of us doubt 
 the existence of a very close connection between body 
 and spirit. 
 
 It will scarcely be urged that a practical necessity 
 sO imperious exists in case of our conceptions of the 
 Deity. In fact if we turn to the history of beliefs we 
 shall find that many creeds have been built on the 
 doctrine of inherent badness in matter, which is 
 regarded as not under the control of a Deity but of 
 evil and malicious powers, against which man has to 
 fight with the aid of the Power which makes for right. 
 Such doctrines are in our day entirely discredited: the 
 study of nature has led to love and admiration of 
 nature, until the danger of speculation is all on the 
 side of deifying nature and caring for no Deity beside. 
 But the ways in which men can rise from worship of 
 the divine in nature to the recognition of a divine ele- 
 ment in human life are not matters for our considera- 
 tion just now. On this subject we may have more to 
 say elsewhere. At present we are considering nature 
 only from the subjective side, as it enters into human 
 emotion and feeling... We are now looking at man, 
 and nature as reflected in man. And we may, while 
 strictly confining ourselves to this aspect, see before us 
 a proof of the identity of the Power which works in 
 nature and the Power which works in human life and 
 conduct. If it be true that the contemplation and love 
 of natural scenes have a tendency to raise the tone of 
 life and to purify the emotions, then they must have a 
 
 _ ee 
 
XXIII Natural Prety a7 
 
 bearing upon conduct. They must lead to improve- 
 ment in action as well as in thought. And this must 
 show that it is the same Spirit which is manifested in 
 the outward and in the inward domain: that the God 
 of consciousness is the God also of nature. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 OPTIMISM AND EVIL 
 
 WE promised to return to the question whether faith 
 guaranteed the truth of optimistic theories in regard 
 to the human race. That it does guarantee the inter- 
 ference of divine power in the course of human affairs 
 we do unhesitatingly maintain; but whether or not 
 the interference takes place whenever such interfer- 
 ence would be to our thinking an advantage,—that is 
 another question. 
 
 If there be noticeable in the world of biology the 
 action of a Power which guides evolution in good and 
 fruitful directions, yet it is perfectly certain that this 
 Power does not always direct evolution in the best 
 possible direction. If it did, not only would the pro- 
 gress and improvement of animals be very far more 
 rapid than it is at present, but retrogression would 
 never take place, and the inferior races of animals in 
 different classes would not come into being at all, or 
 at least would not persist by the side of the superior 
 races. Such creatures as venomous serpents, or the 
 flies whose bite is death to cattle, would certainly not 
 flourish and increase. The least wise among us could 
 easily suggest a number of changes in these respects 
 
CHAP, XXIV Optimism and Evil BLO 
 
 which must seem to human reason, so far as it can 
 venture to judge in these matters, to secure a great 
 improvement on the state of things which exists. 
 
 Again, if we consider pain and disease in connection 
 with the progress of the human race, we may easily 
 discern cases in which they are greatly beneficial. 
 It is easy to see that the pains of indigestion are good 
 as preventing men from eating more than they require, 
 or unwholesome food; and that headaches are good 
 as rendering overwork of the brain unpleasant, and 
 bringing it forcibly to an end. So the diseases which 
 arise from bad drainage, from want of fresh air and 
 the like, serve a purpose which any one can see to be 
 useful. But this is not the case with many diseases 
 which fasten upon those who lead the healthiest lives 
 and are full of energy and vigour. Any physician 
 could arrange a scheme of diseases with causes and 
 consequences which would seem to ordinary superficial 
 thought of a far better moral tendency than that which 
 exists. 
 
 These facts are of course notorious to everybody ; 
 and in fact we have become so used to them that we 
 take them as a matter of course, and they do not 
 move us to wonder. If we try to reconcile them to a 
 belief in the government of the physical world by a 
 perfectly wise Deity, we merely say that our intellect, 
 though capable of judging in matters of detail, is yet 
 quite incapable of taking in all the relations of things. 
 We cannot tell how far evil in one place may be 
 necessary to good in another. The most conceited of 
 men would scarcely venture to say that he could plan 
 out an entire scheme of the universe better than that 
 with which study and action brings us into daily con- 
 
320 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 tact. And if we are unable to make a general scheme 
 of our own, we must necessarily be bad judges of the 
 details of a scheme set before us. Thus the existence 
 of disease and discomfort in the world, or the apparent 
 clumsiness of many of the operations of nature, is not 
 felt by us as bearing on the subject of our religious 
 beliefs. 
 
 And we can bring ourselves to look on human 
 history in nearly the same light. Ignorance, cruelty, 
 lust, and wickedness of all sorts exist around us, and 
 always have existed in the world. We explain their 
 existence as best we can, and reconcile them as best 
 we can with our theories and beliefs. But so long as 
 we believe in the reality of human progress, in the 
 eradual decay and elimination of the evil elements in 
 man and his gradual approach to a better standard 
 and higher level, so long the existing evils have no 
 power to destroy our faith in an overruling Providence. 
 We reflect that good implies as its correlative evil; and 
 so long as the final victory of good is assured, there is 
 something even invigorating in the sight of conflict. 
 We say that evil is the shadow of good, and that the 
 darkness of the shadow proves only that the substance 
 which throws it is solid, and the light bright. The 
 facts of evolution do not necessarily argue moral defects 
 in the government of the world. 
 
 But when we turn from the outer to the inner 
 world the case is different. We should feel it to be a 
 blot upon the moral government of the universe if we 
 knew that in one single instance a man who wished 
 to do well had that wish finally frustrated by the 
 overmastering power of circumstance. If in one case 
 only vice were finally triumphant and virtue van- 
 
XXIV Optimism and Evil 321 
 
 quished and oppressed without remedy, then we should 
 say that the ruler of the world was unjust. 
 
 The cause of this very marked distinction in our 
 way of regarding the natural and the moral world is 
 not far to seek. It is merely a new aspect in that 
 contrast between the world and consciousness of which 
 we have already so often spoken. Looking at. our- 
 selves from without, we see that we are a mere part 
 of the world of forces, acting on that world and acted 
 on by it, and possessing no sort of claim to exemption 
 from its laws. But looking at ourselves from within 
 we feel that we stand above these laws, and that they 
 have no power, or at least no right to harm us. We 
 may even look at single incidents of life in this way. 
 A man adventures his life to save another who is on 
 the point of perishing. In so doing he receives an 
 injury which breaks his limbs and cripples him for life. 
 Now, looking at this occurrence from without it seems 
 to us the most natural thing in the world that it should 
 take place. No one in his senses would expect that 
 the mere presence of a virtuous will would prevent 
 the injury, or enable any one’s physical frame to escape 
 damage from collision with material things. And yet 
 that man on his bed of pain, with his prospects for life 
 shattered, will venture to take quite another view. 
 If he be a coward, he may perhaps regret that he tried 
 to save his comrade; but if he be a man of noble and 
 constant soul, this thought will not occur to him, or, if 
 it occur, will be cast out as a temptation of the evil 
 one. He will not doubt that he did well in making 
 the effort. But he will say to himself that if his 
 accident turn to his final and irremediable evil, then 
 the ruler of the world is to him unjust. Nor will any 
 
 Yj 
 
322 faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 arguments shake his conviction of the soundness of 
 that judgement. 
 
 Perhaps this way of speaking may seem over-bold. 
 Certainly in our days people are rather afraid of hold- 
 ing so strong doctrine, and manage in many ways to turn 
 its edge and avoid it. The method of avoiding it in 
 vogue in novels and plays is so to manipulate circum- 
 stances that men meet in the course of their lives happi- 
 ness and success proportioned to their merit. The good 
 man is rewarded and the villain punished. This is 
 what is called poetical justice. It is as arbitrary an 
 arrangement as that plays shall have five acts and 
 novels three volumes. It does not correspond to the 
 facts of life, and, in fact, is scarcely intended to cor- 
 respond with anything; but it is intended to leave the 
 mind of the reader in a pleasant glow, and in that it 
 must be supposed to succeed. But the really great 
 writers, more particularly Victor Hugo and George 
 Eliot, often violate the arbitrary regulations of this 
 code; and when they do so we usually feel at once 
 raised to a higher moral level. The thrill with which 
 The Mull on the Floss, or Le roi s'amuse, moves our 
 whole nature is a sign that we feel at heart how poor 
 and unsatisfactory is this poetical scheme of retribution. 
 It is, in fact, a mere revival of the old Jewish theory 
 that the righteous necessarily prosper in the world, and 
 the wicked fade away and perish. One might think it 
 strange that this theory, so utterly exploded eighteen 
 hundred years ago by Christianity, and by the history 
 of the Jews themselves, should revive in modern times. 
 Certainly during most of the time wherein the world 
 has been under the dominion of Christian ideas this 
 view has been extinct. We can only regard its occa- 
 
XXIV Optimism and Evil 3D2 
 
 sional revival as a fresh proof of the willingness of 
 mankind to accept any screen which will save them 
 from the necessity of contemplating unpleasant truths. 
 Perhaps, however, it will be maintained that though 
 virtue does not necessarily meet its reward in outward 
 circumstance, it meets it in inward experience; that, 
 in fact, virtue is its own reward; that no one ever 
 does what is right without being the better and the 
 happier for it. As a statement of a high general law, 
 one of those underlying spiritual laws of which, in a 
 previous chapter, we have spoken, this view may well 
 pass. It is quite true that in the vast majority of 
 cases a man is happier as well as better in this present 
 and visible life for doing what is right. Not neces- 
 sarily more prosperous or more successful, but happier, 
 more blessed. ‘To be in a state of health must almost 
 necessarily be better for a man than to be in a state of 
 disease. 
 But the question now is not whether the saying 
 Virtue is its own reward be true as a general rule, but 
 whether it be true as a universal rule without excep- 
 tion. We may take a few extreme instances. During 
 the persecutions of the Huguenots in France during the 
 reign of Louis XIV. many Protestant pastors found a 
 secure retreat among the like-minded Swiss of Geneva. 
 Among them they could live in peace and safety. 
 Yet many of these pastors were not satisfied so to live, 
 but made their way by stealth back into the hills of 
 Languedoc, and devoted themselves there to pastoral 
 work among the peasants, with the full certainty that 
 they would be hunted from place to place hke wild 
 beasts by the authorities, and, if captured, would be 
 broken on the wheel—that is, subjected to a death of 
 
324 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 most lingering torture. Many of them thus met their 
 death; and we are told that in most cases they endured 
 the terrible torture of the rack with wonderful equa- 
 nimity, and appeared happy to the last. To such men 
 the certainty that they were doing their duty may well 
 have been such a sustaining force that they were really 
 not to be pitied. To these virtue may have been its 
 own reward. But among so many there must have 
 been some of weaker spirit or more sensitive nerves 
 who suffered indescribable agonies before they were 
 released by death. And there must have been some 
 who longed in the bitterness of their hearts that they 
 had never left the protection of their Genevese co- 
 religionists. Such would feel that with them virtue 
 was not its own reward, and would be ready to agree 
 with the saying of St. Paul: “If in this life only we 
 have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” 
 Whether the Huguenot preachers suffered in a good 
 cause or a bad does not affect the present question, for 
 every one must admit that if not the Huguenots, then 
 others have suffered bitter penalties for doing what was 
 right, but have not had strength of soul lightly to bear 
 those penalties. To a Socrates or a St. Catherine right- 
 doing and happiness may be inseparable; but can they 
 ever be so to imperfectly virtuous people on whom the 
 attempt to do right brings torture and death ? 
 
 And from the inward and individual point of view 
 it would seem that such exceptions destroy the rule 
 that virtue is its own reward. That rule expresses an 
 ideal truth, but scarcely the real fact, men being what 
 they are. The man who prefers death to the abandon- 
 ment of his duty, in dying does what he prefers to do; 
 but the man who bitterly regrets that he has to die for 
 
XXIV Optimism and Evil B25 
 
 doing his duty, and wishes that he had left his duty 
 undone, cannot be said to do what he prefers to do. 
 Perhaps it may be answered that his suffering comes 
 from the imperfection of his virtue ; this may be quite 
 true; but then, if he had been a little less virtuous, he 
 would not have suffered at all. 
 
 It is clear that the difficulties which stand in our 
 way will be at once removed if ave are at liberty to 
 believe in a future life, where are redressed the in- 
 equalities so conspicuously present in this life. On 
 this hypothesis the facts of life can be easily reconciled 
 with those natural feelings as to the divine justice of 
 which we have spoken. It is a hypothesis worthy of 
 a careful examination; and, to make our examination 
 more complete, we shall do well to devote to it a 
 separate chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 In all religions some of the most cardinal doctrines are 
 concerned with the state after death. If death were 
 regarded as the end of existence, religion would lose a 
 great part of its meaning and force. It would, of 
 course, be impossible to maintain that there could be 
 no real religion apart from some doctrine of immortality. 
 No student of history could seriously maintain such a 
 view; certainly no Christian, seeing that in much of 
 the Jewish Scriptures there is no hint of a future life. 
 And it is impossible to say that the writers of the 
 104th Psalm and the latter chapters of Deuteronomy 
 were not inspired by high religious emotion. But if 
 we regard our own days, at all events, it is certain 
 that the general abandonment of the doctrine of a 
 future life would strike a very severe blow at the 
 foundations of all religion. Let us then occupy our- 
 selves with a careful examination of the foundations of 
 this doctrine alike in reason and in emotion. No 
 inquiry could more fully illustrate the logical principles 
 ‘enunciated in this work, or afford a more complete 
 test of their soundness, 
 
 The testimony of physical science as to the effect 
 
CHAP. XXV Lhe Future Life B27 
 
 of death is purely negative. Our senses show us that 
 the dead man ceases to breathe, to act, and to move ; 
 and that his physical frame slowly crumbles away and 
 is resolved into gases, or enters into new forms of 
 animal and vegetable life. If the question which we 
 are discussing were the resurrection of the body, science 
 would certainly have a word to say on the matter, 
 inasmuch as she could easily show it to be an im- 
 possibility, except by the agency of a number of new 
 and miraculous forces. She would demand, for in- 
 stance, to which of all the human bodies to which in 
 successive ages they have belonged the various particles 
 of matter shall, at the resurrection, be assigned, and 
 put many other unanswerable questions. But thinking 
 men in our day have necessarily either abandoned the 
 naked and literal theory of corporeal resurrection, or 
 else accept it as a miracle, a thing quite outside the 
 working of natural laws. The question, however, at 
 present is not as to the resurrection of the body, but 
 as to the continued existence of consciousness after the 
 destruction of the body. And as physical science 
 knows nothing whatever as to consciousness, and in 
 all her investigations is accustomed entirely to ignore 
 its existence, science can have no opinion whatever as 
 to its mortality or immortality. On one condition 
 only can men of physical science presume to form an 
 opinion of the matter—that condition being that our 
 present senses are the only possible inlets of knowledge, 
 and that whatever cannot be brought before them is non- 
 existent, which view we shall scarcely pause to discuss. 
 
 Let us next interrogate philosophy or that intro- 
 spective science which starts from the fact of con- 
 sciousness, just as physical science starts from the 
 
328 faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 outward fact. In this view we shall note that all 
 consciousness is strictly subordinated to certain laws or 
 forms—ain particular, to the law of time, which applies to 
 all consciousness whatever, and the law of space, which 
 apples to the physical world. Now with the dissolu- 
 tion of the body, all thought which takes its subject- 
 matter from the physical universe would also disappear. 
 The whole picture, which is as it were held in and 
 bordered by the framework of space, would be shattered 
 and destroyed. It does not appear to us that the other 
 framework or form of time would at the same time 
 necessarily be destroyed. That is in a great degree in- 
 dependent of the mere world of phenomena; and we can 
 conceive it as still surviving in some quite new scheme 
 of the universe, wherein space and matter were super- 
 seded by some other scheme of things. What thought 
 would be like if space were taken from us we can but 
 vaguely conceive. What thought would be like if time 
 were quite changed in character we cannot in the least 
 conceive. But, after all, our want of power to conceive 
 a thing is no proof at all that that thing cannot exist. 
 
 It must be allowed that the shock of death will 
 rudely shatter that world of our experience, of which 
 space 1s the essential condition. A speculation of this 
 sort, worked out with equal wit and wisdom, appears in 
 the recent work called Flatland. A being is imagined, 
 whose nature and whose ideas are confined to space of 
 two dimensions only, and who receives a visit from a 
 creature from three-dimensioned space. It is easy to 
 show that the creature of three dimensions will pos- 
 sess many faculties which must seem to him of two 
 dimensions purely miraculous. He can come into 
 sight or move out of it freely by entering or leaving 
 
 ! 
 
XXV Lhe future Life 320 
 
 the plane to which the more poorly-endowed being is 
 confined; he can touch the latter in what he supposes 
 to be his inside, and can exactly observe all his doings 
 without being subject to observation in return. The 
 author of Flatland clearly implies that such powers 
 might be exercised in regard to us by any beings, if 
 such exist, to whom space has four dimensions instead 
 of three. They might, for anything we can know, 
 appear in and leave our space in ways past our com- 
 prehension ; they might act not without us, but as we 
 should suppose within; and they might be fully aware 
 of all our words and deeds while entirely concealed 
 from our observation. And yet that there should be, 
 including and overlying our three-dimensioned world, 
 one of four or five or six dimensions, can scarcely even 
 be said to be improbable. Unimaginable it is of 
 course; but that may very well be the fault of our 
 imagination; and many mathematicians and meta- 
 physicians think that they can almost understand how 
 it may be in a sense conceived. Is it not possible 
 that death may be no calamity, but only a breaking 
 down of a fleshly barrier which shuts us off from 
 worlds which lie about and within us, but which our 
 present senses cannot reveal to us? This seems not 
 merely not impossible, but not improbable. 
 
 But this speculation leads to a still further flight 
 through air which will scarcely buoy up the lightest 
 imagination. If death lead us into a world where all 
 our experieuces of physical things become only as the 
 surface to the cube, may it not be that some change 
 and amplification of a similar kind may come over that 
 which in us is not mere knowledge but life, our affec- 
 tions and emotions? May we not find that our love 
 
330 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 for this person and our respect for that person were 
 also but phases of deeper feelings, deeper and more 
 generalised? That in loving we loved only what 
 Plato might call one manifestation of an eternal idea ? 
 And may we not in this way learn by degrees to love 
 the ideas themselves ? 
 
 But human faculties are not capable of living and 
 working in the great void into which we have cast a 
 hesitating glance.- And one thing is certain, that so 
 long as our own personalities remain definite and un- 
 changed, so long shall we have to regard the person- 
 alities of others with all their passions and feelings 
 as equally real. All personality and all consciousness 
 may be fused in something greater than personality, 
 including it as the cube includes the surface; but until 
 then we must keep the feelings which make up our 
 personalities, and those feelings must cling to the 
 objects which have aroused them. 
 
 It is considered by many that inductive psychology, 
 which is a remarkable modern hybrid between physical 
 science and philosophy, has proved between conscious- 
 ness and the body a closer connection than that here 
 indicated. It has proved certainly that there is the 
 closest connection between the woof of thought and the 
 state of the matter of the brain. Physical diseases in 
 that matter produce the most remarkable results in the 
 consciousness of the person diseased—strange freaks of 
 memory, the obliteration of one path of thought and 
 the opening of another—even changes of character; so 
 that even an external blow on the head may dull or 
 modify the intellectual power, or seem to make virtue 
 more difficult and vice more attractive. And changes 
 which can by outward means be induced in the brain- 
 
 oe 
 
XXV Lhe future Life eyes 
 
 substance will direct thought in one direction or 
 another, and stimulate or benumb it. All this must be 
 allowed to be true, for it is established by a very suf- 
 ficient induction. And it is full of mystery. But we 
 may observe that all which physiological and psycho- 
 logical observation can prove is that, while conscious- 
 ness and physical frame co-exist, and together make up 
 an individual man, so long the connection between 
 thought and brain-matter is extremely intimate, so that 
 one cannot be influenced without the other. This, 
 however, proves and can prove nothing as to what 
 would happen in the event of consciousness taking 
 place out of connection with a physical frame. It 
 affords also but negative evidence. 
 
 Thus so far as sciences alike physical and mental 
 are concerned, evidence as to any future state of the 
 soul after death is purely negative. Of such state they 
 know no example. And of its character they are 
 unable to judge, the analogy of mundane existence 
 entirely breaking down when we attempt to stretch it 
 beyond the limits of material life. Only they help us 
 to reject as improbable or impossible certain supposi- 
 tions as to what it may be. They furnish us with 
 limits within which is a wide field for conjecture and 
 hypothesis. 
 
 We may next make historical inquiry into the 
 origin and growth among nations of the belief in a future 
 life. Among peoples at a low level of culture the 
 opinion prevails that death is not by any means the 
 end of existence; that in fact it is a sort of interruption 
 or episode, after which life goes on much as _ before. 
 The new life, like the old, is attached to the body. 
 Hence the need for well-housing the dead body, for 
 
232 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 protecting it from the weather, for providing it with 
 food and armour and ornaments. ‘This phase of bar- 
 barous belief is brought before us most forcibly by the 
 dispositions of the graves of the nations of the ancient 
 world, the Egyptians, Etruscans, and earlier Greeks. 
 Among all these peoples the grave was the home of the 
 dead, and arranged with the same care with which 
 houses were arranged. Among them all the wants of 
 the dead were carefully provided for, both by the 
 storing of objects in the tomb and by the periodical 
 offerings brought to it at certain festivals of the year. 
 The ancients considered that for a dead man to he un- 
 buried would be the greatest of all calamities, because 
 he would thus be left without a fixed abiding-place, 
 and drift homeless, naked and hungry, over the surface 
 of the earth or the sea. 
 
 These were the beliefs which gave rise to the 
 burial customs of the ancients. But although the 
 customs survived, the beliefs which they embodied 
 oradually decayed. We can scarcely at this distance 
 of time trace the process, though we may observe one 
 not dissimilar going on even at this day among some 
 of the more backward races of the world. But we 
 know that Egyptians, Etruscans, and Greeks alike came 
 to believe, in historical times, in a future life which 
 was entirely dissociated from the body. They believed 
 that at death, the soul or the breath, or the principle 
 of life, whatever it was that did not then perish, set 
 out on long wanderings in search of a new home, a 
 realm of shades situated either afar off amid ocean or 
 desert, or else in the heart of the earth beneath our 
 feet. Arrived in this strange and distant land, the 
 soul entered on a new existence, of the same kind, in 
 
xxv Lhe future Life Ba 
 
 the main, as that of this world, but more vague, 
 shadowy, and obscure. There it remained, and thence 
 it seldom came back to please or to trouble the living. 
 Between such beliefs as these and the contemporary 
 burial customs there was a sharp inconsistency; but 
 man is in most things inconsistent, and belief and 
 custom each kept on its own path, so that collision 
 between the two was avoided. The shade of the 
 departed was indifferently regarded as dwelling in the 
 land of the dead, or as residing in the tomb. 
 
 As to the condition of souls in the spirit-land, and 
 their organisation into a society, we may also trace a 
 gradual growth of nobler belief. At first, as was 
 inevitable in strongly-developed aristocracies, higher 
 position and greater happiness in the next world was 
 supposed to be reserved for chiefs and those in 
 authority. There are to this day races who suppose 
 that happiness beyond the grave is reserved for their 
 rulers, and denied to the common people, however 
 virtuous. But long before the Christian era the two most 
 important races of the early world, the Egyptians and 
 the Greeks, had arrived at the belief that the future 
 world was a.place of discrimination and of judgment ; 
 that there the good met with the rewards of virtue, 
 and the wicked received the punishment due to their 
 vices, which in this life did not always meet their due. 
 To paraphrase a noted saying, they brought in a new 
 life beyond the grave to redress the balance of that 
 which precedes the grave; and thus acknowledged in 
 the government of the universe a justice which cannot 
 be observed when we confine our view merely to the 
 life of the flesh. 
 
 It is well known that the Jews were behind the 
 
Pad Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 surrounding nations in their acceptance of the belief 
 in the future life; a fact the more remarkable when 
 we consider how much in some matters they were 
 subject to influence from the side of Egypt, the real 
 home of that belief. 
 
 But when the Jews adopted it from other nations, 
 they threw into it the moral intensity which has 
 always been the best characteristic of their race. 
 Indeed they would find it easy to extend to the life 
 beyond the grave those strict notions of the close 
 connection between virtue and happiness, and between 
 vice and misery, which they had long held in regard to 
 the affairs of the present life. And in the same way 
 Christianity in adopting the heathen doctrine of a 
 future life did not in any way change its essential 
 character, but only Christianised it. This it did by 
 changing the conception of the virtue which was 
 supposed to merit reward in another state of existence. 
 Hitherto it had often been the custom to suppose that 
 ceremonial rights and purifications could give a title 
 to future happiness, but the Founder of Christianity 
 was never tired of repeating that the heart and not the 
 body must be cleansed that the soul may cast off the 
 slough of sin; that only those are deserving of reward 
 hereafter who love God and their neighbour. And by 
 placing the whole future life in the hands of a Deity 
 who is a kind and loving father, he made it more 
 attractive for good; so that those who were inspired 
 by the Christian enthusiasm thought far less of earning 
 for themselves a good estate in the life to come than 
 of doing the will of their heavenly Father, and leaving 
 it entirely in his hands to assign the reward. 
 
 It is commonly believed that the doctrine of the 
 
XXxv Lhe Future Life 335 
 
 future life is in a marked degree the gift to mankind 
 of the Christian revelation. But this nakedly thus 
 stated is not the case. Compared, indeed, with the 
 Jewish Scriptures the writings of the New Testament 
 are strongly marked by the prominence in them of the 
 doctrine of a future life. But this contrast does not 
 hold between Christianity and Paganism. Among the 
 ancient Egyptians in the very dawn of history, the life 
 after death was not merely believed in, but occupied 
 far more of thought and purpose in the present life 
 than it does or perhaps ever has done among Christians. 
 The life of the governing classes, at least, in Eeypt, 
 was mainly devoted to securing for themselves a good 
 reception in the land of shades, and providing for their 
 future happiness in that grave which they called an 
 eternal abode, as compared with the temporary abode 
 in which they dwelt on earth. Among the Greeks and 
 the Romans, belief in the continued existence of souls 
 after death was all but universal. Then, as now, there 
 were sceptics on the subject; then, as now, these 
 sceptics were a small set who professed to be wiser 
 than their neighbours. Then, as now, philosophic 
 thinkers were divided on the subject; but the greatest 
 of the philosophers maintained that the popular belief 
 contained a kernel of truth. 
 
 The Founder of Christianity and the Founder of 
 Islam alike found the doctrine already existing in the 
 world, and only altered its details. And it has been 
 frequently remarked that the Founder of Christianity * 
 
 ' It must be remembered that we are debarred by the plan of this 
 work from appealing to the authority of the Founder of Christianity 
 on this or any other matter. We only mention his teaching in this 
 connection in order to complete our historical sketch. 
 
3.36 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 says very little indeed as to the condition of the 
 blessed after death. He contents himself with a few 
 general phrases, such as “ They are as the angels of 
 God in heaven,” “In my Fathers house are many 
 mansions. . . . I go to prepare a place for you.” The 
 only book of the Christian canon which gives us any 
 account of the future state is the Apocalypse, which is, 
 on the face of it, a vision or allegory, as to the 
 interpretation of which Christians always have differed 
 and will no doubt always differ. 
 
 The Christian doctrine,- then, while it strongly 
 affirms that the soul survives the body, and that our 
 state in the next world will depend on our conduct in 
 this, yet gives us no details as to the future life. 
 Christians will, of course, suppose that the founder of 
 their faith knew more on the matter than he chose to 
 reveal to his followers. He must have known, they 
 will affirm, that any further assurances or details would 
 be misunderstood, or would have a bad effect on man- 
 kind. In any case, such is the fact. 
 
 As the Christian teaching hardened into dogma, the 
 necessity of outward rites to future happiness was 
 reasserted with fresh energy; and the necessity of 
 belief in certain formulas with a view to salvation was 
 insisted on by ecclesiastical authority; thus creating a 
 bondage which, however necessary as a stage in human 
 progress, yet furnishes painful pages in history. And 
 the chains of this bondage have not yet, in spite of the 
 efforts of reformers during the last five centuries, 
 altogether fallen from our necks. We cannot even yet 
 dissociate the practice of virtue from certain theological 
 dogmas with which it may really have no connection, 
 or believe that the Deity is willing to accept good 
 
XXV The future Life 25% 
 
 works even from those who hold erroneous or unworthy 
 doctrines in regard to himself. 
 
 The spread of more exact and scientific thought in 
 our own days would seem to have produced certain 
 effects on the doctrine of the future life. That doctrine 
 is still held, at least theoretically, by the great majority 
 of educated people; and even by the great majority of 
 those whose lives are devoted to the furthering of 
 scientific knowledge. There may be groups of votaries 
 of particular branches of physical science with whom 
 the doctrine is unpopular and regarded as outworn. 
 But their opinion has but little effect on the general 
 consensus, nor is it to be allowed that they are in at 
 all an exceptionally favourable position for forming an 
 opinion. But the better instructed among mankind 
 now hold two opinions in regard to the future life. 
 First, that its happiness or misery must depend on 
 the moral worth or unworthiness of the person. And 
 this is indeed but a corollary of the second and more 
 general opinion, that whatever be the nature of that 
 life, it must be in essentials a continuation of the 
 present. The great law of continuity is imported from 
 the present life to that after death. We must place 
 between the two no deep gulf filled with the idea of a 
 personally intervening Deity and a judgment modelled 
 on the analogy of a human bar of justice. As time 
 goes on we allow fewer cataclysms and gaps in the 
 scheme of the world. Everything arises out of some- 
 thing else, and is the natural continuation and com- 
 pletion of it. If therefore consciousness survive the 
 grave, it will but have moved to another province of 
 the same empire. The local laws may be changed, 
 but the general government of the realm will still 
 
 Z 
 
338 . faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 prevail. Causes which produce an effect here will 
 there also produce an effect, though it may be under 
 changed conditions. Death may alter many things, 
 but it cannot make evil good or good evil. It cannot 
 make a diseased soul healthy, nor make those happy 
 whose heart is not in harmony with itself, with the 
 nature of the universe, and with the laws of the ruler 
 of the universe. But of course when physical sur- 
 roundings disappear, the power of moral laws will at 
 once increase and their sanction become more in- 
 evitable. | 
 
 Does this sketch of the history of the belief in a future 
 lite in any way help us to determine the reasonableness 
 of that belief? It may seem to some that the fact that 
 such belief sprang from opinions which we know to. 
 have been unfounded, and was long attached to re- 
 ligious views which are entirely abandoned, may tell 
 against. it. We do not believe that the body feels 
 after death; we do not believe in a world of spirits 
 situate in the midst of our globe, and presided over 
 by Osiris and Isis, or by Hades and Persephone. 
 Why then should we not abandon a belief founded in 
 error and fostered by outworn absurdities, especially 
 since sense and intellect furnish it no support ? 
 
 Let us, however, see how it would answer to apply 
 the same logic to others of our beliefs? Our belief in 
 the existence of an external world and of other selves 
 arose from opinions which will not bear investigation— 
 which, at the touch of philosophic thought, fall to pieces 
 like a house of cards. That also has been fostered by 
 untenable views of our relation to external objects. 
 And in this case also no appeal to sense or to reason 
 will enable us to establish a basis for the objectivity 
 
XXV Lhe Future Life SRO 
 
 of the world. And yet we must believe in that 
 objectivity unless we would lose all power of vigorous 
 and successful action. Thus it appears that it is no 
 valid argument against a belief to show that it arose 
 in error and was perpetuated by confusion. Most of 
 the beliefs most necessary to our very existence did 
 the same. 
 
 Rather would it seem that a belief which springs 
 up as man emerges from savagery to the higher level 
 of barbarism, and which grows stronger and more 
 tenacious with each step of the upward movement of 
 civilisation, must needs have solid foundation, with 
 whatever intellectual errors it may be entwined. 
 Rather would we think that it is in accordance with 
 the plan of the universe that a belief of this kind 
 should be gradually revealed to mankind for their 
 good during the ages of the evolution of civilisation, 
 and not that a point will come in the history of man 
 at which it will become his duty to cut down the tree 
 of faith which has so gradually grown up. Some 
 beliefs there are, no doubt, appropriate to the growth 
 of the race, but not to its maturity, which are not 
 developed into higher forms as society advances, but 
 drop away altogether. But we have many reasons for 
 dechning to include among these behefs the hope of 
 the future life. 
 
 The only positive proof, derived from the very 
 nature of conduct, of a future life, lies in the fact that, 
 without a belief in that life, the whole nature of con- 
 duct becomes confused and contradictory. If there 
 be a future life wherein virtue is rewarded and vice 
 punished, then there is no division between the paths 
 of virtue and of prudence. It were wise to encounter 
 
340 faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 even death rather than to abandon one’s duty if the 
 death of the body be only an episode in actual life. 
 A man’s first wisdom will in that case be to preserve 
 his soul from stain and disease at whatever cost, since 
 in the long run this must produce an overplus of 
 happiness. Any shrinking from duty will in that 
 case be short-sighted and mistaken self-love. But if, 
 on the other hand, death brings the end of conscious 
 existence, then it may in many cases be imprudent to 
 do what is right; and for doing what is right a man 
 may suffer severe punishment. For a sentinel to be 
 slain rather than quit his post—for a starving man to 
 refuse to prolong existence by committing theft or 
 murder—is in any case a right thing. But although 
 right it is imprudent unless there be a future life, 
 since in that case death is a greater evil than any 
 other which can happen to a man, and he will be 
 urged by prudence to do anything rather than submit 
 to die. 
 
 Apart from religion, science and observation suffi- 
 ciently establish that we are responsible for the effects 
 of our actions when those effects take place in our- 
 selves, and that habits are formed of a number of 
 individual actions. It would hence result that we 
 should be wise in forming habits which will afford 
 lasting pleasure at the expense of pain caused by 
 actions which at the moment go against the grain. 
 But life is so uncertain for all of us that we can never 
 be sure that we may not be cut off at the moment 
 when we were about to reap the crop of pleasure for 
 which we had sown in pain. Or a change of circum- 
 stances may as completely rob us of the results to 
 which we looked forward as would death itself. And 
 
XxV The Future Life 341 
 Serene re ee 
 in such cases it might seem to cold secular prudence 
 that we had made a bad bargain, and done less than 
 we might have done with our lives. Take for instance 
 the case of a man in whom are the congenital seeds of 
 a disease which is sure to bring him to an early grave, 
 but which does not in the meantime incapacitate him 
 for pleasure. It might seem reasonable in such a man 
 to indulge his baser appetites, trusting that death 
 would save him from the evil results which such 
 indulgences bring on later life. Prudent calculation 
 of consequence might here seem to sanction a course 
 which, as every one knows, would be quite immoral. 
 But the doctrine of immortality at once puts the 
 matter in another light. If death is but a slight 
 interruption in a life which is to be indefinitely con- 
 tinued under new conditions, it must be most im- 
 prudent to admit any self-indulgences which will harm 
 the purity of the soul and unfit it for better destinies. 
 And if in the long run happiness is awarded to each 
 person in proportion to his goodness, then to follow 
 virtue at any cost must be the only wise course. 
 Virtue and selfishness will dictate exactly the same 
 courses of conduct, and those courses such ag every 
 impartial person would allow to be the best. 
 
 The argument for a future life which is thus de- 
 rived from the very nature of conduct is perhaps of all 
 the arguments by which it may be upheld the most 
 clear and logical. No one who understands what 
 reasoning is can fail to see its drift and to feel its 
 force. But there are other arguments leading in the 
 same direction which may with some minds have more 
 weight. One of these is the argument of continuity. 
 If there be one tendency which science hag shown to 
 
342 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 prevail in all the phenomena of the world it is the law 
 of continuity, the law that forces change their aspect 
 and form but do not pass out of being, that in the 
 history of the world there are few gaps or cataclysms, 
 but that everything arises out of pre-existing materials 
 and passes into new forms. But if the law of con- 
 tinuity which holds so conspicuously in all the material 
 universe holds also in the realm of conduct, of con- 
 sciousness and character, then it would seem that we 
 are compelled to postulate a future life for man. We 
 see a fine and noble character gradually formed amid 
 the buffetings of the world, a will grow and develop 
 which is keenly set to follow what is good, and which 
 follows it to the death. Are we to suppose that will 
 and that character to cease suddenly to be at all, to go 
 out like the flame of a candle? Can a force which at 
 one moment is strong enough to sway a whole city or 
 country be at the next moment a nonentity? If so, 
 what becomes of the law of continuity 2? Where is in 
 this case the persistence of force ? 
 
 Or suppose a character not fully formed but in 
 course of formation; a nature capable of great feelings 
 and resolves, but having as yet not attained to anything 
 ereat ; a being half developed, full of the noblest pro- 
 mise, but not having reached nobleness. Is death 
 finally to blight and destroy that being, to wither its 
 promise as the frost destroys the forming fruit of the 
 trees of the orchard ? We find in our hearts as well 
 as in our reason the greatest indisposition to believe 
 it. It seems such a waste of the highest powers, 
 of the noblest faculties, known to man. We know 
 that consciousness exists, and we know absolutely 
 nothing of its origin, so we must suppose that it exists 
 
XXV Lhe Future Life 343 
 
 for a purpose and has a meaning; but if it is cut off 
 and thrown away at the moment when the meaning is 
 being developed and the purpose accomplished, then 
 its very existence seems an absurd thing. 
 
 We might say much more on such subjects as these, 
 but must refrain. We could say nothing which has 
 not been far better said already either by moralists or 
 by poets. And our wish is not at all to excite the 
 sympathy of readers on one side or the other, but 
 merely to look at a great problem from all sides, and 
 to judge as impartially as we can. 
 
 But there is a serious objection which will be 
 brought to bear on the conclusions of this chapter, and 
 not on those only but on all that we have said as to 
 the doctrines of faith. There are among us many 
 sociological schools, of which the school of positivism 
 is perhaps the most logical but by no means the only 
 branch, which will boldly maintain that our whole 
 method is vicious, and our conclusions therefore worth- 
 less. They will say that we assume the unit to be 
 the conscious individual, whereas the true unit is 
 society, of which individuals are but component parts. 
 They will maintain that we have no right to look for 
 a personal providence—that we should rather look for 
 a providence for the race. And so in regard to the 
 equation of virtue and happiness. The happiness of 
 individuals may be quite out of proportion to their 
 merits ; one man may suffer for another, and one may 
 be rewarded for another. The general average, it may 
 be said, will come out right notwithstanding. The 
 virtuous community will thrive and extend, and the 
 vicious community fade away and perish. 
 
 It is as well at once to allow that if in these in- 
 
3244 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 quiries society is the only legitimate unit, and not the 
 individual, then all our arguments fall to the ground. 
 In that case those are justified who say that the only 
 immortality to which we can aspire is an unselfish 
 immortality, immortality in the race and not for in- 
 dividuals. We are in that case bound to sink as far 
 as we can all personal hopes and aspirations in the 
 single desire of the wellbeing of society, and to reject 
 all longings for personal perfection as the remains 
 of innate selfishness. And we are bound to regard the 
 claim that happiness and virtue shall go together as a 
 prompting of egotism, without any root in the nature 
 of things. 
 
 Such ideas are in our days widely spread; they 
 are sometimes openly expressed, but more often they 
 underlie teaching whether secularist or Christian. It 
 is necessary to come to close quarters with them and 
 examine their validity. 
 
 The great question in regard to them is whether they 
 are true. Can it be said in any reasonable sense of 
 the phrase that society is the unit and men one by 
 one the component parts? <A tree is the unit, and a 
 leaf a component part of it, because the tree is full of 
 a common life, and if the leaf be taken away the leaf will 
 perish. An animal is the unit, and its limbs the com- 
 ponent parts, because the animal moves the limbs, and 
 the limbs move together for its benefit and not theirs ; 
 the limbs have no meaning or object of their own. In 
 avery modified sense a hive of bees may be said to be 
 a unit, since it is animated by one idea which governs 
 all the bees and all their relations to one another. 
 But a bee can live and can gather honey apart from 
 the hive; therefore it is equally true to say that the 
 
XxV Lhe Future Life 345 
 
 bee is a unit. And in human society there is no such 
 subordination of the individual to the aggregate as we 
 find among bees. Moreover, the aggregate of bees is 
 definite and clear: it is the hive. Which ageregate of 
 men are we to call the unit, a family, or a city, or a 
 nation, or the human race? All of them seem to 
 have about an equal claim. Among men the indi- 
 vidual has consciousness, wills and thinks and feels ; 
 what possible aggregate of men performs any of these 
 functions? Any society or aggregate of men may be 
 dissolved or broken up; it instantly becomes a mass 
 of atoms which may form a new aggregate or any 
 number of new aggregates at their pleasure. 
 
 There are indeed senses in which we may regard 
 aggregates of men as units. A Greek city was a 
 unit politically, and every citizen was ready at any 
 moment to give his life for it. The Christian Church 
 was in the Middle Ages a unit, and every member of it 
 had clear duties towards every other member. Among 
 nations of our own day who have a strong common 
 feeling, such as the Russians or the Italians, the race 
 is a unit, and devotion to its service a real religion. 
 To a very few of the most self-devoted of mankind, 
 such as Jesuit missionaries and ardent philanthropists, 
 humanity has become a real unit, and the most de- 
 graded being who bears the human shape has seemed 
 a brother. But to all the ordinary purposes of life in 
 the present age the real unit of which account is 
 taken is the individual, and such units as the city, the 
 country, and the human race are little more than 
 metaphors. 
 
 The present writer is not without hope that he 
 may in a future work consider the social aspects of 
 
346 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 religion, as in the present work he is considering the 
 individual aspects of it, and he may then return to the 
 question thus briefly touched on. But to whatever 
 results he may then be led, it is clear that he can 
 never be led to deny that the individual, the unit of 
 conduct, is in a true and clear sense a separate con- 
 stituent of the moral universe. 
 
 On the whole, the progress of the world for many 
 centuries has tended to deal with men more and more 
 as separate entities, and less and less as parts of a 
 mass. Among our early ancestors the household, and 
 later, the village, did really form units far more com- 
 pact than any which are now made up of men. Among 
 the Greeks, as is well known, the civic body, the polis, 
 was a wonderfully concrete and real thing, to which, 
 in many places, divine honours were paid, and to the 
 good of which every citizen was bound, without hesita- 
 tion, to sacrifice goods and life. The feelings of moderns 
 for their city and their country are very tame in com- 
 parison. The human race is for us a more important 
 unity than it was for the Greeks. But it is a unity 
 of imagination merely, and has no sort of corporate 
 being. 
 
 In old days, if a crime were committed in a town- 
 ship, the Government punished the whole township, 
 making all pay for the crime of one or two. And 
 if the head of a family committed murder or became a 
 rebel, not only would he be pat. to death, but all his 
 children and his kin with him. According to the 
 notions which now prevail, such proceedings are utterly 
 unworthy of human justice. They have been left be- 
 hind by the progress of moral feeling, justice adopting 
 a more individual standpoint. It is curious that those 
 
XXV The Future Life 347 
 
 whose views we are now examining suppose that divine 
 justice adheres to the plan which human justice has 
 long abandoned as unworthy. 
 
 Thus, looked at logically, the doctrines according 
 to which a belief in providence for the race and im- 
 mortality in the race are to be substituted for belief in 
 individual providence and personal immortality, are 
 found to lack sufficient basis. Let us next consider 
 them from the practical side. 
 
 Here the matter is simple, for surely no one will 
 seriously maintain that a belief in personal providence 
 and the immortality of the soul unfit a man for prac- 
 tical life. On the contrary, such beliefs have been 
 very strong in many who have been eminently success- 
 ful in ruling mankind and guiding the affairs of nations. 
 To cite instances would be to make a list of statesmen, 
 warriors, and reformers which could be prolonged ac- 
 cording to one’s wish. To draw up a lst of great men 
 who have repudiated those beliefs would be a less easy 
 task. But the matter is obviously too wide and too 
 vague to argue about. We will, therefore, confine 
 ourselves to a single observation of a practical kind. 
 
 The acceptance of the future existence of souls 
 must greatly affect the love for relatives and friends, 
 not so much by making it stronger as by raising its 
 tone, and making it pursue more worthy ideals. No 
 doubt in these days we think much of the happiness 
 of our children, but do we study sufficiently to raise 
 their characters and purify their hearts? Or do we 
 merely indulge them that we may be happy in their 
 immediate happiness? Do we consider what will 
 please our friends or what will be for their real and 
 permanent good? It is laid down by the great autho- 
 
348 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 rity of Kant that our duty towards others is not to 
 study their perfection, as we should study our own, 
 but rather to make their ends our own, whatever these 
 ends may be. Kant does not usually err by taking 
 too low a tone, yet in this case he appears to do so. 
 And this would at once appear if we made real to our- 
 selves the belief that our friends were destined for a 
 future life beyond the grave; and that, in the course 
 of that prolonged existence, the happiness of each would 
 depend not on the convenience of outward circumstance, 
 nor the abundance of sources of enjoyment, but alto- 
 gether on the degree of goodness to which he had at- 
 tained. If we felt this we might be less complaisant 
 in domestic relations, but they would take an altogether 
 higher tone. We should be less easy and good-natured 
 with friends, but we should bestow more thought and 
 care upon them. It can scarcely be affirmed, except 
 by those who regard all religion as mischievous, that 
 such an element entering into personal affections would 
 injure them, or cause the world to become less vir- 
 tuous. 
 
 Thus the end of this chapter leads us to the same 
 point as the end of a previous chapter. The future 
 life is a doctrine of faith. Its main basis is the senti- 
 ment of justice, which is deeply planted in the hearts . 
 of all of us. Leaving out of sight the question whether 
 the doctrine is supported by a special divine revelation, 
 we may fairly say that in the light of conduct it must 
 be pronounced justified only if this sentiment of justice 
 is a well-founded emotion—that is, is a right feeling of 
 our relations to the world and to God. 
 
 Though this chapter is already very long, we cannot 
 conclude it without pointing out that however import- 
 
XXV The future Life 349 
 ant the question of the future life may be from the 
 religious point of view, yet it is perhaps less important 
 than many religious persons suppose, and that for a 
 reason which can be easily pointed out. A man may 
 be sceptical as to future personal existence and yet 
 may be able heartily to accept, not indeed all, but 
 many of the most important and essential of the 
 religious doctrines commonly held by Christians. 
 
 If disbelief in the future hfe compelled us to regard 
 the word Heaven when it occurs in religious writings 
 as a word wholly without meaning, then, indeed, it 
 would be fatal to religion. But it may safely be said 
 that in the great majority of cases in which the word 
 is used, even in the New Testament, a satisfactory 
 meaning may be assigned to it, quite apart from any 
 doctrine as to the continuation of our consciousness 
 beyond death. 
 
 The word Heaven may signify, and in modern use 
 most often does signify, the sum of human ideals. We 
 speak of heavenly delight or heavenly music, meaning 
 thereby that the delight or the music were such as to 
 satisfy our highest aspirations and faculties. In this 
 sense the word is commonly used in the Gospels. Thy 
 will be done, as in Heaven, so on earth. This petition 
 is for a reign in the world of ideal virtue and justice. 
 The kingdom of Heaven ws within you. This means 
 that virtue consists in an attitude of soul in relation 
 to the Power which works for righteousness. The 
 kingdom of Heaven is the world of ideas, the world 
 directly filled with the presence of God, and full of 
 the prototypes whereafter the visible and material world 
 is gradually being formed and moulded. Its realities 
 underlie all the facts of sense; its laws are the sanction 
 
Late) Faith and Conduct CHAP. XXV 
 A oe ee EE eee 
 of virtue and the terror of evil-doers. Its peace is the 
 peace which is not of the world, but which passes all 
 understanding. Its sons and daughters are those who 
 spend their lives in raising and not depressing the tone 
 of social life, in leading men into harmony with the 
 highest law, not encouraging them to make light of it. 
 
 This, we say, is in our days the ordinary meaning 
 of the word Heaven. It lies not in the future nor in 
 the distance, but around us and within us, beneath the 
 surface of material events, beneath the chill surface of 
 consciousness. It is to the outer world what life is to 
 the plant, what thought, and feeling, and purpose are 
 to the man. The poet and the philosopher give us 
 broken gleams of it, and the poet and philosopher at 
 once seem to us inspired. The preacher calls on us to 
 aspire to it, and for the moment we feel as if nothing 
 in the world beside were worth any thought. The 
 hero and the martyr sit enthroned in it, and we feel 
 with what dignity human nature can be filled. In 
 this heaven we all believe, unless the typical material- 
 ist be a real creature of flesh and blood, which is open 
 to doubt. But, in order that we may believe in it, it 
 is by no means necessary that we should believe in the 
 existence of personal consciousness after death. <A 
 Heaven of ideas belongs to experience and to action. 
 Take it away, and life becomes not merely a blank, 
 but a thing divided against itself. But as a historical 
 fact, the nation which has most fully believed in the 
 Heaven of the deeper consciousness, the Jewish nation, 
 did not with any clearness or intensity believe in the 
 future life for individuals. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 THE FUTURE OF MANKIND 
 
 To speak in any detail of the future of religion, of the 
 world, or of human society, would be here out of place. 
 For we have not as yet treated religion from the social 
 point of view at all, but merely from the individual 
 point of view. We have not discussed the nature and 
 functions of the Church; how then can we speak of 
 that which the Church is likely to become, or of the 
 destinies of man regarded as a being capable of re- 
 hgion. 
 
 Yet even from the point of view of the present 
 treatise we have something to say, if not in regard to 
 the actual future of society, at all events in regard to 
 the feelings with which men can look forward to that 
 future. If a man be given to reflection, and be not 
 merged in the gulf of selfishness, his happiness, and, 
 with his happiness, his energy and usefulness, will be 
 in a great degree dependent on the question whether 
 he can look forward to the future of the world-—a world 
 full of friends and of relations, with children growing up 
 about him, with hope or with a despair which strangles 
 hope. And quite apart from all observation, or theory 
 based on observation, of the tendencies of society, we 
 
352 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 Oo 
 
 are able to gather from the primary facts of personal 
 religion strong and well-founded hopes, which will dis- 
 pose us to regard the future of mankind with calmness 
 and without dread. 
 
 Suppose that a skilful engineer set himself to con- 
 struct a steam vessel, so nicely arranged that it could 
 be launched at Dover and proceed without any crew 
 or any hand to guide it into the harbour at Calais. 
 He would find that the whole difficulty, or at least the 
 unsurmountable difficulty, would arise from the un- 
 certainty as to wind and wave. The course he could 
 calculate to a nicety, the force of tide and current 
 might be ascertained within certain limits. If he 
 could secure an absolutely smooth sea and a perfectly 
 still air, his task might be not impossible. But to 
 produce any sort of machinery which should have such 
 power of self-adaptation that it should make allowance 
 for the force and direction of the wind or the rockings 
 of the waves, would be an impossibility to the greatest 
 mechanical genius. But if a child or one half-witted 
 sailor were allowed on board to hold the tiller, then it 
 would become easy to any apprentice to accomplish 
 the task of construction. One thousandth part of the 
 intelligence vainly applied in one case before the vessel 
 startet would, if applied in the other case during the 
 voyage, produce perfect success. 
 
 According to those who see nothing in the pheno- 
 mena around us but unvarying law and an iron chain 
 of cause and effect, the world of living creatures and 
 of men is just such a machine as that we have spoken 
 of—a machine marvellously thought out beforehand 
 and then set to go by itself. As evolution proceeds 
 and man gains greater and greater power in the regula- 
 
XXVI The Future of Mankind Saye: 
 
 tion of the world, the scheme of things becomes more 
 and more complicated, and indeed more and more in- 
 calculable, since it is quite certain that the actions of 
 men cannot be calculated like the courses of the stars 
 or the force of the tides. The course of things as 
 determined by pre-existing law has to move in a 
 medium of greater and greater disturbance. It seems 
 to us looking on that the time must come sooner or 
 later when, unless the world have some power of self- 
 righting, things must get into an evil groove, and the 
 world, by the very force of unbending law, go at a 
 faster and faster pace headlong to destruction. As 
 the society of civilised beings breaks away more and 
 more from the simple life according to nature, and 
 finds out for itself new ways and many inventions, the 
 wheels of that society require readjustment, and if 
 they be not readjusted will jar one with the other. 
 Or, to vary the figure, we may say that society living 
 an unhealthy life requires now and then a strong course 
 of medicine, and if that medicine be not given will die. 
 
 On the other hand, if the course of the lives of 
 individuals and of the race be under the control in 
 but a small degree of a Power working from without 
 to definite purposes, the greatness of this danger will 
 disappear. There will be a hand on the tiller, and 
 the vessel, if strongly and well made, will reach the 
 harbour in spite of opposing forces. 
 
 It will perhaps be said that such guidance and 
 regulation are exactly what we expect from human 
 wisdom, the wiser persuading the more foolish to give 
 up courses contrary to nature, and to aim at the better 
 end in preference to the worse. There is truth in this 
 reply. And the words of wisdom and of spirit which 
 
 2A 
 
354 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 guide the course of the human world do no doubt come 
 from the lips of men. Those who believe in divine 
 government will say that such words are put into 
 men’s mouths by the inspiration of a divine wisdom. 
 And indeed, considering the weakness and_ short- 
 sightedness of the best of men, it seems utterly un- 
 reasonable to suppose that any of them can ever see 
 the full results of their actions, or all the bearings 
 of the remedies they propose for the diseases of 
 society. 
 
 But if one considers the course of events it will 
 appear that the adaptations whereby men become fit 
 for new conditions do not altogether result from accept- 
 ance of the words of the wise, but take place in an 
 unreasoning and unsystematic way, usually below the 
 surface of consciousness. The course of affairs requires 
 changes in mankind, changes in their bodies, changes 
 in their minds, changes in their wishes and habits and 
 thoughts. And these changes come about none knows 
 when or how. Men of the necessary sort make their 
 appearance when and where they are required. And 
 the same silent and slow ehange of which such repre- 
 sentative men are the highest expression takes place 
 also in those who are less noteworthy, all feeling the 
 power of an invisible impulse, and yielding to the 
 pressure of a hand they cannot see. It is impossible 
 
 to pay attention to historic portraiture without observ- 
 
 ing that all the men of the same age and conditions 
 are alike even in face and in physical constitution. 
 In mind and heart, in beliefs and ideals, they are still 
 more alike. In every generation nature changes her 
 dies and produces fresh types. 
 
 Many modern theorists would say that this is the 
 
XXVI The Future of Mankind 355 
 
 result of competition and the survival of the fittest 
 under changing conditions. No doubt the fittest does 
 tend to survive; but who makes the conditions, and 
 who makes the majority in every age born fitter for 
 the conditions under which they will have to live than 
 for those of bygone ages? These results are not pro- 
 duced by the physical aging and evolution of the 
 world of matter; that is in fact obvious enough, since 
 man has himself by this time attained to so pre- 
 ponderant a position in relation to the world, both of 
 plants and animals, that he in all civilised countries 
 directs and regulates it according to his own ends, and 
 is hardly in any degree dominated by it. There is, 
 however, another series of changes in man’s environ- 
 ment which does undoubtedly hold him to some extent 
 in its grasp. Great discoveries in practical science 
 and in engineering, the discovery of the printing-press, 
 of gunpowder, of the’ steam-engine, the electric tele- 
 eraph, and the like, do exercise a wonderful influence 
 on the outer life of man, and through the outer life on 
 the inner. Such discoveries regulate the distribution 
 of population, the size of cities, and the daily habits of 
 all men. They act most notably in breaking down all 
 the barriers which time and custom had raised between 
 one set of men and another. Under the spread of 
 railways in India the barriers of caste are rapidly 
 being levelled, and something of the same kind takes 
 place even in European countries. Every mountain 
 and hill in society is being brought low, and the 
 waters of a tideless democracy covering the face of the 
 earth. Intercourse between all parts of the world is 
 made easy and frequent, all the pathways of knowledge 
 are being made smooth, and doors open to talent which 
 
356 Faith and Conduct OHAP. 
 
 o 
 
 in old times were passable only to those who held the 
 key of privilege. 
 
 Those who dwell in great cities like London and 
 Glasgow and New York see so much of the changes. 
 brought about by the progress of engineering and 
 physical science, and daily feel their bearing so strongly, 
 that they are tempted to adopt the belief that it is 
 these discoveries which regulate the line of human 
 advancement. It is a natural creed to those who 
 dwell in the surging tide of worldly affairs ; and it is 
 a creed which lies deep in the hearts of perhaps the 
 majority of our trading classes. To an ordinary 
 business man it seems not merely a paradox to hint 
 that some great mechanical discovery can produce 
 more harm than good, but it even seems more or less 
 impious—a sort of treason against the laws of the 
 universe. And the existence of this feeling shows that 
 they make it a matter of religious belief that the line 
 of physical discovery and that of human improvement 
 are identical. 
 
 It is natural that those engaged in engineering, in 
 commerce, and in other departments of the struggle for 
 ever going on between man and his physical surround- 
 ings, should have some share in this feeling. But those 
 who stand a little aside from the stream of worldly 
 affairs can see how miserably thin this creed is, and 
 how inadequate is the view which it gives of human 
 life and development. It is in reality a revival of the 
 crude materialism which has never been extinct in the 
 world, whether in theory or in practice. It places man 
 practically in the power of outward things. If science 
 by obeying nature masters her for human purposes, 
 that is well; but if science masters nature merely to 
 
XXVI The Future of Mankind aay 
 
 — 
 
 fall at her feet and worship her, it is il. “ Man is 
 man, and master of his fate,” and if he ceases to feel 
 that mastery in the springs of his life he will soon 
 drift a miserable prey to the buffetings of circumstance, 
 or suffer shipwreck on the rocks of despair. 
 
 It is surely a truer view that “life develops from 
 within ”; that the line of human progress is guided, not 
 by the overpowering force of outward circumstance, 
 nor yet by the action of the expressed and conscious 
 thought of men. Rather it is guided by an under- 
 current of change in development in man himself, in a 
 change which goes on beneath the surface of conscious- 
 ness, in the heart of the race. Sometimes, in the 
 writings of men of genius, we see the very nature of 
 the change portrayed, and held up to the world as a 
 picture of glowing colour. But more often it is hidden 
 and silent in operation, and seems to be in but a small 
 degree originated by man himself. He is the subject 
 in which it takes place, but ultimately he no more 
 causes it than the lightning-conductor causes the 
 lightning, or than the clay causes the shape of the vessel 
 into which, by the hands of the potter, it is fashioned. 
 
 In the view stated thus far there is perhaps not 
 much to produce consolation or to stimulate hope. It 
 may be true that human evolution goes on on lines of 
 its own, dominated neither by the forces of physical 
 nature nor by human reasoning, but by an intelligent 
 power working below consciousness. But it does not 
 hence follow that the movement of mankind is towards 
 good ends, or guided by benevolence. But some 
 assurance on this point may be gained from the re- 
 ligious experiences of the hearts of individuals. For 
 in such experiences the power that les at the root of 
 
358 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 human life and conduct is revealed as loving righteous- 
 ness and hating iniquity, as guiding the life of indi- 
 viduals with wise and loving hand, as taking from each 
 of us, if we choose, the burden of responsibility, and 
 making our path easy and visible. 
 
 It is clear that a man to whom such experiences 
 are not mere imaginations, but real and solid things, a 
 part of the web of conduct of which his whole life is 
 made up, and as certain as any fact in his past lie, 
 cannot easily despair of the future of mankind. Moods 
 of sadness and even of despondency will come upon 
 him, but he will again climb into the leht of hope and 
 belief. He may at times, under the pressure of cyni- 
 cism or sorrow, doubt as to the divine guidance of the 
 world, but the doubt will be such as might cross the 
 mind of a loving husband as to the fidelity of a loving 
 wife. In both cases belief is built upon experience ; 
 and in both cases the pressure of bitter emotion may 
 cause the experience to seem hazy and unreal; but it 
 is beyond doubt the part of a faithful and valiant soul 
 to persist in belief. And he who drifts away from 
 belief will find his life likely to be wrecked. 
 
 We have above pointed out that the physical, the 
 social, and the spiritual conditions of man’s life are in 
 a very varying degree under the control of his intel- 
 heence and will. It is so when we consider men as 
 individuals, and it is so when we look to the human 
 race, or society as an ageregate. As regards physical 
 changes, it would seem that the Power which rules the 
 world does not greatly or rapidly interfere with the life 
 of men; but having set them in a course hemmed in 
 by insurmountable barriers, leaves it in a great measure 
 to human wisdom and science to direct men’s goings in 
 
XXVI The Future of Mankind 359 
 
 that course. We say “in a great measure,’ because 
 we fully believe that even man’s physical frame does 
 change from age to age, in accordance with the varying 
 requirements of the ideas which man in successive ages 
 embodies. But such change is slow. And in the 
 meantime it appears that if man will but rightly and 
 wisely use the powers with which he is at birth endowed, 
 he will be able to live physically amid any surround- 
 ings which are suitable to his mental and moral life. 
 If, through physical indolence, through excess of excite- 
 ment or mental anxiety, or through too continual a 
 strain on the nervous organisation, man puts himself 
 too far into opposition against nature, he will un- 
 doubtedly suffer and perish. But physical indolence 
 and nervous strain are quite as much opposed to moral 
 health as to physical health. Not by any means the 
 least among the reasons which we have for eratitude to 
 the Power that rules men’s lives, is that he will not 
 allow us to grow averse to fresh air, to exercise, to 
 wholesome food, without severe punishment. For 
 these unnatural dislikes not only ruin the body, but 
 produce in the mind false desires, craving for excite- 
 ment, miserable and morbid sentiment. But it 1s clear 
 that these are matters with which medical science 1s 
 quite competent to deal. And to medical science a far 
 nobler field is offered, in trying to determine how the 
 conditions of modern life may be made as physically 
 healthy as possible, and in persuading individuals to 
 conform to healthy conditions, than in attempting to 
 preserve by the resources of degraded ingenuity for a 
 few years lives which have become utterly out of har- 
 mony with their surroundings, or in repairing the waste 
 made by a persistent disregard of the laws of health. 
 
360 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 But in regard to social changes—changes which affect 
 the intellectual, the moral, and the spiritual atmosphere 
 of our lves—the wisdom of man is almost helpless. 
 In fact, if we look to history, we shall find that the 
 ablest men in each generation have not as a rule been 
 those who were of most use in preparing man for his 
 destinies and shaping the course of society. If you 
 throw into a shallow stream a log of wood and a straw, 
 the wood will soon become stranded in a shallow place, 
 while the straw will move lightly and rapidly as the- 
 stream itself. So great intellects often, in virtue of 
 their very greatness, fix themselves to some personal 
 views of the current of affairs, while the current itself 
 runs lightly past them. Our only trust for the future 
 of the race must lie in the conviction that it is guided 
 from without in the direction of righteousness by the 
 same Power which guides and aids each of us who, 
 with earnest desire, longs to be led towards righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 In such beliefs there is nothing to make us in the 
 least relax our exertions directed towards the raising of 
 the tone of society, and the improvement of the world. 
 The will of the Power which makes for righteousness 
 will in the end be done, but who can tell how many 
 miseries the blind and foolish desires of man will before 
 that day bring on the race? Who can tell how many 
 broken cisterns men will persist in hollowing out for 
 themselves, before they return to the only cistern that 
 will satisfy them? There is in store for mankind in 
 future a measureless mass of sorrows and _ affliction, 
 because they will not follow after righteousness. And 
 he who is able by his life or teaching or writing to do 
 even a little to diminish that mass, will be one who 
 
XXVI The Future of Mankind 361 
 
 has deserved well of the human race. If there is in a 
 man’s breast any love for relations, friends, country, or 
 mankind, this surely is a sufficient spur to urge him 
 into doing his utmost to help forward the good cause 
 in the world. | 
 
 Only he will be cautious and not self-reliant in his 
 efforts. He will feel his own utter incapacity to dis- 
 cern the course of righteousness for society, or to give 
 a law to mankind for them to follow. He will only 
 urge men to follow in private life, in social life, and in 
 public life, the clear course of right, and to leave results 
 to Heaven. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 TESTIMONY IN RELIGION 
 
 It is quite evident that all the facts whereon religion 
 is based cannot be personally known to each man. 
 Many of them must be taken upon trust, accepted in 
 dependence on the word of others. If we turn to 
 other branches of knowledge for an analogy, we shall 
 find that in none of them does the individual experience 
 of any man suffice to build him a sufficient framework 
 of certainty. And this necessity for dependence on 
 others applies quite as strongly when the question is 
 not merely one of knowledge, but of the interpretation 
 of fact through emotion. Through belief in men 
 usually lies the road to religious belief. 
 
 Works on psychology which treat of man’s faculties 
 for acquiring sensuous knowledge, do not mention 
 among those faculties the reading of books or hearing 
 of conversation ; yet we all, of course, know that our 
 own individual senses would furnish us with but a 
 very small part of the knowledge which we possess 
 as to the world about us. We all know of the 
 existence of Greenland, and are aware of a number of 
 facts as to its soil, and climate, and appearance, though 
 not one in ten thousand of us has ever set eyes on the 
 
 “ a 
 
CHAP. XXVII Testimony in Religion 363 
 
 country, or is ever likely to go there. We know these 
 things because we accept the testimony of the senses 
 of others. And we gain knowledge not only by help 
 of the normal exercise of the faculties of others, 
 but also by the help of what may be termed artificial 
 senses: such as the telescope, which reveals to us 
 details of objects too far away for sight—for instance, 
 the surface of the moon; such as the microscope, 
 which reveals to us things too small for normal eyes ; 
 and such as the spectroscope, which still more has the 
 character of a special sense, informing us of matters 
 beyond the direct ken of any of our senses. It is the 
 necessity of simplicity and of orderly method which 
 makes pyschological writers speak of the senses as the 
 only inlet of knowledge of the world without us. But 
 they have no intention whatever of denying the 
 legitimacy of knowledge with regard to the world when 
 we receive it on adequate testimony. 
 
 And they are quite right—since testimony of this 
 kind can only be received and interpreted by an 
 imaginative action of the senses. When we hear that 
 the ground in Greenland is covered with snow and the 
 air intensely cold, we can accept and realise the state- 
 ment because we have seen and felt snow, and have 
 experienced cold in the air. The inhabitant of a 
 country in which snow never falls could only take in 
 the statement after it had been explained to his senses 
 by some analogy or some artistic representation which 
 would affect his sense in some degree like the thing 
 depicted. But looking at a painting could not make 
 him realise, however vivid was his imagination, more 
 than a very faint shadow of that compound reality, 
 snow. He would accept the fact that Greenland was 
 
364 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 covered with snow, he might be said to know the fact on 
 testimony, but it would not conjure up those emotions 
 with regard to snow which are, as it were, the ghosts 
 of experience of its qualities, since he had never had 
 the experience. Still more completely must descrip- 
 tions of colour fail to be realised by one who is born 
 blind. Such a phrase as that grass is green can to 
 him convey no meaning at all; he cannot produce 
 imaginative action of the sense of sight or in the least 
 realise any statement made about its testimony in this 
 or that case. 
 
 In matters of sense, then, we are quite justified in 
 accepting the testimony of others who have keener 
 senses than our own or better facilities for acquiring 
 knowledge; but at the same time we cannot intelli- 
 gently or with vividness receive knowledge unless we 
 can state it in terms of actual impressions of our own 
 perceptive faculties. 
 
 Another analogy which may be cited will perhaps 
 serve to make clearer the extension which the introduc- 
 tion of testimony will effect in the fabric of religious 
 knowledge. Writers on Political Economy are in the 
 habit of explaining that mechanism of exchange by 
 which the world satisfies its material needs, on the 
 supposition that in every case things of equal value 
 are exchanged, goods for goods, or goods for gold and 
 silver, which have a value of their own. But after 
 making these explanations, the writers of whom we 
 speak are careful to explain that the process which 
 actually takes place is very different. The introduction 
 of credit in the commercial world makes great changes. 
 Under a system of credit goods are constantly passed 
 over in exchange for a mere piece of paper, which in 
 
XXVII Testimony in Religion 365 
 
 itself has no value at all; for a cheque ora bank note, 
 which is only valued as representing the promise of 
 some person or corporation to pay gold and silver when 
 called upon. Credit in commerce is based on the 
 belief that men of business are honourable, and will 
 not undertake to do a thing without being ready to 
 do it when called upon. And the introduction of 
 credit, while it greatly facilitates the actual course of 
 business, makes the task of fully describing it more 
 complicated and difficult. It does not alter any of 
 the radical laws of exchange, but it does modify their 
 working, and renders their action less simple and 
 obvious. And without the existence of credit exchange 
 must take place in a primitive and laborious form, and 
 anything like a high commercial development will be 
 impossible. 
 
 We have dwelt on these two analogies to show 
 generally that man as an isolated being is quite insuffi- 
 cient for the acquisition of knowledge or for the 
 business of life; that he is at every turn dependent 
 alike on the senses and on the integrity of his fellow- 
 men. ‘This is a plain and obvious fact. But before 
 we venture in any detail to apply such analogies to 
 the processes by which we acquire religious knowledge 
 and build up religious belief, we must insist on a 
 distinction which, with a view to clearness of thought, 
 is most essential. 
 
 This distinction is between testimony and authority. 
 Very much of what we learn from others we learn by 
 the mere use of their senses instead of our own; we 
 merely extend vicariously the range of our ordinary 
 knowledge. But much also which we receive from 
 others belongs to another sphere and is received on 
 
366 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 authority. In the present chapter we shall speak only 
 of the vicarious perception of fact; in the next chapter 
 of the submission to authority. 
 
 Suppose a short-sighted man wholly unacquainted 
 with marine affairs to be wandering by the side of the 
 sea, He sees on the horizon a long dark body, which 
 he readily supposes to be a ship. But of its size, its 
 nationality, its destination, he can form no opinion ; 
 the matter is one of perception, and his perceptions 
 are inadequate. But he falls in with a coastguardman 
 who is looking at the distant ship through a telescope, 
 and the coastguardman at once tells him what is the 
 rig of the vessel, what its nationality, very probably 
 the nature of the cargo. All these things he clearly 
 sees, and knows on the testimony of his senses; but 
 his short-sighted companion can learn them but on 
 testimony. The latter will, however, be quite willing 
 to take them on testimony if he knows that the witness 
 is honest and veracious. 
 
 It thus appears that when we are asked to accept 
 matters of physical fact on testimony we require two 
 things in our witness: first, that he shall have good 
 opportunities for observation—better opportunities than 
 we possess ourselves ; and secondly, that he shall be 
 veracious, willing to tell the truth, and of trustworthy 
 character. 
 
 But in addition to requiring these qualities inthe wit- 
 ness, we require certain qualities in the thing testified 
 also. We require that it shall harmonise with what 
 we know already, so that no mental inconsistency and 
 conflict arises from believing it. And to any reception 
 which can be of any value at all it is necessary that 
 the statement shall be intelligible. We must be able 
 
XXVII Testimony in Religion 367 
 
 to turn it, so to speak, into the circulating coin of the 
 mind. Otherwise, however satisfactory the credentials 
 with which it comes to us, to us it is useless. If we 
 hear on excellent testimony that «=2y, but do not 
 know what « and y stand for, the fact stands, so far 
 as we are concerned, on no basis, and we do not 
 assimilate it. 
 
 If a statement is made as regards physical facts by 
 a competent person, who is also truthful, and if that 
 statement is not inconsistent with anything we know 
 and not unintelligible, we are bound at least provision- 
 ally to accept it. 
 
 Speaking generally, we may say that testimony 
 plays fully as important a part in our religious know- 
 ledge and belief as it does in our knowledge of things 
 of sense. In fact, it really plays a more important 
 part. For whereas all men, except those who are 
 deformed, possess the regular senses, spiritual sensa- 
 tion and perception vary wonderfully in various in- 
 dividuals. Some men seem born with keen perception 
 and appreciation of the facts of the spiritual life, which 
 are no less real to them than obvious and material 
 facts; others are so entirely immersed in the outward 
 life of every day that they offer no inlet to the stream 
 of divine influences; and the world being what it 1s, 
 and daily calling upon us to maintain with unresting 
 energy the struggle for existence, it can hardly be 
 wonderful that the bulk of mankind belong to the 
 latter class, and are of essentially unspiritual tempera- 
 ment. In ordinary times they scarcely feel the need 
 of any life beyond that of material prosperity and social 
 enjoyment. But there are seasons even with these 
 when earthly enjoyments pall, and the world becomes 
 
368 faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 we Pe 
 unsatisfying. Then, with a sense of longing and need, 
 they take up the writings of those to whom the spiritual 
 life has been, as it were, an open book, and reap a rich 
 harvest of vicarious knowledge, of hopes and fears which 
 stretch beyond the limits of the present life, and le 
 beyond the walls of the world of sense. 
 
 But if we find in some cases analogy between the 
 
 reception of physical fact on testimony and the recep- 
 tion of spiritual fact on testimony, it must be acknow- 
 ledged that the points of contrast between the two 
 cases are far more striking and important than the 
 points of resemblance. For the perception of physical 
 facts is clear and defined, and the presence of emotion 
 only tends to disturb and disorder it. But the case 1s, 
 as we have already shown, quite different as regards 
 spiritual facts. Here, in all but the simplest cases, fact 
 has to be interpreted through emotion. And, of course, 
 the introduction of the element of emotion alters the 
 logic of the matter. Emotion is a part of character, 
 and character cannot be judged without emotion. For 
 this reason authority, which plays no part in physical 
 science, plays a great part in religious knowledge. 
 We only accept physical facts and theories provision- 
 ally, until we have time to test them. Our accept- 
 ance of religious doctrine proceeds usually in quite 
 another fashion. We do not accept religious fact 
 provisionally, but believe it, make it a part of our- 
 selves, a basis of conduct, and a thing to which we 
 cling with a force of emotion and will. We must 
 consider how these differences affect the character of 
 our acceptance of religious faith on testimony. 
 
 In the first place, then, we require more in the 
 religious teacher than in the exponent of physical fact. 
 
 a . 
 
XXVIT Testimony in Religion 369 
 
 In this case we look far beyond mere clearness of ob- 
 servation and truthfulness of character. We look for 
 more than clearness of observation because spiritual 
 facts have to be seen through emotion, and if the 
 emotion be wrong no clearness of sight will enable a 
 man to judge rightly. And we look beyond truthful- 
 ness of character because we know, as a matter of 
 history, that persons of transparent sincerity have 
 advocated the most false and pernicious of doctrines. 
 No real religious teacher can be insincere ; but reli- 
 gious teachers may be sincere without being in the 
 least degree trustworthy. Before we accept the testi- 
 mony of an exponent of religious doctrine we require 
 to know whether the emotions through which he inter- 
 preted the facts of life and conduct were the right 
 emotions ; whether he rightly apprehended the rela- 
 tions existing between himself and other selves and 
 the Deity. 
 
 There exist also certain tests which we may, with 
 much caution and reserve, apply to the doctrine pro- 
 posed in itself, apart from the character of the pro- 
 poser. 
 
 Our reasoning faculties may help us a little. It is 
 possible that we may find some contradiction, or some 
 manifest absurdity in the things we are called upon to 
 believe. Ifa would-be spiritual teacher implies that 
 God acts capriciously or changes his mind, we are 
 justified in declining to listen, for the thing is utterly 
 in disaccord with all that we know of the universe. 
 Yet intellect will take us but a little way. It may 
 warn us off from absurdities, but it will not lead us 
 into truth. Thought, as Bacon said, cannot match the 
 subtilties of things: we must expand it to meet new 
 
 2B 
 
370 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 Si ie a eee 
 fact, not contract our belief in fact to suit the pre- 
 judices of the intellect. 
 
 Further, as testimony to fact is tested by an ideal 
 appeal to sense, so testimony to belief is tested by 
 observing whether the words of the witness awake an 
 answering burst of emotion, We are sure that moral 
 superiority and an entire submission of the human will 
 to divine guidance will enable a man to gain insight 
 into spiritual things and fit him for becoming a reli- 
 gious leader, And thus it is that we read our reli- 
 gious books, if we hope to be benefited by them, not 
 with the cold eyes of criticism, but with a heart ready 
 and longing to glow under their influence, and a will 
 ready to be stirred into passionate action. If they 
 stimulate us to follow righteousness, we are thereby 
 assured of the divine origin of their doctrine; if we 
 feel no answering glow arise, then scepticism as to 
 their embodiment of a true revelation comes over us 
 like the hand of frost, and, quite apart from our wish 
 in the matter, we begin to doubt, and take the first 
 steps towards repudiation, 
 
 It may help to show that the last test 1s not alto- 
 gether out of the field of ordinary life if we point out 
 that it is in much the same fashion that ordinary and 
 poorly-educated people judge of the excellence of a 
 painter or poet. This excellence also 1s of a kind 
 which must be judged through emotion. Imagine a 
 countryman of good natural taste, but untrained, to be 
 accompanied to a picture gallery by a fine judge. If 
 the countryman were asked to point out the best 
 picture, he would probably go far astray. But let the 
 judge speak to him as to the various works, freely ex- 
 pressing the feelings which each arouses in his own 
 
XXVII Lestimony in Religion Sua 
 
 mind, then the uneducated friend will soon begin to 
 understand what constitutes better and worse, not by 
 slavishly accepting any dicta, but by an answering 
 emotion in his own heart, just as when two lyres are 
 placed together and a chord of one is struck, the cor- 
 responding chord of the other begins to vibrate, 
 
CHA PD ieee sekeVE BL 
 AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 
 
 Ir the question were merely as to the acquisition of 
 religious doctrines, if a man’s only concern with re- 
 ligion were to get right views on the subject, then the 
 account of the value of testimony given in the last 
 chapter would be complete. And we should have to 
 add in regard to religious doctrine taken on testimony 
 the condition which we annexed to statements of 
 physical fact taken on testimony—the condition that 
 the statement should be intelligible to him who re- 
 ceived it. We should say that even religious doctrine, 
 unless it can be turned into the current coin of the 
 mind, is unmeaning and therefore useless; that in 
 religious doctrine also the statement that «= 2y would 
 be utterly worthless to any one who did not know the 
 values of # and y. | 
 Such views, however, are untenable ; and the reason 
 why they are untenable is that religion is a practical 
 matter, intimately concerned with conduct. Accepting 
 a religious doctrine is not a mere operation of the un- 
 derstanding through which something is added to the 
 fabric of recognised truth, but also a condition of the 
 will, which becomes thereby induced or compelled to 
 
CHAP, XXVIII Authority Mn Religion we 
 
 prefer one course of conduct to another. Not truth 
 and falsehood alone are in question, but right and 
 wrong, good and evil, with consequent health and 
 happiness or consequent disease and misery. 
 
 Religious teachers do two things. They state 
 doctrine, formulate facts as to the nature of God and 
 of man, and the relations of the one to the other; and 
 they give precepts for the practical conduct of life 
 based upon those doctrines. These two parts of their 
 teaching are usually inextricably mixed together, the 
 doctrine giving the reason of the rule of conduct, and 
 the rule of conduct in turn enforcing the doctrine. 
 
 A disciple attaches himself to some great religious 
 teacher, attracted perhaps by the nobility of his life 
 and the magic of his personal character. He sits at 
 the teacher’s feet, and listens to him while he explains 
 the nature of spiritual things. ‘Some of the phrases 
 which he hears, being interpreted by the hght of what 
 he has himself felt and known, edify him and give him 
 desire of a better life. Others of the phrases, not be- 
 ing interpreted by the light of experience, seem to be 
 words only, and do the hearer neither good nor harm, 
 but he treasures them up in the hope that some day 
 he may understand them. Perhaps a phrase here and 
 there may grate on the spiritual perceptions of the 
 hearer, may displease and demoralise him. These he 
 will pass by; or the faith he feels in the preacher may 
 be such that he will be willing to re-examine his ex- 
 perience and to persuade himself that his impressions 
 were wrong. 
 
 But the teacher will not content himself with thus 
 appealing to the experience, the intellect, and the 
 emotions. He will slide out of the indicative mood 
 
374 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 AE ADE Rr TN 
 into the imperative. He will begin giving commands 
 as to what all his hearers should do. Here we are at 
 once in a different sphere. A phrase not understood 
 does neither good nor harm; but it may be followed 
 up by a command about which there is no sort of 
 ambiguity. And the form of the command is often 
 not the hypothetical but the categorical imperative. 
 
 The analogy of our ordinary actions in the world 
 is here most useful. In all matters the search for 
 knowledge is started, and the boundaries of that search 
 fixed, by the necessities of the practical life. All 
 action is based on perception and knowledge, whether 
 that action concerns our relations to material things, or 
 whether it concerns conduct proper; and almost all 
 action takes at least some of its grounds from the 
 testimony of others. We must, however, distinguish 
 three cases. 
 
 (a) Action is often based on the mere testimony 
 of others regarded as an extension of the sphere of 
 our own senses. In this case there is no question of 
 submitting to the will of another, but only of accom- 
 plishing one’s purposes by the help of acquired in- 
 formation. And in this case it is presumed that the 
 testimony acted on is sincere, and set forth without 
 any intention other than that of simply telling the 
 truth. 
 
 The merchant, for instance, sends his goods to this 
 port or to that in consequence of the testimony as to 
 supply and demand in each sent him by agent or by 
 correspondent. If the agent reports wrongly he loses 
 his venture. And the captain steers his ship accord- 
 ing to the indications of a chart which is to him the 
 embodiment of testimony; if the chart is right he 
 
XXVIII Authority in Religion 375 
 
 reaches his port, if it is wrong he may be wrecked. 
 But the merchant and the captain in the cases in- 
 stanced have no reason to think that their informers 
 have any motive for telling a falsehood; they consider 
 the senses of others as merely put at their disposal 
 for use. If the merchant received a number of con- 
 flicting reports and suspected that some of them were 
 intended to deceive him, he would make no venture ; 
 if the captain had half a dozen charts which con- 
 tradicted one another in essential points, or suspected 
 foul play in their composition, he would not sail by 
 them. 
 
 (b) The second kind of action takes place not in 
 mere reliance on testimony, but rather in consequence 
 of dependence on some authority. Of this authority 
 the best instance is that of the physician over the 
 patient in all that concerns his health. In this case 
 the patient at the first commits a voluntary act in 
 handing over to the physician the care of his health, 
 and virtually promising to carry out any directions he 
 may give with a view to its restoration. When such 
 submission has taken place the physician orders such 
 dieting and medicine as he deems necessary. He does 
 not usually give the reasons of his commands. It is 
 of course understood that he will produce reasons if 
 called upon by competent authorities among his col- 
 leagues. But to give reasons to the patient, who 1s 
 ignorant of the constitution of the body and the powers 
 of drugs, would be worse than useless. He takes over, 
 in any serious illness, the care of the patient, and re- 
 lieves him and his friends of all responsibility, accept- 
 ing the task of combating the disease, and incurring 
 the gravest censure if he falls into culpable error in 
 
376 Faith and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 ee ee 
 
 his treatment. In this case more than mere veracity 1s 
 expected of the physician ; we expect also special skill 
 and care. 
 
 (c) The third case is when action 1s based on a 
 direct command from without—a command which does 
 not take the form of a conditional but of a direct or 
 categorical imperative. Such commands are familar 
 to us in our daily life. Even in an age so strongly set 
 as ours against the exercise of parental discipline, we 
 still find here and there a child who does the bidding 
 of a parent without knowing or asking the reason. And 
 the law of the land is content with prescribing courses 
 of action to all citizens; whether the citizens know the 
 reasons for its prescriptions, whether they approve or 
 disapprove of them, is a matter of indifference to the law, 
 and to those who are set to administer it; it requires 
 an outward conformity, not an intellectual appreciation. 
 The reason of this assumption of authority is evident. 
 The parent knows so much more than the child about 
 the world and conduct in general that he is convinced 
 he will best see what ought to be done, and he does 
 not give explanations, because the child would not 
 understand or appreciate them. The law does not ask 
 men to submit to it, but assumes authority over them ; 
 and does so less on the ground that the lawmakers are 
 wiser than those who obey law, than on the ground that 
 the lawmakers consult the general interest, while indi- 
 viduals would necessarily look in the first place each to his 
 ownadvantage. The pressure of law also is in many cases 
 necessary in order to secure that uniformity of practice 
 among the people of a country or city without which 
 something like a chaos must exist. 
 
 In religious matters action may be based on the 
 
XXVIII Authority in Religion 377 
 
 simple testimony of others. But it is far more usually 
 based on the recognition of authority in one of its two 
 forms. The religious teacher may merely claim to 
 guide men as their superior in wisdom, or he may 
 command their obedience under penalties. In the 
 first case his proceeding is closely like that of the 
 physician. He claims to be familiar with the 
 facts of conduct and of the spiritual world, and so to 
 be able to guide men into action which will be for 
 their good, and tend to their spiritual health. Or he 
 may take a bolder and higher line. He may not 
 merely claim to advise men for their good, but 
 command them as a father or as a lawgiver. In that 
 case he puts his commands in the very place of 
 conscience, and claims himself to be the representative 
 of the Power that makes for righteousness. He 
 demands not mere attention and respect but implicit 
 submission and obedience. 
 
 It is extremely difficult in modern days for any 
 religious system to secure a respect of this latter nature 
 from educated men. It would probably be altogether 
 impossible for any man, whatever his attainments, or 
 however commanding his nature, to obtain such 
 veneration from the bulk of the educated classes of 
 any European country. It is almost impossible that 
 such veneration should be paid to a great teacher of 
 the past. Whatever our age is not, it is emphatically 
 an age of criticism. And any decided moral predomi- 
 nance makes him whom it distinguishes the mark of 
 hostile criticism. Nor is it possible that authority, 
 when tried before the tribunal of pure intellect, should 
 be allowed to pass. Criticism and authority are deadly 
 foes, and if the authority cannot silence the criticism 
 
378 Fatth and Conduct CHAP. 
 
 it will perish by it. Criticism of the hard and sharp 
 modern kind is like the rain which gradually levels the 
 hills by continually carrying the soil downwards, like 
 the feet which continually traverse and trample on 
 some green space in the midst of a city until there is 
 not a blade of grass left on it. We have already shown 
 that the knowledge which men regard as most strongly 
 founded and most certain in the world can be by 
 criticism shown to be merely apparent and not worthy 
 of confidence. And if knowledge based on experience 
 will not resist the disintegrating force of intellectual 
 doubt, still less will the knowledge which involves faith; 
 and even still less will the claims set forward by 
 authority be allowed to pass. Every one in our times 
 seems resolved only to believe what he can understand; 
 and how authority will fare with the next generation, 
 which may be expected to be still more sceptical, it is 
 hard to imagine. 
 
 The chief reason of the growth of criticism and the 
 decline of authority is undoubtedly the great spread of 
 scientific knowledge, especially as to physical matters. 
 A generation which has discovered and proved the 
 falseness of the views formerly current as to the course 
 of things in the world is not likely to be disposed to 
 regard as sacred the views formerly current on other 
 subjects, even though they be not proved false. Having 
 cast one opinion after another into the crucible, and 
 finding that they are but gilded dross, it is not strange 
 that we go on to cast everything into the crucible, and 
 are suspicious even of those things which seem able 
 to resist the flame. And besides this, the enormous 
 physical expansion of our times, which has shifted the 
 centre of gravity of society and removed all the ancient 
 
XXVIII Authority in Religion 379 
 
 landmarks, has greatly weakened that inertia so 
 powerful in human societies, and the ties which bind us 
 to the past. We are nouveaux riches and spendthrift of 
 the wealth we have so lightly won. 
 
 A wise man will more often be found making use 
 of the prevailing tendency of his age than struggling 
 against it. The present writer is not likely to attach 
 too great value to authority in religious matters ; 
 indeed he is likely perhaps to be called in question 
 for the opposite tendency——too strong a spirit of 
 rationalism. Yet he strongly believes that we lose 
 erievously in the rightness and beauty of life, if we 
 altogether slight authority in religion, if we are 
 determined to hold the world within the narrow field 
 of our intellect, and to move no step without knowing 
 exactly whither we are going. And in order to keep 
 up the customs of spiritual obedience it is not necessary 
 that we should entirely give up criticism of the claims 
 of authority, but only that we should guide that 
 criticism in the right channel. 
 
 There are two legitimate tests to which we may 
 well submit all such claims, of which tests one may be 
 regarded as preliminary, the other as final. The pre- 
 liminary test is to trace in the characters of those who 
 obey any religious teacher the results of following his 
 commands, to see whether it is well or ill for them that 
 they obey. In spite of all argument to the contrary, 
 mankind have always persisted, with a practical 
 wisdom which is of far more account than the reasonings 
 of professed philosophers, in judging religious systems 
 by the lives of their votaries. In fact this test was 
 accepted by the Author of Christianity when he said, in 
 sublime metaphor, “Do men gather grapes of thorns, 
 
380 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 or figs of thistles?” And ever since, this has been 
 the only test which the common feeling of mankind 
 has regarded as final. If men appear to be better and 
 nobler through accepting some spiritual master, and 
 doing his bidding when they cannot trace the reasons 
 of his commands, this fact at once raises a presumption 
 that the commands are right and wise, and the teacher 
 one to be followed. For this is a practical question, 
 and the test ought to be practical rather than intel- 
 lectual. If we saw two neighbouring peoples alike in 
 character and endowments, but under different forms 
 of government, and one far more prosperous and happy 
 than the other, we should be fully justified in trying 
 to induce the less prosperous community to change its 
 form of government and remodel it after that of its 
 neighbour. If, instead, we began to argue the abstract 
 question of the origin of government and the advantages 
 of liberty, we should be wasting our time foolishly, 
 because we should be rejecting an easy test for a very 
 difficult one, by substituting reasoning for experiment 
 in a matter of practical life. 
 
 Such would be the preliminary test. But the final 
 test must still be that of which we have spoken more 
 than once already in this book—the test of personal 
 experience. If we see other people growing better 
 and happier by taking a master in spiritual things, 
 and doing as he bids them, there cannot be any immo- 
 rality in trying the same thing one’s self; and if this 
 second test prove that the way is good, that man will 
 be rash who abandons it from any intellectual doubt as 
 to the authority of the teacher. If any critic tries to 
 question him he will answer in the words of the blind 
 man in St. John’s Gospel, “ Whether he be a sinner, | 
 
XXVIII Authority in Religion 381 
 
 know not; one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, 
 now I see.” 
 
 Perhaps, however, cases may arise of a very painful 
 and dubious nature, in which one may find happiness 
 and virtue in practical submission to the directions of 
 some religious authority, while at the same time many 
 of his utterances may fail to satisfy the conscience. It 
 is conflicts of this kind which mar and stunt the higher 
 life in many of us, and he would be but a charlatan 
 who would pretend that he had a ready and easy 
 method for putting an end to hesitation and pain in 
 such matters. Perhaps we may venture, however, to 
 point out a few distinctions. 
 
 In each case it is necessary to consider whether 
 the doctrine which goes with and belongs to helpful 
 and noble rules of life be merely beyond experience, or 
 whether it be opposed to experience. If it be merely 
 beyond experience there is great room for hope. Fol- 
 lowing practical precepts is one of the chief means of 
 arousing emotion, and emotion, as we have already 
 seen, enables many things to be understood, which 
 without emotion remain unintelligible. Thus, under- 
 standing of doctrine may follow obedience to precept. 
 This has long been understood by religious teachers, 
 who have told us that obedience produces faith, and 
 faith produces spiritual understanding. If heart and 
 will are obedient, intellect may show a wonderful 
 power of self-adaptation, and advance more than half- 
 way to meet the necessities of action. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, obedience to precept does 
 not, in the case we are supposing, succeed in recon- 
 ciling intellect to the doctrine bound up with that 
 precept, but it remains clearly. opposed to experience, 
 
382 Faith and Conduct CHAP. XXVIII 
 
 then we may well fear that the way of obedience is in 
 this case an evil road which leads to a false peace and 
 a mere simulation of virtue. We then come to a 
 division of ways. There are some who in such a case 
 will adhere to their obedience, and turn away their 
 faces whenever possible from looking at the incon- 
 sistency in their knowledge. ‘They will sacrifice the 
 intellect to the heart and the necessities of conduct. 
 Others will feel that to them an inconsistency in 
 thought and experience is a thing which cannot be 
 accepted for whatever gain of happiness or energy, 
 and with pain and sorrow they will give up an alle- 
 giance which they love. They will make up their 
 minds to dwell on the high and barren plateau of truth 
 rather than in the pleasant valley of self-deception. 
 
CHAPTER XXIx 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Wuilte sketching the logic of religious feeling and 
 religious cognition we have not felt ourselves under 
 any necessity to treat all religious doctrines as if they 
 were equally true, or as if they had an equal claim to 
 our respect. And herein we follow the custom of the 
 English judges of best repute, who, when they sum up 
 a case for the instruction of the jury, do not feel bound 
 to treat the innocence or guilt of a prisoner as a 
 matter entirely uncertain; but while strictly respecting 
 the evidence, and while indicating to the jury where 
 lies the stress of the case, yet by no means conceal 
 their own opinion as to its merits. Even-handed 
 justice and respect for all facts is a good thing, but 
 that absolute colourlessness of intellect which merely 
 ranges the facts without an attempt to throw them into 
 perspective is not a good thing either in life or in 
 hterature. 
 
 In the chapter (XII.) in which we summed up the 
 earlier part of this work, the summary took the form 
 of a recapitulation of the objections which might be 
 urged against the belief in divine government of the 
 -seanblile in our recapitulation of the latter half of our 
 
384 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 discussions our summary may best take the form of a 
 statement what doctrines of religion have stood our 
 tests, and stand fully acquitted of falsehood. 
 
 It is the facts of conduct which furnish the ground, 
 if not of all religious conviction, at least of what is 
 most clear and definite in our religious convictions. 
 This is the one basis sufficiently firm and solid to serve 
 as the foundation of a structure of religious belief. 
 When our structure is once solidly reared, emotion and 
 fancy may be called in to beautify and decorate it; 
 but emotion and fancy are not strong and permanent 
 enough to support the weight of solid walls. And an 
 examination alike of science and of philosophy proves 
 that they have nothing at all to say against a religion 
 of conduct. A religion which pretends to scientific 
 knowledge must sooner or later be destroyed by science ; 
 a religion which sets forth a philosophy will be wrecked 
 in the perpetual battles of the schools; but a religion 
 which has to do with feeling and action rather than 
 with thought will survive so long as action needs its 
 assistance, and only perish when it has become useless 
 to conduct. And, indeed, if the world, not the mere 
 world of sense, but the whole human and spiritual 
 world, could go on as well without religion as with it, 
 then there would seem no great cause to lament the 
 disappearance of religion from among us. If men 
 could fly they would scarcely trouble themselves with 
 making balloons. 
 
 Our structure of religion, then, resting on the founda- 
 tion of conduct, seems to be a building of three storeys. 
 The first or lowest storey consists of the religion of ex- 
 perience, of knowledge derived easily and immediately 
 from the facts of conduct. These facts prove to us 
 
XXIX Conclusion 385 
 oe ig et OS a ee 
 that man is a free and responsible being, and they 
 assure us of the greatness, the wisdom, the justice, and 
 the righteousness of God. These are certainties which 
 no one can doubt who allows our starting proposition 
 that a Power without us interferes in conduct in the 
 interests of righteousness. | 
 
 The lowest storey of a building may be entered 
 direct from the street, but he who would reach the 
 next storey must climb. So in our edifice the second 
 storey is the religion of faith, and cannot be reached 
 save by the help of emotion. Religious emotion sup- 
 plements everyday experience, and guarantees those 
 truths which are common to all religions that lift men 
 above the vulgar level of life. It is through emotion 
 that we learn the dealings of a Providence which 
 watches over our lives and turns them to better ends 
 than we could have imagined. It is through emotion 
 that we know that God is a lover of beauty in the 
 world and in human characters. And emotion may 
 even raise us to a kind of sympathy with God, not 
 utterly unlike the love which we bear to our fellow- 
 men, though it must be allowed that history shows us 
 but few lives which have risen to this height save by 
 the aid of Christian faith. 
 
 We may consider that in these two storeys we com- 
 plete natural religion. But there is a third storey of 
 the religion of authority. Authority may step in with 
 a claim to complete the edifice of religion, partly by 
 dictating what beliefs a man is to accept in matters 
 outside the field of knowledge, and partly by ordering 
 its followers to pursue certain courses of action, even 
 without understanding why they should pursue them. 
 We must carefully distinguish the religious Teacher 
 
 2 C 
 
386 Faith and Conduct CHAP, 
 
 who merely helps his hearers to discern for themselves 
 the facts of the spiritual life, from the religious Autho- 
 rity who bids his followers do certain things in simple 
 reliance on his word. 
 
 The doctrines of experience and of faith produce for 
 themselves a body wherein they may make their ap- 
 pearance in the world. They clothe themselves with 
 dogmatic form in order to come to terms with man’s 
 intellect, and they embody themselves in religious 
 ceremonial and art. Of such outward manifestations 
 we may hereafter, if time and occasion serve, trace the 
 eradual development and modifications in the world’s 
 history. The religion of authority also has its dogmas 
 and its ceremonies; but these cannot form themselves, 
 or be modified by processes of development. They are 
 set forth by the constituted and recognised Authority, 
 whether man, book, or council, and must be obediently 
 accepted by all who allow the authority. 
 
 Our logic can venture to deal with the religion of 
 experience and the religion of belief—can venture to 
 choose among the doctrines, accepting some and reject- 
 ing others in the light of conduct and emotion. But 
 on the threshold of the religion of authority our logic 
 must halt. Beyond this threshold our methods would 
 be useless, since we are from the very nature of autho- 
 rity bound after accepting it to shut our eyes. We 
 may in religious matters accept a master or not, but if 
 we accept one we are bound to obey him. Thus our 
 work reaches its natural termination. Our task is 
 criticism, and where criticism ceases to be legitimate, 
 we lay down the pen, not because we have reached 
 the limits of religion, but because we have reached the 
 limits of our own powers. In ancient temples there 
 
XXIX Conclusion 387 
 
 were adyta where the light of day never penetrated and 
 into which none might enter but the priests: so all the 
 religions which have power among men have also their 
 adyta, which are not to be searched by the light of 
 
 critical method, and may only be visited by those who 
 have sworn fidelity. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CrarK, Edinburgh. 
 
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