UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORIAM 
 S. L. MILLARD ROSENBERG
 
 CURRENT DISCUSSION. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 
 
 I. The Russians, the Turks, and the Bulgarians. By Archi- 
 bald Forbes. II. Turkey. By Viscount Stratford de 
 Redcliffe. III. Montenegro. By the Rt. Hon. W. E. Glad- 
 stone. IV. The Political Destiny of Canada. By Professor 
 GoLDWiN Smith. V. Prussia in the Nineteenth Century. By 
 Professor J. S. Blackie. VI. The Future of Egypt. By 
 Edward Dicey. VII. The Slaveo\raer and the Turk. By 
 Professor Goldwin Smith. VIII. The Stability of the British 
 Empire in India. By Professor Sidney James Owen. IX. The 
 Relation of the English People to the Russo-Turkish War. By 
 Edward A. Freeman, D. C. L.
 
 CURRENT DISCUSSION 
 
 A COLLECTION 
 
 FROM THE CHIEF ENGLISH ESS A YS ON 
 QUESTIONS OF THE TIME. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 EDWARD L. BURLINGAME 
 
 VOL. II. 
 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF 
 
 NEW YORK 
 G. F. PUTNAM'S SQNS 
 
 182 Fifth Avenue 
 1878.
 
 CD 
 
 to 
 
 y-^ 
 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 That highest phase of "Current Discussion," which 
 d" the purposely broad title chosen for 
 
 this voiu. j-st of necessity be the most difficult to 
 
 ^ present fairly ot oletely within narrow limits. In 
 
 the debate upon every iiither.^b]ect, there are many 
 obvious guides as to the impor^^\:e of different ex- 
 pressions of opinion as to the degree in which they 
 truly represent the varying directions of thought. 
 Here, there are few such aids, if any ; selection in 
 this field must unavoidably be a matter of purely 
 y individual judgment. In spite of the broad spirit of 
 J toleration that marks all recent discussion, there is 
 H less here than elsewhere of that common ground, 
 s^ from which the most determined opponents may see 
 and acknowledge the value a,^ach other's arguments 
 as contributions to the whole. ^ " Questions of 
 Belief " it is still possible that the word. ^ ken upon 
 the one side seem utterly useless, if not absolutely 
 harmful, to the other. 
 
 A charge which may naturally be brought against 
 
 27G178
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 the choice of material for this volume, is that it 
 favors the expression of what is known as the " radi- 
 cal" school of thinkers upon these subjects. It can 
 only be said that the skeptic first excites discussion ; 
 and that, from whatever point of view we look at 
 it, we must first of all know what he posits, as the 
 very matter in debate; that the conservative always 
 speaks least, from the very nature of his position as 
 a resistant, not an aggressor; ^and that the points 
 of attack have been so changed that to many earnest 
 and honest minds all schools of thought may now 
 seem radical. 
 
 It may fairly be remembered, however, that a 
 single volume gives but very narrow space, much of 
 which must be given to the discussion of a single 
 proposition ; and that it is not intended, should our 
 scheme meet with success, that the present shall be 
 the only selection in this field. 
 
 To many the position and the work of all the 
 writers represented here are so thoroughly known, 
 that to repeat the plan adopted in the first volume, 
 of a prefatory note recalling them, may easily seem 
 superfluous. At the same time there appear here 
 many names which may not immediately connect
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 themselves in the minds of all readers with the opin- 
 ions or the work which they represent. Some of 
 the authors who take part in this discussion have 
 indeed already addressed the largest possible public, 
 and need no explanation of their attitude ; such are 
 Professor Huxley, the Duke of Argyll, Dr. Martineau, 
 and Mr. Hughes, for example ; and less can hardly 
 be said of Mr. Lewes. But there are others who, 
 from the very nature of their writings, have spoken 
 to smaller audiences. 
 
 Mr. Frederic Harrison, whose remarkable paper 
 ''The Soul and Future Life" forms the text for so 
 much in this volume, is, it need hardly be said, one 
 of the leaders among English Positivists ; and has 
 been for years an untiring and most powerful agent 
 in spreading in England the teachings of his school 
 a translation (under the title " Social Statics ") from 
 Comte's " Positive Polity," being, by the way, one of 
 the latest of his publications. Apart from his many 
 lectures and writings upon philosophical topics, how- 
 ever, he has had an active influence upon affairs 
 which is remarkable for a man of forty-six. Called 
 to the bar in 1859, he quickly became prominent in 
 his profession. Ten years later he was secretary of 
 the " Royal Commission for the Digest of the Law ; " 
 in 1873 he was made examiner in Civil and Interna- 
 tional Law and Jurisprudence, by the Council of
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 Legal Education ; and he has been very eminent in 
 chancery practice. A special subject of his study 
 has been the education and improvement of the work- 
 ing classes, which he has sought to further in the 
 Working Men's College, the Working Women's Col- 
 lege, the Positive School, and* other schemes of 
 which he has been one of the foremost advocates. 
 The greater part of his writings remains in the 
 form of contributions to periodicals notably to the 
 Fortnightly Review. 
 
 Mr. R. H. Hutton, as editor of the Spectator, 
 occupies one of the foremost positions in English 
 journalism. His contribution in the " Symposium " 
 to the discussion of the "Soul and Future Life" is 
 not the first or only paper that he has written upon 
 the subject, or upon Mr. Harrison's view of it. A 
 series of most noteworthy papers, properly belong- 
 ing to this literature, but too long to be included 
 here, were contributed by him to early numbers of 
 the Spectator for 1877. 
 
 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen was best known to 
 the public as a leading jurist, as a codifier of the 
 laws of India, and as the writer of one of the best 
 general works on English criminal law, until, in 
 1873, the publication of his "Liberty, Equality and 
 Fraternity " made him famous in a less special field. 
 He has a peculiar title to appear among the repre-
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 sentatives of deep and earnest thought upon the first 
 of all speculative questions. 
 
 Lord Selborne is better remembered by the gen- 
 eral reader as Sir Roundell Palmer ; for he was only 
 raised to the peerage in 1872. The political career of 
 a man who has been solicitor-general under Palmer- 
 ston, attorney-general under Lord John Russell, and 
 Lord Chancellor under Mr. Gladstone, need hardly 
 be recalled here more especially as his name be- 
 came familiar to Americans through his representa- 
 tion of Great Britain before the Geneva Arbitrators 
 in 1 87 1. One of the most prominent parts of his 
 purely literary work is his well-known " Book of 
 Praise" one of the best collections of devotional 
 poetry in the language. 
 
 Lord Blachford is a well-known English scholar 
 like the rest a member of the bar for years, and 
 afterward rising rapidly in political life until his last 
 office the under-secretaryship for the Colonies from 
 which he retired in 1871. He has written many strik- 
 ing papers in the Quarterlies and Magazines. 
 
 Of the clerical disputants in the " Symposiums," 
 the Reverend Alfred Barry, Canon of Worcester, is 
 a very well-known writer on practical ethics the 
 character of his work being fairly exemplified, per- 
 haps, by his " Lectures to Men " on " Religion for 
 Every Day" one of the more recent of his books.
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 He has gained great distinction not only as a scholar 
 but as a teacher ; and has been successively prin- 
 cipal of the Leeds Grammar School, Cheltenham 
 College, and King's College, London ; and a member 
 of the London School Board. The Dean of St, 
 Paul's (Doctor Richard William Church), less known 
 as a writer than as a preacher, represents fairly in 
 the discussion the conservative element of the Estab- 
 lished Church ; and Dr. Ward, a well-known contrib- 
 utor to the reviews, performs not for the only time 
 in the Nineteenth Century the same office for Ro- 
 man Catholic opinion. The Reverend James Bald- 
 win Brown (the author of "The Higher Life," "The 
 Christian Policy of Life," and other books which 
 have been widely read in his persuasion), is a liberal 
 Independent the minister of a large London con- 
 gregation. 
 
 Mr. W. R. Greg can' need little introduction to 
 any reader of the speculative writing of recent years. 
 His "Enigmas of Life" has passed through many 
 editions, including one at least in this country, and 
 has been unquestionably (in spite of the similarity 
 in its tone to the despondent spirit of his contribu- 
 tion to the Symposium), one of the most widely-read 
 books of its class. His "Political Problems," "Liter- 
 ary and Social Judgments," and " Creed of Chris- 
 tendom " are the chief of his other works, though
 
 PREFACE, ix 
 
 his "Rocks Ahead, or the Warnings of Cassandra/' 
 attracted great attention at the time of its appear- 
 ance in 1874, and gave rise to a long and vehement 
 discussion. 
 
 Professor W. Kingdon Clifford, a man of singularly- 
 brilliant and versatile powers, is at the same time one of 
 the most acute thinkers and most attractive writers 
 among the younger generation of English scientific 
 men. He is, I believe, not yet forty. Taking high 
 honors at Cambridge, and especially distinguished both 
 at the University and afterward for the ease with which 
 he mastered the most diverse subjects, he not only de- 
 voted himself to his special study, the higher mathe- 
 matics, but soon became known as a writer upon 
 speculative topics. Among his strictly scientific work, 
 that relating to dynamics has been particularly valuable ; 
 and he is the author of one of the first text-books upon 
 the subject. His short papers have generally appeared 
 in the Fortnightly Review. 
 
 The Hon. Roden Noel has been chiefly known to 
 the general reader through his contributions to a lighter 
 literature, and his name is more easily recalled in con- 
 nection with his occasional poems and reviews than 
 with speculative essays. 
 
 Mr. Mallock, still a young man, and a comparatively 
 recent graduate of Oxford, though his rapidly growing 
 reputation has been chiefly aided with the larger public
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 by his brilliant and capital trifle, " The New Republic " 
 has shown in his essays a depth and earnestness of 
 thought that place him unquestionably among the most 
 promising writers of the time. A volume like this may 
 fitly close with the work of a pen from which we may 
 certainly hope for further papers as striking and as 
 thoughtful as the one here given.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page, 
 I. The Soul and Future Life. By Frederick Harrison. . i 
 
 II. A Modern Symposium 1 43 
 
 The Soul and Future Life. By R. H. Hutton, Professor 
 Huxley, Lord Blachford, Hon. Roden Noel, Lord Sel- 
 bome, W. R. Greg, Rev. Baldwin Brown, Dr. W. G. 
 Ward. 
 
 III. A Modern Symposium II 156 
 
 The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious 
 Belief. By Sir James Stephen, Lord Selbome, James 
 Martineau, Frederic Harrison, The Dean of St. Pauls', 
 The Duke of Argyll, Professor Clifford, Dr. W. G. Ward. 
 Professor Huxley, R. H. Hutton. 
 
 IV. The Course of Modern Thought. G. H. Lewes. . . 232 
 V. The Condition and Prospects of the Church of Eng- 
 land. By Thomas Hughes. . . . . .251 
 
 VI. Is Life Worth Living ? By W. H. Mallock. . . 280
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE.' 
 
 BY FREDERIC HARRISON. 
 
 How many men and women continue to give a mechanical 
 acquiescence to the creeds, long after they have parted with 
 all definite theology, out of mere clinging to some hope of a 
 future life, in however dim and inarticulate a way ! And how 
 many, whose own faith is too evanescent to be put into words, 
 profess a sovereign pity for the practical philosophy wherein 
 there is no place for their particular yearning for a Heaven to 
 come ! They imagine themselves to be, by virtue of this very 
 yearning, beings of a superior order, and, as if they inhabited 
 some higher zone amidst the clouds, they flout sober thought 
 as it toils in the plain below ; they counsel it to drown itself 
 in sheer despair or take to evil living ; they rebuke it with 
 some sonorous household word from the Bible or the poets 
 * Eat, drink, for to-morrow ye die' ' Were it not better not to 
 be ? ' And they assume the question closed, when they have 
 murmured triumphantly, * Behind the veil, behind the veil.' 
 
 They are right, and they are wrong : right to cling to a hope 
 of something that shall endure beyond the grave ; wrong in 
 
 1 The Nineteenth Centorv, June, 1877.
 
 2 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 their rebukes to men who in a different spirit cling to this 
 hope as earnestly as they. We too turn our thoughts to that 
 which is behind the veil. We strive to pierce its secret with 
 eyes, we trust, as eager and as fearless ; and even it may be 
 more patient in searching for the realities beyond the gloom. 
 That which shall come after is no less solemn to us than to 
 you. We ask you, therefore, WJiat do you know of it ? Tell 
 us ; we will tell you what we hope. Let us reason together 
 in sober and precise prose. Why should this great end, staring 
 at all of us along the vista of each human life, be forever a 
 matter for dithyrambic hypotheses and evasive tropes ? What 
 in the language of clear sense does any one of us hope for 
 after death : what precise kind of life, and on what grounds ? 
 It is too great a thing to be trusted to poetic ejaculations, to 
 be made a field for Pharisaic scorn. At least be it acknowl- 
 edged that a man may think of the Soul and of Death and of 
 Future Life in ways strictly positive (that is, without ever 
 quitting the region of evidence), and yet may make the world 
 beyond the grave the centre to himself of moral life. He will 
 give the spiritual life a place as high, and will dwell upon the 
 promises of that which is after death as confidently as the 
 believers in a celestial resurrection. And he can do this 
 without trusting his all to a perhaps so vague that a spasm 
 of doubt can wreck it, but trusting rather to a mass of solid 
 knowledge, which no man of any school denies to be true so 
 far as it goes. 
 
 I. 
 There ought to be no misunderstanding at the outset as to 
 what we who trust in positive methods mean by the word Soul,
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 3 
 
 or by the words * spiritual,' ' materialist,' and ' future life.' 
 We certainly would use that ancient and beautiful word Soul, 
 provided there be no misconception involved in its use. We 
 assert as fully as any theologian the supreme importance of 
 spiritual life. We agree with the theologians that there is 
 current a great deal of real materialism, deadening to our 
 higher feeling. And we deplore the too common indifference 
 to the world beyond the grave. And yet we find the centre 
 of our religion and our philosophy in Man and man's Earth. 
 
 To follow out this use of old words, and to see that there is 
 no paradox in thus using them, we must go back a little to 
 general principles. The matter turns altogether upon habits 
 of thought. What seems to you so shocking will often seem 
 to us so ennobling, and what seems to us flimsy will often 
 seem to you sublime, simply because our minds have been 
 trained in different logical methods ; and hence you will call 
 that a beautiful truth which strikes us as nothing but a random 
 guess. It is idle, of course to dispute about our respective 
 logical methods, or to pit this habit of mind in a combat with 
 that. But we may understand each other better if we can 
 agree to follow out the moral and religious temper, and learn 
 that it is quite compatible with this or that mental procedure. 
 It may teach us again that ancient truth, how much human 
 nature there is in men ; what fellowship there is in our 
 common aspirations and moral forces ; how we all live the 
 same spiritual life ; whilst the philosophies are but the ceaseless 
 toil of the intellect seeking again and again to explain more 
 clearly that spiritual life, and to furnish it with reasons for the 
 faith that is in it.
 
 4 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 This would be no place to expound or to defend the positive 
 method of thought. The question before us is simply, if this 
 positive method has a place in the spiritual world or has any- 
 thing to say about a future beyond the grave. Suffice it that 
 we mean by the positive method of thought (and we will now 
 use the term in a sense not limited to the social construction 
 of Comte) that method which would base life and conduct, as 
 well as knowledge, upon such evidence as can be referred to 
 logical canons of proof, which would place all that occupies 
 man in a homogenous system of law. On the other hand, this 
 method turns aside from hypotheses not to be tested by any 
 known logical canon familiar to science, whether the hypothesis 
 claim support from intuition, aspiration, or general plausibility. 
 And again, this method turns aside from ideal standards which 
 avow themselves to be lawless, which profess to transcend the 
 field of law. We say, life and conduct shall stand for us 
 wholly on a basis of law, and must rest entirely in that region 
 of science (not physical but moral and social science) where 
 we are free to use our intelligence in the methods known to us 
 as intelligible logic, methods which the intellect can analyse. 
 When you confront us with hypotheses, however sublime and 
 however aifecting, if they cannot be stated in terms of the rest 
 of our knowledge, if they are disparate to that world of sequence 
 and sensation which to us is the ultimate base of all our real 
 knowledge, then we shake our heads and turn aside. I say, 
 turn aside ; and I do not say, dispute. We cannot disprove 
 the suggestion that there are higher channels to knowledge in 
 our aspirations or our presentiments, as there might be in our 
 dreams by night as well as by day ; we courteously salute the
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 5 
 
 hypotheses, as we might love our present dreams ; we seek to 
 prove no negatives. We do not pretend there are no mysteries, 
 we do not frown on the poetic splendors of the fancy. There 
 is a world of beauty and of pathos in the vast ether of the 
 Unknown in which this solid ball hangs like a speck. Let all 
 who list, who have true imagination and not mere paltering 
 with a loose fancy, let them indulge their gift, and tell us what 
 their soaring has unfolded. Only let us not waste life in crude 
 dreaming, or loosen the knees of action. For life and conduct, 
 and the great emotions which react on life and conduct, we 
 can place nowhere but in the same sphere of knowledge, under 
 the same canons of proof, to which we entrust all parts of our 
 life. We will ask the same philosophy which teaches us the 
 lessons of civilization to guide our lives as responsible men ; 
 and we go again to the same philosophy which orders our lives 
 to explain to us the lessons of death. We crave to have the 
 supreme hours of our existence lighted up by thoughts and 
 motives such as we can measure beside the common acts of 
 our daily existence, so that each hour of our life up to the 
 grave may be linked to the life beyond the grave as one con- 
 tinuous whole, ' bound each to each by natural piety.' And 
 so, wasting no sighs over the incommensurable possibilities of 
 the fancy, we will march on with a firm step till we knock at 
 the gates of Death ; bearing always the same human temper, 
 in the same reasonable beliefs, and with the same earthly hopes 
 of prolonged activity amongst our fellows, with which we set 
 out gaily in the morning of life. 
 
 When we come to the problem of the human Soul, we simply 
 treat man as man, and we study him in accordance with our
 
 6 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 human experience. Man is a marvellous and complex being, 
 we may fairly say of complexity past any hope of final analysis 
 of ours, fearfully and wonderfully made to the point of being 
 mysterious. But incredible progress has been won in reading 
 this complexity, in reducing this mystery to order. Who can 
 say that man shall ever be anything but an object of awe and 
 of unfathomable pondering to himself ? Yet he would be false 
 to all that is great in him, if he decried what he already has 
 achieved towards self-knowledge. Man has probed his own 
 corporeal and animal life, and is each day arranging it in more 
 accurate adjustment with the immense procession of animal 
 life around him. He has grouped the intellectual powers, he 
 has traced to their relations the functions of mind, and ordered 
 the laws of thought into a logic of a regular kind. He has 
 analysed and grouped the capacities of action, the moral facul- 
 ties, the instincts and emotions. And not only is the analysis 
 of these tolerably clear, but the associations and correlations 
 of each with the other are fairly made manifest. At the lowest, 
 we are all assured that every single faculty of man is capable 
 of scientific study. Philosophy simply means, that every part 
 of human nature acts upon a method, and does not act chaoti- 
 cally, inscrutably, or in mere caprice. 
 
 But then we find throughout man's knowledge of himself 
 signs of a common type. There is organic unity in the whole. 
 These laws of separate functions, of body, mind, or feeling, 
 have visible relations to each other, are inextricably woven in 
 with each other, act and react, depend and interdepend one 
 on the other. There is no such thing as an isolated phe- 
 nomenon, nothing sui generis, in our entire scrutiny of human
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE, 7 
 
 nature. Whatever the complexities of it, there is through the 
 whole the solidarity of a single unit. Touch the smallest fibre 
 of the corporeal man, and in some - infinitesimal way we may 
 watch the effect in the moral man, and we may trace this effect 
 up into the highest pinnacles of the spiritual life. On the other 
 hand, when we rouse chords of the most glorious ecstasy of the 
 soul, we may see the vibration of them visibly thrilling upon 
 the skin. The very animals about us can perceive the emotion. 
 Suppose a martyr nerved to the last sacrifice, or a saint in the 
 act of relieving a sufferer, the sacred passion within them is 
 stamped in the eye, or plays about the mouth, with a connec- 
 tion as visible as when we see a muscle acting on a bone, or the 
 brain affected by the supply of blood. Thus from the summit 
 of spiritual life to the base of corporeal life, whether we pass 
 up or down the gamut of human forces, there runs one organic 
 correlation and sympathy of parts. Man is one, however com- 
 pound. Fire his conscience, and he blushes. Check his 
 circulation, and he thinks wildly, or thinks not at all. Impair 
 his secretions, and moral sense is dulled, discolored or de- 
 praved ; his aspirations flag, his hope, love, faith reel. Impair 
 them still more, and he becomes a brute. A cup of drink 
 degrades his moral nature below that of a SAvine. Again, a 
 violent emotion of pity or horror makes him vomit. A lancet 
 will restore him from delirium to clear thought. Excess of 
 thought will waste his sinews. Excess of muscular exercise 
 will deaden thought. An emotion will double the strength 
 of his muscles. And at last the prick of a needle or a grain 
 of mineral will in an instant lay to rest forever his body and 
 its unity, and all the spontaneous activities of intelligence,
 
 8 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 feeling and action, with whfch that compound organism was 
 charged. 
 
 These are the obvious and ancient observations about the 
 human organism. But modern philosophy and science have 
 carried these hints into complete explanations. By a vast 
 accumulation of proof positive tliought at last has established 
 a distinct correspondence between every process of thought or 
 of feeling and some corporeal phenomenon. Even when we 
 cannot explain the precise relation, we can show that definite 
 correlations exist. To positive methods, every fact of thinking 
 reveals itself as having functional relation with molecular 
 change. Every fact of will or of feeKng is in similar relation 
 with kindred molecular facts. And all these facts again have 
 some relation to each other. Hence we have established an 
 organic correspondence in all manifestations of human life. 
 To think implies a corresponding adjustment of molecular 
 activity. To feel emotion implies nervous organs of feeling. 
 To will implies vital cerebral hemispheres. Observation, 
 reflection, memory, imagination, judgment, have all been 
 analysed out, till they stand forth as functions of living 
 organs in given conditions of the organism, that is in a 
 particular environment. The whole range of man's powers, 
 from the finest spiritual sensibility down to a mere automatic 
 contraction, falls into one coherent scheme : being all the 
 multiform functions of a living organism in presence of its 
 encircling conditions. 
 
 But complex as it is, there is no confusion in this whole 
 when conceived by positive methods. No rational thinker 
 now pretends that imagination is simply the vibration of a
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 9 
 
 particular fibre. No man can explai7i volition by purely- 
 anatomical study. Whilst keeping in view the due relations 
 between moral and corporeal facts, we distinguish moral from 
 biologic facts, moral science from biology. Moral science is 
 based upon biological science ; but it is not comprised in it : 
 it has its own special facts and its own special methods, though 
 always in the sphere of law. Just so, the mechanism of the 
 body is based upon mechanics, would be unintelligible but for 
 mechanics, but could not be explained by mechanics alone, or 
 by anything but a complete anatomy and biology. To explain 
 the activity of the intellect as included in the activity of the 
 body, is as idle as to explain the activity of the body as in- 
 cluded in the motion of solid bodies. And it is equally idle 
 to explain the activity of the will, or the emotions, as included 
 in the theory of the intellect. All the spheres of human life 
 are logically separable, though they are organically interde- 
 pendent. Now the combined activity of the human powers 
 organized around the highest of them we call the Soul. The 
 combination of intellectual and moral energy which is the 
 source of Religion, we call the spiritual life. The explaining 
 the spiritual side of life by physical instead of moral and 
 spiritual reasoning, we call materialism. 
 
 The consensus of the human faculties, which we call the 
 Soul, comprises all sides of human nature according to one 
 homogeneous theory. But the intuitional methods ask as to 
 insert into the midst of this harmonious system of parts, as an 
 underlying explanation of it, an indescribable entity ; and to 
 this hypothesis, since the days of Descartes (or possibly of 
 Aquinas), the good old word Soul has been usually restricted.
 
 10 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 How and when this entity ever got into the organism, how it 
 abides in it, what are its relations to it, how it acts on it, why 
 and when it goes out of it all is mystery. We ask for some 
 evidence of the existence of any such entity ; the answer is, we 
 must imagine it in order to explain the organism. We ask what 
 are its methods, its laws, its affinities ; we are told that it simply 
 has none, or none knowable. We ask for some description of 
 it, of its course of development, for some single fact about it, 
 stateable in terms of the rest of our knowledge ; the reply is 
 mystery, absence of everything so stateable or cognizable, a^ 
 line of poetry, or an ejaculation. It has no place, no matter, 
 no modes, neither evolution nor decay ; it is without body, 
 parts, or passions : a spiritual essence, incommensurable, in- 
 comparable, indescribable. Yet with all this, it is, we are told. 
 an entity, the most real and perfect of all entities short of the 
 divine. 
 
 If we ask why we are to assume the existence of something 
 of which we have certainly no direct evidence, and which is so 
 wrapped in mystery that for practical purposes it becomes a 
 nonentity, we are told that we need to conceive it, because a 
 mere organism cannot act as we see the human organism act. 
 Why not ? They say there must be a principle within as the 
 cause of this life. But what do Ave gain by supposing a ' prin- 
 ciple?' The 'principle' only adds a fresh difficulty. Why 
 should a * principle,' or an entity, be more capable of possessing 
 these marvellous human powers than the human organism ? 
 Besides, we shall have to imagine a * principle' to explain not 
 only why a man can feel affection, but also why a dog can feel 
 affection. If a mother cannot love her child merely qua
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. " 
 
 human organism unless her love be a manifestation of an 
 eternal soul, how can a cat love her kittens merely qua feline 
 organism without an immaterial principle or soul ? Nay, we 
 shall have to go on to invent a principle to account for a tree 
 growing, or a thunderstorm roaring, and for every force of 
 nature. Now this very supposition was made in a way by the 
 Greeks, and to some extent by Aquinas, the authors of the 
 vast substructure of anima underlying all nature, of which our 
 human Soul is the fragment that alone survives. One by one 
 the steps in this series of hypothesis have faded away. Greek 
 and mediaeval philosophy imagined that every activity resulted 
 not from the body which exhibited the activity, but from some 
 mysterious entity inside it. If marble was hard, it had a * form' 
 informing its hardness ; if a blade of grass sprang up, it had a 
 vegetative spirit mysteriously impelling it ; if a dog obeyed his 
 master, it had an animal spirit mysteriously controlling its 
 organs. The mediaeval physicists, as Moliere reminds us, 
 thought that opium induced sleep quia est in eo virtus donnitiva. 
 Nothing was allowed to act as it did by its own force or 
 vitality. In every explanation of science we were told to 
 postulate an intercalary hypothesis. Of this huge mountain 
 of figment, the notion of man's immaterial Soul is the one 
 feeble residuum. 
 
 Orthodoxy has so long been accustomed to take itself for 
 granted, that we are apt to forget how very short a period of 
 human history this sublimated essence has been current. From 
 Plato to Hegel the idea has been continually taking fresh 
 shapes. There is not a trace of it in the Bible in its present 
 sense, and nothing in the least akin to it in the Old Testament.
 
 12 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 Till the time of Aquinas theories of a material soul, as a sort 
 of gas, were never eliminated ; and until the time of Descartes, 
 our present ideas of the antithesis of Soul and Body were 
 never clearly defined. Thus the Bible, the Fathers, and the 
 Mediaeval Church, as was natural when philosophy was in a 
 state of flux, all represented the Soul in very different ways ; 
 and none of these ways were those of a modem divine. It is 
 a curious instance of the power of words that the practical 
 weight of the popular religion is now hung on a metaphysical 
 hypothesis, which itself has been in vogue for only a few 
 centuries in the history of speculation, and which is now be- 
 come to those trained in positive habits of thought a mere 
 juggle of ideas. 
 
 We have in all this sought only to state what we mean by 
 man's soul, and what we do not mean. But we make no 
 attempt to prove a negative, or to demonstrate the non-exist- 
 ence of the supposed entity. Our purpose now is a very 
 different one. We start out from this that this positive 
 mode of treating man is in this, as in other things, morally 
 sufficient ; that it leaves no voids and chasms in human life ; 
 that the moral and religious sequelae which are sometimes 
 assigned to its teaching have no foundation in fact. We say, 
 that on this basis, not only have we an entrance into the 
 spiritual realm, but that we have a firmer hold on the spiritual 
 life than on the basis of hypothesis. On this theory, the world 
 beyond the grave is in closer and truer relation to conduct 
 than on the spiritualist theory. We look on man as man, not 
 as man plus a heterogenous entity. And we think that we 
 lose nothing, but gain much thereby, in the religious as well as
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. l^ 
 
 in the moral world. We do not deny the conceivable exist- 
 ence of the heterogeneous entity. But we believe that human 
 nature is adequately equipped on human and natural grounds 
 without this disparate nondescript. 
 
 Let us be careful to describe the method we employ as that 
 which looks on man as man, and repudiate the various labels, 
 such as materialist, physical, unspiritual methods, and the like, 
 which are used as equivalent for the rational or positive method 
 of treating man. The method of treating man as man insists, 
 at least as much as any other method, that man has a moral, 
 emotional, religious life, but perfectly co-ordinate with that 
 physical life, and to be studied on similar scientific methods. 
 The spiritual sympathies of man are undoubtedly the highest 
 part of human nature ; and our method condemns as loudly as 
 any system physical explanations of spiritual life. We claim 
 the right to use the terms ' soul,' * spiritual,' and the like, in 
 their natural meaning. In the same way, we think that there 
 are theories which are justly called * Materialist,' that there 
 are physical conceptions of human nature which are truly 
 dangerous to morality, to goodness, and religion. It is some- 
 times thought to be a sufficient proof of the reality of this 
 heterogenous entity of the soul, that otherwise we must assume 
 the most spiritual emotions of man to be a secretion of cerebral 
 matter, and that, whatever the difficulties of conceiving the 
 union of Soul and Body, it is something less difficult than the 
 conceiving that the nerves think, or the tissues love. We re- 
 pudiate such language as much as any one can, but there is 
 another alternative. It is possible to invest with the highest 
 dignity thQ spiritual life of mankind by treating it as an ulti-
 
 14 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 mate fact, without trying to find an explanation for it either 
 in a perfectly unthinkable hypothesis or in an irrational and 
 debasing physicism. 
 
 We certainly do reject, as earnestly as any school can, that 
 which is most fairly called Materialism, and we will second 
 every word of those who cry out that civilization is in danger 
 if the workings of the human spirit are to become questions 
 of physiology, and if death is the end of a man, as it is the 
 end of a sparrow. We not only assent to such protests, but 
 we see very pressing need for making them. It is a corrupting 
 doctrine to open a brain, and to tell us that devotion is a defi- 
 nite molecular change in this and that convolution of grey pulp, 
 and that if man is the first of living animals, he passes away 
 after a short space like the beasts that perish. And all doc- 
 trines, more or less, do tend to this, which offer physical theo- 
 ries as explaing moral phenomena, which deny man a spiritual 
 in addition to a moral nature, which limit his moral life to the 
 span of his bodily organism, and which have no place for 
 ' religion' in the proper sense of the word. 
 
 It is true that in this age, or rather in this country, we seldom 
 hear the stupid and brutal materialism which pretends that the 
 subtleties of thought and emotion are simply this or that agita- 
 tion in some grey matter, to be ultimately expounded by the 
 professors of grey matter. But this is hardly the danger which 
 besets our time. The true materialism to fear is the prevailing 
 tendency of anatomical habits of mind or specialist habits of 
 mind to intrude into the regions of religion and philosophy. 
 A man whose whole thoughts are absorbed in cuttting up 
 dead monkeys and live frogs has no more business to dogma-
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 15 
 
 tize about religion, than a mere chemist to improvise a zoology. 
 Biological reasoning about spiritual things is as presumptious 
 as the theories of an electrician about the organic facts of 
 , nervous life. We live amidst a constant and growing usurpa- 
 tion of science in the province of philosophy ; of biology in 
 the province of sociology ; of physics in that of religion. 
 Nothing is more common tlian the use of the term science, 
 when what is meant is merely physical and physiological 
 science, not social and moral science. The arrogant attempt 
 to dispose of the deepest moral truths of human nature on a 
 bare physical or physiological basis is almost enough to justify 
 the insurrection of some impatient theologians against science 
 itself. It is impossible not to sympathize with men who at 
 least are defending the paramount claim of the moral laws and 
 the religious sentiment. The solution of the dispute is of 
 course that physicists and theologians have each hold of a 
 partial truth. As the latter insist, the grand problems of 
 man's life must be ever referred to moral and social argu- 
 ment ; but then, as the physicists insist, this moral and social 
 argument can only be built up on a physical and physiological 
 foundation. The physical part of science is indeed merely 
 the vestibule to social, and thence to moral science ; and of 
 science in all its forms the philosophy of religion alone holds 
 the key. The true Materialism lies in the habit of scientific 
 specialists to neglect all philosophical and religious synthesis. 
 It is marked by the ignoring of religion, the passing by on the 
 other side, and shutting the eyes to the spiritual history of 
 mankind. The spiritual traditions of mankind, a supreme 
 philosophy of life and thought, religion in the proper sense
 
 l6 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 of the word, all these have to play a larger and ever larger 
 part in human knowledge ; not as we are so often told, and 
 so commonly is assumed, a waning and vanishing part. And 
 it is in this field, the field which has so long been abandoned 
 to theology, that Positivism is prepared to meet the theologians. 
 We at any rate do not ask them to submit religion to the test 
 of the scalpel or the electric battery. It is true that we base 
 our theory of society and our theory of morals, and hence our 
 religion itself, on a curriculum of physical, and especially of 
 biological science. It is true that our moral and social science 
 is but a prolongation of these other sciences. But then we 
 insist that it is not science in the narrow sense which can 
 order our beliefs, but Philosophy ; not science which can 
 solve our problems of life, but Religion. And religion demands 
 for its understanding the religious mind and the spiritual 
 experience. 
 
 Does it seem to anyone a paradox to hold such language, and 
 yet to have nothing to say about the immaterial entity which 
 many assume to be the cause behind this spiritual life ? The 
 answer is that we occupy ourselves with this spiritual life as an 
 ultimate fact, and consistently with the whole of our philosophy, 
 we decline so assign a cause at all. We argue, with the the- 
 ologians, that it is ridiculous to go to the scalpel for an adequate 
 account of a mother's love ; but we do not think it is explained 
 (any more than it is by the scalpel) by a hypothesis for which 
 not only is there no shadow of evidence, but which cannot 
 even be stated in philosophic language. We find the same ab- 
 surdity in the notion that maternal love is a branch of the 
 anatomy of the mammce^ and in the notion that the phenomena
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 17 
 
 of lactation are produced by an immaterial entity. Both are 
 forms of the same fallacy, that of trying to reach ultimate 
 causes instead of studying laws. We certainly do find that ma- 
 ternal love and lactation have close correspondences, and that 
 both are phenomena of certain female organisms. And we say 
 that to talk of maternal love being exhibited by an entity which 
 not only is not a female organism, but is not an organism at 
 all, is to use language which to us, at least, is unintelligible. 
 
 The philosophy which treats man as man simply affirms that 
 man loves, thinks, acts, not that the ganglia, or the sinuses, or 
 any organ of man, loves and thinks and acts. The thoughts, 
 aspirations, and impulses are not secretions, and the science 
 which teaches us about secretions will not teach us much about 
 them ; our thoughts, aspirations, and impulses are faculties of a 
 man. Now, as a man implies a body, so we say these also im- 
 ply a body. And to talk to us about a bodyless being thinking 
 and loving is simply to talk about the thoughts and feelings of 
 Nothing. 
 
 This fundamental position each one determines according to 
 the whole bias of his intellectual and moral nature. But on 
 the positive, as on the the theological, method there is ample 
 scope for the spiritual life, for moral responsibility, for the 
 world beyond the grave, its hopes and its duties ; which remain 
 to us perfectly real without the unintelligible hypothesis. 
 However much men cling to the hypothesis from old association, 
 if they reflect, they will find that they do not use it to give them 
 any actual knowledge about man's spiritual life ; that all their 
 methodical reasoning about the moral world is exclusively 
 based on the phenomena of this world, and not on the phe-
 
 l8 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 nomena of any other world. And thus the absence of tlie 
 hypothesis altogether does not make the serious difference 
 which theologians suppose. 
 
 To follow out this into particulars : Analysis of human 
 nature shows us man with a great variety of faculties ; his 
 moral powers are just as distinguishable as his intellectual 
 powers ; and both are mentally separable from his physical 
 powers. Moral and mental laws are reduced to something like 
 system by moral and mental science, with or without the 
 theological hypothesis. The most extreme form of materialism 
 does not dispute that moral and mental science is for logical 
 purposes something more than physical science. So, the most 
 extreme form of spiritualism gets its mental and moral science 
 by observation and argument from phenomena ; it doe^ not, or 
 it does not any longer, build such science by abstract deduction 
 from any proposition as to an immaterial entity. There have 
 been, in ages past, attempts to do this. Plato, for instance, at- 
 tempted to found, not only his mental and moral philosophy, 
 but his general philosophy of the universe, by deduction from 
 a mere hypothesis. He imagined immaterial entities, the ideas, 
 of things inorganic, as much as organic. But then Plato was 
 consistent and had the courage of his opinions. If he imagined 
 an idea, or soul, of a man, he imagined one also for a dog, for 
 a tree, for a statue, for a chair. He thought that a statue or a 
 chair were what they are, by virtue of an immaterial entity 
 which gave them form. The hypothesis did not add much to 
 the art of statuary or to that of the carpenter ; nor, to do him 
 justice, did Plato look for much practical result in these 
 spheres. One form of the doctrine alone survives, that man
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 19 
 
 is what he is by virtue of an immaterial entity temporarily in- 
 dwelling in his body. But, though the hypothesis survives, it 
 is in no sense any longer the basis of the science of human na- 
 ture with any school. No school is now content to sit in its 
 study and evolve its knowledge of the moral qualities of man 
 out of abstract deductions from the conception of an imma- 
 terial entity. All without exception profess to get their knowl- 
 edge of the moral qualities by observing the qualities which 
 men actually do exhibit or have exhibited. And those who 
 are persuaded that man has, over and above his man's nature, 
 an immaterial entity, find themselves discussing the laws of 
 thought and of character on a common ground with those who 
 regard man as man i. e., who regard man's nature as capable 
 of being referred to a homogenous system of law. Spiritualists 
 and materialists, however much they may differ in their expla- 
 nations of moral phenomena, describe their relations in the 
 same language, the language of law, not of illuminism. 
 
 Those, therefore, who dispense with a transcendental explana- 
 tion are just as free as those who maintain it, to handle the 
 spiritual and religious phenomena of human nature, treating 
 them simply as phenomena. No one has ever suggested that 
 the former philosophy is not quite as well entitled to analyse 
 the intellectual faculties of man as the stoutest believer in the 
 immaterial entity. It would raise a smile now-a-days to hear it 
 said that such a one must be incompetent to treat of the canons 
 of inductive reasoning, because he was unorthodox as to the 
 immortality of the Soul. And if, notwithstanding this unortho- 
 doxy, he is thought competent to investigate the laws of 
 thought, why not the moral laws, the sentiments, and the emo-
 
 20 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 tions ? As a fact, every moral faculty of man is recognized by 
 him just as much as by any transcendentalist. He does not 
 limit himself, any more than the theologian does, to mere 
 morality. He is fully alive to the spiritual emotions in all their 
 depth, purity, and beauty. He recognizes in man the yearning 
 for a power outside his individual self which he may venerate, 
 a love for the author of his chief good, the need for sympathy 
 with something greater than himself. All these are positive 
 facts which rest on observation, quite apart from any explana- 
 tion of the hypothetical cause of these tendencies in man. 
 There, at any rate, the scientific observer finds them ; and he 
 is at liberty to give them quite as high a place in his scheme of 
 human nature as the most complete theologian. He may pos- 
 sibly give them a far higher place, and bind them far more 
 truly into the entire tissue of his whole view of life, because 
 they are built up for him on precisely the same ground of ex- 
 perience as all the rest of his knowledge, and have no element 
 at all heterogeneous from the rest of life. With the language 
 of spiritual emotion he is perfectly in unison. The spirit of de- 
 votion, of spiritual communion with an ever-present power, of 
 sympathy and fellowship with the living world, of awe and sub- 
 mission towards the material world, the sense of adoration, 
 love, resignation, mystery, are at least as potent with the one 
 system as with the other. He can share the religious emotion 
 of every age, and can enter into the language of every truly 
 religious heart. For myself, I believe that this is only done on 
 a complete as well as a real basis in the religion of Humanity, 
 but we need not confine the present argument to that ground. 
 I venture to believe that this spirit is truly shared by all, what-
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE, 2f 
 
 ever their hypothesis about the human soul, who treat these 
 highest emotions of man's nature as facts of primary value, and 
 who have any intelligible theory whereby these emotions can 
 be aroused. 
 
 All positive methods of treating man of a comprehensive 
 kind adopt to the full all that has ever been said about the dig- 
 nity of man's moral and spiritual life, and treat these phe- 
 nomena as distinct from the intellectual and the physical life. 
 These methods also recognize the unity of consciousness, the 
 facts of conscience, the sense of identity, and the longing for 
 perpetuation of that identity. They decline to explain these 
 phenomena by the popular hypotheses ; but they neither deny 
 their existence, nor lessen their importance. Man, they argue, 
 has a complex existence, made up of the phenomena of his 
 physical organs, of his intellectual powers, of his moral faculties, 
 crowned and harmonized ultimately by his religious sympathies, 
 love, gratitude, veneration, submission, towards the dominant 
 force by which he finds himself surrounded. I use words 
 which are not limited to a particular philosophy or religion 
 I do not now confine my language to the philosophy or religion 
 of Comte for this same conception of man is common to many 
 philosophies and many religions. It characterizes such systems 
 as those of Spinosa or Shelley or Fichte as much as those of 
 Confucius or Bouddha. In a word, the reality and the su- 
 premacy of the spiritual life have never been carried further 
 than by men who have departed most widely from the popular 
 hypotheses of the immaterial entity. 
 
 Many of these men, no doubt, have indulged in hypotheses 
 of their own quite as arbitrary as those of theology. It is
 
 22 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 characteristic of the positive thought of our age that it stards 
 upon a firmer basis. Though not confounding the moral facts 
 with the physical, it will never lose sight of the correspondence 
 and consensus between all sides of human life. Led by an 
 enormous and complete array of evidences, it associates every 
 fact of thought or of emotion with a fact of physiology, with 
 molecular change in the body. Without pretending to explain 
 the first by the second, it denies that the first can be explained 
 without the second. But with this solid basis of reality to work 
 on, it gives their place of supremacy to the highest sensibilities 
 of man, through the heights and depths of the spiritual life. 
 
 Nothing is more idle than a discussion about words. But 
 when some deny the use of the word * soul ' to those who mean 
 by it this consensus, and not any immaterial entity, we may re- 
 mind them that our use of the word agrees with its etymology 
 and its history. It is the mode in which it is used in the 
 Bible, the well spring of our true English speech. It may, in- 
 deed, be contended that there is no instance in the Bible in 
 which Soul does mean an immaterial entity, the idea not having 
 been familiar to any of the writers, with the doubtful exception 
 of St. Paul. But without entering upon Biblical philology, it 
 may be said that for one passage in the Bible in which the 
 word * soul ' can be forced to bear the meaning of immaterial 
 entity, there are ten texts in which it cannot possibly refer to 
 anything but breath, life, moral sense, or spiritual emotion. 
 When the Psalmist says, * Deliver my soul from death,' ' Heal 
 my soul, for I have sinned,' ' My soul is cast down within me,' 
 * Return unto my rest, O my soul,' he means by * soul ' what we 
 mean, the conscious unity of our being culminating in its re-
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 23 
 
 Hgious emotions ; and until we find some English word that 
 better expresses this idea, we shall continue to use the phrase- 
 ology of David. 
 
 It is not merely that we are denied the language of religion, 
 but we sometimes find attempts to exclude us from the thing. 
 There are some who say that worship, spiritual life, and that 
 exaltation of the sentiments which we call devotion, have no 
 possible meaning unless applied to the special theology of the 
 particular speaker. A little attention to history, a single reflec- 
 tion on religion as a whole, suffice to show the hollowness of 
 this assumption. If devotion mean the surrender of self to an 
 adored Power, there has been devotion in creeds with many 
 gods, with one God, with no gods ; if spiritual life mean the 
 cultivation of this temper towards moral purification, there was 
 spiritual life long before the notion of an immaterial entity in- 
 side the human being was excogitated ; and as to worship, men 
 have worshipped, with intense and overwhelming passion, all 
 kinds of objects, organic and inorganic, material and spiritual, 
 abstract ideas as well as visible forces. Is it implied that Con- 
 fucius, and the countless millions who have followed him, had 
 no idea of religion, as it is certain that they had none of theol- 
 ogy ; that Bouddha and the Bouddhists were incapable of 
 spiritual emotion ; that the Fire-worshippers and the Sun- 
 worshippers never practised worship ; that the pantheists and 
 the humanists, from Marcus Aurelius to Fichte, had the springs 
 of spiritual life dried up in them for want of an Old or New 
 Testament ! If this is intended, one can only wonder at the 
 power of a self-complacent conformity to close men's eyes to 
 the native dignity of man. Religion, and its elements in emo-
 
 24 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 tion attachment, veneration, love are as old exactly as 
 human nature. They moved the first men, and the first 
 women. They have found a hundred objects to inspire them, 
 and have bowed to a great variety of powers. They were in 
 fuB force long before Theology was, and before the rise of 
 Christianity ; and it would be strange indeed if they should 
 cease with the decline of either. It is not the emotional ele- 
 ments of Religion which fail us. For these, with the growing 
 goodness of mankind, are gaining in purity and strength. 
 Rather, it is the intellectual elements of religion which are con- 
 spicuously at fault. We need to-day, not the faculty of wor- 
 ship (that is ever fresh in the heart), but a clearer vision of the 
 power we should worship. Nay, it is not we who are borrow- 
 ing the privileges of theology : rather it is theology which seeks 
 to appropriate to itself the most universal privilege of man. 
 
 II. 
 
 The rational view of the Soul (we insisted in a previous pa- 
 per) would remove us as far from a cynical materialism as from 
 a fantastic spiritualism. It re.stores to their true supremacy in 
 human life those religious emotions which materialism forgets ; 
 whilst it frees us from the idle figment which spiritualism would 
 foist upon human nature. 
 
 We entirely agree with the theologians that our age is beset 
 with a grievous danger of materialism. There is a school of 
 teachers abroad, and they have found an echo here, who dream 
 that victorious vivisection will ultimately win them anatomical
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 25 
 
 solutions of man's moral and spiritual mysteries. Such unholy 
 nightmares, it is true, are not likely to beguile many minds in 
 a country like this, where social and moral problems are still 
 in their natural ascendant. But there is a subtler kind of ma- 
 terialism of which the dangers are real. It does not indeed 
 put forth the bestial sophism, that the apex of philsosphy is to 
 be won by improved microscopes and new batteries. But then 
 it has nothing to say about the spiritual life of man ; it has no 
 particular religion ; it ignores the Soul. It fills the air with 
 paeans to science ; it is never weary of vaunting the scientific 
 methods, the scientific triumphs. But it always means physi- 
 cal, not moral science ; intellectual, not religious conquests. 
 It shirks the question of questions to what human end is this 
 knowledge how shall man thereby order his life as a whole 
 where is he to find the object of his yearnings of spirit ? Of 
 the spiritual history of mankind it knows as little, and thinks 
 as little, as of any other sort of Asiatic devil-worship. At the 
 spiritual aspirations of the men and women around us, ill at 
 ease for want of some answer, it stares blankly, as it does at 
 some spirit-rapping epidemic. " What is that to us ? see thou 
 to that " is all that it can answer when men ask it for a re- 
 ligion. It is of the religion of all sensible men, the religion 
 which all sensible men never tell. With a smile or shrug of 
 the shoulders it passes by into the whirring workshops of 
 science (that is, the physical prelude of science) ; and it leaves 
 the spiritual life of the Soul to the spiritualists, theological or 
 nonsensical as the case may be, wishing them both in heaven. 
 This is the materialism to fear. 
 
 The theologians and the vast sober mass of serious men and
 
 26 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 women who want simply to live rightly are quite right when 
 they shun and fear a school that is so eager about cosmology 
 and biology, whilst it leaves morality and religion to take care 
 of themselves. And yet they know all the while that before 
 the advancing line of positive thought they are fighting a for- 
 lorn hope ; and they see their own line daily more and more 
 demoralised by the consciousness that they have no rational 
 plan of campaign. They know that their own account of the 
 Soul, of the spiritual life, of Providence, of Heaven, is daily 
 shifting, is growing more vague, more inconsistent, more various. 
 They hurry wildly from one untenable position to another, 
 like a routed and disorganised army. In a religious discussion 
 years ago we once asked one of the Broad Church, a disciple 
 of one of its eminent founders, what he understood by the 
 third Person of the Trinity ; and he said doubtfully " that he 
 fancied there was a sort of a something." Since those days 
 the process of disintegration and vaporisation of belief has 
 gone on rapidly , and now very religious minds, and men who 
 think themselves to be religious, are ready to apply this " sort 
 of a something " to all the verities in turn. They half hope 
 that there is " a sort of a something " fluttering about, or inside, 
 their human frames, that there may turn out to be a " some- 
 thing " somewhere after Death, and that there must be a sort 
 of a somebody or (as the theology of Culture will have it) a 
 sort of a something controlling and comprehending human 
 life. But the more thoughtful spirits, not being professionally 
 engaged in a doctrine, mostly limit themselves to a pious hope 
 that there may be something in it, and that we shall know 
 some day what it is.
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 2^ 
 
 Now theologians and religious people unattached must 
 know that this will never serve that this is paltering with the 
 greatest of all things. What then is the only solution which 
 can ultimateily satisfy both the devotees of science and the be- 
 lievers in religion ? Surely but this, to make religion scientific 
 by placing religion under the methods of science. Let Science 
 come to see that religion, morality, life, are within its field, or 
 rather are the main part of its field. Let Religion come to see 
 that it can be nothing but a prolongation of science, a rational 
 and homogeneous result of cosmology and biology, not a mat- 
 ter of fantastic guessing. Then there will be no true science 
 which does not aim at, and is not guided by, systematic re- 
 ligion. And there will be no religion which pretends to any 
 other basis but positive knowledge and scientific logic. But 
 for this science must consent to add spiritual phenomena to its 
 curriculum, and religion must consent to give up its vapid fig- 
 ments. 
 
 Positivism in dealing with the Soul discards the exploded 
 errors of the materialists and the spiritualists alike. On the 
 one hand, it not only admits into its studies the spiritual life 
 of men, but it raises this life to be the essential business of all 
 human knowledge. All the spiritual sentiments of man, the 
 aspirations of the conscious soul in all their purity and pathos, 
 the vast religious experience and potentialities of the hum.an 
 heart seen in the history of our spiritual life as a race this is, 
 we say, the principal subject of science and of philosophy. 
 No philosophy, no morality, no polity can rest on stable foun- 
 dations if this be not its grand aim ; if it have not k systematic 
 creed, a rational object of worship, and a definite discipline of
 
 28 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 life. But then we treat these spiritual functions of the Soul, 
 not as mystical enigmas, but as positive phenomena, and we 
 satisfy them by philosophic and historic answers and not by 
 naked figments. And we think that the teaching of history and 
 a true synthesis of science bring us far closer to the heart of 
 this spiritual life than do any spiritualist guesses, and do better 
 to equip us to read aright the higher secrets of the Soul : 
 meaning always by Soul the consensus of the faculties which 
 observation discovers in the human organism. 
 
 On the other hand, without entering into an idle dispute 
 with the spiritualist orthodoxy, we insist on regarding this 
 organism as a perfectly homogeneous unit, to be studied from 
 one end of it to the other by rational scientific methods. We 
 pretend to give no sort of cause as lying behind the manifold 
 powers of the organism. We say the immaterial entity is 
 something which we cannot grasp, which explains nothing, for 
 which we cannot have a shadow of evidence. We are deter- 
 mined to treat man as a human organism, just as we treat a 
 dog as a canine organism ; and we know no ground for saying, 
 and no good to l>e got by pretending, that man is a human 
 organism plus an indescribable entity. We say, the human 
 organism is a marvellous thing, sublime if you will, of subtlest 
 faculty and sensibility ; but we, at any rate, can find nothing 
 in man which is not an organic part of this organism ; we find 
 the faculties of mind, feeling, and will, directly dependent on 
 physical organs ; and to talk to us of mind, feeling, and will 
 continuing their functions in the absence of physical organs 
 and visible organisms, is to use language which, to us at least, 
 is pure nonsense.
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 29 
 
 And now to turn to the great phenomenon of material organ- 
 isms which we call Death. The human organism, like every 
 other organism, ultimately loses that unstable equilibrium of its 
 correlated forces which we name Life, and ceases to be an or- 
 ganism or system of organs, adjusting its internal relations to 
 its external conditions. Thereupon the existence of the com- 
 plex independent entity to which we attribute consciousness, 
 undoubtedly i.e. for aught we know to the contrary comes 
 to an end. But the activities of this organism do not come to 
 an end, except so far as these activities need fresh sensations 
 and material organs. And a great part of these activities, and 
 far the noblest part, only need fresh sensations and material 
 organs in similar organisms. Whilst there is an abundance of 
 these in due relation, the activities go on ad infinitum with in- 
 creasing energy. We have not the slightest reason to suppose 
 that the consciousness of the organism continues, for we mean 
 by consciousness the sum of sensations of a particular organ- 
 ism, and the particular organism being dissolved, we have 
 nothing left whereto to attribute consciousness, and the pro- 
 posal strikes us like a proposal to regard infinity as conscious. 
 So, of course, with the sensations separately, and with them 
 the power of accumulating knowledge, of feeling, thinking, or 
 of modifying the existence in correspondence with the outward 
 environment. Life, in the technical sense of the word, is at an 
 end, but the activities of which that life is the source were 
 never so potent. Our age is familiar enough with the truth of 
 the persistence of energy, and no one supposes that with the 
 dissolution of the body the forces of its material elements are 
 lost. They only pass into new combinations and continue to
 
 30 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 work elsewhere. Far less is the energy of the activities lost. 
 The earth, and every country, every farmstead, and every city 
 on it, are standing witnesses that the physical activities are not 
 lost. As century rolls after century, we see every age more 
 potent fruits of the labor which raised the Pyramids, or won 
 Holland from the sea, or carved the Theseus out of marble. 
 The bodily organisms which wrought them have passed into 
 gases and earths, but the activity they displayed is producing 
 the precise results designed on a far grander scale in each 
 generation. Much more do the intellectual and moral energies 
 work unceasingly. Not a single manifestation of thought or 
 feeling is without some result so soon as it is communicated to 
 a similar organism. It passes into the sum of his mental and 
 moral being. 
 
 But there is about the persistence of the moral energies this 
 special phenomenon. It marks the vast interval between phy- 
 sical and moral science. The energies of material elements, so 
 far as we see, disperse, or for the most part disperse. The 
 energies of an intellectual and moral kind are very largely con- 
 tinued in their organic unities. The consensus of the mental, 
 of the moral, of the emotional powers may go on, working as a 
 whole, producing precisely the same results, with the same in- 
 dividuality, whether the material organism, the source and 
 original base of these powers, be in physical function or not 
 The mental and moral powers do not, it is true, increase and 
 grow, develope and vary within themselves. Nor do they in 
 their special individuality produce visible results, for they are 
 no longer in direct relations with their special material organ- 
 isms. But the mental and moral powers are not dispersed like
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 3 1 
 
 gases. They retain their unity, they retain their organic char- 
 acter, and they retain the whole of their power of passing into 
 and stimulating the brains of living men ; and in these they 
 carry on their activity preciselv as they did, whilst the bodies 
 in which they were formed absorbed and exhaled material sub- 
 stance. 
 
 Nay, more ; the individuality and true activity of these men- 
 tal and moral forces is often not manifest, and sometimes is 
 not complete, so long as the organism continues its physical 
 functions. Newton, we may suppose, has accomplished his 
 great researches. They are destined to transform half the phil- 
 osophy of mankind. But he is old, and incapable of fresh 
 achievements. We will say he is feeble, secluded, silent, and 
 lives shut up in his rooms. The activity of his mighty intellec- 
 tual nature is being borne over the world on the wings of 
 Thought, and works a revolution at every stroke. But other- 
 wise the man Newton is not essentially distinguishable from the 
 nearest infirm pauper, and has as few and as feeble relations 
 with mankind. At last the man Newton dies that is, the body 
 is dispersed into gas and dust. But the world, which is affec- 
 ted enormously by his intellect, is not in the smallest degree 
 affected by his death. His activity continues the same ; if it 
 were worth while to conceal the fact of his death, no one of 
 the millions who are so greatly affected by his thoughts would 
 perceive it or know it. If he had discovered some means of 
 prolonging a torpid existence till this hour, he might be living 
 now, and it would not signify to us in the slightest degree 
 whether his body breathed in the walls of his lodging or moul- 
 dered in the vaults of the Abbey.
 
 32 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 It may be said that if it does not signify much to us, it sig- 
 nifies a great deal to Isaac Newton. But is this true ? He no 
 longer eats and sleeps, a burden to himself ; he no longer is 
 destroying his great name by feeble theology and querulous 
 pettiness. But if the small weaknesses and wants of the flesh 
 are ended for him, all that makes Newton (and he had always 
 lived for his posthumous, not his immediate fame) rises into 
 greater activity and purer uses. We make no mystical or 
 fanciful divinity of Death ; we do not deny its terrors or its 
 evils. We are not responsible for it, and should welcome any 
 reasonable prospect of eliminating or postponing this fatality, 
 that waits upon all organic nature. But it is no answer to phil- 
 osophy or science to retort that Death is so terrible, therefore 
 man must be designed to escape it. There are savages who 
 persistently deny that men do die at all, either their bodies or 
 their souls, asserting that the visible consequences of death are 
 either an illusion or an artfully contrived piece of acting on 
 the part of their friends, who have really decamped to the 
 happy hunting-fields. This seems on the whole a more rational 
 theory than that of immaterial souls flying about space, as the 
 spontaneous fancies of savages are sometimes more rational 
 than the elaborate hypotheses of metaphysics. 
 
 But though we do not presume to apologise for death, it is 
 easy to see that many of the greatest moral and intellectual re- 
 sults of life are only possible, can only begin, when the claims 
 of the animal life are satisfied ; when the stormy, complex, and 
 chequered career is over, and the higher tops of the intellectual 
 or moral nature alone stand forth in the distance of time. 
 What was the blind old harper of Scio to his contemporaries.
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE, 33 
 
 or the querulous refugee from Florence, or even the boon- 
 companion and retired playright of Stratford, or the blind and 
 stern old malignant of Bunhill Fields ? The true work of 
 Socrates and his life only began with his resplendent death, to 
 say nothing of yet greater religious teachers, whose names I 
 refrain from citing ; and as to those whose lives have been cast 
 in conflicts the Caesars, the Alfreds, the Hildebrands, the 
 Cromwells, the Fredericks it is only after death, oftenest in 
 ages after death, that they cease to be combatants, and become 
 creators. It is not merely that they are only recognised in 
 after-ages ; the truth is, that their activity only begins when 
 the surging of passion and sense ends, and turmoil dies away. 
 Great intellects and great characters are necessarily in advance 
 of their age ; the care of the father and the mother begins to 
 tell most truly in the ripe manhood of their children, when the 
 parents are often in the grave, and not in the infancy which 
 they see and are confronted with. The great must always feel 
 with Kepler, ' It is enough as yet if I have a hearer now and 
 then in a century.' John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in 
 the grave, but his soul is marching along. 
 
 We can trace this truth best in the case of great men ; but 
 it is not confined to the great. Not a single act of thought or 
 character ends with itself. Nay, more ; not a single nature in 
 its entirety but leaves its influence for good or for evil. As a 
 fact the good prevail ; but all act, all continue to act indefin- 
 itely, often in ever-widening circles. Physicists amuse us by 
 tracing for us the infinite fortunes of some wave set in motion 
 by force, its circles and its repercussions perpetually transmit- 
 ted in new complications. But the career of a single intellect
 
 34 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 and character is a far more real force when it meets with 
 suitable intellects and characters into whose action it is incor- 
 porated. Every life more or less forms another life, and lives 
 in another life. Civilization, nation, city, imply this fact. 
 There is neither mysticism nor hyperbole, but simple observa- 
 tion in the belief, that the career of every human being in so- 
 ciety does not end with the death of its body. In some sort 
 its higher activities and potency can only begin truly when 
 change is no longer possible for it. The worthy gain in influ- 
 ence and in range at each generation, just as the founders of 
 some populous race gain a greater fatherhood at each succeed- 
 ing growth of their descendants. And in some infinitesimal 
 degree, the humblest life that ever turned a sod sends a wave 
 no, more than a wave, a life through the ever-growing harmony 
 of human society. Not a soldier died at Marathon or Salamis, 
 but did a stroke by which our thought is enlarged and our 
 standard of duty formed to this day. 
 
 Be it remembered that this is not hypothesis, but something 
 perfectly real, we may fairly say undeniable. We are not 
 inventing an imaginary world, and saying it must be real 
 because it is so pleasant to think of ; we are only repeating 
 truths on which our notion of history and society is based. 
 The idea, no doubt, is usually limited to the famous, and to 
 the great revolutions in civilization. But no one who thinks 
 it out carefully can deny that it is true of every human being 
 in society in some lesser degree. The idea has not been, or 
 is no longer, systematically enforced, invested with poetry and 
 dignity, and deepened by the solemnity of reHgion. But why 
 is that ? Because theological hypotheses of a new and hetero-
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 35 
 
 genous existence have deadened our interest in the realities, 
 the grandeur, and the perpetuity of our earthly life. In the 
 best days of Rome, even without a theory of history or a 
 science of society, it was a living faith, the true religion of 
 that majestic race. It is the real sentiment of all societies 
 where the theological hypothesis has disappeared. It is no 
 doubt now in England the great motive of virtue and energy. 
 There have been few seasons in the worlds history when the 
 sense of moral responsibility and moral survival after death 
 was more exalted and more vigorous than with the companions 
 of Vergniaud and Danton, to whom the dreams of theology 
 were hardly intelligible. As we read the calm and humane 
 words of Condorcet on the very edge of his yawning grave, 
 we learn how the conviction of posthumous activity (not of 
 posthumous fame), how the consciousness of a coming incor- 
 poration with the glorious future of his race, can give a 
 patience and a happiness equal to that of any martyr of 
 theology. 
 
 It would be an endless inquiry to trace the means whereby 
 this sense of posthumous participation in the life of our fellows 
 can be extended to the mass, as it certainly affects already the 
 thoughtful and the refined. Without an education, a new 
 social opinion, without a religion I mean an organized re- 
 ligion, not a vague metaphysic it is doubtless impossible 
 that it should become universal and capable of overcoming 
 selfishness. But make it at once the basis of philosophy, the 
 standard of right and wrong, and the centre of a religion, and 
 this will prove, perhaps, an easier task than that of teaching 
 Greeks and Romans, Syrians and Moors, to look forward to a
 
 .36 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 future life of ceaseless psalmody in an immaterial heaven. 
 The astonishing feat was performed ; and, perhaps, it may be 
 easier to fashion a new public opinion, requiring merely that 
 an accepted truth of philosophy should be popularized, which 
 is already the deepest hope of some thoughtful spirits, and 
 which does not take the suicidal course of trying to cast out 
 the devil of selfishness by a direct appeal to the personal self. 
 
 It is here that the strength of the human future over the 
 celestial future is so clearly pre-eminent. Make the future 
 hope a social activity, and we give to the present life a social 
 ideal. Make the future hope personal beatitude, and person- 
 ality is stamped deeper on every act of our daily life. Now 
 we make the future hope, in the truest sense, social, inasmuch 
 as our future is simply an active existence prolonged by society. 
 And our future hope rests not in any vague yearning, of which 
 we have as little evidence as we have definite conception : it 
 rests on a perfectly certain truth, accepted by all thoughtful 
 minds, the truth that the actions, feelings, thoughts of every 
 one of us our minds, our characters, our souls as organic 
 wholes do marvellously influence and mould each other ; 
 that the highest part of ourselves, the abiding part of us, 
 passes into other lives and continues to live in other lives. 
 Can we conceive a more potent stimulus to rectitude, to daily 
 and hourly striving after a true life, and this ever-present 
 sense that we are indeed immortal ; not that we have an 
 immortal something within us, but that in very truth we our- 
 selves, our thinking, feeling, acting personalities, are immortal ; 
 nay, cannot die, but must ever continue what we make them, 
 working and doing, if no longer receiving and enjoying ? And
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 37. 
 
 not merely we ourselves, in our personal identity, are immortal, 
 but each act,-thought, and feeling is immortal ; and this immor- 
 tality is not some ecstatic and indescribable condition in space, 
 but activity on earth in the real and known work of life, in the 
 welfare of those whom we have loved, and in the happiness of 
 those who come after us. 
 
 And can it be difficult to idealize and give currency to a 
 faith, which is a certain and undisputed fact of common sense 
 as well as of philosopy ? As we live for others in life, so we 
 live in others after death, as others have lived in us, and all for 
 the common race. How deeply does such a belief as this 
 bring home to each moment of life the mysterious perpetuity 
 of ourselves ! For good, for evil, we cannot die ; we cannot 
 shake ourselves free from this eternity of our faculties. There 
 is here no promise, it is true, of eternal sensations, enjoyments,' 
 meditations. There is no promise, be it plainly said, of any- 
 thing but an immortality of influence, of spiritual work, of 
 glorified activity. We cannot even say that we shall continue 
 to love ; but we know that we shall be loved. It may well be 
 that we shall consciously know no hope ourselves ; but we 
 shall inspire hopes. It may be that we shall not think ; but 
 others will think our thoughts, and enshrine our minds. If 
 no sympathies shall thrill along our nerves, we shall be the 
 spring of sympathy in distant generations ; and that, though 
 we be the humblest, and the least of all the soldiers in the 
 human host, the least celebrated and the worst remembered. 
 For our lives live when we are most forgotten ; and not a cup 
 of water that we may have given to an unknown sufferer, or a 
 wise word spoken in season to a child, but has added (whether 
 
 276178
 
 38 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 we remember it, whether others remember it or not) a streak 
 of happiness and strength to the world. Our earthly frames, 
 like the grain of wheat, may be laid in the earth and this 
 image of our great spiritual Master is more fit for the social 
 than the celestial future but the grain shall bear spiritual 
 fruit, and multiply in kindred natures and in other selves. 
 
 It is a merely verbal question if this be the life of the Soul 
 when the Soul means the sum of the activities, or if there be 
 any immortality where there is no consciousness. It is enough 
 for us that we can trust to a real prolongation of our highest 
 activity in the sensible lives of others, even though our own 
 forces can gain nothing new, and are not reflected in a sensitive 
 body. We do not get rid of Death, but we transfigure Death- 
 Does any religion profess to do more ? It is enough for any 
 creed that it can teach non omnis mortar ; it would be gross 
 extravagance to say omnis non mortar, no part of me shall die. 
 Death is the one inevitable law of Life. The business of re- 
 ligion is to show us what are its compensations. The spirit- 
 ualist orthodoxy, like every other creed, is willing to allow that 
 death robs us of a great deal, that very much of us does die ; 
 nay, it teaches that this dies utterly, forever, leaving no trace 
 but dust. And thus the spiritualist orthodoxy exaggerates 
 death, and adds a fresh terror to its power. We, on the con- 
 trary, would seek to show that much of us, and that the best 
 of us, does not die, or at least does not end. And the differ- 
 ence between our faith and that of the orthodox is this : we 
 look to the permanence of the activities which give others 
 happiness ; they look to the permanence of the consciousness 
 which can enjoy happiness. Which is the nobler ?
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 39 
 
 What need we then to promise or to hope more than an 
 eternity of spiritual influence ? Yet, after all, 'tis no question 
 as to what kind of eternity man would prefer to select. We 
 have no evidence that he has any choice before him. If we 
 were creating a universe of our own and a human race on an 
 ideal mould, it might be rational to discuss what kind of 
 eternity was the most desirable, and it might then become a 
 question if we should not begin by eliminating death. But 
 as we are, with death in the world, and man as we know him 
 submitting to the fatality of his nature, the rational inquiry is 
 this how best to order his life, and to use the eternity that 
 he has. And an immortality of prolonged activity on earth 
 he has as certainly as he has civilization, or progress, or society. 
 And the wise man in the evening of life may be well content 
 to say : * I have worked and thought, and have been conscious 
 in the flesh ; I have done with the flesh, and therewith with 
 the toil of thought and the troubles of sensation ; I am ready 
 to pass into the spiritual community of human souls, and when 
 this man's flesh wastes away from me, may I be found worthy 
 to become part of the influence of humanity itself, and so 
 
 Join the choir invisible 
 . Whose music is the gladness of the world.' 
 
 That the doctrine of the celestial future appeals to the 
 essence of self appears very strongly in its special rebuke to 
 the doctrine of the social future. It repeats, ' We agree with 
 all you say about the prolonged activity of man after death, 
 we see of course that the solid achievements of life are carried 
 on, and we grant you that it signifies nothing to those who 
 profit by his work that the man no longer breathes in the
 
 4 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 flesh : but what is all that to the man^ to you, and to me ? we 
 shall not feel our work, we shall not have the indescribable 
 satisfaction which our souls now have in living, in effecting 
 our work, and profiting by others. What is the good of man- 
 kind to me, when I am mouldering unconscious?' This is 
 the true materialism ; here is the physical theory of another 
 life ; this is the unspiritual denial of the soul, the binding it 
 down to the clay of the body. We say, * All that is great in 
 you shall not end, but carry on its activity perpetually and in 
 a purer way ;' and you reply, * What care I for what is great 
 in me, and its possible work in this vale of tears : I want to 
 feel life ; I want to enjoy, I want my personality,' in other 
 words, * I want my senses, I want my body.' Keep your 
 body and keep your senses in any way that you know. We 
 can only wonder and say, with Frederic to his runaway 
 soldiers, * Wollt ihr immer leben ? ' But we, who know that 
 a higher form of activity is only to be reached by a subjective 
 life in society, will continue to regard a perpetuity of sensation 
 as the true Hell, for we feel that the perpetual worth of our 
 lives is the one thing precious to care for, and not a vacuous 
 eternity of consciousness. 
 
 It is not merely that this eternity of the tabor is so gross, so 
 sensual, so indolent, so selfish a creed ; but its worst evil is 
 that it paralyses practical life, and throws it into discord. A 
 life of vanity in a vale of tears to be followed by an infinity of 
 celestial rapture, is necessarily a life which is of infinitesimal 
 importance. The incongruity of the attempts to connect the 
 two, and to make the vale of tears the ante-chamber or the 
 judgment-dock of heaven, grows greater and not less as ages
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 4I 
 
 roll on. The more we think and learn, and the higher rises 
 our social philosophy and our insight into human destiny, the 
 more the reality and importance of the social future impresses 
 us, whilst the fancy of the celestial future grows unreal and 
 incongruous. As we get to know what thinking means, and 
 feeling means, and the more truly we understand what life 
 means, the more completely do the promises of the celestial 
 transcendentalism fail to interest us. We have come to see 
 that to continue to live is to carry on a series of correlated 
 sensations, and to/ set in motion a series of corresponding 
 forces ; to think is to marshal a set of observed perceptions 
 with a view to certain observed phenomena ; to feel implies 
 something of which we have a real assurance affecting our 
 own consensus within. The whole set of positive thoughts 
 compels us to believe that it is an infinite apathy to which 
 your heaven would consign us, without objects, without rela- 
 tions, without change, without growth, without action, an 
 absolute nothingness, nirvana of impotence, this is not life ; 
 it is not consciousness ; it is not happiness. So far as we can 
 grasp the hypothesis, it seems equally ludicrous and repulsive. 
 You may call it paradise ; but we call it conscious annihilation. 
 You may long for it, if you have been so taught ; just as if 
 you had been taught to cherish such hopes, you might be now 
 yearning for the moment when you might become the imma- 
 terial principle of a comet, or as you might tell me, that you 
 really were the ether, and were about to take your place in 
 Space. This is how these sublimities affect us. But we know 
 that to many this future is one of spiritual development, a life 
 of growth and continual upsoaring of still higher affection.
 
 42 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 It may be so ; but to our mind these are contradictions in 
 terms. We cannot understand what Hfe and affection can 
 mean, where you postulate the absence of every condition by 
 which life and affection are possible. Can there be develop- 
 ment where there is no law, thought or affection, where object 
 and subject are confused into one essence ? How can that be 
 existence, where everything of which we have experience, and 
 everything which we can define, is presumed to be unable to 
 enter ? To us these things are all incoherences ; and in the 
 midst of practical realities and the solid duties of life, sheer 
 impertinences. The field is full : each human life has a per- 
 fectly real and a vast future to look forward to ; these hyper- 
 bolic enigmas disturb our grave duties and our solid hopes. 
 No wonder, then, whilst they are still so rife, that men are 
 dull to the moral responsibility which, in its awfulness, begins 
 only at the grave ; that they are so little influenced by the 
 futurity which will judge them ; that they are blind to the 
 dignity and beauty of death, and shuffle off the dead life and 
 the dead body with such cruel disrespect. The fumes of the 
 celestial immortality still confuse them. It is only when an 
 earthly future is the fulfillment of a worthy earthly life, that we 
 can see all the majesty as well as the glory of the world beyond 
 the grave ; and then only will it fulfill its moral and religious 
 purpose as the great guide of human conduct.
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM. 
 
 " \ 
 
 THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 MR. R. H. HUTTON. 
 
 . The imaginative glow and rhetorical vivacity which are 
 visible throughout Mr, Harrison's Essays on " The Soul and 
 Future Life " '^ are very remarkable, and should guard those of 
 us who recoil in amazement from its creed or no-creed from 
 falling into the very common mistake of assuming that the 
 eflfect which such ideas as these produce on ourselves is the 
 effect which, apart from all question of the other mental con- 
 ditions surrounding the natures into which they are received 
 they naturally produce. It is clear at least that if they ever 
 tended to produce on the author of these papers the same ef- 
 fect which they not only tend to produce, but do produce, on 
 myself, that tendency must have been so completely neutral- 
 ized by the redundant moral energ}' inherent in his nature, that 
 the characteristic effect which I should have ascribed to them 
 
 * The Nineteenth Century, September and October, 1877. 
 2 P. I.
 
 44 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 is absolutely unverifiable, and, for anything we have the right 
 to assert, non-existent. There is at least but one instance in 
 which I should have traced any shade of what I may call the 
 natural view of death as presented in the light of this creed, 
 and that is the sentence in which Mr. Harrison somewhat 
 superfluously disclaims and moreover with an accent of hau- 
 teur, as though he resented the necessity of admitting that 
 death is a disagreeable certainty his own or his creed's res- 
 ponsibility for the fact of death. " We make no mystical or 
 fanciful divinity of death," he says ; " we do not deny its 
 terrors or its evils. We are not responsible for it, and should 
 welcome any reasonable prospect of eliminating or postponing 
 this fatality that waits upon all organic nature." After read- 
 ing that admission, I was puzzled when I came to the asser- 
 tion that " we who know that a higher form of activity is only 
 to be reached by a subjective life in society will continue to 
 regard a perpetuity of sensation as the true Hell," ^ a sen- 
 tence in which Mr. Harrison would commonly be understood 
 to mean that he and all his friends, if they had a vote in the 
 matter, would give a unanimous suffrage against this "per- 
 petuity of sensation," and, so far from trying to eliminate or 
 postpone death, would be inclined to cling to and even hasten 
 it For, in this place at least, it is not the perpetuation of 
 deteriorated energies of which Mr. Harrison speaks, but the 
 perpetuation of life pure and simple. Indeed, nothing puz- 
 zles me more in this paper than the diametrical contradic- 
 tions both of feeling and thought which appear to me to be 
 embodied in it. Its main criticism on the common view of 
 
 ip. 40.
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM. " 45 
 
 immortality seems to be that the desire for it is a grossly sel- 
 fish desire. Nay, nicknaming the conception of a future of eter- 
 nal praise, '^ the eternity of the tabor," he calls it a conception 
 " so gross, so sensual, so indolent, so selfish," as to be worthy 
 of nothing but scorn. I think he can never have taken the 
 trouble to realize with any care what he is talking of. Whatever 
 the conception embodied in what Mr. Harrison calls "ceaseless 
 psalmody " may be and certainly it is not my idea of im- 
 mortal life it is the very opposite of selfish. No conception 
 of life can be selfish of which the very essence is adoration, 
 that is, wonder, veneration, gratitude to another. And gross 
 as the conception necessarily suggested by psalm-singing is, 
 to those who interpret it, as we generally do, by the stentorian 
 shoutings of congregations who are often thinking a great 
 deal more of their own performances than of the object of 
 their praise, it is the commonest candor to admit that this 
 conception of immortality owes its origin entirely to men 
 who were thinking of a life absorbed in the interior con- 
 templation of a God full of all perfections a contemplation 
 breaking out into thanksgiving only in the intensity of their 
 love and adoration. Whatever else this conception of im- 
 mortality may be, the very last phrase which can be justly ap- 
 plied to it is "gross" or "selfish." I fear that the Posi- 
 tivists have left the Christian objects of their criticism so far 
 behind that they have ceased not merely to realise what Chris- 
 tians mean, but have sincerely and completely forgotten that 
 Christians ever had a meaning at all. That Positivists should 
 regard any belief in the " beatific vision " as a wild piece of 
 fanaticism, I can understand, but that, entering into the mean-
 
 46 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 ing of that fanaticism, they should describe the desire for it 
 as a gross piece of selfishness, I cannot understand ; and I 
 think it more reasonable, therefore, to assume that they have 
 simply lost the key to the language of adoration. Moreover, 
 when I come to note Mr. Harrison's own conception of the 
 future life, it appears to me that it differs only from the Chris- 
 tian's conception by its infinite deficiencies, and in no respect 
 by superior moral qualities of any kind. That conception is, 
 in a word, posthumous energy. He holds that if we could 
 get rid of the vulgar notion of a survival of personal sensa- 
 tions and of growing mental and moral faculties after death, 
 we should consecrate the notion of posthumous activity, and 
 anticipate with delight our " coming incorporation with the 
 glorious future of our race," as we cannot possibly consecrate 
 those great hopes now. 
 
 But, in the first place, what is this " glorious future of our 
 race " which I am invited to contemplate ? It is the life in a 
 better organized society of a vast number of these merely tem- 
 porary creatures whose personal sensations, if they ever could 
 be " perpetuated," Mr. Harrison regards as giving us the best 
 conception of a " true hell." Now if an improved and better 
 organized future of ephemerals be so glorious to anticipate, 
 what elements of glory are there in it which would not belong 
 to the immortality looked forward to by the Christian a far 
 more improved future of endlessly growing natures ? Is it 
 the mere fact that I shall myself belong to the one future 
 which renders it unworthy, while the absence of any ** perpe- 
 tuity " of my personal " sensations " from the other, renders it 
 unselfish ? I always supposed selfishness to consist, not in the
 
 A MODERN- " SYMPOSIUM. " 47 
 
 desire for any noble kind of life in which I might share, but in 
 the preference for my own happiness at the expense of some 
 one else's. If it is selfish to desire the perpetuation of a 
 growing life, which not only does not, as far as I know, inter- 
 fere with the volume of moral growth in others, but certainly 
 contributes to it, then it must be the true unselfishness to 
 commit suicide at once, supposing suicide to be the finis to 
 personal "sensation." But then universal suicide would be 
 inconsistent with the glorious future of our race, so I suppose 
 it must at least be postponed till our own sensations have been 
 so far " perpetuated " as to leave heirs behind them. If Con- 
 dorcet is to be held up to our admiration for anticipating on 
 the edge of the grave his *' coming incorporation with the 
 glorious future of his race," i.e. with ourselves and our poster- 
 ity, may we not infer that there is something in ourselves, i.e. 
 in human society as it now exists, which was worthy of his 
 vision something in which we need not think it " selfish " to 
 participate, even though our personal " sensations " do form a 
 part of it ? Where then does the selfishness of desiring to share 
 in a glorious future even through personal " sensations," begin ? 
 The only reasonable or even intelligible answer, as far as I 
 can see, is this ; as soon as that personal " sensation " for 
 ourselves excludes a larger and wider growth for others, but 
 no sooner. But then no Christian ever supposed for a mo- 
 ment that his personal immortality could or would interfere with 
 any other being's growth. And if so, where is the selfishness ? 
 What a Christian desires is a higher, truer, deeper union with 
 God for all, himself included. If his own life drop out of that 
 future, he supposes that there will be so much less that really
 
 48 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 does glorify the true righteousness, and no compensating 
 equivalent. If it be Mr. Harrison's mission to disclose to us 
 that any perpetuity of sensation on our own parts will posi- 
 tively exclude something much higher which would exist if we 
 consented to disappear, he may, I think, prove his case. But 
 in the absence of any attempt to do so, his conception that it 
 is noble and unselfish to be more than content ^grateful ^for 
 ceasing to live any but a posthumous life, seems to me simply 
 irrational. 
 
 But, further, the equivalent which Mr. Harrison offers me 
 for becoming, as I had hoped to become, in another world, an 
 altogether better member of a better society, does not seem to 
 me more than a very doubtful good. My posthumous activity 
 will be of all kinds, some of which I am glad to anticipate, 
 most of which I am very sorry to anticipate, and much of 
 which I anticipate with absolute indifference. Even our best 
 actions have bad effects as well as good. Macaulay and most 
 other historians held that the Puritan earnestness expended a 
 good deal of posthumous activity in producing the license of 
 the world of the Restoration. Our activity, indeed, is strictly 
 posthumous in kind, even before our death, from the very 
 moment in which it leaves our living mind and has begun to 
 work beyond ourselves. What I did as a child is, in this sense, 
 as much producing posthumous effects, i.e. effects over which I 
 can no longer exert any control, now, as what I do before 
 death will be producing posthumous effects after my death. 
 Now a considerable proportion of these posthumous activities 
 of ours, even when we can justify the original activity as all 
 that it ought to have been, are unfortunate. Mr. Harrison's
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM. " 49 
 
 papers, for instance, have already exerted a very vivid and 
 very repulsive effect on my mind an activity which I am sure 
 he will not look upon with gratification, and I do not doubt 
 that what I am now writing will produce the same effect on 
 him, and in that effect I shall take no delight at all. A certain 
 proportion, therefore, of my posthumous activit}' is activity for 
 evil, even when the activity itself is on the whole good. But 
 when we come to throw in the posthumous activity for evil 
 exerted by our evil actions and the occasional posthumous 
 activity for good which evil also fortunately exerts, but for the 
 good results of which we can take no credit to ourselves, the 
 whole constitutes a mtlange to which, as far as I am concerned, 
 I look with exceedingly mixed feelings, the chief element being 
 humiliation, though there are faint lights mingled with it 
 here and there. But as for any rapture of satisfaction in con- 
 templating my "coming incorporation with the glorious future 
 of our race," I must wholly and entirely disclaim it. What 
 I see in that incorporation of mine with the future of our 
 race glorious or the reverse, and I do not quite see why the 
 Positivist thinks it so glorious, since he probably holds that an 
 absolute term must be put to it, if by no other cause, by the 
 gradual cooling of the sun is a very patchwork sort of affair 
 indeed, a mere miscellany of bad, good, and indifferent with- 
 out organization and without unity. What I shall be, for in- 
 stance, when incorporated, in Mr. Harrison's phrase, with the 
 future of our race, I have very little satisfaction in contem- 
 plating, except so far, perhaps, as my " posthumous activity " 
 may retard the acceptance of Mr. Harrison's glorious antici- 
 pations for the human race. One great reason for my per- 
 
 4
 
 50 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 sonal wish for a perpetuity of volition and personal energy is, 
 that I may have abetter opportunity, as far as may lie in me, 
 to undo the mischief I shall have done before death comes to 
 my aid. The vision of " posthumous activity" ought indeed, I 
 fancy, to give even the best of us very little satisfaction. It 
 may not be, and perhaps is not, so mischievous as the vision 
 of "posthumous fame," but yet it is not the kind of vision which, 
 to my mind, can properly occupy very much of our attention 
 in this life. Surely the right thing for us to do is to concen- 
 trate attention on the life of the living moment to make that 
 the best we can and then to leave its posthumous effects, 
 after the life of the present has gone out of it, to that Power 
 which, far more than anything in it, transmutes at times even 
 our evil into good, though sometimes, too, to superficial ap- 
 pearance at all events, even our good into evil. The desire for 
 an immortal life that is, for a perpetuation of the personal 
 affections and of the will seems to me a far nobler thing than 
 any sort of anticipation as to our posthumous activity ; for 
 high affections and a right will are good in themselves, and 
 constitute,indeed,the only elements in Mr. Harrison's "glorious 
 future of our race " to which I can attach much value ^while 
 posthumous activity may be either good or evil, and depends 
 on conditions over which he who first puts the activity in 
 motion, often has no adequate control. 
 
 And this reminds me of a phrase in Mr. Harrison's paper 
 which I have studied over and over again without making out 
 his meaning. I mean his statement that on his own hypoth- 
 esis " there is ample scope for the spiritual life, for moral 
 responsibility, for the world beyond the grave, its hopes and
 
 A MODERN " S YMPOSIUM. " ^ I 
 
 its duties, which remain to us perfectly real without the unin- 
 telligible hypothesis." Now I suppose, by " the hopes " of 
 " the world beyond the grave," Mr. Harrison means the hopes 
 we form for the " future of our race," and that I under- 
 stand. But what does he mean by its " duties ? " Not, 
 surely, our duties beyond the grave, but the duties of those 
 who survive us ; for he expressly tells us that our mental and 
 moral powers do not increase and grow, develope or vary 
 within themselves do not, in fact, survive at all except in 
 their effects and hence duties for us in the world beyond 
 the grave are, I suppose, in his creed impossible. But if he 
 only means that there will be duties for those who survive us 
 after we are gone, I cannot see how that is in any respect a 
 theme on which it is either profitable or consolatory for us to 
 dwell by anticipation. One remark more : when Mr. Harrison 
 says ^ that it is quite as easy to learn to long for the moment 
 when you shall become '* the immaterial principle of a comet," 
 or that you " really were the ether, and were about to take 
 your place in space," as to long for personal immortality he 
 is merely talking at random on a subject on which it is hardly 
 seemly to talk at random. He knows that what we mean by 
 the soul is that which lies at the bottom of the sense of per- 
 sonal identity the thread of the continuity running through 
 all our chequered life ; and how it can be equally unmeaning 
 to believe that this hitherto unbroken continuity will continue 
 unbroken, and to believe that it is to be transformed into 
 something else of a totally different kind, I am not only una- 
 ble to understand, but even to understand how he could 
 
 1 P. 41
 
 5a QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 seriously so conceive us. My notion of myself never had the 
 least connection with the principle of any part of any comet, 
 but it has the closest possible connection with thoughts, affec- 
 tions, and volitions, which, as far as I know, are not likely to 
 perish with my body. I am sorry that Mr. Harrison should 
 have disfigured his paper by sarcasms so inapplicable and 
 apparently so bitter as these. 
 
 PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 
 
 Mr. Harrison's striking discourse on the soul and future 
 life has a certain resemblance to the famous essay on the 
 snakes of Ireland. For its purport is to show that there is 
 no soul, nor any future life in the ordinary sense of the terms. 
 With death, the personal activity of which the soul is the 
 popular hypostasis is put into commission among posterity, 
 and the future life is an immortality by deputy. 
 
 Neither in these views, nor in the arguments by which 
 they are supported, is there much novelty. But that which 
 appears both novel and interesting to me is the author's 
 evidently sincere and hearfelt conviction that his powerful 
 advocacy of soulless spirituality and mortal immortality is 
 consistent with the intellectual scorn and moral reprobation 
 which he freely pours forth upon the " irrational and debas- 
 ing physicism " of materialism and materialists, and with the 
 wrath with which he visits what he is pleased to call the in- 
 trusion of physical science, especially of biology, into the do- 
 main of social phenomena.
 
 A MODERN ''SYMPOSIUM." 53 
 
 Listen to the storm : 
 
 We certainly do reject, as earnestly as any school can, that which is 
 most fairly called Materialism, and we will second every word of those 
 who cryout that civilization is in danger if the workings of the human spirit 
 are to become questions of physiology, and if death is the end of a man as 
 it is the end of a sparrow. We not only assent to such protests, but we see 
 very pressing need for making them. It is a corrupting doctrine to open a 
 brain, and to tell us that devotion is a definite molecular change in this and 
 that convolution of grey pulp, and that if man is thefii;st of living animals, 
 he passes away after a short space like the beasts that perish. And all doc- 
 trines, more or less, do tend to this, which offer physical theories as ex- 
 plaining moral phenomena, which deny man a spiritual in addition to a 
 moral nature, which limit his moral life to the span of his bodily organism, 
 and which have no place for " religion " in the proper sense of the words.^ 
 
 Now Mr. Harrison can hardly think it worth while to at- 
 tack imaginary opponents, so that I am led to believe that 
 there must be somebody who holds the " corrupting doctrine " 
 " that devotion is a definite molecular change in this and that 
 convolution of grey pulp." Nevertheless, my conviction is 
 shaken by a passage which occurs at p. 8 : " No rational 
 thinker now pretends that imagination is simply the vibration 
 of a particular fibre." If no rational thinker pretends this of 
 imagination, why should any pretend it of devotion ? And yet 
 I cannot bring myself to think that all Mr. Harrison's passion- 
 ate rhetoric is hurled at irrational thinkers : surely he might 
 leave such to the soft influences of time and due medical 
 treatment of their " grey pulp " in Colney Hatch or else- 
 where. 
 
 On the other hand, Mr. Harrison cannot possibly be at- 
 tacking those who hold that the feeling of devotion is the con- 
 
 ^ P. 14.
 
 54 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 comitant, or even the consequent, of a molecular change in the 
 brain ; for he tells us, in language the explicitness of which 
 leaves nothing to be desired, that , 
 
 To positive methods, every fact of thinking reveals itself as having func- 
 tional relation with molecular change. Every fact of will or of feeling is 
 in similar relation with kindred molecular facts. 
 
 On mature consideration I feel shut up to one of two alter- 
 native hypotheses. ' Either the " corrupting doctrine " to which 
 Mr. Harrison refers is held by no rational tirinker in which 
 case, surely neither he nor I need trouble ourselves about it 
 or the phrase, " Devotion is a definite molecular change in this 
 and that convolution of grey pulp," means that devotion has a 
 functional relation with such molecular change ; in which case, 
 it is Mr. Harrison's own view, and therefore, let us hope, can- 
 not be a " corrupting doctrine." 
 
 I am not helped out of the difficulty I have thus candidly 
 stated, when I try to get at the meaning of another hard say- 
 ing of Mr. Harrison's, which follows after the ** corrupting doc- 
 trine " paragraph : " And all doctrines, more or less, do tend 
 to this [corrupting doctrine], which offer physical theories as 
 explaining moral phenomena." 
 
 Nevertheless, on pp. 7 and 8, Mr. Harrison says with great 
 force and tolerable accuracy : 
 
 Man is one, however compound. Fire his conscience, and he blushes. 
 Check his circulation, and he thinks wildly, or thinks not at all. Impair 
 his secretions, and moral sense is dulled, discoloured, or depraved ; his as- 
 pirations flag, his hope, love, faith reel. Impair them still more, and he 
 becomes a brute. A cup of drink degrades his moral nature below that of 
 a swine. Again, a violent emotion of pity or horror makes him vomit A
 
 A MODERN '' SYMPOSIUM.'' ^^ 
 
 lancet will restore him from delirium to clear thought. Excess of thought 
 will waste his sinews. Excess of muscular exercise will deaden thought. 
 An emotion will double the strength of his muscles. And at last the prick 
 of a needle or a grain of mineral will in an instant lay to rest for ever his 
 body and its unity, and all the spontaneous activities of intelligence, feel- 
 ing, and action, with which that compound organism was charged. 
 
 These are the obvious and ancient observations about the human or- 
 ganism. But modern philosophy and science have carried these hints into 
 complete explanations. By a vast accumulation of proof, positive thought 
 at last has established a distinct correspondence between every process of 
 thought or of feeling and some corporeal phenomenon. 
 
 I cry with Shylock : 
 
 'Tis very true, O wise and upright judge. 
 
 But if the establishment of the correspondence betv/een 
 physical phenomena on the one side, and moral and intellec 
 tual phenomena on the other, is properly to be called an 
 explanation (let alone a complete explanatioti) of the human or- 
 ganism, surely Mr. Harrison's teachings come dangerously 
 near that tender of physical theories in explanation of moral 
 phenomena which he warns us leads straight to corrup- 
 tion. 
 
 But perhaps I have misrepresented Mr. Harrison. For a 
 few lines further on we are told, with due italic emphasis, that 
 " no man can explain volition by purely anatomical study." 
 
 I should have thought that Mr. Harrison might have gone 
 much further than this. No man ever explained any physio- 
 logical fact by purely anatomical study. Digestion cannot be 
 so explained, nor respiration, nor reflex action. It would 
 have been as relevant to affirm that volition could not be ex- 
 plained by measuring an arc of the meridian. 
 
 I am obliged to note the fact that Mr. Harrison's biologi'
 
 56 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 cal studies have not proceeded so far as to enable him to dis- 
 criminate between the province of anatomy and that of physi- 
 ology, because it furnishes the key to an otherwise mysterious 
 utterance : 
 
 A man whose whole thoughts are absorbed in cutting up dead mon- 
 keys and live frogs has no more business to dogmatise about religion than 
 a mere chemist to improvise a zoology. 
 
 Quis negavit 1 But if, as, on Mr. Harrison's own showing, 
 is the case, the progress of science (not anatomical, but phys- 
 iological) has " established a distinct correspondence between 
 every process of thought or of feeling and some corporeal phe- 
 nomenon," and if it is true that " impaired secretions " deprave 
 the moral sense, and make " hope, love, and faith reel," surely 
 the religious feelings are brought within the range of physio- 
 logical inquiry. If impaired secretions deprave the moral 
 sense, it becomes an interesting and important problem to 
 ascertain what diseased viscus may have been responsible for 
 the Priest in Absolution ; and what condition of the grey pulp 
 may have conferred on it such a pathological steadiness of faith 
 as to create the hope of personal immortality, which Mr. Har- 
 rison stigmatizes as so selfishly immoral. 
 
 I should not like to undertake the responsibility of advis- 
 ing anybody to dogmatize about anything ; but surely if, as 
 Mr. Harrison so strongly urges, " the whole range of man's 
 powers, from the finest spiritual sensibility down to a mere 
 automatic contraction, falls into one coherent scheme, being 
 all the multiform functions of a living organism in presence 
 of its encircling conditions ;" then the man who endeavors
 
 A MODERN " S YMPOSIUM. " 57 
 
 to ascertain the exact nature of these functions, and to de- 
 termine the influence of conditions upon them, is more likely 
 to be in a position to tell us something worth hearing about 
 them, than one who is turned from such study by cheap pul- 
 pit thunder touching the presumption of " biological reason- 
 ing about spiritual things." 
 
 Mr. Harrison, as we have seen, is not quite so clear as is 
 desirable respecting th'e limits of the provinces of anatomy 
 and physiology. Perhaps he will permit me to inform him 
 that physiology is the science which treats of the functions of 
 the living organism, ascertains their coordinations and their 
 correlations in the general chain of causes and effects, 
 and traces out their dependence upon the physical states of 
 the organs by which these functions are exercised. The ex- 
 planation of a physiological function is the demonstratioji of 
 the connection of that function with the molecular state of 
 the organ which exerts the function. Thus the function of 
 motion is explained when the movements of the living body 
 are found to have certain molecular changes for their invari- 
 able antecedents ; the function of sensation is explained when 
 the molecular changes, which are the invariable antecedents of 
 sensations, are discovered. 
 
 The fact that it is impossible to comprehend how it is 
 that a physical state gives rise to a mental state, no more 
 lessens the value of the explanation in the latter case, than 
 the fact that it is utterly impossible to comprehend how mo- 
 tion is communicated from one body to another, weakens the 
 force of the explanation of the motion of one billiard ball by 
 showing that another has hit it.
 
 58 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 The finest spiritual sensibility, says Mr. Harrison (and I 
 think that there is a fair presumption that he is right), is a 
 function of a living organism is in relation with molecular 
 facts. In that case, the physiologist may reply, "It is my 
 business to find out what these molecular facts are, and 
 whether the relation between them and the said spiritual sen- 
 sibility is one of antecedence in the molecular fact, and se- 
 quence in the spiritual fact, or vice versa. If the latter result 
 comes out of my inquiries, I shall have made a contribution 
 towards a moral theory of physical phenomena ; if the former, 
 I shall have don6 somewhat towards building up a physical 
 theory of moral phenomena. But in any case I am not 
 outstepping the limits of my proper province : my business is 
 to get at the truth respecting such questions at all risks ; and 
 if you tell me that one of these two results is a corrupting doc- 
 trine, I can only say that I perceive the intended reproach 
 conveyed by the observation, but that I fail to recognise its 
 relevance. If the doctrine is true, its social septic or anti- 
 septic properties are not my affair. My business as a biolo- 
 gist is with ph3'siology, not with morals." 
 
 This plea of justification strikes me as complete ; whence, 
 then, the following outbreak of angry eloquence ? 
 
 The arrogant attempt to dispose of the deepest moral truths of human 
 nature on a bare physical or physiological basis is almost enough to justify 
 the insurrection of some impatient theologians against science itself. 
 
 " That strain again : it has a dying fall ; " nowise similar 
 to the sweet south upon a bank of violets, however, but like 
 the death-wail of innumerable " impatient theologians " as
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." ^g 
 
 from the high " drum ecclesiastic " they view the waters of 
 science flooding the Church on all hands. The beadles have 
 long been washed away ; escape by pulpit stairs is even be- 
 coming doubtful, without kirtling those outward investments 
 which distinguish the priest from the man so high that no one 
 will see there is anything but the man left. But Mr. Harrison 
 is not an impatient theologian indeed, no theologian at all, 
 unless, as he speaks of " Soul " when he means certain bodily 
 functions, and of " P'uture life " when he means personal an- 
 nihilation, he may make his master's Grand etre supreme the 
 subject of a theology ; and one stumbles upon this well-worn 
 fragment of too familiar declamation amongst his vigorous 
 periods with the unpleasant surprise of one who finds a fly in 
 a precious ointment. 
 
 There are people from whom one does not expect well- 
 founded statement and thoughtful, however keen, argumenta- 
 tion, embodied in precise language. From Mr. Harrison one 
 does. But I think he will be at a loss to answer the ques- 
 tion, if I pray him to tell me of any representative of physical 
 science who, either arrogantly or otherwise, has ever attempt- 
 ed to dispose of moral truths on a physical or physiological 
 basis. If I am to take the sense of the words literally, I shall 
 not dispute the arrogance of the attempt to dispose of a 
 moral truth on a bare, or even on a covered, physical or phy- 
 siological basis ; for, whether the truth is deep or shallow, I 
 cannot conceive how the feat is to be performed. Columbus' 
 difficulty with the egg is as nothing to it. But I suppose 
 what is meant is, that some arrogant people have tried to up- 
 set morality by the help of physics and physiology. I am
 
 6o QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 sorry if such people exist, because I shall have to be much 
 ruder to them than Mr. Harrison is. I should not call them 
 arrogant, any more than I should apply that epithet to a per- 
 son who attempted to upset Euclid by the help of the Rigveda. 
 Accuracy might be satisfied, if not propriety, by calling such 
 a person a fool ; but it appears to me that it would be the 
 height of injustice to term him arrogant. 
 
 Whatever else they may be, the laws of morality, under 
 their scientific aspect, are generalisations based upon the ob- 
 served phenomena of society ; and, whatever may be the 
 nature of moral approbation and disapprobation, these feel- 
 ings are, as a matter of experience, associated with certain 
 acts. 
 
 The consequences of men's actions will remain the same, 
 however far our analysis of the causes which lead to them may 
 be pushed : theft and murder would be none the less objec- 
 tionable if it were possible to prove that they were result of 
 the activity of special theft and murder cells in that " grey 
 pulp " of which Mr. Harrison speaks so scornfully. Does any 
 sane man imagine that any quantity of physiological analysis 
 will lead people to think breaking their legs or putting their 
 hands into the fire desirable ? And when men really believe 
 that breaches of the moral law involve their penalties as surely 
 as do breaches of the physical law, is it to be supposed that 
 even the very firmest disposal of their moral truths Upon " a 
 bare physical or physiological basis " will tempt them to incur 
 those penalties ? 
 
 I would gladly learn from Mr. Harrison where, in the course 
 of his studies, he has found anything inconsistent with what I
 
 A MODERN '' symposium:' 6i 
 
 have just said in the writings of physicists or biologists. I would 
 entreat him to tell us who are the true materialists, " the scientific 
 specialists " who " neglect all philosophical and religious syn- 
 thesis," and who " submit religion to the test of the scalpel or 
 the electric battery ; " where the materialism which is " marked 
 bj' the ignoring of religion, the passing by on the other side 
 and shutting the eyes to the spiritual history of mankind," is 
 to be found. 
 
 I will not believe that these phrases are meant to apply to 
 any scientific men of whom I have cognizance, or to any 
 recognized system of scientific thought they would be too 
 absurdly inappropriate and I cannot believe that Mr. Har- 
 rison indulges in empty rhetoric. But I am disposed to think 
 that they would not have been used at all, except for that 
 deep-seated sympathy with the " impatient theologian " which 
 characterizes the Positivist school, and crops out, character- 
 istically enough, in more than one part of Mr. Harrison's 
 essay. 
 
 Mr. Harrison tells us that " Positivism is prepared to meet 
 the theologians." I agree with him, though not exactly in 
 his sense of the words indeed, I have formerly expressed 
 the opinion that the meeting took place long ago, and that the 
 faithful lovers, impelled by the instinct of a true affinity of 
 nature, have met to part no more. Ecclesiastical to the core 
 from the beginning, Positivism is now exemplifying the law 
 that the outward garment adjusts itself, sooner or later, to the 
 inward man. From its founder onwards, stricken with meta- 
 physical incompetence, and equally incapable of appreciating 
 the true spirit of scientific method, it is now essaying to cover
 
 62 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 the nakedness of its philosophical materialism with the rags of 
 a spiritualistic phraseology out of which the original sense has 
 wholly departed. I understand and I respect the meaning of 
 the word " soul," as used by Pagan and Christian philosophers 
 for what they believe to be the imperishable seat of human 
 personality, bearing throughout eternity its burden of woe, or 
 its capacity for adoration and love. I confess that my dull 
 moral sense does not enable me to see anything base or sel- 
 fish in the desire for a future life among the spirits of the just 
 made perfect ; or even among a few such poor fallible souls 
 as one has known here below. 
 
 And if I am not satisfied with the evidence that is offered 
 me that such a soul and such a future life exist, I am content 
 to take what is to be had and to make the best of the brief 
 span of existence that is within my reach, without reviling 
 those whose faith is more robust and whose hopes are richer 
 and fuller. But in the interests of scientific clearness, I object 
 to say that I have a soul, when I mean, all the while, that my 
 organism has certain mental functions which, like the rest, 
 are dependent upon its molecular composition, and come to 
 an end when I die ; and I object still more to affirm that I 
 look to a future life, when all that I mean is, that the influence 
 of my sayings and doings will be more or less felt by a num- 
 ber of people after the physical components of that organism 
 are scattered to the four winds. 
 
 Throw a stone into the sea, and there is a sense in which 
 it is true that the wavelets which spread around it have an 
 effect through all space and all time. Shall we say that the 
 stone has a future life ?
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM: g^ 
 
 It is not worth while to have broken away, not without 
 pain and grief, from beliefs which, true or false, embody great 
 and fruitful conceptions, to fall back into the arms of a half- 
 breed between science and theology, endowed, like most half- 
 breeds, with the faults of both parents and the virtues of nei- 
 ther. And it is unwise by such a lapse to expose oneself to 
 the temptation of holding with the hare and hunting with the 
 hounds of using the weapons of one prcjgenitor to damage 
 the other. I cannot but think that the members of the 
 Positivist school in this country stand in some danger of 
 falling into that fatal error ; and I put it to them to consider 
 whether it is either consistent or becoming for those who hold 
 that " the finest spiritual sensibility " is a mere bodily function, 
 to join in the view-halloo, when the hunt is up against biolog- 
 ical science to use their voices in swelling the senseless cry 
 that ** civilization is in danger if the workings of the human 
 spirit are to become questions of physiology." 
 
 LORD BLACHFORD. 
 
 Mr, Harrison is of opinion that the difference between 
 Christians and hinself on this question of the soul and the 
 future life " turns altogether on habits of thought." What ap- 
 pears to the Positivist flimsy will, he says, seems to the Chris- 
 tian sublime, and vice versa, " simply because our minds have 
 been trained in different logical methods," and this apparently 
 because Positivism " pretends to no other basis than positive 
 knowledge and scientific logic." But if this is so, it is not, I 
 think, quite consistent to conclude, as he does, that " it is idle
 
 64 questiSns of belief. 
 
 to dispute about our respective logical methods, or to put this 
 or that habit of minds in a combat with that." As to the 
 combatants this may be true. But it surely is not idle, but 
 very much to the purpose, for the information of those judges 
 to whom the very act of publication appeals, to discuss habits 
 and methods on which, it is declared, the difference altogether 
 turns. 
 
 I note therefore in limine, what, as I go on, I shall have 
 occasion to illustrate, one or two differences between the meth- 
 ods of Mr. Harrison and those in which I have been trained. 
 
 I have been taught to consider that certain words or ideas 
 represent what are called by logicians substances, by Mr. 
 Harrison, I think, entities, and by others, as the case may be, 
 persons, beings, objects, or articles. Such are air, earth, men, 
 horses, chairs, and tables. Their peculiarity is that they have 
 each of them a separate, independent, substantive existence. 
 They are. 
 
 There are other words or ideas which do not represent ex- 
 isting things, but qualities, relations, consequences, processes, 
 or occurrences, like victory, virtue, life, order, or destruction, 
 which do but belong to substances, or result from them with- 
 out any distinct existence of their own. A thing signified by 
 a word of the former class cannot possibly be identical or even 
 homogeneous with a thing signified by a word of the second 
 class. A fiddle is not only a different thing from a tune, but 
 it belongs to another and totally distinct order of ideas. To 
 this distinction the English mind at some period of its history 
 must have been imperfectly alive. If a Greek confounded 
 xrtVff with xriaiia^ an act with a thing, it was the fault of the
 
 A MODERN "symposium:' 65 
 
 individual. But the English language, instead of precluding 
 or such a confusion, almost, one would say, labors to propagate 
 it. Such words as " building," " announcement," "preparation," 
 or " power," are equally available to signify either the act of 
 construction or an edifice either the act of proclaiming or a 
 placard either the act of preparing, or a surgical specimen 
 either the ability to do something, or the being in which 
 that ability resides. Such imperfections of language infuse 
 themselves into thought. And I venture to think that the 
 slight superciliousness with which Mr. Harrison treats the 
 doctrines which such persons as myself entertain respecting 
 the soul is in some degree due to the fact that positive " habits 
 of thought " and " logical methods " do not recognize so com- 
 pletely as ours the distinction which I have described as that 
 between a fiddle and a tune. 
 
 Again, my own habit of mind is to distinguish more point- 
 edly than Mr. Harrison does between a unit and a complex 
 whole. When I speak of an act of individual will, I seem to 
 myself to speak of an indivisible act proceeding from a single 
 being. The unity is not merely in my mode of representation, 
 but in the thing signified. If I speak of an act of the national 
 will say a determination to declare war I speak of the con- 
 currence of a number of individual wills, each acting for itself, 
 and under an infinite variety of influences, but so related to 
 each other and so acting in concert that it is convenient to 
 represent them under the aggregate term "nation." I use a 
 term which signifies unity of being, but I really mean nothing 
 more than cooperation, of correlated action and feeling. So, 
 when I speak of the happiness of humanity, I mean nothing 
 
 5
 
 66 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 whatever but a number of particular happinesses of individual 
 persons. Humanity is not a unit, but a word which enables 
 me to bring a number of units under view at once. In the 
 case of material objects, I apprehend, unity is simply relative 
 and artificial a grain of corn is a unit relatively to a bushel and 
 an aggregate relatively to an atom. But I, believing myself to 
 be a spiritual being, call myself actually and without metaphor 
 one. 
 
 Mr. Harrison, who acknowledges the existence of no being 
 but matter, appears either to deny the existence of any real 
 unity whatever, or to ascribe that real unity to an aggregate of 
 things or beings who resemble each other, like the members of 
 the human race, or cooperate towards a common result, like 
 the parts of a picture, a melody, or the human frame, and 
 which may thus be conveniently viewed in combination, and 
 represented by a single word or phrase. 
 
 I think that the little which I have to say will be the 
 clearer for these preliminary protests. 
 
 The questions in hand relate first to the claim of the soul of 
 man to be treated as an existing thing not bound by the laws 
 of matter ; secondly, to the immortality of that existingthing. 
 
 The claim of the soul to be considered as an existing and 
 immaterial being presents itself to my mind as follows : 
 
 My positive experience informs me of one thing percipient 
 myself ; and of a multitude of things perceptible ^percepti- 
 ble, that is, not by way of consciousness, as I am to myself, 
 but by way of impression on other things capable of making 
 themselves felt through the channels and organs of sensation. 
 These things thus perceptible constitute the material world.
 
 A MODERN '' symposium:' 67 
 
 I take no account of percipients other than myself, for I 
 can only conjecture about them what I know about myself. I 
 take no account of things neither percipient nor perceptible, 
 for it is impossible to do so. I know of nothing outside me 
 of which I can say it is at once percipient and perceptible. 
 But I inquire whether I am myself so ^whether the existing 
 being to which my sense of identity refers, in which my sensa- 
 tions reside, and which for these two reasons I call " myself," 
 is capable also of being perceived by beings outside myself, 
 as the material world is perceived by me. 
 
 I first observe that things perceptible comprise not only 
 objects, but instruments and media of perception an immense 
 variety of contrivances, natural or artificial, for transmitting 
 information to the sensitive being. Such are telescopes, mi- 
 croscopes, ear-trumpets, the atmosphere, and various other 
 media which, if not at present the objects of direct sensation, 
 may conceivably become so and such, above all, are various 
 parts of the human body the lenses which collect the vibra- 
 tions which are the conditions of light ; the tympanum which 
 collects the vibrations which are the conditions of sound ; the 
 muscles which adjust these and other instruments of sensa- 
 tion to the precise performance of their work ; the nerves 
 which convey to and fro molecular movements of the most in- 
 comprehensible significance and efficacy. Of all these it is, I 
 understand, more and more evident, as science advances, that 
 they are perceptible, but do not perceive. Ear, hand, eye, and 
 nerves are alike machinery mere machinery for transmitting 
 the movement of atoms to certain nervous centres ascer- 
 tained localities which (it is proper to observe in passing).
 
 68 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 though small relatively to ourselves and our powers of investi- 
 gation, may, since size is entirely relative be absolutely 
 large enough to contain little worlds in themselves. 
 
 Here the investigation of things perceptible is stopped, 
 abruptly and completely. Our inquiries into the size, composi- 
 tion, and movement of particles, have been pushed, for the 
 present at any rate, as far as they will go. But at this point 
 we come across a field of phenomena to which the attributes 
 of atoms, size, movement, and physical composition are wholly 
 inapplicable the phenomena of sensation or animal life. 
 
 Science informs me that the movements of these percepti- 
 ble atoms within my body bear a correspondence, strange, 
 subtle, and precise, to the sensations of which I, as a percipient, 
 am conscious ; a correspondence (it is again proper to observe 
 in passing) which extends not only to perceptions, as in sight 
 or hearing, but to reflection and volition, as in sleep and 
 drunkenness. The relation is not one of similarity. The vi- 
 brations of a white, black, or grey pulp are not in any sensi- 
 ble way similar to the perception of colour or sound, or the 
 imagination of a noble act. There is no visible may I not 
 say no conceivable ? reason why one should depend on the 
 other. Motion and sensation interact, but they do not over- 
 lap. There is no homogeneity between them. They stand 
 apart. Physical science conducts us to the brink of the chasm 
 which separates them, and by so doing only shows us its 
 depth. 
 
 I return then to the question, \Vhat am I ? My own hab- 
 its of mind and logical methods certainly require me to believe 
 that I am something something percipient but am Ipercep-
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 69 
 
 tible ? I find no reason for supposing it. I believe myself to 
 be surrounded by things percipient. Are they perceptible ? 
 Not to my knowledge. Their existence is to me a matter of 
 inference from their perceptible appendages. Them their 
 selves I certainly cannot perceive. As far as I can under- 
 stand things perceptible, I detect in them no quality no ca- 
 pacity for any quality like that of percipiency, which with its 
 homogeneous faculties, intellect, affections, and so on, is the 
 basis of my own nature. Physical science, while it developes 
 the relation, seems absolutely to emphasise and illuminate the 
 ineradicable difference between the motions of a material and 
 the sensations of a living being. Of the attributes of a per- 
 cipient we have, each for himself, profound and immediate 
 experience. Of the attributes of the perceptible we have, I sup- 
 pose, distinct scientific conceptions. Our notions of the one 
 and our notions of the other appear to attach to a different 
 order of being. 
 
 It appears therefore to me that there is no reason to be- 
 lieve, and much reason for not believing, that the percipient is 
 perceptible under our present conditions of existence, or indeed 
 under any conditions that our present faculties enable us to 
 imagine. 
 
 And this is my case, which of course covers the whole ani- 
 mal creation. Perception must be an attribute of something, 
 and there is reason for believing that this something is imper- 
 ceptible. This is what I mean when I say that I have, or more 
 properly that I am, a soul or spirit, or rather it is the point on 
 which I join issue with those who say that I am not. 
 
 I am not, as Mr. Harrison seems to suppose, running about
 
 yo QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 in search of a " cause." I am inquiring into the nature of a 
 being, and that being myself. I am sure I am something. I 
 am certainly not the mere tangible structure of atoms which I 
 affect, and by which I am affected after a wonderful fashion. 
 In reflecting on the nature of my own operations I find noth- 
 ing to suggest that my own being is subject to the same class 
 of physical laws as the objects from which my sensations are 
 derived, and I conclude that I am not subject to those laws. 
 The most substantial objection to this conclusion is conveyed, 
 I conceive, in a sentence of Mr. Harrison's : *'To talk to us 
 of mind, feeling, and will continuing their functions in the ab- 
 sence of physical organs and visible organisms, is to use lan- 
 guage which, to us at least, is pure nonsense." 
 
 It is probably to those who talk thus that Mr. Harrison 
 refers when he says that argument is useless. And in point 
 of fact I have no answer but to call his notions anthropomor- 
 phic, and to charge him with want of a certain kind of imagina- 
 tion. By imagination we commonly mean the creative faculty 
 which enables a man to give a palpable shape to what he be- 
 lieves or thinks possible : and this, I do not doubt, Mr. Harri- 
 son possesses in a high degree. But there is another kind of 
 imagination which enables a man to embrace the idea of a pos- 
 sibility to which no such palpable shape can be given, or rather 
 of a world of possibilities beyond the range of his experience 
 or the grasp of his faculties ; as Mr. John Mill embraced the 
 idea of a possible world in which the connection of cause 
 and effect should not exist. The want of this necessary 
 though dangerous faculty makes a man the victim of vivid 
 impressions, and disables him from believing what his im-
 
 A MODERN ''SYMPOSIUM." yi 
 
 pressions do not enable him to realise. Questions respecting 
 metaphysical possibility turn much on the presence, or ab- 
 sence, or exaggeration of this kind of imagination. And 
 when one man has said " I can conceive it possible," and an- 
 other has said '* I cannot," it is certainly difficult to get any 
 farther. 
 
 To me it is not in the slightest degree difficult to conceive 
 the possible existence of a being capable of love and knowl- 
 edge without the physical organs through which human beings 
 derive their knowledge, nor in supposing myself to be such a 
 being. Indeed I seem actually to exercise such a capacity 
 (however I got it) when I shut my eyes and try to think out a 
 moral or mathematical puzzle. If it is true that a particular 
 corner of my brain is concerned in the matter, I accept the 
 fact not as a self-evident truth (which would seem to be Mr. 
 Harrison's position), but as a curious discovery of the anato- 
 mists. But having said this I have said everything, and as 
 Mr. Harrison must suppose that I deceive myself, so I sup- 
 pose that in his case the imagination which founds itself on 
 experience is so active and vivid as to cloud or dwarf the im- 
 agination which proceeds beyond or beside experience. 
 
 Mr. Harrison's own theory I do not quite understand. 
 He derides the idea, thou^ he does' not absolutely deny the 
 possibility, of an immaterial entity which feels. And he ap- 
 pears to be sensible of the difficulty of supposing that atoms 
 of matter which assume the form of a grey pulp can feel. He 
 holds accordingly, as I understand, that feeling, and all that 
 follows from it, are the results of an " organism." 
 
 If he had used the word " organization," I should have
 
 12 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 concluded unhesitatingly that he was a victim of the Angli- 
 can confusion which I have above noticed, and that, in his 
 own mind, he escaped the alternative difficulties of the case 
 by the common expedient of shifting, as occasion required, 
 from one sense of that word to the other. If pressed by the 
 difficulty of imagining sensation not resident in any specific 
 sensitive thing, the word organization would supply to his 
 mind the idea of a thing, a sensitive aggregate of organized 
 atoms. If, on the contrary, pressed by the difficulty of sup- 
 posing that these atoms, one or all, thought, the word would 
 shift its meaning and present the aspect not of an aggregate 
 bulk, but of orderly arrangement not of a thing, or col- 
 lection of things, but of a state of things. 
 
 But the word " organism " is generally taken to indicate 
 a thing organized. And the choice of that word would seem 
 to indicate that he ascribed the spiritual acts (so to call them) 
 which constitute life, to the aggregate bulk of the atoms or- 
 ganised or the appropriate part of them. But this he else- 
 where seems to disclaim. "The philosophy which treats man 
 as man simply affirms that man loves, thinks, acts, not that 
 ganglia, or the sinews, or any organ of man loves, and thinks, 
 and acts." Yes, but we recur to the question, what is man .? 
 If the ganglia do not think, what is it that does ^ Mr. Harri- 
 son, as I understand, answers that it is a consensus of facul- 
 ties, an harmonious S3-stem of parts, and he denounces an at- 
 tempt to introduce into this collocation of parts or faculties 
 an underlying entity or being which shall possess those facul- 
 ties or employ those parts. It is then not after all to a being 
 or aggregate of beings, but to a relation or condition of be-
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 73 
 
 ings, that will and thought and love belong. If this is Mr. 
 Harrison's meaning, I certainly agree with him that it is in- 
 deed impossible to compose a difference between two dispu- 
 tants, of whom one holds, and the other denies, that a condi- 
 tion can think. If my opponent does not admit this to be an 
 absurdity, I do not pretend to drive him any further. 
 
 With regard to immortality, I have nothing material to 
 add to what has been said by those who have preceded me. 
 I agree with Professor Huxley that the natural world supplies 
 nothing which can be called evidence of a future life. Be- 
 lieving in God, I see in the constitution of the world which 
 He has made, and in the yearnings and aspirations of that 
 spiritual nature which He has given to man, much that com- 
 mends to my belief the revelation of a future life which I be- 
 lieve Him to have made. But it is in virtue of His clear prom- 
 ise, not in virtue of these doubtful intimations, that I rely on the 
 prospect of a future life. Believing that He is the author of 
 that moral insight which in its ruder forms controls the mul- 
 titude and in its higher inspires the saint, I revere those great 
 men who were able to forecast this great announcement, but I 
 cannot and do not care to reduce that forecast to any logical 
 process, or base it on any conclusive reasoning. Rather I ad- 
 mire their power of divination the more on account of the 
 narrowness of their logical data. For myself I believe be- 
 cause I am told. 
 
 But whether the doctrine of immortality be true or false, I 
 protest, with Mr. Hutton, against the attempt to substitute 
 for what at any rate is a substantial idea, something which 
 can hardly be called even a shadow or echo of it.
 
 74 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 The Christian conception of the world is this. It is a 
 world of moral as of physical waste. Much seed is sown 
 which will not ripen, but some is sown that will. This planet 
 is a seat, among other things, of present goodness and happi- 
 ness. And this our goodness and happiness, like our crime 
 and misery, propagate or fail to propagate themselves during 
 our lives and after our deaths. But, apart from these earthly 
 consequences, which are much to us and all to the Positivist, 
 the little fragment of the universe on which we appear and 
 disappear is, we believe, a nursery for something greater. 
 The capacities for love and knowledge which in some of us 
 attain a certain development here, we must all feel to be 
 capable, with greater opportunities, of an infinitely greater 
 development; and Christiansbelieve that sucha development 
 is in fact reserved for those who, in this short time of appren- 
 ticeship, take the proper steps for approaching it. 
 
 This conception of a glorious and increasing company 
 into which the best of men are continually to be gathered to 
 be associated with each other (to say no more) in all that 
 can make existence happy and noble, may be a dream, and 
 Mr. Harrison may be right in calling it so. In deriding it he 
 cannot be right. " The eternity of the tabor " he calls it ! 
 Has he never felt, or at any rate is he not able to conceive, 
 a thrill of pleasure at a sympathetic interchange of look, or 
 word, or touch with a fellow-creature kind and noble and 
 brilliant, and engaged in the exhibition of those qualities of 
 heart and intellect which make him what he is? Multiply and 
 sustain this suppose yourself surrounded by beings with 
 whom this interchange of sympathy is warm and perpetual.
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' ye 
 
 Intensify it. Increase indefinitely the excellence of one of 
 those beings, the wonderful and attractive character of his 
 operations, our own capacities of affection and intellect, the 
 vividness of our conception, the breadth and firmness of our 
 mental grasp, the sharp vigor of our admiration ; and to 
 exclude satiety, imagine if you like that the operations which 
 we contemplate and our relations to our companions are in- 
 finitely varied a supposition for which the size of the known 
 and unknown universe affords indefinite scope or otherwise 
 suppose that sameness ceases to tire, as the old Greek phi- 
 losopher thought it might do if we were better than we are 
 QjLsraftoki] Ttdvrwv yXoxorarov did. xovrjpiav rjva), or as it would 
 do, I suppose, if we had no memory of the immediate past. 
 Imagine all this as the very least that may be hoped, if our 
 powers of conception are as slight in respect to the nature of 
 what is to be as our bodies are in relation to the physical 
 universe. And remember that if practical duties are neces- 
 sary for the perfection of life, the universe is not so small 
 but that in some corner of it its Creator might always find 
 something to do for the army of intelligences whom He has 
 thus formed and exalted. 
 
 All this, I repeat, may be a dream, but to characterise it 
 as " the eternity of the tabor " shows surely a feebleness of 
 conception or carelessness of representation more worthy of a 
 ready writer than of a serious thinker. And to place before 
 us as a rival conception the fact that some of our good deeds 
 will have indefinite consequences to call this scanty and 
 fading chain of effects, which we shall be as unable to per- 
 ceive or control as we have been unable to anticipate to
 
 y6 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 call this a " posthumous activity," " an eternity of spiritual 
 influence," and a " life beyond the grave," and finally, under 
 the appellation of ** incorporation into the glorious future of 
 our race," to claim for it a dignity and value parallel to that 
 which would attach to the Christian's expectation (if solid) of a 
 sensible life of exalted happiness for himself and all good 
 men, is surely nothing more or less than extravagance founded 
 on misnomer. 
 
 With regard to the promised incorporation, I should really 
 like to know what is the exact process, or, event, or condition 
 which Mr. Harrison considers himself to understand by the 
 incorporation of a consentus of faculties with a glorious future ; 
 and whether he arrived at its apprehension by way of "posi- 
 tive knowledge," or by way of " scientific logic." 
 
 Mr. Harrison's future life is disposed of by Professor 
 Huxley in a few words : " Throw a stone into the sea, and 
 there is a sense in which it is true that the wavelets which 
 spread around it have an effect through all space and time. 
 Shall we say that the stone has a future life ? " 
 
 To this I only add the question whether I am not justified 
 in saying that Mr. Harrison does not adequately distinguish 
 between the nature of a fiddle and the nature of a tune, and 
 would contend (if consistent) that a violin which had been 
 burnt to ashes would, notwithstanding, continue to exist, at 
 least as long as a tune which had been played upon it sur- 
 vived in the memory of any one who had heard it the con- 
 sensus of its capacities being, it would seem, incorporated into 
 the glorious future of music ?
 
 A MODERN' "SYMPOSIUM." 77 
 
 HON. RODEN NOEL. 
 
 Death is a phenomenon ; but are we phenomena ? 
 
 The question of immortality seems, philosophically speak- 
 ing, very much to resolve itself into that of personality. Are 
 we persons, spirits, or are we things ? Perhaps we are a loose 
 collection of successive qualities ? That seems to be the 
 latest conclusion of Positive, and Agnostic biological philoso- 
 phy. The happy thought which, as Dr. Stirling suggests, was 
 probably thrown out in a spirit of persiflage by Hume has 
 been adopted in all seriousness by his followers. Mr, Harri- 
 son is very bitter with those who want to explain mental and 
 moral phenomena by physiology. But, as Professor Huxley 
 remarks, he seems in many parts of his essay to do the same 
 thing himself. What could Buchner, or Carl Vogt say stronger 
 than this ? ** At last, the prick of a needle, or a grain of min- 
 eral, will in an instant lay to rest for ever man's body and 
 its unity, and all the spontaneous activities of intelligence, 
 feeling, and action, with which that compound organism 
 was charged" Again, he says the spiritual faculties are 
 " directly dependent on physical organs " " stand forth 
 as functions of living organs in given conditions of the 
 organism." Again: "At last the man Newton dies, that 
 is, the body is dispersed into gas and dust." Mr. Harrison 
 then, though a Positivist, bound to know only successive 
 phenomena, seems to know the body as a material entity 
 possessed of such functions as conscience, reason, imagina- 
 tion, perception to know that Newton's body thought out 
 the Principia, and Shakespeare's conceived Hamlet. In
 
 yS QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 deed, Agnosticism generally, though with a show of humility, 
 seems rather arbitrary in its selection of what we shall know, 
 and what we shall not : we must know something ; so we shall 
 know that we have ideas and feelings, but not the personal 
 identity that alone makes them intelligible, or we shall use the 
 word, and yet speak as if the idea were a figment ; we shall 
 know qualities, but not substance ; " functions " and " forces," 
 but not the some one or something, of which they must be 
 functions and forces to be conceivable at all. Yet naturam 
 expellas ftirca &c. Common sense insists on retaining the 
 fundamental law of human thought, not being able to get rid 
 of them; and hence the haphazard, instead of systematic and 
 orderly fashion in which the new philosophy deals with uni- 
 versal convictions, denying even that they exist out of theology 
 and metaphysique. 
 
 Thus (in apparent contradiction to the statements quoted) 
 on p. 17, we are told that it is "man who loves, thinks, 
 acts ; not the ganglia, or sinuses, or any organ " that does so. 
 But perhaps the essayist means that all the body together does 
 so. He says a man is " the consensus, or combined activity 
 of his faculties." What is meant by this phraseology ? It is 
 just this " his" this " consetisus," or " combined acting " that is 
 inconceivable without the focus of unity, in which many con- 
 temporaneous phenomena, and many past and present meet to 
 be compared, remembered, identified as belonging to the same 
 self ; so only can they be known phenomena at all. Well, do 
 we find in examining the physical structure of man's body as 
 solid, heavy, extended, divisible, or its living organs and their 
 physical functions, or the rearrangement of molecules of car-
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 79 
 
 bon, nitrogen, hydrogen, &c., into living tissue, or its oxidation, 
 anything corresponding to the consciousness of personal moral 
 agency, and personal identity ? We put the two classes of 
 conception side by side, and they seem to refuse to be identi- 
 fied man as one and the same conscious moral agent and 
 his body, or the bumps on his skull ; or is man indeed a func- 
 tion of his own body ? Are we right in talking of our bodies 
 as material things, and of ourselves as if we were not things, 
 but persons with mights, rights, and duties ? We ought per- 
 haps to talk theologies and philosophies being now exploded 
 not of our having bodies, but of bodies having us, and of 
 bodies having rights or duties. Perhaps Dundreary was mis- 
 taken, and the tail may wag the dog after all. 
 
 Mr. Harrison says : " Orthodoxy has so long been ac- 
 customed,to take itself for granted, that we are apt to forget 
 how very short a period of human history this sublimated 
 essence " (the immaterial soul) " has been current. There is 
 not a trace of it in the Bible in its present sense." This re- 
 minds one rather of Mr. Matthew Arnold's contention, that 
 the Jews did not believe in God. But really it does not much 
 signify what particular intellectual theories have been enter- 
 tained by different men at different times about the nature of 
 God or of the soul : the question is whether you do not find 
 on the whole among them all a consciousness or conviction, 
 that there is a Higher Being above them, together with a 
 power of distinguishing themselves from their own bodies, and 
 the world around them in consequence of this, too, a belief 
 in personal immortality. Many in all ages believe that the 
 dead have spoken to us from beyond the grave. But into
 
 8o QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 that I will not enter. Are we our bodies ? that seems to be the 
 point. Now I do not think Positivism has any right to assume 
 that we are, even on its own principles and professions. 
 
 Mr. Harrison has a very forcible passage, in which he 
 enlarges upon this theme : that " the laws of the separate 
 functions of body, mind, or feeling, have visible relations 
 to each other : are inextricably woven in with each other, 
 act and react." " From the summit of spiritual life to the base 
 of corporeal life, whether we pass up or down the gamut of 
 human forces, there runs one organic correlation and sym- 
 pathy of parts. Touch the smallest fibre in the corporeal 
 man, and in some infinitesimal way we may watch the effect 
 in the moral man. When we rouse chords of the most glori- 
 ous ecstasy of the soul, we may see the vibrations of them 
 visibly thrilling upon the skin." Here we are in the region 
 of positive facts as specially made manifest by recent investi- 
 gation. And the orthodox schools need to recognise the 
 significance of such facts. The close interdependence of 
 body and soul is a startling verity that must be looked in the 
 face ; and the discovery has, no doubt, gone far to shake the 
 faith of many in human immortality, as well as in other mo- 
 mentous kindred truths. It has been so with myself. But I 
 think the old dictum of Bacon about the effect of a little and 
 more knowledge will be found applicable after all. Let us 
 look these facts very steadily in the face. When we have 
 thought for a long time, there is a feeling of pain in the head. 
 That is a feeling, observe, in our own conscious selves. 
 Further, by observation and experiment, it has been made 
 certain that some molecular change in the nervous substance
 
 A MODERN ''SYMPOSIUM." 8 1 
 
 of the brain (to the renewal of which oxygenated blood is 
 necessary), is going on, while the process of thinking takes 
 place though we are not conscious of it in our own case, ex- 
 cept as a matter of inference. The thought itself seems 
 when we reflect on it, partly due to the action of an external 
 world or kosmos upon us; partly to our own "forms of 
 thought," or fixed ways of perceiving and thinking, which 
 have been ours so long as we can remember, and which do 
 not belong to us more than to other individual members 
 of the human family ; again partly to our own past experience. 
 But what is this material process accompanying thought, 
 which conceivably we might perceive if we could see the in- 
 side of our own bodies ? Why it too can only seem what it 
 seems by virtue of our own personal past experience, and our 
 own human as well as individual modes of conceiving. Is 
 not that " positive " too ? Will not men of science agree with 
 me that such is the fact ? In short, our bodies, on any view 
 of them science herself has taught us zxo. percepts and concepts of 
 ours I don't say of the "soul," or the mind, or any bete 
 noire of the sort, but of ourselves^ who surely cannot be alto- 
 gether betes noires. They are as much percepts and concepts 
 of ours as is the material world outside them. Are they col- 
 ored ? Color, we are told, is a sensation. Are they hard or 
 soft ? These are our sensations, and relative to us. The 
 elements of our food enter into relations we name living ; 
 their molecules enter into that condition of unstable equilib- 
 rium ; there is motion of parts fulfilling definite intelligible 
 and constant uses, in some cases subject to our own intelli- 
 gent direction. But all this is what appears to our intelli- 
 
 6
 
 82 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 gence, and it appears different, according to the stages of in- 
 telligence at which we arrive ; a good deal of it is hypothesis 
 of our own minds. Readers of Berkeley and Kant need not 
 be told this ; it is now universally acknowledged by the com- 
 petent. The atomic theory is a working hypothesis of our 
 minds only. Space and time are relative to our intelligence, 
 to the succession of our thoughts, to our own faculties of 
 motion, motion being also a conception of ours. Our 
 bodies, in fact, as Positivists often tell us, and as we now 
 venture to remind them, zx^ phenomena, that is, orderly appear- 
 ances to us. They further tell us generally that there is noth- 
 ing which thus appears, or that we cannot know that there is 
 anything beyond the appearance. What then, accord- 
 ing to Positivism itself, is the most we are entitled to affirm 
 with regard to the dead ? Simply that there are no appear- 
 ances to us of a living personality in connection with those phe- 
 nomena which we call a dead body, any more than there 
 are in connection with the used-up materials of burnt 
 tissues that pass by osmosis into the capillaries, and 
 away by excretory ducts. But are we entitled to affirm that 
 iht person is extinct is dissolved the one conscious self in 
 whom these bodily phenomena centred (except so far as they 
 centred in us), who was the focus of them, gave them form, 
 made them what they were ; whose thoughts wandered up and 
 down through eternity ; of whom, therefore, the bodily, as 
 well as mental and spiritual functions were functions, so far 
 as this body entered into the conscious self at all ? We can, 
 on the contrary, only affirm that probably the person no longer 
 perceives, and is conscious, in connection with this form we
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 83 
 
 look upon, wherein so-called chemical affinities now pre- 
 vail altogether over so-called vital power. But even in life 
 the body is always changing and decomposing foreign sub- 
 stances are always becoming a new body, and the old body 
 becoming a foreign substance. Yet the Person remains one 
 and the same. True, Positivism tries to eliminate per- 
 sons, and reduce all to appearances ; but this is too glaring 
 a violation of common sense, and I do not think from his 
 language Mr. Harrison quite means to do this. Well by 
 spirit, even by "soul," most people, let me assure him, 
 only mean our own conscious personal selves. For myself, in- 
 deed, I believe that there cannot be appearances without 
 something to appear. But seeing that the material world is in 
 harmony with our intelligence, and presents all the appear- 
 ance of intelligent cooperation of parts with a view to 
 ends, I believe, with a great English thinker, whose loss 
 we have to deplore (James Hinton), that all is the mani- 
 festation of life of living spirits or persons, not of dead in- 
 ert matter, though from our own spiritual deadness or inert- 
 ness it appears to us material. Upon our own moral and 
 spiritual life in fact depends the measure of our knowl- 
 edge and perception. I can indeed admit with Mr. Har- 
 rison t^at probably there must always be to us the phenom- 
 enon, the body, the external ; but it may be widely different 
 from what it seems now. We may be made one with the great 
 Elohim, or angels of Nature who create us, or we may still grovel 
 in dead material bodily life. We now appear to ourselves and 
 to others as bodil}'^, as material. Body, and soul or mind, 
 are two opposite phenomenal poles of one Reality, which is
 
 84 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 self or spirit; but though these phenomena may var}', the 
 creative informing spirit, which underlies all, of which we 
 partake, which is absolute, divine, this can never be de- 
 stroyed. "In God we live, move, and have our being." It 
 is held indeed by the new philosophy that the temporal, the 
 physical, and the composite (elements of matter and " feel- 
 ing ") are the basis of our higher consciousness : on the con- 
 trary, I hold that this is absurd, and that the one eternal con- 
 sciousness or spirit must be the basis of the physical, com- 
 posite, and temporal ; is needed to give unity and harmony 
 to the body. One is a little ashamed of agreeing with an 
 old-fashioned thinker, whom an old-fashioned poet pro- 
 nounced the " first of those who know," that the spirit is or- 
 ganizing vital principle of the body, not vice versa. The 
 great difficulty, no doubt, is that apparent irruption of the 
 external into the personal, when, as the essayist says, " im- 
 pair a man's secretions, and moral sense is dulled, discol- 
 ored, depraved." But it is our spiritual deadness that has 
 put us into this physical condition ; and probably it is we 
 who are responsible in a fuller sense than we can realize now 
 for this effect upon us, which must be in the end too for pur- 
 poses of discipline ; it belongs to our spiritual history and 
 purpose. Moreover, this external world is not so foreign to 
 us as we imagine ; it is spiritual, and between all spirit there 
 is solidarity. 
 
 Mr. Hinton observes (and here I agree with him rather 
 than with Mr. Harrison), that the defect and falseness of our 
 knowing must be in the knowing by only part of ourselves. 
 Whereas sense had to be supplemented by intellect, and
 
 A MODERN' " SYMPOSIUMP g - 
 
 proved misleading without it, so intellect, even in the region 
 of knowledge, has to be supplemented by moral sense, which 
 is the highest faculty in us. We are at present misled by a 
 false view of the world, based on sense and intellect only. 
 Death is but a hideous illusion of our deadness 
 
 Death is the veil which those who live call life . 
 We sleep, and it is lifted. 
 
 The true definition of the actual is that which is true for, 
 which satisfies the whole Being of humanity. We must ask 
 of a doctrine : does it answer in the moral region ? if so, it is 
 as true as we can have it with our present knowledge ; but, 
 if the moral experiment fails, it is not true. Conscience has 
 the highest authority about knowledge, as it has about conduct. 
 Now apply this to the negations of Positivism, and the belief 
 Comte would substitute for faith in God, and personal im- 
 mortality. Kant sufficiently proved that these are postulates 
 required by Practical Reason, and on this ground he believed 
 them. I am not blind to the beauty and nobleness of Comte's 
 moral ideal (not without debt to Christ's) as expounded by 
 himself, and here by Mr. Harrison. Still I say : the moral 
 experiment fails. Some of us may seek to benefit the world, 
 and then desire rest. But what of the maimed and broken 
 and aimless lives around us ? What of those we have lost, 
 who were dearer to us than our own selves, full of fairest 
 hope and promise, unaware annihilated in earliest dawn, 
 whose dewy bud yet slept unfolded ? If they were things, 
 doubtless we might count them as so much manure, in which 
 to grow those still more beautiful, though still brief-flowering 
 human aloes, which Positivism, though knowing nothing but
 
 86 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 present phenomena, and denying God, is able confidently to 
 promise us in some remote future. But alas! they seemed 
 living spirits, able to hope for infinite love, progressive virtue, 
 the beatific vision of God Himself ! And they really were so 
 much manure ? Why, as has already been asked, are such 
 ephemerals worth living for, however many of them there 
 may be, whose lives are as an idle flash in the pan, always 
 promising, yet failing to attain any substantial or enduring 
 good? What of these agonising women and children, now the 
 victims of Ottoman blood-madness ? What of all the cramped, 
 unlovely, debased, or slow-tortured, yet evanescent lives of my- 
 riads in our great cities ? These cannot have the philosophic 
 aspirations of culture. They have too often none at all. Go 
 proclaim to them this gospel, supplementing it by the warn- 
 ing that in the end there will remain only a huge block of ice 
 in a " wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world ! " I could 
 believe in the pessimism of Schopenhauer, not in this jaunty 
 optimism of Comte. 
 
 Are we then indeed orphans ? Will the tyrant go ever un- 
 punished, the wrong ever unredressed, the poor and helpless 
 remain always trampled and unhappy ? Must the battle of 
 good and evil in ourselves and others hang always trembling 
 in the balance, for ever undecided ; or does it all mean noth- 
 ing more than we see now, and is the glorious world but some 
 ghastly illusion of insanity ? When " the fever called living 
 is over at last," is all indeed over ? Thank God that through 
 this Babel of discordant voices modern men can still hear His 
 accents who said : " Come unto me, all ye that are weary and 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' g; 
 
 II. 
 LOUD SELBORNE. 
 
 I am too well satisfied with Lord Blachford's paper, and 
 with much that is in the other papers of the September num- 
 ber, to think that I can add anything of importance to them. 
 The little I would say has reference to our actual knowledge 
 of the soul during this life ; meaning by the soul what Lord 
 Blachford means, viz., the conscious being, which each man 
 calls " himself." 
 
 It appears to me, that what we know and can observe tends 
 to confirm the testimony of our consciousness to the reality 
 of the distinction between the body and the soul. From the 
 necessity of the case, we cannot observe any manifestations 
 of the soul, except during the time of its association with the 
 body. This limit of our experience applies, not to the " ego," 
 of which alone each man has any direct knowledge, but to 
 the perceptible indications of consciousness in others. It is 
 impossible, in the nature of things, that any man can ever 
 have had experience of the total cessation of his own con- 
 sciousness ; and the idea of such a cessation is much leso 
 natural, and much more difficult to realize, than that of its 
 continuance. We observe the phenomena of death in others, 
 and infer, by irresistible induction, that the same thing will 
 also happen to ourselves. But these phenomena carry us 
 only to the dissociation of the " ego " from the body, not to 
 its extinction. 
 
 Nothing else can be credible, if our consciousness is not ; 
 and I have said that this bears testimony to the reality of the
 
 gg QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 distinction between soul and body. Each man is conscious of 
 using his own body as an instrument, in the same sense in 
 which he would use any other machine. He passes a different 
 moral judgment on the mechanical and involuntary actions of 
 his body, from that which he feels to be due to its actions 
 resulting from his own free will. The unity and identity of 
 the " ego," from the beginning to the end of life, is of the es- 
 sence of his consciousness. 
 
 In accordance with this testimony are such facts as the 
 following : that the body has no proper unity, identity, or con- 
 tinuity through the whole of life, all its constituent parts being 
 in a constant state of flux and change ; that many parts and 
 organs of the body may be removed, with no greater effect 
 upon the " ego " than when we take off any article of cloth- 
 ing ; and that those organs which cannot be removed or 
 stopped in their action without death, are distributed over dif- 
 ferent parts of the body, and are homogeneous in their material 
 and structure with others which we can lose without the sense 
 that any change has passed over our proper selves. If, on 
 the one hand, a diseased state of some bodily organs inter- 
 rupts the reasonable manifestations of the soul through the 
 body, the cases are, on the other, not rare, in which the whole 
 body decays, and falls into extreme age, weakness, and even 
 decrepitude, while vigor, freshness, and youthfulness are still 
 characteristics of the mind. 
 
 The attempt, in Butler's work, to reason from the indivisi- 
 bility and indestructibility of the soul, as ascertained facts, is 
 less satisfactory than most of that great writer's arguments, 
 ^hich are, generally, rather intended to be destructive of ob*
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 89 
 
 jections, than demonstrative of positive trutlis. But the modern 
 scientific doctrine, that all matter, and all force, are inde- 
 structible, is not without interest in relation to that argument. 
 There must at least be a natural presumption from that doc- 
 trine, that, if the soul during life has a real existence distinct 
 from the body, it is not annihilated by death. If, indeed, it 
 were a mere " force " (such as heat, light, &c., are supposed 
 by modern philosophers to be, though men who are not philoso- 
 phers may be excused, if they find some difficulty in under- 
 standing exactly what is meant by the term, when so used), it 
 would be consistent with that doctrine, that the soul might 
 be transmuted, after death, into some other form of force. 
 But the idea of " force," in this sense (whatever may be its 
 exact meaning), seems wholly inapplicable to the conscious 
 being, which a man calls " himself." 
 
 The resemblances in the nature and organization of animal 
 and vegetable bodies seem to me to confirm, instead of weak- 
 ening, the impression, that the body of a man is a machine 
 under the government of his soul, and quite distinct from it. 
 Plants manifest no consciousness ; all our knowledge of them 
 tends irresistibly to the conclusion, that there is in them no 
 intelligent, much less any reasonable, principle of life. Yet 
 they are machines very like the human body, not indeed in 
 their formal development or their exact chemical processes, 
 but in the general scheme and functions of their organism-^ 
 in their laws of nutrition, digestion, assimilation, respiration, 
 and especially reproduction. They are bodies without souls, 
 living a physical life, and subject to a physical death. The 
 inferior animals have bodies still more like our own ; indeed,
 
 go QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 in their higher orders, resembling them very closely indeed ; 
 and they have also a principle of life quite different from that 
 of plants, with vanous degrees of consciousness, intelligence, 
 and volition. Even in their principle of life, arguments founded 
 on observation and comparison (though not on individual 
 consciousness), more or less similar to those which apply to 
 man, tend to show that there is something distinct from, and 
 more than, the body. But, of all these inferior animals, the 
 intelligence differs from that of man, not in degree only, but 
 in kind. Nature is their simple, uniform, and sufficient law ; 
 their very arts (which are often wonderful) come to them by 
 nature, except when they are trained by man ; there is in 
 them no sign of discourse of reason, of morality, or of the 
 knowledge of good and evil. The very similarity of their 
 bodily structure to that of man tends, when these differences 
 are noted, to add weight to the other natural evidence of the 
 distinctness of man's soul from his body. 
 
 The immortality of the soul seems to me to be one of 
 those truths, for the belief in which, when authoritatively 
 declared, man is prepared by the very constitution of his 
 nature. 
 
 CANON BARRY. 
 
 Any one who from the ancient positions of Christianity 
 looks on the controversy between Mr. Harrison and Profes- 
 sor Huxley on "The Soul and Future Life" (to which I pro- 
 pose mainly to confine myself) will be tempted with Faul- 
 conbridge to obser\-e, not without a touch of grim satisfac- 
 tion, how, " from North to South, Austria and France shoot
 
 A MODERN '' SYMPOSIUM." gt 
 
 in each other's mouth." The fight is fierce enough to make 
 him ask, Tantcene animis sapientibus irce 1 But he will see 
 that each is far more effective in battering the lines of the 
 enemy than in strengthening his own. Nor will he be greatly 
 concerned if both from time to time lodge a shot or two in 
 the battlements on which he stands, with some beating of 
 that " drum scientific," which seems to me to be in these days 
 always as resonant, sometimes with as much result of merely 
 empty sound, as " the drum ecclesiastic," against which Pro- 
 fessor Huxley is so fond of warning us. Those whom Mr. 
 Harrison calls " theologians," and whom Professor Huxley 
 less appropriately terms " priests " (for of priesthood there is 
 here no question), may indeed think that, if the formidable 
 character of an opponent's position is to be measured by the 
 scorn and fury with which it is assailed, their ground must 
 be strong indeed ; and they will possibly remember an old 
 description of a basis less artificial than " pulpit stairs/' from 
 which men may look without much alarm, while " the floods 
 come and the winds blow." Gaining from this conviction 
 courage to look more closely, they will perceive, as I have 
 said, that each of the combatants is far stronger on the de- 
 structive than on the constructive side. 
 
 Mr. Harrison's earnest and eloquent plea against the 
 materialism which virtually, if not theoretically, makes all 
 that we call spirit a mere function of material organization 
 (like the dpiwAa of the Phcedo), and against the exclusive 
 " scientism " which, because it cannot find certain entities 
 along its line of investigation, asserts loudly that they are 
 either non-existent or " unknowable," is strong, and (face Pro
 
 92 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 fessor Huxley) needful ; not, indeed, against him (for he 
 knows better than to despise the metaphysics in which he is 
 so great an adept), but against many adherents, prominent 
 rather than eminent, of the school in which he is a master. 
 Nor is its force destroyed by exposing, however keenly and 
 sarcastically, some inconsistencies of argument, not inaptly 
 corresponding (as it seems to me) with similiar inconsist- 
 encies in the popular exposition of the views which it attacks. 
 If Professor Huxley is right (as surely he is) in pleading for 
 perfect freedom and boldness in the investigation of the 
 phenomena of humanity from the physical side, the counter 
 plea is equally irresistible for the value of an independent 
 philosophy of mind, starting from the metaphysical pole of 
 thought, and reasoning positively on the phenomena, which, 
 though they may have many connections with physical laws, 
 are utterly inexplicable by them. We might, indeed, demur 
 to his inference that the discovery of " antecedence in the 
 molecular fact " necessarily leads to a " physical theory of 
 moral phenomena," and vice versa, as savoring a little of the 
 Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Inseparable connection it would 
 imply ; but the ultimate causation might lie in something far 
 deeper, underlying both " the molecular " and " the spiritual 
 fact." But still, to establish such antecedence would be an 
 important scientific step, and the attempt might be made from 
 either side. 
 
 On the other hand, Professor Huxley's trenchant attack 
 on the unreality of the Positivist assumption of a right to take 
 names which in the old religion at least mean something firm 
 and solid, and to sublime them into the cloudy forms of
 
 A MODERN '' SYMPOSIUM." 93 
 
 transcendental theory, and on the arbitrary application of the 
 word " selfishness," with all its degrading associations, to the 
 consciousness of personality here and the hope of a nobler 
 personality in the future, leaves nothing to be desired. I fear 
 that his friends the priests would be accused of the crowning 
 sin of " ecclesiasticism " (whatever that may be) if they used 
 denunciations half so sharp. Except with a few sarcasms 
 which he cannot resist the temptation of flinging at them by 
 the way, they will have nothing with which to quarrel ; and 
 possibily they may even learn from him to consider these as 
 claps of " cheap thunder " from the " pulpit," in that old sense 
 of the word in which it designates the professorial chair. 
 
 The whole of Mr. Harrison's two papers may be resolved 
 into an attack on the true individuality of man, first on the 
 speculative, then on the moral side ; from the one point of 
 view denouncing the belief in it as a delusion, from the other 
 branding the desire of it as a moral degradation. The con- 
 nection of the two arguments is instructive and philosophical. 
 For no argument merely speculative, ignoring all moral con- 
 siderations, will really be listened to. His view of the soul 
 as " a consensus of human faculties " reminds us curiously of 
 the Buddhist " groups ; " his description of " a perpetuity of 
 sensation as the true Hell " breathes the very spirit of the 
 longing for Nirvana. Both he and his Asiatic predecessors 
 are certainly right in considering the " delusion of individual 
 existence " as the chief delusion to be got rid of on the way to 
 a perfect Agnosticism, in respect of all that is not merely 
 phenomenal. It is true that he protests in terms against a 
 naked materialism, ignoring all spiritual phenomena as having
 
 94 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 a distinctive character of their own ; but yet, when he tells us 
 that " to talk about a bodiless being thinking and loving is 
 simply to talk of the thoughts and feelings of Nothing," he 
 certainly appears to assume substantially the position of the 
 materialism he denounces, which (as has been already said) 
 holds these spiritual energies to be merely results of the bodily 
 organization, as the excitation of an electric current is the 
 result of the juxtaposition of certain material subtances. If a 
 bodiless being is Nothing, there can be no such thing as an 
 intrinsic or independent spiritual life ; and it is difficult for 
 ordinary minds to attach any distinct meaning to the declara- 
 tion that the soul is " a conscious unity of being," if that being 
 depends on an organization which is unquestionably discerpti- 
 ble, and of which (as Butler remarks) large parts may be lost 
 without affecting this consciousness of personality. 
 
 Now this is, after all, the only point worth fighting about. 
 Mr. Hutton has already said with perfect truth that by " the 
 Soul " we mean that " which lies at the bottom of the sense 
 of personal identity the thread of the continuity running 
 through all our chequered life," and which remains unbroken 
 amidst the constant flux of change both in our material body, 
 and in the circumstances of our material life. This belief is 
 wholly independent of any " metaphysical hypothesis " of 
 modern " orthodoxy," whether it is, or is not, rightly described 
 as a " juggle of ideas," and of any examination of the question 
 (on which Lord Blachford has touched) whether, if it seem 
 such to "those trained in positive habits of thought," the fault 
 lies in it or in them. I may remark in passing, that- in this 
 broad and simple sense it certainly runs through the whole
 
 A MODERN '' symposium:' 95 
 
 Bible, and has much that is " akin to it in the Old Testament." 
 For even in the darkest and most shadowy ideas of the Shcbl 
 of the other world, the belief in a true personal identity is 
 taken absolutely for granted ; and it is not a little curious to 
 notice how in the Book of Job the substitution for it of " an 
 immortality in the race " (although there not in the whole of 
 humanity, but simply in the tribe or family) is offered, and 
 rejected as utterly insufficient to satisfy either the speculation 
 of the intellect or the moral demands of the conscience.^ Now 
 it is not worth while to protest against the caricature of this 
 belief, as a belief in "man plus a heterogeneous enHty " called 
 tne soul, which can be only intended as a sarcasm. But we 
 cannot acquiesce in any statement, which represents the belief 
 in this immaterial and indivisible personality as resting simply 
 on the notion that it is needed to explain the acts of the 
 human organism. For as a matter of fact, those who believe 
 in it conceive it to be declared by a direct consciousness, the 
 most simple and ultimate of all acts of consciousness. They 
 hold this consciousness of a personal identity and individ- 
 uality, unchanging amidst material change, to be embodied 
 in all the language and literature of man ; and they point to 
 the inconsistencies in the very words of those who argue 
 against it, as proofs that man cannot divest himself of it. No 
 doubt they believe that so the acts of the organism are best 
 explained, but it is not on the necessity of such explanation 
 that they base their belief: and this fact separates altogether 
 their belief in the human soul, as an immaterial entity, from 
 those conceptions of a soul, in animal, vegetable, even inor- 
 I See Job xiv. 21, 22.
 
 g6 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 ganic substances, with which Mr, Harrison insists on confound 
 ing it. Of the true character of animal nature we know 
 nothing (although we may conjecture much), just because we 
 have not in regard to it the direct consciousness, which we have 
 in regard of our own nature. Accordingly we need not 
 trouble our argument for a soul in man with any speculation 
 as to a true soul in the brute creatures. 
 
 In what relation this personality stands to the particles 
 which at any moment compose the body, and which are cer- 
 tainly in a continual state of flux, or to the law of structure 
 which in living beings, by some power to us unknown, assimi- 
 lates these particles, is a totally different question. I fear 
 that Mr. Harrison will be displeased with me if I call it " a 
 mystery." But, whatever future advances of science may do 
 for us in the matter and I hope they may do much I am 
 afraid I must still say that this relation is a mystery, which has 
 been at different times imperfectly represented, both by formal 
 theories and by metaphors, all of which by the very nature of 
 language are connected with original physical conceptions. 
 Let it be granted freely that the progress of modern physio- 
 logical science has rendered obsolete the old idea that the 
 various organs of the body stand to the true personal being 
 in a purely instrumental relation, such as (for example) is 
 described by Butler in his Analogy, in the celebrated chapter 
 on the Future Life. The power of physical influences acting 
 upon the body to affect the energies of thought and will is 
 unquestionable. The belief that the action of all these ener- 
 gies is associated with molecular change is, to say the least, 
 highly probable. And I may remark that Christianity has no
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 97 
 
 quarrel with these discoveries of modern science ;, for its 
 doctrine is that for the perfection of man's being a bodily 
 organisation is necessary, and that the " intermediate state " 
 is a state of suspense and imperfection, out of which, at the 
 word of the Creator, the indestructible personality of man 
 shall rise, to assimilate to itself a glorified body. The doc- 
 trine of the Resurrection of the Body boldly faces the per- 
 plexity as to the connection of a body with personality, which 
 so greatly troubled ancient speculation on the immortality of 
 the soul. In respect of the intermediate " state," it only ex- 
 tends (I grant immeasurably) the experience of those suspen- 
 sions 'of the will and the full consciousness of personality, 
 which we have in life, in sleep, swoon, stupor, dependent on 
 normal and abnormal conditions of the bodily organization ; 
 and in respect of the Resurrection, it similarly extends the 
 action of that mysterious creative will, which moulds the 
 human body of the present life slowly and gradually out of the 
 mere germ, and forms, with marvellous rapidity and exuberance 
 of prolific power, lower organisms of high perfection and 
 beauty. 
 
 But while modern science teaches us to recognise the in- 
 fluence of the bodily organization on mental energy, it has, 
 with at least equal clearness, brought out in compensation 
 the distinct power of that mental energy, acting by a process 
 wholly different from the chain of physical causation, to alter 
 functionally, and even organically, the bodily frame itself. 
 The Platonic Socrates (it will be remembered) dwells on the 
 power of the spirit to control bodily appetite and even passion 
 (to 0u,uostdi^,), as also on its having the power to assume 
 
 7
 
 ^8 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 qualities, as a proof that it is not a mere dpimvia. Surel/ 
 modern science has greatly strengthened the former part of 
 his argument, by these discoveries of the power of mind over 
 even the material of the body. This is strikingly illustrated 
 (for example) to the physician, both by the morbid phenom- 
 ena of what is called generally "hysteria," in which the 
 belief in the existence of physical disease actually produces 
 the most remarkable physical effects on the body ; and also 
 by the more natural action of the mind on the body, when in 
 sickness a resolution to get well masters the force of disease, 
 or a desire to die slowly fulfils itself. Perhaps even more 
 extraordinary is the fact (I believe sufficiently ascertained) 
 that during pregnancy the presentation of ideas to the mind 
 of the mother actually affects the physical organization of the 
 offspring. Hence I cannot but think that, at least as dis- 
 tinctly as ever, our fuller experience discloses to us two dif- 
 ferent processes of causation acting upon our complex human- 
 ity the one wholly physical, acting sometimes by the coarser 
 mechanical agencies, sometimes by the subtler physiological 
 agencies, and in both cases connecting man through the body 
 with the great laws ruling the physical universe the other 
 wholly metaphysical, acting by the simple presentation of 
 ideas to the mind (which may, indeed, be so purely subjective 
 that they correspond to no objective reality whatever), and, 
 through them, secondarily acting upon the body, producing 
 no doubt the molecular changes in the brain and the affec- 
 tions of the nervous tissue, which accompany and exhibit 
 mental emotion. In the normal condition of the earthly life, 
 these two powers act and react upon each other, neither being
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' gg 
 
 absolutely independent of the other. In the perfect state of 
 the Hereafter we believe that it shall be so still. But we do 
 know of cases in which the metaphysical power is apparently 
 dormant or destroyed, in which accordingly all emotions can 
 be produced automatically by physical processes only, as hap- 
 pens occasionally in dreams (whether of the day or night), 
 and morbid conditions, as of idiocy, which may themselves 
 be produced either by physical injur}'- or by mental shock. I 
 cannot myself see any difficulty in conceiving that the meta- 
 physical power might act, though no doubt in a way of which 
 we have no present experience, and (according to the Chris- 
 tian doctrine) in a condition of some imperfection, when the 
 bodily organization is either suspended or removed. For to 
 me it seems clear that there is something existent, which is 
 neither material nor even dependent on material organization. 
 Whether it be stigmatized as a " heterogeneous entity," or 
 graciously designated by the "good old word soul," is a matter 
 of great indifference. There it is ; and, if it is, I cannot see 
 why it is inconceivable that it should survive all material 
 change. For here, as in other cases, there seems to be a fre- 
 quent confusion between conceiving that a thing may be, and 
 conceiving how it may be. Of course we cannot figure to 
 ourselves the method of the action of a spiritual energy apart 
 from a bodily organization ; in the attempt to do so the mind 
 glides into quasi-corporeal conceptions and expressions, which 
 are a fair mark for satire. But that there may be such action 
 is to me far less inconceivable, than that the mere fact of the 
 dissolution of what is purely physical should draw with it the 
 destruction of a soul, that can think, love, and pray.
 
 lOO QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 I do not think it necessary to dwell at any length on the 
 second of Mr. Harrison's propositions, denouncing the desire 
 of personal and individual existence as "selfishness," with a 
 vigor quite worthy of his royal Prussian model. But history, 
 after all, has recognized that the poor grenadiers had some- 
 thing to say for themselves. Mr. Hutton has already sug- 
 gested that, if Mr. Harrison had studied the Christian 
 conception of the future life, he could not have written some 
 of his most startling passages, and has protested against the 
 misapplication of the word " selfishness," which in this, as in 
 other controversies, quietly begs the question proposed for 
 discussion. The fact is that this theory of " Altruism," so 
 eloquently set forth by Mr. Harrison and others of his school, 
 simply contradicts human nature, not in its weakness or sins, 
 but in its essential characteristics. It is certainly not the 
 weakest or ignoblest of human souls, who have felt, at the 
 times of deepest thought and feeling, conscious of but two 
 existences their own, and the Supreme Existence, whether 
 they call it Nature, Law, or God. Surely this Humanity is a 
 very unworthy deity, at once a vague and shadowy abstrac- 
 tion, and, so far as it can be distinctly conceived, like some 
 many-headed idol, magnifying the evil and hideousness, as 
 well as the good and beauty, of the individual nature. But 
 if it were not so, still that individuality, as well as unity, is the 
 law of human nature, is singularly indicated by the very nature 
 of our mental operations. In the study and perception of 
 truth, each man, though he may be guided to it by others, 
 stands absolutely alone ; in love, on the other hand, he loses 
 all but the sense of unity ; while the conscience holds the
 
 A MODERN " S YMPOSIL uM. " i o i 
 
 balance, recognizing at once individuality and unity. Indeed, 
 the sacredness of individuality is so guarded by the darkness 
 which hides each soul from all perfect knowledge of man, so 
 deeply impressed on the mind by the consciousness of inde- 
 pendent thought and will, and on the soul by the sense of in- 
 communicable responsibility, that it cannot merge itself in 
 the life of the race. Self-sacrifice, or unselfishness, is the 
 conscious sacrifice, not of our own individuality, but of that 
 which seems to minister to it, for the sake of others. The 
 law of human nature, moreover, is such that the very attempt 
 at such sacrifice inevitably strengthens the spiritual individu- 
 ality in all that makes it worth having. To talk of " a per- 
 petuity of sensation as a true Hell " in a being supposed 
 capable of indefinite growth in wisdom, righteousness, and 
 love, is surely to use words which have no intelligible mean- 
 ing. 
 
 No doubt, if we are to take as our guiding principle either 
 Altruism or what is rightly designated " selfishness," we must 
 infinitely prefer the former. But where is the necessity ? No 
 doubt the task of harmonizing the two is difficult. But all 
 things worth doing are difficult ; and it might be worth while 
 to consider whether there is not something in the old belief, 
 which finds the key tothi? difficult problem in the conscious- 
 ness of the relation to One Supreme Being, and, recognizing 
 both the love of man and the love of self, bids them both 
 agree in conscious subordination to a higher love of God. 
 What makes our life here will, we believe, make it up here- 
 after, only in a purer and nobler form. On earth we live at 
 once in our own individuality and in the life of others. Our
 
 102 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 heaven is not the extinction of either element of that life 
 either of individuality, as Mr. Harrison would have it, or of 
 the life in others, as in that idea of a selfish immortality which 
 he has, I think, set up in order to denounce it but the con- 
 tinued harmony of both under an infinitely increased power of 
 that supreme principle . 
 
 MH. W. Ji. GREG. 
 
 It would seem impossible for Mr. Harrison to write any- 
 thing that is not stamped with a vigor and racy eloquence 
 peculiarly his own ; and the paper which has opened the pres- 
 ent discussion is probably far the finest he has given to the 
 world. There is a lofty tone in its imaginative passages 
 which strikes us as unique among Negationists, and a vein of 
 what is almost tenderness pervading them, which was not ob- 
 served in his previous writings. The two combined render 
 the secojid portion one of the most touching and impressive 
 speculations we have read. Unfortunately, however, Mr. 
 Harrison's innate energy is apt to boil over into a vehemence 
 approaching the intemperate ; and the antagonistic atmos- 
 phere is so native to his spirit that he can scarcely enter the 
 lists of controversy without an irresistible tendency to become 
 aggressive and unjust ; and he is, too, inclined to forget the 
 first duty of the chivalric militant logician, namely, to select 
 the adversary you assail from the nobler and not the lower 
 form and rank of the doctrine in dispute. The inconsisten- 
 cies and weaknesses into which this neglect has betrayed him 
 in the instance before us have, however, been so severely
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM. " j 03 
 
 dealt with by Mr. Hutton and Professor Huxley, that I wish 
 rather to direct attention to two or three points of his argu- 
 ment that might otherwise be in danger of escaping the ap- 
 preciation and gratitude they may fairly claim. 
 
 We owe him something, it appears to me, for having in- 
 augurated a discussion which has stirred so many minds to 
 give us on such a question so much interesting and profound, 
 and more especially so much suggestive, thought. We owe 
 him much, too, because, in dealing with a thesis which it is 
 specially the temptation and the practice to handle as a theme 
 for declamation, he has so written as to force his antagonists 
 to treat it argumentatively and searchingly as well. Some grati- 
 tude, moreover, is due to the man who had the moral courage 
 boldly to avow his adhesion to the negative view, when that 
 view is not only in the highest degree unpopular, but is re- 
 garded for the most part as condemnable into the bargain, and 
 when, besides, it can scarcely fail to be painful to every man 
 of vivid. imagination and of strong affections. It is to his 
 credit, also, I venture to think, that, holding this view, he has 
 put it forward, not as an opinion or speculation, but as a 
 settled and deliberate conviction, maintainable by distinct 
 and reputable reasonings, and to be controverted only by 
 pleas analogous in character. For if there be a topic within 
 the wide range of human questioning in reference to which 
 tampering with mental integrity might seem at first sight par- 
 donable, it is that of a future and continued existence. If 
 belief be ever permissible perhaps I ought to say, if belief 
 be ever possible on the ground that " there is peace and joy 
 in believing," it is here, where the issues are so vast, where
 
 104 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 the conception in its highest form is so ennobling, where the 
 practical influences of the Creed are, in appearance at least, 
 so beneficent. But faith thus arrived at has ever clinging to 
 it the curse belonging to all illegitimate jjossessions. It is 
 precarious, because the flaw in its title-deeds, barely sus- 
 pected perhaps and never acknowledged, may any moment be 
 discovered ; misgivings crop up most surely in those hard 
 and gloomy crises of our lives when unflinching confidence is 
 most essential to our peace ; and the fairy fabric, built up 
 not on grounded conviction but on craving need, crumbles 
 into dust, and leaves the spirit with no solid sustenance to 
 rest upon. 
 
 Unconsciously and by implication Mr, Harrison bears 
 a testimony he little intended, not indeed to the future exist- 
 ence he denies, but to the irresistible longing and necessity 
 for the very belief he labors to destroy. Perhaps no writer 
 has more undesignedly betrayed his conviction that men will 
 not and cannot be expected to surrender their faith and hope 
 without at least something like a compensation; certainly no one 
 has ever toiled with more noble rhetoric to gild and, illumin- 
 ate the substitute with which he would fain persuade us to 
 rest satisfied. The nearly universal craving for posthumous 
 existence and enduring consciousness, which he depreciates 
 with so harsh a scorn, and which he will not accept as offer- 
 ing even the shadow or simulacrum of an argument for the 
 Creed, he yet respects enough to recognize that it has its 
 foundation deep in the framework of our being, that it cannot 
 be silenced and may not be ignored. Having no precious 
 metal to pay it with, he issues paper money instead, skilfully
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM. " 1 05 
 
 engraved and gorgeously gilded to look as like the real coin 
 as may be. It is in vain to deny that there is something 
 touching and elevating in the flowing eloquence with which 
 he paints the picture of lives devoted to efforts in the service 
 of the race, spent in laboring, each of us in his own sphere, 
 to bring about the grand ideal he fancies for humanity, and 
 drawing strength and reward for long years of toil in the an- 
 ticipation of what man will be when those noble dreams shall 
 have been realized at last even though we shall never see 
 what we have wrought so hard to win. It is vain to deny, 
 moreover, that these dreams appear more solid and less wild 
 or vague when we remember how close an analogy we may 
 detect in the labors of thousands around us who spend their 
 wjiole career on earth in building up, by sacrifice and painful 
 struggles, wealth, station, fame and character for their chil- 
 dren, whose enjoyment of these possessions they may never 
 live to see, without their passionate zeal in the; pursuit being 
 in any way cooled by the discouraging reflection. Does not 
 this oblige us to confess that the posthumous existence Mr. 
 Harrison describes is not altogether an airy fiction ? Still, 
 somehow, after a few moments spent in the thin atmosphere 
 into which his brilliant language and unselfish imagination 
 have combined to raise us, we ninety-nine out of every hun- 
 dred of us at the least sink back breathless and wearied after 
 the unaccustomed soaring amid light so dim, and craving as 
 of yore after something more personal, something more solid, 
 and more certain. 
 
 To that more solid certainty I am obliged to confess, 
 sorrowfully, and with bitter disappointment, that I can contrib-
 
 io6 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 ute nothing nothing, I mean, that resembles evidence, that 
 can properly be called argument, or that I can hope will be 
 received as even the barest confirmation. Alas ! can the 
 wisest and most sanguine of us all bring anything beyond our 
 own sentiments to swell the common hope ? We have aspira- 
 tions to multiply, but who has any knowledge to enrich our 
 store ? I have of course read most of the pleadings in favor 
 of the ordinary doctrine of the Future State ; naturally, also, 
 in common with all graver natures, I have meditated yet 
 more ; but these pleadings, for the most part, sound to anxious 
 ears little else than the passionate outcries of souls that can- 
 not endure to part with hopes on which they have been nur- 
 tured, and which are intertwined with their tenderest affections. 
 Logical reasons to compel conviction, I have met with none-r- 
 even from the interlocutors in this actual Symposium. Yet 
 few can have sought for such more yearningly. I may say I 
 share in the anticipations of believers ; but I share them as 
 aspirations, sometimes approaching almost to a faith, occa- 
 sionally and for a few moments perhaps rising into something 
 like a trust, but never able to settle into the consistency of a 
 definite and enduring creed. I do not know how far even this 
 incomplete state of mind may not be merely the residuum of 
 early upbringing and habitual associations. But I must be true 
 to my darkness as courageously as to my light. I cannot rest 
 in comfort on arguments that to my spirit have no cogency, 
 nor can I pretend to respect or be content with reasons which 
 carry no penetrating conviction along with them. I will not 
 make buttresses do the work or assume the posture of founda- 
 tions. I will not cry *' Peace, peace, when there is no peace."
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM. " 1 07 
 
 I have said elsewhere, and at various epochs of life why the 
 ordinary "proofs" confidently put forward and gorgeously 
 arrayed " have no help in them ; " while, nevertheless, the 
 pictures which imagination depicts are so inexpressibly 
 alluring. The more I think and question, the more do doubts 
 and difficulties crowd around my horizon and cloud over my 
 sky. Thus it is that I am unable to bring aid or sustainment 
 to minds as troubled as my own, and perhaps less willing to 
 admit that the great enigma is, and must remain, insoluble. 
 Of two things, however, I feel satisfied that the negative 
 doctrine is no more susceptible of proof than the affirmative, 
 and that our opinion, be it only honest, can have no influence 
 whatever on the issue, nor upon its bearing on ourselves. 
 
 Two considerations that have been borne in upon my mind 
 while following this controversy may be worth mention- 
 ing, though neither can be called exactly helpful. One is 
 that we find the most confident, unquestioning, dogmatic belief 
 in heaven (and its correlative) in those whose heaven is the 
 most unlikely and impossible, the most entirely made up 
 of mundane and material elements, of gorgeous glories and of 
 fading splendors^ ^just such things as uncultured and 
 
 ^ " There may be crowns of material splendour, there may be 
 trees of unfading loveliness, there may be pavements of emerald, and 
 canopies of the brightest radiance, and gardens of deep and tranquil 
 security, and palaces of proud and stately decoration, and a city of lofty 
 pinnacles, through which there unceasingly flows a river of gladness, and 
 where jubilee is ever sung by a concord of seraphic voices." Dr. Chal- 
 mers' Sermons. 
 
 " Poor fragments all of this low earth 
 Such as in dreams could hardly soothe 
 A soul that once had tasted of immortal truth." Christian Year.
 
 io8 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 undisciplined natures most envied or pined after on earth, 
 such as the lower order of minds could best picture and 
 would naturally be most dazzled by. The higher intelli- 
 gences of our race, who need a spiritual heaven, find their 
 imaginations fettered by the scientific training which, imper- 
 fect though it be, clips their wings in all directions, forbids 
 their glowing fancy, and annuls that gorgeous creation, and 
 bars the way to each successive local habitation that is 
 instinctively wanted to give reality to the ideal they aspire to ; 
 till, in the effort to frame a future existence without a future 
 world, to build up a state of being that shall be worthy of its 
 denizens, and from which everything material shall be 
 excluded, they at last discover that in renouncing the " physi- 
 cal " and inadmissible they have been forced to renounce the 
 " conceivable " as well ; and a dimness and fluctuating 
 uncertainty gathers round a scene, from which all that is con- 
 crete and definable, and would therefore be incongruous, has 
 been shut out. The next world cannot, it is felt, be a mate- 
 rial one ; and a truly " spiritual " one even the saint cannot 
 conceive so as to bring it home to natures still shrouded in the 
 garments of the flesh. 
 
 The other suggestion that has occurred to me is this : It 
 must be conceded that the doctrine of a future life is 
 by no means as universally diffused as it is the habit loosely 
 to assert. It is not always discoverable among primitive and 
 savage races. It existed among pagan nations in a form so 
 vague and hazy as to be describable rather as a dream than 
 a religious faith. It can scarcely be determined whether the 
 Chinese, whose cultivation is perhaps the most ancient exist-
 
 A MODERN " S YMFOSIUM. " j 09 
 
 ing in the world, can be ranked among distinct believers ; 
 while the conception of Nirvana, which prevails in the medi- 
 tative minds of other Orientals, is more a sort of conscious 
 non-existence than a future life. With the Jews, moreover, 
 as is well known, the belief was not indigenous, but imi^prted, 
 and by no means an early importation. But what is not 
 so generally recognised is that, even among ourselves in these 
 days, the conviction of thoughtful natures varies curiously in 
 strength and in features at different periods of life. In youth, 
 when all our sentiments are most vivacious and dogmatic, 
 most of us not only cling to it as an intellectual creed, but are 
 accustomed to say and feel that, without it as a solace and a 
 hope to rest upon, this world would be stripped of its deepest 
 fascinations. It is from minds of this age, whose vigor is 
 unimpaired and whose relish for the joys of earth is most 
 expansive, that the most glowing delineations of heaven 
 usually proceed, and on whom the thirst for felicity and knowl*- 
 edge, which can be slaked at no earthly fountains, has the 
 most exciting power. Then comes the busy turmoil of our 
 mid career, when the present curtains off the future from our 
 thoughts, and when a renewed existence in a different scene 
 is recalled to our fancy chiefly in crises of bereavement. And 
 finally, is it not the case that in our fading years when some- 
 thing of the languor and placidity of age is creeping over us, just 
 when futurity is coming consciously and rapidly more near, 
 and when one might naturally expect it to occupy us more 
 incessantly and with more anxious and searching glances we 
 think of it less frequently, believe in it less confidently, desire 
 it less eagerly than in our youth ? Such, at least, has been my
 
 no QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 observation and experience, especially among the more 
 reflective and inquiring order of men. The life of the hour 
 absorbs us most completely, as the hours grow fewer and less 
 full ; the pleasures, the exemptions, the modest interests, the 
 afternoon peace, the gentle affections of the present scene, 
 obscure the future from our view, and render it, curiously 
 enough, even less interesting than the past. To-day, which 
 may be our last, engrosses us far more than to-morrow, which 
 may be our Forever ; and the grave into which we are just 
 stepping down troubles us far less than in youth, when half a 
 century lay between us and it. 
 
 What is the explanation of this strange phenomenon ? Is 
 it a merciful dispensation arranged by the Ruler of our life to 
 soften and to ease a crisis which would be too grand and 
 awful to be faced with dignity or calm, if it were actually 
 realized at all ? Is it that thought or that vague substitute 
 for thought which we call time has brought us, half uncon- 
 sciously, to the conclusion that the whole question is insoluble, 
 and that reflection is wasted where reflection can bring us no 
 nearer to an issue ? Or finally, as I know is true far oftener 
 than we fancy, is it that threescore years and ten have 
 quenched the passionate desire for life with which at first we 
 stepped upon the scene? We are tired, some of us, with 
 unending and unprofitable toil ; we are satiated, others of us, 
 with such ample pleasures as earth can yield us ; we have had 
 enough of ambition, alike in its successes and failures ; the 
 joys and blessings of human affection on which, whatever 
 their crises and vicissitudes, no righteous or truthful man will 
 cast a slur, are yet so blended with pains which partake
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." m 
 
 of their intensity ; the thirst for knowledge is not slaked, 
 indeed, but the capacity for the labor by which alone it can be 
 gained has consciously died out ; the appetite for life, in short, 
 is gone, the frame is worn and the faculties exhausted ; and 
 possibly this is the key to the phenomenon we are examining 
 age CANNOT, from the very law of its nature, conceive itself 
 endowed with the bounding energies of youth, and without that 
 vigor both of exertion and desire, renewed existence can 
 offer no inspiring charms. Our being upon earth has been 
 enriched by vivid interests and precious joys, and we are 
 deeply grateful for the gift ; but we are wearied with one life, 
 and feel scarcely qualified to enter on the claims, even though 
 balanced by the felicities and glories, of another. It may be 
 the fatigue which comes with age fatigue of the fancy as well 
 as of the frame ; but somehow, what we yearn for most 
 instinctively at last is rest, and the peace which we can 
 imagine the easiest because we know it best is that of sleep. 
 
 KEV. BALDWIN brown: 
 
 The theologians appear to have fallen upon evil days. 
 Like some of old, they are filled with rebuke from all sides. 
 They are bidden to be silent, for their day is over. But some 
 things, like Nature, are hard to get rid of. Expelled, they 
 " recur " swiftly. Foremost among these is theology. It 
 seems as if nothing could long restrain man from this, the 
 loftiest exercise of his powers. The theologians and the 
 Comtists have met in the sense which Mr. Huxley justly in- 
 dicates ; he is himself working at the foundations of a larger, 
 nobler, and more complete theology. But for the present,
 
 112 Q C/EST/OJVS OF BELIEF. 
 
 theology suffers affliction, and the theologians have in no 
 small measure themselves to thank for it. The protest rises 
 from all sides, clear and strong, against the narrow, formal, 
 and, in these last days, selfish system of thought and expec- 
 tation, which they have presented as their kingdom of 
 Heaven to the world. 
 
 I never read Mr. Harrison's brilliant essays, full as they 
 always are of high aspiration and of stimulus to noble en- 
 deavor, without finding the judgment which I cannot but 
 pass in my own mind on his unbeliefs and denials, largely 
 tempered by thankfulness. I rejoice in the passionate ear- 
 nestness with which he lifts the hearts of his readers to ideals 
 which it seems to me that Christianity that Christianity 
 which as a living force in the Apostles' days turned the world 
 upside down, that is, right side up, with its face towards 
 heaven and God alone can realize for man. 
 
 I recall a noble passage written by Mr. Harrison some 
 years ago. " A religion of action, a religion of social duty, 
 devotion to an intelligible and sensible Head, a real sense of 
 incorporation with a living and controlling force, the deliber- 
 ate effort to serve an immortal Humanity this, and this 
 alone, can absorb the musings and the cravings of the spir- 
 itual man." ^ It seems to me that it would be difficult for 
 any one to set forth in more weighty and eloquent words the 
 kind of object which Christianity proposes, and the kind of 
 help towards the attainment of the object which the Incarna- 
 tion affords. And in the matter now under debate, behind 
 the stern denunciation of the selfish striving towards a per- 
 1 Fortnightly Review, vol. xii. p. 529.
 
 A MODERN " S YMPOSIUM:' j j 3 
 
 sonal immortality which Mr. Harrison utters with his accus- 
 tomed force, there seems to lie not only a 5'earning for, but a 
 definite vision of, an immortality which shall not be selfish, 
 but largely fruitful to public good. It is true that, as has 
 been forcibly pointed out, the form which it wears is utterly 
 vain and illusory, and wholly incapable, one would think, of 
 accounting for the enthusiastic eagerness with which it ap- 
 pears to be sought. May not the eagerness be really kindled 
 by a larger and more far-reaching vision the Christian 
 vision, which has become obscured to so many faithful ser- 
 vants of duty by the selfishness and vanity with which much 
 that goes by the name of the Christian life in these days has 
 enveloped it ; but which has not ceased and will not cease, 
 in ways which even consciousness cannot always trace, to 
 cast its spell on human hearts ? 
 
 Mr. Harrison seems to start in his argument with the con- 
 viction that there is a certain baseness in this longing for 
 immortalitv, and he falls on the belief with a fierceness which 
 the sense of its baseness alone could justify. But surely he 
 must stamp much more with the same brand. Each day's 
 struggle to live is a bit of the baseness, and there seems to 
 be no answer to Mr. Hutton's remark that the truly unselfish 
 action under such conditions would be suicide. But at any 
 rate it is clear from history that the men who formulated the 
 doctrine and perfected the art of suicide in the early days of 
 Imperial Rome, belonged to the most basely selfish and 
 heartless generation that has ever cumbered this sorrowful 
 world. The love of life is on the whole a noble thing, for 
 the staple of life is duty. The more I see of classes in which
 
 114 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 at first sight selfishness seems to reign, the more am I struck 
 with the measure in which duty, thought for others, and work 
 for others, enters into their lives. The desire to live on, to 
 those who catch the Christian idea, and would follow Him 
 who "came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister," is a 
 desire to work on, and by living to bless more richly a larger 
 circle in a wider world. 
 
 I can even cherish some thankfulness for the fling at the 
 eternity of the tabor in which Mr. Harrison indulges, and 
 which draws on him a rebuke from his critics the severity of 
 which one can also well understand. It is a last fling at the 
 laus perennis, which once seemed so beautiful to monastic 
 hearts, and which, looked at ideally, to those who can enter 
 into Mr. Hutton's lofty view of adoration, means all that he 
 describes. But practically it was a very poor, narrow,- me- 
 chanical thing ; and base even when it represented, as it did 
 to multitudes, the loftiest form of a soul's activity in such a 
 sad suffering world as this. I, for one, can understand, 
 though I could not utter, the anathema which follows it as it 
 vanishes from sight. And it bears closely on the matter in 
 hand. It is no dead mediaeval idea. It tinctures strongly 
 the popular religious notions of heaven. The favourite 
 hymns of the evangelical school are set in the same key. 
 There is an easy, self-satisfied, self-indulgent temper in the 
 popular way of thinking and praying, and above all of sing- 
 ing, about heaven, which, sternly as the singers would de- 
 nounce the cloister, is really caught from the monastic choir. 
 There is a very favourite verse which runs thus :
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 1 1 5 
 
 There, on a green and flowery mount. 
 
 Our weary souls shall sit, 
 And with transporting joys recount 
 
 The labors of our feet. ^ 
 
 It is a fair sample of the staple of much pious forecasting of 
 the occupations and enjoyments of heaven. I cannot but 
 welcome very heartily any such shock as Mr. Harrison admin- 
 isters to this restful and self-centered vision of immortality. 
 Should he find himself at last endowed with the inheritance 
 which he refuses, and be thrown in the way of these souls 
 mooning on the mount, it is evident that he would feel 
 tempted to give them a vigorous shake, and to set them with 
 some stinging words about some good work for God and for 
 their world. And as many of us want the shaking now badly 
 enough, I can thank him for it, although it is administered by 
 an over-rough and contemptuous hand. 
 
 I feel some hearty sympathy, too, with much which he says 
 about the unity of the man. The passage to which I refer 
 commences on page 17 with the words "The philosophy 
 which treats man as man simply affirms that man loves, thinks, 
 acts, not that the ganglia, the senses, or any organ of man, 
 loves, thinks, and acts." 
 
 So far as Mr. Harrison's language and line of thought are 
 a protest against the vague, bloodless, bodiless notion of the 
 life of the future, which has more affinity with Hades than 
 with Heaven, I heartily thank him for it. Man is an em- 
 bodied spirit, and wherever his lot is cast he will need and 
 
 1 Mr. Martin's picture of the Plains of Heaven exactly presents it, and 
 it is a picture greatly admired in the circles of which we speak.
 
 1 1 6 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 will have the means of a spirit's manifestation to and action 
 on its surrounding world. But this is precisely what is sub- 
 stantiated by the Resurrection. The priceless value of the 
 truth of the Resurrection lies in the close interlacing and 
 interlocking of the two words which it reveals. It is the life 
 which is lived here, the life of the embodied spirit, which is 
 carried through the veil and lived there. The wonderful 
 power of the Gospel of " Jesus and the Resurrection " lay in 
 the homely human interest which it lent to the life of the 
 immortals. The risen Lord took up life just where He left it. 
 The things which He had taught His disciples to care about 
 here, were the things which those who had passed on were 
 caring about there, the reign of truth, righteousness, and love. 
 I hold to the truth of the Resurrection, not only because it 
 appears to be firmly established on the most valid testimony, 
 but because it alone seems to explain man's constitution as a 
 spirit embodied in flesh which he is sorely tempted to curse 
 as a clog. It furnishes to man the key to the mystery of the 
 flesh on the one hand, while on the other it justifies his aspi- 
 ration and realises his hope. 
 
 Belief in the risen and reigning Christ was at the heart of 
 that wonderful uprising and outburst of human energy which 
 marked the age of the Advent. The contrast is most strik- 
 ing between the sad and even despairing tone which breathes 
 through the noblest heathen literature, which utters perhaps 
 its deepest wail in the cry of Epictetus, " Show me a Stoic 
 by heaven I long to see a Stoic," and the sense of victorious 
 power, of buoyant exulting hope, which breathes through the 
 word and shines from the life of the infant Church. " As
 
 A MODERN " SYMP OSIUM." j 1 7 
 
 dying, and behold we live ; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing ; 
 as poor, yet making rtiany rich ; as having nothing, and yet 
 possessing all things." The Gospel which brought life and 
 immortality to light won its way just as dawn wins its way, 
 when "jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops," 
 and flashes his rays over a sleeping world. Everywhere the 
 radiance penetrates ; it shines into every nook of shade ; and 
 all living creatures stir, awake, and come forth to bask in its 
 beams. Just thus the flood of kindling light streamed forth 
 from the Resurrection, and spread like the dawn in the morn- 
 ing sky ; it touched all forms of things in a dark, sad world 
 with its splendour, and called man forth from the tomb in 
 which his higher life seemed to be buried, to a new career of 
 fruitful, sunlit activity ; even as the Saviour prophesied, '* The 
 hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the 
 voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." 
 
 The exceeding readiness and joyfulness with which the 
 truth was welcomed, and the measure in which Christendom 
 and that means all that is most powerful and progressive in 
 human society ^hasbeen moulded by it, are the most notable 
 facts of history. Be it truth, be it fiction, be it dream, one 
 thing is clear : it was a baptism of new life to the world 
 which was touched by it, and it has been near the heart of all 
 the great movements of human society from that day until 
 now. I do not even exclude " the Revolution," whose cur- 
 rent is under us still. Space is precious, or it would not be 
 difficult to show how deeply the Revolution was indebted to 
 the ideas which this gospel brought into the world. I entirely 
 agree with Lord Blachford that Revelation is the ground on
 
 %t$ QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 which faith securely rests. But the history of the quickening 
 and the growth of Christian society is a factor of enormous 
 moment in the estimation of the arguments for the truth of 
 immortality. We are assured that the idea had the dullest 
 and even basest origin. Man has a shadow, it suggested the 
 idea of a second self to him ! he has memories of departed 
 friends, he gave them a body and made them ghosts ! Very 
 wonderful surely, that mere figments should be the strongest 
 and most productive things in the whole sphere of human 
 activity, and should have stirred the spirit and led the march 
 of the strongest, noblest, and most cultivated peoples ; until 
 now, in this nineteenth century, we think that we have dis- 
 covered, as Miss Martineau tersely puts it, that " the theolog- 
 ical belief of almost everybody in the civilired world is base- 
 less." Let who will believe it, I cannot. 
 
 It may be urged that the idea has strong fascination, that 
 man naturally longs for immortality, and gladly catches at 
 any figment which seems to respond to his yearning and to 
 justify his hope. But this belief is among the clearest, 
 broadest, and strongest features of his experience and his- 
 tory. It must flow out of something very deeply embedded 
 in his constitution. If the force that is behind all the phe- 
 nomena of life is responsible for all that is, it must be respon- 
 sible for this also. Somehow man, the masterpiece of 
 Creation, has got himself wedded to the belief that all things 
 here have relations to issues which lie in a world that is 
 behind the shadow of death. This belief has been at the 
 root of his highest endeavor and of his keenest pain ; it is 
 the secret of his chronic unrest. Now Nature through all
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' i i g 
 
 her orders appears to have made all creatures contented 
 with the conditions of their life. The brute seems fully 
 satisfied with the resources of his world. He shows no sign 
 of being tormented by dreams ; his life withers under no 
 blight of regret. All things rest, and are glad and beautiful 
 in their spheres. Violate the order of their nature, rob them 
 of their fit surroundings, and they grow restless, sad, and 
 poor. A plant shut out from light and moisture will twist 
 itself into the most fantastic shapes, and strain itself to 
 ghastly tenuity ; nay, it will work its delicate tissues through 
 stone walls or hard rock, to find what its nature has made 
 needful to its life. Having found it, it rests and is glad in 
 its beauty once more. Living things, perverted by human 
 intelligent effort, revert swiftly the moment that the pressure 
 is removed. This marked tendency to reversion seems to 
 be set in Nature as a sign that all things are at rest in their 
 natural conditions, content with their life and its sphere. 
 Only in ways of which they are wholly unconscious, and 
 which rob them of no contentment with their present, do 
 they prepare the way for the higher developments of life. 
 
 What then means this restless longing in man for that 
 which lies beyond the range of his visible world? Has 
 Nature wantonly and cruelly made man, her masterpiece, 
 alone of all the creatures restless and sad ? Of all beings 
 in the Creation must he alone be made wretched by an 
 unattainable longing, by futile dreams of a visionary world ? 
 This were an utter breach of the method of Nature in all her 
 operations. It is impossible to believe that the harmony that 
 runs through all her spheres fails and falls into discord in
 
 i20 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 man. The very order of Nature presses us to the conviction 
 that this insatiable longing which somehow she generates 
 and sustains in man, and which is unquestionably the largest 
 feature of his life, is not visionary and futile, but profoundly 
 significant ; pointing with firm finger to the reality of that 
 sphere of being to which she has taught him to lift his 
 thoughts and aspirations, and in which he will find, unless 
 the prophetic order of the Creation has lied to him, the har- 
 monious completeness of his life. 
 
 And there seems to be no fair escape from the conclusion 
 by giving up the order, and writing Babel on the world and 
 its life. Whatever it is, it is not confusion. Out of its dis- 
 order, order palpably grows ; out of its confusion arises a 
 grand and stately progress. Progress is a sacred word with 
 Mr. Harrison. In the progress of humanity he finds his 
 longed-for immortality. But, if I may repeat in other terms 
 a remark which I offered in the first number of this Review, 
 while progress is the human law, the world, the sphere of the 
 progress, is tending slowly but inevitably to dissolution. Is 
 there discord again in this highest region ? Mr. Harrison 
 writes of an immortal humanity. How immortal, if the 
 glorious progress is striving to accomplish itself in a world 
 of wreck ? Or is the progress that of a race born with a sore 
 but joyful travail from the highest level of the material crea- 
 tion into a higher region of being, whence it can watch with 
 calmness the dissolution of all the perishable worlds ? 
 
 The belief in immortality is so dear to man because he 
 grasps through it the complement of his else unshaped and 
 imperfect life. It seems to be equally the complement of
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUMS 121 
 
 this otherwise hopelessly jangled and disordered world. It 
 is asked triumphantly : Why of all the hosts of creatures 
 does man alone lay claim to this great inheritance ? Because 
 in man alone we see the experiences, the strain, the anguish, 
 that demand it, as the sole key to what he does and endures. 
 There is to me something horrible in the thought of such a 
 life as ours, in which for all of us, in some form or other, the 
 Cross must be the most sacred symbol, lived out in that bare, 
 heartless, hopeless world of the material, to which Professor 
 Clifford so lightly limits it. And I cannot but think that 
 there are strong signs in many quarters of an almost fierce 
 revulsion from the ghastly drearihood of such a vision of 
 life. 
 
 There seems to me to run through Mr. Harrison's utter- 
 ances on these great subjects I say it with honest diffidence 
 of one whose large range of power I so fully recognize, but 
 one must speak frankly if this Symposium is to be worth 
 anything an instinctive yearning towards Christian ideas, 
 while that faith is denied which alone can vivify them and 
 make them a living power in our world. There is everywhere 
 a shadowy image of a Christian substance ; but it reminds 
 one of that formless form, wherein " what seemed a head, the 
 likeness of a kingly crown had on," And it is characteristic 
 of much of the finest thinking and writing of our times. The 
 saviour Deronda, the prophet Mordecai, lack just that living 
 heart of faith which would put blood into their pallid linea- 
 ments, and make them breathe and move among men. Again 
 I say that we have largely ourselves to thank for this sadden- 
 ing feature of the higher life of our times we who have nar-
 
 122 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 rowed God's great kingdom to the dimensions of our little 
 theological sphere. I am no theologian, though intensely in- 
 terested in the themes with which the theologians occupy 
 themselves. Urania, with darkened brow, may perhaps re- 
 buke my prating. But I seem to see quite clearly that the sad 
 strain and anguish of our life, social, intellectual, and spiritual, 
 is but the pain by which great stages of growth accomplish 
 themselves. We have quite outgrown our venerable, and in its 
 time large and noble, theological shell. We must wait, not fear- 
 ful, far less hopeless, while by the help of those who are work- 
 ing with such admirable energy, courage, and fidelity, outside 
 the visible Christian sphere, that spirit in man which searches 
 and cannot but search '* the deep things of God," creates for 
 itself a new instrument of thought which will give to it the 
 mastery of a wider, richer, and nobler world. 
 
 DR. W. G. WARD. 
 
 Mr. Harrison considers that the Christian's conception of 
 a future life is " so gross, so sensual, so indolent, so selfish," 
 as to be unworthy of respectful consideration. He must ne- 
 cessarily be intending to speak of this conception in the shape 
 in which we Christians entertain it ; because otherwise his 
 words of reprehension are unmeaning. But our belief as to 
 the future life is intimately and indissolubly bound up with 
 our belief as to the present ; with our belief as to what is the 
 true measure and standard of human action in this world. 
 And I would urge that no part of our doctrine can be rightly 
 apprehended, unless it be viewed in its connection with all 
 the rest. This is a fact which (I think) infidels often drop
 
 A MODE RAT ' ' ^ YMPOSIUM.' 125 
 
 out of sight, and for that reason fail of meeting Christianity 
 on its really relevant and critical issues. 
 
 Of course I consider Catholicity to be exclusively the one 
 authoritative exhibition of revealed Christianity. I will set 
 forth therefore the doctrine to which I would call attention, 
 in that particular form in which Catholic teachers enounce it ; 
 though I am very far indeed from intending to deny, that 
 there are multitudes of non-Catholic Christians who hold it 
 also. What then, according to Catholics, is the true measure 
 and standard of human action ? This is in effect the very first 
 question propounded in our English elementary Catechism. 
 " Why did God make you ? " The prescribed answer is, " To 
 know Him, serve Him, and love Him in- this world, and tO' 
 be happy with Him for ever in the next." And St. Ignatius's 
 Spiritual Exercises a work of the very highest authority 
 among us having laid down the very same " foundation," 
 presently adds, that " we should not wish on our part for 
 health rather than for sickness, wealth rather than poverty, 
 honor rather than ignominy ; desiring and choosing those 
 things alone, which are more expedient to us for the end for 
 which we were created." Now what will be the course of a 
 Christian's life in proportion as he is profoundly imbued with 
 such a principle as this, and vigorously aims at putting it into 
 practice ? The number of believers, who apply themselves to 
 this task with reasonable consistency, is no doubt compara- 
 tively small. But in proportion as any given person does so, 
 he will in the first place be deeply penetrated with a sense of 
 his moral weakness ; and (were it for that reason alone) his 
 life will more and more be a life of prayer. Then he will ne-
 
 124 " QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 cessarily give his mind with great earnestness and frequency 
 to the consideration, what it is which at this or that period 
 God desires at his hands. On the whole (not to dwell with 
 unnecessary detail on this part of my subject) he will be ever 
 opening his heart to Almighty God ; turning to Him for light 
 and strength under emergencies, for comfort under affliction ; 
 pondering on His adorable attributes ; animated towards Him 
 by intense love and tenderness. Nor need I add how singu- 
 larly how beyond words this personal love of God is pro- 
 moted and facilitated by the fact, that a Divine Person has 
 assumed human nature, and that God's human acts and 
 words are so largely offered to the loving contemplation of 
 redeemed souls. 
 
 In proportion then as a Christian is faithful to his creed, 
 the thought of God becomes the chief joy of his life. " The 
 thought of God," says F. Newman, "and nothing short of it, 
 is the happiness of man ; for though there is much besides to 
 serve as subjects of knowledge, or motive for action, or instru- 
 ment of excitement, yet the affections require a something 
 more vast and more enduring than anything created. He 
 alone is sufficient for the heart who made it. The contem- 
 plation of Him, and nothing but it, is able fully to open and 
 relieve the mind, to unlock, occupy, and fix our affections. 
 We may indeed love things created with great intenseness ; 
 but such affection, when disjoined from the love of the Creator, 
 is like a stream running in a narrow channel, impetuous, ve- 
 hement, turbid. The heart runs out, as it were, only at one 
 door ; it is not an expanding of the whole man. Created na- 
 tures cannot open to us, or elicit, the ten thousand mental
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." X25 
 
 senses which belong to us, and through which we really love. 
 None but the presence of our Maker can enter us ; for to none 
 besides can the whole heart in all its thoughts and feelings 
 be unlocked and subjected. It is this feeling of simple and 
 absolute confidence and communion, which soothes and satis- 
 fies those to whom it is vouchsafed. We know that even our 
 nearest friends enter into us but partially, and hold intercourse 
 with us only at times ; whereas the consciousness of a perfect 
 and enduring presence, and it alone, keeps the heart open. 
 Withdraw the object on which it rests, and. it will relapse 
 again into its state of confinement and constraint ; and in 
 proportion as it is limited, either to certain seasons or 
 to certain affections, the heart is straitened and distressed." 
 
 Now Christians hold, that God's faithful servants will en- 
 joy hereafter unspeakable bliss, through the most intimate 
 imaginable contact with Him whom they have here so tender- 
 ly loved. They will see face to face Him, whose beauty is 
 dimly and faintly adumbrated by the most exquisitely trans- 
 porting beauty which can be found on earth ; Him whose 
 adorable perfections they have in this life imperfectly contem- 
 plated, and for the fuller apprehension of which they have so 
 earnestly longed here below. I by no means intend to imply, 
 that the hope of this blessedness is the sole or even the chief 
 inducement which leads saintly men to be diligent in serving 
 God. Their immediate reason for doing so is their keen 
 sense of His claim on their allegiance ; and, again, the misery 
 which they would experience, through their love of Him, at 
 being guilty of any failure in that allegiance. Still the pros- 
 pect of that future bliss, which I have so imperfectly sketched,
 
 ii$ QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 is doubtless found by them at times of invaluable service, in 
 stimulating them to greater effort, and in cheering them un- 
 der trial and desolation. 
 
 Such is the view taken by Christians of life in heaven ; 
 and surely any candid infidel will at once admit, that it is 
 profoundly harmonious and consistent with their view of what 
 should be man's life on earth. To say that their anticipation 
 of the future, as it exists in them, is gross, sensual, indolent, and 
 selfish, is so manifestly beyond the mark, that I am sure Mr. 
 Harrison will, on reflection, retract his affirmation. Apart, 
 however, from this particular comment, my criticism of Mr. 
 Harrison would be this. He was bound, I maintain, to con- 
 sider the Christian theory of life as a whole ; and not to disso- 
 ciate that part of it which concerns eternity, from that part of 
 it which concerns time. 
 
 And now as to the merits of this Christian theor}'. For 
 my own part I am, of course, profoundly convinced that, as 
 on the one hand it is guaranteed by Revelation, so on the other 
 hand it is that which alone harmonizes with the dicta of rea- 
 son and the facts of experience, so far as it comes into con- 
 tact with these. Yet I admit that various very plausible ob- 
 jections may be adduced against its truth. Objectors may 
 allege very plausibly, that by the mass of men it cannot be 
 carried into practice ; that it disparages most unduly the im- 
 portance of things secular ; that it is fatal to what they ac- 
 count genuine patriotism ; that it has always been, and will 
 always be, injurious to the progress of science ; above all, 
 that it puts men (as one may express it) on an entirely wrong 
 scent, and leads them to neglect many pursuits which, as be-
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUMP jjf 
 
 kig sources of true enjoyment, would largely enhance the plea- 
 surableness of life. All this, and much more, may be urged, 
 I think, by antitheists with very great superficial plausibility; 
 and the Christian controversialist is bound on occasion 
 steadily to confront it. But there is one accusation which 
 has been brought against this Christian theory of life and 
 that the one mainly (as would seem) felt by Mr. Harrison 
 which to me seems so obviously destitute of foundation, that 
 I find difficulty in understanding how any infidel can have 
 persuaded himself of its truth : I mean the accusation that this 
 theory is a selfish one. There is no need of here attempting 
 a philosophical discussion on the respective claims of what 
 are now called " egoism " and " altruism : " a discussion in 
 itself (no doubt) one of much interest and much importance, 
 and one moreover in which I should be quite prepared (were 
 it necessary) to engage. Here, however, I will appeal, not 
 to philosophy but to history. In the records of the past we 
 find a certain series of men, who stand out from the mass of 
 their brethren, as having pre-eminently concentrated their 
 energy on the love and service of God, and pre-eminently 
 looked away from earthly hopes to the prospect of their future 
 reward. I refer to the Saints of the Church. And it is a 
 plain matter of fact, which no one will attempt to deny, that 
 these very men stand out no less conspicuously from the rest 
 in their self-sacrificing and (as we ordinary men regard it) 
 astounding labours, in behalf of what they believed to be the 
 highest interests of mankind. 
 
 Before I conclude I must not omit a brief comment on 
 one other point, because it is the only one on which I cannot
 
 128 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 concur with Lord Blachford's masterly paper. I cannot agree 
 with him, that the doctrine of human immortality fails of be- 
 ing supported by " conclusive reasoning." I do not, of course, 
 mean that the dogma of the Beatific Vision is discoverable 
 apart from Revelation ; but I do account it a truth cognizable 
 with Certitude by reason, that the human soul is naturally 
 immortal, and that retribution of one kind or another will be 
 awarded us hereafter, according to what our conduct has been 
 in this our state of probation. Here, however, I must explain 
 myself. When theists make this statement, sometimes they 
 are thought to allege that human immortality is sufficiently 
 proved by phenomena ; and sometimes they are thought to 
 Allege that it is almost intuitively evident. For myself, how- 
 ever, I make neither of these allegations. I hold that the 
 truth in question is conclusively established by help of certain 
 premisses ; and that these premisses themselves can previ- 
 ously be known with absolute certitude, on grounds of reason 
 or experience. 
 
 They are such as these : (i) There exists that Personal 
 Being, infinite in all perfections, whom we call God. (2) 
 He has implanted in His rational creatures the sense of right 
 and wrong; the knowledge that a deliberate perpetration of 
 certain acts intrinsically merits penal retribution. (3) Cor- 
 relatively, He has conferred freedom on the human will ; or, 
 in other words, has made acts of the human will exceptions to 
 that law of uniform sequence, which otherwise prevails through- 
 out the phenomenal world.^ (4) By the habit of prayer to God 
 
 ^ I shall not, of course, be understood to deny the existence and fre- 
 quency of miracles.
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 12^ 
 
 we obtain augmented strength for moral action, in a degree 
 which would have been quite incredible antecedently to ex- 
 perience. (5) Various portions of our divinely given nature 
 clearly point to an eternal destiny. (6) The conscious self 
 or ego is entirely heterogeneous to the material world : entirely 
 heterogeneous, therefore, to that palpable body of ours, which 
 is dissolved at the period of death. 
 
 I do not think any one will account it extravagant to hold, 
 that the doctrine of human immortality is legitimately deduci- 
 ble from a combination of these and similar truths. The 
 antitheist will of course deny that they are truths. Mr, Greg, 
 who has himself " arrived at no conviction " on the subject of 
 immortalit}% yet says that considerations of the same kind as 
 those which I have enumerated " must be decisive " in favor 
 of immortality " to all to whose spirits communion with their 
 Father is the most absolute of verities." Nor have I any reason 
 to think that even Mr. Huxley and Mr. Harrison, if they could 
 concede my premisses, would demur to my conclusion, 
 
 MJi. FREDERIC HARRISON. 
 
 [I have now, not so much to close a symposium, or general 
 discussion, as to reply to the convergent fire of nine separate 
 papers, extending over more than fifty pages. Neither time, 
 nor space, nor the indulgence of the reader, would enable me 
 to do justice to the weight of this array of criticism, which 
 reaches me in fragments whilst I am otherwise occupied 
 abroad, I will ask those critics, whom I have not been able 
 to notice, to believe that I have duly considered the powerful 
 
 * See his letter in the Spectator of August 25. 
 9
 
 130 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 appeals they have addressed to me. And I will ask those who 
 are interested in this question, to refer to the original papers 
 in which my views were stated. And I will only add, by way 
 of reply, the following remarks which were, for the most part, 
 written and printed, whilst I had nothing before me but the 
 first three papers in this discussion. They contain what I 
 have to say on the theological, the metaphysical, and the 
 materialist aspect of this question. For the rest, I could only 
 repeat what I have already said in the two original essays.] 
 
 Whether the preceding discussion has given much new 
 strength to the doctrine of man's immaterial Soul and Future 
 existence I will not pretend to decide. But I cannot feel that 
 it has shaken the reality of man's posthumous influence, my 
 chief and immediate theme. It seemed to me that the time 
 had come, when, seeing how vague and hesitating were the 
 prevalent beliefs on this subject, it was most important to re- 
 member that, from a purely earthly point of view, a man had 
 a spiritual nature, and could look forward after death to some- 
 thing that marked him off from the beasts that perish. I can- 
 not see that what I urged has been in substance displaced ; 
 though much criticism (and some of it of a verbal kind) has 
 been directed at the language which I used of others. My 
 object was to try if this life could not be made richer ; not to 
 destroy the dreams of another. But has the old doctrine of a 
 future life been in any way strengthened ? Mr. Hutton, it is 
 true, has a "personal wish" for a perpetuity of volition. Lord 
 Blachford "believes because he is told," And Professor 
 Huxley knows of no evidence that " such a soul and a future 
 life exist ; " and he seems not to believe in them at all.
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 131 
 
 Philosophical discussion must languish a little, if, when 
 we ask for the philosophical grounds for a certain belief, we 
 find one philosopher believing because he has a " personal 
 wish " for it, and another " believing because he is told." Mr. 
 Hutton says that, as far as he knows, "the thoughts, affec- 
 tions, and volitions are not likely to perish with his body." 
 Professor Huxley seems to think it just as likely that they 
 should. Arguments are called for to enable us to decide be- 
 tween these two authorities. And the only argument we have 
 hitherto got is Mr. Hutton's " personal wish," and Lord 
 Blachford's ita scriptum est. I confess myself unable to con- 
 tinue an argument which runs into believing "because I am 
 told." It is for this reason that the lazzarone at Naples be- 
 lieves in the blood of St. Januarius. 
 
 My original propositions may be stated thus. 
 
 1. Philosophy as a whole (I do not say specially bio- 
 logical science) has established a functional relation to exist 
 between every fact of thinking, willing, or feeling, on the one 
 side, and some molecular change in the body on the other 
 side. 
 
 2. This relation is simply one of correspondence between 
 moral and physical facts, not of assimilation. The moral fact 
 does not become a physical fact, is not adequately explained 
 by it, and must be mainly studied as a moral fact, by methods 
 applicable to morals not as a physical fact, by methods ap- 
 plicable to physics. 
 
 3. The moral facts of human life, the laws of man's men- 
 tal, moral, and affective nature, must consequently be studied, 
 as they have always been studied, by direct obser\'ation of
 
 132 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 these facts ; yet the correspondences, specially discovered by 
 biological science between man's mind and his body, must al- 
 ways be kept in view. They are an indispensable, insepara- 
 ble, but subordinate part of moral philosophy. 
 
 4. We do not diminish the supreme place of the spiritual 
 facts in life and in philosophy by admitting these spiritual 
 facts to have a relation with molecular and organic facts in 
 the human organism provided that we never forget how 
 small and dependent is the part which the study of the mole- 
 cular and organic phenomena must play in moral and social 
 science. 
 
 5. Those whose minds have been trained in the modern 
 philosophy of law cannot understand what is meant by sensa- 
 tion, thought, and energy, existing without any basis of mole- 
 cular change ; and to talk to them of sensation, thought, and 
 energy, continuing in the absence of any molecules whatever, 
 is precisely such a contradiction in terms as to suppose that 
 civilization will continue in the absence of any men whatever. 
 
 6. Yet man is so constituted as a social being, that the 
 energies which he puts out in life mould the minds, charac- 
 ters, and habits of his fellow-men ; so that each man's life is, 
 in effect, indefinitely prolonged in human society. This is a 
 phenomenon quite peculiar to man and to human society, and 
 of course depends on there being men in active association 
 with each other. Physics and biology can teach us nothing 
 about it ; and physicists and biologists may very easily forget 
 its importance. It can be learnt only by long and refined ob- 
 servations in moral and mental philosophy as a whole, and in 
 the history of civilization as a whole.
 
 A MODERN "symposium:' 133 
 
 7. Lastly, as a corollary, it may be useful to retain the 
 words Soul and Future Life for their associations ; provided 
 we make it clear that we mean by Soul the combined faculties 
 of the living organism, and by future life the subjective effect 
 of each man's objective life on the actual lives of his fellow- 
 men. 
 
 I. Now I find in Mr. Hutton's paper hardly any attempt 
 to disprove the first six of these propositions. He is employed 
 for the most part in asserting that his hypothesis of a future 
 state is a more agreeable one than mine, and in earnest com- 
 plaints that I should call his yiew of a future state a selfish 
 or personal hope. As to the first, I will only remark that it 
 is scarcely a question whether his notion of immortality is 
 beautiful or not, but whether it is true. If there is no rational 
 ground for expecting such immortality to be a solid fact, it is 
 to little purpose to show us what a sublime idea it would be 
 if there were anything in it. As to the second, I will only 
 say that I do not call his notion of a future existence a selfish 
 or personal hope. In the last paragraph of my second paper 
 I speak with respect of the opinion of those who look forward 
 to a future of moral development instead of to an idle eter- 
 nity of psalm-singing. My language as to the selfishness of the 
 vulgar ideas of salvation was directed to those who insist that 
 unless they are to feel a continuance of pleasure they do not 
 care for any continuance of their influence at all. The vulgar 
 are apt to say that what they desire is the sense of personal 
 satisfaction, and if they cannot have this they care for nothing 
 else. This, I maintain, is a selfish and debasing idea. It is 
 the common notion of the popular religion, and its tendency
 
 134 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 to concentrate the mind on a merely personal salvation does 
 exert an evil effect on practical conduct. I once heard a 
 Scotch preacher dilating on the narrowness of the gate, &c., 
 exclaim, " O dear brethren, who would care to be saved /// a 
 crowd V 
 
 I do not say this of the life of grander activity in which 
 Mr. Hutton believes, and which Lord Blachford so eloquent- 
 ly describes. This is no doubt, a fine ideal, and I will not 
 say other than an elevating hope. But on what does it rest ? 
 Why this ideal rather than any other.? Each of us may im- 
 agine, as I said at the outset,, his own Elysian fields, or his 
 own mystic rose. But is this philosophy ? Is it even relig- 
 ion? Besides, there is this other objection to it. It is not 
 Christianit)', but Neo-Christianity. It is a fantasia with varia- 
 tions on the orthodox creed. There is not a word of the 
 kind in the Bible. Lord Blachford says he believes in it, 
 " because he is told." But it so happens that he is not told 
 this, at any rate in the creeds and formularies of orthodox 
 faith. If this view of future life is to rest entirely on revela- 
 tion, it is a very singular thing that the Bible is silent on the 
 matter. Whatever kind of future ecstasy may be suggested 
 in some texts, certain it is that such a glorified energy as 
 Lord Blachford paints in glowing colours is nowhere described 
 in the Bible. There is a constant practice nowadays, when 
 the popular religion is criticised, that earnest defenders of it 
 come forward exclaiming : " Oh ! that is only the vulgar 
 notion of our religion. My idea of the doctrine is so and so," 
 something which the speaker has invented without counte- 
 nance from official authority. For my part I hold Christianity
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 135 
 
 to be what is taught in average churches and chapels to the 
 millions of professing Christians. And I say it is a very 
 serious fact when philosophical defenders of religion begin 
 by repudiating that which is taught in average pulpits. 
 
 Perhaps a little more attention to my actual words might 
 have rendered unnecessary the complaints in all these papers 
 as to my language about the hopes which men cherish for the 
 future. In the first place I freely admit that the hopes of a 
 grander energy in heaven are not open to the charge of 
 vulgar selfishness. I said that they are unintelligible, not 
 that they are unworthy. They are unintelligible to those who 
 are continually alive to the fact I have placed as my first pro- 
 position that every moral phenomenon is in functional relation 
 with some physical phmomenon. To those who deny or ignore 
 this truth, there is doubtless no incoherence in all the ideals 
 so eloquently described in the papers of Mr. Hutton and 
 Lord Blachford. But once get this conception as the substra- 
 tum of your entire mental and moral philosophy, and it is as 
 incoherent to talk to us of your immaterial development as it 
 would be to talk of obtaining redness without any red thing. 
 
 I will try to explain more fully why this idea of a glori- 
 fied activity implies a contradiction in terms to those who are 
 imbued with the sense of correspondence between physical 
 and moral facts. When we conceive any process of thinking, 
 we call up before us a complex train of conditions j objective 
 facts outside of us or the revived impression of such facts ; 
 the molecular effect of these facts upon certain parts of our 
 organism, the association of these with similar facts recalled 
 by memory, an elaborate mechanism to correlate these im-
 
 136 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 pressions, an unknown to be made known, and a difficulty to 
 be overcome. All systematic thought implies relations with 
 the external world present or recalled, and it also implies 
 some shortcoming in our powers of perfecting those relations. 
 When we meditate, it is on a basis of facts which we are ob- 
 serving, or have observed and are now recalling, and with a 
 view to get at some result which baffles our direct observation 
 and hinders some practical purpose. 
 
 The sarae holds good of our moral energy. Ecstasy and 
 mere adoration exclude energy of action. Moral development 
 implies difficulties to be overcome, qualities balanced against 
 one another under opposing conditions, this or that appetite 
 tempted, this or that instinct tested by proof. Moral develop- 
 ment does not grow like a fungus ; it is a continual struggle 
 in surrounding conditions of a specific kind, and an active 
 putting forth of a variety of practical faculties in the midst of 
 real obstacles. 
 
 So, too, of the affections, they equally imply conditions. 
 Sympathy does not spurt up like a fountain in the air ; it im- 
 plies beings in need of help, evils to be alleviated, a fellowship 
 of giving and taking, the sense of protecting and being pro- 
 tected, a pity for suffering, an admiration of power, goodness, 
 and truth. All of these imply an external world to act in, 
 human beings as objects, and human life under human con- 
 ditions. 
 
 Now all these conditions are eliminated from the orthodox 
 ideal of a future state. There are to be no physical impres- 
 sions, no material difficulties, no evil, no toil, no struggle, no 
 human beings, and no human objects. The only condition is
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 137 
 
 a complete absence of all conditions, or all conditions of 
 which we have any experience. And we say, we cannot im- 
 agine what you mean by your intensified sympathy, your 
 broader thought, your infinitely varied activity, when you be- 
 gin by postulating the absence of all that makes sympathy, 
 thought, and activity possible, all that makes life really 
 noble. 
 
 A mystical and inane ecstasy is an appropriate ideal 
 for this paradise of negations, and this is the orthodox view; 
 but it is not a high view. A glorified existence of greater 
 activity and development may be a high view, but it is a con- 
 tradiction in terms ; exactly, I say, as if you were to talk of a 
 higher civilization without any human beings. But this is 
 simply a metaphysical afterthought to escape from a moral 
 dilemma. Mr. Hutton is surely mistaken in saying the Posi- 
 tivists have forgotten that Christians ever had any meaning 
 in their hopes of a " beatific vision." He must know that 
 Dante and Thomas k Kempis form the religious books of 
 Positivists, and they are, with some other manuals of Catho- 
 lic theology, amongst the small number of volumes which 
 Comte recommended for constant use. We can see in the 
 celestial " visions " of a mystical and unscientific age much 
 that was beautiful in its time, though not the highest product 
 even of theology. But in our day these visions of paradise 
 have lost what moral value they had, whilst the progress of 
 philosophy has made them incompatible with our modern 
 canons of thought. 
 
 Mr. Hutton supposes me to object to any continuance of 
 sensation as an evil in itself. My objection was not that
 
 138 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 consciousness should be prolonged in immortality, but that 
 nothing else but consciousness should be prolonged. All real 
 human life, energy, thought, and active affection, are to be 
 made impossible in your celestial paradise, but you insist on 
 retaining consciousness. To retain the power of feeling, 
 whilst all means and object are taken away from thinking, all 
 power of acting, all opportunity of cultivating the faculties of 
 sympathy are stifled : this seems to me something else than 
 a good. It would seem to me, that simply to be conscious, 
 and yet to lie thoughtless, inactive, irresponsive, with every 
 faculty of a man paralyzed within you, as if by that villanous 
 drug which produces torpor whilst it intensifies sensation : 
 such a consciousness as this must be a very place of torment. 
 
 I think some contradictions which Mr. Hutton supposes he 
 detects in my paper are not very hard to reconcile. I admitted 
 that Death is an evil, it seems ; but I spoke of our posthumous 
 activity as a higher kind of influence. We might imagine, of 
 course, a Utopia, with neither suffering, waste, nor loss ; 
 and compared with such a world, the world as we know it, is 
 full of evils, of which Death is obviously one. But relatively, 
 in such a world as alone we know, Death becomes simply a 
 law of organized nature, from which we draw some of our 
 guiding motives of conduct.- In precisely the same way the 
 necessity of toil is an evil in itself ; but, with man and his 
 life as we know them, we draw from it some of our highest 
 moral energies. The grandest qualities of human nature, such 
 as we know it at least, would become for ever impossible, if 
 Labor and Death were not the law of life. 
 
 Mr. Hutton again takes but a pessimist view of life when
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 139 
 
 he insists how much of our activity is evil, and how question- 
 able is the future of the race. I am no pessimist, and I be- 
 lieve in a providential control ov^er all human actions by the 
 great Power of Humanity, which indeed brings good out of 
 evil, and assures, at least for some thousands of centuries, a 
 certain progress towards the higher state. Pessimism as to 
 the essential dignity of man and the steady development of 
 his race, is one of the surest marks of the enervating influ- 
 ence of this dream of a celestial glory. If I called it as wild 
 a desire as to go roving through space in a comet, it is be- 
 cause I can attach no meaning to a human life to be pro- 
 longed without a human frame and a human world ; and it 
 seems to me as rational to talk of becoming an angel as to 
 talk of becoming an ellipse. 
 
 By " duties " of the world beyond the grave, I meant the 
 duties which are imposed on us in life, by the certainty that 
 our action must continue to have an indefinite effect. The 
 phrase may be inelegant, but I do not think the meaning is 
 obscure. 
 
 II. I cannot agree with Lord Blachford that I have fallen 
 into any confusion between a substance and an attribute. I 
 am quite aware that the word Soul has been hitherto used for 
 some centuries as an entity. And I proposed to retain the 
 term for an attribute. It is a very common process in the 
 history of thought. Electricity, Life, Heat, were once sup- 
 posed to be substances. We now very usefully retain these 
 words for a set of observed conditions or qualities. 
 
 I agree with Mr. Spencer that the unity of the social or- 
 ganism is quite as complete as that of the individual organ-
 
 I40 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 ism. I do not confuse the two kinds of unity ; but I say that 
 man is in no important sense a unit that society is not also a 
 unit. 
 
 With regard to the "percipient "and the " perceptible," I 
 cannot follow Lord Blachford. He speaks a tongue that I do not 
 understand. I have no means of dividing the universe into 
 " percipients " and " perceptibles." I know no reason why a 
 " percipient " should not be a ** perceptible," none why I 
 should not be "perceptible," and none why beings about me 
 should not be " perceptible." I think we are all perfectly 
 " perceptible " indeed some of us are more " perceptible " 
 than " percipient " though I cannot say that Lord Blach- 
 ford is always " perceptible " to me. And how does my being 
 "perceptible," or not being "perceptible," prove that I have 
 an immortal soul ? Is a dog " perceptible," is he " percipi- 
 ent ? " Has he not some of the qualities of a " percipient," 
 and if so, has he an immortal soul ? Is an ant, a tree, a 
 bacterium, percipient, and has any of these an immortal soul ; 
 for I find Lord Blachford declaring there is an " ineradicable 
 difference between the motions of a material and the sens- 
 ations of a living being," as if the animal world were percipi- 
 ent, and the inorganic perceptible ? But surely in the sen- 
 sations of a living being the animal world must be included. 
 Where does the vegetable world come in ? 
 
 I used the word " organism " advisedly, when I said that 
 will, thought, and affection, are functions of a living organism. 
 I decline exactly to localise the organ of any function of mind 
 or will. When I am asked, What are wel \ reply we are 
 men. When I am asked, Are we our bodies ? I say no, nor
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' j ^ j 
 
 are we our minds. Have we no sense of personality, of unity ? 
 I am asked. I say certainly ; it is an acquired result of our 
 nervous organization, liable to be interrupted by derange- 
 ments of that nervous organization. What is it that makes 
 us think and feel? The facts of our human nature ; I can- 
 not get behind this, and I need no further explanation. We 
 are men, and can do what men can do. I say the tangible 
 collection of organs known as a " man " (not the consensus 
 or the condition, but the man) thinks, wills, and feels, just as 
 much as that visible organism lives and grows. We do not 
 'say that this or that ganglion in particular lives and grows ; 
 we say the man grows. It is as easy to me to imagine that 
 we shall grow fifteen feet high, when we have no body, as that 
 we shall grow in knowledge, goodness, activity, &c., &c., &c., 
 when we have no organs. And the absence of all molecular 
 attributes would be, I should think, particularly awkward in 
 that life of cometary motion in the interstellar spaces with 
 which Lord Blachford threatens us. But as the poet 
 
 says : 
 
 Trasumanar significar per verba. 
 Non si porria 
 
 " If" says he, *' practical duties are necessary for the perfec- 
 tion of life," we can take a little interstellar exercise. Why, 
 practical duties are the sum and substance of life ; and life 
 which does not centre in practical duties is not Life, but a 
 trance. 
 
 Lord Blachford, who is somewhat punctilious in terms, 
 asks me what I consider myself to understand " by the in- 
 corporation of a consensus of faculties with a glorious future.'*
 
 J 42 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 Well ! it SO happens that I did not use that phrase. I have 
 never spoken of an immortal Soul anywhere, nor do I use the 
 word Soul of any but the living man. I said a man might 
 look forward to incorporation with the future of his race, ex- 
 plaining that to mean his" posthumous activity." And I think 
 at any rate the phrase is quite as reasonable as to say that I 
 look forward, as Mr. Hutton does, to a " union with God." 
 What does Mr. Hutton, or Lord Blachford, understand him- 
 self to mean by that ? 
 
 Surely Lord Blachford's epigram about the fiddle and the 
 tune is hardly fortunate. Indeed, that exactly expresses what 
 I find faulty in the view of himself and the theologians. He 
 thinks the tune will go on playing when the fiddle is broken 
 up and burned. I say nothing of the kind. I do not say the 
 man will continue to exist after death. I simply say that his 
 influence will ; that other men will do and think what he 
 taught them to do or to think. Just so, a general would be 
 said to win a battle which he planned and directed, even if he 
 had been killed in an early part of it. What is there of fiddle 
 and tune about this ? I certainly think that when Mozart and 
 Beethoven have left us great pieces of music, it signifies little 
 to art if the actual fiddle or even the actual composer con- 
 tinue to exist or not. I never said the tune would exist. I 
 said that men would remember it and repeat it. I must 
 thank Lord Blachford for a happy illustration of my own 
 meaning. But it is he who expects the tune to exist without 
 the fiddle, /say, you can't have a tune without a fiddle, nor 
 a fiddle without wood. 
 
 III. I have reserved the criticism of Professor Huxley,
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 143 
 
 because it lies apart from the principle discussion, and turns 
 mainly on some incidental remarks of mine on " biological 
 reasoning about spiritual things." 
 
 I note three points at the outset. Professor Huxley does 
 not himself pretend to any evidence for a theological soul and 
 future life. Again, he does not dispute the account I give of 
 the functional relation of physical and moral facts. He 
 seems surprised that I should understand it, not being a 
 biologist ; but he is kind enough to say that my statement 
 may pass. Lastly, he does not deny the reality of man's post- 
 humous activity. Now these three are the main purposes of 
 my argument ; and in these I have Professor Huxley with me. 
 He is no more of a theologian than I am. Indeed, he is only 
 scandalized that I should see any good in priests at all. He 
 might have said more plainly that, when the man is dead, there 
 is an end of the matter. But this clearly is his opinion, and 
 he intimates as much in his paper. Only he would say no 
 more about it, bury the carcase, and end the tale, leaving all 
 thoughts about the future to those whose faith is more robust 
 and whose hopes are richer ; by which I understand him to 
 mean persons weak enough to listen to the priests. 
 
 Now this does not satisfy me. I call it materialism, for it 
 exaggerates the importance of the physical facts, and ignores 
 that of the spiritual facts. And the object of my paper was 
 simply this : that as the physical facts are daily growing quite 
 irresistible, it is of urgent importance to place the spiritual 
 facts on a sound scientific basis at once. Professor Huxley 
 implies that his business is with the^ physical facts, and the 
 spiritual facts must take care of themselves. I cannot agree
 
 1 44 Q UESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 with him. That is precisely the difference between us. The 
 spiritual facts of man's nature are the business of all who un- 
 dertake to denounce priestcraft, and especially of those who 
 preach Lay Sermons. 
 
 Professor Huxley complains that I should join in the view- 
 halloo against biological science. Now I never have sup- 
 posed that biological science was in the position of the hunted 
 fox. I thought it was the hunter, booted and spurred and 
 riding over us all, with Professor Huxley leaping the most ter- 
 rific gates and cracking his whip with intense gusto. As to 
 biological science, it is the last thing that I should try to run 
 down ; and I must protest, with all sincerity, that I wrote 
 without a thought of Professor Huxley at all. He insists on 
 knowing, in the most peremptory way, of whom I was think- 
 ing, as if I were thinking of him. Of whom else could I be 
 thinking, forsooth, when I spoke of Biology ? Well ! I did 
 not bite my thumb at him, but I bit my thumb. 
 
 Seriously, I was not writing at Professor Huxley, or I 
 should have named him. I have a very great admiration for 
 his work in biology ; I have learned much from him ; I have 
 followed his courses of lectures years and years ago, and have 
 carefully studied his books. If, in questions which belong to 
 sociology, morals, and to general philosophy, he seems to me 
 hardly an authority, why need we dispute ? Dog should not 
 bite dog ; and he and I have many a wolf that we both would 
 keep from the fold. 
 
 But if I did not mean Professor Huxley, whom did I mean ? 
 Now my paper, I think clearly enough, alluded to two very 
 different kinds of Materialism. There is systematic Material-
 
 A MODERN " S YMPOSIUM. , 4 j 
 
 ism, and there is the vague Materialism. The eminent ex- 
 ample of the first is the unlucky remark of Cabanis that the 
 brain secretes thought, as the liver secretes bile; and there is 
 much of the same sort in many foreign theories in the tone 
 of Moleschott, Buchner, and the like. The most distinct ex- 
 amples of it in this country are found amongst phrenologists, 
 spiritualists, some mental pathologists, and a few communist 
 visionaries. The far wider, vaguer, and more dangerous 
 school of Materialism is found in a multitude of quarters in 
 all those who insist exclusively on the physical side of moral 
 phenomena all, in short, who, to use Professor Huxley's 
 phrase, are employed in " building up a physical theory of 
 moral phenomena." Those who confuse moral and physical 
 phenomena are indeed few. Those who exaggerate the 
 physical side of moral phenomena are many. 
 
 Now, though I did not allude to Professor Huxley in 
 what I wrote, his criticism convinces me that he is some- 
 times at least found among these last. His paper is an ex- 
 cellent illustration of the very error which I condemned. 
 The issue between us is this : We both agree that every 
 mental and moral fact is in functional relation with some 
 molecular fact. So far we are entirely on the same side, as 
 against all forms of theological and metaphysical doctrine 
 which conceive the possibility of human feeling without a 
 human body. But then, says Professor Huxley, if I can trace 
 the molecular facts which are the antecedents of the mental 
 and moral facts, I h^xQexfilained these mental and moral facts. 
 That I deny ; just as much as I should deny that a chemical 
 
 analysis of the body could ever lead to an explanation of the 
 
 10
 
 146 QUESTIONS OF BEtlEF. 
 
 physical organism. Then, says the Professor, when I have 
 traced out the molecular facts, I have built up a physical 
 theory of moral phenomena. That again I deny. I say there 
 is no such thing, or no rational thing, that can be called a 
 physical theory of moral phenomena ; any more than there 
 is a moral theory of physical phenomena. What sort of a 
 thing would be a physical theory of history history explained 
 by the influence of climate or the like ? The issue between 
 us centres in this. I say that the physical side of moral 
 phenomena bears about the same part in the moral sciences 
 that the facts about climate bear in the sum of human civil- 
 isation. And, that to look to the physical facts as an explan- 
 ation of the moral, or even as an independent branch of the 
 study of moral facts, is perfectly idle ; just as it would be if 
 a mere physical geographer pretended to give us, out of his 
 geography, a climatic philosophy of history. Yet Professor 
 Huxley has not been deterred from the astounding paradox 
 of proposing to us a physiological theory of religion. He tells 
 us how " the religious feelings may be brought within the 
 range of physiological inquiry." And he proposes as a 
 problem " IVhat diseased viscus may have been responsible for 
 the '^ Priest in Absolution ? '" I will drop all epithets ; but I 
 must say that I call that materialism, and materialism not 
 very nice of its kind. One might as reasonably propose as a 
 problem What barometrical readings are responsible for the 
 British Constitution ? and suggest a congress of meteorol- 
 ogists to do the work of Hallam, Stubbs, and Freeman. No 
 doubt there is some connection between the House of Com- 
 mons and the English climate, and so there is no doubt some
 
 I 
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 147 
 
 connection between religious theories and physical organs. 
 But to talk of " bringing religion within the range of physio- 
 logical inquiry " is simply to stare through the wrong end of 
 the telescope, and to turn philosophy and science upside 
 down. Ah ! Professor Huxley, this is a bad day's work for 
 scientific progress 
 
 ^ xv yTjOijffat Upiafioq, Upcd/xotd Te TzalSsi;. 
 
 Pope Pius and his people will be glad when they read that 
 fatal sentence of yours. When I complained of "the attempt 
 to dispose of the deepest moral truths of human nature on a 
 bare physical or physiological basis," I could not have ex- 
 pected to read such an illustration of my meaning by Profes- 
 sor Huxley. 
 
 Perhaps he will permit me to inform him (since that is 
 the style which he affects) that there once was and indeed 
 we may say still is an institution called the Catholic Church ; 
 that it has had a long and strange histor}', and subtle influ- 
 ences of all kinds ; and I venture to think that Professor 
 Huxley may learn more about the Priest in Absolution by a 
 few weeks' study of the Catholic system than by inspecting 
 the diseased viscera of the whole human race. When Profes- 
 sor Huxley's historical and religious studies " have advanced 
 so far as to enable him to explain " the history of Catholi- 
 cism, I think he will admit that " Priestcraft " cannot well 
 be made a chapter in a physiological manual. It may be 
 cheap pulpit thunder, but this idea of his of inspecting a 
 " diseased viscus " is precisely what I meant by " biological 
 reasoning about spiritual things." And I stand by it, that
 
 148 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 it is just as false in science as it is deleterious in morals. It 
 is an attempt (I will not say arrogant, I am inclined to use 
 another epithet) to explain, by physical observations, what 
 can only be explained by the most subtle moral, sociological, 
 and historical observations. It is to think you can find the 
 golden eggs by cutting up the goose, instead of watching the 
 goose to see where she lays the eggs. 
 
 I am quite aware that Professor Huxley has elsewhere 
 formulated his belief that Biology is the science which " in- 
 cludes man and all his ways and works." If history, law, poli- 
 tics, morals, and political economy, are merely branches of 
 biology, we shall want new dictionaries indeed ; and biology 
 will embrace about four-fifths of human knowledge. But 
 this is not a question of language ; for we here have Profes- 
 sor Huxley actually bringing religion within the range oi physi- 
 ological inquiry, and settling its problems by references to 
 " diseased viscus." But the differences between us are a 
 long story ; and since Professor Huxley has sought me out, 
 and in somewhat monitorial tone has proposed to set me 
 right, I will take an early- occasion to try and set forth what 
 I find paradoxical in his notions of the relations of Biology 
 and Philosophy. 
 
 I note a few special points between us, and I have done. 
 Professor Huxley is so well satisfied with his idea of a " phys- 
 ical theory of moral phenomena," that he constantly attrib- 
 utes that sense to my words, though I carefully guarded my 
 language from such a construction. Thus he quotes from me 
 a passage beginning, " Man is one, however compound," but 
 he breaks off the quotation just as I go on to speak of the
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 149 
 
 direct analysis of mental and moral faculties by menial and 
 moral science, not by physiological science. I say : " phi- 
 losophy and science " have accomplished explanations ; I do 
 not say biology ; and the biological part of the explanation 
 is a small and subordinate part of the whole. I do not say 
 that the correspondence between physical and moral phe- 
 nomena is an explanation of the human organism. Professor 
 Huxley says that, and I call it materialism. Nor do I say 
 that " spiritual sensibility is a bodily function." I say, it is a 
 moral function ; and I complain that Professor Huxley 
 ignores the distinction between moral and physical functions 
 of the human organism. 
 
 As to the distinction between anatomy and physiology, if 
 he will look at my words again, he will see that I use these 
 terms with perfect accuracy. Six lines below the passage 
 he quotes, I speak of the human mechanism being only ex- 
 plained by a " complete anatomy and biology" showing that 
 anatomy is merely one of the instruments of biology. 
 
 He might be surprised to hear that he does not himself 
 give an accurate definition of physiology. But so it is. He 
 says : " Physiology is the science which treats of the functions 
 of living organism." Not so ; for the finest spiritual sensibil- 
 ity is, as Professor Huxley admits, a function of a living or- 
 ganism ; and physiology is not the science which treats of the 
 spiritual sensibilities. They belong to moral science. There 
 are mental, moral, affective functions of the living organism ; 
 and they are not within the province of physiology. Physiol- 
 og)'^ is the science which treats of the bodily functions of the 
 living organism ; as Professor Huxley says in his admirable
 
 S50 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 Elementary Lessons, it deals with the facts " concerning the 
 action of the bodyT I complain of the pseudo-science which 
 drops that distinction for a minute. He says: "The ex- 
 planation of a physiological function is the demonstration 
 of the connection of that function with the molecular state 
 of the organ which exerts that function." That I dispute. 
 It is only a small part of the explanation. The explan- 
 ation substantially is the demonstration of the laws and 
 all the conditions of the function. The explanation of 
 the circulation of the blood is the demonstration of all 
 its laws, modes, and conditions ; and the molecular ante- 
 cedents of it are but a small part of the explanation. The 
 principal part relates to the molar (and not to the molec- 
 ular) action of the heart and other organs. " The function 
 of motion is explained," he says, " when the movements of 
 tlie living body are found to have certain molecular changes 
 for their invariable antecedents." Nothing of the kind. The 
 function of bodily motion is explained when the laws, modes, 
 and conditions of that motion are demonstrated ; and molecu- 
 lar antecedents are but a part of these conditions. The main 
 part of the explanation, again, deals with molar, not molecu- 
 lar, states, of certain organs. " The function of sensation is 
 explained," says Professor Huxley, "when the molecular 
 changes, which are the invariable antecedents of sensations, 
 are discovered." Not a bit of it. The function of sensation 
 is only explained when the laws and conditions of sensation 
 are demonstrated. And the main part of this demonstration 
 will come from direct observation of the sensitive organism 
 organically, and by no molecular discovery whatever. All this
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 151 
 
 is precisely the materialism which I condemn ; the fancy- 
 ing that one science can do the work of another, and that any 
 molecular discovery can dispense with direct study of organ- 
 isms in their organic, social, mental, and moral aspects. Will 
 Professor Huxley say that the function of this Symposium is 
 explained, when we have chemically analysed the solids and 
 liquids which are now effecting molecular change in our re- 
 spective digestive apparatus ? If so, let us ask the butler if 
 he cannot produce a less heady and more mellow vintage. 
 What irritated viscus is responsible for the Materialist in Phi- 
 losophy 1 We shall all philosophise aright, if our friend Tyn- 
 dall can hit for us the exact chemical formula for our drinks. 
 It does not surprise me, so much as it might, to find Pro- 
 fessor Huxley slipping into really inaccurate definitions in 
 physiology, when I remember that hallucination of his about 
 questions of science becoming questions of molecular physics. 
 The molecular facts are valuable enough ; but we are getting 
 molecular-mad, if we forget that molecular facts have only, a 
 special part in physiology, and hardly any part at all in sociol- 
 ogy, history, morals, and politics \ though I quite agree that 
 "there is no single fact in social, moral, or mental philosophy, 
 that has not its correspondence in some molecular fact, if we 
 only could know it. All human things undoubtedly depend 
 on, and are certainly connected with, the general laws of the 
 solar system. And to say that questions of human organisms, 
 much less of human society, tend to become questions of molec- 
 ular physics, is exactly the kind of confusion it would be, if I 
 said that questions of history tend to become questions of as- 
 tronomy, and that the more refined calculations of planetary
 
 1^2 * QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 movements in the future will explain to us the causes of the 
 English Rebellion and the French Revolution. 
 
 There is an odd instance of this confusion of thought at the 
 close of Professor Huxley's paper, which still more oddly Lord 
 Blachford, who is so strict in his logic, cites with approval. 
 " Has a stone a future life/' says Professor Huxley, " because 
 the wavelets it may cause in the sea persist through space and 
 time ? " Well ! has a stone a life at all .? because if it has no 
 present life, I cannot see why it should have a future life. 
 How is any reasoning about the inorganic world to help us 
 here in reasoning about the organic world ? Professor Hux- 
 ley and Lord Blachford might as well ask if a stone is capable 
 of civilisation because I said that man was. I think that man 
 is wholly different from a stone ; and from a fiddle ; and even 
 from a dog ; and that to say that a man cannot exert any in- 
 fluence on other men after his death, because a dog cannot, 
 or because a fiddle, or because a stone cannot, may be to re- 
 produce with rather needless affectation the verbal quibbles 
 and pitfalls which Socrates and the sophists prepared for 
 each other in some wordy symposium of old. 
 
 Lastly, Professor Huxley seems to think that he has dis- 
 posed of me altogether, so soon as he can point to a sympathy 
 between theologians and myself. I trust there is great affinity 
 and great sympathy between us ; and pray let him not think 
 that I am in the least ashamed of that common ground. 
 Positivism has quite as much sympathy with the genuine 
 theologian as it has with the scientific specialist. The 
 former may be working-on a wrong intellectual basis, and 
 often it may be by most perverted methods ; but in the best
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM. " 153 
 
 types he has a high social aim and a great moral cause to 
 maintain amongst men. The latter is usually right in his 
 intellectual basis as far as it goes ; but it does not go very 
 far, and in the great moral cause of the spiritual destinies of 
 men he is often content with utter indifference and simple 
 nihilism. Mere raving at priestcraft, and beadles, and out- 
 ward investments, is indeed a poor solution of the mighty 
 problems of the human soul and of social organisation. 
 And the instinct of the mass of mankind will long reject 
 a biology which has nothing for these but a sneer. It will 
 not do for Professor Huxley to say that he is only a poor 
 biologist and careth for none of these things. His biology, 
 however, " includes man and all his ways and works." Be- 
 sides, he is a leader in Israel ; he has preached an entire 
 volume of Lay Sermons ; and he has waged many a war with 
 theologians and philosophers on religious and philosophic 
 problems. What, if I may ask him, is his own religion and 
 his own philosophy ? He says that he knows no scientific 
 men who "neglect all philosophical and religious synthesis." 
 In that he is fortunate in his circle of acquaintance. But 
 since he is so earnest in asking me questions, let me ask him 
 to tell the world what is his own synthesis of philosophy, what 
 is his own idea of religion ? He can laugh at the worship of 
 Priests and Positivists ; whom, or what, does he worship ? If 
 he dislikes the word Soul, does he think man has anything that 
 can be called a spiritual nature ? If he derides my idea of a 
 Future life, does bethink that there is anything which can be 
 said of a man, when his carcase is laid beneath the sod, be- 
 yond a simple final Vale i
 
 154 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 P.S. And now space fails me to reply to the appeals of 
 so many critics. I cannot enter with Mr. Roden Noel on 
 that great question of the materialisation of the spirits of the 
 dead; I know not whether we shall be " made one with the 
 great Elohim, or angels of Nature, or if we shall grovel in 
 dead material bodily life." I know nothing of this high mat- 
 ter : I do not comprehend this language. Nor can I add 
 anything to what I have said on that sense of personality 
 which Lord Selborne and Canon Barry so eloquently press 
 on me. To me that sense of personality is a thing of some- 
 what slow growth, resulting froni our entire nervous organisa- 
 tion and our composite mental constitution. It seems to me 
 that we can often trace it building up and trace it again de- 
 caying away. We feel ourselves to be men^ because we have 
 human bodies and human minds. Is that not enough ? Has 
 the baby of an hour this sense of personality ? Are you sure 
 that a dog or an elephant has not got it ? Then has the baby 
 no soul ; has the dog a soul ? Do you know more of your 
 neighbor, apart from inference, than you know of the dog? 
 Again, I cannot enter upon Mr. Greg's beautiful reflections, 
 save to point out how largely he supports me. He shows, I 
 think with masterly logic, how difficult it is to fit this new 
 notion of a glorified activity on to the old orthodoxy of beatific 
 ecstasy. Canon Barry reminds us how this orthodoxy in- 
 volved the resurrection of the body, and the same difficulty 
 has driven Mr. Roden Noel to suggest that the material world 
 itself may be the debris of the just made perfect. But Dr. 
 Ward, as might be expected, falls back on tlie beatific ecstasy 
 as conceived by the mystics of the thirteenth century. No
 
 A MODERN- " S YMPOSIUM. " 155 
 
 word here about moral activity and the social converse, as in 
 the Elysian fields, imagined by philosophers of less orthodox 
 severity. 
 
 One word more. If my language has given any believer 
 pain, I regret it sincerely. It may have been somewhat ob- 
 scure, since it has been so widely arraigned, and I think mis- 
 conceived. My position is this. The idea of a glorified 
 energy in an ampler life is an idea utterly incompatible with 
 exact thought, one which evaporates in contradictions, in 
 phrases which when pressed have no meaning. The idea of 
 beatific ecstasy is the old and orthodox idea ; it does not in- 
 volve so many contradictions as the former idea, but then it 
 does not satisfy our moral judgment. I say plainly that the 
 hope of such an infinite elcstasy is an inane and unworthy 
 crown of a human life. And when Dr. Ward assures me that 
 it is merely the prolongation of the saintly life, then I say the 
 saintly life is an inane and unworthy life. The words I used 
 about the " selfish " view of futurity, I applied only to those 
 who say they care for nothing but personal enjoyment, and to 
 those whose only aim is " to save their own souls," Mr. Bald- 
 win Brown has nobly condemned this creed in words far 
 stronger than mine. And here let us close with the reflection 
 that the language of controversy must always be held to ap- 
 ply not to the character of our opponents, but to the logical 
 consequences of their doctrines, if uncorrected and if forced 
 to their extreme.
 
 A MODERN ^'SYMPOSIUM:''' 
 
 THE INFLUENCE UPON MORALITY OF A DE- 
 CLINE IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 
 
 SIR JAMES STEPHEN. 
 
 Many persons regard everything which tends to discredit 
 theology with disapprobation, because they think that all such 
 speculations must endanger morality as well. Others assert 
 that morality has a basis of its own in human nature, and 
 that, even if all theological belief were exploded, morality 
 would remain unaffected. 
 
 My own view is that each party is to a considerable ex- 
 tent right, but that the true practical inference is often 
 neglected. 
 
 Understanding by the theology of an age or country the 
 theory of the universe generally accepted then and there, and 
 by its morality the rules of life then and there commonly re- 
 garded as binding, it seems to me extravagant to say that the 
 one does not influence the other. The difference between 
 
 ^ The Nineteenth Century, April and May, 1877. 
 
 S7
 
 158 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 living in a country where the established theory is that exis 
 tence is an evil, and annihilation the highest good, and living 
 in a country where the established theory is that the earth is 
 the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the round world and they 
 that dwell therein, has surely a good deal to do with the other 
 differences which distinguish Englishmen from Buddhists. 
 
 Even if it be said that such differences are merely a way 
 of expressing the result of a difference of temperament and 
 constitution otherwise caused, this does not diminish the 
 effect of a belief in the truth of the theory. Kali, Bhowanee, 
 and other malevolent deities worshipped in India are prob- 
 ably phantoms engendered by fear working on a rank fancy ; 
 but this does not make the belief in their real existence less 
 influential in those who hold it. A man who cuts off the end 
 of his tongue to propitiate Kali would let it alone if he 
 ceased to believe in her existence, though the temper of 
 mind which created her might still remain, and show itself in 
 other ways. 
 
 The belief that the course of the world is ordered by a 
 good God, that right and wrong are in the nature of a divine 
 law, that this world is a place of trial, and part only of a 
 wider existence in a word, the belief in God and a future 
 state may be accounted for in various ways. Now that in 
 this country (to go no further) the vast majority of people be- 
 lieve these doctrines to be true in fact just as they believe it 
 to be true in fact that ships and carriages can be driven by 
 steam, and that their conduct is in innumerable instances as 
 distinctly influenced by the one belief as by the other, appear 
 to me to be propositions too plain to be proved.
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM.'' 159 
 
 On the other hand, it seems at least equally evident that 
 morality has a basis of its own quite independent of all the- 
 ology whatever. It is difficult to imagine any doctrine about 
 theology which has not prevailed at some time or place ; but 
 no one ever heard of men living together without some rules 
 of life that is, without some sort of morality. Given human 
 action and human passion, and a vast number of people all 
 acting and feeling, moral rules of conduct of some sort are 
 a necessary consequence. The destruction of religion would, 
 I think, involve a moral revolution ; but it would no more 
 destroy morality than a political revolution destroys law. It 
 would substitute one set of moral rules and sentiments for 
 another, just as the establishment of Christianity and Mo- 
 hammedanism did when they superseded various forms of 
 paganism. 
 
 It would be scarcely worth while to write down these com- 
 mon-places, if it were not for the sake of the practical infer- 
 ence. It is that theology and morality ought to stand to 
 each other in precisely the same relation as facts and legisla- 
 tion. 
 
 No one would propose to support by artificial means a 
 law passed under a mistake, for fear it should have to be al- 
 tered. To say that the truth of a theological doctrine must 
 not be questioned, lest the discovery of its falsehood should 
 produce a bad moral effect, is in principle precisely the same 
 thing. It is at least as unlikely that false theology should 
 produce good morals as that legislation based on a mistaken 
 view of facts should work well in practice. 
 
 I will give two illustrations of this any number might be
 
 i6o QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 given. Suicide is commonly regarded as wrong j and this 
 moral doctrine is defended on theological grounds, which are 
 summed up in the old saying that the soldier must not leave 
 his post till he is relieved. I will not inquire whether any 
 other argument can be produced forbidding suicide to a per- 
 son laboring under a disease which converts his whole life 
 into one long scene of excruciating agony, and which must 
 kill him in the course of a few useless months, during which 
 he is a source of misery, and perhaps danger, to his nearest 
 and dearest friends. I confine myself to saying that, if it 
 could be shown that there is no reason to suppose that God 
 has in fact forbidden such an act, its morality might be dis- 
 cussed and decided upon on different grounds from those on 
 which it must be considered and decided upon on the op- 
 posite hypothesis. 
 
 Take again the law of marriage. Suppose a man's wife 
 is hopelessly insane ought he to be allowed to marry again ^ 
 Ought divorce to be permitted in any case ? These questions 
 will be discussed in a very different spirit, though it is pos- 
 sible that they might be answered in the same way, by per- 
 sons who do and by persons who do not believe in sacra- 
 ments, and that marriage is a sacrament. 
 
 Now let us suppose for the sake of argument that it could 
 be shown that if all theological considerations were set aside, 
 it would be desirable that a person dying of cancer should be 
 permitted to commit suicide, and that a man whose wife was 
 incurably mad should be allowed to marry again ; and that on 
 the other hand, if theological considerations were taken into 
 account, the opposite was desirable. Upon these supposi-
 
 A MODERN " S YMPOSIUM." j 6 i 
 
 tions the question whether the theological beliefs which 
 make the difference are beneficial or not will depend on the 
 question whether they are true or not. Applied generally, 
 this shows that the support which an existing creed gives to 
 an existing system of morals is irrelevant to its truth, and 
 that the queslion whether a given system of morals is good or 
 bad cannot be fully determined until after the determina- 
 tion of the question whether the theology on which it rests 
 is true or false. The morality is good if it is founded on a 
 true estimate of the consequences of human actions. But if 
 it is founded on a false theology, it is founded on a 
 false estimate of the consequences of human actions ; and, 
 so far as that is the case, it cannot be good ; and the circum- 
 stance that it is supported by the theology to which it refers 
 is an argument against, and not in favor of, that theology. 
 
 LORD SELBORNE. 
 
 I begin by observing that (putting special cases aside, and 
 looking at the question in a general way) morality has not 
 flourished, amongst either civilised or uncivilised men, when 
 religious belief has been generally lost, or utterly debased. 
 Not to dwell upon the case of savage races, the modern Hin- 
 doos and Chinese have long been civilised, but are certainly 
 not moral ; nor can anything worse be conceived than the 
 moralit)' of the Greeks and Romans, at the height of their 
 civilisation. The morality of the Romans, in the old repub- 
 lican times when they knew nothing of Greek philosophy, was 
 praised by Polybius, who connected it directly, and emphati- 
 
 IX
 
 1 62 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 cally, with the influence among them of religious belief. After 
 their intellectual cultivation had taken its tone from the irre- 
 ligious or agnostic materialism of Epicurus (hardly dis- 
 tinguishable, I think, from that sort of philosophy which some 
 persons think destined to supplant religious belief in the pres- 
 ent day), their morality became what is described in the first 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Romans and in the Satires of 
 Juvenal ; nor does it seem to have been worse than that of 
 the other civilised races on the shores of the Mediterranean, 
 over whom, at the same time, religion had equally lost its in- 
 fluence. 
 
 On the other hand, it seems to me certain, as an historical 
 fact, that the place which the principles of love and benevo- 
 lence, humility and self-abnegation, have assumed in the 
 morality of the Christian nations (with a wide-spreading in- 
 fluence which has been advancing till the present time with 
 the growth of civilisation) is specifically due to Christianity. 
 To Christianity are specifically due (i) our respect for human 
 life, which condemns suicide, infanticide, political assassina- 
 tion, and I might almost say homicide generally, in a way 
 previously unknown, and still unknown where Christianity 
 does not prevail ; (2) our recognition of such moral and spirit- 
 ual relations between man and man as are inconsistent with 
 the degradation of women, and with the practice of slavery; 
 (3) our reverence for the bond of marriage ; and (4) our abhor- 
 rence of some particular forms of vice. I do not mean to 
 deny that traces of a state of opinion, more or less similar 
 upon some of these points, are discoverable in what we know 
 of the manners of some non-Christian nations : but it is his-
 
 A MODERN '' SYMPOSIUM." 163 
 
 torically true to say, that the prevalence of each of these 
 principles, as manifested amongst ourselves, is specifically 
 due to Christianity. Of Christianity I speak in a sense 
 inclusive of all that it derives from the antecedent Jewish 
 system ; of which it claims to be the true continuation and 
 development. 
 
 If freedom of inquiry is not to be stopped, after the rejec- 
 tion of religious belief, it must gradually extend itself to the 
 whole circle of morality: most, if not all, of which is as little 
 capable of demonstrative proof through the evidence of the 
 senses as any of the doctrines of religion. Those who reject 
 religion will not voluntarily submit to moral restraints founded 
 upon the religion which they reject, unless they can be placed 
 upon some other intellectual basis, sufficiently cogent to 
 themselves to resist the attractions of appetite or self-in- 
 terest. That large part of mankind who are always too much 
 under the government of their inclinations and passions will 
 be quicker in drawing moral corollaries from irreligious prin- 
 ciples than the philosophers by whom those principles are 
 propounded ; and the advanced posts of morality, in which 
 the influence of religion culminates, and of which the neces- 
 sity may not be so evident on natural or social grounds, are 
 not likely to be very strenuously defended by those philoso- 
 phers themselves. 
 
 If the religious foundations and sanctions of morality are 
 given up, what is to be substituted for them ? 
 
 First ; will the modern notion of a duty to act so as may 
 conduce to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of 
 men be sufficient ? I think, certainly not. The idea of duty is
 
 1 64 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 not, to my mind, practical or intelligible without religious 
 conceptions ; and this particular conception of duty depends 
 entirely upon a test extrinsic, and not personal, to the individ- 
 ual a test too, which it is difficult (not to say impossible) 
 for each individual to verify for himself ; though it may be 
 verified, to their own satisfaction, by philosophical students of 
 casuistry or political economy. Those motives are of neces- 
 sity strongest which directly concern the man himself : and a 
 moral principle which attempts to counteract influences 
 operating directly and immediately upon the will by others 
 which are speculative and remote, without any higher sanc- 
 tions realised by and reacting upon the individual, must 
 necessarily be weak. 
 
 But, secondly ; will this idea be sufficient, if so modified 
 as to present to the man the pursuit of his own happiness in 
 this world as the rule of life, but teach him to discover it by 
 observing and doing those things which most conduce to the 
 happiness of men in general ? In this form it is older 
 and more plausible ; but the difficulties of making it practical 
 are really very much the same. This doctrine, as Aristotle 
 observes, depends upon a general induction : it deals only 
 with general truths, and general conclusions, to which there 
 are many apparent and (if there was no law of moral retribu- 
 tion and adjustment behind) many real exceptions. The 
 foundations of a man's moral character and habits must 
 be laid in his youth : when (as Aristotle also says) he is inex- 
 perienced, naturally inclined to follow his passions, and not 
 predisposed to accept the disquisitions of philosophers as 
 proof that his own happiness will not be promoted by seeking
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 1 6^ 
 
 it in his own way. The temperament most likely to act con- 
 sciously on such a rule of life is not the most generous ; it is 
 rather that which is cold and calculating, and which values 
 the reputation more than the reality of virtue. Upon 
 such men, at the best, its influence is to establish a low 
 standard of virtue ; perhaps only to check and impose limits 
 on their tendencies to vice. Over others it can have little or 
 no power, except when operating in combination with, and 
 subordination to higher principles. 
 
 Not only did the ethical systems of the ancients which 
 were based upon this principle fail to make men moral, but 
 we see its impotence constantly exemplified amongst those 
 whom we call " men of the world " a class of persons who 
 are by no means indifferent to their own happiness, or to the 
 good opinion of the world, but by whom the influence of relig- 
 ious belief is not practically felt ; exemplified, too, on 
 points of morality of which the reasonableness seems most 
 manifest. There are no virtues, I suppose, which can more 
 readily be shown to be conducive to happiness, whether par- 
 ticular or general, than that which the Greeks called 
 tcxpareia, and that of benevolence. What can be more con- 
 trary, to both at once of these, than the irregular indulgence 
 of sensual appetite at the cost of the permanent degradation, 
 and almost certain misery, of human beings who are its 
 instruments and victims, and of innumerable physical as well 
 as moral evils to individuals, families, and mankind at large ? 
 Yet how very common is this sort of immorality even among 
 cultivated men, living on good terms with society ! How little 
 it is reproved, how seldom restrained, except by the authority,
 
 ,66 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 or through the influence, direct or indirect, of religion ! All 
 readers of Horace remember the sentetitia dia Catonis, and I 
 doubt whether non-religious opinion among ourselves is much 
 stricter on this subject, though it may be less freely 
 expressed. If it is otherwise as to some of the more abnormal 
 forms of dxpa(T(a, I have already said that this is specifically 
 due to Christianity. The cultivated Greeks and Romans 
 spoke and wrote lightly and familiarly of vices of which we 
 do not speak at all : they regarded them, indeed, as effemi- 
 nate, but not as infamous, and certainly did not visit 
 them with grave social penalties. So tainted was their 
 moral atmosphere, that even such really religious men among 
 them as Socrates and Plato (to whom, however, a religion 
 teaching morals with definiteness and authority was unknown) 
 surprise us by their want of sensitiveness on these points, as 
 manifested in some passages of the Socratic Dialogues. 
 
 I will next inquire whether a sufficient rule of morality' is 
 to be found, when religion is set aside, in any law of 
 our nature ; first, regarding the constitution of our nature 
 apart from and, secondly, taking into account the exist- 
 ence in it of a moral instinct or sense. 
 
 If any one calls the application of right reason to human 
 conduct generally, a law of our nature, from which such 
 a rule is to be derived, without taking into account the moral 
 sense, this, as it seems to me, would be only a different and 
 more indefinite mode of expressing substantially the same 
 theories, which have been already dealt wth. 
 
 But it may, perhaps, be suggested that laws of our nature 
 from which such a rule may be derived, are to be found in the
 
 A MODERN " S YMPOSIUMr 1 6 7 
 
 final causes and purposes of the several organs and powers 
 which exist in that nature ; and that the use o any of those 
 organs or powers in a manner aberrant from their proper 
 causes and purposes is a breach of natural morality. I do 
 net pause to inquire whether the idea of " cause " and " pur- 
 pose," which is involved in such a view, can be verified apart 
 from religion. But such a rule would, at best, be far from 
 coextensive with the whole field of morality : some most 
 necessary parts of a moral code (such e.g. as the regulation of 
 the relations between the sexes) being incapable of being 
 deduced, with any approach to certainty, from the mere 
 constitution of our nature. As to some of our faculties, the 
 determination, with sufficient accuracy to furnish a rule of 
 life, of their final causes and purposes, might involve difficult 
 philosophical inquiries. As to others, though there might be 
 no such difficulty, it is to be remembered that we have a 
 complex nature, in which the forces which operate, either 
 mechanically or in a way resembling the mechanical, upon the 
 will are constantly in practical antagonism to the regulative 
 faculty. The faculties of which the final causes are most 
 obvious exist, not apart from, but in combination with, ottier 
 elements of our nature which (either generally or often) result 
 in tendencies to their use without any direct view to the fulfil- 
 ment of their proper purposes. The gratification of some of 
 those tendencies (such e.g. as eating and drinking for the 
 mere pleasure of taste, and not for nourishment) can hardly 
 be condemned as immoral, on natural grounds, unless carried 
 so far as to overpower reason, or impair strength or health. 
 When it is carried to that excess (as in the case of intern-
 
 1 68 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 perance), it is still true that the origin of the vice has been in 
 the natural constitution of men's bodies, by which a sensible 
 gratification has been found in its indulgence : which (as 
 it seems to me) goes far to prove that this conception 
 of a physical law cannot be relied upon, even in the cases to 
 which it is most directly applicable, as a practical basis 
 of morality a view of which is confirmed by the actual prev- 
 alence among men of that class of vices, even when, to all 
 natural safeguards, is superadded the external influence 
 of religion. 
 
 When we proceed to take into account the moral instinct 
 or sense, we come upon the border-ground, if not into the 
 proper territory, of Religion. To a man who believes in a 
 moral government of the Universe, in the distinctness of the 
 Ego, the real man, from his bodily organisation, and in the 
 doctrines of moral responsibility and moral adjustment in a 
 future state, nothing can be more real, nothing more intelligi- 
 ble, than this moral instinct or sense, with its suggestions of 
 right and wrong, of duty, guilt, and sin, and its judicial con- 
 science. But, if all these postulates are denied, what is then 
 to be thought of this moral instinct or sense ? Why is it, on 
 that hypothesis, less a mere accident of the nervous system, 
 or of some other part of the bodily organisation, than the re- 
 ligious instinct, which is already supposed to set aside, as 
 resting upon no demonstrable ground ? As a phenomenon, 
 and in some sense a fact, it exists, just as the religious in- 
 stinct does (if they be not really the same) ; but those princi- 
 ples of thought which explain away the one, as having no 
 proper objective cause, and as indicative of no objective
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUMS 169 
 
 truth, may as easily explain away the other also. The one is 
 not more susceptible of sensible and experimental demonstra- 
 tion than the other. If a man were merely a higher order of 
 the organisation of matter, homogeneous with, and produced 
 by spontaneous development from, inorganic substances, 
 plants, and inferior animals, and under no responsibility to 
 any moral intelligence greater than his own, what reality 
 would there be in the conception of a moral law of obligation, 
 inapplicable to all other known forms of matter, and appli- 
 cable only to man. 
 
 These questions are practical. Experience, on the large 
 scale, shows that men who disregard the religious, cannot 
 generally be trusted to pay regard to the moral, sense. A 
 moral sense, not believed in, can never supply a practical 
 foundation for morality. On the other hand, a moral sense, 
 believed in, is (in reality) itself religion possibly inarticulate, 
 but religion still. Such a belief cannot exist, without accept- 
 ing the evidence of the moral sense as equally trustworthy 
 concerning those things of which it informs us, as the evi- 
 dence of the bodily sense is concerning those things of which 
 they inform us. It is, of course, only from the impres- 
 sions made upon our own minds that we can know anything 
 about any of the subjects, either of physical, or of intel- 
 lectual, or of moral sensation : their intrinsic nature, ab- 
 stracted from those impressions, is to us, in each case 
 alike, an inaccessible mystery. But belief in the sense 
 is belief in the truth of the information which the sense gives 
 to us : that is, that this information, if rightly apprehended, 
 is trustworthy, as far as it goes ; that there are objective
 
 xyo QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 realities corresponding with it. The moral sense, believed in, 
 is not merely a possible, but I suppose it to be the only pos- 
 sible, human foundation of morality. An intelligent belief in 
 the moral sense naturally takes the man beyond himself, to a 
 higher source of his moral conceptions, which it really pre- 
 supposes ; and any truths correlative to it, which are either 
 ascertainable by the processes of reason, or capable of being 
 otherwise made known, will naturally, when they become 
 known, be recognised, in their proper relation to it, and can- 
 not be rejected without doing it violence. Any such correla- 
 tive knowledge of the higher truths (to the existence of which 
 the moral sense testifies, though it does not fully reveal them) 
 must enlighten, inform, and strengthen it. It is the office of 
 such knowledge to answer authoritatively those questions, as 
 to the real nature, the proper work, the true happiness, the 
 true place in the Universe, of man, which philosophy has 
 always been asking, and has never, by itself, been able to 
 solve. It harmonises, accounts for, and enforces by authori- 
 tative sanctions, the concurrent testimonies of the moral 
 sense, the religious instinct, nature interpreted by reason, and 
 reason enlightened by experience. On the other hand, the 
 want, and still more the rejection, of such knowledge (sup- 
 posing it to be attainable, and true) must, in a corresponding, 
 degree, obscure, perplex, or discredit, the moral sense. 
 
 I am well aware that some who seem to reject all dog- 
 matic theolog}', and even the principles of natural religion, do 
 nevertheless live up to a high moral standard ; just as there 
 are too many others, professing (not always insincerely) to 
 believe in religion, who do the reverse. The moral sense
 
 A MODERN '' SYMPOSIUM.'' 171 
 
 never has been, and never will be, extinguished among man- 
 kind j and in all ages and countries, of which we have any 
 real historical knowledge, there have been conspicuous ex- 
 amples of men who have made it their rule of life. Doubt- 
 less there have been many more who did so, of whom we 
 know nothing : nor is it unreasonable to believe that there 
 may be many such, even among very degraded races. But 
 these facts do not invalidate general conclusions as to the 
 general moral tendency of a decline of religious belief. Those 
 examples of exceptional goodness have not been sufficient to 
 prevent, or to arrest, a progressive deterioration of general 
 morality, when the light of religion has been absent or ob- 
 scured ; and the best ancient schemes of philosophy, which 
 were founded upon the moral sense, failed to compete practi- 
 cally with that of materialism, which did all that was possible 
 to destroy it. " Live while we may " " let us eat and drink, 
 for to-morrow we die " are natural corollaries from the doc- 
 trine of Epicurus ; whatever more refined conceptions that 
 philosopher, or any of his followers, may have propounded. 
 Such will ever be the effect, in the world generally, of a popu- 
 lar disbelief in the. doctrines of immortality and retribution: 
 not because the hope of rewards, or the fear of punishments, 
 is the foundation of religious morality (which, to fulfil the 
 requirements either of religion or of the moral sense, must 
 ascend much higher), but because our nature is so consti- 
 tuted, that the destiny of the individual, for good or evil, for 
 happiness or the reverse, is inseparably bound up with the 
 moral law of his being ; and because those aids and defences, 
 which result from the recognition of this truth, are necessary
 
 172 Q UESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 for the ascendency of the higher over the lower elements of our 
 nature, and for the education of man to virtue. A boy, whose 
 mainsprings of right action are conscience and love, will not 
 endeavor to fulfil the objects for which he is sent to school 
 more selfishly, or from less worthy motives, when he is in- 
 formed of their relation to his future life, than if he were left 
 in ignorance of it; but the knowledge of that relation, by mak- 
 ing him understand the importance of the future as compared 
 with the present, and the meaning and reasonableness of his 
 present duties, may enable him better to fulfil them. 
 
 All that has been said assumes, of course, that there is 
 such a thing as religious truth : nor is it possible to deny 
 that, if this could really be disproved, the morality founded 
 upon it would fail. But it cannot be without importance, 
 whenever the proper evidences of the truth of religion are 
 considered, to take into account, as one of them, its relation 
 to morality : the certainty that, if it were displaced, the sys- 
 tem of morality now received among men would, to a great 
 extent, fall with it ; and the extreme intellectual difficulty of 
 maintaining in that event the supremacy of the moral sense, 
 or placing the morality of the future upon a new basis, likely 
 to acquire general authority among mankind. If it should be 
 suggested that a sufficient moral code for practical purposes 
 niight be maintained by increasing the stringency of human 
 laws in proportion to the failure of religious sanctions, I 
 should reply, that the power of human laws depends upon 
 morality, and not morality upon human laws ; and that any 
 legislation, greatly in advance of the moral sentiment of the 
 community, would certainly not be effectual, and could not 
 long be maintained.
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 173 
 
 It has been no part of my purpose to enter into an exam- 
 ination of any questions as to particular doctrines of religion. 
 I have throughout used the word " religion " in a sense ex- 
 clusive of all systems, usurping that name, which take no 
 cognisance of morality, or which are repugnant, in their prac- 
 tical precepts, to the general moral sense of mankind ; and I 
 have not dissembled my belief, that Christianity (regarded in 
 its general aspect, with reference to the points of agreement 
 rather than those of difference among Christians) does fulfil 
 the conditions necessary for moral efficacy. Error, inconsis- 
 tenc}', incompleteness, or admixture of foreign elements, in 
 particular modes of apprehending or representing it, must, no 
 doubt, as far as they prevail, and in proportion to their 
 importance, detract from the authority, or deteriorate the 
 qualit}^, of its influence. So also must the mere fact of dis- 
 agreement. But, notwithstanding all these drawbacks, Chris- 
 tianity is the great moral power of the world. It has often 
 been supposed to be declining, but has, as often, renewed its 
 strength ; nor has any other power been found to take its 
 place, where it has seemed to lose ground. As to other 
 forms of religion, it may, without difficulty, be admitted, that 
 such elements as they have in common with Christianity may 
 be expected (except so far as they are neutralised or coun- 
 teracted by other contrary elements) to tend in their measure 
 towards the same standard of morality. It is proper (as I 
 suppose) to Christianity, rightly understood, to assert the 
 identity of its own essential principles with those of natural 
 religion, while teaching that the moral government of the 
 world has been so conducted as not to leave mankind depen-
 
 ,y4 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 dent upon natural religion only ; and it refers to a common 
 origin with itself all the elements of religious belief, consis- 
 tent with its own doctrines, which have been, at any time or 
 place, accepted among the nations of the world. These 
 propositions, and also that of the presence of the religious 
 principle in any practical belief of the moral sense, appear to 
 be in accordance with what is said by St. Paul in the 19th 
 and 20th verses of the first, and the 14th and 15 th verses of 
 the second, chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. 
 
 REV. DR. MARTINEAU. 
 
 In order to estimate aright tne moral influence of declin- 
 ing religious belief, the relation between morals and religion 
 must be accurately conceived. They may be regarded as 
 independent, or as identical, or, again, either may be taken 
 to be the foundation of the other. The following positions 
 will serve as a sufficient ground for the opinion which I shall 
 offer. 
 
 A sense of duty is inherent in the constitution of our 
 nature, and cannot be escaped till we can escape from our- 
 selves. It does not wait on any ontological conditions, and 
 incur the risk of non-existence should no assurance be 
 gained with regard to a being and a life beyond us. Even 
 though we came out of nothing, and returned to nothing, we 
 should be subject to the claim of righteouness so long as we 
 are what we are. Morals have their own base, and are second 
 to nothing. 
 
 Apart from this intrinsic consciousness of ethical distinc-
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUMS 1 75 
 
 tions, no ontological discoveries would avail to set up a law 
 of duty, and give us the characteristics of moral beings. A 
 Supreme Power might dictate an external rule, and break us 
 in to obedience by hopes and fears of unlimited extent. But 
 by this sway of preponderant interests we are not carried be- 
 yond prudence ; and in the absence of a law within, respond- 
 ing to the demands from without, we do not reach the 
 confines of moral obligation ; and, in case of failure, we incur 
 the sense only of error, not of sin. Theology cannot supply 
 a base for morals that have lost their own. 
 
 Does it follow that because morals are indigenous, they 
 are therefore self-sufficing ? By no means. Though religion 
 is not their foundation, it is assuredly their crown related to 
 them as Plato says dialectic is to the sciences, war.tp Opiy/.oq 
 roTq imOr^imav/ ^ the coping that consummates them. Be the 
 genesis of the conscience what it may, we learn from it at 
 last that there is a better and a worse in the springs of action 
 which contend for us ; and that, whilst it is open to us as a 
 possibility, it is closed against us as a right, to follow the 
 lower when the higher calls. The authority which stamps the 
 one as a temptation, and the other as a peremptory claim, is 
 not, we are well aware, of our own making ; for it masters us 
 with compunction, and defies all repeal. Nor is it the mere 
 expression of public self-interest ; for it extends beyond the 
 range of social action, and covers the whole voluntary field. 
 Speaking with a voice before which our whole personality 
 bows, and which equally gives law to other men, it issues 
 from a source transcending human life, and infusing into it 
 "^Ref. vii. 534 E.
 
 1^6 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 a moral order from a more comprehensive sphere. It postu- 
 lates a superior will in communion with ours, and adminis- 
 tering this world as a school of character. 
 
 To this result our moral experience naturally runs up, and 
 stops short of it only where its course is artificially arrested. 
 Till it is reached, the ethical demands upon us sieem to 
 address us in tones too portentous for their immediate 
 significance ; remorse clings to us with a tenacity, aspiration 
 returns upon us with a power, which reason cannot ade- 
 quately justify. But in the presence of an objective moral law 
 pervading the universe, administered by a Mind wherein it 
 perfectly lives, and continued for man beyond his present 
 term of years, the scale of the ethical passions, and the in- 
 tensity of admiration and reverence for the good, fall into 
 proportionate place, and escape the irony of being at once the 
 ultimate nobleness and the supreme extravagance of our 
 nature. Religion, on this, side, is but the open blossom of 
 the moral germs implanted within us the explicit form, de- 
 veloped in thought, of faiths implicitly contained in the sense 
 of responsibility and the forebodings of guilt. Its effect, 
 therefore, is to suffuse with a divine light relations and 
 duties which before were simply personal and social. 
 
 A similar transfiguration befalls the pleasures and pains 
 attending voluntary conduct, and constituting its natural 
 "sanctions." Treated as ultimate facts, they can never 
 acquire more than a prudential significance. Treated as 
 symbolical lineaments of a world under moral government 
 they are invested with an expression of character, and look 
 into us with living eyes. Their appeal alights no longer on
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 177 
 
 self-regarding hope and fear, but on the sprhigs of sympathy 
 and shame : they pass from sensitive to ethical phenomena. 
 The new and ideal meaning thus given to a large portion of 
 actual human experience cannot pause there ; it completes 
 itself in the congenial anticipation of a further and invisible 
 store of awards consummating the incipient justice of this 
 world. The faith in a future life where it is more than a 
 belief at second hand ^lias its sheet-anchor in the moral 
 affections. But for the felt interval between what we are and 
 what we ought to be, for the indignation at wrong, for com- 
 passion towards innocent suffering, and reverence for high 
 excellence, vaticinations of renewed existence would have no 
 origin and no support. 
 
 In assigning this method of growth to religion, I do not 
 mean to deny that it may have other lines of formation. The 
 nature-worship which plays so great a part in ancient civil- 
 isation has a different histor}^ and stands in much less inti- 
 mate relations with the moral life of its votaries. We pay, I 
 am disposed to think, too great a compliment to the Greek 
 mythology when we attribute the ethical decay of later 
 Athens and Corinth to the growing skepticism about its gods. 
 The public life was dead. The theatre of great passion and 
 great action was closed. The calls for sacrifice, the oppor- 
 tunities for national expansion, were gone, and the political 
 school for the discipline of character was no longer there. 
 With the loss of a progressive history, the springs of heroic 
 emulation suffered atrophy, a sickly hue passed over litera- 
 ture, philosophy, and art ; and the subsidence of human 
 
 loves and cares upon low Epicurean levels was inevitable 
 
 12
 
 lyg QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 though the Olympian deities had never been dethroned. In 
 the absence of any moral religion, no efficacious resistance 
 could be set up, with or without a pantheistic polytheism, 
 against the canker of social degeneracy. 
 
 In dealing with the present problem, however, we confflie 
 our attention to the Christian type of religion, which has its 
 hold upon our nature from the moral side. The question is, 
 what practical effect might be expected from a decay of that 
 religion. 
 
 Under that change morality would lose, not its base, but 
 its summit. The ground and principles of duty would re- 
 main ; the means for deducing rules of action, estimating the 
 worth of conflicting impulses, and measuring the grades of 
 obligation, would in the main be unaffected ; so that the 
 moral code which would emerge from the labors of a mere 
 philosopher need not materially differ from that recognized 
 by a Christian. This is only an inverse method of saying 
 that the Christian ethics are true to human life and the ex- 
 pression of right reason, I do not think, therefore, that the 
 form and contents of a moral system would be essentially mod- 
 ified by the decline of religious belief. It may, no doubt, 
 happen that particular problems of conduct, as in the case 
 of suicide and of marriage, have become the subjects of ec- 
 clesiastical legislation, and so have passed into preoccupation 
 of religious feeling, and, on the disappearance of that feeling, 
 may be flung back into an indeterminate condition. But to the 
 real solution of such problems it would be difficult to show 
 that religion contributes any new elements, so as to turn into 
 duty that which was not duty before. Its ministers and
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 1 75 
 
 temporary interpreters can give an historical consecration to 
 all sorts of ungrounded opinions, and these will in any case 
 have to look out for an adequate base, whether or not the 
 religious view of life is still upheld. But it is quite possible 
 that a rule of life, once thoughtfully constituted, should be ac- 
 knowledged in common over the whole range of social duty by 
 persons simply ethical and by those who are also religious. 
 
 But though the decay of religion may leave the institutes 
 of morality intact, it drains off their inward power. The de- 
 vout faith of men expresses and measures the intensity of 
 their moral nature, and it cannot be lost without a remission of 
 enthusiasm and, under this low pressure, and successful reen- 
 trance of the importunate desires and clamorous passions which 
 had been driven back. To believe in an ever-living and per- 
 fect Mind, supreme over the universe, is to invest moral 
 distinctions with immensity and eternity, and lift them from 
 the provincial stage of human society to the imperishable 
 theatre of all being. When planted thus in the very sub- 
 Stance of things, they justify and support the ideal estimates 
 of the conscience ; they deepen every guilty shame ; they 
 guarantee every righteous hope ; and they help the will with 
 a divine casting-vote in every balance of temptation. The 
 sanctity thus given to the claims of duty, and the interest that 
 gathers around the play of character, appear to me more im- 
 portant elements in the power of religion than its direct sanc- 
 tions of hope and fear. Yet to these also it is hardly possible 
 to deny great weight, not only as extending the range of per- 
 sonal interests, but as the answer of reality to the retributory 
 verdicts of the moral sense. Cancel these beliefs, and morality
 
 i8o QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 will be left reasonable still, but paralysed ; possible to tem- 
 peraments comparatively passionless, but with no grasp on 
 vehement and poetic natures ; and gravitating towards the 
 simply prudential wherever it maintains its ground. 
 
 Historical experience appears to confirm this estimate. In 
 no race (notwithstanding conspicuous individual exceptions) 
 have the excesses of sensual passion been so kept in check as 
 among the Jews. There is no more striking feature in their 
 literature during the moral declension of Greek and Roman 
 society {e.g. in the Sibylline Oracles) than the horror which it 
 expresses of the pervading dissoluteness of the pagan world. 
 It certainly cannot be said that the problem was rendered 
 easy by the coolness of the Jewish temperament. The phenom- 
 ena of Christendom present a more complicated tissue. But 
 a just analysis yields, I believe, the same result, and attests the 
 force of religious conviction as the only successful antagonist, 
 on any large scale, of the animal impulses. True it is that, 
 in the very presence of the Church, and even among its rep- 
 resentatives, gross vices have at times prevailed. But these 
 have been hollow times, in which, with large classes of per- 
 sons, the outer shell of religion sheltered no sincere life, and 
 the private habits betrayed the inward disintegration which 
 policy or indifference concealed. To test the power of re- 
 ligion, we must limit ourselves to cases where that power is 
 not effete. In the Puritan families of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, among the present Catholic peasantry of Ireland, through- 
 out the Society of Friends, and in the Wesleyan classes, it can 
 hardly be denied that the control of irregular desires has been 
 attained with an exceptional ease and completeness.
 
 A MODERN ''SYMPOSIUM." i8i 
 
 One source of this distinctive power yet remains to be in- 
 dicated. A simply conscientious man may surrender himself 
 unreserx-^edly to the sense of moral obligation, and be so pos- 
 sessed by it as to feel it more than reasonable, and own a cer- 
 tain sacredness in its appeal. Duty, honour, self-forgetfulness 
 in others' good, may obtain the real command of such a one. 
 But the persuasive force with which the right speaks to him 
 is beyond all intellectual measure ; it stirs him in depths he 
 cannot reach ; its heat is in excess of its light ; it is something 
 mystic which must have him, but of which he can render no 
 account. Here, in truth, is religion pressing into life, only 
 with form still indistinct, and its organism of thought not yet 
 differentiated and articulate. Let it complete its development 
 and what change will ensue ? Once rendered conscious of 
 the Supreme Source of his moral perceptions, the responsible 
 agent no longer obeys a pressure out of the dark, but rather a 
 drawing towards higher light ; for an impersonal drift of nature 
 is substituted a profound personal veneration, and enthusiasm 
 turned from a blind nobleness into the clear allegiance of 
 living affection. It is not without reason that this change has 
 been treated as an emergence into new life. Its vast influ- 
 ence is attested by the whole literature of devotion, and es- 
 pecially by its most popular element, the hymns of every age 
 from the Psalter to the Christian Year. 
 
 Though in theory the contents of morality are not al- 
 tered by acquiring divine obligation, the efficacy of religion is 
 more immediately felt in some parts of the character than in 
 others. The scene to which it introduces the mind is one 
 which throws it instantly into the attitude of looking up to-
 
 iS^ QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 wards an Infinite Perfection, whose presence it never quits, 
 and thus supplies the true conditions of humility, of aspira- 
 tion, and of felt equality of moral trust for all men before God. 
 These moods of thought are specifically induced by the contact 
 of higher excellence and a more capacious rule of righteous- 
 ness ; and they are but poorly simulated by the mere sense of 
 personal insignificance amid the immensity of nature, and the 
 awe of the unknown, and the conscious partnership of us all 
 in the human liabilities. The moral characteristics of the 
 Christian temper are nothing but the natural posture of a mind 
 standing face to face with the invisible reality of the highest 
 ideals of its conscience and its love. If that presence departs, 
 they cannot survive. 
 
 MR. FREDERIC HARRISON. 
 
 And all this, to me, describes the moral characteristics, not 
 of the Christian, but of the religious temper. With what has 
 been so finely said in the preceding discourse we ought, I 
 think, most cordially to join. Only for the words " Theology " 
 and " Christian " we must put the wider and more ancient terms 
 " Religion" and " Human ; " and again, for the intrinsic con- 
 sciousness and emotional intuitions, whereby these are said to 
 prove themselves, we must substitute the reasonable proof of 
 science, philosophy, and positive psycholog)'. 
 
 We have before us three distinctive views as to the relations 
 of Religion and Morality, Each of the three has pressed 
 on us a very powerful thought. The reconciliation is ob- 
 scure, yet I hold on to the hope that it may one day be found ;
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 183 
 
 that we shall have to surrender neither Religion nor Science, 
 neither demonstration on the one hand, nor Dogma, Worship, 
 and Discipline on the other; that we shall end by accepting 
 a purely human base for our Morality, and withal come to see 
 our Morality transfigured into a true Religion. 
 
 It is the purport of the first of the arguments before us to 
 establish : that morality has a basis of its own quite indepen- 
 dent of all theology whatever, but that since morality must be 
 deeply affected by any theology, the morality will be underr 
 mined if based on a theology which is not true. We must all 
 agree, I think, to that. 
 
 The second argument insists that if the religious founda- 
 tions and sanctions of morality be given up, human life runs 
 the risk of sinking into depravity, since morality without re- 
 ligion is insufficient for general civilisation. For my part I 
 entirely assent to that. 
 
 The third argument rejoins that Theology cannot supply 
 a base for morals that have lost their own ; but that morals, 
 though they have their own base, and are second to nothing, 
 are not adequate to direct human life until they be transfused 
 into that sense of resignation, adoration, and communion with 
 an overruling Providence which is the true mark of Religion. 
 I assent entirely to that. 
 
 We, who follow the teaching of Comte, humbly look for- 
 ward to an ultimate solution of all such difficulties by the force 
 of one common principle. That we acknowledge a religion, 
 of which the creed shall be science ; of which the Faith, Hope, 
 Charity, shall be real, not transcendental, earthly, not heav- 
 enlya religion, in a word, which is entirely human, in its evi-
 
 1 84 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 dences, in its pui-poses, in its sanctions and appeals. Write 
 the word " Religion " where we find the word "Theolog)'," 
 write the word " Human " where we find the word " Christian," 
 or the word "Theist," "Mussulman," or "Buddhist," and 
 these discussions grow practical and easily reconciled ; the 
 aspirations and sanctions of Religion burst open to us anew 
 in greater intensity, v.-ithout calling on us to surrender one 
 claim of reality and humanity ; the realm of Faith and Adora- 
 tion becomes again conterminous with Life, without disturb- 
 ing, nay, whilst sanctifying, the invincible resolve of modern 
 men to live in this world, /or this world, with their fellow-men. 
 And this brings us to the source of all difficulties about 
 the relations of Morality and Religion. We place our moral- 
 ity we are compelled by the conditions of all our positive 
 knowledge to place it in a strictly human world. But it is 
 the mark of every theology (the name of Theology assumes it) 
 to place our religion in a non-human world. And thus our 
 human system of morals may possibly be distorted it can- 
 not be supported by a non-human religion. But, on the 
 other hand, it is dwarfed and atrophied for want of being duly 
 expanded into a truly human religion. Our morality with its 
 human realities, our theology with its non-human hypotheses, 
 will not amalgamate. Their methods are in conflict. In 
 their base, in their logic, in their aim, they are heterogene- 
 ous. They do not lie in pari materia. Give us a religion as 
 truly human, as really scientific, as is our moral system, and 
 all is harmony. Our morals, based as they must be on our 
 knowledge of Life and of Society, are then ordered and in- 
 spired by a religion which belongs, just as truly as our moral
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 185 
 
 science does, to the world of science and of man. And then 
 religion will be no longer that quicksand of Possibility which 
 two thousand years of debate have still left it to so many of 
 us. It becomes at last the issue of our knowledge, the mean- 
 ing of our science, the soul of our morality, the ideal of our 
 imagination, the fulfilment of our aspirations, the lawgiver, in 
 short, of our whole lives. Can it ever be this whilst we still 
 pursue Religion into the bubble world of the Whence and 
 the Whither ? 
 
 That morality is dependent on theology ; that morality is 
 independent of religion : each of these views presents in- 
 superable difficulties, and brings us to an alternative from 
 which we recoil. To assert that there is no morality but 
 what is based on Theology is to assert what experience, his- 
 tory, and philosophy flatly contradict, nay that which revolts 
 the conscience of all manly purpose within us. History 
 teaches us that some of the best types of morality, in men 
 and in races, have been found apart from anything that Chris- 
 tians can call theology at all. Morality has been advancing 
 for centuries in modern Europe, whilst theology, at least in 
 authority, has been visibly declining. The morality of Con- 
 fucius and of Sakya Mouni, of Socrates and Marcus Aurelius, 
 of Vauvenargues, Turgot, Condorcet, Hume, was entirely 
 independent of any theology. The moral system of Aristotle 
 was framed without any view to theology, as completely as 
 that of Comte or of our recent moralists. We have ex- 
 perience of men with the loftiest ideal of life and of strict 
 fidelity to their ideal, who expressly repudiate theology, and 
 of many more whom theology never touched. Lastly, there
 
 l86 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. . 
 
 is a spirit \\ithin us which will not believe that to know and 
 to do the right, we must wait until the mysteries of existence 
 and the universe are resolved, its origin, its government, and 
 its future. To make right conduct a corollary of a theological 
 Creed, is not only contrary to fact, but shocking to our self- 
 respect. We know that the just spirit can find the right path, 
 even whilst the judgment hangs bewildered amidst the 
 Churches. 
 
 To hold, as would seem to require of us the second argu- 
 ment, that, though theology is necessary as a base for moral- 
 ity, yet almost any theology will suffice Polytheist, Mussul- 
 man, or Deist so long as some imaginary being is pos- 
 tulated, this is indeed to reduce theology to a minimum ; 
 since, in this case, it does not seem to matter in which God 
 you may believe. To say that morality is dependent on one 
 particular theology, is to deny that men are moral outside 
 your peculiar orthodoxy ; to say that morality is dependent 
 merely on some form of theology, is to say that it matters 
 little to practical virtue which of a hundred creeds you may 
 profess. And when we shrink from the arrogance of the first 
 and the looseness of the second position, we have no alter- 
 native but to admit that our morality must have a human, 
 and not a superhuman, base. 
 
 It does not follow that morality can suffice for life without 
 religion. Morality, if we mean by that the science of duty, 
 after all, can supply us only with a knowledge of what we 
 should do. Of itself it can neither touch the imagination, 
 nor satisfy the thirst of knowledge, nor order the emotions. 
 It tells us of human duty, but nothing of the world without
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." i%^ 
 
 US ; it prescribes to us our duties, but it does not kindle the 
 feelings which are the impulse to duty. Morality has nothing 
 to tell us of a paramount Power outside of us, to struggle 
 with which is confusion and annihilation, to work with which 
 is happiness and strength ; it has nothing to teach us of a 
 communion with a great Goodness, nor does it touch the 
 chords of Veneration, Sympathy, and Love within us. 
 Morality does not profess to organise our knowledge and 
 give symmetry to life. It does not deal with Beauty, Affec- 
 tion, Adoration. If it order conduct, it does not correlate 
 this conduct with the sum of our knowledge, or with the 
 ideals of our imagination, or with the deepest of our emotions. 
 To do all this is the part of Religion, not of morality ; and 
 inasmuch as the sphere of this function is both wider and 
 higher, so does Religion transcend Morality. Morality has 
 to do with conduct, Religion with life. The first is the code 
 of a part of human nature, the second gives its harmony to 
 the whole of human nature. And morality can no more suf- 
 fice for life than a just character would suffice for any one of 
 us without intellect, imagination, or affection, and the power* 
 of fusing all these into the unity of a man. 
 
 The lesson, I think, is twofold. On the one hand, mor* 
 ality is independent of theology, is superior to it, is growing 
 whilst theology is declining, is steadfast whilst theology is 
 shifting, unites men whilst theology separates them, and does 
 its work when theology disappears. There is something like 
 a civilised morality, a standard of morality, a convergence 
 about morality. There is no civilised theology, no standard 
 of theolog}', no convergence about it. On the other hand,
 
 l88 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 morality will never suffice for life ; and every attempt to 
 base our existence on morality alone, or to crown our ex- 
 istence with morality alone, must certainly fail. For this is to 
 fling away the most powerful motives of human nature. To 
 reach these is the privilege of Religion alone. And those 
 who trust that the Future can ever be built upon science and 
 civilisation, without religion, are attempting to build a 
 Pyramid of bricks without straw. The solution, we believe, 
 is a non-theological religion. 
 
 There are some who amuse themselves by repeating that 
 this is a contradiction in terms, that religion implies theology. 
 Yet no one refuses the name of religion to the systems of 
 Confucius and Buddha, though neither has a trace of theol- 
 ogy. But disputes about a name are idle. If they could 
 debar us from the name of Religion, no one could disinherit 
 us of the thing. We mean by religion a scheme which shall 
 explain to us the relations of the faculties of the human 
 soul within, of man to his fellowmen beside him, to the world 
 and its order around him ; next, that which brings him face 
 to face with a Power to which he must bow, with a Provi- 
 dence which he must love and serve, with a Being which he 
 must adore that which, in fine, gives man a doctrine to be- 
 lieve, a discipline to live by, and an object to worship. This 
 is the ancient meaning of religion, and the fact of religion all 
 over the world in every age. What is new in our scheme is 
 merely that we avoid such terms as Infinite, Absolute, Imma- 
 terial, and vague negatives altogether, resolutely confining 
 ourselves to the sphere of what can be shown by experience, 
 of what is relative and not absolute, and wholly and frankly 
 human.
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM. " xg^ 
 
 THE DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S. 
 
 It seems to me difficult to discuss this question till it is set- 
 tled, at least generally, what morality is influenced, and what 
 religious belief is declining. 
 
 The morality generally acknowledged in Europe differs in 
 most important points from that of the Hebrews in the days 
 of Moses, of the Greeks in the days of Socrates, of the 
 Romans under the Empire, of the monks of Egypt, of the 
 Puritans of the seventeenth century. All of these had among 
 them high types of character, higher, it may be, than any 
 types among us ; but who among us would accept their mor- 
 ality as a whole ? Our morality has come to be recognised 
 as it is by a definite progress of which the steps may be traced. 
 It is plain that one form of religious thought and religious faith 
 might aid this progress of morality by its decline, and another 
 might, by its decline, impede or reverse it. On such a morality 
 as we acknowledge, whencesoever derived, the decline of 
 Buddhist belief or ancient Roman religious belief might act as 
 a stimulus and a help. The decline of another kind of relig- 
 ious belief might, on the other hand, act most injuriously. 
 
 It seems to me, therefore, that till the question is pre-r 
 sented in a concrete and historical form, nothing can be made 
 of it. I do not understand the two terms of the comparison. 
 Before I can attempt to answer it, I must know, at least ap- 
 proximately, wAaf morality and w/taf religion. 
 
 If by morality is meant the morality generally recognised 
 in Europe on the points of truthfulness, honesty, humanity, 
 purity, self-devotion, kindness, justice, fellow-feeling, and not
 
 1 5 Q UESTIONS OF BELIEF. . 
 
 only recognised, but judged by a conscious superiority of rea- 
 son and experience to be the right standard, as compared 
 with other moralities such as those of the Puritans, the monks, 
 the Romans, the Hebrews then I observe that, as a- matter 
 of fact and history, which to me seems incontrovertible, this 
 morality has synchronised in its growth and progress with an 
 historical religion, viz. Christianity. We are come to the end 
 of eighteen of the most eventful and fruitful centuries of all, 
 at least, that are known to us ; and we are landed in what we 
 accept as a purer morality than any which has been known 
 in the world before, and one which admits itself not to be 
 perfect, but contains in itself principles of improvement and 
 self-purification. With this progress from the first, some- 
 times, I quite admit, with gross and mischievous mistakes, 
 but always with deliberate aim and intention of good, Chris* 
 tianity has been associated. And in proportion as Christian 
 religious belief has thrown off additions not properly belong- 
 ing to it, and has aimed at its own purification and at a 
 greater grasp of truth, the standard and ideas of morality 
 have risen with it. The difficulty at this moment is to deter- 
 mine how much of our recognised morality, both directly and 
 much more indirectly, has come from Christianity, and could 
 not conceivably have come at all, supposing Christianity 
 absent. 
 
 I do not here, in these few lines, assume that in Christian- 
 ity and its long association with human morality we have a 
 vera causa of its improved and improving character. But 
 with this immense fact of human experience before me, 
 unique, it seems to me, in its kind, and in its broad outlines
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' igi 
 
 undeniable, no abstract reasonings can reassure me as to the 
 probability that with the failing powers of what has hitherto 
 been, directly or indirectly, the source of much, and the sup- 
 port and sanction of still more, of our morality, our morality 
 will fail too. It seems to me quite as easy to be skeptical 
 about morality as it is about religion. If the religion has been 
 proved to be not true, then of course it is no use talking about 
 the matter. But if not, a declining belief in it may, with our 
 present experience, be thought at least by those who believe 
 in it, to be attacking the roots of morality, if not in our own 
 generation, at least in those which come after. 
 
 It is matter of history that in what we now generally accept 
 as true morality there are two factors : (i) On the one 
 hand, human experience, human reasonableness, human good 
 feeling, human self-restraint ; and (2) on the other, the be- 
 lief, the laws, the ideas, the power of Christianity. It is 
 difficult to conceive what reason there is to expect that if one 
 factor is taken away the result will continue the same : that 
 the removal or weakening of such an important one as Chris- 
 tiariity would not seriously affect such departments of 
 morals as purity, the relations of the strong to the weak, 
 respect for human life, slavery. 
 
 THE DUKE OF ARGYLL, 
 
 Considering that these papers are contributed by men be- 
 longing to very different schools of thought, and that they 
 deal with a question very abstract and very ill defined, it is 
 surely very remarkable that so much agreement should emerge 
 on certain fundamental points.
 
 192 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 Most remarkable of all, in this respect, is the paper 
 emanating from one of those who "follow the teaching of 
 Comte." 
 
 In that paper I find the following propositions : 
 
 I. That morality is independent of theology ; but 
 
 II. That it is not independent of religion, inasmuch as 
 morality without religion cannot " suffice for life." 
 
 III. That religion means a scheme which (among other 
 things) " brings man face to face with a Power to which he 
 must bow, with a Providence which he must love and serve, 
 with a Being which he must adore that which, in fine, gives 
 man a doctrine to believe, a discipline to live by, and an ob- 
 ject to worship." 
 
 IV. That this scheme or conception of religion is " new," 
 and differs from mere theology in the following distinctive 
 points : 
 
 (i) That it avoids certain words or phrases, such as " in- 
 finite," " absolute," " immaterial." 
 
 (2) That it avoids also all '* vague negatives." 
 
 (3) That it resolutely confines us to the sphere of what 
 can be shown by experience " of what is relative and not 
 absolute," and " of what is wholly and frankly human." 
 
 I will examine these propositions in their order. 
 
 Proposition I. clearly depends entirely on what is meant 
 by theology, and on the distinction which is drawn in the 
 propositions which follow between theology and religion. Two 
 things, however, may be said of this proposition : First, that, 
 as a matter of historical fact, men's conceptions of moral obli- 
 gation have been deeply influenced by their conceptions and
 
 A MODERN ''SYMPOSIUM." ' 153 
 
 beliefs about theolog}', or about the " whence and whither." 
 Secondly, that, as all branches of truth are and must be 
 closely related to each other, it cannot possibly be true that 
 morality is independent of theology, except upon the assump- 
 tion that there is no truth in any theology. But this is an 
 assumption which cannot be taken for granted, being very 
 different indeed from the assumption (which may be reason- 
 able) that no existing theology is unmixed with error. The 
 absolute independence of morality as regards theology, as- 
 sumes much more than this ; it assumes that there is no the- 
 ology containing even any important element of truth. 
 Proposition II. is, I think, perfectly true. 
 Proposition III. contains a definition of religion which 
 might probably be accepted by any theological professor in 
 any of our schools of divinity as good and true, if not in all 
 respects adequate or complete. 
 
 Proposition IV. defines the elements in all theologies 
 which constitute their fundamental errors, and which distin- 
 guish them from religion as defined in Proposition III. In 
 short. Proposition III. defines affirmatively what religion is ; 
 and Proposition IV. defines negatively what it is not. It adds 
 also a few more affirmative touches to complete the picture of 
 what it is. 
 
 Looking now at the erroneous theological elements which 
 are to be thrown away, we find three words fixed upon as 
 specimens of what is vicious. One of them is " the Abso- 
 lute." Most heartily do I wish it were abolished. More non- 
 sense has been talked and written under cover of it than un- 
 der cover of any other of the voluminous vocabulary of 
 
 13
 
 . 1(,4 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. . 
 
 unintelligible metaphysics. It is admitted that the Absolute 
 is " unthinkable," and things which are unthinkable had 
 better be considered as also unspeakable, or at least be left 
 unspoken. 
 
 Next, " immaterial " is another word to be cast away. 
 The worst of this demand is, that the words material and im- 
 material express a distinction of which we cannot get rid in 
 thought. I do know that the pen with which I now write is 
 made of that which to me is known as matter ; but I do not . 
 know that the ideas which are expressed in this writing are 
 made of any like substance, nor even of any substance like 
 the brain. On the contrary, it seems to me that these ideas 
 cannot be so made and that there is an absolute difference 
 between thought and the external substances which it think? 
 about. This may be my ignorance, but until that ignorance 
 is removed I must accept those distinctions which are 
 founded on the experience and observation of my own na- 
 ture, and I must retain words which are necessary to express 
 them. 
 
 Then, as regards the word " infinite," in like manner, I 
 cannot dispense with it, for the simple reason that the idea of 
 infinity is one of which I cannot get rid, and which all science 
 teaches me is an idea inseparable from our highest concep- 
 tions of the realities of nature. Infinite time and infinite 
 space, and the infinite duration of matter and of force, are 
 conceptions which are part of my intellectual being, and I 
 cannot " think them away." Metaphysicians may tell me that 
 they are "forms of thought." But if so they are at least all 
 the more "frankly human," and I accept them as such.
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 195 
 
 Next we are to avoid "vague negatives altogether." 
 Well, but surely a definition of religion as distinguished from 
 theology, which consists in '* avoiding " certain terms, such as 
 we have now examined, is a definition consisting of " vague 
 negatives " and of nothing else. 
 
 But then we come next to an aflSrmative definition : " con- 
 fining ourselves resolutely to the sphere of what can be shown 
 by experience." To this I assent, provided experience be 
 not confined to the sphere of sense, and provided everything 
 which any man has ever felt, or known, or conceived, be ac- 
 cepted as in its own place and rank, coming within the sphere 
 which is thus described. 
 
 Again, it is demanded of us that we confine ourselves 
 resolutely within " what is relative and not absolute." To this 
 I assent. All knowledge is relative relative both to the mind 
 which knows, and relative also to all other things which re- 
 main to be known. Absolute goodness, and absolute power, 
 and absolute knowledge are all conceivable, but they are all 
 relative ; and to talk of any object of knowledge, or of any 
 subject of knowledge as non-relative, is, or seems to me to be, 
 simply nonsense. 
 
 Lastly, it is demanded of us to confine ourselves to what 
 *' is wholly and frankly human." If this means that we are 
 not to think of any Power or any being who is not related to 
 our human faculties in a most definite and intelligible sense, 
 I accept the limitation. But if it means that we are not to 
 think of any such Power or Being except under all the im- 
 perfections, weaknesses, and vices of humanity, then the lim- 
 itation is one which I cannot accept either as conceivable in
 
 196 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 itself, or as consistent with what I can see or understand of 
 nature. 
 
 But ought we not to be agreed in this ? If there is a Power 
 to which man " must bow," " a Being which he must adore," 
 and a " Providence which he must love and serve," it is clear- 
 ly impossible that this Being, Power., or Providence can be 
 wholly human," in the sense of being no greater, no wiser, no 
 better than man himself. 
 
 The whole of this language is the language of theology and 
 of nothing else language, indeed, which may be held con- 
 sistently with a vast variety of theological creeds, but which is 
 inseparable from those fundamental conceptions which all 
 such creeds involve, which is borrowed from them, and with- 
 out which it has to me no intelligible sense. 
 
 With these explanations I accept the tenth paragraph of 
 Paper No. IV., and that part of the last paragraph which has 
 been already quoted, as expressing, with admirable force and 
 truth at least one aspect of the connection between morals 
 and religion. 
 
 PROFESSOR CLIFFORD. 
 
 In the third of the preceding discourses there is so much 
 which I can fully and fervently accept, that I should find it 
 far more grateful to rest in that feeling of admiration and 
 sympathy than to attend to points of difference which seem 
 to me to be of altogether secondary import. But for the 
 truth's sake this must first be done, because it will then be 
 more easy to point out some of the bearings of the position
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 197 
 
 held in that discourse upon the question which is under dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 That the sense of duty in a man is the prompting of a self 
 other than his own, is the very essence of it. Not only would 
 morals not be self-sufficing, if there were no such prompting 
 of a wider self, but they could not exist ; one might as well 
 suppose a fire without heat. Not only is a sense of duty in- 
 herent, in the constitution of our nature, but the prompting of 
 a wider self than that of the individual is inherent in a sense 
 of duty. It is no more possible to have the right without un- 
 selfishness than to have man without a feeling for the right. 
 
 We may explain or account for these facts in various 
 ways, but we shall not thereby alter the facts. No theories 
 about heat and light will ever make a cold fire. And no 
 doubt or disproof of any existing theory can any more ex- 
 tinguish that self other than myself, which speaks to me in 
 the voice of conscience, than doubt or disproof of the 
 wave-theory of light can put out the noonday sun. 
 
 One such theory is defended in the discourse here dealt 
 with, and, if I may venture to say so, is not quite sufficiently 
 distinguished from the facts which it is meant to explain. The 
 theory is this : that the voice of conscience in my mind is the 
 voice of a conscious being external to me and to all men, 
 who has made us and all the world. When this theory is ad- 
 mitted, the observed discrepancy between our moral sense 
 and the government of the world as a whole makes it neces- 
 sary to suppose another world and another life in it for men, 
 whereby this discord shall be resolved in a final harmony. 
 
 I fully admit that the theistic hypothesis, so grounded, and
 
 1 98 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 considered apart from objections otherwise arising, is a rea- 
 sonable hypothesis and an explanation of the facts. The idea 
 of an external conscious being is unavoidably suggested, as it 
 seems to me, by the categorical imperative of the moral sense ; 
 and moreover, in a way quite independent, by the aspect of 
 nature, which seems to answer to our questionings with an 
 intelligence akin to our own. It is more reasonable to assume 
 one consciousness than two, if by that one assumption we can 
 explain two distinct facts ; just as if we had been led to as- 
 sume an ether to explain light, and an ether to explain elec- 
 tricity, we might have run before experiment and guessed that 
 these two ethers were but one. But since there is a discord- 
 ance between nature and conscience, the. theory of their com- 
 mon origin in a mind external to humanity has not met with 
 such acceptance as that of the divine origin of each. A 
 large number of theists have rejected it, and taken refuge in 
 Manichaeism and the doctrine of the Demiurgus in various 
 forms ; while others have endeavoured, as aforesaid, to redress 
 the balance of the old world by calling into existence a new 
 one. 
 
 It is, however, a very striking and significant fact, that the 
 very great majority of mankind who have thought about these 
 questions at all, while acknowledging the existence of divine 
 beings and their influence in the government of the world, 
 have sought for the spring and sanction of duty in something 
 above and beyond the gods. The religions of Brahmanism 
 and of Buddhism, and the moral system of Confucius, have 
 together ruled over more than two-thirds of the human race 
 during the historic period ; and in all of these the moral sense
 
 A MODERN '' SYMPOSIUM." 19^ 
 
 is regarded as arising indeed out of a universal principle, but 
 not as personified in any conscious being. This vast body of 
 dissent might well, it should seem, make us ask if there is 
 anything unsatisfying in the theory which represents the voice 
 of conscience as the voice of a god. 
 
 Although, as I have said, the idea of an external con- 
 scious being is unavoidably suggested by the moral sense, 
 yet, if this idea should be found untrue, it does not follow 
 that nature has been fooling us. The idea is not in the facts, 
 but in our inference from the facts. A mirror unavoidably 
 suggests the idea of a room behind it ; but it is not our eyes 
 that deceive us ; it is only the inference we draw from their 
 testimony. Further consideration may lead to a different in- 
 ference of far greater practical value. 
 
 Now, whether or no it be reasonable and satisfying to 
 the conscience, it cannot be doubted that theistic belief is a 
 comfort and a solace to those who hold it, and that the loss 
 of it is a very painful loss. It cannot be doubted, at least, by 
 many of us in this generation, who either profess it now, or 
 received it in our childhood and have parted from it since 
 with such searching trouble as only cradle-faiths can cause. 
 We have seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven, 
 to light up a soulless earth ; we have felt with utter loneliness 
 that the Great Companion is dead. Our children, it may be 
 hoped, will know that sorrow only by the reflex light of a 
 wondering compassion. But to say that theistic belief is a 
 comfort and a solace, and to say that it is the crown or coiaing 
 of morality, these are different things. 
 
 For in what way shall belief in God strengthen my sense
 
 200 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 of duty ? He is a great one working for the right. But I 
 already know so many, and I know these so well. Hii 
 righteousness is unfathomable ; it transcends all ideals. But I 
 have not yet fathomed the goodness of living men whom I 
 know ; still less of those who have lived, and whom I know. 
 And the goodness of all these is a striving for something bet- 
 ter ; now it is not the goal, but the striving for it, that matters 
 to me. The essence of their goodness is the losing of the 
 individual self in another and a wider self ; but God cannot 
 do this ; his goodness must be something different. He is in- 
 finitely great and powerful., and he lives for erer. I do not 
 understand this mensuration of goodness by foot-pounds and 
 seconds and cubic miles. A little field-mouse, which busies 
 itself in the hedge, and does not mind my company, is more 
 to me than the longest ichthyosaurus that ever lived, even if 
 he lived a thousand years. When we look at a starry sky, 
 the spectacle of whose awfulness Kant compared with that of 
 the moral sense, does it help out our poetic emotion to reflect 
 that these specks are really very very big, and very very hot, 
 and very very far away ? Their heat and their bigness 
 oppress us ; we should like them to be taken still further 
 away, the great blazing lumps. But when we think of the 
 unseen planets that surround them, of the wonders of life, of 
 reason, of love that may dwell therein, then indeed there is 
 something sublime in the sight. Fitness and kinship ; these 
 are the truly great things for us, not force and massiveness 
 and length of days. 
 
 Length of days, said the Old Rabbi, is measured, not by 
 their number, but by the work that is done in them. We are
 
 A MODERN '' SYMPOSIUM.'' 20 1 
 
 all to be swept away in the final ruin of the earth. The 
 thought of that ending is a sad thought ; there is no use in 
 trying to deny this. But it has nothing to do with right and 
 wrong ; it belongs to another subject. Like All-father Odin, 
 we must ride out gaily to do battle with the wolf of doom, 
 even if there be no Balder to come back and continue our 
 work. At any rate the right will have been done, and the 
 past is safer than all storehouses. 
 
 The conclusion of the matter is that belief in God and 
 in a future life is a source of refined and elevated pleasure to 
 those who can hold it. But the foregoing of a refined and 
 elevated pleasure, because it appears that we have no right to 
 indulge in it, is not in itself, and cannot produce as its conse- 
 quence, a decline of morality. 
 
 There is another theory of the facts of the moral sense set 
 forth in the succeeding discourse, and this seems to me to be 
 the true one. The voice of conscience is the voice of our 
 Father Man who is within us ; the accumulated instinct of 
 the race is poured into each one of us, and overflows us, as 
 if the ocean were poured into a cup.^ Our evidence for 
 this explanation is that the cause assigned is a vera caiisa^ 
 it undoubtedly exists ; there is no perhaps about that. And 
 those who have tried tell us that it is sufficient ; the explana- 
 tion, like the fact, "covers the whole voluntary field." The 
 lightest and the gravest action may be consciously done in 
 and for Man. And the sympathetic aspect of Nature is 
 explained to us in the same way. In so far as our concep- 
 
 ^ Schopenhauer. There is a most remarkable article on the " Natural 
 History of Morals " in the North British Review, Dec. 1867.
 
 202 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 tion of nature is akin to our minds that conceive it, Man 
 made it ; and Man made us, with the necessity to conceive 
 it in this way.^ 
 
 I do not, however, suppose that morality would practically 
 gain much from the wide acceptance of true views about its 
 nature, except in a way which I shall presently suggest. I 
 neither admit the moral influence of theism in the past, nor 
 look forward to the moral influence of humanism in the fu- 
 ture. Virtue is a habit, not a sentiment or an -ism. The doc- 
 trine of total depravity seems to have been succeeded by a 
 doctrine of partial depravity, aqcording to which there is hope 
 for human affairs, but still men cannot go straight unless some 
 tremendous all-embracing theory has a finger in the pie. 
 Theories are most important and excellent things when they 
 help us to see the matter as it really is, and so to judge what 
 is the right thing to do in regard to it. They are the guides 
 of action, but not the springs of it. Now the spring of vir- 
 tuous action is the social instinct, which is set to work by the 
 practice of comradeship. The union of men in a common 
 effort for a common object band-work, if I may venture to 
 translate co-operation into English this is, and always has 
 been, the true school of character. Except in times of severe 
 struggle for national existence, the practice of virtue by 
 masses of men has always been coincident with municipal 
 freedom, and with the vigor of such unions as are not large 
 enough to take from each man his conscious share in the 
 work and in the direction of it. 
 
 * For an admirable exposition of the doctrine of the social origin of 
 our conceptions, see Professor Croom Robertson's Paper, " How we come 
 by our Knowledge," in the first number of the Nineteenth Century.
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM. " 203 
 
 What really affects morality is not religious belief, but a 
 practice which, in some times and places, is thought to be re- 
 ligious namely, the practice of submitting human life to 
 clerical control. The apparently destructive tendency of 
 modern times, which arouses fear and the foreboding of evil 
 in the minds of many of the best of men, seems to me to be 
 not mainly an intellectual movement. It has its intellectual 
 side, but that side is the least important, and touches com- 
 paratively few souls. The true core of it is a firm resolve of 
 men to know the right at first hand, which has grown out of 
 the strong impulse given to the moral sense by political free- 
 dom. Such a resolve is a necessary condition to the exist- 
 ence of a pure and noble theism like that of the third dis- 
 course, which learns what God is like by thinking of man's 
 love for man. Although that doctrine has been prefigured 
 and led up to for many ages by the best teaching of English- 
 men, and what is far more important by the best practice 
 of Englishmen, yet it cannot be accepted on a large scale 
 without what will seem to many a decline of religious belief. 
 For assuredly if men learn the nature of God from the moral 
 sense of man, they cannot go on believing the doctrines of 
 popular theology. Such change of belief is of small account 
 in itself, for any consequences it can bring about ; but it is of 
 vast importance as a symptom of the increasing power and 
 clearness of the sense of duty. 
 
 On the other hand there is one "decline of religious 
 belief," inseparable from a revolution in human conduct, 
 which would indeed be a frightful disaster to mankind. A 
 tevival of any form of sacerdotal Christianity would be a
 
 2 04 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 matter of practice and not a matter of theory. The system 
 which snapped the foundations of patriotism in the old world ; 
 which well nigh eradicated the sense of intellectual honesty, 
 and seriously weakened the habit of truth-speaking ; which 
 lowered men's reverence for the marriage-bond by placing its 
 sanctions in a realm outside of nature instead of in the com- 
 mon life of men, and by the institutions of monasticism and 
 a celibate clergy ; which stunted the moral sense of the nations 
 by putting a priest between every man and his conscience ; 
 this system, if it should ever return to power, must be ex- 
 pected to produce worse evils than those which it has worked 
 in the past. The house which it once made desolate has been 
 partially swept and garnished by the free play gained for the 
 natural goodness of men. It would come back accompanied 
 by social diseases perhaps worse than itself, and the wreck of 
 civilized Europe would be darker than the darkest of past 
 ages. 
 
 II. 
 
 DR. WARD. 
 
 I agree with the Dean of St. Paul's, that the wording of 
 our question is unfortunately ambiguous ; and I think that 
 this fact has made the discussion in several respects less point- 
 ed and less otherwise interesting than it might have been. 
 
 For my present purpose, I understand the term " religious 
 belief " as including essentially belief in a Personal God and 
 in personal immortality. Less than this is not worthy the 
 name of religious belief ; and, on the other hand, I will not 
 refer to any other religious truths than these. I am to inquire,
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 205 
 
 therefore, what would be the influence on morality of a decline 
 in these two beliefs. 
 
 But next, what is meant by " morality ? " I will explain 
 as clearly as brevity may permit what I should myself under- 
 stand by the term ; though I am, of course, well aware, that 
 this is by no means the sense in which Sir J. Fitzjames Ste- 
 phen, or Mr. Harrison, or Professor Clifford, understands it. 
 
 I consider that there is a certain authoritative Rule of life,^ 
 necessarily not contingently existing, which may be regarded 
 under a twofold aspect. It declares that certain acts (exterior 
 or interior) are intrinsically and necessarily evil ; it declares 
 again that some certain act (exterior or interior), even where 
 not actually evil, is by intrinsic necessity, under the circum- 
 stances of some given moment, less morally excellent than 
 some certain other act. Any given man, therefore, more 
 effectively practises " morality," in proportion as he more ener- 
 getically, predominantly, and successfully aims at adjusting 
 his whole conduct, interior and exterior, by this authoritative 
 Rule. Accordingly, when I am asked what is the bearing of 
 some particular influence on morality, I understand myself 
 to be asked how far such influence affects for good or evil the 
 prevalence of that practical habit which I have just described ; 
 how far such influence disposes men (or the contrary) to 
 adjust their conduct by this authoritative Rule. 
 
 These explanations having been premised, my answer to 
 
 ^ To prevent misapprehension I may explain that, in my view, those 
 various necessary truths which collectively constitute this rule are, like all 
 other necessary truths, founded on the Essence of God : they are what 
 they are because He is what He is.
 
 2o6 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 the proposed question is this. The absence of religious belief 
 of belief in a Personal God and personal immortality does 
 not simply injure morality, but, if the disbelievers carry their 
 view out consistently, utterly destroys it. I affirm which, of 
 course requires proof, though I have no space here to give it 
 that no one except a Theist can, in consistencj', recognize 
 the necessarily existing authoritative Rule of which I have 
 spoken. But for practical purposes there is no need of this 
 affirmation, because in what follows I shall refer to no other 
 opponents of religion, except that antitheistic body consisting 
 of Agnostics, Positivists, and the like which in England just 
 now heads the speculative irreligious movement. Now it is 
 manifest on the very surface of philosophical literature that, 
 as a matter of fact, these men deny in theory the existence of 
 any such necessary authoritative Rule, as that on which I have 
 dwelt. A large proportion of Theists accept it, and call it 
 "the Natural Law ;" ^ an Agnostic or Positivist denies its 
 existence. It is very clear that he who denies that there is 
 such a thing as a necessarily existing authoritative Rule of life 
 cannot consistently aim at adjusting any, even the smallest 
 part of his conduct by the intimations of that Rule ; or, in 
 other words, cannot consistently do so much as one act, 
 which (on the theory which I follow) can be called morally 
 good. 
 
 ^ The Natural Law more strictly includes only God's prohibition of acts 
 intrinsically evil, and \n% preception of acts which cannot be omitted without 
 doing what is intrinsically evil. But we may with obvious propriety so 
 extend the term as to include under it God's counselling of those acts which, 
 as clothed in their full circumstances, are by intrinsic necessity the more 
 morally excellent.
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 2 07 
 
 Here, however, a most important explanation must be 
 made. It continually happens that some given philosopher 
 holds some given doctrine speculatively and theoretically, 
 while he holds the precisely contradictory doctrine implicitly 
 and unconsciously ; insomuch that it is the latter, and not the 
 former, which he applies to his estimate of events as they 
 successively arise. Now the existence of the Natural Law, 
 so I would most confidently maintain, is a truth so firmly 
 rooted by God Himself in the conviction of every reasonable 
 creature, that practically to leaven the human mind with belief 
 of its contradictory is, even under the circumstances most 
 favorable to that purpose, a slow and uphill process. In 
 the early stages, therefore, of antitheistic persuasion, there 
 is a vast gulf between the antitheist's speculative theory and 
 his practical realization of that theory. Mr. Mallock has set 
 forth this fact^ I think, with admirable force, in an article con- 
 tributed by him to the Contemporary of last January. Wlien 
 antitheists say, such is his argument, that the pursuit of 
 truth is a "sacred," "heroic," " noble " exercise when they 
 call one way of living mean, and base, and hateful, and an- 
 other way of living great, and blessed, and admirable they 
 are guilty of most flagrant inconsistency. They therein use 
 language and conceive thoughts, which are utterly at variance 
 with their own speculative theory. If it be admitted (i) that 
 the idea expressed by the term "moral goodness " is a simple 
 idea, an idea incapable of analysis ; and (2) that to this idea 
 there corresponds a necessary objective reality in reritm 
 naturd ; if these two propositions be admitted, the existence 
 of the Natural Law is a truth which irresistibly results from
 
 2o8 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 the admission. On the other hand, if these two propositions 
 be not postulated, then to talk of one human act being 
 ** higher " or " nobler " than another, is as simply unmeaning 
 as to talk of a bed being nobler than a chair, or a plough 
 than a harrow. Whether it be the bed, or the plough, or the 
 human act, it may be more useful than the other articles with 
 which it is brought into comparison ; but to speak in either 
 case of " nobleness," is as the sound of a tinkling cymbal. 
 Or rather, which is my present point, the fact of antitheists 
 using such language shows, that their practical belief is so far 
 essentially opposed and (as I, of course, should say) immeas- 
 urably superior to their speculative theory. To my mind 
 there is hardly any truth which needs more to be insisted on 
 than this, in the present crisis of philosophical thought : when 
 antitheism successfully conceals its hideous deformity from 
 its own votaries, by dressing itself up in the very garments of 
 that rival creed which it derides as imbecile and obsolete. I 
 heartily wish I had space for setting forth in full and clear 
 light the argument on which I would here insist. I may 
 refer, however, to Mr. Mallock's article, for an excellent expo- 
 sition of it from his own point of view ; and, in particular, I 
 cannot express too strongly my concurrence with the follow- 
 ing remarks :- 
 
 All the moral feelings (he says) at present afloat in the world depend, 
 as I have already shown, on the primary doctrines of religion; but that 
 the former would outlk't the latter is nothing more than we should natu- 
 rally expect : just as water may go on boiling after it is taken off the fire, 
 as flowers keep their scent and color after we have plucked them, or as a 
 tree whose roots have been cut may yet put out green leaves for one 
 spring more. But a time must come when all this will be over, and when
 
 A MODERN " S YMPO SIUM." 
 
 209 
 
 the true effects of what has been done will begin to show themselves. 
 Nor can there be any reason brought forward to show why, if the creed of 
 unbelief was once fully assented to by the world, all morality a thing 
 always attended by some pain and struggle would not gradually wither 
 away, and give place to a more or less successful seeking after pleasure, 
 no matter of what kind. 
 
 I would also recall to Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen's remem- 
 brance an admirable statement of his, which occurs in the 
 work on " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." " We cannot 
 judge of the effects of Atheism," he says, " from the conduct 
 of persons who have been educated as believers in God, and 
 in the midst of a nation which believes in God. If we should 
 ever see a generation of men, especially a generation of 
 Englishmen, to whom the word 'God' has no meaning at 
 all, we should get a light on the subject which might be lurid 
 enough."^ 
 
 So far I have used the word "morality" in that sense 
 which I account the true one. But a different acceptation of 
 the word is very common ; and it will be better perhaps 
 briefly to consider our proposed question in the sense which 
 that acceptation would give it. Morality, then, is often 
 spoken of as consisting in a man's sacrifice of his personal 
 desires for the public good ; so that each man more faithfully 
 practises " morality," in proportion as he more effectively 
 postpones private interests to public ones. I have always 
 been extremely surprised that any Theist can use this termin- 
 ology ; though I am well aware, of course, that may do so. 
 To mention no other of its defects, it excludes from the 
 sphere of morality precisely what a Theist must consider the 
 
 ^ Second edition, p. 326. 
 14
 
 2IO QUESTIONS OF BELIEF, 
 
 most noble and elevating branch thereof viz., men's duties 
 to their Creator. Constant remembrance of God's presence, 
 prayer to Him for moral strength, purging the heart from any- 
 such worldly attachment as may interfere with His sovereignty 
 over the affections these, and a hundred others, which are 
 man's highest moral actions, are excluded by this strange 
 terminology from being moral actions at all. Still in one 
 respect there is great agreement between the two " moral- 
 ities " in question, for under either of them morality very 
 largely consists in self-denial and self-sacrifice. 
 
 Now, if it be asked in what way morality, as so under- 
 stood, would be affected by the absence of religious belief, 
 I think the true reply is one which has so often been drawn 
 out that I need do no more than indicate it. Firstly, apart 
 from Theistic motives there is no sufficient moral leverage ; 
 men would not have the moral strength required for sustained 
 self-denial and self-sacrifice. Secondly and more importantly, 
 if Theistic sanctions were away, no theory could be drawn 
 out explaining why it should be reasonable that a man sacri- 
 fice his personal interest to that of his fellows. 
 
 On this matter I am glad that I have the opportimity of 
 drawing attention to a very fine passage of Mr. Goldwin 
 Smith's, published in the Macmillan of last January : 
 
 Materialism has in fact already begun to show its effects on human 
 conduct and on society. They may perhaps be more visible in communi- 
 ties where social conduct depends greatly on individual conviction and 
 motive than in communities which are more ruled by tradition and bound 
 together by strong class organizations ; though the decay of morality will 
 perhaps be more complete and disastrous in the latter than in the former. 
 God and future retribution being out of the question, it is difficult to see 
 what can restrain the selfishness of an ordinary man, and induce him, in
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM. " 211 
 
 the absence of actual coercion, to sacrifice his personal desires to the 
 public good. The service of humanity is the sentiment of a refined mind 
 conversant with history ; within no calculable time is it likely to overrule 
 the passions and direct the conduct of the mass. And after all, without 
 God or spirit, what is " humanity ? " One school of science reckons a 
 hundred and fifty different species of man. What is the bond of unity 
 between all these species, and wherein consists the obligation to mutual 
 love and help ? A zealous servant of science told Agassiz that the age of 
 real civilization would have begun when you could go out and shoot a 
 man for scientific purposes ; and in the controversy respecting the Jamaica 
 massacre we had proof enough that the ascendency of science and a 
 strong sense of human brotherhood might be very different things. 
 "Apparent dirae facies." We begin to perceive, looming through the 
 mist, the lineaments of an epoch of selfishness compressed by a govern- 
 ment of force. 
 
 In fact, even in the present early stage of English anti- 
 theistic philosophy, if its adherents are directly asked what is 
 man's reasonable rule of life, I know of no other answer they 
 will theoretically give except one. They will say that any 
 given person's one reasonable pursuit on earth is to aim at his 
 own earthly happiness to obtain for himself out of life the 
 greatest amount he can of gratification. No doubt they will 
 make confident statements, on the indissoluble connection be- 
 tween happiness and "virtue." Still, according to their specu- 
 lative theory, the only reasonable ground for practising " vir- 
 tue" is its conduciveness to the agent's happiness. 
 
 Now let us suppose a generation to grow up, profoundly 
 imbued with this principle, carrj'ing it consistently into detail, 
 emancipated from the unconscious influence of (what I must 
 be allowed to call) a more respectable creed. What would be 
 the result ? Evidently a man so trained, in calculating for 
 himself the balance of pleasure and pain, will give no credit 
 on the former side to such gratifications as might arise from
 
 2 1 2 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 consciousness of conquest over his lower nature, or from the 
 pursuit of lofty and generous aims. These, I say, will have no 
 place in his list of pleasures ; because he will have duly learned 
 his lesson, that there is no " lower '' or " higher " nature ; 
 that no one aim can be " loftier " than any other ; that there is 
 nothing more admirable in generosity than in selfishness. On 
 the other hand, neither will he include, under his catalogue 
 oipains, any feeling of remorse for evil committed, or any 
 dread of possible punishment in some future life ; for he will 
 look ' with simple contempt on those doctrines, which are 
 required as the foundation for such pains. His common- 
 sense course will be to make this world as comfortable a 
 place as he can, by bringing every possible prudential calcu- 
 lation to bear on his purpose. Before all things he will keep 
 his digestion in good order. He will keep at arm's-length 
 (indeed at many arms'-lengths) every disquieting considera- 
 tion, such, e.g., as might arise from a remembrance of other 
 men's misery, or from a thought of that repulsive spectre 
 which the superstitious call moral obligation. 
 
 It is plain that duly to pursue the subject thus opened 
 would carry me indefinitely beyond my limits ; ^ and I will 
 only therefore make one concluding observation. If the term 
 " virtue " be retained by those of whom I am speaking, it will 
 be used, I suppose, to express any habitual practice, which 
 solidly conduces to the agent's balance of earthly enjoyment. I 
 am confident that, should this be the recognized terminology, 
 and should the new school be permitted to arrive at its legiti- 
 
 ' I have treated it at somewhat greater length in an article which I con- 
 tributed to the Dublin Revirw of last Januarj', pp. 15-21.
 
 A MODERN- " symposium:' 213 
 
 mate development, there is one habit which would be very 
 prominent among its catalogue of " virtues." The habit to 
 which I refer is indulgence in licentiousness licentiousness 
 practised no doubt prudently, discreetly, calculatingly, but at 
 the same time habitually, perseveringly, and with keen zest. 
 
 PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 
 
 We are led to do this thing, and to avoid that, partly by 
 instinct and partly by conscious motives ; and our conduct is 
 said to be moral or the reverse, partly on the ground of its 
 effects upon other beings, partly upon that of its operation 
 upon ourselves. 
 
 Social morality relates to that course of action which tends 
 to increase the happiness or diminish the misery of other 
 beings ; personal morality relates to that which has the like 
 effect upon ourselves. 
 
 If this be so, the foundation of morality must needs lie in 
 the constitution of nature, and must depend on the mental 
 construction of ourselves and of other sentient beings. 
 
 The constitution of man remaining what it is, his capacity 
 for the pleasures and pains afforded by sense, by sympathy, 
 or by the contemplation of moral beauty and ugliness, is ob- 
 viously in no way affected by the abbreviation of the prolon- 
 gation of his conscious life ; nor by the mere existence 
 or non-existence of anything not included in nature ; nor, so 
 long as he believes that actions have consequences, does 
 it matter to him what connection there may be between these 
 actions and other phenomena of nature.
 
 jn 4 Q UESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 The assertion that morality is in any way dependent upon 
 the views respecting certain philosophical problems a person 
 may chance to hold, produces the same effect upon my mind 
 as if one should say that a man's vision depends on his 
 theory of light ; or that he has no business to be sure that 
 ginger is hot in the mouth unless he has formed definite views, 
 in the first place, as to the nature of ginger, and, secondly, as 
 to whether he has or has not a sensitive soul. 
 
 Social morality belongs to the realm of inductive and de- 
 ductive investigation. Given a society of human beings under 
 certain circumstances ; and the question whether a particular 
 action on the part of one of the members of that society will tend 
 to the increase of the general happiness or not, is a question of 
 natural knowledge, and, as such, is a perfectly legitimate sub- 
 ject of scientific inquiry. And the morality or immorality of 
 the action will depend upon the answer which the question 
 receives. 
 
 If it can be shown by observation or experiment that theft, 
 murder, and adultery do not tend to diminish the happiness 
 of society, then, in the absence of any but natural knowledge, 
 they are not social immoralities. 
 
 It does not follow, however, that they might not be per- 
 sonal immoralities. Without committing myself to any 
 theory of the origin of the moral sense, or even as to the ex- 
 istence of any such special sense, I may suggest that it 
 is quite conceivable that discords and harmonies may affect 
 the congeries of feelings to which we give the name, as they 
 do others, 
 
 I see no reason for doubting that the beauty of holiness
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 215 
 
 and the ugliness of sin are, to a great many minds, no mere 
 metaphors, but feelings as real and as intense as those with 
 which the beauty or ugliness of form or color fills the artist 
 mind, and that they are as independent of intellectual beliefs, 
 and even of education, as are all the true aesthetic powers and 
 impulses. 
 
 On the other hand, I do not doubt the existence of persons, 
 like the hero of the Fatal Boots, devoid of any sense of moral 
 beauty or ugliness, and for them personal morality has no ex- 
 istence. They may offend, but they cannot sin ; they may 
 be sorry for having stolen or murdered, because society pun- 
 ishes them for their social immoralities, but they are inca- 
 pable of repentance. 
 
 Before going further, I think it may be needful to dis- 
 criminate between religion and theology. 
 
 I object to the very general use of the terms Religion and 
 Theology as if they were synonymous, or indeed had anything 
 whatever to do with one another. Religion is the affair of the 
 affections, theology of the intellect. The religious man loves 
 an ideal perfection, which may be natural or non-natural ; the 
 theologian expounds the attributes of what he terms " super- 
 natural " Being as so many scientific truths, the consequences 
 of which work into the general scheme of nature, and are 
 there discernible by ordinary methods of investigation. What 
 the theologian affirms may be put in this way that beyond the 
 natura naturata, mirrored or made by the natural operations 
 of the human mind, there is a natura naturans, sufficient 
 knowledge of which is attainable only through the channel of 
 revelation.
 
 2i6 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 Now I think it cannot be doubted that both religion and 
 theology, as thus defined, have exercised, and must exercise, 
 a profound influence on morality. For it may be that the 
 object of a man's religion the ideal which he worships is 
 an ideal of sensual enjoyment, or of domination, or of the 
 development of all his faculties towards perfection, or of self- 
 annihilation, or of benevolence ; and his personal morality 
 will, in part, contribute largely to the formation of his ideal, 
 and will, in part, be swayed and bent until it harmonizes with 
 that ideal. 
 
 Moreover, it is clear that a man's theology may give him 
 such views of the action of the natura naturans as will pro- 
 foundly modify or even reverse his social morality. 
 
 He may see ground for believing that conduct of evil 
 effect upon society, which is part of the natura naturata, is in 
 harmony with the laws of action of the natura naturans ; and 
 that, as the rewards and punishments of men are but slight 
 and temporary, while those inflicted by the greater power be- 
 hind the natura naturata are grievous and endless, common 
 prudence may dictate obedience to the stronger. And history 
 proves that there is no social crime that man can commit 
 which has not been dictated by theology and committed on 
 theological grounds. On the other hand, the belief that the 
 divine commands are identical with the laws of social moral- 
 ity has lent infinite strength to the latter in all ages. 
 
 In like manner it seems to me impossible to overestimate 
 the influence of speculative beliefs as to the nature of the 
 Deity, apart from all idea of rewards and punishments, upon 
 personal morality. The lover of moral beauty, struggling
 
 A MODERN " SYMPOSIUM." 2 1 7 
 
 through a world full of sorrow and sin, is surely as much the 
 stronger for believing that sooner or later a vision of perfect 
 peace and goodness will burst upon him, as the toiler up a 
 mountain for the belief that beyond crag and snow lies home 
 and rest. For the other side of the picture, who shall exag- 
 gerate the deadly influence on personal morality of those the- 
 ologies which have represented the Deity as vainglorious, irri- 
 table, and revengeful as a sort of pedantic drill-sergeant of 
 mankind, to whom no valor, no long-tried loyalty, could 
 atone for the misplacement of a button of the uniform, or the 
 misunderstanding of a paragraph of the " regulations and in- 
 structions ? " 
 
 While no one can dare history, or even look about him, 
 without admitting the enormous influence of theology on 
 morality, it would perhaps be hard to say whether it has been 
 greater or less than the influence of morality on theology. 
 But the latter topic is not at present under discussion ; and 
 the only further remark I would venture to add is this that 
 the intensity and reality of the action of theological beliefs 
 upon morality are precisely measured by the conviction of 
 those who hold them that they are true. That such and such 
 a doctrine conduces to morality, and disbelief in it to im- 
 morality, may be demonstrated by an endless array of con- 
 vincing syllogisms ; but unless the doctrine is true, the prac- 
 tical result of this expenditure of logic is not apparent. I 
 have not the slightest doubt that if mankind could be got to 
 believe that every socially immoral act would be instantly 
 followed by three months' severe toothache, such acts would 
 soon cease to be perpetrated. It would be a faith charged
 
 2i8 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 with most beneficent works, but unfortunately this faith can 
 so easily be shown to be disaccordant with fact that it is not 
 worth while to become its prophet. 
 
 For my part I do not for one moment admit that morality 
 is not strong enough to hold its own. But if it is demonstrated 
 to me that I am wrong, and that without this or that theologi- 
 cal dogma the human race will lapse into bipedal cattle, more 
 brutal than the beasts by the measure of their greater clever- 
 ness, my next question is to ask for the proof of the truth of 
 the dogma. 
 
 If this proof is forthcoming, it is my conviction that no 
 drowning sailor ever clutched a hencoop more tenaciously 
 than mankind will hold by such dogma, whatever it may be. 
 But if not, then I verily believe that the human race will go 
 its evil way ; and my only consolation lies in the reflection 
 that, however bad our posterity may become, so long as they 
 hold by the plain rule of not pretending to believe what they 
 have no reason to believe because it may be to their advan- 
 tage so to pretend, they will not have reached the lowest 
 depths of immorality. 
 
 MR. R. H. HUTTON. 
 
 That has happened to us which happened to the disputants 
 in that Attic Symposium from which, I suppose, the name for 
 our discussion was taken. We have been interrupted by a 
 ** great knocking at the door " and the entrance of an unbidden 
 guest, who, however, shows no sign either of Alcibiades' in- 
 toxication, or of that generous disposition to crown the most
 
 A MODERN '' symposium:' 2\<^ 
 
 deserving with garlands, which may perhaps have had some 
 connection with the excesses of the brilliant Athenian's pota- 
 tions. The Saturday Reviewer, who, without dropping his 
 mask, has thrust upon us his own criticism on our discussion,* 
 has certainly not conferred the most meagre of wreaths on 
 any one, unless indeed it may be said that he grudgingly 
 crowns the Dean of St. Paul's and the Duke of Argyll with a 
 withered sprig or two of parsley, for pointing out that our 
 subject is much too vague, and for trying to narrow a discus- 
 sion so " abstract and ill-defined." His general criticism is 
 contained in the harsh remark that " all the fine talk of the 
 chosen illuminati is a mass of words with very little meaning," 
 and that " the deliberations of the Symposium bear a very 
 strong resemblance to those of the diplomatists who have 
 been lately concocting protocols ; that is, they consist of 
 empty phrases to which all the parties can agree because they 
 do not touch any of the points on which the co-signataries 
 would be likely to differ." That is a much crueller interrup- 
 tion than any caused by Alcibiades to the guests assembled 
 at the Symposium of Plato, nor do I think it is quite just, 
 though there is enough justice in it to make me try to bring 
 out what seem to me the clearly understood issues between 
 us a little more distinctly, in the few words I have to say. 
 To limit the subject as much as possible, I will speak of 
 nothing but the effect likely to be produced on morality by 
 any decline in the belief in a righteous God independent of, 
 and external to, the human race in one, that is, whose lead- 
 ing purpose in relation to us is believed to be to mould 
 * See Saturday Review for March 31, art. " A Modern Symposium."
 
 220 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 our motives and characters into the likeness of his own. 
 Now it seems to me that all the previous speakers except 
 two, Mr. Frederic Harrison and Professor Clifford, believe, 
 for different reasons, and in different degrees, that such a 
 decline in such a belief in God would probably result in 
 parallel decline in human morality though some insist most, 
 like Sir James Stephen and Professor Huxley, on the point 
 that any attempt to bolster up the belief artificially for the 
 sake of its moral consequences, by discountenancing free 
 discussion, would result in a worse decline of morality, 
 and others insist most, like Dr. Martineau, Lord Selborne, 
 and Dean Church, on the point that the same causes which 
 result in a decline in this belief (especially as it is represented 
 in Christi-anity) are likely to result also in a decline in the 
 force of the ethical principles so closely associated with it. 
 But I do not understand any one to differ with Professor 
 Huxley that if the belief can be shown to be false, be the 
 moral consequence what it may, it ought to go. On the other 
 hand, I understand both Mr. Harrison and Professor Clifford 
 to assert that the causes which, as they think, have under- 
 mined and are undermining the belief in a righteous God, 
 external to the human race, have no tendency to undermine 
 the binding power of the highest human ethics, but, on the 
 contrary, have a direct tendency to elevate and refine them, 
 though Professor Clifford regards this tendency as, on the 
 whole, slight, and confined chiefly to the blow which such a 
 change in belief will have in diminishing the control of the 
 clerg)', while Mr. Harrison expects very much indeed from it, 
 if only through its tendency to concentrate on the desirable
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 221 
 
 aims of a real world, an enthusiasm now so much dissipated, 
 in his opinion, by lavishing it on imaginary objects. 
 
 Now, while I heartily admit with Professor Huxley the 
 conceivability that a gross delusion like the belief "that 
 every socially immoral act would instantly be followed by 
 three months, severe toothache " if it could be palmed off 
 successfully upon our race, would have some very beneficial 
 consequences (some also by no means beneficial) and 
 should not a bit the less regard a conspiracy, even if one 
 were practicable, to impose such a delusion on our race, as a 
 great sin, I cannot the more on that account see how to dis- 
 entangle the question whether there be a righteous God ex- 
 ternal to men from the question whether there would be a 
 great moral loss to human nature in the dissipation of the be- 
 lief in such a God. It is quite conceivable nay, it has often 
 happened that a sincere delusion has produced the best 
 results. The belief in an imaginary danger of death, for in- 
 stance, has often made a man take life more seriously ; and 
 the belief in an imaginary danger of invasion has probably 
 often bound a divided nation together and given it a greater 
 nervous strength and manliness. But though it is easy to 
 conceive a belief, in some respects beneficial, which is wholly 
 false, it seems to me, in the case before us, that the very ele- 
 ment in the belief we are discussing which makes it beneficial, 
 is also a clear note of its truth. What makes the belief in 
 such a God as I have spoken of beneficial, is that this belief, 
 and this only, gives to the attitude of man's mind, in relation 
 to right motive and right action, that mixture of courage and 
 cheerful irresponsibility for the result, characteristic of z. faith.
 
 22 2 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 Luther's great saying, " We say to our Lord God that if He 
 will have his Church, He must uphold it, for we cannot up- 
 hold it, and, even if we could, we should become the proudest 
 asses under heaven," ^ would be of course simply untranslatable 
 into any humanist or Positivist dialect at all. I do not in- 
 deed quite know what Mr. Harrison means when he talks of 
 a " frankly human " religion which shall provide us with a 
 " Providence " whom we are " to love and serve ; " but I sup- 
 pose he must mean that we are to love that law of the uni- 
 verse which produces a certain amount of correspondence 
 between our nature and its " environment," and that we are 
 to cooperate with that law. At least this is the only meaning 
 I am able to attach to " loving and serving " a Providence 
 without believing in God. Now for myself I am incapable of 
 loving a mere law of any kind, whether it be a law of gravita- 
 tion, a law of assimilation between my organism and its en- 
 vironment, or any other ; and as for " serving " it, I like to 
 judge for myself, and, instead of allowing myself always to be 
 assimilated to my "environment," I sometimes prefer what is 
 called, in the language of the same philosophy, " differentia- 
 ting " myself from it. But I think even Mr. Harrison would 
 hardly justify language of trust like Luther's towards a 
 '* Being " of whom we are supposed to know nothing except 
 that it has given rise to the earth we live on, and will most 
 likely, in a few thousand years, also put a final end to it. You 
 cannot trust a being of whose purposes, or capacity for having 
 purposes, you know nothing, because trust implies approving 
 those purposes and believing them to be accompanied by a 
 * Tischreden, ed. Fbrstemann, Leipzig, 1844, vol. ii. p. 330.
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' 223 
 
 far higher range of knowledge and foresight than your own. 
 Yet has not all the benefit of trust in God arisen from that 
 humility and courage, that self-abandonment to a higher will, 
 that sense of complete irresponsibility for the result when the 
 right thing is once done, which constitute moral heroism ? 
 Could such moral heroism survive the belief in a divine will 
 which is shaping all right action to a perfect end ? Suppose 
 we believed in unknown causes which produce indeed such 
 moral phenomena as those of human life for a moment in the 
 long ages of evolution which bring them like a ripple to the 
 surface, but quench them, like that ripple, for evermore, and 
 which are as certain so to quench them as the sun is one day ' 
 to be burnt out, is it possible we could cast ourselves on 
 such unknown causes with the sort of faith in God that has 
 " moved mountains," and that will move mountains again, that 
 will say, for instance, to this huge dead weight of Secularism 
 and Positivism, " Be thou cast into the sea," and it will obey ? 
 Nor can I see any better help in Professor Clifford's sub- 
 stitute for God namely, the higher self represented by " the 
 voice of our Father Man who is within us," i.e. by " the ac- 
 cumulated instinct of the race poured into each one of us '> 
 and overflowing us, " as if the ocean were poured into a cup." 
 The "accumulated instinct of our race" includes a great deal 
 of evil as well as good, and is often unaccompanied by any 
 accumulation of instinct for the suppressing of the evil by the 
 good. I quite agree with those who have urged that it was 
 the " accumulated instinct " of the Athenian people which 
 taught them the necessity of putting down Socrates as one 
 who was undermining the social order to which he belonged.
 
 22 4 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 I do not doubt that Socrates shared that accumulated instinct 
 not less nay, probably, much more than the rest of his 
 countrymen. Probably it overflowed him " as an ocean might 
 overflow a cup." Nevertheless the solitary voice within him, 
 which he attributed to his " daemon," though it could not 
 drown the voice of this " accumulated instinct," was heard 
 above it, and prevailed over the pleas of comradeship, and 
 over what Professor Clifford deems the only " spring of 
 virtuous action," the impulse which invites men to make in- 
 dividual sacrifices to promote the greater efficiency of the 
 social bond. 
 
 Some one may wonder (says Socrates in Plato's Apology) why I go 
 about in private giving advice and busying myself with the concerns of 
 others, but do not venture to come forward in public and advise the State. 
 I will tell you the reason of this. You have often heard me speak of an 
 oracle or sign which comes to" me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridi- 
 cules in the indictment. This sign I have had ever since I was a child. 
 The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do some- 
 thing which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and 
 this is what stands in the way of my being a politician. And rightly, as I 
 think. For I am certain, O men of Athens, that if I had eng-iged in pol 
 itics I should have perished long ago and done no good either to you or 
 to myself. And don't be afraid of my telling you the truth, for the truth 
 is that no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honest- 
 ly struggling against the commission of unrighteousness and wrong in the 
 State, will save his life ; he who will really fight for the right, if he would 
 live even for a little while, must have a private station and not a public 
 one.* 
 
 This is unsocial doctrine enough, and of course Professor 
 Clifford will say that, though fatal to the existing Athenian 
 State, it had its source in instincts essential to a higher politi- 
 cal virtue and to the cohesion of a nobler kind of State. 
 1 Professor Jowett's Flalo, vol. i. p. 346, ist ed.
 
 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 225 
 
 Grant it for a moment. Yet how can we expect moral hero- 
 ism of the same type as that which is convinced that invisible 
 Power is on its side, and trusts to the vindication of the future, if 
 instead of ascribing the origin of its impulses to a divine Power 
 which is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever a Power 
 above it and beyond it, he who has to evince this moral 
 heroism believes that there is no inspiring mind higher than 
 his own, and holds, therefore, that he must rely on himself, 
 and on himself alone, for the fine faculty to discriminate be- 
 tween the inchoate order of a new society, and the worn-out 
 guarantees of an order which is passing away ? How is one 
 who is fully aware that he is dissolving the ancient bonds of 
 a venerable society and polity, but who only hopes that he is 
 creating the germs of something better, to set his face against 
 the brotherhood among whom he lives, and to defy the wrath 
 of the fellow-citizens whom he sees, and all without the whis- 
 per of approval from any spiritual being behind the veil? 
 Surely the hesitating inspiration of that long-buried ancestor, 
 " our Father Man " to admit, for a moment. Professor Clif- 
 ford's assumption when it spells out dubious and unaccus- 
 tomed lessons which the voices of our brother-men join, in 
 loud chorus, to decry, would not be very likely to triumph 
 over fears and scruples which " our Father Man " also au- 
 thenticates, and authenticates much more positively than he 
 ever can authenticate the first faintly uttered principles of a 
 new kind of social union against the old. What was it, as I 
 asked before, which stimulated Luther to his gigantic enter- 
 prise ? Not the doubtful guess that buried generations had 
 transmitted to him the glimpse of a reform which would trans- 
 
 15
 
 226 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 figure society, but the belief that he could honestly use the 
 language of that psalm that he so much delighted to appro- 
 priate to himself : " They came about me like bees, and are 
 extinct even as the fire among the thorns, for in the name of the 
 Lord I will destroy them." Whether the belief in " our Father 
 Man " and in a tentative Providence which does x^oX. foresee, 
 but only accommodates the individual to his "environment," as 
 the only guides of our moral life, be wild or sober, this, I 
 think, is clear, that it does not provide the martyr or the re- 
 former with the stimulating power of di faith ; that it can give 
 no confidence like that in an inspiration of far wider grasp 
 and far deeper purpose than any which the reformer himself 
 commands; that it leaves him a ix\^xq. pioneer amidst dangers 
 and difficulties to which it may turn out that both he and his 
 race are quite unequal, instead of a humble follower obeying 
 the beckoning of one who holds both past and future in his 
 hand. 
 
 And now as to my second point that the very element 
 which gives so beneficial a character to the belief that con- 
 science is the inspiration of God the very element which 
 makes it a useful and practically stimulating belief, and not, 
 as Professor Clifford calls it, a mere source of " refined and 
 elevated pleasure " is also a note of its truth. I hold this 
 to be so because the very experience which produces the trust 
 is an experience of life, and of life morally higher than one's 
 self. Surely, if we are competent, as we are, to say when our 
 friends and our favorite books tempt us, and when they raise 
 us above temptation, we are also competent to say when 
 thoughts that strike with a living power upon the heart come
 
 A MODERN '' SYMPOSIUM." 227 
 
 from a higher, and when they come from a lower source than 
 that of our own habitual principles of action when they 
 come with promise and command, and when they come 
 with discordant sneers, discouragement, and enervation. 
 When we grasp dimly at a great moral principle which is full, 
 to use Professor Tyndall's language, of " the promise and 
 potency " of all forms of life when the more we consider it, 
 the less we see where it is leading us, and yet only feel the 
 more confidence in it on that account when we recognize a 
 clue and a guide without recognizing where that clue and that 
 guide are pointing to when we know that it is our duty to 
 defy the world in the name of a principle of which we can- 
 not gauge the full meaning, or measure even the immediate 
 effects (and this is, as I maintain, the true phenomenon visi- 
 ble in all great moral, as in all great intellectual, origination) 
 then it does seem to me to be a sober and wholesome con- 
 viction that that which we^o not know, there is one who puts 
 the clue into our hands, who does know ; that what we cannot 
 foresee, there is one who does foresee ; that we are grasping 
 the hand of a Power which knows the way before as well as 
 behind ; that we are following the glimmer of a ray which 
 will lead us on to the dayspring from which it descended. I 
 cannot but believe that we have as secure a faculty to dis- 
 criminate the superiority of the life in which a moral impres- 
 sion originates, as we have to discriminate its rightness itself 
 that it is one and the same act of discrimination which says 
 "This is obligatory," and which says "This is instinct with 
 divine life and promise." To suppose that a dead ancestry 
 are flashing through us these commands which at once repu-
 
 2 28 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 diate their principles and nerve us against the wrath of their 
 descendants, seems to me, I confess, a degrading superstition. 
 If " we boast to be better than our fathers," it must be some 
 one better than our fathers who is giving us our watchword. 
 This is why I hold that to lose the faith in God would be to 
 lose a great inheritance of moral order and moral progress, 
 and also to lose at the same moment a truth in comparison 
 with which all other truths are as dim and isolated sparks be- 
 side a pillar of fire that can guide us through a wilderness 
 that we have never even explored. 
 
 SIR JAMES STEPHEN. 
 
 The paper which began this discussion was entitled " The 
 Influence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious Belief." 
 The Dean of St. Paul's remarks : " It seems to me difficult to 
 discuss this question till it is settled, at least generally, what 
 morality is influenced, and what religious belief is declining." 
 The Duke of Argyll observes that these papers " deal with a 
 question very abstract and ill-defined." Dr. Ward says that 
 ** the wording of our question is unfortunately ambiguous, and 
 I think that this fact has made the discussion in several re- 
 spects less pointed and less otherwise interesting than it might 
 have been." 
 
 To these criticisms I reply that the title of my paper con- 
 tains no questions at all, and was not intended to do so. It 
 is simply an indication, in the most general terms, of the sub- 
 ject to which the paper of which it is the title relates. Any- 
 one who will take the trouble to read the paper will see that
 
 A MODERN " symposium:' ^29 
 
 its princiiDal object was to assert the proposition with which 
 it concludes, which is in these words : 
 
 This [/>. the whole of the preceding argument] shows that the sup- 
 port which an existing creed gives to an existing system of morals is irrel- 
 evant to its truth, and that the question whether a given system of morals 
 is good or bad cannot be fully determined until after the determination of 
 the question whether the theology on which it rests is true or false. The 
 morality is [I should have said " may be "] good if it is founded on a true 
 estimate of the consequences of human actions. But if it is founded on a 
 false theology it is founded on a false estimate of the consequences of 
 human actions ; and so far as that is the case it cannot be good ; and the 
 circumstance that it is supported by the theology to which it refers is an 
 argument against, and not in favour of, that theology. 
 
 The only "question" which my paper was intended' to 
 raise is the question wl ether that proposition is true or not? 
 I do not see how its truth can depend (as the Dean of St. 
 Paul's suggests) upon further particulars as to "what moral- 
 ity is influenced," or " what theology is declining." I said 
 nothing about the decline of any particular theological belief, 
 or its influence on any particular system of morals. My prop- 
 osition would apply to all creeds and all forms of morality. 
 
 As to the Duke of Argyll's statement that " the question 
 is very abstract and ill-defined," I should admit its justice if 
 the title of the paper were taken as the statement of a ques- 
 tion. But this is not the case. The proposition which I put 
 forward, in the hope that it would be discussed, is no doubt 
 general in its terms, but it seemed, and still seems to me, def- 
 inite enough to be discussed. As to the " ambiguity " of 
 which Dr. Ward complains, I cannot see how my proposition 
 can have more meanings than one. 
 
 The papers which have been written subsequently to my
 
 230 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 paper raise a great variety of points which I feel much tempt- 
 ed to discuss, but I hardly feel at liberty to do so, as they do 
 not in any way qualify anything said by me. Each paper, 
 indeed, is an illustration of the truth of some part of my 
 proposition or of the assertions by which it is introduced ; for 
 each shows in various ways how very close is the connection 
 in the writer's mind between the theological system which he 
 believes to be true and the moral system which he considers 
 to be good ; and this again shows that the question of truth 
 must precede the question of goodness, and cannot be deter- 
 mined by any answer which may be given to the latter question. 
 I cannot help thinking that if this were generally understood 
 it would affect very deeply the character of a great proportion 
 of current theological speculation.
 
 THE COURSE OF MODERN THOUGHT} 
 
 BY G. H. LEWES. 
 
 Modern Philosophy has moved along two increasingly di- 
 vergent lines. One traversed by Galileo, Descartes, Newton, 
 and Laplace, had for its goal the absolute disengagement of 
 the physical from the mental, i.e. the objective from the sub- 
 jective aspect of phenomena, so that the physical universe, 
 thus freed from all the complexities of Feeling, might be in- 
 terpreted in mechanical terms. As a preliminary simplifica- 
 tion of the problem this was indispensable \ only by it could 
 the First Notion of primitive speculation be replaced by the 
 Theoretic Conception of scientific speculation.^ The early 
 thinker inevitably invested all external objects with proper- 
 ties and qualities similar to those he assigned to human be- 
 ings, their actions he assigned to human motives. Sun, moon, 
 and stars seemed living beings ; flames, streams, and winds 
 were supposed to be moved by feelings such as those known to 
 move animals and men. Nor was any other conception then 
 possible : men could only interpret the unknown by the known, 
 
 ^ The Fortnightly Review, March, 1877. This essay is to form 
 part of a forthcoming volume on The Physical Basis of Mind. 
 
 2 On the distinction between first notions and theoretic conceptions, 
 sec Mr. Lewes' Problems of Life and Mind, vol. ii. p. 251.
 
 232 Q UESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 and tlieir standard of all action was necessarily drawn from their 
 own actions. Not having analyzed Volition and Emotion, above 
 all, not having localized these in a neuro-muscular system, 
 men could not suspect that the movements of planets and 
 plants, and of streams and stones, had motors of a different 
 kind from the movements of animals. The scientific concep- 
 tion of inert insensible Matter was only attained through a 
 long education in abstraction; and is assuredly never at- 
 tained by animals, or by savages. But no sooner were vital 
 conditions recognized, than the difference between vital and 
 mechanical movements emerged. When men learned that 
 many of their own actions were unaccompanied either by Love 
 or Hate, by Pleasure or Pain, and that many were unprompted 
 by conscious intention, while others were unaccompanied by 
 conscious sensation, they easily concluded that wherever the 
 special conditions of Feeling were absent, the actions must 
 have some other motors. Intelligence, Emotion, Volition, and 
 Sensation being one by one stripped away from all but a 
 particular class of bodies, nothing remained for the other 
 bodies but insensible Matter and Motion. This was the 
 Theoretic Conception which science substituted for the First 
 Notion. It was aided by the observation .of the misleading 
 tendency of interpreting physical phenomena by the human 
 standard, substituting our fancies in the place of facts, manipu- 
 lating the order of the universe according to our imagination 
 of what it might be, or ought to be. Hence the vigilance of 
 the new school in suppressing everything pertaining to the 
 subjective aspect of phenomena, and the insistance on a 
 purely objective classification, so that by this means we might
 
 THE COURSE OF MODERN THOUGHT. 233 
 
 attain to a knowledge of things as they are. By thus with- 
 drawing Life and Mind from Nature, and regarding the uni- 
 verse solely in the light of Motion and the laws of Motion, two 
 great scientific ends were furthered, namely, a classification of 
 conceptions, and a precision of terms. Objective phenomena 
 made a class apart, and the great aim of research was to find a 
 mathematical expression for all varieties under this class. 
 Masses were conceived as aggregates of Atoms, and these were 
 reduced to mathematical points. Forces were only different 
 modes of Motion. All the numberless differences which per- 
 ception recognized as qualities in things were reduced to 
 mere variations in quantity. Thus all that was particular and 
 concrete became resolved by analysis into what was general 
 and abstract. The Cosmos then only presented a problem of 
 mechanics. 
 
 During this evolution, the old Dualism (which conceived 
 a material universe sharply demarcated from the mental uni- 
 verse) kept its ground, and attained even greater precision. 
 The logical distinction between Matter and Mind was ac- 
 cepted as an essential distinction, i.e. representing distinct 
 reals. There was on one side a group of phenomena, Matter 
 and Force ; on the other side an unallied group, Feeling and 
 Thought ; between them an impassable gulf. How the two 
 were brought into relation, each acting and reacting on the 
 other, was dismissed as an " insoluble mystery " or relegated 
 to Metaphysics for such minds as chose to puzzle over ques- 
 tions not amenable to experiment. Physics, confident in the 
 possession of mathematical and experimental methods which 
 yielded definite answers to properly restricted questions, 
 peremptorily refused to listen to any suggestion of the kind.
 
 234 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 And the career of Physics was so triumphant that success 
 seemed to justify its indifference. 
 
 In our own day this analytical school has begun to extend 
 its methods even to the mental group. Having reduced all 
 the objective group to mathematical treatment, it now tries to 
 bring the subjective group also within its range. Not only 
 has there been more than one attempt at a mathematical Psy- 
 chology, but also attempts to reduce Sensibility, in its sub- 
 jective no less than in its objective aspect, to molecular move- 
 ment. Here also the facts of Quality are translated into facts 
 of Quantity ; and all diversities of Feeling are interpreted as 
 simply quantitative differences. 
 
 Thus far the one school. But while this Theoretic Con- 
 ception stripi^ed Nature of consciousness, motive, and pas- 
 sion, rendering it a mere aggregate of mathematical relations, 
 a critical process was going on, which, analyzing the nature of 
 Perception, was rapidly moving toward another goal. Locke, 
 Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, directing their analysis exclusively 
 to the subjective aspect of phenomena, soon broke down the 
 barriers between the physical and mental, and gradually 
 merged the former in the latter. Matter and its qualities, 
 hitherto accepted as independent realities, existing where no 
 Mind perceived them, were now viewed as the creations of 
 Mind their existence was limited to a state of the per- 
 cipient. The old Dualism was replaced by Idealism. The 
 Cosmos, instead of presenting a problem of Mechanics, now 
 presented a problem of Psychology. Beginning with what are 
 called the secondary qualities of Matter, the psychological 
 analysis resolved these into modes of feeling. "The heat 
 which the vulgar imagine to be in the fire and the color
 
 THE COURSE OF MODERN THOUGHT. 235 
 
 they imagine in the rose are not there at all, but are in us 
 mere states of our organism." Having gained this stand- 
 ing-place, there was no difficulty in extending the view from 
 the secondary to the primary qualities. These also were per- 
 ceiotions, and only existed in the percipient. Nothing then 
 remained of Matter save the hypothetical unknown :*: the 
 postulate of speculation. Kant seemed for ever to have closed 
 the door against the real Cosmos when he transformed it into 
 a group of mental forms Time, Space, Causality, Quantity, 
 &c. He propounded what may be called a theory of mental 
 Dioptrics, whereby a pictured universe became possible, as 
 Experience by its own A priori laws moulded itself vaio a con- 
 sistent group of appearances, which produced the illusion of 
 being a group of realities. He admitted, indeed, that by the 
 operation of Causality we are compelled to believe in a Real 
 underlying the appearances ; but the very fact that this Cau- 
 ality is a subjective law is proof, he said, of its not being an 
 objective truth. Thus the aim of the mechanical conception 
 was to free research from the misleading complexities of sub- 
 jective adulterations, and view things as they are apart from 
 their appearances; but this aim seemed illusory when Psy- 
 chology showed that Time, Space, Matter, and Motion were 
 themselves not objective reals except in so far as they repre- 
 sented subjective necessities ; and that, in short, things are 
 just what they appear, since it is only in the relation of exter- 
 nal reals to internal feelings that objects exist for us. 
 
 Idealism has been the outcome of the psychological method. 
 It has been of immense service in rectifying the dualistic con- 
 ception, and in correcting the mechanical conception. It
 
 236 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 has restored the subjective factor, which the mechanical con- 
 ception had eliminated. It has brought into incomparable 
 clearness the fundamental fact that all our knowledge springs 
 from, and is limited by, Feeling. It has shown that the uni- 
 verse represented in that knowledge can only be a picture of 
 the system of things as these exist in relation to our Sensibility. 
 But equally with the mechanical conception it has erred by 
 incomplete analysis. For a complete theory of the universe 
 or of any one phenomenon, those elementary conditions which 
 analysis has provisionally set aside must finally be restored. 
 When Quality is replaced by Quantity, this is an artifice of 
 method, which does not really correspond with fact. The 
 quality is the fact given in feeling, which we analytically refer 
 to quantitative differences, but which can never be wholly re- 
 solved into them, since it must be presupposed throughout. 
 One color, for example, may be distinguished from another 
 as having more or fewer undulations ; and so we may by ab- 
 straction, letting drop all qualitative characters, make a scale 
 of undulations to represent a scale of colors. But this is 
 an ideal figment. It is the representation of one series of 
 feelings by another series of different feelings. No variation 
 of undulations will really correspond with variation in color, 
 unless we re-introduce the suppressed quality which runs 
 through all color. Attempt to make one born blind feel, or 
 even understand, Color by describing to him the kind of 
 wave-movement which it is said to be, and the vanity of the 
 effort will be manifest. Movement he knows, and varieties of 
 movement as given in tactile and muscular sensations ; but no 
 combination and manipulation of such experiences can give
 
 THE COURSE OF MODERN THOUGHT. 237 
 
 him the specific sensation of color. That is a purely sub- 
 jective state which he is incapable of experiencing, simply be- 
 cause one of the essential factors is absent. One set of ob- 
 jective conditions is present, but the other set (his sense- 
 organ) is defective. Without the " greeting of the spirit " un- 
 dulations cannot become colors (nor even undulations, for 
 there also are forms of feeling). Besides the sense-organ 
 there is needed the feeling of Difference, which is itself the pro- 
 duct of past and jjresent feelings. The reproduction of other 
 colors, or other shades of color, is necessary to this perception 
 of difference ; and this involves the element of Likeness and 
 Unlikeness between what is produced and reproduced. So 
 that a certain mental co-operation is requisite even for the 
 simplest perception of quality. In fact, psychological analysis 
 shows that even Motion and Quantity, the two objective terms 
 to which subjective Quality is reduced, are themselves Funda- 
 mental Signatures of Feeling;^ so that here, as elsewhere, it 
 is only by analytical artifice that the objective can be divorced 
 from the subjective. Matter is for us the Felt ; its Qualities 
 are differences of feeling. 
 
 Not that this result is to be interpreted as freeing our 
 Theoretic Conception from its objective side, and landing us 
 in Idealism, which suppresses the real universe. The denial 
 of all reality apart from our minds is a twofold mistake ; it 
 confounds the conception of general relations with particular 
 relations, declaring that because the External in its relation to 
 the sentient organism can only be what it is felt to be, there- 
 
 I Not transcendental and it priari, as Kant teaches, but inimanent in 
 
 Feeling
 
 238 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 fore it can have no other relations to other individual reals. 
 This is the first mistake. The second is the disregard of the 
 constant presence of the objective real in every fact of Feel- 
 ing : the Not-Self is emphatically present in every conscious- 
 ness of Self. 
 
 The legitimate conclusion is neither that of Dualism nor 
 of Idealism, but what I have named Reasoned Realism 
 ("Problems," v^ol. i. p. 176), which reconciles Common Sense 
 with Speculative Logic, by showing that although the truth 
 of things (their Wahrheii) is just what we perceive in them 
 (our Wahrnchmiing), yet their reality is this, and much more 
 than this. Things are what they are felt to be ; and what 
 they are thought to be, when thoughts are symbols of the per- 
 ceptions. Idealism declares that they are nothing but this. 
 It is against this nothing but that Common Sense protests ; 
 and the protest is justified by Reasoned Realism, which, 
 taking a comprehensive survey of the facts, thus answers the 
 idealist : " Your synthesis is imperfect, since it does not in- 
 clude all the data notably it excludes the fact of an objec- 
 tive or Not-Self element in ever)' feeling. You may, con- 
 ceivably, regard the whole universe as nothing but a series of 
 changes in your consciousness ; but you cannot hope to con- 
 vince me that I myself am simply a change in yourself, or 
 that my body is only a fleeting image in your mind. Hence, 
 although I conclude that the Not-Self is to you, as to me, un- 
 divorceable from Self, inalienable from Feeling, in so far as 
 it is felt, yet there must nevertheless be for both of us an ex- 
 istence not wholly coextensive with our own. My world may 
 be my picture of it ; your world may be your picture of it ;
 
 THE COURSE OF MODERN TifOUGHT. 239 
 
 but there is something common to both which is more than 
 either an existent which has different relations to each. 
 You are not me, nor is the pictured Cosmos me, although I 
 picture it. Looking at you and it, I see a vast whole of which 
 you are a small part ; and such a part I conclude myself to 
 be. It is at once a picture and the pictured ; at once sub- 
 jective and objective. To me all your modes of existence are 
 objective aspects, which, drawn from my own experience, I 
 believe to have corresponding subjective aspects; so that 
 your emotions, which to me are purely physical facts, are to 
 you purely mental facts. And psychological analysis assures 
 me that ?^ physical facts are mental facts expressed in objective 
 terms, and mental facts are physical facts expressed in subjective 
 terms y 
 
 But while Philosophy thus replaces the conceptions of 
 Dualism and Idealism by the conception of the Twofold As- 
 pect, the special sciences in their analytical career have disre- 
 garded the problem altogether. The mechanical theory of 
 the universe not only simplified research by confining itself 
 solely to the objective aspect of phenomena, but by a further 
 simplification set aside all vital and chemical relations, to deal 
 exclusively with mechanical relations. In ascertaining the 
 mathematical relations of the planetary system, no elucidation 
 could possibly be gained from biological or chemical concep- 
 tions] the planets therefore were provisionally stripped of 
 everything not mechanical. In systematizing the laws of mo- 
 tion, it was necessary to disengage the abstract relations from 
 everything in any way resembling spontaneit}', or extra me- 
 chanical agency : Matter was therefore, by a bold fiction, de-
 
 240 'QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 clared to be inert, and its motion regarded as something 
 superadded from without. 
 
 And this was indispenable for the construction of those 
 ideal laws which are the objects of scientific research. Science, 
 as we often say, is the systematization of Experience under 
 the forms of ideal constructions. Experience implies Feeling 
 and certain fundamental Signatures, all reducible to the pri- 
 mary discernment of Likeness and Unlikeness. Hence Science 
 is first di classification of qualities or discerned likenesses and 
 differences ; next a measuretnent of quantities of discerned 
 likenesses and differences. Although measurement is itself 
 a species of classification, it is distinguished by the adoption 
 of a standard unit of comparison, which, being precise and 
 unvarying, enables us to express the comparisons in precise 
 and unvarying symbols. Whether the unit of length adopted 
 be an inch, a foot, a yard, a mile, the distance of the earth 
 from the sun, or the distances of the fixed stars, the quanti- 
 ties thus measured are symbols admitting of one invariable in- 
 terpretation. The exactness of the mathematical sciences is 
 just this precision and invariability of their symbols, and is 
 not, as commonly supposed, the source of any superior cer- 
 tainty as to the facts. The classificatory sciences, which deal 
 with qualities rather than with quantities, may be equally cer- 
 tain, and represent fuller knowledge, because involving more 
 varied feelings, but they cannot pretend to exactness. Even 
 on the quantitative side, certainty is not identical with exact- 
 ness. I may be quite certain that one block of marble is 
 larger than another meaning that it affects me more volum- 
 inously but I cannot know how much larger it is without in-
 
 THE COURSE OF MODERN THOUGHT. 241 
 
 terpreting my feelings by the standard of quantity the how- 
 muchness as represented by that standard. The immense 
 advantages of exact measurement need not be insisted on. 
 The Biological Sciences, which are predominantly classifica- 
 tory, can never rival the Cosmological Sciences in exactness ; 
 but they may reach a fuller knowledge ; and their certainty 
 will assume more and more the character of exactness as 
 methods of measurement are applied to their classifications 
 of qualities. The qualitative and quantitative aspects of 
 phenomena are handled by the two great instruments, Logic 
 and Mathematics, the second being only a special form of 
 the first. These determine the general conceptions which 
 are derived from our perceptions, and the whole constitute 
 Experience. 
 
 What is the conclusion to which these considerations lead ? 
 It is that the separation of the quantitative from the quali- 
 tative aspect of phenomena the objective mechanical from 
 the subjective psychological is a logical artifice indispen- 
 sable to research ; but it is only an artifice.^ In pursuance 
 of this artifice, each special science must be regarded as the 
 search after special analytical results ; and meanwhile this 
 method should be respected, and no confusion of the bound- 
 aries between one science and another should be suft'ered. 
 Mechanical problems must not be confused by the introduc- 
 tion of biological relations. Biological problems must not 
 be restricted to mechanical relations. I do not mean that 
 
 * The reader will understand that although mechanical relations are 
 modes of Feeling, as all other relations are, yet their aspect is exclusively 
 objective, referring to objects ideally detached from subjects. 
 
 16
 
 242 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 the mechanical relations present in biological phenomena 
 are not to be sought, and, when found, to be expressed in 
 mechanical terms ; I mean that such an inquiry must be 
 strictly limited to mechanical relations. Subjective relations 
 are not to be denied, because they are provisionally set aside, 
 in an inquiry into objective relations ; but we must carefully 
 distinguish which of the two orders we are treating of, and 
 express each in its appropriate terms. This is constantly 
 neglected. For example, nothing is more common than to 
 meet such a phrase as this : " A sensory impression is trans- 
 mitted as a wave of motion to the brain, and there being trans- 
 formed into a state of conseiousnesr, is again reflected as a 
 motor impulse." 
 
 The several sciences having attained certain analytical re- 
 sults, it remains for Philosophy to co-ordinate these into a 
 doctrine which will furnish general conceptions of the World, 
 Man, and Society. On the analytical side a mechanical 
 theory of the universe might be perfected, but it would still 
 only be a theory of mechanical relations, leaving all other 
 relations to be expressed in other terms. We cannot accept 
 the statement of Descartes that Nature is a vast mechanism, 
 and Science an universal application of mathematics. The 
 equation of a sphere, however valuable from a geometrical 
 point of view, is useless as an explanation of the nature and 
 properties of the spherical body in other relations. And so 
 a complete theory of the mechanical relations of the organ- 
 ism, however valuable in itself, would be worthless in the 
 solution of a biological problem, unless supplemented by all 
 that mechanical terms are incompetent to express.
 
 THE COURSE OF MODERN THOUGHT. 243 
 
 The course of biological speculation has been similar to 
 the cosmological. It also began with a First Notion, which 
 compendiously expressed the facts of Experience, Nor can 
 any Theoretic Conception be finally adopted which does 
 away with these facts, known with positive certainty, and 
 popularly expressed in the phrase : " I have a body, and a 
 soul." We may alter the phrase either into, " I am a. body, 
 and I am a soul ; " or into " My body is only the manifesta- 
 tion of my soul ; " or, " My soul is only a function of my 
 body ; " but the fundamental experiences which are thus ex- 
 pressed are of absolute authority, no matter how they may 
 be interpreted. That I have a body, or am a body, is not 
 to be speculatively argued away. That I move my arm to 
 strike the man who has offended me, or stretch out my hand 
 to seize the fruit which I see, is unquestionable ; that these 
 movements are determined by these feelings, and are never 
 thus effected unless thus determined, is also unquestionable. 
 Here are two sets of phenomena, having well-marked differ- 
 ences of aspect; and they are grouped respectively under 
 two general heads. Life and Mind. Life is assigned to the 
 physical organism, or Body all its phenomena are objective. 
 Mind is assigned to the psychical organism, or Soul all its 
 phenomena are subjective. Although what is called my 
 Body is shown to be a group of qualities which are feelings 
 its color, form, solidity, position, motion all its physical 
 attributes being what is felt by us in consequence of the laws 
 of our organization ; yet inasmuch as these feelings have the 
 characteristic marks of objectivity, and are thereby referred 
 to some objective existence, we draw a broad line of demar-
 
 244 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 cation between them and other feelings having the charac- 
 teristic marks of subjectivity, and referring to ourselves as 
 subjects. Psychological analysis shows us that this line of 
 demarcation is artificial, only representing a diversity of as- 
 pect ; but as such it is indispensable to science. We cannot 
 really separate in a sensation what is objective from what is 
 subjective, and say how much belongs to the Cosmos apart 
 from Sensibility, and how much to the subject pure and 
 simple ; we can only view the sensation alternately in its ob- 
 jective and subjective aspects. What belongs to extra- 
 mental existence in the phenomena of color, and what to 
 the " greeting of the spirit," is utterly beyond human knowl- 
 edge ; for the ethereal undulations which physicists presup- 
 pose as the cosmic condition are themselves subjected to 
 this same greeting of the spirit; they too are ideal forms of 
 sensible experiences. 
 
 This conclusion, however, was very slowly reached. The 
 distinction of aspects was made the ground of a correspond- 
 ing distinction in agencies. Each group was personified and 
 isolated. The one group was personified in Spirit an ex- 
 istent in every respect opposed to Matter, which was the 
 existent represented in the other group. One was said to 
 be simple, indestructible ; the other compound, destructible. 
 One was invisible, impalpable, beyond the grasp of Sense ; 
 the other was visible, tangible, sensible. One was of heaven, 
 the other of earth. Thus a biological Dualism, analogous to 
 the cosmological, replaced the First Notion. It was under- 
 mined by advances in two directions. Psychology began to 
 disclose that our conception of matter was, to say the least,
 
 THE COURSE OF MODERN THOUGHT. 245 
 
 saturated with Mind, its Atoms confessedly being ideal fig- 
 ments ; and that all the terms by which we expressed mate- 
 rial qualities were terms which expressed modes of Feeling ; so 
 that whatever remained over and above this was the unknown 
 X, which speculation required as a postulate. Idealism, re- 
 jecting this postulate, declared that Matter was simply the 
 projection of Mind, and that our Body was the objectivation 
 of our Soul. Physiology began to disclose that all the men- 
 tal processes were (mathematically speaking) functions of 
 physical processes, /. e. varying with the variations of bodily 
 states ; and this was declared enough to banish forever the 
 conception of a Soul, except as a term simply expressing 
 certain functions. 
 
 Idealism and Materialism are equally destructive of Dual- 
 ism. The defects of particular idealist and materialist 
 theories we will not here touch upon ; they mainly result 
 from defects of Method. Not sufficiently recognizing the 
 primary fact testified by Consciousness, namely, that Ex- 
 perience expresses both physical and mental aspects, and 
 that a Not-Self is everywhere indissolubly interwoven with 
 Self, an objective factor with a subjective factor, the idealist 
 reduces Existence to a mere panorama of mental states, and 
 the Body to a group in this panorama. He is thus incapable 
 of giving a satisfactory explanation of all the objective phe- 
 nomena which do not follow in the same order as his feel- 
 ings, which manifest a succession unlike his expectation, and 
 which he cannot class under the order of his mental states 
 hitherto experienced. He conceives that it is the Mind 
 ^\i\Q}!\ prescribes the order in Things ; whereas experience as-
 
 246 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 sures us that the order is described, not prescribed by us : 
 described in terms of Feeling, but determined by the laws 
 of Things. The genesis of subjective phenomena is deter- 
 mined by the action of the Cosmos on our Sensibility, and 
 the reaction of our Sensibility. He overlooks the evi- 
 dence that the mental forms or laws of thought which de- 
 termine the character of particular experiences, were 
 themselves evolved through a continual action and reac- 
 tion of the Cosmos and the Soul, precisely as the laws of 
 organic action which determine the character of partic- 
 ular functions were evolved through a continual adapta- 
 tion of the organism to the medium. These immanent 
 laws are declared to be transcendental, antecedent to all 
 such action and reaction. 
 
 A similar exclusiveness vitiates the materialist doctrine. 
 Overlooking the primary fact that Feeling is indissolubly in- 
 terwoven with processes regarded as purely physical because 
 they are considered solely in their objective aspect, the ma- 
 terialist fails to recognize the operation of psychological laws 
 in the determination of physiological results ; he hopes to re- 
 duce Biology to a problem of Mechanics. But Vitality and 
 Sensibility are coefficients which must render the mechanical 
 problem insoluble, if only on the ground that mechanical 
 principles have reference to quantitative relations, whereas 
 vital relations are qualitative. His error is the obverse of 
 the vitalist's error. The vitalist imagines that the speciality 
 of organic phenomena proves the existence of a cause which 
 has no community with the forces operating elsewhere ; so 
 turning his back on all the evidence, he attempts to explain
 
 THE COURSE OF MODERN THOUGHT. 247 
 
 organic phenomena without any aid from Physics and Chem- 
 istry. The materialist, turning his back on all the evidence 
 of quite special conditions, only found at work in living or- 
 ganisms, tries to explain the problem solely by the aid of 
 Physics and Chemistry. It is quite certain that physiological 
 and psychological problems are not to be solved if we disre- 
 gard the laws of Evolution through Epige nesis. The mental 
 structure is evolved, as the physical structure is evolved. It 
 is quite certain that no such evolution is visible in an organ- 
 ism, nor will any one suppose it to be possible in machines. 
 From the biological point of view we must therefore reject 
 both Idealism and Materialism. We applaud the one when 
 it says, " Don't confuse mental facts by the introduction of 
 physical hypotheses ; " and the other when it says, " Don't 
 darken physical facts with metaphysical mists." We say to 
 both : " By all means make clear to yourselves which aspect 
 of the phenomena you are dealing with, and express each in 
 its own terms. But in endeavoring to understand a phenom- 
 enon you must take into account all its ascertainable con- 
 ditions. Now these conditions are sometimes only approach- 
 able from the objective side ; at other times only from the 
 subjective side." 
 
 While it is necessary to keep the investigation of a pro- 
 cess on its objective side limited to objective conditions, and 
 to express the result in objective terms, we must remember 
 that this is an artifice ; above all, we must remember that 
 even within the objective limits our analyses are only pro- 
 visional, and must be finally rectified by a restoration of all 
 the elements we have provisionally set aside. Thus rectified.
 
 248 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF, 
 
 the objective interpretation of vital and mental phenomena 
 has the incomparable advantage of simplifying research, 
 keeping it fixed on physical processes, instead of being per- 
 turbed by suggestions of metaphysical processes. And as all 
 physical investigation naturally tends to reduce itself to a 
 mechanical investigation, because Mechanics is the science 
 of Motion, and all physical processes are motions, we may be 
 asked, Why should not the mechanical point of view be the 
 rational standing-point of the biologist ? Our answer is, Be- 
 cause Mechanics concerns itself with abstract relations, and 
 treats of products without reference to modes of production, 
 /. e. with motions without reference to all the conditions on 
 which they depend. Every physical change, if expressed in 
 physical terms, is a change of position, and is determined by 
 some preceding change of position. It is a movement hav- 
 ing a certain velocity and direction, which velocity and direc- 
 tion are determined by the velocity and direction of a force 
 (a pressure or a tension) compounded with the forces of re- 
 sistance, /. e. counter-pressures. Clearly, the nature of the 
 forces in operation must be taken into account ; and it is 
 this which the mechanical view disregards, the biological re- 
 gards. The mechanical view is fixed on the ascertained ad- 
 justment of the parts, so that the working of the organism 
 may be explained as if it were a machine, a movement here 
 liberating a movement there. The biological view includes 
 this adjustment of parts, but takes in also the conditions of 
 molecular change in the parts on which the adjustment 
 dynamically depends. Mechanical actions maybe expressed 
 as the enlargement or diminution of the angle of two levers ;
 
 THE COURSE OFMODERN THOUGHT. 249 
 
 but chemical actions are not thus expressible ; still less vital 
 and mental actions. 
 
 The organism is on the physical side a mechanism, and so 
 long as the mechanical interpretation of organic phenomena 
 is confined to expressing the mechanical principles involved 
 in the mechanical relations, it is eminently to be applauded. 
 But the organism is something more than a mechanism, even 
 on the physical side ; or, since this statement may be mis- 
 understood, let me say, what no one will dispute, that the 
 organism is a mechanism of a very special kind, in many 
 cardinal points unlike all machines. This difference of kind 
 brings with it a difference of causal conditions. In so far as 
 the actions of this mechanism are those of a dependent 
 sequence of material positions, they are actions expressible in 
 mechanical terms ; but in so far as these actions are depend- 
 ent on vital processes, they are not expressible in mechanical 
 terms. Vital facts, especially facts of sensibility, have factors 
 neither discernible in machines nor expressible in mechanical 
 terms. We cannot ignore them, although for analytical pur- 
 poses we may provisionally set them aside. 
 
 In the course of the development of the mechanical 
 theory, the history of which has just been briefly sketched, 
 biological problems have more and more come under its in- 
 fluence. There has always been a fierce resistance to the 
 attempt to explain vital and sentient phenomena on mechani- 
 cal, or even physical principles, but still the question has in- 
 cessantly recurred. How far is the organism mechanically 
 interpretable ? And while the progress of Biology has shown
 
 250 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 more and more the machine-like adjustment of the several 
 parts of which the organism is composed, it has also shown 
 more and more the intervention of conditions not mechani- 
 cally interpretable.
 
 THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND} 
 
 BY THOMAS HUGHES. 
 
 I think that many of those whom I am about to address in 
 this College ^ on the condition and prospects of our National 
 Church, may very probably be asking themselves at this 
 moment what possible claim I can have to do so, or what 
 possible good can come of anything I may say. I, at any rate, 
 very readily admit that such questions would be most reason- 
 able, so perhaps a few preliminary words of explanation may 
 not be out of place. 
 
 It was some months ago, before the late occurrences at 
 Hatcham and all that has followed on them, that the proposal 
 was made to me. Even then I had serious doubt as to ac- 
 cepting, and ultimately did so with some reluctance. The 
 doubt arose from a genuine belief that I had much more to 
 learn from than to teach the members of Sion College on such 
 a subject. It is true that I had been asked to speak or lecture 
 on the Church question at Birmingham, Norwich, and else- 
 
 1 The Contemporary Review, May, 1877. 
 
 2 This article was delivered as an address, at Sion College, March 13th,
 
 252 THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 where : but those addresses were delivered to popular au- 
 diences, to whom I had been asked to speak as a politician, 
 and at times when this great controversy was in a very 
 different phase. But in this place I knew that I should be 
 addressing an audience of experts, the metropolitan represen- 
 tatives of the great profession (or *' calling," to use the better 
 word) of ordained ministers of the National Church a very 
 different and much more serious matter. Hence my doubt. 
 
 My reluctance arose from a dislike to stir still waters, 
 and raise discussion upon grave matters at a time when 
 there seemed no pressing need for action or decision with 
 regard to them. And I own that the earlier part of the past 
 year appeared to me to bear many signs of such a time ; for 
 the usual motions, pointing to a severance of Church and 
 State, or to reconstruction or reform of one kind or another, 
 had not been made in the House of Commons. In the ad- 
 dresses of members and candidates to constituencies last 
 autumn, when reference was made to the Church question, 
 it was generally treated as a kind of neutral territory in pol- 
 itics, even advanced Liberals, like Mr. Leonard Courtney, 
 declaring, that though they were theoretically in favor of 
 the entire severance of Church and State when the proper 
 time might come, yet they saw no sign of its coming, 
 and deprecated any attempt to force it. On the other 
 hand, one most important Church reform, the full mean- 
 ing of which has never been popularly appreciated, I 
 mean the subdivision of dioceses and the appointment of 
 Suffragan Bishops who should not be Peers of Parliament, 
 had made great progress, almost .without opposition from the
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 253 
 
 non-conforming bodies or the Liberation Society. Thus far 
 the time seemed one for letting well alone, and I should cer- 
 tainly have desired to do so then, but for the smouldering 
 discontent already too apparent in one extreme wing of the 
 National clergy. In view of this, however, it seemed to me 
 possibly worth while to put forward at Sion College a lay view 
 of the matters which were causing such discontent amongst a 
 section of Churchmen. So with this view I overcame my re- 
 luctance, never dreaming that before I should address you 
 here, this smouldering fire would have burst into ablaze ; that 
 we should have, on the one hand, the Church Union publicly 
 denying the right of the nation to control the clergy, and 
 clergymen declaring that they " will labor night and day to 
 set the Church of England free from a persecuting State ; " on 
 the other hand, the Liberationists, reassured at hearing their 
 own war-cries issuing from within what they are used to regard 
 as the hostile camp, openly preparing for a campaign which 
 they seem to think may be the final one. 
 
 Had I been able to foresee such a state of things, I can- 
 didly confess that I should have declined this invitation. The 
 prospect is to me altogether too sad and too confusing, and 
 the issues are at present so undefined, and the forces on 
 either side so undeveloped, that I would very gladly have been 
 silent, at any rate till I could see more clearly how the great 
 controversy was shaping itself, and what it behoved one to 
 say or do in this matter who looks upon the connection of 
 Church and State of the spiritual and temporal life of the 
 nation, as it exists, and has existed in England ever since we 
 were a nation as a part of our national inheritance which it
 
 254 "^^^ CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 would be a grievous misfortune, and an irreparable misfortune, 
 lo lose. 
 
 I am here, however, to speak to you on the subject, and 
 must do so to the best of my ability, glad at any rate that 
 you will hear the views frankly expressed of what I believe to 
 be a much larger proportion than is generally supposed of 
 ordinary English Churchmen laymen who have no strong 
 bias for or against any party in the Church \ who have neither 
 time nor taste for the lamentable party wrestling-matches got 
 up by the (so-called) religious press and societies ; but only 
 desire to use themselves in peace, and to hand down to 
 their children, the opportunities for Christian worship and 
 Christian living which have served their forefathers for 
 so many generations improved and reformed to suit the 
 needs of a new time, but still an inalienable part of the 
 birthright of every English child. I repeat that I be- 
 lieve anid, as one who has had much intercourse with all 
 classes of our society, and has for years been much exercised 
 by this question, have broad grounds for my belief that this 
 class is a far larger one than is commonly allowed. And it 
 would be a great mistake to suppose, because they make no 
 strife or fuss about their religion, that they do not really care 
 about it. It is often assumed, nowadays, that the bulk of our 
 Church laity are mere formalists, supporting religion because 
 they believe the parson to be the most powerful kind of 
 policeman ; and ready to welcome whatever form of new 
 worship, or no-worship, may come next, when criticism and 
 science shall have dealt finally with the supernatural and 
 Christianity, so long only as some form or other be left to keep
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 255 
 
 the common folk in order, and their own wives and children 
 quiet. On the contrary, we (for I must rank myself in their 
 number) are thoroughly satisfied that Christianity is in no 
 more real danger now than it was a hundred and fifty years 
 ago, when Dean Swift, and many other greater wits than 
 we have amongst us nowadays, thought and said that it was 
 doomed. We hold in perfect goo^ faith that the good news 
 our Lord brought is the best the world will ever hear ; that 
 there has been a revelation in the Man Jesus Christ, of God 
 the Creator of the world as our Father, so that the humblest 
 and poorest man can know God for all purposes for which 
 men need to know Him in this life, and can have his help in 
 becoming like him, the business for which they were sent into 
 it ; and that there will be no other revelation, though this one 
 will be, through all time, unfolding to men more and more of 
 its unspeakable depth and glory and beauty, in external 
 nature, in human society, in individual men. That I believe 
 to be a fair statement of the positive religious belief of aver- 
 age Englishmen, if they had to think it out and to put it in 
 words ; and all who hold it must of course look upon Christ's 
 gospel as the great purifying, reforming, redeeming power in 
 the world, and desire that it shall be free to work in their own 
 country on the most favorable conditions which can be found 
 for it. 
 
 On the other hand, there are a number of matters which 
 have been commonly insisted upor in England as part of 
 Christianity, as to many of which the kind of Englishmen I 
 am speaking of have come to have no belief at all one way or 
 the other. They have no time to spare for such subjects, and
 
 256 THE COXDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 do not feel it needful for their higher life that they should 
 make up their minds, for instance, as to the exact quality of 
 the inspiration of Scripture, the origin of evil, the method of 
 the Atonement, the nature and effect of sacraments, justifi- 
 cation, conversion, and other much-debated matters. As to 
 another class of ecclesiastical subjects, such as Apostolical 
 succession, and all the priestly and mediatorial claims which 
 are founded on it, they have indeed made up their minds 
 thoroughly, and believe them to be men's fables, mischievous 
 and misleading to those who teach and those who learn to 
 priests and people alike. 
 
 Probably many of my hearers will consider such a belief 
 as this too vague to be of any practical value ; but at any rate, 
 as a fact, there it is, and it has to be acknowledged and ac- 
 counted with as a fact in dealing with this Church question. 
 And, as a rule, while it hinders those who hold it from attach- 
 ing any exaggerated or superstitious importance to one form 
 or another of Church organization, it inclines them to respect 
 and value that which they find to have been thought out and 
 beaten out by successive generations, and to have brought the 
 nation safely at least, and not without honour, so far. Such 
 a man is therefore generally an attached, though not an en- 
 thusiastic Churchman, and in the main for the following 
 reasons : 
 
 First, the historical. Our time is not one in which any 
 institution is able to stand on its pedigree only, but it is also 
 one in which we are bound to be specially careful of any 
 wholesome links which bind us to the past, and make our his- 
 tory one of steady and connected life and progress. And
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 257 
 
 from this point of view the national Church is beyond all 
 question the most venerable of our institutions, and as in- 
 timately bound up with the national life as the Monarchy or 
 the Houses of Parliament. The latest and best historian of 
 the Conquest describes the England of 1066 as " a land 
 where the Church and nation were but different names for the 
 same community ; a 'land where priests and prelates were 
 subject to the law like other men ; a land where the King 
 and the witan gave away the staff of the bishop ; " adding 
 that " such a land was more dangerous in the eyes of Rome 
 than one of Jews or Saracens." 
 
 And through the long four hundred years' struggle with 
 the Papacy, the same description holds good ; and in every 
 great crisis the Church and nation has held together as one 
 community. When k Becket backed the Pope's claim to 
 make Church Courts supreme over the clergy, and to exempt 
 them from the national tribunals, the King answered by the 
 Constitutions of Clarendon, which declared the Church to be 
 part and parcel of the nation, and the clergy amenable to the 
 civil law like all other citizens ; and those Constitutions were 
 supported by clergy and laity alike. 
 
 When the King, backed by the Pope, refused the de- 
 mands of the nation for the Great Charter, it was Arch- 
 bishop Langton who headed the barons. Two of the three 
 sureties to whom John was bound for its fulfilment were 
 bishops, and the first nine names are those of Church digni- 
 taries. Again and again the identity of the Church of Eng- 
 land with the nation was upheld ; sometimes by bishops, 
 as when Robert Grostete flatly refused to institute Inno- 
 
 17
 
 258 THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 cent IV's Genoese nominee to an English benefice ; some- 
 times by the King or his Courts of Law, as when the King's 
 Bench outlawed the members of the assembly of clerg}', 
 who had come together without the King's writ, and, in 
 deference to a Papal Bull produced by Archbishop Winchel- 
 sea, refused to grant a subsidy to Edward I. for his Scotch 
 campaign. The statutes of mortmain, of provisors, of pro- 
 hibition, of praemunire, all aimed at some encroachment of 
 Rome on the national character of the English Church, 
 were all passed with the assent and' by the help of that 
 Church, which, by its very divisions in such crises, proved 
 its national character. It is not necessary to follow the 
 history since the Reformation, for it is part of the case of 
 those of the clergy who seek to sever the connection that 
 has existed in full force from that time. Even when Episco- 
 pacy was abolished during the Commonwealth and Protecto- 
 rate, the national principle was upheld, and the established 
 Presbyterian Church was even more intimately allied with the 
 State than its predecessor had been. Cromwell had no more 
 thought of severing the connection than Edward or Henry, 
 but desired to make the Church as broad and tolerant as 
 possible. 
 
 And so the Church has continued to our own day in the- 
 ory, and still is to avery great extent in fact, the nation organ- 
 ized for spiritual purposes, and in striking sympathy with and 
 faithfully mirroring the nation in all its varying moods at 
 times no doubt persecuting, apathetic, unfaithful but on the 
 whole faithful to her great mission, and exercising a noble 
 and purifying influence on the national conscience and the 
 national life.
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 259 
 
 If this is at all a true view of the history of the Church 
 of England, the fallacy of the main argument of the English 
 Church Union at recent meetings becomes clear. Appeal is 
 made to some supposed compact between the State and the 
 Church, and it is contended that the Church never conceded 
 to the State the right of control in spiritual matters when that 
 compact was made. This assumes that the State and the 
 Church of England were at some time two distinct corporate 
 bodies, in part at least composed of different persons, and 
 capable of contracting with one another. But there never 
 was such a time in England ; State and Church never stood 
 in such relations to each other ; there never was any such for- 
 mal contract between them as the Church Union argument 
 starts from. Between the officers of the Charch for the time 
 being and the State, there can of course be, and always has 
 been, a contract of service, as there is between the officers of 
 the army and the State. But it is placing matters on a false 
 issue to represent the Church of England as a power bound 
 by treaty or compact with the State of England for certain 
 definite purposes, and competent to annul that treaty when 
 she pleases. A Church with the pretensions of Rome, or a 
 voluntary Church, such as the Methodists, if the nation were 
 to come to them now to make terms, might assume such an 
 attitude and make such claims, but they contradict the very 
 idea of our national Church, as those words have always 
 been understood in England. 
 
 Before quitting the historical ground I would just remind 
 you that this modern cry for disestablishment, or the absolute 
 severance of the State from religion, has really no English
 
 26o THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 tradition at all behind it, at any rate since the Long Parliament. 
 In that celebrated assembly it was indeed mooted, but with no 
 success. Dr. Owen, the brother-in-law of Cromwell, and a 
 famous Nonconformist minister, was its most vigorous oppo- 
 nent, and evidently expressed the sense of the House and the 
 country when he protested in the most solemn and earnest 
 words against the notion that they, as rulers of the nation, 
 had nothing to do with religion. From that time to our own 
 the effort has never been repeated, while the greatest names 
 amongst the Nonconformists may be cited as supporters of 
 the direct and avowed connection of the State with religion. 
 Thus Matthew Henry thanks God " for the national estab- 
 lishment of our religion with that of our peace and civil liberty ;" 
 and Bunyan, Wesley, Baxter, may all be quoted on the same 
 side ; even the leading Nonconformists and the reformers of 
 the very last generation had no such policy. Mr. Grote, who 
 may be taken as their representative man on this question in 
 the first Reformed Parliament, advocated ind^d sweeping 
 and stringent reforms within the Church, but, so far as I am 
 aware, never hinted at severing the connection between the 
 Church and the civil Government. I need not say that the 
 cry from within the Church herself for this divorce is of even 
 more recent origin. 
 
 It may of course be replied to all this, that however strong 
 the historical argument may be, it is after all mainly a senti- 
 mental one which can be allowed little weight in the changed 
 and changing conditions and aims of our time. And I would 
 not press it beyond this, that if thirty generations of English- 
 men, who have given us our country as we enjoy it, have in-
 
 THE CHURCH OF EiVGLAND. 261 
 
 sisted on a national profession of Christianity by the State, 
 those who now oppose it shall at least give us some grounds 
 for believing that the nation will become nobler and better 
 for renouncing that profession. 
 
 The second reason for which such men as I am speaking 
 of value the connection^ may also possibly be called a sen- 
 timental one, but, has I believe, a very important practical side 
 to it. It is that that connection is a constant and power- 
 ful protest against the desire and effort to divide human life 
 sharply into two parts, one of which is concerned with the 
 visible and the other with the invisible, or as the commoner 
 phrase goes, one with secular the other with religious affairs. 
 Notwithstanding the experience of many failures, that desire 
 and effort were never more active than in our time. And. 
 however firmly convinced we may be from the experience of 
 our own lives, and from our observation of all that is going 
 on around us, that no such severance is possible, that the 
 two realms will assert their independence sooner or later, 
 whatever rules we may lay down for keeping them apart, 
 still the mere attempt to sever them will always work mischief ; 
 and we cannot afford to part, or to tamper with, any witness 
 that they have been joined together from the beginning of 
 time, and will remain so joined to the end, by a law which 
 man cannot set aside. And the connection of Church and 
 State is a standing witness to this law in the highest places, a 
 protest against the notion that the nation can repudiate its 
 highest functions and duties, any more than one of its own 
 citizens can do so. Were the present connection severed, the 
 only result would be, that, sooner or later, probably after much
 
 262 THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 national deterioration and humiliation, the law would have \o 
 be reasserted, and the duty accepted again by the nation under 
 new conditions. Therefore, those in whom the love of their 
 country is deepest and strongest, should be foremost in insist- 
 ing that we shall not give up the highest national ideal be- 
 cause we find it hard to realize. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to contend that the ideal is not 
 lowered by severance of the connection. An abandonment 
 of important functions may be expedient, or convenient, or 
 even necessary, but it must remain a proof of a more stunted 
 and narrower life. And without dwelling on the many ways 
 in which such an abandonment might probably act in England, 
 I think no one will deny that, in any case, it is certain to 
 lessen the interest which religious men take in politics and 
 public life. There is, I know, a school of politicians, not 
 wanting influential representatives in the press, who will ex- 
 claim at once, " What a blessing ! How smoothly public busi- 
 ness would run on in future if we could only get rid of them 
 altogether ! They are the bane of public life, at least just so 
 far as they will insist on bringing religious considerations to 
 bear on it. A nation to be great and prosperous can't afford 
 to keep a religious conscience." But I venture to think, not- 
 withstanding, from all \ have seen of public life in England, 
 that precisely the contrary is true, that men who are avowedly 
 leligious are the best politicians, and that it is of the highest 
 moment for the national character, and therefore in the end 
 for national prosperity, that they should be kept interested in 
 politics. It is not easy to do this now, and I am at a loss to 
 see how it will become easier when we declare that henceforth
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 263 
 
 the nation will take no cognizance of, and will cease in its 
 corporate capacity to have anything to do with, religion. If 
 it is replied by some sections of Liberationists (as I presume 
 some at least of the nonconforming bodies would reply) that 
 this is not their meaning that they never intended to bring 
 about such a result, and they do not believe that disestablish- 
 ment will effect it I can only ask, how they propose to 
 avert it ? By what machinery can the national supervision 
 and control of religion be made less irksome to them than the 
 present arrangement? 
 
 Again, such a man finds himself born to a certain religious 
 inheritance as an Englishman. He can go and settle in any 
 remotest hamlet of this island of ours, and there he shall find 
 provided for him and his family a public place of worship, 
 an officer of the State, and all the machinery necessary for 
 enabling him to enjoy every office and ministration of religion, 
 if, and so far only as, he desires them. This, I say, is part of 
 his and of my birthright, and of every man's birthright as an 
 Englishman, in this year 1877. ^ have the right to all these 
 things, not because I hold any particular religious opinions, 
 but simply because I am an Englishman, and claim them. If I 
 am too poor or too miserly to pay for them, I can claim them 
 without payment. 
 
 Now, to put it no higher, this particular portion of our 
 birthright can do us no harm, for this if for no other reason, 
 that we need not use it unless we please. If we do not want 
 to worship God ourselves, or to be baptized, married, buried, 
 consoled, aided, instructed if we want none of these things 
 for our wives and children there is no compulsion whatever
 
 264 "^HE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 upon us in the matter. It is not easy, therefore, to see how 
 we or our families can be injured by this option, and by no 
 means clear how any one else can be. Again, another reason 
 why such men as I am trying to describe are attached to and 
 desire to maintain the connection between Church and State, 
 as the religious condition of things most favourable to national 
 life, is that they see that the principle which underlies the 
 National Church is inclusiveness. Every Englishman born 
 is assumed to be a member, and continues to be so without 
 question, until he leaves it by his own act, by his own free 
 will ; whereas the principle which underlies all voluntary 
 Churches is exclusiveness they are essentially a section 
 gleaned out of the nation, and whereas an Englishman cannot 
 get out of the National, he cannot get into any voluntary 
 Church without an effort of will. It follows, or at any rate is 
 the fact, that the National Church is the most liberal in spirit ; 
 for by its very nature and constitution it is bound to protest 
 against the sectarian spirit, the spirit of division. Whenever 
 the National Church is not bearing this protest faithfully, it 
 is untrue to itself. The wide divergences of opinion allowed 
 within its ranks, so triumphantly cited in some quarters as 
 signs of weakness, seem to such men proofs of strength. 
 
 They see also that the National is the only organization 
 by which the gospel can be carried to the very poor and the 
 outcasts to those, in short, who need it most, but who do 
 not value it, and cannot or will not pay for it. For voluntary 
 Churches cannot live in the poorest districts, but must follow 
 those who can maintain them, and are only bound to minister 
 to these.
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 265 
 
 They see, lastly, that the National Church is best adapted 
 to the tone and circumstances of the people of England, as is 
 proved by the fact that the voluntary Churches are all imita- 
 ting her in so many ways, by using more and more of her 
 Liturgy, by copying her architecture and music, till it is often 
 difficult to tell as you pass a place of worship whether it is 
 National or Nonconformist by even adopting for their minis- 
 ters the titles by which the National clergy have always been 
 distinguished. 
 
 I have had to dwell at some length, though I trust so as 
 not to weary you, on the sort of views which are held by a large 
 number of quiet lay Churchmen who think about such sub- 
 jects at all. And now, if there be the least ground of truth 
 in my picture, if I am not dreaming when I say that such men 
 are numerous in England, I would ask any clergyman here to 
 try to put himself in the place of such a layman, and consider 
 how he would regard the doings of the last few months within 
 the Church, and the position which a section of the clergy 
 are taking up and the language they are using I say a sec- 
 tion of the clergy, not meaning for a moment to deny that they 
 have a following of laymen (not really so numerous as they 
 suppose, but genuine as far as it goes) with them, but only to 
 place the burthen on the right back. No laity would be there 
 but for them ; it is idle to talk of offences coming mainly from 
 the newly-aroused zeal of boys and girls. It is a portion of 
 the National clerg)' who are responsible, and must answer 
 for the present state of things, be it for good or for evil. 
 
 Now this extreme section are deliberately breaking the 
 law, and, to our astonishment, are applauded and upheld in
 
 266 THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 doing so, not only by newspapers and unions from which noth- 
 ing better could be expected, but by considerable numbers of 
 their brethren upon whom we had been accustomed to look 
 with respect as honest and faithful ministers, however much 
 we might differ from them. They do not indeed pretend to 
 agree with the extreme Ritualists, but they support them 
 openly and warmly, on the plea that they are suffering for 
 conscience sake. Well, let the plea pass admit that they are 
 making these things matters of conscience ^but we must be 
 allowed to ask, as Englishmen, whether this is the kind of 
 conscience which we desire to cultivate in ourselves, or to see 
 cultivated in this nation. Poor conscience ! to what pitiful 
 uses is that sacred name turned 1 The stolid Essex peasant, 
 one of the Peculiar people, lets his child die because he will 
 not allow it to take medicine, and believes himself to be suf- 
 fering for conscience sake because he is summoned before a 
 magistrate to answer for its life. And he has far more reason 
 on his side than these Ritualist martyrs I desire neither to 
 speak nor think scornfully or bitterly of them, but this at 
 least I must say, that men who can make matters of conscience 
 of such trivialities as the shape and color of vestments, the 
 burning of candles and incense, the position of tables, and 
 the like, and in defence of these things are prepared to defy 
 authority, and break what they know to be the law of their 
 country, are not fit to be trusted with the spiritual guidance 
 of any portion of our people. This nation has a great work 
 still to do in the world, for which she needs children with 
 quite other kind of consciences than these consciences which 
 shall be simple, manly, obedient, qualities which must disap-
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 267 
 
 pear under such examples and teachings as these men are 
 giving. It is with reluctance that one has to come to such a 
 conclusion, but there is no use in blinding ourselves any longer 
 as to their meaning. They have resolved to try their strength 
 with the nation ; to throw off all civil control as well as to 
 disobey and defy their spiritual superiors, and they will have 
 to abide the consequences, which will assuredly be that they 
 will not be allowed to minister any longer in the National 
 Church which they are doing all they can to destroy. 
 
 Were it only a question of these extreme men, there would 
 be small cause for anxiety ; but, as already stated, they have 
 been backed at any rate, ever since the judgment in the 
 Hatcham case by a large number of High Church clerg)^, 
 from whom we had a right to look for very different things. 
 I have heard friends of my own speaking of these men as 
 martyrs, and echoing the claptrap cries of the (so-called) re- 
 ligious press, such as that of " The interference of the State 
 with the Church has increased, is increasing, and ought to be 
 diminished." A martyr I have always understood to be one 
 who suffers willingly for his faith ; it is abusing an almost 
 sacred word to apply it to such suffering as is possible here 
 in England nowadays, for any opinion (I will not speak of 
 faith) about what postures of the body, or shape or color of 
 garments, have been in use in churches since Edward the 
 Sixth's time. And as to the interference of the State having 
 increased, it is notoriously untrue in any sense except that 
 offences against the law have increased, and so that law has 
 had to be (with extreme reluctance) enforced by the- heads of 
 the Church against the offenders.
 
 268 THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 I willingly admit, however, that they have more reasonable 
 arguments than these. They urge, for instance, that (apart 
 from the extreme Ritualists, whose proceedings they do not 
 approve,) they have been the moving power of the great 
 Church revival of our time, the evidences of which lie broad- 
 cast over the whole country, in restored cathedrals and 
 churches, frequent and reverent services, and the widespread 
 zeal for all social reform and philanthropic effort, which has 
 become the honorable and distinguishing characteristic of 
 the nation in our day. In return for these services they have 
 met with abuse, distrust, misrepresentation, and now at last 
 are the subjects of direct attack on the part of the nation, 
 both in the Law Courts and in Parliament, the crowning act 
 of aggression being the Public Worship Regulation Act, which 
 has been aimed at them, and at them only. 
 
 Now even those who distrust the High Church party most, 
 must admit their plea as to the zealous, and in many respects 
 admirable, work which they have done since the revival be- 
 gun by the " Tracts for the Times " forty years ago. They 
 have deserved well of the nation in many ways, and have 
 possibly some grounds for their complaints as to the suspicion 
 with which they have no doubt been always regarded, though 
 they have certainly taken no pains to avoid it. But it is im- 
 possible to admit that they have any reason to complain of 
 harsh or unjust treatment, either from the national Executive 
 or from the Legislature. The judgment in Mr. Bennet's case 
 , shows how far the Law Courts have been disposed to go in 
 construing their obligations in the largest and widest sense. 
 It is only when there has been an obvious and scandalous
 
 7HE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 269 
 
 disregard and defiance of the law (as in the case of Mr, Pur- 
 chas and Mr. Tooth) that it has been enforced against any 
 of their number. Indeed, another proof of the advantage of 
 the national principle maybe found in the reluctance with 
 which the Courts have intervened ; and the steadiness with 
 which they have upheld the principle of a large toleration 
 and inclusiveness in the face of strong popular excitement. 
 
 Again, as respects the Legislature, so far from showing any 
 readiness or eagerness to follow the popular cry, it has been 
 only when the open defiance of the law had become a public 
 scandal that Parliament could be induced to interfere at all, 
 and then by an Act which I venture to think has been greatly 
 misunderstood and misrepresented. 
 
 Let me just remind you of a fact or two with respect to 
 this Act. In the first place, remember it was a church meas- 
 ure. Whereas the custom had prevailed for years, until it 
 had almost become a rule, that such Bills should be introduced 
 by the Government of the day in consultation with the Bish- 
 ops, this Bill was not a Government measure. I have never 
 hea'd why it was that the rule was broken, but broken it was, 
 and it was not until after the Bill had passed the Lords, and 
 been debated for three long nights in the Commons, that it 
 was at length adopted by the Government. 
 
 It was introduced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
 received the general support of the whole Bench, though the 
 Bishops of Lincoln and Oxford took some objections to small 
 matters of detail. 
 
 At the end of the long and able debate in the Commons, 
 the feeling of the House, and of the nation, had been so
 
 2 70 THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 clearly expressed that the second reading was carried without 
 a division. 
 
 I scarcely remember a question which has stirred the 
 House or the country more deeply in the last twenty years. 
 It was discussed all over the country, in meetings held chiefly, 
 I believe, under the auspices of the Church Association and 
 the Church Union (as to which bodies the Bishop of Lichfield 
 has well said that there will be no peace in the Church till 
 they cease to exist). I would only ask any fair man who is 
 inclined to join in the attempt to take the Church from under 
 State control, to compare the speeches in Parliament and 
 those of the members of these ecclesiastical organizations, 
 during the spring and summer of 1874, and then say which 
 yoke (as the phrase goes) he would honestly desire to be 
 under. 
 
 As for the Act itself, it was well said by Mr. Goschen 
 himself I believe a High Churchman that it would prove 
 either a small or a large measure, a small one if the clergy 
 meant to obey it, otherwise most likely a large and searching 
 one. 
 
 By its provisions the clergy of every school are protected 
 against any malicious or arbitrary use of the Act, by the in- 
 terposition of the chief of their own body in the diocese in 
 which it is sought to put it in motion, whose leave must be 
 obtained before the institution of proceedings. The bishop 
 practically becomes an arbiter in the case if both parties are 
 willing to accept him ; if not, an impartial tribunal is provided 
 for the decision of the questions at issue. 
 
 I trust there are even yet hopes that it may prove a small
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 2-; I 
 
 Act ; for I cannot believe that, in spite of all the goading of 
 the religious press, and of the semi-ecclesiastical societies, a 
 body of high-principled English gentlemen will continue to 
 maintain the attitude of defiance to the law, and to the clearly 
 expressed will of the nation. 
 
 The often repeated cry that the Act is one-sided, and 
 aimed against one party only in the Church, may serve the 
 purpose of excited speakers, but will not bear examination. 
 For it makes no alteration in the law, but only simplifies and 
 cheapens the processes by which the law is administered. 
 Whatever was lawful in the fabric or arrangement of conse- 
 crated buildings, or in vestments, postures, or decorations, 
 remains still lawful whatever was required before the pass- 
 ing of the Act is still required, the neglect to use that which 
 is prescribed standing in precisely the same category as the 
 use of that which is forbidden. 
 
 If it be one-sided, every efficient law in the Statute Book 
 is one-sided ; for every such law inflicts penalties, not on those 
 who keep within, but on those who break it. 
 
 The objection to the constitution of the Court which takes 
 cognizance of these offences, when the parties will not submit to 
 the bishop, can scarcely be regarded as serious. It is said that 
 the authority of this Court " is not derived from the rightful 
 royal supremacy exercised * under God,' but of the Sovereign 
 in council by authority of Parliament." , But surely those who 
 make this protest are aware that the Queen has no authority 
 by virtue of her mere supremacy to constitute any court apart 
 from Parliament. 
 
 On the whole, it is not easy to see how, if order is to be
 
 272 THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS O'F 
 
 preserved, and the law enforced at all in the National Church, 
 any more moderate or fair method could have been found than 
 that adopted by the Act in question. 
 
 But let us pass from the late Act to the remedies for the 
 present state of things, which have been suggested by those 
 who are taking part in this agitation. These are not at pres- 
 ent very definite. They are indeed vaguely pledging them- 
 selves to " work night and day to set the Church of England 
 free from a persecuting State ; " but we are not told, with any 
 distinctness, what they desire to substitute for the yoke of the 
 nation. If the words of some of their number are to be taken 
 literally, it would seem as though our history of seven hun- 
 dred years ago had been rolled back, and that England is again 
 face to face with the monks who followed k Becket in his at- 
 tempt to sever the clergy from the nation, and set them as a 
 caste outside and above the law of the land. I do not of 
 course mean that the present contention is that the clergy 
 shall not be amenable to the law for civil offences, like all 
 other citizens ; but apparently there is a section of them who 
 do claim, that as regards all matters connected with their 
 position and functions as clergy, they shall be subject to 
 Church Courts only. And by Church Courts they cannot 
 mean any courts constituted in our national manner, and under 
 the jurisdiction of Parliament ; for then their grievance comes 
 to nothing. It is reduced to a mere question of names, and 
 it does not matter a straw by what name the Courts which try 
 ecclesiastical causes are known, if they are constituted, and 
 their judges appointed, by the head of the State on the advice 
 of responsible Ministers, and under the control of Parliament.
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 273 
 
 One is driven, therefore, to the conclusion that they mean a 
 tribunal independent of State control, the judges of which are 
 elected by, and responsible to, the clergy, or some purely 
 ecclesiastical organization. There was some strength and 
 meaning in ^ Becket's proposal, because he had the Pope to 
 put in the place of King and King's Council, as the head and 
 fountain of authority for the Courts which he proposed to sub- 
 stitute for the national Courts. But as the Ritualists have not 
 that resource, they should either cease beating about the bush 
 and make their demands clear and precise, telling us who is 
 to be the fountain on earth of ecclesiastical authority, or leave 
 the National Church, and set up a sect of their own, in which 
 they may place themselves as priests in whatever position they 
 please, as they find themselves unable to accept the grandest 
 of all positions, that of simple citizens, called and appointed 
 to minister to the nation, whose sons they are, in spiritual 
 things. 
 
 There is another course advocated by many High Church- 
 men as an escape from our present difficulties, which is ad- 
 vanced temperately and reasonably, and has the public sanc- 
 tion of at least one bishop. I think I shall state it most fairly 
 perhaps in his own words : " I am of opinion," the Bishop of 
 Lincoln writes, " that for the sake of the State as well as for 
 that of the Church much more liberty ought to be given, and 
 much more weight attached, to the judgment of the spiritual- 
 ity in ecclesiastical causes, and to the action of the Church of 
 England in her synods, diocesan and provincial." I am glad 
 to be able to quote his further words of warning : " But we 
 shall never obtain these benefits by violent resistance to con- 
 
 18
 
 274 ^^-^ CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 stitutional authority ; on the contrary, we shall provoke violent 
 reprisals, and shall greatly injure the cause we desire to man- 
 tain." 
 
 I presume that these words point to investing Convoca- 
 tion with some legislative powers in ecclesiastical affairs ; 
 and with every desire to concede whatever can be conceded 
 for the sake of peace, I am bound to say plainly that I do not 
 think it can be found in this direction. Convocation has now 
 for some years been sitting and discussing all questions upon 
 which legislation is needed, or which seriously affect the relig- 
 ious condition of the nation. But I fear that the reports of 
 the debates in both Houses have not had a reassuring effect 
 on the country ; indeed, they have been characterized by tim- 
 idity and narrowness, and an apparent want of appreciation of 
 the forces which are working in the outside world, which has 
 disappointed those who looked most hopefully towards this 
 experiment. I am not aware of any recommendation of prac- 
 tical value which has as yet come from that bod3\ Indeed, it 
 seems to me that the main result of the recent revival of Con- 
 vocation has been to strengthen the convictions of all those 
 who value the national character of the Church, that that 
 character cannot be maintained if its direction and govern- 
 ment is to be entrusted to any ecclesiastical body. It may 
 be said that the proposal is to reform Convocation by the ad- 
 mission of the laity. But this would not remove the objec- 
 tion. Such laymen as would have a chance of election would 
 not represent the nation, besides which they would be power- 
 less in such a body. \\'hen professionals and amateurs meet, 
 we know which side is likely to go to the wall.
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 275 
 
 Convocation was no doubt two hundred years ago a sort 
 of fourth estate of the reahn, representing not the National 
 Church but the clergy, even for purposes of taxation. It was 
 at their own request that for those purposes they were 
 merged in the nation, and taxed by the same machinery as the 
 laity. From that time Convocation was practically without 
 functions, and when summoned, as in 1698, the disputes be- 
 tween the Low Church bishops appointed by the Crown and 
 the Jacobite clergy ran so high as to create scandal and ren- 
 der their debates fruitless ; and from 17 17 till our own day, 
 though formally summoned, they were always at once pro- 
 rogued. 
 
 But even if the traditions of Convocation were far more 
 satisfactory, the chief objection remains that to hand over the 
 control of the Church to that body would be an infringement 
 of the national principle, and an imitation of the practice of 
 the sects, without any compensating advantage. For what 
 ground from recent experience have we for believing that the 
 various parties in the Church would agree better in Convoca- 
 tion than they did in 1698? 
 
 To give the powers that are claimed to Convocation 
 would be a certain step towards a severance of all connection 
 with the State, and consequently (in words probably familiar 
 to many here) would inevitably lead to that " degradation 
 which by an almost universal law overtakes religion when, 
 even while attaining a purer form, it loses the vivifying and 
 elevating spirit breathed into it by close contact with the 
 great historic and secular influences, which act like fresh air 
 on a contracted atmosphere, and are thus the divine antisep-
 
 276 THE CONDITIO y AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 tics against the spiritual corruption of merely ecclesiastical 
 communities " (Dean Stanley). 
 
 I am not aware of any other proposal to which the same 
 objection does not attach. They are one and all aimed at a 
 further severance of the clergy from the Church and from the 
 nation, whereas what we need is precisely the reverse of this 
 that the clergy should be brought into closer contact with 
 the nation, and should learn to feel more and more the worth 
 and nobleness of their common citizenship. 
 
 That they have a higher citizenship is of course true, but 
 only in the same sense in which it is true of every one of 
 their lay brethren. That Christ is the only head of the Church 
 is also true, but is He not also the only head of the nation ? 
 He is no more visible to the Church than to the nation, to 
 the priest than to the crossing-sweeper. They hold their com- 
 mission from Him no doubt, but they must receive it, with 
 some visible seal, from some human hands ; and what seal 
 can be so worthy, so noble, as that of the nation whose chil- 
 dren they are ? 
 
 But if none of the suggestions yet made seem to offer re- 
 lief, what is the outlook ? Dark enough, I admit, but still by 
 no means so dark as it has often been before, for all these 
 struggles and controversies are, after all, but the signs of a 
 vigorous life. All that is needed and surely England will 
 not now for the first time need it in vain is some small share 
 of the self-restraint, the patience, and the courage which have 
 never yet failed her under God's blessing. That there must 
 be a great reform in our National Church is clear, but she is 
 strong enough to bear it. What has been done in our day
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 277 
 
 in this direction should be encouraging instead of depressing 
 to any one who will look at it steadily and fairly j but it is 
 only a fraction of what is needed. 
 
 The readjustment of Church property, the establishment 
 of the Ecclesiastical Commission, the abolition of tests, the 
 relaxation of subscription, the reorganization of parishes, the 
 appointment of bishops without seats in the House of Lords, 
 the subdivision of dioceses, the Church Discipline Acts, the 
 revision of the Bible, and, lastly, this Public Worship Act, are 
 all measures passed within my own memory. And surely 
 such a list (and it might be doubled) may well give heart of 
 grace to the most desponding, for these reforms have been 
 made in a time peculiarly unfavourable to the development 
 of the Church. The commercial spirit, with its utilitarian 
 and materialistic Gospel, has been in the ascendant, with the 
 result that the friends of the National Church have been 
 afraid of touching a brick of the old fabric lest the whole 
 should come about their ears, while her enemies have looked 
 upon every effort for reform with watchful jealousy, fearing 
 lest it should strengthen the old walls and foundations. No 
 one can have been in the House of Commons without becom- 
 ing aware of the strength of these two antagonist forces, both 
 however working in the same direction, that of making any 
 resolute action in Church reform all but impossible. And 
 yet all these things I have just referred to have been done in 
 such a time. 
 
 Why then should we despair of greater and better things, 
 when a time has come in which there are unmistakable signs 
 that, whatever the controlling spirit may prove to be, it will
 
 278 THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 not be the utilitarian or materialistic ? If the Church has 
 emerged from such a time as the one which is expiring, fuller 
 than ever of spiritual life and zeal, and without having as yet 
 lost anything of her national character, what fear is there 
 that she will be false to her own and her country's history in 
 the time which is coming? It was in a crisis in several re- 
 spects as serious as the present that the wisest as well as the 
 most observant and best-informed of foreign critics of our na- 
 tional habits and institutions, wrote : " To this country be- 
 longs the honour of having, so far as the State is concerned, 
 succeeded in the mighty task of reconciling individual liberty 
 with allegiance and submission to the will of the community, 
 whilst other nations are still wrestling with it ; and I feel 
 persuaded that the same earnest zeal and practical wisdom 
 which have made her political constitution an object of 
 admiration to other nations will, under God's blessing, make 
 her Church also a model to the world " (Prince Albert). 
 
 It is in this hope and with this belief that I have ventured 
 to speak to you this evening. I know that I must have said 
 things which may have roused painful, and possibly indignant 
 feelings in the minds of persons for whom individually, and 
 for much of whose work, I should desire only to express re- 
 spect and gratitude. If there should be any such here, I can 
 only ask them to believe that it is from love to the Church, 
 of which we are all members, not less sincere, I trust, and 
 loyal than their own from an estimate not lower, at any rate, 
 though in some respects differing from theirs, of the mission 
 of that Church, and of the work she has been called to do 
 for the nation and for the world that one is constrained to
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAXn. 279 
 
 be perfectly outspoken, and not to ignore or explain away 
 facts, or to call things by any other than their plainest names 
 at such a time as this. 
 
 There is no danger for our Church that I can see, except 
 from her own children, indeed from her own officers. There 
 is no deeper feeling on this subject of disestablishment in the 
 House of Commons than irritated jealousy, having its root in 
 social and political soil, and its expression in clever flippancy 
 and bitterness, and the House in this matter very fairly rep- 
 resents the people. Those who express anything more serious 
 are, I think, constantly finding it more and more difficult to 
 persuade themselves or any one else that they are working 
 for the highest good of the country, and with a single view of 
 placing religion under the absolutely best conditions for do- 
 ing the nation's work. It is only within her own ranks that 
 there is zeal and fire enough to be dangerous. 
 
 Before going further on these new and perilous ways, the 
 discontented in her own ranks should at least count the cost 
 more carefully than they seem yet to have done. Can any 
 one of them say deliberately that in his conscience he believes 
 the conditions and prospects of the religious life of this nation 
 will be improved by the withdrawal of religion altogether 
 from the cognizance and control of the nation ? If he can 
 answer yes, there is no more to be said, and there can be 
 neither peace nor even truce possible between us. If 
 not there is scarcely any point, short of the intrusion of 
 outside influence in the National Church, or disobedience 
 to the law, to which we would not go to help them. We will 
 join them in efforts to obtain thorough Church reform,
 
 28o THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the deeper and wider the better. We have no fear of touch- 
 ing formularies, or canons, or rubrics, or liturgies ; indeed 
 are anxious they should be touched, inasmuch as they are in 
 not a few respects obsolete and unfitted to our time. When- 
 ever the clergy are prepared for this necessary work, which 
 cannot be long deferred though in the midst of the present 
 agitation it is difficult to see how or by whom it can be taken 
 in hand they will find lay Churchmen cordial and strenuous 
 helpers. All we ask of them is, that in one of the great crises 
 of the world the days of the Lord, as they are so well called 
 they shall not wantonly destroy that example of the condi- 
 tions on which the Gospel and the nations can live together, 
 which, with all its faults, is the best hitherto seen in the 
 world, and the only one which gives us even a distant hint of 
 how, in God's good time, the kingdoms of this world may be- 
 come the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVINGS 
 
 By W. H. Mallock. 
 
 I. 
 
 The apostles of modern progress claim many virtues for 
 the present, which the unenlightened observer may be some- 
 what slow to detect in it. But it has one distinctive feature 
 at any rate, the reality of which can be denied by nobody, and 
 which has needed but little heightening from the imagination 
 of the optimist. That feature is the singular toleration of its 
 temper amongst all that, apparently, can most excite intol- 
 erance. Every belief that life was once supposed to rest upon 
 we see men calmly questioning and preparing to cast aside, 
 and yet we most of us keep our tempers ; we are neither afraid 
 nor angry. Doctrines are swinging before us in the balance 
 that seemed but yesterday to be fixed as mountains, not to be 
 weighed at all ; and yet no Brennus adds a sword to make his 
 own scale heavier. There iS, in fact, a greater intellectual 
 struggle going on now about us, than the world in its whole 
 history has ever before witnessed ; the difference that is at the 
 heart of it is wider and more profound. And yet never in any 
 past period has the philosophic and the theological hatred 
 
 1 The Nineteenth Century, September, 1877, and January, 1878.
 
 282 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 been felt so little or been so well suppressed by the disputants ; 
 whilst amongst the world at large that intelligently watches 
 the movement, and with interest abides the result of it, prej- 
 udice seems almost completely to be laid to sleep, and to 
 have given place to a true judicial calm. Our avowed desire 
 is simply to discover where truth lies, not to discover that it 
 lies either here or there. Truth is the pearl we want, and the 
 divers may seek for it either in cesspools or in crystal seas. 
 Let them only prove to us satisfactorily where it is to be found. 
 It is not by its locality that we shall judge of its value. 
 
 A toleration so catholic and so complete as this seems 
 doubtless a very attractive thing, and is hailed by many wise 
 and worthy men as the fairest and surest sign of a really 
 enlightened age. It is to be feared, however, that in this view 
 we flatter ourselves too much. In some small measure our 
 toleration may indeed be a sign of our enlightenment, but in a 
 far greater measure it is a sign and an effect of our ignorance. 
 We are tolerant of various views, because we have grasped the 
 full meaning of none of them. We are calm as we watch the 
 battle, because we are happily unconscious of what hangs on 
 the issue of it. 
 
 This unconsciousness is as easy to explain as it is difficult 
 to excuse. It lies in the following fact. The seat of war, so 
 to speak, is at present in a distant countr)\ Our homes, our 
 families, and the course of our daily lives are not disturbed by 
 it. The questions now dividing the intellectual world are as 
 yet unpractical and remote ones. They deal with the most 
 distant things of the past, or the most elusive things of the 
 present with the connection of mind and body, with the
 
 /S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 283 
 
 foundations of morality, with the descent of man, with the 
 origin of life, with the composition of matter, with the existence 
 or non-existence of a first cause. Such questions as these 
 hardly ever occur to us, much less do we seriously think them 
 over, except in times of leisure or retirement. When we are 
 engaged in action, or when we are stirred by feeling, they 
 recede entirely from us ; we forget that we have ever known 
 them. No questions, however, are simply abstract that are of 
 any importance to the world at large, or that the world at 
 large takes any genuine interest in. They may seem to be so, 
 but they are not so ; and the world by a keen instinct feels that 
 they are not so, long before this feeling has become con- 
 scious knowledge, and before conscious knowledge has pro- 
 duced wisdom. Sooner or later, directly or indirectly, such 
 questions will show their bearing on life. They will become 
 capable of being expressed in terms of action ; and we shall 
 discuss the distant premisses under the form of the near 
 conclusion. And not this only ; not only shall we thus discuss 
 them, but it is this last discussion, this discussion of the con- 
 clusion, that will really be the decisive one. It may reverse 
 in a moment all former judgments, and from it there will be 
 no appeal. Philosophies, let us remember, exist for the world, 
 not the world for philosophies ; and philosophies can only 
 rule the world by guiding it in directions which it is willing 
 itself to take. Let them try to do it violence, and to force it, 
 no matter on whaf grounds : it will argue back from the practi- 
 cal conclusions to the theoretical premises ; and if it rejects 
 the latter as repulsive, it will wisely and inevitably condemn 
 the former as false.
 
 284 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 . The world, then, is tolerant at present of all the rival 
 theories that so much engage its attention, because it is not 
 yet aware of the rival practical meanings which lurk below, 
 but only a little below, the surface of them. I have no wish 
 to pronounce on these any judgment of my own. To do so 
 would be quite beside my point. My aim is a far humbler one. 
 It is simply to awake others, and enable them to pass judg- 
 ment for themselves. It is my aim to make them see what in 
 these days we are really all debating about, and to show them 
 that it is not only first causes, and natural selection, and the 
 condition of the universe millions of years ago ; but the tone 
 and character of our human existence now our hopes, our 
 fears, our affections, even our amusements, our relations with 
 our wives and parents, and the education of our children. It 
 is all under debate the entire scheme and conduct of our 
 Jives, the complexion of each short day of them from sunrise 
 to sunset. But of this the world seems quite ignorant ; and, 
 being ignorant it can easily afford to be tolerant. 
 
 Let us examine the matter more particularly, but first let 
 us make our minds clear about one important point. 
 
 The schools of thought that are being now developed 
 about us seem from some points of view to be very various. 
 Theologies, moral philosophies, and materialisms distract our 
 attention with their endless details, and, seen through a dim 
 intellectual twilight, look even more confused and numerous 
 than they really are. But there is one graftd division to be 
 made between them, at which they at once form into order, 
 and are forced to group themselves into two classes, between 
 which there is no sympathy and no connection, and between
 
 7^ LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 285 
 
 which the line of separation is sharp, distinct, and insupera- 
 ble, and between which^ if their difference have any meaning 
 at all, accounts must first be settled before we can with profit 
 proceed an inch further. The one of these classes is distin- 
 guished by the affirmation, the other by the denial, of two 
 dogmas the existence of a personal God, and the personal 
 immortality of man. The distinct affirmation of these I shall 
 call Religion, or Belief ; the distinct denial of them I shall 
 call Atheism, or Unbelief. I need not pause to defend this 
 use of the words. For the present it is enough that I ex- 
 plain it. 
 
 It is true that Religion and Atheism represent opposite 
 poles of thought, and that between these two certainties 
 there are all gradations of doubt. But with none of these 
 forms of doubt need we now concern ourselves ; and for this 
 reason. My aim is not now to deal with conditions of mind, 
 but with the practical, with the active results which such con- 
 ditions produce. If neither Religion nor Atheism have any 
 practical effect on the conduct and character of life, if their 
 axioms are mere barren propositions beginning and ending 
 with themselves, without any significance, be it ever so small, 
 to the -human race at large, it is a foolish waste of time tc 
 affirm or to deny either of them. They may serve to amuse the 
 barbarous leisure of pedants, but all except pedants will wisely 
 refuse a thought to them. If, however, on the other hand, they 
 have any effect at all, then, in so far as certainty either way 
 can direct or stimulate action, doubt in a like degree must 
 paralyse and arrest it. But it is in action that man's life and 
 health consist ; what tends to hinder action is the beginning
 
 286 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 of death. The philosophy of complete doubt therefore stands 
 self-condemned. It still exists, it is true ; the sentence upon 
 it has never been fully executed ; but it exists as a disease 
 a disease, indeed, from which some of us may ourselves be 
 suffering, but which it seems hardly conceivable that any one 
 in his senses should boast of, still less try to propagate ; 
 whilst, if the doubt be not complete, if it be not balanced 
 perfectly in the centre, it must be always tending either to 
 one pole or the other, and its right name would be incomplete 
 religion or incomplete atheism, neither of which stages is 
 final ; and, the incompleteness being in each case an imper- 
 fection, it must be got rid of before we can do any justice to 
 either side. 
 
 The matter, then, is thus far simplified. All minor differ- 
 ences, of whatever magnitude, for the present may be quite 
 dropped. We will but busy ourselves with the greatest dif- 
 ference of all. As far as we are concerned, there are but 
 two parties now contending, and these parties are Religion 
 and Atheism, Belief and Unbelief, those fundamental oppo- 
 sites, those irreconcilable enemies. Such being the case, we 
 may indeed find matter for wonder in the extreme forbearance 
 with which the contest is conducted, and the impartiality, 
 despite the interest, with which it is watched. 
 
 In former times, when Atheism was vague and stammer- 
 ing, incomplete and unorganized, it was condemned and sup- 
 pressed with horror, anger and indignation. Its apostles 
 were execrated as monsters doomed to eternal torments. The 
 world cast them out, and the Church burnt them. But now 
 that Atheism is complete and organized, without concealment
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVINGS 287 
 
 and without shame, its name is not even a term of mild 
 reproach. On the contrary, its most notorious professors are 
 honored and looked up to by the world in general, and are 
 listened to with respectful patience by even their professed 
 opponents. Deans avow friendship for men compared with 
 whom Voltaire is orthodox, and cardinals with such men 
 gravely discuss beliefs which Voltaire would have thought it 
 horrible to question. 
 
 The reason of this is obvious. Atheism has come forward 
 under changed conditions. It is based upon new founda- 
 tions ; it is animated with a new temper. For the first time 
 it rests itself not on the private speculations of a rebellious 
 intellect, not on the ravings of a vile Parisian populace drunk 
 with the wine of politics, and suffering from political delirium 
 tremens, but on the deep and broad foundations of research, 
 experiment, and proof. It has thus lost all that insolence of 
 private passion and of private judgment, which used to make 
 it as offensive to men's practical instincts as it was hostile to 
 their theoretical convictions. Our modern atheists in profes- 
 sion, and to a great measure in fact are entirely free of the 
 old personal bravado ; they claim to teach with authority, 
 because they have been content to learn with humility. For 
 they, too, have their church, their infallible teacher, to 
 whom they profess an implicit and devout obedience. 
 And this teacher is undoubtedly an august one. It is 
 none other than Nature herself, as our powerful science 
 compels her answers from her Nature, in the widest sense 
 of the word, including the history of the universe and the 
 history of the human race, and the laws in obedience to which
 
 288 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 this history has developed itself. Here, we are told, is our 
 one source of knowledge ; here we learn the truth, and the 
 whole truth. Nature bears witness about every conceivable 
 subject ; there is no rational question which, if we do but ask 
 it properly, she will not answer. She will require no faith 
 from us ; she will ask us to take nothing on trust. Everything 
 that she teaches us she will prove and verify ; and there is no 
 variableness in her, nor any shadow of turning. " Come, 
 then " this is the appeal that our modern atheists make to 
 us " and let us learn of Nature ; let us listen to the voice of 
 Truth ! " And what does Truth tell us ? Among many 
 things Truth tells us two, which are of prime importance, and 
 which are universally intelligible to the human race. There 
 is no God, and there is no future life. The notion of the first 
 is unnecessary, and that of the second is ridiculous. In the 
 name of Truth, then, let us cast these lies away from us, 
 however painfully for the moment we may feel their loss, 
 however closely they may be bound up for us with memories 
 of the past. But we are not left with this exhortation only. 
 Something more is added to sustain and stimulate us. These 
 lies, we are told, if we will but look them boldly in the face, 
 instead of blinking at them out of deference to their supposed 
 divinity, we shall see to be not lies only, but profoundly im- 
 moral lies. It is, therefore, in the name not of selfish indul- 
 gence, not of license and free-living, but of sacred truth and 
 all the severest principles, that we are invited to accept the 
 creed of Atheism, and to cast out Religion. Thus the 
 Atheism of to-day, though theoretically destructive, is practi- 
 cally conservative. It no longer assails society as it is, or any
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 289 
 
 of those rules that sustain it, or the chastened affections that 
 are supposed to make it worth sustaining. It is associated no 
 longer with any dissolute wit, with any cruel and brilliant 
 cynicism, or with the fascinations of lawless love. On the 
 contrary, it is on the whole somewhat dull ; and, to say the 
 least of it, it is eminently respectable. It is the Atheism of 
 the vigil, not of the orgy ; and its character when developed 
 is solemn, almost puritanical. Study the language, the con- 
 duct, even the faces of its most eminent exponents, and signs 
 will be apparent everywhere of gravity and of severe earnest- 
 ness. These are men, we see in a glance, who hold life a 
 serious thing a thing not to be trifled away in idleness, how- 
 ever harmless, or in licentious self-indulgence, however refined 
 or graceful. What is really of value in life, what men should 
 really strive for, are things to be reached only by self-denial 
 and labor, and a vigilant rigor in the guidance and control 
 of our passions. Those who pay no heed to the better part, 
 but who saunter, who lounge, who smile, who sneer through 
 life, are condemned by the atheists even more grimly than by 
 the believers. 
 
 Here, then, is the explanation of our modern tolerance. 
 Both the opposing schools unite in one point ; and this is the 
 only point on which difference could not be forgotten, and on 
 which agreement must be hourly felt and remembered. Both 
 agree in their determination to enforce morality, to enjoin 
 strictly on men one certain line of conduct, and by some 
 means or other to persuade or constrain them to follow it. 
 The two schools may differ as to minor details ; this compara- 
 tively is of small moment. All that we need now remember 
 
 19
 
 290 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 is that they agree about the great premiss, which, though often 
 not expressed, is implied in all moral systems whatsoever, and 
 without which it is manifest they must all fall to the ground. 
 That premiss is this : Human life is a thing of solemn im- 
 portance ; it is of the utmost matter how we live it. Lived 
 in one way, it is a hateful failure ; lived in another., it is a 
 beautiful success. In other words, there is something in it of 
 such consummate and incomparable value that its attainment 
 will repay every possible cost to us of weariness, of patience, 
 and of torture, and, once attained, will make us feel truly that 
 we have not lived in vain. Thus human endeavor has a 
 meaning, and, rightly directed, is sure of its own reward. 
 Life is not vanity, it is not vexation of spirit. Of the existence 
 of this precious something that gives life its value there is 
 no question ; that, by both parties, is taken for granted. The 
 only question is as to its analysis what are its component 
 parts, on what is its value founded ? Thus the rival parties 
 are agreed to share the treasure \ their only contest is as to 
 who shall protect the treasury. 
 
 There is one fact, however, which the unbelievers pass by. 
 They are sometimes so ignorant that they do not know of it \ 
 they are sometimes so preoccupied that they forget it ; they 
 are often of what we should most of us call so fine a nature 
 that they can but imperfectly understand it. At any rate, 
 from whatever cause, they one and all ignore it ; or when for 
 a moment sometimes it is actually forced upon their notice, 
 they only put it aside with anger and irritation. They will not 
 even examine it. This fact, however, is one that must be 
 dealt with that we must look fully in the face. Sooner or
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 29 1 
 
 later we shall have to do so. We cannot dispose of It either 
 by ill-temper or forgetfulness. Let us try to consider it, and 
 calmly value its importance. 
 
 We can most of us, we can probably all of us, remember 
 times in the course of our lives, when we have felt like Mac- 
 beth or Hamlet in their most desponding moods. We have 
 heard the rumor of life as it were an idiot's tale in our ears, 
 full of sound and fury, signifying nothing ; all the uses of the 
 world have seemed weary, stale, fiat, and unprofitable to us. 
 We have thought that there was nothing worth striving for, 
 that there was no profit under the sun. The splendor has 
 gone from the grass, the glory from the flower. Knowledge, 
 life, affection all these have ceased to appeal to us. We 
 have felt that we must do something, but that it was no matter 
 what we did. To some of us suicide has no doubt suggested 
 itself ; and to others the more popular philosophy, so tersely 
 expressed by Byron, that 
 
 Man, being reasonable, must get drunk. 
 
 This view, however, even by most of those who hold it, has 
 been felt to be really but a half-view in the guise of a whole 
 one. It has else been intentionally adopted as a kind of 
 solemn affectation, or it has else been lamented as a miser- 
 able sad disease. It is a view, indeed, that healthy intellects 
 have hitherto declined even to consider. Its advocates have 
 met with neglect, contempt, or castigation, not with arguments ; 
 they have been pitied as insane, condemned as cynical, or 
 passed over as frivolous. And yet but for one reason, 
 this view would have been to the whole modern world not
 
 292 QUESTIONS OF BEIiEF. 
 
 only not untenable, but even obvious. The emptiness of the 
 things of this life, their utter powerlessness to make us really 
 happy, has been the theme equally of saints and sages. Com- 
 merce with the world and meditation in the cloister seemed 
 to teach all of them the same lesson, seemed to preach to 
 them the same sermon de contemptii mundi. The view which 
 the eager monk began with, the sated monarch ended with. 
 But matters did not end here. There was something more to 
 come, by which this view was completely changed and trans- 
 muted, and which made the wilderness and the waste place 
 at once blossom as the rose. Judged of by itself, this life 
 would indeed be vanity ; but it was not to be judged of by 
 itself. All its ways seemed to break short aimlessly in preci- 
 pices, or to be lost hopelessly in deserts ; they led to no visi- 
 ble end. True ; but they led instead to ends that were invisi- 
 ble to spiritual and eternal destinies, to triumphs exceeding 
 every hope, to terrible failures exceeding every fear. This, 
 all men might see if they would only choose to see. The 
 most trivial of our daily actions became thus invested with an 
 immeasurable meaning. Life was thus evidently not vanity, 
 not an idiot's tale, not unprofitable ; and those who affected 
 to think it was were naturally disregarded by the world as 
 either insane or insincere. 
 
 But now with the unbelievers all this is changed. They, 
 too, hold that life is serious ; as serious, they say, as the be- 
 lievers hold it nay, even more so. But they must base this 
 faith of theirs upon quite new reasons ; they must find quite a 
 new answer with which to confute objectors. It is, in fact, 
 their boast that they are obliged to do so. Not only do they
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVLXG? 293 
 
 think the old answers to be insufficient or beside the point, 
 but they think them to be lies, to be groundless lies, to be im- 
 moral lies. To destroy them, to cast them out, to cleanse the 
 world of them, is with our new teachers the very beginning of 
 progress. What then is the practical result, or rather the prac- 
 tical meaning, of this ? An extreme value to life, we have 
 seen, they are resolved indeed, being moralists, they are 
 obliged to give ; they will not tolerate those who deny this 
 value. But they are obliged to find the value in a new 
 place in the very place where hitherto it has been thought 
 most conspicuous by its absence. It is to be found in no 
 better and wider future, where injustice shall be turned to jus- 
 tice, trouble into rest, and blindness into clear sight ; for no 
 such future awaits us. It is to be found in life itself, in this 
 earthly life, this life between the cradle and the grave there 
 or nowhere ; and within these limits they imply it assuredly is 
 to be found found and attained also, for it is nothing if not 
 attainable. Here, then, is a distinct intelligible task that the 
 unbelievers have unintentionally set themselves ; and when 
 they realize what it is, they may perhaps be startled at its 
 boldness. They have taken everything away from life that 
 to wise men hitherto has seemed to redeem it from van- 
 ity. They have to prove to us that they have not left it vain. 
 They have to prove those things to be solid which their pre- 
 decessors thought hollow, those things serious which their pre- 
 decessors thought contemptible ; they must prove to us that 
 we shall be content with that which has never yet contented 
 us, and that the widest minds will thrive within limits that 
 have hitherto been thought too narrow for the narrowest. They
 
 294 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 may be able to prove this ; there is nothing on the face of it 
 that is impossible. But at all events it requires to be proved. 
 They must not beg the very point which is most open to con- 
 tradiction, and which, when once duly apprehended, will be 
 most sure to provoke it. If this life is not of itself incapable 
 of satisfying us, let them show us conclusively that it is not. 
 But they can hardly expect that, without any such showing at 
 all, the world will suddenly repel as a blasphemy what it has 
 hitherto accepted as a commonplace. 
 
 If we consider the matter a little further, this will become 
 more evident. 
 
 All systems of morality, we have seen, must postulate some 
 end of action an end that is worth living for an end that is 
 supremely good for us to gain, and supremely ill for us to 
 lose an end that we can only gain by virtue, and that we 
 must lose by vice. We have seen also that every system of 
 morality that is not religious must place this end wholly within 
 the present life. Life, this terrestrial human life, it premises, 
 contains something in it that can satisfy man ; and this some- 
 thing is to be reached only in certain ways ways that can be 
 prescribed, and taught, and which are named morality. 
 Now let us reflect a little about this something, and see gener- 
 ally what sort of something it must be, if it is to satisfy all the 
 demands that will necessarily be made upon it. 
 
 In the first place, it is of course a something whose value 
 can be, and is, recognized by those who follow it. Virtuous 
 men are virtuous because virtue brings them something which 
 they wish to be brought to them ^because the end it aims at 
 seems to them the highest aim. But this is not all. It is
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 295 
 
 not enough that to those who already know it, and who are 
 already seeking and finding it, the something in question ap- 
 pears an adequate end of action. It must be capable of be- 
 ing put as such before those who already do not know it, 
 and who have never sought it, but who have, on the contrary, 
 always turned away from everything that is supposed to lead 
 to it. It must be able, in other words, not only to satisfy the 
 virtuous of the wisdom of their virtue ; it must be able to con- 
 vince the vicious of the folly of their vice. If it cannot fulfil 
 this condition, the atheistic moralist can make no converts. 
 Vice is only bad in his eyes because of the precious some- 
 thing we lose by it. He can only convince us of our error by 
 giving us some picture of our loss. And this, if his moral 
 system be worth anything, he must be able to do, and, in pro- 
 mulgating his system, he professes to be able to do. The 
 physician's work is to heal the sick. His skill must not end 
 in explaining his own health. 
 
 Here, then, is an important fact about the supreme some- 
 thing that someihittg that alone makes life serious, and that 
 is of necessity postulated by every unbelieving moralist. It 
 is nothing, as we have already said, if not attainable. We 
 now see that it is next to nothing if not describable. 
 
 Let us go a little farther. 
 
 One term of description we may at once apply to it, as 
 about that there has been no question. The something v^o. are 
 in search of is some form of happiness. But it is not enough 
 to call it happiness. For of happiness there are countless 
 kinds ; and one or other of these all men follow, and take 
 very different paths in doing so. But it is plain that they
 
 296 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 are not for this reason moral. Else there would be an indef- 
 inite number of moralities, and we might multiply them at 
 our own caprice. But this plainly is not the case. Of moral- 
 ities, unless we give the word an entirely new meaning, there 
 is fundamentally only one, and this is equally applicable to 
 all varieties of men. Morality, then, is the art of one single 
 kind of happiness ; and this happiness will, when once known, 
 be attractive to all alike, despite every difference of situation, 
 taste, and temper. It will be attractive, too, in so superla- 
 tive a degree, that every pleasure will be gladly sacrificed, 
 and every pain gladly suffered for it, by those who have once 
 seen it in its true colors. 
 
 It thus appears, then, that all those who, dispensing with 
 religion, would yet maintain morality stand committed to the 
 following statement that human life contains for those who 
 seek it a certain kind of happiness so supreme and satisfying 
 that if a man gain the whole world and yet lose this, his en- 
 tire career is but a calamitous failure. And this supreme kind 
 of happiness is the same for all ; it is within the reach of all ; 
 when once fully known it is irresistibly attractive to all ; and, 
 by some means or other, it is describable or presentable to all. 
 
 And now let us dwell once again on this last character- 
 istic, and see a little more clearly how essential it is. 
 
 A code of morals is a number of restraining orders ; it 
 rigorously bids us walk in certain paths. But why ? What is 
 the use of bidding us ? Because there are a variety of other 
 paths that we are naturally inclined to walk in. The right 
 paths are right because they lead to the highest kind of hap- 
 piness ; the wTong paths are wrong because they lead to lower
 
 IS LIFE WOR TH LIVING ? 297 
 
 kinds of happiness. But when men choose vice instead of 
 virtue, what is happening? They are considering the lower 
 happiness better than the highest ; they are making a mistake 
 as to the value of the end. It is this mistake that is the es- 
 sence and the cause of immorality ; it is this mistake that 
 mankind is for ever inclined to make ; and it is the great rai- 
 son (Tetre of a moral system that it can bring this mistake 
 home to us, and so cure us of it ; that it can open our mind's 
 eyes, and show us that the highest happiness is indeed the 
 highest, and so make us sharply conscious of what we lose by 
 losing it. This highest happiness must, then, be describable 
 or presentable ; and the men to whom we shall chiefly v/ant 
 to present it are not men who desire to see it, and will seek 
 for it of their own accord, but men who are turned away from 
 it, and on whose sight it must be thrust. And not this only. 
 Not only must it be thus presentable, but when presented it 
 must be able to stand the inveterate criticism of those who 
 fear being allured by it, who are content as they are, and have 
 no wish to be rendered discontented. These men will sub- 
 mit it to every test by which they may hope to prove that its 
 attractions are delusive. They will ask what it is based upon, 
 and of what it is compounded. They will submit it to an 
 analysis as merciless as that by which their atheistic advisers 
 and censors have destroyed religion. They will test it with 
 reason, as we test a metal by acid. It must, therefore, be 
 able to bear this fiery and fierce ordeal, and come out none 
 the worse for it. Not only must it have a bloom of beauty on 
 it at first sight, but this beauty must bear handling, and must 
 be insoluble by reason, with which it is sure to be tested.
 
 298 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 Now is this happiness a realit)'', or is it a myth ? That is 
 the great question. Can human life, cut off utterly from 
 every hope beyond itself can human life supply it ? If it 
 cannot, then evidently there can be no morality without re- 
 ligion. But perhaps it can. But perhaps life has greater 
 capacities than we have hitherto given it credit for. Perhaps 
 this happiness may be really not far from any one of us, 
 and we have only overlooked it hitherto because it was too 
 directly before our eyes. If so, let it be pointed out to us. 
 It is useless, as we have seen, if not presentable. To those 
 who most need it, it is useless until presented. Indeed, until 
 it is presented, we are but acting on our teacher's maxim 
 by refusing to believe in it. And as yet it never has been 
 presented. No image of any kind of terrestrial happiness 
 has as yet been put before the world that can at all bear 
 the weight that will be put upon it, as the foundation of 
 morality, unless we give morality an entirely new and, in 
 many points, an entirely inverted meaning. 
 
 I know that this statement will be contradicted by many, 
 and, till it is explained further, it is only natural that it should 
 be. It will be said that a terrestrial happiness, just of the 
 kind needed, has been put by the unbelieving moralists before 
 the world again and again. Is not virtue, it has been asked 
 us, its own reward ? Shall we only be generous, be kind, be 
 brave, be true, for the hope of future payment, or the fear of 
 future pain ? Shall we not rather be all these things for the 
 simple sake of being them ? and shall not we find ample 
 blessedness in this ? I know that all this has been urged upon 
 us, and that it is being urged upon us daily nov/. But with
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 299 
 
 what results ? With none, or rather with far worse than none. 
 Not only has it done absolutely nothing towards clearing up 
 the matter, but it has, on the contrary, completely disordered 
 and confused it. It has reduced it to a state in which it is 
 impossible to pass any judgment on it. And the reason why 
 is simple. It begs the answer in the very terms in which it 
 propounds the question. 
 
 This hitherto has been the fault of all the unbelieving 
 moralists. They will never state their own position clearly. 
 I have said they will not, but it must be more true to say they 
 cannot. They apparently only mystify others, because they 
 have first honestly mystified themselves. At any rate, the 
 first thing to be done, before we proceed further, is to extri- 
 cate the question from all those irrelevant surroundings which 
 so completely hide its features as it is at present presented 
 to us. 
 
 As it is necessary before all things that this be done thor- 
 oughl}', I will not contend with the vague representative gener- 
 alities which I just now put into the mouths of the unbelievers. 
 I will take the very words of one of themselves, and these 
 words shall be the most favorable and complete specimen I 
 am able to find of their way of putting the case. They shall 
 show in its best and most alluring light the code of atheistic 
 ethics as it is offered to us by our modern atheists. We shall 
 then see distinctly with that we have first to deal. 
 
 The following verses are George Eliot's : 
 
 Oh may I join the choir invisible 
 
 Of those immortal dead, who live again 
 
 In minds made better by their presence . .
 
 300 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 So to live is heaven . . . 
 To make undying music in the vrorld, 
 Breathing us beauteous order that controls 
 With growing sway the growing life of man. 
 So we inherit that sweet purity 
 For which we struggled, groaned, and agonised 
 With widening retrospect that bred despair . . . 
 That better self shall live till human time 
 Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky 
 Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, 
 Unread for ever. This is life to come. 
 Which martyred men have made more glorious 
 For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
 That purest heaven, and be to other souls 
 That cup of strength in some great agony, 
 Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love, 
 Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, 
 Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
 And in diffusion ever more intense ; 
 So shall I join that choir invisible, 
 Whose music is the gladness of the world. 
 
 In these remarkable verses we have the whole gospel of 
 atheistic ethics, as it is now preached to us, presented in an 
 impassioned epitome. All that our unbelieving moralists say 
 we have condensed here, and condensed in such a way that it 
 shall look at its very best, that it shall look as beautiful and as 
 alluring as it possibly can be made to look. Indeed, the objec- 
 tion might readily suggest itself that it was too beautiful, too 
 highly strung that it was fit only for saints and heroes. This 
 objection, however, is a completely false one. It would apply 
 equally well to any system of morality that tended to raise men. 
 Our professions must be above our practice, else our practice 
 would soon sink below our professions. We are only not worse 
 than we are, because we know we ought to be better. A moral- 
 ity will never save sinners that will not satisfy saints, and the
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 301 
 
 sentiments of a system must be always suited to the most ex- 
 alted of those that live by it. In fact it is these that, before 
 all others, it must suit ; for it is they, though in numbers a 
 minority, that are the primary sources of all moral power. 
 The world may be divided into two classes. The first is com- 
 posed of the great mass of men without strong ambitions, 
 without strong principles, without either the need or power 
 to think things out for themselves. They are content to live, 
 as it were, from hand to mouth in so far as they are virtuous 
 doing their duties, in so far as they are vicious avoiding them, 
 with no inquiry into the deeper reasons of things, and the 
 fundamental difference between vice and virtue. The second 
 class is a comparatively small one, though its limits cannot be 
 defined with any great exactness. It consists of men with 
 minds and wills so active that they cannot take things thus 
 quietly. There are two questions, one of which they will ask, 
 and very often both of them. What meaning can be wrung 
 out of life ? and how can we ourselves wring out this meaning ? 
 These ^re the men who, in a greater or less degree, approach 
 the ideals of sanctity, of heroism, or of genius. These are 
 the salt of the earth, the little leaven hid in a barrel of meal 
 the men who have subdued kingdoms, escaped the edge of 
 the sword, out of weakness been made strong, and have put 
 to flight the armies of the aliens. These are the Pauls of the 
 world, and the Voltaires also, the Loyolas and the Benthams. 
 These are that gifted minority by whom men's blind instincts 
 are converted into clear governing principles, and principles 
 shown in action by example, by whom the world is taught, 
 and whom the world follows. To such men Georjre Eliot's
 
 202 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 verses could not be in any way unsatisfactory on the score of 
 their elevation. And such men, let us remember, are all that 
 we need now consider. For it is these a system must first 
 move and satisfy, before it can move and satisfy any others. 
 If the morality of atheism cannot attract them, we may be 
 quite sure it will attract nobody else. If they are convinced 
 that religion is false, that without religion there can be no 
 power to enable us to overcome temptation, and no reason 
 for desiring to do so, that in a moral sense life is worthless, 
 and that wisdom and folly are all one, much more will the 
 world at large be convinced, to whom wisdom is naturally 
 irksome, and folly easy. 
 
 And now, before recurring to George Eliot's verses let us 
 notice carefully one essential characteristic of the conduct of 
 this minority to whom the verses are primarily addressed. 
 Every human action must have a motive, it must aim at some 
 end which the agent desires to attain. But with the sort of 
 men we are now considering it is not enough that the act has 
 a motive, it must have also a justification. They must be as- 
 sured that the ends they aim at are right and worthy ones. 
 This being the case, we may divide their actions into three 
 classes. In the first the motive and the justification are es- 
 sentially inseparable. The former supplies the latter. The 
 , motive is its own justification. The end, in other words, is 
 good for its own sake. That is all we can say. We can de- 
 fend our desire for it no further. In the second class of ac- 
 tions the motive ajid the justification are inseparable also. 
 But here matters are reversed. The latter supplies the for- 
 mer. The justification is the only motive. The end, in other
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 303 
 
 words, is in no sense good for its own sake, but only as lead- 
 ing to some other good that is. Lastly, there is a third class 
 in which the motive and the justification are separate and dis- 
 tinct things. Here the reasons for which we choose an act 
 are different from the reasons for which we allow ourselves to 
 choose it. It is specially important that this should be un- 
 derstood rightly ; I will therefore give a few examples of 
 what I mean. Let us take the matter of politics. Apolitical 
 career has for many men an irresistible fascination. They 
 pursue it with an appetite and an eagerness that seems utterly 
 unconnected with anything else beyond. The only motives 
 they are conscious of are excitement and ambition. But these 
 strong motives are not sufficient. They need a justification 
 to clench their power. The justification is that politics are 
 not absorbing only, but necessary; not exciting only, but 
 useful. Once let this justification go, once disconnect the 
 success of the statesman from the improvement of the State, 
 once make it self-evident that in following his own interests 
 he is ministering to no interests beyond them, and the whole 
 charm of politics will be gone. They will have become nothing 
 but a game, and a foolish vapid game at which no one will care 
 to play. There is, to take another instance, a certain set of 
 excellent women, who are continually being moved to giving 
 advice and telling the whole truth to their friends. What can 
 be more distinct than motive and justification here ? The 
 justification is the good they do, the motive is the annoyance 
 they give. Or, to come to a commoner matter yet, let us 
 take the matter of eating. Nine times out of ten our imme- 
 diate motive for eating is the immediate pleasure which the
 
 304 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 process gives us. As far as we are conscious at the moment 
 eating is for the most part a simple self-indulgence. But if 
 eating were nothing more than that, conscientious men would 
 never devote the time to it which they do at present. It has, 
 however, a justification ; it is necessary for maintaining life. 
 We do not remember this each time we eat ; we do not perhaps 
 remember it so often as once a twelvemonth ; but the knowl- 
 edge is always latent, and by this knowledge the self-indul- 
 gence is justified. 
 
 Here then are three distinct classes of action. In the 
 yirst the motive supplies its own justification ; in the second 
 the justification is the only motive ; in the third the motive 
 and the justification are distinct and separate. If we lived to 
 eat, eating would belong to the first class ; since we eat to live, 
 eating does belong to the third class. But there is this ex- 
 ception : nauseous food is sometimes taken medicinally, and 
 then eating belongs to the second class. To one or other of 
 these classes every act must belong which any moral man 
 can desire to practise, and every act which any moralist can 
 enjoin. It will be seen further that the whole justification, 
 the whole moral character in fact, of the last two classes of 
 acts is derived ultimately from their connection with the first. 
 In other words, every moral act that we can do is either an 
 act that aims at some end good for its own sake, and that 
 thus stands solely and simply on its own merits ; or else it is 
 only moral in so far as it tends to produce, to facillitate, or to 
 multiply such acts. Such acts then, acts of the first class, 
 acts of which the motive supplies the only justification, are 
 tlie only acts that are of themselves good, or virtuous, or high,
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 305 
 
 or moral. It is from them that the others derive their whole 
 ethical character. And accordingly, in testing the sound- 
 ness of ethical systems, it is with them only that our first 
 concern lies. Everything else will stand or fall with these. 
 
 And now, remembering this, let us turn to George Eliot's 
 verses, and get rid of every act commended in them which is 
 not in itself moral, of which the motive is not its own justi- 
 fication. In this way the matter will be rapidly simplified, 
 and we shall see somewhat more clearly what is the real 
 point at issue. Now the principle and the virtue that George 
 Eliot most dwells upon, and upon which she relies mainly 
 for exciting our sympathies and enlisting them in her cause, 
 is self-sacrifice and heroism, and a losing of our individual 
 lives in the larger life of our own beloved race. It is thus 
 that she professes to offer us a higher kind of morality alto- 
 gether than the old religious kind, which was, compared with 
 this, a selfish hireling thing, bought by a splendid promise of 
 future heavenly wages. George Eliot herself, it is true, offers 
 us a reward ; but her reward is quite different. Though our 
 own, it will yet not be our own. Our good will be the good 
 of others ; our life will be the life of others. For us will be 
 agony, and groans, and struggling ; but we shall welcome 
 them as glorious, we shall choose them gladly ; for by them 
 we mix ourselves with the better self of the whole great world, 
 we become notes in its undying music. ' All this, no doubt, 
 sounds very fine indeed. A class of actions is here com- 
 mended to us that are in many ways very powerfully attrac- 
 tive. But to what class dp they belong ? They belong all 
 of them to those two classes we have been just considering,
 
 3o6 QUESTIOiVS OF BELIEF. 
 
 of which the motive is entirely distinct from the justification, 
 or else for its force altogether depends upon it. They are 
 not actions which stand on their own merit. They are not 
 self-luminous. It is quite true that men will often suffer and 
 die, and earn the name of heroes, because it seems duke et 
 decorum to them so to do. That is the motive. But there 
 must also be the latent justification, that to themselves at 
 least the end has seemed a worthy one. Else, if the end 
 have not so seemed, if they have undergone suffering for 
 ends which they themselves recognized to be frivolous, we 
 shall certainly not call them heroes ; on the contrary we 
 shall call them fools and madmen. If a Christian were to 
 be crucified that he might turn the world from vice to virtue, 
 he might well be called a hero, or something yet higher ; if 
 he were to be crucified that the world might prefer dry 
 champagne to sweet, he might well be called a fool, or any- 
 thing lower. It is evident, then, that all this groaning, this 
 agony, this sacrifice of ourselves for others, depends for its 
 value on the results it is designed to compass. No unbe- 
 liever would pretend that agony was good for itself, that 
 groaning was good for itself, or that heroism without an ob- 
 ject was heroism at all. It is on the object that the whole 
 matter depends. Granted that the object is good, the paths 
 that lead to it are of course good also ; and the harder and 
 more rugged they are, the more shall we admire those who 
 traverse them, and who assist others to traverse them. 
 About this there is no question. What do these paths lead 
 to ? That is the only point there can be any serious dispute 
 about. And I here take occasion to protest, with all the
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 307 
 
 emphasis I may, against a certain practice of our unbelieving 
 moralists which, if its deceit were not evidentally uninten- 
 tional, and if they themselves were not the first victims of it, 
 would demand the hardest epithet that the moral vocabulary 
 can supply. They always speak, they apparently always con- 
 trive to think, of this self-abnegating heroism, to which they 
 give such prominence, as a virtue that is something new and 
 peculiar to their own systems ; that it is cherished by unbe- 
 lief, and that religion stunts it. It is difficult to conceive an 
 assumption more utterly untrue than this, and not only more 
 untrue, but more groundless. Indeed it can only have im- 
 posed on any one by its inconceivable audacity. Heroism 
 and self-abnegation, as a moment's unruffled thought will 
 show us, are parts of religious morality just as much as of 
 atheistic. It is about the object only of the heroism that the 
 two systems differ. Both have for their end true human wel- 
 fare, the truest human happiness ; but the one connects such 
 happiness with something beyond this life with something 
 higher, purer, and more complete ; the other explicitly 
 bounds it by this life, which contains, it teaches, all the ele- 
 vation, purity, and completeness of which the loftiest human 
 nature is capable. Here is the only difference. George 
 Eliot says, " I desire to be immortal in the beneficial effects 
 of my life ; I desire to live on in the higher lives of others." 
 Well and good ; so she may desire it. But the desire is not 
 peculiar to those who desire nothing more than this. The 
 believer has just the same desire. He would just as gladly 
 spend and be spent for humanity. He only connects hu- 
 manity with something better than itself, and so makes it
 
 3o8 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 better worth his being spent for. Let us then, for the present 
 at least, quite put out of our heads all these providing, these 
 provisional virtues, these virtues not self-luminous, not self- 
 justified, which are common to both systems. There need be 
 no discussion where there is no disagreement. Let us con- 
 sider only the self-justified object which the unbelievers give 
 their virtues, and from which alone they gain their virtuous 
 character. For here it is that the heart of the difference lies. 
 And what on this point does George Eliot tell us ? What is 
 all her heroism, all her self-devotion to conduce to ? To 
 making men better, to making undying music and beauteous 
 order in the world, to diffusing sweet purity, and smiles that 
 have no cruelty in them. Here we come to the point. This 
 is the thing we want to know. We want to know what is the 
 precious thing we are to strive for, not to be told again and 
 again that we must heroically strive for something precious. 
 The foundation, then, of the unbeliever's ethics is not the 
 fact that heroism is good, and that self-sacrifice is good, but 
 that kind smiles are, and sweet purity is, and the world's 
 better self is. 
 
 Such is George Eliot's answer ; and such, in substance, is 
 the answer of all her school of moralists. But this is not 
 enough. This sort of answer practically is absolutely value- 
 less. We have here a lot of fine phrases. But what do these 
 fine phrases mean ? They may mean anything, or they may 
 mean nothing. They name a something, it is true ; but, in 
 the act of naming it, they shroud it in a vapor of praise. 
 We want this vapor cleared away. We wish to see the 
 praised something plainly. We want to know in detail
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 309 
 
 what the phrases mean. We want them translated into 
 terms of life and action. For it is according to the value 
 of the exact meaning of them that the system they belong 
 to stands or falls. We know what self-sacrifice and unsel- 
 fishness mean well enough. In the world's *' better self " we 
 find no meaning but what we bring. " Beauteous order " is 
 of course *' beauteous." But we do not want it to be thus 
 named by others ; we want to be shown it, so- that we may be 
 forced so to name it ourselves. Whilst as to "undying 
 music," we want to hear it first before we know whether 
 its continuance would be a blessing or a torture. And here 
 in passing we may notice another hallucination of our moral- 
 ists. They seem to think that the excellence of their end 
 is guaranteed and heightened by the trouble which, they 
 tell us, must be taken to arrive at it. They forget that 
 music fit for an orgy may be just as hard to play as music fit 
 for the Mass. The musician may have to struggle, groan, and 
 agdnize as much in one case as in the other. At present the 
 unbeliever's system of morality is like a rugged Ararat, which 
 we are bidden climb and help others to climb, for the sake of 
 an Ark that is said to rest on the peaks of it. But the peaks 
 are hidden by clouds, the ark can be seen by none below ; 
 and those who profess to have reached it, can give no distinct 
 account of the treasures they profess to have found in it. Why 
 should men then not remain on the level plains, and live at 
 will there quietly with the flocks and herds, if there is nothing 
 to assure them but a vague bewildered rumor that they will 
 gain anything better by the pains and perils of mountaineer- 
 ing?
 
 310 Q UESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 Once again let me repeat it is the ultimate end of action 
 we want to know about, which is quite distinct from our pain- 
 ful efforts to secure it. What is this precious somet/iing, this 
 peculiar kind of happiness, that we ought to live for ? What 
 is it that we gain by virtue and seriousness, and lose by vice 
 and frivolity ? It must be something, and it must be some- 
 thing definite. Else why is the moralist pleased with the 
 serious, and why is he angry with the frivolous ? He can only 
 tell us why, by presenting to us this end of action ; and by 
 presenting it to us in such a way that we see it to be its own 
 justification, that we realize it to be attainable, and that we 
 feel it to be attractive. 
 
 I am quite aware that it is easy to state these things on 
 paper, and to win from the reader a certain kind of assent to 
 them ; but that it is quite a different matter, and often a very 
 difficult one, to produce a really fruitful, a really living con- 
 viction. I will therefore adduce a very singular example to 
 prove that what I have been saying about atheistic ethics is 
 the simple sober truth true not only on paper, but in actual 
 life and practice. And I shall take the example from the 
 confessions of one of the atheists themselves ; one of the most 
 distinguished, the most earnest, the most influential among 
 their number : he shall be my witness. 
 
 " From the winter of 182 1," writes John Stuart Mill in his 
 Autobiography, "when I first read Bentham ... I had what 
 might truly be called an object in life ; to be a reformer of 
 the world. ... I endeavored to pick up as many flowers as 
 I could by the way ; but as a serious and permanent personal 
 satisfaction to rest upon, my whole reliance was placed on
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 31 1 
 
 this .... But the time came when I awakened from this as 
 from a dream. ... It occurred to me to put the question 
 directly to myself : ' Suppose that all your objects in life 
 were realized ; that all the changes in institutions and opin- 
 ions which you are looking forward to, could be completely 
 effected at this very instant, would this be a great joy and 
 happiness to you ? ' And an irrepressible self-consciousness 
 distinctly answered ' No ! ' At this my heart sank within 
 me ; the whole foundation on which my life was constructed 
 fell down. . . . The end had ceased to charm, and how could 
 there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to 
 have nothing left to live for. . . . The lines in Coleridge's 
 Dejection . . . exactly describe my case : 
 
 "'A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, 
 A drowsy, stifled, imimpassioned grief, 
 Which finds no natural outlet or relief 
 In word, or sigh, or tear. 
 
 Work, without hope, draws nectar in a sieve, 
 And life without an object cannot live.' " 
 
 And the teaching of this account is pointed by the following 
 comment on it : ' Though my dejection, honestly looked at, 
 could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the 
 ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny 
 of mankind in general was ever in my thoughts, and could 
 not be separated from my own. I felt that the flaw in my life 
 must be a flaw in life itself; and that the question was whether if 
 the reformers of society and government could succeed in their 
 objects, and every person in the community were free, and in a 
 state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept
 
 3 1 2 QUESTIONS OF BEL TEF. 
 
 up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. And 
 I felt that unless I could see some better hope than this for 
 human happiness in general, my dejection must continue." 
 
 Surely this passage must speak for itself. It can need 
 but little comment. Here is the truth of all that I have been 
 sa}'ing, confessed by one of the unbelievers themselves ; and 
 confessed not as an abstract, not as a theoretical truth, but as 
 a truth whose full bitterness he has himself felt. He has ac- 
 knowledged it by months of misery, by intermittent thoughts 
 of suicide, by years of recurring melancholy. Some ultimate 
 end of action some kind of satisfying happiness this, and this 
 alone, can give any meaning to work, or make possible any 
 kind of virtue. Without this we must be content to live as 
 the beasts, or we can never be content to live at all. All this 
 Mill distinctly acknowledges. What is the end the last end 
 . of action ? That is the vital question. Any answer that stops 
 short of this will be but postponing the difficulty, not meeting 
 it ; and will leave us in no better condition than that of the 
 Eastern cosmogonists, who first explained the earth's stability 
 by saying that it rested on an elephant ; and being asked on 
 what the elephant rested, answered, on a tortoise. 
 
 Mill, however, though he fully felt the difficulty in ques- 
 tion, did not long succumb to it. He was determined that 
 he would conquer it, and he at last persuaded himself that he 
 had done so. He contrived to make life again bearable, and 
 to convince himself that it contained something worthy of his 
 self-devotion. It will be instructive to see how he does this, 
 as a further light will be thus thrown on those subtle decep- 
 tions which the unbelievers practice on themselves, and their
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 313 
 
 contrivances for veiling that question wliose naked face they 
 seem even afraid to look at. The process, then, of Mill's 
 moral convalescence, as he himself understood it, took the 
 form of two new discoveries. In the first place, he tells us, 
 that though he never " wavered in the conviction that happi- 
 ness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life," 
 he now thought that this end was only to be attained by not 
 making it the direct end. " Those only are happy . . . who 
 have their minds fixed on some object other than their own 
 happiness ; on the happiness of others, on the improvement 
 of mankind ; even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a 
 means, but as itself an ideal end." Now what does Mill gain 
 by this ? Is he meeting the difficulty ? Not in the slightest ; 
 he is simply wriggling out of it. For firstly, as to any "art 
 or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal 
 end," if happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, the fol- 
 lowing of these arts or pursuits can only be justified because 
 they promote happiness. Every path in the ethical labyrinth 
 leads back to that. Nor, next, is any difficulty overcome by 
 bidding us follow the happiness of others instead of our own. 
 For the question still remains unsettled, what kind of happi- 
 ness for others is it, that it will be worth our while to promote ? 
 We are merely thus removing the matter to a little distance, in 
 the hopes of gaining a clearer view of it. But that no clearer 
 view of it can ever be got this way, the following pithy passage 
 out of More's Utopia is sufficient to remind us ; " For a joj'ful 
 life, that is to say a pleasant life, is either evil ; and if so, then 
 thou shouldest not only help no man thereto, but rather as much 
 as in thee lieth withdraw all men from it, as noisome and hurl-
 
 3 1 4 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 ful ; or else if thou not only mayest, but also of duty art bound 
 to procure it for others, why not chiefly for thyself? to whom 
 thou art bound to show as much favour and gentleness as to 
 others." And Mill with a curious inconsistency seems to 
 have admitted and felt that this was really true. For no 
 sooner had he come to the conclusion we have been just con- 
 sidering, that men should not seek their own happiness, than 
 he went on to inquire, with the utmost anxiety, in what 
 this happiness consisted. He took some time in discover- 
 ing this, and was at first not a little perplexed about it. But 
 at length light broke upon him ; the discovery at length was 
 made. And what, according to his own account, was it ? 
 The " perennial " happiness, for which men are to live, which 
 is to make life desirable " when all the greater evils .... 
 shall have been removed," consists, he tells us, " in states of 
 feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excite- 
 ment of beauty." This is the only description, the most ac- 
 curate and complete description, he can give us of the one 
 thing by which all conduct is to be tested, and the hope of at- 
 taining which is alone to make life liveable. Mill is as vague 
 as George Eliot. His answer is just as worthless. If some 
 special kind of happiness is the one thing we are to work for, 
 we must know so exactly what this happiness is, that we can, 
 without error, distinguish it from all other kinds. It must be 
 such, too, that we shall be prepared to admit that all acts 
 will be moral that conduce to it ; and that no act will be im- 
 moral that does not keep ourselves or others from the posses- 
 sion of it. Now are "states of feeling, or thought coloured 
 by feeling, under the excitement of beauty," an end so def-
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 315 
 
 inite that any man can work for it ? Or could they form a 
 test, even were they so, by which we could condemn any 
 gratification, however base or abnormal, which we might 
 passionately and persistently long for? Or granting even 
 that such longings did stand condemned as distracting us on 
 our course, should not we in this case best conquer tempta- 
 tion by yielding to it? Mill, it is true, thought this vague 
 hajjpiness definite enough, and attractive enough. But then, 
 let us remember, he was determined to do so. He was an 
 ethical Don Quixote in search of a mistress ; and we should 
 find probably, could only this Dulcinea be identified, that 
 her charms existed nowhere but in the imagination of her 
 knight. 
 
 Here, then, is a fact which is surely not without signifi- 
 cance ; here is a lesson which he that runs may read, and 
 which ma}'^ well give pause to our voluble modern teachers. 
 Mill's experience should at once show us that the very possi- 
 bility of an atheistic morality is at least not self-evident; that 
 even the earnest and benevolent, who long to give life a seri- 
 ous meaning, are bewildered when they try to discover any 
 source for its seriousness ; nay, that bounded as our teachers 
 bound it by itself, the chances are that all ere long will grow 
 to acknowledge its vanity. 
 
 What ! it will be asked, and do they all go for nothing, the 
 utterances of our eminent teachers ? Our modern atheistic 
 moralists have been men of blameless life, of set and solemn 
 purpose, of subtle and of powerful intellects. They have 
 worked, and thought, and written. They have won the ear 
 of the world. All these men tell us confidently that life is
 
 3r6 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 serious. And shall not their confidence be some assurance 
 to us ? In this matter of opinion is not these men's author- 
 ity of the greatest weight ? 
 
 I answer, No ; and for a reason that we shall do well to 
 consider. 
 
 Nearly all our great modern unbelievers, the men on whose 
 speculations and discoveries unbelief in our days has based 
 itself, have been men of letters, of research, or of science. 
 They have won their eminence in the study, or the laboratory, 
 or the dissecting room ; and they have there come to conclu- 
 sions which they proclaim loudly to the world as fatal to all 
 religion. But the knowledge which has qualified them to 
 destroy religion, has no bearing whatever on the knowledge 
 that will qualify them to replace it. They have taken away 
 the happiness of heaven. They replace it by the happiness 
 of earth. But if heavenly happiness be a myth, may not 
 earthly happiness be a myth also ? No eminence gained in 
 the laboratory or the study will make a man an authority upon 
 this question. If he be an authority upon it at all, he will 
 have acquired his qualifications in very different places ; and 
 he will have acquired them not in virtue of his success as a 
 specialist, but in spite of it. Would we judge about the 
 happiness that life can yield, life is the one thing we have to 
 . study. We must study men and women as they are around 
 us, and the varied impulses under which they act. Now not 
 only will lonely thought and study necessitate in general a 
 certain withdrawal from life, and a consequent ignorance of 
 it ; but devotion to any special pursuit, that is possible only 
 for the few, will tend to distort the judgment, and will lead a
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 317 
 
 man to put the personal motive of- his own career in place of 
 the ultimate and general justification. Such men, indeed, 
 live surrounded by idola specHs. Interests which absorb them 
 and give their lives a meaning, they imagine will affect the 
 world at large in a like way ; unconscious that the world at 
 large has other interests which they know of but by empty 
 names ; that it is allured by pleasures, and that it has to 
 battle with passions, to which education and temperament 
 have alike made them strangers. There is indeed something 
 grotesque in the notion of a savant emerging from an 
 examination of a beetle's wing, or a speculation upon parallel 
 lines, before men and women of the world, flushed or em- 
 bittered with the joys, the passions, or the pains of life, led 
 by the bright or dark allurements of ambition, or of vanity, or 
 of love, to instruct them on the strongest motives to action, and 
 the real secret of making the most of this life. Men of science 
 for instance, talk continually about moral matters as though 
 scientific research were the great thing to live for. But when 
 they talk like this, it is plain they cannot know what they are 
 saying. It would be attributing a too unworldly simplicity to 
 them, to fancy that they supposed really that the mass of men 
 would ever follow science for its own sake, or that even could 
 they, they would ever wish to do so. Nor, granting even that 
 this were possible, can we imagine any one bold and blind ' 
 enough to accept the conclusion that would inevitably follow. 
 For if scientific research be the true end of life, and the test 
 of conduct, nothing can then be immoral that does not inter- 
 fere with scientific research. It is hard to see what fabric of 
 ethics could be reared upon this foundation : it is hard to
 
 ^l8 QUES.TIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 conceive that the world in general could desire to raise any. 
 And the end of action which we demand, is an end of 
 action for the world in general. It must be that, or it can be 
 nothing. It must be an end that will attract equally the 
 politician and the professor ; the fashionable femvie incovi- 
 prise famishing for some mad distraction ; and the shy pro- 
 found student, as incapable of understanding passion as he is 
 of inspiring it. It must be an end that will inspire the 
 passionless and restrain the passionate. It must, when we 
 are once within the sphere of its attraction, be the strongest 
 magnet of our lives, of power to counteract the force of all 
 our selfish instincts, and of all the fierce desires which many 
 of the holiest men have hardly resisted, and to which most of 
 the world's greatest men have notoriously yielded. 
 
 That such an end as this is possible for the world in 
 general, those only who know the world can be in a position 
 to say. The religious moralist might well be a recluse, for 
 the source of his morality was essentially without this life. 
 The atheistic moralist must emphatically be a man of the 
 world ; for the source of his morality is essentially within it. 
 He must, indeed, enter into the pursuits of men, with the 
 same diligence as that with which the other avoided them. 
 A knowledge attained thus is an absolute necessity for him. 
 That he may be qualified to deny the necessity of a first 
 cause, will not qualify him to assert the possibility of human 
 happiness, or to understand its nature. And in refusing to 
 believe in this matter any mere thinkers or discoverers, how- 
 ever morally good, or however intellectually eminent, we are 
 refusing them none of that deference which they may so
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 315 
 
 justly claim. Frederick the Great we may think contemptible 
 as a poet ; but we do not for that reason think him the less 
 extraordinary as a man of action. 
 
 - And I now come to the last point that I have here 
 to notice; a point which is really the source of the whole 
 confusion. Our atheistic moralists do, as we have seen, 
 name certain things in life, which when looked at from 
 a distance, and not examined too closely, have for many 
 the appearance of adequate moral ends. But there is this 
 great fact to be remembered. Our moralists, when they 
 deal with life, profess to exhibit its resources to us wholly 
 free from the false aids of religion. They profess, if I 
 may coin a word, to have de-religionized it, before they deal 
 with it. About this matter, however, they betray a most 
 strange ignorance. They seem to think that religion 
 exists nowhere except in its pure form, in the form of 
 distinct devotional feeling, or in the conscious assents of faith. 
 These once got rid of, they think that life is de-religionizcd. 
 The process, however, is really only begun ; indeed, as far as 
 immediate results go, it is hardly even begun. For it is really 
 but a very small proportion of religion that exists pure. The 
 greater part of it has entered into combination with the com- 
 mon acts and feelings of life, thus forming, as it were, a kind 
 of amalgam with them, giving them new properties, a new color, 
 a new consistence. To de-religionize Wie, then, it is not enough 
 to condemn creeds, and to abolish prayers. We must also sub- 
 limate the beliefs and feelings, which prayers and creeds hold 
 pure, out of the lay life around us. Under this process, even 
 if imperfectly performed, it will soon become clear that religion
 
 ^26. QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 in greater or less proportions is lurking everywhere. We 
 shall see it yielded up even by things in which we should least 
 look for it by wit, by humor, by secular ambition, by our 
 daily light amusements ; and as it leaves them, their whole 
 aspect will change. Much more shall we see it yielded up by 
 heroism, by purity, and by love of truth by all those great 
 things which our Atheists name with praise. Professor Tyn- 
 dall calls theologians " Jacobs," who " have deprived matter 
 of its birthright." He had best beware lest he and his fel- 
 lows be found out to be Rachels, who have run away with the 
 gods of theology, and, sitting on them in their tents, have 
 quite forgotten the theft. Life at any rate must be searched 
 and purified of the faiths we are relinquishing, as none of our 
 atheists have yet searched it. Then, but not till then, shall 
 we be able to estimate its resources, when bounded by itself, 
 and cut off from every hope beyond ; when all its ports, so to 
 speak, are blockaded, so that no treasure can be smuggled 
 into them from any foreign country. Then, and not till then, 
 shall we be in any way fit to judge as to whether it contains 
 materials for any kind of happiness which can give it a serious 
 and universal meaning, and make any system of morality 
 possible. 
 
 Here is the real matter at stake. Here is the real issue 
 that is trembling in the balance. Here is the real ques- 
 tion about which we pride ourselves upon being tolerant, 
 or, in other words, about being calm and quite indifferent. 
 For unless, let our Atheists remember, we can find such an 
 end in life as that which we have been demanding ; unless 
 we can find some supreme, some universal, some attainable
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 321 
 
 end to strive for whose beauty shall outshine passion, and 
 withstand the dissolving force of reason, that shall be for 
 ever urging us onward like a steady pilot star, and for ever 
 urging us onward like a favorable wind, we shall be like dis- 
 masted ships, without sail and without rudder, left to welter 
 on a sluggish sea of small and weary impulses, with no escape 
 from the shoreless accursed surface, till at last, and one 
 by one, we sink forever under it. 
 
 II. 
 
 1 AM writing for practical people ; I am dealing with prac- 
 tical matters. When I speak of life, and of the worth of it, I 
 am referring to common things, to things of daily experience. 
 I am referring to the joys, the sorrows, and the occupations 
 that give their quick color to the hours ; and to the loves, 
 the ambitions, and the interests, that slowly give their color 
 to the years. These are the things that surround all of us. 
 We cannot escape from them. In them we live and move and 
 have our being ; and all science and wisdom, and all the pur- 
 suits of intellect, must either culminate in teaching us how to 
 deal with these, or else must humbly take their place amongst 
 them. Be we men of thought or action, be we saints or liber- 
 tines, we have each of us a daily course to shape through a 
 throng of conflicting impulses. And unless we are to be the 
 passive prey of these, some plain principles must be ours to 
 guide us. Now, hitherto, such a set of principles we have 
 had, all of us. They were readily understood ; they were 
 readily applied. Amongst the choices and refusals that beset 
 
 21
 
 322 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 US momently, they left us little in doubt as to the right course ; 
 and if we refused to take it, we refused with our eyes open. But 
 times are changed. The old principles, we are told, are obso- 
 lete ; they are no longer of the least use to us. Principles, 
 we are told loudly, we need just as much as ever ; but we arc 
 offered a new set of them. Now it is plain that the new set 
 will be useless, unless it can take the place of the old. The 
 difficulties we want help in, remain just the same ; they are 
 just as definite as ever. We shall want our new rules of life 
 to be just as definite as our old. 
 
 Here comes a pressing and practical question. Are they 
 so ? or can they ever be made so ? Vaguely stated they may 
 sound well enough. But vaguely stated, they are practically 
 useless. Let our modern moralists give them some definite 
 meaning. Let them show us some particular rules deduced 
 from their general principles. We have heard their princi- 
 ples often enough. What I am now to consider is the de- 
 tailed application of them. We want no more vague mes- 
 sages sent to us out of the study or the laboratory, about the 
 nature of right and wrong. Let the senders themselves come 
 out to us, and illustrate their meaning by examples in the 
 world at large. Let us confront them with men and women 
 as they appear in action. Let us select for them a variety of 
 particular instances. Consider this man, let us say, or this 
 woman ; consider this mood of mind, this pursuit, this pleas- 
 ure, this way of spending the day or night. Put your finger 
 upon this case, and on that case ; tell us which is wrong, and 
 which is right ; and when you condemn any voluntary human 
 action, tell us exactly why you condemn it from your own
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 323 
 
 point of view, and how you would persuade the offender to 
 condemn it also from his. 
 
 Now I have pointed out, in my former paper, that all pos- 
 sible answers to this question are reducible to one simple 
 form. If they have any meaning at all, they must mean this 
 an act, a habit is wrong ; a pleasure, a mood of mind is 
 wrong, because by it we arc robbed of something, or hin- 
 dered in attaining to something, which we can all discern, un- 
 less we close our eyes to it, as the one thing that is indeed 
 desirable the one thing that will make us really happy. 
 And the first task of the moralist is to put this something be- 
 fore us. 
 
 That this is at least one way of stating the case, has been 
 often acknowledged by our modern teachers themselves. I 
 have already quoted J. S. Mill as an instance ; and the doc- 
 trines of to-day are being couched perpetually in this very 
 form. Thus Professor Huxley concludes one of his late ad- 
 dresses by solemnly telling us that the last end of education 
 is to promote " morality and refinement, by teaching men to 
 discipline themselves, and by leading them to see that the 
 highest, as it is the only content, is to be attained, not by 
 grovelling in the rank and steaming valleys of sense, but by 
 continually striving towards those high peaks where, resting 
 in eternal calm, reason discerns the undefined but bright 
 ideal of the highest good *a cloud by day, a pillar of fire 
 by night.' " ^ And these words are an excellent specimen of 
 the moral exhortations of our new school of teachers. 
 
 Now this is all very well as far as it goes ; and were there 
 ^ Critiques and Addresses,^. 32.
 
 324 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 not one thing lacking, it would be just the language that the 
 occasion craves. But the one thing lacking is enough to 
 make it valueless. It may mean a great deal. But there is 
 no possibility of saying exactly what it means. Before we 
 can begin to strive towards the " highest good," we must at 
 least know something of what this " highest good " is. We 
 must make this " bright ideal " " stand and unfold itself." If 
 it cannot be made to do this, if it vanishes into mist as we 
 near it, and takes a different shape to each of us as we recede 
 from it still more, if only some can see it, and to others it is 
 quite invisible then we shall simply set it down as an illu- 
 sion, and waste no more time in pursuit of it. But that it is 
 not an illusion is our moralists' great claim for it. Heaven 
 and the love of God, they say, were illusions. The " highest 
 good " they offer us stands out in clear contradiction to these. 
 It is an actual attainable thing, a thing for flesh and-blood 
 creatures ; it is to be won and enjoyed by them in their com- 
 mon daily life. It is, as they distinctly and unanimously tell 
 us,^ some form of happiness that results in this life to us from 
 certain conduct ; it is a thing essentially of the present ; ' 
 " and it is obviously," says Professor Huxley, " in no way 
 affected by the abbreviation or prolongation of our con- 
 scious life." This being the case, then, it is no unreasonable 
 demand to ask for some explicit account of it. When Pro- 
 fessor Huxley speaks of the highest happiness, what meaning 
 does he attach to the word ? Has he ever enjoyed it himself, 
 or does he ever hope to do so . If so, when, where, and 
 how ? What must be done to get it, and what must be left 
 Nineteenth Century, No. 3, p. 536. * Ibid.
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 325 
 
 undone? And when it is got, what will it be like? Is it 
 something mystical, rapturous, and intermittent, as the lan- 
 guage often used about it might seem to suggest to one ? Is 
 it known only in brief moments of Neoplatonic ecstasy, to 
 which all the acts of life should be stepping-stones ? It cer- 
 tainly cannot be that. Our modern moralists are essentially 
 no mystics, and their highest happiness must be something 
 far more solid than transcendental ecstasies. Surely, there- 
 fore, if it exists at all, we must somewhere be able to lay our 
 hands upon it. It is a pillar of fire by night ; it will be sure- 
 ly visible. It is a city set on a hill, that cannot be hid. It 
 is to be lifted up, and is to draw all men unto it. It is 
 nothing if not this ; and if, after a careful search, we fail to 
 find it, there will be nothing left us but to conclude that it is 
 nothing, or that, at any rate, this life does not contain it. If 
 we are still resolved to find it, we must seek elsewhere for it. 
 We must once again have recourse to religion, and import it 
 into the natural order from a supernatural order that we 
 postulate. 
 
 I have stated, as plainly as I can, the question I want 
 answered. I shall now go on to point out how utterly unsat- 
 isfactory are the answers that have hitherto been given to it. 
 These answers divide themselves into two classes, which, 
 though continually confused by confused thinkers, are really 
 quite distinct and separable. And what I must first do is to 
 show that one of these classes consists of wliat are really no 
 answers at all, and that we must put them altogether aside 
 before we can consider the matter clearly. 
 
 Professor Huxley shall give us an example of both. He
 
 326 Q UES TIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 is going to tell us, let us remember, about the " highest good" 
 the happiness, in other words, that is the secret of our life's 
 worth, and the test of all our conduct. This happiness he 
 divides into two kinds. He says there are two things that we 
 may mean when we speak about it.^ We may mean the 
 happiness of a society of men, or we may mean the hap- 
 piness of the members of that society. And when we speak 
 of morality, we may mean two things also ; and these two 
 things must be kept distinct. We may mean " social moral- 
 ity," of which the test and object is the happiness of societies. 
 We may mean " personal morality," of which the test and ob- 
 ject is the happiness of individuals. And the answers which 
 our modern moralists make us, I divide into two classes, ac- 
 cording to the sort of happiness they refer to. It is before 
 all things important that this division should be made, and be 
 kept quite clear in our minds, if we would see honestly what 
 our modern moral systems amount to. For what makes 
 them at present so difficult to deal with is the fact that their 
 exponents are perpetually perplexing themselves between these 
 two sets of answers, first giving one and then the other, and 
 imagining that, by a kind of confusion of substance, they 
 can both afford solutions, of the same question. Thus they 
 continually speak of life as though its crowning achievement 
 were some kind of personal happiness ; and then, being asked 
 to explain the nature and basis of this, they at once shift their 
 ground, and talk to us of the laws and the conditions of 
 social happiness. Thus, Professor Huxley, starting "^ with the 
 thesis that both sorts of morality, personal and a social, are 
 Nineteenth Century, No. 3, p.536 2 jbij^ pp. 536, 537.
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 327 
 
 Strong enough to hold their own, he conceives he has establish' 
 ed this by simply proving that one is. " Given," he says, " a 
 society of human beings under certain circumstances ; and the 
 question whether a particular action on the part of one of its 
 members will tend to increase the general happiness or not, is a 
 question of natural knowledge, and as such is a perfectly legit- 
 imate subject of scientific inquiry. ... If it can be shown by 
 observation or experiment that theft, murder, and adultery do 
 not tend to diminish the happiness of society, then, in the 
 absence of any but natural knowledge, they are not social 
 immoralities." 
 
 Now here is a clear and complete epitome of one of those 
 two classes of answers that our modern moralists give us. 
 And what I am going to point out is, that these answers are 
 really no answers at all, and to offer them to us creates simply 
 useless confusion. It is as if we asked for a fish, and were 
 offered a scorpion. The scorpion might distract our atten- 
 tion ; it certainly would not satisfy our appetite. The ques- 
 tion we ask is, what is the test of conduct ? in other words, 
 what is happiness ? And what are we answered ? That hap- 
 piness is the happiness of men that it is the general happi- 
 ness that it is the happiness of men in societies that it is 
 happiness equally distributed. But what does this avail us ? 
 The word happiness is still a locked casket. We know nothing 
 as yet of its contents. A happy society neither does nor can 
 mean anything but a number of happy individuals. Granted 
 that we know what will make them happy, then we shall know 
 what will make society happy. Then social morality will be, 
 as Professor Huxley says, a perfectly legitimate subject of
 
 328 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 scientific inquiry. Then, but not till then. When we say that 
 a society is happy as a body, we can only mean that it secures 
 for its members their happiness as individuals. What do the 
 individuals want? We must know that, before we can try to 
 secure it for them. But this is what our moralists are perpet- 
 ually losing sight of. The reason of this confusion is not far 
 to seek. Observation and experiment, it is quite true, will 
 guide us to certain clear and constant rules with regard to 
 conduct. They will show us that there are certain actions 
 which we must never tolerate, and which we must join together, 
 as best we may, to suppress. But what sort of actions are 
 these ? They are simply such as disturb the negative con- 
 ditions of all happiness. They touch neither the loss nor 
 gain of any kind of happiness in particular. Of this class 
 are theft and murder. If we are to be happy in any way, we 
 must, of course, have our lives secured to us, and, next to our 
 lives, our possessions. But to secure us these does not secure 
 us happiness. It simply leaves us free to secure it, if we can, 
 for ourselves. Once let us have some common agreement as 
 to what this happiness is ; we may then be able to formulate 
 other rules and other laws, by which we may be helped in at- 
 taining it. But, in the absence of any such agreement, the 
 only possible aim of social morality is not to promote any 
 kind or kinds of happiness, but to secure the conditions with- 
 out which all happiness would be impossible. Suppose the 
 human race were a set of canaries in a cage, and that we were 
 in grave doubt as to what seed to give them hemp-seed, 
 rape-seed, or canary-seed, or all three mixed in certain pro- 
 portions. That would represent accurately the present state
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING 1 329 
 
 of our case. That is the kind of question we are now in 
 doubt about. Surely it is evident that in this perplexity it is 
 absolutely nothing to the point to tell us that the birds must ' 
 not peck each other's eyes out, and that they must all have 
 access to the trough that we are ignorant how to fill. The 
 real fault, then, of our moralists, that I am now dealing with, 
 is this. They confuse the negative conditions of happiness 
 with the positive materials of it. Professor Huxley, in the 
 passage I have just now quoted, is caught, so to speak, in the 
 very act of committing it. " Theft, murder, and adultery," 
 all these three, it will be remembered, he classes together, and 
 seems to think that they stand on the same footing. But 
 from what I have just pointed out, it is plain that they do not 
 do so. We condemn theft and murder for one reason. We 
 condemn adultery for quite another. We condemn the 
 former, because they are incompatible with any form of hap- 
 piness. We condemn the latter, because it is a supposed vio- 
 lation of one particular form of happiness, or rather, perhaps, 
 the substitution of a supposed lower kind for another sup- 
 posed higher kind. 
 
 We may observe accordingly, that if happiness be the 
 moral test, what Professor Huxley calls " social morality " 
 the rules, that is, for producing the negative conditions of 
 happiness are not in themselves morality at all. They only 
 become so when the inner sense that we are conforming to 
 them becomes one of the positive factors of our own personal 
 happiness. Then they suffer a kind of apotheosis ; they are 
 taken up into ourselves, and become part and parcel of our 
 personal morality. But to tell us simply that happiness is
 
 330 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 social happiness is to tell us nothing at all. Social happiness 
 is a mere set of ciphers till the unit of personal happiness is 
 placed before it. A man's happiness may of course depend 
 on other beings, but it is still none the less contained in him- 
 self. If our greatest delight were to see each other dance 
 the cancan, then it would be morality for us all to dance, that 
 we might enjoy the sight of each other. None the less would 
 this be a happy world, not because we were dancing, but be- 
 cause we each rejoiced in the sight of such a spectacle. The 
 happiness of the individual, as I have said, must be ever the 
 unit of happiness. We may talk as much as we like about 
 distributing it in the present, but we must first be clear as to 
 its present value. We may talk as much as we like about 
 increasing it in the future, but we must first be clear how its 
 present value is capable of expansion. 
 
 Surely one might have thought that this was plain enough 
 that even a child could understand it. And yet it would 
 seem that it is not so. For here are all our modern English 
 moralists making daily the same blunder ; and not only mak- 
 ing it, but proclaiming it aloud with ever-increasing vehe- 
 mence. Thus Professor Huxley, not long since, said that 
 that state of man would be " a true civitas Dei, in which each 
 man's moral faculty shall be such as leads him to control all 
 those desires which run counter to the good of mankind " 
 a sentence which means nothing, unless the "good of man- 
 kind " be defined first of all as the divine good of each indi- 
 vidual man. We shall never get to a civitas Dei from mere 
 order and co-operation. These will take us some way, it is 
 true, but it is a part of the way only ; and that they will take
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 331 
 
 US as far as they do is perfectly self-evident, and has no need 
 of all this emphatic reassertion. There must be order amongst 
 thieves, as well as amongst honest men. Let an army be sent 
 on a holy war or an accursed one, the discipline will be the 
 same that we shall need in it. There can be an orderly 
 brothel as well as an orderly nunnery ; and all order rests 
 on co-operation. We presume co-operation ; we require an 
 end for which to co-operate. 
 
 Let us then, once and for all, set aside all this talk about 
 social morality, as at present nothing to the point. Let us 
 remember that the end we are asking for is, in the first place, 
 a strictl}'' personal end. Can our moralists show us any one 
 highest personal good, towards which, as Professor Huxley 
 says, we may be " continually striving ? " That is the one 
 question that really calls for an answer. What shall I do ? 
 and I ? and I ? and I ? What do you offer me ? and me ? 
 and me ? This is the great question that mankind is ask- 
 ing. " You must promise something to each of us," it says, 
 "or very certainly you will be able to promise nothing to all 
 of us." Nor is there the least loophole left for escape in tell- 
 ing us to work for others, and to find our happiness in that. 
 The question merely confronts us with two other facets of 
 itself. What sort of happiness shall I procure for others ? 
 and what sort of happiness will others procure for me ? What 
 will it be like ? Will it be worth having ? Let us be sure 
 about that first. For it will certainly give me no delight to 
 procure for others what I should feel no delight in if procured 
 by others for me. The coin itself must have some intrinsic 
 value. It will never acquire it by being merely shuffled about
 
 332 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 from one hand to another. A million dull individuals will 
 not make a happy state ; nor will a million million dull indi- 
 viduals make a glorious humanity, any more than, as we often 
 know to our cost, twenty dull individuals will make a brilliant 
 dinner party, or a hundred average churchgoers a fervent 
 congregation. 
 
 We have thus arrived, then, at the true heart of the ques- 
 tion. When I am inquring into life's value, I am inquiring 
 into the highest kind of personal happiness that life can be 
 made to yield to us. 
 
 I must now examine the answers that our moralists have 
 made to this. It is with these answers that our real concern 
 lies. With the former class it was easy enough to deal. They 
 were not false ; they were simply not to the point ; and we 
 had nothing to do but to put them on one side. But the 
 fault that vitiates these is far subtler. The question here is 
 no longer evaded. The answers are straightforward and are 
 singularly plausible ; and until we look at them very nar- 
 rowly, it is hard to say that they are not in a great measure 
 satisfactory. The problem, let * us remember, is to give us 
 something worth living for, some goal to work towards when 
 the very notions of a God and a future life shall have left 
 us, and have evaporated even out of our imaginations. Now 
 many of our new teachers begin by frankly admitting to us 
 that the loss of a belief in God, and the hope of a future life, 
 may be some real loss to us. Others again contend that 
 this loss is a gain. Their views on this point, however, 
 are not much to the present purpose. What we have now to 
 remember is that, even according to those who admit life to
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 333 
 
 have lost most in this way, the loss is not a very important, 
 still less is it a fatal one. It will still leave us a life that is 
 worth living. The character of our aims and pleasures will 
 not be radically changed by it. The good is still to be an aim 
 for us ; and our devotion to it will be more valuable, because 
 it will now be quite disinterested. Thus Professor Tyndall 
 tells us that, though he has now rejected the religion of his 
 earlier years, yet, granting him proper health of body, there 
 is "" no spiritual experience," such as he then knew, " no 
 resolve of duty, no work of mercy, no act of self-renounce- 
 ment, no solemnity of thought, no joy in the life and aspects 
 of nature, that would not still be (his) ; and this without the 
 least regard to any purely personal reward or punishment 
 looming in the future." ^ The same is the implicit teaching 
 of all George Eliot's novels. So, too, Professor Huxley tells 
 us, that come what may to our " intellectual beliefs and even 
 education," he *' sees no reason to doubt " that " the beauty 
 of holiness and the ugliness of sin " are, for those that have 
 eyes to see them, " no mere metaphors," but " real and 
 intense feelings." ^ And Mr. Sully tells us in his late work 
 on Pessimism, that " lives nourished and invigorated " by a 
 purely human ideal, "have been and still may be seen 
 amongst us, and the appearance of but a single example 
 proves the adequacy of the belief." It is plain that such 
 utterances as these enunciate practically no new system at 
 all. They merely redirect our attention to the old one ; they 
 again point to the old practical ends and courses of action, 
 and tell us that these in themselves are their own reward and 
 * Fragments of Science, p. 562. ^ Nineteenth Century, No. 3, p. 537.
 
 334 questiojvs of belief. 
 
 their own sufficient motive. Such is the teaching of our 
 modern moralists. There is, too, another school of teachers 
 to be dealt with, though at present not openly popular, who 
 would give us a rule of life, but who would yet hardly call 
 themselves moralists at all. These would still distinguish 
 probably between vice and virtue, and admit that the pleas- 
 ures they give us are of a different quality. But they would 
 deny that one practically was better than the other. They 
 would call nothing common or unclean ; they would make us 
 free to eat any fruit in the garden ; and the greater variety, 
 they would say, we could enjoy of these, so much the better 
 for us. This teaching is at present more often implied than 
 stated. But at least one of this school, in our day, has been 
 clear enough on the matter ; and he explicitly bases his 
 teaching on the teachings of modern science. " Each mo- 
 ment," says Mr. Pater, " some form grows perfect in hand or 
 face ; some tone on the hills or sea is choicer than the rest ; 
 some mood of passion, or insight, or intellectual excitement, 
 is irresistibly real and attractive for us." And thus, "while 
 all melts under our feet," he goes on, " we may well catch at 
 any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge, that 
 seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, 
 or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange flowers, 
 and curious odors, or the work of the artist's hand, or the 
 face of one's friend." 
 
 Here then are two sets of teachers, who profess, without 
 any aid from religion, to secure for us some real value in life. 
 The one finds this value in one set of pleasures only, and 
 maintains that the art of happiness is to renounce all other
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 335 
 
 pleasures for these. The other finds this value in all 
 pleasures alike, and maintains that the art of happiness is to 
 select as many of all kinds as is possible. And it will be 
 necessary for us to consider both of these views. For. sup- 
 posing we can show that morality vanishes with the vanishing 
 of religion, still it does not follow that happiness does. And 
 if men can be really thoroughly happy without morality, noth- 
 ing will convince them that they are losers by having ceased 
 to be moral. 
 
 And now what I am about to point out is this that both 
 these classes of teachers have committed hitherto one radical 
 fault, by which all their after conclusions, be they never so 
 accurate, are of necessity completely vitiated. They both 
 profess to give us a rule of life without religion without a 
 God whose will we may do here, and whose vision we may 
 enjoy hereafter. But they think that the task is far simpler 
 than it is. They think, it would seem, that they have but to 
 kill God, and that his inheritance shall be ours. Accordingly 
 they strike out the beliefs in question, and then turn instantly 
 to life ; they sort its resources j count its riches ; and then say 
 " Aim at this, and this, and this. See how beautiful is 
 holiness ; see how rapturous is pleasure. Surely these are 
 worth seeking for their own sakes, without * any reward or 
 punishment looming in the future.' " They find, in fact, the 
 interests and the sentiments of the world's present life all 
 the glow and all the gloom of it lying before them like the 
 colors on a painter's palette ; and they think they have 
 nothing to do but to set to work and use them. But let them 
 wait a moment. They are in far too great a hurry. The
 
 336 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 palette and its colors are not nearly ready for them. One 
 of the colors of life religion, that is a color which, by 
 their own admission, has hitherto been an important one 
 they have swept clean away. And let them remember ex- 
 actly why they have done this. It may be a pleasing color, 
 or it may not. This is a matter of taste. But one thing all 
 our modern teachers assure us-^it is not a fast color. It is 
 found to fade instantly in the new sunlight of knowledge. It 
 is rapidly getting dim, and dull, and dead. It is worse than 
 the "flying colors," as Peter Pindar called them, of Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds. When once it is gone, we shall never be 
 able to restore it ; and all future pictures of life must be tinted 
 without its aid. They therefore profess loudly to us that 
 they are going to employ it no longer. But there is this 
 point this all-important point that has quite escaped them. 
 They have rejected the color in its pure state, and they 
 think that they have altogether got rid of it. They seem not 
 to suspect that it may be mixed up with the colors they re- 
 tain, and be the secret of much of their depth and lustre. 
 Let them analyse these colors before they use them. Let 
 them see whether religion be not lurking there, as a subtle 
 coloring principle in all their pigments, even one grain of it 
 being perceptible in its effects. Let them only begin this 
 analysis, and it will very soon be clear to them that to 
 cleanse life of religion is not so simple a process as they 
 seem to have fancied it. Its actual dogmas may be readily 
 put away from us; not so the effect which these dogmas 
 have worked during the course of centuries. In disguised 
 forms they are round us everywhere ; they confront us in
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 337 
 
 every human interest, in every human pleasure. They have 
 beaten themselves into all life 3 they have eaten their way 
 into it ; like a secret sap they have flavored every fruit in 
 the garden. There are as a powerful drug that has got into 
 our whole system. 
 
 But there is this great fact to remember. There have been 
 always forces in the system working this drug out of it ; only 
 hitherto fresh doses have been continually administered. 
 Once, however, let us destroy our stock of the drug, and what 
 must follow will be evident. The drug will in time work alto- 
 gether out of the system, but it will not work out immediately. 
 Its effect will not stop suddenly the moment we cease to ad- 
 minister fresh doses of it. The result will be very gradual, 
 though very sure. 
 
 If then we would appraise the vigour and value of life, in- 
 dependent of religion, we must not draw conclusions from it 
 while religion is yet in its system. Our modern moralists, 
 therefore, in taking life as it is, are building on an utterly un- 
 sound foundation. A fatal error is the kernel of their first 
 premises. Mr. Sully is thus emphatically wrong when he says 
 that a single example in the present day (or, for the matter of 
 that, any number of examples) either goes or can go any way 
 towards proving the adequacy of any non-religious formula. 
 Equally wrong, too, are the other writers I have quoted. Let 
 them analyze what they mean by the " beauty of holiness," " re- 
 solves of duty," and" solemnity of thought ;" or by " insight," 
 "passion," and " intellectual excitement." And let them bring 
 to this spiritual analysis but a little of that skill that has been 
 
 attained to in the analysis of matter. In our late experiments 
 
 22
 
 338 QUEST/OiVS OF BELIEF. 
 
 on spontaneous generation what untold qains have been taken 1 
 With what laborious thought, with what emulous ingenuity, 
 have we struggled to completely sterilize the fluids in which 
 we are to seek for the new production of life 1 How jealously 
 have we guarded against leaving there any already exist- 
 ing germs ! Surely spiritual matters are worth}- of an 
 equally careful treatment. For what we have here to 
 study is not the production of the lowest forms of animal 
 life, but the highest forms of human happiness. These 
 were once thought to be always due to religion. The new 
 doctrine is that they are producible without such aid. Let 
 us treat, then, the " beauty of holiness " and " intellectual 
 excitement " as Professor Tyndall has treated the infusions in 
 which life has been said to originate. Let us boil them down, 
 so to speak, and destroy every germ of religion in them, and 
 then see how far they will generate happiness. And let us 
 treat in this way vice no less than virtue. Having once done 
 this, we may honestly claim whatever yet remains to us ; then 
 we shall see what materials for happiness we can, as atheists, 
 call our own ; then our atheistic ethics, if any such be possi- 
 ble, will begin to have a real value for us then, but not till 
 then. 
 
 Such an analysis must be naturally a work of time. And 
 it is indeed more my purpose to point out its necessity, than 
 to attempt myself to perform it. But a certain part of it is a 
 work of comparative ease ; and even this will yield us results 
 that will be very suggestive to us. 
 
 The things of life as they appeal to us, either singly or 
 woven together by the imagination and the memor}', would be
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 339 
 
 separable naturally into two groups, according as they repel 
 or please us. And a merely natural happiness can be meas- 
 ured by nothing but by what we obtain of the naturally pleas- 
 ant, and by what we avoid of the naturally painful. But if 
 we examine life as w^e actually now find it about us, we shall 
 see that this natural classification has been traversed by an- 
 other. Many things naturally repellent have received a super- 
 natural blessing ; many things naturally pleasant have re- 
 ceived a supernatural curse. Thus in what at present passes 
 muster as the highest happiness, there are many elements of 
 pain ; and in what passes muster as the profoundest misery, 
 there are many elements of pleasure. Thus, whereas happi- 
 ness naturally would be the test of right, right is now super- 
 naturally the test of happiness. And so completely is this 
 notion ingrained in the world's present consciousness that in 
 all our deeper views of life, no matter whether we be saints 
 or sinners, right and \Yrong, not happiness and misery, are 
 the conceptions that first appeal to us. A certain supernatural 
 moral judgment, in fact, has become our primary faculty ; and 
 it mixes its voice spontaneously with every estimate we form 
 of the world around us. 
 
 Now here we have religion in its commonest concrete 
 form. I shall show this more fully by-and-by. But I must 
 first exemplify the fact on which I have just been dwelling 
 I must exemplify how everywhere and in everything, let us 
 turn where we will, let us fix our eyes on what we will, this 
 supernatural sense is always with us ; and that to it is due 
 every keener pleasure and every deeper interest that we at 
 present find life.
 
 240 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 This might seem at first sight a hard task to perform the 
 interests we have to deal with are so varied and so many in 
 number. But there is one special interest that will here as- 
 sist us, an interest which forms, as it were, an epitome of all 
 the rest, and through which we shall be enabled at once to 
 deal with them. I mean art. For let us consider what art is 
 and why it pleases us. Its pleasures are strictly relative to 
 the pleasures of life. We must care, for instance, for 
 the human face, or we should never care for portraits of 
 it. We must care for living womanhood, or we should 
 never care for marble goddesses. We must care for love, 
 or we should never care for love-songs. And so on with 
 all the rest of life's resources. Art may send us back to these 
 with an intenser appreciation of them ; but we must bring to 
 art from life the appreciations we want intensified. Art is a 
 factor in human happiness, because by its means ordinary 
 men are made partakers in the vision of exceptional men. 
 Great art is a speculum reflecting life as the keenest eyes have 
 seen it. All its images are of value only as this. Taken by 
 themselves, " the best in this kind are but shadows." In ex- 
 amining a work of art, then, we are examining life itself, and 
 not life merely, but, as it were, a quintessence of life life 
 with its resources magnified and intensified to their utmost. 
 
 And now remembering this, let us turn to some of the 
 world's greatest works of art I mean its dramas ; for poetry 
 is the most articulate of all the arts, and the drama is the 
 most comprehensive form of poetry. Let us turn, for instance, 
 to Sophocles, to Shakespeare, and to Goethe, and consider 
 some of their greatest plays, and how they present life to us.
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 341 
 
 If we do this, it will need but little thought to show us that all 
 these are addressed primarily to the supernatural moral judg- 
 ment; that this judgment is perpetually being expressed 
 explicitly in the plays themselves ; and still more, that it is 
 always presupposed in us. In other words, these plays are 
 all of them presentations of men struggling, or failing to 
 struggle, not after natural happiness, but after supernatural 
 right ; and it is always presupposed that we, on our part, 
 recognize this struggle as the one supreme thing that gives 
 life its importance. And this importance, primarily and es- 
 sentially, is based not upon the social consequences of con- 
 duct, but upon its personal consequences. In Macbeth, for 
 instance, the main incident, the tragic coloring-matter of the 
 drama, is the murder of Duncan. But in what aspect of this 
 does the real tragedy lie ? Not in the fact that Duncan is 
 murdered, but that Macbeth is the murderer. What appals 
 us, what purges our passions with pity and with terror as we 
 contemplate it, is not the external, the social effect of the act, 
 but the personal, the internal effect of it. As for Duncan, he 
 is in his grave ; after life's fitful fever, he sleeps well. What 
 our minds are made to dwell upon is not that Duncan shall 
 sleep for ever, but that Macbeth shall sleep no more. We see 
 in Hamlet precisely the same thing. The action that our in- 
 terest centers in is the hero's struggle to conform to an inter- 
 nal personal standard of right, utterly irrespective of use to 
 others or of natural happiness to himself. In the course of 
 this struggle, indeed, he does nothing but ruin the happiness 
 around him ; and this ruin adds infinitely to the pathos of the 
 spectacle. But we are not indignant with Hamlet as being
 
 342 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 the cause of it. We should have been indignant rather with 
 him if the case had been reversed, and, if instead of sacrifi- 
 cing social happiness for the sake of personal right, he had 
 abandoned personal right for the sake of social happiness. 
 In Antigone again we have an explicit statement of the super- 
 natural moral axiom on which that whole marvellous tragedy 
 rests that the one rule we are to live by, and not to live by 
 only, but to die for, is no human rule, is no standard of our 
 own, nor can it be altered by what will make either ourselves 
 or others happy ; but it is " the unwritten and the enduring 
 laws of God, that are not of to-day or yesterday, but they live 
 from everlasting, and none can declare the mystery of their 
 generation." Would we see the matter pushed to a yet nar- 
 rower issue, let us turn to Measure for Measure and to Faust. 
 In both these plays, we can see at once that one moral judg- 
 ment, not to name others, is presupposed before all things. 
 This is a hard and fixed judgment with regard to female chas- 
 tity and the supernatural value of it. It is because we assent 
 to this judgment that Isabella is heroic to us ; Margaret is 
 unfortunate in our eyes for the same reason. Isabella has 
 kept, Margaret has lost, her " eternal jewel." Let us for a 
 moment suspend this judgment, and what will become of the 
 two dramas ? The terror and the pity of them will vanish all 
 at once like a dream. The fittest name for both of them 
 would be " Much Ado about Nothing." The deepest feelings 
 that such works could tJien arouse in us would be pity for 
 people who were so disturbed about trifles, or wonder at 
 people who, having pleasure before them, deliberately re- 
 fused to take it, or, having taken it, deliberately made it bitter 
 by cursing it.
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 343 
 
 It will thus be seen and the more we consider the mat- 
 ter the more plain will it become to us that the supernatural 
 moral judgment is the first faculty in us that art appeals to ; 
 that in all great art the suppressed premiss is this : The 
 grand relation of man is not first to his brother men but to 
 something beyond humanity ; to this first, and to his brother 
 men through this. We are not our own ; we are bought 
 with a price. Our bodies are God's temples, and if these are 
 profaned, some unimaginable ruin is sure to overtake the pro- 
 faner. Such are the solemn and profound beliefs, whether 
 conscious or unconscious, on which all the great art of the 
 world has based itself. All the profundity and solemnity of 
 this art is borrowed from these, and is in exact proportion to 
 the intensity with which men hold them. 
 
 Nor is this true of sublime and serious art only. It is true 
 of cynical and profligate art as well. It is true of Congrevo 
 as it is true of Sophocles. The supernatural moral judgment 
 is essential to the character of the libertine as it is to the char- 
 acter of the saint. The libertine is the spirit who denies. 
 But he must have some affirmation for the denial to prey 
 upon. He hates the good, and its existence piques him ; but 
 he must know that the good exists none the less. " I'd 
 no sooner," says one of Congreve's characters, " play with 
 a man that slighted his ill-fortune than I'd make love to a 
 woman who undervalued the loss of her reputation." In this 
 one sentence lies the whole secret of profligacy. We have 
 here the exact counterpart to the words of Antigone that I 
 have already quoted. For just as her life lay in conformity 
 to "the unwritten and enduring laws of God," so does the life
 
 344 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 of the profligate lie in the violation of them. To each the 
 existence of the laws is equally essential. For profligacy is 
 not merely the gratification of the appetites, but the gratifica- 
 tion of them at the expense of something else. Beasts are not 
 profligate we cannot have a profligate goat. Nay, even in 
 cases where men do their best to sink below the level of 
 profligacy, and to plunge deepest in the pleasures that are 
 most entirely animal, the supernatural element, unsuspected 
 by themselves, is still present, and is really what gives the 
 mad rage to their passion. We may detect its presence even 
 in such abnormal literature of indulgence as the erotic work 
 commonly ascribed to Meursius. It is perfectly evident that 
 such pleasures as are there dealt with are supposed to enthral 
 men not in proportion to their intensity (for this would prob- 
 ably be pretty nearly equal), but in proportion to their low- 
 ness to their sullying power. Degradation is the measure 
 of enjoyment ; or rather, it is an increasing numeral by which 
 one constant figure of enjoyment is multiplied. Such pleas- 
 ures are sought only in " twilights," where virtues are vices 
 and their votaries are ever ready to ask 
 
 Ah, where shall we go then for pastime, 
 -f the worst that can be has been done ? 
 
 Thus, if we look at life as it is, in the mirror of art, we 
 shall see how the supernatural is ever present to us. If we 
 climb up into heaven, it is there ; if we go down into hell, it 
 is there also. We shall see it at the bottom equally of two 
 opposite sets of pleasures, to one or other of which all human 
 pleasures belong. The source of one is an impassioned strug- 
 gle after the supernatural right, or an impassioned sense of
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 345 
 
 rest upon attaining it ; tiie source of the other is the sense of 
 revolt against it, which flatters us in various ways. In both 
 cases equally the primary sense appealed to is the supernatural 
 moral judgment. All the life about us is colored by this ; 
 and if this is destroyed or weakened, the whole aspect of life 
 will change to us. 
 
 I will now explain why I call this judgment supernatural. 
 I call it so because natural sense cannot supply it ; because 
 no interrogation of nature can either support or verify it ; be- 
 cause, tested by scientific tests of reality, it at once melts into 
 air like the vainest of vain dreams. To see that this is so, 
 we have but to consider two of its essential characteristics. 
 In the first place this judgment is absolute. It discriminates 
 between right and wrong with a menacing and imperious 
 dogmatism, from which there is no appeal ; and it applies the 
 same standard to all men. In the second place, the difference 
 it asserts between right and wrong is one not of degree but 
 of kind ; and the difference is thus in its nature infinite. Let 
 u take for example, the moral judgment on purity. In the . 
 first place this judgment asserts that purity is better than im- 
 purity for all men, making no allowance either for taste or tem- 
 perament. In the second place it asserts that the choice be- 
 tween this worse and this better is of an importance that is quite 
 incalculable. These two characteristics, our non-theistic mor- 
 alists, on their own admission, are utterly unable to supply. 
 But throughout their whole teaching they are perpetually for- 
 getting this acknowledgment. They have explicitly reduced 
 virtue to a taste, but they are for ever speaking of it as if it 
 were more than a taste. Thev have evidently a meaiiing and
 
 346 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 a feeling for which they can find no place in their reasoned 
 system. They have a feeling that not the greatest happiness 
 is the real test of conduct ; and they hold this highest good 
 up to men, as though no one existed who might not grow to 
 discern its goodness. Thus Professor Huxley, as we have 
 seen, absolutely condemns the " rank and steaming valleys of 
 sense." He speaks as if he had some canon of happiness, 
 independent of all the various and veering tastes of those 
 whom he addresses. And such is the language, and such is 
 the position, of all our atheistic moralists. Their meaning is 
 clear enough ; their reasoning is clear enough ; but their 
 reasoning is utterly incapable of giving any support to their 
 meaning. And they are themselves, in a confused way, con- 
 scious of this confusion. For let them be only pushed hard 
 enough, they surprise us, one and all, by a sudden desertion of 
 their own premisses, and they clutch convulsively at a sup- 
 port of which hitherto they had made no mention. They start 
 one and all with the axiom that happiness is the test of conduct, 
 that happiness is the object of morality. But as soon as this 
 test shows signs of failing them, they directly quit it for 
 another. Thus Professor Huxley admits that the belief in a 
 God always by us, to see that we are faithfully seeking after 
 our own happiness, might be doubtless very useful, if we 
 could ouly believe it to be true. But, he goes on, if no proof 
 of its truth be forthcoming, and if, in its absence, the human 
 race lapse below the beasts in their beastiality, we shall at 
 least, he says, have one comfort in knowing that men will 
 " not have reached the lowest depths of immorality," so long 
 as they hold to the plain rule of not pretending to believe
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 347 
 
 what they have no reason to believe, because it may be to 
 their advantage so to pretend." Now, by a simple substitu- 
 tion of terms, we can see what an utter absurdity is contained 
 in this sentence. According to the modern definition, im- 
 morality can have no conceivable meaning but unhappiness, 
 or, at least, the means to it, which in this case are hardly dis- 
 tinguishable from the end. And thus, according to this rigid 
 reasoning, the human race will not have reached its lowest 
 depths of misery so long as it rejects the one thing which, 
 ex hypothesis might render it less miserable. 
 
 The reason of this confusion is plain. Our moralists are 
 beginning with one test of conduct; they are ending with 
 quite another. They are beginning with subjective happi- 
 ness ; they are ending with objective truth. 
 
 And now here is a plain question, which may be answered 
 in one of two ways, but which, on the atheistic hypothesis, 
 cannot possibly be answered in both. Is truth valuable only 
 because it conduces to happiness ? or is happiness only 
 valuable when it is based on truth ? If the latter, truth, not 
 happiness, is the test of conduct. If our teachers really mean 
 this, let them explicitly and consistently say so. Let them 
 keep this test, let them reject the other ; for the two cannot 
 be fused together. Apparently they have some dim supersti- 
 tion that the attainment of truth will, in some unexplained 
 way, coincide with the attainment of happiness. But, as we 
 have just seen, the moment this notion is really brought to 
 the test, its falsehood becomes apparent. Truth may some- 
 times subserve happiness, but at other times it is absolutely 
 opposed to it. Never at any time are the two to be identified
 
 348 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 ozo^ r alsKpd r lyj^lo.^ tuOtw xOret 
 dtj^oaraToovr' av ou <piXoiv izpotrswinot^. 
 
 And if we do but consider the matter a moment, it will be 
 plain that this not only is so, but that it must be so. For 
 what does truth mean as our modern teachers speak of it ? 
 It means the apprehension of the facts, the sequences, of the 
 natural order, as observation and experiment reveal them to 
 us. It means the knowledge of Nature. But, viewed from a 
 natural stand-point, what is Nature ? Nature, as Mill has so 
 well pointed out, is a thing that can have no claim either on 
 our reverence or our approbation. Judged of by any human 
 standard, Nature is a monster. There is no crime that men 
 abhor or perpetrate that Nature does not commit daily on an 
 exaggerated scale. She knows no sense either of justice or of 
 mercy. In what way then can it be a holy, a noble, a moral 
 thing to study the ways of this monster, unless, the test of all 
 morality being human happiness, we can lay it down as an 
 axiom that an intimacy with this eternal criminal will make us 
 happiest ? I am speaking of this purely from the atheistic stand- 
 point. The believer, of course, admits that truth is a sacred 
 thing ; and he believes that truth will never militate against 
 the highest happiness, but will always guide him to it, when 
 apprehended fully. But his belief rests pn a foundation that 
 has been renounced altogether by his opponents. He values 
 truth because, in whatever direction it takes him, it takes him 
 either to God or towards him. He sees Nature to be cruel 
 when viewed by herself. But behind Nature he sees an all- 
 merciful God, in whom mysteriously all contradictions 
 are reconciled. Nature for him is God's, but it is not
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 349 
 
 God. " Non enim vasa," he says in the words of Augustine, 
 " quaa te plena sunt, stabilem faciunt ; quia etsi frangan- 
 tur, non effunderis. . . Ubique totus es, et res nulla te totum 
 capit." "Though God slay me," says the believer, "yet 
 will I trust in him." This trust can be attained to only by an 
 act of faith like this. No observation or experiment will be 
 enough to give it ; nay, without faith observation and experi- 
 ment will do nothing but undermine it. Thus a belief in the 
 essential value of truth is as strictly an act of religion as is 
 the belief in any article of an ecclesiastical creed. It is 
 simply a concrete form of the beginning of the Christian 
 symbol, " I believe in God, the Father Almighty." It rests on 
 the same set of proofs, neither more nor less. Nor is it too 
 much to say that without a religion, without a belief in God, 
 no fetish worship was ever more ridiculous than this cultus 
 of natural truth. There are many true facts, of course, which 
 it is plainly good for us to know ; and the discovery and 
 publication of these are of course praiseworthy from the 
 utilitarian stand-point. But this electicism in the search for 
 truth is not devotion to truth for its own sake. It is devotion 
 to it for the sake of its consequences, not in scorn of them ; 
 and we are thus simply sent back again to the place we came 
 from. We are sent back to happiness to that test which 
 we found so shifting. It is only in the devotion to truth 
 for its own sake that we find anything absolute. And this 
 devotion is, as I say, in its very essence religious and super- 
 natural ; or if not that, it is utterly mad, aimless, and irra- 
 tional, nor can it possibly long continue to hold its own in 
 the world. 
 
 Thus asain we come to religion. As it was embodied in
 
 350 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 our praise of purity, so is it embodied also in our praise of 
 truth. Let us struggle in what way we will to produce a 
 moral judgment, we shall find that without religion it is im- 
 possible for us to do so. This being the case, the moral 
 judgment is a thing of which we must in imagination rid our- 
 selves ; we must look on life uninfluenced by it, if we would 
 see what life can offer us out of its own resources, and what 
 prospects we can hold out to the world when it has got rid of 
 all that reason can rid it of, and when it believes nothing but 
 what it can support by proof. 
 
 It is absolutely necessary that this should be done, and 
 that it should be done thoroughly. What the new school of 
 teachers are now introducing amongst us is the reign of 
 reason, or it is nothing : it is a reign of reason, as opposed to 
 a reign of faith. But they seem to forget somewhat what 
 reason is. Reason will do much for us ; but what will it do ? 
 Reason itself is nothing but a mill. If we bring grist to it, 
 it will grind. If we bring no grist to it, it can but turn and 
 turn j it will never bring any grist to itself. It will manufac- 
 ture conclusions out of premisses that we supply to it ; but we 
 must get our premisses from elsewhere. Natural science gets 
 these from the senses, and bids reason grind out of them 
 what happiness it can. But the senses, themselves are not 
 reason. It is not reason that tells us that sweet is sweet, 
 and that sour is sour. Still less is it reason that discerns the 
 beauty of holiness, or " the undefined but bright ideal of the 
 highest good." The lower goods are discerned by the senses^ 
 The highest good is discerned by faith. And here we see the 
 great difference between the two. The lower goods are in-
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING! 35 1 
 
 disputable. The higher goods are disputable. No one can 
 talk us out of our five senses ; but the value of truth and 
 holiness has been disputed and denied by millions all through 
 the world's history. If, therefore, vi^e are to believe in noth- 
 ing but what cannot rationally be doubted, reason at once 
 tells us thus much, that the absolute good is a thing we are 
 not to believe in. Accordingly, were one of our new teachers 
 to talk to me about his highest good, I should answer him 
 with bis own arguments. I should tell him that no doubt it 
 might seem as fine a thing as he said it did, but that my first 
 step was " to ask for a proof of its existence," and that if no 
 such proof were forthcoming, I had his own authority for set- 
 ting it down as a dream. Can he bring, I should ask, any 
 better proof of his " highest good " than the believers can of 
 their " most high God ? " It is evident that he cannot ; it is 
 evident from his own admission, and from the admission of 
 all his school. And what will be the result of this ? By the 
 same warrant by which theism is taken from us, the right to 
 our moral judgment is taken likewise. We cannot keep the 
 last, if we are resolved to get rid of the first. Our moralists 
 will intercede in vain for it with the judge they have chosen. 
 They have appealed to reason. To reason they must go. 
 Nor will reason let them out of its presence till they have 
 rendered up to it the very uttermost farthing. They go to it 
 saying " We v.-ill assert nothing, we will be certain of nothing, 
 but what we can prove and verify." And reason at once an- 
 swers that in their eyes God must be a dream, a fancy. But 
 reason does not stop there. When they say before it that 
 love is better than lust, that truth for its own sake is better
 
 352 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 than falsehood, or that it is a higher pleasure to look at a 
 beetle through a microscope than at a ballet-girl through an 
 opera-glass, reason again answers, *' This is a dream and a 
 fancy too. If a few men happen to think some pleasures 
 better than others, there is a fact to notice. It is not worth 
 much ; still it is a fact. But if you mean that such tastes 
 have any claim on men who do not possess them, or in whom 
 they are counterbalanced by other tastes, 
 
 This is the very coinage of your brain. 
 
 This bodiless creation ecstasy 
 Is very cunning in. 
 
 This is simply disease hysteria ; and on your own ground, 
 men will attach no more worth to it than you do to the stig- 
 mata on hysterical peasant girls, or to the visions oi ihe 
 blessed Margaret Mary." 
 
 And now baring seen what reason will take away from 
 us, let us see what it will leave to us. It will leave us, as I 
 have said, the natural senses ; and it will guide us to the 
 production of such social order as may leave us free for these 
 senses to serve us as we will. It will always be a delicious 
 thing to drink when we are thirst)', and to sleep when we are 
 tired. The cool wind will be always grateful to hot fore- 
 heads. The smell of flowers will please us ; and animal 
 spirits may come to us in the spring. But over all these en- 
 joyments that will be left to us a heavy change will come. In 
 the absence of the super-natural moral judgment, they will 
 all be reduced to a dead level. The heights of life will be 
 lowered ; its valleys will be filled up. There will be no hol- 
 lows full of shadow, and no summits gleaming, as at present,
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING t -x^^-, 
 
 with lights from another land. The chiaro-oscuro will have 
 gone from life ; it will present to us no more moral scenery, 
 at least none such as we know at present. The same thino- 
 will happen to life that we have seen will ha[)pen to art. 
 Take away the moral judgment, and all its interests fall to 
 pieces, just as the interest does of Faust or of Afeasure for 
 Measure, and just as the wit does of Congreve. Laughter 
 and gravity become silent side by side. " We say of laughter 
 it is mad, and of mirth, what doth it ? " The same blow is 
 fatal both to the sublime and ludicrous. 
 
 Thus, therefore, .without reference to any prejudice in 
 favor of either vice or virtue, here is one effect of atheism 
 that will be of equal import to all. The first thing now to 
 impress on the world in general is not that these new princi- 
 ples will inaugurate a reign of immorality that, to half the 
 world, would be no bad news not that, but that they will in- 
 augurate a reign of dulness. Vice and virtue will deaden 
 down to one neutral lint ; every deeper feeling either of joy 
 or sorrow will lose its vigor, and will cease any more to be 
 resonant. There will be no contrast ; there will be no va- 
 riety ; there will be no solemnity of thought for the Tyndalls; 
 there will be no levity of thought for the Voltaires. The 
 worn curate toiling hard to save souls in the East End, the 
 intriguing wife toiling hard to ruin her own in Belgravia, will 
 each find a sustaining power gone out of their lives. The 
 object that each sighed for and that excited each will be 
 gone. Indeed the state of things that modern thought seems 
 to promise us, and which it is in some degree actually even 
 now bringing upon us, is one that was long ago predicted, 
 
 27,
 
 354 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 with an accuracy that seems little short of inspired, at the end 
 of Pope's Dimciad. All that he says of dulness may be said 
 of our modern atheism. Its teachers are one and all the 
 precursors of this new kingdom ; they are preparing the way 
 before it. They may deny this as loudly and as honestly 
 as they please. They may pit as they please the practice 
 they have inherited from their fathers against the principles 
 they are bequeating to their children ; but it will be 
 
 In vain, in vain. The all-composing hour 
 Resistless falls : the muse obeys the power. 
 
 Before her fancy's gilded clouds decay, 
 And all the varying rainbows die away. 
 Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires : 
 The meteor drops and in a flash expires. 
 
 Such literally is the effect with which atheism threatens the 
 present resources of life. In our own day, about us in England, 
 we may see the prophecy beginning to fulfil itself. We may 
 see in many quarters dulness and lassitude already setting in, 
 and the very notion of content and happiness vanishing. And 
 yet we are being told that our new aim in life is happiness, and 
 that even if we cannot procure it for ourselves, we can help 
 to procure it in a brighter future for others. We are told that 
 the happiness of heaven was an idle dream, a vapid figment ; 
 that it vanished when we tried to conceive it j but that this 
 human happiness is something that is solid and certain. If 
 so, what is it ? Even at present it is hard to procure, with all 
 the interests of life at their present intensity. Much more 
 will it be hard to procure when these interests lose their 
 strongest hold upon us, and when all life's finest flavors shall
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 355 
 
 have gone from it, as I have shown they must go with the 
 final going of religion. When therefore our moralists talk 
 about humanity, and the glory of its earthly present, and still 
 more of its earthly future, I reply to them in the very words 
 that one of themselves has used with regard to its heavenly 
 future. I say to them as Mr. Frederic Harrison says to his 
 opponents, '' My positioti is this. The idea of a glorified energy 
 in aft ampler life is an idea utterly incompatible with exact thought ; 
 one which evaporates in contradiction in phrases which, when 
 pressed, have ?io f?ieaning." What, I ask, will the ideally happy 
 man be like ? What will he long for ? What will he take 
 pleasure in ? How will he spend his days ? How will he 
 make love ? What will he laugh at ? Let us have some pic- 
 ture of this nobler, ampler, glorified being of the future. Let 
 him be described in phrases which, when pressed, do not evap- 
 orate in contradictions, but which have some distinct mean- 
 ing, and which are compatible with exact thought. Perhaps 
 such a being may emerge in the future. I can only say that 
 I defy any one to imagine him, or seriously to hope for his 
 production. If we really do believe that he is in store for us, 
 the belief is as much an act of faith as the belief in heaven ; 
 it is as vague ; it is even more grotesque ; and what discredits 
 the one equally discredits the other. For myself, I can con- 
 ceive no more ludicrous spectacle than any possible picture of 
 one such radiant being, except it were a whole race of them. 
 In a life bounded by itself, in a life with no hope, no outlook 
 beyond itself, in a life from which religion, the present salt of 
 the earth (and I mean here, by salt, Ih^fiavoring as well aS 
 ihi preserving eXtm^nX), h2LS been taken, it is impossible to
 
 356 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 imagine what any such radiance could be about. If a heaven 
 with God is a state of blessedness that is unthinkable, a 
 Utopia on earth without a (Jod is much more so. 
 
 As far, then, as observation and experiment will carry us, 
 the one conclusion that we come to is this : All the higher, 
 indeed all the strictly human, pleasures of life human as 
 distinct from animal depend, and have always depended, on 
 the supernatural moral judgment ; on the sense not that we 
 are doing our own will, but the will of a Power above us, who 
 is greater and more sublime than we, and yet is, in a sense, 
 akin to us. Nor in saying this do I confine myself to the 
 Christian centuries, nor to nations nor to ages that have risen 
 to any higher kind of theism at all. The same tending towards 
 a personal God is to be traced in all the great civilizations of 
 the world. There has been the same moral passion, though 
 it has been utterly unable to explain itself to itself. To un- 
 derstand this, it is enough to hint a comparison. This long- 
 ing for God, man's strongest spiritual passion, has its analogue 
 in his strongest physical passion. And as the latter is a 
 mystery to itself in the youth of the individual, so is the former 
 a mystery to itself in the youth of race. 
 
 Our present school of moralists are men who would still 
 retain the moral passion, but at the same time they deny the 
 existence of its only possible object, and set up others that 
 are utterly inadequate either to excite or to appease it. Such 
 is the enthusiasm of humanity, which is now offered as an 
 explanation of it. This is really nothing but the desire of God, 
 which will not confess itself. George Eliot's books, to turn 
 to a striking instance, are really instinct with a latent theism,
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 357 
 
 with an unacknowledged religious dogmatism of the most 
 absolute and severest kind. George Eliot is really, as Spinoza 
 was, a person intoxicated with God. Mr. Frederic Harrison 
 is another case in point. He, too, like George Eliot, is a sup- 
 pressed theist. He is full of a longing for God that declines 
 to own itself ; and when he tells us that all his fine feelings 
 are due to the teachings of Positivism, the best reply we can 
 make to him is in the lines of Byron, with the alteration of a 
 single word : 
 
 If you think philosophy 'twas this did, 
 I can't help thinking theism assisted. 
 
 I am not speaking at random. I am simply calling atten- 
 tion to a fact as capable of investigation and proof as any 
 other that is, the intimate connection of morality and relig- 
 ion, or rather their essential identity, not their mere connec- 
 tion. They are, in fact, but different aspects of the same 
 thing. " I desire to be pure in heart " is only another way of 
 saying " I desire to see God." Neither the value of purity 
 nor the existence of God is a thing that can be proved ; but 
 this fact can be, that they stand and fall together. We can 
 get rid of both if we like, but we cannot keep the one and 
 reject the other. What destroys one will destroy both. 
 
 The practical question, then, that is really before us is 
 this : Has life, as we have hitherto viewed it, been viewed 
 under a false aspect, a deceiving glamour ? Are all its pains 
 and pleasures but a mixture of a nightmare and an ecstasy, 
 giving to everj'thing an exaggerated value both of joy and 
 sorrow? Is the moral life only a dream we have been
 
 358 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 dreaming, and from which, in groups less or larger, we are 
 now at last awakening ? 
 
 This is a question that reason cannot answer. The an- 
 swer must be sought in a deeper part of our nature. The 
 choice is between premisses, not between conclusions. Shall 
 we set our affections on nothing but what cannot be doubted ? 
 If so, we shall set them on nothing but the pleasures of sense. 
 And this is what the entire science of the last three centuries 
 has been schooling the world to do, though the real import of 
 its teaching is only now at last slowly becoming apparent. 
 
 At present, beyond a doubt, it is the world's tendency to 
 accept this teaching. Indeed, in a great measure it has al- 
 ready accepted it. What I am trying now to point out is the 
 certain practical result of this acceptance. That result is a 
 paralysis of the moral judgment the paralysis, that is of the 
 sense by which all life's keener interest has been hitherto 
 apprehended. 
 
 And what will be the state of those on whom, one by one, 
 in the world now about us, this paralysis seizes, as it is 
 seizing day by day ? They will be men looking before and 
 after. They will see the life that the world has lived hitherto, 
 but is now leaving behind it. They will see the life that the 
 world is drifting into. The o\A feeling iox virtue will still re- 
 main with them. They will still carry with them the importu- 
 nate notion that life might have some high and worthy meaning. 
 They will still have the wish to stniggle after righteousness. 
 Personally, very likely, they will still continue to do so. But 
 all the while the conviction will haunt them, corroding their 
 whole nature, that this struggle is, after all, an unmeaning
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 35^ 
 
 one ; and they will feel that to other men they can give 
 neither blame nor praise. They will be forced to look with a 
 desponding impartiality on the higher impulses that are yet 
 surviving, and on the lower impulses that will always remain 
 a constant quantity. Xhey will not call the virtuous foolish, 
 nor the vicious wise. They will praise one set of men no 
 more than the other. They will merely say to each with the 
 same listless impartiality :. " Do as you please, so long as you 
 do not interfere with your neighbors. If a man has princi- 
 ples, let him live by them. The principles are a dream, but 
 no matter to him practically they are facts." They will say 
 the same to the man with no principles : " Follow your vices ; 
 follow your passions ; be a beast if you choose to be do just 
 as you like." 
 
 They will not deny that to many life may have a balance 
 of pleasures. But this they do say that if this balance be 
 not realized here, and on this side the grave, then life has 
 no meaning for us, and can have none. To the unsuccessful 
 they will have no word of comfort. They can only say to 
 such, " The end will come soon. Then draw the curtain ; 
 the weary farce will be over." 
 
 No denial of life's worth can be more complete than this. 
 It is all the more forcible, because it affects no impossible 
 universality. It will leave life the worth of a toy for those 
 that care to play with it ; but to those who have outgrown toys 
 it will leave nothing. This pessimism is very different from 
 that of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's has been attributed 
 to some form of mental disease to some abnormal depres- 
 sion of spirits that made all life look black to him. But
 
 360 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF. 
 
 this pessimism is of a different kind. It will be possible 
 for the most healthy and most joyous temperaments, as 
 well as for the most morbid. It will darken the brightest 
 moods as well as it will harmonize with the darkest. It 
 will be ready to assail us in all our business and in all our 
 pleasures, touching us with ever-recurring qualms of life- 
 sickness. It is so simple that all can accept it. It is a 
 kingdom into which even little children may enter. It may 
 leave us mad ; but to get a hold on us, it assuredly will not 
 need to find us so.
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS have in preparation a scries of volumes, to be 
 issued under the title of 
 
 CURRENT DISCUSSION, 
 
 A COLLECTION FROM THE CHIEF ENGLISH ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS 
 OF THE TIME. 
 
 The series will be edited by Edward L. Burlingame, and is designed to 
 bring together, for the convenience of readers and for a lasting place in the 
 libiary, those important and representative papers from recent English periodi- 
 cals, which may fairly be said to form the best history of the thought and in- 
 vestigation of the last few years. It is characteristic of recent thought and 
 science, that a much larger proportion than ever before of their most important 
 work has appeared in the fonn of contributions to reviews and magazines ; the 
 thinkers of the day submitting their results at once to the great public, which is 
 easiest reached in this way, and holding their discussions before a large audience, 
 rather than in the old form of monographs reaching the special student only. 
 As a consequence there are subjects of the deepest present and permanent in- 
 terest, almost all of whose literature exists only in the shape of detached papers, 
 individually so famous that their topics and opinions are in everybody's mouth 
 ^yet collectively only accessible, for re-reading and comparison, to those who 
 have carefully preserved them, or who are painstaking enough to study long 
 files of periodicals. 
 
 In so collecting these separate papers as to give the reader a fair if not 
 complete view of the discussions in which they form a part ; to make them 
 convenient for reference in the future progress of those discussions ; and especi- 
 ally to enable them to be preserved as an important part of the history of 
 modem thought, it is believed that this series will do a ser>'ice that will be 
 widely appreciated. 
 
 Such papers naturally include three classes : those which by their originality 
 have recently led discussion into altogether new channels ; those which have 
 attracted deserved attention as powerful special pleas upon one side or the 
 other in great current questions ; and finally, purely critical and analytical dis- 
 sertations. The series will aim to include the best representatives of each of 
 these classes of expression.
 
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