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 <r
 
 STUDIES 
 
 OF 
 
 CONTEMPORARY SUPERSTITION
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 LONDON
 
 STUDIES 
 
 OP 
 
 CONTEMPORARY SUPERSTITION 
 
 BY 
 
 W. H. MALLOCK 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WARD & DOWNEY LIMITED 
 1895 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 <)W 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 The Essays comprised in this Volume originally ap- 
 peared at intervals in the ' Fortnightly Review,' and 
 bear, as might be expected, traces of the occasions by 
 which they were suggested or provoked. But though 
 not written in the form of a connected series, they all 
 virtually deal with the same subject, and this subject 
 is indicated by the collective title now given to them. 
 By way of introduction I will explain how. 
 
 Alike in the sphere of religion, politics, and 
 economics, the thoughts of men are undergoing 
 rapid changes, and a large portion of the beliefs and 
 opinions which the last generation, as a whole, ac- 
 cepted without question, are now either regarded with 
 a sceptical and often contemptuous criticism, or are 
 else altogether discarded as so many exploded super- 
 stitions. This destructive movement, however, does 
 
 4.89034 
 
 Lib SETS
 
 Vi PEEFACE 
 
 not proceed alone, but is accompanied by another. 
 The old beliefs which are being displaced were beliefs 
 intimately connected with the practical needs of man, 
 and as each in its turn is set aside and discredited, it 
 is found imperatively necessary to put something else 
 in its place, just as the inhabitants of a street which is 
 in process of demolition find' it necessary either to 
 rebuild their houses as fast as they pull them down, or 
 else to secure some other habitation somewhere. The 
 present Essays are criticisms not of the destructive 
 process, but of the attempts that are being made at 
 reconstruction, and they one and all of them follow the 
 same method, which is this : they aim at applying to 
 the new beliefs the same tests and principles which 
 have been used to condemn the old. 
 
 Now the old beliefs — religious, political, and econo- 
 mic — however different their respective subject-matter 
 may seem, are all attacked and condemned on one 
 common ground — they are condemned as being dis- 
 proved by Science. And by Science are meant such 
 truths, whether general or particular — general, like 
 the law of gravitation, or particular, like the his- 
 tory of some Biblical book or books — as are held to 
 be established by systematic external evidence. How 
 Science in this way has affected Religion in general,
 
 PREFACE Vli 
 
 and Christianity in particular, by its natural history of 
 the Bible, and its natural history of the world, and of 
 the human soul and life, is obvious and familiar to us 
 all. Scarcely less obvious is its operation in the 
 sphere of economics and politics. That gradual de- 
 struction of social ideas and institutions which has 
 been going on for the last hundred years, and which 
 those who sympathise with the process delight in 
 speaking of as the Revolution — that gradual destruction 
 claims to explain and justify itself on the ground that 
 the ideas and institutions destroyed do not correspond 
 with the facts of human nature and human conduct, as 
 ascertained and recorded by the rigid methods of 
 Science. 
 
 Such, then, being the grounds on which Science 
 destroys our old beliefs, it is easy to see the grounds 
 on which it attempts to construct its substitutes for 
 them, and the kind of claim which it necessarily makes 
 for these last. It claims that the new beliefs will, 
 whatever their value, at all events stand the tests that 
 have proved fatal to the old. It claims that its sub- 
 stitute for supernatural religion will consist only of 
 propositions rigidly demonstrable to the reason, precise 
 in their terms, and resting on objective evidence. It 
 claims that its doctrines as to government, equality,
 
 Vlll PREFACE 
 
 rights, and the possibilities of social development, 
 unlike the old superstitions as to the virtues of kings 
 and aristocracies, are founded on the solid rock of 
 demonstrable and verifiable facts. 
 
 Throughout the present volume, except in the last 
 two Essays, no attempt is made to discredit or even 
 to criticise the destructive operations of Science. For 
 argument's sake their utmost results are accepted, 
 and all that is done is this. The same method 
 and principles by which men are destroying their 
 old beliefs are applied to the new beliefs by which 
 it is attempted to replace them ; and the new are 
 shown in their main features to be even less scien- 
 tific than the old — to be vaguer, more inaccurate, 
 more completely at war with all objective evidence, 
 and, because their relationship to such evidence is no 
 doubt nearer and more direct, to be not only unscientific 
 but ridiculous. They are shown to be not superstitions 
 only, but abject superstitions — the hopeless and help- 
 less work of men who, as intellectual architects, parody 
 every fault which they condemn as intellectual critics. 
 
 The first three Essays deal with the attempt to 
 manufacture a substitute for supernatural religion out 
 of the cultus of Humanity. Then follows one dealing 
 with the attempt — even more ludicrous — to construct
 
 PREFACE IX 
 
 a new Christianity which shall differ fundamentally 
 from the old only in the fact that it denies, instead 
 of affirming, the miraculous character of Christ. To 
 this Essay succeeds one on ' Marriage and Free 
 Thought,' in which I have endeavoured to show how 
 singularly imperfect is the measure of free thought to 
 which the majority of our religious freethinkers have 
 really attained, and how tenaciously they cling, so soon 
 as freedom threatens their prejudices, to beliefs which, 
 if their principles are really worth anything, are of all 
 superstitions the vainest and the least tenable. In the 
 fifth Essay, ' A Catholic on Natural Eeligion,' attention 
 is directed to the converse side of the question. I 
 have there sought to show how certain defenders of 
 supernatural religion are really guilty of precisely the 
 same error as its opponents, and that, in attempting to 
 defend Theism by the methods of the Positive thinkers, 
 they reduce Catholicism to a superstition as unsubstantial 
 as the Religion of Humanity. 
 
 This is the last of the Essays which is concerned 
 directly with Religion. The next — ' Science and the 
 Revolution ' — deals with the movement now taking 
 place in the sphere of Social politics, and shows how 
 this is vitiated by the same intellectual errors which 
 are discoverable in the religious movement. This
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 Essay constitutes a kind of informal preface to the 
 remaining two, which deal with the most definite form 
 in which social superstition has embodied itself — that is 
 to say, with Socialism. 
 
 There is one thing more which I desire to observe 
 in conclusion. Throughout this volume I have written 
 nothing which expresses a disbelief, on my own part, 
 in the truth of supernatural Christianity, or of Catho- 
 licism, its most logical form. I have only said that its 
 truth, if it be true, like the reality of virtue, if it be 
 real, and the freedom of the will, if it be free, has no 
 proof in positive Science, and that it is impossible to 
 believe in it if such Science is to be our sole guide. 
 Everything depends on our acceptance or rejection of 
 this last hypothesis.
 
 NOTE 
 
 The main subject of the first five of these Essays has, 
 whilst this volume was in the press, been dealt with 
 independently by two well-known English writers. I 
 refer to Mr. Balfour and Mr. B. Kidd, who has, from 
 his own point of view, criticised Mr. Balfour's work. 
 Except through reviews and extracts, I have not yet 
 had access either to Mr. Balfour's work or to Mr. Kidd's 
 criticism, but I believe I am right in saying that, though 
 they approach the question from different sides, they 
 agree with what is asserted in the following Essays — 
 namely, that if religious belief has any basis at all, it 
 has its basis in some organ of certainty unknown to 
 positive science, and involved in the process which 
 logicians recognise as reasoning. 
 
 I may further observe, however, that I entirely dis- 
 sent from Mr. Kidd's contention that Eeligion is the 
 sole, or even the principal, agent in reconciling the 
 masses to the conditions which are essential to progress. 
 Eeligion may make submission to these conditions less 
 onerous ; but the masses submit to them because they 
 cannot help themselves, or only in so far as they cannot
 
 Xll NOTE 
 
 help themselves. The last two Essays in this volume 
 deal with the primary causes on which this submission 
 depends ; and although they were published before Mr. 
 Kidd had made his views public, they constitute a 
 partial criticism of his theory in this particular. 
 
 Cannes : March 1895.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Scientific Bases of Optimism 1 
 
 ' Cowardly Agnosticism ' 48 
 
 Amateur Christianity 94 
 
 Marriage and Free Thought 139 
 
 A Catholic Theologian on Natural Religion . . 172 
 
 Science and the Eevolution 201 
 
 Fabian Economics : — 
 
 I. "What does Socialism mean ? .... 232 
 
 II. Socialism as presented to us by its Intellectual 
 
 Leaders 235 
 
 III. Socialism, a distinctive Analysis of the Present, 
 
 and an Historic Theory of the Past . . 244 
 
 IV. The Fundamental Error in the Socialistic 
 
 Analysis 245 
 
 The so-called Evolution of Socialism : — 
 
 I. Socialists on the Evolution of Socialism . . 274 
 
 II. The alleged contemporary Evolution of Social- 
 
 ism an Appearance only, not a Reality . 278 
 
 III. Misconception by the Socialists of the Nature 
 
 of Industrial Evolution generally . . . 286 
 rV. The True Significance of Contemporary Indus- 
 trial Evolution 295
 
 TEE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 In many ways public attention in England has lately 
 been called afresh to the great and universal question 
 of what our modern science, if fatal to miraculous 
 Christianity, will itself put, or allow to be put, in 
 place of it. Only a few months since, in the pages 
 of a well-known Eeview, 1 a new manifesto was issued 
 by Mr. Frederic Harrison, which purported to describe 
 the exact religious position taken up by the infant 
 Church of Humanity. Mr. John Morley has re- 
 published in ten volumes what is, under one of its 
 aspects, neither more nor less than an anti-Christian 
 creed, embedded in a series of criticisms. Other emi- 
 nent writers equally anti-Christian have been again 
 exhibiting their opinions to the gaze of the pitiable 
 millions, who still sit hugging the broken fetters of 
 theology. Indeed, we may say that during the past 
 two years each of the principal sects into which the 
 Protestantism of science has split itself has appealed 
 to us afresh, through the mouth of some qualified 
 minister; whilst the hold which such questions have 
 on the public mind, whenever they are put in a way 
 
 1 Apologia pro Fide Nostra, by Frederic Harrison, Fortnightly 
 Review, November 1888. 
 
 E
 
 2 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 which the public can comprehend, has been curiously 
 illustrated by the eagerness of even frivolous people 
 in devouring a recent novel, 1 which on ordinary grounds 
 would be unreadable, and whose sole interest consisted 
 in its treatment of Christianity. 
 
 Stimulated by the example of our scientific instruc- 
 tors, I propose to follow, as faithfully as I am able, in 
 their footsteps. There are certain canons of criticism, 
 and there is a certain sceptical temper, which they 
 have applied to Christianity, and which, they say, has 
 destroyed it. The same canons and temper I now pro- 
 pose to apply to the principal doctrine which they offer 
 to the world as a substitute. 
 
 Of course it will be said that thinkers who call 
 themselves scientific offer us doctrines of widely different 
 kinds. No doubt this is true. Amongst men of science 
 as doctrinaires, there are as many sects as there are 
 amongst theological Protestants ; nor was it without 
 meaning, as I shall show by-and-by, that I spoke of 
 their creeds collectively, under the name of Scientific 
 Protestantism. But though, like theological Protes- 
 tants, they differ amongst themselves, and even quarrel 
 amongst themselves, like theological Protestants also, 
 they have fundamental points of agreement ; and it is 
 solely with these last that I now propose to concern 
 myself. Let us take first a hasty glance at their diffe- 
 rences, and it will be presently plain enough what the 
 points of agreement are. 
 
 Putting aside, then, all minor questions, Scientific 
 Protestantism may be said, with substantial accuracy, 
 to be composed at the present moment of five principal 
 1 liohert Elsmere, a novel, by Mrs. Humphry Ward.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 3 
 
 sects, which differ from one another mainly in the fol- 
 lowing ways. One of them, whilst denying, as they 
 all do, both miracles and a future life, believes in a 
 personal God, not unlike the Father of the Gospels. 
 Indeed, it adopts most of what the Gospels say of Him. 
 It accepts their statements, it only denies their autho- 
 rity. There is a second sect which retains a God also, 
 but a God, as it fancies, of a much sublimer kind. He 
 is far above any relationship so definite as that of a 
 father; indeed, we gather that he would think even 
 personality vulgar. If we ask what he is, we receive a 
 double answer. He is a metaphysical necessity ; he is 
 also an object of sentiment ; and he is apprehended 
 alternately in a vague sigh and a syllogism. He is, in 
 fact, a God of the very kind that Faust described so 
 finely when engaged in seducing Margaret. Neither 
 of these two sects is greatly admired by a third, which 
 regards the God of the first as a mutilated relic of 
 Christianity, and the God of the second as an idle, 
 maundering fancy. It has, however, an object of adora- 
 tion of its own, which it declares, like St. Paul, as the 
 reality ignorantly worshipped by the others. Its de- 
 claration, however, unlike St. Paul's, is necessarily of 
 extreme brevity, for this Unknown God is nothing else 
 than the Unknowable. It is the philosopher's substance 
 of the universe underlying phenomena ; and it raises 
 our lives somehow by making us feel our ignorance of 
 it. These three sects we may call Unitarians, Deists, 
 and Pantheists. There is a fourth, which considers 
 all three ridiculous; but the third, with its Unknow- 
 able, the most ridiculous of all. This fourth sect has 
 also its God, which is best described by saying that 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 it differs from the Unknowable in being known in one 
 particular way. It is revealed in a general tendency, 
 discoverable in human affairs, which, taking one thousand 
 years with another, is alleged on the whole to make for 
 righteousness or for progress. The individual man is 
 not made in God's image ; but the fortunes or the mis- 
 fortunes of a sufficient number of men are something 
 still better — they are the manifestations of God himself. 
 Lastly, we have a fifth sect, nearest akin to the fourth, 
 but differing from it and from all the others in one im- 
 portant particular. It rids itself of any idea of God 
 altogether, as a complete superfluity. An object of 
 adoration, like all the others, it has ; and, like the fourth, 
 it finds this object in the tendencies of human history. 
 But why, it asks, should we call them the manifestations 
 of God ? Why wander off to anything so completely 
 beside the point ? They are not the manifestations of 
 God. It is obvious what they are; they are the mani- 
 festations of Humanity. We have here, under our 
 noses, in a visible and tangible form, the true object of 
 all these sublime emotions, those hours of comforting 
 contemplation, which men have been offering in vain to 
 the acceptance of all the infinities in rotation. The 
 object which we have scoured the universe and ran- 
 sacked our fancies to find, has all the while been actually 
 in contact with ourselves, and we ourselves have been 
 actually integral parts of it. 
 
 Here, then, classified with sufficient accuracy, are 
 the principal forms of religion, which those who reject 
 Christianity are now offering the world, in the name of 
 science, as substitutes. Now the great fact which I 
 wish to point out is this : however much the four first
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 5 
 
 differ from one another and from the last, yet the main 
 tenets of the last form an integral part of all. The 
 worshippers of Humanity base their worship of it on 
 certain beliefs as to evolution and progress, which give 
 to human events some collective and coherent meaning. 
 Every one of the other sects, let it worship what it will, 
 bases its worship oq precisely the same foundation. 
 The Scientific Theists, denying both a future life and a 
 revelation, and yet maintaining that God has moral 
 relations with man, and that a man's personal pleasure 
 is the least thing a man lives for, can explain such a 
 doctrine only by affirming a social progress which 
 enlarges the purposes of the individual and exhibits the 
 purpose of God. The religion of the Unknowable is 
 obviously but the religion of Humanity, with the Un- 
 knowable placed under it, like the body of a violoncello, 
 in the hope of producing a deeper moral vibration ; and 
 of every form of scientific theism we may say the same 
 with equal even if not with such obvious truth. I do 
 not suppose that anybody will dispute this, otherwise I 
 should dwell on it longer, so as to place it beyond a 
 doubt. I will take it then for admitted that in all 
 scientific religions, in all our modern religions that 
 deny a future life and a revelation, the religion of 
 Humanity is an essential, is indeed the main ingredient. 
 Let us now consider with a little more exactness what, 
 as a series of propositions, this religion of Humanity is. 
 Every religious doctrine has some idea at the bottom 
 of it far simpler than the propositions in which alone it 
 can be stated logically. Let us see what is the idea at 
 the bottom of the religious doctrine of Humanity. It 
 appeals to us most forcibly perhaps under its negative
 
 6 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 aspect. Under that aspect we may seize it completely, 
 thus. Let us take Shakespeare's lines — 
 
 Life is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 Signifying nothing. 
 
 Let us realise fully all that these lines mean. The idea 
 in question is a protest against that meaning. 
 
 In this form, however, there is nothing scientific 
 about it. It is merely the protest of an individual 
 based on his own emotions, and any other individual 
 may with equal force contradict it. To make it scien- 
 tific it must be transferred to a different basis — from 
 the subjective experience of the individual to the objec- 
 tive history of the race. The value to each man of his 
 own personal lot depends entirely on what each man 
 thinks it is. No one else can observe it ; therefore no 
 one else can dispute about it. But the lot of the race 
 at large is open to the observation of all. It is obvious 
 to all that this lot is always changing, and the nature 
 of these changes, whether they have any meaning in 
 them or none, is not a matter of opinion, but of facts 
 and inductions from facts. The religious doctrine of 
 Humanity asserts that they have a meaning. It asserts 
 that they follow a certain rational order, and that, 
 whether or no they are related to the purposes of any 
 God, they have a constant and a definite relation to 
 ourselves. It asserts that, taken as a whole, they have 
 been, are, and will be, always working together — 
 though it may be very slowly — to improve the kind of 
 happiness possible for the human being, and to increase 
 the numbers by whom such happiness will be enjoyed.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 7 
 
 Here, put in its logical and categorical form, is the 
 primary doctrine common to all our scientific religions. 
 The instant, however, it is thus expressed, another 
 proposition, through a process of logical chemistry, 
 adheres to it and becomes part of its structure. This 
 proposition relates not to the tendencies of the race, 
 but to the constitution of the average individual 
 character. It asserts, and very truly, that a natural 
 element in that character is sympathy ; but it asserts 
 more than this. It asserts that sympathy, even as it 
 exists now, is a feeling far stronger and wider than has 
 usually been supposed ; that it is capable, even now, 
 when once the idea of progress has been apprehended, 
 of making the fortunes of the race a part of the fortunes 
 of the individual, and inspiring the individual to work 
 for the progress in which he shares ; and it asserts that, 
 strong as sympathy is now, it will acquire, as times goes 
 on, a strength incalculably greater. 
 
 These two propositions united may be summed up 
 thus. The Human Kace as a whole is a progressive 
 and improving organism ; and the consciousness on 
 the part of the individual that such is the case, will be 
 the principal cause of its continued progress in the 
 future, and will make the individual a devoted and 
 happy partaker of it. 
 
 Here is the religion of Humanity reduced to its 
 simplest elements. I have called it the religion of 
 Humanity because the name is now familiar, and may 
 help to show the reader what it is I am talking about. 
 But having used it thus far, I shall now beg leave to 
 change it, and instead of the religion of Humanity I 
 shall speak of the creed of Optimism. For my present
 
 8 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 purpose this name is a great deal clearer. A religion is 
 a creed touched with emotion ; a creed is nothing but a 
 dry series of propositions. My present purpose is simply 
 to examine two dry propositions, and I will put all 
 questions of emotion as far as possible into the back- 
 ground. I am aware that the word Optimism is some- 
 times used with a meaning which many devotees of the 
 religion of Humanity would repudiate. George Eliot, 
 for instance, declared she was not an Optimist. Things 
 were not for the best, she said ; but they were always 
 tending to get better. She accordingly said that she 
 would sooner describe herself as a Meliorist. Nobody, 
 again, lays greater or more solemn weight on the doctrine 
 of progress than does Mr. John Morley ; and yet 
 nobody would more bitterly ridicule the doctrines of Dr. 
 Pangloss. But in spite of the sober and even sombre 
 view which such thinkers take of the human lot, they 
 still believe that it holds some distinct and august 
 meaning, that the tides of affairs, however troubled, do 
 not eddy aimlessly, and do not flow towards the dark- 
 ness, but keep due on towards the light, however 
 distant. They believe, in short, that the human lot has 
 something in it which makes it, in the eyes of all who 
 can see clearly, a thing to be acquiesced in not merely 
 with resignation, but devoutness. The soberest ad- 
 herents of the religion of Humanity admit as much as 
 this ; and no violence is done to the meaning, or even 
 to the associations of the word, if all who admit thus 
 much, from the most to the least sanguine, are classed 
 together under the common name of Optimists. 
 
 And now having seen what Optimism is, let us, 
 before going farther, make ourselves quite clear as to
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 9 
 
 what results on life its exponents claim for it. They 
 do not claim for it, as has been sometimes claimed for 
 Christianity, that it is the foundation of the moral code. 
 Our modern Optimists, without a single exception, hold 
 the foundations of the moral code to be social. Accord- 
 ing to their theory, all its cardinal precepts have been 
 the results not of belief, but of experience, and simply 
 represent the conditions essential to social union. 
 Belief, in certain important ways, may modify them ; 
 bat it neither created them nor can substantially change 
 them. Christianity, for instance, has put chastity on a 
 pedestal, but it was not Christianity that made adultery 
 a crime, nor would the completest atheism enable us to 
 construct a society which could live and thrive without 
 some sexual discipline. This is the view taken by 
 modern science, and we may all accept it, as far as it 
 goes, for true. Since, then, the propositions which 
 compose the creed of Optimism are not propositions 
 from which the moral code is deduced, what moral 
 result is supposed to spring from an assent to them ? 
 The result is supposed to be this — not any new assent 
 to the reasonableness of that code, but a new heart in 
 obeying it. In other words, the end of moral conduct 
 being the welfare of society, our assent to the creed of 
 Optimism makes that welfare incalculably nearer and 
 dearer to us than it would be otherwise, and converts a 
 mere avoidance of such overt acts as would injure it 
 into a willing, a constant, an eager effort to promote it. 
 This is what Optimism, when assented to, and acting 
 on the emotions, claims to do for conduct ; and indeed 
 it is no slight thing. It is a thing that makes all the 
 difference between the life of a race of brutes and the
 
 10 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 life of a race with something which we have hitherto 
 called divine in it. For those who deny any other life 
 but the present, what Optimism announces is practically 
 the re-creation of the soul, and our redemption from 
 the death of an existence merely selfish and animal. 
 Optimism announces this, and of all scientific creeds 
 it alone pretends to do so ; and if its propositions 
 are true, there are plausible grounds for arguing that 
 a genuine religion of the kind described will result 
 from it. 
 
 And now we come to the question which I propose 
 to ask — Are its propositions true ? Or are we certain 
 that they are true ? And if we are certain, on what 
 kinds of evidence do we base our certainty ? We have 
 already got them into condition to be submitted to this 
 inquiry. We have stripped them, so to speak, for the 
 operation. There they stand, two naked propositions, 
 whose sole claim to our acceptance is that they are 
 scientific truths, that they are genuine inductions from 
 carefully observed facts, that they have been reached 
 legitimately by the daylight of reason, that prejudice 
 and emotion have had nothing to do with the matter ; 
 that they stand, in short, on precisely the same footing 
 as any accepted generalisation of physics or physiology. 
 One of them, as we have seen, is a proposition relating 
 to the changes of human history ; the other is a pro- 
 position relating to the sympathetic capacity of the 
 individual. 
 
 I propose to show that the first is not as yet a 
 legitimate generalisation at all ; that the facts of the 
 case as at present known, not only are insufficient, but 
 point in two opposite ways ; that the certainty with
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 11 
 
 which the proposition is held by our scientific instructors 
 is demonstrably due to some source quite other than 
 scientific evidence ; and finally, that even if, in any 
 sense, the proposition should be found true, the truth 
 would be found inadequate to the expectations based 
 on it. 
 
 This is what I propose to show with regard to the 
 proposition asserting progress. With regard to the 
 proposition that deals with human sympathy, I pro- 
 pose to show that it is less scientific still ; that whilst 
 here and there an isolated fact, imperfectly apprehended, 
 may suggest it, the great mass of facts absolutely and 
 hopelessly contradict it ; and furthermore, that even 
 granting its truth, its truth would cut both ways, and 
 annihilate the conclusions to which it seems to give 
 support. 
 
 This last proposition we will consider first. Let us 
 repeat it in set terms. It asserts that the sympathetic 
 feelings of the average man are sufficiently strong and 
 comprehensive to make the alleged progress of the 
 human race a source of appreciable and constant satis- 
 faction to himself. And the satisfaction in question is 
 no mere pensive sentiment, no occasional sunbeam 
 gilding an hour of idleness ; but it is a feeling so 
 robust and strong that it can not only hold its own 
 amongst our ordinary joys and sorrows, but actually 
 impart its own colour to both. It will also, as progress 
 continues, increase in strength and in importance. 
 
 Now in considering if this is true, let us grant all 
 that can be granted ; let us grant, for argument's sake, 
 that progress is an acknowledged reality — that human 
 history, if regarded in a way sufficiently comprehensive,
 
 12 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 shows us, written across it in gigantic letters, some 
 record of general and still continuing improvement. 
 Are our characters such that the knowledge of this 
 fact will really cause us any flow of spirits sufficiently 
 vivid to take rank amongst our personal joys, and to 
 buoy us up in personal despondency and sorrow ? Or, 
 again, are they such that this general improvement of 
 the race will be an object nearer our hearts than our 
 own private prosperity, and will really incite us to 
 sacrifice our strength and our pleasures to its promotion? 
 To these questions there are two answers, which I shall 
 give separately. 
 
 The first answer is, that from one point of view 
 these questions are simply questions of degree. For 
 instance, supposing it were suddenly made known to 
 all of us, that some extraordinary amelioration in the 
 human lot would, owing to certain causes, accomplish 
 itself during the next ten days, the whole race would 
 probably experience a sense of overmastering joy, 
 through which ordinary sorrows and annoyances would 
 hardly make themselves felt. Or, again, should it be 
 known that this glorious piece of progress were con- 
 tingent on every one making some specified effort, we 
 may safely say that for the time very few men would 
 be idle. And again, should it be known that by in- 
 dulgence in personal passion the results of this rapid 
 progress would be grievously and visibly diminished, 
 for ten days, doubtless, self-restraint would be general. 
 But in proportion as we suppose the rate of the pro- 
 gress to be slower, and the importance to the result of 
 each separate act to be less, our satisfaction in the one 
 and our anxiety about the other would dwindle, till the
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 13 
 
 former would be perceptible only when all other emotions 
 were quiescent ; and the latter, as affecting action, would 
 cease to be perceptible at all. 
 
 To convince ourselves that such is the law which 
 this feeling would follow, we have only to look at the 
 commonest experiences of life : for the sympathy with 
 general progress of which we are alleged to be capable, 
 is not supposed to have anything miraculous about it, 
 but to be simply a particular application of a faculty in 
 daily exercise. Now an ordinary man is delighted if 
 some great good fortune happens to some other who is 
 very near and dear to him — if his son or his daughter, 
 or his brother, for instance, marries well and happily ; 
 but if the same good fortune happens to some unknown 
 connection, his delight is at best of a very lukewarm 
 kind ; whilst if he hears of a happy marriage in Ger- 
 many, it is nonsense to pretend that he is really 
 delighted at all. Again, if he reads in the ' Times ' of 
 an accident to a train in America, he says it is shocking, 
 and goes on with his breakfast ; but if a telegram comes 
 to inform him that his son was amongst the passengers, 
 he at once is in torture till he learns whether his son is 
 safe. So, too, with regard to conduct, the consequences 
 to be expected from any given act will influence his 
 choice or his avoidance of it in proportion to their 
 nearness or their remoteness, to their certainty or their 
 uncertainty, to the clearness with which he is able to 
 grasp them, and also to their objective magnitude 
 relative to the amount of effort required from himself in 
 doing the act or in abstaining from it. This is evident 
 in cases where the consequences are consequences to the 
 doer. A reward to be given in ten years' time stimu-
 
 14 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 lates no one as much as a reward to be given to-morrow ; 
 nor does a fit of the gout hovering dimly in the future 
 keep the hand from the bottle like a twinge already- 
 threatening. Again, if the ill-consequences of an act 
 otherwise pleasant have in them the smallest uncertainty, 
 a numerous class is always ready to risk them ; and as 
 the uncertainty becomes greater, this class increases. 
 All intemperance, all gambling, all extravagance, all 
 sports such as cricket and hunting, and the very 
 possibility of a soldier's life as a profession, depend on 
 this fact. Few men would enlist if they knew that 
 they would be shot in a twelvemonth ; few men would 
 go hunting if they knew they would come home on a 
 stretcher. And what is true of men's acts regarded as 
 affecting themselves, is equally true of them regarded 
 as affecting others. Sympathy follows the same laws as 
 selfishness. Supposing a young man knew that if he 
 did a certain action his mother would instantly hear of 
 it and die of grief in consequence, he would be a young 
 man of very exceptional badness if this knowledge were 
 not a violent check on him. But suppose the act were 
 only one of a series, making his general conduct only a 
 little worse, and suppose that the chance of his mother's 
 hearing of it were slight, and that it would, if she did 
 hear of it, cost her only one extra sigh, the check so 
 strong in the first case would in this be extremely 
 feeble. Here, again, is a point more important still. In 
 the case of any act, regarded as affecting others, which 
 involves effort or sacrifice, the motive to perform it 
 depends for its strength or weakness on the proportion 
 between the amount of the sacrifice and the amount of 
 good to be achieved by it. A man may be willing to
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 15 
 
 die to save his wife's honour, but he will hardly be 
 willing to do so to save her new ball-dress, even though 
 she herself thinks the latter of most value. A man. 
 would deny himself one truffle to keep a hundred men 
 from starving, but he would not himself starve to give 
 a hundred men one truffle. The effort is immense on 
 one side, the result infinitesimal on the other, and 
 sympathy does nothing to alter the unequal balance. 
 Lastly, results to others, as apprehended by sympathy, 
 even when not small themselves, are made small by 
 distance. No man thinks so much of what will happen 
 to his great-grandchildren as he does of what will happen 
 to his children ; nor would it be easy to raise money 
 for building a hospital which would not be finished for 
 fifteen hundred years. Sympathy, then, with other 
 people, or with any cause or any object affecting them, 
 influences our actions in proportion as the people are 
 near to us, or as the objects are large, distinct, or 
 important ; whence it follows that to produce a given 
 strength of motive, the more distant an object is, the 
 larger and more distinct it must be. 
 
 And now let us turn again to the progress of the 
 human race ; and supposing it to be a fact, and accepting 
 it as described by its prophets, let us consider how far 
 our sympathies are really likely to be affected by it. Is 
 it quick enough ? Is it distinct enough ? Is there a 
 reasonable proportion between the efforts demanded 
 from us on its behalf, and the results to be anticipated 
 from these efforts ? And how far, in each individual 
 case, are the results certain or doubtful ? 
 
 Now one of the first things which our scientific 
 Optimists impress on us is, that this progress is ex-
 
 16 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 tremely slow. Before it has brought the general lot 
 to a condition which in itself is even approximately 
 satisfactory, 'immeasurable geologic periods of time,' 
 Mr. Morley tells us, will have to intervene ; and Mr. 
 Frederic Harrison himself has warned us not to be in a 
 hurry. He is far more sanguine, indeed, than Mr. 
 Morley ; but even he thinks that we must wait for three 
 thousand years before the results of progress begin to 
 be worth talking about. Now, ' to a practical man,' 
 says Mr. Harrison, ' three thousand years is an eternity.' 
 I quite agree with him ; to a practical man it is ; and 
 thus, whether his calculations are accepted, or Mr. 
 Morley's, our own efforts on behalf of the general 
 welfare are divided by a practical eternity from their 
 first appreciable fruits. Now since Mr. Harrison refers 
 us to practical meD, let us try to imagine, guided by 
 our common experience, how the knowledge that this 
 kind of progress was a reality would be likely to affect 
 the practical men we know. Let us first think how it 
 would affect their feelings; and then how, through 
 their feelings, it would affect their actions. The two 
 questions are separate, and involve different sets of 
 considerations. 
 
 To begin, then, with the question of mere feeling — 
 if we wish to form some conjecture as to how men are 
 likely to feel about the things of the remote future, we 
 cannot do better than resort to a test which is suggested 
 to us by the Optimists themselves, and consider how 
 men feel about the things of the remote past. Of 
 course, as we may see in the case of a man's own life, 
 the feelings excited by the past differ in kind from those 
 excited by the future ; but the intensity of the one, we
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 17 
 
 may say with confidence, is a fair measure of the in- 
 tensity of the other. If a man who has caused himself 
 suffering by his own acts, forgets that suffering the first 
 moment it is over, he is not likely to trouble himself 
 about the possibility of its repetition. And the same 
 thing will hold good as to our feeling for past and 
 future generations. Events that are going to happen 
 three thousand years hence will hardly be more to us 
 than events which happened three thousand years ago. 
 Now what man in any practical sense cares anything 
 about what happened three thousand years ago ? To 
 re-people the cities and temples of the past — Memphis, 
 and Thebes, and Babylon — to see at the call of the 
 imagination the earth give up her dead, and buried 
 generations come and go before us, is no doubt an 
 occupation that many of us find fascinating. But the 
 pleasure of watching these dfisvijvh icdprjva has nothing 
 akin to any personal interest in them. Neither, again, 
 has the interest taken in them by the historian. Were 
 we to learn to-day for the first time that all the plagues 
 of Egypt had been repeated ten times over, or that a 
 million slaves had been tortured by Pharaoh Necho, 
 nobody's spirits would be in the least damped by the 
 intelligence. The strongest feelings producible by the 
 longest contemplation of the greatest triumphs and the 
 greatest misfortunes of antiquity are mere phantoms, 
 mere wraiths, mere reflections of the reflections of 
 shadows, when compared with the annoyance pro- 
 ducible by a smoky chimney. Supposing we were to 
 discover that three thousand years ago there was a 
 perfectly happy and a perfectly civilised society, the 
 conditions of which were still perfectly plain to us, the 
 
 C
 
 18 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 discovery no doubt would be intensely interesting if it 
 afforded us any model that we could ourselves imitate. 
 But our interest would be centred in the thought not 
 that other people had been happy, but that we, or that 
 our children, were going to be. The two feelings are 
 totally different. Supposing we were to discover on 
 some Egyptian papyrus a receipt for making a certain 
 delicious tart, the pleasure we might take in eating 
 the tart ourselves would have nothing to do with any 
 gratification at the pleasure it gave Sesostris. The 
 conclusion, then, that we may draw from our obvious 
 apathy as to the happiness of our remote ancestors is 
 that we are really equally apathetic as to the happiness 
 of our remote descendants. As the past ceases to be 
 remote — as it becomes more and more recent, some 
 faint pulsations of sympathy begin to stir in us ; when 
 we get to the lives of our grandfathers the feeling may 
 be quite recognisable ; when we get to the lives of our 
 fathers, it may be strong. This is true ; and the same 
 thing holds good as to the future. We may feel strongly 
 about the lives of our children, more weakly about the 
 lives of our grandchildren, and then presently we cease 
 to have any feeling at all. Were we promised that 
 progress in the future would be quicker than progress 
 in the past, the case would change in proportion to this 
 promised quickness ; but this is precisely what we are 
 not promised. 
 
 I said that this appeal to the past was suggested by 
 the Optimists themselves. The feelings indeed which 
 they dwell upon as producible are somewhat different 
 from those on which I have just commented. But they 
 are less to the point as indicating the possibility of any
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 19 
 
 sympathy with the future, and are seen when analysed 
 to be even more fantastic. What the Optimist tells us 
 that we ought to feel, can feel, and if we do but think 
 over things, must feel, is not so much gladness or sorrow 
 at our ancestors having been happy or unhappy, as 
 gratitude towards them, for the happiness that their 
 efforts have secured for us. Now the efforts of our 
 ancestors have secured us a great number of things. 
 If they have secured us our happiness, they have secured 
 us also our afflictions. If we owe to them our present 
 medical skill, we also owe to them consumption, and 
 gout, and scrofula. Our gratitude, therefore, is to be 
 of a somewhat eclectic character. Its object is not the 
 whole of our ancestors, but only that proportion of them 
 whose lives have been beneficial to us. But we can 
 never know accurately what that proportion is. It is 
 an undistinguished part of a dimly apprehended whole. 
 How are we to be grateful to a shadowy abstraction like 
 this ? Mr. Harrison might tell us, and he actually does 
 tell us, that we know our ancestral benefactors through 
 certain illustrious specimens of them — ' poets, artists, 
 thinkers, teachers, rulers, discoverers ; ' indeed, he says 
 that the worshipping gratitude in question ' is felt in 
 its most definite mode when we enter into communion ' 
 with such great men as these. This, no doubt, makes 
 the idea clearer ; but it only does so to make its 
 absurdity clearer also. Some great men have done 
 good to posterity — good which we feel now ; but many 
 have done evil ; and there are wide differences of 
 opinion as to which of them has done what. Is 
 Frederick the Great, for instance, to be the object of 
 worshipping gratitude or of aversion ? Are we to
 
 20 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 enter into communion with him, or avoid him ? Or 
 supposing all such doubts as these to be settled, and 
 the calendar of the saints of progress to be edited to 
 the satisfaction of us all, there are difficulties still 
 greater behind. Many men whose actions have been 
 undoubtedly beneficial, have been personally of exceed- 
 ingly doubtful character ; the good they have done to 
 posterity has been in many cases unforeseen and un- 
 intended by themselves ; or even if they have foreseen 
 it, love of posterity has not been their motive in doing 
 it. Who, for instance, feels any worshipping gratitude 
 to Lord Bacon ? We may admire his genius, or may 
 recognise his services ; but benefit to us was not his 
 object in producing them, and therefore our gratitude 
 is not their recompense. It is as irrational to be grate- 
 ful for an unintended benefit, as it is to be angry at an 
 unintended injury. Of course we have some feeling 
 about such great men. It is shown in its strongest 
 form in the people we call hero- worshippers. But the 
 feeling of the hero-worshipper is the very reverse of the 
 \ vicarious feeling for humanity postulated by our Opti- 
 mists. The hero-worshipper admires his heroes because 
 they differ from the rest of mankind, not because they 
 resemble and represent them. Even could we imagine 
 that one or two great men actually foresaw our exist- 
 ence, and toiled for us with a prophetic love, we cannot 
 imagine this of the great masses of our predecessors. 
 So far as they are concerned, we are the accidental in- 
 heritors of goods which they laid up for themselves ; 
 and it there is any reason to praise them for what they 
 have done well, there is equal reason to grumble at them 
 for not having done it better.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 21 
 
 If these reflections do not appear conclusive, let us 
 turn from our ancestral benefactors to our remote 
 contemporary benefactors. Our attitude towards them 
 will enlighten us somewhat further. To some of the 
 remotest of our contemporaries we owe some of our 
 homeliest comforts. To take one instance out of many, 
 we owe tea to the Chinese. Now does any English 
 tea-drinker feel any worshipping gratitude towards the 
 Chinese ? We care for them as little as they care for 
 us ; and if we learnt to-morrow that the whole Chinese 
 race was a myth, it is doubtful if one of us would eat a 
 worse dinner for the news. If we feel so little about 
 remote benefactors who are living, we shall hardly feel 
 more about remote benefactors who are dead ; and we 
 shall feel less about remote recipients of benefits, who 
 will not be born for an eternity. 
 
 To sum up, then, what experience teaches us as the 
 extent to which an idea like that of human progress, 
 moving imperceptibly to a goal incalculably distant, is 
 able to affect the feelings of the ordinary individual, we 
 must say that there is no evidence of any sort or kind 
 that for practical purposes it is able to affect them at all. 
 And now let us pass on from this consideration to 
 another. The emotions required by the Optimist we 
 have shown to be not possible. Let us now consider 
 how, supposing they were possible, they would be 
 likely to influence action. We shall see that their 
 influence at the best would be necessarily very feeble ; 
 and that it would be enfeebled by the very conditions 
 which we mainly counted on to strengthen it. Sup- 
 posing the human race could last only another two 
 years, even Mr. Harrison would admit that we might
 
 22 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 well be indifferent about improving it, and feel sad 
 rather than elated at its destiny. As it is, Mr. 
 Harrison, though he cannot say that it is eternal, yet 
 promises it a duration which is an eternity for all 
 practical purposes ; and he conceives that in doing this 
 he is investing it with interest and with dignity. He 
 thinks that, within limits, the longer the race lasts, the 
 more worthy of our service it will seem to our en- 
 lightened reason. One of the most solemn reflections 
 which he presses on our hearts is this, that the con- 
 sequences of each one of our lives will continue ad 
 infinitum. 
 
 Now, from one point of view Mr. Harrison is 
 perfectly right. Granting that we believe in progress, 
 and that our feelings are naturally affected by it, 
 among the chief elements in it which cause it thus to 
 affect them will be its practical eternity — its august 
 magnitude. But the moment we put these feelings, as 
 it were, into harness, and ask them to produce for us 
 action and self-sacrifice, we shall find that the very 
 elements which have excited the wish to act have an 
 equal tendency to enervate the will. We shall find 
 that, as the porter in Macbeth says, they are ' equivo- 
 cators.' They ' provoke the desire, but take away the 
 performance.' For the longer the period we assign 
 to the duration of the human race and of progress, the 
 mightier the proportion of the cause we are asked to 
 work for, the smaller will be the result of our efforts in 
 proportion to the great whole; less and less would 
 each additional effort be missed. If the consequences 
 of our lives ceased two years after our death, the 
 power of these consequences, it is admitted, would be
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 23 
 
 slight either as a deterrent or a stimulant. Mr. 
 Harrison thinks that they will gain force, through our 
 knowledge that they will last ad infinitum. But he 
 quite forgets the other side of the question, that the 
 longer they last, they are a constantly diminishing 
 quantity, ever less and less appreciable by any single 
 human being, and that we can only think of them as 
 infinite at the expense of thinking of them as infini- 
 tesimal. 
 
 Now, as I pointed out before, it is a rule of human 
 conduct that there must, to produce an act, be some 
 equality between the effort and the expected result ; 
 but in the case of any effort expended for the sake of 
 general progress there is no equality at all. And not 
 only is there no equality, but there is no certain con- 
 nection. The best-meant efforts may do harm instead 
 of good ; and if good will be really done by them, it is 
 impossible to realise what good. How many workmen 
 of the present day would refuse an annuity of two 
 hundred a year, on the chance that by doing so they 
 might raise the rate of wages 1 per cent, in the course 
 of three thousand years ? But why talk of three 
 thousand years ? Our care, as a matter of fact, does 
 not extend three hundred. Do we any of us deny 
 ourselves a single scuttle of coals, so as to make our 
 coal-fields last for one more unknown generation ? It is 
 perfectly plain we do not. The utter inefficacy of the 
 motives supplied by devotion to progress, for its own 
 sake, may at once be realised by comparing them with 
 the motives supplied by devotion to it for the sake of 
 Christianity. The least thing that the Christian does 
 to others he does to Christ. However slight the result,
 
 24 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 Christ judges it by the effort and the intention ; a 
 single mite may be valued by Him as much as a 
 thousand pounds ; and however far away from us may 
 be the human beings we benefit, Christ, who is served 
 through them, is near. But the naked doctrine of 
 progress has no idea in it at all analogous to this idea 
 of Christ. Compared with Christianity it is like an 
 optical instrument with some essential lens wanting. 
 Christianity made our infinitesimal influence infinite ; 
 scientific Optimism makes our infinite influence infini- 
 tesimal. 
 
 But perhaps it will be said that the idea of general 
 progress is not supposed to move and stimulate us 
 directly, but is embodied for each one of us in some 
 homely and definite service which we can do to those 
 about us ; and that we do not do such service for the 
 love of the race in general, but rise to the general love 
 through doing the particular services. The answer to 
 this is obvious. If this is all that is claimed for the 
 idea of progress, all claim for it that it influences action 
 is abandoned. It does not tend to make men energetic, 
 philanthropic, and useful who are not so naturally. 
 Such men it leaves exactly as it finds them — the selfish, 
 selfish still, and the filthy, filthy still. It affects those 
 only who act well independently of it ; and all that it 
 can be supposed to do for these is not to make them 
 choose a particular line of conduct, but to give them a 
 new excuse for being pleased with themselves at having 
 chosen it. This brings us back to the question of mere 
 feeling ; and the feeling supposed to be produced by 
 the idea of progress, we have already seen to be a mere 
 fancy and illusion. As I have taken special care to
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 25 
 
 point out, nobody claims for Optimism that it supplies 
 us with a rule of right. That is supplied by social 
 science and experience. What is claimed for it is, that 
 it gives us new motives for obeying this rule, and a feel- 
 ing of blessedness in the thought that it is being obeyed. 
 We have now seen that in no appreciable way has it 
 any tendency to give us either. 
 
 All this while we have been supposing that pro- 
 gress is. a reality, and inquiring if it will excite 
 certain feelings. Let us now reverse our suppositions. 
 Let us suppose the admittedly real thing to be our 
 capacity for the feelings, and inquire what grounds 
 there are for believing in the progress which is to 
 excite them. Of course the question is not one which 
 can be argued out in a page or two ; but we can take 
 stock in a general way of what the arguments are. The 
 first feature that strikes us in human history is change. 
 Do its changes follow any intelligible order ? If so, to 
 what extent do they follow it ? And is it an order 
 which can afford us any rational satisfaction? Now 
 that they follow some intelligible order to some extent 
 is perfectly undeniable. The advance of certain races 
 from savagery to civilisation, and from a civilisation 
 that is simple to a civilisation that is complex, is a fact 
 staring all of us in the face ; and with regard to certain 
 stages of this advance, few people will seriously deny 
 that it has been satisfactory. It is true that, putting 
 aside all theological views of man, certain races of 
 savages have in all probability been the happiest human 
 animals that ever existed ; still, if we consider the earliest 
 condition of the races that have become civilised, we 
 may no doubt say that up to a certain point the advance
 
 26 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 of civilisation made life a better thing for them. But 
 is it equally plain that after a certain point has been 
 past, the continuance of the advance has had the same 
 sort of result ? The inhabitants of France under Henri 
 IV. may have been a happier set of men than its in- 
 habitants under Clovis ; but were its inhabitants under 
 Louis XVI. a happier set of men than its inhabitants 
 under Henri IV. ? Again, if civilisations rise, civilisa- 
 tions also fall. Is it certain that the new civilisations 
 which in time succeed the old bring the human lot to a 
 veritably higher level ? To answer these questions, or 
 even to realise what these questions are, we must brand 
 into our consciousness many considerations which, though 
 when we think of them they are truisms, we too often 
 forget to think of. To begin, then : Progress for those 
 who deny a God and a future life, means nothing, and 
 can mean nothing but such changes as may make men 
 happier ; and this meaning again further unfolds itself 
 into a reference first to the intensity of the happiness ; 
 secondly, to the numbers who partake in it. Thus, 
 what is commonly called a superior civilisation need 
 not, after a certain stage, indicate any real progress. It 
 may even be a disguise of retrogression. It seems, for 
 instance, hardly doubtful that in England the condition 
 of the masses some eighty years ago was in some respects 
 worse than it had been a hundred years before. The 
 factory system, though a main element in the most 
 rapid advances of civilisation ever known to the world, 
 did certainly during the earlier stages of its develop- 
 ment not add for the time to the total of happiness. 
 The mere fact that it did not do so for the time is in 
 itself no proof that it may not have done so since ; but
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 27 
 
 it is a proof that the most startling advances in science, 
 and the mastery over nature that has come of them, 
 need not necessarily be things which, in their immediate 
 results, can give any satisfaction to the well-wishers of 
 the race at large. But we may say more than this. 
 Not only need material civilisation indicate no progress 
 in the lot of the race at large, but it may well be doubted 
 if it really adds to the happiness of that part of the 
 race who receive the fullest fruits of it. It is difficult 
 in one sense to deny that express trains and Cunard 
 steamships are improvements on mail coaches or 
 wretched little sailing boats like the Mayfloiver. But 
 are the public in trains happier than the public who 
 went in coaches ? Is there more peace or hope in the 
 hearts of the men who go from New York to Liverpool 
 in six days than there was in the hearts of the Pilgrim 
 Fathers? No doubt we who have been brought up 
 amongst modern appliances should be made miserable 
 for the time if they were suddenly taken away from us. 
 But to say this is a very different thing from saying 
 that we are happier with them than we should have 
 been if we had never had them. A man would be 
 miserable who, being fat and fifty, had to button him- 
 self into the waistcoat which he wore when he had a 
 waist and was nineteen. But this does not prove that 
 a large-sized waistcoat makes his middle age a happier 
 time than his youth. Advancing civilisation creates 
 wants, and it supplies wants ; it creates habits, and it 
 ministers to habits ; but it is not always exhilarating 
 us with fresh surprises of pleasure. Suppose, however, 
 we grant that up to a certain point the increase of 
 material wants, together with the means of meeting
 
 28 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 them, does add to happiness, it is perfectly evident 
 that there is a point where this result ceases. A work- 
 man who dines daily off beefsteak and beer may be 
 happier than one whose dinner is water and black bread ; 
 but a man whose dinner is ten different dishes need not 
 be happier than the man who puts up with four. There 
 is a certain point, therefore, not an absolute point, but 
 a relative point, beyond which advances in material 
 civilisation are not progress any longer — not even sup- 
 posing all classes to have a proportionate share in it. 
 Accordingly the fact that inventions multiply, that 
 commerce extends, that distances are annihilated, that 
 country gentlemen have big battues, that farmers keep 
 fine hunters, that their daughters despise butter-making, 
 and that even agricultural labourers have pink window- 
 blinds, is not in itself any proof of general progress. Pro- 
 gress is a tendency not to an extreme, but to a mean. 
 
 Let us now pass to another class of facts, generally 
 held to show that progress is a reality, namely, the great 
 men that civilisation has produced. Let us, for instance, 
 take a Shakespeare, or a Newton, or a Goethe, and 
 compare them with the Britons and the Germans of the 
 time of Tacitus. Do we not see an image of progress 
 there ? To this argument there is more than one 
 answer. It is an argument that points to something, 
 but does not point to so much as those who use it 
 might suppose. No doubt a man like Newton would 
 be an impossibility in an age of barbarism; we may 
 give to civilisation the whole credit of producing him, 
 and admit that he is an incalculable advance on the 
 shrewdest of unlettered savages. But though we find 
 that civilisations produce greater men than barbarism,
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 29 
 
 we do not find that the modern civilisations produce 
 greater men than the ancient. Were they all to meet 
 in the Elysian Fields, Newton would probably not find 
 Euclid his inferior, nor would Thucydides show like a 
 dwarf by Professor Freeman. Further, not only do the 
 limits of exceptional greatness show no tendency to 
 expand, but the existence, at any point, of exceptionally 
 great men is no sure indication of any answering eleva- 
 tion amongst the masses, any more than the existence 
 of exceptionally rich men is necessarily an indication 
 that the masses are not poor. The intellectual supe- 
 riority of Columbus to the American savages was, 
 unfortunately, no sign that his followers were not in 
 many ways inferior to them. 
 
 What, then, is the evidence that progress, in the 
 sense of an increasing happiness for an increasing 
 number, is really a continuous movement running 
 through all the changes of history ? It cannot be said 
 that there are no facts which suggest such a conclusion, 
 but they are absurdly insufficient in number, and they 
 are balanced by others equally weighty, and of quite an 
 opposite character. Isolated periods, isolated institu- 
 tions, do indeed very strikingly exhibit the movement 
 in question. One of the most remarkable instances of 
 it is the development of the Church of Rome, looked at 
 from the Catholic standpoint. Again, we constantly 
 find periods in a nation's history during which the 
 national happiness has demonstrably moved onwards. 
 Few of the phenomena on which the faith in progress 
 rests have given to that faith such a violent stimulus as 
 the rapid movement observable in such periods. A case 
 in point is the immense and undoubted improvement
 
 30 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 which, during the past eighty years, has taken place in 
 the condition of the working classes in England ; and 
 no doubt, in spite of the ruinous price paid for it, 
 France purchased by the Revolution an improvement 
 not dissimilar. But these movements are capable of an 
 interpretation very different from that which our san- 
 guine Optimists put on them. They resemble a cure 
 from an exceptional disease rather than any strengthen- 
 ing of the normal health. The French Revolution has 
 been thought by many to have been a chopping up of 
 society and a boiling of it in Medea's caldron, from 
 whence it should issue forth born into a new existence. 
 In reality it resembled an ill-performed surgical opera- 
 tion, which may possibly have saved the nation's life, 
 but has shattered its nerves and disfigured it till this 
 day. Whilst as for ordinary democratic reforms — and 
 this is plainest with regard to those which have been 
 most really needed — their utmost effect has been to cure 
 a temporary pain, not to add a permanent pleasure. 
 They have been pills, they have not been elixirs. 1 
 
 The most authenticated cases, then, which we have 
 of any genuine progress are to all appearance mere 
 accidents and episodes. They are not analogous to a 
 man progressing, but to a tethered animal which has 
 slipped getting up on its legs again. As to the larger 
 movements which form the main features of history, 
 such as the rise of the Roman Empire, these move- 
 
 1 The causes of material or national advance will be recognised 
 in time as being mainly, though not entirely, due to the personal 
 ambitions of a gifted and vigorous minority ; and the processes 
 which are now regarded as signs of a universal progress, are constant 
 cures, or attempts at cures, of the evils or maladjustments which 
 are at first incident to any important change.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 31 
 
 ments, like waves, are always observed to spend them- 
 selves ; and it is impossible to prove, without some aid 
 from theology, that the new waves which have shaped 
 themselves out of the subsided waters are larger, higher, 
 or more important than the last. This is true even of 
 the parts of such movements as history principally 
 records ; but of the part, which for our modern 
 Optimists is the most important — which is, indeed, the 
 only important part for them, history can hardly be 
 said to have left any general record at all. The impor- 
 tant part of such movements is their relation to the 
 happiness of the masses. Does anyone pretend that 
 we have any materials for tracing through the historic 
 ages the fluctuations in the lot of the unnamed multi- 
 tudes ? Here and there some riot, some servile war, or 
 some Jacquerie, shows us that at a certain period the 
 masses in some special district were miserable, and we 
 can trace through other periods some legal amelioration 
 of their lot. But taking the historic periods of the 
 world as a whole, the history of the happiness or the 
 misery of the majority is a book of which everything 
 has perished except some scattered fragments. The 
 gaps between these can be filled up only by conjecture, 
 in many cases not even by that ; and they entirely fail 
 to suggest in any serious way that the happiness of the 
 multitudes concerned has followed any intelligible order, 
 and they certainly negative the supposition that there 
 has been any continuous advance in it. Mr. Harrison 
 says that in three thousand years progress should at 
 least be appreciable to the naked eye. "Will Mr. 
 Harrison, or anyone else, maintain as scientifically 
 demonstrated that the children whipped to their work
 
 32 THE .SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 in our earlier English factories ' were happier than the 
 Egyptian brick-makers amongst the melons and the 
 flesh-pots ? 
 
 There is, however, another hypothesis possible, 
 which may give the doctrine of progress a more 
 scientific character. It may be said that though the 
 changes of history hitherto have been seemingly vague 
 and meaningless, they have been really preparatory for 
 a movement which is about to begin now. Telegraphs, 
 ocean steamers, express trains, and printing-presses 
 have, it may be admitted, done little for the general 
 happiness as yet ; their importance may have been 
 slight if we regard them as mere luxuries : but all this 
 while they have been knitting the races of men together ; 
 they have been making the oneness of Humanity a 
 visible and accomplished fact ; and very soon we shall 
 all of us start in company on a march towards the 
 higher things that the future has in store for us. What 
 shall we say to some idea of this sort —that progress is 
 a certainty henceforward, though it may have been 
 doubtful hitherto ? The idea is a pleasant one for the 
 fancy to dwell upon, and it is easy to see how it may 
 have been suggested by facts. But facts certainly give 
 us no assurance that it is true ; they do but suggest it, 
 as a cloud may suggest a whale. It is no doubt easier 
 to conceive the possibility of a general onward move- 
 ment in the future than it is to conceive that of it as a 
 
 1 The unhappy lot of the child- workers, during the earlier stages 
 of the factory -system, forms a more striking comment on the theory 
 of general progress, the more clearly we realise what history has 
 made so evident — that the parents were as much responsible for it 
 as the masters.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 33 
 
 reality in the past. Indeed, no one can demonstrate 
 that it will not actually take place. All I wish to point 
 out is that there is no certainty that it will ; and not 
 only no certainty, but no balance of probability. The 
 existing civilisation, which some think so stable, and 
 which seems, as I have said, to be uniting us into one 
 community, contains in itself many elements of decay 
 or of self-destruction. In spite of the way in which the 
 Western races seem to have covered the globe with the 
 network of their power and commerce, they are out- 
 numbered at this day in a proportion of more than two 
 to one by the vast nations who are utterly impervious 
 to their influence — impervious to their ideas and in- 
 different to their aspirations. What scientific estimate, 
 then, can be made of the influence on the future of the 
 Mohammedan and Buddhist populations, to say nothing 
 of the others equally alien to our civilisation, who alone 
 outnumber the entire brotherhood of the West ? Who 
 can forecast — to take a single instance — the part which 
 may in the future be played by China ? And, again, 
 who can forecast the effects of over-population ? And 
 who can fail to foresee that they may be far-reaching 
 and terrible ? How, in the face of disturbing elements 
 like these, can the future of progress be anything 
 more than a guess, a hope, an opinion, a poetic 
 fancy ? At all events, whatever it is, it is certainly not 
 science. 
 
 Let us, however, suppose that it is science. Let us 
 suppose that we have full and sufficient evidence to 
 convince us of the reality and continuance of a move- 
 ment, slow indeed as its exponents admit it to be, but 
 evidently in the direction of some happy consummation 
 
 D
 
 34 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 in the future. Now what, let us ask, will this consum- 
 mation be ? It is put before us by the creed of Optim- 
 ism as the ultimate justification of all our hope and 
 enthusiasm, and, as Mr. Morley says, of our ' provisional 
 acquiescence' in the existing sorrows of the world. 
 Does anyone, then, profess to be able to describe it 
 exactly to us ? To ask this is no idle question. Its 
 importance can be proved by reference to Mr. Harrison 
 himself. He says that if a consummation in heaven is 
 to have the least real influence over us, it is ' not 
 enough to talk of it in general terms.' ' The all- 
 important point,' he proceeds, ' is what kind of heaven ? 
 Is it a heaven of seraphic beatitude and unending 
 hallelujahs, as imagined by Dante and Milton, or a life 
 of active exertion? And if of active exertion (and 
 what can life mean without exertion), of what kind of 
 exertion ? ' Now with regard to heaven, it would be 
 perfectly easy to show that this demand for exact 
 knowledge is unreasonable and unnecessary ; for part 
 of the attraction of the alleged beatitude of heaven 
 consists in the belief that it passes our finite under- 
 standing, that we can only dimly augur it, and that we 
 shall be changed before we are admitted to it. But 
 with regard to any blessed consummation on the earth, 
 such details as Mr. Harrison asks for are absolutely 
 indispensable. Our Optimists tell us that, on the 
 expiration of a practical eternity, there will be the 
 beginnings at any rate of a blessed and glorious change 
 in the human lot. In Mr. Harrison's words, I say, 
 What kind of change ? Will it be a change tending to 
 make life a round of idle luxury, or a course of active 
 exertion ? And if of active exertion, of what kind of
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 35 
 
 exertion ? Will it be practical or speculative ? Will 
 it be discovering new stars, or making new dyes out of 
 coal tar ? No one can tell us. 
 
 On one point no doubt we should find a consensus 
 of opinion ; but this point would be negative, not 
 positive. We should be told that poverty, overwork, 
 most forms of sickness, and acute pain would be absent ; 
 and surely it may be said that this is a consummation 
 fit to be striven for. No doubt it is ; but from the 
 Optimist's point of view, this admission does absolutely 
 nothing to help us. The problem is to construct a life 
 of superlative happiness ; and to eliminate physical 
 suffering is merely to place us on the naked threshold 
 of our enterprise. Suppose I see in the street one day 
 some poor orphan girl, utterly desolate, and crying as 
 if her heart would break. That girl is certainly not 
 happy. Let us suppose I see the same girl next day, 
 equally desolate, but distracted by an excruciating 
 toothache. I could not restore her parents to her, but 
 I can, we will say, cure her toothache, and I do. I 
 ease her of a terrible pain. I cause her unutterable 
 relief; and no doubt in doing so I myself feel happy ; 
 but as to the orphan all I do is this — I restore her to 
 her original misery. And so far as the mere process of 
 stamping out pain is concerned, there is nothing to 
 show that it might not leave life in no better position 
 than that of an orphan cured of a toothache. Indeed, 
 if we may trust the suggestion thrown out by Optimistic 
 writers, it would not, even so far as it went, be an un- 
 mixed good. These writers have often hinted that pain 
 and trouble probably deepen our pleasures ; so if pain 
 and trouble were ever done away with, the positive
 
 36 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 blessings of life might, on their own showing, be not 
 heightened but degraded. 
 
 Again, let us approach the question from another 
 side ; and instead of regarding progress as an extinction 
 of pain, let us regard it as the equitable distribution of 
 material comforts amongst all. No one would wish to 
 speak flippantly — or at all events no sane man can 
 think lightly — of the importance of giving to all a 
 sufficiency of daily bread. But however we realise 
 that privation and starvation are miseries, it does not 
 follow — indeed, we know it not to be true — that a light 
 heart goes with a full stomach. Or suppose us to con- 
 ceive that in the future it would come to do so, and that 
 men would be completely happy when they all had 
 enough to eat, would this be a consummation calcu- 
 lated to raise our enthusiasm, or move our souls with 
 a solemn zeal to work for it ? Would any human 
 being who was ever capable of anything that has ever 
 been called a high conception of life, feel any pleasure 
 in the thought of a Humanity ' shut up in infinite con- 
 tent ' when once it had secured itself three meals a day, 
 and smiling every morning a satisfied smile at the uni- 
 verse, its huge lips shining with fried eggs and bacon ? 
 I am not for an instant saying that mere physical 
 well-being is the only sort of happiness to which 
 Optimists look forward. But it is the only sort of 
 happiness about which their ideas are at all definite ; 
 and I have alluded to it as I have done, merely to point 
 out that their only definite ideas are ridiculously in- 
 sufficient ideas. I do not doubt for a moment that 
 thinkers like Mr. Harrison anticipate for transfigured 
 Humanity pleasures which to them seem nobler than
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 37 
 
 the noblest we can enjoy now; but about these pleasures 
 I say there is no consensus of opinion ; what opinion 
 there is, is quite indefinite, there is nothing to show 
 that these pleasures will ever be realised, and judging 
 from the hints we have of them, there is much to show 
 that they would be impossible. To sum up then the 
 altered Humanity of the future, even granting that we 
 are advancing towards it, may be compared to an image 
 of which one part only is definite. It is not like an 
 image with feet of clay and with a head of gold, but 
 like an image with a stomach of clay, and everything 
 else of cloud. 
 
 We have now examined the creed of Optimism from 
 two points of view, assuming in turn the truth of each 
 one of its two propositions, and inquiring into the truth 
 of the other. We first assumed the reality of progress, 
 and asked how far our sympathy was capable of being 
 stimulated by it ; we next assumed the alleged capaci- 
 ties of our sympathy, and asked what grounds there 
 were for any belief in a progress by which sympathy of 
 the assumed kind could be roused. And we have seen 
 that, so far as scientific evidence is concerned, both the 
 propositions in question are unsupported and fanciful. 
 
 There remains for us yet a third test to submit it to, 
 and this will be found to be the most fatal of all. Let 
 us assume, for argument's sake, that both the proposi- 
 tions are true ; and we shall see that they contain in 
 themselves elements by which their supposed meaning 
 is annihilated. Let us assume, then, that progress will, 
 in process of time, produce a state of society which we 
 should all regard as satisfactory ; and let us assume 
 that our sympathies are of such a strength and delicacy
 
 38 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 that the far-off good in store for our remote descendants 
 will be a source of real comfort to our hearts and a real 
 stimulus to our actions — that it will fill life, in fact, with 
 moral meanings and motives. It will only require a 
 very little reflection to show us that if sympathy is 
 really strong enough to accomplish this work, it will 
 inevitably be strong enough to destroy the work which 
 it has accomplished. If we are, or if we should come 
 to be, so astonishingly sensitive that the remote happi- 
 ness of posterity will cause us any real pleasure, the 
 incalculable amount of pain that will admittedly have 
 preceded such happiness, that has been suffered during 
 the countless years of the past, and will have to be 
 suffered during the countless intervening years of the 
 future, must necessarily convert such pleasure into 
 agony. It is impossible to conceive, unless we throw 
 reality overboard altogether, and decamp frankly into 
 dreamland — it is impossible to conceive our sympathy 
 being made more sensitive to the happiness of others, 
 without its being made also more sensitive to their 
 misery. One might as well suppose our powers of sight 
 increased, but increased only so as to show us agreeable 
 objects ; or our powers of hearing increased, but in- 
 creased only so as to convey to us our own praises. 
 
 Can anyone for an instant doubt that this is a fact ? 
 Can he trick himself in any way into any, even the 
 slightest, evasion of it? Can he imagine himself, for 
 instance, having a sudden interest roused in him, from 
 whatever cause, in the fortunes of some young man, and 
 yet not feeling a corresponding shock if the young man 
 should chance to be hanged for murder ? The idea is 
 ridiculous. The truth of the matter is, that unless our
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 39 
 
 sympathies had a certain obtuseness and narrowness in 
 them, we should be too tender to endure a day of life. 
 The rose leaves might give a keener pleasure ; but we 
 should be unable to think of it, because our skins would 
 be lacerated with thorns. What would happen to us 
 if, retaining the fastidiousness of man, we suddenly 
 found that our nostrils were as keen as those of dogs ? 
 We should be sick every time we walked through a 
 crowded street. Were our sympathies intensified in a 
 similar way, we should pass through life, not sick, but 
 broken-hearted. The whole creation would seem to be 
 groaning and travailing together ; and the laughter 
 and rejoicing of posterity would be drowned by the 
 intervening sounds, or else would seem a ghastly 
 mockery. 
 
 But suppose — we have been waiving objections, and 
 we will waive them again — suppose that the interven- 
 ing pain does somehow not inconvenience us ; and that 
 our sympathies, ' on this bank and shoal of time, jump 
 it,' and bring us safely to the joy and prosperity be- 
 yond. Now this jump, on Mr. Harrison's own showing, 
 will carry us across an eternity. It will annihilate the 
 distance between our own imperfect condition and our 
 posterity's perfect condition. But how does Mr. 
 Harrison imagine that it will stop there ? He admits 
 that all human existence will come to an end some day, 
 but the end, he thinks, does not matter because it is so 
 far off. But if sympathy acquires this power of jump- 
 ing across eternities, the end ceases to be far off any 
 longer. The same power that takes us from the begin- 
 ings of progress to the consummation of progress, will 
 take us from the consummation of progress to its
 
 40 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 horrible and sure destruction — to its death by inches, 
 as the icy period comes, turning the whole earth into a 
 torture-chamber, and effacing for ever the happiness and 
 the triumph of man in a hideous and meaningless end. 
 Knowing that the drama is thus really a tragedy, how 
 shall we be able to pretend to ourselves that it is a divine 
 comedy ? It is true that death waits for all and each 
 of us ; and yet we continue to eat, drink, and be merry : 
 but that is precisely because our sympathies have not 
 those powers which Mr. Harrison asserts they have, 
 because instead of connecting us with what will 
 happen to others in three thousand years, it connects us 
 only slightly with what will happen to ourselves in 
 thirty. 
 
 We thus see that the creed of Optimism is composed 
 of ideas that do not even agree with each other. They 
 might do that, however, and yet be entirely false. The 
 great question is, do they agree with facts? and not 
 only that, but are they forced on us by facts ? Do facts 
 leave us no room for rationally contradicting or doubt- 
 ing them ? In a word, have they any basis even 
 approximately similar to what would be required to 
 support a theory of light, or heat, or electricity, of the 
 geologic history of the earth, or of the evolution of 
 species ? Is the evidence for their truth as overwhelm- 
 ing and as unanimous as the evidence Professor Huxley 
 would require to make him believe in a miracle ? Or 
 have they ever been submitted to the same eager and 
 searching scepticism which has sought for and weighed 
 every fact, sentence, and syllable that might tend to 
 make incredible our traditional conception of the Bible ? 
 They certainly have not. The treatment they have met
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 41 
 
 with has been not only not this, but the precise oppo- 
 site. Men who claim to have destroyed Christianity 
 in the name of science, justify their belief in Optimism 
 by every method that their science stigmatises as most 
 immoral. Mr. Harrison admits, with relation to Chris- 
 tianity, that the Redemption became incredible with the 
 destruction of the geocentric theory, because the world 
 became a speck in the universe, infinitely too little for 
 so vast a drama. But when he comes to defending his 
 own religion of Optimism he says, ' the infinite littleness 
 of the world ' is a thought we ' will put away from us ' as 
 an ' unmanly and unhealthy musing.' Similarly, Mr. 
 John Morley, who admits with great candour that 
 many facts exist which suggest doubts of progress, 
 instead of examining these doubts and giving their full 
 weight to them, tells us that we ought to set them aside 
 as ' unworthy.' Was ever such language heard in the 
 mouths of scientific men about any of those subjects 
 which have formed their proper studies ? It is rather a 
 parody of the language of such men as Mr. Keble, who 
 declared that religious sceptics were too wicked to be 
 reasoned with, and who incurred, for this reason more 
 than any other, the indignant scorn of all our scientific 
 critics. Which of such sceptical critics was ever heard 
 to defend a theory of the authorship of Job or of the 
 Pentateuch by declaring that any doubts of their doubts 
 were ' unmanly ' or ' unhealthy ' ? Who would answer an 
 attack on the Darwinian theory of coral-reefs by calling 
 it ' unworthy ' ? or meet admitted difficulties in the way 
 of a theory of light by following Mr. Harrison's ex- 
 ample, and saying, ' We will put them aside ' ? 
 
 Let the reader consider another statement explicitly
 
 42 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 made by Mr. John Morley relative to this very ques- 
 tion of Optimism. He quotes the following passage 
 from Diderot :— ' Does the narrative present me with 
 some fact that dishonours humanity ? Then I examine 
 it with the most rigorous severity. Whatever sagacity 
 I may be able to command I employ in detecting con- 
 tradictions that throw suspicion on the story. It is not 
 so when the action is beautiful, lofty, noble.' ' Diderot's 
 way' says Mr. Morley, ' of reading history is not un- 
 ivorthy of imitation.' Is it necessary to quote more ? 
 This astonishing sentence — not astonishing for the fact 
 it admits, but for the naive candour of the admission — 
 describes in a nutshell the method which men of science, 
 who have attacked Christianity in the name of the 
 divine duty of scepticism, and of a conscience which 
 forbids them to believe anything not fully proved — this 
 sentence describes the method which such men consider 
 scientific when establishing a religion of their own. 
 Let us swallow whatever suits us ; whatever goes 
 against us let us examine with the most rigorous 
 severity. 
 
 No feature in the history of modern thought is 
 more instructive than the contrast I have just indicated 
 — the contrast between the scepticism, and the exact- 
 ingness of science, in its attack on Christianity, and its 
 abject credulity in constructing a futile substitute. 
 That there is no universal, no continuous meaning in 
 the changes of human history, that progress of some 
 sort may not be a reality, I am not for a moment 
 arguing. All I have urged hitherto is, that there is no 
 evidence, such as would be accepted either in physical 
 or philosophical science, to prove there is. The facts,
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 43 
 
 no doubt, suggest any number of meanings, but they 
 support none ; and if Professor Huxley is right in 
 saying that it is very immoral in us to believe in such 
 doubtful books as the Gospels, it must be far more 
 immoral in him to believe in the meaning of human 
 existence. What the spectacle of the world's history 
 would really suggest to an impartial scientific observer, 
 who had no religion and who had not contracted to 
 construct one, is a conclusion eminently in harmony with 
 the drift of scientific speculation generally. The doc- 
 trines of natural selection and the survival of the fittest 
 imply on the part of nature a vast number of failures — 
 failures complete or partial. The same idea may be 
 applicable to worlds, as to species in this world. If we 
 conceive, as we have every warrant for conceiving, an 
 incalculable number of inhabited planets, the history of 
 their crowning races will, according to all analogy, be 
 various. Some will arrive at great and general happi- 
 ness, some at happiness partial and less complete, some 
 may very likely, as long as their inhabitants last, be 
 hells of struggle and wretchedness. Now what to an 
 impartial observer the history of the earth would sug- 
 gest, would be that it occupied some intermediate 
 position between the completest successes and the 
 absolutely horrible failures — a position probably at the 
 lower end of the scale, though many degrees above the 
 bottom of it. Considered in this light its history 
 becomes intelligible, because we cease to treat as 
 hieroglyphs full of meaning a series of marks which 
 have really no meaning at all. We shall see constant 
 attempts at progress, we shall see progress realised in 
 certain places up to a certain point ; but we shall see
 
 44 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 that after a certain point, the castle of cards or sand 
 falls to pieces again, and that others attempt to rise, 
 perhaps even less successfully. We shall see numberless 
 words shaping themselves, but never any complete sen- 
 tence. Taken as a whole, we shall be reminded of 
 certain lines, which I have already alluded to, referring 
 to an ' idiot's tale.' The destinies of humanity need not 
 be all sound and fury ; but certainly regarding them as 
 a whole, we shall have to say of them, that they are a 
 tale without plot, without coherence, without interest — 
 in a word, that they signify nothing. 
 
 I do not say for a moment that this is the truth 
 about Humanity ; but that this is the kind of conclusion 
 which we should probably arrive at if we trusted to 
 purely scientific observation, with no preconceived idea 
 that life must have a meaning, and no interest in giving 
 it one. No doubt such a view, if true, would be com- 
 pletely fatal to everything which to men, in what 
 hitherto we have called their higher moments, has made 
 life dignified, serious, or even tolerable. Hitherto in 
 those higher moments they have risen, like the philo- 
 sophers out of Plato's cavern, from their narrow, selfish 
 interests into the light of a larger outlook, and seen 
 that life is full of august meanings. But that light has 
 not been the light of science. Science will give men a 
 larger outlook also ; but it will raise them above their 
 narrower interests, not to show them wider ones, but to 
 show them none at all. If, then, the light that is in us is 
 darkness, we may well say, how great is that darkness ! 
 It is from this darkness that religion comes to deliver 
 us, not by destroying what science has taught us, but 
 by adding to it something that it has not taught us.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 45 
 
 Whether we can believe in this added something or 
 not is a point I have in no way argued. I have not 
 sought to prove that life has no meaning, but merely 
 that it has none discoverable by the methods of modern 
 science. I will not even say that men of science them- 
 selves are not certain of its existence, and may not live 
 by this certainty ; but only that, if so, they are unaware 
 whence this certainty comes, and that though their 
 inner convictions may claim our most sincere respect, 
 their own analysis of them deserves our most con- 
 temptuous ridicule. 
 
 If there is a soul in man, and if there is a God who 
 has given this soul, the instinct of religion can never 
 die ; but if there is any authentic explanation of the 
 relations between the soul and God, and for some reason 
 or other men in any way cease to accept this, their own 
 explanations may well, by a gradual process, resolve 
 themselves into a denial of the theory they seek to ex- 
 plain. And such, according to our men of science 
 themselves, has been the case with the orthodox Chris- 
 tian faith, when once it began to be disintegrated by 
 the solvent of Protestantism. The process is forcibly 
 alluded to by Mr. Harrison. Traditional Protestantism 
 dissolved into the nebulous tenets of the Broad Church- 
 men ; the tenets of the Broad Churchmen dissolved into 
 Deism, Deism into Pantheism and the cultus of the 
 Unknowable, and the last into Optimism. Mr. Harrison 
 fails to read the lesson of history farther, and to see 
 that Optimism in its turn must yield to the solvent of 
 criticism, and leave the religious instinct, or what is the 
 same thing, a sense of a meaning in life, as a forlorn 
 and bewildered emotion without any explanation of
 
 46 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 itself at all. What Optimism is at present must be 
 abundantly evident. It is the last attempt to discover 
 a peg on which to hang the fallen clothes of Christianity. 
 As Mr. Harrison tells us, most of our scientific Optimists 
 have been brought up with all the emotions of that faith. 
 They have got rid of the faith, but the emotions have 
 been left on their hands. They long for some object on 
 which to lavish them, just as Don Quixote longed to 
 find a lady-love ; and if we may judge from certain 
 phrases of Mr. Harrison, they have modestly contented 
 themselves with asking not that the object should be a 
 truth, but merely that it should not, on the face of it, 
 be a falsehood. He does not ask how well Humanity 
 deserves to be thought of, but how well he and his 
 friends will be able to think of it. Once more let us 
 say that this emotion which they call the love of 
 Humanity is not an emotion I would ridicule. I only 
 ridicule their bestowal of it. The love of Humanity, 
 with no faith to enlighten it, and nothing to justify it 
 beyond what science can show, is as absurd as the love 
 of Titania lavished on Bottom ; and the high priests of 
 Humanity, with their solemn and pompous gravity, are 
 like nothing so much as the Bumbles of a squabbling 
 parish. We all know what Hobbes said of Catholicism, 
 that it was the ghost of the dead Roman Empire, sitting 
 enthroned on the ashes of it. Optimism, in the same 
 way, is the ghost of Protestantism sitting on its ashes, 
 not enthroned but gibbering. 
 
 On former occasions I have been asked by certain 
 critics what possible use, even suppose life is not worth 
 much, I could hope to find in laying the fact bare. To 
 the Optimists as men of science no explanation is
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM 47 
 
 needed. Every attempt to establish any truth, or even 
 to establish any doubt, according to their principles is 
 not only justifiable, but is a duty. To others, an ex- 
 planation will not be very far to seek. If there is a 
 meaning in life, we shall never understand it rightly, 
 till we have ceased to amuse ourselves with understand- 
 ing it wrongly. Humanity, if there is any salvation for 
 it, will never be saved till it sees that it cannot save 
 itself, and asks in humility, seeking some greater power, 
 Who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? 
 But as matters stand, it will never see this or ask this, 
 till it has seen face to face the whole of its own absurd 
 helplessness, and tasted — at least intellectually — the 
 dregs of its degradation. When we have filled our 
 bellies with the husks that the swine eat, it may be that 
 we shall arise and go.
 
 48 
 
 < CO WARDL Y A GNOSTICISM ' 
 
 A WORD WITH PROFESSOR HUXLEY 
 
 The Bishop of Peterborough departed so far from his customary 
 courtesy and self-respect as to speak of ' Cowardly Agnosticism. — 
 Peofessok Huxley, Nineteenth Century February 1889, p. 170. 
 
 I welcome the discussion which has been lately revived 
 in earnest as to the issue between positive science and 
 theology. I especially welcome Professor Huxley's 
 recent contribution to it, to which presently I propose 
 to refer in detail. In that contribution — an article 
 with the title ' Agnosticism ' — I shall point out things 
 which will probably startle the public, the author him- 
 self included, in case he cares to attend to them. 
 
 Before going further, however, let me ask and 
 answer this question. If Professor Huxley should tell 
 us that he does not believe in God, why should we think 
 the statement, as coming from him, worthy of an atten- 
 tion which we certainly should not give it if made by a 
 person less distinguished than himself? The answer to 
 this question is as follows. We should think Professor 
 Huxley's statement worth considering for two reasons. 
 Firstly, he speaks as a man pre-eminently well ac- 
 quainted with certain classes of facts. Secondly, he 
 speaks as a man eminent, if not pre-eminent, for the 
 vigour and honesty with which he has faced these facts,
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 49 
 
 and drawn certain conclusions from them. Accordingly, 
 when he sums up for us the main conclusions of science, 
 he speaks not in his own name, but in the name of the 
 physical universe, as modern science has thus far appre- 
 hended it ; and similarly, when from these conclusions 
 he reasons about religion, the bulk of the arguments 
 which he advances against theology are in no way 
 peculiar to himself, or gain any of their strength from 
 his reputation ; they are virtually the arguments of the 
 whole non-Christian world. He may possibly have, on 
 some points, views peculiar to himself. He may also 
 have certain peculiar ways of stating them. But it 
 requires no great critical acuteness, it requires only 
 ordinary fairness, to separate those of his utterances 
 which represent facts generally accepted, and arguments 
 generally influential, from those which represent only 
 some peculiarity of his own. Now all this is true not 
 of Professor Huxley only. With various qualifications 
 it is equally true of writers with whom Professor Huxley 
 is apparently in constant antagonism, and who also ex- 
 hibit constant antagonism amongst themselves. I am 
 at this moment thinking of two especially — Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison and Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Harrison, in 
 his capacity of religious teacher, is constantly attacking 
 both Mr. Spencer and Professor Huxley. Professor 
 Huxley repays Mr. Harrison's blows with interest ; and 
 there are certain questions of a religious and practical 
 character as to which he and Mr. Spencer would be 
 hardly on better terms. But underneath the several 
 questions they quarrel about, there is a solid substruc- 
 ture of conclusions, methods, and arguments, as to 
 which they all agree — agree in the most absolute way. 
 
 £
 
 50 ' COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM ' 
 
 What this agreement consists in, and what practical 
 bearing, if taken by itself, it must have on our views of 
 life, I shall now try to explain in a brief and unques- 
 tionable summary ; and in that summary, what the 
 reader will have before him is not any private opinion 
 of these eminent men, but ascertained facts with regard 
 to man and the universe ; and the conclusions which, if 
 we have nothing else to assist us, are necessarily drawn 
 from those facts by the necessary operations of the mind. 
 The mention of names, however, has this signal conve- 
 nience. It will keep the reader convinced that I am not 
 speaking at random, and will supply him with standards 
 by which he can easily test the accuracy and the suffi- 
 ciency of my assertions. 
 
 The case, then, of science or modern thought against 
 theological religion or theism, and the Christian religion 
 in particular, substantially is as follows : 
 
 In the first place, it is now an established fact that 
 the physical universe, whether it ever had a beginning 
 or no, is at all events of an antiquity beyond what the 
 imagination can realise ; and also, that whether or no it 
 is limited, its extent is so vast as to be equally un- 
 imaginable. Science may not pronounce it absolutely 
 to be either eternal or infinite, but science does say this, 
 that so far as our faculties can carry us, they reveal to 
 us no hint of either limit, end, or beginning. 
 
 It is further established that the stuff out of which 
 the universe is made is the same everywhere and follows 
 the same laws — whether in the box-office of the Empire 
 Theatre, or in the darkened star round which Algol 
 wheels and shines — and that this has always been so to 
 the remotest of the penetrable abysses of time. It is
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 51 
 
 established yet further, that the universe in its present 
 condition has evolved itself out of simpler conditions, 
 solely in virtue of the qualities which still inhere in its 
 elements, and make to-day what it is, just as they have 
 made all yesterdays. 
 
 Lastly, in this physical universe science has included 
 man — not alone his body, but his life and his mind also. 
 Every operation of thought, every fact of consciousness, 
 it has shown to be associated in a constant and definite 
 way with the presence and with certain conditions of 
 certain particles of matter, which are shown, in their 
 turn, to be in their last analysis absolutely similar to 
 the matter of gases, plants, or minerals. The demon- 
 stration has every appearance of being morally complete. 
 The interval between mud and mind, seemingly so im- 
 passable, has been traversed by a series of closely con- 
 secutive steps. Mind, which was once thought to have 
 descended into matter, is shown forming itself, and 
 slowly emerging out of it. From forms of life so low 
 that naturalists can hardly decide whether it is right to 
 class them as plants or animals, up to the life that is 
 manifested in saints, heroes, or philosophers, there is no 
 break to be detected in the long process of development. 
 There is no step in the process where science finds any 
 excuse for postulating or even suspecting the presence 
 of any new factor. 
 
 And the same holds good of the lowest forms of 
 life, and what Professor Huxley calls ' the common 
 matter of the universe.' It is true that experimentalists 
 have been thus far unable to observe the generation of 
 the former out of the latter ; but this failure may be 
 accounted for in many ways, and does nothing to weaken
 
 52 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 the overwhelming evidence of analogy that such gene- 
 ration really does take place or has taken place at some 
 earlier period. ' Carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, 
 says Professor Huxley, ' certainly possess no properties 
 but those of ordinary matter. . . . But when they are 
 brought together under certain conditions they give 
 rise to protoplasm ; and this protoplasm exhibits the 
 phenomenon of life. I see no breach in this series of 
 steps in molecular complication, and I am unable to 
 understand why the language which is applicable to 
 any one form of the series may not be used of any of 
 the others.' ' 
 
 So much, then, for what modern science teaches us 
 as to the Universe and the evolution of man. We will 
 presently consider the ways, sufficiently obvious as they 
 are, in which this seems to conflict with the ideas of all 
 theism and theology. But first for a moment let us 
 turn to what it teaches us also with regard to the 
 history and the special claims of Christianity. Ap- 
 proaching Christianity on the side of its alleged history, 
 it establishes the three following points. It shows us 
 first that this alleged history, with the substantial truth 
 of which Christianity stands or falls, contains a number 
 of statements which are demonstrably at variance with 
 fact ; secondly, that it contains others which, though 
 very probably true, are entirely misinterpreted through 
 the ignorance of the writers who recorded them ; and 
 thirdly, that though the rest may not be demonstrably 
 false, yet those amongst them most essential to the 
 Christian doctrine are so monstrously improbable and 
 so utterly unsupported by evidence that we have no 
 1 Lay Sermons, Essays, aiid Reviews, pp. 114, 117.
 
 •COWAEDLY AGNOSTICISM' 53 
 
 more ground for believing in them than we have in the 
 wolf of Komulus. 
 
 Such, briefly stated, are the main conclusions of 
 science in so far as they bear on theology and the 
 theologic conception of humanity. Let us now consider 
 exactly what their bearing is. Professor Huxley 
 distinctly tells us that the knowledge we have reached 
 as to the nature of things in general does not enable 
 us to deduce from it any absolute denial either of the 
 existence of a personal God or of an immortal soul in 
 man, or even of the possibility and the actual occurrence 
 of miracles. On the contrary, he would believe to- 
 morrow in the miraculous history of Christianity if 
 only there were any evidence sufficiently cogent in its 
 favour ; and on the authority of Christianity he would 
 believe in God and in man's immortality. Christianity, 
 however, is the only religion in the world whose claims 
 to a miraculous authority are worthy of serious con- 
 sideration, and science, as we have seen, considers these 
 claims to be unfounded. What follows is this — 
 Whether there be a God or no, and whether He has 
 given us immortal souls or no, Science declares bluntly 
 that He has never informed us of either fact ; and if 
 there is anything to warrant any belief in either, it can 
 be found only in a study of the natural universe. 
 Accordingly, to the natural universe science goes, and 
 we have just seen what it finds there. Part of what 
 it finds bears specially on the theologic conception of 
 God, and part bears specially on the theologic conception 
 of man. With regard to God, to an intelligent creator 
 and ruler, it finds Him on every ground to be a baseless 
 and a superfluous hypothesis. In former conditions of
 
 54 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 knowledge it admits that this was otherwise — that the 
 hypothesis then was not only natural but necessary ; 
 for there were many seeming mysteries which could 
 not be explained without it. But now the case has 
 been altogether reversed. One after another these 
 mysteries have been analysed, not entirely, but to this 
 extent at all events, that the hypothesis of an intelli- 
 gent creator is not only nowhere necessary, but it 
 generally introduces far more difficulties than it solves. 
 Thus, though we cannot demonstrate that a creator 
 does not exist, we have no grounds whatever for 
 supposing that he does. With regard to man, what 
 science finds is analogous. According to theology he 
 is a being specially related to God, and his conduct and 
 his destinies have an importance which dwarfs the sum 
 of material things into insignificance. But science 
 exhibits him in a very different light ; it shows that in 
 none of the qualities once thought peculiar to him does 
 he differ essentially from other phenomena of the 
 universe. It shows that just as there are no grounds 
 for supposing the existence of a creator, so there are 
 none for supposing the existence of an immortal 
 human soul ; whilst as for man's importance relative to 
 the rest of the universe, it shows that, not only as an 
 individual, but also as a race, he is less than a bubble 
 of foam is when compared with the whole sea. The 
 few thousand years over which history takes us are as 
 nothing when compared with the ages for which the 
 human race has existed. The whole existence of the 
 human race is as nothing when compared with the 
 existence of the earth ; and the earth's history is but a 
 second and the earth but a grain of dust in the vast dura-
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 55 
 
 tion and vast magnitude of the All. Nor is this true of 
 the past only, it is true of the future also. As the indi- 
 vidual dies, so also will the race die ; nor would a million 
 of additional years add anything to its comparative im- 
 portance. Just as it emerged out of lifeless matter yester- 
 day, so will it sink again into lifeless matter to-morrow. 
 Or, to put the case more briefly still, it is merely one 
 fugitive manifestation of the same matter and force 
 which, always obedient to the same unchanging laws, 
 manifest themselves equally in a dung-heap, in a pig, 
 and in a planet — matter and force which, so far as our 
 faculties can carry us, have existed and will exist 
 everywhere and for ever, and which nowhere, so far 
 as our faculties avail to read them, show any sign, as 
 a whole, of meaning, of design, or of intelligence. 
 
 It is possible that Professor Huxley, or some other 
 scientific authority, may be able to find fault with some 
 of my sentences or my expressions, and to show that 
 they are not professionally or professorially accurate. 
 If they care for such trifling criticism they are welcome 
 to the enjoyment of it ; but I defy any one to show, 
 putting expression aside and paying attention only to 
 the general meaning of what I have stated, that the 
 foregoing account of what science claims to have 
 established is not substantially true, and is not ad- 
 mitted to be so by any contemporary thinker who 
 opposes science to theism, from Mr. Frederic Harrison 
 to Professor Huxley himself. 
 
 And now let us pass on to something which in itselt 
 is merely a matter of words, but which will bring what 
 I have said thus far into the circle of contemporary 
 discussion. The men who are mainly responsible for
 
 56 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 having forced the above views on the world, who have 
 unfolded to us the verities of nature and human history, 
 and have felt constrained by these to abandon their old 
 religious convictions — these men and their followers 
 have by common consent agreed, in this country, to 
 call themselves by the name of Agnostics. Now there 
 has been much quarrelling of late amongst these 
 Agnostics as to what Agnosticism — the thing which 
 unites them — is. It must be obvious, however, to every 
 impartial observer, that the differences between them 
 are little more than verbal, and arise from bad writing 
 rather than from different reasoning. Substantially the 
 meaning of one and all of them is the same. Let us 
 take, for instance, the two who, so far as words go, have 
 been most ostentatiously opposed to each other. I mean 
 Professor Huxley and Mr. Harrison. 
 
 Some writers, Professor Huxley says, Mr. Harrison 
 amongst them, are accustomed to speak of Agnosticism 
 as ' a creed ' or a ' faith ' or a ' philosophy.' Professor 
 Huxley proclaims himself to be ' dazed ' and ' bewil- 
 dered' by such language. Agnosticism, he says, is not 
 any one of these things. It is simply — I will give his 
 definition in his own words — 
 
 a method, the essence of which lies in the vigorous appli- 
 cation of a single principle. . . . Positively, the principle 
 may be expressed : In matters of the intellect, follow your 
 reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any 
 other consideration. And negatively : In matters of the 
 intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which 
 are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be 
 the Agnostic faith, which, if a man keep whole and unde- 
 filed, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the 
 face, whatever the future may have in store for him.
 
 'COWAKDLY AGNOSTICISM' 57 
 
 Now anything worse expressed than this for the 
 purpose of the discussion he is engaged in, or indeed 
 for the purpose of conveying his own general meaning, 
 it is hardly possible to imagine. Agnosticism, as gene- 
 rally understood, may, from one point of view, be no 
 doubt rightly described as ' a method.' But is it a 
 method with no results, or with results that are of no 
 interest ? If so, there would be hardly a human being 
 idiot enough to waste a thought upon it. The interest 
 resides in its results, and its results solely, and specially 
 in those results that affect our ideas about religion. 
 Accordingly, wheu the word Agnosticism is now used in 
 discussion, the meaning uppermost in the minds of those 
 who use it is not a method, but the results of a method, 
 in their religious bearings ; and the method is of interest 
 only in so far as it leads to these. Agnosticism means, 
 therefore, precisely what Professor Huxley says it does 
 not mean. It means a creed, it means a faith, it means 
 a religious or irreligious philosophy. And this is the 
 meaning attributed to it not only by the world at large, 
 but in reality by Professor Huxley also quite as much 
 as by anybody. I will not lay too much stress on the 
 fact, that in the passage just quoted, having first fiercely 
 declared Agnosticism to be nothing but a method, in the 
 very next sentence he himself speaks of it as a ' faith.' I 
 will pass on to a passage that is far more unambiguous. 
 It is taken from the same essay. It is as follows : 
 
 'Agnosticism [says Professor Huxley quoting Mr. 
 Harrison] is a stage in the evolution of religion, an entirely 
 negative stage, the point reached by physicists, a purely 
 mental conclusion, with no relation to things social at all.' 
 I am [ Professor Huxley continues] quite dazed by this de-
 
 58 'COWAEDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 claration. Are there, then, any ' conclusions ' that are not 
 c purely mental ' 1 Is there no relation to things social in 
 ' mental conclusions ' which affect men's whole conception 
 of life 1 . . . ' Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of 
 religion.' If . . . Mr. Harrison, like most people, means 
 by ' religion ' theology, then, in my judgment, Agnosticism 
 can be said to be a stage in its evolution only as death may 
 be said to be the final stage in the evolution of life. 
 
 Let us consider what this means. It means pre- 
 cisely what every one else has all along been saying, 
 that Agnosticism is to all intents and purposes a doc- 
 trine, a creed, a faith, or a philosophy, the essence of 
 which is the negation of theologic religion. Now the 
 fundamental propositions of theologic religion are these. 
 There is a personal God who watches over the lives of 
 men ; and there is an immortal soul in man, distinct 
 from the flux of matter. Agnosticism, then, expressed 
 in the briefest terms, amounts to two articles — not of 
 belief, but of disbelief. I do not believe in any God, 
 personal, intelligent, or with a purpose ; or, at least, with 
 any purpose that has any concern with man. I do not 
 believe in any immortal soid, or in any personality or 
 consciousness surviving the dissohdion of the body. 
 
 Here I anticipate from many quarters a rebuke 
 which men of science are very fond of administering. 
 I shall be told that Agnostics never say ' there is no 
 God,' and never say ' there is no immortal soul.' 
 Professor Huxley is often particularly vehement on this 
 point. He would have us believe that a dogmatic 
 atheist is, in his view, as foolish as a dogmatic theist ; 
 and that an Agnostic, true to the etymology of his 
 name, is not a man who denies God, but who has no
 
 •COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 59 
 
 opinion about Him. But this — even if true in some 
 dim and remote sense — is for practical purposes a mere 
 piece of solemn quibbling, and is utterly belied by the 
 very men who use it whenever they raise their voices 
 to speak to the world at large. The Agnostics, if 
 they shrink from saying there is no God, at least 
 tell us that there is nothing to suggest that there is 
 one, and much to suggest that there is not. Surely, 
 if they never spoke more strongly than this, for prac- 
 tical purposes this is an absolute denial. Professor 
 Huxley, for instance, is utterly unable to demonstrate 
 that an evening edition of the ' Times ' is not printed 
 in Siriu's ; but if any action depended on our believing 
 this to be true, he would certainly not hesitate to declare 
 that it was a foolish and fantastic falsehood. Who 
 would think the better of him — who would not think 
 the worse — if in this matter he gravely declared himself 
 to be an Agnostic? And precisely the same maybe 
 said of him with regard to the existence of God. For 
 all practical purposes he is not in doubt about it. He 
 denies it. I need not, however, content myself with 
 my own reasoning. I find Professor Huxley himself 
 endorsing every word that I have just uttered. He 
 declares that such questions as are treated of in volumes 
 of divinity ' are essentially questions of lunar politics 
 . . . not worth the attention of men who have work to 
 do in the world : ' and he cites Hume's advice with 
 regard to such volumes as being ' most wise ' — ' Com- 
 mit them to the flames, for they can contain nothing 
 but sophistry and illusion.' x Quotations of a similar 
 import might be indefinitely multiplied ; but it will be 
 1 Lay Sermons, Essays, and Reviews, p. 125.
 
 60 'COWAKDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 enough to add to this the statements quoted already, 
 that Agnosticism is to theologic religion what death is 
 to life ; and that physiology does but deepen and com- 
 plete the gloom of the gloomiest motto of Paganism — 
 ' Debemur morti.' If, then, Agnosticism is not an abso- 
 lute and dogmatic denial of the fundamental propositions 
 of theology, it differs from an absolute and dogmatic 
 denial in a degree that is so trivial as to be, in the words 
 of Professor Huxley himself, ' not worth the attention of 
 men who have work to do in the world.' For all practical 
 purposes, and according to the real opinion of Professor 
 Huxley and Mr. Harrison equally, Agnosticism is not 
 doubt, is not suspension of judgment; but it is a 
 denial of what ' most people mean by religion ' — that 
 is to say, the fundamental propositions of theology — 
 so absolute that Professor Huxley compares it to their 
 death. 
 
 And now let us pass on to the next point in our 
 argument, which I will introduce by quoting Professor 
 Huxley again. This denial of the fundamental pro- 
 positions of theology ' affects,' he says, ' men's whole 
 conception of life.' Let us consider how. By the 
 Christian world, life was thought to be important owing 
 to its connection with some unseen universe, full of 
 interests and issues which were too great for the mind 
 to grasp at present, but in which, for good or evil, we 
 should each of us one day share, taking our place 
 amongst the awful things of eternity. But at the touch 
 of the Agnostic doctrine this unseen universe bursts 
 like a bubble, melts like an empty dream ; and all the 
 meaning which it once imparted to life vanishes from 
 its surface like mists from a field at morning. In
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 61 
 
 every sense but one, which is exclusively physical, man 
 is remorselessly cut adrift from the eternal ; and what- 
 ever importance or interest anything has for any of us, 
 must be derived altogether from the shifting pains or 
 pleasures which go to make up our momentary span of 
 life, or the life of our race, which in the illimitable 
 history of the All is an incident just as momentary. 
 
 Now supposing the importance and interest which 
 life has thus lost cannot be replaced in any other way, 
 will life really have suffered any practical change and 
 degradation ? To this question our Agnostics with one 
 consent say ' Yes.' Professor Huxley says that if 
 theologic denial leads us to nothing but materialism, 
 ' the beauty of a life may be destroyed,' and ' its 
 energies paralysed ; ' 1 and that no one not historically 
 blind, ' is likely to underrate the importance of the 
 Christian faith as a factor in human history,' or to 
 doubt ' that some substitute genuine enough and worthy 
 enough to replace it will arise.' 2 Mr. Spencer says the 
 same thing with even greater clearness : whilst as for 
 Mr. Harrison, it is needless to quote from him ; for 
 half of what he has written is an amplification of these 
 statements. 
 
 It is admitted, then, that life, in some very 
 practical sense, will be ruined if science, having 
 destroyed theologic religion, cannot put, or allow to be 
 put, some other religion in place of it. But we must 
 not content ourselves with this general language. 
 Life will be ruined, we say. Let us consider to what 
 extent and how. There is a good deal in life which 
 
 1 Lay Sermons, Essays, and Reviews, p. ] 27. 
 
 2 'Agnosticism,' Nineteenth Century, February 1889, p. 191.
 
 62 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 obviously will not be touched at all, that is to say, a 
 portion of what is called the moral code. Theft, 
 murder, some forms of lying and dishonesty, and some 
 forms of sexual license, are inconsistent with the wel- 
 fare of any society ; and society, in self-defence, would 
 still condemn and prohibit them, even supposing it had 
 no more religion than a tribe of gibbering monkeys. 
 But the moral code thus retained would consist of 
 prohibitions only, and of such prohibitions only as 
 could be enforced by external sanctions. Since, then, 
 this much would survive the loss of religion, let us 
 consider what would not survive. Mr. Spencer, in 
 general terms, has told us plainly enough. What 
 would be lost, he says, is, in the first place, ' our ideas 
 of goodness, rectitude, or duty,' or, to use a single 
 word, ' morality.' This is no contradiction of what has 
 just been said ; for morality is not obedience, enforced 
 or even instinctive, to laws which have an external 
 sanction, but an active co-operation with the spirit of 
 such laws, under pressure of a sanction that resides in 
 our own wills. But not only would morality be lost, 
 or this desire to work actively for the social good ; 
 there would be lost also every higher conception of 
 what the social good or of what our own good is ; and 
 men would, as Mr. Spencer says, ' become chiefly 
 absorbed in the immediate and the relative.' ' Pro- 
 fessor Huxley admits in effect precisely the same thing 
 when he says that the tendency of systematic 
 
 1 ' Since the beginning Religion has had the all-essential office 
 of preventing men from being chiefly absorbed in the relative or the 
 immediate, and of awaking them to a consciousness of something 
 beyond it.' — First Principles, p. 100.
 
 'CO-WABBLY AGNOSTICISM* 63 
 
 materialism is to ' paralyse the energies of life,' and ' to 
 destroy its beauty.' 
 
 Let us try to put the matter a little more concisely. 
 It is admitted by our Agnostics that the most valuable 
 element in our life is our sense of duty, coupled with 
 obedience to its dictates ; and this sense of duty 
 derives both its existence and its power over us from 
 religion, and from religion alone. How it derived 
 them from the Christian religion is obvious. The 
 Christian religion prescribed it to us as the voice of 
 God to the soul, appealing as it were to all our most 
 powerful passions — to our fear, to our hope, and to our 
 love. Hope gave it a meaning to us, and love and fear 
 gave it a sanction. The Agnostics have got rid of God 
 and the soul together, with the loves, and fears, and 
 hopes by which the two were connected. The problem 
 before them is to discover some other considerations — 
 that is some other religion — which shall invest duty 
 with the solemn meaning and authority derivable no 
 longer from these. Our Agnostics, as we know, declare 
 themselves fully able to solve it. Mr. Spencer and 
 Mr. Harrison, though the solution of each is different, 
 declare not only that some new religion is ready for us, 
 but that it is a religion higher and more efficacious 
 than the old ; whilst Professor Huxley, though less 
 prophetic and sanguine, rebukes those ' who are 
 alarmed lest man's moral nature be debased,' and 
 declares that a wise man like Hume would merely 
 ' smile at their perplexities.' l 
 
 Let us now consider what this new religion is — or 
 rather these new religions, for we are offered more 
 1 Lay Sermons, pp. 123, 124.
 
 64 'COWAKDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 than one. So far as form goes, indeed, we are offered 
 several. They can, however, all of them be resolved 
 into two, resting on two entirely different bases, though 
 sometimes, if not usually, offered to our acceptance 
 in combination. One of these, which is called by some 
 of its literary adherents Positivism, or the Religion of 
 Humanity, is based on two propositions with regard to 
 the human race. The first proposition is that it is 
 constantly though slowly improving, and will one day 
 reach a condition thoroughly satisfactory to itself. The 
 second proposition is that this remote consummation 
 can be made so interesting to the present and to all 
 intervening generations that they will strain every 
 nerve to bring it about and hasten it. Thus, though 
 Humanity is admitted to be absolutely a fleeting 
 phenomenon in the universe, it is presented relatively 
 as of the utmost- moment to the individual ; and duty 
 is supplied with a constant meaning by hope, and with 
 a constant motive by sympathy. The basis of the 
 other religion is not only different from this, but 
 opposed to it. Just as this demands that we turn 
 away from the universe, and concentrate our attention 
 upon humanity, so the other demands that we turn 
 away from humanity and concentrate our attention on 
 the universe. Mr. Herbert Spencer calls this the 
 Religion of the Unknowable ; and though many 
 Agnostics consider the name fantastic, they one and all 
 of them, if they resign the religion of humanity, 
 consider and appeal to this as the only possible 
 alternative. 
 
 Now I have already, in a former essay on ' The 
 Scientific Bases of Optimism,' endeavoured to show how
 
 'COWAKDLY AGNOSTICISM' 65 
 
 completely absurd and childish the first of these two 
 religions, the Religion of Humanity, is. I do not 
 propose, therefore, to discuss it further here, but will 
 beg the reader to consider that for the purpose of the 
 present argument it is brushed aside like rubbish, 
 unworthy of a second examination. Perhaps this 
 request will sound somewhat arbitrary and arrogant, 
 but I have something to add which will show that it is 
 neither. The particular views which I now aim at dis- 
 cussing are the views represented by Professor Huxley ; 
 and Professor Huxley rejects the Religion of Humanity 
 as completely as I do, and with a great deal less 
 ceremony, as the following passage will demonstrate : 
 
 Out of the darkness of pre-historic ages man emerges 
 with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He 
 is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes ; a 
 blind prey to impulses which, as often as not, lead him to 
 destruction ; a victim to endless illusions which, as often 
 as not, makes his mental existence a terror and a burden, 
 and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle. He 
 attains a certain degree of physical comfort, and develops 
 a more or less workable theory of life, in such favourable 
 situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or Egypt, and then, 
 for thousands and thousands of years, struggles with vary- 
 ing fortunes, attended by infinite wickedness, bloodshed, 
 and misery, to maintain himself at this point against the 
 greed and the ambition of his fellow-men. He makes a 
 point of killing or otherwise persecuting all those who try 
 to get him to move on ; and when he has moved on a step 
 foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his victims. 
 He exactly repeats the process with all who want to move 
 a step yet further. And the best men of the best epoch 
 are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit 
 
 F
 
 66 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 the fewest sins. ... I know of no study so unutterably 
 saddening as that of the evolution of humanity as it is set 
 forth in the annals of history ; . . . [and] when the 
 Positivists order men to worship Humanity — that is to say, 
 to adore the generalised conception of men, as they ever 
 have been, and probably ever will be— I must reply that I 
 could just as soon bow down and worship the generalised 
 conception of a ' wilderness of apes.' l 
 
 Let us here pause for a moment and look about us, 
 so as to see where we stand. Up to a certain point the 
 Agnostics have all gone together with absolute unani- 
 mity, and I conceive myself to have gone with them. 
 They have all been unanimous in their rejection of 
 theology, and in regarding man and the race of men as 
 a fugitive manifestation of the all-enduring something, 
 which always, everywhere, and in an equal degree, is 
 behind all other phenomena of the universe. They are 
 unanimous also in affirming that, in spite of its fugitive 
 character, life can afford us certain considerations and 
 interests, which will still make duty binding on us, will 
 still give it a meaning. At this point, however, they 
 divide into two bands. Some of them assert that the 
 motive and the meaning of duty is to be found in the 
 history of humanity, regarded as a single drama, with 
 a prolonged and glorious conclusion, complete in itself, 
 satisfying in itself, and imparting, by the sacrament of 
 sympathy, its own meaning and grandeur to the indi- 
 vidual life, which would else be petty and contemptible. 
 This is what some assert, and this is what others deny. 
 With those who assert it we have now parted company, 
 
 1 'Agnosticism,' Nineteenth Century, February 1889, pp. 191, 
 192. 

 
 'COWAKDLY AGNOSTICISM' 67 
 
 and are standing alone with those others who deny it — 
 Professor Huxley amongst them, as one of their chief 
 spokesmen. 
 
 And now addressing myself to Professor Huxley in 
 this character, let me explain what I propose to prove 
 to him. If he could believe in God and in the divine 
 authority of Christ, he admits he could account for duty 
 and vindicate a meaning for life ; but he refuses to be- 
 lieve, even though for some reasons he might wish to 
 do so, because he holds that the beliefs in question have 
 no evidence to support them. He complains that an 
 English bishop has called this refusal ' cowardly ' — ' has 
 so far departed from his customary courtesy and self- 
 respect as to speak of " cowardly Agnosticism." ' I 
 agree with Professor Huxley that, on the grounds ad- 
 vanced by the bishop, this epithet ' cowardly ' is entirely 
 undeserved ; but I propose to show him that, if not 
 deserved on these, it is deserved on others, entirely 
 unsuspected by himself. I propose to show that his 
 Agnosticism is really cowardly, but cowardly not be- 
 cause it refuses to believe enough, but because, tried by 
 its own standards, it refuses to deny enough. I propose 
 to show that the same method and principle, which is 
 fatal to our faith in the God and the future life of 
 theology, is equally fatal to anything which can give 
 existence a meaning, or which can — to have recourse to 
 Professor Huxley's own phrases — ' preventour "energies" 
 from being " paralysed," and " life's beauty " from being 
 destroyed.' I propose, in other words, to show that his 
 Agnosticism is cowardly, not because it does not dare 
 to affirm the authority of Christ, but because it does not 
 dare to deny the meaning and the reality of duty. I 
 
 F 2
 
 68 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 propose to show that the miserable rags of argument 
 with which he attempts to cover the life which he pro- 
 fesses to have stripped naked of superstition are part 
 and parcel of that very superstition itself — that, though 
 they are not the chasuble and the embroidered robe of 
 theology, they are its hair shirt, and its hair shirt in 
 tatters — utterly useless for the purpose to which it is 
 despairingly applied, and serving only to make the 
 forlorn wearer ridiculous. I propose to show that in 
 retaining this dishonoured garment, Agnosticism is 
 playing the part of an intellectual Ananias and Sap- 
 phira ; and that in professing to give up all that it 
 cannot demonstrate, it is keeping back part, and the 
 larger part of the price — not, however, from dishonesty, 
 but from a dogged and obstinate cowardice, from a 
 terror at facing the ruin which its own principles have 
 made. 
 
 Some, no doubt, will think that this is a rash under- 
 taking, or else that I am merely indulging in the luxury 
 of a little rhetoric. I hope to convince the reader that 
 the undertaking is not rash, and that I mean my ex- 
 pressions to be taken in a frigid and literal sense. Let 
 me begin then by repeating one thing, which I have 
 said before. When I say that Agnosticism is fatal to 
 our conception of duty, I do not mean that it is fatal to 
 those broad rules and obligations which are obviously 
 necessary to any civilised society, which are distinctly 
 defensible on obvious utilitarian grounds, and which, 
 speaking generally, can be enforced by external sanc- 
 tions. These rules and obligations have existed from 
 the earliest ages of social life, and are sure to exist as 
 long as social life exists. But so far are they from
 
 'COWAEDLY AGNOSTICISM' 69 
 
 giving life a meaning, that on Professor Huxley's own 
 showing they have barely made life tolerable. A general 
 obedience to them for thousands and thousands of years 
 has left ' the evolution of man, as set forth in the annals 
 of history,' the 'most unutterably saddening study ' that 
 Professor Huxley knows, From the earliest ages to the 
 present — Professor Huxley admits this — the nature of 
 man has been such that, despite their laws and their 
 knowledge, most men have made themselves miserable 
 by yielding to ' greed ' and to ' ambition,' and by prac- 
 tising ' infinite wickedness.' They have proscribed 
 their wisest when alive, and accorded them a ' foolish ' 
 hero-worship when dead. Infinite wickedness, blind- 
 ness, and idiotic emotion have then, according to Pro- 
 fessor Huxley's deliberate estimate, marked and marred 
 men from the earliest ages to the present ; and he 
 deliberately says also, that ; as men ever have been, they 
 probably ever will be.' 
 
 To do our duty, then, evidently implies a struggle. 
 The impulses usually uppermost in us have to be checked, 
 or chastened, by others ; and these other impulses have 
 to be generated, by fixing our attention on considera- 
 tions which lie somehow beneath the surface. If this 
 were not so, men would always have done their duty ; 
 and their history would not have been ' unutterably 
 saddening,' as Professor Huxley says it has been. What 
 sort of considerations, then, must those we require be ? 
 Before answering this question, let us pause for a 
 moment, and with Professor Huxley's help, let us make 
 ourselves quite clear what duty is. I have already 
 showed that it differs from a passive obedience to ex- 
 ternal laws, in being a voluntary and active obedience
 
 70 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 to a law that is internal ; but its logical aim is analogous 
 — that is to say the good of the community, ourselves 
 included. Professor Huxley describes it thus — ' to de- 
 vote oneself to the service of humanity, including intel- 
 lectual and moral self-culture under that name ; ' ' to 
 pity and help all men to the best of one's ability ; ' ' to 
 be strong and patient,' ' to be ethically pure and noble ; ' 
 and to push our devotion to others ' to the extremity of 
 self-sacrifice.' All these phrases are Professor Huxley's 
 own. They are plain enough in themselves ; but to 
 make what he means yet plainer, he tells us that the 
 best examples of the duty he has been describing are to 
 be found amongst Christian martyrs, and saints such as 
 Catherine of Sienna, and above all in the ideal Christ — 
 ' the noblest ideal of humanity,' he calls it, ' which 
 mankind has yet worshipped.' Finally, he says that 
 religion, properly understood, is simply the ' reverence 
 and love for [this] ethical ideal, and the desire to 
 realise that ideal in life, which every man ought to feel.' 
 That man ' ought ' to feel this desire, and ' ought ' to 
 act on it, ' is,' he says, ' surely indisputable,' and ' Ag- 
 nosticism has no more to do with it than it has with 
 music or painting.' 
 
 Here, then, we come to something at last which 
 Professor Huxley, despite all his doubts, declares to be 
 certain — to a conclusion which Agnosticism itself, ac- 
 cording to his view, admits to be ' indisputable.' Ag- 
 nosticism, however, as he has told us already, lays it 
 down as a ' fundamental axiom ' that no conclusions are 
 indisputable but such as are ' demonstrated or demon- 
 strable.' The conclusion, therefore, that we ought to 
 do our duty, and that we ought to experience what
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 71 
 
 Professor Huxley calls ' religion,' is evidently a conclu- 
 sion which, in his opinion, is demonstrated or demon- 
 strable with the utmost clearness and cogency. Before, 
 however, inquiring how far this is the case, we must 
 state the conclusion in somewhat different terms, but 
 still in terms which we have Professor Huxley's explicit 
 warrant for using. Duty is a thing which men in 
 general, ' as they always have been, and probably ever 
 will be,' have lamentably failed to do, and to do which 
 is very difficult, going as it does against some of the 
 strongest and most victorious instincts of our nature. 
 Professor Huxley's conclusion then must be expressed 
 thus : ' We ought to do something which most of us do 
 not do, and which we cannot do without a severe and 
 painful struggle, often involving the extremity of self- 
 sacrifice.' 
 
 And now, such being the case, let us proceed to this 
 crucial question — What is the meaning of the all- 
 important word ' ought ' ? It does not mean merely 
 that on utilitarian grounds the conduct in question can 
 be defended as tending to certain beneficent results. 
 This conclusion would be indeed barren and useless. 
 It would merely amount to saying that some people 
 would be happier if other people would for their sake 
 consent to be miserable ; or that men would be happier 
 as a race if their instincts and impulses were different 
 from ' what they always have been and probably ever 
 will be.' When we say that certain conduct ought to 
 be followed, we do not mean that its ultimate results 
 can be shown to be beneficial to other people, but that 
 they can be exhibited as desirable to the people to 
 whom the conduct is recommended — and not only as
 
 72 'COWAKDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 desirable, but as desirable in a pre-eminent degree — 
 desirable beyond all other results that are immediately 
 beneficial to themselves. Now the Positivists, or any 
 other believers in the magnificent destiny of Humanity, 
 absurd as their beliefs may be, still have in their beliefs 
 a means by which, theoretically, duty could be thus 
 recommended. According to them our sympathy with 
 others is so keen, and the future in store for our de- 
 scendants is so satisfying, that we have only to think of 
 this future and we shall burn with a desire to work for 
 it. But Professor Huxley, and those who agree with 
 him, utterly reject both of these suppositions. They 
 say, and very rightly, that our sympathies are limited ; 
 and that the blissful future, which it is supposed will 
 appeal to them, is moonshine. The utmost, then, in 
 the way of objective results, that any of us can accom- 
 plish by following the path of duty, is not only little in 
 itself, but there is no reason for supposing that it will 
 contribute to anything great. On the contrary, it will 
 only contribute to something which, as a whole, is 
 ' unutterably saddening.' 
 
 Let us suppose then an individual with two ways of 
 life open to him — the way of ordinary self-indulgence, 
 and the way of pain, effort, and self-sacrifice. The first 
 seems to him obviously the most advantageous ; but he 
 has heard so much fine talk in favour of the second, 
 that he thinks it at least worth considering. He goes, 
 we will suppose, to Professor Huxley, and asks to have 
 it demonstrated that this way of pain is preferable. 
 Now what answer to that could Professor Huxley make 
 — he, or any other Agnostic who agrees with him ? 
 He has made several answers. I am going to take
 
 'COWAEDLY AGNOSTICISM' 73 
 
 them one by one ; and whilst doing to each of them, as 
 I hope, complete justice, to show that they are not only 
 absolutely and ridiculously impotent to prove what is 
 demanded of them, but they do not even succeed in 
 touching the question at issue. 
 
 One of the answers hardly needs considering, except 
 to show to what straits the thinker must be put who 
 uses it. A man, says Professor Huxley, ought to 
 choose the way of pain and duty, because it conduces 
 in some small degree to the good of others ; and to do 
 good to others ought to be his predominant desire, or, 
 in other words, his religion. But the very fact in 
 human nature that makes the question at issue worth 
 arguing, is the fact that men naturally do not desire the 
 good of others, or, at least, desire it in a very lukewarm 
 way ; and every consideration which the Positivist 
 school advances to make the good of others attractive 
 and interesting to ourselves, Professor Huxley dismisses 
 with what we may call an uproarious contempt. If, 
 then, we are not likely to be nerved to our duty by a 
 belief that duty done tends to produce and hasten a 
 change that shall really make the whole human lot 
 beautiful, we are not likely to be nerved to it by the 
 belief that its utmost possible result will be some partial 
 and momentary benefit to a portion of ' a wilderness ot 
 apes.' The Positivist says to the men of the present 
 day, c Work hard at the foundation of things social ; 
 for on these foundations one day will arise a glorious 
 edifice.' Professor Huxley tells them to work equally 
 hard, only, he adds, that the foundation will never sup- 
 port anything better than pig-sties. His attempt, then, 
 on social grounds, to make duty binding, and give force
 
 74 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 to the moral imperative, is merely a fragment of Mr. 
 Harrison's system, divorced from anything that gave it 
 a theoretical meaning. Professor Huxley has shattered 
 that system against the hard rock of reality, and this 
 is one of the pieces which he has picked up out of the 
 mire. 
 
 The social argument, then, we may therefore put 
 aside, as good perhaps for showing what duty is, but 
 utterly useless for creating any desire to do it. Indeed, 
 to render Professor Huxley justice, it is not the argu- 
 ment on which he mainly relies. The argument, or 
 rather the arguments, on which he mainly relies have 
 no direct connection with things social at all. They 
 seek to create a religion, or to give a meaning to duty, 
 by dwelling on man's connection, not with his fellow- 
 men, but with the universe, and thus developing iu the 
 individual a certain ethical self-reverence, or rather, 
 perhaps, preserving his existing self-reverence from 
 destruction. How any human being who pretends to 
 accurate thinking can conceive that these arguments 
 would have the effect desired — that they would either 
 tend in any way to develop self-reverence of any kind, 
 or that this self-reverence, if developed, could connect 
 itself with practical duty, passes my comprehension. 
 Influential and eminent men, however, declare that such 
 is their opinion ; and for that reason the arguments are 
 worth analysing. Mr. Herbert Spencer is here in 
 almost exact accord with Professor Huxley ; we will 
 therefore begin by referring to his way of stating the 
 matter. 
 
 ' We are obliged,' he says, ' to regard every pheno- 
 menon as a manifestation of some Power by which we
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 75 
 
 are acted on ; though Omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, 
 as experience discloses no bounds to the diffusion of 
 phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to the 
 presence of this power ; whilst the criticisms of science 
 teach us that this Power is Incomprehensible. And 
 this consciousness of an Incomprehensible Power, called 
 Omnipresent from inability to assign its limits, is just 
 that consciousness on which religion dwells.' * Now 
 Professor Huxley, it will be remembered, gives an 
 account of religion quite different. He says it is a 
 desire to realise a certain ideal in life. Plis terminology 
 therefore differs from that of Mr. Spencer ; but of the 
 present matter, as the following quotation will show, 
 his view is substantially the same. 
 
 1 Let us suppose,' he says, ' that knowledge is abso- 
 lute, and not relative, and therefore that our conception 
 of matter represents that which really is. Let us sup- 
 pose further that we do know more of cause and effect 
 than a certain succession ; and I for my part do not 
 see what escape there is from utter materialism and 
 necessarianism.' And this materialism, were it really 
 what science forces on us, he admits would amply 
 justify the darkest fears that are entertained of it. It 
 would ' drown man's soul,' ' impede his freedom,' ' para- 
 lyse his energies,' ' debase his moral nature,' and 
 ' destroy the beauty of his life.' 2 But, Professor Huxley 
 assures us these dark fears are groundless. There is, 
 indeed, only one avenue of escape from them ; but that 
 avenue Truth opens to us. 
 
 ' For,' he says, ' after all, what do we know of this 
 terrible " matter," except as a name for the unknown and 
 1 First Principles, p. 99. ■ Lay Sermons, pp. 122, 123, 127.
 
 76 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness ? 
 And what do we know of that "spirit" over whose 
 extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising . . . 
 except that it also is a name for an unknown and hypo- 
 thetical cause or condition of states of consciousness ? . . . 
 And what is the dire necessity and iron law under which 
 men groan 1 Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. 
 I suppose if there be an " iron " law, it is that of gravitation ; 
 and if there be a physical necessity it is that a stone unsup- 
 ported must fall to the ground. But what is all we really 
 know and can know about the latter phenomena ? Simply 
 that in all human experience, stones have fallen to the 
 ground under these conditions ; that we have not the 
 smallest reason for believing that any stone so circum- 
 stanced will not fall to the ground ; and that we have, on 
 the contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. . . . 
 But when, as commonly happens, we change will into must, 
 we introduce an idea of necessity which . . . has no 
 warranty that I can discover anywhere. . . . Force I 
 know, and Law I know ; but who is this necessity, save 
 an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing 1 ' 
 
 Let us now compare the statements of these two 
 writers. Each states that the reality of the universe is 
 unknowable ; that just as surely as matter is always 
 one aspect of mind, so mind is equally one aspect of 
 matter ; and that if it is true to say that the thoughts 
 of man are material, it is equally true to say that the 
 earth from which man was taken is spiritual. Further, 
 from these statements each writer deduces a similar 
 moral. The only difference between them is, that Mr. 
 Spencer puts it positively, and Professor Huxley 
 negatively. Mr. Spencer says that a consciousness of 
 the unknowable nature of the universe fills the mind
 
 'COWAKDLY AGNOSTICISM' 77 
 
 with religious emotion. Professor Huxley says that 
 the same consciousness will preserve from destruction 
 the emotion that already exists in it. We will examine 
 the positive and negative propositions in order, and 
 see what bearing, if any, they have on practical life. 
 
 Mr. Spencer connects his religion with practical 
 life thus. The mystery and the immensity of the All, 
 and our own inseparable connection with it, deepen 
 and solemnise our own conception of ourselves. They 
 make us regard ourselves as ' elements in that great 
 evolution of which the beginning and the end are 
 beyond our knowledge or conception ; ' and in especial 
 they make us so regard our 'own innermost convic- 
 tions.' 
 
 ' It is not for nothing,' says Mr. Spencer, ' that a man 
 has in him these sympathies with some principles and 
 repugnance to others. . . . He is a descendant of the past ; 
 he is a parent of the future ; and his thoughts are as 
 children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. 
 He, like every other man, may properly consider himself 
 as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the 
 Unknown Cause : and when the Unknown Cause produces 
 in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorised to profess 
 and act upon this belief.' l 
 
 In all the annals of intellectual self-deception, it 
 would be hard to find anything to outdo, or even to 
 approach this. What a man does or thinks, what he 
 professes or acts upon, can have no effect whatever, 
 conceivable to ourselves, beyond such effects as it 
 produces within the limits of this planet ; and hardly 
 any effect worth our consideration, beyond such as it 
 
 1 First Principles, p. 123.
 
 78 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 produces on himself and a few of his fellow-men. Now, 
 how can any of these effects be connected with the 
 evolution of the universe in such a way as to enable a 
 consciousness of the universe to inform us that one set 
 of effects should be aimed at by us rather than another? 
 The Positivists say that our aim should be the progress 
 of man ; and that, as I have said, forms a standard of 
 duty, though it may not supply a motive. But what 
 has the universe to do with the progress of man ? Does 
 it know anything about it ; or care anything about it ? 
 Judging from the language of Mr. Spencer and Pro- 
 fessor Huxley, one would certainly suppose that it did. 
 Surely, in that case, here is anthropomorphism with a 
 vengeance. ' It is not for nothing,' says Mr. Spencer, 
 ' that the Unknowable has implanted in a man certain 
 impulses.' What is this but the whole theologic 
 doctrine of design? Can anything be more incon- 
 sistent with the entire theory of the Evolutionist? 
 Mr. Spencer's argument means, if it means anything, 
 that the Unknowable has implanted in us one set of 
 sympathies in a sense in which it has not implanted 
 others : else the impulse to deny one's belief, and not 
 to act on it, which many people experience, would be 
 authorised by the Unknowable as much as the impulse 
 to profess it, and to act on it. And according to Mr. 
 Spencer's entire theory, according to Professor Huxley's 
 entire theory, according to the entire theory of modern 
 science, it is precisely this that is the case. If it is the 
 fact that the Unknowable works through any of our 
 actions, it works through all alike, bad, good, and 
 indifferent, through our lies as well as through our 
 truth-telling, through our injuries to our race as well
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 79 
 
 as through om* benefits to it. The attempt to connect 
 the well-being of humanity with any general tendency 
 observable in the universe, is in fact, on Agnostic 
 principles, as hopeless as an attempt to get, in a 
 balloon, to Jupiter. It is utterly unfit for serious men 
 to talk about ; and its proper place, if anywhere, would 
 be in one of Jules Verne's story-books. The destinies 
 of mankind, as far as we have any means of knowing, 
 have as little to do with the course of the Unknowable, 
 as a whole, as the destinies of an ant-hill in South 
 Australia have to do with the question of Home Rule 
 for Ireland. 
 
 Or even supposing the Unknowable to have any 
 feeling in the matter, how do we know that its feeling 
 would be in our favour, and that it would not be 
 gratified by the calamities of humanity, rather than by 
 its improvement ? Or here is a question which is more 
 important still. Supposing the Unknowable did desire 
 our improvement, but we, as Professor Huxley says of 
 us, were obstinately bent against being improved, what 
 could the Unknowable do to us for thus thwarting its 
 wishes ? 
 
 And this leads us to another aspect of the matter. 
 If consciousness of the Unknowable does not directly 
 influence action, it may yet be said that the contem- 
 plation of the universe as the wonderful garment of this 
 unspeakable mystery, is calculated to put the mind into 
 a serious and devout condition, which would make it 
 susceptible to the solemn voice of duty. How any 
 devotion so produced could have any connection with 
 duty I confess I am at a loss to see. But I need not 
 dwell on that point, for what I wish to show is this,
 
 80 'COWAKDLY AGNOSTICISM 
 
 that contemplation of the Unknowable, from the Ag- 
 nostic's point of view, is not calculated to produce any 
 sense of devoutness at all. Devoutness is made up of 
 three things, fear, love, and wonder ; but were the 
 Agnostic's thoughts really controlled by his own prin- 
 ciples (which they are not) not one of these emotions 
 could the Unknowable possibly excite in him. It need 
 hardly be said that he has no excuse for loving it, for 
 his own first principles forbid him to say that it is 
 lovable, or that it possesses any character, least of all 
 any anthropomorphic character. But perhaps it is 
 calculated to excite fear or awe in him. The idea 
 is more plausible than the other. The universe as 
 compared with man is a revelation of forces that are 
 infinite, and it may be said that surely these have 
 something awful and impressive in them. There is, 
 however, another side to the question. This universe 
 represents not only infinite forces, but it represents also 
 infinite impotence. So long as we conform ourselves 
 to certain ordinary rules we may behave as we like for 
 anything it can do to us. We may look at it with eyes 
 of adoration, or make faces at it, and blaspheme it, but 
 for all its power it cannot move a finger to touch us. 
 Why, then, should a man be in awe of this lubberly 
 All, whose blindness and impotence are at least as 
 remarkable as its power, and from which man is as 
 absolutely safe as a mouse in a hole is from a lion ? 
 But there still remains the emotion of wonder to be 
 considered. Is not the universe calculated to excite 
 our wonder ? From the Agnostic point of view we 
 must certainly say No. The further science reveals to 
 us the constitution of things, the feeling borne in on us
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 81 
 
 more and more strongly is this, that it is not wonderful 
 that things happen as they do, but that it would be 
 wonderful if they happened otherwise : whilst as for 
 the Unknown Cause that is behind what science reveals 
 to us, we cannot wonder at that, for we know nothing 
 at all about it ; and if there is any wonder involved in 
 the matter at all, it is nothing but wonder at our own 
 ignorance. 
 
 So much, then, for our mere emotions towards the 
 Unknowable. There still remains, however, one way 
 more in which it is alleged that our consciousness of it 
 can be definitely connected with duty ; and this is the 
 way which our Agnostic philosophers most commonly 
 have in view, and to which they allude most frequently. 
 I mean to the search after scientific truth and the 
 proclamation of it, regardless of consequences. When- 
 ever the Agnostics are pressed as to the consequences 
 of their principles it is on this conception of duty that 
 they invariably fall back. Mr. Herbert Spencer, on his 
 own behalf, expresses the position thus — 
 
 The highest truth he sees will the wise man fearlessly 
 utter, knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus 
 playing his right part in the world, knowing that if he can 
 effect the change [in belief] he aims at, well ; if not, well 
 also, though not so well. l 
 
 After what has been said already it will not be 
 necessary to dwell long on this astonishing proposition. 
 A short examination will suffice to show its emptiness. 
 That a certain amount of truth in social intercourse is 
 necessary for the continuance of society, and that a large 
 
 1 First Principles, p. 123. 
 
 G
 
 82 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 number of scientific truths are useful in enabling us to 
 add to our material comforts, is, as Professor Huxley 
 would say, ' surely indisputable.' And truth thus 
 understood it is ' surely indisputable ' that we should 
 cultivate. The reason is obvious. Such truth has 
 certain social consequences ; certain things that we all 
 desire come of it : but the highest truth which Mr. 
 Spencer speaks of stands, according to him, on a wholly 
 different basis, and we are to cultivate it, not because 
 of its consequences, but in defiance of them. And 
 what are its consequences, so far as we can see ? Pro- 
 fessor Huxley's answer is this : ' I have had, and have, 
 the firmest conviction that . . . the verace via, the 
 straight road, has led nowhere else but into the dark 
 depths of a wild and tangled forest.' Now if this be 
 the case, what possible justification can there be for 
 following this verace via ? In what sense is the man 
 who follows it playing ' his right part in the world ? ' 
 And when Mr. Spencer says, with regard to his con- 
 duct, ' it is well,' with whom is it well, or in what 
 sense is it well ? We can use such language with any 
 warrant or with any meaning only on the supposition 
 that the universe, or the Unknowable as manifested 
 through the universe, is concerned with human happi- 
 ness in some special way, in which it is not concerned 
 with human misery, and that thus our knowledge of it 
 must somehow make men happier, even though it leads 
 them into a wild and tangled forest. It is certain that 
 our devotion to truth will not benefit the universe ; the 
 only question is, will knowledge of the universe, beyond 
 a certain point, benefit us? But the supposition just 
 mentioned is merely theism in disguise. It imputes to
 
 'COWAEDLY AGNOSTICISM' 83 
 
 the Unknowable design, purpose, and affection. In 
 every way it is contrary to the first principles of 
 Agnosticism. Could we admit it, then devotion to 
 truth might have all the meaning that Mr. Spencer 
 claims for it : but if this supposition is denied, as all 
 Agnostics deny it, this devotion to truth, seemingly so 
 noble and so unassailable, sinks to a superstition more 
 abject, more meaningless, and more ridiculous, than 
 that of any African savage, grovelling and mumbling 
 before his fetish. 
 
 We have now passed under review the main positive 
 arguments by which our Agnostics, whilst dismissing 
 the existence of God as a question of lunar politics, 
 endeavour to exhibit the reality of religion, and of duty, 
 as a thing that is ' surely indisputable.' We will now 
 pass on to their negative arguments. Whilst by their 
 positive arguments they endeavour to prove that duty 
 and religion are realities, by their negative arguments 
 they endeavour to prove that duty and religion are not 
 impossibilities. We have seen how absolutely worthless 
 to their cause are the former ; but if the former are 
 worthless, the latter are positively fatal. 
 
 What they are the reader has already seen. I have 
 taken the statement of them from Professor Huxley, but 
 Mr. Spencer uses language almost precisely similar. 
 These arguments start with two admissions. Were all 
 our actions linked one to another by mechanical necessity, 
 it is admitted that responsibility and duty would be no 
 longer conceivable. Our ' energies,' as Professor Huxley 
 admits, would be ' paralysed ' by ' utter necessarianism.' 
 Further, did our conception of matter represent a reality, 
 were matter low and gross, as we are accustomed to 
 
 62
 
 84 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 think of it, then man, as the product of matter, would 
 be low and gross also, and heroism and duty would be 
 really successfully degraded, by being reduced to 
 questions of carbon and ammonia. But from all of 
 these difficulties Professor Huxley professes to extricate 
 us. Let us look back at the arguments by which he 
 considers that he has done so. 
 
 We will begin with his method of liberating us from 
 the ' iron ' law of necessity, and thus giving us back our 
 freedom and moral character. He performs this feat, or 
 rather, he thinks he has performed it, by drawing a 
 distinction between what will happen and what must 
 happen. On this distinction his entire position is based. 
 Now in every argument used by any sensible man there 
 is probably some meaning. Let us try fairly to see 
 what is the meaning in this. I take it that the idea 
 at the bottom of Professor Huxley's mind is as follows. 
 Though all our scientific reasoning presupposes the 
 uniformity of the universe, we are unable to assert of 
 the reality behind the universe, that it might not 
 manifest itself in ways by which all present science 
 would be baffled. But what has an idea like this to do 
 with any practical question ? So far as man, and man's 
 will, are concerned, we have to do only with the universe 
 as we know it ; and the only knowledge we have of it, 
 worth calling knowledge, involves, as Professor Huxley 
 is constantly telling us, ' the great act of faith,' which 
 leads us to take what has been as a certain index of 
 what will be. Now, with regard to this universe, 
 Professor Huxley tells us that the progress of science 
 has always meant, and ' means now more than ever,' 
 ' the extension of the province of ... . causation, and
 
 'COWAKDLY AGNOSTICISM' 85 
 
 .... the banishment of spontaneity.' l And this 
 applies, as he expressly says, to human thought and 
 action as much as to the flowering of a plant. Just as 
 there can be no voluntary action without volition, so 
 there can be no volition without some preceding cause. 
 Accordingly, if a man's condition at any given moment 
 were completely known, his actions could be predicted 
 with as much or with as little certainty as the fall of a 
 stone could be predicted if released from the hand that 
 held it. Now Professor Huxley tells us that, with 
 regard to certainty, we are justified in saying that the 
 stone will fall ; and we should, therefore, be justified in 
 saying similarly of the man, that he will act in such 
 and such a manner. Whether theoretically we are 
 absolutely certain is no matter. We are absolutely 
 certain for all practical purposes, and the question of 
 human freedom is nothing if not practical. What then 
 is gained — is anything gained — is the case in any way 
 altered — by telling ourselves that though there is 
 certainty in the case, there is no necessity ? Suppose 
 I held a loaded pistol to Professor Huxley's ear, and 
 offered to pull the trigger, should I reconcile him to the 
 operation by telling him that though it certainly would 
 kill him, there was not the least necessity that it should 
 do so ? And with regard to volition and action, as the 
 result of preceding causes, is not the case precisely 
 similar ? Let Professor Huxley turn to all the past 
 actions of humanity. Can he point to any smallest 
 movement of any single human being, which has not 
 been the product of causes, which in their turn have 
 been the product of other causes ? Or can he point to 
 1 Lay Sermons, p. 123.
 
 86 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 any causes which, under given conditions, could have 
 produced any effects other than those they have pro- 
 duced, unless he uses the word could in the foolish and 
 fantastic sense Avhich would enable him to say that 
 unsupported stones could possibly fly upwards ? For 
 all practical purposes the distinction between must and 
 will is neither more nor less than a feeble and childish 
 sophism. Theoretically no doubt it will bear this 
 meaning — that the Unknowable might have so made 
 man, that at any given moment his actions would be 
 different from what they are : but it does nothing to 
 break the force of what all science teaches us — that 
 man, formed as he is, cannot act otherwise than as he 
 does. The universe may have no necessity at the back 
 of it ; but its present and its past alike are a necessity 
 at the back of us ; and it is not necessity, but it is 
 doubt of necessity, that is really ' the shadow of our 
 own mind's throwing.' 
 
 And now let us face Professor Huxley's other argu- 
 ment, which is to save life from degradation by taking 
 away the reproach from matter. If it is true, he tells 
 us, to say that everything, mind included, is matter, it 
 is equally true to say that everything, matter included, 
 is mind; and thus, he argues, the dignity we all 
 attribute to mind at once is seen to diffuse itself 
 throughout the entire universe. Mr. Herbert Spencer 
 puts the same view thus : 
 
 Such an attitude of mind [contempt for matter and 
 dread of materialism] is significant not so much of a rever- 
 ence for the Unknown Cause, as of an irreverence for those 
 familiar forms in which the Unknown Cause is manifested 

 
 'COWAEDLY AGNOSTICISM' 87 
 
 to us. 1 . . . But whoever remembers that the forms of 
 existence of which the uncultivated speak with so much 
 scorn . . . are found to be the more marvellous the more 
 they are investigated, and are also found to be in their 
 natures absolutely incomprehensible . . . will see that the 
 course proposed [a reduction of all things to terms of 
 matter] does not imply a degradation of the so-called higher, 
 but an elevation of the so-called lower. 
 
 The answer to this argument, so far as it touches 
 any ethical or religious question, is at once simple and 
 conclusive. The one duty of ethics and of religion is 
 to draw a distinction between two states of emotion and 
 two courses of action — to elevate the one and to degrade 
 the other. But the argument we are now considering, 
 though undoubtedly true in itself, has no bearing on 
 this distinction whatever. It is invoked to show that 
 religion and duty remain spiritual in spite of all 
 materialism ; but it ends, with unfortunate impartiality, 
 in showing the same thing of vice and of cynical 
 worldliness. If the life of Christ is elevated by being 
 seen in this light, so also is the life of Casanova ; and 
 it is as impossible in this way to make the one higher 
 than the other, as it is to make one man higher than 
 another by taking them both up in one balloon. 
 
 I have now gone through the whole case for duty 
 and for religion, as stated by the Agnostic school, and 
 have shown that as thus stated there is no case at all. 
 I have shown their arguments to be so shallow, so 
 irrelevant, and so contradictory, that they never could 
 have imposed themselves on the men who condescend 
 to use them, if these men, upon utterly alien grounds, 
 
 1 First Principles, p. 556.
 
 88 'COWAKDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 had not pledged themselves to the conclusion which 
 they invoke the arguments to support. 
 
 Something else, however, still remains to be done. 
 Having seen how Agnosticism fails to give a basis to 
 either religion or duty, I will point out to the reader how 
 it actively and mercilessly destroys them. Religion and 
 duty, as has been constantly made evident in the course 
 of the foregoing discussion, are, in the opinion of the Ag- 
 nostics, inseparably connected. Duty is a course of con- 
 duct which is more than conformity to human law ; re- 
 ligion consists of the emotional reasons for pursuing that 
 conduct. Now these reasons, on the showing of the 
 Agnostics themselves, are reasons that are not natu- 
 rally forced on us by our daily interests and occu- 
 pations. They lie above and beyond the ordinary things 
 of life, and we must seek them out and rise to them in 
 moods of devoutness and abstraction; but after com- 
 muning with them on this elevated plane it is supposed 
 that we shall descend to the ordinary world of action 
 with our purposes sharpened and intensified. Such is 
 the idea of the Agnostics. It is easy to see, how- 
 ever, if we divest ourselves of all prejudice, and really 
 conceive ourselves to be convinced of nothing which 
 is not demonstrable by the methods of Agnostic 
 science, that the more we dwell on the Agnostic 
 doctrine of the universe, the less and not the more 
 will duty seem to be binding on us. 
 
 I have said that this doctrine can supply us with no 
 religion. If we will, however, but invert the tendencies 
 which religion is supposed to have, Agnosticism can 
 and will supply us with a religion indeed. It will 
 supply us with a religion which, if we describe it in
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 89 
 
 theological language, we may with literal accuracy 
 describe as the religion of the devil — of the devil, the 
 spirit which denies. Instead of telling us of duty, 
 that it has a meaning which does not lie on the 
 surface, such meaning as may lie on the surface it 
 will utterly take away. It will indeed tell us that the 
 soul which sins shall die ; but it will tell us in the 
 same breath that the soul which does not sin shall 
 die the same death. Instead of telling us that we 
 are responsible for our actions, it will tell us that if 
 anything is responsible for them it is the blind and 
 unfathomable universe ; and if we are asked to repent 
 of any sins we have committed, it will tell us we might 
 as well be repentant about the structure of the solar 
 system. These meditations, these communings with 
 scientific truth, will be the exact inverse of the religious 
 meditations of the Christian. Every man, no doubt, 
 has two voices — the voice of self-indulgence or in- 
 difference, and the voice of effort and duty ; but 
 whereas the religion of the Christian enabled him to 
 silence the one, the religion of the Agnostic will for 
 ever silence the other. I say for ever, but I probably 
 ought to correct myself. Could the voice be silenced 
 for ever, then there might be peace in the sense in 
 which Roman conquerors gave the name of peace to 
 solitude. But it is more likely that the voice will still 
 continue, together with the longing expressed by it, 
 only to feel the pains of being again and again silenced, 
 or sent back to the soul, saying bitterly, I am a lie. 
 
 Such, then, is really the result of Agnosticism on 
 life, and the result is so obvious to anyone who knows 
 how to reason, that it could be hidden from nobody,
 
 90 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 except by one thing, and that is the cowardice charac- 
 teristic of all our contemporary Agnostics. They dare 
 not face what they have done. They dare not look 
 fixedly at the body of the life which they have pierced. 
 
 And now conies the final question to which all that 
 I have thus far urged has been leading. What does 
 theologic religion answer to the principles and to the 
 doctrines of Agnosticism ? In contemporary discussion 
 the answer is constantly obscured, but it is of the 
 utmost importance that it should be given clearly. It 
 says this : If we start from and are faithful to the 
 Agnostic's fundamental principles, that nothing is to 
 be regarded as certain which is not either demonstrated 
 or demonstrable, then the denial of God is the only 
 possible creed for us. To the methods of science 
 nothing in this universe gives any hint of either a God 
 or a purpose. Duty and holiness, aspiration and love 
 of truth, are ' merely shadows of our own mind's 
 throwing,' but shadows which, instead of making the 
 reality brighter, only serve to make it more ghastly 
 and hideous. Humanity is a bubble ; the human 
 being is a puppet, cursed with the intermittent illusion 
 that he is something more, and roused from this 
 illusion with a pang every time it flatters him. Now 
 from this condition of things is there no escape ? 
 Theologic religion answers, There is one, and one only, 
 and this is the repudiation of the principle on which 
 all Agnosticism rests. 
 
 Let us see what this repudiation amounts to, and 
 we shall then realise what, in the present day, is the 
 intellectual basis which theologic religion claims. 
 Theologic religion does not say that within limits the
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 91 
 
 Agnostic principle is not perfectly valid and lias not 
 led to the discovery of a vast body of truth. But what 
 it does say is this : that the truths which are thus dis- 
 covered are not the only truths which are certainly and 
 surely discoverable. The fundamental principle of 
 Agnosticism is that nothing is certainly true but such 
 truths as are demonstrated or demonstrable. The 
 fundamental principle of theologic religion is, that 
 there are other truths of which we can be equally or 
 even more certain, and that these are the only truths 
 that give life a meaning and redeem us from the body 
 of death. Agnosticism says nothing is certain which 
 cannot be proved by science. Theologic religion says, 
 nothing which is important can be. Agnosticism 
 draws a line round its own province of knowledge, and 
 beyond that it declares is the unknown void which 
 thought cannot enter, and in which belief cannot 
 support itself. Where Agnosticism pauses, there 
 Eeligion begins. On what seems to science to be 
 unsustaining air, it lays its foundations — it builds up 
 its fabric of certainties. Science regards them as 
 dreams, as an ' unsubstantial pageant ; ' and yet even 
 to science Religion can give some account of them. 
 Professor Huxley says, as we have seen, that ' from the 
 nature of ratiocination,' it is obvious that it must start 
 ' from axioms which cannot be demonstrated by ratio- 
 cination ; ' and that in science it must start with ' one 
 great act of faith ' — faith in the uniformity of nature. 
 Eeligion replies to science : ' And I too start with a 
 faith in one thing. I start with a faith which you too 
 profess to hold — faith in the meaning of duty and the 
 infinite importance of life ; and out of that faith my
 
 92 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 
 
 whole fabric of certainties, one after the other, is 
 reared by the hands of reason. Do you ask for proof? 
 Do you ask for verification ? I can give you one only, 
 which you may take or leave as you choose. Deny the 
 certainties which I declare to be certain — deny the 
 existence of God, deny man's freedom and immortality, 
 and by no other conceivable hypothesis can you vindi- 
 cate for man's life any possible meaning, or save it 
 from the degradation at which you profess to feel so 
 concerned. ' Is there no other way,' I can conceive 
 Science asking, ' no other way by which the dignity of 
 life may be vindicated, except this — the abandonment 
 of my one fundamental principle ? Must I put my 
 lips, in shame and humiliation, to the cup of faith I 
 have so contemptuously cast away from me ? May not 
 this cup pass from me ? Is there salvation in no 
 other ? ' And to this question, without passion or 
 prejudice, the voice of reason and logic pitilessly 
 answers ' No.' 
 
 Here is the dilemma which men, sooner or later, 
 will see before them, in all its crudeness and naked- 
 ness, cleared from the rags with which the cowardice 
 of contemporary Agnosticism has obscured it; and 
 they will then have to choose one alternative or the 
 other. What their choice will be I do not venture to 
 prophesy ; but I will venture to call them happy if 
 their choice prove to be this : To admit frankly that 
 their present canon of certainty, true so far as it goes, 
 is only the pettiest part of truth, and that the deepest 
 certainties are those which, if tried by this canon, are 
 illusions. To make this choice a struggle would be 
 required with pride, and with what has long passed for
 
 'COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM' 93 
 
 enlightenment ; and yet when it is realised what 
 depends on the struggle, there are some at least who 
 will think that it must end successfully. The only way 
 by which, in the face of science, we can ever logically 
 arrive at a faith in life, is by the commission of what 
 many at present will describe as an intellectual suicide. 
 I do not for a moment admit that such an expression is 
 justifiable, but if I may use it provisionally, because it 
 harmonises with the temper at present prevalent, I 
 shall be simply pronouncing the judgment of frigid 
 reason in saying that it is only through the grave and 
 gate of death that the spirit of man can pass to its 
 resurrection.
 
 94 
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 In the following essay there are two errors luhich I desire 
 to correct, and I can do so more effectively by calling attention 
 to them than by expunging them. I have classed amongst the 
 persons who persist in calling themselves Christians, whilst 
 refusing to believe in miracles and the miraculous character 
 of Christ, Mr. Hutton, editor of ' The Spectator,' and Mr. W. 
 T. Stead. I have since had reason to believe that I ivas mis- 
 taken as to Mr. Hutton' s position, and from Mr. Stead I 
 received a very indignant letter, bringing against me a charge, 
 which he repeated in his own review, of breaking the Ninth 
 Commandment, and ' bearing false witness against him.'' He 
 emphatically declares that he does believe in miracles, and 
 more especially in the miraculous character of Christ. I am 
 anxious to express my regret for my involuntary error with 
 regard to him, and to record how unhesitatingly I defer to him 
 as an authority about his own belief. But although his 
 position, it appears, differs so fundamentally from my de- 
 scription of it, it happens, on this very account, to be all the 
 more open to certain of the criticisms contained in the following 
 essay. In this essay I have explained, as the reader will see, 
 that the persons %uho regard Christ as nothing more than a 
 man, and yet pose as apostles of Christian doctrine, base their 
 approval of this doctrine — little as they may themselves per- 
 ceive it — on their own tastes and consciences, not on Christ's 
 authority. They give Christ His testimonial : they do not go 
 to Him for theirs. And this procedure Mr. Stead adopts and 
 even travesties, although at the same moment he is proclaiming 
 Christ to be God. He pats on the back the Logos that was 
 before all worlds ; and acts as Magistrate' s Clerk to the most 
 worthy Judge Eternal. The result is a Christianity which 
 differs from that criticised in this essay, only in the fact of 
 its being much more grotesque. Christ, indeed, as treated
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 95 
 
 by Mr. Stead, is neither more nor less than a kind of spiritual 
 Mrs. Harris, ivhosc sole function is to praise Mr. Stead's plans 
 and prejudices, and to declare him ' to be the best of blessings 
 in a sich world.'' 
 
 I have no wish to say a word against Mr. Stead's good 
 faith and good intentions. No doubt he believes implicitly in 
 what he professes to believe in ; and since this essay was 
 written, he has given the world information which may ivell 
 lead us to think that he is capable of believing anything. He 
 has declared himself a believer not only in the miraculous 
 character of Christ, but a believer also in the reality of 
 verbal inspiration ; the inspired ivritings, however, being not 
 the Biblical books, but certain parts — as I gather — of one of 
 Ms own newspapers. The inspiring power, moreover, is 
 much less vague in its operatioyis than the fire that touched 
 the lips of the Hebrew prophet, or the flames that sat on the 
 heads of the early Christians. It takes the form of a young 
 lady named Julia, who inspires Mr. Stead by the intelligible, 
 and no doubt agreeable process of holding his hand and 
 guiding it, whilst his hand merely holds the pen. His 
 inspirations, in fact, seem to come to him as a knowledge of 
 modem Greek came to Lord Byron and Don Juan ; and he 
 might appropriately say as Lord Byron said with reference 
 to his oion Julias — 
 
 ' I learnt the little that I knoiu by this.'' 
 
 Mr. Stead cannot, of course, be expected to see himself as 
 others see him; but he must, , of course be aware that there 
 are a large number of others who will inevitably see him as he 
 does not see himself ; and I retain in the folloioing pages my 
 mention of him as it originally stood, partly with a view to 
 emphasizing my ivithdrawal of a statement that was inac- 
 curate about him ; and partly because, that correction having 
 been made, his position as an ' amateur Christian ' becomes 
 only the more obvious. 
 
 Few literary events, in this country or America, have 
 been witnessed of late years, in one way more signifi-
 
 96 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 cant than the abnormal success of a certain English 
 novel. I mean the ' Robert Elsmere ' of Mrs. Humphry- 
 Ward. Of its intrinsic merits there is no occasion to 
 speak, for those even who would be disposed to esti- 
 mate them most highly, would admit them to be quite 
 incommensurate with the interest the book excited. 
 Its interest, or at least its exceptional interest, lay 
 entirely in the subject ; and when I call its abnormal 
 success significant, I mean that it was significant on 
 account of the light it threw, not on the writer, but on 
 the mental condition of her readers. In this way it 
 exhibited three things — first, the amount of unformu- 
 lated scepticism prevalent amongst the Christian public ; 
 secondly, the eagerness of this public to understand its 
 own scepticisms more clearly ; and lastly, its eagerness 
 to discover that, whatever its scepticism might take 
 from it, something would still be left it, which was 
 really the essence of Christianity. In other words, the 
 popularity of ' Robert Elsmere ' is mainly an expression 
 of the prevalence of the devout idea that the essence 
 of Christianity will somehow survive the doctrines of 
 Christianity. 
 
 The same fact is illustrated by the prosperity of 
 numerous journals, which are animated by the same 
 idea, and supported by those who share it. It will be 
 enough to mention two of them — -' The Review of 
 Reviews ' and l The Spectator.' 
 
 I mention this novel, and these two successful 
 journals, merely as a means of putting with some 
 precision a fact which, if put vaguely, it is hardly 
 possible to discuss. All three publications, then, re- 
 semble each other in the following way. They all 
 three of them have a similar moral tone ; they have all
 
 AMATEUE CHKISTIANITY 97 
 
 of them a devotional tone, and that is similar also ; and 
 their morals and their devoutness are those of the 
 severest traditional Christianity, with its special sec- 
 tarian features not softened but accentuated. Both the 
 journals in question, if they would praise or condemn 
 conduct, are accustomed to do so by saying that it is, 
 or is not, Christian ; and how to live like a Christian is 
 the one problem of the novelist. And yet all three are 
 in agreement as to one fundamental doctrine, which 
 Mrs. Ward expresses with trenchant brevity — namely, 
 ' Miracles do not happen.' 
 
 Let us expand this phrase into its most important 
 specific meanings. It means that Christ was in no 
 sense a miraculous person ; but that He was born like 
 other men, and died like other men ; that He differed 
 from other men in degree only, not in kind, just as any 
 saint might differ from any sinner. It means also that 
 the records of Christ's life are not more accurate than 
 any ordinary biographies; whilst as for the Epistles, 
 they illustrate Christ's teaching merely as Plato has 
 illustrated the teaching of Socrates. 
 
 Here, then, we have the views of that large number 
 of persons — active teachers and silent sympathetic dis- 
 ciples, who conceive themselves to be the nucleus of the 
 Christian Church of the future — a Church which will 
 not destroy but inherit the power of the Christianity 
 of the past. And, indeed, such persons form a very 
 important body, the position and prospects of which 
 are well worth considering. For the world, like Mr. 
 Gladstone, has three courses open to it — to submit 
 itself openly to the uncompromising dogmatism of 
 Rome; to free itself from the fetters of Christianity 
 
 H
 
 98 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 altogether; or to attempt the construction of a 
 Christianity such as these persons hope for. 
 
 The point, therefore, which I propose to consider is, 
 whether this hope of theirs is based on any reality, or 
 merely on prejudice or self-delusion ; or whether to 
 some extent it may not be based on both. Our pre- 
 liminary question and its answer will be found to be 
 very simple. If all the traditional doctrines as to 
 Christ's nature are discarded, is anything left us that 
 we can honestly call Christianity ? With a certain 
 reservation, which will be dwelt on presently, we 
 answer to this, Yes — a great deal is left. Christianity, 
 even according to the most rigid apostles of orthodoxy, 
 is not merely a body of historical or metaphysical 
 propositions. It is a rule of life, a way of looking at 
 life, and a certain inward disposition of which these 
 things are the result. To be just, to be pure, to be 
 forbearing, to be forgiving, to help others and have the 
 longing to help them — these are duties or virtues which 
 commend themselves to a part of our nature, quite 
 distinct from that which assents to or even considers 
 such propositions as that Christ was born of a virgin, 
 that He was begotten before all worlds, or that He 
 withered a fig-tree by His curse. And if this be true 
 of the teaching of Christ, it is equally true of His 
 character as an example of it. His personality, like 
 his precepts, owes its hold upon men to their moral and 
 emotional, not their intellectual nature. Thus the 
 impulse which leads them to take up their cross and 
 deny themselves, to visit the sick, to suffer for the 
 suffering, to cleanse their own hearts from malevolent 
 or degrading passions, and to reverence the teacher
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 99 
 
 who lias been an example of all these excellencies, is 
 an impulse which refuses to extinguish itself merely 
 because science and history have altered our views with 
 regard to that teacher's pedigree ; nor will his heroism 
 in dying for the truth affect us any the less, because 
 we have learnt to believe that, in doing so, he had not 
 the solace of foreseeing himself at once coming to life 
 again. In other words, not as a theological doctrine, 
 but as a psychological fact, a large part of the kingdom 
 of Christ is within Christians — even the most orthodox. 
 It is not in their knowledge ; it is in themselves : 
 and it is only natural to expect that the men of whom 
 this is true will not even contemplate the idea of 
 committing spiritual suicide, because their views of 
 history happen to have undergone a revolution. 
 
 All this might be put in much more touching 
 language ; but for our present purpose it is best to state 
 things drily ; and the admission I have just made is, at 
 all events, abundantly clear. A large part of orthodox 
 and traditional Christianity — and the part most inti- 
 mately connected with practical life and character — has 
 survived and is surviving the discredit of orthodoxy 
 and tradition. The question, however, is not whether 
 this part survives, but whether it survives unchanged ; 
 and to what extent it can honestly appropriate the 
 name of the whole. 
 
 A name in a case like this is a very important 
 matter ; and if it is used in a misleading and illicit way, 
 there is no species of fraud which should be exposed 
 with less tenderness. For what we have here to do 
 with is no question of etymology. Names are of 
 different kinds. Some retain their original and simple
 
 100 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 meaning. Others, by the time they come into general 
 use, have acquired a meaning which, etymologically, is 
 quite accidental, but which, for all practical purposes, 
 belongs to them none the less. The words ' Christian ' 
 and ' Christianity ' are words of this class ; and it 
 would be impossible to find more complete and striking 
 examples of it. A Christian has meant, for eighteen 
 hundred years, a man distinguished, amongst other 
 things, by a belief that Christ is God ; and the accumu- 
 lated associations of all that immense period have 
 made this part of the word's meaning perhaps the 
 most unquestioned and prominent part. It need not 
 for that reason be necessarily the most essential. That 
 is precisely the question — is it so ? Or is it merely 
 prominent accidentally, and not essential at all ? And 
 will the word, with this part of its meaning dropped, 
 be a virtual equivalent to the word with this meaning 
 included ? In old days, when one spoke of an Axminster 
 carpet, a carpet was designated which was of a par- 
 ticular kind, and which, furthermore, was made at the 
 town of Axminster. Such carpets are now made at 
 Axminster no longer, but carpets of the same kind are 
 made elsewhere. They still, however, are called 
 Axminster carpets. Here is a case in which the most 
 prominent meaning of a term is dropped, and in which 
 the essential meaning is still retained. Now, is the case 
 of the words Christian and Christianity the same ? Is it 
 no more essential to a Christian that he should believe 
 Christ to be God, than it is to a carpet of a particular 
 quality of pile, that it should be made at a certain 
 insignificant town in Devonshire ? I propose to point 
 out that it is a great deal more essential ; and that
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 101 
 
 though, if we were all using the word Christian for the 
 first time, we might apply it with equal propriety to 
 any one who revered Christ, we cannot apply it so now 
 without a distinct spiritual fraud. 
 
 My meaning in saying this is, until I have actually 
 explained it, almost certain to be mistaken. In order 
 to make it clear, let me repeat what I have said already. 
 Christianity hitherto has meant a union of two elements, 
 of which one is moral and emotional, the other doctrinal. 
 We may call one the Christianity of the heart, the other 
 the Christianity of the intellect. These two elements, 
 although always separable in thought, have hitherto 
 been regarded as inseparable in reality. What is now 
 being urged on us is that they are as separable in 
 reality as in thought ; that we can get rid of the one 
 and still retain the other; that the one we can still 
 retain is the one which is most important ; and that the 
 name which has hitherto meant the two in combination 
 may therefore, with virtual accuracy, be applied to the 
 one alone. Now what I am desirous of pointing out is 
 this — that while a large part of this argument is abso- 
 lutely and irrefutably true, a large part is absolutely 
 false. Let us get rid of the Christianity of the intellect 
 as completely as we like, and the Christianity of the 
 heart does not share its fate. It remains, but it 
 remains with a difference ; and this difference is not 
 only accidental, but essential. The thing that is left 
 us is not merely one element without the other, but one 
 elemeDt changed by the absence of the other, and 
 changed to such a degree that, though it may be called 
 a religion of the heart, it cannot, except on etymological 
 grounds, be honestly called the Christianity of the heart
 
 102 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 any longer. It is not the Christianity of the heart 
 which Christians have lived by hitherto, and to persist in 
 calling it by the same name is to palm off a new article 
 under an old trade-mark. 
 
 To begin, then, ignoring every other change — the 
 Christianity of the heart, divorced from the Christianity 
 of the intellect, is the Christianity of the heart turned 
 upside down, and resting on a new foundation. 
 Originally the foundation was Christ; in the present 
 case it is ourselves. Originally certain things were 
 revered because Christ enjoined them. In the present 
 case Christ is revered because He enjoined certain 
 things. We approve of the injunctions, and therefore 
 we approve of Christ. In other words, our own moral 
 or our own spiritual judgment is the ultimate sanction 
 of our religion. On this point let us make ourselves 
 perfectly clear. There were good men in the world 
 before Christ, and there have been good men since, who 
 have known neither His teaching or example ; and their 
 goodness, in many respects, has coincided with His. 
 But if the goodness of Christ, He being merely a man, 
 differed in nothing except degree from the goodness of 
 Paganism, and if the idea of goodness had been always 
 for serious men the same, He is merely one saint 
 amongst many in the great calendar of humanity ; and 
 to follow His example is not to obey Him, but to imitate 
 His obedience to some monitor common to Him and all 
 of us. A Christian in that case is merely a fanciful 
 name for a good man. As a matter of fact, however, 
 Christians have always claimed for Christ that there 
 was in His goodness something distinctive in kind as 
 well as in degree ; that He was peculiar not only in
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 103 
 
 being a perfect example of a type, but in being an 
 example of a peculiar type ; so that any honest imitation 
 of Christ, however incomplete, is better than the com- 
 plete imitation of Marcus Aurelius or of Mahomet. 
 Christians, I say, have always claimed this for Christ ; 
 and all persons who value the name of Christians make 
 precisely the same claim for Him now. Those who think 
 Him to be merely man, and those who think Him to be 
 God as well, agree that He represents, as man, the 
 perfect type of character. In other words, they have 
 one dogma in common which, when their differences 
 are eliminated, is seen to amount to this : that one 
 special type of character is the absolute and perfect 
 type. Mrs. Ward maintains this with as much unction 
 as Cardinal Newman. 
 
 But let us go on to ask on what grounds they 
 maintain this, and the fundamental difference between 
 their two positions will appear. The Cardinal will 
 answer that he knows the type to be perfect, because it 
 was the type revealed by God in taking man's flesh 
 upon him. Mrs. Ward can only account for her corre- 
 sponding certitude by saying that it is the type which 
 commends itself to her own judgment. She may, of 
 course, add that it commends itself to the judgment of 
 those she respects ; but this in the long run comes to 
 the same thing. The final authority of her glorifica- 
 tion of this special type lies in the spiritual aesthetics of 
 her own mind. Nor would the case be really altered, 
 supposing that she and her friends could pool their pre- 
 dilections and give them a cumulative value. There 
 would still be merely the predilections of a certain set 
 of persons, who could only enforce their views by
 
 104 AMATEUE CHKISTIANITY 
 
 shouting, 'The views are ours.' Miracles do not 
 happen; that is the motto of this peculiar people. 
 Their fundamental principle denudes them of every 
 possible claim to knowledge or insight not possessed 
 by others. They can only tell the world that tastes 
 happen to vary — tastes in goodness as well as taste in 
 dress; and that the garment of goodness, made after 
 Christ's pattern, happens to be the garment most 
 pleasing to themselves, while their only means of 
 inducing others to wear it, is that of exhibiting it, as it 
 were, in their shop-windows, as General Booth might 
 exhibit a Salvation Army jersey. 
 
 If they boldly and frankly took up this position 
 many might admire, and certainly no one could quarrel) 
 with it ; only it would be a position which, until the 
 meaning of the name is revolutionised, could not with 
 any honesty be called by the name of Christian. For 
 to call it by that name, considering what the name 
 means at present, instead of describing it belies it and 
 literally inverts it. A Christian at present means a 
 man with whom Christ is the supreme authority — a man 
 who can clench an argument by quoting Christ's words. 
 It is impossible to deny this — it is impossible to get 
 over this. The very sound of the word Christ, as used 
 by Christians, at present echoes with associations of 
 authority of this kind. But it is precisely this authority 
 that Mrs. Ward, and those who agree with her, deny. 
 Their denial of it — a denial at once deliberate and pas- 
 sionate — is the one thing by which they distinguish 
 themselves from the orthodox. They are curiously 
 blind, however, to half of what their denial means. The 
 Christians praised a certain type of character because
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 105 
 
 Christ embodied it. Mrs. Ward praises Christ because 
 He embodied a certain type of character. The ultimate 
 ground, the ultimate justification of her praise, is her 
 admiration of this type, not a belief in Christ. Christ's 
 existence, logically, is for her as much a moral super- 
 fluity as the existence of a philanthropist like Lord 
 Shaftesbury. Lord Shaftesbury did a number of bene- 
 volent things ; but Mrs. Ward does not admire benevo- 
 lence because it was a characteristic of Lord Shaftesbury. 
 She would admire Lord Shaftesbury because he was an 
 example of benevolence ; and if she discovered to-morrow 
 that the career of Lord Shaftesbury was a myth, her 
 admiration of benevolence would still remain unchanged. 
 I may, perhaps, be allowed, without being accused of 
 flippancy, to mention an incident which occurred during 
 my own boyhood. When I was at a private tutor's, I 
 and some of the other pupils were discussing the right 
 pronunciation of the name of an American humorist. 
 We were discussing whether he should be spoken of as 
 Artemus, or Artemus, Ward. One of the pupils who 
 posed as a man of the world, and who had a brother who 
 very possibly was one, supported his own view by saying, 
 with an air of triumph, ' I can tell you that my brother 
 always calls him Artemus.' But presently, in order to 
 add to his own authority still further, he proceeded to 
 make the injudicious assertion, ' My brother calls him 
 Artemus because I do.' ' In that case,' said our tutor, 
 who happened to be a listener, ' two authorities are re- 
 duced to one.' Mrs. Ward is in precisely the same case. 
 ' I must be right,' she argues, ' because I agree with 
 Christ ; and I know that Christ is right, because He 
 agrees with me.' In asking her, then, for the founda-
 
 106 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tions of what she calls her Christianity, we shall find 
 that inevitably in the end she must place them in her 
 own personal predilections. Christ is not the authority 
 for her religion, but merely an example by which she 
 explains it. 
 
 And here let me pause to remove a misconception 
 which is certain to suggest itself. ' What,' some excel- 
 lent person will exclaim, ' if we are driven to believe 
 that Christ was merely a good man, is goodness for that 
 reason made a mere matter of taste ? Is Mrs. Ward's 
 preference of mercy to cruelty, of justice to injustice, of 
 truth to fraud and falsehood, a preference she can put 
 forward only as a personal predilection of her own? 
 Have these virtues no defence in the common reason 
 of man ? Have they no root in the structure of all 
 society ? Cannot science afford us the amplest justi- 
 fication of all of them ? ' The answer is, that if science 
 can, then there is no reason to have recourse to the 
 Gospels. Why need we go back to the fragmentary 
 assertions of Christ, when all that he meant and more 
 can be found demonstrated by Bentham ? If Christ 
 said only what modern science can prove, then modern 
 science says it much better than He did — with greater 
 weight and with far greater completeness ; and to quote 
 His words, except for the sake of literary emphasis, 
 would be like Professor Huxley appealing to the 
 authority of Lucretius. As a matter of fact, however, 
 the case does not stand thus. Christ's goodness, at 
 least in the conception of persons like Mrs. Humphry 
 Ward, has in it something distinct from the goodness of 
 utilitarian science : or it is, at all events, one particular 
 type of goodness, out of the many types for which utili-
 
 AMATEUE CHRISTIANITY 107 
 
 tarian science can offer a logical basis ; and the whole 
 gospel which Mrs. Ward preaches may be summed up 
 in the proposition, not that goodness is better than bad- 
 ness, virtue better than villainy, but that one special 
 modification of goodness is better than any other, though 
 science leaves them all on exactly the same level. And 
 this proposition, unless miracles do happen, and unless 
 Christ is God, can be propounded and defended only as 
 expressing the personal predilection or judgment of such 
 persons as propound it. 
 
 If even yet this should appear doubtful, a further 
 set of considerations, which are immediately forced upon 
 us, will be sufficient to prove its truth. Let us suppose 
 for a moment, for the mere sake of argument, that Mrs. 
 Ward's preference for the Christian type of goodness 
 can be shown to rest upon something beyond her 
 own taste and judgment. The question still remains, 
 what that Christian type is. Christ's own character, 
 regarded as merely human, has been conceived of 
 differently by nearly every critic that has dealt with it ; 
 whilst even those who have had tradition and orthodoxy 
 to help them, have shown us plainly enough, by the 
 variety of their attempts to imitate it, how grotesquely 
 divergent have been their conceptions of what it was. 
 An imitation, in each case we may presume equally 
 honest, produces a St. Simeon Stylites on the one hand, 
 and a Rev. Charles Kingsley on the other; and in- 
 directly it shows itself in such singularly antagonistic 
 ways, as a carnival in the streets of Nice, and a Sabbath 
 in the streets of Paisley. Differences of this kind date 
 from the earliest Christian ages ; and there was not a 
 Gnostic, there was not a Manichasan, who had not,
 
 108 AMATEUE CHRISTIANITY 
 
 according to Mrs. Ward's principles, as good a right to 
 his own idea of Christ's character as the most orthodox 
 of the fathers, as St. Paul or as Robert Elsmere himself. 
 
 The so-called Christianity of such persons as Mrs. 
 Ward is thus doubly an assertion, not of Christ, but of 
 themselves : firstly, because their exaltation of Christ as 
 a teacher is due solely to the fact of His embodying the 
 teaching that they prefer; and secondly, because the 
 Christ who embodies it is solely Christ as He exists in 
 their own special conception of Him. 
 
 But let us waive for the present this last point 
 altogether. By-and-by we shall have to come back to 
 it; but it is used here as an illustration, not as an 
 argument. The point which thus far I have been con- 
 cerned to insist on is, that, even supposing no difference 
 of opinion as to Christ's character possible, supposiug 
 every one conceived of His goodness in precisely the 
 same way, yet for those who regard Him as nothing 
 more than a man, the selection of His special type of 
 goodness is a mere act of personal choice, only to be 
 explained by saying, what might doubtless be said with 
 truth, that this goodness appeals in some special way 
 to their hearts. 
 
 This brings us, however, but halfway on our 
 journey. Much of Christ's teaching is of this precise 
 kind which appeals to all hearts, even if it does not 
 conquer them ; whilst those whom it does conquer, it 
 conquers in this way — it reveals to them, it touches 
 into activity, their own latent sympathies. It does not 
 affect and control them as a voice outside themselves, 
 but as a voice that has roused from sleep some authori- 
 tative voice within. Although, therefore, if Christ
 
 AMATEUE CHEISTIANITY 109 
 
 is no longer regarded as God, His voice loses its 
 authority over those who are not constitutionally in 
 sympathy with Him, it need not, so far as their feelings 
 are concerned, lose its stimulating power over those 
 who constitutionally are. 
 
 But persons like Mrs. Ward, who, denying Christ's 
 Divine nature, are still anxious to be prophets of His 
 moral doctrine, are all of them invariably guilty of an 
 astonishing oversight. Because part of Christ's moral 
 doctrine appeals, as I have said, to the heart, they 
 forget that there is another part, perhaps even more 
 distinctive, and clung to by them with a yet more 
 dogged tenacity, which, if it appeals to the heart at all, 
 does so solely in virtue of some intellectual judgment. 
 The teaching of any man from whom we consent to 
 learn may be, and generally is, of two kinds : one con- 
 sisting of things which are pointed out to us, the other 
 of things which are asserted. And our assent to the two 
 rests on wholly different foundations. Let us take, for in- 
 stance, the case of some piece of antique plate, the value 
 of which would depend partly on its hall-mark, partly on 
 the fact of its having been the property of some historic 
 personage. The owner, who desires to sell it, points us 
 out the hall-mark, hidden in a place where we ourselves 
 should never have looked for it ; and he tells us that he 
 purchased the object at a certain royal sale, and had 
 formerly seen it himself displayed on a royal table. 
 Now as to the hall-mark, though we might never have 
 found it out for ourselves, and though we required to 
 be assisted by some person of superior knowledge, yet 
 the moment it is pointed out to us, our belief in its 
 existence has nothing to do with our confidence in the
 
 110 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 knowledge of this person. It rests entirely on the 
 evidence of our own eyes. We become ourselves an 
 independent and sufficient authority for its existence. 
 But our belief in the value of the object as an historical 
 relic is a belief that can only be ours at second hand, 
 and stands or falls with our belief in the veracity 
 and knowledge of our informant. It depends, in fact, 
 on our assent to certain biographical propositions con- 
 cerning him. If it could be proved that he had never 
 been at the royal table referred to, nor even ever been 
 in the country in which the alleged sale took place, we 
 might still value the object on account of its age or 
 beauty; but its added historical value would dissolve 
 and become nothing. 
 
 The same is the case with the ethical teachings of 
 Christ. Some of them as soon as uttered are at once 
 assented to by all men, or by all men of a certain tem- 
 perament, on their own merits. But others depend for 
 their authority, not on any grounds which we can our- 
 selves perceive, but on facts alleged by Christ, to which 
 we give credit only on the supposition that Christ had 
 peculiar means of ascertaining them. Let us take, for 
 instance, the doctrines which He laid down as to mar- 
 riage. Multitudes who, on mere human grounds, 
 would think divorce desirable, sacrifice this opinion to 
 certain mystical statements, which have not only no 
 force, but have hardly any meaning, except as coming 
 from a teacher possessed of supernatural knowledge. 
 It will be enough to take the shortest and the most 
 important of them. ' From the beginning it was not 
 so.' Now if Christ was God, of course these words are 
 authoritative, and in some sense or other we may be
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 111 
 
 sure that they are absolutely true. But if He was not 
 God, they have no authority whatsoever. How should 
 they have ? If miracles do not happen, and if Christ 
 was merely a man, He knew no more about ' the begin- 
 ning ' than any one of His hearers, and not so much as 
 the author of ' Primitive Marriage.' Here, then, is a 
 most important, central, and distinctive part, not of the 
 doctrine of Christianity, but of its practical ethics, 
 which obviously, if the doctrine goes, loses its sole 
 foundation. A person who, having convinced himself 
 that Christ is not God, still continues to cite Him as an 
 authority on ' what was in the beginning,' is like a 
 person who should quote Mr. Stanley as an authority 
 on the interior of Africa, supposing it to be proved that 
 the explorer had never been out of Clapham. And this 
 argument will be found to go much deeper, and to have 
 an application not only to certain precepts as to con- 
 duct, but to that whole inner attitude which, owing to 
 Christ's statements, the Christian soul assumes in the 
 presence of God the Father. If miracles do not hap- 
 pen, and if Christ had not been with God from the be- 
 ginning, what authority had He for describing to us the 
 Father's character? And why should we order our 
 souls in accordance with what He told us ? 
 
 I need not pursue this point. What I have said 
 already is enough for my present purpose, which thus 
 far is simply this. It is not to prove that such persons 
 as Mrs. Ward, Mr. Stead, and the editor of 'The 
 Spectator ' are not right in preferring any religion they 
 like, or that they do not believe what they profess to 
 believe with complete and even passionate honesty; 
 but merely that these beliefs cannot, on their own
 
 112 AMATEUE CHKISTIANITY 
 
 admission, be held by them on Christ's authority, or 
 on any authority but their own ; that in fact the first 
 result to which their whole position leads is the definite 
 substitution of their own authority for His. 
 
 And now we come to the practical part of our 
 inquiry. What is the result of this result ? We must 
 remember, when we ask the question, that our real 
 interest in the matter is not so much in Mrs. Ward 
 and her friends themselves as in the probable influence 
 of their views on others, now and in the future. But 
 in order to forecast what the influence of these views 
 will be, it is necessary to consider the position of those 
 who at present preach them. 
 
 Mrs. Ward and her friends then, if stript of a tattered 
 livery of phrases, of which they could be denuded by a 
 child, so completely have they renounced all right to 
 them, are seen to be nothing more than a set of lay 
 sectaries, bound together merely by an accidental 
 coincidence of opinions, and forming a special party 
 in the world of religion and morals, just as the League 
 of the White Rose 1 does in the world of politics. Such 
 being the case, what I desire to point out is this : that 
 this religion of theirs, however much we may respect it 
 in themselves, has in it nothing permanent. Not only 
 is it not calculated to make proselytes in the present, 
 but it has no self-preservative principle which can keep 
 its doctrines from decomposition, or at all events from 
 indefinite change. It has nothing in it with which to 
 conquer the consciences of those who are not in sym- 
 pathy with it, or to coerce the consciences of those who 
 
 1 The League of the White Eose is, I believe, an association, the 
 object of which is the restoration of the House of Stuart.
 
 AMATEUE CHKISTIANITY 113 
 
 are. It is, to return to a simile I have used already, 
 nothing more than a fashion in spiritual dress. Its 
 votaries may at present follow it with the same ardour 
 as that with which women adopt the fashionable 
 millinery of the moment ; but like any fashion in 
 millinery, it is certain not to endure. In other words, 
 Christianity with a non-miraculous Christ, is merely a 
 form of opinion, of feeling, or of prejudice, which is no 
 doubt honest even to the degree of fanaticism, but which 
 is due entirely to peculiar and transitory circumstances ; 
 which has no abiding foundation in science, logic, or 
 history; and which, though retaining at present the 
 semblance of many Christian features, retains them only 
 like shapes taken by a cloud, and doomed to be lost or 
 metamorphosed in the inevitable restlessness of the air. 
 
 This assertion is no mere rhetorical prophecy. We 
 have only to apply to Christianity as a whole the same 
 methods which Mrs. Ward applies to a part, and just 
 as Mrs. Ward sees that ' miracles do not happen,' we 
 shall see that Mrs. Ward's Christianity cannot be per- 
 manent. Mrs. Ward is never weary of insisting on 
 the value of evidence ; and if evidence teaches us any- 
 thing it teaches us this. It writes it for us across 
 eighteen hundred years of history, in letters as large 
 and staring as those of a big advertisement. 
 
 Mrs. Ward and her friends have blinded themselves 
 to their real position by one of the most curious 
 delusions possible to imagine — a delusion which implies 
 the denial of every intellectual principle, of which they 
 boast themselves to be the special exponents. Whilst 
 pulling to pieces the doctrinal structure of Christianity, 
 and exhibiting it as an historical and purely human 
 
 I
 
 114 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 growth, tliey entirely forget to study in the same way 
 its moral side, the historical growth of which is far 
 more evident. These simple sons and daughters of 
 modern Protestant England, with all their complicated 
 inheritance of pieties, prejudices, and pruderies, imagine 
 that they have only to get rid of a belief in miracles, 
 and the spiritual residuum left is the religion of the 
 first disciples. Nothing, they think, is wanting to place 
 them on a level with the evangelists except to deny the 
 statements on which the evangelists most insisted. 
 But as a matter of fact — an obvious matter of fact — 
 their emotions and morals, their whole inner spiritual 
 character, differ from that of the Christians who knew 
 Christ, as much as a Little Bethel in an English country 
 town differs from the Temple at Jerusalem, or from ' the 
 upper room furnished.' 
 
 I have no wish to say anything of Mrs. Ward per- 
 sonally, but the school she belongs to, and with which 
 she is in spiritual sympathy, is a school which is distinctly 
 the outcome of English middle-class Nonconformity ; 
 and the peculiar character of its moral ideas and pre- 
 cepts are due as much to national and social conditions, 
 and the history of this country during the past four 
 hundred years, as they are to the words of Christ 
 recorded in the four Gospels. This may be easily seen 
 by comparing them with other contemporary Christians. 
 Different churches, different classes, different races or 
 countries, exhibit moralities of different and orten in- 
 harmonious types. Compare a nun rejoicing in the 
 appearance of the stigmata with a dissenting minister's 
 wife rejoicing in five fat children. Compare the 
 Scotchman who solemnises Sunday by not whistling as
 
 AMATEUE CHEISTIANITY 115 
 
 he gets drunk, with the Frenchman who celebrates it by 
 a happy evening at the opera. Compare the different 
 values accorded in different countries to the same 
 virtues, and the different amount of charity accorded to 
 the same sins. 
 
 For the distinctive character of any moral teaching 
 does not depend merely on its comprising certain pre- 
 cepts, any more than the distinctive expression of a face 
 depends on its comprising certain features. The expres- 
 sion of a face depends, not on the presence of the 
 features, but on their proportion and minute pecu- 
 liarities of shape. In the same way a body of moral 
 doctrines depends for its character, not on the precepts 
 it comprises, but on the relative emphasis it gives to 
 them, on the shade of feeling with which each is 
 enunciated, and on the interpretation put on each, as 
 applied to social circumstances. 
 
 Now the circumstances of our modern middle-class 
 Nonconformists in England are three-fourths of them 
 entirely different from those of a Galilean fisherman ; 
 and three-fourths of the moral judgments which seem 
 to them most important are judgments passed on matters 
 to which Christ either never alluded, or alluded to only 
 in language which they cannot accept literally, and on 
 which they are obliged to put some special interpre- 
 tations of their own. Take, for instance, Christ's 
 utterances about riches. Our Nod conformists, though 
 few of them may have belonged to our richest class, yet 
 have made the pursuit of riches the chief business of 
 their lives. Their ideals have been the ideals of men 
 who keep at least one maid-servant, who value them- 
 selves on the gentility of their parlours and their 
 
 i2
 
 116 AMATEUK CHRISTIANITY 
 
 mahogany chairs, and who consider a black coat as 
 important as a white conscience. Voluntary poverty 
 has never been one of their virtues, and involuntary 
 poverty has had for them a strong savour of sin. They 
 have, in fact, only existed as a class by pursuing and 
 gaining riches so far as their powers allowed, and their 
 ideal of righteousness has been painted on the sacred 
 background of a competence. The whole turn of mind, 
 the whole point of view implied in this, is in complete 
 contradiction to the letter of Christ's teaching ; and the 
 means by which they conceive themselves to have re- 
 conciled it to the spirit are means which never, suppos- 
 ing Christ to be merely a man, could so much as have 
 come within the scope of His mental vision. I allude 
 to the views entertained by them with regard to all 
 pleasures and perfections which they think to be merely 
 human — to their contempt of intellectual culture, their 
 distrust of philosophy, their horror of gaiety and amuse- 
 ment, their suspicion of art and science, and their 
 condemnation generally of the aesthetic decoration of 
 life. The means, in fact, by which they have sought 
 to Christianise the pursuit of riches, have been the 
 restrictions which they have placed on the enjoyment 
 of them ; and these are restrictions entirely peculiar to 
 themselves. By other Christians they are repudiated 
 and even ridiculed ; and they would be impossible to 
 people with a different education, with a different social 
 status, with a different ancestry, and, we may even add, 
 ■with a different climate. 
 
 This is not true, however, of our Nonconformists 
 only. The same thing may be said of the morals of the 
 Christians differing from them. These, too, are what
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 117 
 
 they are, owing to similar causes. And if this is evident 
 from a comparison of merely contemporary types, it 
 becomes plainer still if we look back over the past and 
 observe how the types have changed from age to age, 
 Christ in each age having seemed a somewhat different 
 person, and, in many ages, several different people. 
 
 In a certain sense this would be denied by nobody. 
 Most Christians, for instance, think now that Christ 
 condemned slavery. His first followers never realised 
 this. Most Christians now think that He condemned 
 persecution ; and yet, up to a comparatively recent time, 
 Catholic and Protestant alike — 
 
 Have burnt each other, quite persuaded 
 That all the Apostles would have done as they did. 
 
 Many Christians now think that Christ condemned war ; 
 yet Christians of all denominations, from Philip of Spain 
 to Cromwell, have thought they were serving Christ in 
 cutting the throats of Christians who disagreed with 
 them. Again, though Christ, by His doctrines as to 
 divorce, has impressed a certain fixity on the Christian 
 view of marriage, the ideal of married affection in the 
 modern Christian world possesses a refinement which 
 would hardly have been understood by Augustine. 
 Chivalry was at once the cause and the indication of a 
 new conception of man's duties to woman ; and the 
 Church of Eome is at this very moment professing itself 
 open to some new conception of the duties of wealth 
 towards labour. 
 
 Now persons who believe in the miraculous nature 
 of Christ, and who, unlike Mrs. Ward, believe that 
 miracles do happen, regard all these changes as superin-
 
 118 AMATEUK CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tended by Christ Himself, and as merely representing a 
 fuller understanding of His character. Catholics and 
 Protestants alike assert this ; and though the Catholics 
 alone can do so with strict logical force, any one who 
 starts with the assumption that Christ is actually God, 
 can maintain the position with considerable show of 
 reason. The fact remains, however, that the morals of 
 the Christian world have, in the admission of even the 
 most orthodox Christians, changed since the days of 
 Christ's original disciples. According to their view it 
 is a change which consists in development only ; but, 
 none the less, it is a change. It implies the addition to 
 Christ's recorded teaching of a variety of new judgments 
 — some on questions which in His time did not exist, 
 others on questions which He never touched upon ; and 
 also the adaptation of many of His precepts to changed 
 social conditions. 
 
 This, as I say, according to the view of the ortho- 
 dox, is merely the realisation of what was meant from 
 the very first by a teacher who knew the future as well 
 as He knew the present, and was as familiar with the 
 problems presented by a modern London or Paris as 
 He was with those presented by a carpenter's shop in 
 Nazareth. But with persons like Mrs. Ward, who 
 believe that miracles do not happen, the development 
 of Christian morals, and their adaptation to changing 
 circumstances, must wear, of necessity, an entirely 
 different aspect. For them it is altogether the work, 
 not of Christ, but of man. According to them, no 
 man is ever more than a man. The knowledge and the 
 opinions of all of us are received through similar channels 
 — are limited by our education, are bounded by our
 
 AMATEUK CHEISTIANITY 119 
 
 social horizon, are coloured by the influences of time, 
 and place, and race ; and whatever truths we may feel 
 ourselves called on to assert are conditioned by the 
 contemporary falsehoods to which we endeavour to 
 oppose them. As to the future, though some men have 
 made shrewd conjectures, as Bacon did in forecasting 
 the triumphs of physical science, the shrewdest of these 
 are partial and full of inaccuracies ; and the idea of any- 
 thing like comprehensive second sight is, according to 
 Mrs. Ward's principles, too idle and preposterous to 
 deserve a moment's consideration. Christ, therefore, far 
 from foreseeing the world as it is in the nineteenth 
 century, could not foresee its history even to the end 
 of the first. Being merely a man like other men, His 
 views and His vision were limited. His knowledge was 
 slight, His natural prejudices strong, His conception of 
 life was bounded by His own narrow experience of it ; 
 and He was no more conscious of addressing other ages 
 and civilisations than He was able, if Mrs. Ward's 
 principles are true, to see the glories of Rome from the 
 top of a hill in Syria. 
 
 Everything therefore that, since the days of Christ, 
 has been added to His literal teaching, in order to meet 
 new circumstances, or modified in it in order to make 
 it practicable, has been added and modified wholly and 
 solely by man. Christ has had no more to do with it than 
 Bacon has to do with the lectures of Professor Tyndall. 
 
 Indeed, the analogy of physical science will be here 
 of great assistance to us. Each generation of scientific 
 men has always been eager to admit its debt to the 
 generations that preceded it ; but although it makes 
 use of their discoveries, it has never been bound by
 
 120 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 their opinions. It appropriates what it can itself 
 verify ; what it cannot verify it discards ; and the 
 greatest genius of fifty years ago might have all his 
 theories upset by some accidental discovery of the very 
 man whom he placed in a position to make it. If 
 Christ be merely a man, His position in the world of 
 morals is exactly similar to that of a genius of this kind. 
 Christ committed His teachings to the care of succeeding 
 ages, but each age has had to adapt them to its own 
 needs ; and although theologic belief has disguised 
 from it what it was doing, it has been creating the 
 moral doctrines which it conceived itself to be merely 
 interpreting. In physical science there is progress, 
 but no authority ; or rather, there is no authority 
 except nature. So in morals there is change, progress, 
 or, at all events, adaptation, but there is no authority 
 except human nature. Christ may have assisted men 
 to consult the one, just as Bacon may have assisted 
 them to consult the other ; but it is as absurd for Mrs. 
 Ward to call her religion Christian, as it would be for 
 Professor Tyndall to call his science Baconian. 
 
 The belief that Christ was God, and that all His 
 teachings were final, has, of course, given to the subse- 
 quent morals of Christendom a degree of fixity which 
 they would not have possessed otherwise ; but even in 
 spite of this they have been continually changing : so 
 much so, indeed, that were Christ merely a man, He 
 would necessarily have been horrified at half of St. 
 Paul's Epistles, and been utterly unable to understand 
 the ' Summa ' of St. Thomas Aquinas. Still, many of 
 those changes and amplifications, no matter how great, 
 have been made on lines which Christ's teaching
 
 AMATEUK CHRISTIANITY 121 
 
 suggested ; but the Christian world has not stopped at 
 these. In spite of every belief, and every theory which 
 might have restrained it, it has felt itself impelled, 
 with the advance of knowledge and civilisation, to take 
 into its life sympathies, thoughts, and interests as to 
 which Christ suggested nothing, unless, as was believed 
 for centuries, He suggested condemnation of them. 
 That great movement which goes by the name of the 
 Renaissance was the return of human nature to a lost 
 part of itself, or the welcoming back to itself of a part 
 that had been long banished. For centuries men had 
 aimed at the purification of the mind merely ; now they 
 aimed at its cultivation. For centuries they had reasoned 
 on data supposed to be miraculously given to them ; 
 now they endeavoured to find out facts for themselves. 
 That part of themselves which for centuries they had 
 despised and suppressed, they began to educate and 
 adorn. The beauty of the human form, the glories 
 of light and colour, which were regarded by Augustine 
 as so many temptations of the devil, changed their 
 aspect, and seemed part of man's noblest heritage. 
 The mediaeval sense of the beauty of holiness was 
 supplemented by a sense of the nobility and holiness 
 of beauty; and, along with this — or rather as the 
 subjective side of this — reappeared a sense that had 
 slept or been in hiding for centuries — a sense of the 
 beauty, we might almost say, the duty, of pleasure. 
 
 It is true that this movement produced a great 
 reaction. Protestantism was as much a protest against 
 beauty and pleasure, as against popery ; and it was a 
 protest which, no doubt, had a good deal to justify it. 
 But it differed from the mediaeval asceticism protested
 
 122 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 against by the Renaissance, although in a certain sense 
 that asceticism was its parent. Mediasval asceticism 
 was a protest against the vileness of the flesh. Protes- 
 tantism was a protest against its charm. The monkish 
 ascetic looked upwards, fixing his eyes on God. The 
 Protestant ascetic looked downwards, making grimaces 
 at man. Protestantism, moreover, in its asceticism, 
 just as in its theology, took a great number of forms, 
 protesting against pleasure and beauty in various tones, 
 and with various degrees of moderation. Thus, ever 
 since the revival of art, letters, and philosophy, the 
 moral ideals of Christendom have increased in number 
 and diversity, each affected by race, class, and education, 
 and accurately expressing the origin and character of its 
 peculiarities by the dress, manners, or dialect prevalent 
 amongst those who cherished it. 
 
 Of all these ideals, various and incongruous as they 
 are, what calls itself at present non-theological Chris- 
 tianity is the survival of the narrowest. It is a survival 
 of a type which was developed in this countiy, and in a 
 particular class, under the combined pressure of social 
 and political circumstances ; and which was carried 
 from this country to a certain part of America. And, 
 though during the past three centuries it has kept its 
 principal features unchanged, it is an ideal which makes 
 no appeal to the larger part of Christendom, and is 
 wholly unsuitable to advancing material civilisation. 
 But the point which here I am now concerned to insist 
 on is, that whether this ideal be pleasing or displeasing 
 to most people, it has only preserved its character, even 
 amongst those who cherish it, owing to conditions which 
 its prophets are now sweeping away.
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 123 
 
 It preserved its character owing to a fixed belief 
 that Christ was God, and that every word of the 
 Gospels was absolutely and literally true. It was sup- 
 posed to be formed in strict accordance with the example 
 of God the Son ; and whatever anachronisms may be 
 involved in representing a modern dissenter as repro- 
 ducing the religion of Christ's original disciples, the 
 original dissenters founded their unanimous anachro- 
 nisms on a foundation that for them was absolutely sure 
 and unalterable. But let us once apply to the Gospels 
 the formula of Mrs. Humphry Ward — miracles do not 
 happen, and what becomes of this Nonconformist 
 Imitatio Ghristi then ? 
 
 To this question there are two answers, both equally 
 fatal to Mrs. Ward's position. One is that, if miracles 
 do not happen, either Christ's character was intellectually 
 and morally imperfect, because He claimed that His 
 nature was miraculous, and pretended to work miracles ; 
 or else that the records we have of Him are so vitiated 
 by the credulity of the writers, that it is quite impossible 
 to say what His character was. The other is that, even 
 were His character undoubted, even were it the exact 
 character most admired by our modern dissenters, there 
 is little reason to regard it as fit for general imitation, 
 and less reason to suppose that it will continue to be 
 generally imitated. 
 
 The first of these answers has been so often given 
 that I will only touch on it very briefly here ; but there 
 are a few observations which I am constrained to make 
 in passing. It is a favourite argument with Christians 
 that Christ must be God, because, if He were not, He 
 was either an impostor or a semi-lunatic. No argument,
 
 124 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 however, could really be less forcible, considering the 
 position of those against whom it is now directed ; for 
 what is asserted by persons like Mrs. Ward and her 
 teachers is not only that Christ was not God, but that 
 He never claimed to be so. He was not an impostor, 
 but His disciples imposed on themselves. The story 
 of His miraculous nature, and consequently of His 
 miraculous actions, was not a lie — it was a myth. But 
 none the less, if we accept this view of the matter, is 
 the traditional conception of Christ's moral character 
 changed. He does not appear before us as a bad man, 
 but He does appear as a different man. Even were 
 there nothing more to be said than this, He appears as 
 a man about whom we know much less than we thought 
 we did, for the simple reason that half the anecdotes 
 told of Him have, since they turn on miracles, to be set 
 aside as imaginary. But there remains to be added 
 something far more important. These anecdotes that 
 would have to be thus discarded not only contain the 
 most distinctive, impressive, and touching manifestations 
 of Christ's moral character, but the moral characteristics 
 manifested depend for their whole value on our belief 
 in the miracles associated with them. Let us take, for 
 instance, the story of the Last Supper and the Passion. 
 No story has ever been more moving than this, as 
 received and interpreted by the theology of the Chris- 
 tian world; but take away from it the theological 
 element, and everything in it that was specially moving 
 evaporates. Christ's love and Christ's sorrow have 
 moved the world more than the love and sorrows of 
 other men because, whilst agitating and troubling a 
 human heart, they were supposed to have been super-
 
 AMATEUE CHEISTIANITY 125 
 
 human in their intensity. They were supposed to have 
 been intensified by a unique and miraculous knowledge, 
 which not only made him foresee His own agony, the 
 treachery of Judas, and the denial of Peter, but also 
 laid upon Him the sins of the whole world. If, however, 
 He were merely a man, what becomes of all this ? The 
 sorrow dwindles down to very ordinary proportions ; 
 the character of His death, and the way of meeting it, 
 change ; and, indeed, of the whole story what remains ? 
 Not only its general significance, but its most moving 
 details, go. Christ had no clairvoyance into the coming 
 treachery of Judas; and He either never predicted 
 Peter's denial at all, or, if He did, the prediction was 
 merely a shrewd or cynical guess. In short, if we 
 criticise the records of Christ's life on the assumption 
 that every miracle narrated or implied is mythical, we 
 not only, in point of matter, have very little left, but 
 what is left altogether changes its aspect ; and, apart 
 from the question of whether Christ ought to be 
 imitated, it is difficult to decide as to what there is to 
 imitate. 
 
 Let us, however, waive this point entirely. Let us 
 suppose that Christ, divested of His miraculous attributes, 
 stands before us as a character perfectly unmistakable ; 
 let us suppose that the evangelists enable us to see Him 
 as clearly as Boswell and Sir Joshua Reynolds enable 
 us to see Dr. Johnson ; and let us suppose also that, of 
 the Christ thus seen, a modern dissenting minister, 
 minus his creed, a clergyman like Robert Elsmere, 
 minus his creed and orders, and a journalist like Mr. 
 Stead, throwing the first stone at Mr. Parnell, are the 
 most complete imitations. What, in that case, would
 
 126 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 be the utmost these gentlemen could say of themselves ? 
 Simply that they were imitations of a certain half- 
 educated moralist who lived in Syria, under the Eoman 
 empire; that they had, as the completion and per- 
 fection of their imitation would imply, divested them- 
 selves of all knowledge and sympathies not possessed 
 by him, and ignored every feature of life of which he 
 happened to be ignorant ; in fact, that they appeared 
 before the world of the nineteenth century as an absolute 
 reproduction of a Jewish peasant of the first. If any 
 one is honest enough to tell the world this, the world's 
 general answer will be, ' So much the worse for you. 
 The conditions of life have changed since the first cen- 
 tury, and unless you have added to the ideas of your 
 teacher, or modified them, the presumption is that they 
 are either unsuitable or insufficient ; whilst, if you have 
 added or modified anything, the additions and modifi- 
 cations are your own, and we listen to what you say as 
 coming not from Christ but from you. If your teaching 
 is Christ's teaching unchanged, the presumption is that 
 it is an anachronism. If it is Christ's teaching changed 
 by you, others will either reject it or change it to suit 
 themselves.' 
 
 I am not denying — no one can or need wish to deny 
 — that persons like Mrs. Ward or Mr. Stead find that 
 what they regard as non-theological Christianity meets 
 with sympathy and acceptance amongst large numbers 
 of people. Indeed, it is only because such is the case 
 that their position is worth discussing. The ideals and 
 morals of Evangelicalism and Nonconformity are still 
 deeply rooted in certain classes of what Mr. Stead 
 describes as ' English-speaking folk,' who, accepting
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 127 
 
 the conclusions of modern criticism, have, like Mrs. 
 Ward, rejected all belief in the miraculous ; and to such 
 classes Mrs. Ward and Mr. Stead appeal, and find in 
 them an echo of their own precise sentiments. My 
 aim, as I say, is not to deny this fact, but merely to 
 exhibit its true character and significance. The classes 
 I speak of, and their prophets, are welcome to these 
 moral ideals, just as they are welcome to their ideals of 
 art, of etiquette, or politics. All I desire to point out 
 is that, however tenaciously they may themselves cling 
 to them, they have left themselves no ground on which 
 to recommend them to others — not to their own 
 children, should their children fail to be pleased with 
 them. Even should Mrs. Ward convince us that her 
 ideal is the ideal of Christ, she gains nothing by doing 
 so. She weakens her case rather than strengthens it. 
 But, as a matter of fact, we need hardly consider this, 
 for no one who applies to history Mrs. Ward's own 
 methods can fail to see that what she takes for the 
 origiual Christ is, in all its most distinctive features, an 
 ideal evolved slowly in the course of succeeding ages ; 
 and is not the figure so slightly sketched in the 
 Gospels, but a figure which, though the Gospel sketches 
 suggested it, owes all its drapery, and the larger part of 
 its details, to the developing mind of mediseval and 
 modern Europe. 
 
 Nor is this the conclusion of secular criticism only. 
 It is the explicit view of all sacerdotal Christianity ; 
 and, if denied by our modern Nonconformists, it is 
 denied by no other Christians. The Churches admit 
 that our conception of Christ is a conception which has 
 grown and developed, but they maintain that it has
 
 128 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 grown and developed under the guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit. The Church of Rome, in its doctrines and its 
 history, shows us this most clearly ; and the Anglican 
 and Greek Churches in this respect are merely Ro- 
 manism arrested. Let us, then, glance rapidly over 
 the development of Catholic doctrines. According to 
 Catholic theology, Christianity, as Christ taught it, 
 contained the Christianity of subsequent ages, as the 
 bud contains the flower. In the few doctrines explicitly 
 taught by Him, all the doctrines subsequently formu- 
 lated slept, and were unfolded gradually, as petals 
 unfold in the advancing seasons. The manner in which 
 they were unfolded was at once natural and super- 
 natural. On their natural side they appear as the 
 ordinary operations of man's mind and conscience, 
 on extending knowledge, and multiplying cases of 
 casuistry. Thus the developed theory of the Atone- 
 ment was derived from Roman law ; the developed 
 doctrine of the Trinity from certain subtleties of Greek 
 philosophy ; and the doctrine of the Real Presence from 
 the more familiar teaching of Aristotle. The Christian in- 
 tellect, appropriated from the domains of ordinary thought 
 and knowledge whatever seemed proper to it. But 
 this power of selection was, according to the Catholic 
 theory, superintended at every step by the invisible Holy 
 Spirit, who miraculously guided it to such doctrines, and 
 such doctrines only, as Christ had implied from the 
 beginning, though He had not explicitly propounded 
 them. Now, if Christ was God, this theory is perfectly 
 intelligible. Although, as we gather from St. John, 
 He had never even learnt his letters, He was absolute 
 master of all possible knowledge. The works of Aris-
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 129 
 
 totle, of which he never possessed a copy, the works of 
 the Jurisconsults of the Empire, before they were in 
 existence, were present to his mind more clearly than 
 they ever were to their authors ; and he knew what 
 permanent truths were embodied by them amongst 
 what was false or transitory. If, then, we suppose the 
 Spirit of God to have been always present amongst 
 Christians in some miraculous and exclusive manner, 
 leading them to select these truths, no matter where 
 found, nothing could be more natural or more strictly 
 logical than the belief that the truths thus accepted 
 were part of the conscious meaning of Christ. And in 
 this way, up to the time of the Reformation, the doc- 
 trines of Christianity grew ; and not the doctrines 
 only, but the ideals of virtue and piety, and the attitude 
 of mind and heart, of which the doctrines were at once 
 the cause and the result. 
 
 And of the moral, if not of the doctrinal, Chris- 
 tianity thus developed, our modern Nonconformists are 
 as much the children as are our modern Catholics. If 
 we may believe the account they give of the Church 
 themselves, they are Nonconformists merely as a result 
 of the Church's sins. In that case we may call them 
 her illegitimate children, who, like many illegitimate 
 children, do not know their own mother. It is im- 
 possible for any unprejudiced human being to maintain 
 that the Nonconformist Christianity of the last three 
 hundred years was not largely the creature of the 
 Christianity of the fifteen hundred years that preceded 
 it, and lived on a part of the teaching of the very 
 Church it repudiated : just as the France of to-day, in 
 spite of the revolution, retains of its inherited civilisa- 
 
 K
 
 130 AMATEUE CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tion far more than it destroyed, and is more like the 
 France of Louis Quinze than it is like the France of 
 Clovis. 
 
 But if from the Catholic theory of Christian de- 
 velopment, which in an illogical and unavowed way has 
 been really the theory of the Nonconformists also, we 
 subtract the belief in the Godhead and omniscience of 
 Christ, and with it the belief in the Holy Spirit, as 
 miraculously guiding Christians, the whole theory im- 
 mediately fails to pieces. It loses all credible, indeed, 
 all conceivable meaning. Christ, however excellent, 
 however sublime His character, becomes merely a Jewish 
 peasant, ignorant, and with limited vision ; and to 
 maintain that the doctrines subsequently formulated as 
 to His nature — that the ofioovcrto? of the Nicene creed, 
 or the ovala and v r rr6cnaais of the Athanasian, or that 
 the theories of the Atonement suggested by Roman 
 law, were actually present in His mind, and consciously 
 insinuated in His words, is as fatuous and ridiculous as 
 to maintain that Thales, when he called water the best 
 of things, was secretly but consciously expounding its 
 actual chemistry, as if he were a professor at the Royal 
 Institution in London. Obviously, unless Christ was 
 God, everything added to His literal teaching, every 
 trait in His character associated with the smallest 
 miracle, every judgment on circumstances not in His 
 time existing, or on matters with which He was not 
 brought into personal contact — all this body of doctrines 
 and moral judgments, is obviously nothing in any sense 
 revealed by Christ, but something gradually evolved 
 out of the mind of the generations that succeeded Him ; 
 and instead of representing the immutable truth of
 
 AMATEUE CHEISTIANITY 131 
 
 God, represents so many phases of the intellectual 
 history of man. 
 
 Now, if such be the case — and if ' miracles do not 
 happen ' it must be the case — it is plain not only that 
 persons like Mrs. Ward and Mr. Stead have no grounds 
 for inflicting their religion upon other people, but that 
 their religion is a mere form of moral prejudice which 
 in the course of a few generations will have ceased to 
 be intelligible to any one. If the morals of the Chris- 
 tian world have changed as they have done, and assumed 
 such various shapes when Christ's authority as God 
 operated to keep them fixed, much more are they sure 
 to change in the future, when that authority operates 
 no longer. 
 
 In spite of Christ's words, and all traditional inter- 
 pretations of them, in spite of all the machinery of the 
 Church for emphasising and confirming their meaning, 
 human nature, after some fourteen centuries, could be 
 no longer restrained within the strict Christian limits, 
 but insisted, at all costs, on again appropriating and 
 enjoying those pleasures and perfections, physical, 
 intellectual, and emotional, which the Pagan worlds of 
 Greece and of Rome had cultivated, and from which it 
 had so long debarred itself. This movement, though 
 naturally it produced a reaction, and though certain 
 excesses which at first marked it were moderated, was 
 far from having spent itself by the beginning of this 
 century, and farther still from having left Christianity 
 as it found it. Such being the case, it has during the 
 present century been year by year receiving some fresh 
 stimulus, as science has fixed man's attention on the 
 things of this present life, and been step by step dis- 
 
 K 2
 
 132 AMATEUE CHEISTIANITY 
 
 crediting the teaching of the Gospels as to another. 
 Is it to be supposed then, that a movement which 
 developed itself in spite of restraint, will not continue 
 and extend itself when that restraint is removed ? We 
 see signs around us everywhere that it is receiving a 
 fresh impetus, and taking untried directions. Socialism, 
 which is a complex phenomenon, is, in part at least, a 
 demand for the good things of earth as opposed to those 
 of heaven ; and although it really would involve all 
 sorts of impracticable self-denial, it appeals to its 
 adherents as a protest in favour of pleasure, and a pro- 
 test against that suffering which Christianity taught 
 men to endure. The one object of modern progress is 
 to produce those pleasures which Socialism seeks to 
 distribute; in short, the aim of the whole civilised 
 world is to elude the destiny which, according to the 
 doctrines of Christianity, all men ought to welcome, 
 and which those who would be perfect ought to court. 
 Nor does the civilised world confine its aims and atten- 
 tions to the mere multiplication and improvement of 
 the material means of pleasure. It is distinctly feeling 
 its way towards some new freedom in the enjoyment 
 of them. Woman, to whom Christianity assigned a 
 position of obedience, is gradually claiming a right to 
 some life and some development of her own ; and, for 
 many reasons which need not be dwelt on here, modifi- 
 cations are being consequently demanded in the Chris- 
 tian view of marriage ; whilst women and men alike 
 are assuming a new attitude, and refusing to face the 
 problem of their own existence and of the universe, as 
 if humbly stooping under the burden of inevitable and 
 universal sin.
 
 AMATEUK CHKISTIANITY 133 
 
 The forces in fact that are changing the modern 
 world — I do not by any means say all the forces that 
 are at work in it — are distinctly non-Christian; and 
 unless they are arrested or subjugated by Christianity 
 in some form or other, it is a mere truism to say that 
 they will transform our ideal of life, not perhaps into 
 something wholly different from the Christian ideal, but 
 at least differing from it quite as much as resembling it. 
 
 What the ideal thus evolved will be, it is impossible 
 to say exactly; but we can, indeed we are forced, to 
 form one or other of two conjectures about it, according 
 to our point of view ; and one of these, we may be 
 assured, will in a general way be correct. Our point 
 of view may be that of the Pope, or of Mrs. Humphry 
 Ward. We may either believe that miracles do happen, 
 and that Christianity is the creation of miracle ; or we 
 may believe that miracles do not happen, and that Chris- 
 tianity is the creation of man. 
 
 Now if our view be that of the Pope, and of the 
 Christian world generally, the future of a movement 
 which puts Christ's divine authority aside, and inten- 
 tionally cuts itself off from all channels of supernatural 
 grace, will necessarily appear to us as a future dark 
 with iniquity and corruption. We shall foresee the 
 disappearance of the very idea of virtue. 
 
 This view is so natural and so obvious that we need 
 not dwell on it further. But if we place ourselves in the 
 position of Mrs. Ward, we shall have to examine the 
 prospect with somewhat greater attention. On the 
 supposition that miracles do not happen, that no race 
 has ever been favoured by any miraculous revelation, 
 or enjoyed the invidious privilege of any miraculous
 
 134 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 guidance, the character of man in the Christian as well 
 as in the pagan past, will form a basis for a conjecture 
 as to his character in a non-Christian future. In this 
 case, the argument that a disbelief in Christ as God 
 will loosen every restraint which Christianity has placed 
 upon the passions, is an argument that loses not only 
 its force, but its meaning. For if Christ was not God, 
 and worked no miracles to show that He was God, His 
 deification was the voluntary work of man ; and ex- 
 presses the desire and capacity of man to restrain him- 
 self. Nor does it express this only. It expresses man's 
 possession of Christ's virtues, as well as Christ's ab- 
 horrence of sin. In fact man's passionate adoption of 
 Christ's original teaching, is expressive of man's nature 
 quite as much as of Christ's ; whilst all that has been 
 added to that teaching in the course of succeeding ages 
 is an expression of man's nature, far more than of 
 Christ's. Take, for instance, the doctrine of tran- 
 substantiation, and the idea that God himself actually 
 entered into our bodies. Never was there conceived a 
 more efficacious means of introducing an external rule 
 into the inner world of the heart, than this astonishing 
 doctrine. The severest Protestant, who calls it an 
 invention of mediaevalism, can hardly deny its effect 
 on those who believed it ; and the more convinced we 
 are that it was not the doctrine of Christ, the more 
 clearly we shall see in it an expression of a something 
 in human nature — a desire and a resolve to submit its 
 various parts to the coercive rule of that part which it 
 held to be the highest. 
 
 But we must not confine our attention to the 
 Christian world only. We must look to the other
 
 AMATEUE CHRISTIANITY 135 
 
 civilisations of which we are also the inheritors. We 
 must look to the civilisations of classical Greece and 
 Rome. The moral ideals and conduct which we there 
 meet differ from those of Christianity ; but the difference 
 though great, is partial. Aristotle's conception of a 
 good man may not be identical with that of Thomas-a- 
 Kempis ; but the difference between them is not that 
 between a saint and a monster ; it is simply the differ- 
 ence between one type of goodness and another. The 
 corruption of the pagan world may have been great. So 
 have been the corruptions of the Christian. The former 
 sanctioned many practices which the latter has con- 
 demned ; but many of these were the result of surviving 
 savagery, rather than of corruption, and reappeared 
 in the more savage ages of Christianity; whilst the 
 corruption, great as it was, has been obviously much 
 exaggerated. The gladiatorial shows now strike us with 
 horror ; but were the horrors of the pagan arena greater 
 than those of the Christian stake and torture-chamber ? 
 The cruelties of the Catholics and earlier Protestants 
 alike, towards criminals, and especially towards heretics, 
 have been palliated on the ground that man's natural 
 sympathies were far less sensitive then than they have 
 since become. There is a great force in the argument ; 
 but if it applies to the Christian world, it applies to the 
 pagan also ; and it is quite probable that the Roman 
 public which delighted in the sight of Christians fighting 
 with beasts, or even of Christians burning in the gardens 
 of Nero, would have been horrified at the sight of Calvin 
 slowly roasting Servetus. Whilst as for the corruption 
 of pagan life, as distinct from its cruelty, if the denun- 
 ciations of the Christians had really been justified by
 
 136 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 
 
 facts, the pagan world could hardly have endured for a 
 generation. That it produced monsters of vice there is, 
 of course, no doubt ; but the very fact of these monsters 
 having been so particularly described, is evidence that 
 they were the exceptions, not that they were the rule. 
 It produced a Marcus Aurelius, just as it produced a 
 Tiberius ; and just as Christianity was not needed to 
 produce the one, so Christianity was not needed to 
 condemn the other. With Christian moralists Greece, 
 and above all Imperial Rome, has been pointed to as 
 exemplifying the degradation, suicidal as well as 
 abominable, into which without Christ man naturally 
 tends to sink ; and yet it was from Greece that Chris- 
 tianity took its philosophy ; it was from Imperial Rome 
 that it took its ideas of justice. It has been said that 
 the Roman Empire fell owing to its own vices. It 
 might as well be argued that it fell owing to the rise of 
 Christianity, which coincided with its fall in a far more 
 striking way than any decay in its morals, of which we 
 have any evidence. 
 
 Looking thus at life, on the supposition that miracles 
 do not happen, and judging of the future from the past, 
 we may safely say that the tendency of moral develop- 
 ment will be towards a morality in many ways different 
 from the Christian, and in some ways doubtless shocking 
 to the Christian judgment ; but not towards any gro- 
 tesque saturnalia of cruelty, injustice, or debauchery. 
 It will be a tendency, on the contrary, towards some 
 new type of excellence, differing from the Christian not 
 in the way in which a Tiberius differs from Christ, but 
 rather in the way in which a Goethe differs from a 
 Spurgeon.
 
 AMATEUR CHRISTIANITY 137 
 
 What chance of survival then, in the course of a 
 change like this, has the so-called Christianity of such 
 persons as Mrs. Humphry Ward and Mr. Stead ? In 
 so far as their moral feelings correspond with those of 
 science, or with the general desires and temperament of 
 the civilised world at large, their teachings will endure 
 and will prevail ; but they will prevail as the teachings 
 of science, or as expressions of the desire of the world, 
 not as the dictates of an oriental peasant who has been 
 dead for some two thousand years. On the other hand, 
 in so far as their teachings differ from the teachings of 
 science, or run counter to the desires of the world, they 
 may possibly meet with acceptance amongst a certain 
 class of persons to whose personal temperaments they 
 happen in some way to appeal ; but with the exception 
 of such persons they will have no hold whatever on any 
 human being. 
 
 Persons like Mrs. Ward, and the classes whose 
 opinion she reflects, are curiously misled when they 
 think they can get rid of dogma without ridding them- 
 selves of anything besides. As long as the world 
 assented to the proposition that Christ was God, those 
 who practised the real or supposed precepts of Christ 
 could urge them, with the strongest of arguments, on 
 those who did not practise them ; but when the Godhead 
 of Christ is rejected by both sides as a myth, those who 
 quote Christ as an authority have lost the fulcrum of 
 their lever. In so far as his teachings correspond with 
 those of science, to quote him is a superfluity ; in so far 
 as they are beyond or beside those of science, to quote 
 him is useless. Now such Christianity as that of Mrs. 
 Ward and Mr. Stead can only be distinguished as
 
 138 AMATEUE CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Christianity at all because it comprises teachings of 
 this latter kind — teachings beyond and beside that 
 which is authorised by science and philosophy, and 
 welcomed by worldly wisdom. It consists in the 
 inculcation not of goodness as opposed to ruffianism, 
 but of one type of goodness as distinct from, and hostile 
 to, every other. 
 
 If this type of goodness, namely that of English- 
 speaking middle-class dissenters, be pleasing to persons 
 such as Mrs. Ward and Mr. Stead, by all means let 
 them represent it in its most attractive colours, and let 
 those who recognise its unique and transcendent beauty 
 endeavour, if they will, to embody it. Of Mrs. Ward 
 and Mr. Stead there is only one thing to be asked, and 
 this is that, in the interests of honesty, they drop the 
 name of Christ. What they recommend, they recom- 
 mend on their own authority, not on His. If He has any 
 authority at all, He can, according to their principles, 
 only have it in virtue of their recommendation. They 
 give Him his cachet, He does not give them theirs. It 
 surely, therefore, is not too much to ask of them, since 
 they declare Him to be merely man, not any longer to 
 appeal to Him as if he were God, or attempt to enforce 
 their doctrines on grounds which they themselves 
 repudiate.
 
 139 
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 The curious outburst of indignation which drove Mr. 
 Parnell from power, on account of a liaison which had 
 nothing in it exceptionally discreditable, is, for many- 
 reasons, of more than passing interest. In spite of 
 many unworthy elements that were mixed in it, there 
 is no doubt that at the bottom of this indignation was 
 a state of genuine opinion prevalent in this country 
 as to marriage. Now in so far as this was the 
 case — in so far as the indignation expressed did really 
 originate in the opinion of which I speak, it was 
 an indignation which, even if expressed foolishly, was 
 fundamentally reasonable. But another question re- 
 mains — a question totally different ; and that is whether 
 the opinion can be considered reasonable itself. In 
 other words, on what basis, intellectual or religious, 
 does the view of marriage rest, which not only pro- 
 claims itself by the stones which Dissenters throw at 
 adulterers, but is also embodied in our laws relating to 
 marriage and adultery ? 
 
 What this view is, is sufficiently familiar to all of 
 us. It amounts to this — that marriage is a bond which 
 is properly and naturally indissoluble, and that it can 
 be dissolved only by an act which is morally, if not
 
 140 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 technically, criminal. Our laws as to divorce show 
 this with curious clearness. A marriage is dissolved 
 solely in the interests of the party who had, it is pre- 
 sumed, no wish for its dissolution ; and it has only to 
 be proved that both parties have desired to free them- 
 selves from its bondage, and the law takes care that the 
 fetters shall be riveted on their limbs for ever. 
 
 We will presently analyse this opinion further ; but 
 we will first ask what, on a prima facie view, are the 
 grounds, if any, that can be pointed to as a reasonable 
 foundation for it ? There is one section of the com- 
 munity with regard to which the answer is obvious. I 
 allude to the Eoman Catholics. Whether the Catholic 
 religion is true or not, is nothing to the point here. 
 The Catholics believe it to be true ; and the view that 
 marriage is indissoluble has, for them, the most reason- 
 able of all bases — the express teaching of an authority 
 which they consider to be final and infallible. The 
 same thing may also be fairly said of the High Church 
 section of the Church of England ; and even of some 
 other bodies, which, though bitterly opposed to Rome, 
 and the Roman doctrine that marriage is among the 
 sacraments, are opposed yet more bitterly to scientific 
 and sceptical criticism, and to everything which calls 
 itself either modern, or free, thought. Of the position 
 occupied by these various bodies, that of the Roman 
 Catholics is undoubtedly the most secure. They 
 frankly claim for marriage a sacramental and mystical 
 character ; they base its indissolubility not only on the 
 ground that God through the Bible and the Church 
 has miraculously declared it to be indissoluble, but on 
 the ground that there is in its very nature something
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 141 
 
 that passes our understanding, just as there is in the 
 sacrament of the altar and in baptism. None of the 
 other religious bodies makes a claim for it of precisely 
 the same kind. None of them either definitely attri- 
 butes to it any mystery, or appeals with regard to it to 
 the teachings of a Church that is absolutely infallible. 
 But all of them, Catholics included, have two points in 
 common. First, their belief that marriage is indis- 
 soluble has for its first foundation a belief that Christ 
 was a miraculous being, who, whether of the same or 
 only of a like substance with God, was at all events in 
 God's confidence and familiar with the secrets of 
 existence ; that every sentence He spoke was an 
 utterance from behind the veil ; and that the Gospels 
 record His utterances with an exactness miraculously 
 secured. Secondly, all these religious bodies, and not 
 the Catholics only, in addition to the above belief with 
 regard to Christ's words, believe also in one single tra- 
 ditional interpretation of them ; and they consider this 
 interpretation as no more open to doubt than Christ's 
 miraculous character and the miraculous accuracy of 
 the Gospels. 
 
 With persons who hold these views it is impossible 
 to discuss the marriage question at all ; for they will 
 not admit for a moment that there is anything in it 
 open to discussion. All that we can do, if we act 
 towards them in a right spirit, is to respect their posi- 
 tion, however much we may dissent from it ; and to 
 make it clear that our arguments are not addressed to 
 them. Now such persons, no doubt, form a considerable 
 body in this country ; and did they only comprise the 
 whole, or the great majority of the nation, the present
 
 142 MAERIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 inquiry need hardly be pursued further. The view that 
 marriage is indissoluble, so far as this nation is con- 
 cerned, would be obviously reasonable, as resting on a 
 religion in which the nation believed. 
 
 But what are the facts ? They are certainly the 
 very reverse of these. The orthodox religious bodies, 
 the opponents of free thought, considerable though 
 they may be in point of actual numbers, yet if con- 
 sidered as a part of the nation, are merely a small part, 
 and neither intellectually nor politically is their influence 
 either dominant or increasing. This is no mere opinion. 
 Facts prove it most conclusively. The recent history of 
 the Church of England, if we go no farther back than 
 the publication of ' Essays and Keviews,' gives us a 
 series of proofs that would be quite sufficient in them- 
 selves. The literal accuracy of the Gospels may safely 
 be impugned by any clergyman in the Establishment ; 
 and the traditional interpretation of the Gospels is 
 discarded by the greater part of them. Secular 
 standards, and the methods of secular criticism, are 
 being applied to sacred things in a growing number 
 of pulpits. The traditional interpretation is thus 
 rapidly changing ; and what at the beginning of the 
 century would have been called blasphemy, is regarded 
 by excellent men as the true evolution of Christianity. 
 Much the same may be said of the Nonconformists ; 
 or at any rate of such of their leaders as make them- 
 selves generally audible. The religious movement is 
 all in one direction — the questioning of traditional 
 doctrines, the definite rejection of many of them, and 
 the treatment of the rest as matters that are not 
 essential. But we must not look only to the belief
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 143 
 
 of those who call themselves Christians : we must look 
 to the attitude of Christians towards those who dis- 
 claim even any definite Theism, and to the increasing 
 number and influence of these last. That a man is 
 known to be not a Christian — that he is known to 
 be hardly a Theist, creates now no distrust in him that 
 could possibly be called general ; indeed, the nation 
 has gone out of its way in order to give effect to 
 the conviction, first, that a Dissenter may be as good 
 a legislator as a Churchman ; and finally that a militant 
 atheist may be as good a legislator as a Dissenter. 
 It is unnecessary to describe the facts I allude to 
 further, or insist further on their reality. That the 
 intellectual and religious opinions of the nation, taken 
 as a whole, have been changing and moving in one 
 definite direction, is obvious ; and the direction is that 
 of what is commonly called free thought. And the 
 results, so far as our present argument is concerned, 
 may be briefly summed up as follows : The nation, as 
 is shown by sanctioning the admission of atheists into 
 Parliament, does not, as a nation, believe that the 
 basis or the standard of legislation is a belief in God — 
 in His will or even in His existence. Still less does it 
 believe, as a nation, that this will is revealed to us by 
 any special body of tradition, or in the pages of a book 
 in which every sentence is miraculous. If anyone 
 doubts this, he need ask himself but two questions. 
 Could any scientific discovery in these days be dis- 
 credited even for a moment by the authority of a 
 biblical text ? Would a text, no matter how plain, do 
 anything towards arresting any popular reform or 
 change ? The answer to both these questions, as we
 
 144 MARRIAGE AND FEEE THOUGHT 
 
 are all aware, is No. To this, however, there is one 
 singular exception : and that exception is afforded by 
 popular opinion as to marriage. Socialistic optimists 
 who would laugh at Christ's pessimism in saying that 
 we shall always have the poor with us ; amiable clergy- 
 men who, when Christ said Hell was eternal, maintain 
 that He meant something quite different from what 
 He said ; men who will put on almost any text some 
 new or modified interpretation, or at the bidding of a 
 philologist boldly deny its authenticity ; as well as 
 multitudes who in a general way care nothing for 
 texts at all, or who entirely disbelieve in the miracu- 
 lous character of Christ, are yet, as regards marriage, 
 under bondage to an opinion which has for its ostensible 
 foundation a belief in the miraculous character of 
 every syllable in the Gospels. 
 
 Few people seem to be aware of what a strange 
 anomaly is here. Whilst the religious and irreligious 
 alike are not only engaged in boldly questioning every- 
 thing, but are practising towards each other a toleration 
 new to the modern world, when cardinals fraternise 
 with atheistic radicals and grasp in friendship hands 
 that have never been raised in prayer ; when atheistic 
 radicals court the countenance of cardinals whose dearest 
 beliefs and whose most sacred functions are for them no- 
 thing but ridiculous or degrading nonsense ; when the 
 rationalist pardons the Catholic for maintaining that 
 bread is God ; and the Catholic pardons the blasphemer 
 for insulting the Lord's body ; there is one point as to 
 which the liberality of all parties leaves them. The 
 cardinal ceases to be tolerant ; the free-thinker ceases to 
 think freely. According to all reason and all theology,
 
 MAEEIAGE AND FEEE THOUGHT 145 
 
 a man who does not go to mass must, in the eyes of a 
 Catholic, be in a far more hopeless state than a man who 
 is living in adultery ; but to judge by the language of 
 Cardinal Manning and the Irish bishops, every sin can be 
 forgiven a man but one. He may systematically hate 
 his neighbour ; he may systematically be false to God ; 
 but he may not systematically be too true to a woman. 
 The free-thinkers hold precisely the same opinion ; but 
 as held by them it is logically even more inexplicable. 
 Whatever view they may take of marriage individually, 
 they are bound, if their claim for freedom have any 
 real sincerity, to allow their views to be questioned or 
 contradicted by others ; and the only test of its sincerity 
 is the very simple and obvious one — that they will not 
 only tolerate views other than their own being stated, 
 but that they will tolerate these views being acted on by 
 those who hold and proclaim them. Now with regard 
 to every kind of conduct, which does not of necessity 
 happen against the will of one of the parties to it, such 
 as theft, murder, or slavery, our free-thinkers do practise 
 the kind of tolerance I speak of, with the single 
 exception of adultery. Adultery is often condemned, 
 and very rightly, for accidental reasons ; for the ingrati- 
 tude or false friendship involved in it, or for the sorrow 
 or misfortune caused by it. But these have no special 
 or essential connection with it ; they are very frequently 
 absent ; and the curious thing is, that the more complete 
 their absence is, the more complete, according to popular 
 opinion, and also according to our laws, is the un- 
 pardonable character of the adultery. Let us suppose 
 two couples, unhappily married, who if they could only 
 re-sort themselves, might be mated to their common 
 
 L
 
 146 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 satisfaction. Let us suppose further that there are no 
 children to complicate the question. Now, if these four 
 people were to agree to live in adultery, there could 
 obviously be no deceit, no injury, no unhappiness ; and 
 if matters were managed decently, there would be no 
 scandal. But according to our laws, and according to 
 popular opinion, adultery like this would be adultery of 
 the most aggravated kind. The very fact that all con- 
 cerned in it wished for divorce, would, if the fact were 
 known, make divorce impossible for them ; whilst the 
 fact that none of them was deceived or injured would, 
 in the eyes of Mr. Parnell's censors, instead of ex- 
 culpating any of them, only add a deeper blackness to 
 all. But if the principles of freedom, if the repudiation 
 of persecution proclaimed and boasted of by all pro- 
 fessors of toleration — if these principles have really 
 any meaning in them, adultery of this kind is merely, 
 as Mill would have described it, a new experiment in 
 living; and the union of a man and woman which 
 could never be theologically sacramental, or in England 
 legally ratified, is a union which may demand in justice 
 from any liberal thinker at least as much toleration as 
 Cardinal Manning extends to men who ridicule and 
 repudiate all his sacraments together. Again, as we 
 all know, during the course of recent events in Ireland, 
 we have learnt from the very classes which condemned 
 Mr. Parnell most loudly, that it is often necessary to 
 break the laws in order to secure their being amended. 
 Surely the men who excuse boycotting, the refusal to 
 pay legal debts, outrage, the maiming of cattle, and 
 even murder, on the grounds that without these it 
 would be impossible to amend the land laws, must see
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 147 
 
 that adultery can be defended in a precisely similar 
 way, on the ground that without it we shall never 
 amend the marriage laws. But the very men who will 
 use this argument about every other question, are the 
 very men who would shriek in horror if anyone attempted 
 to apply it to the question to which logically it is most 
 applicable. 
 
 What, then, is the explanation of this curious contra- 
 diction ? As I have said before, I am not arguing 
 with Catholics, nor should I expect them to consider 
 any single argument that I am urging ; but I have 
 alluded to the conduct of Cardinal Manning and the 
 Irish Bishops, because it may help to throw a certain 
 light on the question. 
 
 My point with regard to them has been this — not 
 that they condemn adultery as a very grave sin. Of 
 course they condemn it. My point has been that, 
 whilst tolerating other sins which theoretically must be 
 far graver, they visit this with a condemnation which 
 theoretically is grotesquely disproportionate, and for 
 which their theology can give no sufficient account. 
 The inference is this — that their condemnation, though 
 based, no doubt, on their theology to a certain extent, 
 has its principal basis on something that is outside 
 theology. In precisely the same way the various pro- 
 fessors of Liberalism, from broad-church clergymen and 
 liberal Nonconformist ministers to worshippers of 
 Humanity, such as Mr. Frederic Harrison, derive their 
 views as to marriage, and their excitement about 
 adultery, from some belief or prejudice which, whatever 
 its real nature, is entirely outside the principles which 
 they profess, and which they propound so emphatically. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 It must be so. Just as Cardinal Manning whilst, so 
 far as his associates are concerned, he remains a Gallio 
 with regard to the mass, remains an inquisitor as to 
 marriage, so do the liberals, religious and irreligious 
 alike, become inquisitors and become persecutors also ; 
 and unite with a Roman Catholic in that one course of 
 conduct — and that one only — on account of which they 
 have execrated Rome most loudly. There must, for a 
 fact like this, be some secret and unavowed reason. 
 
 The reader must not imagine that I am imputing 
 to the nation generally any intentional, still less any 
 sinister duplicity. When I say that a multitude of 
 people act on some reason that is secret, I mean that 
 it is secret only because they do not recognise it 
 themselves. When once pointed out, however, its 
 nature will, I think, be obvious. The popular opinion 
 as to marriage which we are now discussing seems to 
 me to rest upon a composite basis. What it princi- 
 pally rests upon is a sort of instinctive utilitarianism. 
 It wants no philosopher to assure the most stupid of 
 us that the happiness of a nation means the happiness 
 of its individuals ; that the happiness of the individual 
 depends on the happiness of the family ; and that this 
 depends largely on the married happiness of the 
 parents. Now long centuries of Christian, and es- 
 pecially of Catholic tradition, have caused us as a 
 nation to associate the indissolubility of marriage with 
 its existence ; and this association, as is often the 
 way with associations, has outlasted the grounds on 
 which it was originally justified. The idea, therefore, 
 is still prevalent that to make marriage dissoluble 
 would be practically to destroy it, to inaugurate an
 
 MAEEIAGE AND FEEE THOUGHT 149 
 
 era of fantastic and unrestrained licence, and to destroy, 
 together with marriage, the home, the family, and 
 civilisation. The view of marriage accordingly which 
 we have to deal with is the product of reasoning which 
 is' itself purely and strictly utilitarian, but which is 
 clenched, made rigid, and placed out of reach of con- 
 troversy by reasoning derived unconsciously from the 
 doctrines of a discarded theology. 
 
 Let me explain this more fully. That the happiness 
 of the home or family is an end to aim at, is a positive 
 doctrine — it is a secular doctrine ; it is not a theological 
 one : and that we must regulate marriage so as best to 
 secure this end is a doctrine which would be defended 
 by a Benthamite as strenuously as by Cardinal Manning. 
 Now, given a positive end in itself admittedly desirable, 
 according to every modern theory of social and intel- 
 lectual progress, the utmost freedom and toleration 
 must be accorded, not only to every opinion, but to any 
 practical experiment by which new means towards this 
 end may be put before us and tested. Further, of all 
 social arrangements, marriage, as at present regulated, 
 is the one which presents us with the largest percentage 
 of individual failures. I do not say that the cases in 
 which marriage is fairly successful are not overwhelm- 
 ingly in excess of the cases in which it produces in- 
 tolerable distress ; but these latter cases are at least so 
 numerous that more than one of them must have been 
 forced on the observation of everybody : and no one can 
 deny — not even the severest Catholic — that, regarded 
 as a means of producing social happiness, if our mar- 
 riage arrangements could be improved, they call urgently 
 for improvement. But the liberal and progressive
 
 150 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 thought of this country, the moment it is brought to 
 bear on this one social question, becomes doggedly false 
 to every one of its boasted principles ; it hampers itself 
 with a literal interpretation of the Gospels which, 
 with regard to every other subject, it has long con- 
 temptuously abandoned; whilst indignantly refusing 
 to recognise the vows that bind the nun, it refuses 
 even to consider the relaxation of those that may be 
 killing the wife ; and whilst ridiculing the idea that 
 any other contract is inviolable, and whilst rashly 
 sanctioning the experimental violation of most, it 
 treats this contract of marriage, which constantly 
 works so miserably, as a contract which no one may 
 violate, though everyone concerned is willing, and 
 which it is a kind of blasphemy to attempt to regulate 
 better. 
 
 And now let me state precisely what I am here 
 urging. I am urging not only on atheists, on agnostics, 
 or on theists, but on all religious men, whether calling 
 themselves Christians or no, who respect freedom of 
 inquiry, who accept science as a guide, who weigh the 
 accuracy of the Gospels in the balance of scientific 
 criticism, and who consider Christ's nature, His autho- 
 rity, and His reported words, as all of them open to free 
 and fearless inquiry — on all men, in short, who repre- 
 sent in this country the thoughts, hopes, and opinions 
 which are most distinctively modern, and which for 
 good or for evil are embodying themselves in our laws 
 and our institutions — on all these men I am urging 
 that they should treat marriage in precisely the same 
 spirit as they treat everything else ; that they should 
 recognise and resolutely put away from them those
 
 MAERIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 151 
 
 theological prepossessions, which all their most cherished 
 principles condemn as the merest of superstitions, and 
 which here interfere entirely with their putting their 
 principles into practice. In other words, let them con- 
 sider it as an open question whether marriage should be 
 indissoluble, or easily dissoluble, or dissoluble only with 
 difficulty, and whether adultery is necessarily an un- 
 pardonable offence, or whether it may not, under 
 certain circumstances, be regarded merely as a ' new 
 experiment in living.' 
 
 Surely, according to every modern principle this 
 demand is reasonable ; and the more wedded any liberal 
 thinker may be to the opinions at present current, the 
 more gladly should such an inquiry be welcomed by 
 him ; as its only result, according to his expectations, 
 would be to place these opinions on their only legitimate 
 basis. Let me also reassure the timid reader further. I 
 have asked him to consider whether, when none of the 
 parties implicated are unwilling, and when no children 
 are concerned, adultery should not be regarded as a new 
 experiment in living. But I ask him to consider this 
 question merely as an introduction to the further one — 
 whether marriage should not be dissoluble without the 
 necessity of adultery, and whether a remedy should not 
 be found for miserable or for unfortunate unions without 
 someone paying for it by a cruel social stigma. I may 
 further assure the timid reader of this, that such con- 
 siderations as I am about to put before him will lead to 
 results far more in accordance than he may imagine 
 with his own existing prejudices. I shall say much 
 that a Puritan may dissent from, but nothing that he 
 can be shocked at.
 
 152 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 Let me then ask the reader to consider for a moment 
 what marriage is according to that opinion which is 
 at the present moment embodied in the laws of this 
 country. According to Catholic theology marriage is 
 essentially indissoluble. According to the laws of this 
 country it is dissoluble, but it ought not to be dissolved. 
 Between these two views there is a profound and funda- 
 mental difference. There is the same difference as 
 there is between telling a butler that certain tumblers 
 are made of unbreakable glass, and telling him that he 
 will be kicked out of the house if he breaks them. 
 Marriage, therefore, even according to the opinions 
 dominant in this country now, is not in its nature in- 
 dissoluble. The law can, and the law does dissolve it. 
 Opinion, then, in this country has definitely and dis- 
 tinctly repudiated the traditional interpretation of the 
 Gospels ; and has taken one step in the direction of 
 freedom. The law, however, dissolves marriage for one 
 cause only, and that cause is an action which is re- 
 garded as discreditable to the agent. Obviously this 
 condition of things is prima facie ridiculous. Why 
 should the performance of a discreditable action be an 
 antecedent condition of arriving at an end which the 
 law sanctions, and sanctions only because it is supposed 
 to be desirable ? The only definite reason, the reason 
 which has retarded the free consideration of the case, 
 is one single word of seven letters, supposed to have 
 been used by Christ ; and it is a word whose meaning, 
 except for the authority of Rome, is more than doubt- 
 ful. But the authority of Rome is nothing to the 
 English nation as a whole. The nation as a whole, not 
 only rejects, but abhors interpretations of the Gospels
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 153 
 
 on which Rome most strenuously insists. How then 
 can people who call Rome either blasphemous or absurd 
 for the interpretation which it puts on the words, ' This 
 is my body,' debar itself from even considering a 
 most serious social reform, in deference to the Roman 
 interpretation of the one word iropvzia ? All that we 
 have to do is to treat this word in the way in which 
 liberalism treats all the rest of the Bible — to interpret 
 it through its context by a free secular standard ; or at 
 all events, to allow for the latitude of its possible 
 meaning : and we shall get from the Gospels nothing 
 but this statement, that marriage should not be dis- 
 solved without grave and sufficient cause, what con- 
 stitutes such sufficient cause being left to human beings 
 to discover. Thus unless free thought allows itself to 
 be fettered by the Bible in a way which on principle it 
 certainly does not allow itself, all the freedom for which 
 I am now pleading is sanctioned by the very words 
 which are popularly supposed to forbid it. 
 
 Let us then consider what marriage is, when con- 
 sidered apart from all mysteries or sacramental theories. 
 In the eye of the English law, and of the English 
 people as a whole, marriage is a legal contract. That, 
 however, expresses but a small part of the matter. 
 The laws of a country are merely the expression of 
 human nature as developed in that country. Marriage 
 is a legal relationship only because it is first a human 
 relationship ; and such conduct as the law enjoins or 
 protects with regard to marriage, it enjoins and protects 
 only because men have found it desirable. The legal 
 part of the contract is therefore only a husk and shell, 
 of which the kernel is a natural human contract. It is
 
 154 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 not law that gives its character to the contract, but the 
 dominant wishes and feelings and practice of a com- 
 munity that give its character to the law. Law is 
 merely a kind of railway winch men have constructed 
 in order to keep themselves on the best course towards 
 an end which they have themselves chosen. What, 
 then, if we strip from it its accidental husk of law, is 
 marriage in itself, according to the highest and purest 
 conception of it ? 
 
 If any Nonconformist reads these pages, he will, 
 perhaps, be reassured when he sees that, for an answer 
 to this question, it is a Nonconformist to whom I turn. 
 ' The internal form and soul of this relation,' says 
 Milton, ' is conjugal love arising from a mutual fitness 
 to the final causes of wedlock.' Milton's known views 
 with regard to divorce have caused great injustice in 
 some ways to be done to his writings on the subject. 
 They have been neglected, because the conclusion which 
 they seek to prove has up to the present day been not 
 generally acceptable; but there is far more in them 
 than what those who have never read them imagine. 
 His treatise on ' The Four Chief Places in Scripture 
 which treat of Nullities in Marriage ' is not so much a 
 piece of special pleading in favour of free divorce, as a 
 long amplification of the description, just quoted, of 
 marriage — of ' the internal form and soul ' of it ; and 
 nowhere else in the English language, or probably in 
 any other, has the highest and noblest conception of it 
 been set forth with such majestic eloquence. 
 
 The Church of Eome, though it does not admit 
 divorce, yet on certain occasions pronounces a marriage 
 null— it declares, in fact, that what passed for a
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 155 
 
 marriage was not a marriage, on a ground which the 
 Protestant world does not in any way recognise — the 
 ground that free consent was wanting in the parties, or 
 in one of them. Consent, according to the Catholic 
 doctrine, is the essence of matrimony, and where con- 
 sent is wanting no true marriage has existed. Now 
 what consent is according to the Catholic doctrine, 
 mutual fitness is according to the conception on Milton ; 
 and the view which he advocates with regard to the 
 dissolution of marriage has properly no relation to the 
 Protestant doctrine at all, but is neither more nor less 
 than the Catholic doctrine rationalised. It is the 
 Catholic doctrine with this alteration only — that he 
 puts in place of ' full and free consent,' ' conjugal love 
 arising from mutual fitness.' 
 
 Now putting, as we are putting, Catholic authority 
 aside, and appealing only to those higher and the deeper 
 perceptions which, rooted in our natural feelings, find 
 their utterance in poetry, rise upwards towards religion, 
 and form a part of whatever is most noble and most 
 beautiful in life, no one surely can doubt for a single 
 moment that Milton's doctrine has more to recommend 
 it than the Roman. It is in fact the doctrine which, 
 with ever-increasing completeness, underlies the spiritual 
 progress, the spiritual elevation of man, and which, how- 
 ever much its consequences may be disputed, would be 
 admitted as the truth, even if not the whole truth, by 
 everybody. Let Milton speak further. Expressing 
 himself, as he could not help doing, in the forms supplied 
 him by his theology, he starts by saying that, according, 
 to God's own statement, the first aim of marriage was 
 full and fit companionship. ' Loneliness,' he says, ' is
 
 156 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 the first thing which God names not good.' Nor is 
 companionship, he urges — and those whom I am address- 
 ing will not be inclined to contradict Milton here — to 
 be understood in an exclusively, or even mainly, physical 
 sense. ' The Song of Songs,' he says, which is gener- 
 ally believed to figure the spousal of Christ with His 
 Church, sings of a thousand raptures between those two 
 lovely ones far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment. 
 Adam's consent in marrying Eve, he urges, depended 
 for its validity on his knowledge of her individual fit- 
 ness for him ; and if he could have put his inmost 
 thought into words, his bridal words, Milton tells us, 
 would have been these : ' This is she by whose meet 
 help and society I shall no more be alone. This is she 
 who was made my image, even as I the image of God, 
 not so much in body as in unity of mind and heart.' 
 
 Now, Milton was addressing, just as I am address- 
 ing now, a public which admits that marriage may be 
 dissolved on ground of adultery ; and his argument is 
 this — that the physical union being, at all events 
 without other union, the lowest element in marriage, 
 adultery injures a marriage to a far less degree than 
 such complete and incurable antagonism between the 
 character of husband and wife as makes any union 
 other than the physical one impossible. ' When love, 
 he says, ' finds itself utterly unmatched, and justly 
 vanishes, nay rather cannot but vanish, the fleshly 
 relation may indeed continue, but not holy, not pure, 
 not beseeming the sacred bond of marriage ; being 
 truly gross and more ignoble than the mute kindliness 
 between herds and flocks. . . . Why, then, shall 
 divorce be granted for want of [bodily fidelity] and not
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 157 
 
 for want of fitness to intimate conversation, whereas 
 corporal benevolence cannot in any human fashion be 
 without this ? ' Marriage, he says, if truly and ade- 
 quately conceived, may be compared to the spiritual 
 affection of saints, such as Paul and Barnabas, who 
 were 'joined together by the Holy Ghost to a spiritual 
 work,' but who ' thought it better to separate when 
 once they grew at variance. If,' he proceeds, ' these 
 great saints, joined by nature, friendship, religion, high 
 providence, and revelation, could not so govern a 
 casual difference, a sudden passion, but must in wisdom 
 divide from the outward duties of friendship or a col- 
 leagueship in the same family, or on the same journey, 
 lest it should grow to a worse division, can anything 
 be more absurd or barbarous than that they whom only 
 error, act or plot, hath joined, should be compelled, not 
 against a sudden passion, but against the permanent 
 and radical discords of nature, to the most intimate 
 and incorporating duties, therein only rational and 
 human as they are free and voluntary ; being else an 
 abject and servile yoke scarce not brutish ? ' 
 
 In order to make all these passages appeal to the 
 present age of liberalism, we have only to eliminate the 
 theological element in their form, and the arguments 
 and the sentiments expressed in them lose none of 
 their cogency, If the literature of the modern world 
 illustrates one fact in the spiritual history of man more 
 clearly than another, it illustrates the gradual refine- 
 ment and elevation of the idea of love proper to and 
 possible in marriage, and essential to a right marriage. 
 There is another aspect to the question which we will 
 consider presently, but we are considering the relation-
 
 158 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 ship now with reference to the married parties solely; 
 and considered in the light of the companionship of a 
 man and woman, the idea of it which is cherished by 
 the conscience of the modern world, which is appealed 
 to as the standard of what marriage ought to be, and 
 which poets and religious writers alike have done their 
 utmost to adorn and to express, is the idea of a most 
 perfect and intimate union of mind and heart, which 
 alone gives the physical union human meaning or 
 dignity. And marriage of this kind has been recog- 
 nised by the modern world, if not as a sacrament in the 
 technical and theological sense, yet as something which 
 has on the entire life a spiritual influence which 
 elevates, just as the Catholics hold that the sacraments 
 elevate, bringing the soul nearer to the mystery which 
 is called God ; and making it impossible, as Goethe 
 puts it, for those even who dare not say, ' I believe in 
 Him,' to say, ' I do not believe.' A union so complete 
 as this must no doubt be rare. All natures are not 
 capable of it ; and circumstances do not always admit 
 of it. But still for the modern world it is the type of 
 what ought to be. It is ' the internal form and soul ' 
 of marriage in its true development ; and the conscience 
 demands that all marriages should approach this stan- 
 dard, even if they do not reach it. Does any one doubt 
 this ? Will any one venture to maintain that mind 
 and heart is not the highest and the most essential part 
 of marriage, the physical union being of value only 
 because it tends to cement, to express, and to deepen 
 the spiritual union ? 
 
 Apart, then, from such ecclesiastical doctrines as 
 are based on an interpretation of the Bible which
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 159 
 
 liberal thought repudiates, this conception of marriage 
 which is described by Milton is the highest conception 
 of marriage at which the world has yet arrived ; and 
 apart from certain of its logical consequences, the voice 
 of our spiritual civilisation not only admits, but boasts 
 that it is so. My purpose here is to urge on all liberal 
 thinkers what these logical consequences are ; and to 
 urge on them that the strongest reasons in favour of 
 facilitating divorce, of granting it for causes other than 
 what is called adultery, of granting it in response to 
 the wishes of both parties, and of removing from it al- 
 together any necessary discredit — the strongest reasons 
 in favour of all this, are to be found not in some low 
 conception of marriage to which we might possibly 
 sink, but in the highest conception of it to which we 
 have yet risen. 
 
 And let me again point out, what I have already 
 indicated, that the sort of divorce that would be facili- 
 tated in this way would not be properly speaking 
 divorce at all. It would not be the violent rupture of 
 a sacred bond, but a formal recognition that this bond, 
 in its full sanctity, had never existed. It would be in 
 fact the Roman Catholic view and practice secularised, 
 and interpreted by modern methods and standards — 
 the same methods and standards as are being applied 
 to every other question. Whatever may be our views 
 as to the reality of human progress in general, with 
 regard to certain matters such progress is a reality. 
 Civilised men, for instance, are less cruel than they 
 were in the Middle Ages. In the same way, with 
 regard to affection, the ideal now accepted by civilised 
 men is more refined and more elevated than that which
 
 160 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 in the Middle Ages was prevalent ; or at all events 
 men are more conscious of its higher and more sacred 
 characteristics. On the other hand, whilst the ideal of 
 affection has been thus growing spiritualised, the theory 
 of conduct has been more and more secularised, and 
 placed more and more completely on a utilitarian basis. 
 We have spiritualised our conception of what married 
 happiness ought to be, and we have adopted the prin- 
 ciple that, in law and conduct alike, that and that only 
 is right which conduces most to happiness. Thus, 
 whilst bringing the Roman conception of the sacra- 
 mental sanctity of marriage out of the region of theo- 
 logy, and enshrining it in the heart, in the imagination, 
 in all the deepest feelings of man, we at the same time 
 have freed ourselves from the difficulties — once in- 
 superable — of the doctrine that the essence of marriage 
 and its sacramental character, reside not in any quali- 
 ties of the union of which the hearts of either party 
 can be conscious, but in some magical charm residing 
 in a mere momentary act of consent — a consent which, 
 a day later, may have changed into unavailing repen- 
 tance. In this way, so far as reason can guide us, we 
 are brought inevitably to the great general principle 
 that marriages can be pronounced null not only on the 
 ground of the adultery of one of the parties, but of any 
 fault, sufficiently grave, of any kind ; and — what is still 
 more important — of any quality or characteristic in 
 either party which, without being a fault in either, 
 makes happiness impossible. 
 
 Now it cannot be denied that in the present state 
 of opinion the views just described would be received 
 with general disapproval. Why would this be so ?
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 161 
 
 The reasons, I think, are not difficult to discover. 
 Summed up briefly they consist of the vague opinion 
 that, if ever we begin to tamper with the marriage 
 bond as it at present exists, we shall destroy marriage 
 altogether. So far as this opinion really is what it 
 affects to be I will discuss it presently ; but it probably 
 masks an opinion of an entirely opposite character. 
 Let me speak of this first. 
 
 Many rigid moralists, Nonconformist and other, 
 would tell us, as a ground for condemning the view in 
 question, that it would open the door to all uncleanness 
 and profligacy, by lessening the blame now attached to 
 adultery. But the real feeling at work in their hearts 
 would be, not that adultery would be treated as no 
 worse than continued ill-temper or selfishness, but that 
 selfishness and ill-temper will be shown to be often 
 worse than adultery. The control now demanded of a 
 single physical impulse would be, according to the 
 view of marriage we are discussing, demanded of the 
 whole heart and life — of the soul as well as of the body ; 
 and it is probably no sin against charity to say that the 
 standard of morals thus erected would be most dis- 
 agreeable and most humiliating to that special class 
 of persons who, in virtue of education or temperament, 
 are most censorious with regard to technical adultery. 
 Many husbands and wives who have no other matrimonial 
 virtue, are in their own estimation models of respect- 
 able excellence, because they have never had, or been 
 tempted to have, lovers ; and amongst these are no 
 doubt numbers of those who were loudest in their 
 execrations and holiest in their horror of Mr. Parnell. 
 Such persons, tried by this new standard, would 
 
 M
 
 162 MAKKIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 certainly be covered with humiliation. When some 
 minister was mounting the pulpit of his own physical 
 chastity, and selecting the sharpest first stones with 
 which to pelt some adulterer, conscience would say to 
 him, ' Consider your own conduct as a husband. You 
 have said bitter words to your wife almost every day ; 
 you have neglected her wishes ; you have shown her 
 no sympathy; you have systematically put on her 
 conduct the hardest and cruellest interpretations ; you 
 have made no effort to love her. Every day, every 
 hour of your married life, you have sinned more deeply 
 and shamefully than this adulterer you are preparing 
 to stone.' And if conscience spoke thus to many a 
 preaching man, it would be equally candid to many a 
 censorious woman ; silencing and perhaps softening her 
 with a knowledge of this most wholesome truth — that 
 no woman is nearer hell than a woman whose sole 
 virtue is chastity. In other words, to make a long 
 matter short, the view of marriage and annulment of 
 marriage which we are now discussing is simply a 
 development of the view put forward by Christ. It 
 is not a view which makes adultery venial, but which 
 places other faults under a precisely similar condem- 
 nation. 
 
 But the more important point to be noticed is the 
 genuine and real opinion mentioned above, that the 
 marriage bond, if in any way tampered with, would fall 
 to pieces, and the institution of marriage be ruined. If 
 we consider how loosely men in general argue until 
 some closer train of argument has been forced on their 
 attention, this view will hardly seem unnatural. It is 
 easy to show, however, that it depends for its main
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 163 
 
 force on the overlooking of one of the chief facts of the 
 case. The belief in the sanctity of marriage is not 
 peculiar to Christians or to the modern world ; it 
 cannot, therefore, be claimed that we derived the idea 
 of it from revelation. It must, therefore, be regarded 
 — and modern free-thinkers must be the first to admit 
 this — as the outcome of something inherent in human 
 nature, under certain conditions relative to race and 
 civilisation ; and all legal doctrines in favour of the 
 indissolubility of the contract are expressive of the fact 
 that men in general feel and think it best that the mar- 
 riage union should be permanent. Laws have not made 
 human nature, but human nature has made the laws ; 
 and it is absurd, therefore, to think that the moment a 
 law is relaxed, in order to meet the requirements of 
 certain numerous but exceptional cases, that human 
 nature will suffer a sudden change, and that men and 
 women will at once rush into irregularities which all of 
 them know will not promote their happiness, and to 
 which most of them will have but small temptation. 
 The average man, quite apart from any other religious 
 theories, marries a wife with the intention of remaining 
 married to her. Indeed, the more firmly we believe 
 that the permanence of marriage is approved and 
 willed by God, the more firmly we must believe that 
 such permanence has in it nothing arbitrary, but that 
 God wills it because man's nature is most completely 
 satisfied by it. Will even the most rigid advocate of 
 the indissolubility of marriage maintain that this is not 
 the case? Will he deny that a husband who really 
 loves his wife will value and cling to her companionship 
 more and more as life goes on ? Will he venture to 
 
 M 2
 
 164 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 maintain the contrary ? Will he venture to say that 
 constancy is a kind of penance — a kind of mutilation of 
 affections which, in pursuit of mere natural and human 
 happiness, men would be always transferring from one 
 object to another ? Does the average man act thus in re- 
 gard to friendship ? Why should he incline to act thus, 
 then, in regard to serious love ? A man's physical caprices 
 may change from day to day, but love or affection, just 
 as they take time to grow, the more they grow and the 
 deeper their roots strike, the more difficult it is to 
 uproot them, and to plant others in their place. It 
 requires all kinds of effort — efforts of the mind, of the 
 imagination, a new surrender of reserve, a new exercise 
 of faith. In fact the demenagement of a heart is a very 
 troublesome thing, and the average man who is happy 
 with the wife he has got will be deterred from seeking 
 another by the mere labour involved in a removal. 
 
 To all this, however, there is an important objection 
 that will be urged. It will be said, and said with per- 
 fect truth, that a line of conduct or a course of life, 
 which other people know would be for our happiness, 
 and which in our sober moments we know would be for 
 our happiness also, is liable at times to be presented to 
 us in entirely false colours ; and that if we have no ex- 
 ternal rule to guide us we are in constant danger of 
 losing what we would really choose. This argument 
 which is true of human nature generally, is supposed to 
 have special force as an argument for the indissolubility 
 of marriage. Were marriage easily dissoluble, or 
 dissoluble on other grounds than it is, any temporary 
 quarrel or disagreement, it is urged, would lead both 
 parties to a step which they would bitterly regret after-
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 165 
 
 wards. Disagreements which are really of the slightest 
 and most transitory kind often at the time seem the 
 deepest and most irremediable. If marriage were dis- 
 soluble at will, such disagreements would be fatal. The 
 married life of every couple would be in daily danger of 
 shipwreck. Whereas, if the dissolution of marriage is 
 a difficult and painful thing, and not to be attempted 
 except under the most desperate circumstances, these 
 passing disagreements are comparatively harmless ; and 
 as it is known that they could justify no permanent 
 separation, they do not even suggest it. Nor is the 
 argument applied to definite disagreements only. It is 
 applied also to the general conduct and disposition of 
 those concerned. The knowledge on the part of either, 
 that the other cannot be got rid of, and a substitute 
 obtained, is said to produce a tendency in both towards 
 making the best of things ; and it is said that if the 
 tendency thus produced were absent, disagreements 
 which are now lived down, or conquered, would be so 
 frequent in the lives of even the best assorted couples, 
 that few marriages would be permanent, and few homes 
 escape being broken up. 
 
 Now, though in this argument, as thus stated, there 
 is a monstrous exaggeration, there is no doubt a con- 
 siderable element of truth. No doubt the sense that to 
 dissolve a marriage is out of the question does induce a 
 large number of couples, so to control their dispositions 
 and their tempers as to maintain amity, or even perhaps 
 affection, where otherwise there would be estrangement 
 or enmity. The answer to this argument is, that though 
 it may be true, it is only a fragment of the truth. It 
 is true of certain couples, but of certain couples only ;
 
 166 MAKEIAGE AND FEEE THOUGHT 
 
 whilst as to others the truth is the exact opposite. If 
 the sense that marriage is indissoluble leads some hus- 
 bands to control their tempers, or keep their fancies 
 from wandering, others would be prompted to a control 
 even more strict and careful by the knowledge that a 
 want of control might lead to their marriage being dis- 
 solved. If one man is mainly prompted to behave well 
 to his wife by the knowledge that he cannot get rid of 
 her and put someone else in her place, another will be 
 prompted to behave well to her by the knowledge, that 
 if he does not, she may get rid of him, and put some- 
 body else in his. And if we look dispassionately at the 
 average human character, we can hardly avoid the con- 
 clusion that this last class of cases represents human 
 nature far more completely than the former ; or that at 
 all events it represents a far higher element in it. It 
 is surely a higher, a happier, a more desirable thing in 
 a husband that he should cherish and please his wife 
 for fear she should get rid of him, than that he 
 should smother his ill-temper or aversion because he 
 cannot get rid of her. If the indissolubility of mar- 
 riage in many cases tends to repress disagreement, 
 its dissolubility in more would tend to prevent dis- 
 agreements from arising, and would make the union 
 depend mainly on what really gives it its sanctity — 
 on mutual attraction and cohesion, not on an external 
 chain. 
 
 Human nature is such, however, that in one and the 
 same person the most contradictory motives are united ; 
 and if we take men and women as a whole, the truth 
 probably is — what at first seems paradoxical — that 
 married happiness would be best secured and promoted
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 167 
 
 by marriage being at once both dissoluble and indis- 
 soluble. This seeming impossibility would be reduced 
 to a practical reality by the dissolution of marriage 
 being made difficult, so far as the process is concerned ; 
 but easy so far as the grounds are concerned. The 
 grounds of a divorce or a dissolution should be simply 
 the will of the parties interested. They alone are the 
 proper judges of its sufficiency ; but in order to prevent 
 their will, on so important a matter, being formed 
 lightly, the carrying of their will into effect should 
 demand serious sacrifices. How serious, is a question 
 of degree. 
 
 And now let me pass to another aspect of the 
 question, which up to now I have purposely put on one 
 side. Up to now I have considered marriage as if it 
 had relation solely to the husband and wife, and their 
 relation to each other as companions. I have purposely 
 avoided all consideration of children, not because this 
 is not an equally important point, but because it gives 
 rise to a different set of arguments ; and in order to 
 arrive at any clear conclusion it is necessary at first to 
 keep the two apart. Marriage has two ends — the 
 happiness and welfare of the parents ; the happiness 
 and welfare of the children. The conditions which 
 promote each we must consider separately. Sometimes 
 the conditions which promote each will coincide, some- 
 times they will differ. When they coincide there is no 
 difficulty ; when they differ there must be a com- 
 promise. 
 
 Now with regard to the children of parents whose 
 marriage is annulled, it would not be difficult to provide 
 for their material welfare. The only evil that could
 
 168 MAKEIAGE AND FKEE THOUGHT 
 
 result to them would be mental or spiritual. The 
 foundations of character are laid in the home ; and all 
 the affections which men consider most sacred, depend 
 for their development on experience of parental love, 
 on the reverence felt for parents, and on the example 
 set by them. This fact, however, though it tells as a 
 rale in favour of the permanence of marriage, tells, in 
 exceptional cases, for precisely the same reason, against 
 it. If a husband and wife, who are mutually unsuitable, 
 find the sanctity of marriage a mere name as regards 
 themselves, so too will they in many cases make the 
 sanctity of home a mere name as regards their children. 
 Even those whose view of marriage is so completely 
 physical, that technical adultery seems the only offence 
 fatal to it, must yet see that, so far as regards the 
 children, of all offences it is generally the least im- 
 portant. It is more often the result of an unhappy 
 marriage than the cause of it. It is in itself an act of 
 which generally the children know nothing ; but it is 
 constantly the result of conduct which the children 
 know only too well — of ill-temper, of neglect, of cold- 
 ness, of daily hardness, and above all daily injustice, 
 on the part of father to mother, or of mother to father ; 
 and no one, with regard to justice, is more sensitive 
 than a child. It is impossible to exaggerate the pain 
 that children can be made to feel by the spectacle of 
 dissension between their parents, or of the injustice of 
 one of them toward the other ; the miserable searchings 
 of the young hearts, or the blight of moral scepticism 
 which descends upon them too early. Whilst as for 
 technical adultery, as I say, they will probably know 
 nothing of it ; and besides this, as everyone knows who
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 169 
 
 has any experience of life, many men who have secretly 
 kept mistresses have, in every respect except physical 
 fidelity, been most kind and unselfish husbands, most 
 tender and affectionate fathers, and have surrounded 
 their children with that atmosphere of unsullied affec- 
 tion which many of the technically chaste, by their 
 injustice, by their selfishness, or by their coldness, 
 have destroyed. 
 
 The consideration then of the children, though in 
 many cases it may complicate matters, instead of 
 conflicting with the general principle I am contending 
 for, at once strengthens and illustrates it. It shows 
 how the dissolution of a marriage, for any cause that 
 makes it hopelessly unhappy, is demanded not only by 
 our highest ideas of married companionship, but with 
 equal or even greater force by our highest ideas of the 
 home. It shows us that the permanence of the union 
 should be the normal thing to aim at ; but it shows 
 also that when that union completely misses its ends, 
 it should, because we value other ends so highly, be 
 dissolved. 
 
 Once again, let me quote the words of Milton. 
 c Law,' he says, ' cannot command love, without which 
 matrimony hath no true being, no good, no solace, 
 nothing of God's instituting, nothing but so sordid and 
 so low, as to be disdained of any generous person. 
 Law cannot enable natural inability, either of body or 
 mind, which gives the grievance ; it cannot make equal 
 those inequalities, it cannot make fit those unfitnesses ; 
 and when there is malice more than defect of nature, it 
 cannot hinder ten thousand injuries and bitter actions 
 of despite, too subtle and too unapparent for law to
 
 170 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 
 
 deal with. And while it seeks to remedy mere outward 
 wrongs, it exposes the inward person to others more 
 inward and cutting. All these evils unavoidably will 
 redound upon the children, if any be, and upon the 
 whole family. . . . Nothing more unhallows a man, 
 more unprepares him for the service of God in any 
 duty, than a habit of wrath and perturbation, arising 
 from the importunity of troubulous causes never absent. 
 And when the husband stands in this plight, what love 
 can there be to the unfortunate issue, what care of 
 their breeding, which is the main antecedent to their 
 being holy ? ' 
 
 Finally, to turn back from these complicated con- 
 siderations, and to regard marriage again as having for 
 its primary end the completion of man's being by 
 some fitting, some ennobling, some lasting, companion- 
 ship and affection, let me put before the reader these 
 touching and eloquent words of the same writer : ' God 
 cannot in the justice of His own promise and institution 
 so unexpectedly mock us, by forcing that upon us as 
 the remedy of our solitude, which wraps us in a misery 
 worse than any wilderness.' 
 
 To those who believe, as a supernatural dogma or 
 doctrine, that no divorce is possible, nothing that I 
 have said is addressed ; nor should I expect it to 
 influence them. But to those who, not being Catholics, 
 or, at all events, not believers in the older forms of 
 orthodoxy, but professing, on the contrary, to be pro- 
 gressive and liberal thinkers, still cling doggedly to 
 the doctrine that marriage is indissoluble, or to the 
 bastard form of that doctrine that it is dissoluble only 
 for adultery, I would say, let them reason back from
 
 MARRIAGE AND FREE THOUGHT 171 
 
 this conclusion of theirs till they reach at last its only 
 possible premisses, and they will, at the end of their 
 journey, find themselves landed in Catholicism. Let 
 them admit the premisses, or let them abandon the 
 conclusion.
 
 172 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 
 
 A CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL 
 RELIGION 
 
 Believers in Revelation are constantly asked how far 
 their beliefs rest on natural grounds, and how far on 
 supernatural : how much to natural religion is added 
 by revealed religion ; in what way the first affords a 
 basis for the acceptance of the second ; and how much 
 of the first would remain to man if, for some reason or 
 other, the truth of the second were discredited. 
 
 This question in the present condition of thought is 
 argumentatively of the first importance. The historical 
 evidences of Revelation which were once thought irre- 
 sistible, have suffered so much at the hands of modern 
 criticism, and the idea of a Revelation, in the light of 
 modern discoveries, seems to have so many incongruous 
 and improbable aspects, that its inherent probability 
 requires to be first vindicated before the sceptical in- 
 quirer can entertain the idea of its reality. We shall 
 hardly believe, in the face of many difficulties, that God 
 has spoken specially to a particular section of mankind, 
 unless we are led on independent grounds to a pre- 
 sumption that God exists. What grounds, then, we 
 ask, are there for that presumption? Through the 
 ceaseless changes and transformations of matter, with- 
 out end or beginning, and without conjecturable aim,
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 173 
 
 out of which the only consciousness of which we have 
 any knowledge, seems slowly and blindly to have 
 evolved itself, threatening again to be annihilated — by 
 what faculties, by what observation, by what processes 
 of reasoning, can we pierce through this, and find light 
 and reason behind it ? 
 
 Many answers, as we all know, have been given. 
 The apostles and the expounders of Natural Religion 
 have been many. But the importance and interest of 
 their arguments have generally been weakened by this, 
 that each of such apostles speaks generally for himself, 
 and represents nobody but himself; that there is no 
 body of doctrine which they all of them hold in common, 
 and that their premises, their methods, and their con- 
 clusions are different, and are often mutually hostile. 
 
 Considerable interest, therefore, attaches to a work 
 on Natural Religion by a distinguished theologian of 
 the Roman Church, which has just been condensed and 
 translated from the original German into English. It 
 has, of course, no dogmatic authority, but it has been 
 pronounced at all events to contain nothing contrary to 
 faith ; and the kind of view upheld, and the kind of 
 arguments set forth in it, may be taken to represent 
 the general tone and position which Catholic apologists 
 are, at the present juncture, adopting in the face of 
 modern science and of reason unchecked by authority. 
 
 This work forms, as originally written, the first 
 volume of Dr. Hettinger's ' Evidences of Christianity ' ; 
 but father Sebastian Bowden, who edits the present 
 translation, has so arranged it that it constitutes a 
 complete treatise, adding himself to it an ' Introduction 
 on Certainty,' which is specially addressed to the secular
 
 174 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 
 
 English public. This introduction is extremely lucid 
 and interesting. It explains briefly Dr. Hettinger's 
 philosophic position as a Catholic ; it gives a brief view 
 of the scope and the general substance of his argument ; 
 and a few quotations from it will assist the reader in 
 seeing what the character of this argument is. 
 
 Father Sebastian starts with this proposition, that 
 God's existence, and the fact that man is related to him, 
 can be established 'by reason alone, apart from any 
 supernatural source ; ' but that the knowledge thus gained 
 is ' fragmentary and incomplete,' and quickened even 
 in the earnest heathen ' a longing for a revelation.' 
 The heathen philosophers, however, were, many of 
 them, as far as they went, so sound in their reasonings, 
 and so correct in their conclusions, that the Fathers of 
 the Christian Church adopted large portions of their 
 systems. 
 
 ' They did so, not because theology,' as St. Thomas 
 says — 
 
 was of itself insufficient to prove its own doctrines, but 
 because of the defect of our understanding, which is more 
 easily led by the knowledge of the truth which it has 
 acquired for itself, to the knowledge of those truths which 
 are above reason, and which theology imparts. And thus 
 the Church employed philosophy both to give expression to 
 divine mysteries in human terms, to develop and illustrate 
 them by human reasoning, and to defend the doctrines of 
 faith against heretical attack. . . . Thus man advanced in 
 knowledge from objects of sense to tniths of reason, and 
 from these, by a strictly logical sequence, to God. 
 
 The writer then goes on to emphasise an extremely 
 interesting point, which will hardly be recognised with
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 175 
 
 enthusiasm by the modern Protestant world. The above 
 procedure, he says, being that of Catholicism, that of 
 the modern systems which began in the Reformation 
 has been entirely and absolutely opposite. They have 
 not begun in reason ; they have begun with the rejec- 
 tion of reason. What, for instance, Father Sebastian 
 asks, could be less reasonable, using the word in the 
 rationalistic sense, than Luther's appeal to the Bible 
 alone, or than Cranmer's appeal to the royal supremacy ? 
 And he adds that the chief reproach of the Reformers 
 against the scholastics was ' the employment of human 
 arguments in the matter of Divine Truth.' Now our 
 modern positive thinkers may very likely admit that, 
 with regard to Protestant Christianity, Father Sebastian 
 is right. Indeed, Professor Huxley is almost every 
 month asserting the same thing, only in less polite 
 language. Professor Huxley, however, would certainly 
 deny this daring impeachment as directed against him- 
 self. It must be owned, indeed, that it has a paradoxical 
 sound ; but when its meaning is further consulted, it 
 will be found to be absolutely true. Just as Protestant- 
 ism began with this principle, that ' in the sphere of 
 revelation, no authority was to be recognised as infal- 
 lible in matters of faith,' so the philosophy that grew 
 up with Protestantism began with a similar principle, 
 ' that in the domain of reason no principle, no fact, was 
 to be admitted as certainly true. Hence,' Father 
 Sebastian proceeds, ' the new philosophy opens with 
 Descartes' system of " scientific doubt," which means 
 that in the logical order of thought doubt is prior to 
 certainty, and that everything is to be assumed as 
 doubtful till it be proved true.'
 
 176 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 
 
 Here, according to him, we come to the fundamental 
 difference between the philosophy of Catholicism and 
 the philosophy of the modern world. There is no 
 question, it must be noticed, of Catholic theology ; what 
 is spoken of is merely the philosophy on which that 
 theology builds itself : and the first principle of that 
 philosophy is this — not that doubt is prior to certainty, 
 as our modern Agnostics say, but that certainty is prior 
 to doubt. 
 
 Now, according to Catholic philosophy (says Father 
 Sebastian), certainty is of two kinds, natural and philo- 
 sophical. 
 
 The certainty which all men possess, and on which all 
 alike practically act, and which is therefore called natural, 
 is direct and simple, and is obtained before the mind has by 
 any reflective process determined the motive of its assent. 
 
 Philosophic certainty, on the contrary, is reflex and 
 demonstrative, and is only obtained after the motive of the 
 assent has been explicitly determined. 
 
 What Agnostics contend, then, is that natural certainty, 
 because it arises prior to proof, is necessarily untrust- 
 worthy. . . . The Schoolman (or the Catholic theologian), 
 on the other hand, affirms that natural certainty is not 
 only true and reasonable in itself, but that it is the sole 
 basis of philosophic certainty, and of all sound human 
 reasonings. They argue thus : All knowledge is the result 
 of two factors — the faculty which knows, and the object 
 known. This faculty, i.e. the mind, like the eye, can only 
 know or see objects that come within the range of its 
 vision. Of objects beyond that range, of itself it knows 
 nothing, but of objects within that range, it can and does 
 speak with certainty. Thus all knowledge is primarily 
 objective, and, as we are constituted, is derived first from 
 sense-objects.
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUEAL EELIGION 177 
 
 Such being the case, the writer proceeds to observe 
 that natural certainty rests on three foundations — in the 
 first place, the senses, as has just been said ; secondly, 
 the ideas which the objects of sense excite in us, to- 
 gether with our reasonings on them ; and lastly, the 
 information which we accept from the evidence of other 
 men. 
 
 Now comes the great question : c How far does 
 natural certainty teach us the existence of God ? ' The 
 answer is given thus. The truths of which we can be 
 naturally certain are, as is implied above, of two kinds 
 — first, those in which the motive of assent is self- 
 evidently apparent, from some conclusion derived from 
 premises of which the truth is previously known — as, 
 for instance, that the whole is greater than the part. 
 In such cases we behold the effect in the cause. Secondly, 
 there is another class of truths, which are the inverse 
 of the foregoing. Instead of being effects deduced from 
 cause, they are causes deduced from effects. Such, for 
 instance, is our certainty of the existence of the external 
 world, which we deduce from its sensible phenomena ; 
 or our certainty of our own existence, which we deduce 
 from our consciousness of our acts. Now our certainty 
 of God's existence is a certainty of this order. ' God's 
 essence is inconceivable to the human mind, and in- 
 accessible to the human sense.' His existence is, there- 
 fore, not self-evident to us, any more than the idea of a 
 part would be self-evident to us, supposing we had no 
 idea of a whole. We reach our belief in it, from our 
 certainty as to the world and ourselves. We demon- 
 strate that the world and ourselves, from what we know 
 of them, are not self-caused ; and we conclude, by a 
 
 N
 
 178 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUEAL RELIGION 
 
 certain inevitable train of argument, that the only cause 
 sufficient to have produced them is such an intelligent, 
 free, and omnipotent Being, as we call God. 
 
 Let us now see what the details of this argument 
 are, and we will do it by reference to the work of Dr. 
 Hettinger itself. 
 
 We argue back to God, from ourselves and from the 
 world. Dr. Hettinger expresses it, ' from the mind, and 
 from nature.' To the proofs derived from these two 
 things, must be added proofs derived from a third — 
 from history, and from human testimony. 
 
 We will begin with the arguments derived from the 
 human mind. These, according to Dr. Hettinger, 
 logically base themselves on the theory of necessary 
 truths, such as the primary ideas of logic and mathe- 
 matics. These ideas, it is argued, are objectively true ; 
 they are true independently of the human mind. For 
 the mind only apprehends them through reasoning from 
 the things of sense ; but these things of sense are them- 
 selves always changing, whereas the ideas which they 
 illustrate, embody, and lead us to, never change. The 
 latter, therefore, are something behind and beyond the 
 former, and constitute an eternal reality, an eternal 
 truth. Truth, however, cannot exist ' apart from an 
 external reason that perceives it, [just as] thought 
 [cannot exist] without the thinking mind.' The reason 
 here spoken of, however, cannot be man's reason, it 
 must therefore be the reason of an ' Eternal Mind, a 
 Supreme Intelligence, and this Supreme Intelligence is 
 God.' To this metaphysical argument is added the 
 argument from conscience. Conscience is a commanding 
 voice speaking within man ; and as this voice is con-
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUEAL EELIGION 179 
 
 stantly raised against man's strongest natural impulses 
 and dearest wishes, it exists in him ' not by his own 
 act, but in spite of him, and against Ins own will.' It 
 speaks to him as a superior to a subject, authoritatively 
 legislating for him. But ' every act of legislation is an 
 act of the will.' Conscience, therefore, must obviously 
 be the expression of the will of God. 
 
 So much for the proof from mind. Let us now 
 pass to the proof from nature, or the material universe. 
 This is composed of three separate arguments. In 
 the first place, the writer lays down as self-evident the 
 proposition that ' matter has in itself no principle 01 
 activity ; ' and yet the universe is ' instinct with move- 
 ment, activity, and life.' Its movement must therefore 
 come from some Mover outside itself; and this Mover 
 is God. Further, the movement of the universe ob- 
 viously does not proceed ' from a chance or random 
 impulse, but is throughout ordered on a fixed and 
 definite design.' All that exists in the visible world 
 ' shows unmistakably adaptation to an end ; ' ' perfect 
 harmony reigns in all parts of the universe ; ' so that 
 all nature is evidence of ' an ordaining and adapting 
 Intelligence,' the ' goodness ' of which is as infinite as 
 its ' wisdom ; ' and this Intelligence is God. Lastly, it 
 is asked, whence did this universe come ? For it does 
 not exist of itself. We ourselves, as we know, do not 
 exist of ourselves; still less, it is argued, 'do the visible 
 things around us, for they are of a lower grade than the 
 human intellect.' Dr. Hettinger then puts the same 
 idea in another form. There are beings, he says, which 
 are possible and contingent ; which may exist, and 
 which may not exist ; therefore such beings when they 
 
 N 2
 
 180 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUKAL EELIGION 
 
 do exist, must have a cause ; but there cannot be an 
 endless series of causes ; for such a sequence would be 
 like ' a chain suspended in the air,' which yet must 
 bear the weight of everything. The force of this argu- 
 ment, the writer insists, is seen with special clearness 
 in the case of life and consciousness. For even if 
 matter were eternal and self-existent, life obviously is 
 not so, for ' scientific research has proved that at a 
 certain period the condition of the earth made organic 
 life impossible ; ' therefore for the cause of life, or for 
 the cause of matter, we must go back to a first, supreme, 
 and living cause, which is God. 
 
 Lastly comes the proof of God, derived from history 
 and human testimony. The authority of Cuvier is in- 
 voked to show that the human race is not more than 
 six thousand years old. Now during that period, it is 
 impossible to discover any trace of religion having been 
 invented ; and yet, during that period, men universally, 
 as Cicero bears witness, have always had some religion. 
 But may not some primitive man have invented it, and 
 persuaded all the others to accept it ? This supposition 
 is answered by an appeal to Pliny the Younger, who 
 says ' that no one man has ever deceived everybody.' 
 Therefore religion cannot have been an invention of 
 any particular man, but must be naturally inherent in 
 all men; and Pliny the Younger is again quoted, as 
 declaring that a belief common to all men is never false. 
 It is true, Dr. Hettinger observes, that an ingenious 
 argument has been put forward, which derives the 
 belief in question from awe of the forces of nature — a 
 universal cause producing a universally similar effect. 
 Now this argument, he says, ' is founded on the as-
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL KELIGION 181 
 
 sumption that man's primitive state was savage, his 
 religion polytheistic, and that he has advanced therefrom 
 by a necessary law of development, to civilisation and a 
 belief in God.' But this assumption, Dr. Hettinger 
 continues, is obviously false. We naturally ask why ? 
 He tells us. It is obviously false, because it postulates 
 in man universally ' a constant natural tendency to pro- 
 gress, whereas the exact contrary is the fact. . . . The 
 more man approaches the savage state, the more hope- 
 less is his intellectual stagnation : [indeed] not only is 
 the savage [of to-day] indifferent to civilisation; he 
 shows a deliberate preference for barbarism. . . . 
 Belief in the existence of God [then], being diffused 
 throughout the nations of the world, as every page of 
 history proves,' the highest form of this belief must 
 have been the earliest; and the polytheism of to-day 
 can be nothing else than degradation of an original and 
 natural monotheism. Travellers tell us, however, that 
 there are many nations who have no belief in God at 
 all, and thus impugn the foundation of all the above 
 reasoning — the proposition that theism is natural to 
 man as man. But to this Dr. Hettinger answers that 
 travellers are unreliable ; that there is no evidence for 
 the existence of any atheistic nation. The utmost that 
 has been established — and this, he admits, has been 
 established — is, that atheism has been discovered 
 amongst a few ' isolated groups ' — a few ' isolated 
 savage tribes.' But the ' reasoning faculty of these 
 tribes is so absolutely undeveloped, that their condition 
 simply amounts to brutish.' Their existence, there- 
 fore, says Dr. Hettinger, instead of proving what our 
 rationalists maintain that it proves, proves in reality
 
 182 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUKAL EELIGION 
 
 the exact opposite. It is a proof, not that theism is 
 not natural to man, but that in so far as men forget 
 theism, in so far as they lapse from their original 
 instinctive faith, they lose the characteristics of 
 humanity. We trace, then, Dr. Hettinger continues, 
 the belief in God, 
 
 from primitive times, and watch its unbroken career 
 through subsequent ages. . . . Everywhere it appears as a 
 natural growth . . . and it gains more than it loses with 
 every advance of civilisation. . . . Truth and error [indeed] 
 are alike transmitted from age to age, but with this differ- 
 ence, that while there is no limit to the spread of truth, 
 error inevitably finds its level. . . . The vitality [there- 
 fore] of this belief [in God], its absolute independence of 
 space and time, are a clear proof of its truth. 
 
 Here in outline are the arguments of contemporary 
 Catholicism for the existence and the objective truth of 
 a natural religion in man — a natural belief in God. But 
 before criticising them, let us deal with one further 
 question. Granting that we thus have such a natural 
 belief in God, how much knowledge of God does this 
 belief include ? According to Dr. Hettinger, it would 
 appear to be very partial. It includes at its utmost not 
 more than was arrived at by Socrates and Plato ; and 
 its chief contents are as follows — that God, in addition 
 to omnipresence and omnipotence, is a personal and 
 designing intelligence ; that good and evil being ob- 
 jective realities, God is infinitely good ; that, as Plato 
 sa}'s, He made the world out of love ; that, as Socrates 
 says, He demands, above all things, purity of heart and 
 justice; and that 'whilst His providence watches over 
 all things, it watches specially over man.' But all this
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 183 
 
 knowledge is incomplete and general. It tells us 
 nothing of God's inner hidden life. Conscience itself, 
 God's vicarious voice, ' is not the law of morals, but 
 [merely] the application of that law to ourselves ; ' and 
 in order that, in Plato's words, ' we may cross as in a 
 trusty vessel the stormy sea of life,' we need more than 
 a natural knowledge of God ; we need a supernatural 
 revelation from Him. It is not enough that our reason 
 raises us towards Him; His goodness must descend 
 and speak to us. Still, our natural knowledge teaches 
 us this much — that whatever we may mean by goodness 
 and justice, God is good and just : that He has made us 
 to do His will ; that we owe Him everything ; and that 
 He will take care that we pay our debts ; and that a 
 natural and reasonable certainty on these points, so 
 thrusts itself on all of us, by the spontaneous action of 
 reason, that we cannot avoid, much less reject it, with- 
 out an intentional and criminal act of a perverse will. 
 In fact, to use Father Sebastian's words, the personality 
 of God, and His infinite care for man, and His infinite 
 love and goodness towards him are so clearly demonstra- 
 ble, whilst all objections are so shallow, so sophistical, 
 and are so easily dispelled, that religious denial, and 
 even religious doubt, ' is a crime of the most heinous 
 malice possible in human act.' 
 
 Let us now briefly consider what force or value such 
 a defence of religion as this is likely to have for the 
 sceptical world at large ; and whilst we approach it 
 with perfect impartiality as to its substance, let us do 
 so with complete and serious sympathy as to its aim. 
 Let us suppose ourselves to be doubters, who desire the 
 comfort of faith, and ask ourselves how far, in the
 
 184 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUKAL RELIGION 
 
 existing conditions of thought, such reasoning is calcu- 
 lated to be any help to us. To me it seems that this 
 book, in a most deplorable and startling way, illustrates, 
 little as he thinks it does, the following utterance of its 
 editor : ' A defence of religion,' says Father Sebastian, 
 ' based on arguments unsound or inconclusive, or ignor- 
 ing the sceptical objections of the day, may only suggest 
 new doubt, and do more harm than good.' He adds, 
 that the present work he believes ' to be safe from this 
 peril.' To any independent reader it will, I believe, 
 seem to be full of it. It has every one of the faults 
 that have just been mentioned. Most of it is inclusive, 
 much of it is unsound, and the principal objections that 
 require combating are ignored throughout the whole 
 of it. 
 
 To begin by putting the case in a general way, the 
 writer and the school represented by him, much as they 
 may have studied our modern scientific thinkers, seem 
 utterly unaware of the extraordinary change which 
 modern science has accomplished in the position of the 
 human mind. Historical criticism, philology, physiology, 
 geology, astronomy, and science generally seem to these 
 men to increase in bulk, but never to change in cha- 
 racter ; and the opinions of a man of genius in one age 
 seem as objectively valuable as the opinions of a man 
 of genius in another. Thus Rousseau is quoted as an 
 authority for the authenticity of the Gospels, and Cuvier 
 as an authority on the antiquity of the human race ; as 
 if Cuvier's knowledge could be placed on the same 
 plane as that of Professor Huxley ; or as if Eousseau's 
 opinion as to the Gospels could have had the smallest 
 critical weight in his own day or in any other. This
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 185 
 
 book is indeed a curious medley, in which all ages, 
 however distant, are brought together to the front of 
 the stage, and Socrates made to silence Darwin on the 
 question of design ; where Lucretius is treated as the 
 mouth-piece of contemporary physical science, and the 
 theory of mental evolution is refuted by a sentence from 
 Pliny the Younger. The impression produced on the 
 mind is just what would be produced if a modern map 
 of the Mediterranean should be corrected by an appeal 
 to the Odyssey, or Mr. Stanley's Travels by the geography 
 of Martianus Oapella. 
 
 This brings us to the interesting question : What is 
 really the attitude of the Catholic apologist to that 
 modern science, to whose methods and conclusions he 
 refers so constantly ? Does he set aside its methods as 
 unsound, or as leading to conclusions of no special 
 importance ? Or if it can speak with authority as to 
 any subjects, what is the range of subjects as to which 
 it can so speak? One might have thought, judging 
 merely from Dr. Hettinger's general tone, that he 
 considered its authority as purely speculative, in most 
 cases, and as grotesquely false in others. The fact, 
 however, is quite otherwise, as the following passage 
 shows : — 
 
 ' A mere speck on the earth's surface, man,' he says, 
 
 now weighs this terrestrial sphere, and measures its height, 
 its breadth, and depth. Astronomy subjects to its formulas 
 the mechanism of the heavens. Geology penetrates into 
 the mysteries of its [the earth's] origin. Natural philosophy 
 determines the laws which govern the movements and 
 changes of the material world. Chemistry shows the 
 elements by whose combination bodies either exist or dis-
 
 186 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 
 
 appear. Physiology reveals the formative process of 
 organisms, and the continuity of their fundamental types, 
 from the lowest up to the highest — that of the human 
 body. . . . The pages of history reveal to him the whole 
 course of the human race. Comparative philology gives 
 him an insight into the structure of language. 
 
 Now what is the real meaning of the above explicit 
 statement ? It means this — that except for the doctrines 
 of natural selection and spontaneous generation, which 
 the author specially excludes — the discoveries of modern 
 science, with regard to the material world, are true ; 
 and these discoveries are obviously seen by him to in- 
 clude the evolution of the lifeless universe from some 
 simpler substance ; the evolution of all existing life from 
 some simpler vital principle ; and also the history of the 
 human race, as rewritten in the light of modern scientific 
 evidence. But the curious thing about Dr. Hettinger 
 is this : that though he accepts all these revelations of 
 science, he seems totally unaware of the real character 
 of their authority, or their real drift and meaning, when 
 taken together as a whole. He does not see how 
 completely they take away from him the coercive force 
 of his principal arguments. 
 
 In the first place, he does not discriminate between 
 one scientific authority and another ; and in talking of 
 modern science, he exhibits the most curious misconcep- 
 tion as to what modern science is. Thus, as we have 
 seen already, he goes to Cuvier as a final authority on 
 geology, and accordingly declares modern science to 
 have demonstrated that the human race began at the 
 traditional date of Adam. Fortified by this view, he 
 proves to his own satisfaction that man's original condi-
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUEAL EELIGION 187 
 
 tion was a condition of the purest monotheism ; and he 
 bases on this one of his arguments for God's reality. 
 He seems never to have heard of the age of flint imple- 
 ments ; nor to know of those forlorn traces left by the 
 human foot, so far in ' the dark backward and abysm of 
 time,' that Adam seems as modern by comparison as 
 yesterday's ' Daily Telegraph.' 
 
 His arguments, however, in the face of science, have 
 far deeper flaws than this. He contends that God's 
 existence can be proved in each of these two ways — 
 since the universe moves, it must have a mover ; since 
 it exhibits perfect design, it must have a designer ; and 
 further, since the design is obviously benevolent, the 
 designer must be infinitely good. But to all such 
 arguments what science does is as follows. It does not 
 destroy them as logical structures, but it blows away 
 the bases on which they rest, like so many pieces of 
 thistledown. 
 
 In the first place as to design — if it allows us to 
 entertain the belief in design at all, it transfers the 
 whole question to the very beginning of things, or to 
 the time when the universe, as we know it, existed only 
 potentially in its simplest elements. All that has since 
 happened — at all events in the material world — in all 
 of man's surroundings, if not in man himself, was 
 designed then, once for all, immutably and completely. 
 Dr. Hettinger himself sees this ; for he speaks of ' the 
 action of the forces of nature ' as being ' necessarily 
 fixed ; ' and he argues that matter cannot be a self- 
 existing substance, which God found and worked with, 
 because the forms which things take are the result of 
 the ' very nature and essence ' of their component parts ;
 
 188 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 
 
 and are ' absolutely inalienable from the things them- 
 selves.' If then everything that now exists in the 
 physical universe (and this includes the physical part of 
 man), everything from the course of the planets to the 
 slightest molecular change in each human brain, or the 
 smallest tremor of each blade of grass — if all this existed 
 necessarily in ' the primordial arrangement of the mole- 
 cules of the universe,' and could not, unless all the laws 
 of matter had been subsequently revolutionised, have 
 happened otherwise, nothing is gained logically by 
 postulating a moving principle outside the molecules, as 
 well as within them. On whatever grounds such a 
 postulate may be adopted, it is not adopted by the 
 mind, owing to any compulsion of reason ; as is abun- 
 dantly shown by a glance at the set of arguments which 
 Dr. Hettinger relies on for proving to us that it is. 
 
 These arguments are as follows : ' The Divine 
 Substance,' he says, is evidently ' essentially different ' 
 from the molecules of the universe, because the ' divine 
 substance ' being ' eternal, necessary, and infinite,' every 
 manifestation of it must be ' eternal, necessary, and 
 infinite ' also : but the things of the molecular universe 
 are exactly the reverse, therefore, the molecular universe 
 cannot be identical with the divine substance. Again, 
 were the two identical, all finite existences, if resolved 
 into their primordial matter, would produce a divine 
 substance which is infinite : but the infinite cannot be 
 obtained by the addition of things finite, any more than 
 a unit can be the product of a sum of zeros. Again, 
 were God and the universe the same living substance, 
 the same substance would be at once free and necessary, 
 conscious and unconscious ; what is free would have
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUEAL RELIGION 189 
 
 been evolved from what is not free : — which is impos- 
 sible, for the lower cannot produce the higher, or the 
 imperfect produce the perfect. Finally comes this 
 argument, which must be given in the writer's own 
 words, ' If the world is not the work of God, but self- 
 created, as the less cannot produce the greater, it must 
 have been the work of man. But man is inconceivable 
 apart from nature; indeed, of all organic beings, he 
 is the last produced. Therefore the world was not 
 created by man, who is conditioned and finite, but 
 by a first cause, who is superior alike to man and to 
 the world.' 
 
 The deepest feeling which these lamentable puerilities 
 call forth in us, is astonishment that any serious man 
 should in these days have recourse to them : but it will 
 still be well to notice a few details of their ineptitude, 
 for they give us the key to the fundamental unsound- 
 ness of the writer's entire position. 
 
 With regard to the statement that if God apart from 
 the universe does not exist, we are driven to assert that 
 infinity is made up of a number of finite things, Dr. 
 Hettinger is no doubt quite correct ; but the hypothesis 
 of a separate God does nothing to help us out of the 
 difficulty. If science forces on us any belief at all, it 
 makes us realise every day more and more irresistibly, 
 how this universe of finite things actually is infinite ; 
 or at all events it makes any limit to it inconceivable. 
 Conversely, too, it brings this home to us — that not only 
 do finite things thus make up an infinite thing, but that 
 an infinite number of things go to make up finite 
 things. Let us consider the particles that make up a 
 drop of water. Chemistry may come to the point when
 
 190 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUEAL RELIGION 
 
 it can divide them no further, but thought divides them 
 for ever, and can never put a term to the process. 
 
 But there are other criticisms to be made on Dr. 
 Hettinger's argument that are more important still. If 
 God did not make the world, he says, man must have 
 made it. The philosophical absurdity of this alternative 
 we need not now insist on. The point to be noticed is, 
 that for Dr. Hettinger, man still seems to be the central 
 fact of the universe, 1 and the earth and the universe he 
 uses as convertible terms. He seems to know nothing 
 of that stupendous and overwhelming revelation which 
 science has forced on man of nature's unfathomable 
 magnitude ; how it has dragged aside the curtain which 
 for so many thousands of years roofed him in and 
 sheltered him, in what seemed a comprehensible cosmos 
 — a cosmos in which he was the crowning feature ; and 
 how it has laid bare to his astonished eyeballs those 
 endless profundities of time and space, swarming with 
 worlds and systems, and suns shining and darkened, 
 which drown the universe as man once knew it, and 
 swallow up what seemed its august and divine signifi- 
 cance in their desolating and unthinkable enormity. 
 Had Dr. Hettinger realised this, he would have seen all 
 his arguments, which take man as the centre of things, 
 and assumes for him some destiny that is obviously pre- 
 eminent and significant — he would have seen all these 
 arguments perishing on each side of him, like helpless 
 sailors washed overboard in a storm. 
 
 And now let us go on to another point. ' Were 
 God and matter,' he says, ' one identical substance, 
 
 1 ' Nature exists only as a means by which man attains to God, 
 and will endure only as long as that purpose remains,' p. 277.
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUEAL EELIGION 191 
 
 what is free would be evolved from what is not free — 
 which,' he exclaims triumphantly, ' is impossible ! ' and 
 he imagines that he is thus refuting the scientific theory 
 of the universe. Here again we see that he has not the 
 smallest idea of what the scientific theory of the universe 
 is. According to that theory nothing would have hap- 
 pened of the kind he mentions. What is free would 
 not have been evolved out of what is not free ; because, 
 according to that theory, no such thing as freedom is 
 in existence. What we call freedom is a mere subjective 
 delusion; and Dr. Hettinger in assuming it to be a 
 reality attempts to answer science on its own grounds, 
 by starting with the principal proposition which science 
 declares itself to have disproved. 
 
 Lastly, let us turn to an argument on which Dr. 
 Hettinger lays even greater stress, and which he thinks 
 is most calculated to carry conviction to the ordinary 
 mind. This is the argument from design. The universe 
 evidently displays some purpose, he says, therefore there 
 must be some mind in which the purpose is conceived ; 
 and it is equally evident that the purpose is infinitely 
 ^ise, good, and benevolent. Now the obvious answer 
 to this is, that the discoveries of modern science, though 
 they have not disproved the possibility of some provi- 
 dential purpose, have at all events taken from it, as a 
 postulate, all logical necessity. This, however, is but a 
 small part of the matter. The aim of Dr. Hettinger, 
 and all those who believe with him, is not merely to 
 prove that the universe reveals a purpose, but that this 
 purpose is infinitely wise and benevolent. But when 
 we talk of benevolence or goodness, we mean, and we 
 can mean only, benevolence and goodness to such living
 
 192 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 
 
 and conscious things as we know, and primarily and 
 principally to man. It is, of course, admitted by all 
 theologians that this goodness need not have for its 
 object, in all cases, man's material prosperity ; but it 
 has, in all cases, as Dr. Hettinger says with emphasis, 
 such circumstances for its object as will enable each 
 man, if he wills it, to attain to God. In other words, 
 God apportions to each man the circumstances best 
 calculated to lead each man to Himself. Now this may 
 be true or it may not be true. "We are not concerned 
 with that question here ; we are only concerned in 
 asking how far natural reason shows it to be true. Dr. 
 Hettinger professes for the time to appeal to nothing 
 but that. Let us consider then one of the principal 
 facts which he alleges in support of his proposition, and 
 that is the universality of the knowledge of Himself 
 which God has implanted in every human heart. That 
 knowledge, or rather the possibility of that knowledge, 
 Dr. Hettinger describes as universal, so that, ' every 
 man ' is able to arrive at it, unless he deliberately and 
 maliciously sets his face against doing so. Let us, 
 however, take certain of Dr. Hettinger's own admissions. 
 Having declared that there is no nation, however savage, 
 which has not some religion, he admits that in many 
 cases the religion in question is nothing but ' the fear 
 of evil spirits ; ' and he admits further the existence of 
 certain isolated groups who have not a vestige of any 
 religious belief at all. Now how does he reconcile such 
 facts as these with the general proposition ? He says 
 that the natives whose sole religion is the fear of evil 
 spirits are races who by their own sins have fallen, and 
 who are ' degraded and chastened ; ' whilst the isolated
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL EELIGION 193 
 
 groups which have no religion at all, have been more 
 sinful, have been chastened and degraded yet farther, 
 ' so that their reasoning faculty is absolutely un- 
 developed, and their condition amounts to brutish.' 
 Let us suppose that this is so. Now comes the follow- 
 ing question. We take the case of these degraded 
 creatures to-day — we take them one by one individually 
 and we ask, ' Did these men sin or their parents ? 
 Obviously their parents, their remote ancestors, of whom 
 these living men knew nothing. But God's goodness, 
 as Dr. Hettinger describes it, is goodness not only to a 
 race as a corporate community, but goodness to each 
 separate immortal life, to each individual immortal soul. 
 Here then are a number of immortal souls to whom God 
 has allotted circumstances in which, so far as reason 
 and observation can inform us, no knowledge of God is 
 possible, and no life at all but a life that is ' simply 
 brutish.' ' But,' says Dr. Hettinger, { these men are 
 few in number.' "Was there ever a more lamentable 
 apology ? If a God who is supposed to be infinitely 
 powerful and good can be convicted of want of good- 
 ness in the case of a single soul, His character for power 
 and goodness is as much destroyed as if the same con- 
 viction could be arrived at in the case of millions. And 
 it is this that really is the case — always supposing that 
 reason and observation are our sole sources of know- 
 ledge. Millions are always with us, other than savages, 
 who were born into the world, not only surrounded by 
 circumstances that are inexorably brutalising, but with 
 brutal passions ingrained in their whole system, and 
 forced upon them by the very formation of their skulls. 
 It is idle to say that in the course of progress such 
 

 
 194 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUEAL EELIGION 
 
 millions will exist no longer. They have existed, and 
 they do exist ; and it will do the theologian little good 
 to argue that his God will be a just God in the future, 
 if it still remains apparent that He has been an unjust 
 God in the past. And to the eye of natural reason, 
 unjust God is and has been, if we suppose a God at all. 
 That there are countless instances of what seems His 
 goodness, His care, and His wisdom is, of course, un- 
 deniable ; but these only throw into darker shadow 
 those instances equally, if not more numerous, of what 
 seems His malevolence, His cynical indifference, or His 
 impotent stupidity. Let us take the only argument 
 that ever has been advanced, or can be advanced, against 
 this position, and that is the argument that all the 
 apparent evil God inflicts on man is meant for his good, 
 and will result in his good hereafter. That may be 
 true. I am not, for a moment, saying that it is not 
 true ; but the point is that, however true it may be, its 
 truth is not apparent to natural reason : natural reason 
 cannot discover a hint of it. How can natural reason 
 discover in the earthquake of Lisbon any wisdom or 
 goodness, so far as the men and women are concerned 
 who perished in it ? or in the hereditary weakness, 
 taints, and manias with which so many are burdened 
 from the moment they come into the world ? Or again, 
 if we turn to the great events of history, what trace of 
 good or of wise purpose can we distinguish there? 
 Even granting that we can persuade ourselves that 
 they show signs of some general progress, what is that 
 from the point of view of the individual ? All that the 
 theologian can see, by the light of his natural reason, 
 will be that God is facilitating the perfection of men's
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 195 
 
 souls in the future by the wholesale sacrifice of men's 
 souls in the past. 
 
 This argument is almost as old as human thought 
 itself; but that does not make it any the less forcible. 
 On the contrary, the discoveries of science are every 
 day giving new force to it, illustrating it and bringing 
 it home to us by fresh examples, driving it into the ears 
 of the world in a way never before dreamed of; and 
 Dr. Hettinger, on grounds of natural reason, makes no 
 attempt to answer it. 
 
 Indeed, this Catholic defence of natural religion, 
 regarded as an answer to the arguments of scientific 
 Agnosticism, is no answer at all. The subtleties of the 
 metaphysical part of it we need not discuss here. The 
 philosophy on which these are based may be true or 
 false. The only point on which I am now concerned 
 to insist is, that whatever difficulties such arguments 
 may meet, there are other difficulties which not only 
 are not met, but which it seems the writer has not even 
 conceived of. These difficulties consist, one and all of 
 them, of certain broad generalisations, the truth of 
 which modern science is daily branding deeper into the 
 consciousness of civilised man. They may be summed 
 up as follows : 
 
 The material universe is infinite and eternal, all its 
 changes being the result of all-pervading and eternally 
 unchanging laws. 
 
 Life and consciousness, whatever maybe their nature, 
 are inseparable from this material universe ; they follow 
 its laws, and are the results of its laws. They are 
 another aspect of the movements of the same machine. 
 
 Such life and consciousness as we see exhibited in 
 
 o 2
 
 196 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUEAL RELIGION 
 
 man is a fleeting and infinitesimal phenomenon in the 
 eternity and the infinity of this All. 
 
 No purpose that to human reason seems rational 
 can be discovered by human reason in man's circum- 
 stances and history — certainly not any benevolent 
 purpose ; and as to the universe as a whole, no meaning 
 or purpose in it is even conjecturable. 
 
 The universe is eternal ; freedom is unthinkable ; 
 purpose is undiscoverable ; the hypothesis of a designer 
 is unnecessary. Such is the verdict of natural reason 
 applied scientifically ; and there is this important fact 
 to be remarked — that if that verdict has weight with 
 anybody, it ought to have special weight with such 
 Catholic philosophers as Dr. Hettinger, because, as we 
 have seen, one of the fundamental doctrines of their 
 philosophy is the trustworthiness of the evidence given 
 us by our senses with regard to the external world, the 
 trustworthiness of our consciousness with regard to 
 ourselves, and the trustworthiness of those laws of 
 thought which we discover in ourselves. 
 
 The conclusion, then, of the whole matter is as 
 follows. If by natural religion is meant a belief in 
 God, based on the application of man's logical faculties 
 to the facts of his own intellect and of the sensible 
 universe, there is no such thing as natural religion at 
 all. However the idea of God may have arisen in our 
 minds, the accurate use of reason, and the accumulation 
 of accurate knowledge, are so far from having led us to 
 it, that the more systematic and more accurate they 
 become, the more utterly baseless do they show this 
 idea to be. 
 
 And now let me turn round to the reader and
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUEAL EELIGION 197 
 
 answer a question which he will perhaps ask. He will 
 perhaps ask, to what purpose are these criticisms put 
 forward here ? Is it with the purpose of proving that 
 natural religion is a delusion, and that it is idle to 
 attempt to give to human life any aim or hope above 
 and beyond itself ? The purpose is very different. It 
 is not to show that there is no such thing as natural 
 religion, but that if there is such a thing, it founds 
 itself, and must defend itself, on quite other grounds 
 than those put forward by writers like Dr. Hettinger. 
 What, as it appears to me, these grounds are, I will 
 try to explain briefly. 
 
 In the first place, it must be recognised, with 
 absolute clearness, that neither the testimony of sense, 
 nor the testimony of history, nor the laws of the 
 intellect, give us any proof of the existence of a 
 personal Creator. 
 
 In the second place, it must be recognised that if 
 we mean by a Creator a Creator infinitely benevolent 
 to man, and add as a corollary to this, man's moral 
 responsibility to this Creator, then such a Creator and 
 such a responsibility are not only not discovered by 
 observation and by the intellect, but the very idea of 
 them, the more we contemplate it, becomes more and 
 more preposterous. The propositions that God is 
 infinitely good, and that man's will is free, must be 
 recognised as being as unthinkable as the proposition 
 that two straight lines can enclose a space. 
 
 But the matter does not end here. There is a 
 third truth to be recognised, which is this — that not 
 only are a good God and a free human will unthinkable, 
 but that everything else, if we try to think it out, ends
 
 198 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL RELIGION 
 
 in being unthinkable also. Time, space, eternity, we 
 know that they exist, and yet the more we contemplate 
 their existence, the more and more do we see that 
 some impossibility is involved in it. We know that 
 the universe exists, but we can neither conceive of it as 
 being infinite, nor as having any confine. Our con- 
 ception is incomplete, and in trying to make it complete 
 we tear it to pieces. And with all conceptions it may 
 be shown that the case is really the same. In all there 
 is sleeping a germ of the inconceivable. The mind has 
 only to realise all that is really implied in them, and, 
 like Faust's poodle, each of them swells and swells to 
 a monster, till the logical girdle of thought is no more 
 able to contain it than a woman's sash is able to go 
 round the equator. Out of the reason there are ever 
 ready to spring the wild horses, which, if we allow 
 them, will tear reason to pieces. In other words, all 
 thought is founded on assumptions, which involve the 
 negation of the laws of thought. 
 
 Now if this fact is once realised, the mere idea 01 
 God's existence and goodness, and of man's freedom 
 and responsibility, will not present to us any insuper- 
 able difficulties, on the ground of their logical impossi- 
 bility. It must be remembered, however, that the 
 argument that has just been urged does not go to show 
 that every impossibility is true, but merely that every 
 impossibility is not necessarily untrue. It merely gives 
 us, as it were, a kind of permissive bill, to construct a 
 natural religion if we can. It assures us that reason 
 shall not interfere with us; but it does not promise 
 that at starting reason shall do anything to assist us. 
 That is to say, it leaves us to take the first step
 
 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATUKAL KELIGION 199 
 
 independently of reason. We have to start not with 
 something proved, but with something assumed. 
 
 Now what is that something ? Is it God, and man's 
 freedom ? Is the first step we speak of the direct 
 assumption that these are realities ? Before answering 
 we must consider the following point — that though 
 natural religion must, as we say, be based on an 
 assumption, and though we have no proof which will 
 show it to be true, still we must have some motive for 
 wishing to believe it to be true. Now what motive 
 can man have for wishing to believe in the two propo- 
 sitions in question — that God exists, and that man is 
 free, and responsible to God ? They are propositions 
 which are not only scientifically superfluous, and which 
 also multiply and deepen the difficulties of the intellect, 
 but they involve many consequences which are practi- 
 cally terrifying and disagreeable. The only motive 
 then that can make us wish to assent to them does not 
 lie in themselves. These primary doctrines of natural 
 religion are not its primary assumptions : or, to speak 
 more correctly, they are not assumptions at all. They 
 are logical deductions from some assumption already 
 made ; and the assumption is the assumption of the 
 value, the dignity, and the significance of man's life. 
 In other words, putting the question of a revelation 
 aside, a belief in God can only logically be defended by 
 assuming, first, a certain belief in life — a certain 
 spiritual importance and dignity in certain acts and 
 moods of mind, and a certain meaning in certain 
 spiritual fears and hopes, and a certain authority, 
 beyond that of a tribal instinct, in the voice of con- 
 science. Now, so far as proof is concerned, all this is
 
 200 CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN ON NATURAL EELIGION 
 
 mere assumption. What faculty is there in man which 
 is to urge him to assume it ? 
 
 It is difficult to suggest for it any better name than 
 faith; and its formula put briefly comes to be as 
 follows : ' I do believe in the spiritual value and the 
 eternal meaning of life, because my nature is such that 
 I abhor the belief that is the alternative.' This step 
 once taken, natural reason steps in and works in the 
 ordinary way; proving, just as it might prove any 
 other theorem, that given to life the sort of value in 
 question, the existence of God and of man's freedom 
 are its necessary logical consequences, and that it can- 
 not be explained, or even expressed, without having 
 recourse to them. 
 
 Science, whilst increasing the difficulties in the way 
 of natural religion on one side, has strengthened all the 
 arguments in favour of it, on the other. In dwarfing 
 man into apparent insignificance, when compared with 
 the sum of the universe, and in thus robbing his life of 
 all its objective magnitude, it has made a belief in God 
 and in immortality essential, to a degree that could 
 never have before been realised to any rational belief in 
 the dignity of so evanescent an existence. To put the 
 whole matter briefly, it may be said that whilst the 
 hypothesis of God becomes more and more superfluous 
 in the world of matter, it becomes more and more 
 logically necessary in the world of spirit ; and my sole 
 complaint against such apologists as Dr. Hettinger is 
 that they stultify and discredit the second of these great 
 truths by their blindness to the first. They place their 
 treasure, indeed, in a strong-room, but the foundation 
 of the strong-room they insist upon seeking in the 
 sand.
 
 201 
 
 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Religious belief and political and social Conservatism 
 are very commonly supposed to be related and to go 
 together ; still, there are many sections of the religious 
 world which would doubtless deny that the connection 
 was in any way fundamental or necessary. Few people, 
 however, would deny this — that whatever may be the 
 relations of Religion and Conservatism to one another, 
 they have in common one position at all events — a 
 position of antagonism to a certain common foe. The 
 common foe is that body of discoveries, whether alleged 
 or real, those methods of discovery, those tests of truth, 
 and that general habit of mind, which are now popu- 
 larly described by the words Science and Scientific. 
 The quarrel between Science and Religion is direct and 
 open ; the quarrel between Science and Conservatism 
 is less direct ; but in both cases the antagonism is 
 equally real and notorious. Science claims to destroy 
 what has hitherto been called religion, by destroying 
 the bases and evidences of our traditional religious 
 beliefs. It claims to destroy the cause of political and 
 social Conservatism, by supplying society, not only with 
 the material appliances of improvement, but — more im- 
 portant still — with a new theory of itself. 
 
 Now how do Religion and Conservatism meet this
 
 202 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 
 
 common antagonist ? How do Christians meet what 
 they consider to be the science of Antichrist ? How do 
 Conservatives meet what considers itself the Science ot 
 the Ee volution ? They meet it — speaking generally — 
 in two wholly different ways, and each way is the worst 
 way possible. Each perversely pursues the conduct that 
 would be appropriate to the other, and does so with 
 results that are at once ludicrous and lamentable. The 
 true character of this intellectual drama is so little 
 appreciated at present by the general public, that I 
 shall not be engaging in any superfluous task, if I try 
 to suggest it to the attention of the reader. 
 
 The fundamental difference between Religion and 
 Science is really confined to one question, which, though 
 profound, is strictly limited. It is this. Are the only 
 truths of which we can be certain, by which we are bound 
 to live and insist on others living, for which we should be 
 ready to die, and perhaps inflict death on others, such 
 truths as can be established by scientific evidence ? Or 
 are there other certainties arrived at by other means, 
 for which science affords no evidence whatever, but 
 which men are as fully justified in proclaiming, in 
 teaching, and in acting on, in using as the bases of 
 legislation and daily conduct, as they are in teaching 
 and acting on the ordinary laws of health ? Science 
 says that there are no such certainties ; Religion says 
 there are. We have here not only the sole ground on 
 which the two conflict, but the sole ground on which 
 they even meet. Within its own limits every sensible 
 theologian ought to see that science is absolutely right, 
 in enforcing its test of truth, and in refusing credence 
 to anything that will not stand it. He ought to see,
 
 SCIENCE AND THE EEVOLUTION 203 
 
 no matter how ardent his faith, that the physical world 
 as known to us by experience, and the spiritual world 
 which alone gives the physical world meaning, are to 
 be explained, and must be explained on totally different 
 principles ; and that it is as essential to forget God, in 
 trying to understand the first, as it is to remember 
 Him, if we would give any sense to the second. But 
 the majority of those who affect to defend religion, 
 especially of the clerical defenders of it, whatever else 
 they may be, are not sensible theologians. I beg the 
 reader to remark that I speak of the majority only ; 
 but it is the majority, unfortunately, that makes the 
 most noise, and in the intellectual world, as in the 
 political, is held to represent the stronger side of a 
 question. Let us, then, turn to the apologetics and the 
 polemics of the average Christian pulpit, and what sort 
 of reasoning and what sort of temper do we encounter ? 
 We know only too well. Who is not familiar, either 
 in church or out of it, with what we may call the 
 curate contra mundum? He directs his attacks — if, 
 indeed, they are worthy of the name — not at the vul- 
 nerable heel of science, but at the most solid parts of 
 its armour. He ridicules doctrines and discoveries, 
 which every rational man accepts as indubitable, and 
 he taxes their discoverers with an arrogant vanity in 
 proclaiming them. He denounces as feeble sophistries 
 reasoning which is irresistible to any intelligence 
 stronger and better informed than his own ; and many 
 of the profoundest religious difficulties which modern 
 scientists point out he disposes of in a moment with a 
 few nursery arguments, little deeming that apostles, 
 fathers, and schoolmen have seen them and weighed
 
 204 SCIENCE AND THE EEVOLUTION 
 
 them long before modern science was thought of, and 
 have humbly and reverently acknowledged them as 
 solemn and insoluble mysteries. Well does one of the 
 most thoughtful of our living Catholic writers say, that 
 1 no small number ' of our Christian apologists ' rage 
 furiously against a doctrine without really comprehend- 
 ing it,' and urges on them ' to reconsider some of 
 their favourite positions.' Well does he add, with even 
 greater emphasis, that ' the understanding revolts at 
 the ineptitudes of these defenders of the faith.' It has 
 been urged with considerable force, with regard to the 
 Eoman Church, that its divine character is proved 
 rather than disproved by the vices of some of its popes 
 and its epochs of gross corruption, because nothing that 
 was not divine could ever have survived the mass of 
 shame and scandal by which at times the Church has 
 been covered. In the same way it may be said that 
 revealed religion generally is proved rather than dis- 
 proved by the frantic feebleness of its apologists, be- 
 cause if it were not divinely and profoundly true, it 
 would have been long since discredited by the argu- 
 ments of its most voluble supporters. These unfortunate 
 men, in their endeavour to avert the destructive impact 
 of modern science on Christianity, act exactly like a 
 man who, wishing to arrest a train, should jump at the 
 engine, instead of turning it into a siding. 
 
 So much for the treatment which science meets 
 with from those to whom it opposes itself as the 
 destroyer of Christianity and religion. Let us now 
 consider how it fares with regard to that other class to 
 whom it opposes itself as the supporter of progressive 
 democracy, of what is sometimes called ' The Eevolu-
 
 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 205 
 
 tion,' and of ' advanced ' ideas generally. The spectacle 
 which thus presents itself to us is curiously different. 
 The demeanour of Conservatism towards its scientific 
 enemy is the precise opposite to that so unfortunately 
 adopted by Eeligion. Instead of using the language of 
 hatred and ridicule, Conservatism treats the scientific 
 claims of democracy with deference, almost with 
 timidity ; and it attacks democracy through everything 
 rather than through these. When our modern Revolu- 
 tionists talk of the laws of progress, of sociology, of 
 social evolution, of the true basis of government, and of 
 the rights and powers of the people, of education, of 
 heredity, of equality, and equality of opportunity, and 
 declare that their views represent what the world re- 
 cognises as science, our Conservatives, instead of re- 
 plying with any railing accusations, accept the state- 
 ment as being in the main true. We hear nothing, in 
 this connection, of the arrogance and effrontery of 
 science, of conclusions said to be demonstrated, which 
 really are no conclusions, of the ignorance, of the 
 absurdity, of the confusion of scientific men. On the 
 contrary, our Conservatives seem to vie with the Revo- 
 lutionists in treating Science with an ostentatious 
 civility ; and they actually accept it as a matter of 
 course that the favourite generalisations and formulas 
 employed by the Revolutionists are scientific. 
 
 Here we have that odd inversion, that perverse ex- 
 change of parts, to which I have just alluded. This 
 respect which Conservatism pays to what its adversaries 
 call their science, is every whit as absurd as the con- 
 tempt and the shrill abuse of the curate. What the 
 occasion requires is that each of these two characters
 
 206 SCIENCE AND THE KEVOLUTION 
 
 should completely abandon his present temper and 
 position and adopt that of the other. Let the con- 
 troversialist of the pulpit meet science as applied to 
 religion, not with indiscriminating contempt, but with 
 discriminating respect, and he will see its weak points 
 better, from fully mastering the points where it is im- 
 pregnable. On the other hand, let the Conservative, 
 in dealing with the science of the Revolutionists, pick 
 up all the contempt we suppose to have been aban- 
 doned by the curate, let him boldly adopt every sneer, 
 every affronting phrase ; let him make his tongue ache 
 with talking of ignorance, of arrogance, and confusion, 
 of shallowness and self-contradiction : let him do all 
 this, and do something more besides ; let him not only 
 adopt the terms which the curate applies to the man of 
 science, but let him adopt those also which the man of 
 science applies to the curate ; let him taunt his oppo- 
 nent with fanaticism, with prejudice, with unmanly 
 and fatuous sentimentality, with hysteria and super- 
 stition, and he will hardly have said a word too much 
 in speaking of that farrago of unscientific nonsense, 
 which our democrats, our ' advanced thinkers,' our 
 apostles of revolutionary progress, have contrived to im- 
 pose on the world, and on themselves also, as science. 
 
 The class of thinkers and leaders of thought I allude 
 to no doubt comprise men who, though highly influen- 
 tial perhaps as practical politicians and agitators, are 
 not supposed even by their followers to be very profound 
 philosophers. But I have not such men in my mind 
 only : I allude even more particularly to others, 
 whose philosophic reputation is high, and who, if 
 not philosophers, are nothing. A good example of
 
 SCIENCE AND THE KE VOLUTION 207 
 
 such men is Mr. Frederic Harrison. Discussing the 
 Revolution of 1789, ' the cardinal features of the move- 
 ment,' he says, ' are in no sense locally French, or of 
 special national value. They are equally applicable to 
 Europe, and indeed to advanced human societies every- 
 where. . . . They concern the transformation of a 
 feudal, hereditary, privileged, authoritative society, 
 based on antique right, into a republican, industrial, 
 equalised, humanised society, based on a scientific view 
 of the common weal.' The main point he is insisting on 
 is this, that the French Revolution is really important, 
 not as the revolution of a nation, but as a marked stage 
 in the social evolution of man — as ' a movement of the 
 race towards a completer humanity' — a movement 
 which, to quote his own words again, ' forms the subject 
 of a crowning human science,' which has ' emerged out 
 of the physical sciences.' 
 
 Now of modern science, professing as it does to found 
 itself solely on evidence, the chief characteristic should- 
 be, and indeed in most cases is, an extreme carefulness, 
 an absolute accuracy, an utter rejection of rhetoric, in 
 stating the observed facts on which it bases its generalisa- 
 tions and conclusions. Even the rashest of our physicists, 
 when dealing with physical questions, always in this 
 respect are anxiously and severely conscientious. It will 
 be instructive to turn to a few sentences of Mr, Harrison's 
 in order to see how the crowning human science, when 
 applied by its exponents to explaining the evolution of 
 the ' common weal,' differs from ' the physical sciences 
 out of which it has emerged.' We will take Mr. 
 Harrison's treatment of certain classes of facts, certainly 
 of grave importance in estimating the general character
 
 208 SCIENCE AND THE EEA 7 0LUTI0N 
 
 of the ' movement of '89.' We will take the change in 
 the condition of the peasantry, and the development in 
 the state of organised philanthropic socialism. Mr. 
 Harrison's statements on both these points, though 
 they cannot be said to have no truth in them, are yet 
 vitiated by a carelessness and a wild inaccuracy which 
 not only makes it impossible to draw from them any 
 scientific conclusions, but which would utterly discredit 
 him as a witness in an ordinary court of law. Let us 
 begin with what he says of ' hospitals, asylums, poor- 
 houses,' and ' social institutions of a philanthropic sort ' 
 generally. ' Almost everything,' he says, ' which we 
 know as modern civilisation [in connection with these] 
 has taken shape and systematic form within these 
 hundred years. The care of the sick, of the weak, of 
 the destitute, of children, of the people — all this is 
 essentially an idea of '89.' Now Mr. Harrison tells us 
 that one of the stages by which men rose to a scientific 
 conception of history was the ' extension of their 
 interests ' beyond the history of Europe to the history 
 and the fortune of ' all who dwell on the planet ' ; and 
 that this it was that ' gave a new colour to the whole 
 range of thought.' Such being the case, it is sufficient 
 here to point out that every one of the above functions 
 of the State, which he so confidently speaks of as 
 unknown before '89, had been organised and discharged 
 by the State five hundred years previously in a country 
 as large as the whole of Western Europe, with a com- 
 pleteness that has not yet been excelled, and with a 
 benevolence that has not yet been equalled. No one 
 who is acquainted with the condition of Mediasval China, 
 and its elaborate provisions for old age and for sickness,
 
 SCIENCE AND THE EEVOLUTION 209 
 
 amongst the common people, can fail to see the 
 absurdity of Mr. Harrison's statement, especially when 
 put forth as a generalisation of the ' crowning human 
 science.' 
 
 Inaccurate in a similar and a far more obvious way 
 are his statements as to the comparative position 
 achieved and enjoyed by the French peasantry of to- 
 day. He declares, for instance, that what he calls ' land- 
 lord law and landlord justice,' by which, as he tells us, 
 he means ' territorial oppression,' ' may be found in 
 Ireland, may be found in Scotland, may be found in 
 England, but have totally disappeared from France.' 
 It is enough to say, by way of comment on this, that if 
 French law had prevailed in Ireland during the last 
 eight years, every tenant of the class so dear to Mr. 
 Harrison and his friends would have been long since 
 evicted with a vigour, a promptitude, and a ruthless- 
 ness, which have never, as a matter of fact, been 
 known in that country, even on the estates of the 
 hardest and the most detested landlords. 
 
 These statements of Mr. Harrison, however, are 
 merely misstatements of facts. If we pass to Mr. 
 Harrison's next sentences we come to a fault that goes 
 deeper — we come to confusion of thought. We have 
 two curious instances of it, one after the other. ' The 
 eight million peasants,' he says, ' who now own the 
 [French] soil are masters of their own destiny, for 
 France has now eight million kings, eight million lords 
 of the soil.' This might be accepted as a passable 
 though inferior piece of rhetoric in the essay of a boy 
 at a grammar-school, but as coming from a writer who 
 insists on being taken seriously, who claims our atten- 
 
 P
 
 210 SCIENCE AND THE EE VOLUTION 
 
 tion mainly on the ground that he is writing scientifically 
 and who means his statements to be taken as state- 
 ments of hard and unadorned facts, it bears as little 
 resemblance to what he means it to be — that is to say, 
 a scientific statement — as a child's fairy tale bears to a 
 chapter of constitutional history. How, in any serious 
 sense, can eight million men be said to be, each of them, 
 masters of their own destiny ? How can they be said 
 to be each kings in any sense that is not self-contradic- 
 tory ? What king was ever master of his own destiny 
 even in the days when kings governed as well as 
 reigned ? Was each king not largely dependent on the 
 action of his fellow kings ? And if this was true in the 
 case of a dozen kings, each ruling over millions, much 
 more is it true in the case of millions of kings, where 
 the destinies of each are dependent on the destinies 
 of all the rest. Mr. Harrison would have spoken 
 with equal truth if, instead of calling these peasants 
 eight million kings, he had called them eight million 
 slaves ; or, if he wants to see an exact duplicate of 
 his statement, he may be referred to the saying of a 
 well-known American humorist, that there was no 
 jealousy in the ranks of a certain volunteer corps, 
 because all the men were generals. Of course, it may 
 be said that in dealing with historical subjects, more 
 licence must be allowed to expression than is required 
 or admissible in physics ; and that it is absurd in the 
 former case to take mere expressions literally. But 
 what we have here is no mere question of expression; 
 it is a question of expression which conveys a radically 
 erroneous thought, and is valuable to the argument of 
 the writer on account of this error, mainly.
 
 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 211 
 
 Let us take from Mr. Harrison one case more. It 
 occurs in the sentence following that on which we have 
 just been dwelling. ' The twenty thousand, or thirty 
 thousand, it may be,' he proceeds, ' who in these islands 
 own the rural lands, should ponder when the turn of 
 their labourers will come to share in the "ideas of '89." ' 
 Now, this statement, if it means anything, evidently 
 means this — that the landlord class in Great Britain and 
 Ireland occupy the same position that the corresponding 
 class in France occupied under the old regime, and that 
 the labourers, so soon as their eyes are sufficiently 
 opened, will view their own position in the same light as 
 that in which the French peasantry in '89 viewed theirs. 
 This, however, as might be shown from Mr. Harrison's 
 own writings, is impossible. The labourer in these 
 islands can never share the ideas of '89, for the simple 
 reason that the ideas of '89 were a protest against things 
 which existed then in France, but which neither had, 
 have, or can have any existence here. It is as absurd 
 to conceive of the English labourer of the future sharing 
 the ideas of '89 as it is to conceive of a Cook's tourist 
 at Jerusalem sharing the ideas of Godfrey de Bouillon. 
 The English labourers may imbibe ideas some day in 
 some way analogous to those of the French peasants, 
 but the difference between the two will be at least as 
 important as the likeness ; and to treat them as identical 
 is as unscientific a blunder as it would be to treat gun- 
 powder as identical with brimstone and treacle. 
 
 But these particular blunders of Mr. Harrison are, 
 no doubt, after all, microscopic ; and if they stood by 
 themselves it would not be worth, our while to dwell on 
 them, or even to notice them. But they do not stand 
 
 p 2
 
 212 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 
 
 by themselves — they are representative. They repre- 
 sent follies, errors, and confusions on a small scale, 
 which throughout the theories of our modern democratic 
 philosophers are repeated on a colossal scale, and which 
 supply the warp if not the woof of their philosophy. 
 
 It is this fact which the apologists of Conservatism 
 seem not so much as to suspect. They imagine their 
 opponents, in one way at least, to be far stronger than 
 they are ; and they mistake for the solid mountains of 
 science what are in reality nothing but wind-bags in- 
 flated with superstition. The task of pricking the 
 wind-bags with the spear-head of real scientific reason- 
 ing, and reducing to their true proportions the pro- 
 spects of democracy and social change, is a task waiting 
 to be undertaken by some school of clear and vigorous 
 thinkers. The effects which physical science has pro- 
 duced on the popular creed of Christianity are as 
 nothing when compared to the effects which such 
 thinkers would be sure to produce on what at present 
 passes muster as the scientific creed of democracy. 
 
 One contemporary writer has done something in 
 this way already. He is the Catholic writer from 
 whom I just now quoted a trenchant condemnation 
 of certain clerical controversialists ; and I have specially 
 in view one particular chapter in the work from which 
 that quotation was taken. Mr. Lilly's ' Century of 
 Revolution' — a succinct discussion of the great social 
 movement which has characterised the past hundred 
 years — has one chapter devoted to ' The Revolution 
 and Science.' 
 
 He begins this chapter with pointing out afresh to 
 his readers the arrogant and imperious confidence with
 
 SCIENCE AND THE KE VOLUTION 213 
 
 which the leaders of the Kevolution claim science as 
 their own, and declare that on it their principles and 
 their prospects rest. ' The new ideal of the public 
 order,' he says, e is a society where science will be all- 
 sufficient — " une societe ou la science suffise a tout, a 
 la theologie, a la morale, a l'education, aussi bien qu'a 
 l'industrie." ' 
 
 There is [he proceeds], in the present day, a great, I 
 might almost say a unanimous, consensus of testimony to 
 the same effect from Revolutionary publicists. On every 
 side we hear that the Revolution must be, that it is, scien- 
 tific. The word is almost invariably employed in that 
 mutilated sense to which it is now so generally narrowed . . . 
 it is used as a synonym for physics. The very use is a tacit, 
 in most cases, no doubt, an unconscious, recognition of 
 what Mr. Morley calls 'the great positive principle that 
 we can know only phenomena, and know them only 
 experientially '. . . . The Jacobins of to-day seek in the 
 laboratory a ' solid formula ' for their politics. It is upon 
 'natural truths,' they urge, that the foundation of the 
 public order must rest. 
 
 Mr. Lilly then goes on to point out that the primary 
 ' natural truth,' which they claim as the basis of their 
 theoretical edifice, and without which the whole would 
 collapse like a house of cards, is the theory of evolution, 
 which is associated with the name of Darwin — the 
 theory, as he puts it — 
 
 that in the development of the individual from the simple 
 unsegmented cell, in which the human organism originates, 
 we have the abstract and brief chronicle of the race. . . . 
 
 Now, how [he says] does the Revolutionary dogma look 
 in the light of these facts, so luminously exhibited by Mr.
 
 214 SCIENCE AND THE KEVOLUTION 
 
 Darwin as the ' scientific ' account of the human mammal ? 
 First, consider the doctrine of the natural, inalienable, and 
 imprescriptible rights of the individual, which is the chief 
 corner-stone of the whole Revolutionary edifice. How is 
 it possible to predicate such rights of an animal, whose 
 attributes are constantly varying — whose original is not 
 Jean-Jacques' perfect man in a state of nature, but not to 
 go further back, a troglodyte with half a brain, with the 
 appetites and habits of a wild beast, with no conception of 
 justice, and with only half articulate cries for language ? 
 . . . Take the thrice-sacred formula, Liberty, Equality, 
 Fraternity. What place [he asks] is there for these con- 
 ceptions [in any creed professing to be ' scientific ' ?] 
 Liberty ! [he proceeds] : The sovereignty of the individual ! 
 It disappears with the fiction of a perfectly homogeneous 
 humanity. The message of scientific evolution to the 
 masses is to know their masters ... to recognise the 
 provision of nature which has made the few strong, wise, 
 and able ; the many, weak, foolish, and incompetent. 
 Equality ! So far from being ■ the holy law of nature,' as 
 Marat was wont to affirm, it is flat blasphemy against that 
 law. Inequality is everywhere her rule, and is the primary 
 condition of progress. Why, man is nothing but the pro- 
 duct of vast inequalities — of successive variations of previous 
 animal types. . . . Fraternity ! Yes, the fraternity of Cain 
 and Abel. Cain survived because he was the fittest, and 
 proved his fitness by surviving. 
 
 Mr. Lilly then turns to another side of the question, 
 and having dealt with this pseudo-scientific theory of 
 man's natural rights, he examines with even greater 
 force and severity that other theory which is essential 
 to it, and is always linked with it, the theory of man's 
 natural goodness. Mr. Lilly reminds us that Mr. John 
 Morley has pointed emphatically to the words of
 
 SCIENCE AND THE EEVOLUTION 215 
 
 Diderot, ' Human nature is good ; and the evil in the 
 world is the result of bad education and bad institu- 
 tions ; ' and has declared that here we have ' the central 
 moral doctrine of the Revolution.' This doctrine, Mr. 
 Lilly would have us observe, is actually palmed off on a 
 scientific age as science. But is it scientific ? he asks. 
 To his ears such a claim sounds like the impudence of 
 a cynical quack or the mad raving of an unlettered 
 religious fanatic. ' The natural goodness of the bete 
 humaine ! ' he exclaims. ' It is aboriginally unethical ; 
 ferocious passions are its very groundwork.' The party 
 which calls itself scientific, he observes, declares that 
 crime is the result of bad education ; whilst the very 
 science from which it professes to derive all its doc- 
 trines, informs us plainly, to quote from Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer, ' that crime is really connected with an 
 inferior mode of life, itself usually consequent on an 
 original inferiority of nature.' 
 
 That is what science says ; but the moment the 
 party of progress, turning from physical questions, seek 
 to apply science to questions of politics and society, 
 every intellectual acquisition which science has brought 
 to them, and of which they profess to be the proudest 
 exponents and the fiercest guardians, is disturbed, 
 inverted, thrown to the winds, or trampled con- 
 temptuously in the mud. 
 
 The Revolutionary democracy of the present day [to 
 return again to Mr. Lilly's own words] starts from the 
 proposition that man, qua man, possesses all the higher 
 attributes of citizenship. It is based upon an a priori 
 theory of the supposed rights, inalienable and impre- 
 scriptible, of humanity in a hypothetical state of nature.
 
 216 SCIENCE AND THE EE VOLUTION 
 
 It everywhere depends, whether consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, upon the doctrine of man and society which 
 Rousseau formulated, and which Robespierre sought to 
 realise ; an abstract, an unrelated, a universal man ; 
 identical in all ages, in all latitudes, in all races, in all 
 states of civilisation. It everywhere aspires, with varying 
 degrees of vehemence, to sweep away historic institutions, 
 with the immeasurable diversities attaching to them, in 
 order to make room for a reconstruction of the public order, 
 on the basis of arithmetic and what it calls pure reason. 
 . . . Thus the Benthamite aspiration, ' Everybody to count 
 for one, nobody for more than one,' or the more succinct 
 formula, ' One man, one vote,' is merely a translation into 
 the vulgar tongue of Rousseau's sophism of the equivalence 
 of all members of the community, and of their natural right 
 to participate equally in the expression of the general will. 
 The proposition with which the air still resounds, that 
 ' The true political creed is faith in the people,' is but a 
 variation on the theme that 'human nature is good,' justly 
 reckoned by Mr. Morley ' the central moral doctrine of the 
 Revolution.' 
 
 Thus, as Mr. Lilly points out with reiterated 
 emphasis, the entire political and social creed of that 
 party which arrogates to itself the name of the party of 
 progress, of free thought, and of science, is a creed 
 which, taken as a whole, is a mass of fanciful super- 
 stition, as far removed from science as the theology of 
 Johanna Southcote. Mr. Lilly's criticisms deal with the 
 fundamental propositions of this pseudo-scientific school, 
 but they deal with them only. I propose to point out 
 how, through all its distinctive arguments, through 
 all its distinctive assumptions, through all the dis- 
 tinctive trains of reasoning, together with their ac-
 
 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 217 
 
 companying phraseology, by which it seeks to appeal 
 to and lead the present generation, there runs the same 
 ignorance of science, the same superstition and con- 
 fusion. 
 
 Let us take, for instance, those doctrines concerning 
 land, to which such prominence has been given by Mr. 
 Henry George. The great claim which Mr. George 
 made for his doctrines was that they were scientific — 
 that they could one and all be demonstrated, and that 
 they follow one another with an absolute logical neces- 
 sity. Now, whether Mr. George's economic arguments 
 were sound or unsound, they all, as put forth by him, 
 derived their practical, their moral force, from a major 
 premiss with regard not to economics, but theology. 
 That premiss was this — that God made the land with 
 a distinct, even if not with an exclusive, view to man's 
 use of it, and had certain definite intentions as to what 
 that use should be. But Mr. George, whatever his re- 
 ligion may be, did not come before the world as the apostle 
 of any Christian Church, or of any special revelation ; 
 and certainly the public which has given him the most 
 hearty reception, has not been a public which believes 
 in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, or in biblical 
 texts, as foundations for scientific theories of society. 
 How, then, does Mr. George know of the existence of 
 God, and still more of the exact intentions of God ? It 
 is again yet more pertinent to ask, Does Mr. George's 
 public believe in the existence of God, or in the possi- 
 bility of demonstrating by science that He has any 
 intentions at all ? Let Mr. George set plainly before 
 his public the various theological propositions which 
 really underlie and are essential to the whole of his
 
 218 SCIENCE AND THE EEVOLUTION 
 
 economic gospel, and let that public examine on what 
 authority he makes them. The examination will lead 
 to only one verdict — that they are either entirely unsup- 
 ported deductions from certain texts in a Bible whose 
 authority the public in question has repudiated, or else 
 that they are arbitrary assumptions of Mr. George's own. 
 
 Mr. George for his own sake is hardly worth re- 
 ferring to ; but he is worth referring to for the sake of 
 the error, which, in this way, he represents. The state- 
 ments which he makes with such frequency, with re- 
 gard to God and God's intentions, and which form the 
 practical fulcrum of his reforming lever, are part of the 
 stock-in-trade of the whole democratic school, and it is 
 hardly too much to say that no revolutionary appeal to 
 the people ever is made, or can be made, without them. 
 The only difference between him and other reformers is, 
 that whereas he makes these statements explicitly, and 
 fully aware that he is making them, the others make 
 them implicitly, and in stupid ignorance of the content 
 of their favourite propositions. For instance, whereas 
 Mr. George says God made the land, and intended all 
 men to enjoy it equally, the ordinary democratic re- 
 formers say, The land is not made for the few ; or, The 
 land is not intended for the few ; or, The land does not 
 exist for the few. 
 
 This class of phrase is familiar to everyone. It is 
 frequent no doubt in the mouths of religious people ; 
 but it is most frequent, at the present day, and it is em- 
 ployed with the greatest and the most exaggerated 
 emphasis, by those to whom religion is nothing but a 
 lie, a dream, or a conjecture. It is not from priests and 
 ministers, but from the scientific leaders of the social
 
 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 219 
 
 revolution, that we hear most often what the land exists 
 for, and is made for. Now, what are these assertions 
 when we come seriously and severely to inquire into 
 their meaning ? They are simply so many assertions 
 that the world was created by an intelligent being, with 
 special social and political intentions, and that these 
 intentions, in all their minutest details, are known by 
 a certain school of human politicians. They are, in fact, 
 a series of theological dogmas, which differ from all 
 other theological dogmas in this only — that they en- 
 deavour, as though they were ashamed of themselves, to 
 hide their sacred character ; that they do not profess to 
 rest on any vestige of evidence ; and that they are put 
 forward by the very men who declare that all theology 
 is a delusion, that no evidence for any one of its doc- 
 trines is possible, and that to believe anything without 
 evidence is the most contemptible form of imbecility, 
 and the vilest form of immorality. We have here 
 indeed a curious spectacle ; and yet strangely enough 
 the public have not yet discovered its absurdity. We 
 have the very same philosophers, in the austere name 
 of science, scourging theology out of the Temple with 
 one hand, and smuggling it back, in a sack of verbiage, 
 with the other. 
 
 It would require far more space than can here be 
 given to point out fully the extent to which theology — 
 and theology of the crudest and most anthropomorphic 
 kind — the theology of Salem Chapels and Little Bethels 
 — forms the groundwork of our advanced scientific 
 theories of social progress and scientific demands for 
 social reform. It would require a long chapter or an 
 essay, instead of a few brief paragraphs, to track it and
 
 220 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 
 
 to expose it, through the phrases and moods of thought 
 and feeling in which it ignorniniously hides itself; to 
 fully expose the nature of this truly astonishing transac- 
 tion, this clandestine re-introduction of condemned intel- 
 lectual goods, by the very men who have made their 
 reputations by condemning them ; and the curious irony 
 of the fate which has made them base all their practical 
 doctrines on those very beliefs which their chief intel- 
 lectual mission has been to exhibit as dreams and 
 fancies beneath the contempt of old women and children. 
 Some of Mr. Lilly's remarks, though not made 
 exactly in this connection, indicate a partial explanation 
 of what I have just said. ' We are living,' he writes, 
 ' in an age of commonplaces. The popular mind is fed 
 chiefly on phrases provided by the newspapers, which 
 constitute for the great majority their only literature. . . . 
 One result is that words lose precise connotations, and 
 too often serve merely to darken counsel.' Journalism 
 no doubt has done much in certain ways to degrade 
 language, though in others it may have improved it ; 
 and precisely the same thing may be said of literature 
 generally. As the production of literature, the number 
 of competing producers, and the number of readers, 
 increases, the quality of literature inevitably declines. 
 There is a higher average level ; that is undoubtedly 
 the case ; but it is precisely here that the great evil 
 lies. There is now an enormous public which takes an 
 interest, more or less intelligent, in subjects which 
 formerly were approached only by the few ; and to meet 
 the demands of this public an army of writers has arisen 
 who supply it with information and guides what it calls 
 its thoughts. The consequence has been that whilst
 
 SCIENCE AND THE EE VOLUTION 221 
 
 literature, as a profession, has risen, literature as a pur- 
 suit and as a fine art has declined. Mediocrity in style 
 has become a real power, which whilst it raises much 
 up to its level, drags also much down to it, and pre- 
 vents more from ever rising above it. If, however, 
 nothing but mere literary style were in question, this 
 would not, for our present purpose, be worth remarking 
 upon. But literary style is bound up with, it causes, it 
 denotes, and it explains, other things of far deeper im- 
 portance — that is to say, the state of knowledge, the 
 habits of thought and the modes of reasoning prevalent ; 
 and in our own age, not only knowledge, not only 
 thought, but also the sympathies and the hopes of men, 
 have been affected — or it might be better to say infected 
 — by this disease of literature, to a degree that is not 
 generally suspected. 
 
 What has happened has been this. In the first 
 place accuracy of thought has been lost. That is one 
 thing ; but it is not all. Accuracy of thought has not 
 only been lost, but it has been lost under cover of a 
 pseudo-accuracy which makes men pride themselves on 
 the very quality in which they are most profoundly 
 wanting. There is one exception to this rule which not 
 only proves it, but is also the cause and the explanation 
 of it. This exception is supplied by physical science. 
 Here thought and language alike have arrived during 
 the present century at an accuracy never before known. 
 Accurate methods, accurate ways of thinking, and 
 accurate phraseology, have all gone together. The first 
 has necessitated the last two, and the triumphs of 
 modern science are due to the three taken together. 
 
 But now comes the unfortunate part of the matter.
 
 222 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 
 
 In attempting to apply the principles and discoveries 
 of physical science to what Mr. Harrison calls ' the 
 crowning science ' of man — to moral, to political, and 
 to social problems, our modern philosophers, one and 
 all of them, have set to work with a simplicity truly 
 childish. Instead of applying the methods of physical 
 science, they have applied its phrases ; and with regard 
 to these phrases, they have entirely failed to see that, 
 though as applied to physics they may be absolutely, 
 and even pedantically, accurate, classifying facts and 
 giving clearness to every generalisation, yet, as applied 
 to questions of human conduct and character, they are 
 for the most part nothing but so much jargon, which 
 only goes near enough to the real truth to obscure it. 
 
 Let us take, for instance, the most prominent word 
 in the vocabulary of socio-political science — The People. 
 In the first place, no scientific definition of The People 
 has ever been formulated, or at all events there is none 
 generally known and accepted ; and not only this, but 
 it is abundantly evident that no scientific conception of 
 what The People is exists in the minds of any of the 
 theorists who reason about it. There is not a single 
 democratic philosopher who does not use the word in a 
 variety of senses inconsistent with each other and with 
 the arguments supposed to be supported by them. Mr . 
 John Morley, for example, tells us in one place that The 
 People are the poorest and most helpless classes in the 
 community, and consequently the classes most likely 
 to suffer from oppression and injustice. For this reason, 
 he says, they ought to have power in the State, because 
 they have naturally most need of protection. Now, if 
 any one chooses to use the word People in this sense,
 
 SCIENCE AND THE EEVOLUTION 223 
 
 Mr. Morley's argument lias a certain intelligible 
 meaning ; but even so it is a meaning very far short of 
 scientific. For instance, supposing the bulk of any 
 population is in the habit of making itself constantly 
 helpless by drink, Mr. Morley would, of course, not 
 argue that sots should have the principal power in the 
 State, in order to protect themselves against the kicks 
 of the sober ? In every community, however, a great 
 deal of poverty and helplessness is produced by causes 
 analogous to drink. Evidently, therefore, Mr. Morley's 
 claim for the people is based not simply on this assertion 
 of their helplessness, but on another implied assertion, 
 that this helplessness is, as a general rule, not caused 
 or accompanied by any moral or intellectual decrepitude. 
 The moment, however, we state this explicitly, a number 
 of difficulties and questions at once present themselves. 
 It may be obviously right that The People, in this sense 
 of the word, should be protected against oppression, but 
 is it equally obvious that the People, who are differen- 
 tiated from the rest of the community only by the fact 
 of their being poorer and more helpless, would be able 
 to devise the means for securing the end in question ? 
 Is it not quite possible that means which to them seem 
 the worst and the least satisfactory, would be in reality 
 more efficacious than any that might be suggested 
 by themselves ; and that it would be, in the long run, 
 for their own interest that those means should be forced 
 on them against their wills by others ? Both Power 
 and People are evidently used in arguments such as 
 these with an indefiniteness and an incompleteness of 
 meaning which cloaks corresponding incompleteness of 
 thought. Still we have here a proposition which, so
 
 224 SCIENCE AND THE EEVOLUTION 
 
 far as it goes, is really true and sensible — viz., that it 
 is right that those of the community who are least able 
 in daily life to protect themselves should be provided, 
 by some means or other, with protection by the State. 
 
 But what a very little way this takes us, even if we 
 accept Mr. Morley's own way of putting it ! The whole 
 business of the State is not to protect the poor against 
 oppression. Even supposing the poor to be the only 
 class worth consideration, the State would do very little 
 for them if it were nothing more than their defender. 
 As society becomes more complex, the barest necessaries 
 of life for the poorest citizen, and the conditions under 
 which he can earn even the poorest livelihood, become 
 more complex also, and require exceptional study, and 
 exceptional power and concentration of mind to grasp 
 them. They are also constantly changing, obviating 
 some evils, and surprising us by producing others ; ren- 
 dering old restrictions superfluous or disadvantageous, 
 and demanding new ones ; and the legislative and exe- 
 cutive changes thus necessitated, require for their 
 accomplishment some of the rarest qualities that can be 
 produced by exceptional training and by exceptional 
 natural aptitudes. Thus, they who say that all power 
 should be in the hands of the People must plainly dif- 
 ferentiate the People by something besides their com- 
 parative poverty and their comparative absence of 
 leisure. The People, as the source of power, must 
 include those who are essentially the few, as well as 
 those who are essentially the many. The great thesis 
 of scientific democracy being this, That all power should 
 be in the hands of the People, it is evident that all 
 those must be members of the People whose talents and
 
 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 225 
 
 education are essential to the right exercise of power. 
 If this be so, who then are not the People ? The ex- 
 cluded portion of the community cannot be the rich as 
 a whole, because many of the rich will have talents, 
 training, and knowledge, specially fitting them for the 
 performance of certain necessary functions ; nor again 
 can such of the rich be excluded as are without excep- 
 tional ability ; because, if one thing is more self-evident 
 than another, it is this — that the absence of exceptional 
 ability is the prevailing characteristic of the People. 
 Reflections like these are so obvious, that it may seem 
 hardly worth one's while to make them ; but they suffice 
 to show something which is very far from obvious to 
 many excellent persons — namely, the ridiculous vague- 
 ness with which our revolutionary science conceives of 
 the principal subject of all its speculations and its 
 researches. 
 
 And now let us pass from the word People to the 
 word Power. Precisely the same vagueness both of 
 language and of thought confronts us here. Political 
 power is spoken of and argued about by our modern 
 theorists as though it were some simple and single 
 thing ; whereas in reality, as may be easily seen, it is 
 in the highest degree complex, comprising in itself 
 many clearly distinct parts. One very simple division 
 lies almost on the surface. Political power, whenever 
 exercised, implies three things, at all events — the con- 
 ception of some given end as desirable ; the will to 
 accomplish this end; and the devising of the means for 
 its accomplishment. Let us take a very simple ex- 
 ample. An entire community, living on the banks of 
 an estuary, are unanimous in thinking that it would be
 
 226 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 
 
 convenient if a suspension bridge were built over it. 
 In addition to thinking it would be convenient if a 
 suspension bridge were built over it, they come to be 
 unanimous in thinking that it would be possible to 
 build it — possible as a piece of engineering, and possible 
 also as regards their own power of paying for it. Now, 
 thus far we can conceive of the entire community 
 acting together like a single individual, and being 
 rightly described in this special connection as one body, 
 or as The People. But the resolve to build the bridge, 
 though an essential part of the power requisite to build 
 it, is not for practical purposes any power at all until 
 it is united with and subjected to the special knowledge 
 and skill of a small part of the community — the en- 
 gineers, who have to plan every detail of the structure, 
 and, indeed, to decide whether it is a possible structure 
 at all. Thus power, as applied to any practical purpose 
 in politics, consists, firstly, in the desire for certain ends ; 
 secondly, in the criticism of these ends and the discern- 
 ment of how far they are practicable, and, thirdly, the 
 devising the best means for accomplishing them. 
 Again comes this further division. The purposes to 
 which power is applied are of two kinds — destructive 
 and constructive — the blowing up of bridges and the 
 building of bridges. 
 
 And now, bearing this in mind, let us ask ourselves 
 how far Power — that is to say the sum of all these 
 powers — ought to reside, or is capable of residing, in 
 the poorest and most numerous class of the community, 
 taken as a whole, and excluding all exceptional minori- 
 ties ; or even in the whole community, including these 
 minorities, but merging them in the mass and denying
 
 SCIENCE AND THE KEVOLUTION 227 
 
 them any exceptional influence. It is perfectly obvious, 
 the moment we examine the matter closely and resolve 
 to bring our thought and language into any kind of 
 severe and accurate order, that some of the most 
 important elements of power never have resided in any 
 class that can be called ' the people,' and never can 
 reside in it. The devising of the means for fulfilling 
 the requirements of the community must always be in 
 the hands of a minority who possess, or are supposed to 
 possess, talents above the average — a minority which is 
 not merged in the people, but is differentiated from 
 it. And thus we arrive at what is perhaps the best 
 definition of the People that is possible — all those 'persons 
 who are without exceptional talents, and whose qualities, 
 when exceptional at all, are exceptional by being below, 
 not by being above, the average. It is conceivable, in 
 certain cases, that The People thus defined may be 
 capable of wielding all the power requisite for some 
 destructive purpose, but it is utterly inconceivable that 
 they can ever be capable of construction. A drunken 
 mob some day may blow up the Forth Bridge, but a 
 drunken mob will never rebuild it. Between the 
 people sweeping away what demagogues call abuses 
 and the only classes that could put anything better in 
 their place, there is all the difference that there was 
 between Newton and his dog Diamond. 
 
 It may be said, however, that even though the 
 People may not be able to carry out any given purpose, 
 they are yet capable of feeling, and expressing a com- 
 mon desire and will that such and such purposes should 
 be carried out. And within certain limits this is true, 
 but within certain limits only. I shall not here even
 
 228 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 
 
 endeavour to specify what these limits are. I wish 
 merely to point out that these limits exist, and that 
 until they have been inquired into, and some general 
 perception of their nature arrived at, it is idle to talk 
 about the will of the People, except for the purpose of 
 the coarsest and most unscientific oratory. Let any 
 Eadical define the People as he pleases, and then ask 
 himself how far, and under what conditions, he can 
 seriously attribute to the vast multitudes in question 
 any complete singleness of will, of wish, or of opinion. 
 If by the People he means the whole community, it 
 is one of his commonplaces to declare that the People 
 have two opposing wills — the will of the classes, 
 and the will of the masses. As a matter of fact, however, 
 he always excludes the classes : still, whatever the 
 details of this exclusion may be, the People means for 
 him the great bulk of the population ; and the People 
 thus defined does not differ more from the classes than 
 the various sections of the people differ from one 
 another. These sections are divided by various interests, 
 various temperaments, and various social grades ; it is 
 only in the rarest cases that they think or feel the same 
 about any given question, or that they think or feel 
 deeply about the same question at all. The number of 
 persons, I do not say who led, but who took an active 
 part in, the French Eevolution was incredibly small. 
 The bulk of the population remained passive; ac- 
 quiescent, no doubt, in the destruction of certain abuses, 
 but without any will whatever as to any scheme of re- 
 construction ; and it would, indeed, be hardly too much 
 to say that, except for purposes of destruction — the 
 destruction of something existing which is obnoxious
 
 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 229 
 
 to the vast majority, and felt as a hardship by each 
 individual citizen — no spontaneous act of will on the 
 part of the People is possible. 
 
 It would be easy to show that what is called the 
 popular will, and what actually seems to be such, is 
 certainly a delusion in many cases, and is probably a 
 delusion in most. In one class of cases, it is obviously 
 not spontaneous : it is at best but a choice made by 
 the majority between a few alternatives offered them 
 by a very small minority ; and the course of public 
 affairs is obviously dependent less on the will of the 
 people than on the ability and the character of a 
 certain handful of politicians. There is, however, no 
 doubt, another class of cases, in which the initiative, to 
 all appearance, does come from the multitude — cases 
 in which we hear of ' great waves of popular feeling,' 
 of ' indignation meetings,' and of feelings agitating 
 ' the great heart of the masses.' Now, such expres- 
 sions as these of the will of a certain number I 
 quite admit may be genuine so far as they go, 
 but as to how far they go there is room for 
 endless misapprehension. Newspapers, the medium 
 through which public events are viewed, necessarily 
 form, even the best of them, a medium which is in 
 many cases distorting. Enthusiasms, interests, aspira- 
 tions, indignations, and so forth, make, through the 
 newspapers, a noise in the public ear that is out of all 
 proportion to their real power and extent. They, for 
 the most part, originate in small minorities, and end 
 with small minorities ; but these are precisely the 
 bodies that delight in public meetings, in writing to 
 the newspapers, and in doing things of which the
 
 230 SCIENCE AND THE EE VOLUTION 
 
 newspapers can take note. They are thus in the 
 position of a man who makes his voice heard every- 
 where, as if it were the voice of a multitude ; not 
 because his voice is powerful, but because he has his 
 mouth at a speaking-trumpet. About a great number 
 of subjects apathy is as golden as silence, and the body 
 of the people are really apathetic about them ; but this 
 wise apathy, though it makes a sensible people, would 
 naturally make an intolerably dull newspaper ; indeed, 
 a newspaper can hardly give expression to it. And 
 thus, from the very nature of the case, in nine instances 
 out of ten, newspapers, as representing the state of 
 popular opinion, represent, not the common-sense of the 
 majority, but the deviations from common-sense on the 
 part of a numerically small minority. 
 
 I am not denying that the People, in some sense or 
 other, is a real body, differing from any special class ; 
 that on some occasions it may be accurately said to 
 have a will, and within certain limits to have power ; 
 and that its power, such as it is, may be developing. 
 But I do say that neither the People, nor the People's 
 power, have ever been accurately defined, or even 
 accurately conceived of; that as for the People's will 
 it has seldom been truly ascertained, and never 
 accurately studied : and that when true scientific 
 methods are applied to social questions, the prospects of 
 modern democracy, and the whole meaning of that 
 change which has been hastily named Progress, will be 
 seen to be profoundly different from anything that our 
 advanced thinkers suspect. 
 
 The Science, in fact, of these thinkers, with their 
 theories of revolution and evolution, has no resemblance
 
 SCIENCE AND THE REVOLUTION 231 
 
 to true science deeper than what comes from an 
 echo of its phraseology. The social philosophy of such 
 thinkers as Mr. Morley and Mr. Harrison have 
 precisely the same relation to science that alchemy 
 had to chemistry. The Popular Will, the People, 
 Progress, and Social Evolution, are phrases which, as 
 used by them, are fitted only to take rank with the 
 Four Elements, with Phlogiston, and with the Vital 
 Principle.
 
 232 
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 I 
 
 WHAT DOES SOCIALISM MEAN? 
 
 Socialism is a word which is, by many people, used in 
 senses so vague and so contradictory, as often to deprive 
 it of all arguable meaning. Were the matter one of 
 mere verbal propriety, everybody who is touched by a 
 knowledge of social suffering, and desires to relieve it 
 by organised action of any kind, would, no doubt, by 
 the derivation of the word, be equally justified in claim- 
 ing for himself the name of Socialist. But it must be 
 remembered that with precisely the same justification 
 we might call a crow a blackbird, or a Newfoundland 
 dog a water-wagtail. The practical meaning of a word 
 is determined, not by its etymology, but its most definite 
 and distinctive use ; and the word Socialism, as every- 
 body really knows, possesses a meaning more or less 
 definitely fixed, and does not mean merely a desire 
 to relieve social suffering, but a belief that social suffer- 
 ing is due to certain special causes, and a consequent 
 desire to relieve it by special and peculiar methods. It 
 is known, further, that these methods, whatever may 
 be their details, would involve the destruction of insti-
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 233 
 
 tutions and principles which have hitherto been con- 
 sidered the foundations of all society and civilisation ; 
 and in especial the institution, as it now exists, of 
 private property. So much about Socialism the general 
 public knows, and so far as it goes this is all perfectly 
 true; but the general public knows little more than 
 this, and what it does not know it makes up for by 
 guesses and assumptions, which are for the most part 
 wrong. Such being the case, I shall endeavour in the 
 clearest, the briefest, and the fairest way possible, to 
 explain what Socialism is, as formulated by its most 
 competent exponents ; and having thus set before the 
 reader; its main and most essential elements, I shall 
 fix his attention on those of them which differentiate 
 it from other systems; and isolating them from the 
 rest, I shall point out the fallacies which underlie 
 them. 
 
 We must begin by observing that Socialism, in a 
 perfectly definite sense, has meant, and may mean, three 
 different things, which are, however, by no means 
 mutually exclusive — a conspiracy, a party, and a creed. 
 But in this country, at all events, it does not mean a 
 conspiracy ; nor can it as yet be even regarded as a 
 party. It is indeed struggling to form itself into a 
 party ; but it is doing this by ordinary constitutional 
 means ; and so far it is not peculiar, and calls for no 
 comment. There is, in short, nothing peculiar about it 
 except the creed to which, if ever it becomes a party, it 
 will aim at giving effect. Socialism, therefore, as it now 
 exists, may be defined as a body of economic and social 
 doctrines, resulting in certain conclusions as to the 
 future possibilities of society — possibilities which
 
 234 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 Socialists as a party will endeavour to make actual. 
 It is, therefore, as a body of social and economic doc- 
 trines that we must consider it if we would understand 
 to any purpose its character and its prospects. 
 
 First, however, let us ask this : How, or how far, 
 can these distinctive doctrines be identified ? For there 
 are Socialists of various sects, just as there are Christians; 
 and about certain points they rival Christians in their 
 disagreement. This is true; but amongst the more 
 thoughtful Socialists — those who, so to speak, have the 
 intellectual charge of the movement — though disagree- 
 ment about secondary points may grow, about certain 
 primary points there is a growing clearness and agree- 
 ment. It is to these last points that I propose now to 
 confine myself ; and, in order to show the reader what 
 they are, I shall make use of a volume which has been 
 issued, with a similar purpose, by a society of English 
 Socialists, who, whatever their importance as a practical 
 force may be, are the ablest, the clearest, and most 
 practical exponents in this country of what Socialism 
 really is. The society I allude to calls itself ' The Fabian 
 Society ' ; and its name is now met with in newspapers 
 not infrequently. Societies for propagating views are 
 apt to seem ridiculous ; it may therefore be not super- 
 fluous for me to say that the writers of the present volume 
 — for it consists of essays by several writers — are persons 
 of high education and trained powers of reasoning ; that 
 they are fully conversant with the orthodox theory of 
 economics ; that many of the orthodox doctrines form 
 part of their own system, and have been adapted by 
 them to new purposes in a most plausible and ingenious 
 way ; that many of their own views and arguments are
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 235 
 
 highly suggestive and valuable ; and that the principal 
 writer, Mr. Sydney Webb, is a lecturer on Political 
 Economy at the City of London College. This volume, 
 then, which is called ' Fabian Essays in Socialism,' may 
 be taken as exhibiting Socialism in its most favourable 
 and most reasonable aspect. To this volume we will 
 now proceed to refer. Between some of the writers 
 there are minor differences of opinion ; and some of 
 them on minor points are not quite consistent with 
 themselves. But matters like these are trifles. In 
 dealing with a book of this kind, our object must be to 
 criticise, not the way in which a case is stated, but 
 the case itself; and any chance defect in the mere 
 statement of it we ought to remedy, rather than dwell 
 upon, if we would criticise it to any advantage. What 
 we want is to see how much truth certain men have got 
 hold of; not to waste time in quarrelling over the 
 manner in which they have managed to express it. 
 
 II 
 
 SOCIALISM AS PRESENTED TO US BY ITS INTELLECTUAL 
 LEADERS 
 
 Socialism, then, as these writers are careful to tell 
 us, is ' not a religion ' ; it is par excellence ' a property- 
 form ' ; it is ' the scheme of an industrial system for the 
 supply of the material requisites of human social exist- 
 ence.' Socialists see civilisation in some ways steadily 
 advancing. They see that in all civilised countries the 
 aggregate income produced every year is constantly 
 increasing far faster than the population produces it.
 
 236 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 And yet, in spite of this, they see poverty on all sides 
 of them. The increasing wealth seems to accumulate 
 in the hands of a limited class ; whilst the great masses 
 of the community are face to face with starvation, and 
 are saved from it only by the sale of their labour and 
 their liberty to others. And this condition of things, 
 which would have been miserable enough at any time, 
 is being rendered more intolerable by the education 
 which makes men reflect upon it, and by a conscious- 
 ness of political power which inspires them with hopes 
 of changing it. 
 
 Such is contemporary society as seen and depicted 
 by the Socialists generally, and by the Fabian essayists 
 in particular ; and Socialism, as a reasoned system, 
 consists, first, of an analysis of the causes of this con- 
 dition of things ; and, secondly, of doctrines as to the 
 means by which it is to be revolutionised for the better. 
 
 In their analysis of the causes of the existing social 
 system, economic science owes a great debt to the 
 Socialists. They have imported into it something 
 which was before altogether wanting to it, namely, the 
 historical and the comparative method. The older 
 economists accepted the facts around them, as if they 
 were part of the immutable order of nature. The 
 Socialists have thrown a new light upon the problem 
 by giving prominence to the fact that such is not the 
 case, and that certain of the most prominent features of 
 our present industrial system have only developed them- 
 selves fully during the past five generations, whilst a 
 few centuries ago they were altogether absent. The 
 chief of these new features are Capital, as we know it, 
 and the position of the ordinary labourer with regard to
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 237 
 
 the conditions of his labour. In the Middle Ages, as 
 the Socialist school has effectively pointed out, the 
 position and occupation of the labourer were settled for 
 him by birth and status. ' Agriculture,' as one of the 
 Fabian essayists says, ' was organised in the feudal 
 manor . . . handicraft was ordered by the guilds of the 
 towns . . . every man had his class, and every class 
 its duties.' That is to say, in one way or another 
 every man was, by the very constitution of society, 
 assured of access to the means of providing for himself a 
 suitable livelihood. This picture, though incomplete, 
 contains much that is true and pertinent, and accepting 
 it for the moment as the Socialists present it to us, let 
 us see how to account for the change which society has 
 undergone since. 
 
 Many Socialistic agitators, of the more foolish and 
 ignorant kind, have sought to explain all the evils 
 which they denounce by attributing them to the ex- 
 ceptional wickedness of the rich and the capitalistic 
 classes. But the men to whom Socialism owes its 
 existence as a reasoned system do nothing of this kind, 
 except, perhaps, in momentary fits of temper. On the 
 contrary, their entire method of dealing with the 
 question puts on one side these crude and angry pueri- 
 lities, and they see that even the worst of the evils 
 which arouse their pity or their indignation are due to 
 the action of men who were neither better nor more 
 wicked than their fellows, but who each pursued the 
 course that seemed best to him, entirely unconscious of 
 the changes he was instrumental in producing. In a 
 word, the Socialists in their explanation of economic 
 changes, are sober and dispassionate Evolutionists.
 
 238 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 They are the very reverse of what many people take 
 them to be. Thus, as one of the writers in the Fabian 
 volume says, the old social order collapsed only because 
 ' it was burst by the growth of the social organism ' ; 
 and ' the main stroke in the industrial revolution was 
 contributed,' as Mr. Sydney Webb emphatically says, 
 not by the designing policy of any individual capitalist, 
 but by the inventions of men like ' Newcomen, Watt, 
 and Arkwright.' 
 
 And now comes the part of their creed which is 
 important practically. Just as the existing social state 
 has been evolved out of a state that was widely different 
 from it, so out of it in turn will be evolved another 
 equally different. Just as the feudal system has passed 
 away, so, by the same power, will pass the Capitalistic 
 system ; not because theoretically men consider it ' im- 
 moral or absurd,' but because it is being gradually 
 ' burst by the growth of the social organism.' This trans- 
 formation, the Socialists maintain, is in progress now 
 around us, and has been in progress for the past sixty 
 years. The very capitalists themselves, and politicians 
 who hate the name of Socialism, are unconsciously 
 working for it and hastening- it on. Indeed, all that 
 the Socialists think it possible for themselves to do, is 
 consciously to guide and accelerate a movement which 
 would anyhow, sooner or later, accomplish itself without 
 their aid. They are, let me repeat, Evolutionists, as 
 distinct from revolutionists. Any violent revolution, 
 supposing it to be successful, would, according to them, 
 be only a sign, and not a cause, of progress. It would 
 only be a chance turbulence on the surface of a great 
 current. But the whole tenour of their teaching is,
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 239 
 
 that it would, as a fact, be not successful ; that it would 
 defeat its own object, and result in temporary retro- 
 gression. The Fabian essayists argue this point very 
 acutely. Their ultimate aim is, as we shall see presently, 
 the complete expropriation of what they call the pos- 
 sessing classes ; but they realise that any violent or even 
 sudden expropriation, would not only ruin the rich, but 
 a good half of the entire community also. ' The result,' 
 says the editor of the essays, ' would considerably take 
 its advocates aback. The streets would be filled with 
 starving workers of all grades. . . . They would cry, 
 " Back with the good old times, when we received our 
 wages, which were at least better than nothing." . . . 
 In practical earnest,' he proceeds, ' the State has no 
 right to take five farthings of capital from anybody, 
 until it is able to invest them in productive enterprise.' 
 Therefore, the Socialists argue, the process of taking 
 must be gradual, but none the less will it be sure, and 
 each year its speed tends to accelerate. It has, in fact, 
 begun already. It began years ago. It began with the 
 establishment of the Income Tax. ' Then,' say the 
 Fabian essayists, ' the thin end of the wedge went in. 
 The Income Tax,' they declare, ' is simply a forcible 
 transfer of rent, interest, and even rent of ability, from 
 private holders to the State, without compensation ; ' 
 and, so far as the mere process of expropriation is 
 concerned, the full development of Socialism will be 
 merely the gradual extension of taxation of this kind. 
 
 Expropriation, however, is merely a means to an 
 end. The State would do no good by taking all this 
 money and locking it up ; and it would do only evil by 
 scattering it as an indiscriminate largess. The sole
 
 240 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 object of taking it is to use it as Capital, with which to 
 pay the wages of productive labour. But before the 
 State can pay the wages of labour, it must first become 
 master of the complicated organisation of labour, and 
 this it can do by degrees only. Consequently its 
 spoliation of the private landowners and capitalists 
 must take place by degrees also. Let us, for instance, 
 take the case of the iron trade. The Socialists' 
 programme is that the State, by means of income tax, 
 shall ultimately take the entire profits of the iron- 
 masters, and with these buy up their property ; just as 
 if one man has a glass of beer and twopence, and 
 another man takes the twopence and buys the glass of 
 beer with it. But it would be suicidal for the State 
 thus to treat the iron-masters until, firstly, other 
 industries had accommodated themselves to the change, 
 and, secondly, till the State was in a position to manage 
 the production of iron with at least as much skill and 
 economy as the present generation of employers. The 
 development of the State, however, as the general 
 employer of labour has begun already, and daily goes 
 on apace. The municipalisation of tramways, gas- 
 works, and water-works are the most important recent 
 examples, and the most significant; while the most 
 important, as well as the oldest, is the Post Office. The 
 State, then, has only to proceed on the course on which 
 it has embarked already. From supplying towns with 
 gas and water, it will go on to supply them with boots, 
 with coats, with bread, butter, and so forth, until at 
 last it has become the universal manufacturer, farmer, 
 merchant, shopkeeper, and landlord. And in this pro- 
 cess, let it be again remarked, the Socialists maintain, and
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 241 
 
 very plausibly, there need be no violence or even 
 abruptness. The process might be half accomplished 
 before many people knew that it had begun. For the 
 State would not forcibly extinguish any private enter- 
 prises. It would extinguish them only by successfully 
 competing against them — by producing the same quality 
 of goods, selling them at the same or even lower price, 
 and at the same time paying higher wages. It would, 
 in fact, extinguish the competitive system by compe- 
 tition. 
 
 And supposing this process to be completed, what 
 will be the social result ? The result, in this country, 
 according to the Fabian essayists, will be as follows : 
 The aggregate income of the country, according to the 
 Fabian essayists, will be as follows : The aggregate in- 
 come of the country will continue to grow as heretofore ; 
 but for argument's sake we may estimate it at its present 
 figure, which is, roughly speaking, about thirteen 
 hundred millions. About a third of this, say the essayists, 
 represents interest on capital, and about an eighth the 
 actual wages of ability, or exceptional productive talent. 
 The highest exceptional talent, they say, could be had, 
 in the open market, for 8001. ; and were the highest 
 wages of ability cut down to this, we should diminish 
 its existing wages by nearly one-half. Such being the 
 case, nearly half the existing wages of ability, and the 
 entire profits of capital, would be diverted from the 
 pockets of the able men and the present possessors of 
 capital, and would find its way into the pockets of the 
 State. The sum which the State would thus become 
 possessed of would be something like five hundred 
 million pounds ; and this would constitute an addition 
 
 K
 
 242 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 to the existing wages fund, and would be employed in 
 raising the wages of the entire community. When 
 this is done, the Socialistic transformation will be com- 
 plete. There will still be a capitalistic employer, and 
 there will still be wage-earning producers; but the 
 capitalistic employer will virtually be a committee of 
 the producers ; and instead of taking for itself any 
 portion of the product, will only collect this product, 
 and pool it ; and then, in the shape of wages, return 
 to the producers, not, as the private employers do, 
 only a part of it, but the whole. In one sense private 
 property will be as secure then as it is now. Each 
 man's wages or income will be absolutely his own, and 
 all the articles of consumption and enjoyment which he 
 buys with it. The only kind of property which will 
 have been Socialised will be, not articles of con- 
 sumption, but the means of production; and the 
 Socialisation of these last will mean merely that each 
 citizen has an equal share in them, just as if all were 
 equal shareholders in some existing railway company, 
 in which they were all at the same time wage-receiving 
 employees. Their income will thus consist of wages 
 supplemented by profits. Their wages may vary, but 
 the profits that supplemented each man's wages will be 
 the same. Then, with the State for employer, there 
 will be full work for all, for everyone will have the right 
 to demand access to the means of labour ; and of his 
 own labour, as Mr. Sidney Webb says, ' he will obtain 
 the full result.' To distribute products or riches 
 ' according to the labour done by each in the collective 
 search for them ' — this, says the editor of the volume, 
 ' is the desire of Socialism ; ' and the process above
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 243 
 
 described is the process by which the desire will be 
 accomplished. 
 
 It remains for a moment to look under the surface 
 and consider the forces to which this evolutionary 
 movement is, according to the Socialists, due. Conscious 
 endeavour is the last, and in some respects the least. 
 At all events it would be unless there was some 
 stream of tendency with which it coincided : and this 
 stream of tendency consists of a treble series of 
 events. The first is the growth of population, 
 which necessarily results in a vast portion of the 
 community being landless ; the second is the change 
 in the methods of industry — even of agricultural 
 industry — which makes individual ownership of the 
 means of production impossible, and at the same time 
 teaches the workers how to act in concert, and 
 familiarises them with the idea of social, as opposed to 
 individual production ; and the third is the growth of 
 political democracy, which is the inevitable result of 
 education, the diffusion of news, and rapid travelling. 
 
 Industrial democracy, say the Socialists, is merely 
 the obverse of political democracy. The former has 
 already matured the methods and habits requisite for 
 the latter; and now, by the rapid development of 
 municipal and county councils, which are almost as 
 rapidly becoming employers of labour, the conversion 
 of political democracy into industrial democracy is being 
 accomplished. Private capitalism has played an es- 
 sential part in this evolution. It has associated the 
 workers. Having done this, the private capitalist 
 becomes gradually useless, and falls away. The State 
 
 E 2
 
 244 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 takes his place. The State becomes the capitalist, but 
 a capitalist transfigured, who is at the same time the 
 people. 
 
 in 
 
 SOCIALISM, A DISTINCTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PRESENT, 
 AND AN HISTORIC THEORY OF THE PAST 
 
 Such is the theory and scheme of contemporary 
 Socialism, as set forth by the leading Socialists them- 
 selves — a scheme which, when fully realised, will, ac- 
 cording to them, restore to men their lost economic 
 freedom, will redeem them from the transient bondage 
 to which private capitalism has subjected them, will 
 render it impossible for an unemployed class to exist, 
 and enrich each labourer by rendering back to him that 
 vast theft from the products of his daily industry which 
 the present system, not the wickedness of individuals, 
 makes inevitable. I have described this scheme, not 
 only as fairly but as fully as the limitations of space 
 will allow. I have not, however, been able (for space 
 would not allow of this) to give the reader a full idea 
 of the sober care, the cultivated and laborious thought, 
 and the powers of acute reasoning, exhibited by the 
 writers of the Fabian Essays generally, and by Mr. 
 Sidney Webb in particular. And yet in spite of all 
 these qualities, as I shall now proceed to show, there is 
 not a distinctive — that is to say a really Socialistic — 
 argument, in the whole book, which is not based on an 
 entire misunderstanding of the question — a complete 
 misapprehension of the most important facts dealt with, 
 and a failure to recognise at all the most important
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 245 
 
 facts involved ; and that the moment we apply to it 
 any approximately complete criticism, the Socialistic 
 theory, despite all the talents of its advocates, tumbles 
 to pieces like a frail castle of cards. The principal 
 errors I allude to, which are absolutely inherent in the 
 system, and run through the writings of all Socialists, 
 and of all the contributors to the Fabian Essays in 
 particular, may be classified under three heads; and 
 though they are too closely connected to admit of 
 entirely separate treatment, I shall, so far as is 
 practicable, examine them in order. They consist firstly 
 of an erroneous and incomplete analysis of the existing 
 industrial system ; secondly of a false estimate of what, 
 historically, are the tendencies and results of that 
 system ; and lastly a false view of economic history 
 generally, and a correspondingly false application of 
 that method of comparative criticism, the introduc- 
 tion of which in itself is, as I have said before, so 
 greatly to the credit of the modern Socialistic school. 
 
 IV 
 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL ERROR IN THE SOCIALISTIC ANALYSIS 
 
 The main error in the Socialistic analysis of the 
 existing system of production is one which I have lately 
 exposed at length in a volume called Labour and the 
 Popular Welfare. 
 
 That error is the doctrine that Labour is the chief, 
 if not the sole human agent in production, and that the 
 non-labouring classes are consequently non-productive 
 classes. When once this error is exposed fully, the
 
 246 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 foundation of scientific Socialism altogether disappears. 
 It is an error, however, for which the Socialists are not 
 responsible. They have borrowed it without criticism 
 from the orthodox economists, in whose works it is still 
 rampant. In the book just alluded to, I have analysed 
 this error at length. The substance of my criticism I 
 will repeat briefly here. I pointed out that the orthodox 
 economists — and I took Mill as an example — see plainly 
 enough that not only muscular labour but invention, 
 scientific discovery, and industrial management also, are 
 obviously concerned in production at the present day ; 
 and that the modern increase in the productivity of 
 industrial exertion, is due to the development of the 
 latter, not of the former. But all these later forms of 
 industrial exertion the orthodox economists include under 
 the one term Labour. Thus they speak of the ' labour 
 of the savant,' ' the labour of the inventor,' ' the labour 
 of the superintendent.' That is to say, they recognise 
 and admit theoretically that labour is of two kinds, or 
 that the word means two things ; and that one kind of 
 labour is a universal faculty, and the other a scarce 
 faculty. But this recognition is only occasional ; the 
 truth involved in it is never analysed, or incorporated 
 with their general theory ; and although on these rare 
 occasions they admit that the word labour means two 
 things, yet in all their practical arguments, without any 
 exception, they invariably and persistently use it as if 
 it meant only one thing ; and that one thing is average 
 muscular labour, to the exclusion of labour of any other 
 kind. As an instance of this I cited in my book the 
 title of one of Mill's chapters in his ' Principles of 
 Political Economy,' which he calls ' The Probable Future
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 247 
 
 of the Labouring Classes,' explicitly and exclusively 
 meaning by these classes the mass of wage-earning 
 manual labourers. And the Fabian essayists repeat 
 Mill's confusion. It permeates their whole volume. 
 They too recognise intermittently that Labour can be 
 said to be the sole producer of wealth only if by Labour 
 we understand two things ; but like Mill they reason 
 practically as if the word meant only one. Here, for 
 instance, is the editor of the Fabian volume striking in 
 the opening essay the key-note of the whole argument. 
 1 Shareholder and landlord,' he says, ' live alike on the 
 produce extracted from their property by the labour of 
 the proletariat.' And if we want to know exactly what 
 he means by labour, we have only to refer to the be- 
 ginning of the same paragraph. He tells us that labour 
 is a form of human exertion, ' the acquisition of which 
 is a mere question of provender.' There is always a 
 supply of it tending to be in excess of the demand. 
 Labourers, he says, ' breed like rabbits ' ; and he ex- 
 pressly declares that it is the labour of men like these 
 that ' piles up the wealth ' of the possessing and em- 
 ploying classes. 
 
 Now what I have urged in my book, Labour and 
 the Popular Welfare, is that, so long as the word 
 Labour is used in this sense, it is impossible to reason 
 or even think clearly about production, if we apply the 
 same word also to the exertions of the inventing, the 
 discovering, and managing class whose interests are 
 represented as being not only different from, but op- 
 posed to, those of the labouring class. Accordingly, to 
 the exceptional faculties of the former I gave a distinct 
 name — Ability. I pointed out that the moment we
 
 248 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 make language in this way correspond with fact, the 
 absurdity of saying that labour ' piles up all the wealth ' 
 of the ' shareholder and the landlord ' becomes self- 
 evident. Ability, even the Socialists admit, has some 
 part in the piling up, or, in other words, produces some 
 portion of the pile; so that instead of saying that 
 Labour produces, or piles up, all the wealth of the 
 community, we are driven to say something that is very 
 different — we are driven to say that it produces only a 
 certain fraction of it ; and then comes the question, 
 what fraction ? As soon as we come to see this, the 
 whole case of theoretic Socialism is lost. Its main 
 logical weapon breaks in two in its hands. I will point 
 out how and why. 
 
 I have explained in Labour and the Popular Wel- 
 fare the principles on which the product of Labour is 
 to be discriminated from the product of Ability, and 
 also the way in which those principles are to be applied. 
 The principles are merely principles of ordinary logical 
 analysis : the application is a question of industrial 
 history. Put briefly, what I said was as follows. 
 
 So far as production is concerned, the great economic 
 fact of the modern world is the constant increase in the 
 amount of wealth that results from the exertions of the 
 same number of men. To take our own country for 
 an example, there is, in proportion to the population, 
 about three times as much produced now as there was 
 in the days of our great-grandfathers. That is to say, 
 two-thirds of our existing national income is due to the 
 action of some force the development of which is new 
 since that comparatively recent time. Now this force 
 is not some new development of labour — of labour as
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 249 
 
 defined by the Socialists — of that muscular force which 
 can always be had for asking — the force which, as the 
 Fabians say, ' breeds like rabbits.' Muscular force is no 
 more powerful now than it was then ; nor is the muscular 
 skill greater. The most exquisite work that mere 
 manual effort can accomplish has been accomplished 
 long ago, and we cannot surpass it now. The sole 
 cause, then, of this increment has not been Labour, but 
 the gradual concentration of the moral and intellectual 
 faculties of exceptional men on the problem of directing 
 Labour. These faculties thus concentrated constitute 
 Industrial Ability, or — to put it more shortly — Ability. 
 It is the increasing operation of Ability that has been 
 the sole new factor in production, and therefore it is to 
 Ability that the modern increment in wealth is due. 
 In other words, about two-thirds of our present national 
 income is produced, not by Labour, but by Ability. In 
 Labour and the Popular Welfare this calculation is 
 carefully worked out, but it is enough here to put it in 
 this brief form. 
 
 Now it is this fundamental fact that Socialism 
 ignores — Socialism generally, and the Fabian essayists 
 in particular ; and in the case of these special writers 
 this lacuna in their analysis can be made all the more 
 clear in connection with the above criticism, because 
 they not only, like Mill, recognise in an intermittent 
 way that Ability is a productive force of some kind, 
 but they actually call it by the name I myself have 
 given to it. They call it Ability. They even speak of 
 ' the rent of Ability,' defining this as the quantity by 
 which the products of the able man exceed those of the 
 average labourer; and they admit on these occasions
 
 250 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 that, whilst Labour is a universal faculty, the more 
 productive forms of Ability are by comparison extremely 
 rare. The editor of the volume, for instance, speaks of 
 it in the opening pages as a function ' of those scarce 
 brains, which are not the least of Nature's capricious 
 gifts.' Now if the writers had followed out the train of 
 thought latent in this admission, their entire reasoning 
 would have been inevitably altered ; but they never do 
 this. They only at intervals recognise this truth, to 
 drop it ; and instead of incorporating into it their 
 logical system, they leave it lying, useless and detached, 
 on the surface. 
 
 This procedure on their part is mainly due to the 
 fact that they have never clearly seen what Ability 
 really is, and in what precise way, as a productive 
 agent, it differs from Labour. The true difference, 
 which I have explained at length in Labour and the 
 Popular Welfare, is as follows. Labour, of whatever 
 degree, skilled or unskilled, is a kind of industrial 
 exertion which begins and ends with the particular task 
 or material on which each labourer is engaged — whether 
 it is carrying a sack of coals, fixing a brick in its place, 
 riveting the plates of a ship, or scraping a true surface 
 for the side-valve of a steam-engine. Some of these 
 forms of labour are skilled, some unskilled. One will 
 bring the man who performs it fifteen shillings a week, 
 another four guineas, or even more. But each has this 
 characteristic in common, that it begins and ends with 
 the individual sack carried, the individual surface made 
 true, and so forth. But Ability is a form of industrial 
 exertion which influences the labour of an indefinite 
 number of men on an indefinite number of tasks, either
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 251 
 
 by supplying each simultaneously with a similar assist- 
 ance in performing his task, or with some given pattern 
 by which he is to work, or by correlating the different 
 exertions of different bodies of labourers. For instance, 
 so far as Labour is concerned, precisely the same kind 
 and quality of force is exerted in digging a canal and 
 in digging a railway cutting or throwing up a railway 
 embankment. But what has transformed canal-transit 
 into railway-transit has been the Ability of a minority 
 of men operating on a vast army of labourers, and 
 entirely transfiguring the result, whilst the Labour has 
 remained unchanged. And what is true of the creation 
 of railways is true of modern progress and modern 
 production generally. The entire growth of wealth in 
 the modern world is an increment which has been added 
 by Ability to the old product of Labour. The Fabian 
 essayists, often as they mention Ability, have, as I say, 
 never attempted an accurate analysis of its character 
 and its functions ; but the moment they do so, 
 and connect this analysis with the rest of their 
 theory, the above conclusion is inevitable. It leaps 
 to light. 
 
 For the elucidation of this truth, so fatal to the 
 Socialistic theory, the Socialists themselves are to be 
 thanked. The orthodox economists dealt with the 
 labourer's reward only under the aspect of the wages 
 paid him by an employer, and treated it as something 
 regulated by supply and demand. The Socialistic 
 economists have done signal service by insisting that 
 this is a wrong, or at least a one-sided, view of the 
 matter ; and that the true view of the point at issue 
 is obtained not by inquiring what Labour receives
 
 252 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 under the existing system, but by inquiring what 
 Labour produces ; by insisting that wages are merely 
 a disguised form of what is produced by the labourer, 
 and by declaring that the wage-question is at bottom 
 this — Does the labourer get the whole of his produce ? 
 Or does he get only part ? But here comes the point 
 which the Socialists fail to see. If the reward of 
 Labour is to be considered in this way, the reward of 
 Ability must be so considered likewise; and the 
 question is forced upon us, What proportion of the 
 national income does Ability produce ? or, in other 
 words, what does that small minority of men produce, 
 who in virtue, as the Fabians say, ' of Nature's capricious 
 gifts,' possess that rare faculty ? And the answer is 
 arrived at in the way above indicated. This small 
 minority produces all that portion of the national income 
 which, without the assistance of its ' rare gifts,' the 
 majority could not produce. 
 
 Such is the principle by which the respective 
 products of these two faculties must be discriminated. 
 Let us now come to the application of the principle. 
 This, as I said, can be made only by the assistance of 
 actual experience, and especially the facts of experience, 
 extending over considerable periods, as recorded in 
 industrial history. In Labour and the Popular Welfare 
 I took the products of the industry of a population of 
 ten million persons in this country a hundred years 
 ago; and for argumentative purposes made Labour a 
 present of the total produce. It is impossible to main- 
 tain that mere Labour, the faculty ' that breeds like 
 rabbits,' divorced from the control of Ability, can 
 produce more than the total which, in the days of our
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 253 
 
 grandfathers and great-grandfathers, was produced by 
 Labour and Ability together. Starting, then, with the 
 above exaggerated estimate of what Labour can produce, 
 I showed what the total product of Labour in this 
 country is at the present time ; the result being that 
 Labour at this moment produces less than five-thir- 
 teenths of the existing national income, and Ability 
 eight-thirteenths. The wages of Labour, however, are 
 about seven-thirteenths of the whole ; that is to say, 
 Labour receives to-day at least forty per cent, more than 
 it produces. 
 
 The whole materials of this conclusion are in the 
 Fabian volume itself. Over and over again is the 
 admission made that in order to maintain production in 
 its present state of efficiency, still more to increase it, 
 the State will require ' the scarce brains ' just as much 
 as private enterprise does now ; but the writers fail to 
 see the enormous results of this admission. I am not 
 speaking now of the precise figures in the calculation 
 just made. They are matters not of theory, but of 
 historical detail. But some result substantially the 
 same as what I have mentioned inevitably follows from 
 the reasoning of all the Fabian writers, when once their 
 unconscious admissions have been expanded into their 
 full significance. The only theoretical answer possible, 
 which bears any semblance of plausibility, is one which 
 they have not given, but which they might give ; and I 
 will mention it for two reasons — firstly, because its 
 plausibility at first sight is so great ; and, secondly, 
 because by dwelling on its falsehood, we shall have our 
 attention fixed on a fundamental economic truth, which 
 has hitherto by all schools been altogether neglected,
 
 254 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 and which will throw additional light on the calculation 
 made above. 
 
 The plausible answer is this. It may be said that 
 if Ability is to be held to produce all that part of the 
 product which is over and above what Labour could 
 have produced without its assistance, by the same 
 argument Labour can be shown to have produced the 
 whole of the product, since without its assistance Ability 
 would produce nothing. But this contention is false 
 for two reasons — a minor reason and a major reason. 
 The minor reason is that when we talk of Labour and 
 Ability we mean not abstract faculties, but we mean 
 men possessing them ; and though the average Labourer 
 is not a potential man of Ability, the man of Ability is 
 a potential Labourer ; therefore men of Ability could 
 always produce more, per head, than average Labourers, 
 even though these last gave them no assistance whatever. 
 But this point is trifling, and requires but passing 
 notice. The important point is as follows. 
 
 All practical reasoning is carried out by the aid of 
 suppositions. We estimate the causes of this or that 
 result by seeing what would happen if such and such a 
 cause were withdrawn. But in all practical reasoning — 
 in all reasoning intended to guide action — the supposi- 
 tions we make must be suppositions of possibilities. 
 Thus in economics we take no account of the part 
 played in agriculture by the air, or by the force of 
 gravity ; because nothing we can do by our social or 
 political action will interfere with the presence and 
 operation of either one or the other of them. They are 
 permanent facts of nature, and we therefore assume them 
 as such. Now Labour is, in this respect, exactly like
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 255 
 
 air or gravity. It is a permanent necessity of life. 
 Under certain circumstances a minority of men can be 
 exempted from it : but for the majority in all communi- 
 ties, to labour is as necessary as to eat, or even to 
 breathe. In other words, the task-master of man is 
 Nature. The average man is a little mill that Nature 
 turns, by the wind or the stream of his necessities. 
 His limbs and muscles labour as inevitably as his heart 
 beats. But the case of Ability is altogether different. 
 This is a faculty which develops itself only under special 
 circumstances ; whilst the productivity of Labour varies 
 little, that of Ability is capable of indefinite increase ; 
 and again, after it has increased, it may at any moment 
 contract. Therefore, whilst we are arguing in accord- 
 ance with the realities of things when we calculate 
 what Labour would do if there were no Ability, we are 
 indulging in a supposition which is altogether fanciful 
 when we consider what would happen if there were no 
 Labour. We might as well calculate what would 
 happen if the labourers had wings, and were to fly away 
 to the moon. 
 
 The recognition of this truth leads us to a second 
 set of considerations. The true task-master of man 
 being, as was just said, Nature, his true task-master is 
 not the employing class. "What this class, which 
 represents Ability clothed with capital and operating 
 through capital, really does, is to intervene between 
 man and Nature, and transfigure the impersonal brute 
 task-master into a reasonable and personal one, which 
 at its hardest imposes conditions no harder than Nature 
 does at her hardest ; which generally imposes conditions 
 at once less hard and more advantageous ; and which is
 
 256 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 the one intermediary through which mankind in general 
 can ever strike with Nature a better bargain than it 
 does at present. The dark picture which Socialists 
 draw of the lot of the working-classes owes most of its 
 darkness to the fact of their measuring life by a false 
 standard. They estimate the lot of the workers by the 
 lot of those who employ them — a lot which, under 
 certain conditions, may be made impossible for anybody, 
 but which, under no conditions, could be made possible 
 for all ; and they attribute the hardness of the general 
 lot to the action of those who enjoy the exceptional lot. 
 But let them remove these last, and what will happen 
 then ? The employing, the privileged class, would 
 have been swept aside, only to reveal the sterner, the 
 more grudging, the more implacable features of Nature, 
 the arch-capitalist — who, in some regions, indeed, smiles 
 on some of her slaves, keeping them by her smile in 
 savagery, but who, over far wider portions of the earth's 
 surface, sweats them more unmercifully than the most 
 callous of human tyrants. 
 
 Here, for instance, is a description of men free from 
 the domination of capital, and having Nature for their 
 sole employer. ' They labour early and late. They 
 work hard. They plod on from day to day, and from 
 year to year — the most patient, untireable, and per- 
 severing of human animals. There is not an hour of a 
 single day in the year during which they rest. It would 
 astonish the English common people to see the intense 
 labour with which they earn their firewood.' It might 
 be thought that the above was a passage from Karl 
 Marx, describing the misery of the ' white slaves ' of 
 capital. It is not. It is taken, with merely the senti-
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 257 
 
 mental padding omitted, from an account quoted by 
 Mill as a ' show specimen ' of the happy condition of 
 a German peasant proprietor. 
 
 And now we may return with a fresh set of illustra- 
 tions, from the question of the natural bondage of 
 Labour to the question of the natural products of 
 Labour. The scanty amount wrung from the soil by 
 the German peasant is a good living example of what 
 Labour itself produces. Other examples are the village 
 boot-maker, who works for himself and sells direct to 
 the consumer ; and the old cotton-spinners and weavers, 
 who worked in their own cottages. Both these last are 
 cited by the Fabian essayists as types of the position of 
 labourers, when not under the tyranny of the profit- 
 mongering and plundering employer. That under the 
 dominion of the employer their gross product is increased 
 is too well known to require reassertion here ; but it 
 will be well to point out that not only is the gross 
 product increased, but that what the labourer himself 
 receives is increased also. A weaver, in the good old 
 days to which the Fabian essayists refer — a weaver who 
 represented Labour not in bondage to Ability — earned, 
 according to Arthur Young, seven and sixpence a week. 
 A weaver in a modern cotton-mill earns thirty shillings. 
 
 There is no space here to pursue this subject further ; 
 but enough has been said to make it clear to the reader 
 that there are ample means of verifying the practical 
 reality of the fact that the Labour of the many, as apart 
 from the Ability of the minority, creates but a small 
 part of our existing national income ; that the national 
 income rises with the increased application and increased 
 efficacy of Ability ; and that if Ability is unduly ham-
 
 258 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 pered, or suffers a reduction in force by a reduction of 
 its natural incentives, the national income is capable of 
 indefinite shrinkage. 
 
 When once this truth is plainly stated it becomes 
 impossible for even the Socialists themselves to deny it. 
 It is, indeed, implicit in their teachings ; and it is 
 unconsciously acknowledged by every one of the Fabian 
 essayists. The State, according to their view, is to 
 become the sole employer ; but the State, to fulfil this 
 function, will be obliged gradually to enlist in its service 
 all the Ability now in the service of private enterprise ; 
 and on the efficiency of this Ability, under new condi- 
 tions, will depend whether there will be as much to 
 distribute amongst the labourers, when labour takes 
 nearly the whole, as there is now, when it takes only a 
 part. 
 
 So far as the question of men ' selling themselves 
 into bondage ' is concerned, Socialism would make no 
 change whatever. If a man who has no land, who lives 
 only on wages, and who has nothing to separate himself 
 from starvation but the sale of his labour — if such a 
 man is a white slave now, the bulk of the community 
 under Socialism would be white slaves still, and slaves 
 with no chance of ever attaining freedom. The three 
 cardinal doctrines enforced by all the Fabian essayists 
 are, first, that no man must be allowed to own any of 
 the means of production ; secondly, that he shall own, 
 but own only, his wages, and the articles of consumption 
 he can buy with them ; and, thirdly, that without labour 
 a man will get no wages at all, and that if, as one of 
 the Fabian essayists says, ' he choose not to work he 
 will be in danger of starvation.'
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 259 
 
 So far as the bulk of the community goes, Socialism 
 does not even promise any change, except in the two 
 following particulars. One is that, no matter how fast 
 population increases, the State will be able to find 
 productive labour for all. The other is, that their 
 labour will be rewarded by increased wages. 
 
 Now, as to the first point, it must be enough for me 
 here to say that there is in the Socialistic scheme no 
 hint of any new power or principle by which a Socialistic 
 State would be better enabled to solve the problem of 
 finding productive Labour for all than the private 
 capitalist is. A Socialistic State could easily waste the 
 savings of the country in setting men to useless and 
 unproductive labour ; but how to make productive 
 labour, on one narrow portion of the earth's surface, 
 keep pace with an indefinite multiplication of its 
 inhabitants is a problem to be solved, if at all, not by 
 the State as the State, but by the State as a body able 
 to secure the services of individuals endowed with rare 
 industrial genius — the genius that is able to wrest new 
 secrets from Nature and discover new industries or new 
 methods of industry. To say that the State, as the 
 State, would be able to do this is as absurd as to say 
 that the State could discover a new star. 
 
 Next as to the question of increased wages — an 
 increased reward for Labour — this point can be dealt 
 with very briefly and simply. The Fabian essayists, as 
 has been said, calculate that were Socialism realised to- 
 day the State would have an annual fund of five hun- 
 dred millions at its disposal, taken from the present 
 possessing classes, and that this would be available for 
 division amongst the great mass of the wage-earners. 
 
 s 2
 
 260 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 These Utopian financiers, however, forget that, as Mr. 
 Giffen pointed out, two hundred millions of this repre- 
 sents capitalised savings, and that, unless the productive 
 powers of the community are to decline, this saving 
 would still have to be made. The wage-earners could 
 not have it to spend as private income. The five 
 hundred millions, therefore, shrink to three hundred, 
 which would have to be divided amongst some 
 thirty-three million persons, 1 and which would yield 
 them a bonus per head of three-and-sixpence per 
 week. 
 
 So much, then, for what Socialism, according to the 
 figures quoted by Socialists, could do for the people 
 generally, even if we accept their own premises. But 
 in their premises the most important question of all is 
 neglected. They assume this five hundred millions of 
 annual income as a natural product, inevitably resulting 
 from the exertions of a population of thirty-eight 
 million people. But let them look back only a few 
 decades — let them look back only to the time of the 
 first great Exhibition, and they will find that even at 
 that recent date, had the population then been as great 
 as it is now, the production of this sum would have 
 been impossible. If the actual wage-earning popula- 
 tion at that time had received the same wages per head 
 they receive now, the entire national income would 
 have been more than swallowed up in paying them, 
 
 1 In this calculation about five million persons are deducted from 
 the total population, as belonging to the class of State Employers 
 of Labour and their families. If this number is thought too large, 
 it is easy to alter the calculation, so as to increase the number of 
 the labourers, in which case the increment of wages will be even 
 less than what is above stated.
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 261 
 
 and the Socialists would have found no surplus re- 
 maining at all. The entire fund then, with which 
 they propose to deal, is practically a growth of the last 
 forty years. It has come to be produced only through 
 a series of very complicated circumstances, and the 
 play of intricate forces ; and were these interfered with 
 the millions would at once dwindle and disappear. It 
 is, in other words, the product, not of the labour which 
 we may always count on to exert itself, and ' to breed 
 like rabbits,' but of the Ability of the ' scarce brains, 
 which are not the least of Nature's capricious gifts,' and 
 which may cease to exert themselves any day if they 
 are not appropriately stimulated. 
 
 Here, then, comes the point of fundamental differ- 
 ence between Socialism and the existing system. So 
 far as concerns the necessity of men selling themselves 
 for wages, and working at the bidding of industrial 
 superiors, Socialism will make no difference, except 
 that it will arm every director of industry with the 
 powers of a State official. Its fundamental peculiarity 
 is that it will take from the men of Ability the larger 
 part of what they produce, and yet expect that they 
 will continue to produce it just the same. Every 
 stimulus to exceptional exertion will be annihilated. 
 The ' scarce brains ' who will still have to wield capital 
 are to be released alike from all the penalties of failure, 
 and nearly all the rewards of success — from the 
 penalties of failure, because the capital will not be 
 their own ; and from the rewards of success, because, 
 as the Fabians distinctly say, a graduated income- 
 tax would always be held in readiness for the 
 special purpose of taking from every industrial genius
 
 262 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 everything that he produces annually above the value 
 of800Z. 
 
 The Fabian essayists will at once say No to this. 
 They will say, and with perfect truth, that all through 
 their book they draw a sharp distinction between the 
 wages that will be paid to Ability, and the interest on 
 capital, or that part of the product which now goes to a 
 man as owner of the means of production. To own the 
 means of production, say the Socialists — and no one 
 insists on this truth more logically and lucidly than 
 they do — is necessarily to receive interest, on account 
 of the use made of them ; and it is mainly, they say, in 
 the shape of interest that the money goes away, which 
 it is the great object of Socialism to give back to 
 Labour. Therefore, all that the Socialistic State will 
 do is, they contend, not to rob Ability, but merely to 
 resume possession of the materials through which 
 Ability operates. 
 
 The confusion of thought implied in this reasoning 
 is astonishing. In the first place, if interest, under the 
 present system, can be said to be a robbery from 
 anybody, it is obviously a robbery not from Labour, but 
 from Ability ; since it is a point admitted, by even the 
 Socialists themselves, that it is only Ability, or ' the 
 scarce brains,' that can manipulate the means of pro- 
 duction, as they now are, to advantage. I shall recur 
 to this point presently ; but at the present moment it 
 is not the point that it is really important to notice. 
 The important point is that the means of production, as 
 they exist to-day in this country, are themselves the 
 production of Ability. Their estimated value is about 
 ten thousand millions ; and of these ten thousand
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 263 
 
 millions, eight hundred thousand have been created 
 since the year 1800. Socialists talk of them as if they 
 were indestructible gifts of Nature, which had always 
 existed, and which could never be destroyed, no matter 
 what tricks we played with them. They talk of them 
 as if they were synonymous with the natural qualities 
 of the soil ; and accordingly we find the Fabian 
 essayists constantly speaking of the State resuming its 
 mediaeval rights to them. They might just as well talk 
 of the State resuming its mediaeval rights to the last 
 picture painted by Sir Frederic Leighton. The Fabian 
 phrase is plausible only with regard to land ; * and no 
 
 1 I am compelled here to criticise briefly in a foot-note a point 
 which on some other occasion I hope to deal with at length. The 
 Fabian programme as to the Socialisation of land is as follows. 
 Let us divide, for simplicity's sake, the various qualities of soils 
 in a county into two classes. A man's labour on soil of the first 
 class yields, let us say, 150?. a year ; a similar man's labour on soil 
 of second class yields 501. a year. Thus if the soil were owned by 
 the cultivators, the first man, owing to no extra effort of his own, 
 would be the happy possessor of an extra 100Z. a year. The 
 Fabians tell ns that the Socialistic State would take this 1001. a 
 year from the first man, and divide it between the two, the result 
 being that each would have 1001. They entirely fail to perceive 
 that such an arrangement would at once introduce into the 
 Socialistic State all the seeds of the deadliest industrial warfare. 
 For let us assume (as the Fabians do with sufficient accuracy for 
 the purpose of argument) that all the best land is occupied first. 
 We have then a class of cultivators who all have 150Z. a year : but 
 the moment, with the growth of populatiou, the inferior soil is 
 occupied, every new cultivator inflicts a direct injury on the old, 
 making him poorer by exacting some part of his income. Every 
 cultivator, therefore, of any acre of inferior land, would be the 
 natural enemy of the cultivator of superior land, and it would thus 
 be the direct interest of the latter to prevent inferior soils being 
 cultivated at all.
 
 264 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 doubt it might be possible to organise a new community 
 in which the State should be the owner of certain 
 rights in the soil. But in any old and highly cultivated 
 country, the soil is a kind of centaur, the body of which 
 is land, and the head and shoulders capital. Even as 
 it is, the land of this country forms, in point of value, 
 only one-seventh part of the total means of production ; 
 and if we deduct the value that Capital and Ability 
 have added to it, it would not count for so much as 
 one-tenth. Virtually, then, those means of produc- 
 tion in which Socialists say the State is to resume its 
 mediaeval rights, are means of production the very 
 existence of which were hardly dreamed of even at the 
 end of the last century. They are the artificial product 
 of the present century — the product, roughly speaking, 
 of three generations of able men — the grandfathers and 
 the fathers of the men who now possess it, and of these 
 living able men themselves, who have created more 
 than a fifth part of it ; and to whose constant exertion it 
 is alone due that the whole is not dissipated. These 
 means of production, in other words, are the savings 
 from the private incomes created by able men ; and one 
 of their main motives in creating these incomes has 
 been the desire to capitalise a part of them into means 
 of future production, in order that this should yield, 
 either to themselves or their families, these very millions 
 on which Socialism desires to seize. 
 
 I will illustrate this by a case which the Fabian 
 essayists suggest — the case of an able man, who, 
 because his ability is a social necessity, will be able to 
 command, they estimate, about 800/. a year. Such a 
 man would, with sufficient motive, be able to save
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 265 
 
 annually, say 700?. If he does this from the age of 
 twenty-five to thirty-five, he will be the owner of 
 7,000?., which, if managed by himself, will, under 
 the existing system, bring him in some 700?. annually. 
 He will now be able to save 1,400?. a year ; and if 
 he does this for another ten years, he will have saved 
 at the end at least 14,000?. more, and then be the 
 owner of 21,000?., which will bring him in some 
 2,000?. annually. At this juncture, if he chooses to do 
 so, he will probably be able to sell the business he has 
 developed to some other man of Ability, and be able at 
 forty-five to retire as a leisured man. At all events, he 
 will be master of an income which is the result of his 
 past exertions, and is independent of his present 
 exertions, and which he will be able to leave to his wife 
 or children. He will have created in the shape, let us 
 say, of a factory or printing works, an inanimate co- 
 worker with Living Ability and Labour; and as the 
 owner of it, he will command a share of the product 
 which it helps to produce, just as he would were it 
 some colossal horse which he had constructed and 
 endowed with life, and let out for hire. Such is the 
 process by which the great mass of the existing means 
 of production have come into existence, and are kept in 
 existence. This interest is just as much the product of 
 Ability as are the wages of superintendence or manage- 
 ment; and it has been only for the sake of enjoying 
 this product that Ability h&s exerted itself to increase 
 the means of production. It is indeed Ability's indirect 
 product ; but it is the product for the sake of which 
 Ability mainly exerts itself. 
 
 To convince ourselves that such is the case, let us
 
 266 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 see what would be the conditions of our man with 8001. 
 a year — the maximum — under Socialism. The moment 
 he can command this salary from the Socialistic State, 
 every motive to exert himself further is gone. Let 
 him develop and apply his genius to never such good 
 purpose, let him multiply wealth by the use of his 
 ' scarce brains ' to never so great an extent, he will be 
 creating these new products only to have them swept 
 away from him by the collector of income-tax, who will 
 be watching him as though he were a public enemy. 
 But not only will every motive to produce more be 
 annihilated ; what is of yet greater importance, every 
 motive to save — or, in other words, to increase the 
 means of production — will be annihilated likewise. He 
 will be allowed to spend his 800?. a year as he likes, so 
 long as he spends it on wine, on plum-cake, or on neck- 
 ties ; but if, instead of spending 700?. a year on these, 
 he should wish to spend it on the construction of some 
 improved printing-press, the Socialistic State would say 
 to him, ' By all means do so if you like ; but the 
 moment it is finished we shall confiscate it ; and who- 
 ever gets any benefit from it, you, at all events, shall 
 get none.' The Fabian essayists distinctly say that any 
 property, no matter of what kind, which is capable of 
 yielding any rent to its owner, must, on Socialistic 
 principles, be ruthlessly taken away from him. 1 
 
 1 One of the Fabian essayists gives as an example of rent- 
 yielding property some great picture by Raphael ; and points out 
 with great clearness, that if such a treasure is suffered to be the 
 property of an individual, nothing can prevent the owner's deriving 
 a rent from exhibiting it. The writer naively hints a doubt whether 
 any men exist who would be really selfish enough even to wish to 
 call such a picture their own ; but oddly enough he forgets to con-
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 267 
 
 It will be thus seen that Socialism is a war upon 
 two things — first, on every motive to increase the gross 
 products of the community, or, in other words, the fund 
 out of which alone capital can be saved ; and, secondly, 
 upon every motive to save it. So far as it is possible 
 to translate into figures the programme sketched out 
 by Mr. Sidney Webb and his friends, Ability is to be 
 robbed of about half of the hundred and eighty millions 
 which it produces annually by its direct action, and of 
 the whole of the four hundred and fifty millions which 
 it produces by its indirect action ; and, in addition to 
 this, of the fraction of its products that would be left to 
 it, it is to be jealously and forcibly prevented from 
 making that use — namely, saving and investment — 
 which in the eyes of the most energetic men, gives it its 
 greatest value. Mr. Sidney Webb denounces 'the 
 freedom to privately appropriate the means of produc- 
 tion,' forgetting that the means of production are the 
 personal product of the Ability of the appropriators, 
 
 sider the case, not of a man who accidentally owns an ancient 
 masterpiece, but of a living artist who produces masterpieces him- 
 self. If we accept a picture as representing rent-yielding property, 
 what concerns us as economists is the production of new pictures, 
 rather than the inheritance of old; and, according to the Socialists, 
 if some State servant happened also to be a great artist, he need 
 only employ his leisure in painting pictures great enough to make 
 the public anxious to look at them, and the State would swoop 
 down on them, and seize them as if they were smuggled brandy. 
 A great artist is indeed the one kind of producer who might 
 occasionally be found willing to produce under such conditions; but 
 even amongst artists this would occur but seldom ; whilst amongst 
 no other kind of producer would it cccur at all. A man may 
 be willing to produce something with the intention of giving it 
 away ; but he will not produce anything with the certainty that it 
 will be forcibly taken away.
 
 268 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 and that what lie calls appropriation is merely a man's 
 keeping what he has made, and putting it to the use 
 for which he has made it ; and he speaks lightly of the 
 ease with which ' appropriators ' could be ' expropriated 
 by the community.' He might just as well speak of 
 the ease with which we could cut a labourer's 
 throat, and then argue as if the man would go on 
 labouring. 
 
 Here we have the one peculiar doctrine on which 
 Socialism rests, and which alone fundamentally divides 
 it from all other systems. It is the doctrine that 
 Ability will continue to exert itself as heretofore, when 
 almost every motive to exertion is taken away from it. 
 Socialism, no doubt, has many other peculiarities ; but 
 these are secondary and incidental, and they are all 
 derived from this. If any one doubts that such is 
 really the case, the writings of the Fabian essayists 
 contain all the materials for showing him that it is so. 
 Almost every one of the writers, unconsciously but 
 continually, is acknowledging that the bulk of our 
 modern wealth is the product of Ability, not Labour — 
 of the few, not of the many ; and that were the exer- 
 tions of the few hampered or weakened, the wealth 
 which the Socialists would distribute would cease to 
 exist at all. 
 
 The Essayists constantly endeavour to hide this fact 
 from their eyes by trying to persuade themselves that, 
 by some unanalysed process, the powers of Ability are 
 diffusing themselves amongst the community generally ; 
 and they support this contention by observing that 
 capital now is not usually manipulated by the men who 
 own it, but by salaried managers, who do all the work
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 269 
 
 of Ability — managers who can always be obtained for a 
 salary of 8001. a year ; and they point in especial to 
 the formation of trusts, and the grouping of many 
 capitals under one central management. But the 
 puerility of these arguments is one of the strangest 
 things in the book. Do Mr. Webb and his friends 
 think that the powers which introduced steam, for in- 
 stance, are represented by a manager at 800Z. a year ? 
 Do the shareholders in a Transatlantic steamship com- 
 pany hire this marvellous being, tell him that they 
 want a ship which will go in less than six days to 
 America ; and do they wake up presently and find the 
 City of Pcvris on the Clyde ? Did the community — the 
 social body — feel a wish for electric lighting, for the 
 telephone, and the phonograph, and give a manager 
 800L a year, and tell him to produce these things ? 
 The Fabian essayists are even more unfortunate in 
 their examples than in their theory; for, having pointed 
 to the American trust companies as the great classical 
 example of how the profitable management of capital 
 may be divorced from any direct and personal interest 
 in it, they admit incidentally that the most important 
 trust of all — namely, the Standard Oil Trust — ' is 
 controlled by nine men owning a majority of the 
 stock.' 
 
 I have no space, however, to dwell upon this matter. 
 I return to the broad statement made above — namely, 
 that it can be logically demonstrated, even from the 
 admissions of the Fabian essayists themselves, that the 
 larger part of the wealth of the modern world is actually 
 the product of a minority of able men, and would 
 dwindle in proportion as the exertions of these
 
 270 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 were relaxed ; and the sole fundamental change 
 Socialism proposes to introduce is to rob them of 
 every motive for producing more than one-ninth part 
 of it. 
 
 If any one thinks that Ability would continue to 
 exert itself under these conditions, it seems to me that 
 such a man is impossible to argue with. Indeed, the 
 Fabian volume itself is full of incidental admissions, 
 with regard to human nature, which themselves prove 
 how absurd such a view is. But a far more forcible 
 answer to it than any argument is to be found in the 
 fact that could Ability be secured under the conditions 
 in question, the whole State would have become 
 Socialistic long ago, by a spontaneous and inevitable 
 process. According to Mr. George Howell, the aggre- 
 gate revenue of the trade unions of this kingdom ten 
 years ago amounted to two millions a year ; and the 
 amount by this time is most probably larger. If, then, 
 Ability is to be had for next to nothing — if the highest 
 productive genius can be secured for 8001., which is not 
 much in excess of what Mr. Pickard receives for 
 organising strikes, why do not the unions become their 
 own employers ? They could, of course, begin on a 
 comparatively small scale only ; but they could begin 
 on a scale that would be large compared to that of a 
 private firm ; and if they made profits as rapidly as 
 they imagine the employers make them, their capital 
 would go on increasing year by year, and their business 
 would extend with an ever-increasing celerity. The 
 principles of Socialism would show all the world their 
 soundness by their success ; and Socialism in the course 
 of a generation would have destroyed individualism, not
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 271 
 
 by attacking it, but by doing its work better, in pre- 
 cisely the same way as railways destroyed coaches. 
 Again, why do not the co-operative societies do the 
 same thing? Here, again, there is ample capital. 
 These societies owned between them in 1891 more than 
 sixteen million pounds, and in 1892 more than seven- 
 teen millions. And what do they do with it ? In 1891 
 they had invested three-eighths of it in individualistic 
 enterprise ; and of their increased capital in the year 
 following they had similarly invested a yet greater pro- 
 portion. They have at this moment more than six and 
 a half millions of capital thus invested. Of the capital 
 which they employ themselves, about 92 per cent, is 
 employed, not in production, but in what the Socialists 
 call joint-stock shop-keeping. The crucial problem 
 is the problem of production. If it is possible to 
 secure Ability, under conditions designed especially to 
 mulct it of the larger part of what it produces, why 
 do not these societies use all these millions in produc- 
 tion? 
 
 If ever there was an opening ready for them — for 
 them and the trade unions between them — there is, on 
 their own showing, an opening now. There are hun- 
 dreds of thousands — so the leaders of the unionists tell 
 us — hundreds of thousands of their fellow-workmen 
 without employment. Why do not the unionists and 
 the co-operators themselves employ them — the one with 
 their annual revenue of two millions, the other with 
 their capital of nearly seven millions, now invested in 
 non-socialistic enterprise ? The answer is plain. 
 Neither of these bodies can employ either the unem- 
 ployed or themselves, because to employ successfully
 
 272 FABIAN ECONOMICS 
 
 Ability is the prime requisite — and ability of a very 
 high order ; and it is impossible to secure such Ability 
 on the Socialistic terms. 
 
 The very existence of an unemployed class, indeed, so 
 far from being a proof that Socialism is required, is a proof 
 that we require yet rarer Ability, a yet more strongly 
 stimulated individualism. Let a new Arkwright, a new 
 Watt, or a genius who will do for British agriculture 
 what these men did for manufacture, make his ap- 
 pearance ; in short, let the multiplication of Ability 
 merely keep pace with the increase of population, and 
 an unemployed class (other than criminals, and drunk- 
 ards, and exceptionally worthless persons) will be an 
 impossibility. Does the bitterest opponent of the pri- 
 vate capitalist imagine that if the wit of man was able 
 to devise means by which under existing circumstances 
 the present unemployed could be set to produce any- 
 thing which the rest of the community would recognise 
 as exchangeable wealth — does any one imagine that 
 under these circumstances the labour of the unemployed 
 would have to go begging, and that eager employers 
 would not rather be competing for it ? No doubt the 
 State, as it is, may support these men, by finding for 
 them unremunerative labour, and thus trenching on 
 the savings of the country ; but this is merely a dis- 
 guised charity, and is no real solution of the problem. 
 The problem is, how to make the labour of the unem- 
 ployed as efficient and as wealth-producing as that of 
 the mass of their fellows. And this is a problem which 
 can be solved by industrial Ability only. The Socialists 
 would encourage Ability by robbing it of all its pro- 
 ducts. What is really wanted — if anything new is
 
 FABIAN ECONOMICS 273 
 
 wanted — is rather that the State should offer it an 
 additional bonus. 
 
 So much, then, for Socialism as an analysis of the 
 process of production. In the following essay I shall 
 consider the view of its historical evolution, and its 
 progress in recent times, and at the present moment, 
 as given by the Fabian essayists, and shall show that in 
 every one of their generalisations they are altogether 
 mistaken. I shall show that whilst when they are 
 analysing Socialism they use the word in one sense, 
 when they are dealing with history they use it in two 
 totally different senses — not only different from, but 
 antagonistic to the first. Finally, having shown the 
 falsehoods and confusions contained in the Socialistic 
 contribution to economics, I shall endeavour to sum up 
 the valuble truths contained in it ; to show that the 
 proper place for these is in what — in a broad and social, 
 as distinct from a party sense — may be called the sys- 
 tem of Conservatism ; and to show how the defenders 
 of this system may be able, by a fuller understanding 
 of it, to speak to the intellect, the heart, and the hopes 
 of the people of this country, like the voice of a trumpet, 
 in comparison with which the voice of Socialism will be 
 merely a penny whistle.
 
 274 
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 I 
 
 SOCIALISTS ON THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 I have pointed out in the preceding essay the one fun- 
 damental doctrine in which Socialism differs from Indi- 
 vidualism. I showed that this, reduced to its simplest 
 form, was one single, bald, definite doctrine with regard 
 to the process of production in the modern world, which 
 all Socialists implicitly affirm, and which everybody else 
 implicitly sets aside as a piece of raving. The doctrine 
 I refer to is neither more nor less than this — That the 
 men who, year by year, create by their exceptional 
 ability by far the larger part, and the only growing 
 part, of our national income, would continue to produce 
 the same number of millions under a Government 
 specially organised to take all they produced away from 
 them, as they produce now under a Government which 
 confirms them in the possession of three-fifths of it. 
 The Fabian essayists, one and all of them, admit — 
 though they fail to realise clearly what this admission 
 implies — that the growing amount of wealth produced 
 in the modern world depends not on the labour contri- 
 buted by the average labourers, but on the ability of
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 275 
 
 those ' scarce brains,' to quote Mr. Shaw's words, 
 c which are not the law of nature's capricious gifts ' — 
 that is to say, on the ability of the exceptionally gifted 
 few by whom the exertions of the labouring many are 
 organised; and production, under Socialism, as con- 
 ceived of by Mr. Sidney Webb, differs fundamentally 
 from production under Individualism only in the fact 
 that the men with the ' scarce brains ' — the active 
 private employers of the present day — will be converted 
 into an army of Government taskmasters, and will be 
 plundered by the Government of almost everything they 
 produce. The labourer will still be a wage-earner, who 
 will have to work or starve ; there will still be industrial 
 discipline as rigid as any that now exists. The sole 
 distinctive advantage held out to the labourers is that, 
 by robbing the men with c the scarce brains ' of what 
 they produce as fast as they produce it, the Government 
 will provide itself with a fund to increase the present 
 wage of labour — a fund which, as I showed from the 
 figures supplied by the Fabian essayists themselves— 
 would give each citizen an extra sixpence a day. But 
 I am not going to dwell here on the inadequacy of this 
 result, nor on what most people will consider the obvious 
 character of the fact, that if the men with ' the scarce 
 brains ' are to be robbed of what they produce, there is 
 very little chance that they will go on producing it. 
 The point on which I am now concerned to insist is, 
 that it is the doctrine of Socialism that they trill go on 
 producing it — that a man, for instance, will be as 
 anxious to make 100,000£. if he is only allowed to keep 
 800L of it, and not even to employ that as he likes, as 
 he would be were he allowed to keep 80,000L, and 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 spend or invest it according to his own judgment. 
 And not only is this peculiar doctrine the doctrine of 
 the Socialists, but it is — as will appear more clearly in 
 the following pages — the only fundamental doctrine in 
 which they are peculiar. It is the only fundamental 
 doctrine taught by them which is not either actually in 
 some way taught also by Individualists, or is else capable 
 of being appropriated by them and used to strengthen 
 Individualism. The Fabian essayists, though they are 
 constantly losing sight of this fact in their arguments, 
 are yet constantly proclaiming it ; and to show the 
 reader that I have not misrepresented the matter, I 
 will quote the following words from the concluding 
 essay : — ' It is not so much to the thing the State does,' 
 says the writer, ' as to the end for which the State does 
 it, that we must look before we can decide whether it 
 is a Socialist State or not. Socialism is the common 
 holding of the means of production and exchange, and 
 the holding of them for the equal benefit of all ' — i.e. in 
 such a way that the man who produces most shall have 
 as little as possible more than the man who produces 
 least ; and no one, says the writer, is a true Socialist 
 ' who hesitates to clamour his loudest against any pro- 
 posal whose adoption would prolong the life of private 
 capital [which means par excellence interest on private 
 capital] for a single hour.' 
 
 And now, having thus summed up for the reader 
 the gist of my previous essay, and having shown him 
 again what in its essence the Socialistic system is, I 
 propose to examine those theories of history and evolu- 
 tion by which the Socialistic economists aim at con- 
 vincing us that Socialism is the condition towards
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 277 
 
 which all civilised society is working — a condition 
 which is inevitably and rapidly being evolved out of the 
 economic conditions that have preceded it. I pointed 
 out already that the Socialistic economists have rendered 
 an invaluable service to economic science by introducing 
 into it the historical and comparative method, instead of 
 doing as their orthodox predecessors had done, and 
 treating the society existing round them as the only 
 society requiring or deserving analysis, and as repre- 
 senting the sole form which industrial civilisation could 
 assume. What I shall now have to point out is that 
 the service they have rendered by insisting on the 
 necessity of applying the historical method, has been 
 only equalled by the failure which has attended their 
 own application of it ; and I shall deal with their his- 
 torical criticisms under two heads — first, those that refer 
 to the present and that near past during which the 
 capitalistic system, as we now know it, has developed 
 itself; and secondly, those that refer to the four or five 
 preceding centuries, during which the beginnings of 
 this modern system were slowly evolved out of the 
 mediasval. The reader will see that there have been 
 two distinct propositions submitted to us. First, that 
 out of Capitalism is being evolved Socialism ; secondly, 
 that out of mediaeval Individualism was evolved Capi- 
 talism. The historical order, as I have placed them, is 
 inverted ; but it is the order in which it will be most 
 convenient to consider them.
 
 278 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 II 
 
 THE ALLEGED CONTEMPORARY EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 AN APPEARANCE ONLY, NOT A REALITY 
 
 The theory of the Fabian essayists as to modern and 
 contemporary tendencies, forms, from their point of view, 
 the best, and indeed a conclusive, answer to the argu- 
 ments of those who maintain that Socialism is unwork- 
 able ; for it is a theory at once illustrated by, and based 
 on, a number of industrial facts, which the essayists 
 declare to be examples of Socialism already at work. 
 I am going to take the principal examples cited by 
 them, and to show the reader that not a single one of 
 them is really Socialistic in the sense which the 
 Socialists attribute to the term ; but that the Fabian 
 writers — no doubt with perfect honesty — have been 
 playing fast and loose alike with their language and 
 their thoughts ; and that, whilst defining Socialism as 
 being in its essence one thing, when they are looking 
 for realised examples of it they mean quite another. 
 
 The chief examples which the Fabian essayists give 
 us are the Post Office, the Income Tax, Free Education, 
 and the management by municipal bodies of gas-works, 
 water-works, public libraries, tramways, and ferries. 
 Each of these they declare to be an actual instalment 
 of Socialism ; whilst Trusts and Joint Stock Companies 
 are represented as the Socialistic chicken, alive and 
 almost ready to burst out of the Individualistic egg. I 
 propose to show that in none of these examples is the 
 real Socialistic principle embodied at all ; but that, on 
 the contrary, the success of each experiment involves
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 279 
 
 that very principle of Individualism which the Fabian 
 essayists declare it is the mission of Socialism to 
 destroy. What I mean in saying this is, that in every 
 one of these so-called examples of Socialism the presence 
 and use of private capital are implied — that private 
 capital used or accumulated by private persons is in 
 each of these cases an essential factor, and in most of 
 them a principal factor. 
 
 Let us begin with the Income Tax. Mr. Bernard 
 Shaw declares that this is Socialism pure and simple — 
 Socialism already in our midst. ' It is the transfer,' 
 he says, ' of rent and interest to the State by instal- 
 ments.' If this tax is not Socialism, it is, he declares, 
 ' an intolerable spoliative anomaly.' But Socialism it 
 is, he continues, absolute, although not complete ; and 
 all we have to do is to increase this tax gradually, and 
 at last the Socialism will be complete as well as abso- 
 lute. The State which at present socialises a part of 
 rent and interest will at last have socialised the whole. 
 It seems entirely to escape Mr. Shaw's mind, that if 
 the State should attempt to socialise the whole, or even 
 the larger part of this sum, the result would be that the 
 sum would no longer be produced. With the exception 
 of a very small part of it — namely, the prairie rent of 
 the land — the sum which he alludes to, and which he 
 estimates at about five hundred millions, is an annual 
 product of ability, new since the last generation ; and 
 were the conditions and influences which have stimu- 
 lated its production withdrawn, it would disappear far 
 more quickly than it appeared. But I have dwelt on 
 this point already, and I only mention it here in 
 passing. What I want here to insist on is that, what-
 
 280 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ever might happen under other circumstances, the 
 Income Tax as we know it at present is actually a 
 transfer to the State from a sum that is produced by 
 individual enterprise — by individual ability manipulat- 
 ing private capital ; and that the amount transferred has 
 been carefully adjusted with a view to taking as little as 
 possible from the individual, not as much; in other words, 
 to diminishing as little as possible the normal reward or 
 incentive of those who save private capital, or who employ 
 it. Instead, therefore, of being an example of Socialism, 
 it is one of the most astonishing witnesses to the pro- 
 ductive force of Individualism. The same criticism 
 applies to Trusts and to Joint Stock Companies. I 
 need not repeat at length an observation I made in my 
 former paper, that one of the greatest of existing 
 Trusts, which the Fabians cite as a typical example, 
 is — as with a curious naivete they tell us — directed by 
 nine men, who own the larger part of the stock. Two 
 far more important and more widely-reaching facts to 
 be noticed are, first, that the capital invested in these 
 enterprises is the product of the previous application 
 of other private capital, by the ability of individuals 
 whose main motive in producing it was its future in- 
 vestment in enterprises of this very kind ; and, secondly, 
 that the men who direct these enterprises, even if their 
 position be that of mere hired managers, enjoy the 
 advantage which quintuples the moral value of their 
 salaries, and which, as we have seen, it is the Socialist's 
 primary aim to abolish — the advantage of investing 
 whatever they may be willing to save, or, in other 
 words, of converting it into private means of production, 
 and thus hereafter reaping from it an independent or
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 281 
 
 anti- Socialist income. Does Mr. Shaw imagine that 
 the manager of any great railway company would con- 
 sider his present salary to be as valuable a reward as it 
 is, if one of the conditions of its payment to him were 
 that he was at liberty to invest none of it, or that 
 any investment he made were to be ipso facto confis- 
 cated ? 
 
 The favourite, the proverbial example with the 
 Socialists, of Socialism in operation, namely, the Post 
 Office, and the municipal enterprises — distributive, as 
 in the case of water, or distributive and productive 
 both, as in the case of gas — on which the Fabian 
 essayists lay still greater stress, differ in one point from 
 the companies I have just alluded to, and with this I 
 shall deal presently. But in every other respect their 
 position is the same. Every employe, either under 
 the Government or the municipal authorities, can con- 
 vert his savings into private means of production, and 
 derive interest from them ; and the rarer and more 
 valuable his ability, and the larger his salary, the more 
 important as a motive the hope of this saving is. And 
 now let us look at the matter from another point of 
 view, and we shall see that, on the admission of the 
 Fabian writers themselves, what was said about the 
 Individualist foundation of all Trusts and Companies is 
 even more strikingly illustrated by the enterprise of 
 Municipal bodies. Municipal Socialism has been 
 rendered possible only — to quote the distinct admission 
 of Mr. Sidney Webb — ' by the creation of a local debt 
 now reaching over a hundred and eighty-one million 
 pounds.' In other words, it has been rendered possible 
 only by the fact that private ability had created all this
 
 282 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 capital, and created it — as the event shows — with the 
 distinct object of employing it so that it should yield 
 interest. If Mr. Sidney Webb doubt this, let him ask 
 himself whether those millions would have been forth- 
 coming if the municipal authorities had not only 
 promised no interest on them, but had distinctly de- 
 clared that they bound themselves never to pay any — in 
 fact, that whatever money was lent to them, they meant 
 practically to confiscate. Mr. Webb knows, as well as 
 anybody, that if municipal enterprise had attempted to 
 establish itself on these Socialistic terms, or on any 
 terms winch did not call to its aid the normal and vital 
 motives which have created private capital, municipal 
 enterprise could never have established itself at all. I 
 am not at this moment considering how it may extend 
 itself in the future. I am doing what Mr. Webb does. 
 I am speaking of it as it is ; and certainly as we know 
 it at present, it is so far from being an instalment of 
 Socialism, that it is a mere extension of the immemorial 
 functions of Government, which has been made possible 
 only by the assistance of Individualism, and is, like the 
 Income Tax, a witness to the forces which Individualism 
 represents. 
 
 The case of the Post Office will enable us to see into 
 the matter yet farther. I need hardly repeat, with 
 reference to the Post Office officials, what I have said 
 already about the employes of public bodies generally, 
 namely, that no enterprise is really Socialistic which 
 allows salaries to be saved and invested as private 
 capital. I will merely point out the fact, to which I 
 have drawn attention in my recent volume, Labour 
 and the Popular Welfare, that the Post Office, even
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 283 
 
 when regarded under its most Socialistic aspect, is 
 merely a film of Socialism supported on the sinews of 
 Individualism. All the improved means of transport 
 — the ocean steamers which go to America and back in 
 twelve days now, whereas sixty years ago the same 
 journey occupied a hundred and five — the development 
 of railways and telegraphs, and more recently of the 
 telephone — all of these are the children of private 
 ability allied with private capital ; and the Post Office, 
 as compared with these, is a child riding on the 
 shoulders of a giant. And what holds good of the Post 
 Office at the present moment, has been true of it, in 
 a marked degree, throughout its entire history. The 
 main improvements in its service have been due to 
 private initiative, from the days when Murray and 
 Dockwra, and after them Povey, started successively a 
 penny and a halfpenny post for London, and when 
 John Allen, who rented the cross-posts in the country, 
 trebled the business by his organisation of it, to the 
 days when mail coaches were started by a private 
 member of Parliament. 
 
 And now, let us go back for a moment from Imperial 
 enterprise to Municipal, and take three of the special 
 examples which Mr. Sidney Webb gives. ' Bradford,' 
 he says, ' supplies water below cost price.' Mr. Webb 
 entirely misses the meaning of this statement. It either 
 means that the municipality makes a losing business of 
 the water supply ; or else, that the loss is made good 
 by a tax on incomes which are produced by Individual- 
 istic enterprise. Therefore, the Bradford water supply 
 is either unsuccessful Socialism, or it is not Socialism 
 at all. Secondly, Mr. Webb tells us that 'Liverpool
 
 284 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 provides science lectures ; ' and, thirdly, that ' Man- 
 chester stocks an art gallery.' The first statement 
 really means that Liverpool secures the services of 
 individual men of science, who give lectures. The 
 municipality either pays the lecturers, or it does not. If 
 it does pay them, it pays them out of a rate on Indi- 
 vidualist incomes — so here again is another tribute to 
 Individualism. Or, if it does not pay them, there is no 
 municipal Socialism in the matter. We have simply an 
 instance of the intellectual charity of the lecturers. 
 And now, lastly, let us turn to the Manchester picture- 
 gallery. In a public gallery itself there is nothing new, 
 and nothing more Socialistic than there is in a cathedral . 
 All we need consider is the pictures ; do they repre- 
 sent Socialism ? The pictures have been either bought 
 by the municipality, or presented to it by persons who 
 have bought them ; or it is conceivable that some of 
 them may have been the gifts of munificent artists. 
 But even these last — if such there are — represent, not 
 Socialism, but private munificence. Mr. Webb will 
 hardly maintain that there is no difference between Sir 
 John Millais making Manchester a voluntary present of 
 a great picture, and Sir John Millais having the same 
 picture seized by two arcned officers of a Socialist cor- 
 poration, set to watch him as he worked, and to deprive 
 him of it as soon as the last touch had been given. 
 Whilst if — to take the typical case — the pictures are 
 bought and paid for, the money ultimately comes from 
 an Individualist income on the one side, and goes to 
 swell an Individualist income on the other. The pro- 
 duction of pictures can be socialised in two ways only — 
 either by depriving the artist of any property in his
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 285 
 
 own work, by rendering it penal for him to possess his 
 own pictures ; or else by each hundred county or parish 
 councillors setting to paint a masterpiece with a hun- 
 dred brushes between them. 
 
 The more we examine the instances given by the 
 Fabians of the actual evolution and development of 
 Socialistic institutions, the more apparent does it be- 
 come that these institutions represent no new Socialistic 
 development at all ; and that the only new feature or 
 new vitality to be observed in them is due to the very 
 forces which Socialism would supersede or smother. I 
 am not forgetful of the fact that in institutions like the 
 Post Office, or municipal gas-works, there is an element 
 which in strict truth may be said to partake of Social- 
 ism. But as I shall show presently, there is in none of 
 these institutions anything which in any way points to 
 the evolution of Socialism as a working principle. 
 There is an evolution of sentiment and of incomplete 
 thought which results in a belief amongst many that 
 Socialism can be made to work. But the actual evolution 
 of events — and the class of events especially which the 
 Fabian writers cite — proves the exact contrary of what 
 the Fabian writers think. I shall make this presently 
 far more clear, but I must first turn from the Socialists' 
 misreading of modern history, to consider their treat- 
 ment of the history of social evolution generally.
 
 286 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 III 
 
 MISCONCEPTION BY THE SOCIALISTS OF THE NATURE 
 OF INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION GENERALLY 
 
 Following the example of Karl Marx, the entire 
 Socialist school begin their historical review of what 
 they call the evolution of Socialism, with the state of 
 society which prevailed in Europe, or rather in this 
 country, five hundred years ago : for it is to this country 
 especially, which Marx called the ' classic ' example, 
 that all their writers turn. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in the 
 Fabian volume, treads in the exact footprints of his 
 predecessors. ' I shall,' he writes in his essay on 
 ' Historical Transition,' ' begin at the beginning. I 
 shall make no apology for traversing centuries by leaps 
 and bounds at the risk of sacrificing the dignity of 
 history to the necessity of coming to the point as soon 
 as possible. Briefly, then,' he continues, ' let us com- 
 mence by glancing at the Middle Ages.' And when he 
 mentions the Middle Ages, what is he specially thinking 
 of? His next sentence tells us. It is England. 
 ' There,' he says, ' you find, theoretically, a much more 
 orderly England than the England of to-day.' Of no 
 other country, of no other civilisation, is there the 
 smallest mention. This singular limitation of their 
 historical vision is characteristic of the entire science of 
 the Socialists. To whatever they give their attention 
 they see only a fraction of it ; and here, though they 
 may be said to have actually pointed the way — as I 
 have before observed — to the historical study of econo- 
 mics, they have been not only the pioneers of the true
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 287 
 
 scientific method, but a warning example of the puerile 
 and unscientific application of it. The Socialistic 
 theorists, with very great ingenuity, trace a whole 
 series of historical steps in the history of this country, 
 such as the suppression of the monasteries, the growth 
 of the wool trade and sheep-farming, which led to the 
 development, on the one hand, of a class of landless 
 labourers, and on the other of a capitalistic middle- 
 class, which hired these labourers as its instruments ; 
 and this process, as they point out, continued to the 
 middle of the last century. Then the epoch of modern 
 scientific inventions dawned, and the new motive 
 powers and machinery introduced by men like Ark- 
 wright and Watt, acting on the industrial conditions 
 which had been by that time evolved, resulted naturally 
 and inevitably in the modern factory system. In place 
 of the old mediaeval organisation, which at once secured 
 and fixed each man in the position he was born to, 
 industrial society had been at last metamorphosed into 
 a small body of irresponsible employers, and a vast and 
 fluid body of proletarian labourers, who could only live 
 by working at the employer's bidding. From an his- 
 torical analysis like this the Socialists argue that just 
 as the social rule of Feudalism has given place to the 
 individual rule of the capitalist, so the rule of the 
 capitalist over the labourers will, by a process precisely 
 similar in nature, give place to the rule, under 
 Socialism, of the labourers over themselves. 
 
 The plausibility of this piece of philosophising rests 
 entirely, not on its inaccuracy, but on its superficiality 
 and its incompleteness. Let us consider its incomplete- 
 ness first. If we are to derive any profit from the
 
 288 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 historical study of economics, from the comparative 
 method, and from the theory of evolution, it is abso- 
 lutely useless to confine ourselves to a few isolated 
 centuries in the life of an isolated nation. Our study 
 must be extended, so far as our means permit, to the 
 civilisations and barbarisms of the human race as a 
 whole, and the most distant countries and the most 
 distant periods must be compared. For any fragment 
 of history, such as that to which the Socialists confine 
 themselves, is not only a history of certain events, 
 individuals, and populations ; it is a history also of 
 human nature, human character, human capacities : 
 and it is only in so far as it throws light upon these 
 that it can afford us any ground for even a plausible 
 conjecture as to the possibility of any fundamental 
 social change in the future. The Socialists will, of 
 course, say that the five centuries of English history 
 from which they argue do show us an example of this 
 very thing — that is to say, a fundamental social change 
 in the past. The answer to this brings us to the root 
 of the matter. The answer is, that if we look below the 
 surface, and regard the history of these centuries as a 
 history of human nature, they reveal to us no funda- 
 mental social change at all. They show us many 
 superficial changes, many changes of form, but no 
 change in those underlying human forces by which all 
 the changes in form and circumstance are produced. 
 This will be at once apparent if we summarise the 
 historical argument of the Socialists in terms of its real 
 meaning. Its real meaning is this. In the Middle 
 Ages the many were controlled by the few, according 
 to a certain elaborate and peculiar system. In the
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 289 
 
 course of time this system changed so completely that 
 the old controllers of the many lost the whole of their 
 original power. Power of that kind, in fact, ceased to 
 belong to anybody. A new kind of power, resting on 
 a new basis, was developed, and centred itself in a dif- 
 ferent class of persons ; and the many, emancipated from 
 the government of one minority, became subject to the 
 government of another. Similarly, so the Socialists 
 argue, by a new process of change, the many emanci- 
 pating themselves from this second minority as from 
 the first, will cease to be under the government of any 
 minority at all. 
 
 As soon as their case is thus stated, the flaw in 
 the argument becomes apparent. But the principal 
 absurdity in the Socialistic reasoning is not derived 
 from any mere defect in logic. It is the result and the 
 sign of that superficial view of history which fails to see 
 what, at bottom, the subject matter of history is ; and 
 the limitation of view to which I alluded is the direct 
 consequence of this. For the moment we realise that 
 all the events of history are but so many manifestations 
 of the forces of human nature, and the moment we 
 describe the transition from the Feudal to the Capitalistic 
 systems so as to show what is at once its most general 
 and its most essential character, so as to exhibit it as a 
 change in the relations between the many and the few, 
 we at once see that it was no isolated occurrence, but 
 that it has had its counterpart in every age and country ; 
 and that the rudest or the earliest civilisations, however 
 unlike ours on the surface, really offer to our study 
 precisely parallel cases. Whenever human beings have 
 risen from the most abject savagery, and in proportion 
 
 D
 
 290 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 as they have risen from it, we find presented to us a 
 fact which is everywhere essentially identical — namely, 
 the fact of the many being under the control of the few. 
 The form of the control varies ; but the fact of it never 
 varies. Its basis is sometimes military, sometimes 
 religious, sometimes economic ; sometimes it is of all 
 three kinds together ; but there the control is. In the 
 early pastoral ages we have patriarchs with flocks, and 
 herds, and servants. In ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 
 in ancient Greece and Rome, through countless 
 differences there appears this same phenomenon. 
 Groups of men have been cast on distant countries, 
 compelled to build up their social life from the founda- 
 tions. They have been cast amongst new circumstances 
 and opportunities that have been the same for all. But 
 whatever their history may have been, it has been the 
 history of this one thing — the evolution of a governing 
 minority, and its relation to the governed. And what 
 makes this fact all the more striking, is the parallel 
 fact, that generally — though not universally — the 
 many have constantly been rebelling against the few, 
 attempting to make some change in the social structure ; 
 and that in every case the end has been just the same 
 — they may have sometimes changed masters, but they 
 never have got rid of them. Nor is this true of the old 
 world only. Amongst the most startling and instructive 
 of all the facts of recorded history, are the conditions of 
 civilisation which the first discoverers of America found 
 existing amongst the most advanced native races. 
 Certain writers have cited the empire of the Incas as 
 affording an example of vast and successful Communism ; 
 and l;o far as the majority of the people were concerned
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 291 
 
 there is some justification for this view of the matter. 
 But such writers forget how this Communism was main- 
 tained. They forget to mention that the majority were 
 under the rule of a king and a double aristocracy, as 
 powerful and exclusive as any that could have been 
 found in Europe ; that equality amongst the people was 
 an equality of the most rigid poverty, though not of 
 want ; and that all the wealth and luxury produced in 
 the entire empire was produced for the king and the 
 priesthood and the noble classes only. 
 
 Had the Socialistic theorists realised the above 
 great and universal fact, they would have seen that 
 their attempt to understand the nature and causes of 
 Capitalism by a mere study of one isolated fragment of 
 human history, was about as rational as an attempt to 
 explain man's mortality by examining the accident or 
 tbe illness which caused the death of a particular 
 individual. This might be small-pox, or it might be a 
 donkey's kick ; and if we reasoned about life as the 
 Socialists reason about economic history, we shall 
 inevitably come to the conclusion that human beings 
 would be immortal if they were all vaccinated, or if 
 there were no donkeys to kick them. And, indeed, if 
 we had only the case of one man to study, such a con- 
 clusion would be by no means irrational. It is shown 
 to be irrational only because we see that, as a matter of 
 fact, all men die, however various their circumstances ; 
 and that in each special case, accident, debility, or 
 disease is the proximate cause of a death, but is not the 
 cause of death. In the same way, the circumstances 
 which led in this country to the change from Feudalism 
 to Capitalism were merely the proximate causes of the 
 
 u 2
 
 292 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 transfer of power from one minority to another. They 
 were not the causes of that great universal fact that 
 power, under all circumstances, is in the hands of a 
 minority always ; nor do they offer the smallest 
 indication that in this respect things will ever change 
 in the future. 
 
 The real change underlying the great industrial 
 transition, on which the Socialists build what they take 
 to be their scientific theory, was simply a gradual change 
 in the kind of personal superiority required by the age 
 in pursuit of its changing ideals and its ambitions. 
 During the Middle Ages the required superiority was 
 mainly military. It was of more importance to defend 
 industry than to organise it. As time went on the 
 situation slowly reversed itself, and it became more 
 important to organise industry than to defend it. In 
 the mediasval world valour employed industry ; in the 
 modern world industry employs valour. And now let 
 us look below the surface a little deeper, and we shall 
 see that the great mental event, of which these outer 
 changes were the expression, was the gradual withdrawal 
 from war of the strongest intellects and characters, and 
 their concentration on the business of production, sup- 
 plemented by the development of faculties of many new 
 kinds, which now found uses never before open to them, 
 and which placed their possessors amongst the potentates 
 of the new era. In a word, the military ability of the 
 minority has gradually turned into, or has given place 
 to, the industrial ability of the minority. And this, 
 again, is but the expression of another fact that is 
 deeper and wider still — the fact that no matter what 
 the special faculties may be which under any given cir-
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 293 
 
 cumstances are most useful to a community, these 
 faculties, in their highest degree and their most service- 
 able forms, are found to exist only amongst compara- 
 tively few persons ; and by an inevitable and natural pro- 
 cess these few persons become the rulers, and democratic 
 forms of government may conceal this fact, or modify 
 certain of its results, but they never fundamentally alter it. 
 The events then which the Socialists have mistaken 
 for an evolution of the economic rule of the many out 
 of the economic rule of the minority, has really been 
 nothing but the evolution of a new minority out of the 
 old ; and the evolution of a minority whose special 
 faculties and functions not only as yet show no signs of 
 being superseded, but are every day becoming more and 
 more necessary. It is impossible here to explain or 
 illustrate all this in detail. I can only attempt to 
 indicate the bare outlines of the situation ; but their 
 truth will be recognised by the many quite as clearly 
 as by the few. The great objects involved in the con- 
 temporary aspirations of all classes, and of the majority 
 especially, are, first, the maintenance of our existing 
 industrial productivity ; and secondly, the increase of it. 
 The ' Labour leaders ' of to-day are constantly teaching 
 the people to look forward to a progressive shortening 
 of the hours of labour, together with a constant increase 
 in the total product of the community ; and it is per- 
 fectly obvious that such a result is possible only by an 
 increased intensity in the action, not of Labour, but of 
 Ability. But this increased intensity in the action of 
 Ability, or, in other words, of the exceptionally gifted 
 few, is necessary not only to increase the rate of pro- 
 duction in | proportion to the population, it is also
 
 294 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 necessary if we are to prevent the present rate of pro- 
 duction from diminishing. When we are dealing with 
 a population that occupies any given area — such, for 
 instance, as the area of the British Islands — and when 
 the number of inhabitants which we start with are very 
 few, production will become easier as they gradually 
 grow more numerous, up to a certain point, but up to 
 a certain point only ; and then after that it will con- 
 stantly become more difficult. That is to say, when the 
 population increases beyond a certain point, the amount 
 of wealth produced will depend more and more, not on 
 the amount of Labour, but on the Ability with which it 
 is organised. Thirty average labourers, occupying a 
 thousand acres, will probably produce more wealth per 
 head than three ; but a thousand average labourers, 
 packed together on three acres, will produce nothing at 
 all, unless they are organised and directed by Ability. 
 
 Thus just as an examination of these contemporary 
 facts, from which Socialists argue that Socialism is 
 already in the course of developing itself, shows them 
 to be really examples and results of a developing 
 Individualism ; so does a wider and more philosophic 
 study of history show us that amongst all the changes 
 and developments of all the civilisations known to us, 
 there is not one which even suggests a belief that the 
 evolution of Socialism is a possibility, or which is not a 
 step in the evolution of some new form of its opposite.
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 295 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF CONTEMPORARY 
 INDUSTRIAL EVOLU'IION. 
 
 And now let us go back to the contemporary facts 
 in question. I said that certain of them — such as the 
 Post Office, and municipal gas-works and water- 
 works, had one side to them, at all events, which was 
 Socialistic actually. We have in each of these cases 
 an industrial enterprise managed under State control, 
 and generally managed at a profit. But what I am 
 going to point out is, that in each of them there is a 
 peculiar feature, which prevents them being typical of 
 industrial enterprise generally. This peculiarity is 
 most marked in the case of the Post Office. The Post 
 Office is a distributive agency, but it distributes a kind 
 of goods whose economic character is unique. The 
 distribution of all other goods depends on complicated 
 problems connected with supply and demand ; but in 
 the case of letters — the goods which are distributed by 
 the Post Office — the supply and demand naturally and 
 necessarily balance themselves, tradesmen's bills being 
 almost the only kind of letter for which the demand 
 is less than the supply. Thus the customers of the 
 Post Office naturally solve themselves difficulties which 
 most other distributing businesses have to solve for 
 their customers. Gas and water are examples — though 
 much less perfect examples — of the same peculiarity. 
 The relation between demand and supply can be gauged 
 with exceptional ease ; and though there are many 
 degrees of excellence in gas and water, there is an
 
 296 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 average degree required by the general public which is 
 easily attained, and of which everybody is a sufficient 
 judge. If all London required a supply of mineral 
 and aerated waters, as well as of ordinary water, and 
 if men were as critical in their tastes with regard 
 to them, as they are with regard to wine or beer, a 
 Socialistic water-supply would be a very different 
 matter. Whatever element of Socialism there may be 
 in their enterprise, it is made possible and successful 
 only by their exceptional simplicity ; and could the 
 principle of competition be conveniently introduced into 
 them, it is impossible to doubt that in each case the 
 results would be far better. Oddly enough, one of the 
 Fabian essayists admits that this would be the case even 
 with the postal service in towns ; though he says that 
 it would not be so if we take the country as a whole. 
 In saying this he is right ; and if we consider the 
 reason why, we shall see in all these enterprises another 
 peculiarity, which, in a far more important way, ac- 
 counts for the Socialistic element in them. They are 
 all enterprises in which the benefits of competition 
 would, owing to physical circumstances, be more than 
 neutralised by its inconveniences. It is impossible to 
 imagine a number of competing postal services ; or 
 houses invaded by the pipes of competing water 
 companies ; nor could we tolerate that our streets 
 should be continually rendered impassable by the 
 laying of new gas mains for supplying some improved 
 gas. All the enterprises which a State can advan- 
 tageously undertake, are characterised by one or other 
 of two features, or by both of them — firstly, their 
 exceptional simplicity ; and secondly, the fact that
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 297 
 
 from their very nature it is exceptionally desirable 
 that they should be monopolies. And now, bearing 
 this in mind, let us look back at the civilisation of 
 the past. We shall find that State enterprise of this 
 limited kind is no new thing. We shall find, on 
 the contrary, that it is as old as civilisation itself, and 
 its natural and necessary accompaniment. We shall 
 find that it existed in the ancient world of slavery, 
 and that there was more of it in Imperial Rome than 
 in modern London or Manchester. In order to make 
 the truth of this more evident I will cite another ex- 
 ample, to which I have often alluded elsewhere — 
 namely, a street. If a public hall, as Mr. Sidney 
 Webb seems to think, is an example of Socialism, so is 
 a street also. Both are constructed and maintained 
 by the public authorities : and the money for construct- 
 ing and maintaining them is extracted from the pockets 
 of the community. But unless the existence of streets 
 in London and Manchester is altogether a new sign of 
 the times, portending the evolution of a new Social 
 order, there is no such sign to be found in public halls 
 and municipal gas-works. 
 
 I began the preceding essay with observing that 
 the word Socialism was used loosely and in various 
 senses ; and that in one of them only did it stand 
 for any opinion or principle which essentially differen- 
 tiates Socialists from men of any other party. But 
 it is not only the general public which is confused 
 by the ambiguity of the term. The Socialists them- 
 selves, and the Fabian essayists in especial, are 
 confused by it also ; and whilst they fancy themselves 
 to be arguing for the principle which separates
 
 298 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 them from their opponents, they are often uncon- 
 sciously defending and advocating views which all 
 the world holds as strongly and intelligently as they 
 do. I shall now be able to make intelligible to the 
 reader what these various and confusing meanings 
 attached to the word Socialism are. They are broadly 
 speaking three ; and, whilst still retaining the word, 
 the three different things meant may be classified and 
 distinguished thus — as Incidental Socialism, Supple- 
 mentary Socialism, and Fundamental Socialism. A 
 street is an example of the first ; the income tax is an 
 example of the second ; and the doctrine that men 
 will exert themselves to produce income when they know 
 that the State is virtually an organised conspiracy to 
 rob them of it, is not only an example, but also the 
 substance of the third. If the word Socialism has any 
 distinctive meaning, and if Socialists in any way are a 
 distinct and peculiar party, what Socialism means is 
 this third thing — Fundamental Socialism. It is to the 
 examination of this that, in these two essays, I have thus 
 far addressed myself; and I have aimed at showing the 
 reader — or rather showing him how to show himself — 
 that it is nothing more than a foolish dream and 
 delusion, repugnant alike to the teaching of common 
 sense and of history, and important only because it is 
 at once plausible and dangerous — not dangerous because 
 it could ever be realised, but because incalculable harm 
 might be done by vain attempts to realise it. 
 
 But it is not my only aim to enforce this negative 
 conclusion, nor is it my chief aim. I have emphasised 
 the dangers and the fallacies of Fundamental Socialism, 
 mainly with a view to separating from it Incidental and
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 299 
 
 Supplementary Socialism ; and have thus urged all 
 Conservatives to be on their guard against the former, 
 mainly with a view to showing them that they need not 
 be afraid of the latter. In the social and political 
 gospel preached by the Socialists, and preached by the 
 Fabian essayists with more than ordinary ability, there 
 is a mixture of profound and wholesome truth with the 
 most puerile falsehood. My aim is to show that the 
 truth may be appropriated by all of us, whilst we leave 
 the falsehood behind, as the sole shibboleth of a mis- 
 chievous and misguided sect. In order to explain this, 
 let me explain the names I have given to these two 
 forms of so-called Socialism, of which no Individualist 
 need be afraid. 
 
 I have called institutions, such as a street or a public 
 building, or, we may add, the fortifications of a town, 
 examples of Incidental Socialism, because institutions of 
 this kind are incidental to all civilised life. And I 
 have referred to them because they afford us the simplest 
 and most self-evident proof that the fact of great insti- 
 tutions being maintained by the State for society, is no 
 sign that society is Socialistic, or on its way to Socialism. 
 I have spoken of the income tax as an example of Sup- 
 plementary Socialism, because the kind of institutions it 
 represents are not necessarily incidental to civilisation. 
 They are, indeed, in its earlier stages impossible, and 
 came into being, and can come into being, only as the 
 crowning result of wealth, when it is increased beyond 
 a certain point by the intensified operation of Ability. 
 This Supplementary Socialism includes not only the 
 income tax, but any appropriation by means of rates or 
 otherwise from private income, and the use of it for
 
 300 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 public purposes, such as the providing of free libraries, 
 free education, or free ferry-boats. On the surface, no 
 doubt, this looks like Fundamental Socialism — like the 
 Socialism of the Fabian essayists ; and for that reason 
 many people are afraid of it. It is in reality the very 
 negative of that Socialism, being, as I have said before, 
 rendered possible only by the existence of wealth 
 increased and maintained by the forces of Individualism, 
 and so long as this fact is steadily borne in mind, 
 though the principle of Supplemental Socialism is 
 capable of foolish application, there is in the principle 
 itself nothing that Conservatism need fear. On the 
 contrary, Conservatives may recognise it as capable of 
 indefinite, though not indiscriminate, extension. There 
 is no reason, so far as the fundamental principles go, 
 that the most rigid economic Conservative should not 
 outbid the Socialists in their endeavours to secure for 
 the masses supplementary benefits from the State. He 
 might advocate the provision for them of free theatres 
 so long as he remembered that these would ultimately 
 have to be paid for out of the income produced by indi- 
 vidual ability, and that if too much is taken from it this 
 year, there may next year be none to take. 
 
 Here we see the truth of the observation of one of 
 the Fabian essayists, which I have already quoted. 
 ' Although Socialism involves State control, State con- 
 trol does not involve Socialism. It is not so much the 
 thing the State does, as to the end for which the State 
 does it, that we must look, before we can decide whether 
 it is a Socialistic State or not ' ; and no policy is 
 Socialistic, he proceeds to tell us, ' which would prolong 
 the life of private capital a single hour.' Nothing can
 
 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 301 
 
 be more true than this. Here is the one point — the 
 one essential point, as to which economic Conservatism 
 joins issue with Socialism. Let me express by a simple 
 figure the character of their opposition. The larger 
 part of our annual national wealth is, as has been said 
 already, the product not of the Labour of the many but 
 of the Ability of the few. The few, with ' the scarce 
 brains,' produce the only part of our wealth that grows, 
 therefore the continued exertion of the few is recognised 
 as a necessity by both parties. But the motive of the 
 few in producing has been the prospect of enjoying 
 what they produce, partly in the form of immediate 
 profits, but mainly in the deferred form of rent and 
 interest. Now we may not inaptly call motive the fuel 
 of action. Profits, rent, and interest, these are the fuel 
 of industrial Ability, just as coal is the fuel of the steam- 
 engine. The practical teaching of Socialists as bearing 
 on the immediate situation is simply that the fuel is 
 being consumed wastefully, and that it is possible to 
 reduce the quantity ; and if we take this teaching apart 
 from any ulterior significance, it may come from a 
 Conservative reformer just as well as from the Socialist. 
 The two, in fact, may be in exact agreement. But if 
 we look not to this teaching alone, but to the views and 
 aims underlying it, we ai-e at once in presence of the 
 essential antagonism of the two; for the aim of the 
 Conservative reformer is so to improve the engine, that 
 whilst reducing the consumption of coal, we may main- 
 tain the effective heat of the fire, or with the same con- 
 sumption increase the heat ; whilst a reduction in con- 
 sumption is advocated by the Socialist only as a step 
 towards raking the fire out. The object of one is to
 
 302 THE SO-CALLED EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 
 
 generate more steam with the least wasteful fire ; the 
 dream of the other is to generate it without any fire at 
 all. 
 
 Let us return from the language of metaphor to 
 that of actual fact. The Socialists say that they value 
 no reforms that do not tend to the extinction of private 
 capital and Individualism ; the Conservatives may 
 answer, if they have only courage to do so, that they 
 dread none. They need not be afraid of the State doing 
 anything that is beneficial to the people, so long as in 
 securing the money required for such a purpose it does 
 nothing to discourage the action of that individual 
 Ability which alone can supply the funds necessary to 
 such State beneficence. 
 
 If our economic Conservatives will only realise this, 
 if they will separate the truths which the Socialists are 
 popularising from the falsehoods, and adopt the former 
 at the same time that they expose the latter, they will 
 find that the more boldly and completely they face the 
 labour question, the easier will the vindication of their 
 position in the eyes of the community become to them. 
 The ideal, in fact, towards which they will be able to 
 point the people, may be not inaccurately described as 
 Socialism without its impossibilities. 
 
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