d&*> In oV A* WITHIN OUR LIMITS WITHIN OUR LIMITS ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS MORAL RELIGIOUS, AND HISTORICAL BY , ' , ALICE GARDNER Lecturer in History at Newnham College, Cambridge AUTHOR OK " THEODORE OF STUDIUM," " THE LASCARIDS OF NIC/EA,' "THE CONFLICT OF DUTIES," ETC. pomv 15 TO T. FISHER UNWIN LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20 TO MISS FLORENCE MELIAN STAWELL KINDEST AND KEENEST OF CRITICS First published in 191 3 [All rights reserved] PREFACE THESE essays, with the exception of one, were originally addresses, mainly given to audiences of women students. The one on * The Greek Spirit and the Mediaeval Church " was delivered, by kind invitation of Dr. Rendel Harris, at the Woodbrooke Settlement for religious and social studies. That on " Reason and Feeling in Social Questions " was given at Ipswich, to ladies who had been pupils at the High School in that town. The little paper on Theodoret has appeared in The Modern Churchman, and I acknowledge the kindness of the editor, the Rev. H. D. A. Major, for allowing it to be reprinted here. The title was suggested in the course of looking through the essays with a view to publication, as emphasizing the one principle that seemed to run through them all : that for clear thinking on fundamental principles and for concentrated action in dealing with present-day problems, as well as for the sympathetic and rational interpretation of the past, we need to spend more time and energy than we always feel ready to give in mark- ing out the several fields before us, pointing out distinctions among the things submitted to our observation, and tracing as far as possible their 448944 vi PREFACE relations to one another. In days of motor-car speed, slovenly thinking and precipitate action are often found to hamper intellectual and moral advance, both in individuals and in societies. If this little book helps any readers to " think soberly " and in consequence to act effectually, it will attain its principal object. Thanks are due to various friends for sympathy and suggestions, chiefly to Miss F. Melian Stawell and to Professor Percy Gardner ; also to several generations of Newnham College students, whose patient and kindly attention has been the great inducement to make these utterances public. ALICE GARDNER. CAMBRIDGE, May 1913 CONTENTS PAGE I. FREE THOUGHT AND ITS POSSIBLE LIMITA- TIONS ....... i II. REASON AND FEELING IN SOCIAL QUESTIONS 20 III. BELIEF IN MIRACLES .... 47 IV. THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY ... 74 V. RITUAL IN ITS HISTORICAL AND PSYCHOLOGI- CAL ASPECTS 99 VI. OLD AND NEW IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 131 VII. RESPONSIBILITY ..... 160 VIII. RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE AND SOCIETIES FOR MAINTAINING IT 178 IX. HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES . . . 193 X. A FIFTH-CENTURY PRECURSOR OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 215 XL THE GREEK SPIRIT AND THE MEDLEVAL CHURCH 223 XII. THE FUNCTIONS AND LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 256 XIII. RELIGION AND PROGRESS .... 284 XIV. INDEPENDENCE 301 vil WITHIN OUR LIMITS FREE THOUGHT AND ITS POSSIBLE LIMITATIONS (Address to the Newnham College Sunday Society} IT is often a profitable exercise, conducive both to clearness in one's own mind and to a better understanding of other people's, to inquire into the meaning of the words commonly used, espe- cially such as habitually convey either praise or blame. I am not quite sure under which of these two heads Free Thought generally falls. The word free has pleasant associations : we enjoy our free time or think we do ; we are proud of our political freedom, or if we possess it only imper- fectly, we are anxious to obtain it in fuller measure; free as air, free as a lark, suggest happy feelings. In some combinations, however, the adjective has an undesirable meaning : by the expressions free living and free love, we indicate an absence of reasonable self-control and of regard to social duty in the restraint of certain kinds of appetites and passions. How about free thought ? Is - : WITHIN OUR LIMITS ever an appetite to be restrained ? Some us would assert that we think for ourselves quite freely, but hesitate to call ourselves Free- thinkers. Does or does not the hyphen make a real difference ? In other words, are there any restraints upon liberty of thinking the over- passing of which would be detrimental to ourselves and other people ? The subject is worth looking into. Now to get to any clear conception on freedom of thought we must try to be clear about freedom in general. Some people consider that all freedom is a good thing, and that when it becomes bad it is no longer freedom, but licence. Others, like the late Professor Seeley who took pleasure in demolishing popular idols, and particularly this one would make all freedom consist in absence of restraint, which may be good or bad according to circumstances. For myself I am inclined to think that the passion for liberty is not an irra- tional thing, as it would be if its object were a mere negation. Our enjoyment of liberty is not merely the satisfaction of having no chains or no rules or no tiresome people looking at us, but the delight of exerting our activities according to the promptings of our nature or of our will. We never can have such an absence of restraint all round as to be always in the full enjoyment of all our activities, physical, mental, and moral. But the less we are conscious of restraint the more we enjoy our freedom. The word conscious seems to bring in an alien FREE THOUGHT 3 idea, since it is quite possible to be free or unfree without knowing or caring about it. " Nuns' fret not at their convent's narrow room," and con- versely the skylark probably does not know that he is any more free than the parrot on his perch. The joy of being free is, perhaps, only consciously realized by those who have escaped from some kind of servitude. And this conscious realiza- tion is, we may say, an essential element in the idea of perfect freedom, especially of freedom in thought. It may seem superfluous to say what after all is, I think, worth noticing that freedom of thought can only be used and enjoyed by those who care to think. Our notions about freedom are always relative. I met with a curious instance of this a short time ago. A Russian lady married an Englishman and came to live in an English village. Some friends called on her and asked her how she liked England. " Not at all," she replied, " after such a free country as Russia ! Here you cannot walk in the fields without being persecuted." The lady's standard of free- dom, as applied to England and to Russia, was not the conventional one, but it is quite intelligible from her point of view. If she had wanted to propagate revolutionary doctrine from a haycart, she would have been far freer in England than in Russia. Since she only wanted to walk about in the country, she had been more at liberty in Russia than she found herself in England. Similarly, no one is really deprived of freedom 4 WITHIN OUR LIMITS in thought except such as genuinely desire to think. The fact that any particular person never feels any restraint does not necessarily imply that there are not restraints which he would find galling if his mind became active. And the more active his mind becomes, the more hampering will he find any restrictions which he does not realize as reasonable, or as imposed by rightful authority. If, however, we are all of us free in some directions, restricted in others, if the question of liberty of thought as of action is merely one of degree is it not wasting words to discuss a vague term of which the meaning has no universal validity ? I think that here again there is a very real difference between freedom and servitude, sufficient, indeed, to give us one of the many principles on which all human beings may be divided into two classes. And if we divide the world into free thinkers and others (the second class consisting both of those who think but not freely, and those who do not think at all), I should have no hesitation in putting myself in the class of the free or would-be free though conscious that this classification runs across many others that either freedom or servitude in thought may co-exist with all possible grades of piety and impiety, of virtue and vice, even of cleverness and stupidity. The basis of the distinction lies less in the belief in freedom more in the belief in thought. Some people regard thought as a necessary evil FREE THOUGHT 5 others have taken it to be a temptation of the devil. The belief of free thinkers (with or without hyphen) is that thought is good that to think is to exercise one of the noblest faculties of human nature ; that at least half of the misery and vice in the world and three-quarters of its vapidity and weariness are due to want of thought ; that we are never likely to have too much of it, any more than we are likely to have too much con- science or too much philanthropy ; that when we seem to have, it is because as may easily happen with conscience and with philanthropy likewise what we have is out of proportion to other parts of our nature ; that if it ever wants training or restraining, it is only in order that it may grow more vigorously, not dwindle or become effete. But while there is a fundamental difference in standpoint between those who advocate and those who oppose freedom in thought, I think that a good deal of the current dislike of the idea is due to a certain confusion of mind as to what such freedom implies. Thus there is often a want of distinction between free thought and free expression of thought. A person who blurts out his ideas on all occasions, suitable or the reverse, does not necessarily think more freely than one who is reticent about his own opinions except when a declaration of them seems necessary. Again, free thought is often supposed to be destructive, though freedom is just as much needed for the building up of new systems as for the removal of old ones. In the third place, 6 WITHIN OUR LIMITS those who think freely are sometimes credited with boundless self-conceit with a disposition to regard all the wisdom of the past, or of great men in the present, as inferior to the unaided lucubrations of their own minds. This is of course absurd, since without freedom such wisdom could never have been accumulated by the teacher nor assimilated by the learner. And in point of fact, it may be confidently said that those philosophers who have been freest and boldest in their speculations have been the most thorough-going in admitting the narrow limits of the human understanding. Indeed, these limits can never be realized until we have en- deavoured to surpass them and failed. Self- conceit, obstinacy, irreverence, are found not only in free thinkers, but in a good many ob- scurantists ; and if there is any ground for associating such qualities with emancipation of mind, it may be found in the tendency of the newly emancipated, in any department of life, to idolize and perhaps to abuse their newly acquired liberty. Perhaps the subject will become a little clearer if we consider the different kinds of control from which those who would think freely wish to be emancipated. The first and most obvious control is that of the State. Some people would say that the State has no right to attempt in any way to coerce or direct the thoughts of any of its subjects. But since we are coming more and more to look to the State for some kind of supervision of all FREE THOUGHT 7 that makes for the material and moral well- being of the people, and since right thinking is a most essential element in well-being, it would seem that so hasty a generalization is out of place. The limits of State interference are diffi- cult to determine except on a basis of highly enlightened expediency, and the reason why we would keep it within narrow bounds is that the State is a very clumsy instrument in dealing with so delicate a substance as thought. Directly, of course, the State is simply incapable of con- trolling us in our thoughts. The physical force which it wields may prevent us from lifting a finger or even from uttering a word in support of our convictions, but it cannot help us from retaining those convictions. It may give a man the choice between asserting something that he does not believe, and suffering severely for refusing to assert it ; but it cannot make him believe it. On the other hand, the indirect effect of the action of a State even a tolerant State on the beliefs and the mental tone of the people is con- siderable. We commonly regard it as the duty of the State to promote general enlightenment, and that surely is nothing less than to enable people to think reasonably and in accordance with fact, and to dispel superstitious and baseless fancies. Still more do we (or most of us) regard it as well within the limits of political authority to prohibit the publication and distribution of literature tending to obliterate the distinctions 8 WITHIN OUR LIMITS between right and wrong, decent and indecent ; i.e. to keep thought from moral contamination. This is not done now in England by means of any censorship of the press not because such censorship was a radically evil thing in itself, but because it was so difficult to exercise efficiently : innocent and wholesome books were liable to be prohibited, and pernicious ones so long as they did not offend any vested interest to slip through. At present our safeguard is a general libel law extensive enough to condemn a vast number of innocent books (including probably the present paper), but mitigated by the necessity of persuading a bench of jurymen to agree unanimously that the work in question is really demoralizing in tendency. I am inclined to think that much more might possibly be done than is done in the way of prosecuting the writers and publishers of bad books, which tend to poison the springs of thought in the ignorant people who read them. But the most virtuous prosecutors are likely to be mistaken sometimes, and in general the abuses of a free press are more evident than its uses. Besides acting indirectly on thought, the State is almost bound to take account of differences in habits of thought and mind in choosing its servants. Here, again, there have always been opportunities for persecution and irrational sus- picions of persecution. It has always seemed to me most unreasonable to preclude any head of a government school or training college from FREE THOUGHT 9 informing himself as to the general religious standpoint of those under him. Of course he has not the slightest right to bring personal animus into his application of such knowledge, but it is, or should be, of use to him in determining the work and career of his subordinate or pupil for the good of the public generally or of that person in particular. The idea that religious and even moral principles do not matter so long as one behaves decently is an absurd one, only plausible in view of the ingrained tendency to suppression of thought on the part of those who have as a rule very little notion of what thought means. Perhaps, however, the question of religious liberty as guaranteed against State persecution has been fairly thrashed out in public. I turn to the more presently interesting question as to the limits of religious authority, whether exercised by actual living voice or by canonical writings. Of course the rivalry of authority and free thought appears in other spheres than the directly religious. We have heretics arising from time to time who upset or challenge the established views on matters of science, history, and fine art, and who often meet with severe and crushing criticism in which all the forces of conservatism and of recognized learning and good taste are arrayed against them. Sometimes the heretic prevails, and comes in course of time to be recognized in his turn among the wielders of authority. Sometimes he succumbs and is heard 2 io WITHIN OUR LIMITS of no more. But in science (including history) and art, far more than in popular philosophy or in religion, or in anything that seems to be every- body's business, the authority is supposed to be that of those who know or have known, and is liable to growth or change with increase of knowledge. And again it has to do with science or art only. Religious authority has to do not only with religious thought, but with religious practice, and it is generally supposed to be comprised in statements and principles once laid down and capable of no real modifications, though subject to new developments in application and interpretation. I think we may say that there is an insur- mountable difference between those who suppose that religious authority has been distinctly given to certain persons by a divine fiat and those who take it as not essentially different from authority of the other kind, which, even if divine in origin and to be received with reverence, is ultimately based on the decisions of human reason, is always subject to change as human conceptions change, and acts more as affording beacon-lights or flags of warning than as setting up notice-boards against trespassers. This latter view may seem essentially modern, but it was held by thoughtful minds even in the Middle Ages. Thus the Irishman, John Scotus, who lived at the court of Charles the Bald in the ninth century, wrote : " Authority proceeds from reason, not reason from authority. For all authority which is not FREE THOUGHT u approved by right reason is invalid. For right reason, in its inherent powers and immunity, requires not the sanction of any authority. And real authority seems to me to be nothing else than truth discovered by the power of reason and handed down in writing by the holy fathers for the benefit of posterity." Of course Scotus is not thinking of the desultory workings of the individual reason. To him all knowledge seemed to be comprised in the Wisdom or Word which " in the beginning was with God and was God," but it was by the exercise of the human reason, in communion with the Divine Reason that the results of the highest thought were to be reached. The thought of the past, flowing like a mighty river from before all time through past to present and on to the future, and taking into itself all the worthy thoughts of all human minds, is very unlike that of an external authority imposed by popes or councils or sacred books. But to the Catholic philosophers, the decisions of popes and councils and books were valid in so far as they embodied some part of the eternal wisdom. The theory of Scotus (of authority as a legiti- mate power) opens up the question : " How is the individual to determine between lawful and unlawful authority in matters of thought as else- where ? ' And in the Middle Ages few would have ventured to answer : " By the light of the reason that is in each man." That is, however, practically the answer that Scotus gives, and it is the only one that the free thinker can accept. 12 WITHIN OUR LIMITS The consensus of experts in religion if we could obtain it would be, not an infallible authority, since no consensus of experts in any subject is able to speak the final word, but one of inestimable value. And if most of us might agree that we do not possess it though scientifically minded Catholics consider that they have something like it in the continuous voice of the Church yet we do profit and might profit more than we do by the religious experience of our predecessors, whether enshrined in words or in symbolic cere- monies or in the habits of daily life. Meantime we must be careful to avoid using the word authority in its two senses in the same argument. True, we generally distinguish clearly enough between the authority recognized in sciences and arts and the authority of the government which guides our actions by laws and enforces obedience by penalties. I suppose that the word originally belonged to the political sphere and was thence by analogy extended to the intellectual. The word law has a similar history which is interesting in many ways, but would now lead us too far afield. But the point to notice is that the two kinds of authority have been at times identified in idea, at others more or less but never completely separated. Their identification is fatal to intellectual freedom. Their complete separation is impracticable so long as thought and action are inextricably com- bined in human life. Please observe that I am not returning to the FREE THOUGHT 13 subject of political regulation of intellectual processes, but am considering the regulation of such processes by a power that may or may not be associated with the political, but which claims a right to spiritual rule, and to the enforcement of certain uniformities by spiritual or ecclesiastical penalties. It is commonly said that in the old Greek world, and in the Roman in so far as it was the heir of the Greek, people were allowed to think freely. This always must seem paradoxical when we reflect that in the first state of Greek antiquity, in its freest days, Socrates was made to drink the hemlock and Euripides was banished. Of course they were regarded as dangerous men to the State, such a thing as Church authority as distinct from State authority being unknown. But I do not see that this distinction makes much difference. Again, we all know that some Stoics suffered for their very independent opinions under the Roman Empire. Still, apart from direct effect on the State and on public order and morals, people were certainly less troubled for vagaries of opinion in the ancient world than in the mediaeval or great part of the modern. We have in the Old World nothing like the pro- mulgation of a body of doctrine on the nature of the Deity and the origins and destiny of man which every one is held bound to believe on penalty of sanctions of terrible import, such as must needs touch indirectly (through friends and position and the tone of society towards him) I 4 WITHIN OUR LIMITS even the most contemptuous of sceptics. Nor was such a result reached, apparently, in the very first stage of Christianity. How it came into being and was established in Europe and part of Asia for so many centuries is a very difficult historical question. It does not seem to be Hellenic nor yet Jewish, nor yet entirely Roman, and assuredly cannot be traced to the Founder of Christianity. Yet the idea of authority in its secondary sense as the final and decisive voice of those who know, a voice which we can only neglect at our peril is certainly growing in the later Greek ages, and is more evident still in the Jewish care for the canon and the Roman reverence for the learned in the law. The sanctions of religious authority are less terrifying than they used to be, but they still act in the reprobation and sometimes the exclusion from religious privileges on the part of ecclesiastical officers ; in the general social disapproval which commonly rests deservedly or undeservedly on those who repudiate doctrines commonly taught or the sense in which they are taught ; still more in the inward dissatisfaction and loneliness of the thinker who is out of sympathy with his neighbours, unless he is firm enough in his convictions to be above caring for external support. If the sanctions of authority are different from what they were in the Middle Ages, so is the character of the offence against which they are directed. The spiritual power has, since the FREE THOUGHT 15 Middle Ages, made great concessions to the individual reason. In the days of Bernard and Abelard, it was enough to spoil a great man's career that he used reason freely in defence of doctrine held on faith. Now, the rulers of the churches generally welcome thought and argument up to a certain point as a useful ally. This point we have discussed elsewhere.* Yet apart from all theoretical discussions, the practical problem presses upon each thinker, how he ought to make his own reason work in relation to generally acknowledged spiritual au- thority. He would fain render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's, if he could see the inscription on the coin clearly. But how is he to be a law to himself without disparaging the laws laid down by those stronger and wiser than he is or can ever hope to become ? Perhaps the only approach to a solution of the problem lies in our thinking freely and inde- pendently, but never in isolation, always availing ourselves of the accumulated wisdom of past and present teachers, having courage to differ from them, if necessary, but hesitating to differ from those on whose judgment we have generally been able to rely, until we know that our ground is sure. It is in this way that progress has been made in every branch of knowledge, and I do not see that the highest kind of knowledge is an exception, except that it involves more * See Essay on Christian Apologetics. 16 WITHIN OUR LIMITS seriousness, coming from a deeper sense of re- sponsibility. I have already alluded to the distrust of the individual reason prominent in the minds of the greatest thinkers. The lesser thinkers, or the recently emancipated, do not always feel that distrust, nor realize their responsibility as seekers for a safe path in a dusky world. One hears the apostolic injunction, " Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good/' sometimes interpreted to mean : " Put everything to the test of your understanding ; and throw away all that you cannot understand or appreciate." The wise attitude is neither to accept at once nor to reject at once what does not seem in accordance with what we hold already, but to keep the mind open, and never to lose a reverent regard for what our conscience and our whole spiritual nature feel to be worthy of admiration. It may be noticed in this connection that thought, in a large sense, takes in contemplation as well as ratiocination, and that the strengthening and purifying of the mind, which is essential in order that it should succeed in the quest for truth, requires not only habits of accurate reasoning, but a perpetual intercourse with such ideas as make all life and thought strong and pure. This dwelling of the mind on what it requires for its highest development is enjoined in St. Paul's maxim, " Whatsoever things are pure . . . whatsoever things are of good report, . . . think on these things." And we have the FREE THOUGHT 17 same advice in the constantly repeated precept of the Stoics to soak the mind in first principles. It is only so that we can discern the relative im- portance or insignificance of the things we are thinking about. It is hardly too much to say that all religious observance and all self-culture has this as its primary aim. I do not of course mean that we should live in a fool's paradise, and think the world and all things and people better than they are. St. Paul never lost the consciousness that there was a good deal around him that was not lovely or of good report, and the Stoics also were fully aware of the seamy side of life. But on the whole it is better for us, and more conducive to our progress in thinking as in action, to take in and dwell upon all the helpful thoughts that may come to us in good literature, or in the society of high-minded people, or, still more perhaps, in our own illumi- nating moments of inward silence. One may seem to be enunciating a paradox in insisting thus on the responsibilities of free thought. But there is a similar paradox in all exhortations to the free to use their freedom well. To be free implies joy, for freedom brings the destruction of craven fear, such fear as is the enemy of joy. But there is another kind of fear from which we can never be quite exempt that of missing the full advantage of our freedom. We are accustomed in the political world to regard freedom as perfectly compatible with self-constraint, with power to co-operate i8 WITHIN OUR LIMITS with our fellows, with reverence for law and order. In the world of thought there is the same compatibility. The free working of the mind under self-imposed discipline, with regard to the claims of religion and social duty, is the goal to be aimed at by those who have taken the burden upon themselves of endeavouring to live according to reason. I have tried to lay down the general lines which, as it seems to me, we have to follow in trying to get to a sound understanding of the whole subject. It may seem as if long serious consideration were needed in order to make these general principles of any practical utility. It is obvious, however, that only general sugges- tions are possible, since the mind of no human being is exactly like that of any one else, and the individual conscience, though capable of training under religious and social influence, must be the final judge in questions of practical duty. I do not hold that every one is bound to think in equal measure, but it is certainly true that in so far as we must think, we should think as thoroughly as we can, and that we should never delude ourselves into the belief that we have dug to the bottom of a subject when we have only grazed its surface. The main result to which I have been trying to lead you is that to think freely is good ; that freedom in thought generally means emancipation from authority that is not recognized as lawful ; that lawful authority in all departments of FREE THOUGHT 19 thought is the accumulated experience of the wise ; that such authority must be recognized by thought itself, the individual mind acting independently but reverently, and under a sense of responsibility ; that even the authority of the wise may fail us sometimes, in which case the mind can only fall back on the light within, and follow where it leads. Furthermore, we see that to appreciate the wisdom of the past and to reach towards the highest truth we may ever reach in the future, we need constant self-discipline with much self -distrust. To be a thinker requires faculties only to be attained by much labour. But for those who can think, and think reverently, patiently, and faithfully, there is never any danger lest thought should become too free. II REASON AND FEELING ON SOCIAL QUESTIONS (Address Delivered to Former Pupils of the Ipswich High School) FOR all of us to-day, the air is thick with social questions. Even those who live " far from the madding crowd " are obliged to read the news- papers, and those who lead the quietest domestic life have come to regard their troubles with their servants or with their children's schooling not as due to their own evil fate or to the depravity of mankind in general, but as forming part of " the domestic servant question " or " the edu- cation question/' which civilized society as a whole is bound to try to solve. With women of active interests among whom all who have been through the course of a good public school are likely to be included the pressure of the unsettled questions of industrial, domestic, and political relations among the members of modern society is often very acutely felt, always more or less present to the mind, sometimes inspiring to efforts after reform, sometimes appalling with a sense of general disunion, deterioration, and hopeless unsettlement. So that in what I have to say to you I am at least free from the necessity REASON AND FEELING 21 of arousing your attention to matters which do not interest you. I used just now the word political, but I need hardly say that I have not come here with any political propaganda. I do not myself believe in the possibility or the desirability of drawing a hard-and-fast line between political and social matters. Such a distinction would have been incomprehensible to the Greek philosophers, who thought, on the whole, more reasonably and fundamentally on the subject than most writers and speakers of the present day. Nor is the dis- tinction likely to be understood by the people of the twenty-first century. It is even now becom- ing unmeaning in the large field of local govern- ment. It springs partly from an utterly debased use of the word politics as concerned with party politics only, partly from the difficulty which, especially in England, has always been experienced in the way of co-operation between voluntary and compulsory effort in the public service. That difficulty has by no means been as yet over- come. Still, though there are some ways of helping good work in connection with public authorities and others which have their origin and direction in voluntary combinations only, the unity of aim and to a certain extent similarity of method among such workers is tending to lessen if not to obliterate the distinction between so-called " philanthropy " and active citizenship. Now the main thought that I wished to bring before you to-day is that the solution of social 22 WITHIN OUR LIMITS difficulties and the betterment of human life in all its relations requires three main things : right feeling, right reason, and the combination and co-operation of the two. This sounds a truism and perhaps it is. But I often think that the recognition of the truth of truisms might bring more light sometimes on the path of thought and action than a good many sensational new ideas. At any rate, I should like you to consider feeling and reason as applied to some of the problems which agitate us at the present day, and to notice how great hindrance we suffer from either too much or too little feeling, or from feeling apart from reason, or from a pseudo-reason either in alliance with certain kinds of feeling or wrongly supposing itself to be outside feeling altogether. But first for a few words I shall not go into any abstruse philosophy as to the functions of feel- ing and reason respectively and the relative im- portance assigned to each in the conduct of life. Now it seems to me that a history of human culture as reflected either in literature or in popular ethics might be written on the plan of marking the ups and downs of reason or feeling respectively in the estimate of dominant teachers or popular leaders. The eighteenth century was the heyday of intellectualism all over Europe. The Romantic Reaction gave the dominant place to feeling. Feeling in very extreme forms (as in those of the French Revolutionists, who formulated the Rights of Man) sometimes tried to get into the clothes properly belonging to reason; but they REASON AND FEELING 23 never fitted passion wore itself through at the elbows. But the intellectual ideal of life, with the belief in the essential reasonableness of human nature, lasted well into the nineteenth century in some quarters, especially among the instructors of youth. Probably there is no one here who has been brought up on Sandford and Merton or Miss Edgeworth's Tales for Children. But if there is, she will appreciate with me the well-meant efforts of the early nineteenth-century educators to build up the character of children by informing their minds and training their judgment. It was an excellent aim, only thwarted by a certain want of human nature in those who followed it. True, the writers of this school laid stress on dutiful feelings, on liberality to the poor a quality which brought a delightful feeling of conscious virtue and a rather cold-blooded grace called general benevolence. But feeling was in general only to be indulged in strict subordination to what reason approved as right and proper. The intellectualization of life was carried to its furthest by Bentham and his school. The early Utilitarians did excellent work in clearing the moral atmosphere of fogs. In the field of law, it has been said that all modern reforms may be traced to Bentham. But a reaction against high- and-dry reasonableness was bound to come. One sees it in the exceedingly interesting chapter in the biography of J. S. Mill, in which he shows how, having been brought up in strict Benthamism, he came to feel it utterly insufficient for his moral 24 WITHIN OUR LIMITS nature, and had to seek satisfaction in more open fields, especially the poetry of Wordsworth. Yet, though Mill broke loose from his early trammels, he still, in his most ardent and broadly sympa- thetic writings, clung to his faith in the reasonable- ness of people generally. In fact, the main differ- ence in political principles between his school and that which more or less follows in his steps is that he and his fellow-workers believed a good deal in the competency of men and women to see their own interests and follow them up, and to gain wisdom by experience, whereas modern political writers know how much more force pas- sion and prejudice and even fancy have than sober reason, and they calculate on such force in trying to determine the conduct of even normally reasonable persons. I suppose that one of the popular writers who did most to emphasize the element of feeling in life was Charles Dickens. He believed most of all in the power of personal human kindness, and distrusted efforts to reform the world on general principles, which efforts he mercilessly caricatured in the persons of Mrs. Jellaby and the prison re- formers in David Copperfield. Moral or emotional enthusiasm is no more regarded by him than by the Utilitarians but he has a wholesome respect for the simple human virtues practised by ordinary good-natured people. Unfortunately this is partly spoiled by sentimentality, which is rather a different kind of thing from healthy feeling I once in trying to define it called it fatty degenera- REASON AND FEELING 25 tion of the heart. Sentiment is perhaps able in some ways to soften the rough places of life, but it is too fluid to accomplish much, chiefly because it does not realize its relation to the intellectual side of things generally. The priests of feeling, if I may put the case so, have two cults, that of sentiment and that of passion. I need not point out how the latter comes to predominate from time to time in certain kinds of literature so much so that those who are nourished on it hardly realize how any but a cold-blooded person can lead a reasonable life at all. But without giving illustrations, it is evident that our spiritual pendulum is always swinging from reason to feeling and back again, never stopping in the mean between the two. At the present day, with the growth of science in all spheres, physical, intellectual, and moral, of human life and experience, it might seem that reason or intellect was having its time of pre- dominance. Many people, however, would say, and perhaps rightly, that in most departments of life we were on the crest of a wave towards feeling. If we consider some of the present-day tendencies in art, religion, education, and political activity, we see a strong tendency to disparage thought and knowledge in comparison with strong feeling, sometimes manifested in a quiet, sometimes in a violent w r ay. Those of us who are concerned with education may at times have been thwarted by the contempt expressed by parents and other directors of youth for " book-learning " as if 3 26 WITHIN OUR LIMITS any kind of learning ever grew out of books, apart from human minds and souls ; and worse far the indifference to sound mental training in com- parison with a superficial interest in things in general. " Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever " has been quoted in a way that would express some hidden affinity between virtue and stupidity. The good old maxim that education ought to bring conviction of ignorance is set aside, because consciousness of ignorance is an unplea- sant and depressing feeling, and its wholesome effects are not superficially discerned. In morals and religion, zeal for truth is gener- ally at a discount compared with active desire to do something. In political and social life, with which we are here concerned, the tendency is strongly marked, and in a democratic country- dangerous. There is a tendency to assume that people ready to suffer for any cause must have a good cause, though history tells us of many faithful martyrs to cranks and quackery. Some of the least temperate of political and economic movements are supposed to be justified by the principles of a now popular French philo- sopher less easy to understand than those who skim his writings seem to imagine who arrived at those principles by the hardest of hard think- ing. An instance of the same tendency is to be seen, I think, in present-day discussions of poor-law reform. The publication of the Majority and Minority Reports of the Commissioners has divided REASON AND FEELING 27 the public into two hostile camps a most de- plorable result in the eyes of those who desire sober and well-considered legislation on the sub- ject ; and of persons eager for the Minority Report, I believe that almost all (excluding of course a few experts who have come to their opinions by experience and reflection) are moved by the fact that the Minority Report appeals more to the feelings, the Majority to the reason of the com- munity. The reaction against Charity Organization is another part of the same movement. The original promoters of the Charity Organization had a hard battle to fight because so many people's feelings were against them. It was so nice to be thanked for a sixpence even if one had no reason to think that it satisfied more than an immediate need if it even went so far and it was so much more pleasant and inspiring to believe that beggars were honest people if we were begging, we should like people to think us honest. And to eliminate the benevolent gentleman and the lady bountiful was to destroy a much-admired and often admir- able ideal. But the Charity Organizers had reason on their side, and on many though not all occa- sions were able to secure their case by gaining over feeling too. I once read a charming story of a French gentleman who was convinced that it was wrong to give to beggars, yet was touched by an appeal from a hungry-looking little boy on a cold night. By a happy inspiration, he asked the boy to carry his great-coat to the station, pulling it 28 WITHIN OUR LIMITS off and walking himself in bitter cold that he might be able to remunerate honest labour in- stead of encouraging mendicity. In this case there was personal feeling involved. But very often the lines of action prescribed by reasonable and impartial investigators are dull and unin- teresting from the human point of view. They involve a good deal of office work, collection and tabulation of details, calculation of averages and the like. The element of active personal interest and human sympathy is there sure enough, but does not loom very large in prospectuses and reports. Worse still, the rational reformers to use the word in a non-party sense are not often carried away by unmeasured hopefulness. They look for permanent results, but knowledge and experi- ence have taught them to appreciate the element of time and the number of thwarting circum- stances that every scheme on trial must neces- sarily undergo. For this reason I always feel a strong admiration for those moderate people who throw themselves heart and soul into reasonable schemes, eschewing all occasions of coquetting with popular fancies or susceptibilities, never minimizing but never exaggerating the forces arrayed against them. Such people there are probably some of us have known many of them. If they were more in number than those whom I would call the fluid reformers, the world's progress would go on at a more equable and even at a speedier rate. REASON AND FEELING 29 These reflections may bring us to a position whence we may contemplate the relations of reason and feeling in human affairs as they should be and as they habitually are. The grand meta- phor of Plato, who thought of the human reason as of a charioteer driving a pair of horses one high-bred and spirited, the other vicious and skittish, and was bound to keep them both in hand is very suggestive. In another well-known simile of Plato, reason is as the supreme ruling force in a well-ordered State; the higher feelings as the military force which guards it, the lower or appetitive the necessary but menial parts by which it is nourished. This view, with modifica- tions almost necessary to those living under modern and Christian influences, seems not only suggestive, but generally sound. The charioteer cannot advance without the horses, though if either becomes insubordinate he is carried far away or thrown out on the road. To use an- other, more modern simile : feeling is the steam, reason the machinery of the steam engine. Both are necessary to any kind of motion although if one had the steam without the mechanism, an explosion might result which would set going a hidden store of undesired motion to the various parts separately. Even a worthy feeling may run away with us if the curb is not applied in time, and when a lower feeling asserts itself the danger is naturally greater. In one respect, however, neither Plato's similes nor the more commonplace one is quite applicable. 30 WITHIN OUR LIMITS The charioteer is distinct from his horses and the steam from the machinery. But when the human being is swayed by his feelings, these feelings themselves affect his reasoning powers, making him content to accept bad arguments in favour of what he wants to do or have done, and unable to see the force of cogent reasons on the other side. Thus to discern good and evil in practical life, and to persuade others to accept what we regard as a good cause, we need to pay attention both to the reasons offered on one side or an- other and to the feelings and dispositions, in ourselves or others, which, even when not appar- ently resisting the force of reason, make some kinds of reasons so much more practically evident than others. But we must turn from these general considera- tions to the subject of our present inquiry, and see how they bear on some social questions of the present day. I have already noted one field of social relations : that of rich and poor, in which we find some kinds of reason and some kinds of feeling at variance. But this department, wide and far-reaching as it is, seems small in comparison with the relations of men and women. Yet some most important problems as to those relations are forcing themselves on the present generation, and on none more than on the educated women of the progressive countries of the world. The problems are not identical everywhere, and as I want to be practical I shall confine my attention for the present to our own country. This excludes REASON AND FEELING 31 many questions which beset societies in which women are only emerging from a state of abso- lute servitude or seclusion, though such questions may also press upon us when we try to ameliorate the condition of our fellow-subjects in the Far East. The Woman Question, or Woman's Movement, even within these limitations, is sufficiently com- plex. There is not merely a choice between pro- gress and stagnation or between retrogression and stability. Personally I dislike the phrase be- cause I find it so very ambiguous. Thus if I am supposed to be on one side or the other of the " Women's Movement/' as a whole, I find myself in company with people whose principles I ex- tremely dislike and distrust. Generally, however, the whole group of problems may be combined under the one head of an inquiry how to secure for women a larger life than they have had in time past, more scope for developing their inborn faculties both in self-culture and in the service of the public ; a fuller share in the life of the whole community, social, intellectual, and moral ; greater economic independence, both as a result of the other desiderata and as a necessary step to their attainment ; and for the general public a more defi- nite and more enlightened comprehension, through- out society, of the privileges and responsibilities to be accorded to women and to be by them cheer- fully and loyally appropriated. To some here, this may appear somewhat vague but I want to cover a wide ground and not to 32 WITHIN OUR LIMITS alienate the sympathy of any who are working for a cause which must, I think, be recognized as a good cause by all present to-day. I must, how- ever, say a word or two about two branches of the question which necessarily arouse the bitterest controversy political relations and sexual rela- tions properly so called. Now from what I have said it will appear that I cannot see any logical possibility of cutting off politics from the rest of active social life, nor any settlement that could satisfy our aspirations without according to us active and responsible rights as citizens. At the same time, if any of my audience are indifferent to political franchise, I would avoid their opposition by saying that I value the vote far less for any immediate effect I expect from it than for its being the visible sign and symbol of much more. Repre- sentative government is, after all, a very im- perfect human institution. People are learning to manipulate it more and more (though no doubt it always has been manipulated) to party and sectional ends. The possession of votes by women would do much, no doubt, towards removing grievances of various kinds, but it would not purify the electoral system, nor preclude the tyranny of the majority, nor ensure that any one of us or any large number of us might not have permanently to live under a government the main principles of which we might utterly abhor. If I say this, and at the same time declare myself a decided suffragist, I hope that neither camp will regard me as utterly antagonistic. REASON AND FEELING 33 The other field which we can hardly exclude from our general survey must be but gently touched upon. All I would say is that I earnestly trust in the ultimate prevalence, as a result of this movement, of a far higher standard of sexual morals. I have felt both saddened and repelled by signs that in some happily very few quarters there is a demand, not for the levelling up of men's standard in this respect, but for a levelling down of that of women. Generally, however, I think that the best men and women are agreed in abhorring such an issue. But one warning seems necessary for women in general. If in times past there was too much laxity for men, there was also another kind of laxity allowed to women, which is quite incompatible with the moral standard required by social reformers I mean : a toleration of female levity and of carelessness as to raising and disappointing ex- pectations in men. I do not intend to say that all flirtation is wicked some people attract and then repel in a playful way that does little harm. But that a woman should use her attractiveness to arouse false hopes and spoil men's lives ought to seem to every one something outrageous. Novel-writers and amatory poets never have so regarded it. But for a pure and healthy society it seems to me essential that women equally with men should be entirely honourable, considerate, and clean-minded in all their inter- course which leads or might lead to marriage. Turning from these weighty subjects to the 34 WITHIN OUR LIMITS wide region of women's education, employments, and opportunities, we find on both sides of every question which comes forward a host of feelings arrayed on one side or the other. In fact, if we return to Plato's simile, we seem to have the charioteer trying to drive twenty-four rather than two horses in hand, and the horses are of all degrees of amenability or obstinacy. Some pull so hard that he is at times not quite sure whether he is guiding them or they him. Let us look some of these horses in the mouth or, to drop metaphor, let us examine some of the feelings or dispositions which help or hinder the solution of questions about women. i. The ugliest of the hindering feelings one that is generally shrouded under better feelings or plausible arguments is professional self- interest and exclusiveness. We find, as we might reasonably expect to find, that in many pro- fessions and occupations that have for a long time been open to men only, those in possession do not wish to share their privileges with a host of new-comers. There are, of course, splendid examples of breadth and liberality in this respect, especially in the medical profession, in county councils, and I suppose I may now say in some unions of working-men. Still, the feeling is there and has to be reckoned with. It is commonly supported by the logical fallacy of conclusion on insufficient induction. " No woman can undergo the training for this " ; "no woman has the faculty for that " is urged till examples are brought REASON AND FEELING 35 forward to the contrary. Then they are regarded as exceptional and abnormal until they are sufficient in number to upset the general state- ment. The advice to be given to those who would combat this feeling of exclusiveness is threefold : (a) To remember that a corporation or anything of the nature of a corporation can never be expected to throw open its gates at the first request. I say request not summons. It is absurd to demand as a right what must in the first place be a favour, or to tolerate any breach of consideration and courtesy on the part of those first admitted to participation in any new privileges ; (b) to be extremely careful as to the qualifications and general character and ability of the women first put forward for places hitherto held by men only. The right women furnish a reductio ad absurdum of the arguments from general unfit ness. The inferior to illogical minds seem to confirm it ; (c) not to attempt to secure any new sphere of occupation where those originally possessing it could not admit women without a bouleversement of all their modes of procedure. This last point is often not understood by some progressive women, and it is a difficult point, since naturally corporate interest may often suggest impossibilities where only some modifications are essential. Such women would do well to ask the opinion of men generally friendly to our cause and well informed as to the circumstances of the trade, profession, or office in question, before they take any decided steps. 36 WITHIN OUR LIMITS 2. Then there is sometimes on our side, some- times against us the chivalrous feeling of a good many high-minded and generous men, and of women who look for greater benefits from a poetic exaltation of our sex than from a con- sideration of its capacities and its needs. I have been struck by the paradox that while, in arguments for the removal of female disabilities, one often hears speeches breathing of knight- errantry, with its desire to succour the oppressed and to support the weak, it is at the same time urged on the other side that such removal would annihilate the spirit of chivalry altogether. The idea that women should be kept dependent in order to afford scope for chivalrous devotion on the part of men always seems to me to resemble the now outworn notion that the continuance of the poor is necessary in order to give scope to the liberality of the rich. It may be answered pretty much as the other has been. However well off women may become, there will never be a time when in some respects they do not demand special care and consideration in virtue of physical and other hindrances in life. And, just as fortuitous beneficence has never effectually coped with the problem of poverty, so no amount of generous and chivalrous feeling ever prevalent in society has proved an adequate protection for women. Chivalry, though it professed to regard the poor and the helpless, was, after all, an institution of the upper classes. The safety and the purity of women were not so much REASON AND FEELING 37 regarded in mediaeval times as in prosy modern life. And the quasi worship of woman, if good for some men as any pure worship of an ideal must be was extremely bad for women, as encouraging the captiousness and pettiness to which ladies of a protected and aristocratic class are often liable. Here I would add a word of warning which I think we many of us require. Some women are apt to " make the best of both worlds " to accept and even to demand all the consideration and indulgence accorded by the spirit of chivalry and at the same time to claim all the rights based on the principle of equality when labouring or competing with men. This tendency is in some ways not so bad as it once was. A woman no longer claims a lenient judgment on inferior literary or scientific work, as she might have done in the days of Macaulay. But I sometimes feel a little indignant when, in questions on which personality ought not to count, women take advantage of their sex in order to force attention or to shirk obligation. We ought either to be content with a fair field and no favour or to accept special privileges and keep out of the world of competition altogether a course which has now become impossible. I do not wish to be understood as desiring to eliminate all that survives of chivalry, which did good work in its time. Pity for the struggling, the instinct of helpfulness, anger against the strong who oppose the weak, are noble passions, common 38 WITHIN OUR LIMITS to men and women, though most effectual in the physically and intellectually strong, and there is plenty of scope for them in the world generally, even if the relative strength and weakness of the sexes be considerably changed. 3. Closely akin to the chivalrous objection to woman's progress is that grounded on aesthetic susceptibility. The professional woman or the woman advocate of the claims of her sex is generally represented as an ungainly object, and sometimes, unfortunately, she has justified the charge. I have read that at the beginning of the woman student movement in Russia all the women made it the recognized practice to wear short hair and blue spectacles, and among our own pioneers there have been some who have considered that any attention to such externals as dress and demeanour were contemptible. Such was not, of course, the attitude of our real leaders. The contemners of appearances were a minority, but, unfortunately, a very conspicuous minority. As we have here to do with feeling pure and simple, we must oppose to it not reason except so far as to convince our opponents of the slight extent to which the mischief prevails but a careful attention to that sense of beauty and fitness which is needed to make social life tolerable. Unfortunately, though there is a deep-lying difference between the beautiful and the ugly, very much of people's views and tastes on the subject are dictated rather by convention than by real love for beauty in itself. So that if we REASON AND FEELING 39 considered our own ideal of beauty, we should probably offend social taste as much as the Russian students did with short hair and blue spectacles. Convention has in particular deter- mined what kind of appearance is or is not desirable for women and girls as such. And sometimes the prevalent taste is so sickly and silly that we are quite right in disregarding it. We often hear even now disparagement of a robust figure and healthy complexion as coarse ; and active strenuous motion on the part of girls is often opposed from the aesthetic side. I cannot but allow some ground for this feeling. Health and activity conduce to beauty, but the exaggeration of some forms of muscular strength through specialization in physical exercise often leads to a kind of warping and distortion which an ancient Greek would have abhorred. And the adjuncts of physical exercise for girls are not altogether pleasant. My own feeling as I have said, we are here obliged to lay some stress on feeling is that shouting, perspiration, mud, and ungraceful clothing, necessary and desirable in the playing-fields, should never intrude into either drawing-room or school-room. To observe some difference between the requirements of sport and the refinements of social life may cost some trouble, but from even an educational point of view it is worth while. But apart from dress and from sport, there are many things which women do or want to do which offend other people's susceptibili- 40 WITHIN OUR LIMITS ties. I think that really refined women might be trusted to make their own path. But they cannot control others, and the objection is hard to remove. For myself, I confess that I have an objection, which is, I suppose, aesthetic, against women's assuming the position of clergy- men. I can see that women's share in church work is a very large one, and that it is ever being increased and better organized : also that the complete subordination of competent women to incompetent men is often a grievance and a hindrance. Also I see no objection whatever to female preaching or to other lay preaching. But something in me revolts against the idea of a woman holding rank with the ordinary clergy. If, as I think, my feeling is shared by most other people, it would seem to show that the time has not yet come for opening the ranks of the clergy to women. The grand old days of powerful Abbesses, learned and correspondents of learned men, with scope for organizing and for ruling in certain ecclesiastical spheres, has gone by and is not likely to return. Meanwhile the aesthetic objection does not affect the desirability as well as the essential justice of including women in any scheme of representative church government. 4. More serious than the last antagonistic feeling, and closely allied to it, is the objection arising from an intense dislike of the view of the whole world as a ground of rivalry between the sexes. I believe that the women who stand aloof from our efforts, in so far as they are actuated REASON AND FEELING 41 by natural and unselfish feelings, dislike the cause because it seems to be siding with women against men. Now the most evident answer to make to those who take this attitude is that however closely the interests of men and women may be intertwined in the whole system of things, there is and must be occasional conflict of immediate interests at particular times and places. The same applies to rich and poor, to employer and employed, even to slave-owners and slaves. Each class or denomination in these pairs shares in the well-being of the other, and it used to be said that the rich might be trusted to protect the poor, that the masters were quite alive to the reasonable requirements of the men, that it never paid the slave-owner to hurt or starve a slave. But experience has deprived such generali- zations of any practical use. Now with regard to men and women one hardly likes to say the same for the relations of men and women must always be closer than any of these others ; but it may at least be safely asserted that even if all men were perfectly disinterested and reason- able, they would not be able to enter into the women's point of view in some things without an effort of the imagination which to most minds, whether male or female, is beyond present capacity. It is nearer to possibility where brother and sister relations are healthy and intimate the relations of husband and wife may develop it, but not always and many do not experience this relation. I do not know which is the more 4 42 WITHIN OUR LIMITS painful object to contemplate : a man who despises all women or a woman who distrusts all men. We have all of us probably met with specimens. They are generally beyond the range of argument, because their state of mind is com- monly to be traced to personal experience. It is to a change in the general experience, which might in part result from a removal of some of the restrictions still maintained on social inter- course between the sexes, that we might look for a remedy. 5. Beyond all this is the influence of stolid, sometimes quite respectable conservatism. That is, as compared to the other horses, a big brewer's drayhorse slow to move, but powerful when once started. It is at the back of most of the other feelings antagonistic to progress which I have been considering, but I want to consider it here in relation to certain objections to almost all changes in the extension of women's education and interests on grounds supposed to be scientific. I do not feel able to cope with the entire case, but to pass it by altogether would practically mean the abandonment of our whole cause. Some persons, looking at the subject from the purely physical and physiological point of view, have genuine fears lest the whole movement should tend to the deterioration of the race, by discouraging marriage, especially early marriage, and thereby lowering the birth-rate and de- pressing the health-standard of children. Let us not refuse to see what there may be of truth REASON AND FEELING 43 in these arguments. The prolongation of the period of education does demand a retardation of marriage beyond what used to be the normal age, and the option of other careers than that of wife and mother does make life more endurable, even happier, for such as, whether by circum- stances or education, prefer or are bound to remain unmarried. But later and fewer marriages have their cause in other social facts than that which we are now considering. We all of us grow to maturity much more slowly than when Alexander the Great or even when the " grand Conde " won great victories at seventeen the age at which Lady Jane Grey was considered an example of classical learning as well as domestic piety. Both boys and girls in the upper forms of schools are far less developed than their grandfathers and grandmothers were at the same age. The physical development is, I believe, slower likewise : but even if it were not so, I cannot think that a modern girl of seventeen is often fit for the functions of wife and mother, considering what great moral and intellectual calls are entailed in those functions. Then as to the number of the unmarried : our objectors often forget the large number of gentlemen's daughters who in time past have remained unmarried for want of a dowry, and frequently adopted the religious pro- fession without a vocation, from sheer necessity or been condemned to listless and empty lives. But granted that there are a great many 44 WITHIN OUR LIMITS young women now unmarried who would be happier themselves and bring more happiness to others in the married state, I cannot see that the fault is all on their side or on that of their educators. A great many men shrink from marriage through dislike of enforced economies or added responsibilities, and many women of small means but highly domestic character get simply no chance of a really happy marriage. Surely no one is so misanthropic as to wish to force women into loveless alliances through pure lack of livelihood. Of course it may be said that many of the professions we wish to have opened to women are partly or entirely renounced by such as marry and have families. For this reason, it seems only natural to expect that in those professions which require the longest and the costliest training, the proportion of women to men will always be small. But apart from the fact that home duties, however zealously per- formed, do not always consume all the time and energy of a healthy woman in fairly good cir- cumstances, we seem to be convicted of a hideously low ideal of education if we hold that the develop- ment of the intellectual and artistic faculties with the widening of moral and social interests is of " no use " to a woman unless she can turn her education to a distinctly professional end. Women who are only wives and mothers are not the best kind either of wives or of mothers. Any one who has acquaintance with a fair number of highly educated women who have husbands REASON AND FEELING 45 and children must feel some amusement mixed of course with indignation at the assumption commonly made that ignorance and frivolity are better than knowledge and intellectual tastes in those who have to cope with the problems of family life. I would, as already hinted, concede to the scientific growlers (if so I may call them) that many people are not married who ought to be, and some others married who ought not to be, and that a certain number are married un- suitably. But the remedy to this state of things (which is, after all, not particularly novel) had better be sought by reasonable men and women consulting together in a spirit of mutual confi- dence and respect. It can hardly be reached by any wholesale effort to suppress the aspirations of one sex altogether. This seems too evident to need saying. And it would be worse than a platitude it would seem absurd presumption to say that we do not disparage the noble qualities displayed and further developed in the fulfilment of duties peculiar to women's life. But we do not hold with the uncompromising conservative that the Golden Age is to be found in the past. Possibly our ideal is not to be reached at any particular moment in the future. But it may be fragmentarily shown in most times, and our busi- ness is to give it form and substance as far as present circumstances will allow. 6, But for all this great patience is needed. Impatience is perhaps at present the most dan- 46 WITHIN OUR LIMITS gerous of the charioteer's horses. The im- patient people have sought to justify much that is unseemly and unjust, chiefly, I think, by argu- ments based on a very one-sided application of imperfectly known historical facts. It is not the case, as sometimes asserted, that appeal must be made from reason to passion and to terrorism. In point of fact, violent action may indefinitely retard the worthiest of causes, as Gunpowder Plot delayed Catholic emancipation. Nor is there any- thing but bitterness and indignation to be aroused by fastening upon living personal agents the re- sponsibility of defects in a system which has grown up through many ages, and which, being human, is bound to have defects. Against all retarding or dangerously diverting forces we need to set that of eVieiKeia, translated variously as moderation, forbearance, or sweet reasonableness. Such reasonableness is not in- compatible with zeal, and to make it effectual it needs the purest devotion. The issue is a real one, though not so clear in all cases as some zealots may believe. The charioteer may not always see the goal before him other chariots are making so much dust, it is a long way off, and some of his horses are pulling so hard that he cannot keep his eyes looking straight before him. But clear- ness of vision comes to the spiritually alert, and if only he persists and keeps a firm hand on the reins, he may guide the chariot at last, strained perhaps, but safe and sound, to the point of achievement and rest. Ill BELIEF IN MIRACLES (Paper Read to the Newnham College Sunday Society) I HAVE chosen a somewhat thorny subject for this afternoon's consideration, not with a desire of provoking controversy, still less, if possible, from a desire to unsettle any one's principles of belief (or to cause mental disquietude) but because the whole question is in the air, and in some quarters it has assumed such an important aspect as to oblige all persons of independent mind to try to find out what opinions on the matter they actually hold. The controversy is sometimes carried on with considerable acrimony, but it seems to me that such acrimony is quite superfluous else I should not have introduced the subject to-day. For, in order to arrive at a rational conclusion, we are not in the least compelled to admit either that miracles are impossible (a statement seldom heard nowadays, unless combined with a definition of miracles which implies their impossibility), or that miracles are necessary to prove either the Christian or any other faith a view far removed from modern theology. So that, however much we may desire to have our minds clear upon so important a subject, we may argue it without 47 48 WITHIN OUR LIMITS any fear that either our sanity or our Christianity is at stake. If, however, the issues of the controversy are not so tremendous as they once seemed to be, it has a religious and moral as well as an intellectual bearing, and the attitude we take towards it is likely to affect our general view of life, with our hopes, fears, and practical aims, to a very con- siderable extent. This will appear as we go on, if, as I propose, we examine two propositions commonly laid down in different quarters : (i) that belief in miracles is, generally speaking, on the decline, especially among educated people ; and (2) that any religion which does not contain some of the miraculous element is a poor and nerveless thing good enough, perhaps, for arm- chair readers, but useless for practical men and women ; elevating and consolatory for those ex- posed to few temptations, but of no avail in the battle of the world ; sufficient in life and health, but a broken reed in sickness and death. Now it is evident that if either of these pro- positions is false and the other true, there is nothing to be anxious about. If belief in miracles is not declining, or is only declining in some particular forms, it does not matter much what a religion without miracles might be. And if belief in miracles is going, but religion can maintain its power just as well without it, there is equally little to disconcert us. But if both propositions are true : if we are coming constantly to diminish and at last to eliminate the miraculous element BELIEF IN MIRACLES 49 in our religion, and if religion really needs that element in order to be of much effect, we are in a very sad state. Nor is any remedy apparent. For if we are ourselves under the influences that minimize the miraculous, we cannot recover our belief except by shutting ourselves off from the intellectual atmosphere in which we live which would be pure obscurantism. Our only course in such case would be to go on as best we could along our own lines and do all we could to pre- vent people still behind the age from participat- ing in the general progress. One other course is sometimes suggested : to accept and to propagate views which we think conducive to the general good, even if we find them contradictory to our own convictions. This might be the ultra-prag- matic course, or the course suggested by an exaggerated form of pragmatism, but it is dis- tinctly immoral, and so could hardly have good moral results. The effect, then, of accepting our two propositions together is pessimism of a very gloomy kind. Now before we attempt to analyse the two propositions, I may say in anticipation that I am generally in harmony with those who would accept the first and reject the second : who think that belief in the miraculous, as commonly understood, is on the wane, but that a really spiritual religion can well stand the separation, and may ultimately flourish all the better without its former adjunct. At the same time, I am quite able to see why the loss of the miraculous seems to some people of 50 WITHIN OUR LIMITS dire import, but I am inclined to think that the reason of their fear lies in a mistaken identifica- tion of the miraculous with that which it stands for in religious thought and feeling. What they really want to keep is, I believe, something quite compatible with the scientific and historical tone of modern culture. But it is time to turn to the propositions themselves. i. Is belief in the miraculous inconsistent with modern ideas, and likely to dwindle and perish as society advances ? I spoke, a little while ago, of the miraculous as commonly understood. We seem to want a definition of miracle or miraculous which is in accordance with the meaning of most people who argue on the subject. But although a good many definitions have been given, it is difficult to find or frame one that is quite satis- factory, not so much from the mental haziness that prevails in our minds as from the different notions of the universe held by different people who have at various times formulated their con- ceptions. The simple, etymological meaning of miracle is something that causes wonder, and this meaning is still prominent in its ordinary use, and has the advantage of emphasizing, if I may say so, the subjectivity of the term. What is wonder- ful to one person may be quite commonplace to another, either because he knows something about it or because he does not realize its significance. A countryman from the wilds might wonder on seeing a motor-car. Persons unobservant of natural phenomena, like Charles Lamb, would not BELIEF IN MIRACLES 51 wonder if, some morning, the sun rose in the west. And there certainly seem, as we shall see directly, to be degrees of the miraculous, as the word is loosely applied, which appeal differently to different minds. But the New Testament words translated miracles point to something more than the exciting of wonder. Miracles are mighty works, manifestations of power. Thence they be- come equivalent to signs or indications that some unusual or unknown power is in operation. One word and one whole range of ideas sometimes introduced in this connection, and touching it on one side, must be kept aloof I mean the mys- terious. This word has a different origin and signi- ficance. True, the mysterious moves to wonder, because it is hidden and cannot be comprehended by human faculties. But it is only by a lax use of words that we describe any unexpected or unexplained occurrence (such as the loss and re- covery of property) as mysterious. If belief in miracles were reduced to zero, the great mysteries of life and death, the unsolved problems that have occupied men's minds since they began to think, would still be there. But we shall return to this subject later on. A somewhat similar word to miracle, but more nearly equivalent to sign, is the Roman pagan one, portent. A portent was to the Romans an extraordinary event that betokened something which rendered it desirable to consult the Sibylline Books. Some " portents " would seem to moderns miraculous, others not. If an 52 WITHIN OUR LIMITS ox came into a house and walked upstairs, we should regard it as an unusual but not miraculous event. If four moons were seen in one night by credible witnesses the case would be different. In most early religions (I am not speaking of savage religions, which are not so helpful in illustration as those of simple agricultural peoples) there is some difference made between ordinary and extra- ordinary occurrences. People who believe in divine powers working in nature (or, perhaps we might say, powers which are always pro- ducing natural effects) may have a simple or elaborate ritual for securing the' goodwill of those powers in the ordinary labours of life sowing, reaping, ploughing, dividing land, and the like. But when something exceptional happens like the falling of a thunderbolt their ordinary ritual is insufficient : they must resort to whatever traditional or even foreign lore they most respect. As they learn more about nature, things formerly considered portentous are no longer regarded as being so. Historians of the Greeks like to mark as an epoch in the history of human culture the day when Thales of Miletus told the Lydians about to join battle with the Medes of an eclipse which he expected to take place, and thus prevented them from feeling terrified thereby. It was not, of course, that the philosopher had annihilated their regard for portents generally, but that he had removed a considerable class of phenomena from the region of the miraculous to that of ordinary, intelligible BELIEF IN MIRACLES 53 occurrences. It is the perpetual continuation of the process, as man learns more about nature, which our proposition asserts. Those who con- tradict it would say that the process is bound to go on, but that it must stop somewhere. Hitherto I have avoided giving or quoting any definition of miracle supposed to be scientific, but it now seems necessary to become more precise. These definitions have generally been framed for purposes of theological argument, and some of them are unsatisfactory from the standpoint of the ordinary cultivated person. The description of a miracle as an event which contradicts or transcends the laws of nature is one which, I confess, does not convey to me any intelligible meaning. A more rational designation of miracle is that it cannot be ac- counted for by any natural laws or processes so far as we know them. But here the term we is vague, for we here, individual human beings, do not all know everything about the laws of nature any more than the Lydians knew about eclipses before they had heard Thales' explanation. The idea at the bottom of the minds of those who framed definitions or descriptions of this kind is that the region of the miraculous lies beyond all that has been or ever will be or could possibly be understood and reasonably accounted for by human intelligence, and that at the same time it is presented in the shape of fact to our powers of perception and observation. This definition might seem to some people too 54 WITHIN OUR LIMITS negative. They would say that the positive and the more important side of miracle was not its inexplicability, but its claim to illustrate and manifest the working in the universe of a supreme will-power. They would regard miracles as standing to the ordinary processes of nature as, e.g. the voluntary movements of our arms to the involuntary though vital movement of the heart. But there is the great difference : that whereas conscious human action presupposes regularity of vital functions, the working of miracles, as commonly understood, would imply something like a cessation in the operation of natural forces. It would be granted by those who hold a non-miraculous religion that divine power might be shown as evidently or more so in the processes of human thought and volition as in those of cosmic revolutions. We shall come back to this point shortly. Since, however, the word miraculous is ordinarily em- ployed as to results observed in the natural and not in the conscious human sphere, I may leave " moral miracles " aside for the present, only presuming that no effect of any unexpected volition on the part of a human, superhuman, or infra-human being would be according to our definition regarded as miraculous unless it had come about in opposition to all expectations based on sound and unbiased study of nature and all calculations of ordinary probability. The question then might present itself in this f orm : are we, or are we not, coming more and BELIEF IN MIRACLES 55 more to the conclusion that all the events of which we have experience in our lives or have received on trustworthy testimony from others could, if only we had sufficient knowledge, be fitted into their proper place in the whole sequence of things, or shall we always have to allow a margin for the action of forces which do not conform to natural law as we know it or ever shall know it ? The answer commonly made by those who hold to belief in the miraculous is that now, in our present-day experience, we are right in referring all phenomena to the regular operation of natural law, but that our respect for the testimony of ancient tradition together with our view as to the antecedent probability of supernatural occurrences in past times, may legitimately lead to our assigning some historical occurrences, in long-past ages, to supernatural causes, especially to a divine volition acting in a way unintelligible and opposed to all ex- perience. I fear that this all seems a somewhat involved and dry disquisition. It seemed necessary for our purpose, but after all, it has to do with what is academic rather than actual, for the simple reason that the people who have testified to the miracles connected with our religion, and indeed with any other, have had no particularly clear apprehension of natural law, any more than the large majority of the millions who have received those miracles on their evidence. I must say a few more words on the conception of natural law 56 WITHIN OUR LIMITS in this connection, before we can escape into more open fields. Law in the scientific sense means a uniformity in the sequence of events, learned by much ob- servation and experiment. The law of gravity, for example, is a brief statement of the attraction to one another of particles of matter. The laws of heredity are a summary of the results obtained by experiments in the reproduction of plants and animals. Such laws cannot be contravened, though they may sometimes be imperfectly or erroneously stated, or unwisely neglected in practice. If a man tumbles over a precipice and is killed, or if he marries a consumptive girl and is burdened with unhealthy children, he is not contravening the laws of nature, but exem- plifying their action in his own person. The laws of nature are to be expressed in the indicative, not the imperative mood. Or, as Austin said in his lectures which cleared away many cobwebs they are not laws properly so called, but only such in a transferred or figurative sense. But if this is the case, how comes it about that our minds seem so readily to grasp the idea of the law and order of the universe as presenting a type to which societies of men, and individual human beings, with their composite nature of thought, action, and passion should seek to be conformed ? An answer to this question would involve an investigation of the early history of philosophy, as it tended to monotheism, and brought into it a comprehensive idea of human BELIEF IN MIRACLES 57 duty. Greek philosophy attained fairly soon to the idea of a cosmos, an orderly universe, main- tained and directed by a divine power, an order in which man, too, had his place, in subordination to this directing power with which he, as a reasonable being, had some affinity. And Hebrew religion, by another route, came still earlier to a somewhat similar conception of the world as directed by a supreme God, who commands the services of the winds and the seas, whose mercy is over all His works, though His law has been made known only to His chosen people Israel. The ideas of cosmic order and of the legal obliga- tions of man are curiously brought together in the nineteenth Psalm (beginning : " The heavens declare the glory of God ..." and continuing, r ' the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul "), which, as scholars tell us, is composed of two distinct poems. The man who brought the two poems into juxtaposition exemplified what I hardly like to call the perennial confusion between actual and metaphorical law I should prefer here to call it a profound insight into the essence and the conditions of unity and order in the realm of nature and the world of man. Still, if we descend from poetry into prose, we can see clearly enough that the laws or commandments, whether set by divine or human authority, which man is bound to follow, but is always disobeying, are connected by analogy only (though the analogy may be close and suggestive) with the series of orderly sequences which are followed 5 58 WITHIN OUR LIMITS involuntarily, so far as we can discern among the forces of nature. I may seem to have contradicted myself in say- ing that the early believers in Christian miracles had no clear notion of natural law and then quoting the Hebrew Scriptures for a conception of a universal order which almost amounts to a reign of law. But, as already shown, the Hebrew conception is not exactly scientific, though it seems to foreshadow, or at least to make ready the way for the scientific view of to-day. Now the rational conception of natural law leaves no room for suspension or contravention of natural laws generally, but since genuine science is always modest it affords a good deal of scope to the supposition of remarkable things having happened in remarkable times, events that might seem simple enough to us if our knowledge were wider and deeper. All that reason demands is that with regard to strange and exceptional occurrences, we should have either strong ante- cedent probabilities or unusually good evidence, or, if possible, both. We are now coming near the heart of our problem. Some people think they see antecedent probabilities for the exceptional and non-natural occurrences said to have marked the beginnings of the Christian religion. To others, such ante- cedent probabilities seem entirely unsubstantial and irrelevant. With regard to the evidence pro- duced : I think it may be quite safely asserted that, looked at in a white light, and from a calmly BELIEF IN MIRACLES 59 judicial point of view, the evidence in favour of the early Christian miracles taken en bloc seems to be losing in strength. It is not that we are in any way losing our respect for early Christian records or early Christian life, but that the de- mands of accurate scholarship are more exacting than they used to be, in all branches of history ; and that as more unity is being brought into our critical and historical investigations, and the fields of these investigations are constantly being widened, we see the inconsistency of being credu- lous here and sceptical there. In plain language, if we place Christian miracles alongside a good many recorded in mediaeval or even modern times, which few sane persons have any hesitation in rejecting, it is hard to see why, from the historical point of view, the former should be regarded as being at least very probable. An objection may be made here to which I would allow due weight : if, on the one hand, the growth of the scientific spirit and of historical and literary criticism has made some reputed miracles seem highly improbable to us at the present day, there are others, of a different kind, which, in the light of new knowledge and methods of study, have become more conceivable and explicable to us than they were to the sceptically minded of a century ago : I refer especially to miracles of healing and to communications from an unseen world. The latter subject I prefer to leave for the present, as I do not feel competent to give any opinion on its recent developments. Here I 60 WITHIN OUR LIMITS would only say, that however interesting and im- portant any conclusions may be on communica- tion between mind and mind without physical mediation, and however desirable it may be to inquire into the subject of trances and visions with the view of tracing some regularity among the phenomena they exhibit, we are as yet very far from any proof, based on human experience, of intercourse between living and dead. With miracles of healing the case is different. So much stress has come to be laid on the power exercised by mind and will over body, that many of the " mighty works " recorded in Scripture seem not unlike what we experience or expect ourselves. Differences of temperament and of habit of mind may affect our particular views. For myself I would say that if the personal presence of Jesus Christ was at all like what I should imagine it to have been, I do not think I have ever suffered from any physical ailment which that presence might not have healed or greatly mitigated. But concessions of this kind would seem to people who lay stress on miracles rather an explaining away of facts than a frank acceptance of them. Visions of encouragement and warning and the removal of nervous or other physical disabilities constitute only a portion of the collection of miraculous occur- rences which are contained in Holy Writ. And, after all, miracles brought into line with non- miraculous experiences accounted for on similar principles would, for the purposes of apologists, hardly count as miracles at all. BELIEF IN MIRACLES 61 The result, then, of the first part of our inquiry namely, into the proposition that belief in miracles is decreasing would seem to be that modern con- ceptions of the uniformity of nature, and the stringent requirements of historical evidence as to legitimate proof, with the slight value attached to the evidence of non-critical informants, do tend to make people hesitate more and more to accept events as miraculous in the generally accepted sense of the word, although modern discoveries and modern views of life are by no means unfavour- able to the expectation of many things that may move us to wonder, nor to the experience of the manifestation, whether in nature or in human life, of mysterious and determinant forces. 2. These remarks, with others made already, may help us to deal with the second of our pro- positions : that a non-miraculous religion is a poor and nerveless sort of thing. Before I consider the grounds on which this proposition is based, I would put forward one argument against it which seems to me to have some force. If ever there has been a religion with little or no miracle, it is Islam. Of course Mohammed took over a certain number of miracles from the Hebrew Scriptures and others from Christian tradition, but these are not of the essence of Mohammed's religion. Mohammed claimed to be an inspired prophet, but not a miraculous person, unless indeed the origin of the Koran were to be represented as a miracle, as it certainly is not in the simple Moham- medan creed. But while in essentials non- 62 WITHIN OUR LIMITS miraculous, Islam is not a religion that any one, however he may dislike it, can call nerveless or invertebrate. Possibly a comparison of Buddhism and other non-miraculous but powerful religions might be brought in. But as the practical ques- tion is generally between a miraculous and a non- miraculous form of Christianity, I will leave other religions on one side. What, then, are the causes of the dread and dis- like commonly expressed towards a non-miraculous Christianity ? I will examine some of them separately. (a) First, there is one of a somewhat scholastic kind that I should hardly have thought worth mentioning if it had not been most eloquently urged in the very able Hulsean Lectures for 1909, though the Hulsean Lecturer for 1910 attacked it with great vigour. The chief objection to a non- miraculous religion seemed to Dr. Figgis to be that it would allow of no free action on the part of the Deity. It would assume that He was bound by His own laws. Now if this view had not been advocated by so able a scholar, I should have thought that it sprang from the confused concep- tion of law already considered. The question is not whether or no God can work miracles, but whether or no He does, or, subjectively put, whether or no we can conceive of His working miracles. If we cannot I do not say that I should accept this bald statement, but it may stand hypothetically it no more proves limita- tions to the divine power than I am proved to be BELIEF IN MIRACLES 63 paralysed because I am not thought likely, in the course of reading this paper, to stand upon the table and brandish it in the air. (&) But behind this somewhat academical ob- jection lies another : that those who reject miracles must take a cut-and-dried view of things in general that the universe must seem to them more like a mechanism directed by a distant propeller, than like a living organism instinct with the Spirit of God. But we have already seen that the idea of an eternal order never failing and never transcended has proved a source of great inspira- tion in past days, both to Pagans and Jews. If, as is often said, but not I think truly, Stoicism with its idea of the Cosmos and the Divine Logos was only of use to the intellectual elite, what shall we say of the Psalms and of the many glorious songs which magnify God in nature ? Not only a general intellectual admiration, but a strong emotion of gratitude and awe is inspired by the contemplation of the revolving seasons, the har- monious movements of the stars, the birth, life and decline, and recombinations of living crea- tures. There is no fear lest our knowledge should ever become so complete as to exclude wonder, however little we may come to look for wonders of an abnormal kind. (c) But there are other objections which lie deeper : true, it may be said, the whole course of Nature is admirable and awe-inspiring, but is it not also ruthless ? It sustains many forms of life, but also many forms even cruel forms of 64 WITHIN OUR LIMITS death. It brings into being noble creatures and noble races and then lets them pass away to make room for others. Though Nature has her gentler moods, she is also seen " red in tooth and claw." Those whose high designs are frustrated by her overwhelming forces may at times see in her more of the diabolical than of the divine. Now in Christian story we have the picture of One in closest connection with Deity, frequently oppos- ing, by acts of human compassion, the inhuman tendencies of the natural world. We see Him restoring sight to the blind and strength to the paralysed, stilling the storm which might have destroyed honest fishermen, feeding by His won- derful powers a hungry multitude whose suffering was due to a nobler hunger for His word ; we see Him raising a maiden and a youth from premature death, the one from her couch, the other from his bier ; finally we see Him triumphing over the unjust death-penalty inflicted on Himself. Is not belief in these forms of divine remedial action better than mere nature-worship ? To all this we may emphatically assent. Nature- worship, unless our idea of Nature comprises all that is best in humanity, needs to be supplemented by the recognition of a divine pity and patience of which we should not learn much from non- human nature alone. But surely the miracles of the Gospels would seem feeble and spasmodic attacks on the power of sin and suffering if they were not taken as continuous with the working of the spirit of Christ through all the ages. With- BELIEF IN MIRACLES 65 out plunging into dogmatics, we can all see that it is of the essence of the Christian religion to seek for God not only in Nature, but also in all the desires and efforts of man to amend what Mill calls the " inequalities and the wrongs of Nature." True, we need concrete examples of the exercise of forbearance and self-sacrifice to enable us to realize their beauty and their power, but is it certain that such examples must necessarily be of the nature of the miraculous ? (d) Another danger which seems to attend the loss of belief in miracles is that it might shut some of us off from the whole course of historic Chris- tianity. This would seem a very real misfortune to all who like to dwell on the thought of the One Catholic Church, and who value their own church- manship, and to those who realize the ties which bind us to past generations, including, it may be, honoured friends still with us. But so far as concerns radically different views of cosmology held by us and by our ancestors, the mischief, if mischief it be, is done already. The first preach- ing of the Christian religion and the first formula- tion of Christian doctrine were undertaken by and for people who held a geocentric theory of astronomy, and believed in a solid sky above us and dark depths below, and Christian legend soon peopled these upper and lower realms with human and non-human spirits in something like human form. These notions formed the framework into which all teaching about the destiny of the world and of each human spirit had to be fitted. The 66 WITHIN OUR LIMITS framework is now gone, but we are by no means out of spiritual touch with the men who held it and helped to develop and to decorate it. The thoughts of Dante and of Michelangelo appeal to the present age perhaps with as much force as they did to those who held the mediaeval concep- tions of the Mountain of Purgatory and of the Last Judgment. Why need any of us feel shut out of Christendom the members of which, at all times, have held very heterogeneous views of life because we take some things symbolically which our forefathers took literally ? But I have no desire to shirk one very tangible difficulty which besets our way at this point. It is often said that whatever latitude may be allowed in the interpretation of Christian ideas, no one has the right to the name of Christian who cannot accept the earliest creeds, and that the Apostles' Creed asserts at least two miraculous events : the virgin birth of our Lord and His resurrection from the dead on the third day. Now it has seemed to many students, and quite rightly, an unfair proceeding on the part of some church teachers to invite us to examine the his- torical side of our religion in a historical spirit and by historical methods, and then to brand as non-Christian any who do not come to the desired conclusion about two historical events. A little reflection, however, will show that the historical articles were put into the creeds because they stood for some doctrine that had a more than historical value. And these particular articles BELIEF IN MIRACLES 67 stand respectively for the doctrine of the Incarna- tion, or, as I should prefer to call it, of the revela- tion of God in man, and for that of the triumph of Christ over death. I do not wish to go much into the import of the Miraculous Birth. It is closely connected in our minds with crowds of attractive stories and beautiful imagery, which, of course, have not the remotest bearing on the question of its his- toricity ; and it is difficult for many people to dissociate it either from these associations or from the doctrine for which it commonly stands. But it is evident to students of the Bible that the two ideas were not closely associated in most of the New Testament writers, and that no hint of a virgin birth is to be found in those who developed the doctrine of the Incarnation most completely, especially St. Paul and the writer of the Fourth Gospel. I am not, you will observe, arguing against the early tradition, but only desire to show that it was not an integral part of apostolic theology. It may be noticed, by the way, that Mohammedans believe in the virgin birth of Jesus but not in His divinity, and hold Him inferior to Mohammed, who had an earthly father. If we come to the miracle of the Resurrection, we find ourselves on different ground, for that event, unlike anything connected with the Birth, was made very prominent in the early teaching of Christianity, especially in the writings of St. Paul. But in St. Paul's mind, and in that of very many Christians of his own time and later, the 68 WITHIN OUR LIMITS Resurrection was not taken as an event in itself, but as one of a series, past, present, and future, as belonging to the doctrine of a living and exalted Christ, present in the Church by His Spirit, and speedily coming to judge the world. St. Paul himself, as time went on, had to modify his views of a speedy second advent. Other Christians have come to change their conception as to the visible body of Christ in heaven. But the belief that Christ was not overcome by death, and that His Spirit has ever been and still is working in the world does not seem to have been dependent on the conception of a cloud-raised body and an expected parousia, and possibly it may not re- quire that of an empty tomb. This being the case, it seems well that, for the laity at least and some of us would desire for the clergy too no particular historical interpretation of doctrine, as based on the creed, should be regarded as obli- gatory. It would seem therefore that there is no clearly assignable reason why a religion with little or no miraculous element need be a poor sort of thing. Belief in miracles is not necessary to a recognition of divine omnipotence, nor to a reverent wonder in the contemplation of divine power as shown in Nature; nor is it needed for the acknowledg- ment of something more excellent and divine than the natural order of things as we see it ; nor yet is it essential to keep up the continuity of religious life through the succeeding ages of the Church. We have noticed also that some non-Christian BELIEF IN MIRACLES 69 religions are very vigorous without laying much stress on the miraculous, and if we had pursued that line of thought we should have noticed that religion in general is not to be regarded as power- ful or as effete in any people in proportion to the place which miracles occupy in their theory of life. Yet, in spite of all this, we may some of us have a haunting notion that there is something at the bottom of the strictures made on a nerveless rational religion; further, we may suspect that if we personally had more belief in miracles, our religion would be a more potent factor in our lives. Let us examine this suspicion and see what it is worth. It can hardly be supposed that a belief that miracles had once happened and would never happen again could ever be much encouragement to anybody. But perhaps a genuine belief in miracles as having once happened almost always carries with it the supposition that others might occur in the future or at least some great and unexpected events such as might once have been thought miraculous. Now the expectation of great results is in itself likely to bring them about. We see this in the history of many great move- ments, especially religious movements. The Sal- vation Army, for example, at least in the days of Catherine Booth, seems to have often attained to apparently impossible results in reclaiming hardened evil-doers, breaking old chains of disso- lute habits, and rousing masses of men and women to enthusiasm about things to which they had 70 WITHIN OUR LIMITS been totally indifferent. Doubtless the mind that is always questioning and criticizing the type of mind quite necessary for the progress of science and history is, as a rule, unlikely to expect very unusual results, and is therefore unlikely to obtain them. But the fault is in the person thinking, not in his thoughts about miracles or anything else. Those who, through caution in thought, tend to become over-cautious in action need to be aware of their propensity and to en- deavour to correct it. They may do this without violence to their useful function of questioning. The subject may be put in another light. The religious view of life the mystic view, some would say, but all personal religion is more or less mystic is of the whole world of sense and ex- perience as resting upon one that is supersensual and divine the real world from which that of experience derives what measure of reality it may be said to have for us. All goodness, beauty, and truth are of God, who is the hidden life of all things, and is realized by man in so far as man endeavours to reach through the material to the eternal. If we could see things aright, we should discern a divine element even in the things of ordinary life, but our spiritual sense is weak through worldly cares and self-centred distrac- tions. Miracle seems to many religious people a kind of outcropping of the divine substratum in the material world. The divine is always there, but is not easily apprehended. Without miracle, then, we might seem to be further removed from BELIEF IN MIRACLES 71 the recognition of God in Nature and in human life, and everything would become sordid and commonplace. But in fact we want, instead of the levelling down of everything to the material standard, a levelling up of all things to the divine. If our minds had the full consciousness of God which has been given to great saints at various times which is manifest in chosen spirits even now, and which to all of us may be in some measure attainable every slight event of our lives and every sight that we might see would testify to us of the divine wisdom and goodness as powerfully as any wonder recorded or imagined in the world's history. These last suggestions may seem vague and high-flown, but they may help towards a more adequate view of the subject, which we must each strive to attain for ourselves. In reading about the necessity of miracles, the words often recur to my mind : " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not belie ve," implying: "If you do believe by seeing signs and wonders, your belief will be of little avail/' And one is some- times inclined, legitimately I think, though with a conscious transference, to apply to the sceptic- ally-minded but inwardly devout thinker of the present day the words of the great beatitude : " Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed." Let me repeat, in conclusion, that I do not sup- pose we have yet come anywhere near to the bottom of the question of miracles and belief in 72 WITHIN OUR LIMITS the miraculous. My object has been not to dis- parage the judgment and intellect of those who cling to that belief, but rather to combat the notion that, from a religious point of view, there is a great gulf fixed between those who do and those who do not hold to the miraculous accom- paniments of Christian origins. The faith of a Christian is belief in God as revealed in Christ, and, though that faith has hitherto generally gone along with certain opinions as to the life and work of Christ, we have no right to suppose it non-existent where opinions of a different kind prevail. The secularist and the religious views of life are poles apart. The distance between miracu- lous and non-miraculous Christianity is small in comparison. If Christians of our day are often found lacking in zeal and earnestness, the fault is not in their believing too little, but in their want of a firm grip on what they actually do believe. If only we were a little more charitable to our neighbours and more loyal to the truth as far as we can discern it, both faith and reason would have more scope among us. If our faith enabled us to expect to see moun- tains removed in our own actual experience, by the divine power working in and through us, it would matter little whether our reason accepted or rejected the evidence given for any particular manifestations of that power in the far-away past. True, we should expect to find some such mani- festations in the past, as all history and all experi- ence are fundamentally united in one great series, BELIEF IN MIRACLES 73 but whether or no we accepted the evidence for some unusual exhibition of divine power would depend on the weight we attached to the evidence presented, not on our power of faith. And thus the acceptance or rejection of that evidence on historic grounds should never form a barrier between fellow Christians, nor ever be a hindrance in the common efforts of those who labour and pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God. IV THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY THE people of England are not, generally speak- ing, worshippers of beauty. There are many artists and art-connoisseurs among us, and we commonly regard some interest in art and also some appreciation of what are commonly called " the beauties of nature " as indispensable elements in culture. But, as a rule, we do not regard the contemplation of the beautiful as a part of our life without which all the rest would be cheap and mean. We do not, in choosing any new mode of life or any place to dwell in, think first of all how far it will afford us opportunity of seeing, hearing, or otherwise enjoying what is beautiful. In fact, we should generally feel some contempt for a person who put such considera- tions in the forefront of his arguments for or against any practical scheme. The man of our contemporaries who cared more than any one else for literature and culture would have allowed science and art to divide between them one quarter of life, reserving the other three-quarters for conduct. Certainly Matthew Arnold's idea of conduct was comprehensive enough to take in a 74 THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 75 good deal of what is, to say the least, very in- timately connected with aspirations after the beautiful as such. But for ordinary people, his allotment of the spheres of life might seem adequate without any such qualifications. We are gener- ally suspicious as to the moral and mental sound- ness of the most thorough-going votaries of beauty. So far is this true that, at the outset of this paper, I feel very uncertain whether the majority of my hearers have come expecting to hear the Worship of Beauty commended or re- proved. The suspicion is not without some grounds in our national common sense. For one thing, we are not naturally so sensitive as some peoples to impressions of beauty and its contraries. We many of us feel that our conceptions of beauty are inadequate, our tastes variable, our judgment in such matters insecure. What an ancient Greek or a modern Japanese knows by instinct has to be laboriously instilled into our minds. We are, except the densest of us, able to respond to aesthetic cultivation, and to perceive, when pointed out to us by masters whom we trust, traces of beauty or of ugliness that we should not have dis- covered for ourselves. Still, the radical want is there. I have sometimes been surprised though I may frankly confess that I am not myself of aesthetic temperament or artistic capacity to find people of first-rate parts and culture who practically ignore the most potent kinds of beauty who would not, for example, recognize 76 WITHIN OUR LIMITS human beauty, however perfect the proportions of a head and figure might be, unless there were some indication of moral goodness or at least of personal amiability. Others, again, see no beauty in landscapes that have powerfully appealed to the heart and imagination of consummate artists. Of course, as we all know, persons inappreciative of beauty in some regions are wide awake to recognize it elsewhere. But if people are alto- gether hazy as to whether the things around them are beautiful or not, and also indifferent as to whether or not they are to be called so, it were futile to bid them worship they know not what and they care not what. Then again, and more reasonably, people shrink from attributing too much honour to the beautiful, lest that honour should be paid at the expense of the true. There has been in very high quarters we find it notably in Plato a disposition to dis- parage mimetic art as something to do with imitations rather than realities, and even natural beauty has been regarded as more or less deceptive. We have all from childhood been warned against thinking too much of good-looking friends, or of hankering after personal beauty in ourselves if we have it not, or rejoicing in it un- duly if we have it. Even the attractiveness of a gaily coloured flower has been used to point a moral against the pride that must have a fall. " Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain " was a text much repeated to young women of former generations. Beauty had, it was said, only to THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 77 do with outward things. Worth of character in human beings, and good moral lessons to be gathered from our studies of art and nature, were far more to be valued than personal beauty or lofty imaginings or passing raptures of delight. Then in the third place, love of beauty was and perhaps still is apt to be identified with self- indulgence. The desire for pleasure which it excites, whether of a grosser or of a more refined nature, is alike enervating, and tends to lower the standard of life and to deaden the highest faculties of man. Finally, the love of beauty is often taken to be hostile to the democratic spirit of the age. The cultivation and the indulgence of a passion for beauty demand leisure such as is not within reach of the daily toiler. They demand ex- penditure of money in beautiful works of art, tastefully decorated houses, frequent journeyings to places where the hand of Nature or the genius of man have stored up treasures not to be found on the common road. The spirit of the age, with its levelling tendencies, demands that nothing shall be held of first-rate importance that is not within the reach of all. Now all these objections are easily answered or turned by such as believe in our need of a real cult of the beautiful. To our ignorance as to what is beautiful, the best reply is : the sooner we learn the better. In regard to the supposition that aesthetic preferences are likely to pervert moral judgments,, it may be asserted that the 78 WITHIN OUR LIMITS fault of confusing beauty with moral goodness lies not in the beauty itself, but in the mind which makes the confusion. Against the charge of fostering self-indulgence it may be most truthfully and evidently declared that self-indul- gence, more than any other vice, is utterly destructive of real and permanent enjoyment, first of the higher, then of all kinds of beauty. And in answer to any suggestion that devotion to the beautiful is anti-democratic, we have often heard the truth insisted upon that the purest natural sources of joy in the beautiful are the common sights and sounds of nature, which illuminate the life of all except those who live in a squalor that modern civilization declares to be intolerable, and those monumental works of man cathedrals and public buildings, paintings and sculptures in art galleries which are, or ought to be, national property. But though each argument by itself is feeble against the cult of beauty in its highest and noblest form, each one testifies to a quite reason- able fear, one justified by common experience, of the evil tendencies to be traced in a partial, or disproportioned, or unrestrained pursuit of the enjoyment of beautiful things. To be entirely elevating and purifying, our love of beauty must have an ideal element and must be quite unselfish and altogether reverent. I am practically putting the same statement in different though apparently stronger language when I say that our love of the beautiful needs to be elevated into a worship THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 79 of beauty. This view will, it is hoped, seem to be justified and to be free from exaggeration if we examine more closely what this worship of beauty involves. I think we shall see more clearly the character of the beauty of which I speak if we begin by inquiring into the fundamental significance of worship. In making this inquiry I wish to take the word in its fullest and (for us) its most literal sense, not in the fanciful or exaggerated way in which, e.g., we call a person a baby- worshipper for being fond of children, or a hero-worshipper because he likes to hear about great people. Unless degraded and rendered useless, the word and the idea are religious, though, like most ideas which have been received into the religious world, it has suffered degradation there by associa- tion with what is merely formal. But taken in its highest and at the same time its simplest form, worship is an attitude of the human mind and affections, implying, I think we may say, two things : unbounded admiration and the impulse to whole-hearted service. The first of these elements is, perhaps, more evident than the second. Admiration lies at the basis of all religion that contains more than a dread of the supernatural or a self-interested endeavour to get the supernatural on our side. Seeley chose for the motto of his treatise on Natural Religion Wordsworth's aphorism : " We live by admiration." In itself the quotation is misleading, as it is taken out of its context, 80 WITHIN OUR LIMITS and gives the impression that Wordsworth meant what he did not say that we live by admiration only. But it serves well to set forth Seeley's idea, that our permanent and habitual feeling of admiration as we contemplate the universe around us things infinitely great and infinitely little and also as we recognize somewhat to be admired yet more in the best we have experienced or conceived in human character, this feeling is that which alone makes religion possible for man, at any rate for man in his present stage of de- velopment. If we feel admiration without love, our religion will be a cold one, but love without admiration is altogether non-religious though not necessarily ignoble. But is the feeling which makes us ready to make practical obeisance, to bind ourselves in some way to the object of our devotion, neces- sarily connected with that of admiration, so as to blend with it in the idea of worship ? Logically, perhaps, we would say no ; psychologically, yes. That which we most admire from its very ex- cellence might seem to be far removed from the possibility of receiving anything from us. From the days of Socrates, if not from earlier times, philosophers have puzzled the plain man by asking how the perfection and happiness of deity could receive any addition from sacrifices offered by imperfect humanity. Yet the plain man has gone on offering sacrifices, material or spiritual, and his instinct was right. His crude ideas of presenting to his god something that his god THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 81 would enjoy have given way to a threefold con- ception of religious service, according to which the worshipper seeks to obtain for himself a clearer vision of that which he adores, to make the beauty and the joy of it more widely diffused among his fellow men, and finally, in some measure to gain for himself, by conscious discip- line, whatever he may be able to obtain of the divine character. Now the boundless admiration and the dis- interested activity in service adoration and devotion, as we may fitly term them which constitute worship have evidently an ideal element in them. It is not this or that object taken alone that we adore or admire, not one or another serviceable action that we seek to perform. The religious consciousness would reject as super- stitious or as blasphemous the thought that there could be any fitting object of adoration or devotion save or beside the Holy One that in- habiteth eternity. But how can we bring this view into accordance with what we were saying : that the beautiful in nature and life is not only to be loved, but to be worshipped ? Only by frankly including the beautiful in the divine. This may come about in two ways : by discerning the workmanship of the Creator in the beauty of the world, and esteeming as a divine gift the artistic power of man ; or by accepting the beautiful as part of the divine element in which we live and move. The way we choose will depend on whether in 82 WITHIN OUR LIMITS our thoughts and feelings in relation to God we approach Him as transcendent or as immanent. These are philosophical words, but they express a difference which even those who are not philosophers can easily grasp. The more common is also perhaps the earlier view though here it is rash to be certain, and I am not sure that the anthropologists would not now say the opposite. I mean the view which looks to a Creator outside the world, fashioning and directing it in a way that our faculties cannot comprehend, pronouncing it, as it first issued from His hand, to be " very good/' maintaining its order and directing its manifold changes through all time. The other view is that of an all-pervading Power, working not on, but in and through the universe as we perceive it; one order, without which all were chaos ; one reality, apart from which the world and we ourselves were but " the baseless fabric of a vision" the life of all that lives, the meaning of all that mind can conceive. It were vain indeed to declare that one of these views is right and the other wrong. To do so would be to make an insolently high claim for our human faculties, which can never grasp in thought or express in words what infinitely transcends all understanding or speech. In our language, whichever line we follow, we can only " speak in parables." And in tracing the thoughts of those who have thought most deeply, we find that among the minds that have dwelt on one aspect or on the other, or alternatively on either, are THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 83 both canonized saints and proscribed heretics. We are at liberty to follow our own mental and moral bent, and are in good company whichever view we prefer. Now to those who think of God as Creator, the worship of the beautiful is only redeemed from idolatry by the belief that God made and loves beauty, so that in worshipping beauty we are approving what He approves, and, in a certain indirect manner, worshipping Him. The other, or mystic view, affords a simpler and more direct justification. For those who have received it have generally held that beauty, in its real and essential being, is part of the divine nature, that the archetype of beauty is to be sought in God Himself, and that the worship of it is a divine worship. As the early Christian mystics would have said, Beauty is one of the names by which man may address the Nameless One. And most of the greatest poets have a vein of mysticism which is most evident in those whose feeling for beauty is most intense, whether they be marked by the sober piety of Wordsworth or the defiant enthusiasm of Shelley. But the question must be met : how are we to identify that beauty, or its characteristics, to which such high honour is attributed ? The ques- tion has been asked and has received very various answers for centuries. Some philosophers have sought to discriminate between our idea of the beautiful and that of the good. Others have tried to find links between the various sensible or 84 WITHIN OUR LIMITS intellectual impressions excited in us by things that we agree in calling beautiful. The science of aesthetics belongs partly to metaphysics, partly to psychology. But without being either meta- physicians or psychologists (except in so far as any person who thinks at all must at times assume the character of both), we may, I think, profitably keep the question before our minds, and ask our- selves from time to time why we think this or that to be beautiful, and how we can both widen our experience and purify our taste in these matters. One point may be noticed in passing : the question as to the elements in our conception of beauty is quite distinct from the inquiry into the origin of that conception. It is quite possible that in the development of living organisms, in- cluding that of man, there has been a certain attraction to bright colours and sweet odours which may be regarded as a very rudimentary form of our love of beauty. Such attraction is distinctly advantageous, in the struggle for exis- tence, to the living things that exercise it as the brightly coloured flower draws to it the insects which disperse the pollen, and the gay feathers of a cock-bird are presumably pleasing to the hen. And even among developed human crea- tures, the qualities which have a purely physical attractiveness are of a distinct use in encouraging the maintenance and increase of the finer physical types. But the mere animal gratification in what is pleasing falls far below the satisfaction which we derive from the contemplation of the beautiful, THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 85 in so much that, while marking a possible begin- ning, it has little interest for those who want to understand what we actually intend when we speak of beauty as something to be loved and worshipped. If we read what has been written on the sub- ject, we shall not find much agreement as to the sensual, the intellectual, and the moral elements in our perception and enjoyment of beauty. There are certain combinations of colours, of linear forms, of musical notes, taken in succession or simultaneously, which seem to give the raw material for our aesthetic l faculty to work upon. And that faculty in its constructive work is helped by the constant action of the mind, especi- ally in the regions of memory and imagination, which enriches the field of sensible experience with a multitude of associations and suggestions. Further, in order to grasp and to delight in the world of beauty which by a complex growth has come to form part of our environment, we need to put forth some energies of the soul which be- long to us not only as sentient, or as intellectual, but as moral and spiritual beings. Perhaps no one has ever written on the sub- ject with more suggestiveness and profundity than John Ruskin, though many other writers may 1 I find myself unable to dispense with this word, so abhorrent to Ruskin and his followers. But in using it I would (a) re- pudiate the associations which belong to it as suggestive of a particular school, and (b) extend its meaning beyond that which primarily belongs to it. Words, like things, are often better than their origins. 86 WITHIN OUR LIMITS have been more consistent and methodical. I am referring especially to the second volume of Modern Painters " On Ideas of Beauty/' which he wrote in youth and republished, with severe self- criticisms, in his mature age. Especially is he lucid and helpful in pointing out what beauty is not : that it is not to be identified with the true or with the useful, or with the familiar or with whatever has pleasant and interesting associa- tions. Yet when he comes to consider what beauty is, he seems in some respects to confuse the issues by bringing in ideas of a heterogeneous kind. Thus when he is treating of human beauty, the spiritual expression both of face and of attitude seems to him the main thing. His re- ligious feeling would make him regard the early Tuscan painters not only as occupying a higher plane, morally and spiritually, than Pheidias and Praxiteles, but as being actually better artists. This fault comes partly from his early want of familiarity with ancient art though he seems to me occasionally to make very true remarks in writing about the Greeks and partly from the curious inconsistencies of his own nature, in that he was a puritan by education and mental disci- pline, a worshipper of the beautiful by tempera- ment and by spiritual insight. But his inconsistencies render him, perhaps, all the more suggestive. He divides all beauty under two heads, the typical and the vital. When he treats of " those qualities or types on whose combination is dependent the power of mere THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 87 material loveliness," he does not attempt to be exhaustive. But he selects some ideas which are presented to our consciousness in such sights, whether of nature or art, as we call beautiful, and in each of them he would recognize a divine attri- bute. There is the idea of infinity, suggested by glimpses of luminous background and hints of endless space ; that of unity ; which is " essential to the perfection of beauty in lines, colours, or forms/' seen in the midst of difference and variety ; that of repose or permanence, of purity, and of moderation. It may seem to be a strain- ing of the use of logic to argue that anything which seems to conform to these types owes its beauty to the fact that God is infinite, is one, is ever working and ever at rest, and the like. Yet the distinction of the types and of what they suggest is a helpful one, in enabling us to see, not that art is dependent on religion or religion on art, but that a correlation of the two ought to be brought about in the human consciousness. Perhaps we should not all go with Ruskin in making a hard-and-fast line between typical and vital beauty. As to vital beauty as shown in man, I do not, as I have said, consider him a safe guide, and in dealing with vegetable life he seems to bring in moral considerations which are purely fanciful. But we may feel inclined to follow him in the main when he says that vital beauty con- sists in " the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things. " Of course there is such felicitous fulfilment which does not strike us 88 WITHIN OUR LIMITS as beautiful as in the case of a hog grubbing up dirty food from a dust-heap, but that may be only because of sordid suggestions and absence of the chief kinds of typical beauty in any par- ticular case. The idea as applied to human beings is expressed in dough's line : " For we are beautiful only in doing the thing we are made for." Unfortunately, we do not always know what we and other creatures are made for. But many kinds of beauty do carry with them the idea of fitness, of completeness, of well-directed energy. Yet, after all, to the real worshipper of beauty the synthesis is more important than the analysis. We look into particular things and say that they are or are not beautiful, and we can go some way in assigning the reason why ; but either on Ruskin's lines or on Shelley's, or on Plato's, or on those of the writer of the nineteenth or of the hundred-and- fourth Psalm, or on other lines still, we feel that to get to the root of the matter we must come to see all beauty as one, to rejoice in the beauty of the world as a whole. But herein lies a danger of self-deception. People sometimes talk glibly about the beauty of the world, as they talk about its perfection in other ways, not so much because they know and feel it as because they think they ought to feel it, while they keep their eyes shut to all that might suggest a different view. Is the world altogether beauti- ful ? Are there not, even in undiluted nature, sights and sounds suggestive of foulness, disease, THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 89 and misery ? Is there not a distressing want of power in the operations of nature ? Where is the beauty of a dense sea-fog, of a bloated reptile, of a stunted tree ? Are we quite honest with our- selves if we declare that nature is altogether beautiful ? It may almost be said that to a religious mind the problem of ugliness presents a difficulty like the old-world problem of evil, or rather, that it represents a part or an aspect of that problem. And the difficulty may be met in similar ways in both cases. We may be told that most ugliness, like almost all else bad, comes from " what man hath made of man," and that man's imperfection does not diminish the perfection of his Creator. Or it may be said that the flaws we see in the universal system are due to our partial view. If we could see all things in their real proportions, the good and the beautiful would completely absorb the evil and the hateful. Or again and here, perhaps, we are on safer ground we may assure ourselves that whether to us it appears all-prevalent or not, yet beauty is there, as goodness is there, and it is for us to rejoice in both, and reverence both, and to wait in hope that what seems otherwise may come to have another significance for us as we strive to reach the ideals we see in the far distance. Such striving does not bring a logical solution to our difficulties, but it may bring a practical one. And, after all, the subject before us is eminently practical. In modern life with its noise and 7 go WITHIN OUR LIMITS unrest, its tendency to exhaustion by futile effort and to absorption in sordid interests, we need to escape from the babel around and to refresh our spirits by the contemplation of all that is peaceful, and strong, and pure. Even in a place like this, into which the worst forms of worldliness do not easily enter, there are some tendencies which need to be counteracted by a reverent love of all that is worthy to be loved, and a habit of dwelling on great ideas. In our recreations there is some fear lest the impulse to companionship and competition, natural and healthy as they may be, should spoil our chances of quiet communion with nature, and restful enjoyment of peaceful country sights and sounds. In our intellectual work there is much more danger lest we should, by over-haste, anxiety, and eagerness for speedy results, fail to enjoy as we might the ideas which are presented to our minds as we study the order of nature and the words and works of man. The contemplative tone of mind is as far as possible removed from idleness, but it cannot thrive without a certain amount of leisure, and succumbs altogether in an atmosphere of feverish hurry and effort. The type of character formed under the influence of a perpetual reverent regard for beauty is well illustrated in some members of the modern pre-Raphaelite school, of whom Holman Hunt is, perhaps, the last surviving member. Those who have read the delightful biography of Edward Burne- Jones, written by his widow, will THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 91 know the sort of moral climate to which these men belonged ; one of liberty and contentment, absolute unworldliness, generosity, kindliness to all creatures, reverence for all things high and noble, unceasing devotion to their art. The artist is not faultless any more than other men. Perhaps to some of the weaknesses of humanity, irritability, changefulness in spirits, some forms of intolerance, he may be more liable than the rest of us. But if true to his ideals he is far above the world in general in freedom from sordid motives, conventional unrealities, and pettiness in interests and aims. But we are not many of us artists, and we cannot live the artist's life without his powers and his vocation. Is it possible that we as ordinary people should raise our lives to a some- what higher level by caring more about the beauty which we can discern in the natural scenes among which we move, in all that we see and read of art and letters ? I certainly think that it is, and that many of us fall too easily a prey to the small cares of life and the personal anxieties that assail us, because we do not keep eyes and hearts open to the permanent sources of satisfaction, which by their greatness may make us feel ashamed of being so easily moved by little things of no importance. But, it may be said, there are other things than beauty which claim man's devotion. If in reality it be divine in character, yet even so, and even in that full perfection to which in our imperfect 92 WITHIN OUR LIMITS vision it can never attain, it does not comprehend all that we conceive of God. And in our common life, if it is to be adopted as a principle, must it not be subordinated to other principles, or at least brought into agreement with them ? To meet these suggestions I will consider briefly here how the worship of beauty is or may be related to the necessities of ordinary life, to the moral standard generally acknowledged, and to the principles of the Christian religion. It might be thought that the tendency of a genuine devotion to what is beautiful would be to put us out of conceit with the world in which we have to live, and the people, often dull and prosaic, with whom we have to work and to associate. Of course such a tendency is some- times to be found. We all know the imagination wonderfully expressed in Tennyson's " Palace of Art/ 7 of a soul that withdraws itself from all that is mean and vulgar to dwell among fair landscapes, and noble statues and pictures, and immortal poetry. Of a sudden that soul perceives the wickedness and the futility of her attempt, and longs to return to humble life and purge away the sin of her self-exaltation. It may be that the attempt has been made by others who have not discovered their error in time. But generally speaking, true worship of beauty, or of anything else, is opposed to selfish ex- clusiveness. The worshipper does not wish to have his desired object all to himself. It does not belong to him, rather he belongs to it. True, THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 93 there are many jarring notes and unsightly visions which are offensive to our finer sus- ceptibilities, and we may lawfully indulge in an occasional holiday from them. Tennyson himself seems in a certain measure to have lived thus retired, though not so as to lose sympathy with his fellows. But his retirement was amply justi- fied by the work that he accomplished in bringing so much that was beautiful within reach of ordinary folk. We consider that the hermits and monks of old would have been justified in fleeing from the world if they had succeeded both in maintaining a higher life and helping others to rise towards it. But commonly the world pursued them into their solitude, and then they became as " salt that has lost its savour." Worship of beauty is a very different thing from fastidiousness of taste. The latter might breed disgust of ordinary life. The former recognizes " the soul of good in things evil/' and can both see how much beauty and feeling for beauty lies hidden in common things and people, and also labour to bring the treasure to light and help all men to enjoy it. But how about the moral bearings of all this ? Is a man who appreciates the beautiful necessarily a better man than one who does not ? Ex- perience obliges us to answer no. The beautiful is included in the good, but does not comprehend the whole of the good. Some people of sensitive and cultivated minds, capable of loving and even of reverencing beauty, may be wanting in moral 94 WITHIN OUR LIMITS backbone, and so may come to grievous failure. We need the constraint of the law as well as the loveliness of an ideal. Even where, as in most of the virtues, the good and the beautiful coincide, overmuch attention to the side of the beautiful may tend to warp the moral judgment. I mean that those virtues and vices which most forcibly strike the imagination are not always those which, according to our sober judgment, we should pronounce the most to be sought or shunned respectively. Yet, on the other hand, where the imagination is not alive to the beauty of pure and disinterested lives, where the mind, in trying to rise to a conception of abstract goodness, is not helped by any suggestions from the wonders of the world around, where poetry and art are taken as mere pastimes, not as essential elements in life there the moral tone, if sound, is likely to be harsh and forbidding, and is necessarily incomplete. A great deal might, of course, be said on this subject, and still more on the relation of the worship of beauty to religion, and especially to Christianity. As I have already hinted, some kinds of beauty, especially human beauty, were immensely better felt and understood by the pagan Greeks than by ourselves, and that appre- ciation was not due to accident nor to ethnic differences, but in great part to certain con- ditions of life which are quite incompatible with any form of Christianity. Again, it can hardly be said that Christianity in its present forms sets great store on anything visible and tangible, THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 95 in comparison with "the hidden man of the heart/' and beauty must always be understood, primarily, and before the data have been worked upon by imagination and affections, to be con- cerned with that which is outward and sensible. Furthermore, Christianity has been called the "worship of sorrow" ; and sorrow in itself, as apart from pathos or tragedy, does not dwell in the region of the beautiful. The most sacred symbol of our religion, suggestive as it is of pain, disfigurement, laceration, would be condemned as unfit for representation by the canons of any sound school of art. But on the other side are two considerations : first, that many kinds of actual outward beauty, undiscerned before, have come to light in the Christian view of life and of the world. I have already mentioned some of the Psalms as showing a feeling for the beauty of the whole creation such as could not be paralleled in pagan literature, and these psalms, though very inadequately compre- hended, passed into the body of canonical Chris- tian literature. But it is in what we generally take as most characteristic utterances of Christ Himself that we perceive a more familiar and loving regard for the simple things of nature. A philosophic writer l on the History of ^Esthetics has remarked that in no pre-Christian writer do we find a feeling for floral beauty like that indi- cated in the passage beginning : " Consider the lilies how they grow." * Mr. Bernard Bosanquet, 96 WITHIN OUR LIMITS No doubt in later times the theory of man's total depravity and the practice of asceticism tended to benumb the feeling of natural happi- ness in those whose minds were deeply religious. It is not true to say that Christianity killed pagan art. Sculpture and most other arts were mori- bund before the final prevalence of Christianity, and architecture rose to a new life under its influence. But, generally speaking, the influence of Christianity was not so stimulating to the per- ception and imitation of the beautiful as was the outward-regarding religion of the Greeks, with notable exceptions such as those just given. But there remains our second consideration : that even if Christianity were less favourable than it is to the reverent recognition of natural beauty, it has revealed to man depths of moral and spiritual beauty of which the pagan world had no conception. I have throughout this essay con- sidered beauty as something which appeals primarily to the senses and the imagination, and have regarded the introduction of moral con- siderations as dangerous to lucidity of thought on the subject. Yet I would not assert that when we speak of a beautiful face, or even of a beautiful character, we are using the word beautiful in a strained or a merely figurative sense. There are certain kinds of moral and spiritual excellence which appeal to us by outward bodily expression and by presentation made to the eyes of the mind which seem to have a very close analogy to what we have been considering as " types " of THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY 97 beauty undoubtedly so-called. For, as we have seen, much of the beauty of beautiful things lies to us in what they suggest though suggestiveness alone cannot constitute beauty and the higher the suggestion, provided that something of beauty pure and simple is actually there, the purer the enjoyment that it can impart. Man can care for beauty because he has the contemplative faculty, which both Aristotle and Plato regarded as far higher than the active, and which, as the neo-Platonists thought, finds satis- faction in the recognition of perfect Divine Beauty. The Christian mystics, whose ideas come down to most of us chiefly in mediaeval poetry and painting, dwelt much on the idea of the Beatific Vision in which they placed the consummation of blessedness. Modern life, even when religious in aim, is not altogether favourable to contemplation. To rest in the idea of perfect beauty may seem to some an idle enjoyment, to others a privilege allowed to but few. Yet the duty of dwelling on noble ideas was enjoined by an apostle on quite ordinary Christians : " Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what- soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things/' True, the loving contemplation of the mani- fold, sensible, human, however excellent, cannot be regarded as if it were the fruition of the one, spiritual, divine. But, as we know in part and 9 8 WITHIN OUR LIMITS prophesy in part, so we contemplate in part. Man attains to the whole from the fragmentary, to the perfect from the imperfect. There are many ways by which the soul of man can travel towards its eternal home the way of labour, of prayer, of discipline, of charity. And among these ways is the love of beauty, so that the words which follow the apostle's exhortation to the contemplation of excellent things seem to follow quite naturally : " the God of peace shall be with you." RITUAL IN ITS HISTORICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS (Read to a Meeting of the Vacation Term for Biblical Studies) WHY is ritual an interesting subject ? That it is an interesting subject for most of us may either be taken for granted or inferred from the fact that many of us have come here from a great dis- tance for the purpose of gaining fresh light chiefly on this side the ritual side of our re- ligion. The grounds of its interest for us, of its increasing importance for students of religion and of human life past and present, are well worth a brief discussion, and may, perhaps, be ap- proached without presumption by those who have no claim to rank as specialists either in liturgical knowledge or in psychology. It is a subject about which we all have some feeling and some knowledge, and one on which the most learned expert still walks on quaking ground. For this reason, I have less hesitation than I might other- wise feel in straying into fields which I dare not call my own. I must beg any who have made a systematic study of ritual to bear with me if I have nothing to say that is not familiar to them, and would desire all students to expect from me 99 ioo WITHIN OUR LIMITS a few scattered suggestions towards thought rather than a completely thought-out exposition. When I say that ritual has its historical and also its psychological aspect, I mean to draw a very definite distinction, which has often been but feebly discerned, and the neglect of which has often led to much confusion of mind and bitter- ness of spirit. At the same time, I do not assert that the two can ever be entirely separated in practice. The origin, the development, the con- scious and unconscious changes of ritual, furnish in some cases a clue to the history of human pro- gress, while in others they posit problems which the historian and the prehistoric anthropologist has yet to solve. The effect which the observance of ritual has had and still has on mankind its influence on the emotions, the character, the be- liefs of those who practise it is in many cases something that could not possibly have been ex- pected from the early significance or object of the rite in question. Yet very often the theory that it had such-and-such origin and is approved by such-and-such authority makes it very much more impressive. And conversely, the readiness to accept a dignified or undignified origin for a ritual custom may depend partly on the respect in which such custom is held. Yet in the white light of the historical investigator, the difference between the historical origin and the present-day significance of any practice is almost too evident to need pointing out. I have hitherto used the word ritual as if we THE IMPORTANCE QF RITUAL 101 were all agreed as to its meaning without any precise definition. But in practice we seem to find ritual very closely associated with some things of different kinds. The essence of ritual lies in the conception that something has to be done and that the action is valid and effectual because it is done properly. I should, I think, lay down that, generally speaking, nothing done with the distinct intention of attaining a certain object, according to the ordinary reasonable adaptations of means to ends, comes under the head of ritual. For example, in our religious services the sermon is not a part of the ritual. It is, or is supposed to be, directed to the distinct object of imparting religious instruction or exhorta- tion, and is a success or a failure according as it is able to attain that object. True, it may be taken as a part of the whole service without any very definite notion as to what should be gained by it. Where the listener's sentiment is that expressed by the Northern Farmer : "I thowt a said what a owt to 'a said, an' I coom'd awaay," the sermon may be said to be taken as a part of Church ritual. Similarly the reading of Gospel and Epistle in Latin is a part of the ritual in the Roman Catholic Church. With us, the same in English, or the ordinary lessons, have a distinct object, that of imparting scriptural knowledge, and so fall under another head. Prayer may or may not come under the head of ritual according to the forms observed and the intention of the worshipper. To this distinction it may be objected that with WITHIN OUR LIMITS simple-minded people all ritual is directed to a definitely conceived end. The priest is called in by the Russian peasant to bless his fields, with the idea that what the priest does will actually make his crops more abundant. The savage imi- tates thunder and lightning with a distinct idea of making the rain come. But these instances only prove that the difference between the prac- tically useful and the ceremonially correct is not discerned by man until he has some notion how far his powers over nature extend. Of course the usefulness of ritual in the wider sense of the word useful is not disputed here. All that we would assert is that in ritual pure and simple the per- formance of an action as it should be performed is the one object of the action. The ritual may have its uses, but its separate acts are not each designed with the view to a useful end. Ritual in its broader significance would thus comprise all of a distinctly ceremonial character in our life, including the common amenities and decencies of social intercourse. But though all this falls under the general head of ceremonial, the term ritual is generally reserved for those ceremonies that are distinctly religious or dis- tinctly legal in character. We have here to do with the religious side, though in early societies law and religion are hardly to be distinguished. Now if we ask why the history of ritual has become more interesting to us of late years, the answer is not far to seek. The history of all institutions, works, or habits of mankind has THE IMPORTANCE OP RITUAL 103 become more scientific and more fruitful since it has been studied in reference to the principles of evolution. And ritual has, on this side, a peculiar, I might say an almost dangerous charm. So much information that our ancestors would have regarded as puerile has of late years been brought together in ways that throw light or promise to do so on the far-back ages of mankind, that furnish bases for new-built sciences and sometimes for hastily built specula- tions. To take a hackneyed but perhaps un- disputed instance : we all know now the ritual of the ancient Roman marriage, in which the bride was in semblance torn from the bosom of her parents, was not, as appeared to the myth-makers of an uncritical age, a commemoration of a histori- cal event, but the survival of a savage usage in which the strong man won his wife by capture. It may be though here I speak less confidently that the sacred care with which the Vestal Virgins kept alive the fire of the State points back to a time when fire, if once extinct, could only be re- kindled by a doubtful and cumbersome process. But the light thrown by the history of ritual on early social institutions and means of obtaining subsistence, a light which becomes steadier as it is gathered from many and distant sources, is hardly as important to us as the revelation which we now seek in it of the beliefs and the mental character of our forefathers, especially of those whose thoughts and feelings were so different from ours that the strongest effort 104 WITHIN OUR LIMITS of imagination scarcely enables us to understand them. Where man has not been able to ar- ticulate his thoughts or to hand them down by writing to posterity, he has, by the ritual obser- vances to be traced in his monuments or in the long-descended customs of his less remote de- scendants, placed a ladder before the feet of the anthropologist of to-day , which he may mount to survey the strange field of a spiritual past. Our results are scientific, for they are based on wide observation and legitimate induction, yet the science is still in its swaddling-clothes, and we must not expect too much from it. Able and learned investigators are to be found interpreting the same phenomena in totally different ways. Take, for example, the mental change associated with the supersession, in Mediterranean lands, of burial by cremation. Some would tell us that it shows the rise of a higher notion of the soul, as of something that does not always hover about the body, but mounts, on the pure flames, to its native empyrean. Others see in the same change merely a more drastic way of laying the ghost. The unlearned can only suspend judgment, but they can at least beware of dogmatizing themselves, or of adopting baseless conclusions. When, for example, we read how the wreath of the victor in certain sports might only be cut by a boy whose parents were both still living, we may be naturally inclined to attribute the custom to the Greek idea of the sacredness of joy, and the disqualification of any who had THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 105 known sorrow for a festive function of the kind. But those who know more about these subjects would prefer to seek the origin of the condition in dread of the ghost of a dead parent. We must relinquish sentiment with a sigh, and accept the decision of the learned. In these cases ritual may be taken as indica- tive of belief, though the indication is seldom absolutely plain and clear. But ritual is also interesting as being creative of belief. I do not wish to plunge into the vexed question as to the origin of myth. About thirty years ago, myth- ology was generally said to be the result of observation of nature, anthropologically and therefore poetically expressed. The chief heroes of Greek and even of Teutonic mythology were solar deities. Their noble actions the slaying of dragons, the cleansing of foul places, the liberation of captives were, rationally explained, equivalent to the invigorating, purifying, and softening powers of the sun shining in his strength. If the hero deserted a fair lady (as Theseus left Ariadne and Heracles was faithless to Megara), it was that the dawn welcomes the sun, but fades at his nearer approach, or that the sparkling dew is dried up by the rays which have given her beauty and glory. Similarly Hermes is always the wind, and in fact all the stories about gods and heroes are a kind of natural history imperfectly under- stood. This theory, made current by Max Muller and his school and driven to death by Sir George Cox, is a distinct advance on the 8 io6 WITHIN OUR LIMITS old method of attempting to extract historical information from the details of popular stories and to trace a reliable tradition by the pseudo- rationalistic process of leaving out the super- natural elements. But more recent investigators go further, and tell us that a great part of mythology is simply ritual misunderstood. The story, already cited, of the Rape of the Sabine Women is a case in point. It doubtless arose from the necessity for finding the cause of the curious marriage customs of which the Romans had long forgotten the origin. Much more of the once-received Roman history, including the twins themselves, is now generally believed to have a ritual origin. Of course the explanation of myth by ritual does not explain ritual. The most hopeful way of seeking such information is to examine the ceremonies and ways of existing peoples in a backward state of civilization. Scientific travellers and even missionaries (though the latter in some ways stand at a disadvantage, since they are pledged to aim at the abolition of the very things which the anthropologist wants to learn about) have collected for us information which becomes intensely interesting when we bring it into connection with the curious habits and fanciful stories of our own country folk and our not very remote ancestors. Of course this method of tracing myth to ritual may be driven to death like the other two, for both of which we may find scope in a com- prehensive theory. The regular or irregular THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 107 recurrence of natural phenomena, with the con- viction, found alike in savage and in sage, that the non-human world is full of life, and is related to our fortunes in more ways than meet the eye, may well have given birth to such worship of nature as that to which the earlier school of mythologists have traced a whole pantheon and a whole library of legend. And again, there is a distinct rehabilitation going on in some quarters of the character of primitive tradition and the historical memory of pre-literary man. But even if we bear this in mind, and along with this the uncertainty of the ground on which mythologists have to pick their way, we may still realize that the effect of ritual on belief and thought was very great in early times, and that we may expect to find it still operative much later. For the great feature of ritual that which has enabled it to create myth and pseudo-history and to serve as a sparkling though insecure chain between past and present, is its continuity and intense conservatism. Man clings to his habits far more tenaciously than to his ideas, and goes on, age after age, performing acts the reason for which has long since to exist. This applies to all fixed habit more or less, but far the most to all habits that have, or have once had, a religious significance. The reason seems to be that all ritual began by being something more than ritual. Let me briefly explain this. Writers on primitive cults have familiarized us with the notion that magic commonly precedes io8 WITHIN OUR LIMITS religion. Some would put this statement in the form that religion grows out of magic, but it is quite possible to accept the former principle without the latter. The distinction between magic and religion has been made very clear by an eminent Cambridge anthropologist l and by others. In magical processes you try to coerce the powers that are authors to men of life and death, health and sickness, wealth and poverty. In religious acts you try to gain over these powers to your side, by propitiation or offering or some other appointed ways. The second process marks an advance on the first, as it shows that man has learned something of his limitations. We are tempted to ask whether there may be a higher state still in which the religious acts are directed to bringing man himself into harmony with his spiritual environment, and into a fitting sub- ordination to a power which he seeks neither to coerce nor to propitiate. But this is a question we may postpone for the present, though we may have to recur to it later. There may be some difficulty occasionally in deciding whether any particular rite is primarily magical or religious in character. The minds of uneducated people are not always clear as to the import of their actions. I have heard that in some parts of Europe the peasants are wont to threaten and abuse their images of the Madonna if she has seemed inattentive to their prayers. And in the long-continued rites by which men 1 Mr. J. G. Frazer. THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 109 seek to placate the spirits of the departed, it is impossible to determine the point where the desire to frighten away the ghost gives way to the hope of gaining the help of a powerful ancestral spirit, or to the less selfish impulse to do some- thing for the pleasure or relief of those who have given us pleasure on earth. Yet whatever their origin and early history, magic and religion are essentially different, and magic has been con- demned by the chief positive religions of the world. The ritual of magic is based on two principles, which are thus enunciated by Mr. Frazer : l (i) " First, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause ; and second, that things which have once been in contact but have ceased to be so continue to act on each other as if the contact still persisted. From the first of these principles the savage infers that he can produce any desired effect merely by imitating it ; from the second he concludes that he can influence at pleasure and at any distance any person of whom, or any thing of which, he possesses a particle/' The former of these principles gives rise to imita- tive or mimetic, the second to sympathetic magic. Every one who has heard travellers' stories about savages, or read any ancient or modern folklore, can produce instances of both. To the former kind belongs the weird custom of endeavouring to produce the birth of a male infant by a mimick- ing, on the part of one or other parent, of the 1 The Golden Bough, I. p. 9 in second edition. no WITHIN OUR LIMITS process of childbirth, including the subsequent congratulations of neighbours ; the second is familiar to those who delight in gruesome tales of evil worked by relentless enemies who have somehow gained possession of a lock of hair, or of any nail-parings or teeth of the victims. These very primitive conceptions and the conduct based on them might seem too remote from religion to require notice here. But though the principles of magic and of religion are unlike, there is often a curious connection between the kind of acts required by both : witness the dire effects attributed to the saying of prayers back- wards, or to baptizing puppets and then mutilating them. The tenacity with which people sometimes cling to religious rites seems almost to have some- thing of a magical element in it. In spite of the instructions of religious teachers, man has a lingering belief that he can control at least some of the powers above, or at least the powers below, at his own will. Early magical and early religious ritual have one feature in common : both need to be per- petuated by careful transmission from one genera- tion to another, generally by being given into the custody of a particular order of soothsayers in the former case, of priests in the latter. Whether the earliest cults are of deceased ancestors or of natural powers, or of both combined, primitive man has to make rules for securing their favour or averting their displeasure by the appropriate offerings and sacrifices. These rules are per- THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL in petuated by the care of a priesthood which may or may not be identical with the headship of a clan or house. In course of time the processes have to be explained, and the explanation com- monly takes a form which, while it often obscures the origin, adds to the persistency of the ritual itself. But why dwell on the ritual of savages, or at least of men in a backward state rather than on that which is followed in a higher stage of civiliza- tion and authorized by the great religions of the world ? Simply because the great religions of the world have not created anew any ritual system, but have borrowed elements from religions of a more rudimentary kind. Even Mahomet felt obliged to retain certain Arab uses in his religion, which, apart from those of the regular hours of prayer, borrowed, we may suppose, from the Jews, had as little ritual as any religion known. Your recent studies will have shown those who had not taken up the subject before that the ritual system of the Jews was in great part borrowed from pagan and primitive sources. And Christian ritual certainly did not come from any ceremonial system devised by the Founder of our religion or His more immediate followers, but was developed by the assimilation of much that had belonged both to the Jews and to the Greeks of pre-Christian times. When we say that a system of ritual was de- veloped, we do not prejudge the question whether the result was entirely for good or for evil. The ii2 WITHIN OUR LIMITS fact that some universal practices of Christians to-day have no sanction in the Gospels does not prove that they ought to be abolished, unless we give up the idea of Christianity as an organic growth. Nor, on the other hand, does the fact that various practices have prevailed everywhere prove that they are the lawful and natural outcome of the religion of Christ, unless we are to accept the fatalistic rather than optimistic principle that " whatever is, is right. " We have, as commonly happens in our historical studies, to keep apart the consideration how things came to be and that of whether it was right that they should come to be. And all investigators of all schools have of late opened up to us a treasury of historical interest by tracing for us the connection between the ceremonies of the Early Church and of the Later Paganism. Among Englishmen, Dr. Hatch was one who led the way in tracing the connection between the institutions of the Graeco-Roman world of the Christian Church, but he devoted more attention to forms of government and of doctrine than to ceremonial. Since his lamented death a good deal has been done in this field. Especially we have come to see how very much all ceremonies connected with the Sacraments of the Church have taken the shape of the Mysteries which were such an important part of the religious life of the Graeco-Roman world at the beginning of our era. The very term Mysteries, so often applied to the Sacraments in early days, and the adoption of the term priest (Jepevs or sacerdos) THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 113 for the officiating minister, might suffice to prove the existence of this tendency of the new religion to borrow from those which it had displaced. And when we come to look more narrowly we see how even the most significant actions of the celebrants, and the way in which they are interpreted, took form and colour from associations which, however much the Church might despise them, resembled Christianity in their attempts to reach and to satisfy some of the perennial longings of the human heart. If people have their eyes once opened to this continuity of ritual, and the tendency of old-world rites to crop up again in many distant times and places, they find abundance of traces of it on all sides. We all know how the Festival of St. John the Baptist, as kept in many country places in England and Germany, is complicated with the pagan ceremonies of the summer solstice. In the Greek Church, pagan practices have perhaps been more fully adopted and interpreted than in the Western. To take one instance among hundreds : in ancient Greece a new-born babe, being received as member of the family, was carried three times round the hearth. At the present day, at the baptism of a Greek child, it is carried three times round the font. It is natural that the latter ceremony should be connected with Trinitarian doctrine, and perhaps the interpreta- tion is quite permissible from the point of view of religious education. But it gives a conspicuous example of the truth that the lesson to be drawn H4 WITHIN OUR LIMITS from a rite is often far enough removed from the scientific explanation of its origin. It was the direct policy, a wise policy we might most of us think, on the part of the Church of Rome to sanction the maintenance of continuity in this respect with due regard for the prevention of abuse not always an easy matter. Most people know of the letter written by Gregory the Great to Augustine of Canterbury, when he was organizing the newly founded Church of England, bidding him maintain the old temples and festivals, so far as possible, and turn them to Christian uses. He was to do, consciously and openly, what would, apart from his intentions, probably have come about in more extravagant fashion. The fact that religions of the higher type must borrow most of their ritual from the lower does not prove the comparative worthlessness of ritual, but rather the reverse. Some kind of ritual, as we see all through history, has been followed by the votaries of all religions, whether natural or positive. But the greatest religious movements have generally begun in the assertion of funda- mental principles, and the founders or pioneers have been so much concerned with weightier matters that they have, more or less, left ritual to take care of itself. And it has taken care of itself, and accumulated till it has required and obtained regulation by definite ecclesiastical au- thority. In the history of the Church the bitter- ness of ritual differences has been partly due to the association of belief with rite ; still more, THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 115 perhaps, to the rivalry, national, racial, or spiritual, of the authorities by which one or other form of ritual has been prescribed. I have spoken several times of the reinterpreta- tion of religious ritual with the social and intellectual progress of society. This reinter- pretation is generally of a symbolic character. Intelligent people would often have repudiated venerable rites if there had not been some com- mentator at hand to explain what seemed puerile and to give a moral and spiritual meaning to what had originated without any significance of the kind. This was the way in which eclectic phil- osophers of the later Roman Empire treated the mysteries of Osiris and Isis, of Asclepios and of Mithras. This was the way, too, in which early Christian mystics, such as Dionysius the Areo- pagite, gave a pregnant meaning to every part of the sacramental ritual. But the attitude which religious reformers have from time to time taken up towards ritual has not always been of this reinterpretative kind. Often their demand has been like Cromwell's as to the mace : " Take away this bauble. " Their objection has been, we may say, threefold. They have opposed the superstitious retention of unintelligible practices ; they have objected to the degradation of some- thing originally more than ritual into ritual pure and simple (as in the instance already given : the conversion of the reading of Gospel and Epistle into a mere rite by keeping them in " a tongue not understanded of the people ") ; and n6 WITHIN OUR LIMITS above all, they have denounced the tendency to put correct observance above either true doctrine or righteous conduct. We find abundance of such remonstrances in the literature of the Reformation, as much from the men of the Renaissance as from the left wing of Protestantism. And as far back as the historical memory can discern, we seem to see the same thing. It is interesting to study the contrast between the pre-exilic and the post- exilic Hebrew prophets, who represent respec- tively opposition to current ritual and the re- storation and reorganization of the same. Both had, doubtless, their legitimate functions. But there can be no doubt which seems to express the most fervently religious spirit. Take the words of Amos and of Micah : " I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me your burnt offerings, I will not accept them : neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream/' " Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 117 With these compare Haggai and Malachi : " Go up into the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house ; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord. Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why ? saith the Lord of Hosts, because of Mine house that is waste, and ye run every man into his own house. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit." " Will a man rob God ? Yet ye have robbed Me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee ? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse : for ye have robbed Me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the store- house, that there may be meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." It would not be fair to the post-exilic prophets to say that their whole religion consisted in ex- hortations to revive and maintain the temple ritual. Yet the importance of that ritual in their eyes seems to diminish our capacity for admiring their zeal as we can that of their anti-ritual pre- decessors. These cases seem to bear out the general rule that in religious reformations ritual is not always reformed pari passu with doctrine and discipline, though a reorganization of ritual is likely to follow n8 WITHIN OUR LIMITS such reformations, and sometimes to help stereo- type their work. Apart from distinctly religious reformations there have been bitter controversies respecting ritual, the results of which have been evident to the world, but the animus of which requires a considerable effort of the historical imagination, with a sympathetic study of contemporary litera- ture, on the part of those who would understand it. A conspicuous example is to be found in the great Iconoclastic Controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries. The Emperors wanted to put down all reverence shown to representations, in sculpture or painting, of Christ and the Saints. The icons, they said, and very truly, gave occasion to many superstitious practices : people scraped the dust off them to conjure with ; they took statues as sponsors for their children ; they were losing sight of the truth embodied in the Second Commandment and in the writings of the Prophets, that the Almighty cannot be likened to any work of men's hands, that the spiritual cannot be re- duced to the dimensions of the material. On the other hand, the defenders of the icons protested that the reverence or irreverence shown to the image was really paid to what the image repre- sented ; that man must worship by means of types and symbols ; and above all, that to deny the lawfulness of representing Christ in material form was to deny His humanity and to cut at the root of the Christian religion. Each side had a good cause it is hard for us to say which had the THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 119 better, though in this case, as in most, the side opposed to the ruling powers showed the greater zeal and spiritual insight. Neither was able or cared to understand the other. Ultimately the icons prevailed, and with them both the truth they symbolized and the superstition which they encouraged. But meantime the whole civilized world had been distracted, and the forces of Christianity, learning, and patriotism, sorely needed to ward off the inroads of barbarism and fanaticism and the yet more pressing dangers from non- Christian military power, were turned against one another with disastrous result. The controversy was one of the causes which brought about the severance of Empires and Churches of East and West. No one who has studied it can regard disputes as to " mere ritual " as unworthy of serious attention. Yet here as elsewhere we see questions as to ritual observance, doctrinal belief, and spiritual authority in very close connection. To sum up generally what we have been gather- ing together as to the historical interest of ritual, we may say that the chief lesson impressed upon us is one of caution. Similarity of ritual does not prove ethnic affinity, as ritual is migratory and easily transferred from race to race. It is not a sure guide to primitive beliefs, seeing that the be- liefs attached to the very same rite may have varied in various places and peoples, and are not always agreed upon by the best authorities. It is not a safe index to the mind and character of a society, as it may have been borrowed from afar 120 WITHIN OUR LIMITS and interpreted in many ways. The " method of survivals/' useful in a measure, cannot be relied upon altogether unless we allow that " ashes to ashes " in our Burial Service implies that our forefathers practised cremation ; or the " with all my worldly goods I thee endow " in the Marriage Service proves that men, on marriage, used to make over all their property to their wives. The intensity of the controversies which centre round ritual is almost always due to some extraneous point of interest : to close association with some cherished belief or subordination to some recognized authority. The processes by which ritual is modified and readapted as time goes on have in them much that is artificial and adventitious. Apparently something quite definite and easy to lay hold of, it eludes our grasp as we try to pin it down and arrange it in phases of historical development, since practices that we might put down as successive in time may be found to syn- chronize even in the same society. Certain general principles have, of course, been established, and certain important results obtained. But these results are to a great extent of a negative char- acter. Yet after all, negations are often of great service in recalling us from unprofitable fields. We may not have attained yet to a scientific comprehension of ritual in its origin, development, declines, and resuscitations. But a truly historic view of the subject saves us from crude and fanciful theories and from excess of respect or contempt in practice. THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 121 This brings us to the second aspect of ritual on which we have to dwell : on its relation to the mind, affections, and character of man. It is the intimacy of these relations, so complicated and varied, that make the whole subject one of perpetual and living interest. While the aberrations of ritual practices, and their liability to fall behind the progress made in religious thought and morals, have always alienated a good many thoughtful people, yet the power of ritual is realized by very many who stand aloof from any church or denomination. Everybody knows how Comte would have had a ritual with- out anyjtheistic or supernatural element in his religion. In a clever pamphlet, 1 called Religion, a Criticism and a Forecast, the author, a very able Cambridge man, after indignantly denouncing all religion with any ecclesiastical or dogmatic ele- ments, declares that the religion of the future ought to have a ritual. The attempt to supply the need was not very successful in the one case, and is not likely to be so in the other. Ritual in general, apart from special rites, is not made, but grows. It is nothing without a background of tradition and associations. It would be harder to create a brand-new ritual than a brand-new House of Lords or a brand-new system of versifica- tion. Is, then, this hankering after a ritual a "last infirmity of noble minds " ? If men are taught as much religious truth as they are capable of 1 By Mr. Lowes Dickinson. 9 122 WITHIN OUR LIMITS attaining, and if they follow in life the dictates of reason, conscience, and the precepts laid down for their guidance as to their duty to God and to their neighbour, is not any ritual superfluous ? Some reformers have thought so. But the con- stitution of human nature is against them. Even the Society of Friends may be said to have a kind of ritual of its own, in " sitting " and in periodic meeting. And most other non-ecclesiastical bodies have a great deal more. In fact, the power of ritual to control the actions and modify the character and feelings of men is so great that to ignore it would be about as unreasonable as to make schemes of locomotion without taking account of either steam or electricity. In fact at the present day there are many who go to the opposite extreme, who would cling to the practice of Christian ritual while avoiding any direct expression of Christian belief, at least in the forms generally used. It seems to them that ritual has an advantage over language because it expresses no definite statement of belief or opinion, but only seeks to shadow forth such truths as lie beyond our capacity of formulating ; because, in short, it is symbolical. Perhaps, if we consider the matter, language about religion is generally in great measure symbolical also, but there are in all formularies of religious beliefs some statements which can only naturally be taken au pied de la lettre, and which, if so taken, involve views as to historical events and the order of nature which some historians and critics are THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 123 unable to accept. The question as to how far any person should be allowed to share in the ritual of a religion without agreeing to all its teaching is one that did not trouble people at all in ancient times and not much in mediaeval, and I am inclined to think that in our day the general view is in favour of leaving the matter in each case to the decision of the individual conscience. To join in ritual for a mere sensuous or even sentimental gratification, if permissible, is hardly commendable. But to follow generally the course of a service some parts of which do not command our intellectual assent is hardly to be looked upon as a sign of insincerity towards oneself or others. The influence of ritual is very varying in kind, according to its character and that of those who practise it. Religious ritual may be of a highly exciting nature or calming and sedative. It may appeal to our highest aesthetic susceptibilities, through the noblest achievements of the musician, sculptor, and painter, or it may stir up the animal passions to a dangerous activity. It may be equally significant to all the world, or it may have no meaning at all that meets the casual eye. But there is a sufficiently marked common character in ritual taken as a whole for us to be able to distinguish at least four sources of its strength. In the first place, anything done regularly and habitually becomes, insensibly, a part of one's life almost of oneself. The moulding power of habit is much dwelt upon by writers on education, and 124 WITHIN OUR LIMITS habits of religious observance are sometimes the most educational element in the life of adults. It has been thought by some that the frequently irrational and always cumbersome rules as to taboo, with permitted and prohibited foods, alliances, and modes of life generally, practised in primitive societies, have paved the way to some- thing like morals. It is something for men to realize that they have to do this rather than that, whether they like it or not. Perhaps the idea of ought in general precedes the notion of good and evil. But apart from any such speculations, ritual of all kinds disciplines towards regularity of life and conduct and is opposed to anarchic individualism, while at the same time it forms a kind of chain by which, so to speak, the life is kept together. The beads of the chain are the solemn rites associated with great occasions, such as birth, marriage, and death. This may prim- arily apply to non-religious as well as to religious ritual, but the two are not very easy to dis- tinguish in very early stages of civilization, or even in our own time. Then, in the second place, there is always some- thing impressive in joining in any action along with a great concourse of people. The most trivial action performed by many persons at the same moment such as the lifting of the hat as the royal carriage passes sends a thrill to the heart, especially if one is in the thick of the crowd oneself. I know not why this should be so, whether the act performed by many in common THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 125 seems to break down the barriers of individuality and make one realize the littleness of personal life in comparison with that of the nation, or of man- kind at large ; or whether the feeling that one attaches to the action, slight in itself, is multiplied many thousands of times by the sympathy of those around : however it may be, the fact is there. And in cases where, as in time-honoured ritual, one feels that not only the assembly, but many members of past generations are, in memory if not in bodily presence, associated with the performance of that particular ceremony, the feeling of being one in a vast number, of personal smallness and reflected greatness is stronger still. In contrast with this supplementary rather than inimical is the binding power of ritual observance in smaller and closer associations. All readers of ancient history are familiar with the great importance attached to family and gentile cults, and how much more they did to keep society together. And I have spoken of the more spiritual unions of later times, in which men and women of different nations, races, and classes joined in the celebration of sundry rites which united them by the ties of close religious sympathy. We know that in some of the mysteries, the initiated re- ceived instruction which gave them principles of life and a hope beyond death. But the fact of being initiated, and all that it implied, meant a far closer tie than such as would be created simply by the acceptance of a common doctrine. Man always craves companionship, and in his most 126 WITHIN OUR LIMITS secret longings, his need of divine assistance does not oust his hunger for human sympathy. But the distinctly religious importance of ritual is, of course, more weighty than any of these, which seem to depend upon it in the last resort. Man has believed and does still believe that by means of ritual duly accomplished he may obtain communion with God. I leave aside the knotty question whether, chronologically, in the historical development of natural religions, it was communion or communica- tion that came first. It may be that as neither the philosopher nor the savage is quite consistent in all his thoughts about the supernatural, some ideas which seem logically incompatible have practically coincided. Thus in sacrificial ritual men have had the hope of propitiating the powers above, of serving and pleasing them, and of sharing in their life and power. They may have sought to commune or to bargain with gods as with men, or to derive from them a strength which would to us seem far from spiritual. Still their ideas have been religious. And as religion be- comes more moral and more philosophical, the desire for spiritual guidance and spiritual power has ever expressed itself, and has obtained satis- faction, by the use of ritual forms. I speak, of course, of men in general, not of the few privileged souls that are superior to the aid of ritual altogether. Our reading of history and experience of mankind would, I think, naturally lead us to regard ritual as a permanent vehicle of THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 127 spiritual self-expression, also, in religious lan- guage (too often degraded into religious cant) as " means of grace/' Yet, as we have seen above, religious reformers have commonly seen danger and degradation in many kinds of ritual, or in too much importance attached to ritual of any kind. Where are we to draw the line between the helpful and the pernicious ? Those who have strong views as to the definite and binding character of ecclesiastical authority would have a decided answer ready : the ritual followed should be that prescribed by the church that each one belongs to, or by the spiritual power that is set over him. But like most decided answers, this is not quite as definite as it seems : first, because when the right is allowed, there is often vagueness as to fact. This, of course, has led to many ritual difficulties in the Church of England. And secondly, because ritual is always capable of modification and is always being modified, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, in the progress of society, and most intelligent people wish to have a share in secur- ing that the changes made are in a beneficial, not in an undesirable direction. I do not mean, especially so near the end of my hour, to lay down the lines which ritual, in its development, ought to take. I will confine myself to a few hints and suggestions. The first is that while some authority is generally necessary, great variety is to be desired. Without authori- tative prescription, ritual must lack the elements 128 WITHIN OUR LIMITS of generality and fixity to which, as we have seen, it owes much of its influence on the mind. But in a society composed of so many hetero- geneous elements as any society of the present day is bound to be, allowance must be made for individual tastes and susceptibilities. It is a question of degree, to be settled by the dictates of Christian wisdom and Christian charity too often, alas ! conspicuously absent from all argu- ments on these subjects. Then again, ritual ought always to keep abreast of the highest religious ideas of the time as to theology and morality, and though it is not necessarily dependent on intellectual or aesthetic considerations, it should not be repugnant to the good sense or the good faith of educated people. The keeping up of the standard is not to be effected in general by introducing new ways, but by dropping such of the old as have come to seem unmeaning or puerile, and reinter- preting the rest so as to give them a higher meaning. From what we have said, and I hope from the whole trend of our discussion, it may be asserted that religious interpretation of any ritual and inquiry into its historical origin are two very distinct processes. A rite may be legitimate and profitable, the origin of which is to be sought in a mass of confused and super- stitious fancies. The distinction has been pointed out very clearly in a yet more thorny field than ritual that of doctrine by the most sagacious and the boldest of critics, the Abbe Alfred Loisy. THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL 129 He holds, as is well known, that Catholic belief stands its ground quite apart from any historical results of New Testament study. And similarly, he regards as quite normal developments all the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church, however much we may be convinced that they were entirely absent from the Church as originally founded. Few people are as consistent and logical as Loisy. His own Church, unable to comprehend him, has reduced him to silence. But his main idea has been put forth and will bear fruit, it is to be hoped, in clearer thinking and more moderate action on the part of those people who read and meditate. We at the present day are bound to investigate ritual with all freedom, and in the neutral light of science. And we are also bound to follow such practices in religious worship as our experience of ourselves and our regard for our brethren would dictate as the most profitable for them and for us. Religion, after all, is something that lies deep below all historical inquiry, all outward observance, though it may enhance the interest of the one and give life and meaning to the other. The study of ritual makes us feel all the more how all the world is akin. The observance of simple, sacred rites binds us together in faith, hope, and charity. That which should tend to unity has only too often led to collision and strife. No remedy will be found till reason and charity join hands, helping us to realize how manifold are the ways in which men have sought 130 WITHIN OUR LIMITS after God in past times "if haply they might feel after Him and find Him." Thus also we may learn to feel thankful that in many of these ways, tortuous and dark as they may be, some- thing at least of the divine goodness has come down to gladden and to strengthen the spirit of the humble and diligent seeker. VI SOME OLD AND NEW IDEAS OF SIN AND ITS REMISSION (Read to Newnham College Sunday Society) I HAVE chosen what may seem to be rather a gloomy subject for our consideration to-day because I have reason to think that it will prove an interesting one. Most people who belong to our race and civilization and have had even to a slight extent the moral and religious education of English people have some practical and personal acquaintance with the sense of sin. And I think I may add that almost all people who have that sense are desirous that it should be either diminished or increased. They dislike it as something uncomfortable and possibly abnormal, or else they feel as if it were something they ought to have, but only possess in a small degree. The subject holds a large place in the great religions of the world, most conspicuously in the one to which we ourselves belong. The forgiveness of sins is the subject of a special petition in the Lord's Prayer and a special clause in the Apostles' Creed. The general confession of sins opens the daily service of the Church of England, and the ideas of purification from sin 132 WITHIN OUR LIMITS and of sacrifice for sin predominate in the two sacraments acknowledged in that Church. And while to many people the prominence of these thoughts seems right and fitting, to others they seem somewhat unreal, or at least complicated with modes of thought and feeling that are hardly in accord with modern views of life. A little examination of the subject may help us both to understand how this state of things has come about, how we ought practically to use or to reject the notions called in question, and briefly what our whole intellectual and spiritual attitude should be with regard to this most serious of questions. A thorough investigation of the meaning of sin and its remission would involve us in pro- longed inquiries into the fields of anthropology, history, and psychology, such as none of us are perhaps just now able or willing to undertake. But without wearying you by more than a suggestion of such extensive labours, I wish to show you that the idea is a highly complex one, especially since it is currently represented as something extremely simple. In one sense it is simple to us, as it relates to certain experiences of our own or of people like ourselves which can be easily recognized, and which stand in clear relation to other parts of our consciousness. But this simplicity is not incompatible with an obscure origin, a varied history, and a possible evolution into other forms in time to come. Writers about men in the lower stages of IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 133 culture, especially those who went to them with a missionary purpose, have often represented primitive or savage men as imbued with a sense of sin and a desire to be rid of it. To a certain extent the scientific observer confirms this view, though he would show a wide difference between the savage and the cultivated man as to their idea of what sin is and wherein it consists, as well as in their ways of dealing with it. There can be no doubt that the life of the untutored barbarian is full of fears. He knows little about the forces working around him, he has no clear distinction between the personal and the im- personal, he is constantly in danger of putting himself into an undesirable position with regard to] those forces, and he tries to avoid mistakes by following the traditional lore of his tribe and to correct mistakes by using the rites prescribed by the medicine man. In most cases he believes in ghosts friendly or the reverse whom he is bound to propitiate in the accustomed way at the risk of incurring their enmity. At a later stage (though of course the stages overlap) he believes in great powers ruling the course of nature, which he must, by force or persuasion, get on to his side or that of his people, and in anthropomorphic deities with their likes and dislikes, whom it is prudent to cajole and pre- sumptuous to defy. His feeling of insecurity and his scruples in incurring danger may be taken as a kind of embryo sense of sin. Certainly the acts he avoids, such as killing a blood-brother, 134 WITHIN OUR LIMITS forming a marriage within close degrees, re- treating from an engagement after swearing to observe it are all acts of the kind that we should still call sins. But a very great deal that the savage has to guard against lies outside the regions of morals altogether. He has to eschew or to clear himself from impurity, and in spite of the difficulty which the modern or Christian mind feels in avoiding later associations, the impurity which has to be removed by ceremonial acts is little concerned either with moral per- versity or with physical uncleanliness. The whole elaborate system by which a good many savage or backward peoples regulate their way of life and social intercourse may be of benefit to them in impressing on them the need of following some rules and of bridling passions and instincts; and in so far as it implies the subordination of one's own ways to the dictates of a hidden and in- corporeal but ever-working power, it may be said to have a side turned towards religion. And it is in religious rites and usages that many of the old tabu traditions survive to this day. But the one point that I would here lay stress on is that the dread of having put oneself in opposition to the superior powers, and the longing in some way or other to come back to a state of harmony and goodwill on the part of these powers, seem to lie in the most fundamental strata of human nature, and that these feelings are, to say the least, akin to those to which the preacher of repentance and deliverance confidently appeals. IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 135 Something analogous to this may perhaps be traced in the early development of the individual. I do not entirely believe myself in any very great contribution to be made to primitive anthropology by the study of child-psychology. Children who have intercourse with grown-up people (and what children have not ?) are somewhat in the condition of savages who have heard stories from sailors and sermons from missionaries, and have thereby become almost useless for mytho- logical purposes. But there are some points in the mind of a child, generally such as he is most reticent about, which do bear a resemblance to that of the savage, and among these is the feeling of dread and insecurity, due to ignorance of the processes of nature around and of the preferences and probabilities of action in the human environment. Probably many of us re- member even if we have not been bred in an atmosphere of terror and repression the great fear that has overpowered some of the darker days of childhood, when we dreaded lest we might unwittingly have committed some evil deed that must have noxious consequences, and how, at times, we have wondered why certain words of ours have provoked kindly amusement in our elders and others not spoken with any very different meaning or intention have brought down on us a crushing reprimand. The terror of ignorant insecurity in childhood is one that teachers and parents at the present day try, very rightly, to reduce to a minimum But 136 WITHIN OUR LIMITS those who have suffered from it have some con- solation in the fact that they have known an experience which, if we cannot call it religious fear, at least makes that fear seem possible, and may help to keep aloof the spirit of heedless irre- sponsibility which is often a bar to moral and spiritual progress. But I do not want to linger too long over the beginnings of things, especially of things that are so very different in their earliest stages and in their fuller development. As the child and as the people develop and become more reasonable, the superstitious dread dies away and is replaced by the normal feeling of shame or fear which keeps us from injuring our neighbours or falling much below the standard of conduct acknowledged by the society in which we move. It may, as we shall see presently, lie deeper and reach farther, but the fact I wish to notice here is that in the course of social or individual evolution the idea of what should be done or left undone becomes moralized. The element of caprice in the general system of things becomes, very gradually, eliminated. The higher religions, in setting forth the relations between man and God, make less of ritual and ceremony, more of character and direction of life. Religion in a crude, incipient form had been a force com- pelling men to live by some kind of rule. In a maturer form it sanctioned and furthered the process by which men came to live under reasonable laws. I suppose that in early times IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 137 all law-givers from Hamurrabi and Moses down to Numa and some canonized legislators of the Middle Ages, were supposed to have spoken by divine inspiration. True, the Greek law- givers, like Solon and Demonax, were veritable human beings, modifying or rejecting tradition by the light of reason. Yet even their laws were regarded as sacred, and a law-breaker was an offender against the gods of the State. Yet this did not imply that the idea of sin had been entirely merged in that of crime. All crimes might come under the head of sin, but equally criminal actions may vary in their degrees of sinfulness, and some acts which have been held to be sinful in a high degree have commonly been regarded as liable to be visited by a super- natural rather than an official retribution. Even when it has become more moral and reasonable, the idea of sin, even in comparatively more advanced peoples, differs from that of moral guilt. For one thing, the element of voluntary purpose, essential to a rational conception of guilt, is not supposed essential to the state of impurity, nor can good motives be pleaded in extenuation. We know the tragic story of the Theban heroes whose taint, if partly moral, was mostly due to circumstances beyond the control of the sufferers. When (Edipus slew his father and married his mother, he acted in ignorance and good faith, but he and his progeny never- theless incurred the stain. If it may be said that this story belongs to the stage of the lower culture 10 138 WITHIN OUR LIMITS in Greece, we may point to a really historical example in the mature life of the Greeks : Timoleon had, from motives of the purest patriotism, put to death his brother who was aiming at tyranny. Yet, just because it was his brother, he was regarded at Corinth as under a ban, and found it best to leave his country. And one knows how often some ceremonial mischance led to a ceremonial purification, whether of a city or of an individual. Now there can be no doubt that it is very per- nicious for any society if the vague fear of offending superior powers becomes stronger than the forces that restrain men from inflicting injuries on their neighbours or on the community as a whole. And those religious teachers, whether prophets or philosophers, have done good work who have insisted on the comparative unimportance of any acts done or avoided, signs observed or neglected, in comparison with the natural and social duties of life. From the old Homeric times we have the glorious saying of Hector that the best omen is to fight for one's country though Hector's heroism did not save him from the enmity of certain of the gods ; and the identifica- tion of the will of the gods with the principles of justice and wisdom did not grow very rapidly on Greek soil. It was because this process was so hard in the case of the anthropomorphic gods of the Olympian pantheon, that they lost much of their prestige long before the end of paganism. But in other quarters the principle had been IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 139 more loudly asserted. The Hebrews had had a moralized religion for a long time. Even if we accept in its fullest extent the theory as to the gradual growth of Hebrew monotheism and the late date of the more humane and moral parts of the law, there can be no doubt that from comparatively early times they were familiar with the idea of righteousness as the main element in the divine character. Yet as their religion was also one abounding in ceremony, a state of opinion grew up in which oppression and injustice were regarded as indifferent, and sacrifices as the things in which Jehovah took pleasure. And this was just the system against which the earlier prophets, especially Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, raised their voices. Their object was to remove the sorrows of the people by removing their sins, and the removal was not to be by any ceremonial purification, but by repentance and amendment. The words : " When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive/' have become, to most of us, stale and hackneyed enough. But they mark a revolution of thought and feeling in a super- stitious and ceremonious age. The question naturally arises : in the case of those who listened to the prophet's warnings, did the repentance come from a genuine sense of sin or from a fear of evil things to come ? Possibly here, as in many cases where men are deeply stirred within, their feelings are com- 140 WITHIN OUR LIMITS plicated beyond power of analysis. There must, of course, be some revulsion against an evil life before one can recognize the force of the voice that rebukes it, still more before one can eschew it and repent. At the same time there is little doubt that in all ages many evil-doers have, either temporarily or permanently, amended their ways in consequence of fear for the future. We may note here that remission seems to be in the minds of the prophets an act of the divine mercy, a removal or postponement of the effects of sin which ensues, as it in justice should, on the cessation of the sin itself. They had quarrelled with the general system of sacrifices and purifica- tion : the sackcloth and ashes, with tears and fasting, which accompany the act of penitence seem rather a guarantee of bona fides on the part of the penitent than the means by which he obtains absolution. The evils foretold by the prophets against a sinful nation were, generally speaking, national evils defeat, deportation, famine. But, as we have seen, they brought the charge of sin home to the individual sinner, and thus the call to amendment and conditional promise of deliverance have been by succeeding ages retained in a purely individual sense. Times of stress and strain, collective or indi- vidual, have through all the ages been favourable to the belief to which the prophets have appealed that in some sense man is the source of his own sufferings, and that if by his own effort or by the aid of a superior power he could change into a IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 141 different relation with his whole environment, things might go better with him. But this change has not always been taken as involving moral amendment. Sometimes it has been sought in the acquisition of hidden knowledge. If it were supposed that the occult knowledge desired was only accessible to those who had abandoned evil ways of life, the two ways of approach would lead to the same goal. And there is reason to think that they actually did so in the case of the ancient mysteries of the Greek world, in which the aspirants to initiation were rejected if they did not come up to a standard of purity which, in some rites in some places at least, was not merely ceremonial. I refer, of course, to the Mysteries, especially those of Mithras and of Isis, in which, after the decline of Greek civic interests had well set in, and all nations and cults were associated under the Roman Empire, men and women sought to satisfy religious longings that could not find satisfaction in the ordinary State worships. But like other religious developments which are accompanied by excitement and novelty, these were open to great abuse, and devout pagan thinkers sometimes felt bound to protest against the notion that, either in this world or the world to come, the initiated man, however immoral, had more to hope from the powers above than the uninitiated who had lived a blameless life. I may seem to have wandered a little from my point, but I think you will be ready to see how the state of mind which had recourse to the 142 WITHIN OUR LIMITS Mysteries was akin to that which sought for re- mission of sin. The later pagan cults appealed to a widespread desire for deliverance from evil and especially from death. Thus they became both the forerunners and the bitter rivals of Christianity. For there can be no doubt that the call of Christianity at its first appearance was to re- pentance ; its promise was of remission of sins. In the former respect it might possibly seem a revival of the old warnings of the prophets, cer- tainly a continuation of those of John the Baptist, but as to remission it seems to have been more emphatic. I cannot stop to discuss the very weighty and much-disputed question whether or not the very first Christian teaching including that of Christ Himself was or was not a summons to prepare for a coming catastrophe. In either case it certainly brought before the minds of men the need of a speedy reconciliation with God. And, especially in the Synoptic Gospels, we see that the reconciliation was represented by Christ as something which was not to be deprecatingly sought by ritual or discipline, but in which the reconciling power met the sinner " a great way off " and which was a source of joy to the angels of God. The necessity for repentance for sin and the possibility of its remission have, of course, always held a large part in the Christian system. But with the growth of the Church and of the concep- tion of Church authority we may add, with the IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 143 increased elaboration of ritual, borrowed from Jewish or pagan sources the whole subject be- came involved in a vast system of theological thought and an equally complicated system of ecclesiastical discipline. Perhaps this was neces- sary in order that Christianity should keep in touch with its social and intellectual environment during the later Roman Empire and the rise of mediaeval Europe. Theories of the Atonement and systems of penitential discipline were a natural product of the speculative and practical intelligence of men working at a great problem. What later times have had cause to regret is not the elaboration, but the fact that the elaboration went too much on juristic and materialistic lines. The Middle Ages had inherited from Rome the legal habit of mind, and they naturally applied the juristic measure in some regions where it seemed afterwards inapplicable. The conception of the atonement made by Christ as a satisfaction of a juristic kind, and the apportionment of penalties or compositions for penalties to sins of different degrees, are quite consistent with general mediaeval deductions from Roman principles of law. And one at least of the bequests of Greek philosophy to the Middle Ages, the thought of the seen and tangible as sign and symbol of the un- seen and eternal, lay at the basis of the whole sacramental system which was at once a re- minder of spiritual realities to the spiritually minded and a source of superstitious fancies to the low and ignorant. In time the reaction came, 144 WITHIN OUR LIMITS and in the countries where the Reformation was accepted, and ultimately in others also, the moral and spiritual view of sin and pardon come again to the fore. Of course new dangers cropped up. The Lutheran doctrine of Justification by Faith might though unfairly be interpreted to mean the shifting off of a troublesome responsibility by intellectual assent to a theory which transferred the burden to some one else. And the Calvinistic doctrine of Predestination, with the views of both Luther and Calvin (though here they were quite in accord with many ancient Fathers) as to the entire cor- ruption of human nature, might seem to make any practical instruction as to the means of over- coming sin comparatively futile. At the same time, the decay of the old ideas as to what con- stituted sin and how it should be confessed and amended might seem to impose on each individual a responsibility which he was often hardly able to discharge. Still, when stripped of the mis- chievous accretions of many centuries of super- stitious feeling and bad reasoning, there can be no doubt that a great deal of the power of religion among us to-day rests on the belief on the part of religious people that they have sinned and have a tendency to sin, and that their sins have in some way been got rid of. Now if this is the case, it might well seem that anything which was strongly opposed to this belief which made the appeal to the general sense of sin unmeaning and its remission superfluous or undesirable would either weaken the hold of IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 145 religion upon society, or would force it to assume a different character. The question I want now to examine is whether, in the critical atmosphere in which we live, these doctrines have been impugned, and if so, with how much reason and practical force. There can be no possible gain in refusing to look such criticisms in the face so long as they are made with moderation and good sense. The objections we have to consider are based partly on moral, partly on scientific grounds, but the two are generally combined in the minds of those who feel them. i. In the first place, it is sometimes said that it is neither right nor reasonable to desire that either we ourselves or other people should escape the penalty of our wrong-doing. Punishment is the right and lawful consequent on sin. Plato considered that an evil-doer who escaped punish- ment was worse off than one who was brought to justice. Ought we, in these enlightened days, to fall behind him in our appreciation of justice, and to wish to flee from the effects of our own actions, or, worse still, to hope that these effects will be felt by others rather than by ourselves ? Other pagans than the Greek philosophers have taken a somewhat similar view. In the very attractive picture of Burmese life and thought given by Mr. Fielden in his Soul of a People there is a curious contrast drawn between Indian and English views of the effects of legal punishment. Burmese Buddhists consider that it does away with the crime ; English Christians commonly think that 146 WITHIN OUR LIMITS it makes the convict a more strongly marked criminal than he was before. A boy who had, under great provocation, stolen some of his master's money, and undergone a term of imprison- ment, was greatly surprised that his master refused to take him back into his service, now that the offence had been atoned for. The master had not been overstern at the time of the theft. He had even desired, if possible, to screen the boy from the eye of the law. But now he could not take him back because he was marked with that very brand which, in the boy's own eyes and in those of his people, had been removed by the fact of his punishment. It seems to me that there is something in this objection from the payer's side. But it goes on the disputable hypothesis that penal justice effects not only the improvement of society generally, but that of the punished criminals in particular. Certainly among advanced peoples, one of the objects of punishment is supposed to be the re- form of the criminal, and in the case of juvenile offenders, and in all disciplinary punishments of a non-legal character, this object is predominant. But I do not think that it was so among the ancient Athenians and I doubt if it is in modern Burmah. Naturally, the willing submission to lawful authority and the recognition of one's own culpability, which sometimes accompanies the endurance of punishment, is a first step towards the restoration of the culprit to his right place in society. But if the will is untouched, the benefit IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 147 to society from the punishment of the evil-doer is only very indirectly a benefit to him. And the kind of punishment commonly dreaded by those who seek remission of sins is, I think, not the punishment which would remove the sin, but one which would rivet its chains more strongly than before. Even the crude conception of the wrath of an offended deity wreaking vengeance on the sinner is certainly, whatever be its worth, some- thing different from the shrinking from wholesome disciplinary chastisement. Such shrinking is not commended by Christian teachers. And the dread not of the wrath of God, but of the encroaching power of sin itself is perhaps at the bottom of the feeling in all but the least instructed among us. 2. But the second objection may seem more serious : that whether it were good or evil for us to escape from the consequences of our past lives such escape is quite impossible. According to our present conception of the universe of things and the history of man, the whole order is so bound in one that everything which it has re- sulted from what has gone before and will lead on to what is to come after. Every word which we ever spoke set certain vibrations going, which, in some form, are going on still, and there is no reason whatever to suppose that the mental and moral effects of our speech and action are any the more likely to come to a full-stop, impossible as it may be for us to trace them. Any undoing of the past is not only impossible, it is, to an orderly mind, inconceivable. 148 WITHIN OUR LIMITS Now this reasoning applies in full force against any theory of the remission of sin which would make it tantamount to an undoing of the past. Those who have done so have been misled by imperfect metaphors or false analogies. When we have done wrong it is vain to suppose that any power, human or divine, will put us in precisely the position we should have been in if we had done right. The question is, whether or no it may be possible for us to reach a new position altogether which may be better and safer for us than the first one, whether we can " rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to nobler things." If it is possible, it must be by the application of some strong force, whether it be our own or one working on us from without. I am inclined to think that the scientific view of things fits in better with the idea of salvation as worked out by tears and blood than it does with the easy-going fashion, in religious and non- religious circles alike, of treating moral delin- quencies, except those of a flagrant description, as something very unimportant and not to be taken too seriously. 3. But again it may be said that it is un- scientific to lay stress on individual actions ex- cept in so far as they are the product of character. If people could somehow or other divest them- selves of their feeling of responsibility for this and that and the other action, they would only have obtained a very partial relief from their moral burden. This about comes to saying that IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 149 it is sin rather than sins that we ought to want to get rid of. But, after all, the old practice of making people confess particular acts of sin must very often have been a help to enlighten them as to their own character and to serve as a warning. Actions are the outcome of character. Therefore those who would avoid wrongful action need to guard the springs of action by the discipline of character. But actions also tend, especially when they become habitual, to the formation of character. Our actions themselves need control and guidance. 4. But the most serious of all objections re- mains : is there not, after all, some unreality in the stress laid both in our religious services and in the language of religion generally, on the power of sin in the world and the need of forgiveness or absolution ? Have there not been a great many excellent people who have never had much sense of sin ? Are we not guilty of inconsistency to use no harsher word when we accept with satis- faction the approval of our friends or of society for something well done, and the next hour in church call ourselves miserable sinners ? The language of religion has generally been framed by persons of exceptionally sensitive religious temperament. St. Paul, St. Augustine, Luther, Bunyan, had a strong consciousness of sin while they were living moral lives. Ought we to take them at their own valuation and disparage human nature in the person of some of its best representa- tives ? Or, worse still, shall we try to fit our own religious experiences or moral ideas so as to 150 WITHIN OUR LIMITS accommodate them to those of men of a different, probably a larger make ? Shall we use words which we only half mean, or to which we attach no meaning at all, but which to them meant very much ? Surely to do so were not only to deceive others if many people did the same thing there would probably be little if any decep- tion but to stifle our own genuine feelings and to foster in ourselves and others the notion that religion, after all, has more to do with conventions than with realities. To all who have thought seriously on the state of religion at the present day, and still more perhaps to those who have studied the different phases of religious consciousness through the past ages, it may well seem that remoteness from actuality, even if unaccompanied by conscious insincerity, has always been the great danger of the religious life both in societies whether churches or states and in individuals. But, at the same time, observation and history alike teach us that the language in which human thought and feeling tries to express itself in religious subjects can never quite comprehend what it should set forth. Many formulae have been used with very real meaning at different times, and yet with great varieties of meaning. And, on the other hand, many persons have gone through experi- ences which the psychologist would class together as of the same order, which to themselves would seem to have nothing in common. We need to keep a clear head as to differences between man IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 151 and man and as to progress from past to present. But we need also, not only for scientific generality, but for our souls' health, to keep an eye for hidden affinities, for so only shall we be able to profit from the instructions of men of old and the spirit by which they were moved. To take the smaller, more practical question first : I think that probably some of the expres- sions in our services should be altered to suit more modern views of sin, or, at least, people should not be regarded as standing outside the pale of Christianity because they cannot conscientiously use them. Possibly they may have a clearer understanding than many of their orthodox neigh- bours about other equally important parts of Christianity. For myself, I may remark by the way, such utterances as those of the General Confession present no great difficulties. The word miserable I take to mean : deserving of the divine misericordia or pity. That " we have left undone those things which we ought to have done and done those things which we ought not to have done " seems to me a very straightforward statement of a patent fact. Even the words which offend many, " there is no health in us/' appear to me perfectly true if interpreted as meaning not that there is nothing in our souls that is not corrupt if so, how would there be in us any power to recognize and confess sin? but that we have no power of initiative towards betterment without some impulse from beyond ourselves. Nevertheless, those who regard this as 152 WITHIN OUR LIMITS quibbling may leave the General Confession to those who can use it honestly, and express their own feelings on the subject in some other way. For I think it is very clear that the sense of sin followed by slow or sudden conversion, not only, as we have already seen, in earlier times, but even at the present day, does show itself in many ways. American psychologists have investigated the subject and drawn up statistics, and some of their results have been brilliantly popularized and suggestively commented on in Prof. William James's Varieties of Religious Experience. Of course he takes cases in which the sense is par- ticularly acute, but even distinguished person- alities are marked by the peculiar character of their age and education. It is evident that the reality, on its darker side, is still with us, and that we may hope for a corresponding lighter side in the hope or the consciousness of deliverance. In the reports of the Salvation Army and of other evangelical workers among the low and the abandoned, we hear of criminals suddenly awak- ing to the enormity of their crimes, sensual people to the grossness, frivolous people to the inanity of their lives. Possibly in a healthy moral atmo- sphere, among people who have been decently and intelligently brought up, the sense of sin does not involve the consciousness of actual vice nor yet that of vapid self-indulgence. But if I mis- take not, it often exists, more like a lingering pain than an acute malady, and may be summed up as a bitter consciousness of having lost fervour IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 153 for one's ideals, and often, in consequence, of having lost sight of these ideals altogether. To some of us it is little credit that we are not tempted to break the ten commandments or indulge to any great extent in the seven deadly sins but the fact of starting from a favoured position ought to carry with it the obligation to attain to a greater height. This applies, of course, to our own self-culture and to our achievements in the world. But if we succumb to the tendency to slackness, we fall as low, comparatively, as those who, with less advantageous start, fall into shameful vices. It seems to me sometimes that many of us realize a great sadness in the feeling that we have lost our ideals, and in some of us this feeling shows itself in what is called cynicism (though real Cynicism was a much more respect- able thing) and general nonchalance and disap- pointment. I fear that some may take these sentiments as testimony that I am myself infected with the social ills that I deplore. If so, let me hasten to say that I do not think we are all pessimists, nor am I a pessimist myself. It may be allowed that few people, in art, religion, literature, possibly even science and social reform, have high ideals and pursue them strenuously further- more, that there is among us a consciousness of our wants in this respect. And if this is so, it may seem natural that among those who look for a day of judgment whether in this world or beyond it there are few who dread the penalties ii 154 WITHIN OUR LIMITS of misdeeds compared with the many who dread what in our university parlance we call " failure from general weakness." If this is the case, are we not in a less hopeful condition than are those whose consciousness of evil is more positive and definite, as there is less hope for the souls in Limbo than for those in Purgatory ? Salvation is supposed to be a de- liverance from positive, not from negative or neutral evil. In answer to this and I trust that my answer will at least not seem pessimistic I would repeat what I was saying a little while back: that language about the religious life can never be quite plain and definite it is bound to be more or less symbolical, even meta- phorical, and a very large number of angry controversies and outrageous misconceptions have arisen from the errors of people who have taken metaphors in a literal sense. Now the words to signify that operation by which the sense of sin is removed have been described by many metaphors, and in writing this essay I have found it impossible to avoid using some of them, and so seeming to imply more than, at the moment, I wished to convey. Remission suggests debtor and creditor ; de- liverance captivity and liberation ; forgiveness personal injury and injured ; and the like. True, introspective people who have gone through the experience have often described it with the most accurate precision you can read their statements in Professor James's book and others. But they IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 155 have generally gone beyond the simple, psycholo- gical experience, and spoken of the cause of that experience as if it were equally simple. Or they have applied to the process some symbolic word as if it described a simple, not a highly complex sensation. There can be no such thing as a simple and direct sense of forgiveness, of liberation, of salvation or absolution. The feeling of relief experienced may be real enough, but in most cases the recipient of the experience does not distinguish the actual object of consciousness from the imaginative form in which he naturally clothes it, and so he says that he is sure within himself that his sin is pardoned or that his soul is saved. And too often he may think that those who do not claim any such direct intuition are excluded from his sphere of spiritual experience. Now I am very far from saying that we are bound, in speaking of religious experiences or beliefs, to keep to the bare, naked statements which the psychologist can docket and put in his pigeon- hole. We must use language which seems the best we can find to express what we want to say. But we must not let language, or even conceptions, tyrannize over us when we want them to help us. In the Parables of the Gospels we find the removal of sin set before us in many ways : the remission of a debt ; the restoration to its right place of lost property ; the washing of what has been soiled ; but more powerfully than in any other way the return home and welcome to the father's house of the prodigal son. This parable 156 WITHIN OUR LIMITS has appealed so strongly to the feelings of Christians that they have sometimes forgotten that it is a parable, just as much as that of the lost piece of money, and that, however rich in suggestiveness, the forgiving of the undutiful son, with all its circumstances, is meant to illus- trate, not to explain or to describe, what happens when an erring man or woman desires to return to a better life. In one way, indeed, the idea of forgiveness seems to go nearer to the root of things than any other : there can be no doubt that in the teaching of Christ the possibility of effectual repentance was made conditional on willingness to take pity on those who have injured us and wish to regain our goodwill. I am inclined here to ask whether the transcendent act may not be more closely associated than we generally realize with that humanity and pity which binds, or should bind, us to our fellow-men; in the language of mysticism which I here throw out merely as a suggestion whether the forgiveness of man by man may not be a part of that mys- terious yet very real thing which we call the forgiveness of God. But I pass on to consider that sphere already noticed to which the idea of forgiveness may not seem quite applicable: the view of sin as a weakness, negation, or defect a view, I may say in passing, which does not make sin less serious, any more than darkness seems less black when we describe it as the negation of light. Now there is a comparison IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 157 very frequently made in the Bible between sin and disease, recovery from sin and healing. It does not exactly form the subject of a parable, unless, as it seems probable, some of the miracles of healing are to be regarded in the character of parables ; in any case I think that our Lord seems to have had the analogy constantly in his mind. The restoration of a feeble and diseased body to health and strength is a very fitting simile of the spiritual change desired by those who feel that their lives are being spoiled by weakness of will and by lack of invigorating enthusiasms. There is one passage of a pagan philosopher the only one of the kind I have found in that kind of literature, which presents the idea of sin and its removal in a striking simile, that of a part of the human body separated from the whole and then reunited. The words of Marcus Aurelius in this passage, taken with what we are told of his austerities in early life, have made me suspect that possibly, without ever wandering into the paths of vice and folly, he may have been what James calls a " twice-born man " : " Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity for thou wast made by nature a part, but now hast cut thyself off, yet here there is this beautiful provision, that it is in thy power again to unite thyself. God has allowed this to no other part, after it has been separated and cut asunder, to come together again. But consider the kindness by which He has distin- 158 WITHIN OUR LIMITS guished man, for He has put it in his power not to be separated at all from the universal ; and when he has been separated, He has allowed him to return and to be united and to resume his place as a part." * We have seen that there is a mass of testimony, from very various quarters, that consciousness of sin, desire for its removal, and a belief that somehow it may be or has been removed have existed in many different forms at different times. Nor, though perhaps passing through new phases, do they show any sign of extinction to-day. If they did, there would indeed be ground for very grave fears, if not despair, for the future. For the worst thing possible that can happen to societies or to individuals is that they should become entirely satisfied with themselves. Dis- satisfaction with self may be a painful feeling, but it is, as far as we know, the only means by which we can attain any end in which lasting satisfaction may be found. But, it may be said, is not such dissatisfaction and self-disparagement incompatible with the self-respect which we are accustomed to regard as an essential element in a dignified and well- balanced character ? If it amounts to self-ab- horrence, as it often does, for a time at least, in some saintly characters, it certainly is so ; but saints are not always well-balanced people, and we cannot wish them to be so. For people of ordinary calibre I think that self-respect is 1 Meditations, VIII, 34, Long's translation. IDEAS ON SIN AND ITS REMISSION 159 a safer and more useful quality when it resides more in belief as to capacities than in a high regard for what one actually is. And the belief that one is made for great things has a high vocation must necessarily involve in most of us a wholesome and humbling feeling of personal shortcomings. But no sense of positive sin or of general failure is of much good without some kind of belief that the stain may be done away or the feeble limbs strengthened that it is possible for the burdened and wearied soul to get rid of encumbrances and make a fresh start. And so far as the traditional ideas of sin and absolution have strengthened this belief and helped to convert the hope into a reality, they have acted for good. It is not pious fancy but verifiable fact that though a faulty past cannot be done away, it may be, and often has been, made to yield material for a better life in the future. And although a plain statement of this kind may not seem to imply any particular theories of theology or religious philosophy, surely the contemplation of such glorious possibilities makes us incapable of pessi- mism. For it naturally brings a conviction that the universe which contains them is permeated by what, after all, we can but imagine as the redemptive power of the love of God. VII RESPONSIBILITY (Read to Newnham College Sunday Society) THE associations which the word responsibility call up in the minds of most of us are both plea- sant and dignified. We have memories of the feeling of self-respect the realization that we count for something in the world that can only arise when some office of trust, small or great, has been given to us. I suppose it is a feeling similar in kind, though different in degree, that makes a little girl proud to be allowed to mind a sleeping baby, and that leads a statesman to wish to retain his seat in the Cabinet. We all know how in most schools in boys' schools since Dr. Arnold's time, and in girls' schools during the last twenty years or so a revolution has been effected, a law- abiding spirit infused, and a feeling of loyalty aroused by the expedient of making the elder pupils chiefly responsible for the maintenance of order and discipline. Yet, on the other hand, we all know something of the delightful relief when a heavy or even a light responsibility is removed. If a task, even a pleasant one, which lay on our mind has been achieved, if an examina- tion for which we have been strenuously pre- 160 RESPONSIBILITY 161 paring is finally over whatever the result may be ; if a guest even a welcome one has ter- minated his visit ; if we have escaped it may be from the kindest of neighbours to some quiet region where nobody will expect anything from us, and we can do exactly as we like in any of these cases, absence of responsibility comes to us as the most delightful thing in the world. The seeming paradox points to the fact that with responsibility, as with much else in life, alternate periods of having and losing are necessary in order that it should be valued aright. If we were always realizing our responsibilities, life would be a terrible strain. If we never realized them at all, it would be a purposeless dream. If we look a little more closely into things, we see that very much not only of the happiness but of the efficiency of life depends on the limits set to this same principle of responsibility. I am thinking now not of any temporal limitations by which ease from responsibility follows a period of tension, but rather of a division, more or less flexible, of life into spheres wherein responsibility is felt and others from which it is absent. We find that we like and esteem people, and that people seem to get the good that is to be got out of life, in proportion to their acceptance of their position as responsible or not responsible for what they observe or experience. We all know and have at times laughed at the extreme types on either side, the extremely fussy person and the extremely casual person respectively. The undue 162 WITHIN OUR LIMITS extension of the sphere of responsibility generally results in fussiness and in what is worse. Those who feel themselves responsible for all that goes on around them are apt to meddle in a great many things that they had better leave to others. At the same time they are likely to feel the burden they have taken on their shoulders very hard to bear, and impossible to throw off. I believe it is a not very uncommon form of mania to suppose that one is receiving blame, whether deserved or undeserved, for political disasters, famines, de- feats, and other evils, the causes of which lie beyond the reach of any individual. Less serious, perhaps, than the habit of meddling in things generally, and grieving inordinately over what cannot be helped, is the censoriousness generated in those who consider themselves responsible for the moral and spiritual profit of all with whom they come in contact. This failing can only be designated by the term "priggishness." Those who possess it are not, of course, more actively helpful to their neighbours than others, but they are often not bad people, and, after all, they are more to be pitied than disliked, for they are debarred from the pleasures of free give-and-take friend- ships with persons of various kinds. Yet the other extreme the wholly irrespon- sible person is in some ways more of a burden on society, or rather, he is so or not just accord- ing to his temperament and disposition. A person may be unwilling to undertake obligations towards others, and yet, if genial and kindly by RESPONSIBILITY 163 nature, may help life to run on easy wheels. But such people cannot be brought to work along with others, and if their natural feelings are not pleasant and kindly, they can only be kept within the bounds of law and order by appeals to self- interest, or by more or less gentle coercion. Now this fact the importance of deciding, as to everything in life, how far the individual re- sponsibility reaches is a very important one in practical morals, and some ethical teachers have made it the corner stone of their philosophy. Epictetus, for instance, in his Discourses, begins with an excellent chapter on the " Things which are in our power and not in our power/ 1 and he frequently returns to the subject in the course of his reflections. In general, he takes as " within our power " what his translator l calls " the right use of appearances," or, as perhaps we might expand his meaning : the capacity of looking at things reasonably, and of preferring the better to the worse, irrespectively of consequences. He quotes an anecdote of the philosopher Paconius Agrippinus, who was falsely accused by Nero. " When it was repeated to him that his trial was going on in the Senate, he said : * I hope it may turn out well ; but it is the fifth hour of the day ' (this was the time when he was used to exercise himself and take his cold bath), ' let us go and take our exercise.' After he had taken his exer- cise, one comes and tells him : ' You have been condemned.' ' To banishment/ he replies, ' or 1 I quote Mr. G. Long. 164 WITHIN OUR LIMITS to death ? ' 'To banishment.' ' What about my property ? ' ' It is not taken from you/ ' Let us go to Aricia, then/ he said, ' and dine/ " One might feel inclined to comment on this story : All very well for Agrippinus, and very noble in him to be so indifferent to his own fate. But suppose it had been a dear friend of his who was on trial and then banished. The result would have been just as much beyond his own power, but would it have been equally natural and right for him to take his exercise and bath and country outing ? Possibly it is the indifference recom- mended by the Stoics to all results beyond our powers which has to some people made them appear stern and heartless as the better ones certainly were not. But it does not follow from our recognition of our responsibilities that we should feel no interest where our responsibility ceases. To this point we shall return later. Meantime, it is certain that we may be able to bear troubles more lightly if we realize that no action on our part can keep them aloof, and that no amount of outward misfortune can touch our inward liberty. But perhaps before we go farther we ought to look a little into the meaning we attach to the word responsibility. It may seem simple, but I find that it stands for very different things in different people's minds, that its connotation is always relative to the speaker's attitude. For instance : I remember that a lady, who was much pleased with what she saw of our college, re- RESPONSIBILITY 165 marked to me : " What a delightful life your students must have ! So totally free from re- sponsibility ! " I did not controvert her opinion that student life was delightful, but I thought that if one considered how many students here have been conscious that, apart from the ever-present claims of common occupations and societies, their prospects of prosperity in life, and the credit of college, school and family perhaps the future comfort or the reverse of those dearest to them depended in great part on whether or no they were able to turn to good account their oppor- tunities here, one would agree that " free from responsibility " was hardly the word to express the lady's meaning. What she was thinking of, probably, was exemption from anxiety about money matters or unaided decisions in practical affairs. Originally, as far as I can trace it, the word has a quasi- juristic meaning. One is re- sponsible where one can be called upon to make answer or to give account. In politics the word is used in its natural sense when we talk of the Cabinet being responsible to the House of Com- mons, and the House of Commons to the electors. In morals the Roman idea of obligation is refined into the conception of a government under which one is liable to be called to account by a higher authority than that of any earthly tribunal. The responsible life is that which Milton, at the age of twenty-three, desired to live " As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye " and it is depicted under various aspects in those of our Lord's parables 166 WITHIN OUR LIMITS which relate to the final judgment especially the Parable of the Talents. But though there is a teleological idea in it, it is constantly used by us without any reference to the Last Judgment, and may, indeed, be employed with its full weight of meaning by those who naturally think of judg- ment as ever present rather than as far removed in the future. To complete the idea, I would bring in the phrase just quoted from the Stoics, and say that we regard ourselves responsible where the results of our actions are in our own power, and that we are bound in all such acts to regulate our conduct by the moral standard which com- mends itself to us as the highest. We are not responsible for events which are not the result of our own actions, nor for what may have resulted from actions of ours to which we should not attri- bute moral blame. This is a rough description, not an adequate definition of responsibility. Two weak points in it may be seen at a glance. In the first place, the results of our actions are not accurately cal- culable, and often extend farther than we sup- pose ; so that the zones within and beyond which we may regard ourselves as having no control are not clearly marked off from one another ; there is always a wide borderland within which we regard ourselves as partially responsible. The second defect is that it would seem inconsistent to make our responsibility depend on our moral standard if at the same time we acknowledge as most thinking people must do that we are to a RESPONSIBILITY 167 great extent responsible for that standard. In other words, we always seem to be driven in a circle when we take our conscience as the final moral authority, and at the same time make it our duty to train and enlighten our conscience to the best of our ability. But these objections are not fundamental from a practical point of view. It is in the regions of partial responsibility that we need the best efforts of our mind as well as of our will to make our path clear. And the authority of the individual conscience is not destroyed by our allowing that some of its commands or pro- hibitions must at times be brought to the bar of reasonable criticism. The fact remains that in order to live well and happily, to do one's duty in society, and to develop the capacities of one's own nature it is possible and very desirable to realize when and how far we are to regard our- selves as responsible for the consequences of our own actions. Thus it is very good to remind ourselves of our own absence of responsibility with regard to various things against which there is often a temptation to fret and struggle. There is our general physical environment, including the country and climate in which we have to live. Of course we may be able to change it by removal of residence, but if we decide that the change would bring more disadvantages than advantages, the only reasonable thing to do is to accept it and make the best of it though such advice is always easier to give than to follow. More important, 168 WITHIN OUR LIMITS perhaps, is the necessity for insisting on our irre- sponsibility with regard to our temperament, birth, and up-bringing. There is, of course, no harm in imagining what we might have done if we had inherited other tendencies than those which we find in ourselves, or how our life would have been different if we had been sent to other schools, or brought in contact with other kinds of people. But such imaginations, if indulged, have a weakening effect. What we have to do now is to take ourselves as we are and make the best of ourselves, with the aid of all the helps, physical, social, religious, and other, which are at this moment within our power. The mistakes that our elders may have made with regard to us may serve as a caution in our dealings with our youngers or contemporaries. So far, what is a hindrance in itself may be made helpful. But to regret that we are not what we have now no chance of ever becoming is futile, and sometimes worse. We may go even farther than this and say that at this moment we are not responsible for the mistakes made or even the wrong done by us in previous days. I do not mean that we are exempt from the suffering that past follies or sins have brought upon us. But though their fruits may remain, the deeds themselves belong to the past, which is of " the things over which we have no power. " The most inspiring leaders have always the " Everlasting Now " about them. Marcus Aurelius exhorts himself thus : " Consider RESPONSIBILITY 169 thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time ; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee." l And the Christian presentation of the same idea is in a higher key. We have it in Longfellow's words, a comment on St. Augustine, " that men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to nobler things/* The remorse we can never cease to feel for opportunities lost and worthless objects pursued is tempered by the reflection that the past is, after all, beyond our control. Those who have insisted most on this side of the subject on our absence from responsibility for external conditions, even where they are in part the result of our own past actions are also those who lay most stress oh our responsibility for what pertains to our own mind and character. They need not necessarily be advocates of the metaphysical doctrine of freewill some of them have been more or less fatalists but they have laid stress on the fact of practical experience : that the tone of our life is determined by the attitude we take up towards our whole environ- men, human, superhuman, and subhuman. They recognize the possibility of moulding charac- ter by constant dwelling on great and helpful ideas, of gaining control over passions and in- clinations by self-discipline. They do not deny that our individual nature, as it appears to the world generally, is partly determined by causes over which we have no control, but they regard 1 Long's Translation VII, 56. 12 170 WITHIN OUR LIMITS as the one essential determinant of moral worth not any combination of good qualities, but loyalty and simplicity in general purpose and aim. But I wish now to turn from the fields in which we are either entirely irresponsible or entirely responsible to those in which we have, as indi- viduals, a responsibility of a limited kind. These are very extensive. I will confine myself to a few remarks on general social life, and on modern relations of public life. I have already referred to the ways in which people may either overrate or underrate their responsibilities with regard to the society in which they move. Beyond the plain and evident duties which are incumbent on us in the ordinary relations of social life, there are a good many things which go to make up the permanent well- being of a society of any kind for which the whole society is responsible, no one person more than any other and here comes in the danger lest the feeling of responsibility may in the individual become weakened. The tone and character of any society a family, a school or college, a club, or association of any kind is, of course, deter- mined ultimately by the character of all its members, in such a way that if it deteriorates, or begins to exhibit unhealthy signs, we should be wrong in attributing all the blame to any one particular person. Yet we should be equally wrong in laying the fault at no one's door, or at that of one or two influential persons. It is a duty incumbent on the members of a society not RESPONSIBILITY 171 only to keep to their own standard of action where others deviate from it, but so far to identify themselves with the society as a whole as to feel personally bound to keep the standard as high as possible. We all know that the natural ten- dency is in precisely the opposite direction. A body of persons acting together is often guilty of dishonourable or ferocious acts of which most of the members would individually be ashamed. And often, in a school or college, or in sections of one, habits and modes of acting and speaking become prevalent quite alien to the individual in his or her normal or home life. It may be said that the sense of individual responsibility in matters of right and wrong, fit and unfit, ought to suffice against any such danger. But the sense of corporate responsibility is necessary to keep the life of the society healthy. If it is weak, those who have independence of mind to condemn prevalent follies or faults are apt to withdraw from active intercourse with uncongenial elements around them, and to lose inclination or power to oppose what they disapprove. But if corporate responsibility is strong, if each member feels personal grief and even shame for anything that casts a slur on the name of the community, there is more hope of finding some remedy. But, of course, each member needs to bear in mind that he shares this responsibility with others, and has no special commission to set the whole society to rights. And he also needs to remember that where his own standard is not that of his fellows, 172 WITHIN OUR LIMITS it is not impossible that they may have justifica- tion for their side of the question. Corporate responsibility may and often does breed intoler- ance. Perhaps intolerance is a less evil than in- difference, but there is no reason why we should not find the channel between Scylla and Charyb- dis. This, like most moral questions, is a problem to be solved in the working, not a matter on which to lay down very definite rules. Some of these remarks apply to public life and all the world of fashion, opinion, and enterprise. Of course it might be alleged that we as women have no public responsibilities because we have no active political rights, at any rate in the government of the country. But this would be a very narrow view to take. In the first place, a democratic country like England is ultimately governed by public opinion, and women who are not absolutely secluded must to a certain extent take their part in the formation of public opinion. In the second place the whole field of social life is indefinitely wider than that within which the direct or even the indirect control of the State is predominant, and in this larger field we all have our share of duties and responsibilities. It is in this wide sphere that we have to ask ourselves what things are within and what are beyond our power. And the answer we should give would generally be less simple than that of the Stoics I have been quoting, who would have almost limited personal responsibility to keeping the judgment fair and true and the inward pur- RESPONSIBILITY 173 pose high and pure. The Roman Stoics lived in a time when there was, generally speaking, very little political liberty. There was, certainly, in some quarters a good deal of beneficent public activity, but the idea of reforming the world, inwardly and outwardly, had not yet dawned. Even Christianity did not bring that idea to the forefront at first. To the earliest Christians the world seemed doomed, and was only to be renewed after a wholesale destruction. Yet Stoicism, with its grand idea of universal membership of the " dear city of Zeus/* as Marcus designates the universe, and still more Christianity, with its watchword of the " Kingdom of God/' had in germ, from the beginning, that motive power to- wards the amelioration or regeneration of social life which is active among us to-day. How far is each one of us responsible for the sin and misery of the world ? This is a danger- ously large question. One thing is clear : no one is individually responsible for the whole, or bound to attack all the sources of evil at once, en bloc, or to let his joy in what is good and beautiful fail, oppressed by the sight of the hateful and bad. But neither is any one free, from the highest moral point of view, to enjoy the good as if there were no evil. Possibly there are a few who make life happier for other people by avoiding all occasions for unhappiness themselves, but such, if they exist, form a very small minority. There are several unfortunate mistakes made by some conscientious people who are supremely 174 WITHIN OUR LIMITS anxious to leave the world better than they have found it. There are some who are so much struck by a particular source of evil that they ride full tilt at it, without considering their own special fitness to cope with it. The worst vices of society need combating by persons with great judgment and knowledge of human nature. A good will is not sufficient. And the tendency sometimes the fashion to attend solely to some conspicuous cause of evil may lead to the loss of much that is good. I have sometimes wondered whether the very natural and entirely justified desire to put an end to the existence of crushing poverty among us may not make people in- different to such objects as the pursuit of higher knowledge and the production of works of beauty, which need upholding if our life is not to become sordid and narrow. After all, the struggle of good against evil is one in its ultimate purpose, though the foes are scattered and may appear in divers places in the forms of brutality, of vicious extravagance, or of mere superficiality and unhealthy sentiment. Perhaps only a few of us are fit to storm the great strongholds of wickedness. But we are still active combatants if our life's work is to promote what we acknow- ledge to be good. Among the mistakes of worthy people just mentioned is that of failing to recognize the limit of their own physical powers. I have heard of busy people clergymen working in large and overcrowded parishes, or women RESPONSIBILITY 175 devoted to some engrossing branch of social work, who have persisted in going on without a holiday, on the pretext that they could not be spared, until they broke down utterly, and had to be spared for a far longer time. This all comes, I think, from an exaggerated sense of responsibility. The duty that lay on these people did not comprehend the impossible, and it did comprehend that of discerning and avoiding ultimate failure. It was not, perhaps, that their sense of responsibility was too strong, but that it was not widely directed. Yet after all, those are nearer the truth and stand higher in the order of being who realize their responsibilities in an exaggerated way than those who only realize them within a narrow circle. In one sense we have all to bear the burden which wrong-doing has laid upon the whole race. There is a profound truth at the bottom of the stern theological doctrine that the sin of Adam belongs to his whole race. We may feel personally free from the vices that have wrought havoc in social life, but we can hardly any of us claim to be free from all selfishness and indolence, and it is to selfishness and indolence embodied in somebody's acts that most of the misery in the world is due. If we in any degree share in the causes of the evil, we are in duty bound to share in the task of endeavouring to overcome the evil. Our responsibility is not, of course, in proportion to the harm we may have done, as in these considerations the ordinary 176 WITHIN OUR LIMITS rules as to proportion do not hold. The question for us is not how much we are bound to do, but how much, with our given constitutions, powers, and ability to improve both, we may conceivably be capable of doing. We need, then, to regard as our ideal that which is expressed in the epitaph of our princi- pal foundress, of " serving our generation by the will of God," and to reach it we have to consider carefully both what we may take as compre- hended in that will, and also what are our own special capacities for service. We have no right to shrink from any service except in the hope of doing a greater. Yet much that we would fain, if we were strong enough, try to put to rights must be set down as lying beyond our power. But what is to be our attitude of heart and mind towards the things that are not within our own power as to which we have no responsi- bilities or only slight ones ? The Stoic answer might seem to be that we should be indifferent that pain and sorrow, whether felt by ourselves or by others, even the badness of people whose badness we cannot correct, should not be allowed to perturb us, so long as we are walking in the paths of duty. But such an attitude is precluded by the feelings of humanity, and by the recognition of the unity of the race of man and the whole system of things, which formed a prominent part of the Stoic system, and a still stronger in the Christian. When all the sense of responsi- bility is removed, there must still be a sadness RESPONSIBILITY 177 in sympathy with the human and even animal pain, especially in those nearest us, and a joy in human goodness and in the beauty of creation and of art. These form a large part of our life, and they are certainly not without influence on the part which has to do with active duty. In a way, they even enter into the sphere of responsibility with regard to our own selves, as the ordering of our thoughts and feelings is a task for which, more than for any other, we are responsible. We are all, in the drama of life, both actors and spectators. And sometimes it is good for a time to take up the attitude of spectator pure and simple, if for no other reason, because it will react upon our practical life. But apart from any such intent, it is good to realize that, after all, we and all our actions and capabilities are infinitely small in comparison with universal nature. This would be a crushing and deadening thought if it were not tempered by a recognition that our little lives are not without significance in the life of the whole. Small indeed may be the actual amount which any of us can accom- plish upon the earth. But if it is in any way possible that man may be a co-worker with God, his failures may seem remediable and his achievements lasting. For his work is, after all, but God's work done in and through him. He cannot remake the world. But it may be his blessedness to believe that what he does is part of a process the end of which he sees not, but which he believes to be good. VIII RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE AND SOCIETIES FOR MAINTAINING IT (Mostly Read to a Newnham Gathering of the Society of the Annunciation) SOME time ago I undertook to give a brief address at a college gathering of a students* society the main object of which was to strengthen its members in regular habits of church-going, com- municating, prayer, and devotional reading. As I had reason to believe that the society was helpful to many members, I was glad to have an opportunity of pointing out those character- istics of the society in which, as it seemed to me, its usefulness consisted. I felt that whereas some college societies tended to distract the students' minds among a multitude of interests and obligations, this one tended or was bound to tend to concentration of mind on duties already acknowledged and to the raising of the tone of ordinary work rather than the multi- plication of spheres of activity. But the existence of the society and the particularity of its aims and constitution seemed to want some apology and interpretation. I give these exactly as I put them before the society, thus : To come to our society in its plain and 178 RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE 179 definite objects, we may say that it is based on two suppositions, the denial of either of which would make it useless : (i) that it is desirable to maintain some regular habits of religious observance ; and (2) that such observance is more effectually secured for some people, at least by membership in a society. (i) The first proposition is a truism to many, but it would not be admitted by all or even by all whom we should agree to call religious people. The formation of rules and habits suggests to many a lack of liberty and spontaneity. Why not leave to our own religious feelings the deter- mination of their own modes of expression, and trust our spiritual aspirations to seek satisfaction in their own way ? Louis Stevenson, when travelling in the Cevennes, and accepting for a few days the hospitality of some Trappist monks, was amused and disgusted at the rule posted in his room that at such-and-such a time the guests in retreat were expected to make good resolutions. To him it seemed that you "might as fruitfully talk of making your hair grow." Good resolutions cannot be made to order. They are the outcome of certain experiences, and the response of the will to what these experiences seem to suggest. Similarly, the deepest and most genuine utter- ances of prayer and praise are generally called forth in illuminating moments of great suffering or great exaltation, quite apart from formal religious exercises. Such exercises may be and often have been worse than useless to those who i8o WITHIN OUR LIMITS have practised them in a mechanical way. But whatever truth there may be in this view is not a final condemnation of all religious rules. It seems to me that the question rather resembles that of the training of teachers. A genius for teaching cannot be given by training, and an ideally good lesson cannot be made only by observing pedagogic maxims, while a really bad teacher is commonly said to be made worse by learning to trust to his rules. But between the geniuses and the fools there are a large number who profit by instruction in method and by the use, without abuse, of rules and practices in- culcated by experts. So it is with the yet larger system of religious thought and feeling. Some people have risen so high that they need no direc- tion, or times, or forms, but always live in an atmosphere of faith and prayer, conscious of the divine presence, and as little likely to lose that consciousness as to doubt their own existence or that of their dearest friends. And there are other people, who, whether by their own fault or by untoward circumstances, are unable to respond to any sursum corda, to whom religious forms are forms only, and observances a mechanical drill. But between these extremes there are a great many people who have some power of realizing the " unseen and eternal " behind the " seen and temporal/' and who have, at times, a real desire to do their duty as a task assigned them from above, but who are so easily distracted by the cares or the pleasures of life that they are in RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE 181 danger of succumbing to a low non-religious if not irreligious standard of life. The danger, for them, is best averted by perpetual reminders of principles, accepted but not sufficiently dwelt upon, and by opportunities of opening their hearts and minds to influences which make for faith, hope, and charity. What we are now considering belongs to the psychological side of religion. 1 It would be a mistake to suppose that that side was an inven- tion of the Pragmatists or of any modern school. From early days many great spiritual teachers have taught religious psychology, as M. Jourdain " talked prose " without knowing it. Notable among them is an Englishman whose works are, I believe, specially recommended to members of this society, William Law. Living in an age when religion seemed very disputatious in some quarters, dead-alive in others, formal and self-satisfied in most, he not only held up continually the highest possible ideal before all professing Christians, but explained in a thoroughly scientific way the means by which they, with their given mental and moral faculties and social conditions, might hope, if not to attain, at least to rise towards that ideal. He was never weary of insisting that Christianity does not reside in a series of acts or in an accept- ance of doctrines, but in a temper of mind which temper can only be produced by a system of 1 Of course the epoch-making books on religious psychology are Graingcr's Soul of a Christian and James's Varieties of Religious Experience. 182 WITHIN OUR LIMITS discipline, and all his rules of religious observance have a disciplinary character. We may at the present day find some of his theology obsolete, and some of the motives to which he appeals are not very potent with our generation. But his root -principle is one that must always appeal to the Christian consciousness, and his methods, being based on a sound knowledge of human nature, are capable of application in many cases which he did not foresee. The strengthening and purifying of character by the formation of healthy habits is a process familiar to us in all educational discussion, and it is of paramount importance in the case of religious habits and of the education which we have to impart to our adult selves. It may be a humiliat- ing fact, but it certainly is a fact, that acts only occasionally repeated or facts learned and not again referred to come to occupy a small part in our consciousness compared with those which frequent iteration has made too familiar for even temporary neglect. This is, of course, an admis- sion which cuts both ways. Religious habits, if they become mechanical, are a barrier against religious life rather than a channel for it to flow in. But there is no reason why they should become mechanical, at least where their use and significance are adequately realized where the self-educator reserves his right to vary them according to his own judgment whenever they seem to be lapsing into a clockwork rigidity. But beside, or sometimes concomitant with, RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE 183 rigidity, is another danger, which sets some people against religious rules that of unreality. We are all more or less familiar with the tendency in the Positivist school, though not there only, of trying to get a certain soothing influence out of musical services, religious poetry, and the other ritual or imaginative developments of Christianity, with- out taking its contents too seriously. Now with- out condemning this tendency, so long as it is not masquerading in false colours, we cannot, at best, regard it as anything but a pis-aller for genuine religious worship and religious discipline. Worship has, and should have, its aesthetic side, but unless it is more than aesthetic it will become poor and weak on that side as on every other. No rule of religious practice need ever degenerate into a use of narcotics. But, on the other hand, the fear of unreality may lead to an over-scrupulous rejection of much that might prove helpful. As we pass through various phases of thought and feeling in the course of our mental and spiritual progress, it may at times come about that obser- vances which once meant a good deal to us become vapid and unactual. Are we not then bound to discontinue them ? The question is a hard one, the answer to which must be given by the individual conscience. Here I would make a remark to those who fear lest they may become insincere in continuing to use forms which have, temporarily or permanently, lost some or all of their old significance : that all religious forms and all religious language are and must be symbolical. 184 WITHIN OUR LIMITS I do not say mere symbol, because such a phrase would seem to imply that what was symbolic could not be our nearest approach to reality. All churches and sects of churches have at times committed the mistake of trying to make all their members mean the same thing by what they said or did in common. Of course there must be some underlying agreement as to the significance of symbols, or they would cease to be a bond of union, or, indeed, to have any but a fancy signifi- cance at all ; but the history of religion shows in many instances how both doctrines and ceremonies have been differently interpreted in different ages without losing their power to bring great truths within the range of human apprehension. There should be the less danger of unreality in any routine of Christian observances because with us such observances are, essentially, a falling back on fundamental principles. It was an important practice with the Stoics to repeat ever and anon to themselves those truths with regard to the nature of good and evil, man's place in the cosmos, the nature and limits of human responsibility, which served them as guidance and security in all their life and thought. And similarly every Christian, in every act of worship and in every attempt at religious thought, is going back to primary truths. Most of us are rather impatient of truisms nowadays, and do not see the need for ever formulating afresh what we do not wish to dispute. But, perhaps for this very reason, it is sometimes almost quaint to see how often these RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE 185 truisms are forgotten in practice. We yield to irritation or fear when we ought to know that there is nothing to make us either angry or afraid. We say " I couldn't help it " after actions which our conscience declares to be within our power. We lose our sense of proportion, thinking a little thing which concerns us far more important than a great thing which concerns other people. Should we not be more free from such miserable incon- sistency and unrest if we took more trouble to drive home into our hearts and minds the truths which seem so evident that we are wearied by their very statement ? Now to return to our Society : its principle is that everybody should have a ride and that everybody should make that rule for herself, with only a few general indications such as at least all English church-people might easily accept. And it is, to my mind, in this elasticity as to rule that the great merit of our Society consists. Some people might think it too elastic to be of much good. But if there is any sense in what I have been trying to say, there is a world of difference between having some rule, whether an easy or a hard one, and having no rule at all. And a great many abuses of rule-keeping are obviated by allowing scope for individual requirements. It is with spiritual as with physical life. We are so different that " one man's meat is another man's poison/' although bread does not kill people of normal constitutions, and arsenic in large quantities does not nourish 13 186 WITHIN OUR LIMITS them. Similarly, while some things are almost universally good or bad for our spiritual health, we must allow for individual differences. Neglect of this principle has often done great harm. People who cannot keep their attention fixed during a prolonged service, especially in a stuffy church, had better attend shorter ones than scold themselves and injure their health, while attempting to use what may be good for their friends but not for them. And books which are eminently profitable for some persons may be unintelligible or insipid to others. I do not mean that we should take our present capacities as fixed, and avoid permanently any religious exercise which is not easy and pleasant. But the progress we hope to make can only be attained gradually, and to expect to reach it at one bound is unwise perhaps presumptuous. It seems, then, unnecessary to say very much about the formation of a rule which is meant to be adapted to each member according to her needs. But there are one or two points about which a rule seems particularly helpful, and is especially enjoined on our members. One is the habit of churchgoing. It seems to me that people are nowadays extremely slack in this respect, and that a great many who call them- selves church-people have no feeling of duty in the matter. In a great many cases there may be reasons which entirely justify their abstinence. In fact, this is a point on which I think we should studiously avoid severe judgments. But when RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE 187 people acknowledge, in a general way, that they suppose themselves to be church-goers, and have no scruples that keep them from joining in public worship, yet are always ready, if they have a week-end visitor, or if the weather is unusually wet or unusually fine, to stay away from church and spend the time in novel-reading or gossip, they seem to me to be lacking in their duty both to themselves and to the church of which they are members. It may be that persons likely to belong to this society are likely also to have acquired habits of church-going and not to require any warning on the subject. But habits are easily lost, especially among people suddenly withdrawn from the routine of family or school life and thrown on their own responsi- bilities, and therefore a rule which ensures their continuance may be useful. The other point is that of keeping up the habit of reading books directly helpful towards spiritual and moral improvement. This is just one of the things that tends to be crowded out of a busy life, and yet one that can ill be spared. I am thinking chiefly of the kind of books usually recommended to members of this society : not so much works of biblical criticism, though, from another point of view, these are eminently desirable ; nor yet Christian apologetics, which may or may not be morally stimulating ; but rather books like those of Law, already men- tioned, of Kingsley, Robertson, Goulburn, and some of the early German mystics like Tauler, i88 WITHIN OUR LIMITS and the author of the Theologia Germanica. They seem a very varied company when we try to recall them to remembrance, but are alike in the great and notable point that their wisdom comes from personal experience, and is therefore practical and lasting. There is one more point on which I must touch in this connection. This society shows itself to be free from any party spirit from being liable to be called either High Church or Low Church in the attitude it takes towards Holy Communion. It supposes, naturally and rightly, that its members are regular communi- cants and take this part of their churchmanship very seriously. It provides for corporate com- munions, and these are perhaps the part of the society which some of us value most. But it lays down no rule about frequent or comparatively infrequent communion, and leaves the question of fasting, and of the observance of festivals, to each one's reason and conscience. I think we ought to be thankful that a church society can with us be formed on so broad a basis. (2) But it is time for me to turn from the general question of a religious rule to that of the need for having a society to help towards its observance. I remember that when the society was first started some people said : "It may be all very true that it is good to go to church and read helpful books, and do all the other things you mention, but can't you do them without forming a society to help you ? " Doubt- RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE 189 less the indefinite multiplication of societies at the present day is, as we have already allowed, a sign of weakness, but if we are weak, why not try to help one another by combination ? It is certain that a very strong and helpful mutual sympathy arises among people when they find that they are aiming at a common goal, and often they cannot find this out except by means of a society like ours. Of course if membership in such a society had any kind of exclusiveness, or feeling of fancied superiority towards those who are unwilling or unable to join it, any good that it might do would be counteracted by a greater evil. But I think there is no need for such a result all the less because, as I have said, it is the best and strongest, not the slack and weak people, who will be beyond the need of joining, and so generally remain outsiders. Then we may feel the less ashamed of requiring the support of a society if we consider that the Church of England does not provide for the individual discipline of its members in the same way as do the Roman and the Greek, and some English Nonconformist bodies. In churches where membership depends on communion and communion must be preceded by confession, or in more democratic bodies where the spiritual welfare of each is made the affair of all, one is less likely to become self-negligent and slack than one is among us. I am not, of course, thinking of the merely nominal adherents of the great historic churches, but of those who are WITHIN OUR LIMITS bona-fide and active members. And I am not proposing that our Church ought to undertake the task of spiritual direction of the adult laity. If the task could be taken in hand, by competent persons, and worked in all loyalty and sincerity, I cannot but think that a great gap would be filled. But if, as I fear, such a desire is chimerical, we have the more scope for lesser societies to help in what has been, and in some place still is held to be, the work of the Church. One aspect of the society must be considered in relation to its usefulness : it is a society of students. Now I have often heard people of excellent intentions give exhortation to students on the supposition that they were liable to dangers of a different not to say opposite kind from those which we, who look at student life from within, know to be there. There is very little I had almost said too little fear lest the desire of knowledge and the tendency to look at things on the intellectual side only should crowd out all our religious aspirations as well as our domestic affections. If, as may very often be the case, the religious faculties do not develop pari passu with the intellectual in this place, it is not that the intellectual develop too fast, but that they are able to make a better stand than the former against the common enemies of both. And these enemies are pretty much the same with us as with other people, though they fight with different weapons in different fields. The chief of them are distraction and slackness. There is so much RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE 191 of excitement in the varied interests of a large community that it needs some steadiness of mind to keep within a beaten path, and a dis- traught mind naturally becomes slack, especially at the present day, when a certain lassitude is accepted as inevitable in most sections of society. This acceptance is contrary to the early traditions of our colleges, the founders of which led strenuous lives that we might enjoy and hand on the fuller life which they had made possible for us. Now I feel that college life, more than any other life, needs the temper which societies like ours are meant to foster, in order that it may not fall short of its high vocation. Our purpose here is the pursuit of knowledge. And when we think what a noble thing that pursuit can be, we must feel ashamed to see how often it is disgraced by mean associations or retarded by idleness or apathy. It is so easy for us, under pressure of circumstances, to reverse the action of George Herbert's housemaid who " made drudgery divine," and to turn work which has seemed to some worthy of the name " divine " into the poorest drudgery. Now a religious society com- posed of students ought to act upon studies and put them on a religious basis. There have been times in which religion and study were very closely allied, other times in which the alliance was dissolved, to the great detriment of both parties. By being students, and by belonging to this society, we testify our loyalty to the two causes combined. Our studies, whether of 192 WITHIN OUR LIMITS or of nature, can only be carried on profitably if taken up in a religious spirit. Our religion, if, according to our collect, it takes the form of " cheerful readiness " to accomplish the tasks assigned us, needs all the help that all our studies can give us. Surely our duty as students is to strive ourselves and to help all those within our reach, towards better modes of living, and especi- ally towards better ways of thinking. For thought is at the root of life, and those who in their student life have learned to think reasonably and soberly, with reverent and fearless regard for all truth, and freedom so far as possible from tendencies to self-deception or to hasty conclu- sions, are able and are bound to do more than others in this particular way of advancing the Kingdom of God in the hearts and minds of men. Does this seem vague and high-flown ? Then let us come back to the simple and evident pur- pose of our society, which, after all, is as lofty a one for each of us as is conceivably possible. For it should keep before our minds the thought of a Presence ever abiding with us which can ennoble the commonplace things of life, repair our failures, keep us from despair in our dark moments, and restore us when we are weak and faint. And if, even in a slight measure, the society attains that end, we may well feel thank- ful to have it among us here, IX HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES (Introductory Lecture to Historical Students of Newnham College) FOR people beginning any new undertaking, or opening up for themselves a new path of life and thought, with new difficulties, interests, and ideals, it is a good thing to stop first and see where they are and what they want to do, in order that they may do it as well as possible. Now I would not imply that history is a new subject of study to any of you here. But there is and ought to be a difference between the school study of his- tory and that followed at a university, though, of course, good school preparation counts for a great deal in enabling one to follow a university course satisfactorily. I am inclined to think that there are many different ways in which one may approach the subject of one's university course which may be more or less good though there are some which are undeniably bad. Any one who has been accustomed to regard any branch of knowledge as a kind of racecourse, in which one's object is to cover ground somehow, and enable oneself to answer the kind of questions that an examiner is likely to set, has made a bad beginning. It is 193 194 WITHIN OUR LIMITS always a comfort to the teacher to realize that the mercenary idea of learning, even from a mer- cenary point of view, is unproductive. My ex- perience of examiners and examinations, which is of many years' standing, leads me to believe that except where barbaric methods survive good places are generally obtained by students who work on good lines, while well-merited disappoint- ment falls to the lot of those who keep examination results in view all through their course. I do not recommend so heroic a course as that of a total ignoring of future examinations by teachers and students. It is our business to consider care- fully how your work should be arranged with a view to university standards and requirements, and the less you think about the subject the better, both for your own education and even for your future careers. But leaving these low and mean considerations where they safely may be left, on one side, I want to say a few words as to the relation of his- torical studies to the other studies pursued at this university. I think it is a great advantage for you that in this college, as in the university, you are always in the society of students, and of students working at other subjects than your own. It is, I fear, an exploded error that the university took its name from being a place of universal or all-round study. But though this notion is based on false etymology, it points to a true and fruitful principle : that all studies help one another, and that all kinds of students may HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES 195 help one another. For we cannot, as in the good old times when the fields of knowledge were few and scantily cultivated, accomplish, each one individually, the whole course of knowledge the trivium first and then the quadrivium. But it is a pity that we should lose the broader outlook on life and things that some of the old-world scholars had. Specialism in studies, if carried beyond a certain point, must tend to narrowness unless somehow counteracted. There are two ways in which it may be resisted : by a broad basis of all-round teaching in schools ; and by comrade- ship of adult students in different departments. And this second means we have in the studies pursued here. We benefit in two ways : by learn- ing to apply in our particular fields the methods and principles which are chiefly used in some other ; and also by intercourse with minds which are of a somewhat different type from our own. I do not mean, by this last suggestion, to imply that all the minds of those who take up any line of study are of the same type. A great many other things than natural bent decide us as to our several courses. Even in the case of one sub- ject, such as history, one may be drawn to it from very different points of view. Some people have chiefly the antiquarian liking for history. They are attracted to it by a desire to know how cer- tain things have come to be as they are now, just as the geologist seeks to know how the different kinds of rock have come to occupy their present positions, or the botanist wants to account for 196 WITHIN OUR LIMITS the distribution of flora. To know the causes of things is the great desire of the scientific mind, irrespectively of the use to which that knowledge may be turned. Others, again, are drawn to his- torical studies by the hope that they may throw light on the path of political or civic duty, whether for those actually engaged in governmental work or for private citizens. Or, again, there are those perhaps a larger proportion than the others to whom the attraction is personal and human. They want to increase their field of human acquain- tances, and to share sympathetically in the life of other times and societies ; they read history from the same motives that make them want to go to parties, or to visit fresh places. This class includes all those whose interest in history is of the romantic kind ; who find present life mono- tonous and often ugly, and who feel refreshed by the vision of stirring times and characters and picturesque manners and situations. Now I do not think that any of these attrac- tions is to be despised, but we all need to come under the influence of them all, at least to a certain extent. The purely scientific historian, without practical or human interests, is likely not only to prove dull to less scientific persons, but to fail on his own ground, because, in order to establish his general principles, he needs a vast number of details, and details are not easily collected nor adequately appreciated, in human affairs, except by such as have warm human sympathies. It is said that a large measure of HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES 197 imagination is necessary to make any great scien- tific discoverer, and I am sure that it is wanted to make a good historian. Then, again, the practical or political historian is likely to fail lamentably if he has not a good deal of the scien- tific spirit, and also a wide acquaintance with human beings and institutions, both of the past and of the present. One is tired of seeing especially in the daily press warnings and sug- gestions supposed to be drawn from historical experience ( e.g. as to land valuation), but which a deeper study of historical conditions would show to be quite irrelevant. But, after all, the human student of history (if I may use the expression) needs to learn to take the scientific standpoint, and again his subject tends to become remote or unactual if he does not also, occasionally at least, look at things on the practical side. Of course there are some historical philosophers who would entirely exclude this " human " class of readers from the ranks of serious students. The late Professor Seeley, whose influence on historical studies at Cambridge was at one time very strong, used to warn such people off the fields of history, and bid them keep to romances. But I think he overlooked the fact that it makes an immense difference to the way in which we regard ^things whether or no we believe in the veracity of a story, be it ever so interesting. In fact, the interest is immensely increased, for the normal mind, by the probability or certainty that 198 WITHIN OUR LIMITS it is true. Even a romance is more pleasing to most of us if we know that its historical setting is in accordance with facts and with conditions that once actually prevailed. I dare say there are a good many people who have no feeling at all of this kind, but I think I am safe in saying that to all voluntary students of history, the pleasures of the imagination consist chiefly in reconstructing the life of the past so as to bring it, or a portion of it, as near as possible to what we may reasonably hold to have once actually existed. But this use of the imagination needs to be checked and trained by habits of sound scientific study, and by regard to truth above all things. When it is not so checked, we have pictures of life unlike anything that ever has been or is ever likely to be : witness the number of indifferent historical novels that are constantly issuing from the press, and that would do no harm if, to many who read them and some who write them, they did not stand for a reproduction of real history. Each type of historical students is generally attached more to one department of history than another : the scientific to the study of origins a fascinating road with many pitfalls; the practical to recent or at least modern develop- ments ; the human to times of intellectual and moral stir, to the rise and development of new ideas, sentiments, and motives. Yet we all follow the same methods, and have the same need of patience, thoroughness, and effort after HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES 199 accuracy. It is with history as with travel : some travel for scientific purposes, others on commercial undertakings, others again simply for the pleasure of seeing the world. But they all need good roads and railways and steamship services, with convenient arrangements for bag- gage and with a good police system to maintain security. So all historians need facilities for acquiring data, and for arranging and assigning the right importance to their data when found. We see, then, that in the character and objects of historical minds there are both unity and diversity. And this unity and diversity, as I suggested at the outset, are to be found in studies generally, historical and other. What I have been saying may suggest that some historical students may find themselves more in sympathy with students of certain non-historical subjects, while other historical students are more closely bound to those working in other fields. But in all fields of intellectual labour there is room for friendly co-operation. This applies not only to the learned world at large, but to students working side by side, but along different lines, in one university, and even in one college. The studies of this university that seem most akin to the historical are those concerned with languages and literatures. As you most of you know, a considerable acquaintance with the general history of the Greeks and Romans is expected in all candidates for the Classical Tripos. In our college historical and classical 200 WITHIN OUR LIMITS students have for many years attended lectures on Ancient History together, and the plan has worked very well. As far as familiarity with the outlines was concerned, the needs of both kinds of students are identical. Generally speaking, historical students require a knowledge of ancient history in relation to universal history, as illus- trating the character of those peoples of the ancient world who have had the greatest formative influence on after times, and as enabling us to trace the course of development of European civilization from a distant, though not the re- motest possible, epoch. Classical students are bound to take up the subject chiefly from another point of view as necessary for the comprehension of Greek and Latin literature. The needful knowledge, however, is the same in both cases, though perhaps historical students may help their classical friends by taking a wider sweep of the subject, and classical students may help the historical by being more closely in touch with the literary sources. Personally, I feel very strongly that ancient history ought to form an important part in both curricula. The student of history whose knowledge does not extend beyond modern times, with some vague notions about the Middle Ages, is as badly equipped as an art critic who only looks at the pictures in the Royal Academy. And a student of any literature is bound to be a dabbler unless he has some knowledge of the people who produced that literature, and the process by which it grew up. HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES 201 Of course the study of the languages them- selves, strongly insisted on in Cambridge, gives some scientific basis to linguistic studies here. But apart from the consideration that phil- ology has itself many points of contact with history it is often found that people who are eager to study literature do not take much interest in philology, and for such people their studies can only become sound and satisfactory if followed in a historical spirit. If any of you have ever attended literature lessons under a teacher who had no particular realization of the successive historical influences and circumstances which produced or modified the character of each great author in turn, you may have felt inclined to say as some people have said that literature like virtue cannot be taught as a subject. Of course one may find in the writings of men of genius luminous ideas or finely expressed feelings which one receives gladly quite apart from any thought of the period or nation to which the author belonged. But these choice morsels do not constitute an organic whole. We may love them, we may live by them, without knowing or caring where they come from but in that case, it is as men or women that we receive them, not as students of literature. Literature as a subject must be studied historically if it is to be studied seriously. This brings me to a point which I would like to make evident to classical students. In these days, when so many people think little of the 14 202 WITHIN OUR LIMITS wisdom of past ages in comparison with that of to-day, and^are anxious for results, whether moral or material, as the test of all mental labour, the respect for classical studies is waning, and there is a fear lest they should die a gradual death. To the man in the street they seem objectless, and wanting in seriousness. Now is not the one hope for these studies to show that they are serious because they are historical that the laws of development are to be traced in them just as much as in the natural sciences that the great literatures of antiquity are to be studied not because they belong to antiquity, but because they are great, and because the knowledge of them means knowledge of human life and progress ? But I may leave this thought for you to develop for yourselves I would only add that I have often regretted that the framers of the Modern and Mediaeval Languages Tripos did not, like the reformers of the Classical Tripos, insist on some knowledge of the history of the peoples whose literature was to be studied. Perhaps the reason is that as the French and Germans are still with us, we are not likely to forget their existence, whereas a student who has not been taught history might acquire a certain amount of what passes for classical knowledge with a very im- perfect notion as to who the Greeks and Romans were and what they did. Next to the study of languages and literatures, those that seem as taken up here to have most affinity to history are the science of econo- HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES 203 mics and those which are grouped together as the moral sciences. Economics used, before its promoters had put it on an independent footing here, to come partly under Moral Science and partly under History. There is still a certain amount of history especially recent history prescribed for students of economics, and economic history enters largely into our Historical Tripos. I believe that most teachers of economics would say that acquaintance with historical methods and a fairly wide knowledge of historical fact is highly desirable for those who take up that subject. I am inclined to think that the whole subject is far more educative if those who take it up do not specialize too early. For though economic considerations often go a long way towards explaining the course of the world's history, and the state of things in the world as it is now, these considerations are complicated by a great many others that have to do with man on his other-than-economic sides. Those who have studied history have certainly had to do with various sides of the complicated creature, man. This remark brings one to the comparison of the moral sciences with the historical. Some knowledge of psychology, and especially the psychological "way of looking at things, is necessary for the historian, though his psychology may not have been definitely obtained from directly psychological study. And history affords to the psychologist his chief field for observing human nature, so as to discern its 204 WITHIN OUR LIMITS laws and to illustrate their operation. Ethics is another subject that is generally familiar to the historian. Almost all historians feel inclined to express occasionally an ethical judgment on historical characters and actions, though a few would say that this is no part of their business. The ordinary student, in reading history as in observing human life, feels compelled to approve or condemn as he goes on. True, if he reads widely, he soon becomes less sure about a good many of his moral judgments, and learns to modify the details of his moral standard, as he applies it to distant ages and societies. But the principles are there, and he does not gather them from his historical reading, however much he may think that he discerns them there. If the historian needs ethics, the student of ethics needs history. The history of ethics is now generally regarded as necessary to the understanding of its principles and distinctions, and the moral, like the economic, history of mankind cannot be separated from the history of human development in general. There are two other studies grouped under the head of the moral, or the mental and moral sciences, to which the historical student often feels attracted, and to which he must always owe a great deal logic, and philosophy proper. Now some acquaintance with logic is desirable for all studies I often regret that students of our college do not more often take it instead of the alternative subject as a preliminary and for history more than for some others, because HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES 205 history is a subject on which very loose reasoning is commonly indulged, and blatant fallacies are rampant. This applies, perhaps, more to the political and other practical statements supposed to be based on history, but it is true also of the way in which history is constructed. A good historian, like a good man of science, may generally follow the rules of logic without having learned them. But even for the logical mind logical training is desirable, and for the less logical mind it might prove beneficial in a high degree. The relation of philosophy to history is, of course, a very wide subject. In one sense, history may not seem to have more to do with philosophy than most other subjects have. What philosophy, generally speaking, does for all branches of knowledge is to co-ordinate them by supplying the general principles which lie at the root of all knowledge. Now history is a study of the concrete, just as much as geology or astronomy, and it might seem that for the plain man, who wants to study history in a plain way, philosophy had better be left on one side. Yet the fact remains that a large proportion of his- torical students have a very great wish to get to general principles such as they cannot find within the limits of history proper. We desire to find connecting links running through all history, perhaps to resolve all history into the working out of a few uniform processes. A good many people have tried to formulate a law 206 WITHIN OUR LIMITS of human progress ; others have thought they saw in history a system of cycles, by which things return periodically to the same point from which they started. It is to be observed that, as a rule, those who have cared most about finding what they might regard as a philosophic explanation of history have greatly undervalued the difficulty of constructing a veracious and comprehensive historical narrative. Theoretical and speculative historians sometimes remind one of the French writer on cookery, who considered the catching of the hare as an unimportant and easy process compared to that of cooking it. History, generally speaking, is still engaged in the task of catching the hare. At the same time the correlation of historical facts, with regard to their relative significance, implies a sense of the organic unity of the subject which only a philosophic mind can, on any large scale, seem competent to supply. A good many of the unifying ideas applied to historical facts prove, on examination, to be suggestive rather than complete. I do not think that a satisfactory formula to express the development and decline of civilization has ever been found, and philosophy needs to go farther still, and explain man's place in the universe. Yet no efforts to obtain general principles are ever quite lost. We need in history, more even than in other subjects, to beware of coming to be unable to see the wood for the trees. History pure and simple cannot give us a philosophy of history. But no philosophy of history is in any HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES 207 way satisfactory that does not agree with the results of real historical labour and research. Somewhat similar remarks apply to theology as to ethics, since it is now regarded as in great part a historical science, though of course it can never become completely one, any more than ethics can. I think it is becoming more and more a recognized principle that theological students need a good historical training. Apart from the necessity now generally acknowledged of comparing Christianity with other religions, such students cannot possibly understand how the Early Church grew up unless they know a good deal about the Roman Empire, nor can they grasp the meaning of creeds and formulas, or the controversies to which they have given rise, without having studied the general European and Oriental culture which prevailed at the beginning of the Christian era and the condition of governments and peoples during the Middle Ages. But if theologians are thus dependent on the labours of the historian, historians are also much indebted to the theologians and to all who have examined into the religious conceptions and institutions that have, at different periods, in- fluenced societies and formed ideals. In Cam- bridge the distinction between secular and religious history has, happily, been long ago broken down. You will find that the same professors and readers are lecturing to theological and to his- torical men, and that very often the same course of lectures is attended by both kinds of student. 208 WITHIN OUR LIMITS When we come to the natural sciences, you will see that, generally speaking, their subject- matter is different from that of the historian, though even here there is common ground as e.g. in geographical studies, which have their purely physical side, and also that in which they touch human beings and social progress. But on the other hand, natural and historical students are mutually indebted as to methods and points of view. Some principles now acknowledged in human sciences had first been applied in those of nature. Most particularly the doctrine of evolution is now applied to societies and nations as much as to classes of plants and animals. Also the logical methods according to which knowledge has been and is being accumulated and built up into sciences were acknowledged as prevailing in the natural world before they were seen to be likewise the only means of progress in human and social studies. Of course I do not mean to say that knowledge of natural things has always preceded inquiry into human nature. Among the earliest thinkers, speculations as to man and as to nature, and the traditional wisdom about both, were a good deal intermixed. The earliest Ionic philosophers were some of them even practical politicians. But I suppose we may say that the hindrances to clear thought and to reasonable deductions from observation were sooner eliminated in the field of purely material knowledge. The necessity of defining terms and of discerning exactly what conclusion can be HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES 209 deduced from one's premises is more evident, perhaps, in physical than in moral science, though we must not forget that the first philosopher to insist on complete definition and close argument Socrates preferred the study of man to that of nature. The possibility of employing ex- perimental methods in the natural sciences has made it possible for them to advance more steadily than the others. In any case I think we may say that modern historians have been greatly influenced by the naturalists in demanding evidence for facts and confirmation of hypotheses, as well as in their general conception of develop- ment and progress. There is one great branch of knowledge which seems at present less allied to history than are the other sciences : I mean mathematics. In history we do not look for quantitative results. Of course astronomy is a help to chronology, and algebraic methods may often be applied to economic statistics. But generally speaking, mathematicians do not seem to have much in common with historians, either as to method or as to subject-matter. I do not of course mean that none of you are likely to benefit intellectually from intercourse with mathematical friends. They will at least impress you with the need of con- centration in thought, and of eliminating all that is irrelevant in trying to solve any problem. Possibly you may find other services to be received from mathematical persons, and you may be able to render services to them by reason even of 210 WITHIN OUR LIMITS the differences between your habitual objects of thought and theirs. I might, of course, bring in the consideration of other subjects, but what I have said is enough, I hope, to set your minds working on the give- and-take relations between historical and non- historical or not-specially-historical studies. I have purposely chosen the word studies rather than sciences (except occasionally, or in speaking of historical or human sciences, about which there is no dispute) because I wanted to postpone the question whether history is to be counted as a science or whether it comes in under the arts. To this question I wish very briefly to direct your attention. I often regret the very strange use made of the terms sciences and arts by those who have drawn up the regulations of our younger universi- ties. In old times the distinction hardly existed : all of the Seven Liberal Arts were what we should now call sciences. And in Cambridge the degrees of Master of Arts and Bachelor of Arts are given to those who have attained proficiency in mathematics and the natural sciences as well as to those who have devoted their attention to language and literature. But there is need for a differentiation, and the one which we learned when I first studied logic and method in the seventies was a very clear and useful one : Sciences are bodies of knowledge, of ascertained uniformities among things material or immaterial. Exact sciences enable us to predict future events. HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES 211 Others allow of prediction only with provisos, but all enable the student to reason from the known to the unknown. The laws of science are expressed in the indicative mood. Arts, on the other hand, are bodies of rules telling you what to do in order to obtain certain ends. They speak in the imperative mood. Every art, when it has gone beyond the empirical stage, is based on science, yet it is not the case that each art has a corresponding science, for some arts are based on a good many sciences, and some sciences afford direction for a good many arts. Now this distinction is a clear and useful one. When we want to say whether a study is a science or an art, we have only to ask whether we take it up in order to know all that we can know about a certain kind of phenomena, or whether because we want to find out how to accomplish certain ends. Thus botany is a science, agri- culture is an art ; mathematics are a science, engineering and navigation are arts ; psychology is a science, education is an art. In all of these cases the art cited is partly based on the science named before it, partly on other sciences. Now, according to this distinction, history is certainly not an art. There are many arts which look for some measure of guidance to history especially practical politics, or the art of ruling, but no art which is simply applied history. In a sense it is a science, since it is a body of know- ledge methodically arranged. But it does not present us with a set of principles or laws deter- 212 WITHIN OUR LIMITS mining the relations of the things that form its subject-matter. True, people talk of laws of history and laws of human progress, but these are not definitely established like the laws of other sciences, except in the case of such evident uniformities like the decay of nations through corrupt government, or the tendency of the military spirit to produce despotism as lie on the surface of things, and even so need a good deal of qualification. And it is a remarkable thing that the people who think they have got to laws in history or in human progress are, as already suggested, very seldom the great his- torians much oftener the philosophical theorists whose knowledge of history is comparatively superficial. I should prefer to say that history was a science of the explanatory or descriptive type, its object being to ascertain, as far as possible, the course of human events that have been of importance in the growth and decline of human civilization, and to explain the causal connections existing among these events. Thus in the old, and as I consider the only correct, use of the words history is not an art, but a science a descriptive and comparative science which is concerned with the past, not with the present and future. It might also be regarded as a portion of the whole science of man as a social being of anthropology, if that term had not been restricted to uncivilized man or of sociology (if that most barbarously formed word has come to stay), with the proviso that, HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES 213 so far as material and results go, the part seems in this case ever so much larger than the whole ! The paradox is attributable to the sociologists. But in the loose and incorrect use of the words science and art, history stands on the verge of both. It is studied by strictly scientific and logical methods, yet it has human interests. It has, as we have already seen, always been closely allied with literature. But literature too, if studied at all, must, we have said, be studied scientifically. The dangers of representing history as science and science only are, in the first place, to make it seem more definite in principles and results than it can ever be ; in the second place, to narrow its sphere to the comprehension of political relations only; and in the third place, to deter from the study of it a good many seriously minded people whose interest in it is mainly of the human and imaginative kind. On the other hand, to put history with the arts is to make it seem a less serious study than it should be, and to give it more or less a character of dilet- tantism. But, after all, names are not everything, and I wish to end these remarks with something more encouraging than a dispute about nomenclature. I consider that, after all, the great advantage of the study of history is to give students the historical point of view : to enable them to regard every period of past history as a link in a chain, reaching back to the farther and on to a nearer past, and to look on their present life as 214 WITHIN OUR LIMITS the result of forces which have worked through the past and which will continue to work in the future. It is not, of course, only the special students of history who are able, more or less, to reach this standpoint, but if there were no special students of history, fewer still would be likely to catch the historical spirit. Thus speciali- zation in study, if combined with comradeship in studies, so far from tending to narrowness, may help to widen the intellectual horizon of us all, if only we retain enthusiasm for our chosen line of thought and work along with genuine respect for those of our fellow students. X A FIFTH-CENTURY PRECURSOR OF MATTHEW ARNOLD (Reprinted from " The Modern Churchman ") "!F Christ were God only, and took the beginning of His existence from the Virgin, from that fact the Virgin alone might be named and called ' God-bearer ' as one who had by nature given birth to God. But if Christ is God and Man, the former from everlasting (for He never began to be, since He is co-eternal with the Father), the latter since these last days, in which He has been produced from human nature, it behoves whosoever would hold to a doctrinal accuracy, in weaving titles for the Virgin, to make a clear distinction between that which results from the union [of God and Man] and that which pertains to nature [or human birth]. But if any one wishes to speak after the manner of panegyrists, and to compose hymns, and to set forth praises, and if he desires to make forcible use of the most dignified appellations, not by way, as I have said, of stating doctrine, but in order to set forth with the highest glorification the greatness of the mystery, let him glorify his desire, and use the high-sounding titles ; 215 216 WITHIN OUR LIMITS let him express his wonder and adoration. For we find many instances of this tendency in orthodox teachers ; only let the principle of moderation be observed" * These are the words of Theodore! of Cyrrhus, a combatant in the Nestorian Controversy, and to the modern student of that dreary conflict they may appear as an oasis in the desert. For, unlike most of the writings to which they belong, they seem to pierce to the root of the matter, and to point to a distinction which, if observed, would allow scope for clearness of thought combined with toleration of variety in expression. The question, of course, was as to the one or the twofold nature in Christ, and the term OZOTOKOS (which I prefer to translate by God-bearer rather than by the more blatant Mother of God) was the catchword in the controversy. May one use that term of the Virgin Mary ? " Yes," say Cyril and the Alexandrians, " for Christ is one and is God." " No," say the most decided Nestorians, " for it is Christ as man, not as God, that was born of a woman." " No," says Theodoret, " if you want to be theologically accurate, but yes if you speak poetically and with emotion." He, being at once a theologian and a man of letters, discerned the distinction between the language of literature and the language of dogma. For this reason I have called him a precursor of Matthew Arnold. 1 Theodoret of Cyrrhus to the Monks of Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia. Ep. 151. M.P.G. 83. A PRECURSOR OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 217 The analogy must not be pressed too far, especially as the attitude taken up towards dogma by Theodoret was very unlike that of Matthew Arnold, in that he believed, as Matthew Arnold did not, that dogma can serve as a definite and scientific statement of divine truth. Nor did Theodoret entirely grasp the possible extension and manifold applications of the rules here laid down. Neither does he, in religious controversy, always rise above the reckless scurrility which marks the discussions of that time. But good men ought to be judged with some regard to their high-water mark, and the high-water mark of Theodoret was far above the average. To understand him and his principles, we must bear in mind that not only was he, as just now said, theologian and man of letters : there were two more characters he had to present the ascetic, and the ecclesiastical statesman. As he was born about 390 and died about 460 A.D., his life fills the first half of the stormy fifth century, with a margin on either side. His parents, who belonged to the Syrian Antioch, were pious folk, and from his childhood he fre- quented the society of solitary recluses, to one of whom, moved by pity to pray that a virtuous lady's longing for a child might be gratified, Theodoret owed, he thought, his own birth. After he had lost his parents, he lived for a time in monastic seclusion. Meantime he received a good Greek education, and even became acquainted with some oriental languages. He acquired the style of 15 2i8 WITHIN OUR LIMITS writing, bristling with both classical and biblical quotations, which was in vogue among the clergy of his day. In the interpretation of scripture, he naturally followed the more literal, Antiochene method in preference to the allegorical which marked the rival school of Alexandria. Besides his Commentaries, he wrote a Church History, still of great value to ecclesiastical students. In 423 (circ.) he was appointed to the bishopric of Cyrrhus in Syria (between Mt. Amanus and the Euphrates) . There he had to follow a different kind of life, as administrator and general advocate of good order. In those days, when the Goths were overrunning the West and threatening the East, the Vandals were establishing themselves in Africa and persecuting Catholic Christians, the Huns were devastating Asia and Europe, and there was threatening unrest in the lands farther east while the old municipal system had fallen into decay, and the work of defence could be but inadequately maintained every bishop who had any character and ability was called to be in a special sense the shepherd of his people. And Theodoret seems to have done his duty nobly by the diocese assigned to him. He husbanded the ecclesiastical revenues and supplied the city with two bridges, a better water supply and drainage system, and even public baths for some at least of the Greek Fathers, however ascetically inclined, were not averse to personal cleanliness. This we have on his own testimony : we might prefer to have learned it from others A PRECURSOR OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 219 but Theodoret was a Greek, and besides, he needed on more than one occasion to defend himself against the charges of his enemies. He wrote to the regent Pulcheria (elder sister of the Emperor Theodosius II) to entreat that the burdens on the city might be lightened. He exerted himself, by writing elegant letters to influential persons, on behalf of at least one sufferer at the hands of the Vandals. He was also a powerful and eloquent preacher. In 430 began the active opposition of Cyril Patriarch of Alexandria to Nestorius of Con- stantinople. Nestorius was a friend of Theodoret and belonged to the same school of thought a school from which the aspersions of heresy have been entirely removed by modern theo- logical historians. 1 Theodoret was present at the Council of Ephesus in 431, at which Nestorius was deposed, a proceeding against which he protested with all the energy of his nature, joining the opposition council of the Antiochenes, and striving, though in vain, to secure a fair hearing for his side at the imperial court. When John Bishop of Antioch gave up his opposition and came to a kind of compromise with the Alexan- drians, Theodoret stood aloof, since the accommo- dation would have involved a condemnation on his part of Nestorius himself. In his vehement opposition to Alexandria, Theodoret was influenced by fidelity to the principles of the Antiochene school and Nestorius himself ; partly too, no 1 See Bethune Baker, Nestorius and his Teaching. 220 WITHIN OUR LIMITS doubt, by anger against the masterful conduct of Cyril and his successor Dioscorus, who sought to place the Alexandrian See above all others. Through what seem to have been somewhat frivolous accusations on the part of his opponents, Theodoret was confined to his diocese and (happily for himself) unable to attend the " Robber Council " at Ephesus in 449, at which Dioscorus of Alexandria and his tumultuous followers carried everything their own way and all friends of Nestorius were deposed. Two years later, at Ghalcedon, when the doctrinal controversy was settled on the basis of the " Tome " of Pope Leo, and Dioscorus was condemned and deposed, Theodoret was reinstated, but at the cost of his consenting to condemn Nestorius by name. The doctrine of Nestorius and that of the " Tome " were not fundamentally different, and Theodoret had not to deny any of his convictions. He assented for the sake of restoring peace to the Church but peace obtained at the cost of fidelity to friends is an ill-gotten possession, and often, as in this case, a precarious one. Theo- doret probably returned to his diocese, and died about the year 460. To return to the solution which he proposed but was unable consistently to maintain, as to disputed terms in religious phraseology : it is evident on reflection that though his principles are sound, there are difficulties and dangers in their application. Those who would " weave panegyrics " on any being, human or divine, A PRECURSOR OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 221 under the Later Empire, commonly sinned not only against accuracy, but against fitness, good taste, and common honesty. Feeling must be the only judge of what is fit in devotional litera- ture, but the language of devotion is apt to become fulsome and overstrained, and in that case it may be as inimical to robust Christianity as heretical statements in plain prose, apio-rov elvcu, rb perpiov was Theodoret's thoroughly Greek prin- ciple, which few are ready to abide by, either in literature or in dogma. If we look at the hymns sung in our churches to-day, we see that their Christology is confused to a remarkable degree. I have heard it stated, on the authority of an eminent English divine, that all heresies might be proved from Hymns Ancient and Modern. But where the religious meaning is noble and nobly expressed, no dogmatist even would feel inclined to quarrel. No one, for instance, would accuse Dr. Watts's classical hymn on the Passion of being Theopaschite, 1 though two lines might lend themselves to such an interpretation. On the other hand, some ex- pressions used by the people in a popular way, whether in prose or verse, give a twinge to even the ordinary thinker. One shivers a little at hearing the Bavarian crucifix-makers called 1 Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, Save in the death of Christ my God I All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood. 222 WITHIN OUR LIMITS " Herrgott-Schnitzer," though the pious peasants of Ober Ammergau are less likely than anybody else to lose sight of the human nature of Christ, which they decennially exhibit to the world in their simple and reverent drama. To draw the line between the permissible and the prohibited is not easy, nor is it a task which lies heavy on our consciences. The restraints imposed on behalf of sound theology might check the flow of devout feeling. This Theodoret saw, and if his contemporaries had seen with his eyes, much of bitterness and of unmerited suffering might have been spared to the Church and the world. XI THE GREEK SPIRIT AND THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH (Lecture delivered at Woodbrooke) WHEN your Director suggested to me that I should come and give a lecture here, I accepted the offer as one bringing honour and pleasure, honour, in coming from so distinguished and deservedly respected a scholar as your Director; pleasure, in that it is always pleasant to exchange thoughts and words in a sym- pathetic atmosphere, and I felt sure that I should here meet with persons whose serious studies had enabled them to notice and to weigh any considerations brought before them, and whose habits of associating together all that belongs to learning and to life had led them to take a vivid human interest in many departments of knowledge which people in general would call unactual or remote. But when I had reflected a little on the task I had undertaken, and es- pecially on the title of the subject chosen out of three or four suggested for my address, I may confess that I began to feel nervous. For here more than anywhere I should feel ashamed of 333 224 WITHIN OUR LIMITS talking vaguely on general tendencies and half- apprehended subjects, and the title given to us does seem to lend itself to rather loose and aimless talk. I may, however, beg you to believe that in suggesting it, I had something more than mere generalities in my mind ; that I had in my thoughts certain men and certain movements belonging to particular times and places which seemed to me to manifest something which, with a definite meaning, I could but designate as the Greek spirit, and which did actually come into rivalry or conflict with the institutions and the authorities of the Mediaeval Church. I should perhaps have felt a little more secure of my ground if I had been limited to some particular person or movement as illustrating the more general ten- dencies, but I bow to the authority which has preferred that I should start from generalities, though I may bring in particulars by the way. With a view not only to clear my ground, but also to present in as clear a light as I can the subject now before us, I may at the outset state that I am not, except indirectly, concerned with the Classical Greek spirit or the Primitive Church. Of course in order to understand the Greeks of any time we must begin with the classical Greeks, and I shall have cause to emphasize the fact that all the qualities and tendencies which seem, so to speak, the most Greek in the Greeks of any period, are to be observed, either in germ or in full development, in the Greeks of classical times. And similarly the Mediaeval Church grew out THE GREEK SPIRIT 225 of the Primitive Church, and, in spite of many strange absorptions of extraneous elements, has a life continuous therewith. But we must avoid the error sometimes made by persons interested in literature and indifferent to history which ought to form the backbone of literary study of writing and speaking as if Greeks of the type of Plato and Euripides, not to say Homer, come into contact with Christianity either in apostolic or in later times. The Greeks to whom St. Paul preached, and whose mental attitude he criticized with a severity they probably deserved, were neither classical nor mediaeval Greeks, though nearer to the former than to the latter. I have only in a very indirect way to do with the extremely interesting subject : the influence of Greek modes of thought and life on the growth of the Early Church. I have no doubt that some students here are familiar with the two companion volumes of the late Dr. Hatch, in which, in a masterly way, he traces the connection of early ecclesiastical institutions with the or- ganization of the Roman Empire, and the founda- tion of the Christian doctrinal system with the philosophy of the Greeks. In consequence of the processes he describes, long before we come to the mediaeval phase of Church History, the ecclesiastical system had incorporated into itself many principles both of Roman and of Greek origin which in some cases may have seemed to obscure if not to stifle the new light and life which had come straight from Jerusalem 226 WITHIN OUR LIMITS or Galilee. The fact that had impressed itself upon me in the course of my studies, and which, in consequence, I wished to bring home to other students, is that after the Church had taken in as much of Hellenism as, we may say, it was capable of holding in solution, there were still people of Greek race or of Greek minds or of Greek habits of thought who could not fit, or who could only be fitted with difficulty, into the mediaeval system. If it had not been so, we can hardly say that there would have been one great Christian system with no recalcitrant sects or outstanding individuals there would in any case have been Far-Eastern Christians, and some independent individuals in various parts but the unity of Christendom would have been an ideal approaching nearer to actuality than it ever came, and an effectual stop would have been made to the intrusion of a militant Mo- hammedan element into the most civilized of European lands. But I must go back to make clearer the dis- tinction I have noticed between the Greek spirit in general, as it survived into mediaeval and even into modern times, and the spirit of the Ancient Greeks during the most brilliant times of their history and literature. In trying to get at the essential character of the Greek mind, even in its time of greatest ascendancy, we are met with at least three difficulties. I think you will realize them even if you take up only such general books as Butcher's Some Aspects of the Greek THE GREEK SPIRIT 227 Genius the work of a very profound and sym- pathetic Hellenic scholar, or a more popular study like Mr. Lowes Dickinson's bright little book, The Greek View of Life. The first difficulty relates to the enormous differences among different Greek states or communities, even where none is to be regarded as less purely Greek than another. Of course the opposed qualities, both good and bad, of Athenians and Spartans, is one that meets the student beginning to read Greek history and Athens and Sparta are perhaps not more remote from one another in thought and life than many other pairs of Greek cities. True, they had certain common qualities, which enabled individuals of the one state to admire and imitate individuals of another. Thus they felt competent to criticize one another, and were the more cordial in their love or hatred one of another. Their differences were, of course, accentuated by their separateness as political entities, and, as their political power and independence waned, tended to become less conspicuous. Still, local or racial or cultural differences were always there, and always a hindrance to the determination of essential similarities. The second difficulty in determining what belongs to the old Greek spirit is that the Greeks always had such a rare power of borrowing from other peoples, and of imposing on what they borrowed a character which might seem to belong neither to the Greeks themselves nor to those from whom they borrowed. Thus without 228 WITHIN OUR LIMITS straying far into the very thorny field of Greek mythology, it is generally agreed that many of their most widely honoured deities came to them from abroad Aphrodite from Syria, Hermes from Phoenicia, Dionysus from Thrace or, if these particular origins are disputed, the foreign provenance of these gods is generally acknow- ledged. And again, both in classical and in pre-classical times, we have ever and anon to take notice of some influences, moral, religious, artistic, from abroad, especially from the East, which have had a profound result on the lives and characters of some pre-eminently Greek speculators and moralists. Such must have been the con- ditions that moulded the life and character of Pythagoras and his followers, and the later though hardly post-classical philosophies were partly based on oriental ideas. Perhaps the Greeks were no less a great and original people for sometimes acting as mediators between other races. But the fact that they could so mediate makes their own originality the harder to discern and define. Then, in the third place, many of the abler among the Greeks were naturally of critical mind, and able to discern the defects, even more than the strong points, of their own people. Thus we are tempted at times to judge them too harshly, attributing to them all the faults which their orators and satirists and moralists denounced or ridiculed or lamented ; and at other times we take those very critics as the typical instances THE GREEK SPIRIT 229 of their race, and would discern, even in their invectives, the evidences of a free atmosphere, in which men could endure and even enjoy to be told of their faults and those of their neigh- bours, in which old abuses could not go on unper- ceived or new vagaries come in without challenge. It is always a vexed question whether the average man or the genius is to be taken as most perfectly embodying the character of the community to which he belongs. There is hardly a failing to be noticed in the Greek character which some Greek did not see and chastise. If the Athenians and of course it is chiefly among them that critics and moralists flourished were litigious and meddling, there was Aristophanes to show them the absurdity of their conduct. If they cared more for public business than for actual political knowledge, there was Socrates to question them and show them the futility of trying to practise an art they had never learned. If a prominent rhetorician took refuge from thoughts in a cloud of words, there was Plato to render him infinitely ridiculous. If a little later they were more ready to pass votes than to execute the measures decreed, the oratory of Demosthenes might show them the error of their frivolity. Perhaps the testimony of these critics in favour of the better qualities of the Greeks is all the more striking from their frequent denunciations. The modern reader makes some kind of com- promise, which can hardly reach more than an approximation to accuracy. 230 WITHIN OUR LIMITS But the glaring contrasts in what passes as the Greek character are due to other causes as well as the fact that they possessed critics. You may have noticed them in the books to which I have referred, in which especially Mr. Butcher's they are frankly acknowledged. It would seem that among a people of varied sensibilities and the capacity of rapidly changing from one mental or moral phase to another, any preponderating influence would be likely to produce an equally powerful reaction, and the two contrary forces would be seen co-existing in the same society, even in the same individual at different times. Thus we are told and truly that the Greeks enjoyed life more fully than any other people, and yet that their view of life was tinged with a profound melancholy. What more natural, indeed, than that intense joy in life should be coupled with sorrow at its evanescence ? We know that patriotism was its strongest moral trait. Yet a Greek often showed his love for his city by persuading some foreign power to attack it in order to restore him and his party to power. We are told that their religion was without a moral element. Yet some of their poets, even of the strictly classical times, have uttered the noblest words about the divine power of ever- abiding law. We are told that their human affections were limited to kinsfolk and fellow- citizens. Yet some of their greatest men seem to have attained, perhaps before the Hebrews did, to the conception of one God, of whose race THE GREEK SPIRIT 231 all men come, and to a desire that He should pity all men in their folly and feebleness. It is said that they thought much about this world and little about any other. Yet we have the fact that all through their history, they sought, in occult observance, to gain some access to the hidden meaning of all things, and to raise them- selves above the fear of death. I do not know that these contrasts are more marked than any- thing to be noticed in the English or in the French people at the present day. Their sphere of thought and life was wide and various, and we must beware of trying to fence it round with definitions and formulae. Bearing in mind, however, that the character of the Greek people was as complex as that of any other great people, we may yet single out certain great qualities which, generally speaking, they possessed in a high degree, and for which the circumstances of their history allowed wide scope. And some of the less desirable traits we may find to be of the nature of exaggerations of their strong points, or perversions of wholesome energies that have lost their proper scope. Professor Butcher, in the book I have referred to, describes our debt to the Greeks in the follow- ing words : 1 " To Greece, then, we owe the love of Science, the love of Art, the love of Freedom : not Science alone, Art alone, or Freedom alone, but these vitally correlated with one another and brought into organic union." Of course it 1 Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, p. 39. 232 WITHIN OUR LIMITS was only in favoured communities and in favoured periods that we find these three noble passions and their correlation. But even in less happy times and places Greeks seem to care more than other people for knowledge, or at least for the things of the mind ; they are quicker and surer to discern and to produce what is beautiful ; and they dislike being impeded in the exercise of their activities, whether physical or mental. The harmony of character produced by the three- fold pursuit of truth, beauty, and liberty is perhaps hardly to be found in concrete examples after the best period of Greek history. The differences between the Greeks of classical and those of later times is sometimes set down vaguely to decadence or degeneracy. But those who use those words most readily are not by any means agreed as to the date at which the degeneracy began, and are often prone to make too little of the manifest failings of the early Greeks and to disparage the excellent qualities of many of their descendants. Also they are tempted to throw the veil of a far-sounding word over historical problems that need careful inquiry. Not that I am prepared to give you all the historical changes that tended to modify the Greek character. But I would draw attention to a few obvious ones, and suggest that others are there, though not easy to distinguish and estimate. The love of freedom had suffered from the loss of political autonomy in the city states. Not that those cities when independent were all, or THE GREEK SPIRIT 233 even the most democratic of them, as fully possessed of freedom as we aspire to be in the constitutionally governed states of the present day. Certainly the idea of the freedom of the individual as against the claims of state authority was very little developed in any early Greek community. But there was the principle that citizens should govern and be governed in turn ; that the one object of those in power should be the good of the whole people ; and that there is something slavish and ignominious in allowing any of the affairs of a state, whether internal or external, to be managed or controlled by any power outside. But the autonomy of the Greek states naturally favoured a condition of per- petual and hostile rivalry, the imperial am- bitions of a few large and wealthy states being resented by the independent spirit of the smaller ones. The perpetual wars proved exhausting to the population of the city state and to its finances, in times when public finance did not receive much scientific attention. Confederations formed a temporary bulwark against the en- croachments of half-Greek or non-Greek states, but the passion for autonomy was almost as fatal to confederations as to city imperialism, and the impossibility of collective resistance on the part of the Greek states led to their gradual subjection under the yoke first of Macedon and later of Rome. It would, of course, be a mistake to suppose that the Greek cities were quite without political 16 234 WITHIN OUR LIMITS rights under the rule or dominant influence of the successors of Alexander or even when they were incorporated into the provincial system of the Roman Empire. For many centuries there was a good deal of scope left for local patriotism in the citizens of Greek communities, a patriotism the fruits of which are seen both in literary records and in monuments of civic munificence. But local or municipal rights and duties do not call forth political abilities and aspirations in the same measure as membership in an independent self-governing state. And the Empire itself, though not disliked as foreign, and though recog- nized as necessary and beneficent, was regarded rather with religious awe increased by the worship paid to its autocratic heads than with feelings of loyalty and patriotism. Meantime the instinct of self-government often found ex- pression in the formation of private societies, or less desirably in seditions and tumults. Later on, when the bad finance system of the Middle Empire had, by the responsibilities imposed on civic functionaries, sapped the strength of municipal life, even local citizenship ceased to be an active force. We find, however, that the freedom expelled from the state was sometimes found in the church, especially in the popular acceptance or rejection of bishops, and in tumul- tuous assertion of ecclesiastical preferences. The love of intellectual freedom found among the classical Greeks at their best was at least as much thwarted in the course of their history as THE GREEK SPIRIT 235 was their attachment to political liberty. But this kind of freedom may best be taken along with knowledge, the love of which was, according to Professor Butcher, another noble trait in the old Greeks. I think that the fearless and disinterested search for truth, and the joy in contemplating truth when found, are genuine marks of the Greek spirit, and in some measure persisted where- ever the Greek language and Greek culture sur- vived. But there were at least three forces acting against the pure love of truth. In the first place there was the rival affection for the charms of oratory. Every one knows how Socrates and Plato had always to be insisting on the uselessness of words which did not convey sound sense, on the hollowness of graceful discourse unaccom- panied by exact knowledge. Plato was, of course, a sufficient master of the use of language to be safe in ridiculing the art of the rhetorician. But as time went on, in spite of the reputation of Plato and the reverence for his master, rhetoric as a branch of education continually gained on philosophy. Of course, as already noticed, extravagance stimulated reaction in various quarters, but as time went on, language was more and more ex- alted above thought, to the destruction not only of thought, but of all nobility and dignity in language itself. Then besides the Greek love of words, there had appeared in Greek lands, with the increased intercourse with the East which followed the conquests of Alexander and of the Romans, a 236 WITHIN OUR LIMITS morbid appetite for the occult and magical, fatal to the intellectual detachment and clearness of vision which distinguishes Greek thought at its best. And in the third place, there had come in, during the early ages of Christianity, the habit of subjecting thought to the iron yoke of authority. It is not easy to date the beginning of this process nor to trace it to its home. It is certainly not Greek, nor does it come from the Founder of Christianity, nor does it seem a product of ancient Rome. But it has often been, unfortunately, taken as essential to Christianity, it triumphed in the Mediaeval Roman Church, and it often checked intellectual freedom in minds essentially Greek. I do not wish to disparage the use of authority no knowledge of any kind can progress without the recognition of some standard, whether set by experts now living or by classic works of the past, to restrain the vagaries of novel specula- tions but this authority is of a different kind from that which imposes whole systems of thought, as distinct from social conduct, under definite or even indefinite penalties. Nor would I say that even the restraint on criticism imposed by authority in the ordinary sense must necessarily be hurtful to societies or individuals. All I would affirm is that where it prevails, dogmatism for this word seems to sum up the imposition of statements of fact and principle by authority only is incon- sistent with the kind of intellectual liberty charac- teristic of the Greek spirit. Yet, in spite of all draw- backs, intellectual life never died out among the THE GREEK SPIRIT 237 Greeks all through the Middle Ages, and Byzantine literature was always asserting its life by putting forth new shoots. The third of the noble affections attributed by Professor Butcher to the Greeks is also one that survived in some measure, but not without hindrance from historical causes. That the old Greeks had a very keen appreciation of beauty, in living creatures as in lifeless forms, is, of course, acknowledged by every one who has the most distant acquaintance with Greek art and litera- ture. Nor did the Greeks cease to be an aesthetic people when the noblest impulses of artistic pro- duction had ceased. True, some of the same tendencies which tended to mar the love of liberty and the love of knowledge had a deleterious effect on art. The necessary decline of the city state would naturally bring about a change in artistic ideals and also in the means of pursuing them. The swamping of thought in rhetoric corresponds, in art, to a disproportionate estimate of ex- pression and of technical skill compared with the faculty of idealism. And again, enjoyment of the beautiful is always apt to degenerate into an appetite for sensuous pleasure. Greek art could not permanently hold its own against the tide of oriental influence. Yet it seems to be an over- statement that, as an eminent researcher has said, Greek art was stifled in the embrace of the East. In the later as in the earlier days of Greek pro- ductiveness, the Hellenic spirit did not borrow from any quarter without making adaptations 238 WITHIN OUR LIMITS and improvements. This is seen in one of the latest and noblest of Greek products Byzantine architecture. We are generally prone to pronounce a people or a period artistic or the reverse by noting the character and the progressiveness or stagnation of one particular kind of art, or even by the degree of tolerance accorded to ugliness of particular kinds. But a little reflection shows us that people may discern good and bad in music and not in the plastic arts, and vice versa ; that they may love landscape and not care for portraiture ; that they may follow hideous fashions in wearing apparel, and show good taste in church architecture. Thus we must not set down the later Greeks as having lost artistic power because late Greek sculpture is poor. The same age which produced Sta. Sophia was content with coin-types of the most despicable kind. Greek taste had not all dried up, though its streams may have become less copious, but it was flowing in other channels. Under oriental or other influences, beauty of colour had come to be valued above purity of form. Interiors of buildings were more cared for than their exteriors. Low reliefs were better executed than high reliefs or sculpture in the round. Cer- tain kinds of floral decoration were carried to the highest point of excellence, as we see in the capitals in Sta. Sophia ; the art of working in mosaics was perfected. These may not have been such noble forms of art as those embodied in the Parthenon Marbles, but those who practised them and enjoyed THE GREEK SPIRIT 239 them were surely not devoid of artistic sense. The contrary judgment was shown by builders and benefactors in Western lands, who sent for Greeks to execute some of their churches, or copied what they had seen or heard of in Greek lands. The post-classical Greeks, then, retained, in at least some measure, on into the Middle Ages, many of the faculties and impulses to which their early reputation had been due. But how about the other trait which Professor Butcher remarks, the "organic union " in which art, science, and liberty were " vitally correlated " ? I think this dominant factor has more conspicuously declined than any other. One knows how the old principle of Greek life was supposed to be expressed "as /irjSe^ ayav nothing in excess : moderation in activity and rest, in love and hatred, in toil and pleasure, in rejoicing and lamentation, in respect for self and for others. The East had overflowed the West, and the East had never sought to be moderate had favoured large empires, colossal works of art, men of superhuman claims and powers, overmastering ideas and emotions. The East, as we have already observed, had exercised influence on the Greeks from early times, but under the comprehensive system of the Roman Empire, that influence, for better and for worse, became more potent ; and though, as just re- marked, it did not exactly stifle the Greek spirit, it may have gone far to weaken the Greek sense of proportion. I spoke at the outset of my fear of becoming 240 WITHIN OUR LIMITS vague, and I fear that the danger has already become manifest. But we realize a little more what we are talking about when we turn from the qualities or bundles of qualities that we find or may expect to find in the later Greeks to look for a distinctive bond by which the Greeks, apart from the measure in which these qualities were possessed, were able to recognize one another. The ancient Greeks, in all their diversity of political institutions, had been bound together by a common language, a common culture, and a common religion, allowing of course for local divergencies. The mediaeval Greeks had their common language and culture and their common ecclesiastical system, and they had also another bond of union lacking to the old Greeks, member- ship in a Greek state the Empire which we, not they, would designate as Byzantine. To them it was the Roman Empire and they were the only real Romans, without being thereby in any way less Greek. It would be difficult to say at what time the government exercised from Constanti- nople is to be called Greek. Constantine, in founding his capital of New Rome, had certainly not the slightest idea of setting up a Greek power in opposition to the Latin, nor of founding a second empire in any sense. He ruled himself over an undivided empire, and after his death it was divided for administrative purposes and reunited more than once. True, from the death of Theodosius the Great, we have one imperial government in Rome and another in Constanti- THE GREEK SPIRIT 241 nople, but the two were regarded as complementary parts of a whole rather than as powers foreign to one another. Their relations were very inti- mate, though jealousies of ministers and generals were often a hindrance to effective co-operation. The code of laws published by Theodosius II was followed in Italy and studied in Gaul. The canons of the great Church Councils, recognized by the State, were current in East and West. The official language in both capitals was Latin, and Greek literature was still studied in the West. But a change came when the Empire in Italy was overthrown by the barbarian Odoacer in 476. The insignia of empire were, however, not assumed by the barbarian king, but conveyed to the Emperor in Constantinople. Not that the Em- perors on the Bosporus exercised any effective control over the government of Odoacer, or over that of the great Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who afterwards ruled Italy from Ravenna. When Justinian's generals had overthrown the govern- ment of the Ostrogoths, there was once more an Emperor claiming universal authority, and recog- nized as such in Rome. But the Western provinces had already fallen away. The settlements of the Lombards soon made imperial rule difficult in Italy. The ecclesiastical power was not heartily on the side of the Empire, or rather, there was a series of decided breaches between Pope and Emperor, of which it seemed that one was cured only to make room for another. The Pope comes to look for aid not to the Romano-Greek East, but 242 WITHIN OUR LIMITS to the barbarian West. The Franks are called into Italy to extinguish the Lombard kingdom. Then comes the decisive act of the drama- Christmas Day 800 when Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne the Frank as Emperor and Augustus, and when the Western Church and the Western peoples see, or think they see, the Roman Empire revived and its glory restored by the sanction and under the aegis of the Roman Church. This act of the Pope was in one sense a frank recognition of facts especially of the nullity of the Eastern power in Italy and the supremacy in Europe of the great Teutonic king, whose rule embraced what we now call Italy, Germany, France, and part of Spain. In another sense the Pope's act was a huge fiction, which may have deceived some persons, but not Charles himself. He was certainly not convinced by any bad arguments that the Empire had really come to an end, but sought for some modus vivendi with those who rightfully kept the title and the power. Neither he, however, nor any of his successors were permanently successful. I may be excused for recapitulating these salient points in Mediaeval History, with which you are probably all familiar. I only do so in order to indicate how much historical causes had to do in determining the attitude of the Greek East to the Teutonic West in the Middle Ages, and especially how the East naturally became more and more Greek, the West more and more Teutonic, while each in turn assumed itself to be not only a lineal descendant, but the real continuator of the THE GREEK SPIRIT 243 Roman Empire. And of course, if we look to the ordinary marks of continuity in states, the East was right. Those who want to specify the moment of the fall of the Roman Empire cannot, according to any rational historical principles, place it before the date where Gibbon ends his history the year 1453, when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, though, if we were asked what European power most effectively embodied the spirit of the Ancient Empire, we might, per- haps, point away from all secular states to the Church of Rome. For the Mediaeval Church (the Roman Church, as we are used to call it), with its all-penetrating official hierarchy, its far-reaching claims to au- thority, especially after the papal power had been exalted by Hildebrand and his followers, its intimate connections with the various departments of life in widely separated regions, its setting forth of common rules of conduct and common objects of reverence throughout Western Christendom, ex- ercised a force in the direction of unity not wholly unlike that of the Roman Empire. True, the Church never succeeded in establishing a Pax Romana, though proclamations of Treves de Dieu against private wars at sacred seasons mark an effort in that direction. It did not prevent the rise of separate feeling in national states, though it remained to a large extent an international or supernational power. It had not originated and in part it resisted the mediaeval association of government with land tenure, though it became 244 WITHIN OUR LIMITS to a large extent feudalized and made the most of its feudal position. Like the Empire, it maintained a common language, without abolishing other tongues, and a common culture, in virtue of which Mediaeval Europe, in spite of endless local varieties, displays a similarity of institutions and a power of give-and-take in ideas and inventions which can hardly be paralleled in our modern family of nations. But there is one great difference for our present purpose all-important -between the unity obtained under the Roman Empire and under the Roman Church : in the former case the Greek peoples were an essential element in the system. Their language was everywhere that of the higher culture. Their great men of the past were reverenced as teachers, while those of inferior calibre were rcognized as necessary in the present. Their cities, as already said, enjoyed power and prosperity, and in Eastern lands the advance of the Empire meant the wider extension of Greek influences. In Mediaeval Europe the case was far otherwise. The Greek language was known to very few, and such portions of its literature as were studied were very fragmentary, and veiled in Latin translations. Some of the Greek Fathers of the Church were known by name, but the type of theology which characterized them, though not without influence on some poets and thinkers, was, to say the least, not dominant in the Roman Church. There were Greek merchants in the West, and from time to time Greek diplomatists THE GREEK SPIRIT 245 at European courts, but generally speaking, the Greeks were outside the European system, heretics, or at least suspected of heresy, even before the final schism came aliens in every sense of the word. It is notable that the friction between the Greek Church and the Papacy was, as a rule, unconnected with any strongly marked religious differences. East and West joined in the con- demnation of Arianism at Nicaea in A.D. 325 l and at Constantinople in 382. During the long Christo- logical dissensions of the fifth and early sixth centuries, calamitous to the Greek Empire in depriving it of ecclesiastical and in time of political authority over Syria and Egypt, Rome assisted Byzantium in constructing the via media between Nestorianism and Eutychianism. Catholic ortho- doxy on its intellectual side was, as we have already suggested, largely a Greek product, belonging to that element of the Greek mind that the West was able to assimilate. But in the West, Catholic orthodoxy had another side that of submission to the Roman See. The Council of Chalcedon, where the via media was laid down, was the beginning of a temporary schism between the Papacy and Constantinople, not on any doctrinal grounds, but as to the amount of power and prestige to be assigned to the bishopric of New Rome. The Iconoclastic Controversy, which was hardly so much a conflict between Eastern and Western Churches as between a certain imperial policy and 1 The West, however, was fully represented at Nicsea. See Map 5 of Cambridge Mediaeval History, vol. i. 246 WITHIN OUR LIMITS the religious usages of East and West alike, was settled in the East on lines allowed in the West as orthodox. But while it raged, the Papacy had taken the uncompromising attitude which had led to the so-called restoration of the Empire in the West, under Charlemagne, and that step was not to be undone by the re-establishment of the icons. On other occasions when relations were strained and communications broken between the Popes and the Emperors and Patriarchs of the East, it was generally because the Emperors were endeavouring, not to introduce new dogmas, but by some authoritative declaration l to bring about either compromise or acquiescent silence among the holders of conflicting views. When the final separation came, in 1054, ^ e points of difference were for the most part such as might have seemed capable of accommodation : the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist ; the practice of fasting on Saturdays ; the marriage, under certain conditions, of some orders of the clergy. There was one doctrinal difference : as to the filioque clause added to the Nicene Creed. But this question was not one that came home to men's bosoms so much as had some others, e.g. that of the icons. The Greeks were ready to explain their theological position in such form as to make the breach not very serious, and one is inclined to think that some of the combatants on either side favoured their own doctrine because 1 The Henoticon of Zeno, the Ecthesis of Heraclius, the Type of Constans. THE GREEK SPIRIT 247 it was that of their own Church and people rather than as being in itself of great religious significance. The visible points of opposition were not causes, but rather pretexts of warfare. If the Western World disliked or was indifferent to the Greeks, the Greeks heartily disliked and despised all the Western nations. They have their points of superiority of which they were proudly conscious. One curious example is seen when a Greek noble in the thirteenth century indignantly rejected the suggestion that in order to refute a charge of treason he should clear himself by the ordeal of hot iron. He could not expect, he said, that a miracle would be worked on his behalf, though if a certain holy bishop took the hot iron from the altar and handed it to him, the case would be different. The bishop declined the honour, and the test was rejected as " barbarous." The later Greek civilization, whatever its faults, was a continuation of that of the Ancient World, while the West had succumbed to the barbarian invaders. The Byzantine government was auto- cratic and bureaucratic ; feudalism, though analo- gies to some feudal customs are not unknown, never prevailed till after the conquests of the Crusaders. The Byzantine court was splendid, intellectual, ceremonious beyond any other. The standard of learning and culture, though it had its ups and downs, was immeasurably superior to that of the Western peoples. There and in the other Greek cities, all through the " Dark Ages " of Europe, men and women too were reading the 248 WITHIN OUR LIMITS Greek poets and philosophers and enjoying the masterpieces of ancient art. Their standard of morals was, if in some respects no higher, in many ways entirely different from that acknowledged by our ancestors. Knightly courage with its extravagant accompaniments seemed to them " barbarous " as compared with their more in- tellectual way of dealing with difficulties. If there had been no particular occasions for the discrepancies to show themselves, they could not have remained permanently hidden. And the occasions were there, as we have already seen, in rival ecclesiastical claims, which broadened out into deadly national or social conflicts. The claim of the Roman See to some kind of supremacy would never have aroused opposition in the East. But as those claims rose ever to a higher mark, they encountered opposition which was the stronger from the close connection between Church and State in the Byzantine Empire. True, the relations of Empire and Patriarch in Con- stantinople might lead to other possibilities. A patriarch or other leading churchman who had some cause of opposition to the Emperor, on moral or personal or other grounds, would be likely to think of the primacy of St. Peter, to appeal for at least moral support to Rome. Such a result was most notably seen at the time of the Icono- clastic Controversy, when a large body of monks and clergy, and for a time the Patriarch, were in active opposition to the ecclesiastical policy of the Emperors and in close correspondence or THE GREEK SPIRIT 249 sympathy with Rome. But since the Emperor could always remove and appoint patriarchs at his will, and since the popular sympathy would more naturally go with Greeks than with foreigners, the Greek Church became, as time went on, both more national and less independent. Meantime the other great patriarchates, at one time serious rivals to that of Constantinople, and more ancient especially Alexandria and Antioch had become weakened by dissensions and schisms, and could make but a poor stand against the Mohammedan invasions. The Greek Empire as, I think, we may safely call it from about the seventh century onwards was Christian, but hardly, even when in full communion with Rome, an integral part of European Christendom, and when it was no longer so, the taint of heresy rendered it yet more alien. The result of this was seen in the history of the Crusades. It was natural that the Greek Emperors and the Western peoples should look at the crusading movement from opposite points of view. When Alexius I appealed to Western Europe for help against the Saracens, he hoped, of course, for the restoration to the Empire of what had been taken from it by the " Infidels." The wiser among the popes aimed, while advocating holy wars, at the healing of the differences between Eastern and Western Churches. But the rank and file of the Crusaders sought, if they were ambitious, for glory and lands if they were more pious, for the recovery of the holy places and 250 WITHIN OUR LIMITS the remission of their own sins. It is both amusing and instructive to read the comments of the highly cultured Byzantine princess, Anna Comnena, who lived at Constantinople at the time of the First Crusade, on the swarm of locusts that was darkening the East, the rudeness of the chiefs, whose barbarous-sounding names need apology, the superior wisdom and virtue of her father, the Emperor Alexius. The end was, of course, a temporary success with ultimate failure. Alexius did recover Nicaea and some other places that he had lost. But the means that he employed, though perhaps not dishonourable, rankled in the breasts of his rivals. The crusading kingdoms or principalities founded in the East Jerusalem, Antioch, Tripolis were foreign outposts that could hardly have maintained themselves permanently, even without any dissensions within. The culmi- nation of the rivalry between Crusaders and Greeks was attained in the Fourth Crusade, when the host which should have gone to restore the Christian cause in Asia turned instead to capture and despoil the centre of Greek Chris- tianity on the Bosporus, and set up another exotic feudal state on Greek soil which could but maintain half a century of impotent and precarious existence. It is during this period the first half of the thirteenth century that the antithesis of the Greek spirit and the Mediaeval Church is most clearly expressed. The Latins in Constantinople set up, of course, their patriarch under Roman THE GREEK SPIRIT 251 obedience. 1 Meantime a Greek noble, Theodore Lascaris, first chosen as ruler in Santa Sofia, escaped to Asia Minor, built up a new state on Greek lines by the support of refugees and of the clergy, and ruled from Nicaea, where he caused a patriarch to be appointed who should carry on the title and traditions of Constantinople. After fifty years of labour and strife, Empire and Patri- archate were re-established in Constantinople, and the Byzantine Empire went on with weakened force, though not without certain revivals in art and letters, for nearly two hundred years. But meantime there had been many futile attempts at ecclesiastical reunion, and many complaints on both sides made by members of the opposed peoples and churches, which show a deeper separation in tone of mind and manner of thought than was in any way commensurate with the actual points in dispute. To use a homely ex- pression, Greek and Latin always got on one another's nerves. The Greeks still, of course, call themselves Romans, but this is rather a hindrance than a help to their recognizing the supreme authority of the Pope in Rome. If we wanted a concrete very human ex- ample of the Greek spirit in opposition to the Crusaders, I would point to the last Greek bishop of Athens, who had to flee before the tide of " barbarism." Michael Acominatus was a native 1 The action of the Crusaders had been taken under papal prohibition, but Innocent III found it desirable to make the best of a bad job. 252 WITHIN OUR LIMITS of Choniae or Colossse in Asia Minor, by culture and tastes a Greek of the Greeks. He had been educated in Constantinople, where he belonged to a learned and literary circle, and was promoted from an office about the Patriarch to be Archbishop of Athens. His new life was full of disappoint- ments; the people were suffering much from imperial oppression, and seemed to him to have fallen immensely below their ancestors in virtue as in prosperity. But there was a mitigating feature in his unsatisfactory position : he dwelt on the Acropolis and officiated in the Church of the Mother of God formerly the Parthenon. All the traditions of the city seemed ever present to his mind, and he gloried in them without any fear lest he should be suspected of semi- paganism. In urging for some favour to the city, he could think of no higher return than that the benefactor should be prayed for in the Parthe- non. He did his best for his people, exhorting them to virtue by the memory of their ancestors, writing to those in authority in the hope of getting exactions removed, and on one occasion urging his flock to resist bravely the encroachments of a local Greek tyrant. But when Greece fell into the hands of certain bands of Frankish knights, utterly ignorant of all its past, he retreated to a neighbouring island, and was succeeded by a Frenchman, who was very intolerant in enforcing submission to the papal power. From his island refuge, Michael wrote letters of lament to his friends, and it is characteristic of him that, though THE GREEK SPIRIT 253 he certainly had a religious basis to his life, one of his greatest anxieties for a young pupil was lest he should fall into the habit of using popular words and phrases unknown to Attic Greek. His friends relieved his sorrows by helping to recover his lost books, especially his Euclid and his Greek Commentaries. He remained on friendly terms with some who had bent before the storm, though his hopes for the future were chiefly directed to Nicaea. He was, however, a correspondent of other Greek leaders especially in Epirus who were in rivalry to the Nicene Emperors. For even in their days of deepest distress the mediaeval Greeks showed at least one trait of their ancestors : the passion for local autonomy or at least for provincial separateness. It may be said that the type of culture repre- sented by Michael Acominatus humane, erudite, literary, retentive of historical tradition was one that might with advantage have found a home in the European system, as it ultimately did at the Renaissance. But it had to bide its time. There was, however, another and yet worthier side of Greek thought and life which actually showed itself in Europe some centuries earlier, and which was crushed or reduced to an under- ground life by that same Western suspicion of all things Greek which found its bitterest expression in the Fourth Crusade. I refer to the Christian Neo-Platonism of which the great mediaeval exponent is John the Scot (Erigena). It may seem Hibernian to say that the best Greek of the 254 WITHIN OUR LIMITS Middle Ages was an Irishman. But, though his Greek reading was but fragmentary in comparison with that of Acominatus and his learned con- temporaries, Scotus had perhaps drunk more deeply of the spirit of Greek philosophy, as he had combined that spirit mote consciously and effectu- ally with the spiritual teaching of Christianity. He had soaked himself in the more mystic of the Greek fathers, and shown, perhaps, more boldness than any of them in applying their ideas or the ideas which they had originally drawn from Plato and the Neo-Platonists throughout the whole realm of human thought. His vision of the whole tangible world as sign and symbol of the invisible and eternal, his recognition of the incapacity of the human mind to comprehend the divine, his conception of Christian doctrine as essentially symbolic in significance, may seem compatible with the Christianity of all deep thinkers at all times. But he incurred censure during his life- time, his teaching was afterwards authoritatively condemned in words that showed utter ignorance as to his meaning, and his best book was put on the Index at just about the time when Bishop Michael of Athens died in exile. But it is time for me to conclude the con- siderations, somewhat fragmentary, I fear, that I have been endeavouring to lay before you. The student of European civilization, which now takes in, and in fact must always take in, more than the actual continent of Europe, is ever and anon struck by the temporary weakening THE GREEK SPIRIT 255 of some excellent elements of life and thought, which may often reappear in different guise. But much is lost as time goes on, even if it may be true that more is gained. The more that we can retain or revivify from what is worthy and of good report in past ages, the better for the happiness of the future. Progress and the maintenance of continuity are not mutually exclusive ideals, though it may not be always easy to combine them in practice. The preservation of the past as a storehouse both of inspiration and of ex- perience does not imply either a superstitious relic- worship or a dogged conservatism. One has to be as much a critic and eclectic in trying to discern and to estimate the things of history as when one is choosing among the various products of modern times. Such criticism and eclecticism is the task of the present-day scholar, who loves the past and desires to improve the present. This is, I take it, the attitude of those who study in this place, and as it is also my own, I hope I shall myself receive from you a lenient judgment for the inadequate way in which I have treated a large subject. I am satisfied if it assists any here to profitable thinking on their own account. XII THE SCOPE AND FUNCTIONS OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (A Paper written for the Newnham College Branch of the Students* Christian Union) WHEN I was asked to say something to the members of the Students' Christian Union on the subject of Apologetics, I felt pleased at the re- quest and desirous to do what I could to assist clear thinking on an important subject. At the same time, I was doubtful whether I could promise to do as desired, because of a certain repulsion which the word apologetics generally exercises on me. On further reflection, however, I seemed to see that what I did not like about apologetics was due in part to the apologists, in part to the readers and propagandists of apologetics, rather than to the thing itself, which has a useful perhaps sometimes a necessary place in theological and religious literature. Since it is probable that other people may share my instinctive aversion from the subject, it may be helpful on the prin- ciple, " grasp your nettle " to inquire first into the causes of such aversion. Such an inquiry may have the negative use of showing us what CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 257 apologetics are not, or what are the limits by which they must be bounded. The first and most natural objection to apolo- getics arises from the ordinary meaning attached to the word or its cognates in common speech. To apologize is generally to acknowledge some measure of guilt " qui s'excuse s'accuse " as, when we apologize for having trodden on our neighbour's toes, we confess to heedlessness in order to avoid the heavier charge of malice. The people who go all through life in an apologetic spirit are those who are painfully conscious of their own shortcomings and make other people so. Of course this is not the attitude that ought to be taken up by Christians as such yet we cannot say that it is not more or less the attitude of a good many Christian apologists. It may often seem wiser to ignore foolish or malicious charges, and even to leave some of the graver ones to be refuted by other than controversial argu- ments. A really robust religion does not need to be always explaining itself to those who cannot or will not understand it. Yet explanations are sometimes in place, especially when specific accusa- tions are made. Apologies need not be more than illuminating expositions. The apology of Socrates is not an over-modest production, and Newman's Apologia pro vita sua, if somewhat over self-conscious, is a monumental piece of self- analysis. If Christian apologetics conformed to either of these types, they would not be open to the reproach of feebleness, 258 WITHIN OUR LIMITS But apart from the name and the purpose of apologetics, considerable discredit has been cast upon it by the way in which it has been and is often carried on. The fault here is certainly with the apologists themselves. They are often less skilful in providing the defence than are their opponents in leading the attack. One sees this particularly in some of the books written to defend Christianity against the opinions of men of science. In this case the attack is commonly made by experts in science, the defence by dilet- tanti. When intelligent people get up a scientific subject like Variation or Radium simply in order to vindicate possible attacks on Christian belief such knowledge is bound to be superficial and half-digested. This would not matter so much if those who argued on behalf of Christianity and those who accepted their arguments were always quite honest. But unfortunately one knows how in every subject there is a strong temptation for an indolent but deeply interested person to take a probable hypothesis for a proved statement to accept a pleasing explanation which leaves aside unpleasant facts ; and this is more true with religion than with any other depart- ment of life and thought. True, some people find it greatly to their advantage to disbelieve religious doctrine and to accept even poor argu- ments against Christianity. But in a conservative society, where there is such strong feeling bound up with Christian ideas that to part with them would mean a terrible wrench, the general in- CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 259 clination tends the other way. I do not say that deeply rooted religious feeling ought not to weigh for much when one is examining into the funda- menta of one's religion. But it ought not to blind us as to the legitimacy of a logical method, or the fallacious character of a bad argument. An uneducated, or even a clever but narrow- minded apologist has often a very confused notion as to what the statements he brings forward may be taken to prove. I came across a curious in- stance of this a short time ago. A tract was sent me written by an American lawyer, to show how he had come to believe in the truth of the Christian religion. He had, according to his account, been leading a worldly and aimless, though apparently not an immoral life. He had once believed that everything in the Bible was true, but had been led to doubt and then deny a six days' creation and all the rest of the Hebrew cosmology. He was subject to fits of depression, and had no means of refreshing his jaded mind. In short, he was in a generally low, despondent, and spiritless con- dition. One evening he felt powerfully attracted to the singing of some people who were holding a religious meeting. He went to two or three of their meetings and felt impressed with the greatness and the reality of the objects of their teaching. Thus suddenly as it happens sometimes he found himself uttering a cry for help, in response to which a new wave of strength and vigour came to possess him and make him feel a different man. Now|if this man had confined himself to his 260 WITHIN OUR LIMITS experiences and all that might be deduced from them, he might have been a good apologist against any materialistic opposition to Christi- anity. Unfortunately, Christianity was, for him, so bound up with belief in the literal veracity of the Bible that as soon as he was convinced that Christianity was not all rubbish he passed straight to the conclusion that Darwinism must be all wrong. What he ought to have seen, of course, was that any objections to his faith based on the impossibility of a six days' creation were not false in themselves, but quite irrelevant. But as his mind, though not altogether confused, was essentially limited, he could not see the bearings of the subject. He really stood upon much firmer ground than he knew. But he and others like him do, unwittingly, a great deal of harm in clinging to " the things that are shaken/' whereas the " things that cannot be shaken " are the real and abiding foundation. But thirdly besides our natural dislike of making excuses, and the more justifiable objection to the bad arguments so commonly used in this connection, there is in many of us a feeling that the business of apologetics tends to distract the minds of thoughtful people from the really con- structive work, in the philosophical, historical, and generally critical study of Christian origins and principles which, if carried out with sufficient learning and zeal, ought to render apologetics quite superfluous. We know that those who have done the most to remove, in non-Christian CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 261 circles, current prejudices against Christianity are not, generally speaking, those who have written controversial books in defence of the Faith, but those Christian scholars who have proved themselves competent and honest searchers for truth in various departments of knowledge, and those Christian workers who have manifested strength and purity of character in the ordinary relations of life, even transcending the limits prescribed by ordinary morality. Such persons have realized themselves, and made others realize, that their life, both intellectual and moral, was permeated with the spirit of the religion they professed. The arguments against a religion, like the prejudices against a class or race, are best met by a reductio ad absurdum. Such an argument is furnished by every Christian scholar, hero, or saint, against those who have represented Christianity as obscurantist or pusillanimous, or selfishly other-worldly. Of course the non- Christians may say that such-and-such people are what they are irrespectively of their religion, or that they are amiably inconsistent. But where a man or woman is obviously all of a piece, in mental outlook, moral principles, and general habits and preferences, the type, as well as the individual, claims respect. One recognizes easily the different conceptions of the Christian mind and character exhibited by people who have or who have not been brought into close contact with reasonable and earnest Christians. Then again, we see how the objections against 262 WITHIN OUR LIMITS certain outlying portions of Christianity, to over- come which has been the painful task of apologists, often vanish of themselves in the clearer light derived from the unprejudiced studies of Christians and non-Christians working together in the search for truth. It may be that fresh objections are raised up on the ruins of those that have crumbled away, but these are often likely to disappear in their turn, if left alone in a wholesomely critical and reasonable atmosphere. In spite of these considerations, however, apologetics still have their functions. If the atmosphere is not reasonably critical and few, if any of us, live in an atmosphere that is per* fectly so the objections may be such as cannot be let alone. They may appeal to passion and prejudice, so as to blind men to truths of the utmost importance ; they may be and often are an almost insuperable hindrance to the religious education of children and to the spiritual discipline of adults. They make the individual or the society which they dominate poor and weakly, by checking the flow of those influences that do most to render life rich and strong. All this amounts to saying that apologists as such (perhaps an apologist pure and simple is an unknown being) are valuable, not as builders of churches, but as scavengers who help to remove the heaps of rubbish that obstruct the ways to the church doors. This scavenging, if not the very highest, is very useful work. And it differs in different ages according to the kind of rubbish CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 263 piled up and the directions from which the churchward roads are impeded. When we read the most ancient attacks upon Christianity and the defences made in reply, we are struck by certain similarities between the old and the new, along with great differences. The early Christians had to repel some very absurd charges. Their opponents taxed them with cannibalism because of their secret assem- blies, and probably also because of certain un- comprehended sacramental phrases which must have leaked out. They accused them of atheism, since to the Graeco-Roman world religious worship seemed naturally to require ceremonies and observances such as the early Christians did not practise. They held them as all readers of Tacitus know to be haters of the human race, a charge probably based on their withdrawal from social conviviality. The philosophers de- spised them as chiefly recruited from the poor and illiterate. All classes suspected them as wanting in public spirit. To some of these charges the Christians could make triumphant replies. They could say with truth that their standard of morals was higher and their worship purer than those of their neighbours. They could show that their religion prescribed acts of pity and helpfulness even to those who were not of their own persuasion. They could assert that they were loyal, obedient to the laws and mindful of the Emperors in their prayers, though certainly in public life they 264 WITHIN OUR LIMITS did not, for obvious reasons, care much about prosperity or reform. And when men like Justin and Aristides became Christians, and argued against Hellenes and Jews in the style and the costume of Greek rhetoricians, the charge of having no philosophy or literature might seem to be refuted. Yet deep down in the mind of some of the best representatives of the Old World there remained a settled aversion which no mere arguments could repel. For it was felt that the new sect had repudiated the ways and the wisdom of their fathers, that they regarded as doomed to a speedy destruction the whole system which Greek and Roman genius had raised up, in culture, civilization, and order, through all the centuries ; that even if they availed themselves, at times, of some utterances of Greek wisdom against the aberrations of Greek folly, it had only been on the principle : "fas est ab hoste doceri " ; that there was, after all, no method of reconciling the spirit of the old with that of the new ; that those who spoke of a kingdom of darkness and a kingdom of light were, all things considered, more consistent and more honourable than those who used the intellectual weapons of Greeks and Romans in favour of what, to Greek and Roman eyes, must needs appear a poor superstition ; that patriotism and piety in the good old Roman sense were fundamentally op- posed to all manner of compromise or conciliation. These reproaches could hardly at first be met except by denunciation. Neither in the de- CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 265 clining days of the Empire nor through the long course of the Middle Ages was Christianity able to do full justice to what was worthy of gratitude and admiration in ancient civilization. Here and there some pious dreamer, especially of the Neo-Platonic school, might feel an inward sympathy with virtuous ancient pagans, and venture to hope that their souls had found mercy with God. But there seems to have been general acquiescence with the doctrine set forth, sadly enough, by Dante, that even Virgil, with the other poets and prophets of antiquity, were doomed to perpetual alienation from the divine presence. In the Greek East, it is true, the memory of ancient philosophers and heroes was still honoured ; but though, in the confusion of rhetorical discourse, their names were uttered along with those of scriptural worthies or church fathers, they were, as orthodoxy required, placed on a totally different footing. Even if it had not been so the influence of Greece on the Western world was but partial and fragmentary before the Renaissance. And when the Renaissance came, and a wild enthusiasm for antiquity took possession of societies that had hitherto regarded it with contemptuous pity, there seemed in many quarters to be danger of a pagan revival ; there was certainly a shock to the established system of Christian doctrine and discipline. Happily, there were among the men of the new movement some who were thoroughly imbued with the Christian spirit. Yet it was not for 18 266 WITHIN OUR LIMITS them, but for those who belonged to a later and more historical and scientific age, to rise to a broader view of Christianity, as owing un- consciously much to the systems which it had super- seded, and to the recognition in a full sense of the apostolic maxim that " every good and perfect gift is from above/' The controversies which have raged from the sixteenth century to our own time have not all taken the form of a war of the Classical against the Christian world. Many of them have been directed against certain systems of hierar- chical order with which Christianity had, through historical circumstances, become bound up. And generally speaking, it is in the name of what is new and progressive that Christianity has been attacked, though the new spirit of liberty and progress comes, through the Renaissance, from the ancient world. Some objections are made on moral, others on intellectual grounds. In some cases Christ and Christianity have been resisted together ; in others Christians have been charged with infidelity to the principles of their Master ; more recently the ground has been undermined by denial of any certain knowledge about Christ or even about the earliest Christians, Perhaps, for clearness' sake, it may be as well to look into some of these modern objections. I will consider very briefly five kinds of stricture on Christianity, three moral and two intellectual, with the ways in which they have been met or may be met by apologists. CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 267 Christianity has been represented : (i) as the champion of the rich and well-to-do against the down-trodden ; (2) as appealing to motives of a low self-interest, either for this world or for the next ; (3) as setting up a state of moral merit and demerit inconsistent with social welfare ; (4) as necessarily bound up with unscientific conceptions of the universe ; (5) as resting on an insecure historical basis. (i) The first of these views has, we might suppose, had its day, since modern Christianity may seem to be fairly democratic. A very slight knowledge of the beginnings of Christianity is enough to convince most people that at the outset it ran counter to the prejudices and interests of respectable people, that it was in great part recruited from the lower classes of society, and that its earliest promoters were emphatic in their denunciation of avarice and injustice. Even Camille Desmoulins, one of the most fiery spirits of the French Revolution, declared for " Le bon sans-culotte Jesus. " Yet the system which he opposed contained all that most people associate with Christianity. And after all the fact remains, and is almost too evident, that even with us the religious world is worldly still. The agitators who have convinced many working-men that all clergymen are rolling in wealth, that bishops have nothing at all to do, and that lucrative posts are often only open to unthinking people or to hypocrites, may be pretty wide of the mark. Yet is it not significant how little the 268 WITHIN OUR LIMITS fact seems to be taken to heart, among well-to-do religious people, that the mass of the people in our Christian country are, except for occasional requirements, outside the churches altogether ? All the churches insist perhaps almost too much on the duty of the rich to help the poor ; but is it not always assumed that those helpers are, from a religious standpoint, superior to those whom they help ? Of course it may be said that they are superior in education and enlighten- ment, and in standard of social morals ; but if this is the case, it only corroborates the statement that the church does not, with us, afford a broad basis on which persons of all social ranks can meet as equals. If the only grievance were that the Church of England, while doing much for the people, ceased to be the church of the people, we might feel regret and possibly com- punction. But it has been pretty clearly shown that the Nonconformist bodies, especially those of established character and prestige, do not draw within their circles any large proportion of the working-classes. Those who really believe in democracy, and are at the same time hopeful about future prospects, look less to religious than to secular influences to effect the amelioration of English life. If they are very zealous for progress, and look on the Church as a non- democratic element in our institutions, they are urgent, not only for church-disendowment, but for secularization of education, laws, and general customs. CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 269 Here we seem to have an almost desperate case for the apologists, since whatever is said in justification of Christianity in its essence or in its earliest form may be interpreted as con- demning most of the ecclesiastical and religious institutions and practices in vogue among us. What we want to do, and many are trying to do, is to demonstrate, both practically and theoretically, that our Christianity, however defective, is at least in continuity with that which began by proclaiming glad tidings to the poor. But here many admirable people are liable to overshoot the mark, and to produce the impression that social ranks are in themselves hostile to Christian principles. Some Christian democrats seem to believe that if Christ came now He would identify Himself with the Labour Party perhaps parade London in the ranks of the " unemployed." But the poor are no more infallible than the rich, and in the early days the Christians were not a triumphant majority. It was the mass of the people that cried out " Crucify Him ! " Religion is something that ought to rise above mere party feeling. Where it is powerful in a society, it sanctions the duties acknowledged by each to all. The doctrine that all are responsible for the use of their one, five, or ten talents is very far removed from that of complete and universal equality as commonly understood. Here, as said already, the apologist may do good work in removing prejudices due to ignorance. But if he goes further and tries to base Christianity on 270 WITHIN OUR LIMITS democracy pure and simple, he may win adherents, but it will be at the cost of lowering the character of Christianity itself, in the same way, if less disastrously, as those did who subordinated it to the ideas and interests of the dominant classes of society. (2) The second moral objection to Christianity that it appeals to lower motives than those which actuate the best kinds of non-Christians, is one against which the apologists have a fairly easy task. The best reply is found in the number of Christian lives devoted to good works in the midst of troubles and misunderstandings. True, it may be said that the labours of Christians have often been sustained by the hopes of happiness hereafter, either at the Second Advent or after their own death. But on the other hand, Christi- anity, even in its most degraded form, has never materialized heaven in quite the same way as Mohammedanism has done, though it certainly has materialized the pains of hell. I think that all Christian teachers, except in times of par- ticularly lifeless, cut-and-dried orthodoxy, have represented the hopes and fears of the hereafter as motives to be tolerated in the degraded and ignorant, and as greatly inferior to the love of God and man and hatred of wrong and injustice which have been the motive-power in the lives of all great Christian characters. It is a curious problem to be referred to the religious psycho- logist how far pure affections and loyalty to truth were intermixed with baser though natural CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 271 desires for personal reward in the consciousness of saints and martyrs. We certainly do not arrive at any conclusion from their writings, as they were unaware of any collision between pure love of God and the hope of enjoying Him for ever. But a religion the great commandments of which run " thou shalt love " ought to be clear of any suggestions of personal desires, since to love either God or man for the sake of gaining pleasure or avoiding pain is hardly a possibility even to so vagarious a creature as man. Here again it is the apologists who are chiefly to blame for taking a line that has brought dis- credit on apologetics and even on Christianity itself. The theory that good people did right chiefly from the hope of heaven and the fear of hell has been encouraged by the setting forth of Christian doctrine known chiefly to Cambridge students in the works of Paley, though many both before and after him have adopted similar arguments. It would be foolish and chimerical to deny that hope and fear are quite legitimate instruments to be used by moralists, so long as sense of duty and the higher affections are not lost sight of. But nobility of character never has been and never can be raised upon purely self-regarding motives, whether inside or outside the Christian Church. (3) Another moral objection to Christianity has already been hinted at in the sketch just given of the old pagan view with regard to it. Most pagan morality, and much of the 272 WITHIN OUR LIMITS morality of our own days, has to do with the duties of citizenship, whereas in the Christian system each human being is regarded as owing obedience to God, as bound to help other human beings, especially fellow-Christians, as brothers, and as having in addition the duty of saving his own soul, or at least of working out his own salvation. Now there is no antagonism between the Christian claims and those of citizenship. Even in apostolic times, men were told to pay honour to whom honour was due, and to respect the civil magistrate. But even the most zealous of Christian historians (such as the late Dr. Bigg) have acknowledged that Christianity did little to restore public morals in the Empire, however much it achieved in the improvement of in- dividuals. And through the Middle Ages a large part of the spiritual energy which might have invigorated popular life and worked towards the physical propagation of desirable qualities was secluded I cannot say wasted in the retirement of the cloister ; and though the contemplative life is not too highly exalted among us at the present day, and religious motives are often directed to political ends, yet the unactual note of early Christian morals survives, in the Church and its education, in a want of insistence on such virtues as courage and patriotism, and the undue exalta- tion in theory at least of the gentler virtues, with a somewhat indiscriminating benevolence and a want of consistency in ideals and practice. Here the apologist is able to show that the CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 273 defects in the early Christian scale of duties was due to temporary circumstances : to the belief in the speedy return of Christ to judge the world, and to a want of interest in an imperial system which was doomed to decay. With us things are different. Believers in a speedy Second Advent are few ; and the state of which we form part is supposed at least to be Christian in char- acter, and to have primary claims on our service and devotion more pressing than those of other peoples. True, the cosmopolitanism which Chris- tianity partly took over from Stoicism, giving it new meaning and freshness, and also the duty of care for oneself as an individual soul, still dis- tinguish Christian from non-Christian views of life at the present day ; but the character of the Christian patriot, warrior, and statesman has witnessed to the compatibility of the simultaneous recognition of civil or national with spiritual excellence. There are many other moral charges brought against Christianity, especially on the doctrinal side, which are due to narrowness of education, and which thought and study can easily repel. Such, for instance, is the accusation of the doctrine of vicarious suffering; and undoubtedly the doctrine of the Atonement as represented in all the crudity of Puritan theology may well be called immoral and also blasphemous. But here the apologist is helped by the growth of a saner theological spirit in all the churches, and also by the modern tendency to look at theological 274 WITHIN OUR LIMITS doctrine, as at everything else, from the historical point of view, and to interpret the views of our forefathers in connection with their whole en- vironment. Before I pass on to consider some of the chief intellectual stumbling-blocks in the way of Christi- anity, it seems necessary just to touch on those difficulties, partly intellectual and partly moral, which belong to no particular phase of society or stage of intellectual development, but which are inseparable from human nature, and have agitated the thoughts of men for at least several thousands of years. I refer, of course, to those problems, if we are pleased so to call them, which have never been finally solved, but which have presented themselves in different forms in different ages, and have at times opposed not only the reception of the Christian or any other moral and universal religion, but any theory of man and the universe which might satisfy either the emotional or the intellectual demands of exacting human nature. The most conspicuous of these problems are that of free-will and necessity, and closely allied to it the existence of evil in a world directed by a beneficent power. These questions, in their entirety, are beyond the reach of any apologist. They have to find some practical solution in every mind capable of realizing them. Meantime, it is well for the apologist, as for the independent thinker, to know something of the ways in which they have been regarded and the directions in which some light on them has been sought CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 275 by the greatest minds of ancient and modern times. The subject is too extensive for us to go into it at any length at present. Here I would only make one or two practical suggestions : firstly, that the Christian apologist ought not to suppose that he has got any simple and easy answer to the old-world questions. If he can show in some way how these questions are linked together, and if he can determine how far our limited faculties can go towards meeting them ; if, too, he can convince his interlocutors that they need not wait for the solution of all mysteries before they agree to the general doctrine and discipline of any religion he will at least have done some- thing. And secondly, he should be on his guard against identifying Christianity with one view or another on the ultimate mysteries, since a very slight knowledge of history and of human life will make it clear to him that there have been Christians as well as non-Christians on both sides of the controversial lines which are supposed to divide mankind into two camps. There are splendid examples of Christian leaders among determinists and also among proclaimers of free-will. Christians of different complexions have sought to explain the existence of evil by the two familiar ways : the temporary prevalence of a subordinate power of evil, and the merely apparent, or subjective, or relative existence of all that is not good. Certainly passages from Scripture and from eminent Christian thinkers have been quoted in 276 WITHIN OUR LIMITS favour of either view. Of course the fact of being a Christian will make the determinist or the believer in free-will, the Platonist denier of evil or the believer in a personal devil different in his ideals, conduct, and tone of mind from what he would have been without Christianity. But and this is the point on which I desire to insist it is not the business of the Christian apologist to force everybody into the same attitude with regard to the mysteries of the universe, still less to deny that the mysteries are always there. (4)! come now to consider the actual or possible attitude of apologetics towards difficulties of an intellectual kind, arising from the progress of scientific knowledge. It is plain that the chief points in what is commonly called the conflict between science and religion are due far less to the incompatibility of any particular fact of science with any particular doctrine of religion than to the difference in general outlook, the varying degrees of probability with which this or that is regarded, the relative importance of things in the general field of knowledge, which are the natural results of scientific education or scientific habits of mind, and which may collide with the beliefs, expectations, or general estimate of things which prevailed before science had developed, but while religious doctrine was already there. It has become a commonplace to say that science and religion have their separate fields, and that in ordinary life we often find religious men who are also scientific ; that the fundamental CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 277 doctrines of spiritual religion can be accommodated to suit new conceptions of the material universe, and have even at times gathered fresh strength and more illustration from the results of scientific discovery. Still, the fact remains that there is and must be an inconsistency between the ideas, on religious subjects, of those who have lived before and after any great scientific change such as that brought by the Copernican system and by the doctrine of evolution. We have but to look at the artistic creations of mediaeval Christianity to realize how the heliocentric system of the planets has made unreal for us the ideas of heaven and hell on which the minds of our ancestors were nourished. And the most cursory reference to any books touching on the subject of creation, before the growth of geology or the introduction of the idea of development, brings home to us the strangeness of those beliefs on the origin of things which were not obtained from scientific investigation, but received on religious authority. We are accustomed to ridicule the obscurantism of the Catholic Church that compelled Galileo to withdraw his statements as to the motion of the earth, as also, in more recent times, of the Anglicans who persecuted Colenso and the few fanatics who objected to Temple. But while acknowledging fully that they were sinners against the light, let us not minimize the task undertaken by those who accept new light from all quarters and are ready to abide the consequences. For the re- interpretation of religious truth in totally new 278 WITHIN OUR LIMITS mental surroundings is not a matter to be under- taken in lightness of heart. Sacred records have had to be either allegorized or else deprived of part of their authority. Beautiful visions have melted away, warnings and promises have become unreal. This is, of course, only a transition stage in the intellectual and religious development of mankind. In course of time it appears that many most illuminating religious ideas, many sources of hope and incitements to labour have come to us by those very means that have destroyed for ever the charming fabric of old-world faith. Life, and with it religion, may seem to have descended from poetry to prose. But our duty, whether as apologists, or as Christians, or simply as human beings, is not always to be hankering after the past, but to endeavour to adapt as much as we can of the wealth accumulated in the past to suit the needs of the present. (5) I come to difficulties of another kind possibly the most pressing in our own days those which Christianity has to encounter on the historical side. Here, as in the latter case, we must distinguish between the changes made by doubt thrown on particular facts from those due to the growth of the scientifically-historical spirit. And here again it would seem probable that how- ever much turmoil is caused by the former, far more radical changes are wrought by the latter. The historical facts which Christians would generally like to see well established are, of course, those related in the New Testament, especially CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 279 those relating to the life and teaching, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The growth of historical knowledge has not been such as either to prove or disprove the gospel history. But it has caused us to have a much higher standard as to sound historical evidence. It has also brought Christian origins and developments into line with certain other departments of the history of re- ligion. It has further, by critical examination of Christian records, led the most conservative of scholars to the conclusion that, taking the most favourable view possible of the trustworthiness of the original traditions and of the good faith of those by whom they were transmitted, we cannot regard ourselves as possessing a biography of our Lord giving accurately all the facts that we most wish to know. I do not wish to be taken to express any ap- proval of the work of a wholesale destructive character which has lately been attempted, es- pecially across the German Ocean. The attempt to reduce both the story of Jesus and the lives and works of the Apostles to oriental myth is among those venturesome attempts of one-sided scholars that would do no harm if they were not concerned with matters of universal interest and followed by an appeal to the public. Few sane scholars, perhaps no historical scholars, doubt the historicity of Christ nor His greatness. Still, the question as to what He did and intended to do, how far the Kingdom of God which He pro- claimed was at first complicated with the ex- 280 WITHIN OUR LIMITS pectation of a speedy catastrophe, what happened exactly when He was withdrawn from mortal sight, but remained a living power in the lives of His disciples all this is still highly debatable ground. It might seem as if a temporary veiling of the face of Christ were a just retribution on those who have so long claimed Him as the originator of their personal ideas and fancies, and asserted the sanction of His words for their own acts and opinions. Possibly the next generation may be more certain about the historical Jesus than it is possible for us to be. In any case, the right course for apologists to take is not to minimize the actual historic doubts and difficulties, but rather to dwell on the importance of all that historical criticism cannot possibly take away from us and of much that it has revealed to us, in enabling us to trace the workings of the spirit of Christ in many minds and in many churches all through mediaeval and modern history. It is a mistake to say that devotion to Christ as known in the gospel story, or even to Him as a perfect human character, has been at the root of all Christian life and action at all times, though it certainly has been in times near our own. But we all know how St. Paul speaks very little of Jesus as man and teacher, and even deprecates knowledge of Christ " after the flesh/' but is full of thought of Him as crucified and enthroned. In later days the theologians who thought of Him chiefly as the divine Logos acknowledged His CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 281 humanity, but often thought little about His human life. In many countries, even now, simple people know very little about the Teacher of Nazareth, but are yet Christians and " ignorantly worship " God manifested as man. I am not saying that this is right, nor that such people are not at a great disadvantage compared with those who have obtained a nearer view of the Master. But I merely point to the fact that if the worst comes to the worst, and we are, some of us, obliged to be content for a time with hazy knowledge of Christ as He lived on earth, we need not thereby be shut off from all the spiritual treasures which Christ has brought into the world. It seems to follow from these remarks that the task of apologetics is not always easy. It de- mands candour, patience, kindliness, and, still more, willingness to learn from opponents. Above all, it needs recognition of its own limitations. In conclusion I would look for a moment at the subject from another point of view, and sug- gest that those who undertake the defence of Christianity should have as clear ideas as possible, not only of the kind of attacks that they may have to repel, but far more of what it is that they are bound to defend. In military action, it is not good policy to make efforts on behalf of weak or useless outposts. Now, as we have seen, there is a certain amount in what generally passes as Christianity which has become attached to it from historical causes and cannot be said to belong to it essentially. Then there is much which to 282 WITHIN OUR LIMITS some people may be so closely bound up with Christianity that they, at least, could not remain Christians without it. But apart from what is mere accretion, or what is purely subjective in value, there are certain fundamental conceptions which are essential to the Christian religion in all times and places. It would, of course, be absurd for me to try to separate these three elements in popular Christianity. Probably we should some of us distinguish them in very different ways. Yet it is well for us all to recognize the distinction as far as we can. Stumbling-blocks are often removed when people realize that some things which they have always regarded as necessary elements in Christian belief have not always been held by Christians, and when they are held, are in no way profitable to Christianity. Anything which is really helpful to some Christians is, if questioned, worthy of explanation and apology; but if it is the reverse of helpful in any quarters, we are wrong in taking too much pains on its behalf. This applies especially to many kinds of religious discipline and observance, which are excellent for many perhaps for most people, but which others can very well do without. The more that Christians themselves realize what is all-important in their religion, the less likely are they to waste their energy in the defence either of what had better go, or of what would be good to retain, but can be lost without any great catastrophe. This amounts to little more than what we have already said or implied : that when CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 283 apologists have done their best or their worst, Christianity will stand or fall far less by their arguments than by the power of Christian faith and love acting in the lives and thoughts of Chris- tian men and women. XIII RELIGION AND PROGRESS (Paper read to the Newnham College Sunday Society) MY object in choosing what may seem rather a pretentious subject to present before you to-day is a quite humble one. My desire is to help clear up the minds of some of those present, 'as well as my own, as to the cause of a very distinct opposi- tion of opinions on some important practical principles. The opposition may be briefly stated thus : There are many people who hold that religion except perhaps in a very attenuated form is essentially inimical to all progress intellectual, moral, or economical. And there are others who assert with equal confidence that no progress can be stable and permanent unless it has a strong religious element and that all real religion is friendly to progress. Of course this opposition is seldom stated without any sort of modifications. Those who hold the former view may be ready to acknowledge that at certain times, under certain social and moral conditions, religion may have been harmless, 284 RELIGION AND PROGRESS 285 or even beneficial, to the cause of progress. And those who represent the opposite opinion may allow that progress has sometimes been impeded by the prevalent forms of religion. But in their practical ideals they differ toto ccelo. According to the former, we have our choice between the two : either religion must go to the wall, or progress must be mistrusted and turned back as far as possible. According to the latter, we have but to swim with the tide, and our secular and religious interests will alike prosper. Now in this case, as wherever controversy rages around some venerable but vague word or form of words, it is natural and reasonable to suspect that part of the opposition is verbal rather than actual : that some haziness as to the real significance of the abstract terms, religion and progress, has produced a bitter antagonism among people who, in pursuit of the concrete, are very little, if at all, divided. And in fact, both progress and religion may be so defined as to render any serious opposition between them almost inconceivable. If progress be taken to imply the full and harmonious develop- ment of all the faculties of man in society, it must include the perfection of man as a religious or as a spiritual being. And if religion be taken to mean what Matthew Arnold would have it to be, " morality touched with emotion/' it can certainly not be dispensed with in any attempts to ameliorate human life. But I think that without being inexact in our investigation and reasonings, we 386 WITHIN OUR LIMITS can do better and keep more within the bounds of ordinary thought and speech if we content our- selves with descriptions rather than with precise definitions of the two great agencies under con- sideration. By progress, then, I would understand all that goes to increase the power of man over the physical world and the co-operation of men in society to the attainment of common ends. It would thus comprise, as it does in common speech, the growth of knowledge, both theoretical and practical, the softening and humanizing of manners which is commonly supposed to belong to civiliza- tion, the development of industrial resources and of political organizations, and the general widen- ing of the intellectual horizon of the community at large, or at least of a considerable portion thereof. To some people, progress may seem to be more than this, but I think that most of us would agree that a society advancing in the various ways indicated might fairly be called progressive, even if in some respects (e.g. pictorial art, or architecture, or physical efficiency) it might be stationary or even retrogressive. The other term religion I would also take in a broad sense. People who talk about religion seem sometimes to ignore the fact that there are good religions and bad religions, or as we might more correctly say good and bad forms of religion. But without regard to the quality of any religion or form of religion, we may agree to the statement that it implies a doctrine, a dis- cipline, and a worship ; a doctrine as to the re- RELIGION AND PROGRESS 287 lations of the human and divine, and the ultimate purpose and meaning of all things ; a discipline by which habits, moral or ceremonial or both, are formed and enforced ; and a worship by which acts of ritual are performed or signs of reverence are paid to beings or a Being regarded as capable of propitiation or worthy of supreme reverence. It may be said that some religions will not come under this description, but I think that no important ones will fall outside. Even the inchoate religions of savages have the three elements in embryo form. And a religion of agnosticism, like Buddhism, while naturally pos- sessing the element of discipline, seems to have a power of developing both a doctrine as to the supernatural basis of things and the worship of an originally human founder. Now the question is as to whether religion, taken in this sense, is, or is not, favourable to progress, taken also in the sense just given. Or, more precisely, whether, apart from determining factors peculiar to some particular age and country, there is any uniform or permanent re- lation between the two. Or again, more definitely still, as more interesting to us personally, whether the forces acting on behalf of religion among us at the present day are or are not helpful to the cause of modern progress. I will first put the case as strongly as I can for those who see nothing but hostility between the two. Such people need not be essentially anti- religious. Of course if they are entirely devoted 288 WITHIN OUR LIMITS to the cause of progress, as they see it and are trying to further it, they will be impatient with anything that seems to thwart it. But if there is a great deal that they do not like in modern tendencies, which yet seem to them overpoweringly strong, and constructive in force, they may deeply regret the loss of elements in the culture of past ages which gave it dignity and sweetness, but which are doomed to decay as much as the pictur- esque beauty of mediaeval cities and the naive pathos of primitive poetry. Then they are either pessimists if they make up their minds to the inevitable or reactionaries, if they set themselves to oppose inflowing currents and to rescue at least some debris of the glories of the past. But the arguments for their view, whether or not that view is to them a cheerful one, are to be found in the records of history and in observation of life. i. One is that the increase of knowledge with the growth of scientific method and logical habits of mind is ever diminishing the sphere of religion in furnishing explanations of unintelligible things. An untrained mind is always naturally prone to superstition, and a great deal that we would all set down as superstition at the present day counted as reasonable explanation among our ancestors some of them immeasurably our superiors only a few generations back. It is quite super- fluous to dwell on the gradual growth of a dis- inclination to admit the intervention of miraculous agency in ordinary affairs. It is generally acknow- RELIGION AND PROGRESS 289 ledged that whereas in old times people were asked to believe in Christianity on the strength of miracles, they are now asked to believe in miracles on the strength of Christianity. True, men are more willing now than a few decades ago to admit of strange occurrences and unknown processes that go on in human bodies and human minds; but most people who have given their attention to such things would say that they come in the order of nature, though nature may be more multifarious and mysterious than we used to suppose. And we can hardly say that the recog- nition of an uncanny element in life is closely connected with religion as religious people under- stand the word. From similar causes, we are, as a rule, less inclined than our forefathers to see special dispensations of Providence in the events of our lives, or special acts of a creative or an overrruling power hi any newly observed pheno- mena or cataclysmic occurrences in the external world. It is not that science has become arrogant, and refuses to see God in nature. Rather, it has become modest, and hesitates to ascribe to the Deity everything of which it fails to see the origin, or which might seem plain if the Deity were even as ourselves. If He is in nature or nature in Him, partial manifestations are dis- credited. But it is with these partial manifesta- tions that religion, in the popular mind, is chiefly bound up, and if the tendency of progress is to disparage them, it may well seem to be inimical to religion altogether, except as a vague theory of 2QO WITHIN OUR LIMITS some mystic thinkers, out of touch with ordinary humanity. 1 2. This argument is drawn from the scientific side of the question ; the next two come from the historical. All students of history know that if there are any things within its range more obstinately conservative than any others, these are the religious institutions of a people. Fashions of dress and diet change as by gusts of wind. Customs and institutions formed for social and political purposes sometimes outlive their original objects, but are generally changed or done away with as circumstances demand. But in everything to do with ritual or old religious habits and distinctions there is a tendency to indefinite persistence, until, sometimes, ancient objects of veneration are swept away in a moment of popular fury. Where no such unpopularity is incurred, old-world superstitions and habits survive, contributing much to the enjoyment of the people and to the instruction of the antiquarian but very little to the serious life of the community. Dislike of change in religious practices was at first, no doubt, due to superstitious fear, and maintained itself by general sentiment. What- ever its cause, it is there, and to those who regard religion chiefly on the external side of ritual and observance progress and religion seem as likely to amalgamate as oil and water. 3. But far more powerful on this side is the 1 These reflections are developed in the essay on " Belief in Miracles/' p. 30 se^. RELIGION AND PROGRESS 291 historical argument based on the many instances of religious authority, or state authority backed by religious sanctions, intervening to suppress movements of intellectual or social activity, even by severe persecution of the leaders. Of course the mind naturally recurs to the Inquisition, and to the line taken by the Church of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance against men like Abe- lard, Bruno, Galileo. One thinks, too, of the blighting influence of asceticism on some forms of art and culture whether that asceticism has worn a Catholic or a Puritan dress. And in more recent times, have we not all seen the condemnation, by the highest authority of the Roman Church, of all the critical effort of modern times ? But the coercion of intellectual progress by religious authority is not confined to one church or one religion. We see something of it even among the Greeks, who had larger scope for freedom of thought than most peoples of antiquity ; the condemnation of Anaxagoras for impiety, and the execution of Socrates on a charge which, though false, was made in the interests of popular religion, are conspicuous instances. Wielders of religious authority have most often been ready to crush independence sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. How, then, can religion in its essence be other than hostile to progress ? 4. Then, in the fourth place, there is an argument from analogy. In the course of human develop- ment, certain forces have proved beneficial during 2Q2 WITHIN OUR LIMITS special phases of civilization, and have main- tained themselves accordingly. But when they have served their purpose, they have gradually disappeared like a disused organ of a living body. We have learned from the anthropologists that some superstitions belonging to primitive religions were very useful in their time, towards fostering a regard for human life, protecting certain kinds of early property, keeping the breed of men healthy, and so forth. But these super- stitions have now been superseded by rational regard for our own interests and those of the society to which we belong, and by institutions specially framed to serve those interests. And to those who regard religion (as it was commonly regarded in the last century) as a kind of police force, whose function it was to enforce moral rules by supramundane sanctions, it might well seem that enlightened secular education, with good social institutions, are likely in the future to succeed to the functions of churches and religious teachers. I have tried to put these arguments pretty strongly, at the risk of hurting the feelings of any who may feel too much repelled by the mental attitude of those who urge them to see the need for looking for any grain of truth in them. I consider, however, that even if these people were enemies to all that we most prize though personally I do not regard them in that light it is, as the Romans said, a righteous thing to learn from one's enemy. And if there is any ground in their assertions, it must yield food for RELIGION AND PROGRESS 293 reflection and subsequent action to those who take the opposite side. It is to the arguments on that other side that I now wish to turn. It has often been shown how important a part religion has held in the early and later develop- ments of civilization. It has, as we have already seen, helped to impress on early societies the need for law and order. Later on we see con- fidence in national deities contributing to the growth of patriotism, and urging the claims of the people at large to loyal service on the part of the individual. In various countries, religion has allied itself with what was strongest and best in the national character, and helped to develop it to the highest possible stage. Greek art, including the drama, is hardly conceivable if the Greeks had not had the conceptions of their anthropo- morphic deities to represent, according to the noblest standard of human beauty, and if they had not learned to increase their physical advantages by athletic contests held in honour of the gods, or to develop their creative literary powers in the tragedies which were also a divine service. The Romans could hardly have originated and maintained their system of law and government if their religion had not associated itself very intimately with their whole conduct of life. If it is said, as hinted a little while ago, that religion may have served as leading-strings for a young and growing people, to be discarded on its arrival at maturity, it may be replied that both the Greek idea of beauty and the Roman idea of law 294 WITHIN OUR LIMITS allied themselves to what was most elevated in the religious consciousness of both peoples, even while the early superstitions died away ; and this even before the universal elements in Hellenism and Romanism had been incorporated into Christianity. If we turn to the Hebrews, it is plain how through all their history their progress was religious where it was also political and literary. Closely associated with their national life, as it continues to be to this day, it was yet more closely allied to their conception of righteousness as the most essential element in the divine character, and the whole development of this conception constitutes one of the chief branches of the study of religion generally. Furthermore, it may be shown that in the tumultuous times of the Middle Ages, the in- stitutions and the teachers of the Christian religion helped in the formation of orderly communities, in the assertion of spiritual and intellectual factors in life above brute force, in the revival of arts and letters, in the insistence on the natural brotherhood of man. If here again the theory of religion as leading-strings be advanced, it may be pointed out that very much of the teaching of Christianity was not discerned at the times of its earliest promulgation. Far from its influence having disappeared with the progress of society, it may be said that each stage in social progress has been marked by often occasioned by some new manifestation of Christian enthusiasm. The arguments lately cited on the other side RELIGION AND PROGRESS 295 would be met chiefly by a distinction between the essential nature of religion and certain accidents which have, for better or worse, attached them- selves to it at different times. Modern science, it has been shown very many times, has no quarrel with religion as such, only with certain obsolete explanations of nature and crude ways of regarding the world and man which have long been discarded by all religious people who have any claim to education. Then with regard to religious conservatism and opposition to change of all kinds : here again a distinction may be made between religion itself and what has been done in its name. True religion recognizes those who suffer for their love of truth, from Socrates down to Father Tyrrell. It is only by abuse of authority, by sordid human desire for power or wealth, not by genuine zeal for the glory of God, that the con- trollers of religion have persecuted the advocates of liberty and reform. Christians, more than the votaries of any other religion, ought to recognize the paradox of associating their cause with reaction and coercion, since they began in a movement against the established religious authorities, and their Founder was put to death by the representa- tives of respectable conservatism. The role of the prophets and that of the priests has some- times been assimilated, though more often the two have been in open or tacit opposition. But the force of religion has generally been on the side of the prophets. 296 WITHIN OUR LIMITS The only escape from such anomalies in the future as religious intolerance and reaction, would seem to be that religion itself should be regarded as capable of progress. It is not given to man ready made, like a house to dwell in, or a dress to wear, but rather like food, to be assimilated and worked into his organism. If we desire that in days to come our posterity may continue to live in the spirit of reverence and of hopeful activity that religion alone can give, we must be careful always to distinguish the real thing from its external trappings, and to be ready to accept new interpretations of old truths. Such is the general view of those who would identify the cause of religion with that of progress. It is possible to feel a strong sympathy with their state of mind, and yet to consider that some modifications may be needed in their conclusions. For, after all, religion is not to be regarded as entirely bound up with progress, however much worse it may be to associate it with reaction. For progress, though a worthy object of our pursuit, is not, in its sphere, wholly coincident with that of religion, nor is it solid enough to constitute a permanent support for so great a structure. There is much in the religion of most religious people which has nothing to do with progress, in the ordinary sense of the word. I do not mean that religious people are not con- tinually making progress in religion, but this need not have anything to do with the progress of the world. Many ages of the world's history have RELIGION AND PROGRESS 297 been, in most ways, unprogressive and even de- cadent, while many peoples have lived for cen- turies in a practically stationary state. Yet in such days and with such peoples, religion has given consolation and even hope to many who ever looked forward to a great cataclysm, or who dwelt on the glories of the past only. In fact, religion is so far from being bound up with progress in time that time is to it of little account it looks at all things sub specie ceternitatis. It points to One " in whom is no variableness/' and to whom " a thousand years are as one day." And thus it can contemplate without horror the possibility that the earth may one day become as cold and lifeless as the moon, or that, before that day, some other luminary may have collided with our planet and reduced it to fragments. But I do not, of course, deny that the religion of progressive peoples ought to be progressive, whatever may be the character of religion under conditions which forbid progress altogether. I only mean that energetic and active people have no right to despise the religion of any who, dwelling apart from the great currents of popular move- ment, feel no enthusiasm for a golden future, and, without being pessimists, are far from being optimists. With this proviso, we, who certainly belong to a progressive people and a progressive age, ought by all means to bring our religion into harmony with our other motives of action. Yet perhaps, if we feel our efforts baffled and if our objects turn out unworthy of the sacrifices made 20 298 WITHIN OUR LIMITS to attain them, we ought to realize that after all we are not left without any ground beneath our feet. The history of religion seems to leave on us the impression that the religious conceptions of man, however invariable within limits, are funda- mentally much the same from age to age. The sympathy called out in us by the utterances of psalmists and prophets of the olden time is so strong as sometimes to obscure the differences between their times and morals and ours. We often read into their words meanings that they would not have accepted. But the very fact that the words are capable of being so interpreted seems to point to a deep underlying unity in the religious consciousness of the race. Of course this principle must not be pressed too far. The religion of primitive peoples is always interesting, but it does not, except in rare cases, call out our sympathy and admiration. And many religions can only inspire us with abhorrence of their cruel sacrifices or their sensual rites. But with peoples whose religious ideas have been from early times of a higher order, the case is different. It is with religion as with poetry. The rude war- songs and the plaintive wailings of savages have a certain charm, but we do not regard them as products of high art. But a good deal of the poetry of about eight hundred years before Christ is immeasurably better, as poetry, than anything we have seen, or dare hope to see, produced in our own days. In religion, as in art, we have some RELIGION AND PROGRESS 299 kinds of progress and many varieties of merit, but no steady continuous progress from the in- ferior to the superior. A sudden rush upwards is sometimes made by a great genius. But for some long time we have not had any great re- ligious genius among us, any more than we have had any great creative poet or artist. Perhaps some may come to us in a future day. Mean- time it is our task to take and use the treasures bequeathed to us by the past, and hand them down, adapted to modern needs, to those who are to succeed us. The general result of these reflections may be summarized thus : there is a good prima-facie case for those who consider that religion and pro- gress are antipathetic to one another, but such persons often make the error of identifying religion with the authority exercised in the name of re- ligion, and with the natural conservative instincts of human nature, which cling to any object of old-time veneration. Those who take progress and religion as naturally advancing hand-in-hand, unless fanaticism or ambition or sordid interest have forced them into opposition, can make out a better cause. But they are liable to confuse the most permanent element in life with something always in motion and flux. Religion need not necessarily lead the van of progress, but to main- tain its ground in a progressive society it must be capable of adaptation to changing habits of thought and action, as society grows in complexity, and knowledge becomes more extensive and 300 WITHIN OUR LIMITS systematic. Religion is itself susceptible of a progress of its own, but its highest manifestations, like those of artistic inspiration, are not such as we can bring under any known rule. I once saw a doggerel inscription carved over the door of an old Bavarian inn, according to ancient custom. It ran somewhat thus : Magst du dich beim Alten halten Oder alles neu umstalten, Mein's nur treu und lasz Gott walten. 1 It seemed to me that this would be a good motto for a political club comprising progressive and conservative elements. It might seem even more suitable for a society containing various types of religious thought and feeling. Religion always seems old yet it need never become decrepit or effete if it does, it deserves to perish in the struggle for existence. It is always new but if it becomes identified with policies of revolu- tion or even of reformation it becomes secularized, and is merged in the purely mundane. If it is the task of some of us to treasure up the old, of others to propagate the new, ought we not to regard ourselves as fellow-workers, though in various fields, in the service of righteousness and truth ? 1 Would you keep the world to its old-world way. Or fashion it fresh in the light of to-day, Only be true, and let God hold sway. XIV INDEPENDENCE (Paper read to the Newnham College Sunday Society) WHEN I wrote this word at the head of my paper, I wondered how many of those who should hear it would have pleasant associations with it, how many entirely the reverse. I think that almost all of us have a certain pleasure in being what we consider independent and a desire to be more independent than we are. There is a natural and healthy joy felt by the baby when he first struts across the floor rejecting any proffered finger, by the convalescent the first time he puts on his clothes for himself after a long illness, by the scholar who sets to work at any piece of first-hand investigation by all of us when we start any new undertaking, great or small, on our own responsibility and on the strength of our own resources. And we all feel a certain admira- tion for the independent type of mind and char- acter, for the original thinker, the leader in fresh enterprises, the fearless critic, the bold champion of unpopular causes, whilst those who are, in all their actions and ideas, dependent on others, 301 302 WITHIN OUR LIMITS who " never knew their own minds/' or who never try to do any kind of work unassisted, are regarded, if not with moral reprobation, with a certain aversion and contempt. Yet on the other hand, the word independent may suggest the person contemptuous of social amenities and decencies ; the loud-voiced factory girl who would rather do the hardest work and sleep in a garret than go into service ; the tradesman who refuses on any occasion to meet any special wishes of his customers ; and all those sharp- cornered, disobliging people who show their in- dependence of others chiefly by forcing others to become as independent as possible of them. Should we say that there are two kinds of in- dependence, one good and the other bad ? Or that it is good in moderation, but that we may have too much of it ? Each of these views seems to me to have some degree of truth, but none represents the whole truth as I wished to set it before you : that independence is an alto- gether desirable thing, but that it needs, in order to work effectually, to be supplemented by some- thing that seems very like its exact opposite. This may sound paradoxical, but I hope that as we go on it may not seem to be unreasonable. Let us, then, look a little more clearly at inde- pendence as we wish to have it. If we followed the example of Plato in his Republic and looked first at the larger unit, the state, for a clearer manifestation of the quality we wish to discover in the individual, we should say that political INDEPENDENCE 303 independence lay in the power which a state has of administrating its own affairs, regulating its external policy, and making its own laws, without the interference of any foreign power. Among the old Greeks, the idea of autonomy needed to be completed by that of self-sufficiency. The state must not only move as it likes, but be able, under necessity, at least, to provide for its own wants. Similarly the independent man is one whose powers of action are not restrained by any limita- tions imposed by neighbours, and whose great sources of satisfaction lie within, and do not require to be supplemented by the possession of external goods. To put this in another form : independence means life at first hand. The independent plant, as distinguished from the parasite, draws its nourishment straight from the soil and the air, grows according to its natural motions, and lives on even if its neighbours around fall and die. Thus the man or woman of in- dependent mind and character stands face to face with nature and society, receives freely all the influences, natural and social, that can make life happy and wholesome, and acts freely and spontaneously from motives derived from his own character, his tastes, reason, and con- science. Now I do not think it can be maintained that there is too much of this spirit among us at the present day. I would not lay stress on the many cases we come across of pitiable depen- dence of people who, according to the homely 304 WITHIN OUR LIMITS but expressive phrase, " cannot call their souls their own." Even in people who are not weaker than most of their neighbours we often wish to find a little more spontaneity and decision. Sometimes it is the opinions and tastes of our particular friends and advisers, sometimes the conventions of society, that prevent us from having any distinct opinions and tastes of our own or from giving expression to any that we may possibly have. I am not, of course, anxious to limit the influence of helpful friends or to advocate rebellion against social proprieties. But most really serviceable friends deprecate any tendency to override the natural tendencies of persons they care about, even if such may be less experienced or less capable than themselves. And in accepting, as necessary limitations in some directions the dicta of society, the indepen- dent mind always reserves the right of criticism, and watches for opportunities of gradual modi- fication towards a more reasonable standard. If we wish to enjoy either nature or art, we must go to both with unclouded minds. What other people have said about nature or art may help indefinitely towards our higher enjoyment, but only on condition that we use the judgment of those whom we recognize as having deeper knowledge or purer taste than our own in helping us to develop our own faculties, not as super- seding the use of them. This may seem an im- practicable distinction, but I do not think that it is really so. To take an example or two : INDEPENDENCE 305 it is possible to realise what beauty there may be in a flat country by studying, with the help of a good critic, those etchings of Rembrandt's in our Museum here. Again, Ruskin has opened many people's eyes to the glories of Turner and to the beauty and truthfulness of the Early Italian painters and the modern Pre-Raphaelites. And any one who has made the most elementary study of Greek sculpture has probably acquired a liking for works of an important period of promise and lost his preference for more skilful products of a period of decadence. But if the critics and historians have done the student any good, however slight, it has not been by instilling their judgments into him, but by bringing him fresh light by which to form judgments of his own. And if he retains his independence, this new light will not prevent him from seeing clearly the other things which he would have seen if he had not been instructed at all. If level fields have their beauty, he may still continue to love mountains. He need not cease to admire Titian and Veronese because he can enjoy Cimabue and Giotto, nor despise the Apollo Belvedere because it belongs to a late period. Possibly his tastes may be such that the art critics generally do not appeal to him, but that he may have intense enjoyment in some particular aspects of natural and artistic beauty. In that case it is more expedient for him frankly to confess that he likes these things best, though he acknowledges that others may be really better. The worst 306 WITHIN OUR LIMITS thing for his happiness and even for his honesty is to fancy that he likes what he really does not, and to disown his natural preferences without acquiring higher ones. In literature yet more than in art, independence is quite essential. One cannot and need not shut oneself off from the current movements in favour of some special poet or school of writers. But if such authors are, through our own tempera- ment and character, less pleasing and helpful to us than others, there is no reason why we should adopt the fashion of the hour. We often waste time and trouble in what to us are rough and thorny paths when there are many pleasant ones near at hand in which we might take our pastime even if we had to take it in smaller companies or even alone. In other regions where, for life to arrive at any standard of efficiency and dignity, independ- ence is yet more desirable than in literature and art, we find it yet more conspicuously lacking. How many hundreds of people take their political opinions ready-made from their ordinary news- paper and their religious opinions ready-made from their ordinary preacher, or from the circle in which they find themselves ! Such persons may be, within their limits, good citizens and even good Christians. They may have some kind of hold on political principle and religious doctrine. But their range of view is likely to be limited and their grasp feeble, until they try to go beyond fashion, convention, aad tradition, INDEPENDENCE 307 and ask themselves : What is this to me ? How does it affect my particular life and duty ? What must I take and what reject, and how must I use what I take in order that I myself shall see my way clearly and keep to it steadily ? A parasitical life is bad enough in all its phases. But in its attitude towards the ideal, it is not worth calling life at all. So far I have looked chiefly at the more receptive and passive side of human nature at the stand- point to be taken up towards the beauty and truth around and beyond us which we desire to receive into our souls. But when we come to the active side, independence seems, if possible, yet more necessary. When we set about any piece of work, when we decide on any course of action, in the numberless cases which arise in everyday life for some practical decision, we need a vigour and a security that cannot be enjoyed by those who are only accustomed to follow the lines chalked out for them by their fellows. There is in many fields a great waste of power nowadays, and it seems to me that one source of waste is the non-use of special faculties pos- sessed by individuals. If we perfectly knew our- selves, we should probably be aware, not only of many weaknesses that escape our notice, but also of special facilities of which we fail to take ad- vantage because we do not realize that they are there. Even if a candid examination brings us to the conviction that we only attain a fair average all round, yet even so, no two people are exactly 3o8 WITHIN OUR LIMITS alike, and we might all of us accomplish more if we did what we were most fit to do, in the way in which we could best do it, instead of trying to do just like those around us, and lamenting when we fell short. Even within the limits set by social life, by school, home or college, by class distinction, by church organization, there is yet scope for individual energy to assert itself in the under- taking and accomplishment of the world's work. Some persons can work better on certain lines, others on different ones. It is a great source of strength to the individual to believe that there are fields of activity open to him, and that if he cannot do this or that as his neighbour can, he has but to work on and await his opportunity. Furthermore, it is only the independent mind and character that can initiate any work worth doing. One falls into the habit of saying that things must be so, until some enterprising person starts the question " Why ? ' Then follows an attempt to make things different, which might have been made earlier if only some one had ventured to look at the situation in an uncon- ventional way. Now I know that serious objection may be taken to this praise of independence. I may be told that it leads to that odious spectacle, love of eccentricity ; that it encourages self-conceit ; that it would lessen the obligation of social amenities and the powers of social co-operation. To which I would answer : no doubt it would do all this, and worse too, if it were not accompanied INDEPENDENCE 309 by what seems to be its opposite : the sense of entire and complete dependence. I have already said that I had a paradox which I wanted to justify. I shall be aided in such justification if I show that paradox as it may seem, the concomitance of complete independence and of entire subjection, has formed the most inspiring doctrine of the greatest of pagan philosophies and of the greatest of all religions of Stoicism and of Christianity. That Stoicism encouraged the independence of man is known to all. The most essential thing to do, according to Epictetus, is to make up our mind what things are within our power and what are beyond it. For what is beyond our power is not essential to our well-being. What is within our power furnishes all that is needed for a good and happy life. Wealth, friends, health, all the desiderata of ordinary human beings, may be taken from us. But the reasonable view of life, and courage, and contentment are things of which no external power can deprive us. Even the mistakes and wrong-doings of past times have become part of that which is no longer in our own power and so unable to touch our true being now at this moment. It is in virtue of his reasonable soul that man is a child of God, and this divine inheritance cannot be withdrawn from him. But it is the task of his life so to rule and discipline himself that he may be above the fear of any- thing that may come on him from without : pain, poverty, hatred, death itself. The perfect man is 310 WITHIN OUR LIMITS entirely self-sufficing and independent of all the world. Yet there is the other side of the Stoic doctrine : man is part of a great whole. He is nothing in himself, but may derive endless comfort from thinking how great is the whole, the " City of God " of which he is a citizen. In following his nature, he follows the law of the Almighty Father, In reviling his fellow-man or allowing his own heart to become corrupt, he is like a member of the body struggling against another member, like an unhealthy growth on a living organism. In practice, some of the Stoics seem to have dwelt most on one side, others on the other side of the truth which seems to reduce itself to one. But it is evident that exclusive attention to either side would lead to very pernicious results. Probably many laid too much proportional stress on the first half, and thence came the dis- agreeable reputation of the " budge doctor of the Stoic fur," who, in insisting on independence of external conditions, had landed himself in isola- tion from all his fellows and from all human feelings and humanizing pursuits. On the other hand, to dwell only on the all-embracing universal Power would probably lead to a crippling fatalism or a non-moral pantheism. The connection be- tween the two sides might be made out from the intellectual point of view, but it was primarily moral or spiritual. Man is great in so far as he knows the greatness of the Cosmos. The life of INDEPENDENCE 311 the individual is worthy and harmonious if it is in all respects subject to a divine law. The juxtaposition of littleness and greatness in man, which belongs to his subjection and in- dependence, was realized by Jews as well as by : Greeks. "I will consider Thy heavens, even the ;work of Thy fingers ; the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained. What is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visitest him ? Thou madest him lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and worship." Man is a small enough creature in the material universe, yet, in the eyes of the Psalmist, he is the viceregent of the Most High. But the two sides of the picture are, I think one may say, more clearly set forth in Christianity than in any other religion or in any philosophy. It is sometimes said that Christianity was the first religion to make direct appeal to the in- dividual conscience. But this is not strictly true. The old national religions of the Ancient World did not, certainly, address themselves much to men as individuals, or appeal strongly to the personal feeling of man and woman as to the claims of heaven on their allegiance. Certain philosophers, as we all know, did so and were treated in consequence as revolutionary and dangerous persons. But just at the rise of Christianity there was a good deal of personal religion about, and very much more at the time when Christianity began to enter into active competition with the rival systems and cults. 312 WITHIN OUR LIMITS Amid the dissolution of nations and religions under the all-embracing sway of Rome, many religious societies had sprung up, to which persons were admitted of all nations, all ranks, and both sexes, associations the mysterious rites of which in honour of Mithras, of Osiris and Isis, of Sabazius, or of other neo-Greek divinities claimed to purge the soul from pollution and cast out the fear of death. When Christianity first appeared in the Greek- speaking world, it seemed rather like one of these new societies than like one of the old religions. It appealed to man as man, not as Athenian or Roman or Ephesian. It threw on the individual the responsibility of accepting or rejecting a divine message. It possessed apparently from the time it was first proclaimed secret rites which also soon came to be called mysteries by which those who belonged to it formed a brotherhood apart from the rest of the world. And it went much farther towards the disintegration of the old system than ever Mithraicism or any of the other new religions went, in that it led men to adopt a life and follow a calling so far remote from their former pursuits that the ordinary business military or civil of the state became something apart from their spheres of action. State, family, kinsfolk, old habits of life, old standards of right and wrong, all the world as it had hitherto been, was, to the man newly baptized into the name of Christ, to be counted as dust in the balance com- pared with the love which constrained him, and the glory which should be revealed. INDEPENDENCE 313 This was, of course, not the attitude permanently maintained by Christians in general. Family, social, political claims were reasserted. Nay, the religious society itself became a great and elaborate organization, imposing strict limitations to in- dividual zeal and hazardous imaginings. And the sense of individuality has at times become blunted, so that men seemed born into the Christian Church apart from any first-hand ex- perience of Christian realities, and to receive involuntarily all its obligations and privileges as they did those of their nation or society. Yet after the Church has for a time become lethargic, the subsequent awakening has always been accompanied by an enhancement of the value of individual conviction and the need of independent recognition of truth and acceptance of salvation. It was so at the Reformation, at the Wesleyan Revival it is so wherever a fresh burst of life breaks the crust of religious re- spectability. But as we have practically implied this recog- nition of the individual in his independent claims and responsibilities rests on the belief that each one attains the end of his desires in submission to an order wherein his task is assigned him nay more, as the recipient of a divine gift without which he could do nothing. And nowhere do we find such entire freedom from the ordinary shackles of external circumstances, such power to resist apparently insuperable difficulties, as in those who regard all their strength as not their own but 21 314 WITHIN OUR LIMITS as directly imparted by Him in whose cause it is to be used. This is the language of religion, perhaps, but it has to do with facts patent to every psycholo- gical observer of men and reader of history. And the same conclusion might be yielded by a study of Christian doctrine. In St. Paul's doctrine of the Ktvucris or self-mptying of Christ, set forth in the Epistle to the Philippians, we have the idea most clearly manifested. I do not say that the passage I refer to means nothing more I should always be loath to limit to one sense the significance of any great religious doctrine but it certainly does seem to set forth the supreme greatness and majesty of uncontrolled power submitting itself, freely and out of pure love, to the very lowest and most complete subjection. It is found in many places of the Fourth Gospel, and elsewhere in the New Testament, and possibly it is its very familiarity that makes us sometimes blind to its sublimity. But is this a flight above the comparatively humble question from which we started ? I think not, if all things connected with the moral and spiritual life point to regions beyond the reach of precise language and definite understand- ing. The truth, if truth we take it to be, has a quite mundane and practical side. The duty of seeing with our own eyes, grasping with our own affections, labouring with our own energies, is so far opposed to contempt of our neighbours and disregard for any higher Power, that it only finds INDEPENDENCE 315 its fulfilment in co-operation with others and in willing acceptance of a very subordinate place in a great whole. Genuine independence does not involve anything like self-assertion, for it is secure of its standing, and we commonly are most loud in our assertions where our tenure is the least assured. Self-respect of the best kind involves respect for others, since we are only worthy of respect, by ourselves or by any one else, when we are working with and for our neighbours, in the light of the experience bequeathed by those who have gone before us, and in the hope of serving those who are to come after. And the only independence worth having is that which springs from a clear recognition (with willing acceptance) of the obliga- tions which rest upon us, and of the impotence of all the forces of evil to deprive us of what we have chosen for our supreme good. PRINTED BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VTNEY, LD. f CONDON AND AYOESBORY. ^ , y^^ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. Fine schedule: 25 cents on first day overdue 50 cents on fourth day overdue One dollar on seventh day overdue. N V 13 15,4, FF &+ LD 21-100m-12,'46(A2012s )4120 YC 3031 448944 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY