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T TL> I v J f V - Edition, September 1922 New Impression, November 1922 Made in Great Britain PREFACE IT is always difficult to choose a title for a book of essays, and it seemed most convenient to repeat the name of the little volume which was published three years ago. Those essays were in part a challenge to certain idols of the market-place and theatre, and I thought it legitimate to mark the purpose or tendency of the book on the title- page. But I have no wish to pose as a prophet crying in the wilderness. The events of the last few years have, it is to be hoped, taught something both to my critics and to myself ; they have perhaps even brought us nearer together. In any case, the present volume contains nothing very daring or unconventional, and if it had stood alone I should have chosen a less provocative title. The greater part of the book consists of hitherto unpublished matter. Confessio Fidei is an attempt to put in order what I actually believe, and to explain why I believe it. I shall be classified, I suppose, as belonging to the right wing of theological liberalism. But I prefer to call myself a Christian Platonist, and to claim a humble place in the long chain of Christian thinkers whose philo- sophy is based on the Platonic tradition. That chain has been unbroken from the first century to our own day, and in English theology it has had a very honourable record. It should, I think, be recognised as a third school of thought in the Church, not less legitimate, nor less pro- ductive of good fruits, than the Catholic and Protestant parties, which in ecclesiastical politics are so much more active and prominent. The Hibbert Lectures were delivered at Oxford in 1920 ; the subject was suggested to me by my friend Dr. Jacks. vi PREFACE The five lectures are a sketch of the interaction df political and religious ideas in history, with special refer- ence to present problems. The subject is interesting and important ; but the treatment is necessarily cursory and superficial, mainly from lack of space, but also, as regards the medieval period, from insufficient knowledge. I hope, however, that as a summary of the attempts that have been made in various ages to place human institutions under the sanction of absolute authority, the lectures may not be without interest. The Romanes and Rede Lectures were given in 1920 and 1922 respectively. These two annual lectureships have been held by such a series of distinguished men that it is a great honour to be asked to deliver them, and I valued the compliment from my two universities very highly. Both lectures have been published and widely read ; but some who already know them may be glad to have them in book form. The next two essays, which I am allowed to reprint by the courtesy of the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Review respectively, deal with closely connected subjects. The unending rivalry between Europe and Asia a rivalry not only of peoples but of ideas and types of civilisation has not been definitely settled in favour of the West. Under new forms, Abiatic competition may be a very serious matter for industrialised Europe, and it no longer seems likely that the whole world will pass under the political tutelage of the white peoples. The other essay. The Dilemma of Civilisation, raises the great question whether the over-mechanisation of life has not impaired the intrinsic qualities of the human race, so that what we usually call progress may have to be paid for by racial retrogression. It is possible that here and there these two essays may bear marks of the very anxious years in which they were written. It then seemed uncertain whether civilisation would survive the terrible strain which the Great War had put upon it. Our social order has many enemies, who have not yet abandoned the hope of wrecking it. But it seems to me to have more strength than either PREFACE Til its friends or its enemies gave it credit for ; and Western Europe at least shows signs of convalescence. The competition of the Far East is perhaps a question for the next generation more than for our own, though we must be prepared to deal with it ; and The Dilemma of Civilisation is a problem for the Earth-Spirit, whom George Meredith, in rather cryptic lines, represents as contemplating ' her great venture, Man.' Meanwhile on him, her chief Expression, her great word of life, looks she ; Twi-minded of him, as the waxing tree Or dated leaf. ' Earth,' the poet thinks, is not yet certain that her great venture has been a success. But humanity is still young. The last essay, on Eugenics, urges the necessity of counteracting, by rational selection, the racial deteriora- tion which must overtake any nation in which natural selection is no longer operative. It has appeared in the Edinburgh Review for July 1922. W. E. INGE. ST. PAUL'S, August 1922. CONTENTS PAOB I. ' CONFESSIO FlDEl ' 1 II. THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE : (i) THEOCRACIES 60 (ii) THE GREEK CITY STATE .... 78 (iii) THE MEDIEVAL IDEAL ..... 99 (iv) THE MODERN GOD-STATE . . . .120 (v) RELIGION AND THE STATE .... 139 III. THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 158 IV. THE VICTORIAN AGE 184 V. THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS . . . 209 VI. THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION .... 231 VII. EUGENICS 254 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS 'CONFESSIO FIDEI' THE object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's. Philosophy means thinking things out for oneself. Ultimately, there can be only one true philosophy, since reason is one and we all live in the same world. But we are all limited, both in intellectual capacity, and in the experience upon which our beliefs are built. We can only try to co-ordinate and reconcile the knowledge which has come to us from many quarters, resolving contradictions and separating genuine convic- tions from spectral half-beliefs, conventional acceptances, and the mere will to believe. We cannot make a religion for others, and we ought not to let others make a religion for us. Our own religion is what life has taught us. If we can clarify this body of experience, which comes to us so turbid and impure, we shall have done what is best worth doing for ourselves, and we shall have to offer to others the best that was in us to give, however small its value may be. I begin this essay on the terrace in front of an hotel at Miirren. A lonely holiday, almost without books, among the grandest scenes of nature, is a favourable opportunity for setting one's ideas in order. Solitude and freedom from interruptions give a chance of continuous thinking. The absence of books compels thought to take the form of self-examination. A Swiss alp, five thousand feet above the sea, and in full view of a majestic range of snow n. 1 B 2 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS peaks and glaciers, opens avenues of communication with the magnolia Dei which are less easy to maintain amid the dark and grimy surroundings of my London home. And so I will employ myself here in trying to formulate my articles of belief, primarily for my own sake, but also in the hope that what I write may fall into the hands of some like-minded or sympathetic readers. God is the beginning of religion and the end of philo- sophy, and the beginning and the end are one. Alike in religion and philosophy the important question is not whether God exists, but what we mean when we speak of God. We all, I suppose, tend to make a God in our own likeness, or in the likeness of such an one as we should be if we could be what we would. Our dominant interests warp our conceptions of the Deity. The philosopher contemplates an eternal thinker ; the moralist a magnified schoolmaster or judge ; the priest reveres the head of the clerical profession ; the scientist personifies the vital law of the phenomenal universe ; the patriot invokes the protector and champion of his nation. The average man, hemmed in by pitiless circumstance, appeals to a kindly governor of the world, who will forgive the mistakes to which nature is so relentless, and give compensation for all unmerited suffering. The many who have failed to bring their own lives under any ruling principle, see no moral or rational principle in their environment. Their universe is godless, as their own lives are anarchical. * Such as men themselves are, such will God appear to them to be.' The second half of the nineteenth century was taken up with a long ' conflict between religion and science,' as it was usually called ; more accurately, it was a con- flict between naturalism and supernaturalism. The great German idealists had passed under a cloud; interest was concentrated on the unparalleled progress of the natural sciences, which seemed for a time to have solved ' the Riddle of the Universe.' Natural science depended on one dogma, which was often wrongly called the law of causality, but was really the law of unbroken continuity. It was therefore obliged to wage war on the theory of 'CONFESSIO FIDEI' 3 supernatural interventions, with which traditional religion was bound up. If the Creator was in the habit of sus- pending His own laws, no science of nature was possible. If, for example, an outbreak of cholera might be caused either by an infected water-supply or by the blasphemies of an infidel mayor, medical research would be in con- fusion, But we can now see how much bad philosophy was mixed up with this just claim of science to be undis- turbed in its own field. Kant had done a poor service to idealism by his separation between the theoretical and the practical reason. He conceded objective certitude only to the truths of science, basing our moral and religious beliefs on subjective faith. Religion under these conditions was condemned to fight a losing battle. Our spiritual life was banished from the sphere of objective reality ; and we find natural philosophers like Herbert Spencer suggesting a delimitation of territory, by which the know- able should be assigned to themselves, the unknowable to religion. It* was only a step further when Leslie Stephen called the two spheres realities and dreams. The nine- teenth-century scientists did not mean to be materialists, and most of them repudiated the name ; but all their effective thinking was done in terms of mechanical physics, and mind or consciousness was relegated to the position of a passive spectator among machinery which worked independently of it. The idealists were too ready to accept this demarca- tion. Some of them fell back upon the irrationalism of Pascal ' the heart has its reasons which the intellect knows not of ' ; or like Tennyson, made the heart stand up like a man in wrath against the freezing reason's colder part. Others, down to our own day, make religion a homage to ideals which are not facts, and virtually assign the spiritual life to the province of the aesthetic imagination. The assumption is that science gives us facts without values, and religion values without facts. Science tells us what is true ; philosophy and religion spread over the cheerless scene the light that never was on sea or land. This intolerable dualism was most ineffectively bridged by the superstition of automatic progress, an unscientific 4 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS dream-picture in which nevertheless science and religion could meet on common ground. Ideals could recover some actuality by being regarded as future facts. The world is an unsatisfactory place now, but it is on its way to perfection. Man as we know him is a poor creature ; but he is half-way between an ape and a god, and he is travelling in the right direction. Finis coronal opus. God at present (according to these apologists) seems to make a poor job of governing the world ; we can only say of Him, with Dr. McTaggart, that He is ' on the whole good rather than bad ' -a restricted testimonial which would hardly procure an engagement for a housemaid except under post-war conditions ; but He is gradually improving, and we must give Him time to ' realise himself.' This expedient is neither scientific nor Christian. There is not, and cannot be, any progress in the universe as a whole, and there is no probability that the human race will either reach perfection or find the laws of nature much more conformable to its desires than they are now. Any philosophy which postulates either any kind of progress in the universe as a whole, or unending progress in any part of it, is demonstrably moonshine and not worth dis- cussing. The whole cannot change ; and all growth has its natural limit. A planet has a history ; the macrocosm has none. Our species has probably half a million years in which to try every possible and impossible experiment in social and economic reform. That ought to satisfy our millenarians. But as when we look at a grave we say ' Beneath that mound lies what I, as a creature of time, shall be in a few years,' so when we look at the moon we may say with tolerable assurance, ' That is what our home will look like at no incalculably distant date.' To throw our ideals into the future is the death of all sane philosophy and science. As I write these lines I have before me a row of mountain summits of incomparable glory and majesty, but entirely remote from all human interests. They were in existence before even our sub- human ancestors hunted the mammoth and disputed their caverns with the cave-bear. They will stand where they now are when the next ice-age has depopulated this 'CONFESSIO FIDEP 5 part of Europe and perhaps brought about the extinction of what are now the most advanced races of mankind. And yet the mountains themselves are not everlasting. The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands ; They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go. The period of organic evolution is but a moment when compared with the tremendous duration of inorganic evolu- tion. Ten thousand million years may have been required to reduce a star from the temperature of Alnilam to that of Arcturus or our sun. A thousand million years may elapse before the extinction of the light and heat which pour from our elderly luminary, and which make life and consciousness possible, for a little while, on one or two of the planets which revolve round it. And then who can measure the 'duration of the sleep of dead worlds, in cold and darkness, till a new cycle begins for them ? The home of religion, we are told, is the ideal. But ideals which have no counterpart in reality, and are created either by the rebel will, which however angrily it may declaim against freezing reason cannot make things other than they are, or by the poetic fancy which can only weave a world of dreams into which we may flee from the facts of life such ideals are frivolous and can bring us no deep or lasting satisfaction. Nor have we the power to levy unlimited drafts upon the future. War- finance has no place in philosophy. Instead of running up loans which the future will not honour, we must direct our critical attention to the primary assumption of naturalism, that the phenomenal world, or what naturalism mistakes for such, is objectively real, and our valuations, whether moral or aesthetic, of no more than subjective validity. As long as the attempt to interpret the world by purely mechanical and quantitative categories remained unchallenged, naturalism had the appearance of a coherent principle of explanation under which everything might in time be brought. Man, with his consciousness, reason, and lofty claims, was described as only the most cunningly 6 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS devised of nature's clocks. Complete knowledge of the laws of invariable sequence would, it was assumed, reveal him as an automaton. It is no wonder that this philo- sophy for it was a metaphysical, not a scientific theory aroused indignant protests, even before its inherent weak- ness was fully exposed. Its weakness, however, was not far below the surface. It was easy to prove that the synthesis of naturalism could not survive any thorough investigation of the conditions of knowledge. Not only was the knower reduced by it to an otiose and inexplicable spectator of a scene in which he is obviously an actor ; not only does epiphenomenalism (as Plotinus said long ago) ' make soul an affection, or disease, of matter ' ; but the scientific view of the world itself is by no means re- ducible to mathematical formulas. It is an intellectual construction based on an abstract view of reality, convenient for the prosecution of those studies with which natural science is concerned. It is already charged with value- judgments, which are the more confusing because they are not recognised as such. It is in serious difficulties about what are called the primary and secondary qualities an old problem which has perhaps exercised the minds of thinkers too long. The primary qualities, it has often been held, are objectively real ; the secondary, such as colour and sound, are subjective effects due to our senses. This practically means that we are to look for truth not in the drama of reality as it unfolds itself to our minds, but in the stage mechanism by which it is exhibited. The naturalist seldom thinks of what the world would be without its secondary qualities universal darkness and silence, not a world at all. No wonder that Fechner called this the ' night-view ' of the universe. To separate the two orders of qualities seems to be impossible ; if the secondary qualities are condemned as unreal, the primary must go too. If the secondary, which demonstrably de- pend on the body and mind of the perceiver for their char- acters as known, are allowed to belong to reality, the place of mind, as an integral and integrating factor in reality, is conceded. It might even have been better, as I think Professor Laurie suggested, to drop the words primary and 'CONFESSIO FIDEI' 7 secondary, and substitute quantitative and qualitative. It would then be clear how impossible it is to interpret any concrete object without the help of qualitative cate- gories. Sound and colour have their physical i dices in vibrations ; but these would never have been discovered but for the qualitative values which sounds and colours have for us. But the citadel of naturalism was really betrayed from within. Biologists were at first willing to accept the first dogma of scientific orthodoxy, that the world of science is ultimately the sphere of applied mathematics, so that all biological processes must be reducible to mechanical and chemical terms the dynamics of particles. But this hypothesis was so cramping and so contrary to what seemed to be the laws of life as they present themselves to observation, that a revolt took place against the prin- ciple of explaining the organic by the inorganic. ' Why seek ye the living among the dead ? ' was a question asked more insistently every year. Thus a rift was introduced between biology and physics, and the unity of the scientific view of the world was broken up. Whether the new vitalism which has been encouraged by this declaration of independence on the part of biology and psychology has escaped the fallacies of the old vitalism may be doubted. An autonomous life-principle, whether called by old names or by new, is a danger to the reign of continuity. It may be used to hand over the world once more to super- naturalistic dualism, or to miracle-working will. It has been acclaimed as liberating us from the chains of determinism, and opening the gates of the future which nineteenth-century science had shut and locked. So far has this supposed emancipation taken us that some Ameri- can thinkers are ready to accept an anarchic universe of free and independent spirits, among whom the Deity has less power than the President of the United States, or even to rehabilitate pure chance. The gains of nineteenth- century science are in danger from such doctrines, and theism has nothing to hope from them. The dualism which naturalism had hoped to remove reappears in the war between man and the cosmic process, which Huxley, hardly 8 OUTSPOKEN -ESSAYS knowing what he did, proclaimed in his famous Romanes Lecture. It is a new Zoroastrianism or Manicheism, in which even men of science are, surprisingly, found ready to identify the God of nature with Ahriman, and to invite us to enlist on the right side in a cosmic duel. Or if the good cause is merely a subjective ideal, as seems to follow from the presuppositions of these writers, we are in the painful position of being ordered to love a good God who does not exist, and to resist a Power which exists but is not good. The doctrine that men are automata was always absurd, and Professor J. A. Thomson has stated the case against it in unanswerable language. ' A self-stoking, self-repairing, self- preservative, self-adjusting, self-in- creasing, self-reproducing machine is only by an abuse of language called a machine at all.' Such a machine would certainly make the fortune of its inventor ; and we must remember that our machine-makers try to do some of these things. A machine is after all the creation of a purposeful mind. There is no contradiction between mechanism and purpose an obvious truth which has been too often forgotten in the controversy between naturalists and theists. Mechanism is the teleology of the inorganic world. It is, we may believe with confidence, the work of an intelligent designer, which, as we might expect, displays the regularity of any machine which is doing its work. With the brief episode of organic evolution we come to other methods, which depend on the presence of consciousness and reason. But there is no sharp line of demarcation between the two. The development of life out of the inorganic is a fact, though it has not yet been produced experimentally. For even if the rather fantastic theory were established, that the spores of life travel through space from distant orbs, the difficulty would then only be thrown one stage back ; somewhere or other life must have been produced from the lifeless. No theory which separates man from the world of which he is an organic factor ought to satisfy us. The universe is ' all of a piece ' ; it was not made for us ; nor are we ' the roof and crown of things ' at least it may 'CONFESSIO FIDEI' 9 be hoped that we are not. But the highest to which human nature can attain all the intellectual, moral and spiritual endowments of the greatest human beings are just as much part of nature as the primordial element or elements out of which the visible universe is woven. Nor can we explain the higher by the lower. The attempt to do so was the blunder of science in the last century. Wherever values are in question, by their fruits, and not by their roots, we shall know them. Evolutionists have often assumed that evolution means the mechanical un- packing of what was potentially there all the time, just as traditionalists regard progressive revelation as the better understanding of a faith once delivered to the saints. The word ' potentially ' is a dangerous one in philosophy. It has often been used to disguise or evade the problem of change, which is not an easy one. The dogma of con- tinuity, which seemed to forbid the addition of any new factor by way of creation, made it necessary, in the teeth of evidence, te assert that the final result of any develop- ment was implicit in its beginnings. If our ancestors were apes, then we are cultivated apes, or the apes are arrested men. As this was too absurd, science fell back on the admission of real change, but insisted that the changes are slight and very slow. It seems to have been generally forgotten that a small change is as difficult to account for as a great change ; the problem is how to explain change at all. There is a story of a girl who apologised for a baby whose existence needed apology on the ground that it was a very small one. The minute modifications imagined by the early Darwinians are equally futile as an explanation of how there came to be any modifications ; the ' mutations ' which have now been observed do not add to the philosophical difficulty. There has been a tendency to revert to Lamarck's theory that the changes of species are caused by the will of the indi- viduals composing them, a will excited by the environment, which makes modifications of structure necessary in order to preserve life under changing conditions. This is to admit what Bergson calls creative evolution, through the agency of the unconscious striving of living beings. Some- 10 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS thing actually new, and not implicit in the racial origins, is brought into being. It may well be supposed that consciousness itself was evoked in this way in response to vital needs. The question seems to me extraordinarily difficult. For when we postulate the advent of some new factor to account for change in organisms, we must not forget the inexplicable results of chemical combinations. We do not suppose that anything like a new creative act is responsible for the appearance of water when oxygen and hydrogen combine, and yet this is a more startling change than organic evolution has to show. But I think it would not be rash to say that the laws, that is to say the observed behaviour, of inorganic matter do not suffice when we wish to predict the behaviour of living things. 1 And in the same way, biological and psychological laws may not suffice to explain the processes of spiritual life. Without in any way wishing to restore the old dualism of natural and supernatural, we may be justified in repudiating that kind of determinism which rests on the analogy of in- variable sequence in inorganic nature. I have said that what we call mechanism is so far from ruling out the hypothesis of a directing mind, that it strongly supports that hypothesis. But is the directing mind which orders all the events of the universe merely immanent ? Modern philosophy for the most part asserts that it is. Our idealists are most of them either frank pantheists, or advocates of the watered-down pantheism which is the creed of the English Neo-Hegelians. For this school, God is exhausted in his universe ; His life is realised only in the cosmic process. They consider that not only is man organic to the world, but that the world, including especially man, is organic to God. ' The exist- ence of finite selves,' we are told by Professor Pringle- Pattison, ' constitutes the essence of the absolute life.' ' If God is not active in the process, He is no more than an eternal dreamer.' ' The eternal and the temporal are 1 It might be better to avoid the question- begging words ' living ' and 'inanimate,' for probably everything is 'Jiving' in different degrees; but it is convenient to use 'living ' for organisms. 'CONFESSIO FIDEI' 11 correlatives,' he says. The world is therefore, according to this theory, as necessary to God as God is to the world. As Coleridge says, speaking of Spinoza, whereas for the Christian the world minus God = 0, but God minus the world = God, for Spinoza God minus the world = This doctrine of pure immanence leads logically to the acceptance of the world as we find it, as all equally good and equally divine. Our Hegelians reject this con- clusion with indignation, and seldom fail to pillory Pope's famous line, ' As full, as perfect in a hair as heart.' They escape from it partly by their doctrine of degrees of truth and reality, on which I shall have more to say presently, and partly by making large drafts on the future, which, as I have said, we have no right to do. A God who is gradually coming into His own is not yet God, and there is no reason to suppose that such a Being exists. There neither is nor can be any progress in the whole, but only, as Empedocles said, an alternate combination and dis- sociation, which we call Nature, or Growth. An infinite purpose is a purpose everlastingly frustrate ; and what single purpose could be accomplished in the life of our planet added to the life of other worlds utterly unknown to us, as we are to them ? I do not see how this philosophy can survive the inevitable downfall of the shallow optimism which is the basis of secularism. The relations of the ideal to the actual, of what ought to be to what is, cannot be adjusted by the maxim ' Wait and see.' There is no escape from pantheism, and from a creed which, if not pessimistic, is without hope for the future and without consolation in the present, unless we abandon the doctrine of equivalence between God and the world, and return to the theory of creation by a God who is, in His own being, independent of the world and above it. This was the doctrine of the later Platonists, who however did not represent the Deity as an architect or manufacturer, but used the metaphors, confessedly inadequate, of the effluence of rays from a sun, or the overflow of a fountain. The relation between the Creator and the world is, they insisted, a one-sided relation in the sense above indicated, namely, that while the world owes everything to God, 12 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS God owes nothing to the world. The creation of the world was an appropriate act of God ; it was even a necessary act, since the attributes of God, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, are essentially creative energies ; they cannot be idle. It is impossible that there should not have been a world, because it is impossible that God should not create, after His own image, any good thing which it is possible for Him to create. To abstain from creating would argue either a defect of benevolence or something like indolence in a Being to whom we attribute every perfection. But the time-process, even when gathered up in all its complex meanings, is an integral part of His experience, not an essential part of His existence. The words of the dying Emily Bronte seem to me to contain a true philosophy : \ With wide-embracing love Thy Spirit animates eternal years, Pervades and broods above, Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. Though earth and man were gone, And suns and universes cease to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee. This conception of the relation of God to the world is also that of the Catholic Church, and has been defended by a long series of Christian philosophers, who do not seem to me inferior in acumen and penetration to the more celebrated modern thinkers from Spinoza to our own day. I have often wondered why the hypothesis of creation, expounded by the guardians of the Catholic tradition, has received such slight attention from our metaphysicians. One reason apparently is that while we can know, at least in part, the character and methods of an immanent God, and cannot doubt His existence without denying that the world has an inner meaning and a rational explanation, it is impossible to prove the existence of the transcendent God whom Christians worship, a Being who must remain an unverifiable hypothesis. But it is also contended by modern idealists that such 'CONFESSIO FIDEI' 13 a one-sided relation between God and the world as is asserted by Platonism and Christianity is impossible. The latter objection may, I venture to think, be sum- marily dealt with. It is a mere begging of the question. If such a Being as the Christian God exists, there is no reason why He should not create a world, without ex- hausting Himself in it. We are not guilty of the contra- diction of making the Absolute create something which is not included in the Absolute. Without God, immanent in His Creation and willing its continuance, the universe would not exist ; but the universe is not a complete expression and externalisation of His nature, being on a lower plane than His life, and an imperfect sharer in His eternity, which it can represent only under the in- adequate form of unending duration. If we have already assumed that God and the world are correlatives, it is easy to prove that they must be reciprocally involved in each other ; but Christian philosophy does not regard them as correlatives. As for the objection, drawn from physics, that there can be no action without equivalent reaction, it does not touch those who believe that ultimate reality is a kingdom of values. I have said already that the laws of dynamics cannot be applied to the imponder- ables with which religious thought deals. The question whether and how the transcendent God of Christianity can be known to us is a very difficult one. Catholic theology has steadily maintained that the existence of God can be proved by human reason. And it is absurd to suppose that we can know of God's existence without knowing anything else about Him. We cannot know that God exists, unless we have some predicates which necessarily appertain to the name ' God.' According to Catholic philosophy, we can prove that a Being possessing some at least of the attributes which we assign to God, exists, and we can attain to this knowledge through our own reason, apart from revelation. The best Catholic theologians, however, reject what they call ' ontologism,' the doctrine that the existence of God is a necessary and fundamental truth of reason. They hold that our know- ledge of God is of the nature of a valid inference. They 14 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS are not willing to surrender the famous four proofs which Kant denounced ; they can all be restated so as to have great value. The ontological proof, which Kant handled most severely, is invalid in its original form, but may be so corrected as not to involve the error of ontologism. There is, of course, another line of proof, open to Platonists and Christians alike that from religious ex- perience. Mysticism rests on the gallant faith of Plato, that ' the completely real can be completely known,' and that only the completely real can be compl tely known. Complete knowledge is the complete unity of knower and known, for we can, in the last resort, only know ourselves. The process of divine knowledge, therefore, consists in calling into activity a faculty which, as Plotinus says, all possess but few use, the gift which the Cambridge Platonists called the seed of the deiform nature in the human soul. At the core of our personality is a spark lighted at the altar of God in heaven a something too holy ever to consent to evil, an inner light which can illuminate our whole being. To purify the eyes of the understanding by constant discipline, to detach ourselves from hampering worldly or fleshly desires, to accustom ourselves to ascend in heart and mind to the kingdom of the eternal values which are the thoughts and purposes of God this is the quest of the mystic and the scheme of his progress through his earthly life. It carries with it its own proof and justification, in the increasing clearness and certainty with which the truths of the invisible world are revealed to him who diligently seeks for them. The experience is too intimate, and in a sense too formless, to be imparted to others. Language was not made to express it, and the imagination which recalls the hours of vision after they have passed paints the vision in colours not its own. Remembered revelation always tends to clothe itself in mythical or symbolic form. But the revelation was real ; and it is here and here only in the mystical act par excellence, the act of prayer that faith passes for a time into sight. Formless and vague and fleeting as it is, the mystical experience is the bedrock of religious faith. 'CONFESSIO FIDEI' 15 In it the soul, acting as a unity with all its faculties, rises above itself and becomes spirit ; it asserts its claim to be a citizen of heaven. I am very far from claiming that I have had these rich experiences myself. It is only occasionally that I can ' pray with the spirit and pray with the understanding also,' a very different thing from merely ' saying one's prayers.' Nor have I found in the contemplation of nature anything like the inspiration which Wordsworth and others have described. At times ' the moving waters at their priest-like task ' seem to have the power which Euripides ascribes to them, of ' washing away all human >lls ' ; at times the mountains speak plainly of the Ancient of Days who was before they began to be ; but too often nature only echoes back my own moods, and seems dark or bright because I am sad or merry. The sweet sanctities of home life, and especially the innocence and affection of young children, more often bring me near to the felt presence of God. But for the testimony of the great cloud of witnesses, who have mounted higher and seen more, I should not have ventured to build so much on this immediate revelation of God to the human soul. But the evidence of the saints seems to me absolutely trust- worthy ; and the dimness of my own vision would be disquieting only if I felt that I had deserved better. The pearl of great price is not so easily found. But do we know of any who have sought after the knowledge of God as diligently as other men seek after wealth and honour, and have come away empty-handed ? Now, the God revealed to us in prayer and meditation is both immanent and transcendent. He is within us and yet far above us. Our knowledge of Him is true know- ledge, but by no means complete knowledge. There is a considerable element of agnosticism in true Christianity. If even the pure mystical experience is reconstructed rather than reproduced by the memory, much more do our schemes of value, whether scientific or metaphysical, take symbolical shapes when we try to make them principles of action or even objects of contemplation. The Godhead as He is in Himself, all great mystics have 16 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS agreed, is indescribable and unimaginable ; no names can be given Him and no statements made about Him. Even the Trinity, some have thought, must proceed from a mysterious Unity ' beyond existence.' But this does not mean that we ought to abstain from attributing any qualities to God. To do this would be to impoverish our religion, not to bring it closer to the truth. The organ by which we know God is our whole personality unified under the primacy of the highest part of it. God for us is the best that we can know. The spirit of man is not confined by time and place ; but it is ensouled spirit, the spirit-in-soul of a being under probation in a world of time and place. Our highest intuitions of the Divine, our most intimate communications with God, must still be relative to the condition in which we are ; and if, following the path of logic and analysis, we strip off those determinations which genuine religious experience attaches to the idea of God, we shall be in danger of defaecating to a transparency what ought to be the most richly concrete idea in our consciousness. St. Paul, in that inspired hymn which proclaims Love to be the hierophant of the Divine mysteries, ends by emphasising the necessary limitations of our knowledge. ' Now we see as in a mirror, by symbols, but then face to face ; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as I am known.' The apostle's ' now ' and ' then ' are themselves symbolic, being derived from the lower categories of experience, like the ' here ' and ' there ' of the Platonist. The author of the ' Theo- logia Germanica ' comments on the passage as follows : ' He says, When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. But when doth it come ? I say, when as much as may be it is known, felt and tasted by the soul. The lack lieth altogether in us and not in it. The perfect cannot be known to the creature in virtue of its creature nature and qualities, that by which it saith "I" and "myself." So long as we think much of these things and cleave to them in love, joy, pleasure or desire, so long the perfect remaineth unknown to us.' This is undoubtedly the thought of St. Paul. Love is self-transcendence, and ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 17 yet self-completion, as God Himself is transcendent and yet immanent. What then is the relation of the God whom we thus know truly but imperfectly to the order of nature ? We must remember that the mirror in which we see Him is the order of nature as known to us. The order of nature includes the highest that man can reach ; but if the philosopher was right who said that the throne of the Godhead is the human spirit, it is none the less true that the whole of creation, with its laws, is a revelation of God. Some recent thinkers have depicted nature as a ' blind giant,' in whose operations we can find neither wisdom nor goodness. This is a philosophy of dualism, in which the enemy of God is the Irrational in nature ; God and man are allies against a senseless machine. We are sometimes tempted to believe this ; but it ought not to satisfy us. I reject altogether the idea of interphenomenal causa- tion. Events cannot be causes or consequences of other events. Kegularity of sequence is what we should expect to find, though to our imperfect knowledge there are critical points in evolution, aftei which things seem to move in a new dimension. But to attribute efficient causation to matter seems impossible ; nor has matter in itself any ' potentiality.' And to suppose that causation begins with consciousness is to introduce an impossible cleft between things and persons, which in my opinion is one of the worst kinds of dualism. For not only can nobody say where the line is to be drawn between things and persons, but wherever we choose to draw it the results are absurd. The reign of law and purpose extends over the organic and the inorganic alike. The only difference is that conscious beings are able in various degrees to think God's thoughts after Him, as Kepler said, while Nature, ' the sleeping spirit,' obeys without knowing what she does. The cause of events is the will of God. God is inde- pendent of the world-process, which nevertheless He knows as a process, just because He is not living and moving in it. It is not difficult to understand this, because we n. o 18 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS ourselves are conscious of time, as we should surely not be if our innermost life were not supra -temporal. We are not conscious of movements in which we ourselves and all our environment are involved. It is an old controversy, whether the universe had a beginning in time. The majority of philosophers, both in antiquity and in our own day, have denied the creation of the world in time, while Christian theology has affirmed it. Augustine, indeed, suggests that the world and time were made together, and hopes in this way to escape the difficulty of an empty time before the world was. 1 Natural philosophy, until recently, has supported the belief that the forces of association and dissociation balance each other, so that the life of the universe is perpetual and unchanging. But modern science, in the mouths of some of its most distinguished representatives, has been unable to avoid the conclusion, based on the second law of thermo- dynamics, that the whole universe is slowly running down like a clock. I have referred to this theory in another essay in this book. Its supporters have not always drawn the obvious inference that if the universe is running down in time, it must have been wound up in time, and that whatever unknown power wound it up once may presum- ably be able to wind it up again. But even if the argu- ments for ' entropy ' are at present unanswerable, it seems much more likely that the ancients were right in thinking that the forces of evolution and of involution balance each other. It is as certain that some stars are becoming hotter as that others are becoming colder. It is, of course, conceivable that what we call the universe is only a partial scheme, which has a beginning, middle, and end. There may be a plurality of cosmic processes, both in space and time. But the analogy of the universe which we know supports the belief that what we see is a part of an infinite whole, regulated throughout by the same laws, which have never not been in operation, and which will never cease to act. If this is so, the world is perpetual, as 1 He seems to be right. Empty space is thinkable ; empty time is not. If nothing were happening, time would not be empty ; it would disappear. ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 19 its Creator is eternal. 1 The universe, as I have argued already, is not essential to the being of God, but is a continuous act congruous to His nature. There is no single purpose being realised in it, for the time-series has no first and last term, between which a single all-embracing purpose could be inaugurated and consummated. But there is a vast number of limited purposes, which have their beginning and end in time. The achievement of these purposes adds nothing to the being or the well- being of the Creator, nor does their failure involve Him in any loss. They are His thoughts, transmuted in the time series into purposes or acts of will, and their validity may be illustrated as well by the results of rebellion as by the results of obedience. In their entirety, they are the complete expression of the Divine mind, so far as it can be expressed in an imperfect medium. \ The only ' conscious subject ' necessary to the existence of the world is God. If no other conscious subjects existed, as in all probability they do not exist except for a short time in a few spots scattered about the universe, the world would be exactly what it is, except that those globes which contain conscious beings would not contain them. The notion of a college of souls who are constitu- tive of reality must be rejected. Those who uphold this theory generally end by finding that the supposed free and independent spirits, for whose separate individuality they are so jealous, are sufficient to themselves without a God, or arrive at the still more absurd notion that God is a primus inter pares, a phrase which I have actually seen used. The kind of realism which I am advocating is a very different thing from saying that the world as we know it has an independent objective existence, to which we in the act of knowing it contribute nothing. The world as we know it, the world as known to science, is 1 So of space. Nicholas of Cusa was, I think, the first to dis- tinguish between the infinitum of God and the interminatum of the world. As infinity is to boundlessness, so is eternity to per- petuity. It is well known that Finitism and Infmitism are equally demonstrable and equally refutable. This indicates, I think, that in space and time we are not dealing with the fully real, 20 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS not a closed system of independent real objects. It is demonstrably a mental construction, and like all mental constructions it is based on a valuation of existence. Natural science deliberately abstracts from a whole range of higher values, embracing all the imponderables in our experience. It is only by a confusion that it attempts to build upon mechanism a metaphysical system which regards itself as a negation of metaphysics. The world of ordinary experience is not the world of science, but a very roughly constructed scheme of values, selected by the practical consciousness as bearing on our own psycho- physical life and needs. It is certainly not the world as known to the Divine omniscience. The world in which we ordinarily live is relative to soul-life ; it is not the world of spirit. The world as known to God is relative to the Divine, not to human consciousness ; and the relation between a Divine thought and the Divine thinker is one of complete correspondence. The controversy between realism and idealism is thus solved in the Divine knowledge. The spiritual world, the ultimately real world, is the objectified thought of Him who ' spake and it was done.' It is not ' only mental ' ; the thought is not prior to the thing, nor the thing to the thought. The thought and its object reciprocally imply each other. The world of time and space touches reality most closely where the eternal thoughts of God can be discerned creating after their own likeness, and working towards the fulfilment of some purpose. And what, so far as we can see, are the chief among these purposes ? Some of our idealists have been attracted by a phrase borrowed from a letter of Keats, that the world is ' the vale of soul- making.' In a sense I should agree ; but not if ' souls ' mean only human souls. For this way of estimating the value of the world is far too anthropocentric. Our personal idealists need to be reminded of Aristotle's words that there are many things in the world more divine than man. Anthropolatry is the enemy ; it has vitiated much modern philosophy. True philosophy is theocentric. The world is a hymn sung by the creative Logos to the glory of God the Father. Its objects, so far as we can discern, are the ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 21 manifestation of the nature of God under His three attributes of Wisdom, Beauty and Goodness. We call these three attributes of God the Absolute Values. They are absolute because they exist in their own right and cannot be made means to anything else, not even to each other, and because they are eternal and unchangeable. We call them values because they are the subjects of qualitative judgments ; they cannot be measured or given quantitative equivalents. They are, we say, spiritual goods, in which we may participate in proportion to our own spiritual growth. We do not make them ; they are above us. It is rather they that make us immortal and blessed if we can lay hold of them and live in them. It is important to assert, against naturalism and some forms of realism, that these values are not merely ideals. Ideals have been said to be ideas in process of realisation. But when we speak of an ideal we mean something which ought to be~ but is not, or something which will be but is not yet. Those who regard God and the realisation of God's will as ideals are either projecting His reign into the future, a method to which we have already taken objection, or they virtually assign all the highest hopes of humanity to the sphere of the imagination. Religion, for some of our prophets, is a kind of poetry which em- broiders, dignifies and beautifies life by painting it in fanciful colours. It is possible to admit the important work done by the imagination in philosophy, religion, and the higher life generally, without giving ourselves free scope to invent fairy-tales and beguile ourselves with them. Wordsworth calls imagination ' reason in its most exalted mood.' But he draws a distinction between imagination and fancy. Imagination is the objectifying contemplation of the Platonist ; it sees with the mind's eye the universal ideas which are the archetypes of the sensible world. We are justified in believing that the world as God sees it is far more beautiful and harmonious than the world as we see it. But then we assume that the defect is in us, not in the world, and we do not suppose either that if we were reborn as we are now ten thousand years hence, we should find everything better, or that 22 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS we can live in a world of fancy which has no roots in experience. These ultimate values, as I understand the matter, are the most real of all things, being the primary attributes of the Divine nature. The creation participates in these values imperfectly, and in so far as it does not exhibit them, it occupies a lower rank, not only in worth, but in reality. Its imperfections are due to several causes. In the first place, at whatever moment we choose for our valuation of experience, we are compelled to fix the present value of existences which are still in the making, and imperfect because they are unfinished. Their real value is neither their condition at the present moment nor the last term of their development, but their whole meaning and significance as expressed by their course in time and their action upon their environment, unified in the know- ledge of God. Secondly, the objects on which we pass judgment are not independent and self-existing units, whose value is their value for themselves only ; they are in concatenation with larger wholes, to which they contribute partly by self-surrender. These larger purposes are in part hidden from us ; our knowledge is conditioned by our needs as human beings ; these needs have developed the faculties through which our environment acts upon our consciousness. The inevitable result is that our outlook is too anthropo- centric ; we tend to assume that the world was made for us, and that any arrangements which do not subserve our aims and our happiness are an indictment of the Creator or an argument against the providential and rational government of the universe. The problem of evil cannot be entirely solved, but we have magnified and complicated it beyond measure by our wilfulness and self-centred claims. For though we cannot step off our own shadows or understand the Welt-politik of the Almighty, we are not obliged to regard the world we live in as the predestined playground of our species only. The ultimate values, of which we are allowed to know much and to divine more, are the inspirers not only of inter-human morality, but of art and science*, which lift us at once ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 23 out of a purely anthropocentric world. These impersonal interests remove from us no small part of ' the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world.' The universe does not appear evil to anyone who lives in the pursuit of the True and the admiration of the Beautiful. Thirdly, if we hold that we are here on our probation, it is plain that we must be confronted with much that for us is actual and positive evil. In no other way could the good will be exercised. In a world where the good met with no opposition, morality would be inert and useless, a functionless habit which could no more be called moral than the tendency of a stream to flow downhill. There can be no morality without temptation, no victory over evil without a real enemy. Evil, then, is the inseparable condition of good in the world of will, which is the world of souls on their probation, the world of which time is the form. There is no evil in the eternal world in which God dwells, because in that world there is no time, no conflict, no contingency of any kind. Those who forfeit their place in this eternal world, the world of spirit which is above the world of soul, are said to lose their souls. They ' have their portion in this life,' the half-real world of psychical experience through which we were meant to pass into the full light of the Divine presence. Our easy-going hedonism lands us in insoluble diffi- culties about Divine justice. The eternal world must, I suppose, contain crushed evil, illustrating negatively the triumph of the positive values. The punishment of evil is that it should be revealed as what it is. In heaven white is white and black black. But we are vexed and puzzled at seeing the bad prosperous, and we wish to see them mulcted, not in heaven's currency, but in our own. So we imagine infernal torture-chambers for them, and then, being very humane, decide that they must be unoccupied. But it is only those who half envy the wicked here who want to roast them hereafter. The wicked will be neither annihilated nor tortured nor, in the ordinary sense, forgiven ; justice does not mean that we are to be compensated for being what we are. The wicked will remain in the environment which they chose 24 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS for themselves while on earth. Their punishment, if they are not inhumanly bad, will be that which Persius desired for cruel tyrants : Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicts. It is, however, unnecessary to suppose that a purely bad man has ever existed. We cannot even execute a murderer without hanging by the same rope three or four men who do not deserve hanging. ' Wickedness,' as Plotinus says, ' is always human, being mixed with something contrary to itself.' And therefore we need not believe that any- one is wholly and entirely damned. What we call heaven and hell are not two places ; they are the two ends of a ladder of values. We shall all stand somewhere on the ladder, where we deserve to be. Lastly, we magnify the problem of evil by our narrow and exclusive moralism, which we habitually impose upon the Creator. There is no evidence for the theory that God is a merely moral Being, and what we observe of His laws and operations here indicates strongly that He is not. If we suppose that His interests are about equally divided between the moral, intellectual and aesthetic aspects of His creation, so that He enjoys all the wonders which science studies and all the beauties which art imitates, no less than the holiness of a saint or the self- devotion of a hero, then much which the mere moralist finds a scandal in the government of the world receives a satisfactory explanation. I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that He has a sense of humour. The lack of this sense is considered a defect in human nature ; and some of us would think that heaven would be very dull without it. The world is full of absurdities which to a superior Being may afford infinite merriment. Several animals are laughable, though few are really ugly ; and many of the antics of our own species must seem exquisitely ridiculous to anyone observing them from outside. We often, with- out meaning it, picture God as a sour Puritan. It would be easier to justify His ways to man if we pictured Him more genially. 4 CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 25 The unsolved mystery of evil is not so much the prevalence of suffering as the apparently reckless waste and destruction of the higher values. I think it is true, as Kobert Louis Stevenson said, that ' what we suffer ourselves has no longer the same air of monstrous injustice and wanton cruelty that suffering wears when we see it in the case of others.' I think we can generally see some reason in our own troubles, not perhaps when they first fall upon us, but in retrospect ; it is the apparent injustice and irrationality of fate in its dealings with others, which sometimes oppresses us. Characters with noble possi- bilities are cut off prematurely, or crippled by lack of opportunity, or corrupted by an evil environment which they cannot escape. So dubious is the supremacy of good in the world as we see it, that the well-meant apologies of orthodox optimism sound like a mockery, and we are tempted to think that a cynic might write a very plausible essay on the same lines, called ' The Problem of Good,' from the point of view of Mephistopheles. Indeed, I do not think that faith in God can be justified unless we believe in an eternal spiritual world of which this world is an imperfect likeness. If our philosophy obliges us to assign to our supreme values a real objective existence as the contents of the Creator's mind, we have a back- ground of reality against which to set the disappointments of this world. We are not able to picture to ourselves the eternal mode of existence, because we have experience only of the conditions which belong to souls on their probation ; but there is no reason to doubt what our minds constantly affirm, that those values which are the objects of the soul's love and aspiration are the atmosphere which the perfected spirit breathes when it awakes after the likeness of its Maker and enjoys His presence for ever. If this is so, the apparent waste of spiritual values in time is analogous to the wastefulness of nature in the creation and destruction of lower values. It is the lavish- ness of a Creator who draws from inexhaustible stores. I do not suggest that this is an adequate explanation of ^the problem of evil ; I do not think that an adequate explanation has been or can be given. But the problem 26 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS seems to me to have been made much worse than it really is. It is, on the whole, the least worthy conceptions of God which have most to fear from this difficulty. Recent philosophy has given increased attention to the doctrine of values as the key to an understanding of experienced reality. Rightly interpreted, this doctrine of values seems to me identical with the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. The superior rank of value- judgments is proved precisely by what some moderns wrongly call their sub- jectivity. The valuer, the valuation and the value cannot be separated. Spirit and the spiritual world are a unity in duality. The world of sense we know as something different from ourselves ; the world of spirit we cannot know until we are ourselves spiritual. This is the doctrine of St. Paul, no less than of Plotinus. And knowledge of the eternal values is real knowledge. In so far as we lay hold of wisdom, goodness and beauty, we are in possession of those things which exist in their own right ; which are always and everywhere the same, though in experience they show diverse characters, as the light is always the same, though it is polarised into various hues ; and which cannot be means to anything else. This is to lay hold of eternal life. Religion is the faith that gives substance to values, and philosophy aims at giving them their proper place in a harmonious scheme of existence. It is only by the path of value that we reach God at all. God is, as has been said, the Valor Valorum, the value of values, the supreme value. Without valuation there can be no philosophy and no science. The distinction between appearance and reality, which has taken many forms in philosophy, is itself a judgment of value. If we say with Milton that earth is but a shadow of heaven, or that the things which are not seen are more real than the things which are seen, we make this judgment because we con- sider the spiritual of higher worth than the temporal, and in virtue of the fundamental optimism which is the basis of all living faith, we affirm that the best is also the most real. The ' Progressism ' of much modern thought is a poor substitute for this belief in the substantial reality ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 27 of the eternal values. It is a residue of still undefeated materialism, which can find no food for its faith and hope in an unseen world, and therefore throws them into a mundane future. How baseless this attempt is, has been already shown. It takes the world of common experience as the real world, and then seeks to improve it by building upon this foundation an imaginary superstructure in the future an unending upward movement, which science itself knows to be impossible. The idealised future is a new world brought into existence to redress the balance of the old. In the same way the religious materialist tries to give himself a pleasanter picture of the world by mixing it with creations of the will and imagination. He endeavours to correct the deficiencies of scientific truth by mixing it with scientific falsehood, just as some have endeavoured to vindicate the freedom of the human will by mixing incoherence with mechanism. In this way one scheme of values is confounded, and another degraded. It is a bridge built in mid stream and touching neither bank. The right starting-point, as I have said, is to examine the conception of the world as known to science. It is obvious that it is an abstract conception, because it ignores, for its own purposes, all aesthetic and moral judgments. Some writers accuse science of giving us a world of facts without values. I cannot agree with this opinion, which seems to me a mischievous error. Windelband speaks of ' the logical value of generalisation ' ; and there is no doubt that what science calls truth is a value, and indeed one of the ultimate values. Ray Lankester says : ' Science commends itself to us as does honesty and great art and all fine thought and deed, because it satisfies man's soul.' One of the troubles of the modern scientist is that physics has disintegrated the atoms and molecules which were the material vehicles of his values, till they threaten to evanesce into charges of electricity which it is not easy to invest with any qualities at all. The world of science is essentially a world of values, but of values closely attached to phenomena which have the property of being quantitatively commensurable. As a matter of fact, no 28 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS science can escape other qualitative judgments, which do not belong to 'the logical value of generalisation.' The scientists of the nineteenth century were not always philosophers enough to recognise this, but their successors see more clearly. When, for example, sequence was turned into ' causation,' the idea of teleology was smuggled in unexamined. In recent years, several scientific thinkers have acknowledged that the old abstractions cannot be maintained. Bitter, writing in 1911, says : ' We cannot inspect plant and animal life broadly and soundly, either in technical science or in common intelligence, unless the aesthetic side of our nature joins with the intellectual in determining our attitude towards the beings we deal with.' But these qualitative judgments sometimes warp the scientific mind. For instance, Herbert Spencer's artificial system of evolution seems to be based on the false value- judgment that the more complex is the' higher,' an assumption which runs through much of contemporary thought. In its mathematical or quantitative measurements science has found a method of bringing all phenomena under one system. Things are said to be known when they can be weighed and counted, and when their behaviour in various combinations can be predicted. The laws of nature in theory at least form a closed system, and the values which are found in them are the values of con- formity to rule, like the working of a perfect machine or of a mathematical demonstration. Einstein has no doubt disturbed the calm waters of Newtonian physics ; but I find it difficult to believe that his theories will prove so subversive as some now suppose ; nor do I think that they have much metaphysical importance. The idea of a quantitative mathematical universe is not found in the atoms. It is the product of interplay between thought and its object, a rational scheme with an inner coherence. Whether it is really a closed system may be doubted. Such phenomena as regularly recurring eclipses show that for many purposes it works admirably ; but the influence of the imponderables on human action cannot be denied, and we have already seen that biology ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 29 and psychology are claiming their freedom. In short, like every other synthesis that is based on abstraction, the world as known to science has some ragged edges. The old difficulty about the infinity of space and time has never been solved ; it remains as a warning to naturalists that omnia exeunt in mysterium. Mere time contains, so far as I can see, no element of value and therefore none of existence. Duration, on the other hand, is always a value, and is known as such. And this introduces us to the world of Will, of which durational time is the form. We have classified moral goodness as one of the ultimate values. But a moment's reflection shows us that it is in some ways unlike the others. It speaks in the imperative mood. It rejects what is for what ought to be. It affirms negative as well as positive values, and leaves us with a radical dualism that of good and bad. It seems therefore to belong to a lower and less perfect sphere of existence than the True and the Beautiful. For these latter have their home in eternity ; whereas moral goodness belongs to the world of struggle in which we live here. Morality as we know it cannot be ultimate, because it aims at its own supersession by the destruction of the antagonistic principle, which is nevertheless the condition of its own existence. If there were no evil, there would be no morality. Nevertheless, our very life here is bound up with the moral struggle. It is even more intimately real and vital for us, as souls on probation, than the homage to Truth and Beauty which may occupy spirits set free. Nor is there any danger, in our experience, that morality may ever perish for want of an antagonist. The upward struggle in which morality lives has no finality ; an achieved good always points the way to a possible better. It is here, in the struggle of the moral will, that we may find some explanation and justification of that philosophy of progress with which we have dealt rather hardly. The unrealised ideal -the ideal which we hope to see realised some day is always before the gaze of the moral will, which sees in the prospect of a better future a vision of its completed task. We may even say that the will 30 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS transmutes the idea of Divine perfection into that of victorious energy. So long as we avoid two errors that of transferring the idea of progress to the being of God Himself, and that of supposing that progress is a law of nature which works automatically we are at liberty to cherish the inspiring thought that we are fellow-workers with God in realising His purposes in time. Further, we must remember that though morality is human and relative to the conditions under which we live, the right and good, towards which morality strains, is an eternal attribute of God. Morality is not an end to anything else, except to the realisation of this right and good which is an ultimate value. Morality is not, for example, a means towards the happiness of ourselves or of others. Utilitarianism, ' the greatest happiness of the greatest number,' was an attempt to apply quantitative standards of measurement to spiritual goods. It was an attempt to weigh the imponderable. Hence came its popularity ; for it offered a calculus by which the value of conduct could be estimated as exactly as the weight of a bag of coins. But it failed completely, mainly because all ends turn to means in its hands. Nothing then stands in its own right ; a utilitarian cannot even be a consistent hedonist. The Beauty of the world, as many have felt, is the strongest evidence we have of the goodness and benevolence of the Creator. Not, of course, that the world was made beautiful for our sakes. It is beautiful because its Author is beautiful ; and we should remember that when the old writers spoke of God as the Author of nature, they used the word in much the same sense as if we said that a man was the author of his own photograph. But we are allowed to see and enjoy beauty, although the gift cannot be proved to promote our own survival. It looks like a free gift of God. Beauty is a general quality of nature, and not only of organic nature ; crystals are very beautiful. As in the case of the other ultimate values, the emotion of beauty is aroused by the meeting of mind and its object ; and not only must the object be beautiful ; the perceiving mind must also be beautiful and healthy. The vile or 'CONFESSIO FIDEI' 31 vulgar mind not only cannot discern beauty ; it is a great destroyer of beauty everywhere. The love of beauty is super-personal and disinterested, like all the spiritual values ; it promotes common enjoyment and social sympathy. Unquestionably it is one of the three ultimate values, ranking with Goodness and Truth. The appeal of the three ultimate values to the average man is not equal. Many persons are unmoved by beauty, and in the large majority we must, I fear, agree with Sir Leslie Stephen that ' the love of truth is but a feeble passion.' Few of us could give a hearty assent to the noble words of Bishop Berkeley, who, it must be remembered, was a practical philanthropist, not an armchair philosopher. ' Truth is the cry of all, but the game of a few. Certainly, where it is the chief passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares and views ; nor is it contented with a little ardour in the early time of life ; active perhaps to pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a real progress in knowledge must dedicate his age as well as youth, the later growth as well as first-fruits, at the altar of Truth.' There are no other absolute values besides Goodness, Beauty, and Truth. Happiness, for example, is not another absolute value, but is attached to the possession of any of the three. I call them absolute values in opposi- tion to the utilitarian, who degrades them from ends to means, and to the pragmatist, who lowers the pursuit of truth to a sceptical opportunism. The tokens of an absolute value are, I think, four in number. Absolute values are ends, not instruments ; they are not even instruments to each other, though in experience we never come into contact with any one of them quite pure ; for example, aesthetic pleasure is never quite independent of ethical and scientific truth. Secondly, they require disinterestedness ; a merely human, still more a merely personal reference destroys our appreciation of them. Subjectively, we find that a very pure happiness attends our apprehension of them ; and lastly, we find that they bring with them a permanent enrichment of our personality. They differ from the lower goods of life in being 32 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS not measurable or ponderable ; and in being seemingly unlimited in potential supply. They are also independent of any particulars in the world of phenomena. For example, mathematical truth is indifferent to the question whether a perfect circle exists anywhere in the nature of things ; and art is not restricted to the imitation of individual objects. Goodness, too, does not require a full scope for its exhibition ; the saint may be a prisoner, or bed-ridden. They are indestructible and eternal. 1 They are spiritual ; that is to say, they belong to a supra-temporal and supra-spatial sphere of existence, though their creative energy is always operative in space and time. They exist after the mode of spiritual things, which are the externalised thoughts of God. Our knowledge of them is not ' subjective ' ; subjective knowledge is no knowledge at all. ' Validity,' says James Ward, ' implies reality and is otherwise meaningless.' We find their imprint everywhere, not least in the simplest and ' lowest ' parts of creation. What Goethe calls ' nature's capacity for self-forgetfulness ' makes the humblest flower a pure mirror of the Creator's mind. Our capacity for breathing in this Divine atmosphere is conditioned by the necessity of energising in the harsher air of the world of our probation. It is the paradox of the spiritual life that if we could take to ourselves ' the wings of a dove ' and escape from this world of mingled good and evil, we should not reach the rest which we desire. For one at least of the Divine values, Goodness, cannot be realised by flight, but only by struggle. Nevertheless, our citizenship is in heaven, our life here a pilgrimage. Secularised Christianity ignores or denies this ; and it should by this time be plain that secularised Christianity has neither savour nor salt. ' Otherworldliuess ' alone can transform this world, because the other world is the reality of which this world is the shadow. 1 Hoffding's argument for the ' conservation of values ' seems to me unnecessary. In their essence they are supra-temporal and inherently imperishable ; in their manifestation they are perpetually created anew. ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 33 Secularism, in promising us a delusive millennium upon earth, has robbed mankind of the hope of immortality. As the historian Ozanam says, it promises men an earthly paradise at the end of a flowery path, and leads them to a premature hell at the end of a way of blood. This hope must be brought back by a more spiritual philosophy. One of the greatest needs of our time is a standard book on the doctrine of immortality. It would be a life's work for any man, and the author would have to be both a philosopher and a historian. The best book that has yet appeared is von Hiigel's ' Eternal Life ' ; but there is ample room for another independent study of the whole subject. Eternal life and survival are not the same ; and yet they are related to each other. Eternal life is a quality of ultimate reality ; survival is a quantitative measure of duration. Eternal life belongs to the conception of reality as a kingdom of values ; survival conceives human existence as a page of history. The relation between them raises the question of the nature and reality of time, the most difficult and perhaps the most important of all philosophical problems . We are not dealing with a mere intellectual puzzle, but with a problem which is being forced upon all Christian bodies, and upon every thoughtful mind. If we com- pare the religious and homiletic literature of the present day with that of earlier generations, nothing will strike us more forcibly than the secularisation of the Christian hope which marks the utterances of all who wish to enlist the sympathies of the younger generation. The old gaudily coloured pictures of bliss and torment have passed away. Our contemporaries desire a religion without a hell ; and they even seem to prefer a religion without a heaven. References to the future life are perfunctory, and are chiefly used in consoling mourners and fortifying those about to die. A working-class audience in particular listens with marked impatience to addresses upon human immortality. The working man is apt to think that the preacher is trying to put him off with cheques drawn upon the bank of heaven, the solvency of which he greatly doubts, in order to persuade him not to claim what he conceives to be his rights here and now. The reformers n. D 34 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS in the sixteenth century complained of ' Purgatory Pick- purse ' ; our revolutionists think that heaven and hell are made to discharge the same function of bolstering up social injustice. I am not speaking of the irreligious, who at all times have derided or neglected the hopes and fears of the Christian ; nor of the devout, who have not been much affected by the modern changes ; but of the large body of well-intentioned people who call themselves Christians and attend, at least sometimes, our places of worship. These people, as a class, have hopes in Christ, but in this life only. Christianity for them is mainly an instrument of social reform. A new apocalyptism has taken the place of ' the blessed hope of everlasting life ' ; it has driven it out and almost killed it. In part, this is an illusion which will cure itself. Attempts have been made to realise the millennium in Russia, and the result has been and is such an Inferno as the world has never seen before. At home, the attempt to establish a paradise of high wages and short hours has produced the consequences which we all deplore and which all sane economists predicted. The new apocalyptism is stricken to death. But let no one suppose that we shall go back to the popular teaching about the future life which satisfied our grandparents. There must be and ought to be great changes. For these traditional notions have been rejected very largely because they are not good enough to be true. Belief in a future life is sometimes a religious belief, but by no means always. If I believe in a future life because I enjoy my existence here and want to perpetuate it beyond my earthly span, that has nothing to do with religion. If I desire a future life because I am miserable here and think that I have a claim to compensation, that is not religion either. If I desire a future life because I have made certain investments in good works, on which I hope to make a handsome profit, in ,the words of the hymn Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee, Repaid a thousandfold will be ; Then gladly will we give to Thee, Who givest all, CONFES8IO FIDEI* 35 that has no more to do with religion than if I invested my money on the faith of one of the very similarly worded prospectuses which I find on my breakfast table. The main thesis of this essay is that true faith is belief in the reality of absolute values. It is in this kingdom of absolute values that we must look for and find our immortality. It is because we know what Truth, Beauty, and Goodness mean that we have our part in the eternal life of God, Whose revealed attributes these are. And I repeat that these values stand in their own right, and cannot be made the means to anything else. This has been felt at all times by the best men and women. The last of the great Greek philosophers says severely : ' If a man seeks in the good life anything apart from itself, it is not the good life that he is seeking.' And a Christian saint expressed a wish that heaven and hell were blotted out, that she might love God for Himself only. Thus there is a noble element in the rejection of the old doctrines of reward and punishment. It is felt, though not always formulated .explicitly, that Divine justice must be exercised, so to speak, in pari materia ; that the appropriate reward for a life of disinterested service and self-sacrifice is not a residence in a city with streets of gold and gates of pearl, enlivened by ' the shout of them that triumph, the song of them that feast ' ; and that the appropriate punishment of those who have been selfish, hard-hearted, hypocritical and worldly is not to be roasted in an oven. If these rewards and punishments were known, as orthodoxy declares them to be certain, they would vulgarise virtue and make disinterestedness impossible. Popular teaching has invested God with our own mercenariness and vindictive- ness. In its anxiety to make its sanctions impressive, it has sought to make up for the uncertainty and deferred date of its inducements by painting them in the crudest possible colours, and has thus outraged our sense of justice and decency. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be recognised in a God who could so reward and so punish. And there is nothing in our experience of the present life to suggest that in the second volume of God's book the Divine government will be of a totally different kind from 36 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS that under which we live here. Within our experience, the reward of good living is not to make a fortune, but to become a good man ; and the punishment of habitual sin is to become a bad man. ' Sow an action and reap a habit ; sow a habit and reap a character ; sow a character and reap a destiny.' ' Be not deceived,' says St. Paul, ' God is not mocked ; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap.' This we can believe ; this seems to us to be just. But the popular eschatology makes the Creator an Oriental Sultan, who prides himself on the crude lavish- ness of his rewards, and the implacable ferocity of his punishments. We cannot suppose that the civilised world will ever come back to these beliefs. They are, as I have said, not good enough to be true. Again, the advance of science has made the old eschato- logical framework untenable. Curiously enough, it was not Darwin or Lyell or any other nineteenth-century scientist who struck the blow, but Copernicus and Galileo in the time of the Renaissance. If the earth is a planet revolving round the sun, and if the solar system is only a speck in infinite space, the old geographical heaven and hell must be abandoned. Hell is not beneath our feet ; volcanic eruptions are not caused, as the Schoolmen suggested, by overcrowding in the infernal regions ; and heaven is not a place which could be reached by an aeroplane if we knew the way. There is no religious topography ; there is no particular place where God lives. This has been admitted by Christian philosophers for ages ; long before Galileo, theologians declared, without being accused of heresy, that God has His centre everywhere and His circumference nowhere ; so that we cannot get nearer heaven by altering our position in space. Educated Christians, even in the Middle Ages, were not committed to the child's picture-book theology which is often supposed to be the only accredited doctrine of the Christian religion. But it is notorious that even at the present day most people still believe that Christianity asserts the existence of a geographical heaven and hell. Here. then, we have a plain case in which tradi- tional teaching is flatly contradictory to the facts of science which have been known for centuries, and also ethicallv ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 37 revolting. Can we be surprised that it has lost all power to influence conduct or command real credence ? The main reason why so little has been done to relieve Christianity of this burden is that certain other beliefs are bound up with it. For instance, if heaven is not a place, what shall we do with our bodies in heaven ? And what reason is there any longer to believe in a general resurrection, or in the physical resurrection and ascension of Christ ? Many no doubt would be glad to be relieved of these miracles, which are a stumbling-block to them ; but many others would feel that the foundations of their belief were being shaken if the physical resurrection were impugned. The majority of men and women are, in a sense, materialists. They live in a world of space and time ; and the space- less and timeless is for them the unreal or non-existent. Materialistic dogmatism is the clerical form of dogmatic materialism. The theology of the average bigot is of amazing crudity, but he has never thought it out. His theology, such as it is, is the carrier of his values. It is nothing to him that thought and knowledge have left behind forms of expression which were once natural enough. He thinks that his values are being attacked, and resists furiously. Thus it is very difficult to get rid of irrational and obsolete forms of belief, especially in eschatology, where all is and must be symbolic. ' Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things that God hath prepared for them that love Him.' It is true that St. Paul goes on to say that ' God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.' But the Spirit does not reveal phenomenal facts, but spiritual values, the reality of which it assures to us. St. Paul makes a clear distinction between the knowledge which is open to the carnal mind and that which comes through the Spirit. ' The carnal mind knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God ; it cannot know them, because they are- spiritually discerned.' ' Now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face ; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.' In this life, and in so far as we ' mind earthly things,' we are unable to form any clear conception of the spiritual world. Any clear 58 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS picture that we form must be partially untrue, precisely because it is intelligible to the 'carnal mind.' A local heaven and hell, with graphic joys and tortures, is eminently intelligible to the carnal mind ; it is eminently unsatis- factory to the ' spiritual man,' even before he has gone very far in the knowledge of God and Christ which St. John says is eternal life. But the mass of believers still demand a sign and still desire to interpret their faith materialistically. They desire to do it, and yet they cannot, because the new knowledge, which is now common property, cries out against it, and their moral sense also protests ; hence the dilemma in which the Church is placed. Nevertheless, we have no real choice. We cannot uphold, as part of our religious faith, beliefs about the external world which we know to be untenable. To do this is to infect the whole body of our beliefs with insincerity. We acquiesce too easily in ' the conflict between religion and science.' There ought to be no such conflict. The conflict of religion is not with science, but with the materialistic philosophy built upon science, a philosophy which takes an abstract field of inquiry for the whole of reality, and ignores those spiritual values which are just as much part of our knowledge as the purely quantitative aspects of reality with which the natural sciences are concerned. From this false philosophy we can only be rescued by a truer philosophy, which endeavours to do justice to values as well as to what we call facts. We should try to think out these problems, difficult as they are, for without this philosophy we shall not be able to vindicate our faith in eternal life against those who in the name of science would rob us of it. Let us consider briefly the teaching of the New Testa- ment about eternal life and survival. We know that Christ preached to simple-minded Jewish peasants, men who had had indeed a good education, but were quite untouched by the religious philosophy which we find in Philo. There is no trace of Greek ideas in the Synoptic Gospels. The great difficulty for us in considering the teaching of Christ about eternal life is the hotly controversial question whether He shared the 'CONFESSIO FIDEI' 39 apocalyptic dreams of some of His contemporaries. Personally, I think that He used the traditional prophetic language about the Day of the Lord, but that, like John Baptist, He revived the older prophetic tradition, and did not attach Himself to the recent apocalyptists. No doubt there are apocalyptic passages in the Synoptics, and, what is more important, the first two generations of Christians believed that the ' Presence ' of the Messiah was imminent. But the expectation of a sudden, dramatic and, above all, violent upsetting of all human institutions by miracle seems quite contrary to the temper of His mind, and would be hardly compatible with sanity, much less with the position which Christians are bound to give Him. It is more to our present purpose to remind ourselves that Christ dwells very little on the future state, except in the parables of the Sheep and Goats, and of Dives and Lazarus ; that these parables do not profess to be descriptions of actual events, whether past, present or future ; and that they reproduce the current notions of the period about the next world, notions which have no supernatural authority. His one argument for immortality is ' God is not the God of the dead, but of the living ; for we all live unto Him.' This is an argument, not for resurrection or survival, but for eternal life. ' Because He lives, we shall live also.' All through the Pauline Epistles we can trace the receding influence of Messianic Judaism, with its doctrine of a reign of the saints on earth, and the growing influence of the Greek idea of eternal life, as a higher mode of exist- ence differing qualitatively from earthly life in time, and accessible here and now to the ' spiritual.' The ' kingdom of God ' is seldom mentioned ; the ' Son of Man ' dis- appears ; the dominant thought is the contrast of life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit, while between the two comes the psychic life, having affinities with both, but differing from Spirit in being individual and purely human, while the life of Spirit is in a sense super-individual and ' one ' in all persons, and divine. ' We are all made to drink into one Spirit.' This psychology, with its tripartite classification of the person- ality, is distinctly Greek, not Jewish, and it has remained 40 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS the cornerstone of Christian philosophy, which in its doctrine of the Spirit, practically identified with the glorified and yet ever-present Christ, has a strongly mystical tendency. Life in the Spirit, eternal life, is a present possession of the spiritual man ; but while ' in the body ' we have only an ' earnest ' of the life that shall be. A ' spiritual body,' not of flesh and blood, is prepared for us, and at death we shall be ' changed ' ; ' this mortal shall put on immortality,' a kind of clothing of the Soul, now become Spirit, conformable to the conditions of purely spiritual existence. There is here, no doubt, an attempt to combine Greek and Jewish conceptions which a strict philosopher might find inconsistent. Salvation is elevation to a higher state of being, exalted above time ; and yet it is future. Apocalyptism is not explicitly abandoned or even consciously repudiated. But for the religious consciousness I do not think that the futurity of salvation can be discarded, even when we lay most stress on eternal life as opposed to survival. We must remember, what even philosophers of the school of Plato sometimes forget, that the mere substitution of simultaneity for succession does not effect the desired change from a quantitative to a qualitative conception of eternal life or immortality, and that nothing is gained by getting rid of the idea of flux merely to substitute for it the idea of immobility. The subject is very difficult. We are conscious of con- taminating our thoughts of eternity with ideas which belong only to time. But time has its values those which belong to the activities of the Will; and in attempting to banish all ideas of futurity and succession from our conceptions of eternity we are in great danger of losing those values, which are of the highest importance to us while we are here on our probation. At any rate, Christian eschatology has remained very much where St. Paul left it. The Johannine writings may be called an inspired interpretation of the Person and significance of Christ, addressed to the third generation of Christians. They are the best commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, which they presuppose ; they carry the theology of St. Paul to its logical conclusions. The Pauline Churches needed ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 41 a Gospel, partly because they were threatened with a ' Gnostic ' theosophy which encouraged mysticism without morality and virtually cut Christianity loose from the historical ministry of Christ, and partly because the existing Gospels (our Synoptics and others) taught an a^o^eosw-Christology, whereas the Pauline Churches had learnt an mcarwa^ow-Christology. So the unknown Fourth Evangelist stepped into the breach, and gave us a Gospel according to Paul, but enriched by a sublimely idealised which does not at all mean an untrue portrait of the Divine Founder. The doctrine, especially of the Prologue, undoubtedly owes something to Philo.; but it has lately been shown, by Dr. Kendel Harris, that the conception of Christ as the Wisdom of God (Kochma, not Memra) was very early, leaving traces in the Synoptics and in St. Paul, and that the Johannine Logos has the attributes of the Divine Wisdom, perhaps more than those of the Stoical Logos, though St. John prefers the latter name, partly perhaps because Wisdom is feminine in Greek. But here our business is with the eschatology of the Evangelist. The phrase ' eternal life,' which in this Gospel takes the place of the Synoptic ' kingdom of God,' occurs seven- teen times in the Gospel, and six times in the First Epistle. Nowhere is there any emphasis on the adjective ' eternal ' ; life in the Johannine sense is necessarily eternal. We must not then neglect the passages where ' life ' is used without the adjective ; they will throw light on ' eternal life ' as conceived by the Evangelist. Christ in the Synoptics frequently uses Life in a religious sense ; e.g. ' a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.' ' Narrow is the way that leadeth unto life.' The Greek word is OJT/, which in the New Testament has a higher sense than /3tos, contrary to classical usage. In 2 Timothy we have fj OI/TW? WT) ' life that is life indeed.' Sometimes in the Synoptics Christ strengthens 0077 by aiwi/ios, which means neither exactly ' never-ending ' nor ' lasting for a long time,' but ' belonging to the eternal world ' ; cuwv, which the Greeks derived from TO del ov, is the reular word for 42 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS eternity as opposed to time. I do not know what Aramaic word Christ probably used instead of cu'wyios ; but I am sure that the popular attempts to water down the meaning of the Greek word when applied to punishment hereafter are unscholarly. In many places, ' life ' in our version represents not far) but t/'ux 7 ?' which means the individual life the nearest equivalent of ' the Ego.' Our translators have not dared to translate ' he that wishes to save his soul shall lose it ' ; they have thus weakened one of the great texts of the Gospel, which means a real surrender of the Ego, not a mere willingness to face death. The soul has to die as Soul in order to live as Spirit. There is not really much change in St. John as compared with St. Paul. But as compared with the Synoptics we find, as Professor Bacon says, a complete transfer of the emphasis away from the expected judgment of the apocalyptic Lype at the end of the world, de- scribed in the Gospel of Matthew, back to a judgment already executed in principle by the coming of Jesus and the Spirit ; it necessitated a complete recast of the traditional teaching. Hence a spiritual Gospel to teach the last things from a rationalised point of view was needed just as urgently as one to teach the first things from the view-point of Christ's pre- existence as the creative and redemptive Wisdom of God. These two restatements were indispensable wherever Paulinism stood confronted by Greek thought. In St. John, life as a present possession is strongly emphasised, and the whole idea of a reign of the saints on earth has disappeared. The most significant passages in which life, as eternal life, is spoken of as a present possession are v. 24-25 : ' He that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath eternal life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.' (Here the symbolical meaning of ' dead ' is plain.) vi. 47 : ' Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life.' vi. 54 : ' Whoso eateth my flesh and 'CONFESSIO FIDEI/ 43 drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.' (Here we have a most curious com- bination of the spiritual and the traditional doctrine. In the Lazarus story Jesus corrects Martha's words, ' I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day/ by replying, ' I am the resurrection and the life.') 1 John iii. 14 : ' We know that we. have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.' 1 John v. 11-12 : ' God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.' To which should be added the remarkable words in John xvii. 3 : ' This is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.' ' In considering these phrases ' (says Westcott), ' we must premise that in spiritual things we must guard against all conclusions which rest upon the notions of succession and duration. Eternal life is not an endless succession of being in time, but being of which time is not a measure. We have no powers to grasp the idea except through forms and images of sense. But we must not transfer them as realities to another order.' To sum up : in this Gospel, as von Hugel says, the Way, the Truth, and the Life are an ascending scale of values, and ' I am the Resurrection and the Life ' is the inner meaning of the raising of Lazarus, the last of the seven great miracle- symbols of the Gospel of Eternal Life. ' For its possessor's consciousness, such Life means beatitude : " that they may have life, and have it abundantly." In its ethical relation, it is the immediate concomitant of all acts pleasing to God: "His commandment is eternal life." And with respect to knowing, it is enlightenment : " this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ." It would be impossible here to trace the influence of the Johannine conception of eternal life in later Christian theology. Augustine says : ' Thou, God, precedest all past times by the height of Thy ever-present eternity, and Thou exceedest all future times, since these are future and when they have come will be past. Thy years neither come nor go, but these years of ours both come and go, 44 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS that so they may all come. All Thy years abide together, because they abide ; but our years will be only when they have ceased to be. Thy years are but one day, and this Thy day is not every day, but to-day. This Thy to-day is eternity.' Again, ' True eternity is present where there is nothing of time.' Again, speaking of a moment of vision : ' If that our touch, by rapidly passing thought, of the eternal Wisdom which abideth above all things, were to be continued, so that eternal life would be like that moment of intelligence, would not that be the meaning of the words, " Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord " ? ' The medieval Schoolmen, recognising the unbridged gulf between time and eternity, intercalated between them the conception of perpetuity (aevum), which ' participates in each.' Our tripartite nature lives in all three : our physical life in time, our psychical life in aevum, our spiritual life in eternity. The creation is perpetual, but not eternal. As Eckhart says : ' Temporal becoming ends in eternal unbecoming ; eternal becoming has neither beginning nor ending.' Eternal life, for all these thinkers, is the atmosphere which we breathe when we are above our normal selves. We surround ourselves with a world after our own like- ness ; we are what we love. As Spinoza says : The things which are for the most part considered among men as the highest good are reducible to three : riches, honour, sensual pleasure. By these the mind is distracted, so that it can think of no other good. Happiness or unhappiness resides alone in the quality of the object which we love. Sadness, envy, fear, and hate occur in the love of perishable things. But the love of what is eternal and infinite feeds the soul with joy alone. In these thoughts we breathe a more rarefied but far more bracing air than in the picture-book theology of popular religion. And as for the pitiful fancies of our modern necromancers, it seems a shame even to speak of them in such a connexion. In them we see in part the rebound against the tyranny of nineteenth-century materialism an assertion, however misguided, of the 'CONFESSIO FIDEI' 45 right of the will and affections to make themselves heard in any discussion of the ultimate values ; in part the pathetic longing of the bereaved to realise the continued existence of those whom they have loved and lost ; and in part a revolt against a secularised religion which has practically confined our hopes in Christ to this life. The remedy is to offer a more worthy conception of human immortality. The right to speak about the eternal values the right even to believe in them must be earned by strict self- discipline. ' If anyone is willing to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.' ' Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' In proportion as we acclimatise ourselves to the pure and fine air of the spiritual world, the difficulties and puzzles of popular eschatology fade away into comparative insignificance. fSo far I have kept almost entirely to that philosophy of religion which is common to PLatonism and Christianity. I make no apology for thus emphasising the debt of the Christian Church to its ' old loving nurse, the Platonick philosophy.' That precious link with the maturest wisdom of antiquity can never be broken without tearing Christianity itself to pieces. But, as St. Augustine rightly discerned, there comes a point where our non-Christian guides can conduct us no farther. The great Bishop of Hippo had learned from the Platonists the meaning of ' God is Spirit,' a doctrine which many Christians of his time did not understand, and which many do not under- stand to-day. But that 'the All-Great is the All -Loving too,' he could not learn from the sages of Hellenism. ' The Word made flesh that I found not among them,' he says. And so, after due deliberation, he threw in his lot with the Christian Church, which had already assimilated the spiritual philosophy of Platonism, as well as the moral discipline which the later Platonists had taken over from the Stoics. From this time, though much that was noble attached itself a little longer to the decaying cause of Paganism, which clung to the name of Hellenism, the Church became the living heir of the great Greek tradition. 46 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS The question which Augustine thus decided for himself is not yet closed. Can a Platonist be a Christian without renouncing the philosophy which he has found satisfying, both as an interpretation of the universe as it reveals itself to human experience, and as a rule of life, a path of ascent up the hill of the Lord ? I believe that not only is it possible, but that the Christian revelation puts the keystone in the arch, and completes what the long travail of the human spirit, during many centuries of free and unfettered thought, had discovered about the nature of the world in which we live, the laws of God and the whole duty of man. The Incarnation and the Cross are the central doctrines of Christianity. The Divine Logos, through Whom the worlds were made and Who sustains them in being, is not exhausted in His creation, but remains transcendent as well as immanent in it. In the world He manifests Him- self as the source of those supreme values which we have mentioned as vital Law in the course of nature, the directing Wisdom celebrated in the later Jewish literature ; as Beauty, everywhere ; and as Love. Love is a personal thing, called out by persons, and exercised by persons. ' We love God because He first loved us.' Neither natural law nor the beauty of the world suffices to manifest or call forth the love which binds together man and his Creator. Nor would any display of almighty power for our sakes evoke it. So far as I can see, nothing but a personal Incarnation, and the self-sacrifice of the Incarnate, could either adequately reveal the love of God for man, or call forth the love of man to God. No doubt the Incarnation is also a revelation of universal spiritual law. The ' whole process of Christ ' is and was meant to be a dramatic representation of the normal progress of the soul. So St. Paul felt it to be. As Christ died and rose again, so we, as members of His mystical body, are to die to our old selves, and to rise again clothed with ' the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.' This being the law of redemption, it might be supposed that the revelation could be made to the human spirit as a discovery, and that a personal, 1 CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 47 objective Incarnation was unnecessary. But it does not seem to me that any diffused, impersonal revelation could take the place of the Word made flesh and tabernacling among us. Such a revelation would merely mark a new stage in the growth of racial experience, a fuller under- standing of life and its meaning ; it would not give us an assurance that God is Love, nor would it reveal the supreme law of gain through pain, of victory through defeat the offence and the glory of the Cross. "We needed a demon- stration that in spiritual creation, as in physical creation, birth comes through travail pangs. The Cross, as I understand it, is not so much an atonement for the past as the opening of a gate into the future. Plato had already divined that ' we cannot get rid of evil without suffering ' ; but vicarious suffering the suffering of the sinless for the sinful remained a stumbling-block for the non-Christian world ; and it is only in this doctrine that the sting of the world's sorrow and injustice is really drawn. Redemption means admission to redemptive work > and our redemptive work is accomplished not only by what we do ; we are also called to ' fill up, on our part, what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for His body's sake.' That life in possession of the eternal values must needs be free from suffering was the doctrine of Greece and of India. That the perfect life can and must suffer pain without impairing its fruition of the beatific vision is the doctrine of Christianity. It is true ; whereas the other doctrine requires an unnatural detachment from our environment, and an inhibition of the emotion of pity, to make it true. Such an ideal can be realised, if at all, only in isolation ; and here we are confronted by one of the paradoxes, not to say contradictions, of Stoicism, which proclaimed the possibility of complete inner inde- pendence and invulnerability, while insisting on human brotherhood and the obligation of social service. The unemotional benevolence of Stoicism or Puritanism is not only unattractive and therefore ineffective, but it is far more difficult to practise than the Christian charity which is based on sympathy. Seneca says that only weak eyes 48 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS water at the misfortunes of others ; St. Paul would have us weep with them that weep. Fellow-feeling, which involves the acceptance of alien griefs as if they were our own, is part of our lot as members one of another ; Christianity welcomes and consecrates this relationship, which Stoicism, for all its nobility, leaves external to the man himself. And with this renunciation of self-sufficiency goes the cult of complete detachment from our environ- ment, which in the scheme of the Asiatic sage often turns the dying life into something like a living death. The Christian life demands more faith and courage. It offers no promise of invulnerability, and no immunity from temptation. The difficulties of leading a life unspotted by the world, without flight from it, are surmounted by a creed which makes love tho great purifier of motives, and the crown of all virtue. The Incarnation gives a definite answer to the question which the philosophy of the time often debated, whether the soul was free from guilt in choosing to animate an earthly body, or whether perhaps it is expiating its sins in an earlier life by being condemned to live for a time in this vale of tears. If a Divine Being chose to become incarnate for the sake of sinners, it is impossible to regard our earthly lives either as an unworthy choice or as a punishment. They are rather the means by which Divine love may be brought down into an imperfect world, as the rest of nature is the means by which the wisdom and beauty of the Divine mind are made manifest. The whole of creation, and not only humanity, is, in a sense, ' ennobled and glorified ' by this self-surrender of Him who brought it into being. The Incarnation, rightly understood, implies a very com- plete ' transvaluation of all values.' It gives a keener edge even to the Beatitudes. The Divine life, under human conditions, was the life that ended on the Cross. And it is worth while to remind ourselves that what is best for us is best also for others. The Church at present suffers as much from the vicarious hedonism of its social ethics as from the self-indulgence and greed of some among its unworthy adherents. Both are equally materialistic; both alike rest on an estimate of good and evil which makes ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 49 the Incarnation unintelligible. ' If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.' Why, we may ask, did Christ reject this as a temptation of the devil ? Was it only because the bread would have been for His own consumption ? I think not. Popular Christianity says in effect, ' Keep your values unchanged, but redistribute them.' The deepest meaning: of the Incarnation is very different from this. That the Incarnation should have taken the form of a human life lived under ordinary conditions causes me no difficulty. A perfect human character, with human limitations, is the only possible form of an Incarnation for the benefit of mankind. Nothing would have been added, and much would have been lost, if the Incarnate had been invested with the trappings of earthly power, or with superhuman majesty and beauty of person. Still less, in my opinion, ought we to demand that He should break through the fixed laws of nature, which He Himself ordained, and in accordance with which He orders the. course of the world. In so doing, He would not have exalted Himself ; He would have condemned His own creation. The controversy about the Divinity of Christ has in fact been habitually conducted on wrong lines. We assume that we know what the attributes of God are, and we collect them from any sources rather than from the revela- tion of God in Christ. We maintain that, in spite of His voluntary humiliation, Christ possessed all the attributes of the unlimited Sultan of the universe before whom other creeds are willing to do homage. But surely Christ came to earth to reveal to us, not that He was like God, but that God was like Himself. The question which we ought to ask is, ' Since Christ is God, what may we infer about the nature of God ? (' I am not assuming that such sayings as ' I and my Father are one ' are certainly historical. It is enough that He spoke and acted as one fully possessed by the Spirit of God the Father. To believe in the Divinity of Christ is to believe that in the human Jesus dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead under bodily conditions. And if, as we know, this meant the Cross, the inference is 60 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS that, as the author of the Epistle to Diognetus says, ' force is not an attribute of God.' Traditional Christianity has insisted that this revela- tion was accompanied by certain unique miracles at the beginning and end of our Lord's earthly career, and by a series of manifestations of superhuman power during its course which, as was believed till lately, were by no means unique, since many miracles of the same kind have been reported of others who never claimed Divine powers. Those who believe, as we do, that Christ was a Divine and unique Being, will certainly not be guilty of the presumption of denying that the circumstances of His birth into the world and of His withdrawal in bodily presence from it, may well have been also unique. But we have, I think, the right to maintain that the question as to the historicity of the miracles in the Gospels and Creeds is a scientific and not a religious question. Those who think otherwise can hardly have asked themselves what these miracles, sup- posing them to be fully established, actually prove. A dramatic vindication of God's omnipotence in the world of phenomena was precisely what the contemporaries of Christ desired to see, and it was precisely what He did not come to earth to provide. ' A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign. Verily I say unto you, there shall no sign be given to this generation.' The question of miracles seems to be part of the question as to the power of mind over matter, on which the last word has certainly not been said. It is a scientific and not a religious question, and it has no bearing on the Divinity of Christ. The living Christ is ' a quickening Spirit ' ; conversio fit ad Dominum ut Spiritum, as Bengel said. In no part of the New Testament are we encouraged to distinguish sharply between the glorified Christ and the Holy Spirit. ' The Lord is the Spirit,' as St. Paul says. To make our belief in Christ as a living and life-giving Spirit depend on any abnormal occurrences in the physical world seems to me to be an undetected residue of materialism ; and if such occurrences are prized as proving that God can ' do something ' in the natural order, those who so prize them [seem to [me, as I have said, to confound ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 51 one system of values and to degrade another. So much I have thought it right to say in my Confessio Fidei. Let these problems be handled with all reverence and caution ; but do not let us base on controvertible grounds a faith which stands on its own sure foundation. I am well aware that there is a school of advanced critics who will accuse me of doing here exactly what I deprecate. I have made the weight of my theological position rest on a certain conviction about the historical Jesus namely, that He was the Incarnate Word or Logos of God, a perfect revelation of the mind and character of God the Father. This belief, they say, is so improbable that it ought not to be held without overwhelming proofs, which are not forthcoming. They have drawn their own picture of Jesus of Nazareth, on the assumption that He was merely a religious leader in Palestine at the time of Tiberius ; and they have asked themselves what kind of persons actually exercised this kind of influence at this time. Being for the most part actuated by a dislike of Liberal Protestantism, which they regard as the religion of the hated Germans, they have taken a positive pleasure in stripping the figure of Jesus of all the attributes with which the devotion of centuries has invested it, and have left us with a mild specimen of the Mahdi type, an apocalyptic dreamer whose message consisted essentially of predictions about the approaching catastrophic ' end of the age,' predictions which of course came to nothing. I have dealt at length with the position of this school of theology in my former volume of essays. Its protagonist, Alfred Loisy, has shown himself not only a brilliant con- troversialist, but a very acute critic ; though his last commentary, on the Acts of the Apostles, is disfigured by an extravagant scepticism which refuses to accept any state- ment as true when a possible motive for lying may be conjectured. This brilliant Frenchman has now com- pletely severed his connexion with the Catholic Church ; but some of his disciples still claim their right to remain ministers of the Gospel, and two of them, Anglo-Americans and priests of the Episcopal Church, have recently written a history of the Christian origins from this point of view. 52 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Like Loisy himself, they speak with scorn of Liberal theology, and wish, apparently, to commend Christianity as a mystery religion of the same type as the Hellenistic cults which were its rivals, and with which the Catholic Church of the third and fourth centuries refused to make any terms whatever. If the historical evidence favoured this view, I hope I should not reject it from mere prejudice. But the whole theory seems to me quite perverse. The Jesus whom they draw is a psychological monster, a person who could never have existed, still less havo founded a great religion. The teaching of St. Paul is also distorted beyond recognition by these writers. There is not a trace in his epistles of the superstitious and unethical sacramentalism which they try to find there. St. Paul's personal religion was a Christ-mysticism based on individual experience, and working from within outwards, as genuine Christianity always does, to inspire his devotion to the Church as the body of Christ, and his reverence for the two great sacra- ments in which the Church realises its corporate unity with its Lord. To suppose that St. Paul, a Jew and a Pharisee, worshipped Christ ' the Lord ' as the Alexandrians worshipped ' our Lord Sarapis ' is really absurd. Fortun- ately, we know more about St. Paul than about any other great man of antiquity except Cicero, and he has left no room to doubt what he meant by ' serving the Lord Christ.' Christianity in history is certainly a syncretistic religion. I have tried to prove, in my contribution to ' The Legacy of Greece,' that the Catholic Church is the living heir of Hellenism. But none the less, its foundation is the historical Christ, whose life and teaching show no obliga- tions to Greek culture. And whenever Christianity has renewed the glowing vitality of its golden age, the revival has always been a return to the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels, from whom, in the words of the Fourth Evangelist, rivers of living water flow in an inexhaustible stream. I have tried to ask myself what would be the effect upon my personal faith if I were driven to accept the interpretations of Loisy and his followers as true history The figure of Christ as an object of worship would be gone. CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 53 We could take no interest in a deluded Jewish peasant, who, believing that the world was coming to an end, preached only an Interimsethik of no value to a world which had thousands of years before it. Cut off from its roots in the historical Incarnation, the Church appears in Loisy's ' L'Evangile et L'Eglise ' as a very human political institution, adapting itself adroitly to the task of self- preservation, and perhaps incidentally doing rather more good than harm in the world. Devoted loyalty to such a political organisation is possible, as history shows ; but on the whole I think that my country has had a better record, and the name of England moves me more than the Church without Christ. What 1 should have left would be precisely that religious philosophy which for Augustine was the bridge which carried him out of Mamcheism to Christianity. And of this I could say what Plato, its founder, said of it. In the absence of some Divine revelation, he has given us a raft on which we may hope to navigate the stormy waters of life in comparative safety. But the loss of the ' Divine Word ' would be a very heavy deprivation ; and if I felt that I had lost it, I should not think it honest to call myself any longer a Christian, or to remain in the Christian ministry. It seems to me that the Roman Church was quite right in condemning both Loisy and Tyrrell. The latter was less explicit, but his real opinions were probably not far different from those of the French critic. I have thus made my position quite clear about the historical element in Christianity. There is a great tempta- tion to take up a position well above high-water mark, where no possible discoveries in either science or criticism can disturb us. But I remember a sneer of Professor Huxley against this kind of apologetic. ' No longer in contact with fact at any point, the Church will be able to boast that it has won the peace which no man can take away.' Our religion cannot, I think, be made immune from dependence on past history. But happily the evidence is not solely that by which we judge other strange events reported by ancient writers. The Christ in us bears witness 54 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS to the Christ for us. The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. And the Holy Spirit, in bearing this witness, sets the stamp of Divinity not only on the revelation, but on the historical revealer. In other words, the voice of God within us speaks in the tones of Jesus of Nazareth. In conclusion I wish to say something about the nature bf religious belief in general. Faith is an affirmation of the undivided personality ; the will and affections are engaged in it as well as the intellect. It is not merely trust ; it is not merely a ' wager/ But neither is it purely an intellectual inference. Its peculiar character is due to the peculiar position of souls on their probation, which have, as it were, a footing in more worlds than one. The author of the ' Theologia Germanica ' says that the soul of man has two eyes, one of which looks on the creature, the other on the Creator. He adds that we can only see with either of these eyes when the other is shut. This amounts to saying that we have a natural squint, which can be rectified only by always closing one eye. This seems to me to be the wrong kind of mysticism. The invisible things of God, as St. Paul tells us far more truly, are to be understood through the things that are made. But it is true that the soul knows both what is above itself and what is below itself, and that to bring these two sides of our knowledge under one system is impossible. We cannot make our highest intuitions and experiences our own without translating them into symbolical or mythical forms. That popular religion contains a large mythical element needs no demonstration. Myth and cultus seem to be the untransparent middle terms between the spiritual and the temporal. They have only an instrumental value, a pragmatic truth, relative to the position of each soul in the scale of being. But I am afraid that philosophy is not in a much better case, if it aspires to be the religion of the educated man. The philosopher does not wish to make the world 'float double, swan and shadow,' like 'the swan on still St. Mary's Lake.' He does not wish to turn Plato's ' intelligible world ' into a replica of the world ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 55 we know without its misfits, converting his idealism into a kind of supramundane physics. But it is extremely hard to prevent the imagination from doing this, when we try to ' ascend in heart and mind ' to the philosopher's heaven. I doubt if any philosophy can escape this trans- formation of thoughts into concrete images, unless indeed we are content to treat metaphysics as a mere intellectual puzzle, like a problem in mathematics. Perhaps a superior being would not see any generic difference between the religion of a philosopher and that of a child. The Synoptic Gospels say that Christ always taught symbolically. ' With- out a parable spake He not unto them/ In truth it seems as if, while we live here, faith needs the help of the imagina- tion to make its affirmations real. These mind-pictures are a substitute for the actual vision which belongs to a higher state. The mystics, like other people, form these images, but they reject them one after another as unworthy. ' God is not like this/ they declare, as soon as any concrete image of Him has formed itself in their minds. Their method has been compared to peeling an onion ; they have been said to grasp at the absolute, and to seize only zero. They do not think so themselves ; and surely we are in far more danger from the heavy-handed dogmatist who wishes to arrest and stereotype the image-making faculty at a very crude stage, and to fix it in the same state for all, without regard to the great differences in tempera- ment and education which divide human beings. This standardising of religious belief is the work of militant institutionalism. It is militarism in religion : it crushes individuality and enforces obedience in the temper of a drill-sergeant. Unless we accept the ethics of militarism we must confess that this involves a shocking indifference to truth. The true religion for each of us is the most spiritual view of reality that we are able to realise and live by. The forms are not and cannot be the same for all ; and accusations of infidelity on the one side, and of obscuran- tism on the other, are out of place. We must try to under- stand the traditionalists, even when they wish to deprive 56 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS us of our own liberty. And yet we cannot avoid some conflict with them, For religions have a natural tendency to congeal and crystallise, as well as to evaporate ; and institutional Christianity has not kept pace with the growth of human knowledge. The traditional Christian lives, as I have said, in a pre-Copernican universe, and refuses to readjust his cosmology, which fits only into a geocentric frame. \ jv This immobility of dogma causes other evils besides intellectual dishonesty. No scientific discovery is without its religious and moral implications. The new knowledge imposes upon us new duties ; and these new duties are systematically ignored by the Churches, which even mani- fest an active antipathy to them. Two examples, which are especially flagrant, will illustrate my meaning. The discoveries which are still rightly associated with the name of Charles Darwin have proved, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the so-called lower animals are literally our distant cousins. They have as good a right on this planet as we have ; they were not made for our benefit, as we used to suppose. This discovery has certainly altered our way of regarding them ; it has made us aware of moral obligations which were formerly unrecognised. The only question is how far the recognition of these obligations ought to take us. Some think that we ought to abstain from animal food altogether. But the whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive ; and if we assume that survival has a value for the brutes, no one has so great an interest in the demand for pork as the pig. The morality of field sports is much more dubious, and I cannot doubt that the opinion will before long be generally held, that to kill animals for pleasure is barbarous and immoral. As for big game shooting, the extermination of rare and beautiful species differs from other crimes in being absolutely irreparable. Deliberate cruelty to animals happily arouses almost as much indignation in this country as cruelty to children. It is a spontaneous verdict of the newly enlightened moral sense, to which organised religion, I regret to say, has contributed very little. ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 57 I have no wish to make an attack on the Church of Rome ; but it happens to be the most prominent example of a Church which has assimilated nothing of scientific ethics. My own Church has learned something, but is still lamentably behind the best lay conscience. During the agitation against the cruelties practised in the plumage trade, a lady who was working for the Plumage Bill tried to enlist the sympathies of Roman Catholics, and failed completely. The answer which she received was, ' The lower animals were made for our use, we have no duties towards them.' This is, I am sorry to say, the common view among Roman Catholics. The cruelties practised on animals in Catholic countries are one of the drawbacks to travelling in the south of Europe. The Mohammedans, I am informed; are much more humane. My other example is our duty to posterity. Here again, new scientific discoveries have called attention to the fact that we are largely responsible for the physical, intellectual, and moral outfit with wliich the next generation of English will face the duties and difficulties of life. The science of eugenics is still in its infancy, and the wisest students of it warn us not to be in a hurry ; but no one can read the standard books on Meiidelism without being convinced that an instrument has been put into our hands by which real racial progress can be attained in the future. It is equally certain that in the absence of purposive action directed towards racial improvement, civilisation itself will prove a potent dysgeuic agency, sterilising the best stocks and encouraging the multiplication of the unfit. To any intelligent lover of his kind, this must seem the most important of all social questions, and the encourage- ment of scientific research in this direction must seem the most hopeful means of helping forward the progress of humanity. The kindred problem of regulating the popula- tion so as to secure the best conditions for the inhabitants of a country must also, before long, engage the attention of all intelligent sociologists. But here, also, the old morality is the great enemy of the new. The Roman Catholic Church is a bitter and unscrupulous opponent both of eugenics and of birth-control. I read in one of their organs 58 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS the astounding statement that ' since posterity does not exist, we can, properly speaking, have no duties towards it.' Only those who have tried to rouse the public conscience on these questions know how fierce is the antagonism of the greatest among the Christian Churches to any recog- nition of scientific ethics. The worst enemies of Christianity are Christians. A religion will never be destroyed by worldliness, sensuality, or malicious wickedness. The world, the flesh, and the devil are the natural enemies of the Church, which thrives on the struggle against them. But when traditional orthodoxy provokes the moral indignation of the enlightened conscience, and when it outrages our sense of truth and honesty by demanding our assent to scientific errors which were exploded centuries ago, then indeed the Church is in danger, and its well-disciplined battalions will not save it from disaster. If ever a Church alienates from itself not only the best intellect but the best conscience of the nation, so that these forces no longer exert any pressure upon its action, the descent to Avernus is easy and the return very difficult. Its rulers are led by the real or supposed necessity of representing and conciliating a less and less respectable clientele, and the public ceases to look for wisdom or guidance from the official spokesmen of the Church. If our leaders were wise in their generation, they would make a great effort to check the progressive alienation of vigorous and independent thought from Christianity. They would have the courage to disregard the prejudices of the church-going public, and would appeal to the con- science and intelligence of a wider circle. The combina- tion of reactionary theology with crude revolutionary politics, which now seems to be in favour, will win them no respect. The Labour movement can provide its own hired advocates ; the business of the clergy is to preach the Gospel and to speak the truth. It is certain that Christ never meant to strew intellectual difficulties of the kind with which we are familiar in the path of His disciples. He never required us to outrage our scientific conscience as a condition of obeying Him. He bade us to take up ' CONFESSIO FIDEI ' 59 our croas and follow Him ; but the burdens, heavy and grievous to be borne, which our traditionalists bind on the shoulders of men and women, are not only no part of the burden of the cross : they are a sore hindrance to many who wish to take it up. Organised Christianity is at present under a cloud. The Churches have but little influence, and if they had more they would not know what to do with it. But the rationalistic assumption that the Christian religion is played out is quite out of date and betrays a complete absence of the historical sense. Eeligious institutions are by far the toughest and most long-lived of all human associations. Nothing could destroy the Christian Churches except the complete decay and submergence of the white race, a most improbable contingency. Ages of belief and of unbelief follow each other, and perhaps both are wrongly named. And if the Churches seem fairly secure, much more so is the revelation of which they are the guardians. With the added experience of nearly two thousand years, the modern man can repeat the words of St. Paul, that ' other foundation can no man lay save that which is laid,' that is to say, ' Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.' THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE (i) THEOCRACIES THE father of political philosophy taught us that human association began for the purpose of self-preservation, and was developed for the purpose of living well. We may follow Aristotle and say that all settled States embody some aspiration to live well. From this point of view, the history of institutions is the most pathetic of all records. Man has conquered the wild beasts ; he has conquered his fellow-men ; he has conquered nature ; but collectively he has never suc- ceeded in governing himself. A good government remains the greatest of human blessings, and no nation has ever enjoyed it. There is no ruler, says Plato, who would be unjustly condemned by his subjects. The world sways backwards and forwards between the ideals of Order and Liberty ; not because anyone thinks it possible or desirable to enjoy either of those boons without the other, but because, after a brief experience of governments based on one of them, men think that no price is too high to pay for being delivered from it. As surfeit is the father of much fast, So every scope by the immoderate use Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil ; and when we drink we die. 1 No doubt there are transformations which can hardly occur without an intermediary phase. For example, it 1 Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act i, Scene 2. 60 THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 61 does not seem possible for democracy, which disintegrates society into individuals and only collects them again into mobs, to pass directly into its opposite, socialism. A military monarchy must come between them. Russian autocracy, standing on its head, is more of an autocracy than ever. The little finger of Lenin is thicker than the loins of Nicholas the First. We might find other examples of the transformation of a movement into its opposite. We may trace the progress of unlimited competition towards a stage when it destroys itself. The competing units, which began as individuals acting in isolation, become larger and larger aggregates, until they succeed in establishing monopolies, which bring competition to an end. Or if competition is not terminated in this way, it may end by exhausting the competitors. The conditions of success may become so severe that the ruling race rules itself out, and is displaced by non- competitive strata of the population. This fate often befalls warlike and predatory races ; they who take the sword perish by the sword. The wolves disappear ; the sheep survive. Some movements disintegrate so rapidly that they live only in the vigorous reactions which they produce. This is true of all violent social revolutions, especially when they include communistic experiments. Thus the Jacobinism of the French Revolution, which looked like mere anarchism and bloodthirstiness, inaugurated the bourgeois regime of the nineteenth century. Our present social unrest will. I think, issue in a division of the wage- earners into a privileged and an unprivileged section. It will broaden the basis of conservatism. Sometimes the transformation is of a more subtle and interesting kind. Roman imperialism, as I said just now, ended by destroying the spirit of nationality. The ruling race itself was partly absorbed, but very largely extinguished. Yet the empire, though it decayed as a fact, survived as an idea. It had a new and very remarkable lease of life in an idealised form, as the Roman Church. So on a still larger scale Jewish nationalism by its uncompromising fanaticism caused the destruction of the Holy City and the annihilation of the Jewish State ; but in Christianity we may say with 62 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Seeley that the Jewish nationality had a new and boundless extension. The civilised world has adopted Jerusalem as its spiritual capital, and David and the prophets as its spiritual heroes. What the Babylonians and Persians and Greeks and Romans did for Judaism, by liberating the idea from the mould in which it had taken shape and which prevented its expansion, that the Barbarians did for the Roman Empire. In both cases the idea triumphed, and in the form most unacceptable to its first custodians. For the patriotic Jew would have regarded with horror the prospect of his sacred books being annexed by the Gentiles of the West, and we can imagine the feelings of Trajan or Tacitus on being told that a Christian priest would rule a world-wide theocracy from the Vatican. The ironies of history are on a colossal scale, and must, one is tempted to think, cause great amusement to a superhuman spectator. This chameleon-like character of human institutions, these Protean changes, arc, when they are once understood, a considerable obstacle to the extreme form of State-loyalty. They do not affect the love of country, for we may imagine that the innermost life of a country persists through all changes ; but they do make it difficult to worship a State as the embodiment of a type of government which we admire ; for by the mere fact of being a successful example of such a type, it is preparing the way for the triumph of an opposite principle which we probably dislike extremely. It will be one of the objects of these lectures to show that the State Visible has not that consistency and uniformity of character which could make it the object of unqualified loyalty and devotion. It never represents any clear ideal, but always the resultant of conflicting interests and forces ; or if one tendency, such as individual liberty, or highly organised discipline, seems for a time to have gained com- plete control, the suppressed instincts are gathering strength below the surface, and a violent reaction, which the temporary success of the opposite principle has itself generated, may be confidently expected. It is a rare exception when the authority of a State rests on bare force. In primitive associations of men this is never the case. The primitive community contains THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 63 unseen as well as visible members. It contains gods as well as men, the god or gods of tho tribe. Under the pro- tection of these unseen rulers are placed all the possessions which the tribe most values and most fears to lose. Above all, the gods are the guardians of the traditions and customs of the tribe. All societies cohere mainly by the superin- cumbent weight of custom. At ordinary times there is a certain mental inertia which keeps the members of a State marching in step, and each innovation, once established, becomes a tradition, to be reverenced as such. It is only in revolutionary periods that we discover how weak are the bonds which keep society together, apart from the tacit acceptance of custom. When either reason or passion plays upon institutions, they perish. Knowing this, the savage consecrates his tribal customs, and puts them safe out of reach of criticism. The eighteenth- century rational- ists were very wide of the mark when they supposed that religion was invented by priests to defraud the people. It would be much nearer the truth to say that the people introduced priests to keep themselves, or rather their neighbours, in the way they should go. But primitive man is not a philosophic pragmatist. He includes his tribal god in his community because he believes in his existence, and he supports the priest because he believes that the priest can act as a mediator between himself and the unseen ruler of his tribe. There is at this stage no distinction between Church and State, between secular and religious law, between the claims of Caesar and of God. The penalties which are believed to follow on an infraction of the duties which the tribe owes to its unseen Head are collective punishments such as a chief might, if he had the power, inflict upon rebellious subjects ; and the satisfactions which the tribe offers to earn his favour or placate his wrath are modelled on the tributes which the chief is in the habit of exacting. The primitive community is thus in part a theocracy ; though before any separation of interests has taken place between sacred and secular authority we can only say correctly that its government contains strong theocratic elements. The supreme authority is unseen, and there is 04 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS something mysterious about the way in which he makes his pleasure and displeasure felt. But he is on the whole the custodian of tribal custom and accepted views of right and justice, and may be appealed to as the champion of mos maiorum against all unauthorised innovations, and all acts of arbitrary tyranny by the visible head of the State. The barbarous community thus contains the germs of theocracy as a form of government. In the history of civilisation theocracy has held, and may hold again, a very important place. It is one of the forms in which the Invisible State has received practical acknowledgment in framing constitutions. I have therefore thought it worth while to devote my first lecture to the Theocratic State, before considering its chief rival, the Greek Commonwealth, whether in its actual manifestation or in the ideal forms imagined by philosophers. It will be convenient to take the Hebrew State as our first example. It furnishes a useful parallel to the Gr^ek political type which we shall consider next in order, because here also we are able to examine both the real and the ideal State. The prophets, with their Kingdom of God, are analogous to the Greek philosophers with their city whose type is laid up in heaven. The Israelite nation in Palestine was a mixture of nomad invaders with settled Canaanites. In the desert the religion of the children of Israel must have been very different' from that which we know of 'from their sacred books. We are incidentally told that they offered no sacrifices while they lived as wandering shepherds ; the great festivals of the Law were agricultural feasts, which would have no meaning for Bedouins. Nor can we think of a theocracy before the political fusion of the tribes. Nomads very seldom develop a true monarchy, and it was not till centuries after the tribes were settled in Canaan that a kingship was established, and then, we are told, it was in imitation of the foreign kinglets who lived round about. According to the earliest account, the institution of the monarchy was in accordance with the will of God, and was carried out through His prophet Samuel. Later, when the power of the priesthood had already begun to come into conflict with the regal authority, the tradition arose that THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 65 the appointment of a king was an act of rebellion against the strict theocracy which alone had the approval of Jehovah. At a very early date, signs of jealousy between Church and State began to show themselves. The king was ex-officio general and judge ; he was also ex-officio priest. Saul saw nothing wrong in offering sacrifice in the place of Samuel. David wore a linen ephod, which was a priestly garment. Both he and Solomon blessed the people ; and David's sons were priests, as if by patrimony. Jeroboam also seems to have acted as priest. It is not necessary to dwell further on this early period, in which the cultus even of Jehovah seems to have been more like the barbarous rites of Uganda or parts of India than later Judaism. The theocracy really begins with the central- ising policy of the later Jewish kings, which was only made possible by the fact that most of the other towns, with their local sanctuaries, had fallen into the hands of the Assyrians. Josiah hoped on the one hand to make the Temple an annexe of the royal palace, and so keep the priesthood as a support to the throne, and on the other to divert to Jerusalem the gifts of the faithful which had gone to local shrines. Doubtless he also wished to put down the abominations practised at many of these holy places. The captivity led to the compilation, in the time of Ezekiel, of a book containing the priestly traditions of the Temple ritual, and this codification was continued. Under Ezra the whole Pentateuch, though not in its present form, was published. The nation had become a Church, and the revelation of the spoken word had become the inspira- tion of a Book. The Jewish theocracy as we know it was now in being. Whether the Church-nation would have been able to withstand the disintegrating influence of Hellenism, if the latter had been left to pursue its course of peaceful penetration, cannot be decided. The violent persecu- tion of Antiochus Epiphanes put an end to all hope of Hellenising the Palestinian Jews, and fixed them in their splendid isolation. The Jews of the Dispersion might continue to imbibe foreign culture, and to assimilate their beliefs to those of the educated world around them by 66 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS studying Greek philosophy. It was in fact this rapproche- ment which made possible the spread of Christianity in Europe ; for the Christianity which converted the world was the Christianity of Stephen, Apollos, and Paul, not the Christianity of James the Brother of the Lord. But the fiery trial under the Maccabees fell on Palestine ; and the deepest religious feeling and devotion among the Jews were found among those who resisted all compromise to the death. More and more the theocratic idea realised itself in a Jewish Catholic Church, which nevertheless was unwilling to surrender the dream of temporal power, till in endeavouring to turn the dream into fact it had ruined the nation completely in its local seat. But the destruction of Jerusalem, and the annihilation of the Jerusalem hier- archy with its worship, really liberated the theocracy from an association with secular politics which had become not only unnecessary but hampering. Judaism without Jerusa- lem became a State of an unique kind ; though if the Roman Church ever renounced its dream of temporal domination and sundered its connexion with the city of Rome, it would become an institution of a somewhat similar nature. Judaism is a theocratic State with no visible symbols of empire, and therefore nothing to attack, though its citizens may be and often are maltreated. Its terms of membership are nominally religious, but are very largely racial ; and the pride and loyalty which keep it together are partly racial and partly religious, the two being inseparable in the minds of its adherents. There is no desire to refuse to accept citizenship in the political states where the Jews find their homes, nor any inclination to disobey the laws ; but their deepest loyalty is to their own race, and they have a fixed determination to escape being fused in other nation- alities. This consistent policy, one of the most successful in history, is of such peculiar interest for our present purpose, that it may be worth while to illustrate a little further, from the writings of Jews themselves, the attitude of the Jewish theocracy towards the secular governments under which its members live. Mr. Morris Joseph, in bis book ' Judaism as a Creed and Life,' thus states the duties of a Jew to the State. I give his statement in an abridged form. THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 67 Every association of men has for its object the pro- motion of common aims. Common interests have common duties as their correlative. The State is Society under its most organised form ; but it retains the ethical character which underlies its existence. There are moral obligations on both sides, from the individual to the State, and from the State to the individual The Old Testament prescribes obedience to alien rule. ' Seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive/ says Jeremiah ; ' and pray unto the Lord for it ; for in the peace thereof ye shall have peace.' ' Serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you,' says Gedaliah. The Talmud also declares that he who rebels against his sovereign deserves to die, and that ' the law of the land is law.' Deeds of mercy are not to be confined to Jewish recipients. The author assures us that there is no ' Jewish vote ' ; the Jews vote as citizens, not as Jews. He also says that a Jew has no right to refuse to serve in the army or navy, even though such service involves certain breaches of the ritual law ; nor should he refuse to serve on a jury or to vote on the Sabbath. Unquestionably there are some things in which the Jew would think it his duty to obey God rather than man ; but in modern Jewish books, written in England, the stress is laid on the moral, not on the ceremonial. Law ; and the chief feature which distinguishes Jewish from Christian ethics is the appeal made to keep up the honour of the nation. It is treason to give occasion for the name of Jew to be evil spoken of. All public trans- gression is a ' profanation of the Name ' of God. The Name of God is profaned when his people and religion are brought into contempt. Thus the Jew replies with a fine noblesse oblige to the scorn of centuries. The Jewish theocratic State is now in some danger of disintegration, as it was under the earlier successors of Alexander, by coming into too friendly relations with an alien and in some ways a broader culture. It flourished best under persecution, and may be killed by kindness. It will be very interesting to see whether the Jews will choose, if they are given the opportunity, to rebuild a Temple in their Holy City. 68 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Other theocracies may be passed briefly in review : they will illustrate the different advantages and disad- vantages of this type of government. The extraordinary stability of Hinduism has hardly received sufficient recog- nition from students of historical philosophy. Just as Judaism generated and then expelled the Christian religion, which won such resounding triumphs in Europe after being, on the whole, rejected by Asia, so India first generated and then expelled one of the other great religions of the world Buddhism. There are said to be at present less than half a million Buddhists in India, though the teaching of Gautama has spread over Burma, Siam, Japan, China, and Korea. This expulsion of Buddhism from India was the work of Brahmanism, which has had a longer life than any other great religion. Whether it is at last beginning to decline I do not know enough to say. As a type of theocracy it is very interesting. There is, I am told, no congregational worship or ' going to church,' no high-priest and no ecclesiastical capital. But ritual enters into social life more intimately than it ever did with the Jews. It has been said that a Hindu eats religiously, drinks religiously, bathes religiously, and sins religiously. It is his religion which has bound together and preserved the social system of caste which is the most salient feature of Indian civilisa- tion. Religion controls the life of an Indian far more than it is controlled by the civil laws of the English or of his own princes ; this is why it is such a good example of theocratic government. The people may have been conquered half a dozen times ; but the real government that of unseen divine powers remains unchanged. Asiatic nations are easy to conquer because they care so little who collects the taxes. They are citizens of an Invisible State. A curious development of theocracy is illustrated by the Dalai Lama of Tibet. A sacred ruler who is an incarna- tion of the Deity is in a very difficult position, since he cannot behave like a human being without compromising his dignity. The only thing to do is to shut him up. But a ruler who is shut up cannot govern. So the theocracy becomes a sham, and various court functionaries conduct the government in the name of the sacrosanct monarch. THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 69 It is said that the Dalai Lama has been usually a boy, and that he was secretly poisoned from Pekin when he grew up. There have been many other quasi-divine sovereigns, living in great seclusion behind screens of elaborate etiquette. Montezuma of Mexico seems to have been a ruler of this kind. It is a very obvious device to surround the person of the monarch with religious awe, and if it is not carried too far it may make for stability and good order ; but a man who has been deified before his death cannot be shown, except on State occasions. It used to be supposed that the Mikado of Japan was a potentate of this kind. The Shoguns of the powerful Tokugawa clan had deprived him of all real jurisdiction, and even styled themselves sovereigns of the country. But later accounts, from Japanese sources, do not support the view that the Mikado was a Grand Lama, with only spiritual authority. He kept a phantom court, surrounded by a few officials belonging to the highest nobility, but he was always de iure emperor ; and when in negotiations with European powers the Shogun was obliged to produce his credentials, a further continuance of his usurpation became impossible. It would therefore be rash to adduce Japan before the Revolution as an example of an effete theocracy. Russia under the Tsars was a State with strong theo- cratic elements. The Tsardom was a genuine continuation of the Byzantine system, under which a close alliance existed between State and Church ; but since the secular arm predominated, we cannot speak of a theocracy here. Justinian, who did much to consolidate the relations which were afterwards to prevail between Church and State, claimed the right to appoint and dispossess bishops, to convene and direct ecclesiastical councils, to sanction their decisions, and to amend or abolish their canons. In ex- change for the mastery which he assumed over the Church, he built churches and convents in all parts of the empire, and employed his authority to suppress heresy and schism. Both the Byzantine emperors and the Tsars certainly had a sacred character, but this claim only enabled them to keep the Church in a subordinate position. There is, however, one very important theocratic system 70 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS which we have not yet mentioned. Some 15 per cent, of the inhabitants of the globe are followers of the Arabian prophet, and the religious tie which binds Moslems together is felt to be stronger than any merely political allegiance. Racialism also has been quite overcome by this religion, and to a large extent class-differences also ; so that a low- caste Hindu has everything to gain by becoming "a Mussul- man. Islam has sometimes appeared as the realisation of what the fanatical Jew would have liked to see his own nation doing carrying the banner of the Lord of hosts into all lands, and presenting foreign nations with the alternative of submission or extermination. The unity of Islam is also shown by the principle that there can be only one deputy or vicegerent of the Prophet on earth though the faithful may not be agreed who the Caliph is. But here again recent historical research has modified the traditional view. The Arabs were not at first eager to proselytise ; and though they undoubtedly wished to put an end to paganism, they were not intolerant to Christianity, and treated the Jews much better than they were treated by Christians at the same period. The conquests of the seventh century were primarily an expansion of the Arabian nationality, and only secondarily an extension of the Mohammedan faith. The reaction of the East against the West had already made itself felt as early as the third century ; and Arabs had begun to swarm before Mohammed. What Islam did was to make the migrations, which would have taken place even without it, much more formidable. It aimed at making its adherents soldier-priests, combining as it were the sacerdotal with the warrior caste. The daily religious exercises maintained the priestly character, and also constituted a useful drill. The Moslem must always be ready for the Holy War ; and death in such a war was a sure passport to Paradise. The creed is there- fore well fitted for a conquering people, and it helped the Arabs to carry their arms and their trade in a marvellously short time to the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. The effects of that wonderful century of expansion have left a deep mark on history to this day ; but we must never make the mistake of holding the Mohammedan religion THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 71 responsible for the barbarities of the horde of Tartars who unhappily succeeded the Arabs as the chief representatives of the Islamic peoples. The theocratic character of Islam is shown in its jurisprudence, in which it is thoroughly Oriental. The business of the legislator and magistrate is not to study an experimental science, registering cases and tabulating results, in order to improve the administration of justice. It is to know and carry out a set of rules revealed by God. This unprogressive code is, of course, derived from the Koran, which can never be superseded by any subsequent revelation, since no prophet greater than Mohammed can ever arise. This biblio atry has unquestionably been one of the chief obstacles to progress in Mohammedan coun- tries ; though in those Moslem communities which are under foreign governments, especially in British India, there is said to be considerable readiness to accept modifi- cations of the Koran, except in the case of ceremonial religion. We have seen signs of the same thing among the Jews, who are also strictly bound by the authority of a book, but have found means to make the burden light without disloyalty. The theocratic type of government belongs especially to Asia. When it has appeared in the West, it has indicated a victory of Asiatic ideas over European. The successors of Alexander claimed divine attributes, and some of them inscribed Theos (God) on their coins. The Roman Emperors received divine honours in their eastern provinces. An inscription in Asia Minor, dated just before the birth of Christ, announces that ' the birthday of the God (Augustus Caesar) has become the beginning of glad tidings (evangelia) through him to the world.' No form of government seems at present less likely to establish itself in Europe ; though we must not forget the attempt of De Maistre and Chateaubriand in France to recommend a Catholic theocracy in the nineteenth century. But since it is one of the historical forms under which the relations of the State Visible and the State Invisible have been adjusted, we may consider the advantages and disadvantages of this type of constitution. 72 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS We have already mentioned the great tenacity of life which societies theocratically governed seem to possess. We are apt to dismiss such nations as unprogressive ; but a society which is slow to advance may also be slow to decline ; the tortoise may reach the goal before the hare. It is also no small advantage that the supreme authority should be unassailable. It implies that a nation is religious ; that it regards the unseen as the most real ; that it has an absolute standard of values, which is independent of the caprice of princes and the popular vote. Even if the Law which cannot be altered is nothing more than venerable custom, reverence for the wisdom of the past is a great asset at all times, and in stationary periods, which are the longest, is invaluable. If some eager reformers hear this statement with impatience, we may remind them that revelations are not always pro- gressive. The history of religions, it has been said truly, is usually a history of decline. Buddhism and Christianity were in their greatest purity and at their highest level of spiritual elevation, when they were fresh from the mint. In spiritual matters, the wind bloweth where it listeth ; there is no law of progress, any more than in the history of art and literature. So there is much gain in preserving with all possible care the records of the revelation at the time when it won its first victories, and placing them in the guardianship of a set of men specially chosen for this duty. In most cases the sacred deposit consists largely of a code of laws, like the Hebrew Pentateuch, the Indian Laws of Manu, and the codes of half-divinised lawgivers in other ancient peoples. Plutarch defends the idea of revelation in the cases of Minos, Zoroaster, Zaleucus, and Numa. No doubt ' the law of the Medes and Persians that altereth not ' was supposed to be under divine sanction. The theocratic idea also inspires intense loyalty and devotion. It turns every soldier into a potential martyr, and enables a subject nation to preserve its individuality and its traditions in the face of long-continued and relent- less pressure. A warlike nation, filled with religious enthusiasm, has its strength doubled. THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 73 On the other hand, the theocratic idea has fatally checked the growth of many nations, and has brought some to ruin. Bagehot says : In primitive times either men had no law at all, or had to obtain a fixed law by processes of incredible difficulty. Those who surmounted that difficulty soon destroyed all those who lay in their way who did not. And then they themselves were caught in their own yoke. The customary discipline, which could only be imposed on early man by terrible sanctions, continued with those sanctions and killed out the propensities to variation which are the principle of progress. Theocracies also tend to uphold an external and unspiritual doctrine of the divine favour and displeasure. We can trace this weakness in the whole history of the Hebrews. It is very difficult for any nation, especially for a half-civilised nation, to accept the truth that the gifts of the Spirit are in the spiritual sphere, and that God does not show His favour by giving wealth, prosperity, and victory, nor His anger by sending pestilence, famine, and defeat in war. The Hebrews ascribed all their mis- fortunes 'and few nations had so many to the anger of Jehovah, and their prophets inveighed against the national sins which had incurred such a chastisement. Such teaching might be morally bracing ; and the prophets bore steady witness to the righteousness of God by attributing His anger not only to idolatry but to injustice, licentious- ness, and other ethical delinquencies. Still, the connexion which they traced between national misfortune and the anger of heaven was no true connexion, and it helped to mislead the Jewish people at critical times of their history. In short, the theocratic idea, when applied to the course of external events, leads to a false political philosophy. Some of the prophets, it need not be said, did much to purify and elevate the crude notion of col- lective reward and punishment, and to give the belief in divine government a truer and more spiritual form. Another evil of theocracies is the hatred and want of understanding which they foster towards other nations. Theocracy in history almost always means the governance 74 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS of one particular nation by its own Deity. It stimulates the fiercest and narrowest kind of patriotism. The Jews were always notorious for their odium generis huwani. Juvenal actually supposed that the law of Moses forbade a Jew to show the way to any uncircumcised person. When a theocratic State gets the better of its neighbours in war, it usually commits great atrocities without any sense of wrong-doing, and carries into effect the pious reflexion : ' Do not I hate those, Lord, who hate Thee ? Yea, I hate them with a perfect hatred.' This attitude of conscientious scorn and abhorrence for other nations and their customs makes it almost impossible for a theocratic nation to learn anything from other peoples. This does not apply to the Saracens, who were more ready to assimilate Giaeco-Roman culture than the Christian peoples of the West during the Dark Ages. But I have already said that the early Arabian conquests were far more the expansion of a nation than the pro- pagandism of a religion. When the ewarming time from Arabia ceased, the Islamic nations, under the influence of a theocratic religion based on an infallible book, became entirely unrecej tive, and have so remained to this day. We may, in fact, lay it down as a general rule that theo- cracy may preserve a nation or a type of culture for a long time, but at last ends by strangling it. A theocracy cannot adapt itself to new conditions or profit by new acquisitions of knowledge. The sacred book, or the faith once delivered to the saints, becomes a fatal bar to further progress. Morality in such a nation is heteronomous, not autonomous : conduct rests on authority, not on conscience. In some barbarous tribes the sacrosanct code is full of absurdities, cruelties, and immoralities, so that customs are perpetuated under the sanction of religion which the culture of the people has really quite outgrown. So the half-civilised Aztecs practised human sacrifice and canni- balism ; and a long list might be made of similar anomalies. A heteronomous morality has no means of reforming itself. Even Christian theology preserves some unethical notions which would have been discarded if they had not been withdrawn from criticism. And from time to time these THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 75 survivals poison moral practice, as in the religious perse- cutions and witch-trials of the later Middle Ages and the early modern period. Human nature changes so little, that the radically false foundation of heteronomous morality does not appear to do very much harm ; but there are cases in which new knowledge has quickened the moral sense in a new direction ; and in these cases we find that the heteronomous theocratic idea interposes a dead wall of stolid opposition to the acceptance of new moral duties. There is another defect in theocracy as a form of government, which has had very serious consequences. Every government ret-ts ultimately on force, though at ordinary times the force is kept in the background and the machine runs itself, kept going by habit and custom, and by a measure of general goodwill towards constituted authority. It is the crux of all political science how to place the force in hands which will not misuse it. For example, the Roman Empire was ruined by the necessity of keeping up a large standing army to guard the frontiers against the barbarians. The organisation of a city State was incompatible with this system. The State was at the mercy of a popular general with victorious legions behind him. The evil showed itself as soon as the first long-service professional army was formed under Marius. From that time till the downfall of the Western Empire, the Roman dominion was torn by civil wars between rival commanders ; and when the emperors instituted a bodyguard or home army of pampered Praetorians, these household troops set up and deposed emperors at their will, dividing among themselves great sums of money at each revolution. But under a theocracy there is no material power to fall back upon ; the authority is spiritual and unseen. And though this spiritual authority may be the strongest of all sanctions to the noblest members of a nation, the majority are incapable of such devotion, and there will always be a large number of ' average sensual men ' who care nothing for religion. For these, a theocracy must provide fear and superstition. Savages are really governed by tabus ; and such is the power of 76 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS suggestion that there are well-authenticated stories of healthy men who have died of shock after unintentionally violating a tabu. In the Middle Ages the Popes exercised a real power by excommunication and interdict. As long as their sentences were carried out on earth, and were believed to be ratified in heaven, the theocracy had in reserve a sufficient coercive force. But the time comes when this spiritual authority is called in question ; and then the theocracy is at once threatened. It is obliged in self- defence to resist any changes in the mental condition of its subjects which will cause its authority to be under- mined. This is why theocracies are obliged to be obscurantist. They must foster the belief in ecclesiastical miracles, and provide miracles themselves ; they must make the people believe that the priests hold the keys of heaven and hell ; they must employ ' Purgatory Pickpurse ' for revenue purposes ; and above all things, they must keep education in their own hands, and endeavour to press the ductile minds of children into the mould which they desire them to keep through life. The miserable results of this policy, which the Roman Catholic Church would establish everywhere if it could, are apparent in Poland, in Canada, and above all in Ireland. It is not necessary to waste much moral indignation over such methods. They are the indispensable machinery of theocracy ; and it is open to its supporters to say that those who throw off the yoke of the priests often go further and fare worse. Many impartial observers might fairly prefer the social life of an Austrian or Swiss Catholic village to that of an English or American town. Still, one cannot give a high place to a government which exists by an elaborate system of deception and exacting money under false pretences ; and it cannot be good for men and women to have their whole view of nature and its laws distorted. A religion of this kind seems to have a fatal power of killing all other religion in its neighbour- hood. A certain number of pious souls may find a welcome shelter under its protection, and develop their spiritual life in a very beautiful manner. But there are many THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 77 others who would naturally be religious after a different sort ; and these are alienated from religion altogether. The machinery of theocracy generates a violent revulsion against every kind of religion. We always find by the side of priestly authority a fierce anti-clerical feeling which endangers not only the stability of the government but the foundations of social morality. It is not only the worst men, but some of the best, who range them- selves as the enemies of the Church in Roman Catholic countries. Thus the State tends to be torn in two, and the dominant factions are superstitious obscurantists on one side, and coarse materialists on the other. The moderate parties are crushed out between them. Enlight- ened and high-minded reformers find it impossible to join either party, and are excluded from public life altogether. It is extremely difficult for a modern theocracy to reform itself ; for it has probably already shed many naturally religious persons who have been repelled by its methods of dealing with the uneducated, and as the pressure increases, it has to depend on a lower and lower clientele. Its chief hope must be that the excesses of the opposite extremists will drive all who value the continuity of civilisation and culture to take refuge under its admirable organisation. Such a possibility is by no means remote in the world to-day, when we are threatened by revolu- tionary movements which may sweep away the priceless treasures which we have inherited from the past, as completely as the barbarian invasions obliterated the classical culture. But a heavy price has to be paid by a civilisation which calls in an ambitious priesthood to save it. I once said to a wise man : ' If we had to choose between the Red International and the Black, I think I should choose the yoke of the Black.' He replied : ' No. We should soon escape from the Red tyranny ; but the Blacks do not let their victims go.' 78 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS (ii) THE GREEK CITY STATE We pass to-day from the theocracies which flourish so naturally in the East to the Greek State, whether real or ideal. Superficially, the change may seem to be from a sacred to a secular government. The Greek was not baptized or married or buried by priests ; he knew of no Church. And yet we should be much mistaken if we thought of anything like modern secularism in connexion with Greek political theory. When Plutarch says that a city might sooner subsist without a geographical site than without belief in the gods, his words would not have appeared strange to his countrymen at any time. Very often the origin of a Greek city was religious, and the fact was indicated by the very name, as at Athens and Megara. Religion, based on a real or fictitious bond ot kinship, pervaded all the social and political life of the people. The city was an enlarged family ; membership depended on birth, not on residence. Marriages with aliens were forbidden or discouraged ; admission of aliens to citizen- ship was made difficult. So, until we come to Orphism, there were no Greek missionaries ; and it is easy to see how such ideas as inherited guilt, vicarious punishment, and communal responsibility, flourished in the Greek communities. Geographical conditions helped to perpetuate and intensify the clannishness of the little States. They were well aware of the weakness and danger to which their divisions exposed them ; but even security against con- quest by a non-Hellenic people seemed to them to be bought too dear by the sacrifice of the city-organisation which distinguished them from the barbarians. And as in the parallel case of the Italian republics and tyrannies of the late Middle Ages, 'he City-State, which was a small canton, not a municipal area, proved to be a forcing house of genius and of rich, full, joyous life, such as no other type of State has produced. It would not, as is sometimes assumed by those who scold the Greeks for their political THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 79 foolishness, have been an easy or simple matter to make the other choice. The whole structure of ancient civilisation depended on the City as the unit. Neither the Macedonians nor the Romans tried to abolish it. And when, besides loyalty to the City, men were expected to feel loyalty to an Empire, the idea of the Empire could be embodied only in a divinised monarch standing above and outside the Cities an idea which really belongs to the East. How strong was the sentiment of municipal patriotism under the Roman Empire, till the later emperors at last crushed it under their monstrous system of taxation ! And when it died, classical culture died too. For our present purpose it is specially necessary to emphasise that the Greek State was a moral association, which avowedly existed to further ' a good life ' among its members. It is bound together by Laws, or rather by ' the Law.' But the Law is not the changing expression of the wishes or the wisdom of the citizens ; it is something essentially unchanging, absolute in its sanctions, and sacred in its origin. Not that they supposed it to have been written on tables of stone by the finger of God, like the Jewish law, or dictated like the Koran. The laws of the State were, as they knew, human enactments ; but behind the laws was the Law, which was the arbiter in the breast of every educated and high-minded citizen. This Law was in part a system of inherited custom, obedience to which has become a habit ; the Greeks treated habit with great respect. Reflection soon convinced the philosophers that the laws are by no means always in accordance with the Law of the ideal State, and, as we shall see, they did not wish the State to be held together by external authority ; but they still regarded the laws as the expression of the wisdom and moral will of the living State, and each generation put itself under them, as an authority far above the popular will. It is the fashion now to speak of the ' static ' conception of society, which we are told belonged to the Greeks, and to contrast it with the ' dynamic ' conception at which we moderns have arrived. But the real difference is between the attitude of reverence to a law which we did not make, and which 80 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS is above ourselves, and the modern attitude towards laws which merely indicate the present direction of the so-called general will. The Greek, though he never developed a theocracy, believed in a divine source of all just government. It is true that this conception of an absolute authority an unchanging principle of justice, supreme over all human legislation, was held in different degrees by different thinkers. In two or three books of the ' Politics,' Aristotle uses very modern language in discussing legislation, without direct reference to ethical standards. But he never, I think, really teaches that the laws, whether morally good or bad, are the creators of right. Plato, though more decidedly in the ' Republic ' and ' Statesman ' than in the ' Laws,' allows an appeal from the laws as they are to the laws as they ought to be, and feels no great respect for the legislation of Athens as he knew it. Even in the ' Laws ' he returns at last to the State Invisible as the true lawgiver, and laments that from want of education and high principle the citizens of every earthly State produce such a poor copy of it on earth. There was nothing new in this attitude. Heracleitus seems to have developed the idea of a law of nature, which he studied as the basis of physics. Physics, in his view, is an intermediary between ' the one divine law, which is infinitely strong, and suffices, with something over, for all human laws,' and the human laws themselves. Physical laws are manifestations or emanations of the divine wisdom which penetrates all things ; and human laws are, or should be, framed in accordance with the laws of nature. Unfortunately, ' the good are few, the evil are many ' ; the majority of men live as if they had a private world of their own, instead of reverencing the Reason which is one and common to all. Only the wisest can thus com- mune with the World Soul (I do not mean that Heracleitus uses this phrase) ; and the wisest, at Ephesus and else- where, are spurned and driven out. Heracleitus seems on one side to be near to the naturalistic and evolutionary ethics of the nineteenth century ; but his Law was a mystical and spiritual principle, operative throughout the universe. He was no materialist, THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 81 Already in the fifth century the distinction between the State as it is and as it ought to be had found expression in the famous antithesis of vcm and vo/xo?. The claim to try and condemn all human institutions by an absolute principle, discovered by education, by conscience, or by intuition, is the parent of all reform, and of all revolution too. It is capable of being applied in two opposite direc- tions. For what is the ' Nature ' which is so often opposed to ' Convention ' ? Is it the character and will and law of God, the guiding principle of the archetypal world ; or is it the right of the stronger to dominate if he can ? The Greeks at this time were keenly interested in comparative politics ; and they could not help reflecting that if ' Nature ' was one, and ' Law ' very different in different countries, Law and Nature cannot be identical. The great interest of the ' Antigone,' to a Greek, lay in the sharp conflict between ' Law ' and ' Nature.' If Law commands us to commit an impiety, ought we or ought we not to be passive resisters ? The Greek conscience pre- ferred obedience to the ' unwritten laws, the origin of which no one knows ' ; but it was not a clear case ; to reject the laws of the State must always be a serious matter. How serious a matter it is was soon evident from certain developments of political and moral speculation. Con- ventional morality may be rejected in favour of a purer and higher law, or in favour of no law at all. The Sophists, who were not a school of philosophers, but professional educators, in some cases found reasons for young men who wished to make a career for themselves in total dis- regard of ordinary standards of right and wrong. They argued sometimes like Hobbes, sometimes like Machiavelli, and sometimes like Nietzsche. Callicles in the ' Gorgias ' uses Nietzsche's phrase about ' slave-morality.' A favourite argument was that since the laws represent only con- vention, the wise man will break them without scruple, if he can do so with impunity. The Cynics and Cyrenaics preached downright moral anarchism, throwing away the idea of the State altogether. It was absurd, they said, to profess loyalty and self-devotion to a mere geographical area. No doubt this line of thought might be interpreted 82 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS as a noble cosmopolitanism and belief in the brotherhood of mankind ; but both in ancient and modern times cosmopolitanism is often only a mask for selfishness and a desire to evade social obligations. The Cynic may be either a beast or a god, but he is not often a god. This brings us to Plato, the enemy of the Sophists. The remainder of this lecture will be occupied with his political teaching, which I need not say has permanent value of the highest kind. In the earlier dialogues, especially the ' Gorgias,' he emphasises two things as indis- pensable for a statesman a high moral purpose and knowledge of his business. Plato never wavered in insisting on these two qualifications. They are at the root of the political doctrines of the ' Republic.' Ignorance and selfishness are the two banes of political life. Under a democracy every citizen thinks that he is qualified to govern the country, and the result is utter inefficiency. And the individualism justified by the Sophists disintegrates the State, which becomes a chaos of warring factions. Justice requires that every man should be set to the work for which nature has fitted him ; nothing is more unjust than the artificial, factitious equality of unequals. This is the fundamental vice of democracy : the other, indivi- dualistic self-seeking, he regards as specially characteristic of oligarchies, chiefly because for him an oligarchy means a commercialised State. The real root of the evil in such a State is love of money. Where this dominates social life, the State tends to be divided into two parties, or rather two nations the rich and the poor ; and these are at war one with another. In the passage where these words occur he closely resembles the well-known and remark- able diagnosis of social disease in England, in Disraeli's Sybil.' But Plato was well aware that greed and selfishness are likely to be quite as prevalent and quite as destructive under a democracy. He saw only two possible remedies, unless or until the citizens were sufficiently educated and moralised to be free from these evil passions. One was to renounce industrialism altogether. A very small State of agriculturists, living away from the sea and there- THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 83 fore out of reach of temptation to make money by trade, might live a peaceful and wholesome life, exchanging their products by simple barter, and not quarrelling among them- selves. Civilisation, in the ordinary sense of the word, might ' cure ' itself by cutting its own throat. This is the solution which has commended itself to many idealists between Plato and Kuskin. The chief obstacle is the presence of a large population which industrialism has called into existence, and which would have to be got rid of somehow. It might also be objected that the life of the peasant proprietor, e.g. in France, is by no means ideal ; and that there is probably no class in any country which is so preoccupied with petty gains and savings as the French small farmers. But this last objection perhaps did not apply so strongly to farming in Greece. In the land of the vine and olive work is far less incessant, and a hardy but comparatively free and happy existence is the lot of all, provided that the population is kept down. At any rate, we must bear in mind that Plato was firmly convinced that the inevitable price paid for industrial progress is too high. He clung to the ideal of the self- sufficing life. The second remedy for corruption and injustice in government is one of the greatest interest and importance. He has observed that political power is always abused by the ruling class to plunder and exploit the governed. It is, he says, as if watch-dogs were to turn into wolves, and devour the sheep entrusted to them. That a tyrant plunders his subjects needs no demonstration ; though if he is strong enough to prevent anyone else from plundering, the people may be comparatively fortunate under his rule. An oligarchy will try to monopolise the avenues of wealth, though it will keep them open to unusual ability from the lower classes ; so that this form of government, as has been demonstrated by modern experience, is favourable to material progress. But a democracy, as had become apparent even in Plato's time, will vote itself doles and pensions from the exchequer, and will pillage the rich by means of super-taxes ('liturgies') and capital levies. In this way the resources of the nation are soon exhausted ; 84 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS and the property -owners are tempted to plot for a counter- revolution. And what is Plato's remedy, assuming that we must take the ' luxurious State,' with all its paraphernalia of trade and commerce and capital and a wage-earning class, as a fait accompli ? It is that political and economic power must not be in the same hands. This, as we shall see, is the reason for his communism, and for his prohibition of family life, which he never thought of applying to the whole population, but only to the governing class. The governing class was deliberately to be put in a posi- tion which the ordinary man would not wish to occupy. Its members were to be heavily penalised, deprived of all that the average man most values. They were to be held in great honour ; he hopes that an ascetic, self-sacrificing class will always be held in honour ; but they are to be deprived of all temptation, and all possibility of making gain for themselves out of their political power. He saw clearly, what the uniform experience of mankind has since demonstrated to be the truth, that communism is only possible under two conditions. One is the abolition of the family. It is impossible to abolish private property on any other terms. The .various communistic experiments in the United States and elsewhere have proved that a com- munistic settlement may continue for a hundred years or more, if celibacy is one of the rules. Otherwise it invariably collapses within a single generation. In America the celibate communists have generally become rich, through the unearned increment in the value of their landed property ; and they have then shown no zeal in making proselytes. The normal end of such an experiment, in America, is a tontine, in which the property of the community, some- times very large, devolves upon the last survivors of a club which refuses to admit new members. The last communist is an aged, childless millionaire. But this would not happen under Plato's scheme. The other indispensable condition is a religious basis, in the absence of which quarrels soon break out, ending in early disruption. Plato hopes that he has secured this, and I think he has secured it. We shall not understand the ' Republic ' unless we realise that his THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 85 communism is a heroic remedy for a desperate evil the union of political power and economic temptation in the hands of the same class. And even if we think that his expedient is impracticable, and that the sacrifice demanded of the Guardians in the 'Republic' is heavier than any man ought to be called upon to pay (though we must remember that the Catholic monks and nuns are willing to pay it, and something more, for Plato's Guardians were not pledged to life-long continence), we must admit that the abuse against which his scheme was directed is a gigantic evil, and that it has baffled all makers of constitutions and all political philosophers from that day to this. The union of political power with economic temptation has been the source of innumerable acts of injustice, and has been one of the greatest obstacles to human happiness. It is notorious that under an oligarchy or ' timocracy ' the politically unrepresented classes are unfairly treated. If they are not overtaxed in the literal sense, they are exploited and unable to reap the full fruit of their labours. But modern thought is slow to admit that power in the hands of the populace is certain to be equally abused. The newly enfranchised masses for some time astonished the world by their moderation ; and it was quite wrongly supposed that they were more just and generous by nature than the classes which had held power before them. The truth is that, at least in this country, the extension of the suffrage was granted before the masses were ready for it ; it was given in the course of the frantic struggle for power between two political factions, neither of which, in the excitement of the party game, cared to look far ahead. Disraeli hoped to dish the Whigs ; the head of his own party soon adorned the same charger. No impartial observer can any longer doubt that Plato's opinion as to the danger of giving the power of the purse to the democracy was quite correct. For two generations or so the political inexperience of the populace was so great that it allowed itself to be dragged into such purely middle- class causes as the campaign against the Church and the House of Lords. But now that it has had time to realise its power and formulate its own demands, the middle-class 86 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS programme has been dropped, and one thing alone excites enthusiasm, the pillage of the minority, exactly as Plato told us. So entirely does this object dominate all other considerations, that it unites in one predatory horde parties whose political philosophy (if we may dignify it by such a name) ought to place them in diametrically opposite camps. No two types of political thought are more radically opposed to each other than that of the Socialist, for whom the State is everything, and that of the Syndicalist, for whom the State is nothing. But as long as the loot lasts, they are willing to work together. The consequences to the nation may be even more ruinous than could result from absolute monarchy or oligarchy ; and, if so, Plato's political insight will once more be justified by the course of history. Another practical problem, also of great and permanent importance, which exercised the mind of Plato, was the choice between many-sidedness and specialisation. On the whole, Athens had stood for the former, and Sparta for the latter, just as in modern times America might be taken as the type of eurpaTreXta, and Germany of differentiated functions. The Sophists were considered to have fostered versatility in its least desirable aspects ; and Plato detested them and their works. Moreover, without being exactly a pro-Spartan, he was keenly alive to the superior efficiency, in some directions at least, of the Lacedaemonian type ; and his temperament led him to lay great stress on ' my station and its duties/ It was also becoming plainer every year that in one department, and that the most vital to the existence of the State, the amateur was no match for the professional. The day of the militiaman or territorial was passing ; the day of the professional soldier was at hand. And so Plato gives us a neat tripartite division of his ideal State into rulers, soldiers, and workers, each with a special trade to learn. So only, he thought, could incompetence be banished. No doubt this was one of the Pythagorean triads. The Pythagoreans also divided manhood into Lovers of Wisdom, Lovers of Honour, and Lovers of Money ; and they found a corresponding tripartite division THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 87 in the human soul, in which one or other of its three faculties tends to predominate. Plato, like the Stoics later, wishes the higher part of the soul to rule the lower ; but he does not fall into the ascetical error of wishing to suppress the lower altogether. On the contrary, the ideal is a ' musical harmony ' of the three. This ideal might seem to point to a similar harmony in the individual souls of all the citizens, which would make his extreme specialisation unnecessary. But he knows the weaknesses of human nature, and the chaos of inefficiency which results if the constitution is based on the assumption that all men are equally fitted to undertake any kind of service ; and so he decides in favour of professionalism, with such safe- guards against abuse as he can devise. And his system provides that those who are chosen and trained to embody the higher elements in human character shall actually govern. It is for the advantage of all that they should. It is also ' just,' since justice demands that every man should be put to the work that he is best fitted to do. The invisible or ideal principle is the eternal fact of ' justice,' which is part of the fundamental law of the universe. He is entirely free from the false mysticism which has produced the conception of a ' general will,' a sort of resultant of the wisdom or folly of the whole community, personalised and half divinised. Of course the danger of this kind of polity is that it may harden into a rigid caste system, as in India. Plato wishes the transition from one class to another to be as easy as possible, and though he does not say so, he probably thought that the three classes would tend to sort themselves without much friction, since a man who preferred industry and money-making would wish to belong to the third class, the spirited man to the soldier class, and the idealist and political philosopher to the class of guardians. All three classes have to make real sacrifices ; but is not this the case under any polity that we may choose ? To put the power in the hands of the most unselfish class is at any rate an experiment well worth trying. Some difficulty is caused to the modern reader by Plato's unfamiliar use of the word justice, which for us is loaded 88 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS with Roman ideas of ius, with which the Greek conception has little in common. It is not easy to distinguish justice in Plato from o-fa^poa-vvrj, a virtue for which we have no exact equivalent. Justice for Plato means social morality based on an absolute standard of right and wrong. The State is not a legal person ; it is not a person at all, since there is no social sensorium ; but it is a moral unity with a common function and end. From the moral and spiritual point of view, we are members of a body, bound together by reciprocal duties. It is ' unjust ' for any citizen not to play his part, even if his failure is due to being put to work for which he is not naturally fitted. It is by this standard that he tries, and for the most part condemns, concrete law, tradition and custom. Human institutions must stand or fall according as they correspond or fail to correspond with perfect justice. There is yet another great question which all social philosophers have to face the relative importance of Nature and Nurture. It is a question which now separates science very sharply from dominant political tendencies. If we were to adopt Plato's Republic and make men of science our guardians, the whole course of legislation would be revolutionised. We seldom realise how far our social policy is antagonistic to the firm convictions of a small but extremely competent class of thinkers the natural philosophers. Their warnings are disregarded by politicians because they are too few to count in elections, and by the populace because with the majority reason counts for nothing against passion, and the welfare of posterity is nothing against the desires of the moment ; but Dame Nature, who, as Plotinus says, ' never talks/ has her own way of dealing with those who flout her. Plato is a eugenist and a scientific thinker ; but he thinks that education is the only remedy for selfishness and ignorance, and accordingly pays more attention to nurture than to nature, therein differing, apparently but not really, from the men of science. Greek education, as Plato found it at Athens, was not very unlike the education of an English gentleman at a public school and at Oxford. It included physical training, literary studies, the religious THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 89 lesson, and, for those who wished to complete the course, the art of public speaking and political theory. The typical product, like the typical product of Oxford, was a versatile and accomplished man who could take kindly to a public career. Like our own education, it was on a voluntary basis and unorganised ; it was left to the family and not to the State. At Sparta, as in Prussia, it was quite otherwise ; and Plato craves for the Spartan spirit of discipline, if he can have it without paying too high a price. It will not be necessary for our purpose to de- scribe the educational system propounded in the ' Republic ' and other dialogues. It is all meant to converge upon the Idea of the Good ; and though contemplation is higher than action, the philosopher is not choosing the highest course if he withdraws himself from public affairs. He ought to try ' to save his country as well as himself.' We moderns observe that ambition may draw away a possible saint or philosopher to what Seeley calls the ignominious end of a large practice at the bar ; Plato exhorts the good man to renounce the ambition of living in constant com- munion with the divine Ideas, in order to be practically useful to his fellow-citizens. Plato's theory of education has been made too little of ; his scheme of communism has been made too much of. There was never any socialistic party at Athens ; and Plato has very little interest in problems of distribu- tion. He denies private property to the two smaller classes (the army was to be a very small one) only because he wants those classes to attend to their public duties without distraction and still more without temptation. The true analogy is not between the 'Republic' and the theories of Marx or Lenin, but between the ' Republic ' and Catholic monasticism. The motives for conventual com- munism and clerical celibacy were the same as those of Plato. The hermits were Christian Cynics. Nietzsche said that Plato was a Christian before Christ. It would be more true to say that he was a Hildebrandian before Hildebrand. The abolition of the family follows necessarily from the abolition of private property. It is impossible to destroy 90 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS one without destroying the other. This the consistent modern socialists quite understand ; and they also under- stand that they cannot get their way without first destroy- ing Christianity. Plato had not such deeply rooted con- victions about marriage to encounter ; the Greek city was a men's club, and the breaking up of the home was not so shocking to them as it is to most of us. Moreover, Plato advocated neither celibacy nor promiscuity. The unions of the sexes were to be regulated by the State, very much as they were in the communistic society organised by Mr. Noyes in America. Enough has been said on this part of the scheme. The significant part of it is that the guardians are to be kept unworldly and pure from ambition or covetousness. Like the Roman Catholic priests or monks, they are to have such temptations put out of their reach. Plato is not drawing a Utopia. He is planning a per- fect Greek City-State, and he does not think his scheme impossible to carry out. ' We do not speak of things that are impossible/ he says in the ' Republic,' ' though we admit that they are difficult/ ' It is no mere dream,' he says again ; ' if kings were philosophers, or philosophers kings, it might be realised.' It is plain that the guardians might rule without a monarchy, and probably better without a monarchy ; but the difficulty is to get the scheme started, except by the agency of a philosophic lawgiver invested with plenary authority. Isocrates and Plato, who differed on most things, agreed that the salvation of Greece depended on the revival of monarchy. To break the tradition, he makes the deliberately absurd suggestion that all adults should be sent away to the farms, and the little children educated in the capital, away from contamination by their elders. But in other moods Plato suspects that his Republic is impossible. ' Our city is founded on words ; for it exists nowhere, I think, on earth.' ' It is no matter/ he says again, ' whether it exists or ever will exist.' This last sentence is a touchstone to distinguish Platonists from non-Platonists. The non-Platonist knows only of concrete actual realities, past, present, or to be, and unsubstantial THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 91 dreams, which are of no importance except as ideals of what we hope and intend to do or see done. The ideals of the Platonist are Ideas, that is to say, eternal truths, the constitutive factors of a world more real than ours. This spiritual world is the archetype and exemplar of this world as we wish it to be ; but in the nature of things it is impossible that the State Visible can ever be a perfect reproduction of the State Invisible. We are hampered here not only by the manifold defects of human nature, but by the very conditions of time and place, of change and decay. In all our efforts to improve the constitution and working of the Visible State, we must keep our minds set on the perfect State, of which the type is laid up in heaven, and apply the principles which philosophic intuition can make known to us as the principles of perfect justice, to the imperfect conditions of a concrete community, in the hope that they may work as a leaven in the Visible State, and gradually remould it nearer to the heart's desire. To the Platonist, we cannot insist too strongly, the actual reality of the Invisible State is independent of its realisation on earth. It remains and always will remain the spiritual home of the good man, to which he can flee away and be at rest when he will. It is a sanctuary where God can hide him privily by His own presence from the provoking of all men, and keep him secretly in His taber- nacle from the strife of tongues. Plato does not relegate his heaven to the dim and distant future ; still less does he, like ancient and modern apocalyptists, dream of it as something to be realised, no one knows how, the day after to-morrow. On the contrary, he knows that it never will and never can be fully realised on earth, and he has no confidence that the course of history will bring it much nearer. It already exists, though not here ; it is already accessible, though not to all men ; it is the real city of which we are citizens, but there is a toilsome, spiritual ascent (ascende per te ipsum super te ipsum) which every man has to climb in order to reach it. There is a crucial divergence here between secularism and idealism (I do not use the word in the post-Kantian sense, for which I prefer the word mentalism) ; indeed there is no deeper cleavage 92 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS in human thought than that which divides those who believe in an eternal, independently existing City of God from those who do not believe in it. Here Platonism and Christianity are at one. Christ knew nothing of Greek philosophy ; but Plato would have endorsed without hesitation the words : ' Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also/ The spiritual world has a supreme and independent reality : this is the cornerstone of Christianity, and of its old ally the philosophy of Plato. And yet it is an essential part of this religious philosophy that the spiritual world is the goal of aspiration for all things here below, in their several degrees. Every living thing has a ' nature ' which is not material but spiritual ; and above all, the human soul, and the State which is the human soul writ large, have a moral and spiritual end or purpose. It is therefore impossible to separate the Visible and Invisible State as two cities which have no concern with each other. The Invisible State is the norm or standard by which to judge the Visible. This Plato says explicitly. ' Our inquiry into the nature of absolute justice has been undertaken with the object of finding an ideal, that men may judge of their actual condition according to the standard which that ideal sets up, and the degree in which their actual condition approximates to it.' The familiar criticism that Platonism assumes a static universe seems to me not a serious charge. That the eternal world is already perfect it certainly asserts ; but what is the alternative ? A perfection which is never and nowhere attained ; a purpose which is eternally frustrate ; God and man alike condemned to the doom of Tantalus ; victories in time which time presently hurls into nothing- ness ; the pursuit of a will-of-the-wisp of progress, to which neither science nor history can have anything to say ; a fluctuating and subjective standard of good, which has no sanction beyond the wishes and ideals of imperfect man ; THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 93 and a God who has not and never will come into His own. Platonism teaches a finite and limited teleology pervading the whole of nature, an infinite number and variety of purposes which because they are finite are capable of being realised ; and an eternal background from which they derive their inspiration, and in which they rest when their course is run. Too frequently these purposes are not attained ; and the history of States, as of individuals, is one of perversion and decline. Plato traces the course of these corruptions, and for the purposes of exposition supposes a perfect State which gradually becomes perverted. He does not say that history always follows this sequence, and Aristotle rather captiously points out that it does not ; but there was enough in Greek history to make Plato's sketch plausible and valuable, and the medieval Italian Republics present several parallels. The history of Rome followed Plato's sequence of oligarchy, democracy, tyranny, and it is by no means certain that some modern States will not do the same. Examples of degradation in States, which accom- panies degradation in the characters of its citizens, are very salutary for us at the present time. Perhaps he is also sound in thinking that though economic questions are true causes of revolutions, they are not the main causes. Whether he is right in holding that democracy necessarily means disintegration, a condition in which the citizen may choose to be at peace when his country is at war, and to disobey laws which he does not like, may be doubtful to some of us. At any rate he has put his finger on one of the weaknesses of that form of government. He is even more concerned with the ' injustice ' of treating unequals as equals, and of committing power to those who are unfit to exercise it. These in fact tend to be the ' stinged drones,' a pestilent class of men, who show the majority how to pillage the minority, and take good care of themselves. The end of chaos is a military monarchy ; and Plato shows how the autocrat is driven to a warlike policy. In modern times too, the autocrat must not allow his people to suspect that the bayonets are there to keep them in subjection : he must persuade them first that they are necessary as a 94 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS protection against aggressive neighbours, and then that they procure for the country glory and wealth. One question, to which the majority of men are far from indifferent, remains : Are the citizens of a good State happy, and are the citizens of a bad State unhappy ? Plato has not much difficulty in proving that the life of the autocrat is unhappy ; but are the guardians of the ideal State happy, and how about the other classes ? He is too honest to be content with the shallow Emersonian doctrine that ' the thief steals from himself ' ; so that a system of perfect compensation exists in this world. In the last book of the ' Republic ' he is driven to estimate pleasure qualita- tively and not quantitatively, and to conclude that it is only sub specie aeternitatis that justice is done. The whole argument of the treatise thus rests at last on the immortality of the soul, as it does in Christianity. It would take too long to compare the political philo- sophy of the later dialogues with that of the ' Republic.' In the ' Statesman,' he seems to think that the best practicable polity is something very like that of Germany under the Kaisers. The monarch is to have unlimited power, in theory ; but his duty is to act as mediator between the con- flicting forces in the nation, as a neutral and independent arbiter. He will take note of changes in the body politic, of the emergence of new classes and the depression of old ; and will try to govern wisely and justly as the representative of the spirit of the nation. Our quarrel with Germany, and the consequent downfall of the monarchy there, must not blind us to the fact that before the war that country was the best governed in Europe. The ' Statesman ' also shows a change in Plato's attitude towards the laws. Laws are mainly necessary to protect the ruled against the rulers, and therefore they ought not to be necessary at all ; but as things are, they are necessary and must be treated with respect. In the ' Laws ' he goes further in accepting the reign of law as a necessity, though he never deviates from his conviction that it is a pis aller, as Christ said that parts of the Mosaic Law were instituted ' because of the hardness of your hearts.' In the age of gold the government was theocratic. Out of possible forms THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 95 of government under present conditions, he prefers a mixed government, not very unlike the late lamented British Constitution, with elements (such as the combination of universal suffrage with class suffrage) which suggest the Prussian constitution, while it existed. But he gravitates again towards theocracy, with religious persecution and a Vehmgericht ominously called the Nocturnal Council, painfully like the Inquisition. The closest parallel to the State of the ' Laws,' in actual history, has been the Eoman Catholic Church in the days of its temporal power. The only great difference is that Plato would suppress all who taught that the gods can be bought off and propitiated. In his State, therefore, Catholics would fare as badly as the other two classes of misbelievers whom he will not tolerate Atheists and (as we may call them) Epicureans. Thus the subject of this lecture leads on to the subject of the next, though, as we shall see, other elements entered into the theory and practice of the medieval Church. The resemblance is not to be accounted for by conscious copying. Plato moulded all subsequent thought in antiquity, and his influence has been equally great in modern times. But during the many centuries when the Church was developing its polity on the lines of the ' Laws,' the ' Laws ' was entirely unknown in Western Europe. It is a remarkable testimony to Plato's political insight that he predicted, for better and for worse, the course which a great polity based on conse- crated authority must follow. It will not be necessary for our present purpose to consider the political theory of Aristotle, since in his writings the relations of the Visible to the Invisible State are not a prominent subject of discussion. But it is neces- sary to say something of the Stoics, who were inheritors of one side at least of Plato's later teaching. There is a passage in the tenth Book of the ' Laws ' which is strangely Stoical in tone. The ruler of the universe has ordained all things with a view to the excellence and preservation of the whole, and each part, as far as may be, has an action and passion appropriate to it. ... One of these portions of the universe is thine own, unhappy man, which, however little, contributes to the whole ; and you 96 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS do not seem to be aware that this and every other creation is for the sake of the whole, and that the life of the whole may be blessed ; and that you are created for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for your sake. You are vexed because you do not know that what is best for you happens to yourself and to the universe, as far as the laws of the common creation admit. . . . O youth, who fancy that you are neglected by the gods, know that if you become worse you shall go to the worse souls, or if better to the better, and in every succession of life and death you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of Heaven, which neither you nor any unfortunate will ever glory in escaping, and which the ordaining powers have specially ordained ; take heed thereof, for it will surely take heed of you. If you say, I am small and will creep into the depths of the earth, or I am high and will fly up to heaven, you are not so small or so high but that you shall pay the fitting penalty, either here or elsewhere. ... So all things work together and contribute to the great whole. The universal sway of Providence is here taught almost in the very words of the 139th Psalm. This quotation may serve to bridge over a gap. For there is a gap, and even a contrast. The Stoics had no particular reverence for Plato, and in many ways were much nearer his eccentric contemporary Diogenes. I am giving the last few minutes of this lecture to them because they were the first to introduce into Greek thought the idea of an Invisible State on earth, like the Invisible Church on earth which some Christian sects make much of. The shattering of the independent Greek Commonwealths made way for two complementary ideas which always go together the independence of the individual, and cosmo- politanism. The two were bound together in their ethics in the way adumbrated by Plato in the passage just quoted from the ' Laws.' ' What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.' ' All that happens to the individual is for the good of the whole.' These two quotations are from Marcus Aurelius. They reconciled the claims of egoism and altruism by teaching that altruism is merely the recognition of a fact our membership one of another. They were far from acknowledging two orders, a natural and a spiritual. The natural order contains in itself the THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 97 sanction for all moral duties. This is our happiness ; if we will that which is, we shall will what ought to be, and what we ought to will. ' Zeus,' says Epictetus, ' has made the nature of the rational animal such that it cannot obtain any good proper to itself, unless it contribute some- thing to the common interest. In this way, it is not un- social for a man to do everything for the sake of his own interest.' And again : ' What are you ? A man. If you look at yourself as separate from other men, it is according to nature to wish to live to old age, to be rich, to be healthy. But if you look upon yourself as part of a certain whole, for the sake of that whole it may behove you to run into danger, to suffer want, and even to die before your time.' ' You must live for others if you wish to live for yourself,' says Seneca. ' What I have to consider,' says Marcus Aurelius, ' is my own interest ; and the true interest of everything is to conform to its own constitution and nature. My nature owns reason and social obligation ; socially, as Antoninus, my city and my country is Eome ; as a man, it is the world. These are the societies, whose advantage can alone be good for me.' One more quotation : Pliny, prob- ably quoting Posidonius. says : ' God is the helping of man by man, and this is the way to eternal glory.' What, then, is the community of which we form a part ? There is no stopping-place between the individual and the whole world. We belong to many social organisms, like concentric circles. Epictetus says : ' Do you not know, that as a foot alone is no longer a foot, so you alone are no longer a man ? For what is a man ? A part of a State first, that which is made up of gods and men ; then that which is said to be next to the other, a small copy of the universal State.' This sense of common citizenship and common membership with all mankind awoke for the first time a realisation ol the injustice of slavery. ' Say you, I have purchased these men ? ' says Seneca. ' Whither are you looking ? Towards the earth, the pit, the wretched laws of dead men. To the laws of the gods you are not looking.' Similarly, from the same root proceeded the duty of benevolence and forgiveness of injuries. We desire to forgive and help others, exactly as we forgive and help n. B 98 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS ourselves. The inherent dignity and natural rights of every individual were a necessary corollary from the Stoic doctrine of the brotherhood of all mankind. Reverence for natural or divine law was reflected in respect for human laws. Human laws are reflections of the divine reason. And the Stoics endeavoured to ' make it so.' The wonderful system of Roman law was largely their work. Plutarch blames the Stoics for allowing no authority to human laws unless they agreed with ius naturae ; and they probably did teach this. 1 Thus Greek political philosophy in its later stages adapted itself to the conditions of a world empire. It leapt over the barriers of family, of race, of city, of nationality, and embraced the whole of mankind or, even further, the entire cosmos ' made up of gods and men.' Morality also included kindness to animals. It prepared the way for the international and cosmopolitan religions, in which there was neither Greek nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. Its obedience to existing forms of government was only conditional. The system produced several political martyrs. The ultimate seal of authority was within in the broast of the Stoic wise man. in which resided a spark of the divine nature, like the Funkdein of the medieval mystics. We have thus seen that there was a religious basis for all Greek political thought. The State, for the Greeks, was from first to last an ethical institution, and it was a copy of the City of God, of which the type is laid up in heaven. The Stoics rejected the doctrine of Ideas ; but it was one of them who said. ' The poet says, Dear City of Cecrops : shall not I say, Dear City of God ? ' 1 Even the l);gest : ' No consideration of civil right can affect the force of natural right.' (iii) THE MEDIEVAL IDEAL Hebrew theocracy and Greek political philosophy were two of the three factors which controlled the whole history of the Middle Ages, and are still the dominating ideas in European thought. The third is Koman imperialism. Troeltsch is quite right when he says that Catholicism does not belong to the Middle Ages, but is the last creative achievement of ancient civilisation. It is a theocracy of a peculiar type, determined by the confluence of nationalities and of ideas which took place as the result of the Koman Mediterranean Empire. Its connexion with the Galilean and Pauline Gospel is so far adventitious that if Christ had never lived, we may guess that a spiritual Roman Empire not very- unlike the Catholic Church would have appeared. The religion of Christ has a history ; but the stream runs partly underground, and its fortunes are rather entangled with than determined by the great political institution which alternately sheltered and repressed it. We have seen how Plato traced the normal changes mostly for the worse which states undergo. The history of Rome is a drama in three acts. The first is the Roman Republic, predominantly oligarchical in type, but with strong democratic elements. In spite of many blunders and not a few crimes, the old families who decided the policy of the Republic showed an astonishing degree of political capacity. The system was wrecked from causes which hardly came within the purview of Plato. I referred to them in my first lecture. The first standing army, with a long-service general, which the Romans accepted most reluctantly and in dire necessity, when their existence was threatened by a horde of German barbarians those whom they called Cimbri and Teutons was the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic. From that time, the professional army was master of the State. A long series of civil wars made the principate of Augustus in- evitable ; and the principate was from the first a carefully camouflaged autocracy. Tacitus describes how Augustus 100 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS drew into himself all the functions which under the Re- public had belonged to the magistrates and the laws. This, then, was the beginning of the second act in the drama the Republic had given way to an autocracy. The emperor or Princeps, though he kept up the pretence of dividing his power with the Senate, was really above the law ; and if he strained his prerogative unreasonably, there was no remedy except assassination, which always remains in the background to temper despotism. It is a mistake to suppose that the emperors plotted to increase their arbitrary power, like the Stuarts. Despotism was forced upon them by the circumstances of the age ; it advanced constantly by the accumulation of precedents, and after the disap- pearance of the doctrinaire republicans, who were usually Stoics, met with no popular resistance. The only real force was in the hands of the army, which soon began to put up and put down puppet emperors at its will. This anarchic stage issued in a cast-iron despotism of the Oriental type. Diocletian and his successors had a court like Persian or Parthian kings ; they wore the diadem, which the Romans traditionally hated and despised ; they were approached as living gods with the servile forms of adoration familiar to the East and loathed in the West ; and like the later French kings they kept a huge army of parasites and dependents which exhausted the wealth of their subjects. Centralisation brought to an end the cantonal structure which had given a distinctive character to ancient culture. Society stiffened into castes, which more and more tended to become hereditary. The lawyers developed a theory of a social contract, by which the people had voluntarily placed their liberties in the hands of a single ruler. More- over the military basis of the autocracy was no longer disguised. For the first time, the sovereign lived in uniform, and the court was officially called ' the camp.' All provinces became ' imperial ' ; the old aerarium became merely the revenue of the town council of Rome. The finance re- sembled that with which we are now familiar in England a dishonest mint, leading to a general rise of prices, and then frantic legislation against profiteers, who were ordered, on pain of death, to sell at a loss. Lactantius tells us that the THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 101 number of those who lived on the taxes was as great as the number who paid them. By a curious provision, the town councillors were responsible for the rates, which they could not collect. They were chosen against their will, usually by patrimony, and five gold pieces were given to anyone who could catch and bring back a runaway town councillor. This was the second act in the Roman drama. The third was the Koman Church, with its rival the Holy Roman Empire, which was an embarrassed phantom long before it was finally abolished. To this we must now turn. What was the genesis of the political theory of Catholicism ? It would take far too long to trace to its source the idea of ' the kingdom of God ' in Jewish speculation and prophecy, in the writings of apocalyptists, and in the New Testament itself. There has been much controversy about the meaning of the word in the Gospels. Perhaps the most certain and most significant facts which emerge from the investigation are, first, that the earliest generation of Christians believed that the Messiah was shortly to appear to restore the kingdom to Israel, and, secondly, that when Jerusalem was destroyed and the hope of the Parousia vanished gradually into thin air, the religion of Christ was discovered to stand on a foundation entirely independent of Messianism. In the history of Christian belief, the kingdom of God has been interpreted in three different ways. It has been taken to mean the life of the saved in the presence of God after the Last Judgment what we usually call Heaven. It has been taken to mean the visible reign of Christ on earth between His second coming and the day of judgment the belief of the so-called Chiliasts or Millenanans. And, thirdly, it has been identified with the Church on earth. The first and third types of belief are still strong ; the second has almost disappeared. But in the second century it was strongly held, and predictions of the millennium were put into the mouth of Uhrist Himself. It seems to be true that during the persecutions, at least before A.D. 200, the time when the social life of the Church was at its very best, the majority of Christians set their hopes on a golden age on earth to be introduced, probably before very long, by the 102 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS second coining of Christ. The belief decayed from various causes, among which may be included the dislike of it among ecclesiastics and the growth of a Christian philosophy with strong Neoplatonic elements. Chiliasm, perhaps we may say, was a survival of apocalyptic Judaism in Christi- anity. It spread chiefly among the uneducated. But another factor in the decay of Chiliasm was the conversion of Constantine, and the Christian Empire thus inaugurated. At once the bishops began to refer everything to the emperor, and to treat him as a sacred being. The earthly future of the Church seemed secure without waiting for a miracle. The acceptance of Christianity by the imperial govern- ment was made necessary by the complete failure of the last persecution. The persecution itself was a desperate attempt to destroy an imperium in imperio, a power which, in a state ruled autocratically, was really as dangerous as the government believed it to be. The earlier persecu- tions had been much less systematic, and sometimes resembled pogroms in Russia. The government was always very jealous of associations, as is shown by Trajan's letter to Pliny about the proposed firemen's union in Bithynia. But besides this, there was even in the second century an instinctive feeling that the Church was an association of a peculiarly dangerous type, as indeed it was. Religious persecution was alien to Roman ideas, but the Christians were unpopular, and it pleased the populace, in some places, to be let loose upon them. The persecuting rulers in Diocletian's time counted on this unpopularity, and found that it no longer existed in most places. Their cruelties caused disgust among the Pagans themselves ; in fact it was the Pagan conscience which obliged them to stop. After such a defeat, an alliance was the only possible way out. This the Christians quite understood, and they took Julian's attempt to undo the work very calmly. ' It will soon pass,' said Athanasius. Theodosius found it wise to give the bishops almost as great powers as the governors oi provinces, thus inaugurat- ing the Byzantine type of Church-and-State, which was afterwards copied by Russia. THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 103 Chiliasm the belief in a kingdom of God on earth in the future was partitioned, as it were, between the visible Church on earth and the kingdom of heaven beyond the skies. The latter was, of course, envisaged in a widely different manner by the Christian Platonists, such as the Alexandrian and Cappadocian Fathers, and by the simple believers. But on the whole it would be true to say that the kingdom of God meant the visible Church on earth, together with the ' Four Last Things.' Augustine, who began his mental life as a Christian with a partly spiritu- alised Millenarianism, afterwards discarded it, as he tells us explicitly. ' We ourselves were formerly of this opinion. ' The sack of Home by Alaric caused more commotion, even in Christian circles, than the fall of Jerusalem had done. The Pagan charge, that the disaster had happened tempori- bus Christianis, had its sting in the notion, not altogether ill-founded, that the Christians set small value on the treasures of classical culture, and had not bestirred them- selves to protect them from the barbarians. Augustine's famous City of God,' a work of permanent importance and far-reaching innuence, was on one side an answer to this accusation, and on another an attempt to justify the attitude of Christians to the Pagan civilisation. It shows, among other things, that Paganism was still very much alive, at least in the West. It is commonly said that Augustine was the first to identify the visible Church with the Kingdom of God. It is true that the identification was not quite explicitly made by any earlier Christian writer. When the question is discussed by earlier Church writers and it is not discussed very often the usual language is that the Church militant is a preparation for the Church triumphant, a doctrine which naturally held the field during the reign of Millenarianism. Augustine himself in his ' Ketractations ' says clearly : 'Wherever in these books I have spoken of the Church as not having spot or wrinkle, it is not to be taken of the Church as it now exists, but of the Church whose existence is being prepared/ He also distinguishes between the City of God on earth, and the civitas superna in heaven, in which the Church on earth is to find its consummation. 104 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS And in one of his treatises on the Fourth Gospel he says '; ' What could be more senseless and presumptuous than to assert that the kingdom of heaven itself belongs to the life in which we now are ? For though the Church as it is is sometimes called the kingdom of heaven, it is of course so called as being gathered for the future and eternal life.' There are, however, passages hi which Augustine might be held to have himself made this identification which he repudiates so strongly. The explanation is that he came to Christianity through Platonism, and remained a Platonist even when his ecclesiasticism was dragging him in the opposite direction. He believed in the Church or kingdom of God, of which the type is laid up in heaven, and of which the visible Church is a copy. He found the idea of a visible Church firmly rooted, and gathering strength for the conflicts against heresy and schism. He glorified the visible Church by depicting it as the true likeness, albeit necessarily imperfect, of the Invisible Church. The Church on earth, as a communio externa, contains good and bad ; the elect among its members are already members of the communion of saints, which includes all, past, present, and to come, who are predestined to life eternal. He was undoubtedly reluctant to admit that some who are not included in the former communion may be admitted into the latter. The polemic against Paganism led him to develop the theory of two Cities or States, representing opposite prin- ciples. The one is the kingdom of the devil, the other the kingdom of God. They differ in purpose. The earthly State pursues earthly peace, the heavenly State or City of God pursues the heavenly peace. But the earthly State is morally impotent, and is therefore reduced to pursuing its ends by force or fraud. It cannot achieve justice ; and without justice a great empire is only grande latrocinium. Does he then identify the kingdom of the devil, the earthly State, with the Roman Empire, and the City of God with the Catholic Church ? How is this possible, when the Church notoriously includes so many reprobates, and when the secular State can point to so many fine characters among its servants ? And does the churchman 105 owe no allegiance or respect to the civil government ? Augustine was far from holding this ; he sees that the two Cities not only interpenetrate, but depend on each other, for the Church is protected in its rights by the State, and the State must borrow from the heavenly State the moral principles without which it could not hold together. Indeed, the very existence of the earthly State proves that it is, in some degree, itself an imitation of the heavenly City, since otherwise, on Platonic principles, it could not exist. For that which is purely evil has no substance and no power. This may seem to be, and in fact is, a con- tradiction of the thesis that the earthly State is a kingdom of the devil ; the two ideas have different sources. But the Platonic doctrine, according to which the earthly State must be a reflection, however far inferior to the original, of the perfect or heavenly State, enables Augustine to argue that the civil power is or ought to be an instrument of the Church. So far from the Church being a society within the Empire, the Empire is a society within the Church. This was a line of thought which was destined to have strange developments during the Middle Ages. It became the duty of the State to put down heresy and schism, and to ' compel men to come in.' Thus Augustine's Platonism prepared the way for the medieval theocracy, which became much cruder and more dangerous when the philo- sophy which had been its basis was forgotten or discredited. Augustine himself knows of no infallible organ of Church authority, but only of an infallible standard, the City of God, of which the type is laid up in heaven. Nevertheless, his conception of the proper relations of Church and State of a supreme and all-embracing Church of which the State was to be the secular arm, laid the foundations of Papal autocracy. Government by bishops and by councils the system which Augustine knew could never enable the Church to exercise the authority which he declared to be its due. This could only be done by turning the Church into a monarchy like the Empire. And the Empire of the West was in its death-throes, ready to bequeath its tradi- tions and the prestige of its name to the communio externa, the earthly embodiment of the kingdom of God. 106 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Thus Augustinianism buttressed the growth of the Papacy ; while in the East theologians continued to profess that ' the Church is not a State,' and the Byzantine Church clung to the idea of a Christian Empire. A comparison has often been made between Augustine's ' City of God ' and the ' De Monarchia ' of Dante. For our present purpose, which is to form an estimate of the third and last act in the drama of Roman Imperialism, in which an attempt was made to establish a world-wide theocracy of a peculiar kind, the comparison should be instructive. The Dark Ages had intervened between the two books that great eclipse of culture and humanity which must remain for all time as a dread warning to the facile and complacent prophets of progress of the fate which may some day again overtake the human race. If the whole period between Justinian and William the Conqueror had been blotted out from our annals if the human race could have skipped the half-millennium which separates the end of classical antiquity from the beginning of medieval culture, can anyone say that much of real value would have been lost ? But one thing had happened. Augustine's dream of a dominating City of God on earth had been tried ; it was no longer in the air, but a historical fact. And the Papacy, with the help of the most successful forgeries in history, which were not indeed written at Rome, but which were deliberately adopted and used by Rome, had established its claim to rule the world. Gregory the Great had still acknowledged the complete supremacy of the Emperor, to whom, he declared, God had said ; I have entrusted rny priests (including the Pope) to your hands.' But in 800 Leo III placed the Imperial crown on the head of Charlemagne, and the people cried ' Long live Charles Augustus, crowned by God himself.' And Gregory VII wrote, ' who can doubt that the priests of Christ are to be regarded as the fathers and masters (magistros) of all faithful kings and princes ? ' At the beginning of the thirteenth century Boniface VIII issued a Bull in which he pronounced that 'it is absolutely necessary to salvation that all human creatures should be subject to the Roman Pontiff.' This arrogant assertion was made 107 after the tide had begun to turn, temporarily, against the Papacy. Dante's argument may be summarised as follows. The object of secular monarchy is to establish liberty and peace, that the human race may make the best of itself. A single universal monarchy is necessary for the well-being of the world; the Roman Empire was a divine institution. The Komans, like the Jews, were ordained by God to carry out a great task in the world the Jews prepared the way for the Gospel, the Komans gave the world its system of law. The Roman Empire of the West has not come to an end ; Charlemagne and his successors are in the direct line of sovereignty from Julius Caesar and Augustus. They do not derive their authority from the Popes ; the coronation of Charles by the Pope was an irregular proceeding. The authority of the Emperor ' descends upon him without any intermediary, from the fountain-head of universal autho- rity.' Man has two objects to secure happiness in this life, and eternal salvation. For these ends God has insti- tuted two distinct powers the Empire, to promote man's temporal well-being, and the Papacy, to ensure his happiness in the next world. ' Man had need of a two-fold directive power, according to his two-fold goal : the Sovereign Pontiff to lead the human race to eternal life in accordance with revealed truth, and the Emperor to direct him to temporal felicity in accordance with philosophic teaching/ Thus Dante, giving voice to the rising lay consciousness of Europe, proclaims the divine source of the State Visible, and assigns to it the duty of safeguarding universal peace, and of making men happy 'according to the teaching of philosophy.' Without knowing it, he is revolting against the position of the ' De Civitate Dei.' The Church is to confine itself to spiritual affairs, and leave secular govern- ment to the Emperor. This is right, because temporal monarchy is itself inspired from 'the citadel of all unity,' the will of God. Thus, as Villari says, human society is reconsecrated, as that which is willed by God and necessary for spiritual life. In this, it need hardly be said, Dante is the champion of the losing side. The Augustinian and Gregorian conception of ecclesiastical sovereignty 108 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS prevailed. One example, from our own country, will suffice. Thomas a Becket writes to the King of England : If you employ your elevation in the interest of your own force and power and not in the interest of God, if you do not renounce your designs against the property and persons of ecclesiastics, He who has raised you will demand an account of the talents which He has given you, and like Rehoboam, son of Solomon, who was deposed for his father's faults, He will make your heirs pay for yours. Again : The Church is composed of two orders, clergy and people. The people include kings, princes, dukes and counts. It is cer- tain that the kings have received their power from the Church. Princes ought to bow their heads before bishops, and not to command them. The 'De Monarchia,' as Bishop Robertson says, was at once the epitaph of a dead ideal and the prophecy of a more glorious future. The development of the Roman polity into a pure autocracy has proceeded on the whole steadily and regu- larly. Episcopal power had culminated in the tenth century ; from that time the Papacy gained ground at the expense of the bishops. The title ' Vicar of Christ ' was first used by Innocent III (1198-1216). Boniface VIII is said to have died of vexation at the rebuffs which his pretensions received ; and no doubt from the point of view of secular politics his fears were justified. The time was passing when the Pope could dispose of crowns at his will. The captivity at Avignon was followed by the Renaissance, the Renaissance by the Reformation. The eighteenth century secularised the idea of power ; the nineteenth swept away the remains of the temporal power. But beneath the surface a new transformation of the Papacy into an absolutist theocracy went on steadily. The dogma of Papal infallibility was the logical con- clusion of the whole policy of Rome for many centuries. At the Council of Trent the Church was declared to be the only interpreter of Scripture, and tradition was like another Scripture, as it had been under the Rabbis. It was in vain THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 109 to quote Tertullian, * Dominus noster Veritatem se non Consuetudinem cognominavit.' Augustine could already declare : ' I should not believe in the Gospel but for the authority of the Church ' a sentence which no doubt does great injustice to himself. Tradition had to be harnessed, like Scripture. The Pope alone could interpret it authori- tatively ; so that Pius IX could say, ' / am tradition/ But infallibility could hardly be made into a dogma till the temporal power had been abolished. It is most awkward to divinise a living man, above all a personal ruler, who probably makes as many mistakes as other people. Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi really relieved the Papacy of a hampering burden. The scandal of the ' Babylonish captivity,' when there were three rival Popes, was not henceforth likely to recur. And as the Pope had become an almost invisible Grand Lama, adulation of him could be pushed to the furthest limits without being palpably ridiculous. I have in my hands a French sermon printed a few years before the war, which received flattering notice from the preacher's superiors. It is entitled ' Devotion to the Pope.' The text, slightly garbled, is from Mark xii. 30, ' Thou shalt love Mm with all thy mind, with all thy will, with all thy heart, and with all thy strength.' The preacher says (I quote his own words) : The Pope is Jesus Christ on earth. Except the mystery of the Real Presence, nothing brings us nearer to the presence of God than the sight or even the thought of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. We ought to love him, in a minor degree, like God Himself. As the Tabernacle is the abode of Jesus the Victim, so the Vatican is the abode of Jesus the Teacher ; it is from this place, or rather sanctuary, that since His ascension Jesus Christ, the Divine Word, speaks to the world. What a beauti- ful parallel is this ! When we bow ourselves before the Taber- nacle containing the sacred elements, we adore our Lord Jesus Christ in His eucharistic presence which is a substantial and personal presence ; when we fall at the feet of the Pope, it is still in a manner our Lord Jesus Christ whom we adore in His doctrinal presence. In both cases we adore and confess the same Christ Jesus. From which it follows, by a rigorous con- sequence, that it is as impossible to be a good Christian without devotion to the Pope as without devotion to the Eucharist. 110 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Therefore, let us think, judge, speak, like Rome : let us write, as M. Brunetiere, of the French Academy, wrote in 1900 : ' As to what I believe, go and ask at Rome. In matters of dogma or morals, I have only to assure myself of the authority of the Church.' Yes ! we have only to say with King David, ' I be- came dumb and opened not my mouth, for it was thy doing.' What conformity of views, what harmony of action, will then reign between the Pope and all the children of Holy Church ! I have chosen this sermon as typical of the language which is now addressed to the Pope. It is, you see, an almost complete apotheosis : the Pope is no longer a man, but a symbol, an idol. This degree of divinisation is incom- patible with the exercise of personal independent power : a God on earth must be a prisoner, and in practice is prob- ably very much in the hands of his council, since he is cut off from opportunities of seeing and hearing for himself. It is not necessary to suppose that such utterances as that which I have read are insincere: there is real enthusiasm for the Papacy as a system of government, for the idea of order, unanimity, military obedience, with the force and efficiency which belong to it. In the unutterably shallow political thought of our time, it is assumed that the subjects of an autocracy are unwilling subjects, that they crave for the blessings of democracy. In many cases they desire nothing of the kind ; they obey willingly and are very glad to be relieved of responsibility. Loyalty to a single man, representing an idea, is the strongest kind of loyalty that exists. There is far more loyalty to the Catholic Church in France than to the Republic : though love of la patrie is shared by nearly all Frenchmen. But we do great injustice to the Catholic polity if we regard it as a religion, instead of as a form of State. It is essentially the latter, and only incidentally the former. But it is a State which desires to be, like the ancient Greek States, an ethical association, existing that its members may ' live well.' The ideal is a high one ; it is an attempt to carry into practice the kind of State which Plato sketched out in his Dialogues. But on the whole it can hardly be denied that it has been a failure. It does not seem to have raised the moral THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 111 tone of society in the countries which have adopted it, except perhaps in such Arcadian communities as Ober- Ammergau, and in some very limited circles living an old- fashioned life under priestly direction. It has shown all the defects of despotism a costly and luxurious central government, necessitating heavy taxation, and the ruthless suppression of all movements towards freedom. This kind of oppression is peculiarly searching and tyrannical under a theocracy, because it lays its hands not only on overt acts, but upon all liberty of thought. To think for oneself in matters which concern our eternal interests is rebellion or treason. The faithful are forbidden to read certain books, and to join certain societies ; they must submit their consciences to periodical examination by an official ; the education of their children is taken out of their hands and is strictly regulated by the hierarchy. An acute conflict of loyalties is set up between Church and State : no Catholic is more than conditionally a patriot, and the conditions are of the political, not of the moral order. In my first lecture I mentioned the evil effects of placing all- moral conduct under the rule of authority. Conscience is stifled ; and the Catholic is curiously impervious to that lay- morality which with all its defects generally embodies the best features of a national character. These defects are of course not in any way connected with the Christian religion ; they are the defects of theocratic autocracy in its Catholic form, and illustrate some of the difficulties of establishing a Platonic State in working order. The experiment is not played out ; it may even have a great future if, as is probable, the present riot of nationalism is followed by a struggle between two or more types of internationalism. But it has certainly not solvod the problem of human government. It will not be necessary to say much about the other universal State which made up the medieval theory of world-government. We have seen from Augustine how natural it was for those who followed his line of thought to assume a natural dualism of the spiritual and secular power. And the quotations from Dante's ' De Monarchia ' have shown how, at least for a supporter of the cause of 112 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS the Empire against that of the Popes, the Roman Empire might receive the epithet ' holy.' But it is strange how natural it was to medieval thinkers to assume that there must be only one Pope and one Emperor. Engelbert, about 1330, summed up the accepted medieval theory on the subject when he said : ' There is only one Republic of the whole Roman people, and therefore there must be only one prince and king.' It is both amusing and instruc- tive that the Turkish. Sultan refused to acknowledge Charles V as Emperor, because there could be only one Emperor of Rome, and Solyman the Magnificent was he. There is something rather splendid in the power which this idea of unity had to dominate the mind of the Middle Ages. These barbarians, as we think them, were possessed by a purely metaphysical doctrine of the branching out of all multiplicity from unity, and of the brotherhood of the human race through the participation by all men in the general concept of humanity. The Divine Unity was represented on earth by a duality a world priest and a world monarch. The universal Church and the universal State were correlative conceptions, and when even the shadow of the latter passed away, it was a heavy blow to the former. The two Empires were rivals rather than enemies, and acknowledged their need of each other. As early as the fifth and sixth centuries, when the Western Empire had only lately fallen, the Church makes repeated efforts to resuscitate the Empire ; it entreats the barbarian kings to make themselves Roman Emperors, and to enter into the same relations with the Church which the Emperors had maintained. The claim to universal dominion was a serious weakness to the Empire, preventing a strong national government in Germany ; and before long the Papacy began to claim a feudal supremacy over the Emperor, and grasped both the ' two swords.' The Papacy was the sun, the Empire the moon. In fact, the Empire became an Idea even more than the Papacy ; it was venerated, in its actual helplessness, as the symbol and guarantee of a real league of nations. As Bryce says, ' Both Empire and Papacy rested on opinion rather than on physical force, and when the struggle of the eleventh century came, the THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 113 Empire fell, because its rival's hold over the souls of men was firmer, more direct, and enforced by penalties more dreadful than the death of the body.' Both were in a sense ghosts of the Roman Empire ; but the Papacy was the more substantial ghost of the two. Both were glaring anachronisms ; but one of them still survives, strong in the knowledge, usually forgotten by its rivals, . that human nature changes not, and that the thing that hath been is the thing that shall be. Some have said that human beings are not moved by abstractions ; the truth is that they are seldom moved by anything else. Since it was Napoleon who banished to limbo the bloodless shade of the Holy Roman Empire, we may pause for a moment to ask what his own idea of the relations of Church and State was. When he was ex- communicated by the Pope, he sent a message to the French bishops, reminding them of the words of Christ : ' Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.' The Papacy was denied the right to divert any Frenchmen from their allegiance to the Emperor. At St. Helena he unfolded his dream of Caesaro-Papism. I should have exalted the position of the Pope without measure ; I should have surrounded him with pomp and homage ; I should have brought him to cease from regretting his temporal power ; I should have made an idol of him. I should have made him live near me : Paris would thenceforth have been the capital of the Christian world. I should have been the director of the religious no less than of the political world. The following reflections on the nature of the medieval theocracy may help to make the subject of this lecture clearer. Medieval thought, as Gierke says, regarded the universe as an articulated whole, and everything in it as both a part and a whole. The world is a cosmos, a divinely instituted harmony. And, in accordance with the Neoplatonic philosophy, the higher principle is not divided up when it ' comes down ' in its creative power to give life and order to the lower ranks of being. It is present everywhere in its entirety, though enfeebled to a 114 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS greater or less degree in its operation, from its admixture with lower existences. Therefore every institution, and even every individual, is a microcosm or minor mundus. God, the absolutely One, is above the plurality of the world, the source and also the goal of every living being. Hence the lex aeterna, the eternal law of God, permeates all the apparent multiplicity of the world. ' All multi- tude,' it was said, ' is derived from the One, and is brought back to the One ' ; in other words, all order consists in the subordination of plurality to unity. The heavenly bodies have their unity in the primum mobile. So in societies there must be a union regens in every whole. Mankind, too, is a mystical body, an universitas, an ecclesia universalis, a respublica generis humani. Yet there was also, as we have seen, a dualism of spiritual and temporal, just as in experience we cannot transcend the duality of subject and object, of voCs and voyrov. There were disputes, as I have said, about the Two Swords. The Imperialists said that one sword was theirs. William of Ockham even boldly argues that if there is only one head of all mankind, it must be the Emperor. But by both parties alike the dualism was held to be somehow not ultimate. The medieval principle of unity repudiated any possibility of cleavage within either Church or Empire. Yet it found room for more or less independent States under the vaulted dome of world-unity, and each State was an universal State in little, a minor mundus. Thus it might be argued that each State could only realise its proper nature by being complete in itself. Nicolas of Cusa argued that the Church and Empire are inseparable and interdependent, like soul and body, under the unity of the Spirit : and parallels were drawn, following Dionysius the Areopagite, between the spiritual and terrestrial hier- archies. The analogy of the bodily organs was also drawn upon. John of Salisbury anticipates Herbert Spencer in finding some organ of the body to match each function of the State. Every permanent human group is a ' natural and organic body ' even a ' mystical body.' Here we have a philosophical basis for the new Guild Socialism if our latter-day medievalists cared to use it. The ' social organism ' is a thoroughly medieval idea, and is drawn out very ably by Nicolas of Cusa in his ' Cosmic Harmony.' This organic theory, resulting, as they said, in social health and ' tranquillity,' when properly observed, is in many ways vastly superior to the disintegrating ' Ideas of 1789.' Marsilius of Padua argued that the Reason inherent in every community engenders the social organism by a conscious imitation of the life-making forces of Nature. This, again, is a thoroughly Neoplatonic doctrine. It is easy to see how this philosophy led to monarchy and the rule of one in every society. It is instructive to observe how Chapters of Canons put one of their own number over all the rest, with a double share of every- thing the Dean, and how in the later foundations the Dean has more power than in the earlier. But it must be strongly insisted on, since it is not generally known, that medieval theory left no room for the lawless rule of mere caprice or arbitrary will. The medieval king, or even Pope, was not and could not be a ' tyrant ' in the sense in which Plato and Aristotle use the word. Monarchy is a relationship involving reciprocal rights and duties. Lordship is never mere right without obligation. The duty of unconditional obedience was not taught in the Middle Ages. We are to obey God rather than man, if the two duties clash. Consequently, the doctrine of the Schoolmen was that ' in the court of conscience there is no obligation to obey an unjust law' a most important principle, whether it is right or wrong. It was the greatest and most masterful of the Popes, Innocent III, who laid down in memorable words which are em- bodied in the great collection of the Decretals, that if a Christian man or woman is convinced in his own mind and conscience that it would be a mortal sin to do, or leave undone, some action, he must follow his conscience even against the command of the authorities of the Church ; for it may well happen that the Church may condemn him whom God approves, and approve him whom God condemns. 1 It is surprising to find that tyrannicide is not infre- quently justified by medieval casuists, very explicitly by 1 Marvin, Progress and History, p. 80, 116 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS John of Salisbury. Mariana, in the sixteenth century, committed the Jesuits to a justification of tyrannicide, and even, in certain circumstances, of regicide. Aquinas speaks with reserve : tyrants ought to be deposed. Of course the Popes sometimes claimed unconditional power, but only as part of their claim to be infallible organs of the Divine will ; the theory of the Middle Ages was as has been stated. It was also frequently maintained that the will of the people is the source of temporal power. This certainly seems inconsistent with the theory that all power comes from above. It was, I think, a survival of the democratic legal theory of the Roman Empire, which stands in curious contrast with the actual constitution. When one considers [says Prof. Hearnshaw] how completely impotent the people were in fact, there are few passages in Pioman legal literature more remarkable than that at the beginning of the Institutes of Justinian, which runs : ' The will of the emperor has the force of law ; for the people by an enactment called the lex regia grants to him all its authority and power.' The passage is said to be a quotation from Ulpian. Thus throughout the Middle Ages there was a democratic as well as an absolutist or theocratic theory of the source of authority, a theory resting on the fiction cf a contract between the ruler and the ruled. In the election of emperors the legal theory was that the electors represented their subjects. Even the Papacy, which derived its sacred authority from the Deity, always remained elective : the last rivet in the chain of autocracy, that of allowing a Pope to nominate his successor, has never been fixed. Papal elections were in a sense a vindication of the rights of the people, of the Church as the congregation of the faithful. A General Council might depose a Pope for heresy, under the fiction that a heretical Pope has ipso facto ceased to be Pope. Ockham, bold as ever against the Popes, thought that even the laity might punish a heretical Pope. Above all, State law was the ius naturale (with the THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 117 ius divinum and ius commune gentium, which protected rights of property, contracts, the right to live, and so forth). 1 The idea that the State is above all law, free from all moral and natural law, was a shocking innovation of Machiavelli, and its adoption by philosophers and statesmen in modern times is the most grievous falling off that I know from the standards of the despised Middle Ages. No doubt the appeal to ' natural law ' against unjust State-legislation might prepare the way for revolu- tions, as indeed it often has done. It is the natural refuge of the individual against a persecuting State ; and it has been used quite consistently by the democrats at the time of the French Revolution, by Chartists and others against the capitalistic regime, and by Conservatives against the socialistic governments of our own day. The Middle Ages taught quite clearly that there is no legitimate government which is not just, and which does not make for justice, whether it is the government of the One or the iViany. But the seventeenth century, in the persons of James I and Louis XIV, taught that the king can do no wrong, and their successors lost their heads. Hegel and his disciples in Germany taught that the State can do no wrong, and plunged the world in war. Our doctrinaire democrats teach that the majority can do no wrong, and they bid fair to wreck our civilisation completely. The origin of the ' divine right of kings ' has been found in Gregory the Great, and in some rash phrases of Augustine. It was upheld by Ockham and Wycliffe, on the lines of Dante's De Monarchia.' When Sir F. Pollock says that it was ' not rational, nor ingenious, nor even ancient,' we have to remember that the notion of a king-god is very ancient, and that the maxim ' rex est mixta persona cum sacerdote ' is of respectable antiquity. It is true, how- ever, that the Middle Ages had no conception of absolute sovereignty ; ' Law ' was always above the king. The seventeenth-century royalists were the first to put the king above the law ; they had the modern notion that ultimate power must be vested in someone, just as the 1 Ihe ius nalurale and the ius gentium did not always agree, e.g. slavery was contrary to the former, but accepted by the latter. 118 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Popes had begun, a good deal earlier, to claim ' plenitude potestatis.' These royalists accused the Jesuits of the murder of Charles I, and coupled with them the dissenters, as advocates of the right of resistance. In this extreme form the doctrine was never held by the Tudors, whose subjects accepted their despotic rule because they wanted no more wars of succession, and no more Papal extortions. Knox did his best to teach James I the limits of kingly power. ' No oath or promise can bind the people to obey and maintain tyrants against God ; and if they have ignorantly chosen such as after declare themselves unworthy, most justly may they depose and punish them.' This would not have shocked medieval casuists at all. Queen Victoria, by the way, once asked Sir William Harcourt whether he thought subjects were ever justified in deposing their sovereigns a terrible question from that very formidable old lady. He replied : ' I am too loyal a subject oi the House of Hanover to say Never.' James I not only held a novel and untenable view of his preroga- tive, but was fool enough to put it in a book. A good king [he wrote] will frame all his actions according to the law ; yet he is not bound thereto but of his good will and for good example to his subjects. He is master over every person, having power over life and death. For though a just prince will not take the life of any of his subjects without a clear law, yet the same laws whereby he taketh them are made by him- self or his predecessors. The wickedness of the king can never make them that are ordained to be judged by him, to become his judges. A wicked king is sent by God to punish his people, and ' patience, earnest prayer, and amendment of life are the only lawful means to move God to relieve them of that heavy curse.' He also told the Commons that 'kings are judges over all their subjects and in all cases, yet accountable to none but God. They have power to make of their subjects like men at chess.' The Anglican clergy re-echoeu these preposterous sentiments. The Kegius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, JJr. Sanderson, said that subjects must never take arms against their sove- reign, ' not for the maintenance of the lives and liberties of ourselves and others ; not for the defence of religion ; not, if that could be imagined possible, for the salvation of a soul ; not for the redemption of the whole world.' The historian must ask how this insane doctrine, which no Byzantine emperor had ever propounded, came to be received except with ridicule, in the seventeenth century. The answer is that the new spirit of nationality had been threatened by the pretensions of the Papacy, and that to strengthen the monarchy was to strengthen the nation. When Queen Elizabeth's subjects were incited to be traitors on pain of damnation, it was necessary and right to give a religious sanction to loyalty. The Tudors under- stood this ; the Stuarts quite misconceived the situation. We shall understand the position of the British monarchists better if we read the arguments of Bacon, and later of Hobbes. But these belong to the subject of our next lecture. Here I need only add that after 1688 the doctrine of the divine right of kings lingered only as a romantic regret. Tories like Swift and Bolingbroke reject it with scorn. Bolingbroke says : ' A divine right to govern ill is an absurdity ; to assert it is blasphemy.' So it was, when the nation was no longer threatened by other pretenders to divine right. 120 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS (iv) THE GOD-STATE The two main features of modern history are the development of nationalities and the growth of individual freedom. These two movements began rather suddenly and grew very rapidly ; though Troeitsch says truly that it was only the great struggles for freedom m the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries which brought the Middle Ages definitely to an end. The idea of an European or Christian commonwealth, supernational and resting on ethical or religious sanctions, had faded away, and with it faded the ideal which the world is trying to revive in the League of Nations. It was succeeded by an era of fierce national competition, restrained, so far as it was restrained, by custom and the survival of vague traditions of international law, rather than by any clearly conceived principle ; and these restraints, instead of growing stronger, almost disappeared whenever any State felt strong enough to disregard them. The intestine struggles of Italy during the Renaissance demoralised the nation, and in a people of acute and logical intellect produced the same kind of cynicism which Thucydides notes as the result of the Peloponnesian War. This spirit lives for us in the writings of Machiavelli, who began to write the books which have made him famous when he was living in retirement near San Casciano, in the year 1513. In part, but not altogether, he deserves the obloquy which has clung to his name. It is true that he proclaimed that politics, as actually carried on, have nothing to do with ethics ; it is not true that he attached no value to morality ; but modern readers have neglected the ethical parts of his books. A few quotations will show what he really taught and thought ' Men never behave well unless they are obliged ; whenever they are free to do as they like, everything is filled with confusion and disorder. A lawgiver must necessarily assume that all men are bad, and that they will follow the wickedness of their hearts whenever they have the opportunity to do so.' This resembles the Protestant doctrine of total THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 121 depravity ; it is overcoloured and rather too cynical. His theory of imitation is like that of the Frenchman Tarde. ' Men almost always walk in the paths that others have chosen and in their actions proceed by imitation, yet they cannot attain to the excellence which they imitate.' So Anatole France says, ' Pecus is imitative, and would appear more so if he did not deform what he imitates. Tiiese deiormations produce what is called progress.' He sees clearly that all institutions carry within them the seeds of their own dissolution. ' In all things there is latent some peculiar evil which gives rise to fresh changes. ... It has been, is, and always will be true that evil succeeds good and good evil, and the one is always the cause of the other. I am convinced that the world has always existed after the same manner, and the quantity of good and evil in it has been constant ; but this good and evil keep shifting from country to country, as is seen by the records of ancient empires ; but the world itself remained the same.' Of forms of government and their changes he speaks like Plato and Aristotle. Monarchy passes into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, democracy into anarchy ; and ' if the founder of a State establishes any one of these governments, no remedy can prevent it from sliding ofi: into its opposite. This is the circle within which all States are governed.' Theoretically, a State might go on revolving in this way for ever ; but the actual tendency is downward, because Nature has so fashioned men that they desire everything and cannot get much ; so that they are always discontented and consumed either by ambition or by fear ; and these passions are the ruin of States. Tney would fall to pieces sooner but for wars, which bind them together for a time. A strong monarchy, when the monarch respects the laws, gives a nation the best chance. Machiaveili adds this profound observation : ' The safety of a republic or kingdom consists not in having a ruler who governs wisely while he lives, but in being subject to one who so organises it that when he dies it may continue to maintain itself.' The tendency to decay can be prevented in one way only. ' The observance of the ordinances of religion is the cause of the greatness of 122 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS commonwealths ; so also is the neglect of them the cause of ruin. For when the fear of God is wanting, a kingdom must either go to ruin or be supported by the fear of a prince to compensate for the best influences of religion.' He adds, in words which might have been borrowed from Plotinus, ' The belief that if you remain idle on your knees God will fight for you has ruined many kingdoms. Prayers are indeed necessary ; but let no man be so foolish as to believe that if his house falls about his head, God will save him from being crushed.' Keligion and respect for law are necessary for the health of a community ; failing these, a strong and enlightened despot may keep it together for a short time, but not for long. We have here a hard and sober estimate of the conditions of national welfare ; its moderate pessimism is amply confirmed by history. To the question, What is right in politics ? he gives an answer which would have contented our utilitarians. ' I believe good to be that which conduces to the interests of the majority, and with which the majority are contented.' I am afraid we must admit that he regarded religion mainly as a support of order and source of contentment. JbLe did not think that the principles of Christianity are work- able in practical politics, and in consequence accepted a contradiction between private and political ethics which has been generally accepted in modern Germany by moralists as well as politicians, to the great misfortune of the human race. The Gospel, he says, has made the world weak, and a prey to wicked men, since the majority, in order to get to Paradise, think more how to endure wrongs than how to punish them. Jlunaan atfairs, on the other hand, are controlled by the law of sell-preserva- tion. A ruler finds himself in a world which he did not make and for which he is not responsible ; he must do whatever is necessary to ensure the survival and prosperity of his country. Theoretically, he was in favour of a free constitution, of an influential Church, and of an united Italy : but in the desperate state of his country's fortunes he was willing to support a crafty despotism, a repudia- tion of Christian ethics, and conflict within the conflnes of Italy. In the spirit of Bernhardi and many other THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 123 Germans, he says : ' Where the bare safety of the country is at stake, no consideration of justice or injustice, of mercy or cruelty, of honour or dishonour, can find a place. Every scruple must be set aside, and that plan followed which saves the country's life and preserves her liberty.' With a horrible cynicism, he indicates the policy which the Bolsheviks are now following : ' To establish a republic in a country where there are gentry, you cannot succeed unless you kill them all.' So, perhaps for the first time, was uttered the creed of the God-State which has dominated modern politics ever sinca, and which has now brought civilisation to the brink of ruin. From that time to this, though not without brighter episodes, Christianity has been banished from international politics, and international law has had a precarious existence. Before leaving Machiavelli, it is only fair to remember that this divorce between the secular and the spiritual power sounded the death-knell of one of the worst evils of the Middle Ages -religious persecution. Whether the idea of a Free Church in a Free State is really tenable and practicable is another question ; but at any rate modern secularism has put an end to the Inquisition, even in Roman Catholic countries. Machiavelli was a pioneer. Let us pass on to the next century, and after a brief recognition of Grotius, whose ' De lure Belli et Pacis ' (1625) was a noble attempt to formulate the principles of international law at a time when they were falling into desuetude to our own country, where the Renaissance flowered late. Bacon's ideal is a strong military State, in which the people are ' ever ready to spring to arms ' ; and ' the opinion of some of the Schoolmen is not to be received, that war cannot be made but upon a precedent injury or provocation ; for there is no question but a just fear of danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of a war.' The State is supreme over the religion as well as the politics of its citizens, and Bacon acknowledges no obligation to the comity of civilised nations, lie is a pure nationalist. His international ethics differ in no way from the principles expounded before the war by German professors. 124 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Hobbes, one of the most powerful and origina of political thinkers, threw aside the divine right oi kings, but proclaimed the divine right of States, The ' Leviathan ' is as famous a book as ' The i'rmce ' of Machiavelli. The frontispiece shows a gigantic crowned figure, representing the State, with the motto ' .Non est potestas super terrain quae coinparetur ei.' He describes the natural man as torn by various passions and ambi- tions, without law or justice, and living a life that was ' solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short.' The war of all against all was only brought to an end by the establish- ment of a coercive State. This must be centred in a despotic sovereign, for a limited monarchy is a contra- diction in terms. The ruler must be supreme also in spiritual matters, since sovereignty cannot be divided, and there is no room in any weil-ordered State for any independent jurisdiction, such as that claimed by the Koman Church. The Papacy is only the ghost of the deceased Koman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. But the government, though absolute, was not to be inquisitive or tyrannical. There should be no more laws than are absolutely necessary, just as nature does not make river banks higher than are needed to guide the course of the water. It is interesting to find that this ingenious supporter of absolutism was hated by the Koyalists. Clarendon said : ' I never read a book which contained so much sedition, treason, and impiety.' The reason was that, though monarchy seemed to liobbes the best form of government, what he really inculcated was that power, whether in the hands of a king or a parlia- ment, must not be divided. This was quite diti'erent from the Koyalist theory ; and Hobbes poured scorn on the religious and romantic ideas which were then, as they are always, the great strength of Conservatism. He insisted quite plainly that the State can do no wrong, having no power above itself. Hobbes also believed in an ' original compact,' which was a favourite plea of the opponents of Divine Kight, and perhaps their best argument, though historically baseless. Locke and Milton both uphold it. It is plain that there is no necessary connexion between THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 125 the idea that a government ought to be all-powerful and that every ' nation ' has a natural right to independence. The God-State is one thing ; the God-Nation is another. There are. in fact, two distinct controversies that of the State against the individual, or against groups of indi- viduals, which is part of the eternal conflict between Order and Liberty ; and the conflict between nationalism and internationalism. The authority of the State was exalted in and after the Renaissance, partly in revolt against such international authority as the Papacy, and partly through growing consciousness of national unity. But nationalism is a much later development ; in fact it belongs to the nineteenth century. It was not a very strong sentiment in the eighteenth century, when culture was more European and less national than it is now. Personally, I think it is more superficial than we usually suppose, and a vast amount of deliberate nonsense has been talked about it since 1914. It is impossible to define a nation except as a body of men who believe themselves to be one. Nationalism is different from racialism the absurd and unscientific theory which the Germans exploited under the guidance of Houston Chamberlain for the nations are all mixed in blood beyond the possibility of disentanglement. It has nothing to do with language, for the Scots speak two languages, the Belgians and Swiss three each, and the Americans at least a dozen. It has no essential connexion with political allegiance ; for the most violent nationalism is generally that of some ill- conditioned province which has persuaded itself that it is a fine thing to hate the rest of the political aggregate to which it belongs. But it is an extremely potent sentiment, strong enough to create grievances and antipathies and sometimes even unities out of nothing. Mazzini hypno- tised the Italians by the word ' Italia,' and Italy is indubitably a nation, though it is obvious to the most casual observer that the North and South Italians are racially quite different. The Congress of Vienna, which in all respects compares very favourably with the Congress of Versailles, is commonly abused for disregarding this sentiment of nationality, which was by no means universally 126 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS felt. Lord Acton says bluntly, ' The theory of nationalism is more absurd and more criminal than that of Socialism,' a verdict which would have been more telling without the comparison, for Socialism is not necessarily absurd or criminal ; it is only a machine which has hitherto refused to work, whereas nationalism works a great deal too well. The good old word ' patriotism ' is far more rational and intelligible. The modern period has been marked by the successive attempts of nation-states, intoxicated by their own strength, to destroy their neighbours. We, as it happens, have always been one of the neighbours, though if we look at the world, and not at Europe, the matter appears rather different. The spirit of militant nationalism has never been shown so nakedly as, in the recent war, by Germany ; for the earlier attempts to destroy the balance of power in Europe were inspired by more mixed ambitions. Spain wished to re-establish the medieval theocracy ; France, under Louis XIV. was governed partly by the dynastic and personal ambitions of its king ; and the Revolutionary Wars began with the desire to dis- seminate certain ideas they in part resembled the early wars of Islam. In fact, though patriotic pride played a great part in the support which the French gave to the designs of Napoleon, the spirit of nationalism was ranged against him, and he did more to kindle it than anyone else, not by fostering it, but by threatening it. The victory of the Allies a hundred years ago, like the victory of the Allies in the late war. was a victory for nationalism ; though the spirit of nationalism, in its most aggressive form, seemed to be incarnated in the Germans. Napoleon's contribution to the evolution of the God-State lay in his repudiation of all international law and morality, and in the drastic thoroughness with which he brought all the intellectual and spiritual forces in France into subservi- ence to his own policy. There is nothing original in Prussianism ; it is carefully copied from Napoleon, its inventor. But Germany had more time to perfect the Napoleonic scheme, and carried it so imich farther that Lord Acton was able (too flatteringly, perhaps) to call THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 127 Prussianism * a new type of autocracy the Government the intelbctual guide of the nation, the promoter of wealth, the teacher of knowledge, the guardian of morality, the mainspring of the ascending movement of man.' He added prophetically that ' it is the greatest danger that remains to be encountered by the Anglo-Saxon race.' These lectures are concerned rather with ideas than with history ; and it is with the theory rather than with the practice of the God-State that I wish to deal to-day. The genesis of the doctrine in Germany has been traced back to Fichte, in the famous lectures which he gave at Berlin after Prussia had been humbled to the dust by Napoleon. He said : The duty of the State is to care for the maintenance and increase of the population by encouraging marriage and the nurture of children, by health-institutes and the like ; to take means for developing man's empire over nature by well-planned and continuous improvements in agriculture, industry, and trade, and by maintaining the necessary balance between these branches ; in short, by all those operations which are included in the conception of national economy. In return, it is the right of the State to employ for its purposes the whole surplus of all the powers of its citizens without exception. The free and noble citizen offers his share willingly, as a sacrifice upon the altar of his fatherland ; he who needs to be forred to part with it only shows that be was never worthy of the gift entrusted to him. So far, we seem to have a sketch of a scientific State- socialism. But Fichte goes on : 'It is the necessary tendency of every civilised State to expand in every direction.' The weaker States struggle against this tendency, and have invented the doctrine of a balance of power. ' But no State strives to maintain this balance except as a pis aller, and because it cannot compass its own aggrandisement or carry out its implicit plan for a universal monarchy. Every State defends the balance of power when it is attacked by another, and prepares in secret the means whereby it may, in its own time, become itself a disturber of the peace.' The well-known advice, * Threaten war that you may have peace,' is equally valid 128 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS in the converse, ' Promise peace in order that yon may begin war with an advantage in your favour.' ' Always, without exception, the most civilised State is the most aggressive.' It is a pity that we in England are so con- vinced that professors do not count ; for in Germany they do count,, and really they have been very candid. Civitas civitati lupus : history is to remain for all time a dismal conjugation of the verb ' to eat.' in the active and passive. The direct influence of Fichte has perhaps not been very great after his own generation, at any rate in Germany. But Hegel has certainly founded a school, which still has distinguished men as its prophets. The difference between the two men, as concerns our present subject, is that Fichte deified the German nation he preached a fanatical patriotism ; while Hegel deifies the State qua State. The> criticism seems to be justified that be draws no distinction between the Ideal and the Actual, holding that the Absolute is realised in concrete experience ; so that we cannot condemn things as they are by contrasting them with things as they ought to be. When he says, ' the real world is as it ought to be.' he is saying what Plato would agree with ; but whereas Plato's conclusion is ' Let us flee hence to our dear country,' Hegel finds his ideal State not invisible and in heaven, but visible and on earth. His religious exaltation in speaking of the State is most extraordinary, and to most of us must appear grotesque. ' The State is the divine idea as it exists on earth.' ' All the worlh which the human being possesses, all the spiritual reality which he possesses, he possesses only through the State.' ' The State is the Spirit which stands in the world and realises itself therein consciously.' ' The existence of the State is the movement of God in the world.' ' The State is the divine will as the present Spirit unfolding itself to the actual shape and organisation of a world.' ' It is the absolute power on earth : it is its own end and object. It is the ultimate end which has the highest right against the individual.' He even calls the State ' this actual God,' as the Eomans called Augustus praesens divus. It is necessary to realise that these wild utterances are not the hyperboles of a rhapsodist, but THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 129 the grave and deliberate opinions of a great philosopher. They throw a flood of light on modern Germany, and incidentally relieve Bismarck from the charge of having invented this type of political theory. The worshippers of the God-State naturally deny to individual citizens any rights against the State. This view may be easily held without any metaphysical theories about the nature and limits of personality, and there is no reason why a philosophy which minimises the value and reality of the individual should lead to State-worship. But in Hegel it is said that these two parts of his philo- sophy are made to help each other ; and it is certain that some English disciples of his have made play with the quasi-mystical conception of a General Will, which had its birth, if I am not mistaken, in France, but which may be used to support the notion of the State aS N a super- person, in whom individuals participate Platonically. Sometimes the General Will is called the Keal Will, as if it were that which in our heart of hearts we desire, though we may not always be aware of it. This, however, seems to introduce a contrast between the ideal and the actual which this philosophy on the whole ignores. The Real Will, or the General Will, is the mind of the deified State. A whole series of difficulties at once occur to the mind. Is not the notion of a General Will a mere metaphor ? There is no social sensorium, and we do not really feel for each other in any literal sense. However much I may sympathise with my child who has a toothache, my own teeth do not ache in consequence. When two men desire the same thing the same woman, for example their wills remain two, not one. And in politics the idea of a General Will seems to be nonsense, and only invented to prove to the minority that minorities have no right to exist. The nearest approach to a General Will is not presented by the State, even in war-time, when a common danger and enthusiasm sweep away many minor differences of opinion, but by small fanatical, ignorant, selfish groups such as the political faddists who subordinate all other interests to their one craze, and constitute one of the dangers and difficulties of democratic government. And this suggests 130 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS another fatal objection to the theory. Why should the State be the unit ? The metaphor of a social organism has been run to death, and certainly, if the State be an organism, it must be compared to the very humblest organisms known to biology. But in fact we all belong to a great many social organisms, each of which has its indefeasible rights over us, and we our rights in it. Some of these are smaller than the State, others are larger. The chief of these are the family ; the body for which we work, whether it be a College or University, a commercial company, or a trade guild ; the Church ; the State ; the comity of civilised nations ; humanity at large ; and (I hope) all living beings on the earth. There is nothing specially sacred about the State, which, so far as it is identified with the Government, may be the least respectable of all the social organisms to which we belong. It is true that some writers, like Dr. Bosanquet, include in ' the State ' ' not merely the political fabric, but the entire hierarchy of institutions by which life is determined, including the family, trade, the Church, the University.' But in the first place ' the State ' in common usage does not mean the entire hierarchy of social life, and does mean the political fabric ; and secondly, some of the chief problems of ethics arise from the conflicting claims of the various social organisms which are here merged or confused. The gravamen against the worshippers of the God-State is that they deny all inde- pendent authority to the other social organisms, some of which are more important to the welfare and happiness of the individual than the State itself. There is in fact no philosophical reason whatever why the political fabric should be chosen out for apotheosis. The choice is an accident due to the circumstances under which the philo- sophy arose. It is worth noticing that Karl Marx, starting from Hegelian principles, found his real-ideal common- wealth, not in the political aggregate, but in a general will to power of a social class dispersed throughout the world, and that the Bolsheviks, taking Marx as their prophet, have carried their worship of this new Moloch to a maniacal frenzy which even the German militarists never approached. The essence of the philosophy, and its great moral and THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 131 social danger, is not identification of the political aggregate with the Absolute Spirit incarnated in an institution, but the belief that such an incarnation exists somewhere, and that when found, it has a right to an unqualified devotion which overrides all other social obligations and all the principles of morality. The evil is that men should pay divine honours to any human institution, making its claims absolute and unchallengeable. In the period which the Great War perhaps brought to an end, it was natural to deify either the nation or the State. We are perhaps on the threshold of an epoch in which other associations, either wider than the nation, like the Catholic Church, or Labour, or narrower than the nation, like the groups which it is proposed to form into trade guilds, may claim and receive the same immoral and unquestioning devotion which, when given to the State, has brought such hideous calamities upon the world. If so, we shall find that the error is not less destructive in its new forms. There is one more difficulty, which the worshippers of the State seem seldom to have faced. It would be too absurd to suppose that our own State is the only specimen of these superhuman and supermoral individualities. Even the ancient Hebrews in some sort recognised Chemosh and the other Canaanite gods. But if there are several of these mysterious demigods, who by hypothesis are wiser and more moral than human individuals, how is it that they have never evolved even the rudiments of a system by which they can live on tolerable terms with each other ? To the unprejudiced observer, so far from displaying superior wisdom or morality, international relations seem to exhibit the most dismal failure of common sense and common decency to be found anywhere. On the whole, the larger the group, the worse it behaves. Of all aggregates, States are the most shameless in their conduct, when they act as States. To worship the State is to worship a demon who has not even the redeeming quality of being intelligent. I have said that some serious ethical problems are raised by the conflicting claims of the various social organisms to which we belong. Sometimes the State bids us to do some- thing of which our consciences disapprove. Let us take 132 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS an example which has been hotly discussed during the last few years, and in which the possibility of a conflict, such as that in the ' Antigone ' of Sophocles, between State-law and the older and more august laws of humanity, whether based on religion or not, has become very apparent. When the Great War broke out, the State called upon all able-bodied citizens to help in resisting the enemy. But a minority of citizens thought that the war was a mistake. None but the most perverse could argue that our cause was bad ; but some held that the Christian maxims ' Resist not the evil man,' and ' Overcome evil with good,' were intended to be put into practice. Non-resistance, they said, is the Christian way of dealing with aggression, and it has yet to be proved that it is not more efficacious than the attempt to crush the aggressor by violence. Others, leaving on one side the religious and humanitarian objections to war, may have thought that bellicose patriotism is an anachronism which is out of relation with the actual facts of civilisation in the twentieth century. European civilisa- tion, they might argue, is homogeneous and bound together by a hundred ties. Nations are becoming artificial groups ; as nations they gain by each other's prosperity and lose by each other's misfortunes. The real cleavage in modern society is horizontal ; it runs through all countries, and divides in each country the handworker from the bour- geoisie. This war, then, was a stupid reversion to passions which the world has outgrown, and to rivalries which are really obsolete ; the forces of law and order have ruined themselves in a suicidal struggle, oblivious that their real enemies were those of their own household. A third group may have agreed with Mr. Norman Angell that war between great, wealthy, and well-matched Powers is suicidal folly the worst kind of bad business ; since in such a struggle the worst of all calamities is to lose, and the next worst to win. These are all, it seems to me, reasonable attitudes, and I am unable to make a distinction by saying that the first objection is conscientious, the second and third only intellectual. I am not conscious of becoming uncon- scientious when I begin to think. What then was the duty of a person holding any of these views ? Ought he to THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 133 have enlisted, or to have refused to serve ? And what was the duty of the State if he refused to serve ? The position actually taken up by the State in this country of trying to decide whether an objection was conscientious or not- was, I think, absurd and illogical. The State cannot try men's hearts and examine their motives. The French, as is well known, shot their conscientious objectors, and sent to their next-of-kin a curt notice that So-and-so ' died as a coward.' This was unjust, for some objectors were not cowards ; but who would venture to judge even in his own case whether his objections to the war, reasonable as they may have been in themselves, were not specially recommended to him by his dislike of the prospect of being shot ? May there not have been more moral courage in the unwilling recruit who said frankly, ' I would rather be a coward than a corpse ' ? The State had to consider whether it could afford to keep military service on a voluntary basis, since this was the only real alternative to universal conscription ; and quite clearly it could not afford it. With all my sympathy and admiration for the Quakers, I think that when the safety and existence of the country is at stake, the right of private judgment in opposing the deliberately accepted policy of the State cannot be upheld. A misleading parallel has sometimes been adduced, from the conduct of the early Christians in refusing to sacrifice. But the cases are quite different. The Roman government of course did not care whether the Christians sacrificed or not ; they never compelled the Jews to sacri- fice ; the sacrificial test was adopted as the simplest which was known to be effective. The object was to stamp out a self-governing society within the State. Now in doing this the State was exceeding its rights. Such societies may be troublesome and even dangerous ; but the State must wait till they break the ordinary laws, not laws invented on purpose to catch them. The Koman Catholics are often a nuisance to governments ; but the State has no right to ordain that everyone shall publicly eat beef on Good Friday, on pain of death. Societies within the State have a right to exist, so long as they do not break the laws or plot to overthrow the government. 134 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Another case of conscience may be raised. Let us suppose that the constitutional maxim, ' No taxation without representation,' has been flagrantly violated, and that a class which pays an undue proportion of the taxes has been deprived of all effective representation, and is systematically fleeced by one or both of the dominant parties, which bribe the electorate at their expense. Is it justifiable for the injured class to resist when possible ? Remembering St. Thomas Aquinas' maxim, ' In the court of conscience there is no obligation to obey an unjust law,' 1 I should hesitate to answer in the negative ; but it is clear that an open and concerted refusal to pay may be justifiable, when private concealment of income is not. A different class of problem arises when the State legislates against the rules of a religious body. How far ought Catholics and Anglicans to recognise the marriages of divorced persons, or marriages with a deceased wife's sister ? The State is no creator of moral principles, and if we are con- vinced (for example) that marriage is indissoluble, we cannot absolve from guilt those who have broken this divine decree. The infliction of social penalties, and the expulsion from our religious society of those who have taken advantage of the laxity of the law, are clearly justifiable. Or suppose that the State has exceeded its rights by prohibiting some harmless act, such as the consumption of alcohol. Is smuggling, in such a case, morally justi- fiable ? I should say Yes : the interference of the State in such matters is a mere impertinence. These are examples of the moral problems which may arise from our membership of different bodies which overlap each other, and by our possession of certain indefeasible rights as individuals and free men, with which the State has no right to meddle. Among these rights I unhesi- tatingly include the right of private property. We have now to remind ourselves that the movement which we have traced from its inception in Machiavelli's ' Prince ' to its sinister culmination in German philosophy 1 Locke holds that a government which imposes taxes without consent is no true government. THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 135 and German practice, has not been the only movement in European political thought since the Renaissance. 1 said that in the modern period two new ideas are plainly trace- able : one of them is the emergence of nationalities, and the intense loyalties which have clustered round either the idea of the nation or the idea of the State ; and the other is the growing independence of the individual. Both are reactions against the dominant ideas of the Middle Ages ; but they are on the whole opposed to each other. Lord Eustace Percy, in his thoughtful book ' The Responsibilities of the League,' maintains that ever since the Renaissance Europe has been living under ' a philosophy of emancipation.' First the Reformation broke the power of the Church, and freed the Northern Europeans from the yoke of the Latin Empire. Next an attack was made upon the monarchical idea, and kings were deprived of most of their power. Then the aristocracy, who represented the traditions of feudalism, were struck down. Then the middle-class plutocracy were shorn of their political pre- ponderance, and are now trembling for their pockets. Then let us not shut our eyes to this fact parliamentary democracy began to be attacked, so that the House of Commons has lost in prestige quite as much as the -House of Lords. At the same time the idea of nationality is assailed by the same disintegrating philosophy. We must make our minds quite clear about this. The great issue before the world is not between monarchy and democracy, but between nationalism and internationalism. While we, following humbly in the wake of America, have been airing our fly-blown phylacteries and chattering about making the world safe for democracy, the world has been girding itself for a much grimmer cnoice. The new revolutionary and semi -revolutionary movements are all, without ex- ception, frankly anti-democratic. That issue is no longer alive. Ballot-box democracy has seen its best days. The question before the world is whether the principle of nationality has been so discredited by the war that it is going to be abandoned, and a universal civil war of classes put in its place. All that we have said about the absurdity of the God-State may prove to be like flogging a dead horse. 136 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS The strategy of Foch has refuted Hegel and Treitschke. Real-politik has not been real enough. It has been through- out, on one side, a form of romanticism, and it has mis- calculated the forces against it. No doubt it was con- sciously arming itself against its internal even more than against its external foes ; and we may soon have to admit that the enemy was sufficiently terrible to make even the crime of plunging the world into war capable of palliation. The God-State has gone with the Kaiser into banishment ; the question is, whether we are to have States at all in future. The conflict was openly declared more than half a century ago in the controversy between Mazzini and Bakunin the Russian anarchist, and the issue is clearly perceived on the Continent. The League of Nations, let us remember, is based on the principle of nationality. The nations are to be units, entering into the League as units, and supporting it as units. For this reason, the Revolution is pledged to destroy the League of Nations, and if the League ever comes into effective existence, the Revolution will do all in its power to undermine it. We English are, as usual, so slow to under- stand what is going on abroad that we do not realise this, and muddle-headed persons may be found supporting the League of Nations and also expressing sympathy with Bolshevism. If you have followed me so far, you will see that I am by no means prepared to give up the idea of the State Visible. It is the unifying force which keeps the citizens of a country together. It is the eye and hand and brain of the nation ; and can anyone say that love of country and pride in our membership of it are not strong and noble sentiments to-day ? It seems to me that the nobler elements in our nature are so much bound up with ' our country,' that the loss of this particular social organism, though it is not the only one, would impoverish life incalculably. I am not favourably impressed with internationalism as I have met with it. It is generally, I think, associated with some bitter sectional animosity, and with a good deal of sheer selfishness and unwillingness to make sacrifices. The people who quote (very unfairly) Dr. Johnson's well- THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 137 known gibe that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel are persons whom one would be glad to see driven to their last refuge. They are frequently persons who also speak disparagingly of other bonds which mankind has held sacred for thousands of years the family and religion. It is surely plain that to destroy these loyalties to country, to church and to wife and children would be to dissolve human society completely. For these are the cement that has made any kind of social fabric possible. And it is surely a truism that though a social fabric may be disin- tegrated and destroyed, it cannot be put together again like a house. One might as well try to build a tree, or to put life into an anatomical model of a human body. The State is a living organism : not that it is a superhuman person, or a person of any kind ; but it is compacted of those organic filaments of which Cailyle speaks, drawing their vitality from the deepest instincts and most firmly rooted racial habits. Private property, the family, re- ligion, patriotism how can anyone with the slightest pretence to the historical sense suppose that an experiment which repudiates all these can be anything else than a fiasco ? The tragedy is that the modern State has discredited itself, partly by the overweening claims made for it, but mainly by being false to the ideals which a State ought to set before itself ; by its explicit or implicit rejection of moral standards, by its insatiable greed of territory and power ; by its thinly disguised or quite open injustice in dealing with weaker States ; and by the wretched quality of its governments, whether monarchical, oligarchical, or democratic. Instead of trying to realise the ideals of the City of God, whose type is laid up in heaven ; instead of ' coveting earnestly the best gifts ' for the country which it represents, it has cultivated a brutal worship of power, the ideal of the ' tyrannical man ' of Plato and Aristotle. Our political standards have been purely quantitative : we have gloated over statistics of population, of land areas, and of trade returns, as if these constituted greatness, and their increase progress. We have forgotten that hitherto the nations which have put mankind and posterity 138 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS most in their debt have been small States -Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England. Mankind has honoured its destroyers and persecuted its benefactors, building palaces for living brigands, and tombs for long-dead prophets. It is this perpetual unfaithfulness to the idea of the State which has led to these passionate revolts against it. The cause of our country ought to mean for us Englishmen the defence and triumph of those good qualities which our country may rightly claim as its own the whole complex of moral attributes which make up the idea of that noble type, the English Gentleman. It should also mean for us the preservation of the great language and literature of our people, and their traditions of liberty, personal independ- ence, and fair play. Are these to be swamped in a bitter struggle for problematical economic rights or privileges, a struggle in which we are to be allied with foreigners against another class of our own countrymen ? That is not the way to purify the idea of the State. Rather we should keep the vision of the City of God before our eyes, and try to realise the highest and most spiritual values in the life of our country. THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 139 (v) KELIGION AND THE STATE An impartial consideration of the various forms of State which have appeared in human history, and of the various theories and ideals which thinkers have evolved in the course of their attempts to devise a perfect scheme of government, must lead the student to one conclusion. Good government is the hardest of all problems, and it has never yet been solved. Political history is an almost unrelieved tragedy, because there has never yet been a hopeful experiment that did not break down after a time ; there has never been a constitution that did not bear within itself the seeds of its own decay and dissolution. Theocracy, which in theory is the organisation of man- kind under the authority of divine revelation, has in practice meant the domination of a priestly caste ruling by superstitious fear and fraud, and extorting money by false pretences. The City State of Greece and medieval Italy, unrivalled as a forcing-house of genius, and the mother of the arts and sciences, has been the shortest-lived of any form of polity. Nor have the philosophic struc- tures reared on this foundation done much more than serve as models for the impracticable Utopias which idealists of all ages have loved to build in the clouds. Koman imperialism and the dual world-empire which was its heir looked imposing, while ' the world ' meant the countries round the Mediterranean ; but the Holy Roman Empire was a phantom, the ghost of the mighty power wielded by the Caesars ; and the Roman Church was never able to make good its claim to be the one legitimate embodiment of the Christian faith. Its pretensions were always far beyond its power to realise them ; and now that its rival and counterpart has ceased to exist even in name, these pretensions have lost their intelligible explanation. The most powerful modern nations have repudiated their spiritual allegiance to Rome ; and though the Latin countries are so far negatively faithful to the old caput orbis that they have shown but little disposition 140 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS to adopt any other form of religion, their culture has in fact broken loose from ecclesiastical control, or where it has not done so it has remained in a backward and barbarous condition. Roman Catholicism everywhere confronts modern civilisation as an enemy, and that is precisely why it has so much more political power than Protestantism. The opponents of ' the ideas of 1789,' and even discontented provinces which have no uniting prin- ciples except antipathy to the central government, tend to place themselves under the leadership of the Roman Church, and to take advantage of its incomparable gifts for organisation, discipline, and cunning intrigue. Pro- testantism has amalgamated far more closely with the development of secular culture, so that in Protestant countries it is impossible to form strong political parties of clericalists. Religion with us is no monopoly of Conservatives, Liberals, or Socialists ; still less does it desire to be a ' party of the Centre,' separated from all of them, and devoted to the interests of an international corporation. The apotheosis of nationalism which marks the modern period has probably nearly reached its term. It was from the first morally indefensible; and it has ended by plunging the world into the greatest calamity that has ever befallen it, a disaster which has brought ruin and desola- tion to half the continent of Europe, and which has shaken the whole fabric of civilisation to its base. Nationalism in its extreme Machiavellian form is discredited ; and the internationalism which offers itself as the alternative does not seem to have any promise for the future ; for it is not based on any love for mankind, or any real desire for peace and goodwill. The two international organisations which confront each other are ultramontane Catholicism, which is the service of a militant corporation existing rather for its own ends than for the welfare of humanity ; and international Socialism, which is frankly based on a predatory class-war. There are other international forces, such as finance, art, philosophy, and science ; but these are not political organisations, and do not even aim at any new integration of society. THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 141 As Dr. Bussell says in a recently published lecture, ' the very root-principles of the man in the street are shaken, and no one knows to whom or to what he owes allegiance. The disappearance of monarchy, except in a few cases, has removed an intelligible principle of personal loyalty, leaving a void which no one at present even proposes to fill. Instead of a unifying influence, the government of the modern State tends to be frankly sectarian and partisan ; it has no stability and no general popular support. It is at the mercy of plotters and anarchists no less than the older personal monarchies. While founded, at least in theory, on a popular franchise, it creates no affection or respect among the people. . . . Meantime, if government is weaker and more precarious in its tenure, it is asked to do more. It is saddled, by general consent or apathy, with duties and functions which it cannot possibly fulfil. It does not seem to be developing, here or elsewhere, into a responsible directorate of business men a somewhat sordid, but still working, hypothesis for society and its rulers. It is still largely composed of amateurs detached, by an unreal public life and its catch- words, from any true knowledge of men and women. Those who demand its interference most warmly are the least confident of its motives and its ability. In the general chaos of thought to-day, nothing is commoner than to find the same treatise insisting on the universal control or competence of the State, and yet holding up as an ideal the unfettered freedom of the subject, his conscience and his movements. . . . The State is now stripped of its venerable trappings and exposed in all its nakedness as a hotbed of intrigue, waste, and self-seeking. No one cares or troubles to define democracy, and the old constitutional methods of vote and parliament and debate seem highly unpopular. The prevailing features of modern life are impatience, distrust, and an unwilling- ness to set to work until the meaning and worth of work are explained.' This analysis of our present condition seems to me entirely true, and I would lay special stress on the com- plete discredit into which ballot-box democracy has 142 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS fallen. Those who still babble about the ' General Will ' only want a stick with which to beat the life out of minorities, and an excuse for relieving politicians of all moral responsibility. It seems as though all the expe- dients for establishing an ordered human polity had been tried, and that all have failed. But we may be reminded that this is the age of science, and that science has tried its hand at moral and political philosophy. Perhaps what we want may be found here. The new knowledge ought surely to have something new to teach us about the art and philosophy of government. This claim has been made. As Professor David Ritchie says : ' Evolution has become not merely a theory but a creed, not merely a conception of the universe, but a guide to direct us how to order our lives.' It is in this aspect that we have to consider the social ethics of science. Can we find in its teachings a realm of ideas which may form a standard for social life, to take the place of the supernatural sanctions which are no longer operative in the nations of the West ? Can we retrace the steps of philosophy to its earliest beginnings in Ionia, when Thales and his successors sought to find in the ultimate con- stitution of matter and the laws of nature a basis for individual and public morality ? I do not think that the scientific school has produced any political philosopher of the first rank. Darwin wisely confined himself to his own subject, though it was Malthus on Population that first set him thinking on biological problems. Herbert Spencer, though he does not by any means deserve the acrimonious aspersions of critics who hate him on political grounds, started with strong pre- judices those of a Radical dissenter and never corrected them by study of earlier writers on political philosophy. His education on this side remained very scrappy, and it is not difficult to trace some of his leading ideas to their source in the few books which he had read. ' Morality,' he said, ' is a species of transcendental physiology.' The adjective gave admittance to a mystical theory of ' life,' as a quasi-divine force, operating in all nature, from the highest to the lowest forms a Plotinian doctrine which THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 143 he probably borrowed from S. T. Coleridge. This loan from Platonism was given a peculiar character by com- bining it with a doctrine of universal evolution, which was then in the air, and which Spencer began to hold before the appearance of Darwin's famous book. The process of upward development, according to Spencer, is always in the direction of higher individuation. The higher organisms are more complex and more specialised. This furnishes him with a teleological standard of value, to which, as he supposes, all nature tries to conform. By a very superficial reading of history, he regards militarism as a lower integration of the social organism, and industrialism as a higher stage a condition of differentiation. He looked forward to a time when this differentiation into independent units should be complete, after which he hoped that an ' equilibrium ' would be reached, and the individual would be free from all external control in a permanent and ' static ' paradise of unlimited liberty and low taxes. It is not easy to reconcile this ideal with all that he says about the social organism, nor to defend his rather absurd analogy between the State and our bodily frame, with nerves for telegraph wires, and so on. But it is his justification of competition, as ' a beneficent private war, which makes one man strive to stand on the shoulders of another,' which has made so many writers of the younger generation treat him as a personal enemy. Only a middle-class Victorian English- man could have fallen into the error of contrasting militarism with industrialism two systems which, as Germany has shown, may easily be fellow-workmen and fellow-conspirators. Strauss, who goes even further than Spencer in his dislike of trade unionism, advising that employers ' should send to foreign countries for workmen, and then let the refractory see who will be able to hold out longest,' defends military conquest as well as social inequality as right, because natural, and ridicules those who hope for or expect the abolition of war. Mr. Clodd sees that militarism and industrial competition are equally war, though the weapons are different, and thinks that war. in one form or the other, is a law of nature. ' Man's 144 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS normal state is one of conflict ; further back than we can trace, it impelled the defenceless bipeds from whom he sprung to unity, and the more so because of their relative inferiority in physique to many other animals. The struggle was ferocious, and under one form or another rages along the line to this day. " There is no discharge in that war." It may change its tactics and its weapons ; the military method may be more or less superseded by the industrial, a man may be mercilessly starved instead of being mercilessly slain ; but be it war of camp or markets, the ultimate appeal is to force of brain or muscles, and the hardest or craftiest win.' It was indeed plain that the ' survival of the fittest ' can only mean that those survive who are fittest to survive, not the fittest by any moral standard ; evolutionary optimism, though it continued to be preached by many, was an amiable superstition, based perhaps on the superficial Deism of the eighteenth century. And so, while Darwinism was applauded in Germany as giving the blessing of science to militarist government and Machiavellian politics, English Darwinians, unwilling to accept so unwelcome a conclusion, were driven to what a more theological age would have called Manichean dualism. ' Nature,' says Huxley, ' is no school of virtue, but the headquarters of the enemy of ethical nature.' The ' cosmic process ' is frankly handed over to Ahriman, and man, who is endowed with an ethical sense which at every point revolts against Nature's methods, has been given, or has given himself, the formidable task of ' resist- ing the cosmic process.' Man is on one side a self-asserting natural organism, and on another a self-renouncing social being. But what is the foundation of this moral sense which flies in the face of Nature ? Huxley gives no clear answer ; Wallace, who felt the same horror at Nature's methods, was driven to postulate ' an influx from the unseen universe of spirit,' thus definitely joining the ranks of theism. These scientific dualists were undoubtedly dismayed by what seemed to be the unavoidable conclusions to which evolutionary ethics must lead in practical politics. THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 145 If ' history is a good aristocrat,' science seemed to be a very heartless kind of Tory, or even a Prussian militarist. This was so contrary to the main current of opinion at the time, which was pacifist and humanitarian, that science, which at one time in Queen Victoria's reign seemed to be in possession of the intellectual field, has been assailed by new enemies from every side. The remarkable work of Aliotta, ' The Idealistic Reaction against Science,' gives a good survey of the miscellaneous host of allies Neo-Kantians, Voluntarists, Pragmatists, Activists, and others, who have tried to subvert the foundations of the scientific world-view. These intellectual campaigns have been assisted by orthodox theology, overjoyed at finding such allies against its old enemy ; by sentimentalists of every kind ; and by the inheritors of the ' ideas of 1789/ whose idola fori were faring very badly at the hands of biologists. Further, the widening cleft between a philo- sophy based on physics, and a philosophy based on the study of living organisms, with psychology as its crown, threatened to break up natural science from within, and was of great service to its enemies. The scientists, who not long ago claimed to be the dictators of morality and the expounders of the whole scheme of the universe, are in danger of being ousted altogether from philosophy, ethics, and politics, and being bidden to confine them- selves to the ; r laboratories. As an example of the language which is popular to-day, I will quote a sentence from a very able writer, to whom I acknowledge great obligations in these lectures, Mr. Ernest Barker. ' It may still remain a matter of doubt whether ethics and politics, which belong to the sphere of mind, will gain by the importation into their sphere, in whatever way, of tho, laws of the natural world/ The laws of mind, he almost seems to imply, are independent of the natural world. What must be the dread of naturalism in politics which can entrap a philosopher and a learned student of Plato and Aristotle into such a statement as this ? I have not the least doubt that this ' reaction against science ' is shallow, transient, and retrograde. No doubt the self-confident scientists of the last century brought 146 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS it on themselves. They knew so little of metaphysics that they supposed the world as interpreted by science to be an objectively existing material structure, independent of the human mind. They attempted to interpret life by the laws of inorganic matter. They thought that they had disposed of Christianity by challenging it to sub- stantiate miracles. Some of them were carried away by the popular delusion that the world is necessarily getting better of its own accord ; they were, many of them, incompetent judges outside their own subject, and they did not know it. But there is no sign whatever of the ' bankruptcy of science ' which some of its enemies have been proclaiming. Its methods continue to work ; they win new and signal triumphs every year ; and can any thinker now be satisfied to cut the world of knowledge in two with a hatchet, and to separate religion, ethics, and politics from the study of nature ? It is not philosophers who are attracted by such a theory ; it is politicians. They heap scorn on those whom they call ' intellectuals,' not because they are wrong, but because they are few. They ignore the fact that they have to deal with Nature herself, who, as Plotinus says, is not in the habit of talking, but who is in the habit of striking. The new knowledge has, in fact, made many changes in religion, in ethics, and in politics. It has made an end of the supernaturalistic dualism which has been the hypothesis of Catholicism. There are not two orders the natural and the supernatural dovetailed into each other on the same plane. We can no longer (unless we are on a coroner's jury" 1 explain a mysterious event as an act of God, because (as has been said) we don't know what the devil else to call it. Many ' false opinions ' (^evSets Sofat) have been undermined. The ridiculous dogma that men are born equal is dead if not buried. The ' sanctity of human life ' must give way to the obvious truth that a garden needs weeding. The question of population, which Huxley rightly discerned to be ' the problem of problems,' will have to be thoroughly investigated"with reference to the health and welfare of the next and future THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 147 generations. These are only examples of the ethics of the future, which modern science has made inevitable. The nation that learns these lessons first will lead the world in civilisation and good government. It is a blunder to call scientific ethics ' materialistic.' The word is a mere term of abuse for anything that we do not like. If we believe in God, the laws of nature are the laws of God for the world in which we live. We know them only through the reason which God has given us ; and it is that reason which finds law and order in the dance of atoms which is all that can be said to be presented to us from without. The laws of nature are a large part of Divine revelation. If we disregard them, and make, as Heracleitus said, a private world of our own, we shall not be ' splendid rebels,' but fools. And science is no friend either to selfishness or to hedonism. Self-sacrifice is part of nature's law. It is however a legitimate question to ask whether, besides the evolution of species, there is an evolution of ideas which obeys the same law favouring the survival of the fittest, but is relatively independent of biological change. The question is important, because if human nature can only improve by the agency of natural or rational selection, the hope of conspicuous progress within so brief a period as 500 or 1000 years would seem to be small, unless or until we know enough of the laws of heredity to breed for moral improvement. No one can deny the immense progress of knowledge which, as we have seen, carries with it important ethical implications ; nor the cumulative weight of experience gained by the method of trial and error. And it is by no means easy to separate this kind of progress from improvement in human nature itself. To say that environ- ment does not modify character is untenable. But the evolution of ideas is not necessarily towards a higher morality, any more than biological evolution is necessarily towards the production of ' higher ' or more complex types. Civilisation r may pursue a course which brings present success and future ruin. Or ideas may stagnate, and cause a whole civilisation to stagnate too. There are 148 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS several instances in history of a degeneration of ideas, comparable to the change of a freely moving animal into a parasite. The evolution of ideas is not a purely bio- logical process ; but it is strictly limited by the innate capabilities of each generation which acts as carriers to the ideas. A bad social organisation will produce a counter-selection the worse ideas will tend to prevail. The lower animals, acting from instinct rather than reason, (though I cannot allow that these faculties are mutually exclusive,) subordinate self-preservation to the interests of the race. For us there is a conflict between self-regarding and external duties. We have to ' save our own souls ' to make the best of our lives and we have to consider the welfare of others, especially of posterity. These duties conflict, except upon the highest plane ; and purely scientific or naturalistic ethics cannot, I think, prevent them from conflicting. Nor can biology give us any clear answer to the question whether our duty is to serve humanity as a whole, or the particular national or social group to which we belong. In short, though science has revealed new duties, and has increased our knowledge of those laws of nature which, in Bacon's words, we can only conquer by obeying them, it does not possess any dynamic which can lift our lives to the spiritual realm in which alone our higher natures are at home, and which alone can give us an absolute standard whereby to measure all human actions and aspirations. The neglect of scientific sociology is deplorable ; but naturalism is an abstract and defective view of life, against which men will always be in revolt. We cannot accept a view of the world which practically leaves us out. We are therefore compelled to reject the idea of a purely scientific State as the solution of our problem ; not because science is ' materialistic/ for it is not ; but because science concentrates itself upon a particular kind of values,' leaving others out of account. And when an attempt is made to construct a rounded scheme of reality, those values which are excluded are virtually repudiated. If I were asked to state in one word the cause of the THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE H9 failure of our civilisation, I should answer ' Secularism.' There must surely be some very deep ground for the uni- versal discontent and malaise which have overtaken Western civilisation. There is but little happiness and content anywhere, and the reason is that we have lost faith in the values which should be the motive force of social life. Capi- talism is in danger, not so much from the envious attacks of the unpropertied, as from the decay of that Puritan asceticism which was its creator. The glory of subduing the earth and producing something no matter what on a large scale ; the accumulation of wealth, not for en- joyment, but as the means of increased power and the instrument of new enterprise -this conception of a worthy and God-fearing life no longer appeals to men as it did. The capitalist now is too often an idler or a gambler, and as such he can justify his existence neither to himself nor to others. The working-man also has too often no pride and no conscience in his work. He works in the spirit of a slave, grudgingly and bitterly, and then ascribes his un- happiness to the conditions of his employment. He is becoming well educated ; but he twists everything round, even religion, to his alleged economic grievances, and loses sight of higher interests. Industrialism drags on, because the alternative is starvation ; but the life and joy have gone out of it, and it seems likely to pass into a state of gradual decay. Civilisation presents the spectacle of a mighty tree which is dying at the roots. When masses of men begin to ask simultaneously ' Is it all worth while ? What is the use of this great Babylon that we have builded ? ' we are reminded that the medieval casuists classified acedia, which is just this temper, among the seven deadly sins. We had almost forgotten acedia, and few know the meaning of the word ; but it is at the bottom of the diseases from which we are suffering- -the frivolous and joyless emptiness of life among the rich, and the bitter discontent of the hand- workers. Troeltsch, writing about twelve years ago, after men- tioning the decline of Calvinistic asceticism, the character of which he was one of the first to lay bare, names as ' the final characteristic of the modern spirit ' ' its self-confident 150 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS optimism and belief in progress. This (he says) was an accompanying phenomenon of the struggle for freedom in the period of illuminism, which without such a confidence could not have broken the old chains, and it then found confirmation in a multitude of new discoveries and new creations. The old cosmic conceptions dominated by the Fall, the redemption of the world, and the final judgment, have fallen away. To-day everything is filled with the thought of development and of progress upward from the depths of darkness to unknown heights. The despairing sense of sin, the sense of a great world-suffering imposed upon us for our purification and punishment, have been banished.' Since Troeltsch wrote these words, the baseless- ness of this secular optimism has been thoroughly exposed. The loss of a faith, even of a fantastic dream like this, is a grave matter for humanity. But it was after all a will-o'- the-wisp ; and now that it is gone, the path is open for a truer philosophy of history, based on a truer philosophy of life itself. Troeltsch is confident that ' a Church-directed civilisa- tion ' is no longer possible. This is certainly true, while the Church cannot make up its mind whether to go into politics or to stand aloof from them. A Church which allied itself whole-heartedly with Conservatism or with Revolution might conceivably ' direct civilisation ' again, of course at the cost of complete apostasy from the religion of Christ. And a Church which determined to combat spiritual evil with spiritual weapons, confronting ' the World ' with another standard of values, and offering mankind the blessedness promised by Christ to all who will renounce the world and follow Him, might also conceivably win civilisation to make trial, for the first time on a large scale, of those doctrines which would in truth solve all the gravest of our problems. But a secularised Christianity, such as is now preached from our pulpits, serves neither God nor man ; ' it is good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men/ It tries to please men who have obviously no conscious religious needs, no sense of sin, no craving for redemption from it, ' whose god is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 151 things.' St. Paul's climax has corne to sound in our ears as a bathos ; but it is not. Eucken, whose whole philosophy is based on a sharp opposition between the earthly and the spiritual life, thinks that there is a danger lest those who live as citizens of the Invisible State should withdraw from the visible world, and fail to set their mark upon it. He says that ' Christi- anity was established in an age which was wanting in vigorous vitality, and was chiefly intent on gaining a safe harbour of refuge. It seemed that this could only be found in opposition to the confused activity of the world, in a supernatural order. ... A sharp opposition runs through the whole history of Christianity, the opposition between an inwardness which withdraws from the visible world, and an adaptation to this world, with the danger of an intrusion of the sensible into the spiritual/ He is thinking no doubt of monasticism, which may be justified as a calling for a few, and which only becomes too popular when the conditions of life in the world are thoroughly miserable and barbarous, as they were during the Dark Ages. At such times, havens of refuge have a value for posterity, since they preserve some relics of culture from destruction. On the whole, I do not think that Christianity has ever quenched human activities. It has been the religion of the most energetic peoples of the earth, though I do not pretend that they have done much to recommend their principles. The Christian attitude may be summed up in the maxim, ' Value spiritual things for their own sake, and the things of sense for the sake of the spiritual.' ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' A whole philosophy is contained in these simple words. Those who in heart and mind are already citizens of the State Invisible, the kingdom of God, will be inwardly detached from the external world around them ; but just as the mind and will of God, which find complete expression in the eternal world, create con- tinually, by an inner necessity, the world of time, in which the thought of God is transmuted into vital law, and the will of God into an interwoven complex of finite purposes, so, the Platonists teach us, the soul of man, in the act of 152 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS contemplating the eternal order, creates, by an inner necessity, a copy of that order in the scene of our temporal probation. We are not to regard this world as an end in itself ; its deepest reality is the complex of divine purposes which are being worked out in it ; and since those purposes have their source and their goal in the eternal world, it is only by knowing the eternal world that we can know things temporal as they are. The real is the ideal ; but a deeper reality than our ideals. As the American Professor Hocking has lately written : ' We have learnt that we must go to school to nature to obey her, without letting the will or fancy mislead us ; we must learn the same lesson in religion. All our creativeness must be within the frame- work of that which independently is.' The State Invisible is the kingdom of absolute values, the kingdom of eternal life. It is because we have been misled into attaching absolute value to things that have it not, to man-made institutions, to transient enthusiasms, to all the idols of the cave and the market-place, that our faith in immortality has come to burn so dim. We have, as Mr, Glutton Brock says, parodied our certainties in a wrong medium, till they have lost their certainty for us. To some extent I think we must admit that this scepticism about a future life has been wholesome. Men have denied themselves the consolations of belief because they are not sure that the values which it embodies are absolute. They feel the unworthiness of the doctrine of immortality as it has been presented to them. They have no desire for rewards for themselves and punishments for others ; they do not feel that either are deserved. But it is the pre- vailing secularism which has caused the belief in eternal life to be swept away along with the travesties of it which make up the picture-book eschatology of the Churches. If we looked within, we should find both heaven and hell there. The highest human life tells us most about heaven, the lowest human life tells us most about hell. The eternal values are commonly classified as Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, and we cannot improve on that classifi- cation. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty are the threefold THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 153 cord which is not quickly broken. Here, then, we have a definite content for the State Invisible : we are not reduced to talking vaguely about ' Spirit/ the word which so annoyed a practical reformer like Luther. Spirit should be the fullest of all concepts ; it is sometimes in danger of being the emptiest. But if in place of this too general term we take these three absolute values, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, and make it our ideal that these shall prevail ' on earth as in heaven/ we have a definite standard and a goal in sight. We also know our enemies pride, sensu- ality, and selfishness ; the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is pride which most prevents us from keeping our minds open and teachable for the reception of new truths. It is sensuality which most often poisons our appreciation of the Beautiful, so as even to make it, in Tennyson's words, ' procuress to the lords of hell/ And it is selfishness which thwarts and spoils disinterested affection. All three shut up the soul in itself, and cut it off from its true and happy life in the eternal world. The relations between matter and spirit, between the outer and the inner, between the visible and the invisible, between earth and heaven, are a problem never to be completely solved. But it may be helpful to remind ourselves, that the contrast between outer and inner is misleading. The inner world is the whole field of con- sciousness, from which the physical world is a selection. Practical needs and the pursuit of specialised knowledge both tend to break up the continuum ; and language, which was made to express our needs in intercourse with each other, helps to emphasise an artificial view of reality. The highest and most universal truths cannot be fitted into a scheme of reality such as we construct for our external life in time. We sometimes try in vain to find a place for God inside the artificial construction which we mistake for things as they are ; and when this attempt fails, we are tempted to thrust Him out altogether. A truer philosophy will abate the claims of natural science to divide the contents of our consciousness into dreams and realities, the former being all that an abstract view of the world has left out ; it will do this without in any way impairing the 154 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS value of science as a revealer of many of the laws under which we live. It is because man is a microcosm that he can only find his full life in membership. Potentially, we have all reality within us, and potentially what we call the external world is a part of our higher selves. But, as Krause has said in a profoundly true passage : The fellowship of higher beings with lower beings is immediate and direct, whereas the fellowship of co-ordinate beings on the same plane, in and through their common higher spheres, is mediate and indirect. Community is everywhere present whenever the inner manifestations of the life of the beings meet, mutually influence, and limit each other ; and when at the same time they strive to maintain and heighten their independence. There is a degree of community even when there is no recognised unity of life, as when several beings are useful to one another in a community ; but such communities are kept up merely by a common external interest and have value only when the members are held together by justice. According to this philosopher, who is here rightly inter- preting the Platonic doctrine, there can be no durable and valuable coherence in the State Visible, except so far as its members are also members of the State Invisible. True union between human beings can be achieved only in the spiritual sphere ; in theological language, it is only as sons of God that we are in any real and effective sense brethren of each other. Any other kind of union, based on mutual convenience, is precarious and morally valueless. History confirms this view. Associations for unworthy ends find it very difficult to hold together long enough to accomplish the ends for which they vrere formed, whereas a community, the members of which have in common a deep religious conviction, resists all attempts to disintegrate it. This fact is connected with the necessity which compels all lower forms of association to curtail the freedom of their members, to impair their individuality, and turn them into mere tools. But the unity of the Spirit is not only consistent with, but vitally connected with the fullest development and enhancement of individuality. A union of this kind lacks the cast-iron discipline of a military confederacy ; but it THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 155 has creative and assimilative powers which more than make up for this deficiency. Every person who is, by virtue of his rich and consecrated inner life, a citizen of the heavenly City, not only lives on that higher plane in which alone our personality is fully developed, but acts as a unifying, integrating force in society. Love, as Krause goes on to say, is the living form of the organic unification of all life in God. Love is the eternal will of God to be vitally present in all beings, and to take back the life of all His members into Himself as into their whole life. This love pours itself into all beings as the divine impulse to rejoice in the perfection and beauty of every being, and blissfully to feel this unity of life. This is unquestionably the prin- ciple of the Christian religion, as we have it from the lips of its Founder and of those who have best understood Him. We are to regard ourselves as strangers and pilgrims on earth, immortal spirits on our probation, but charged with the duty of making earth, which is the shadow of heaven, as much like its archetype as we can. And the way to do this is to develop our spiritual faculties to the uttermost, knowing that it is only in the spiritual life that we really come into contact with our fellow men as they are. Social problems cannot be solved while we regard men merely as the subjects of claims and counter-claims against each other, nor can any legerdemain of legislative machinery cure the deep-seated vices of human nature, which are the cause of our troubles. The mere politician never awakens the sense of sin in those whom he addresses ; on the contrary, he encourages them to think that their unhappi- ness is due to the injustice of other men. Thus he directly fosters hatred, bitterness, and alienation ; instead of unifying the State, he disrupts it. We can all see how our civilisation is falling to pieces under this treatment. The government is despised and disliked by all ; the State is torn asunder by warring factions, some of which are openly plundering their fellow-citizens and holding the nation to ransom. The State has completely lost its moral authority and its power of evoking reverence and loyalty. The idea of the Nation is not dead ; men are still willing to die for their country ; but the name of the State only 156 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS calls up the picture of a collector and payer of blackmail. Nor can I see any remedy except in the adoption of the Christian standard of values and the Christian philosophy of life. The question may be raised whether the citizens of the State Invisible should organise themselves as a Church, or in any other way. Some kind of mutual support is clearly necessary. What the New Testament calls the World human society as it organises itself apart from God is largely a system of co-operative guilt with limited liability. Each member of it can shift moral responsibility upon someone else, and when any of its tools is conscience- stricken, it says as the Chief Priests said to Judas, ' What is that to us ? See thou to that.' To meet this formidable organisation, there must be another society founded on the opposite principles, pledged to assist its members in the promotion of righteousness, peace, and goodwill. Such a society constitutes the Invisible Church of which so much has been said at various times of history ; and it needs the active co-operation of all high-minded men and women, who are shocked at the idea of using for their own purposes the faults and weaknesses of others, that sinister art without which, we are often told, it is impossible to get anything done in this world. But how far is it desirable to organise the moral forces of society into a visible corporation ? Or, to put the question otherwise, is the separation of Church and State a permanent thing, or a temporary accident ? On the one hand, we must emphasise that spiritual victories can be won only in their own field. The influence of the Church, as a spiritual agency, must be exercised upon th>: will and conscience of men ; and a Church that leaves this, its legitimate sphere, and goes into politics, or attempts to use coercion, always comes out badly smirched, and generally outdoes secular governments in craft and cruelty. On the other hand, if the secular State has no spiritual or ideal basis, it is deprived of the strongest and noblest attractions that might hallow the obedience and kindle the devotion of its members. Nor does the dualism of Church and State seem altogether natural. The old idea, that the Church is the nation under its spiritual aspect, THE STATE, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE 157 is surely the right one. It is impracticable at present, partly because the spiritual Roman Empire, with its claims to super-national or extra-national obedience, still survives, a relic of the dead world-empire still vigorous in the midst of modern nationalism ; and partly because the Church has split up into smaller corporations, none of which is capable of acting as the complete embodiment of the religion of the nation, while many prefer to stand outside all religious organisations. But if the State could once more place itself under the protection of religion not in the sense that it should be controlled by priests, but that it should be recognised by all, as it was in Greek antiquity, as a moral institution, existing to promote the highest possible life among its citizens, we might hope to see a great improve- ment in the lamentably low standard of international morality, and a diminution in the sordid corruption, class bribery, and intrigue which mar democratic politics. If politicians came to regard themselves as the priests or officers of a holy corporation, pledged to stand or fall by the noblest ideals, the whole spirit of political life would be altered, and instead of lagging far behind even the most mediocre standard of private morality, the State might set an example of high-minded justice, generosity, and chivalry. There does not seem to be any reason in the nature of things, why governments should be unjust in foreign policy, nor why they should appeal to the worst passions of the electors, their cupidity, pugnacity, and mean prejudices. The evil is partly due to a mutual shifting of responsibility. The government says ' We are only the servants of the people ' ; the people say ' We must leave it to the govern- ment to tell us what is right.' Men of high character either keep out of politics or are driven out of them, and this is most true in the most democratic, which are also the most secularised States. The dualism of Church and State may some day come to an end ; and the truths which underlie both Hebrew theocracy and Greek political philosophy may be brought together in some form of polity which can also find room for the ideals of a spiritual world-commonwealth and of a purified and exalted patriotism. THE IDEA OF PROGRESS THE belief in Progress, not as an ideal but as an indis- putable fact, not as a task for humanity but as a law of Nature, has been the working faith of the West for about a hundred and fifty years. Some would have us believe that it is a long neglected part of the Christian revelation, others that it is a modern discovery. The ancient Pagans, we are told, put their Golden Age in the past ; we put ours in the future. The Greeks prided themselves on being the degenerate descendants of gods, we on being the very creditable descendants of monkeys. The Romans en- deavoured to preserve the wisdom and virtue of the past, we to anticipate the wisdom and virtue of the future. This, however, is an exaggeration. The theory of progress and the theory of decadence are equally natural, and have in fact been held concurrently wherever men have specu- lated about their origin, their present condition, and their future prospects. Among the Jews the theory of decadence derived an inspired authority from Genesis, but the story of the Fall had very little influence upon the thought of that tenaciously optimistic race. Among the Greeks, who had the melancholy as well as the buoyancy of youth, it was authorised by Hesiod, whose scheme of retrogression from the age of gold to the age of iron was never forgotten in antiquity. Sophocles, in a well-known chorus imitated by Bacon, holds that the best fate for men is ' not to be born, or being born to die.' Aratus develops the pessimistic mythology of Hesiod. In the Golden Age Dike or Astraea wandered about the earth freely ; in the Silver Age her visits became fewer, and in the Brazen Age she set out for heaven and became the constellation Virgo. Perhaps 158 THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 159 Horace had read the lament of the goddess : ' What a race the golden sires have left worse than their fathers ; and your offspring will be baser still.' In the third century after Christ, when civilisation was really crumbling, Pagans and Christians join in a chorus of woe. On the other side, the triumphs of man over nature are celebrated by the great tragedians, and the Introduction to the First Book of Thucydides sketches the past history of Greece in the spirit of the nineteenth century. Lucretius has delighted our anthropologists by his brilliant and by no means idealised description of savage life, and it is to him that we owe the blessed word Progress in its modern sense. Usus et impigrae simul experientia mentis paulatim docuit pedetemtim progredientes. sic unum quicquid paulatim protrahit aetas in medium, ratioque in luminis erigit oras. Pliny believes that each age is better than the last. Seneca, in a treatise, parts of which were read in the Middle Ages, reminds us that ' not a thousand years have passed since Greece counted and named the stars, and it is only recently that we have learned why the moon is eclipsed. Posterity will be amazed that we did not know some things that will seem obvious to them.' ' The world,' he adds, ' is a poor affair if it does not contain matter for investigation for men in every age. We imagine that we are initiated into the mysteries of Nature ; but we are still hanging about her outer courts.' These last are memorable utterances, even if Seneca confines his optimism to the pleasure of explor- ing Nature's secrets. The difference between Rousseau, who admired the simple life, and Condorcet, who believed in modern civilisation, was no new one ; it was a common theme of discussion in antiquity, and the ancients were well aware that the same process may be called either progress or decline. As Freeman says, ' In history every step in advance has also been a step backwards.' (The picture is a little difficult to visualise, but the meaning is plain.) The fruit of the tree of knowledge always drives man from some paradise or other ; and even the paradise of fools is not an unpleasant abode while it is habitable. 160 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Few emblematic pictures are more striking than the Melencolia (as he spells it) of Diirer, representing the Spirit of the race sitting mournfully among all her inventions : and this was at the beginning of the age of discovery ! But the deepest thought of antiquity was neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It was that progress and retrogression are only the incoming and outgoing tide in an unchanging sea. The pulse of the universe beats in an alternate ex- pansion and contraction. The result is a series of cycles, in which history repeats itself. Plato contemplates a world-cycle of 36,000 solar years, during which the Creator guides the course of events ; after which he relaxes his hold of the machine, and a period of the same length follows during which the world gradually degenerates. When this process is complete the Creator restores again the original conditions, and a new cycle begins. Aristotle thinks that all the arts and sciences have been discovered and lost ' an infinite number of times.' Virgil in the Fourth Eclogue tries to please Augustus by predicting the near approach of a new Golden Age, which, he says, is now due. This doctrine of recurrence is not popular to-day ; but whether we like it or not, no other view of the macro- cosm is even tenable. Even if those physicists are right who hold that the universe is running down like a clock, that belief postulates a moment in past time when the clock was wound up ; and whatever power wound it up once may presumably wind it up again. The doctrine of cycles was held by Goethe, who, in reply to Eckermann's remark that ' the progress of humanity seems to be a matter of thousands of years,' answered : Perhaps of millions. Men will become more clever and dis- cerning, but not better or happier, except for limited periods. I see the time coming when God will take no more pleasure in our race, and must again proceed to a rejuvenated creation. I am sure that the time and hour in the distant future are already fixed for the beginning of this epoch. But we can still for thousands of years enjoy ourselves on this dear old playground of ours. Nietzsche also maintained the law of recurrence, and so did the Danish philosophic theologian Kierkegaard. THE IDEA OF PROGEESS 161 Shelley's fine poem, ' The world's great age begins anew,' is based upon it. Still, I must admit that on the whole the ancients did tend to regard time as the enemy : dcim- nosa quid non imminuit dies ? They would have thought the modern notion of human perfectibility at once absurd and impious. The Dark Ages knew that they were dark, and we hear little talk about progress during those seven centuries which, as far as we can see, might have been cut out of history without any great loss to posterity. The Middle Ages (which we ought never to confuse with the Dark Ages), though they developed an interesting type of civilisation, set their hopes mainly on another world. The Church has never encouraged the belief that this world is steadily improving ; the Middle Ages, like the early Christians, would have been quite content to see the earthly career of the race closed in their own time. Even Roger Bacon, who is claimed as the precursor of modern science, says that all wise men believe that we are not far from the time of Antichrist, which was to be the herald of the end. The Eenaissance was a conscious recovery from the longest and dreariest set-back that humanity has ever experienced within the historical period a veritable glacial age of the spirit. At this time men were too full of admiration and reverence for the newly recovered treasures of antiquity to look forward to the future. In the seventeenth century a doctrine of progress was already in the air, and a long literary battle was waged between the Ancients and the Moderns. But it was only in the eighteenth century that Western Europe began to dream of an approaching mil- lennium without miracle, to be gradually ushered in under the auspices of a faculty which was called Reason. Unlike some of their successors, these optimists believed that perfection was to be attained by the self-determination of the human will ; they were not fatalists. In France, the chief home of this heady doctrine, the psychical tempera- ture soon began to rise under its influence, till it culminated in the delirium of the Terror. The Goddess of Reason hardly survived Robespierre and his guillotine ; but the belief in progress, which might otherwise have subsided n. M 162 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS when the French resumed their traditional pursuits rem militarem et argute loqui was reinforced by the industrial revolution, which was to run a very different course from that indicated by the theatrical disturbances at Paris between 1789 and 1794, the importance of which has perhaps been exaggerated. In England above all, the home of the new industry, progress was regarded (in the words which Mr. Mallock puts into the mouth of a nineteenth-century scientist) as that kind of improvement which can be measured by statistics. This was quite seriously the view of the last century generally, and there has never been, nor will there ever be again, such an op- portunity for gloating over this kind of improvement. The mechanical inventions of Watt, Arkwright, Crompton, Stephenson, and others led to an unparalleled increase of population. Exports and imports also progressed, in a favourite phrase of the time, by leaps and bounds. Those who, like Malthus, sounded a note of warning, showing that population increases, unlike the supply of food, by geometrical progression, were answered that compound interest follows the same admirable law. It was obvious to many of our grandparents that a nation which travels sixty miles an hour must be five times as civilised as one which travels only twelve, and that, as Glanvill had already declared in the reign of Charles II, we owe more gratitude to the inventor of the mariner's compass ' than to a thousand Alexanders and Caesars, or to ten times the number of Aristotles.' The historians of the time could not contain their glee in recording these triumphs. Only the language of religion seemed appropriate in contemplating so mag- nificent a spectacle. If they had read Herder, they would have quoted with approval his prediction that ' the flower of humanity, captive still in its germ, will blossom out one day into the true form of man like unto God, in a state of which no man on earth can imagine the greatness and the majesty.' Determinism was much in vogue by this time ; but why should determinism be a depressing creed ? The law which we cannot escape is the blessed law of progress ' that kind of improvement that can be measured by statistics.' We had only to thank our stars for placing us THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 163 in such an environment, and to carry out energetically the course of development which Nature has prescribed for us, and to resist which would be at once impious and futile. Thus the superstition of progress was firmly established. To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy. The superstition of progress had the singular good fortune to enslave at least three philosophies those of Hegel, of Comte, and of Darwin. The strange thing is that none of these philo- sophies is really favourable to the belief which it was supposed to support. Leaving for the present the German and the French thinkers, we observe with astonishment that many leading men in Queen Victoria's reign found it possible to use the great biological discovery of Darwin to tyrannise over the minds of their contemporaries, to give their blessing to the economic and social movements of their time, and to unite determinism with teleology in the highly edifying manner to which I have already referred. Scientific optimism was no doubt rampant before Darwin. For example, Herschel says : ' Man's progress towards a higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the very last existence of history.' But Herbert Spencer asserts the perfectibility of man with an assurance which makes us gasp. ' Progress is not an accident but a necessity. What we call evil and immorality must disappear. It is certain that man must become perfect/ ' The ultimate development of the ideal man is certain- as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith ; for instance, that all men will die/ ' Al- ways towards perfection is the mighty movement towards a complete development and a more unmixed good/ It has been pointed out by Mr. Bradley that these apocalyptic prophecies have nothing whatever to do with Darwinism. If we take the so-called doctrine of evolution in Nature as a metaphysics of existence, which Darwin never intended it to be, ' there is in the world nothing like value, or good, or evil. Anything implying evolution, in the ordinary sense of development or progress, is wholly rejected/ The survival of the fittest does not mean that 164 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS the most virtuous, or the most useful, or the most beautiful, or even the most complex survive ; there is no moral or aesthetic judgment pronounced on the process or any part of it. Darwinism [Mr. Bradley goes on to say] often recommends itself because it is confused with a doctrine of evolution which is radically different. Humanity is taken in that doctrine as a real being, or even as the one real being ; and humanity (it is said) advances continuously. Its history is development and progress towards a goal, because the type and character in which its reality consists is gradually brought more and more into fact. That which is strongest on the whole must therefore be good, and the ideas which come to prevail must therefore be true. This doctrine, though I certainly cannot accept it, for good or evil more or less dominates or sways our minds to an ex- tent of which most of us perhaps are dangerously unaware. Any such view of course conflicts radically with Darwinism, which only teaches that the true idea is the idea which prevails, and this leaves us in the end with no criterion at all. It may further be suggested that Spencer's optimism depends on the transmissibility of acquired characters ; but this is too dangerous a subject for a layman in science to discuss. Although the main facts of cosmic evolution, and the main course of human history from Pithecanthropus downwards, are well known to all my hearers, and to some of them much better than to myself, it may be worth while to recall to you, in bald and colourless language, what science really tells us about the nature and destiny of our species. It is so different from the gay colours of the rhapsodists whom I have just quoted, that we must be amazed that such doctrines should ever have passed for scientific. Astronomy gives us a picture of a wilderness of space, probably boundless, sparsely sown with aggrega- tions of elemental particles in all stages of heat and cold. These heavenly bodies are in some cases growing hotter, in other cases growing colder ; but the fate of every globe must be, sooner or later, to become cold and dead, like the moon. Our sun, from which we derive the warmth which makes our life possible, is, I believe, an elderly star, which THE IDEA OF PKOGRESS 166 has long outlived the turbulent heats of youth, and is on its way to join the most senile class of luminiferous bodies, in which the star 19 Piscium is placed. When a star has once become cold, it must apparently remain dead until some chance collision sets the whole cycle going again. From time to time a great conflagration in the heavens, which occurred perhaps in the seventeenth century, becomes visible from this earth ; and we may imagine, if we will, that two great solar systems have been reduced in a moment to incandescent gas. But space is probably so empty that the most pugnacious of astral knights-errant might wander for billions of years without meeting an opponent worthy of its bulk. If time as well as space is infinite, worlds must be born and die innumerable times, however few and far between their periods of activity may be. Of progress, in such a system taken as a whole, there cannot be a trace. Nor can there be any doubt about the fate of our own planet. Man and all his achievements will one day be obliterated like a child's sand-castle when the next tide comes in. Lucretius, who gave us the word progress, has told us our ultimate fate in sonorous lines : Quorum naturam triplicem, tria corpora, Memmi, tres species tarn dissimiles, tria talia texta, una dies dabit exitio, multosque per annos sustentata ruet moles et machina mundi. The racial life of the species to which we happen to belong is a brief episode even in the brief life of the planet. And what we call civilisation or culture, though much older than we used to suppose, is a brief episode in the life of our race. For tens of thousands of years the changes in our habits must have been very slight, and chiefly those which were forced upon our rude ancestors by changes of climate. Then in certain districts man began, as Samuel Butler says, to wish to live beyond his income. This was the beginning of the vast series of inventions which have made our life so complex. And, we used to be told, the ' law of all progress is the same, the evolution of the simple into the complex by successive differentiations.' This is the gospel according to Herbert Spencer. As a universal law 166 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS of nature, it is ludicrously untrue. Some species have survived by becoming more complex, others, like the whole tribe of parasites, by becoming more simple. On the whole, perhaps the parasites have had the best of it. The pro- gressive species have in many cases flourished for a while and then paid the supreme penalty. The living dread- noughts of the Saurian age have left us their bones, but no progeny. But the microbes, one of which had the honour of killing Alexander the Great at the age of thirty-two, and so changing the whole course of history, survive and flourish. The microbe illustrates the wisdom of the maxim, Aa$e /Juoo-a.9. It took thousands of years to find him out. Our own species, being rather poorly provided by nature for offence and defence, had to live by its wits, and so came to the top. It developed many new needs, and set itself many insoluble problems. Physiologists like Metchnikoff have shown how very ill-adapted our bodies are to the tasks which we impose upon them ; and in spite of the Spencerian identification of complexity with progress, our surgeons try to simplify our structure by forcibly removing various organs which they assure us that we do not need. If we turn to history for a confirmation of the Spencerian doctrine, we find, on the contrary, that civilisation is a disease which is almost invariably fatal, unless its course is checked in time. The Hindus and Chinese, after advancing to a certain point, were content to mark time ; and they survive. But the Greeks and Romans are gone ; and aristocracies everywhere die out. Do we not see to-day the complex organisation of the ecclesiastic and college don succumbing before the simple squeezing and sucking apparatus of the profiteer and trade-unionist ? If so-called civilised nations show any protracted vitality, it is because they are only civilised at the top. Ancient civilisations were destroyed by imported barbarians ; we breed our own. It is also an unproved assumption that the domination of the planet by our own species is a desirable thing, which must give satisfaction to its Creator. We have devastated the loveliness of the world ; we have exterminated several species more beautiful and less vicious than ourselves ; we have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have 167 treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. If it is progress to turn the fields and woods of Essex into East and West Ham, we may be thankful that progress is a sporadic and transient phenomenon in history. It is a pity that our biologists, instead of singing paeans to Progress and thereby stultifying their own researches, have not preached us sermons on the sin of racial self-idolatry, a topic which really does arise out of their studies. L'anthropolatrie, voild I'ennemi, is the real ethical motto of biological science, and a valuable contribution to morals. It was impossible that such shallow optimism as that of Herbert Spencer should not arouse protests from other scientific thinkers. Hartmann had already shown how a system of pessimism, resembling that of Schopenhauer, may be built upon the foundation of evolutionary science. And in this place we are not likely to forget the second Romanes Lecture, when Professor Huxley astonished his friends and opponents alike by throwing down the gauntlet in the face of Nature, and bidding mankind to find salva- tion by accepting for itself the position which the early Christian writer Hippolytus gives as a definition of the Devil ' he who resists the cosmic process ' (6 diTiTarrwv TOIS Koo-fjuKOis). The revolt was not in reality so sudden as some of Huxley's hearers supposed. He had already realised that ' so far from gradual progress forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite persistence in one state, or with a gradual retrogression. Suppose, e.g., a return of the glacial period or a spread of polar climatical conditions over the whole globe/ The alliance between determinism and optimism was thus dissolved ; and as time went on, Huxley began to see in the cosmic process some- thing like a power of evil. The natural process, he told us in this place, has no tendency to bring about the good of mankind. Cosmic nature is no school of virtue, but the head-quarters of the enemy of ethical nature. Nature is the realm of tiger-rights ; it has no morals and no ought- to-be ; its only rights are brutal powers. Morality exists 168 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS only in the ' artificial ' moral world : man is a glorious rebel, a Prometheus defying Zeus. This strange rebound into Manicheism sounded like a blasphemy against all the gods whom the lecturer was believed to worship, and half- scandalised even the clerics in his audience. It was bound to raise the question whether this titanic revolt against the cosmic process has any chance of success. One recent thinker, who accepts Huxley's view that the nature of things is cruel and immoral, is willing to face the probability that we cannot resist it with any prospect of victory. Mr. Bertrand Russell, in his arresting essay, ' A Free Man's Worship/ shows us Prometheus again, but Prometheus chained to the rock and still hurling defiance against God. He proclaims the moral bankruptcy of naturahsm, which he yet holds to be forced upon us. That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving ; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the out- come of accidental collocations of atoms ; that no fire, no hero- ism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an indi- vidual beyond the grave ; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievemont must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habi- tation henceforth be safely built. Man belongs to ' an alien and inhuman world/ alone amid ' hostile forces.' What is man to do ? The God who exists is evil ; the God whom we can worship is the creation of our own conscience, and has no existence outside it. The ' free man ' will worship the latter ; and, like John Stuart Mill, ' to hell he will go.' If I wished to criticise this defiant pronouncement, which is not without a touch of bravado, I should say that so complete a separation of the real from the ideal is im- possible, and that the choice which the writer offers us, THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 169 of worshipping a Devil who exists or a God who does not, is no real choice, since we cannot worship either. But my object in quoting from this essay is to show how completely naturalism has severed its alliance with optimism and belief in progress. Professor Huxley and Mr. Russell have sung their palinode and smashed the old gods of their creed. No more proof is needed, I think, that the alleged law of progress has no scientific basis whatever. But the superstition has also invaded and vitiated our history, our political science, our philosophy, and our religion. The historian is a natural snob ; he sides with the gods against Cato, and approves the winning side. He lectures the vanquished for their wilfulness and want of foresight, sometimes rather prematurely, as when Seeley, looking about for an example of perverse refusal to recognise facts, exclaims ' Sedet, aeternumque sedebit unhappy Poland ! ' The nineteenth-century historian was so loath to admit retrogression that he liked to fancy the river of progress flowing underground all through the Dark Ages, and endowed the German barbarians who overthrew Mediterranean civilisation with all the manly virtues. If a nation, or a religion, or a school of art dies, the historian explains why it was not worthy to live. In political science the corruption of the scientific spirit by the superstition of progress has been flagrant. It enables the disputant to overbear questions of right and wrong by confident prediction, a method which has the double advantage of being peculiarly irritating and incapable of refutation. On the theory of progress, what is ' coming ' must be right. Forms of government and modes of thought which for the time being are not in favour are assumed to have been permanently left behind. A student of history who believed in cyclical changes and long swings of the pendulum would take a very different and probably much sounder view of con- temporary affairs. The votaries of progress mistake the flowing tide for the river of eternity, and when the tide turns they are likely to be left stranded like the corks and scraps of seaweed which mark the high-water line. This 170 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS has already happened, though few realise it. The praises of Liberty are mainly left to Conservatives, who couple it with Property as something to be defended, and to con- scientious objectors, who dissociate it from their country, which is not to be defended. Democracy the magic ballot-box has few worshippers any longer except in America, where men will still shout for about two hours and indeed much longer that she is ' great/ But our pundits will be slow to surrender the useful words ' pro- gressive ' and ' reactionary/ The classification is, however, a little awkward. If a reactionary is anyone who will not float with the stream, and a progressive anyone who has the flowing tide with him, we must classify the Christian Fathers and the French Encyclopaedists as belonging to the same type, the progressive ; while the Koman Stoics under the Empire and the Russian bureaucrats under Nicholas II will be placed together under the opposite title, as reaction- aries. Or is the progressive not the supporter of the winning cause for the time being, but the man who thinks, with a distinguished Head of a College who, as I remember, affirmed his principles in Convocation, that ' any leap in the dark is better than standing still ' ; and is the reaction- ary the man whose constitutional timidity would deter him from performing this act of faith when caught by a mist on the Matterhorn ? Machiavelli recognises fixed types of human character, such as the cautious Fabius and the impetuous Julius II, and observes that these qualities lead sometimes to success and sometimes to failure. If a reactionary only means an adherent of political opinions which we happen to dislike, there is no reason why a bureaucrat should not call a republican a reactionary, as Maecenas may have applied the name to Brutus and Cassius. Such examples of evolution as that which turned the Roman Republic into a principate and then into an empire of the Asiatic type, are inconvenient for those .who say 'It is coming/ and think that they have vindicated the superiority of their own theories of government. We have next to consider the influence of the super- stition of progress on the philosophy of the last century. THE IDEA OF PKOGRESS 171 To attempt such a task in this place is a little rash, and to prove the charge in a few minutes would be impossible even for one much better equipped than I am. But something must be said. Hegel and Comte are often held to have been the chief advocates of the doctrine of progress among philosophers. Both of them give definitions of the word a very necessary thing to do, and I have not yet attempted to do it. Hegel defines progress as spiritual freedom ; Comte as true or positive social philosophy. The definitions are peculiar ; and neither theory can be made to fit past history, though that of Comte, at any rate, falls to the ground if it does not fit past history. Hegel is perhaps more independent of facts ; his predecessor Fichte pro- fesses to be entirely indifferent to them. ' The philosopher,' he says, ' follows the a priori thread of the world-plan which is clear to him without any history ; and if he makes use of history, it is not to prove anything, since his theses are already proved independently of all history.' Certainly, Hegel's dialectical process cannot easily be recognised in the course of European events ; and, what is more fatal to the believers in a law of progress who appeal to him, he does not seem to have contemplated any further marked improvements upon the political system of Prussia in his own time, which he admired so much that his critics have accused him of teaching that the Absolute first attained full self-consciousness at Berlin in the nineteenth century. He undoubtedly believed that there has been progress in the past ; but he does not, it appears, look forward to further changes ; as a politician, at any rate, he gives us something like a closed system. Comte can only bring his famous ' three stages ' into history by arguing that the Catholic monotheism of the Middle Ages was an advance upon Pagan antiquity. A Catholic might defend such a thesis with success ; but for Comte the chief advantage seems to be that the change left the Olympians with only one neck, for Positive Philosophy to cut off. But Comte himself is what his system requires us to call a reactionary ; he is back in the ' theological stage ' ; he would like a theocracy, if he could have one without a God. The State is to be subordinate to the Positive Church, and he will 172 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS allow ' no unlimited freedom of thought.' The connexion of this philosophy with the doctrine of progress seems very slender. It is not so easy to answer the question in the case of Hegel, because his contentment with the Prussian government may be set down to idiosyncrasy or to prudence ; but it is significant that some of his ablest disciples have discarded the belief. To say that ' the world is as it ought to be ' does not imply that it goes on getting better, though some would think it was not good if it was not getting better. It is hard to believe that a great thinker really supposed that the universe as a whole is progressing, a notion which Mr. Bradley has stigmatised as ' nonsense, unmeaning or blasphemous.' Mr. Bradley may perhaps be interpreting Hegel rightly when he says that for a philosopher ' progress can never have any temporal sense,' and explains that a perfect philosopher would see the whole world of appearance as a ' progress,' by which he seems to mean only a rearrangement in terms of ascending and descending value and reality. But it might be objected that to use ' progress ' in this sense is to lay a trap for the unwary. Mathematicians undoubtedly talk of progress, or rather of progression, without any implication of temporal sequence ; but outside this science to speak of ' progress without any temporal sense ' is to use a phrase which some would call self-contradictory. Be that as it may, popularised Hegelianism has laid hold of the idea of a self-improving universe, of perpetual and universal progress, in a strictly temporal sense. The notion of an evolving and progressing cosmos, with a Creator who is either improving himself (though we do not put it quite so crudely) or who is gradually coming into his own, has taken strong hold of the popular imagination. The latter notion leads straight to ethical dualism of the Manichean type. The theory of a single purpose in the universe seems to me untenable. Such a purpose, being infinite, could never have been conceived, and if con- ceived, could never be accomplished. The theory con- demns both God and man to the doom of Tantalus. Mr. Bradley is quite right in finding this belief incompatible with Christianity. THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 173 It would not be possible, without transgressing the limits set for lecturers on this foundation, to show how the belief in a law of progress has prejudicially affected the religious beliefs of our time. I need only recall to you the discussions whether the perfect man could have lived in the first, and not in the nineteenth or twentieth century although one would have thought that the ancient Greeks, to take one nation only, have produced many examples of hitherto unsurpassed genius ; the secularisation of religion by throwing its ideals into the near future a new apocalyptism which is doing mischief enough in politics without the help of the clergy ; and the unauthorised belief in future probation, which rests on the queer assump- tion that, if a man is given time enough, he must necessarily become perfect. In fact, the superstition which is the subject of this lecture has distorted Christianity almost beyond recognition. Only one great Church, old in worldly wisdom, knows that human nature does not change, and acts on the knowledge. Accordingly, the papal syllabus of 1864 declares : ' Si quis dixerit : Eomanus pontifex potest ac debet cum progressu, cum liberalismo, et cum recenti civilitate sese reconciliare et componere, anathema sit.' Our optimists have not made it clear to themselves or others what they mean by progress, and we may suspect that the vagueness of the idea is one of its attractions. There has been no physical progress in our species for many thousands of years. The Cro-Magnon race, which lived perhaps twenty thousand years ago, was at least equal to any modern people in size and strength ; the ancient Greeks were, I suppose, handsomer and better formed than we are ; and some unprogressive races, such as the Zulus, Samoans, and Tahitians, are envied by Europeans for either strength or beauty. Although it seems not to be true that the sight and hearing of civilised peoples are inferior to those of savages, we have certainly lost our natural weapons, which from one point of view is a mark of degeneracy. Mentally, we are now told that the men of the Old Stone Age, ugiy as most of them must have been, had as large brains as ours ; and he would be a bold man who should 174 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS claim that we are intellectually equal to the Athenians or superior to the Romans. The question of moral improve- ment is much more difficult. Until the Great War few would have disputed that civilised man had become much more humane, much more sensitive to the sufferings of others, and so more just, more self-controlled, and less brutal in his pleasures and in his resentments. The habitual honesty of the Western European might also have been contrasted with the rascality of inferior races in the past and present. It was often forgotten that, if progress means the improvement of human nature itself, the question to be asked is whether the modern civilised man behaves better in the same circumstances than his ancestor would have done. Absence of temptation may produce an appearance of improvement ; but this is hardly what we mean by progress, and there is an old saying that the Devil has a clever trick of pretending to be dead. It seems to me very doubtful whether when we are exposed to the same temptations we are more humane or more sympathetic or juster or less brutal than the ancients. Even before this war, the examples of the Congo and Putumayo, and American lynchings, proved that contact with barbarians reduces many white men to the moral condition of savages ; and the outrages com- mitted on the Chinese after the Boxer rebellion showed that even a civilised nation cannot rely on being decently treated by Europeans if its civilisation is different from their own. During the Great War, even if some atrocities were magnified with the amiable object of rousing a good- natured people to violent hatred, it was the well-considered opinion of Lord Bryce's commission that no such cruelties had been committed for three hundred years as those which the Germans practised in Belgium and France. It was startling to observe how easily the blood-lust was excited in young men straight from the fields, the factory, and the counter, many of whom had never before killed anything larger than a wasp, and that in self-defence. As for the Turks, we must go back to Genghis Khan to find any parallel to their massacres in Armenia ; and the Russian terrorists have reintroduced torture into Europe, with the THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 175 help of Chinese experts in the art. With these examples before our eyes, it is difficult to feel any confidence that either the lapse of time or civilisation has made the bete humaine less ferocious. On biological grounds there is no reason to expect it. No selection in favour of superior types is now going on ; on the contrary, civilisation tends now, as always, to an Ausroltung der Besten a weeding-out of the best ; and the new practice of subsidising the un- successful by taxes extorted from the industrious is caco- genics erected into a principle. The best hope of stopping this progressive degeneration is in the science of eugenics. But this science is still too tentative to be made the basis of legislation, and we are not yet agreed what we should breed for. The two ideals, that of the perfect man and that of the perfectly organised State, would lead to very different principles of selection. Do we want a nation of beautiful and moderately efficient Greek gods, or do we want human mastiffs for policemen, human greyhounds for postmen, and so on ? However, the opposition which eugenics has now to face is based on less respectable grounds, such as pure hedonism (' would the superman be any happier ? ') ; indifference to the future welfare of the race (' posterity has done nothing for me ; why should I do anything for posterity ? ') ; and, in politics, the reflection that the unborn have no votes. "We have, then, been driven to the conclusion that neither science nor history gives us any warrant for be- lieving that humanity has advanced, except by accumu- lating knowledge and experience and the instruments of living. The value of these accumulations is not beyond dispute. Attacks upon civilisation have been frequent, from Crates, Pherecrates, Antisthenes, and Lucretius in antiquity to Rousseau, Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Ruskin, Morris, and Edward Carpenter in modern times. I cannot myself agree with these extremists. I believe that the accumulated experience of mankind, and his wonderful discoveries, are of great value. I only point out that they do not constitute real progress in human nature itself, and that in the absence of any real progress these gains are external, precarious, and liable to be turned to our 176 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS own destruction, as new discoveries in chemistry may easily be. But it is possible to approach the whole question of progress from another side, and from this side the results will not be quite the same, and may be more encouraging. We have said that there can be no progress in the macro- cosm, and no single purpose in a universe which has neither beginning nor end in time. But there may be an infinite number of finite purposes, some much greater and others much smaller than the span of an individual life ; and within each of these some Divine thought may be working itself out, bringing some life or series of lives, some nation or race or species, to that perfection which is natural to it what the Greeks called its ' nature.' The Greeks saw no contradiction between this belief and the theory of cosmic cycles, and I do not think that there is any contradiction. It may be that there is an immanent teleology which is shaping the life of the human race towards some completed development which has not yet been reached. To advocate such a theory seems like going back from Darwin to Lam- arck ; but ' vitalism,' if it be a heresy, is a very vigorous and obstinate one ; we can hardly dismiss it as unscientific. The possibility that such a development is going on is not disproved by the slowness of the change within the historical period. Progress in the recent millennia seems to us to have been external, precarious, and disappointing. But let this last adjective give us pause. By what standard do we pronounce it disappointing, and who gave us this standard ? This disappointment has been a constant phenomenon, with a very few exceptions. What does it mean ? Have those who reject the law of progress taken it into account ? The philosophy of naturalism always makes the mistake of leaving human nature out. The climbing instinct of humanity, and our discontent with things as they are, are facts which have to be accounted for, no less than the stable instincts of nearly all other species. We all desire to make progress, and our ambitions are not limited to our own lives or our lifetimes. It is part of our nature to aspire and hope ; even on biological grounds this instinct must be assumed to serve some THE IDEA OF PEOGRESS 177 function. The first Christian poet, Prudentius, quite in the spirit of Robert Browning, names Hope as the dis- tinguishing characteristic of mankind. Nonne hominum et pecudum distantia separat una ? quod bona quadrupedum ante oculos sita sunt, ego contra spero. We must consider seriously what this instinct of hope means and implies in the scheme of things. It is of course possible to dismiss it as a fraud. Per- haps this was the view most commonly held in antiquity. Hope was regarded as a gift of dubious value, an illusion which helps us to endure life, and a potent spur to action ; but in the last resort an ignis fatuus. A Greek could write for his tombstone : I've entered port. Fortune and Hope, adieu ! Make game of others, for I've done with you. And Lord Brougham chose this epigram to adorn his villa at Cannes. So for Schopenhauer hope is the bait by which Nature gets her hook in our nose, and induces us to serve her purposes, which are not our own. This is pessi- mism, which, like optimism, is a mood, not a philosophy. Neither of them needs refutation, except for the adherent of the opposite mood ; and these will never convince each other, for the same arguments are fatal to both. If our desires are clearly contrary to the nature of things, of which we are a part, it is our wisdom and our duty to correct our ambitions, and, like the Bostonian Margaret Fuller, to decide to ' accept the universe.' ' Gad ! she'd better,' was Carlyle's comment on this declaration. The true inference from Nature's law of vicarious sacrifice is not that life is a fraud, but that selfishness is unnatural. The pessimist can- not condemn the world except by a standard which he finds somewhere, if only in his own heart ; in passing sentence upon it he affirms an optimism which be will not surrender to any appearances. The ancients were not pessimists ; but they distrusted Hope. I will not follow those who say that they succumbed to the barbarians because they looked back instead of forward ; I do not think it is true. If the Greeks and n. M 178 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Romans had studied chemistry and metallurgy instead of art, rhetoric, and law, they might have discovered gun- powder and poison gas and kept the Germans north of the Alps. But St. Paul's deliberate verdict on pagan society, that it ' had no hope,' cannot be lightly set aside. No other religion, before Christianity, ever erected hope into a moral virtue. ' We are saved by hope,' was a new doctrine when it was pronounced. The later Neoplaton- ists borrowed St. Paul's triad, Faith. Hope, and Love, adding Truth as a fourth. Hopefulness may have been partly a legacy from Judaism ; but it was much more a part of the intense spiritual vitality which was disseminated by the new faith. In an isolated but extremely interesting passage St. Paul extends his hope of ' redemption into the glorious liberty of the children of God ' to the ' whole creation ' generally. In the absence of any explanation or parallel passages it is difficult to say what vision of cosmic deliverance was in his mind. Students of early Christian thought must be struck by the vigour of hope in the minds of men, combined with great fluidity in the forms or moulds into which it ran. After much fluctua- tion, it tended to harden as belief in a supramundane future, a compromise between Jewish and Platonic escha- tology, since the Jews set their hopes on a terrestrial future, the Platonists on a supramundane present. Christian philo- sophers still inclined to the Platonic faith, while popular belief retained the apocalyptic Jewish ideas under the form of Millenarianism. Religion has oscillated between these two types of belief ever since, and both have suffered considerably by being vulgarised. In times of disorder and decadence, the Platonic ideal world, materialised into a supraterrestrial physics and geography, has tended to prevail : in times of crass prosperity and intellectual con- fidence the Jewish dream of a kingdom of the saints on earth has been coarsened into promises of ' a good time coming.' At the time when we were inditing the paeans to Progress which I quoted near the beginning of my lecture, we were evolving a Deuteronomic religion for ourselves^even more flattering than the combination of determinism with optimism which science was offering THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 179 at the same period. We almost persuaded ourselves that the words ' the meek-spirited shall possess the earth ' were a prophecy of the expansion of England. It is easy to criticise the forms which Hope has assumed. But the Hope which has generated them is a solid fact, and we have to recognise its indomitable tenacity and power of taking new shapes. The belief in a law of progress, which I have criticised so unmercifully, is one of these forms ; and if I am not mistaken, it is nearly worn out. Disraeli in his detached way said ' The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.' It would not be easy to sum up better the achievements of the nineteenth century, which will be always remembered as the century of accumulation and expansion. It was one of the great ages of the world ; and its greatness was bound up with that very idea of progress which, in the crude forms which it usually assumed, we have seen to be an illusion. It was a strenuous, not a self- indulgent age. The profits of industry were not squandered, but turned into new capital, providing new markets and employment for more labour. The nation, as an aggregate, increased in wealth, numbers, and power every day ; and public opinion approved this increase, and the sacrifices which it involved. It was a great century ; there were giants in the earth in those days ; I have no patience with the pygmies who gird at them. But, as its greatest and most representative poet said : ' God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.' The mould in which the Victorian age cast its hopes is broken. There is no law of progress ; and the gains of that age now seem to some of us to have been purchased too high, or even to be themselves of doubtful value. In Clough s fine poem, .beginning ' Hope evermore and believe, man,' a poem in which the ethics of Puritan- ism find their perfect expression, the poet exhorts us : Go ! say not in thine heart, And what then, were it accomplished, Were the wild impulse allayed, what were the use and the good ? 180 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS But this question, which the blind Puritan asceticism resolutely thrust on one side, has begun to press for an answer. It had begun to press for an answer before the great cataclysm, which shattered the material symbols of the cult which for a century and a half had absorbed the chief energies of mankind. Whether our widespread discontent is mainly caused, as I sometimes think, by the unnatural conditions of life in large towns, or by the decay of the ideal itself, it is not easy to say. In any case, the gods of Queen Victoria's reign are no longer worshipped. And I believe that the dissatisfaction with things as they are is caused not only by the failure of nineteenth-century civilisation, but partly also by its success. We no longer wish to progress on those lines if we could. Our apocalyptic dream is vanishing into thin air. It may be that the industrial revolution which began in the reign of George III has produced most of its fruits, and has had its day. We may have to look forward to such a change as is imagined by Anatole France at the end of his ' Isle of the Penguins/ when, after an orgy of revolution and destruc- tion, we shall slide back into the quiet rural life of the early modern period. If so, the authors of the revolution will have cut their own throats, for there can be no great manu- facturing towns in such a society. The race will have tried a great experiment, and will have rejected it as unsatisfying. We shall have added something to our experience. Fontenelle exclaimed, ' How many foolish things we should say now, if the ancients had not said them all before us ! ' Fools are not so much afraid of plagiarism as this Frenchman supposed ; but it is true that ' Eventu rerum stolidi didicere magistro.' There is much to support the belief that there is a struggle for existence among ideas, and that those tend to prevail which correspond with the changing needs of humanity. It does not necessarily follow that the ideas which prevail are better morally, or even truer to the law of Nature, than those which fail. Life is so chaotic, and development so sporadic and one-sided, that a brief and brilliant success may carry with it the seeds of its own early ruin. The great triumphs of humanity have not THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 181 come all at once. Architecture reached its climax in an age otherwise barbarous ; Roman law was perfected in a dismal age of decline ; and the nineteenth century, with its marvels of applied science, has produced the ugliest of all civilisations. There have been notable flowering times of the Spirit of Man Ages of Pericles, Augustan Ages, Renaissances. The laws which determine these efflores- cences are unknown. They may depend on undistinguished periods when force is being stored up. So in individual greatness, the wind bloweth where it listeth. Some of our greatest may have died unknown, ' carent quia vate sacro/ Emerson indeed tells us that ' One accent of the Holy Ghost The careless world has never lost.' But I should like to know how Emerson obtained this information. The World has not always been ' careless ' about its inspired prophets ; it has often, as Faust remarks, burnt or crucified them, before they have delivered all their message. The activities of the Race-Spirit have been quite unaccountable. It has stumbled along blindly, falling into every possible pitfall. The laws of Nature neither promise progress nor forbid it. We could do much to determine our own future ; but there has been no consistency about our aspirations, and we have frequently followed false lights, and been dis- illusioned as much by success as by failure. The well-known law that all institutions carry with them the seeds of their own dissolution is not so much an illustration of the law of cyclical revolution, as a proof that we have been carried to and fro by every wind of doctrine. What we need is a fixed and absolute standard of values, that we may know what we want to get and whither we want to go. It is no answer to say that all values are relative and ought to change. Some values are not relative but absolute. Spiritual progress must be within the sphere of a reality which is not itself progressing, or for which, in Milton's grand words, ' progresses the dateless and irrevoluble circle of its own perfection, joining inseparable hands with joy and bliss in over-measure for ever.' Assuredly there must be advance in our apprehension of the ideal, which can never be fully realised because it belongs to the eternal 182 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS world. We count not ourselves to have apprehended in aspiration any more than in practice. As Nicolas of Cusa says : ' To be able to know ever more and more without end, this is our likeness to the eternal Wisdom. Man always desires to know better what he knows, and to love more what he loves ; and the whole world is not sufficient for him, because it does not satisfy his craving for know- ledge.' But since our object is to enter within the realm of unchanging perfection, finite and relative progress cannot be our ultimate aim, and such progress, like everything else most worth having, must not be aimed at too directly. Our ultimate aim is to live in the knowledge and enjoyment of the absolute values, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. If the Platonists are right, we shall shape our surroundings more effectively by this kind of idealism than by adopting the creed and the methods of secularism. I have suggested that our disappointments have been very largely due to the unworthiness of our ideals, and to the confused manner in which we have set them before our minds. The best men and women do not seem to be subject to this confusion. So far as they can make their environment, it is a society immensely in advance of anything which has been realised among mankind generally. If any social amelioration is to be hoped for, its main characteristic will probably be simplification rather than further complexity. This, however, is not a question which can be handled at the end of a lecture. Plato says of his ideal State that it does not much matter whether it is ever realised on earth or not. The type is laid up in heaven, and approximations to it will be made from time to time, since all living creatures are drawn upwards towards the source of their being. It does not matter very much, if he was right in believing as we too believe in human immortality. And yet it does matter ; for unless our communing with the eternal Ideas endows us with some creative virtue, some power which makes itself felt upon our immediate environment, it cannot be that we have made those Ideas in any sense our own. There is no alchemy by which we may get golden conduct out of leaden instincts so Herbert Spencer told us very THE IDEA OF PKOGKESS 183 truly ; but if our ideals are of gold, there is an alchemy which will transmute our external activities, so that our contributions to the spiritual temple may be no longer ' wood, hay, and stubble,' to be destroyed in the next conflagration, but precious and durable material. For individuals, then, the path of progress is always open ; but, as Hesiod told us long before the Sermon on the Mount, it is a narrow path, steep and difficult, especially at first. There will never be a crowd gathered round this gate; ' few there be that find it.' For this reason, we must cut down our hopes for our nation, for Europe, and for humanity at large, to a very modest and humble aspiration. We have no millennium to look forward to ; but neither need we fear any protracted or widespread retrogression. There will be new types of achievement which will enrich the experience of the race ; and from time to time, in the long vista which science seems to promise us, there will be new flowering-times of genius and virtue, not less glorious than the age of Sophocles or the age of Shakespeare. They will not merely repeat the triumphs of the past, but will add new varieties to the achievements of the human mind. Whether the human type itself is capable of further physical, intellectual, or moral improvement, we do not know. It is safe to predict that we shall go on hoping, though our recent hopes have ended in disappointment. Our lower ambitions partly succeed and partly fail, and never wholly satisfy us ; of our more worthy visions for our race we may perhaps cherish the faith that no pure hope can ever wither, except that a purer may grow out of its roots. THE VICTORIAN AGE EACH generation takes a special pleasure in removing the household gods of its parents from their pedestals, and consigning them to the cupboard. The prophet or pioneer, after being at first declared to be unintelligible or absurd, has a brief spell of popularity, after which he is said to be conventional, and then antiquated. We may find more than one reason for this. A movement has more to fear from its disciples than from its critics. The great man is linked to his age by his weakest side ; and his epigoni, who are not great men, carica- ture his message and make it ridiculous. Besides, every movement is a reaction, and generates counter-reactions. The pendulum swings backwards and forwards. Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival. The German Von Eicken found, in this tendency of all human movements to provoke violent reactions, the master key of history. Every idea or institution passes into its opposite. For instance, Roman imperialism, which was created by an intense national consciousness, ended by destroying the nationality of rulers and sub- jects alike. The fanatical nationalism of the Jews left them a people without a country. The Catholic Church began by renouncing the world, and became the heir of the defunct Roman empire. In political philosophy, the law of the swinging pendulum may act as a salutary cold douche. Universal suffrage, says Sybel, has always heralded the end of parliamentary government. Tocque- ville cap- this by saying that the more successful a democracy is in levelling a population, the less will be the resistance which the next despotism will encounter. 184 THE VICTORIAN AGE 185 But the pendulum sometimes swings very slowly, and oscillates within narrow limits ; while at other times the changes are violent and rapid. The last century and a half, beginning with what Arnold Toynbee was the first to call the Industrial Revolution, has been a period of more rapid change than any other which history records. The French Revolution, which coincided with its first stages, helped to break the continuity between the old order and the new, and both by its direct influence and by the vigorous reactions which it generated cleft society into conflicting elements. Then followed a Great War, which shook the social structure to its base, and awakened into intense vitality the slumbering enthusiasm of nation- ality. At the same time, a variety of mechanical inven- tions gave man an entirely new control over the forces of nature and a new knowledge of the laws of nature, and this new knowledge, not content with practical applica- tions, soon revolutionised all the natural sciences, and profoundly affected both religion and philosophy. The reign of Queen Victoria, which I have chosen to mark the limits of my survey to-day, covered the latter half of this saeculum mirabile, the most wonderful century in human history. There are of course no beginnings or ends in history. We may walk for a few miles by the side of a river, noting its shallows and its rapids, the gorges which confine it and the plains through which it meanders ; but we know that we have seen neither the beginning nor the end of its course, that the whole river has an unbroken continuity, and that sections, whether of space or time, are purely arbitrary. We are always sowing our future ; we are always reaping our past. The Industrial Revolution began in reality before the accession of George III, and the French monarchy was stricken with mortal disease before Louis XV bequeathed his kingdom to his luckless successor. But there can be no question that the river of civilisa- tion reached a stretch of rapids towards the end of the eighteenth century. For instance, in locomotion the riding-horse and pack-horse had hardly given place to 186 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS the coach and waggon ^before the railway superseded road traffic ; the fast sailing clippers had a short lease of life before steam was used for crossing the seas. In- dustrial changes came too quickly for the government to make the necessary readjustments, at a time when the nation was righting for its life and then recovering from its exhaustion. The greatest sufferings caused by the revolution in the life of the people were in the first half of the century ; the latter half was a time of readjust- ment and reform. One great interest of the Victorian Age is that it was the time when a new social order was being built up, and entirely new problems were being solved. The nineteenth century has been called the age of hope ; and perhaps only a superstitious belief in the automatic progress of humanity could have carried our fathers and grandfathers through the tremendous diffi- culties which the rush through the rapids imposed upon them. Let us spend five minutes in picturing to ourselves the English nation in a condition of stable equilibrium, as it was in the eighteenth century. Before the Industrial Revolution, the country was on the whole prosperous and contented. The masses had no voice in the government, but most of them had a stake in the country. There were no large towns, except London, and the typical unit was the self-contained village, which included craftsmen as well as agriculturists, and especially workers in wool, the staple national industry. The aim of village agriculture was to provide subsistence for the parishioners, not to feed the towns. The typical village was a street of cottages, each with a small garden, and an open field round it, divided up like a modern allotments area. The roads between villages were mere tracks across the common, often so bad that carts were driven by preference through the fields, as they still are in Greece. So each parish pro- vided for its own needs. The population was sparse, and increased very slowly, in spite of the enormous birthrate, because the majority of the children died. Families like that of Dean Colet, who was one of twenty-two children, among whom he was the only one to grow up, remained THE VICTORIAN AGE 187 common till the middle of the eighteenth century. Then, for reasons which have never, I think, been fully explained, the deathrate rapidly declined, at the very time when economic conditions demanded a larger population. This is the more remarkable, when we remember the manner in which young children were treated before the Factory Acts. Political power was in the hands of a genuine aristo- cracy, who did more to deserve their privileges than any other aristocracy of modern times. They were, as a class, highly cultivated men, who had travelled much on the Continent, and mixed in society there. In 1785 Gibbon was told that 40,000 English were either travelling or living abroad at one time. They were enlightened patrons of literature and art, and made the collections of master- pieces which were the pride of England, and which are now being dispersed to the winds. Their libraries were well stocked, and many of them were accomplished classical scholars. They were not content, like their successors to-day, to load their tables with magazines and newspapers. Lastly, they fought Napoleon to a finish, and never showed the white feather. Those who have studied the family portraits in a great house, or the wonderful portrait gallery in the Provost's Lodge at Eton, will see on the faces not only the pride and self-satisfaction of a privileged class, but the power to lead the nation whether in the arts of war or of peace. No doubt, political corruption was rampant ; but it was not till George III tried to govern personally by means of corruption, that its consequences were disastrous. The loss of America was the first serious blow to the aristocratic regime. The necessary changes would have come about earlier but for the French Revolution and the war. The former caused a panic which now seems to us exaggerated. But we are accustomed to revolutions, and know that they never last more than a few years ; the French Revolution was the first of its kind. Moreover, France had long been the acknowledged leader of civilisation, and a general overturn in that country terrified men like Gibbon into 188 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS prophesying that a similar outbreak was likely to over- whelm law, order and property in England. They did not realise how different the conditions were in the two countries. The most modest democratic reforms were therefore impossible till Napoleon was out of the way, and till the anti-revolutionary panic had subsided. One result of the war has not always been realised. The eighteenth century had been international ; there was not much Chauvinism or Jingoism anywhere till the French, fighting ostensibly under the banner of humanity, had kindled the fire of patriotism in Spain, in Germany, and even in Russia. England had always had a strong national self-consciousness ; and after the war the bonds of sympathy with France were not at once renewed, so that our country, during the early part of Victoria's reign, was more isolated from the main currents of European thought than ever, before or since. Men of letters who lamented this isolation now turned for inspiration rather to Germany than to France. On the other hand, the war did not interrupt the intellectual life of the country to anything like the same extent as the recent Great War. At no period since the Elizabethans was there such an output of great poetry ; and it does not seem to have occurred to any young lady of that time to ask Scott or Wordsworth what they were doing during the war. Modern sociologists have drawn lurid pictures of the condition of the working class during the earlier part of the last century. It seems in truth to have been very bad. Byron in 1812 told the Lords : ' I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey, but never under the most despotic of infidel governments did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return in the very heart of a Christian country.' In 1831 a member of parliament said : ' An agricultural labourer and a pauper the words are synonymous.' Those who want details can find them in the well- known controversial books by the Hammonds, which state the case against the governing class in an exhaustive manner. There was in fact too much ground for Dis- raeli's statement that England at that time consisted of THE VICTORIAN AGE 189 two nations, the rich and the poor. The poor were still largely illiterate, and so inarticulate ; and the comparative absence of the large half-educated class which now dominates all public discussion made the cultivated gentry a class apart. Their own standard of culture was higher than that of the leisured class to-day ; but they took little interest in the lives of the poor, until they were forced to do so. We however who have witnessed the succession of economic crises which attend and follow a great war ought not to forget the appalling difficulties with which the government was confronted. In 1795 there was actual famine, which was met by the famous system of doles out of the rates, in augmentation of wages, a most mischievous bit of legislation, like the similar expedients of the last three years. It had the double effect of pauperising the rural labourer and of putting an artificial premium on large families -the children who were carted off in waggon-loads to feed the factories. It was repealed only when the ruined farmers were abandoning their land, and the glebe-owning clergy their livings. Fluctuations in prices had much to do with the miseries of the hungry thirties and forties ; but over-population, as the economists of the time pointed out with perfect justice, was one of the main causes. It was not till much later that there was food enough for all ; and this was the result of the new wheat-fields of America and the sheep-walks of Australia, which brought in food and took away mouths. In Ireland the barbarous and illiterate peasantry multiplied till the population exceeded eight millions, when the inevitable famine illustrated nature's method of dealing with recklessness. The only error with which the economists of this time may be charged was that they did not realise that over-population is the result of a very low standard of civilisation. Families are restricted whenever the parents have social ambitions and a standard of comfort. Where they have none, the vital statistics are those of Russia, Ireland, India and China. The astonishing progress in all measurable values which marked the first half of the reign produced a whole 190 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS literature of complacency. I quoted some examples of the language which was then common, in my Romanes Lecture on ' The Idea of Progress.' Macaulay supplies some of the best examples. We must remember that the progress was real, and that its speed was unexampled in history. The country was, in vulgar language, a going concern, as it never was before and has not been since. The dominions beyond the seas were being peopled up and consolidated. At home education was spreading, liberty was increasing, and the light taxes were raised with an ease which fortunately for ourselves we no longer even remember. Principles seemed to have been discovered which guaranteed a further advance in almost every direction, intellectual as well as material. For that was the great age of British science ; and most branches of literature were flourishing. Hope told a flattering tale, and optimism became a sort of religion. Nevertheless, such complacency was bound to produce a violent protest. Disraeli, whose well-remembered warn- ing about ' the two nations ' has already been quoted, described the age as one which by the help of mechanical inventions had mistaken comfort for progress. And com- fort, as another critic of social science has said, is more insidious than luxury in hampering the higher develop- ment of a people. The literature of social indignation was contemporaneous with the literature of complacency. Carlyle and Ruskin were its chief prophets ; but we must not forget the novels of Dickens, Charles Reade and Kingsley. Carlyle and Ruskin both denounced the age with the vehemence of major prophets vehemence was in fashion at that time in English literature but they did not approach the ' condition of England question ' from quite the same angle. Carlyle was a Stoic, or in other words a Calvinist without dogmas ; he had also learned to be a mystic from his studies of German idealism. He repre- sents one phase of the anti-French reaction ; he hated most of the ideas of 1789, as displayed in their results. He hated the scepticism of the Revolution, its negations, its love of claptrap rhetoric and fine phrases, and above THE VICTORIAN AGE 191 all its anarchism. He wished to see society well ordered, under its wisest men ; he wished to overcome materialism by idealism, and loose morality by industry and the fear of God. Justice, he declared, is done in this world ; right is might, if we take long views. Institutions collapse when they become shams, and no longer fulfil their function. The sporting squires ought to be founding colonies instead of preserving game. As for the new industrialism, he disliked it with the fervour of a Scottish peasant. Ruskin was a Platonist, steeped in the study of Plato, and bound to him by complete sympathy. We cannot separate Ruskin the art-critic from Ruskin the social reformer. His great discovery was the close connexion of the decay of art with faulty social arrangements. Ugli- ness in the works of man is a symptom of social disease. He could not avert his eyes from the modern town, as Wordsworth did, because the modern town meant a great deal to him, and all of it was intolerable. He observed that the disappearance of beauty in human productions synchronised with the invention of machinery and the development of great industries, and he could not doubt that the two changes were interconnected. We some- times forget that until the reign of George III a town was regarded as improving a landscape. A city was a glorious and beautiful thing, an object to be proud of. The hill of Zion is a fair place, the joy of the whole earth, because it had the holy city built upon it. Never since civilisation began has such ugliness been created as the modern English or American town. Ruskin saw in these structures a true index of the mind of their builders and inhabitants, and the sight filled him with horror. He read with entire approval what Plato wrote of industrial- ised Athens. ' The city of which we are speaking,' he says in the ' Laws,' ' is some eighty furlongs from the sea. Then there is some hope that your citizens may be virtu- ous. Had you been on the sea, and well provided with harbours, and an importing rather than a producing country, some mighty saviour would have been needed, and lawgivers^more than mortal, if you were to have even a chance of preserving your State from degeneracy. 192 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS The sea is pleasant enough as a daily companion, but it has a bitter and brackish quality, filling the streets with merchants and shopkeepers, and begetting in the souls of men uncertain and dishonest ways, making the State unfaithful and unfriendly to her own children and to other nations.' Like Plato, Kuskin would fain have returned to a much simpler social structure, when each country, and even to a great extent each village, was sufficient to itself. He did not show how such a return is possible without blowing up the great towns and their inhabitants ; but he quite seriously regarded the Industrial Eevolution as a gigantic blunder, and believed that England would never be healthy or happy until what his contemporaries called progress had been somehow swept away with all its works. How this was to be done he hardly considered. Like a true Platonist, he set before his countrymen, in glowing language, the beauty of the eternal Ideas or abso- lute Values, pleaded that there was no necessary connexion between equality of production and equality of remunera- tion, and instituted various experiments, not all un- successful, in restoring the old handicrafts and the temper which inspired them. The problem of mending or ending industrialism, foolishly called capitalism, remains unsolved. Ruskin's own artistic life would have been, impossible without the paternal sherry and the rich men who drank it ; and Morris' exquisite manufactures depended absolutely on the patronage of the capitalists whom he denounced. But the indignation which these Victorian social reformers exhibited had much justification, even after the worst abuses had been partially remedied. A mixture of rapid progress and extreme departmental inefficiency is one of the characteristics of the earlier part of the reign. Lord Justice Bowen has written an instruc- tive sketch of the administration of the Law between 1837 and 1887. There were two systems of judicature, Law and Equity, with a different origin, different procedure, and different rules of right and wrong. One side of West- minster Hall gave judgments which the other side restrained the successful party from enforcing. The THE VICTORIAN AGE 193 bewildered litigant was driven backwards and forwards. Merchants were hindered for months and years from re- covering their dues. The fictitious adventures of John Doe and Richard Roe, the legal Gog and Magog, played an important part in trials to recover possession of land. Arrears accumulated year by year. The Court of Chan- cery was closed to the poor, and was a name of terror to the rich. It was said by a legal writer that ' no man can enter into a Chancery suit with any reasonable hope of being alive at its termination, if he has a determined adversary.' Bowen says that Dickens' pictures of the English law ' contain genuine history.' The horrors of the debtors' prison are well known, and nearly 4000 persons were sometimes arrested for debt in one year. In 1836, 494 persons were condemned to death, though only 34 were hanged. Public executions continued to 1867. If a farmer's gig knocked down a foot passenger in a lonely lane, two persons were not allowed to speak in court the farmer and the pedestrian. Most of these abuses were rectified long before the end of the reign. The Universities were slowly emerging from the depths to which they had sunk in the eighteenth century, when they neither taught nor examined nor maintained dis- cipline. We all remember Gibbon's description of the Fellows of his College, ' whose dull but deep potations excused the brisker intemperance of youth.' These gentlemen were most of them waiting for College livings, to which they were allowed to carry off, as a solatium, some dozens of College port. Cambridge, it is only fair to say, never fell quite so low as Oxford, and began to reform itself earlier. The Mathematical and Classical Triposes were both founded before Queen Victoria's acces- sion. But public opinion thought that the University authorities needed some stimulation from outside, and in 1850 a Royal Commission was appointed for Oxford, and two years later another for Cambridge. The Reports of these two Commissions are very amusing, especially that of the Oxford Board, which lets itself go in a refreshing style. Its members had received provocation. The Governing Bodies generally refused to answer their n. o 194 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS questions. Some of the Colleges had exacted an oath from new Fellows to reveal nothing about the affairs of the College. The Dean of Christ Church declined to answer letters from the Koyal Commission ; the President of Magdalen replied that he was not aware that he had mis- used his revenues, and begged to close the correspondence. These dignified potentates are not spared in the Keport. The Cambridge Report, which is much more polite, did good service by recommending the foundation of a medical school. Other changes, such as the abolition of all Anglican privileges, and the permission of Fellows to marry, came later. In the case of the Universities, as in that of the Law, the improvements between 1837 and the first Jubilee were enormous. The Civil Service, it is almost needless to say, was a sanctuary of aristocratic jobbery. Many of the clerks were rather supercilious gentlemen, who arrived late and departed early from their offices. The Army in 1837 consisted, in actual strength, of about 100,000 men, of whom 19,000 were in India and 20,000 in Ireland. There had been a strong movement after the peace to abolish the Army altogether, on the ground that another war was almost unthinkable. The Duke of Wellington was only able to keep up this small force by hiding it away in distant parts of the empire ; the total number of troops in Great Britain was only 26,000. Officers were ordered to efface themselves by never wearing uniform except on parade. A Royal Duke could not be given a military funeral, because ' there were not troops enough to bury a Field Marshal.' As to the quality of the troops, the Duke frequently called them ' the scum of the earth,' and the brutal discipline of the time did everything to justify this description, for the soldier was supposed to have surrendered all his rights as a man and a citizen. The privates enlisted for life or for twenty-one years, and it was so difficult to get recruits that they were frequently caught while drunk, or frankly kidnapped. They were dressed, for campaigning in the tropics, in high leather stocks and buttoned-up jackets, so that hundreds died of heat apoplexy. Lord Wolseley THE VICTORIAN AGE 195 thought that in 1837 50,000 Frenchmen could have easily taken London. Nor was the danger of a French invasion at all remote. The Volunteer movement, the social effects of which were excellent, was mainly due to the Prince Consort, a far wiser man than was recognised during his lifetime. The Crimean War revealed in glaring colours the in- competence of the military authorities and of the Cabinet at home. If we had been fighting against any European power except Russia, with whom utter mismanagement is a tradition, there can be no doubt that our Army would have been destroyed, as it ought to have been at Inker- man. The military credit of the nation was only partially restored by the prompt suppression of the Indian Mutiny. Yet here again the age of hope and progress made good its professions. The mistakes in the Boer War seem not to have been nearly so bad as those in the Crimea. It would be easy to go through the other departments of national life the Navy, Finance, Colonial and Indian Policy, the growth and distribution of Wealth, Locomotion and Transport, Education, Science, Medicine and Surgery, and to prove that the progress during the reign of Queen Victoria was quite unprecedented. The creed of optimism was natural and inevitable at such a time, though cool heads might remember the line of Publilius Syrus, Ubi nil timetur, quod timeatur nascitur. Lecky, a historian with some practical experience of politics, deliberately stated his opinion that no country was ever better governed than England between 1832 and 1867, the dates of the first Reform Bill and of Disraeli's scheme to dish the Whigs. As far as internal affairs go. it would not be easy to prove him wrong. The one prime necessity for good government was present : those who paid the taxes were also those who imposed them. If there was some false economy, as there was in the Crimean War, sound finance benefited the whole population by keeping credit high, interest low, and taxation light. Political life was purer than it had been, and purer prob- ably than it is now. The Hou.se of Commons enjoyed 196 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS that immense prestige which has been completely lost since the old Queen's death. The debates were read with semi-religious fervour by every good citizen over his break- fast, and a prominent politician was treated with even more exaggerated reverence than our worthy grandfathers paid to bishops. The debates were good because they were real debates and conducted by men who all spoke the same language. The rhetorical methods of the working man are quite different from those of the gentry, and mutual annoyance is generated by the mixture of styles in debate. Above all, the House of Commons was still a rather independent body. The history of England shows that as soon as the Commons freed them- selves from the control of the king, they began to try to free themselves from the control of the constituencies. They debated in secret ; they made their persons legally sacrosanct ; and on several occasions they turned out a member who had been duly elected by his constituents, and admitted a member who had been duly rejected. These encroachments could not last long. The Brad- laugh case was the last attempt to repeat the tactics by which Wilkes was kept out of Parliament ; but until the poisonous delegate theory obtained currency, the member of Parliament was a real legislator, with a right to think, speak and vote for himself. During the middle part of the reign, the dramatic duel between Gladstone and Disraeli gave a heroic aspect to party politics, and kept up the public interest. In foreign politics it is not so easy to share Lecky's opinion. The opium war against China, and the Crimean War, were blunders which hardly anyone now defends ; and Palmerston's habit of bullying weak foreign powers did not really raise our prestige. For a long time we could not make up our minds whether France or Russia was the potential enemy : a vacillation which proved that the balance of power, which we thought so necessary for our safety, already existed. Our statesmen, in spite of the warnings of Lord Acton and Matthew Arnold, were blind to the menace from Germany, down to the end of the reign and later. The Crimean War only increased the THE VICTORIAN AGE 197 friction between France and England. The French fortified Cherbourg, and talked openly of invasion. In 1860 Flahault, the French ambassador in London, said bluntly that ' his great object was to prevent war between the two countries.' This prolonged jealousy and suspicion between the two Western Powers made it impossible for England to exercise much influence on the Continent. The settle- ment after 1815 handed over central and eastern Europe to governments of the type which it is the fashion to call reactionary. Russia, Prussia, and Austria, acting to- gether, were not to be resisted. And so the disturbances of 1848, once more kindled by Paris, just failed ; and democracy had a serious rebuff. Nearly all the despotic governments of Europe were overthrown in 1848, and nearly all were restored a year later. The French indeed got rid of their king, mainly because he was a pacifist ; but Germany refused to be unified under the red flag, and began to prepare for a very different destiny. The Pope wobbled and then came down heavily on the side of the old order. Meanwhile, England looked on. Chartism was a very feeble affair compared to the continental revolu- tions, and it flickered out in this year. The people had got rid of the corn-laws, and were fairly content ; there was nothing at all like a class war in this generation. So, while Macaulay was showing how very differently we manage things in England compare, for example, 1688 with 1848 we decided to invite the world and his wife to London, to envy and admire us in Sir Joseph Paxton's great glass house. We must not laugh at that archi- tectural monstrosity. It was the mausoleum of certain generous hopes. On the Continent men had been shot and hanged for the brotherhood of the human race ; we hoped to show them a more excellent way. We had given a lead in free trade ; we still hoped that our example would soon be followed in all civilised nations. We had reduced our Army to almost nothing ; we hoped that militarism was a thing of the past. All these hopes were frustrated. A fanatical nationalism began to foster racial animosity ; the enrages of Europe began to preach 198 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS class-hatred and to find many listeners ; protective tariffs were set up on every frontier ; international law became a mere cloak for the schemes of violence ; and, as has been said, all Europe ' breathed a harsher air.' Worst of all, the mad race of competitive armaments, which was destined to wreck a great part of the wealth which two generations of peaceful industry had gathered, was begun. We have to remember that the prosperity and security of the happy time which we are now considering were due to temporary causes, which can never recur. In the nineteenth century England was the most fortunately situated country, geographically, in the world. When the opening and development of the Atlantic trade deprived the Mediterranean ports of their pride of place, an Atlantic stage of world-commerce began, in which England, an island with good harbours on its western coasts, was in the most favourable position. The Pacific stage which is now beginning must inevitably give the primacy to America. We had also a long start, industrially, over all our rivals, and our possession of great coal-fields and iron- fields close together gave us a still further advantage. All these advantages are past or passing. Henceforth we shall have to compete with other nations on unprivileged conditions. It is useless to lament the inevitable, but it is foolish to shut our eyes to it. The Victorian Age was the culminating point of our prosperity. Our great wealth, indeed, continued to advance till the catastrophe of 1914. But there was a shadow of apprehension over everything ' never glad confident morning again.' Let us now turn to the intellectual and spiritual move- ments of the reign. The Romanticist revolution was complete, in a sense, before 1825. It was a European, not only an English movement, and perhaps it was not less potent in France than in Germany and England, though in accordance with the genius and traditions of that nation it took very different forms. In England it inspired verse more than prose, though we must not for- get Scott's novels. It produced a galaxy of noble poetry during the Great War, and added another immortal glory to that age of heroic struggle. By a strange chance, THE VICTORIAN AGE 199 nearly all the great poets of the war-period died young. Wordsworth alone was left, and he was spared to reap in a barren old age the honours which he had earned and not received between 1798 and 1820. For about fifteen years there was an interregnum in English literature, which makes a convenient division between the great men of the Napoleonic era and the great Victorians. tFrom about 1840, when great literature again began to appear, the conditions were more like those with which we are familiar. There was an unparalleled output of books of all kinds, a very large reading public, and a steadily increasing number of professional authors de- pendent on the success of their popular appeal. As in our own day, a great quantity of good second-rate talent trod on the heels of genius, and made it more difficult for really first-rate work to find recognition. The impetus of the Romantic movement was by no means exhausted, but it began to spread into new fields. The study of ' Gothic ' art and literature had been at first, as was in- evitable, ill-informed. Its reconstruction of the Middle Ages was a matter of sentimental antiquarianism, no more successful than much of its church restoration. The Victorians now extended the imaginative sensibility, which had been expended on nature and history, to the life of the individual. This meant that the novel instead of the poem was to be the characteristic means of literary ex- pression ; and even the chief Victorian poets, Tennyson and Browning, are sometimes novelists in verse. The grandest and most fully representative figure in all Victorian literature is of course Alfred Tennyson. And here let me digress for one minute. It was a good rule of Thomas Carlyle to set a portrait of the man whom he was describing in front of him on his writing-table. It is a practice which would greatly diminish the output of literary impertinence. Let those who are disposed to follow the present evil fashion of disparaging the great Victorians make a collection of their heads in photographs or engravings, and compare them with those of their own favourites. Let them set up in a row good portraits of Tennyson, Charles Darwin, Gladstone, Manning, Newman, 200 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Martineau, Lord Lawrence, Burne Jones, and, if they like, a dozen lesser luminaries, and ask themselves candidly whether men of this stature are any longer among us. I will not speculate on the causes which from time to time throw up a large number of great men in a single genera- tion. I will only ask you to agree with me that since the golden age of Greece (assuming that we can trust the portrait busts of the famous Greeks) no age can boast so many magnificent types of the human countenance as the reign of Queen Victoria. We, perhaps, being epigoni ourselves, are more at home among our fellow-pygmies. Let us agree with Ovid, if we will : Prisca iuvent alios ; ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor ; haec aetas moribus apta meis. But let us have the decency to uncover before the great men of the last century ; and if we cannot appreciate them, let us reflect that the fault may possibly be in our- selves. Tennyson's leonine head realises the ideal of a great poet. And he reigned nearly as long as his royal mistress. The longevity and unimpaired freshness of the great Victorians has no parallel in history, except in ancient Greece. The great Attic tragedians lived as long as Tennyson and Browning ; the Greek philosophers reached as great ages as Victorian theologians ; but if you look at the dates in other flowering times of literature you will find that the life of a man of genius is usually short, and his period of production very short indeed. Tennyson is now depreciated for several reasons. His technique as a writer of verse was quite perfect ; our newest poets prefer to write verses which will not even scan. He wrote beautifully about beautiful things, and among beautiful things he included beautiful conduct. He thought it an ugly and disgraceful thing for a wife to be unfaithful to her husband, and condemned Guinevere and Lancelot as any sound moralist would condemn them. A generation which will not buy a novel unless it contains some scabrous story of adultery, and revels in the ' realism ' of the man with a muck-rake, naturally ' has no use for ' the ' Idylls of the King, ' and THE VICTORIAN AGE 201 calls Arthur the blameless prig. The reaction against Tennyson has culminated in abuse of the Idylls, in which the present generation finds all that it most dislikes in the Victorian mind. Modern research has unburied the unsavoury story that Modred was the illegitimate son of Arthur by his own half-sister, and blames Tennyson for not treating the whole story as an Oedipus-legend. In reality, Malory does not so treat it. He admits the story, but depicts Arthur as the flower of kinghood, ' Rex quondam rexque futurus.' Tennyson, however, was not bound to follow Malory. He has followed other and still greater models, Spenser and Milton. He has given us an allegorical epic, as he explains in his Epilogue to the Queen : Accept this old imperfect tale, New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul, Ideal manhood closed in real man Rather than that gray king, whose name, a ghost, Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak, And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still ; or him Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's. The whole poem is an allegory. Camelot is Never built at all, And therefore built for ever. The charming novelettes in which the allegory is forgotten need no more justification than the adventures in The Faerie Queene,' or the parliamentary debates in ' Paradise Lost.' The Idylls fall into line with two of the greatest poems in the English language ; and when Tennyson writes of Arthur, ' From the great deep to the great deep he goes,' he is telling his own deepest conviction of what our brief life on earth means the conviction which in- spires his last words of poetry, ' Crossing the Bar.' Tennyson knew materialism and revolution, and whither they tend. The children born of thee are sword and fire, Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws. And The fear lest this my realm, upreared By noble deeds at one with noble vows, From flat confusion and brute violence Reel back into the beast and be no more. 202' OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS We are told that he is shallow, an echo of the thoughts of educated men at the time, and that, like the Victorians in general, he never probes anything to the bottom. It is true that he reflects his age ; so do almost all other great men ; and that his age was an age of transition ; so, I believe, are all other ages. He repre- sents his age both in his deep-rooted conservatism or moderate liberalism, and in his reverence for the new knowledge which was undermining the conservative stronghold, especially in religion. He is unjustly re- proached with speaking contemptuously of the French Revolution, ' the red fool-fury of the Seine,' as ' no graver than a schoolboys' barring out.' He despised barricades and red flags and September massacres, because he be- lieved that the victories of broadening Freedom are to be won by constitutional means. He is a little self-righteous about it, no doubt ; that helps to date him. He came, we must remember, half-way between the Pantisocracy of Coleridge and his friends and the still cruder vagaries of our young intellectuals. Years brought the philosophic mind to Carlyle, Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Years will bring a relative sanity to our young Bolsheviks ; they will then, I hope (for I wish them well), begin to read Tennyson. The second ' Locksley Hall ' is peculiarly inter- esting for our purpose, because, though the author pro- tested that it was written in character, dramatically, it is plain that it does express his political and social disillu- sionments and anxiety about the future ; and Gladstone answered it as an attack upon the England of the day, calling attention to the great progress which had been made in the 'sixty years' since the first 'Locksley Hall.' Tennyson saw that the Victorian social order was break- ing up ; and with great prescience he foretold many of the evils which have since come upon us. The deluge of political ' babble ' ; the indifference of the new voters to the grandeur of the British Empire ; the contempt for experience and wisdom, setting the feet above the brain and bringing back the dark ages without their faith or hope ; the vague aspirations for international friendship, blighted by the pressure of over-population THE VICTORIAN AGE 203 and ending in universal war : all these shadows of coming events, too clearly seen, have convinced him that there is no straight line of progress, but many a backward-stream- ing curve, which often seems more like retrogression than progress. This is not the language of 1851. In truth the clouds began to gather before the old Queen and the old poet died. Even in fiction, the note of disillusion- ment is heard with increasing clearness, in the latest novels of George Eliot, in writers like Gissing, and in the later books of Thomas Hardy compared with the earlier. In religion Tennyson certainly represents the mood of the mid-century. Romanticism had given religion a new attractiveness in the revolutionary era. In France it stimulated the Neo-Catholicism of De Maistre and Chateaubriand ; in Germany it gave a mystical turn to philosophical idealism ; and in England it produced an Anglo-Catholic revival. But for reasons mentioned above, this revival remained intensely insular. England, and perhaps especially Oxford, were at this time so cut off from the Continent that the isolation of the English Tract- arians was not at first felt ; and the constructive work of philosophers and critics on the Continent was spurned as ' German theology.' So when Newman at length took the perhaps logical step of joining the Roman communion, the Movement broke up, and its ablest members turned against it with the anger of men who feel that they have been duped. Neither science nor criticism could be dis- regarded any longer. English scholars began to read German, as Carlyle had exhorted them to do ; and every- body began to read Darwin. There arose among the educated class an attitude towards religion which we may call very distinctively Victorian. Carlyle remained a Puritan, without any dogmatic beliefs except a kind of moralistic pantheism. Ruskin was a Protestant medievalist, who admired everything in a medieval cathedral except the altar. Tennyson and Browning were ready to let most dogmas go, but clung passionately to the belief in personal human survival. Tennyson's famous lines ' There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the 204 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS creeds ' have been wittily parodied by Samuel Butler : ' There lives more doubt in honest faith ' etc. The sentiment in Tennyson's lines may be easily defended ; but it must be confessed that ' honest doubt ' was some- thing of a pose at the time. In reading such men as Clough or Henri Amiel, the average man becomes im- patient, and is inclined to say ' Why can't the fellow make up his mind one way or the other, and get started ? ' They carry suspension of judgment to the verge of futility, and though they obviously suffer, one does not feel very sorry for them. It is the opposite failing from that of Macaulay, who as a historian suffers from a constitutional inability not to make up his mind on everything and everybody. Matthew Arnold is also a religious sceptic ; but he has formulated a liberal Protestant creed for him- self, not very unlike that of Sir John Seeley's ' Ecce Homo.' It was not a happy time for religious thinkers, unless they made themselves quite independent of organised Christi- anity. Intolerance was very bitter ; and only the secular arm stopped a whole series of ecclesiastical prosecutions, which would have made the ministry of the Church of England impossible except for fools, liars, and bigots. Real hatred was shown against the scientific leaders, which Darwin calmly ignored, and Huxley returned with interest. But though the contradictions and perplexities of rapid transition were more felt in religion than in any other subject, it may be doubted whether organised Christianity has ever been more influential in England than during the Victorian age, before the growth of the towns threw all the Church's machinery out of gear. Many of you will remember Lecky's charming description of the typical country parsonage, and the gracious and civilising influ- ences which radiated from what was often the very ideal of a Christian home. The description is in no way exag- gerated ; and now that high prices and predatory taxa- tion have destroyed this pleasant and unique feature of English life, it is worth while to recall to the younger generation what it was in the time of their fathers and grandfathers. THE VICTORIAN AGE 205 I have taken Tennyson as my example of Victorian literature, because his is the greatest and most representa- tive name. It is no reproach to say that he is thoroughly English. Browning is more cosmopolitan, but his method of facing the problems of life like a bull at a fence is characteristically English. There is no time to speak at length of the Victorian novel, another bright star in the firmament of the reign. Our nation has a great tradition in fiction, and we shall be wise to stick to it, instead of preferring a corrupt following of the French, whose novelists, in spite of their clever technique, seem to me frequently dull and usually repulsive. Dickens and Thackeray have been rivals, almost like Gladstone and Disraeli, and perhaps few are whole-hearted admirers of both. That any educated reader should fail to love one or the other is to me inexplicable. The palmiest day of English novel-writing was in the fifties, when Dickens, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Kingsley, Disraeli, Bulwer Lytton and Meredith were all writing. Later in the reign there was a short set-back, and the fortunes of English fiction seemed for a few years to be less promising than they became in the next generation, when several new writers of great ability and charm appeared. Now we seem to be once more in the trough of the wave ; and I cannot doubt that the main cause of the decay is the pernicious habit of writing hastily for money. If we take the trouble to consult Mr. Mudie's catalogue of fiction, we shall learn to our amazement that there are several writers, whose names we have never heard, who have to their discredit over a hundred works of fiction apiece. They obviously turn out several books a year, just as a shoemaker manufactures so many pairs of boots. The great novelists have generally written rapidly, rather too rapidly ; but such a cataract of ink as these heroes of the circulating library spill is abso- lutely inconsistent with even second-rate work. Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art ; and here again the Victorian Age occupies the most favourable part of the curve. Of the other glories of Victorian literature I can say 206 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS nothing now. But before leaving this part of the subject, consider the wonderful variety of strong or beautiful English prose writing which that age produced. Froude, Macaulay, Newman, Ruskin, Pater and Stevenson are each supreme in very different styles ; and all of them achieved excellence by an amount of labour which very few writers are now willing to bestow. I have no wish to ofier an unmeasured panegyric on an age which after all cannot be divested of the responsibility for making our own inevitable. It was to a considerable extent vulgarised by the amazing success of the Industrial Revolution. Napoleon's nation of shopkeepers did judge almost everything by quantitative standards, and by quantitative standards the higher values cannot be mea- sured. There was no lack of prophets to point out a better way, but the nation as a whole was not unfairly caricatured as John Bull, that stout, comfortable, rather bullying figure which excited Ruskin's indignation, and which others have said that we ought to burn instead of Guy Fawkes. We were unpopular on the Continent just when we thought that all other nations were envying us. They did envy us, but with the underlying conviction that there must be something wrong in a world where the Palmerstonian John Bull comes out on top. The greatness of the age, as I have said, depended on a combination of circumstances in their nature transient. It resembled the short-lived greatness of Venice, Genoa, and Holland. Before the end of the reign society had begun to disintegrate, so that we find antagonistic move- ments flourishing together. Theoretical socialism reached its zenith ; but there was also an outburst of romantic imperialism, of which Sir John Seeley, Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, was one of the founders, Froude and Dilke powerful propagandists, Rudyard Kipling the poet, and Joseph Chamberlain the practical manager. It was a mild attack of the epidemic which afterwards enticed Germany into the Great War, and the worst that can be said of it is that it encouraged a temper of sentimental brutality in the English people, and brought us for the first time into danger from a coalition of foreign powers. The THE VICTORIAN AGE 207 second Jubilee was its day of triumph ; the Boer War the beginning of its downfall. The fusion of social classes proceeded more and more rapidly as the century went on. At the beginning of the reign the territorial oligarchs purchased another lease of power by an alliance with the successful commercial class which, with the Indian Nabobs, had been violently radical until the aristocracy recognised them. The two parties quarrelled about the Corn Laws and Factory Acts, but when these questions were settled, they gradually drew together, while lavish new creations of peers turned the House of Lords into the predominantly middle-class body which it is now. Towards the end of the reign the higher gentry began again to go into trade, as they had done until the Georges brought in German ideas, and the way was prepared for the complete destruction of social barriers which the Great War effected. Meanwhile, there were ominous signs that our civilisation, like others in the past, might be poisoned by the noxious by-products of its own activities. Parasitism at both ends of the scale became an ever-increasing burden on industry, and symptoms of race-deterioration became apparent to the very few who have eyes for such things. Legislation removed most of the obvious evils in the workmen's lot, but one evil it could not remove, and this became more grievous and more resented every year. The great industry was turning human beings into mere cogs in machines, and a type of workman was evolved who needed no craftsmanship such as an intelligent man could be proud to acquire and happy to exercise. This problem, which threatens the life of our civilisation, was already beginning to loom darkly before the eyes of the late Victorians. I have no doubt that the Elizabethan and the Victorian Ages will appear to the historian of the near future as the twin peaks in which English civilisation culminated. There may be a third, equally splendid, period yet to come, but I do not think that any of us will live to see it. The re- mainder of the twentieth century will be handicapped by tbe necessity of clearing up the mess made in the last eight years. However, the Napoleonic War was followed, as I 208 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS have argued, by a very great age, and I will not be so rash as to prophesy what England will be like thirty years hence. It is for you, my younger hearers, to answer that question, for the answer depends on yourselves. We old Victorians will before then have made room for you by quitting a world to which, as I am sure you think, we no longer belong. THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS THE projecting peninsula of Asia which the ancients called Europe 1 covers, with its adjacent islands, less than two million square miles : an area about the same as that of India, and about half that of Canada. The homeland of the white man, if we exclude Russia, might be dropped into Australia or Brazil without anywhere coming near the coast. And yet it is no accident that Europe has taken the lead in civilisation. It is the only continent which has no deserts ; and its Mediterranean shores are perhaps the most favoured region of the whole planet. Its popuUtion consists, as we are now taught, of three distinct races, each with its own characteristics. The shores of the Mediterranean belong to a dark, long-headed race which probably had its original home in North Africa, formerly connected with Europe by more than one land bridge. This race not only occupied the northern coasts of the Mediterranean, but pushed up the warm Atlantic sea-board as far as Scotland. The Mediterranean man is intolerant of severe cold, and has not maintained his ascendancy in mountainous districts. The race is not peculiar to Europe, since much of the Indian population belongs to a kindred stock, as do the Berbers of North Africa and the Semitic peoples. The round-headed element in the population of Europe, which has been not very happily called Alpine, came from Asia, and drove a wedge across the centre of the continent, forming at the present day a large part of the population in France and Germany, 1 Russia is excluded, as being geographically part of the Asiatic mass. n. 209 p 210 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS and the main part of the Slavonic nations. The third factor, the Nordic race, is now believed to be genuinely European, being indigenous around the Baltic Sea. From this centre it flooded the greater part of Europe in suc- cessive waves of invasion. Its well-known characteristics are tall stature, light-coloured hair and eyes, and a roving disposition. Being a good fighter, though pugnacious rather than warlike, the Nordic man has been a great conqueror, and has formed the aristocracy of many coun- tries inhabited mainly by the other European races. Being a heavy eater and drinker, he is what the Americans call a high standard man, and cannot or will not compete by the side of other races in manual labour. This habit, rather than his inability to live in a hot climate, has led to his disappearance in several countries where he con- quered but did not expel the inhabitants. His high standard of living and pride of race are gradually extin- guishing him in North America ; and in England, while the Nordic man flourishes in the country districts and as a seafarer, he is apparently at a disadvantage under the conditions of industrial labour in the towns, where a smaller and darker type of men is already prevalent, and is becoming more so in each generation. The industrial revolution has greatly diminished the preponderance of pure Nordic blood in this country. Our frequent wars, in which the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes are usually the first to volunteer and the first to be killed, have weakened them still further. Writers like Madison Grant, who are influenced by the cult of racialism now popular on the Continent, even speak of ' The Passing of the Great Race ' as a doom to which the Nordics must resign them- selves. Of the remaining two races, the pure Alpine seems to be decidedly inferior to the Mediterranean in intelligence and energy ; but a large admixture of Alpine blood flows in the veins of some of the most powerful nations. The vigour of the Germans is indeed a refutation of their favourite theory that the Nordic race is intrinsically superior to all others ; for they themselves are not, like the Scandinavians, pure Nordics. The Germans area mixture of Nordic and Alpine man ; the British of Nordic and THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS 211 Mediterranean. In Great Britain the round-headed man, who was once among us and constructed the round barrows which indicate his presence, has practically vanished. His physical characteristics are rarely found in these islands. If we look at a map of the world as it was at the end of the Middle Ages, about 1480, we shall be startled to find how small a part of it was fully included in the European system. European culture reigned in France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Bohemia, and the greater part of Spain, from which, however, the Moors had not yet been finally expelled. Russia was still a barbarous country ; South-Eastern Europe had fallen, or was soon to fall, under the yoke of the Grand Turk ; Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Poland were still on the outskirts of civilisation, and partially detached from the European system. For a thousand years before the beginning of the modern period Europe had been on the defensive against Asia. Three times civilisation had been in imminent danger of being submerged by a torrent of Asiatic invaders. The first irruption of Mongols, in the fifth century, reached France, and nearly overthrew Roman civilisation at Chalons. The Arabs, within a few decades after their emergence from the desert, struck down the East Roman Empire, exterminated the Nordic Vandals in Africa, con- quered Spain, invaded France, and even after they had begun to decline, drove the chivalry of Europe out of Palestine. The third period of nomadic aggression set the Tartar on the thrones of India and China, which he retained till within living memory, kept Russia in thraldom for two hundred years, obliterated the East Roman Empire, and as late as the seventeenth century threatened Vienna. The destruction of civilisation in all its most ancient seats has been the work of the Mongol. It is not true to say that he overthrew only decadent and feeble empires. Such was the state of the unending duel between West and East, in the period before the great age of discovery. On the whole, the East had been the successful aggressor. The West had only once turned the tables on a large scale, in the time of Alexander the Great, who took advantage 212 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS of a great temporary superiority in military science to conquer the home-lands of the Asiatic beyond the borders of India. The Roman Empire was only a device to protect the Mediterranean enclave, so insecurely guarded by moun- tain and river on the north, so open to nomadic raiders in Hungary and Syria. The Mediterranean peoples, except the Jews who were themselves Asiatics, accepted the heavy hand of Rome and did not often rebel ; they knew the alternative too well. The turning-points of world-history have generally been military discoveries. The unknown genius who found out that copper could be hardened into a service- able weapon by the admixture of a small percentage of tin probably revolutionised Europe in prehistoric times. The Altaic shepherd on his horse shattered civilisation over the greater part of the Old World. The invention of gunpowder curbed his aggression, and for the first time gave civilisation a decisive superiority over barbarism in warfare. But the turn of the tide which has now brought nearly the whole world under the political control of the European races began with two feats of naval enter- prise. In 1492 Columbus, while seeking a western route to the East Indies, landed on one of the Bahama Islands ; and two years later Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and crossed the 3nd an Ocean to Calicut. The blockade of Europe by the Moslem was broken, and the Atlantic period of history, which to the future historian will be as distinct an epoch as the Mediterranean period, began. Almost simultaneously with these d scoveries, the Moors were finally driven from Spain ; the tide of Moslem conquest had begun to ebb from its western high-water mark. In 1519-1521 the most wonderful of all voyages brought the crew of Magelhaes to the Philippines from Patagonia. From that time the white man has been at home on every ocean. The ascendancy of the white man may be dated from these d scoveries, though the full effect of them was not felt till the nineteenth century. By an amazing piece of good fortune, which can never be repeated in the history of the world, however many millennia remain during which THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS 213 it will be inhabited by our species, the white man, newly emancipated by the Renaissance and ready for new adven- tures, found a vast continent across the Atlantic, only sparsely peopled by a feeble race with no effective weapons, waiting for his occupation. He was able to populate a great part of this enormous area with his own stock ; till a second stroke of luck opened to him, in the nick of time, the only other large territories suitable for white colonisa- tion, in Australasia. Thus two new continents, with an area of about 17 million square miles, were added to the domains of the European. It was not, however, till the industrial revolution in the reign of George III that the overwhelming predominance of the European declared itself. That momentous trans- formation of the whole economic structure of European society produced an unexampled increase, both in wealth and numbers. The population of Europe, which in 1801, after the rapid growth had begun, was only 150 nrllions, was about 450 millions in 1914, besides 110 million white men in America and the British colonies. Wealth in England increased about tenfold between the two great wars, a striking comment on Wellington's forecast in 1832 : ' Few people will be sanguine enough to imagine that we shall ever again be as prosperous as we have been/ After 1870, the progress of Germany was even more rapid than our own. In North America material expansion was on a yet more portentous scale. The three million colonists who revolted against Great Britain in the reign of George III are now represented by a nation of 110 millions, of whom a very large majority are of white descent. More recently, Canada and the Argentine Republic have entered on the path of rapid growth. This expansion of the Western Europeans by no means exhausts the tale of aggression. The Russians brought under their dominion, and began to colonise, the vast expanse of Northern Asia as far as the Pacific ; and practically the whole of Africa, which covers 11 million square miles, was staked out by rival white races for present or future exploitation. At the beginning of the Great War, out of the 53 million square miles which 214 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS (excluding the Polar regions) constitute the land surface of the globe, only six million square miles were not under white government. The exceptions to universal white domination were China, Japan, Tibet, Siam, Turkey, Afghanistan, Persia, Abyssinia, Liberia, and Hayti. As the result of the Great War, Turkey, Persia, and Hayti may almost be subtracted from the list. No important non-European governments remain, except in China and Japan. It is no wonder that till a few years ago it was assumed as probable that the remaining Asiatic Empires would follow the same path as India, and fall under one or other of the European powers. Mr. Meredith Townsend, writing in 1901, says: 'So grand is the prize [of Asiatic trade] that failures will not daunt the Europeans, still less alter their conviction. If these movements follow historic lines, they will recur for a time upon a constantly ascending scale, each repulse eliciting a greater effort, until at last Asia, like Africa, is partitioned, that is, each section is left at the disposal of some white people. If Europe can avoid internal war, or war with a much aggrandised America, she will by A.D. 2000 be mistress in Asia, and at liberty, as her people think, to enjoy/ But in 1901 the tide had really begun to turn, and Mr. Townsend himself was one of the first to sound the warning. The culmination of white ascendancy may almost be fixed at the date of the second Jubilee of Queen Victoria, when the spectators of that magnificent pageant could observe the contrast between the splendid physique of the coloured troops in the procession and the stunted and unhealthy appearance of the crowds who lined the streets. The shock came ;n 1904, when Russia, who with the help of France and Germany had robbed Japan of the fruits of her victory over China, extended covetous hands over Manchuria and threatened Korea. The military prestige of Russia at that time stood very high, and Europe was startled when an Asiatic people, poor and relatively small in numbers, threw down the gauntlet to the Colossus of the North. Kuroki's victory on the Yalu, though due to the blunder of a subordinate general, will THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS 215 perhaps rank as one of the turning-points of history. It was followed by a series of successes, both by land and sea, which amazed Europe, and sent waves of excitement and hope through the entire continent of Asia. A French- man has described the arrival of the first batch of tall Russian prisoners at a Japanese port. The white men present consisted of French, Germans, English, and Americans ; but at the sight of Europeans in the custody of Asiatics they forgot their rivalries ; a feeling of horror went through them all, and they huddled together as if they realised that something uncanny was happening which threatened them all alike. There was in reality nothing mysterious in the Japanese victories. A few European officers had seen their army before the war, and a distinguished Anglo-Indian had reported that they were ' quite as good as Gurkhas/ Russia was honeycombed with disaffection and corruption, and was never able to bring her whole force to bear in the Manchurian battle- fields. But the decisive factor was the German training of the Japanese army, which had learnt all that the best instructors could teach, with wonderful thoroughness and ability. This was the momentous lesson of the war. An Asiatic army, with equally good weapons and training, is a match for the same number of Europeans ; and there is no part of European military or naval science which the Asiatic cannot readily master. In these facts an observer might well recognise the fate of white ascendancy in Asia. Mr. Stoddard, in his remarkable book on ' The Rising Tide of Colour/ has collected evidence of the effect of this campaign upon the Japanese themselves. A temper of arrogant and aggressive imperialism has grown up among them. The semi-official Japanese Colonial Journal declared in the autumn of 1914 : ' To protect Chinese territory Japan is ready to fight no matter what nation. Not only will Japan try to erase the ambitions of Russia and Germany ; it will also do its best to prevent England and the United States from touching the Chinese cake/ The Great War seems to have raised their ambitions still higher. Count Okuma, in the summer of 1919, 216 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS recommends an alliance with Russia, as soon as the Bolsheviks have been suppressed. Then, by marching westward to the Balkans, to Germany, to France, to Italy, the greater part of the world may be brought under our sway. Another plan is to arm and drill the Chinese. We have now China. China is our steed ! Far shall we ride upon her ! So our 50 millions becomes 500 millions ; so our hundreds of millions of gold grow into billions. . . . How our strength has grown and still grows ! In 1895 we conquered China ; Russia, Germany, and France stole the booty from us. In ten years we punished Russia and took back our own ; in twenty we were quits with Germany ; with France there is no need for haste. She knows that her Oriental possessions are ours for the taking. As for America, that fatuous booby with much money and sentiment but no cohesion and no brains of government, were she alone we should not need our China steed. America is an immense melon, ripe for the cutting. North America will support a thousand million people ; they shall be Japanese with their slaves. So wrote a Japanese imperialist in 1916. Such rodo- montades have some importance as symptoms of a new spirit, but otherwise need not be taken seriously. More interesting is the growing consciousness of Pan-Asiatic sympathy, which finds vent in the cry ' Asia for the Asiatics,' and in proposals to establish a Monroe doctrine for the East. The revolution in China in 1911 was probably the beginning of a new awakening in that vast empire. In speaking of Chinese stagnation we have often forgotten the paralysing effect of the Tartar domination, which has only lately been thrown off. And the new China, in spite of its hatred of Japan, is dreaming of a Pan-Mongolian alliance. An Indo-Japanese association has existed for some years ; its object is certainly not to maintain the British Raj. ' Let us go to India, where the people are looking for our help ! ' exclaims Count Okuma in 1907. Many Anglo-Indian writers, and among them Mr. Townsend, have commented on the extreme slenderness THE WHITE MAN AND. HIS RIVALS 217 of the threads by which we hold India. ' Above this inconceivable mass of humanity, governing all, protecting all, taxing all, rises what we call the Empire, a corporation of less than 1500 men, who protect themselves by finding pay for a minute white garrison of 65,000 men, one-fifth of the Roman legions. There is nothing else. To support the official world and its garrison there is, except Indian opinion, absolutely nothing. If the brown men struck for a week, the Empire would collapse like a house of cards, and every European would be a starving prisoner in his own house. He could not move or feed himself or get water. The Empire hangs in the air, supported by nothing but the minute white garrison and the unproved assumption that the people of India desire it to exist.' This is forcibly put ; but till lately we might have answered that behind that small garrison lies the whole power of the British Empire, which could and would be used to put down rebellion. The natives, however, know that though this used to be true, it is now very doubtful whether the masses in this country would not sympathise with the rebels and paralyse the efforts of the Government. It is not surprising that the growth of nationalism in India seems to many to portend the approaching end of our rule. Another symptom to which some of our alarmists attach great importance is the Moslem revival. Islam is a great civilising influence in Africa, and is spreading rapidly among the negroes of the interior. It is also true that a very bitter feeling has been aroused among educated Moslems, in every country where they live, by the destruction of the Mohammedan kingdoms and govern- ments. At the present time there is not a single Moslem ruler who is really independent of Europe. The downfall of that proud and conquering faith has been, from the political point of view, almost complete. This humiliation, we are told, may lead to a great militant revival. The Moslems may put themselves at the head of the Pan- Asiatic movement. They may convert Hindus, Chinamen, Japanese, and fill them with martial ardour for a Holy War against Europe. This prediction does not seem to be very probable. There is not much danger to Europe from 218 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS the African blacks. In Arabia the swarming period has passed. The Moslems in India have given our armies less trouble than other fighting races of the peninsula. And it is most unlikely that either China or Japan will adopt the Mohammedan creed. To the present writer it seems that the danger to the white races will come only from the yellows and the browns, not from the blacks or the reds, and that this danger is not at present of a military character. No doubt it may become a military danger in the future, if the whites persist in excluding the yellow and the brown races by violence from half-empty territories in which they desire to settle. If the white man is determined to throw his sword into the scales of peaceful competition, his rivals will be compelled at last to vindicate their rights by war. But at present the brown man will not take up arms except to obtain self-government for him- self in his home, and this he is likely to obtain from Great Britain without fighting. The Japanese, in spite of a few fanatical expansionists, have no wish to try conclusions with Europe or America on the field of battle, so long as they are allowed to extend their influence on the continent of Asia. A mass-levy of Chinese for aggressive war is not to be thought of ; they have none of the habits of Mongolian raiders, and, unlike the Japanese, they do not wish to be soldiers. The yellow peril, so far as it exists, is the peril of economic competition. Until the European broke into the isolation of Asia, the life of its crowded population was self-contained and self-supporting to an extent of which the West has no experience. ' A fairly contented Indian peasant or artisan/ says Mr. Townsend, ' usually seems to Western eyes to possess no comforts at all. His hut contains nothing on which a British pawnbroker would advance three shillings. The owner's clothing may be worth five shillings if he has a winter garment, and his wife's perhaps ten shillings more. The children wear nothing at all. The man never sees or thinks about meat of any kind. He never dreams of buying alcohol in any shape. The food of the household costs about six shillings a month. THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS 219 He could fly into the jungle with his whole possessions, his farm or hut of course excepted, at five minutes' notice. This method of life extends from the bottom of society up through the whole body of the poorer peasantry and artisans/ ' But for the Europeans, they would import nothing whatever.' And yet these people are not all poor. Silver in India disappears as if it fell through into a hidden reservoir. The man in a loin-cloth has usually his hoard, often a very large one, and the Indian ' poor ' possess a mass of jewels. It is not poverty, but thrift like that of the miser in a comedy, that keeps the standard of comfort in India at the lowest possible level. And the result is a social freedom and absence of care which the Hindu not unreasonably Values above all the paraphernalia of European culture. In China the standard of living is rather higher, and in Japan higher still ; but even in Japan the working class lives almost incredibly cheaply, and, apart from the disturbances caused by Western inter- ference, society is in a state of stable equilibrium. It is needless to say that in skilled craftsmanship the Asiatic is as good as the European. The introduction of Western industrialism into these countries has had the effect of increasing the population, and of creating a class of native capitalists, some of whom, like the merchants of Singapore and the mill-owners of Osaka, are immensely rich. It has also brought the East into direct economic competition with the West. The Japanese, in their haste to make money, have tolerated a system of labour in their factories no better than that of England a hundred years ago, and discontent is already manifest among the wage-earners ; but it is certain that the ratio of wages to output all over the East gives native manufacturers a great advantage over the European and American, and that this advantage is not likely to disappear. All who have had the opportunity of observing the Asiatic at work seem to agree that economically he is greatly superior to the European. Many years ago Mr. Kipling, after a day or two at Canton, records the horror which overpowered him at the deadly efficiency of the 220 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS Chinese. ' Soon there will be no more white men, but only yellow men with black hearts ' the ' black hearts ' were perhaps the result of witnessing a Chinese execution. Mr. Stoddard explains the cause of this efficiency in graphic language : ' Winnowed by ages of grim elimination in a land populated to the uttermost limits of subsistence, the Chinese race is selected as no other for survival under the fiercest conditions of economic stress. At home the average Chinese lives his whole life literally within a hand's breadth of starvation. Accordingly, when removed to the easier environment of other lands, the Chinaman brings with him a working capacity which simply appals his competitors/ That urbane Celestial, Doctor Wu-Tmg- Fang, well says of his own people : Experience proves that the Chinese as all-round labourers can easily out-distance all competitors. They are industrious, intelligent, and orderly. They can work under conditions that would kill a man of less hardy race ; in heat that would kill a salamander, or in cold that would please a polar bear, sustain- ing their energies through long hours of unremitting toil with only a few bowls of rice. Professor C. H. Pearson bears the same testimony : Flexible as Jews, they can thrive on the mountain plateaux of Tibet and under the sun of Singapore ; more versatile even than Jews, they are excellent labourers, and not without merit as soldiers and sailors ; while they have a capacity for trade which no other nation of the East possesses. They do not need even the accident of a man of genius to develop their magnifi- cent future. Lafcadio Hearn speaks of them as a people of hundreds of millions disciplined for thousands of years to the most untiring industry and the most self-denying thrift, under conditions which would mean worse than death for our working masses a people, in short, quite content to strive to the uttermost in exchange for the simple privilege of life. An American, Mr. Clarence Poe, writes in 1911 : We must face in ever-increasing degree the rivalry of awakening peoples who are strong with the strength which THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS 221 comes from poverty and hardship, and who have set them- selves to master and apply all our secrets in the coming world- struggle for industrial supremacy and for racial readjustment. Finally, to quote Mr. Stoddard again : When the enormous outward thrust of coloured population- pressure bursts into a white land, it cannot let live, but auto- matically crushes the white man out first the white labourer, then the white merchant, lastly the white aristocrat, until every vestige of white has gone from that land for ever. . . . No- where, absolutely nowhere, can white labour compete on equal terms with coloured immigrant labour. These warnings of the grim struggle which awaits the white races are confirmed by several concrete examples. In Hawaii the immigrants have been mainly Japanese, who are less formidable than the Chinese, as is shown by the fact that Japan has lately been compelled to pass laws for the exclusion of Chinese labour. Yet in those islands the Hawaiian fisherman and the American mechanic and shopkeeper have alike been pushed out of employ- ment. The Polynesian abor:g : nes are wither'ng away ; the Americans are encysted as a small and dwindling aristo- cracy. In 1917, 5000 Japanese were born, and only 295 Americans. In Mauritius a century ago one-third of the population were whites, mostly French. ' To-day the fabled land of Paul and Virginia is becoming a bit of Hindustan, with a Chinese fringe.' Natal, which has recently passed an Exclusion Act, is ' a country of white landlords and supervisors controlling a horde of Asiatics. The working-class white population has to go.' 1 These testimonies, which might easily be multiplied, and which are not contradicted, are sufficient to prove that under a regime of peace, free trade, and unrestricted migration the coloured races would outwork, underlive, and eventually exterminate the whites. The importance of this fact cannot be exaggerated. The result of the European, American, and Australian labour movement has been to produce a type of working-man who but for protection in its extremest form, the prohibition of immigration, 1 Neame, Oriental Labour in South Africa. 222 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS would soon be swept out of existence. And this pro- tection rests entirely on armed force; in the last resort, on war. It is useless to turn away from the facts, however unwelcome they may be to our socialists and pacifists. The abolition of war, and the establishment of a League to secure justice and equality of treatment for all nations, would seal the doom of the white labourer, such as he has made himself. There was a time when we went to war to compel the Chinese to trade with us, and when we ruined a flourishing Indian trade by the competition of Lancashire cotton. That was the period which it is the fashion to decry as a period of ruthless greed and exploitation. The working-man has brought that period to an end. To-day he is dreaming of fresh rewards, doles, and privileges which are to make the white countries a paradise for his class. And all the time he is living on sufferance, behind an artificial dyke of ironclads and bayonets, on the other side of which is a mass of far more efficient labour, which would swallow him up in a generation if the barriers were removed. The American books from which quotations have been made are written with the object of urging a policy of absolute exclusion. This is the remedy, and the only remedy, which finds favour in the United States, in British Columbia, in Australia, and in South Africa. There is probably no question on which the people of those countries are so nearly unanimous. ' The White Australia doctrine/ says one Australian writer, ' is based on the necessity for choosing between national existence and suicide.' Another says, ' Australians of all classes and political affiliations regard the [exclusion] policy much as Americans regard the Constitution.' ' Take down the barriers on the Pacific Coast, and there would be ten million Hindus in Canada in ten years.' A Cali- fornian echoes this Canadian protest : ' The multitudes of Asia are awake after their long sleep, as the multitudes of Europe were when our present flood of immigration began. We know what would happen on the Asiatic side, by what did happen on the European side. Against Asiatic immigration we could not survive.' And so a policy, which is rather time-discredited than time-honoured, THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS 223 is to be adopted, to preserve the white man in his half- empty Garden of Eden. As the Babylonians built the so-called Median Wall to keep out the roving nomads from the North, as the Chinese built their wonderful Great Wall to keep out the Tartars, as the Romans carried a line of fortifications from Newcastle to the Solway, so the white man is to erect a permanent barrier to exclude the Asiatic. All the under-populated countries are in the hands of the whites, and the overflow of China, Japan, and India is never to be allowed to reach them. Is it likely that this policy will be successful ? To begin with, it has all the well-known drawbacks of a protective system. In the protected countries the cost of living is forced up, and the consumer is deprived of the advantage which he might have gained from competition, in all trades where the home labourer can determine prices. Under this system the cost of labour has become so high that much of the wealth in the protected countries remains undeveloped. In the State of New York, and in other parts of the Union, the visitor is surprised to see many derelict farms. The explanation is that the cost of labour is so great that it pays to cultivate only the best land. Further west, magnificent crops of fruit rot on the trees ; there is no one to pick them. The slow growth of Australia and New Zealand is the result of the absence of cheap labour. In our own country an impasse has plainly been reached. Unemployment is increasing, and must increase much further. No houses can be built for rents which the occupants could pay. The high cost of coal impoverishes the population and cripples all industries. The Government has no remedy except to endow the unemployed out of the taxes and to build houses out of the rates ; though it must be clear even to the least intelligent member of the House of Commons that every five pounds so spent drives another workman out of employment for a week. Quite apart from Asiatic competition, our social order is threatened with bankruptcy. By a well-known law of nature, a class shielded from healthy competition becomes more and more inefficient, and less able to stand against its rivals when the protecting barriers fail. 224 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS If the conditions in the white countries become un- favourable to enterprise, we may be sure that both capital and business ability will be transferred to the economically strong countries. Asia will be industrialised ; India and China and Japan will be full of factories, equipped with all the latest improvements, and under skilled management, which at first will be frequently white. Wealth will be so abundant in Asia that the Governments will be able without difficulty to maintain fleets and armies large enough to protect their own interests, and to exact repara- tion for any transgressions of international law by the whites. Only a wealthy country can be powerful by sea ; and a nation which has lost most of its foreign trade will not think it worth while to bid for naval supremacy. The policy of exclusion will, therefore, be powerless to prevent those races which possess economic superiority from in- creasing in wealth and then in military power. The suicidal war which devastated the world of the white man for four years will probably be found to have produced its chief results, not in altering the balance of power in Europe, but in precipitating certain changes which were coming about slowly during the peace. The period which these changes would naturally have occupied was shortened by perhaps fifty years. The first of these is the change in the relation of wages to output, which has been suddenly and enormously altered to the detriment of the consumer. The second change is the transference of political and financial supremacy from Europe to the United States, a change which was no doubt bound to occur within half a century, since America has a decisive advantage in her geographical position, equally adapted for the Pacific and the Atlantic trade. The present writer, when he was in Berlin two or three years before the war, had a conversation with a leading German publicist, and endeavoured to impress upon him that in the event of a European war, the American would in- evitably be the tertius gaudens. The argument, though absolutely sound, as the event has proved, was not very well received. Europe has thrown away her last half- century of primacy. The third change is that to which THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS 225 this article is directed. The peril from the coloured races, which before the war loomed in the distance, is now of immediate urgency. The white peoples, exhausted and crippled by debt, will be less able to compete with Asia. The policy of exclusion, however, must be considered as it affects the white nations separately, for the problem is not the same all over the world. In North America it is probable that the immigration of Chinese, Japanese, and Indians may be successfully resisted. Employers of labour may complain with good reason that they are unable to develop their businesses ; but the labour vote will be far too strong for them. The Americans are beginning to realise that their promiscuous hospitality to immigrants, even from Europe, has seriously impaired the racial integrity of their nation, and has been accom- panied by a great reduction in the birth-rate of the old Americans of Anglo-Saxon and Dutch stock. Only in the South, where the blacks are kept in a semi-servile condition, are the white families still large. The new policy, it is plain, will be one of ' America for the Americans ' ; Europeans as well as Asiatics will find the land of freedom hard to enter. But Central and South America are not likely to remain barred to the yellow race. The Latin Americans have very little colour prejudice ; and there is a far-away kinship between the Mongols and the so-called red men, which makes racial admixture between them by no means repugnant. Central and South America are potentially very rich ; and the greater part of the continent is too hot for Europeans, but not for Chinese. The Germans in South Brazil have lost their vigour ; like our countrymen in South Africa, they sit under a tree and hire a coloured man to work for them. But the Chinaman can work in worse climates than that of South Brazil. The Australians, as we have already seen from their own writings, are fully aware that for them exclusion of the Asiatic is a matter of life and death. But will five million white men be able to guard an empty continent, nearly as large as the United States ? They might save 226 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS themselves by rescinding trade- union regulations, and offering homes on easy terms to competent workmen and their families from all parts of Europe. The resources of the country would then be rapidly developed, and the population might in a few years be numerous enough to keep the invader out. But no policy of this kind is to be expected. The Australian working-man will vote for keeping his prize to himself, till the dykes burst. As for the other great islands near South-East Asia, it is almost certain that they will become Chinese. It is also probable that this race will spread over Central Asia, where there are said to be large tracts of fairly good land still nearly empty. In South Africa the danger is more from the Kaffir than from the East Indian or Chinaman. The Bantus are a fine race, and it has yet to be proved that they are incapable of civilisation. The African has at all times and in all places, except in our West Indies, met with abominable treatment. Everything has been done to degrade him and ruin his character. Mr. Stephen Graham's book about ' The Children of the Slaves ' in the Southern States of the American Union makes an Englishman's blood boil. It is not easy to forget the horrible photograph of a negro burnt alive by a crowd of white savages. Even in South Africa the Kaffir has much to complain of ; and the evidence of those who know the country is that the relations between the two races are growing worse instead of better. The future of that Dominion is problematical ; but it does not seem likely that it will ever be a white man's country like Canada or New Zealand. For us at home the problem is different. We are not threatened by coloured immigration, and we have nothing to fear from the armies and fleets of Asia. But we depend for our very existence on our for ign trade that is to say, on being able to offer our manufactures to other nations at a price which they are willing to accept. In return for these manufactures we import the food on which we live. If we can no longer sell them, we shall get no food, and we shall starve. This is a childishly THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS 227 simple proposition, but a large section of our politicians and social reformers choose to ignore it. A double move- ment, combining decrease in production with increase in its cost, has been progressing rapidly, and many seem to view it with complacency. Its effects would have shown themselves earlier but for the disorganisation of industrial life on the Continent. The crash of our factitious prosperity has now begun ; the war-fortunes are melting away like snow. The criticism may be made that these arguments prove too much. If the cheaper races must always out- work and underlive the more expensive, why have China and India remained poor ; and what is the use of warning us against a fate which we cannot possibly escape, since we cannot lower our standard to that of the Chinese or the Hindus ? The answer to the former objection is not difficult. Agricultural Asia is over-populated and can only just feed itself. The low standard of living has increased the population to the margin at which existence is just possible. Industry on the European system of mass- production is still in its infancy in Asia ; where it exists, it is very profitable. It is said that at the present time Japan, which till lately was a very poor country, contains as many millionaires, in proportion to its population, as the United States. The second objection that if our premisses are true, no efforts on our part can avert the ruin of the white races is not altogether sound. The industrialisation of Asia will undoubtedly give rise to the same labour difficulties which cripple our home in- dustries. The wages of the Indian and Chinese operative will rise. They will certainly not rise sufficiently to prevent Asiatic merchants from capturing our markets if we go on as we are doing ; but the case of British trade is not yet hopeless. A great increase of production, and a cessation of strikes, with a Government pledged to peace, free trade, and drastic retrenchment, would restore confidence and give the country a chance of returning to sound business principles. We still have some advantages, including our coal, and a geographical position which, 228 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS though no longer the best, is a good one. But the country must learn that our industry must henceforth be con- ducted under unprivileged conditions. The relation of wages to output must be approximately that which pre- vails in the world at large. Moreover, as our period of economic expansion is probably over, we cannot provide for a larger population than we have at present. The birth-rate must match the death-rate, as it does in France. It is probable indeed that we shall not be able to employ or to feed the whole 48 millions who now inhabit these islands. A gradual reduction in our numbers, by emigra- tion or by birth-control, might save much misery. Behind the problem of our own future rises the great question whether any nation which aims at being a working-man's paradise can long flourish. Civilisation hitherto has always been based on great inequality. It has been the culture of a limited class, which has given its character to the national life, but has not attempted to raise the whole people to the same level. Some civilisa- tions have decayed because the privileged class, obeying a law which seems to be almost invariable, have died out, and the masses have been unable to perpetuate a culture which they never shared. Civilisation, therefore, based on inequality, has always been insecure ; and there are other reasons why the ideal of equality, or at least of equal opportunity, is attractive to many. But a universal high standard of living seems to be impossible in an industrial community. It has been suggested that what Aristotle called inanimate instruments (as distin- guished from the animate instruments the slaves) may take the place of the poorly paid labourer. In other words, we may all be comfortable when we have machines to work for us. But it must be remembered that machines dis- place hand-labour ; so that the proposed improvements would reduce the number of men and women for whom employment could be found. Further, the extended use of machinery means in practice that every worker is him- self turned into a cog in a machine. His working life consists in repeating, thousands of times a day, some simple movement, like turning a screw. The human THE WHITE MAN AND HIS RIVALS 229 organism is not adapted to this kind of work ; it is hateful and injurious. All joy in labour, all the pleasure of crea- tion, all art and ingenuity, are killed by such excessive mechanisation. Machinery will no doubt perform many unpleasant tasks for us, as it does already ; but it will not enable the whole population to live in comfortable villas, and to eat as much expensive food as they desire. Least of all will this be possible in our densely populated island, for reasons which have already been stated. Lastly, have we any right to assume that the supremacy of the Asiatic would be a retrograde step in the history of the world ? The Americans do assume it as unquestion- able ; but they seldom condescend to give their reasOns. There is no physical or intellectual inferiority in the yellow races that is certain ; and the moral inferiority of the Asiatic consists chiefly in a callousness about bearing and inflicting suffering, which the Orientals themselves admit. An Indian pundit said to Mr. Townsend : ' The substantial difference between the English and us is not intellectual at all. We are the brighter, if anything ; but you have pity (doya), and we have it not.' An English officer told me that he once stood over the mangled body of a Chinaman who had met with a violent death. Noticing, as he thought, some sign of compassion on the stolid face of the dead man's companion, he said : ' This is a sad sight.' ' Yes,' said the Celestial : ' he owed me ten cents ' ! But there are other virtues in which the Oriental is our superior ; the Japanese, especially, have achieved the boast of Pericles, that the Athenians are lovers of beauty com- bined with plain living, better than any other modern people. It is the plain living which sticks in the throat of the American ; but it need not stick in ours. Probably the Eastern races will force upon us a general simplifica- tion of life, which will give us a social freedom to which we have long been strangers. A Russian one of the survivors of the intelligentsia who have escaped from the Terror has lately suggested that the psychological cause of the war is that people were ' stifling under the burden of civilisation,' compelled to make, to buy, and to consume countless unnecessary articles which were ' of use neither 250 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS to him who made them nor to him who sold them, nor even to him who bought them.' To simplify life by abolishing irrational and unnecessary expenditure would increase our health and happiness, and would perhaps enable us to hold our own against the races of the East. A gradual assimilation in the modes of life of all civilised countries is to be expected. There will be no more hermit kingdoms. The Asiatic will have more wants ; the European and American must be content with fewer. The chief danger to the white man arises from his arrogant contempt for other races, a contempt which in some lands is mixed with fear and hatred, and which has provoked fear and hatred in return. Europeans have recently enjoyed an unfair advantage over their rivals, which they have abused without the slightest regard for justice and fair play. This advantage will not be theirs in the future : they will have to compete on equal terms with nations schooled by adversity and winnowed by the hard struggle for existence. Victory will go to the races which are best equipped for that kind of competition ; and it may well be that a modified caste system, not rigid, as in India, but such as prevailed till lately in Europe, may prove to have a greater survival value than either democracy or socialism, which in its present form desires to keep the whole population as nearly as possible on the same level. An English poet has given his opinion that fifty years of Europe are better than a cycle of Cathay. But the future may show that the European is a good sprinter and a bad stayer. It is better to be a hare than a tortoise ; but it is better to be a live tortoise than a dead hare. THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION THE social outlook of the man of science is very different from that of the politician, and hardly less from that of the average social reformer. The biologist thinks in centuries and millennia ; he looks before and after in a way which would ruin a politician, who is acute enough in predicting which way the popular breeze will blow to-morrow, but knows and cares little what will happen in the next generation. The man of science also believes that we can only conquer nature by obeying her ; he does not think that human nature is likely to change appreciably even in a thousand years, except by the operation of natural selection or counter-selection, or if he is an optimist, by rational selection ; he certainly does not believe that ' where God sends mouths He sends meat,' nor that vicarious charity will cover a multitude of economic sins. We breathe a different atmosphere when we leave the watchful observers of the jumping cat, and consult the men who patiently interrogate the great Sphinx the ' elemental laws ' which, as Walt Whitman says, ' never apologise,' the silent goddess on whose knees are the fates of nations, races, and species, and who makes them or breaks them impartially, according to their skill in reading her riddles, or their wilfulness in disregarding her unspoken but not unacted warnings. Science has not yet come to its own in forming the beliefs and practices of mankind, because it has been too much excluded from politics and too much repressed by religion. It is the purgatory of religion and politics alike, exacting expiation for every sin against truth and every dishonest concession to passion or prejudice. The futile attempts of the last 231 232 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS century to ' reconcile ' it with ecclesiastical tradition have died down. Science has captured a number of indefensible outworks, and religion is not a pin the worse. Science was materialistic while battling with superstition ; since it has won its freedom it has been willing to learn much from idealistic philosophy. The war of the twentieth century is no longer between science and religion ; it is between science and the irrational forces which make for social degeneracy and disintegration. It is not for nothing that revolutionists speak with hatred or distrust of ' intellectuals.' For they themselves are in revolt, not merely against the existing social order, but against economic law, and against society as an organic growth, with its roots in the past. And yet the prevailing tone and temper of public opinion have always reacted upon the progress and direction of scientific discovery. We have to admit that even the most independent thinker is the child of his age. The dreams of human perfectibility which intoxicated the French towards the end of the eighteenth century gave a stimulus to doctrines of evolution as the law of nature ; but while la carrier e ouverte aux talents was reflected in the theory of Lamarck, the competitive industrialism of the next generation found its supposed justification in Darwin's doctrine of the survival of the fittest. At the present day, the popular faith that everything is possible to organised efiort seems to correspond to the physics of energy, and it may be that the political and economic revolt against the belief in fixed laws of nature is more than accidentally synchronous with the theories of Bergson and his school. Few men free themselves from prejudices coming from without ; none perhaps from prejudices which have their source within. We never become in- dependent of our temperament ; and group-influences, however we may account for them, seem to modify in- dividual temperament in each generation, probably by constantly directing attention to some one aspect of experience. Two recent books on scientific sociology, which re- semble each other in the ability of their authors, in their THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 233 wide knowledge of biology and kindred sciences, and in their general plan of treatment, may profitably be considered side by side, the more so as their conclusions are strongly opposed to each other. One is Dr. Miiller Lyer's ' History of Social Development ' (Phasen der Kultur), written before the war and now translated into English ; the other is Dr. Austin Freeman's ' Social Decay and Regeneration,' published in 1921 with an introduction by Mr. Havelock Ellis, himself a notable contributor to the scientific study of social problems. Dr. Miiller Lyer contemplates the species to which we belong as rising from insignificant beginnings to more and more elevated forms of life. At first, of course, man knew nothing of the marvellous destiny reserved for him ; but a great moment arrived when a knowledge of the path which he was treading crossed the threshold of his consciousness. From this moment instinctive striving began to be transformed into conscious and purposive action. He cherished hopes of being able to control the movement of his own progress. But this control has not yet been achieved, and cannot be ours till we understand the course of social evolution, which has passed through many successive phases. These lines of direction can be traced, and they must serve us as signposts for the future. Dr. Lyer attempts to interpret history in this manner. His subject comprises economic development, the family, the State, the human intellect, ethics, justice, and art. Culture, he says, is a progressive movement, which we can trace back to its beginnings in the evolution of man from lower forms. The discovery of speech, of the way to produce fire, and of tools, are among the most important points of new departure. The use of tools increases steadily as man moves from the age of stone to that of copper and bronze, and thence to iron. The age of iron culminated in the machine-civilisation of our own day, which began in this country about 150 years ago, when a series of discoveries ushered in the industrial revolution. All purely mechanical labour is now in process of being transferred from man to the machine ; and we might have expected that the prophecy of Aristotle would-be 234 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS approaching its fulfilment : ' If shuttles would work by themselves, and the plectra and zithers could play by themselves, we should need no more slaves ' ( ' Politics,' i, 2, 5). But the development of social organisation has not kept pace with that of technical art and of our general economic life ; so that the wage-earners have not yet emerged from quasi-servile conditions. The machine age is only in its preliminary phase. Capitalism, as he shows, was highly developed under the Eoman Empire ; private fortunes were on a larger scale than at any subsequent period before the nineteenth cen- tury. But its basis was slave labour, not machinery. (He might have added that improvements in machinery are always kept back by slavery.) Accordingly, when the supply of slaves fell off, industry decayed. For the ancients never kept human stud-farms like the planters of the Southern States in America ; and without this device, a slave population always decreases rapidly. From the end of the Western Empire till the beginning of the in- dustrial revolution capitalism was on a very small scale. It was discouraged by the Church and repressed by the feudal system. Either the desire for accumulation was weaker in the Middle Ages, or the opportunities for gratifying it were absent. Even in 1825 the whole merchant-fleet of Bremen did not number as many tons as an ordinary steamer of to-day. Until steam came in to perform the work which had hitherto been done by the muscles of men and beasts, the large majority of workmen were small handicraftsmen, and many families were almost entirely self-sufficient. In the new economic era, the first strides were made by those older trades which had previously developed as handicrafts ; secondly came such newer trades as those in rubber, sugar, and chemical works. Thirdly, hand labour was driven from spinning, weaving, tanning, brick-making and pottery, which for thousands of years had been common domestic industries. The self-sufficing family disappeared ; for the factories herded the workmen together, and the old cottage with its kitchen garden and pigsty was crowded out. Individual production gave way to co-operative production ; division of labour THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 235 destroyed the old craftsmanship and the old independent artisan. The greatest success of the capitalistic era has been the immense increase of export and import trade. Dr. Miiller Lyer is impressed by the truth of Kant's saying, ' As progress becomes more rapid its phases are shorter/ He thinks that the stage in which we now are will be far briefer than those which preceded it. Amalgamations, both of capital and labour, grow larger ; and socialised trade, conducted by the State, becomes more and more important. It is only the strong conserva- tism of domestic economy that has prevented large experi- ments in co-operative housekeeping, which would economise the greater part of women's labour. But such experiments, as he sees, are made difficult by ' our social sensitiveness, which has become self-conscious through our thousand divisions into classes and sub-classes, and by the tendency to exclusiveness inherent in every family union.' Such schemes as those of Fourier ' must be relegated to the dim future.' It is impossible not to regret the loss of handiness which the machine age has brought with it. Savages always want to know whether the traveller has made all his belongings himself, and would be surprised if he con- fessed that he could not make one of them. An English visitor to Tahiti found that the natives could make a hut out of branches and leaves ; they readily kindled fire by rubbing sticks together. Clothing was woven during a walk to fetch fruit. Flasks, pails, and casks were scooped out of bamboo in a few minutes. These natives would have been astonished to hear that a houseless Briton has to bully the State into spending a thousand pounds of the taxpayers' money to build him a home, and that he is content to wait months for its completion . Moreover, while in the natural state man is able to live out his own life, employing himself in occupations which make use of all his energies equally, set his limbs in motion, excite his interest, and call forth his sagacity, ' we have all developed on one side only, and become slaves of labour, some of whom all their lives do nothing but dig, others bore or polish, or write or tend a machine.' Fishing and hunting, 236 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS the daily occupation of the barbarian, are in civilisation amusements which only the well-to-do can enjoy. But our author finds the greatest evil wrought by machinery to be the stimulus which it gives to covetous- ness, or ' pleonexia ' as he calls it, borrowing a useful word from the Greek. It has created a hard and hateful world, in which industry is regarded as the aim of existence, and time as mere money. This ' Americanism,' as the Germans call it, has attacked the nations of the West like an epidemic, and though the almost superhuman energy which it has introduced into life must excite admiration, it has brought with it no happiness, but rather envy and bitterness. Culture in fact has made the lot of the majority worse rather than better. Man in his primitive condition can employ his ability in harmony with his own tastes. He is free from anxiety for the future and contented with his lot ; whereas in a highly industrialised community the great mass of people are crowded in a never-ceasing treadmill of specialised labour, hemmed in on all sides by duties and restrictions, consumed either by care or by ' pleonexia,' and condemned to a troubled and stunted existence which would fill a savage with horror. And yet there seems to be no escape. For the most highly organised communities have the greatest survival value, and the fate of the individual is immaterial to the advance of the process. Just as, in an earlier state of society, a slave-holding nation, which can devote itself more exclusively to the art of war, is more powerful than a nation of working agriculturists, so a modern nation which forces a majority of its members into the most unnatural division of labour can undersell and starve out another which has preserved simpler and more wholesome methods of production. A people which cares only for such progress as can be measured by statistics is likely to destroy another, higher in the scale of civilisation, which aims at making a better quality of life possible for its citizens. The blindly working forces of nature favour perfection of social organisation rather than the welfare of the individual. In the most advanced animal com- munities this process has been carried to a hideous per- THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 237 faction. The beehive is an appalling object-lesson in State socialism carried to its logical consequences. Mankind, says Dr. Lyer, is in revolt against this doom. The two cries, ' individualism ' and ' socialism/ are only different expressions of the demand for happiness. If we take these two ideals as implying respectively the organisa- tion of freedom and the organisation of labour, they are complementary to each other rather than antagonistic. It is only in States organised for war that the interests of the individual need be ruthlessly sacrificed. Inter- national commercial relations tend to unify the whole of civilisation, and when this process has gone further, the State may become, as it should be, the medium for the welfare of its citizens. This will not be brought about till a condition of relative stability is produced. But such a stabilisation is probable in the near future, since there are no more empty countries to be exploited, and there are already signs of a ' humanising of propagation/ by which the reckless and senseless increase of numbers may be brought to an end. Nothing, our author says, justly, has caused so much needless suffering among civilised nations, and has so completely neutralised the effect which culture should have in promoting happiness, as the swollen birth-rates of the nineteenth century. When ' the science of social forces has itself become a social force/ we are justified in supposing that future development will rise to undreamed-of heights, and will lead on to an era of perfect culture, in the light of which all the phases of our present half culture put together will seem like a kind of childhood of the human race. We almost receive the impression that throughout the tremendous drama of humanity there has been glimmering a secret plan of salvation and blessing. Dr. Lyer. it will be seen, is an optimist, and he ends on an almost religious note which sounds oddly from an avowed secularist, who has nothing but contempt for the faiths by which men have lived in the past. His outlook is what we have learned to call pre-war ; and nothing makes us realise so clearly the profound change which a terrible 238 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS catastrophe has made in our judgments about the world in which we live, than the fact that we can tell without difficulty whether a book on social science was written before or after 1914. For Dr. Lyer, the assumptions of evolutionary optimism are taken for granted ; the course of civilisation has been not only from a simpler to a more complicated structure, but from an irrational to a partially rational order of social life ; and though for a time the development of machine industry seems to have diminished human happiness, he has no doubt that this maladjustment will before long be set right. He is not free from the fallacies of Karl Marx, and more than once assumes that the present economic system tends to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The statistics of the national income in the years before the war entirely refuted this favourite argument of the Socialists. He looks for a solution of the economic difficulty to nationalisation and State manage- ment. Such a view is intelligible in a German, for State administration in Germany before the war was undoubtedly very efficient, and free from the reckless wastefulness and incompetence which have made public ownership a byword in England. But this efficiency was the result of a bureau- cratic system organised from above ; it has yet to be proved that national trading under a democracy can be either economical or business-like. And it is generally agreed that the German system was prejudicial to personal initiative, and to that adaptability on which the Americans have long prided themselves, and which we may fairly boast that we displayed during the war. Dr. Lyer is also obliged to postulate a recovery from the evil spirit of ' pleonexia/ which he considers to be a result of modern industrialism. But it is very doubtful whether the Western European is really more covetous either than his ancestors before the industrial revolution, or than the picturesque and romantic Asiatic. If we are looking for the man who would cut the throat of his best friend for a few dollars, it is not in Chicago or the City of London that we are most likely to find him. We cannot cure the acquisitive spirit by limiting its opportunities. The peasant proprietor is perhaps the greediest skinflint alive. THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 239 The unexamined postulate of evolutionary optimism is that all social evils have a natural tendency to eliminate themselves. There is no sanction in history for this assumption. Increasing complexity of organisation is not necessarily progress, if by progress is meant the passage from a less desirable state of life to a more desirable. The more complex structure of society may impose itself because it has a greater survival value ; it is not certain that any measures of social reform can make life in a highly industrialised community satisfying to the in- dividual without impairing the efficiency on which the existence of such a community depends. This is the great problem of sociology ; it must be solved, if there is any solution, without assuming, as Dr. Lyer docs, that there is some mysterious power which has already determined that the human race shall advance to some unimagined perfection. It is often forgotten that highly organised animal communities, such as the bees and ants, must have passed through a period of rapid ' progress,' during which their social life attained its present complexity, and that this period of evolution was followed by a condition of stable equilibrium which appears to be permanent. Our own species probably passed through many millennia without appreciable change, and the restless spirit of progress may, for all we know, come finally to rest at some time when man is once more in complete harmony with his environment. The shocking revelations of depravity which war-conditions have brought to light in many countries have made such a possibility less unwelcome to us than to our fathers. The progress on which they prided themselves now seems to us to have been mainly illusory. This disillusionment has been well illustrated by Mr. Max Beerbohm. He has drawn for us a picture of the nineteenth century in the person of a large and comfortable man in side-whiskers and a white tie, looking complacently at his vision of the future a still larger and more comfortable man with an ampler white tie. His companion picture of the twentieth century shows us a young man with a mourning band on his arm, contemplating his vision of the future a large note of interrogation. So 240 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS completely has a sudden convulsion shattered our rosy dreams, and left us gazing anxiously into the void. Dr. Austin Freeman's book reflects the post-war temper of disillusionment and perplexity. But his main subject is the reign of the machine, and its reactions upon the life of mankind. The part played in human activities by muscular exertion has decreased very rapidly in the last hundred years. A century ago, our muscles were the chief motive power. Now, machinery is finding its way even into the smallest establishments. So with transport. A hundred years ago journeys were chiefly made on foot or on horseback, and our ancestors thought nothing of a thirty miles' walk. Now we scramble into an omnibus to escape the exertion of walking a few hundred yards. It is well known that the disuse of function results in loss of function and atrophy of the disused organs ; to counteract which the modern man uses dumb-bells and developers, which would astonish a savage as much as anything else in our civilisation. The factory hands, the chief victims of the machine, are as a rule of very poor physique ; they are small and stunted, with bad teeth, and suffer much from pulmonary and digestive troubles. Their death-rates are far higher than those in rural areas. Dr. Freeman might have added that in spite of the advance in medical science, the expectation of life after sixty, in all classes together, is slightly less than it was half a century ago : a clear proof that we are not living healthy lives. From the point of view of health, our urban civilisation is a failure. Progress, as Dr. Freeman sees clearly, is of two kinds. It may refer to changes in the environment, including the store of transmitted experience ; or it may mean those changes by which man himself has been improved. The two aspects by no means coincide. Intrinsic progress was great, and may have been rapid, when man was first becoming human. The decisive modifications were doubtless due to variations which established themselves, and which definitely lifted our species into a condition in which men could begin their conquest of nature. But from an early date, progress has been almost entirely environmental. The change in THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 241 the relation of man to his surroundings has been amazing. The little hairless animal that once crept, naked and forlorn, over the face of the earth, the sport of the elements, the prey of the larger beasts ; behold him now in all the opulence of his great inheritance of knowledge, lording it over the world through which he once sneaked in continual peril of his life. He burrows into the bowels of the earth ; he traverses its surface at a speed which leaves the fleetest beast as stationary ; he follows the leviathan into the depths of the sea ; he soars to heights inaccessible to the eagle. In time of peace we congratulated ourselves on the humanising effects of these discoveries ; but we know now that primitive barbarism was only dormant, and ready to be roused into active savagery at the first beat of the drum. And under the conditions of modern warfare, the lives and property of non-combatants are exposed to dangers which are the direct result of the new knowledge. The discovery of flying has so far been an almost unmixed curse to humanity, and is a menace to the very existence of civilisation. Nor can we congratulate ourselves without hesitation on the rise in the standard of comfort, which only means that we make increased demands on our environ- ment. ' There is much truth in the saying of Diogenes, that a man's wealth may be estimated in terms of the things which he can do without.' The accumulation of wealth and the increase of numbers, without any real advance in individual character or mental capacity, do not make for happiness. The theory and practice of government are divided between sociologists, who have knowledge but no power, and politicians, who have power but no knowledge. ' The professional politician whom democracy has brought into existence differs entirely from other professional men. He is totally unqualified.' Such knowledge as the old parliamentary hand has acquired teaches him only how to get office and to keep in office ; it has no relation to political wisdom or statesmanship. For example, the First Lord of the Admiralty may be a brewer, a publisher, or a stockbroker. And yet this is a time when the functions of government are being extended every year. n. u 242 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS The division of Labour has destroyed the old crafts- man. Not a man in a boot factory is able to make a pair of boots. Even in the Art Schools the pupils are being trained, not to be artists, but to be Art School-masters and mistresses ; and the Technical School scholars are being trained to be Technical School-masters. The old appren- ticeship produced very different results at a small fraction of the cost. Everyone who knows the inside of a Government department notices its incapacity as compared with a private business concern. The business men who joined the Army, and were seldom employed in the work of management, were unanimous in their verdict that ' if any private firm were conducted in this way, it would be bankrupt in a week.' And yet the clamour for nation- alisation goes on. It is a clamour to substitute a system of proved inefficiency for one which has worked well as a method of production. Another manifest evil is the splitting up of the community into minor aggregations, each tyrannically ruled from within, antagonistic to each other and to the community as a whole. ' A spirit of mutual hostility and of collective selfishness and greed replaces the patriotism, public spirit, and citizenship on which civilisation grew and on which alone it can be maintained.' The scheme of elevating the social organism as a whole without improving the individuals who compose it has only the results of degrading the individuals still further ; for the ' social organism ' is a very low type of organism, a simple aggregate of complex units ; and by absorption into an organised aggregate of this low type the individual, as we have seen, becomes functionally atrophied. Having thus dealt faithftilly and somewhat severely with our modern institutions, Dr. Freeman girds up his loins for an attack on machinery. These chapters might have been the exhortation which persuaded Samuel Butler's Erewhonians to destroy all their machines and forbid the manufacture even of a watch. ' Mechanism is an independent entity governed by its own laws and having no necessary connexion with human needs and human THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 243 welfare.' The development of the machine is in the direction of ever-increasing automatism. The total elimina- tion of the human worker is the goal towards which it is moving. Man is being driven from the principal field of his activity. The reign of the machine has, for the first time, made the earth hideous. The old town was an improvement to the landscape ; the new town is an eyesore. The old sailing ship was a thing of beauty ; the new steamer wastes no effort in vain attempts not to be ugly. A more im- portant indictment is that before the age of machines the inroads made by man on irreplaceable material were moderate, and offered no menace to posterity. Pre-mechanical civilisation had left the original environ- ment of man largely undisturbed, its outward aspect little changed, its store of mineral wealth almost intact ; and in so far as it had reacted upon human environment, the result of the reactions was to increase the habitability of the world for man. The last hundred years have seen a complete change in these conditions. Pre-mechanical man lived on the interest of his environment ; mechanical man lives very extravagantly on the capital. The power-machine is an insatiable consumer of coal and iron. Nobody supposes that the world's supply of coal will last for as much as a thousand years, even if our miners (animated, no doubt, by far-seeing forethought for posterity) refuse, at frequent intervals, to bring it to the surface. The forests of the world are also being rapidly destroyed, largely to gratify the insatiable demands of the newspapers for wood pulp. Many of us will think that ' one impulse from the vernal wood ' might teach us more than ' all the sages ' who write for the daily press. But the vernal wood is being cut down. The visible tokens of the triumphant machine are our horrible factory towns with their forests of tall chimneys ; their unending rows of mean houses, peopled by crowds of dingy workers ; and the pall of black smoke above their heads which pours down a shower of soot through the twice-breathed air, and devastates the country 244 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS for miles beyond the radius of the town itself. If those philosophers are right who hold that beauty is an attribute of the Deity, and that ugliness of every kind is displeasing in His sight, our modern civilisation is a blatant blasphemy. Dependence on the smooth working of this complicated mechanism has made "Western society much more vulnerable than it was before. Even in Kussia the paralysis of commerce has turned the towns into cemeteries ; and our trade unions have made the welcome discovery that they can ' hold up ' the community as successfully as ever Dick Turpin waylaid a coach. A revolution in England would condemn millions to actual death by starvation. Aesthetically the influence of the machine is bad, because it destroys variety and individuality. We do not want to find the same furniture, carpets, wall-papers, and ornaments in every house ; such uniformity is as dull as a picture-gallery filled with replicas of a single picture. Dr. Freeman sums up the reactions of the power- machine on industry as follows : (1) the disappearance of the skilled craftsman and his replacement by the manu- facturer and the semi-skilled or unskilled factory hand ; with the like disappearance of the skilled shop-keeper and his replacement by the vendor of factory-made goods ; (2) the disappearance of small local industries ; (3) the disappearance of commodities made by hand with conscious adaptation to human and even personal needs, and their replacement by goods produced by machinery and adjusted to the needs of machine production. The characteristics of the new production are great quantity and small variety, low price and debasement in the character of products ; (4) lowering of standard in production ; (5) wasteful habits and disrespect for the products of industry ; (6) lowering of public taste by frequent contact with things tastelessly designed and badly made. The worker has hitherto been the chief sufferer ; but now the solitary virtue cheapness of machine-made articles is passing away, and the consumer also is to be pitied. Dr. Freeman pursues his relentless attack, and con- siders the reaction of machinery upon man collectively. THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 245 The industrial revolution was the greatest revolution that has ever occurred. Formerly, the surroundings of the worker were usually pleasant. The hours were long, but the conditions of labour were easy, enlivened by chat with neighbours over the loom or through the smithy door. The worker was also a master who determin/d his own hours of work, and since he dealt directly with the consumer he received the entire profit of his labour. One of the earliest results of machinery was to break up the little society in which the workmen were amicably distributed among the rest of the population, and to concentrate the ' hands ' in separate aggregates, with habits and sympathies different from those of other classes. The conditions of factory labour were for half a century and more thoroughly bad, and feelings of resentment and antagonism were rooted more and more deeply in the minds of the labourers. The result has been that they have formed combinations held together by a tyrannical organisa- tion and discipline, and constantly engaged in acts of war. They lean to collectivism, which is the total suppression of personal liberty ; they have no ambition to return to craftsmanship of the old kind ; they have never known it and are quite unfit for it. ' That the working class consists largely of men of very slight skill was clearly shown during the war, when so-called skilled men were called up for service and easily replaced by admittedly unskilled men, or even by shop-girls and domestic servants.' The most sinister development of class-consciousness is syndicalism, which is frankly anti-social as well as anti-democratic. It aims at setting up class antagonism and conducting class warfare. It tends to make a good fellow (for so the average workman is) into a very bad citizen. Another evil of the present system is the opportunity which it gives to a few individuals to amass enormous fortunes which are a curse to themselves and their families and a scandal to the world. Dr. Freeman traces the evolution of an enterprising retailer into the proprietor of shops scattered all over the country, who often becomes his own grower, importer, shipowner, manufacturer, wholesaler and retailer with profits on every stage of 246 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS the business. The final stage is the amalgamation of several huge competing concerns of this type into a combine or trust, holding a virtual monopoly. The spectacle of even a few multi-millionaires of this kind is a reductio ad absurdum of our whole system, and a potent factor of unrest and discontent. The plutocrats try to protect themselves by buying up and controlling the press, whereby democracy is poisoned at its source and is even coming to be regarded as an obstacle to social reform. One other bad result remains to be noted. There are not enough consumers at home to keep the great industries running at their maximum profit, and so the surplus must be unloaded on foreign countries. Hence the scramble for markets, and the constant danger of wars for trade. Population has been stimulated on the assumption that the possibilities of export were unlimited ; unfavourable trade conditions produce at once a vast amount of un- employment, which means that a large fraction of the population who, through no fault of their own, are con- tributing nothing to the wealth of the country, have to be supported by doles levied on the producers. Over- population and unemployment are the inevitable result of machine civilisation. Man, individually, is a heavy loser. The majority of workmen are, as it were, parasitic on the machine which has ousted them from natural human occupations. Let us consider the fate of a shipload of factory hands cast on a fertile but uninhabited island. Could they, like the Pilgrim Fathers, found a self-contained and civilised community ? Obviously they could not. If they did not die of starvation, they would be found six months later living as savages. Dr. Freeman has watched three hundred African natives caught by a storm on the borders of the great forest in West Africa. The natives, who carried cutlasses, disappeared into the forest, from which they presently emerged carrying bundles of poles and coils of monkey-rope. In about an hour he was amazed to see a village ready for habitation. This story re- sembles the experience of the traveller in Tahiti, mentioned by Dr. Muller Lyer. Let us turn OUT thoughts once more THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 247 for a moment to the Government's ' Housing Scheme.' Our ancestors ' would no more have dreamed of asking the State to build their houses than to comb their hair.' A melancholy chapter follows on Social Parasitism. Dr. Freeman spares no class in this part of his indictment ; but he sees the greatest danger in what he considers the evident intention of ' Labour ' to become parasitic on the community. The essence of parasitism is the demand for remuneration determined by the desires of the producer, irrespective of the value of the work which he produces. He has no difficulty in showing how the blood of the industrious is sucked in a dozen places to feed the idle or incompetent, and the egregious bureaucracy which exists mainly to extort and squander the fruits of pro- ductive toil. That fabulous community whose members lived by taking in each other's washing was an economically sound concern compared with one in which a vast majority should subsist parasitically on the earnings of a dwindling minority. Yet this is the social state towards which our own society is advancing. Dr. Freeman next (after an adverse criticism of collect- ivism, which he has anticipated in some earlier chapters) gives his experiences of the British ' sub-man ' as he saw him while inspecting conscripts. The evidences of de- generacy were painfully apparent. Compared with the African negro, the British sub-man is in several respects markedly inferior. He tends to be dull ; he is usually quite helpless and unhandy ; he has, as a rule, no skill or knowledge of handicraft, or indeed knowledge of any kind. The negro, on the contrary, is usually sprightly and humorous. He is generally well-informed as to the flora and fauna of his region, and nearly always knows the principal constellations. He has some traditional knowledge of religion, myths and folk- lore, and some acquaintance with music. He is handy and self-helpful ; he can usually build a house, thatch a roof, obtain and prepare food, make a fire without matches, spin yarn, and can often weave cotton cloth and make and mend simple implements. Physically he is robust, active, hardy and energetic. Over-population is a phenomenon connected with the survival of the unfit, and it is mechanism which has created 248 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS conditions favourable to the survival of the unfit and the elimination of the fit. The whole indictment against machinery may be summed up in Dr. Freeman's own words : Mechanism by its reactions on man and his environment is antagonistic to human welfare. It has destroyed industry and replaced it by mere labour ; it has degraded and vulgarised the works of man ; it has destroyed social unity and replaced it by social disintegration and class antagonism to an extent which directly threatens civilisation ; it has injuriously affected the structural type of society by developing its organisation at the expense of the individual ; it has endowed the inferior man with political power which he employs to the common disad- vantage by creating political institutions of a socially destructive type ; and finally by its reactions on the activities of war it constitutes an agent for the wholesale physical destruction of man and his works and the extinction of human culture. It is thus strictly analogous to those anti-bodies by which the existence of aggregates of the lower organisms is brought to an end. We turn eagerly from this terrible diagnosis to the consideration of remedies. ' The ultimate anti-condition is the suspension of natural selection.' To deal with this, elimination of the unfit is more practicable at present than eugenic attempts to breed supermen. Nevertheless the adoption of Dr. Rentoul's method of sterilisation is beset with difficulties. (Personally, I think that public opinion would be so much shocked by the advocacy of it that it would set back incalculably the whole cause of racial hygiene.) So Dr. Freeman falls back on the Old Testament doctrine of a ' remnant.' A ' nucleus of superior individ- uals ' might render possible, even at the eleventh hour, a social reconstruction. He suggests a ' voluntary segregation of the fit,' a society of men and women who would deter- mine to lead healthy lives under natural conditions, free from the tyranny of mechanism, and supplying each other's modest needs by hand labour. It is much to be feared that this scheme is quite un- workable. To collect a society of eugenic craftsmen and professional people in local centres would surely be im- THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 249 possible in such a country as England. And even if they could establish themselves in certain districts, they would not escape the burdens which the State is imposing on all hard-working citizens. They would be taxed, as Dr. Freeman says that they are now, to support the swarming progeny of the unfit, to make the wastrel comfortable, and to provide soft jobs and pensions for the civil servant and the politician. The experiment would be started under conditions which would foredoom it to failure. Moreover, the trade unions would certainly attack and destroy the new society before it could grow. And lastly, from the point of view of stirpiculture, the effect of the experiment, while it lasted, would be to drain off the best, leaving the residuum worse than before. These objections seem fatal to the establishment of a segregated ' remnant ' in Great Britain. But there is no reason why the experiment should not be tried in a new country. A Company might be founded to acquire a sufficient tract of land in Rhodesia, Tasmania, Western Canada, or Southern Chile, on which a community of picked emigrants might settle and try to live in the good old fashion, as Dr. Freeman wishes. It is most desirable that sociological experiments should be freely tried ; for it is only by experiment that the value of proposals for an ideal commonwealth can be tested. The trade unions might easily put their theories into practice if they wished ; they could start co-operative production without paying any toll to ' functionless capital ' ; but apparently they are too prudent. The Communists, to do them justice, have not shrunk from experiments ; and they have demon- strated conclusively that on a large scale Communism means the swift death of all human industry except agriculture. Dr. Freeman's society would be less ambitious. It would aim only at reproducing the simple, self-contained social life of the age before machinery. In any country where unoccupied land of good quality can still be bought, such a community might live very happily ; but not in England. The constructive part of the book which we have been considering is therefore very disappointing. It leaves us with no remedy for a state of things which the 250 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS author thinks almost desperate. So lame a conclusion to a very able social diagnosis should make us realise how deep and difficult the problem is. Civilisation is faced with a great dilemma. It has grown, like every other organism, in response to its environment. It has strengthened itself by utilising that environment to the uttermost. The secrets of nature have been penetrated, and its forces, one after another, have been harnessed to a car of Juggernaut, which seems now to be crushing its own worshippers. No society which has refused to use the new mechanical discoveries can hold its own in com- petition against the highly industrialised societies. Even in Europe, the Latin countries, which are poor in mineral wealth, have fallen behind in the race. The quick-witted and ambitious Japanese have bowed the knee to Baal, and their ancient culture, so pretty and gracious, is being vulgarised and brutalised before our eyes. Some of the nature-peoples, like the South Sea islanders, have withered at the first touch of the men with the machines, and seem to be dying of mere despair. And yet the all-conquering civilisation of the West now appears to be stricken itself. In Dr. Freeman's language, its own activities have generated toxins which are poisoning it. The machine, though it is our master, cannot work without human auxiliaries ; and these, at the moment when they seemed about to be themselves thoroughly mechanised in its service, are in violent revolt. The Erewhonian policy of breaking up the machines is manifestly impossible in this country. It would condemn more than half the population to starve. We are and must remain the slaves of our machines, so long as we are unable to feed our own population. But a mere check on natural increase will not solve the problem how we are to return to a more natural and healthy type of civilisation. The remedy may be partly in our own hands. If, for example, we chose to clothe ourselves in homespuns which would last half a life-time instead of in cheap machine-made garments which wear out in two or three years, one old industry might be revived. There is much to be said for making national dress reform THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 251 a practical question. Women would no doubt resist it furiously, and it could not be forced upon them ; but the male sex cannot be enamoured of the ugly, costly and inconvenient garments which fashion compels them to wear. An exhibition of new costumes would be very interesting, and would be popular enough to cover ex- penses. There are many other ways in which life could be simplified ; and every unnecessary concession to fashion increases our slavery to the machine. We have seen a welcome improvement in the furniture of living rooms, which forty years ago were so encumbered with useless tables and chairs and cheap ornaments that there was hardly room to turn round. We ought to accustom our- selves to think of the conditions under which everything that we buy is produced. We should then take much more pleasure in a hand-made article, with some individuality in it, than in a standardised product of a great factory, which speaks of nothing but soulless and irksome labour. There are still opportunities of encouraging good crafts- manship, in wood-carving, for instance, and house decora- tion. The real difficulty is that the uneducated do not seem to wish for good articles, unless they can boast of the price they paid for them. We are now suffering from standardised minds as well as from standardised commodities ; and they suit each other. It would be a very wholesome sign if workmen were to refuse to be bound either by trade union rules or by the ' customs of the trade,' and were to insist on working according to their own bent, and selling the works of their own hands. So far, the outcry against mechanism has come mainly 'from artistic disciples of Ruskin and Morris ; the workman aims not at humanising the quality of his labour, but at diminishing its quantity. We may however trust with confidence to the permanence of that best side of human nature, which makes good and beautiful creation one of the chief pleasures of life. Opportunity only is needed. Behind all this, there is the strange question whether man the toolmaker did not, when he made that momentous choice, forfeit the possibility' of further intrinsic progress. Can we say that as is the photographer to the painter, so is 252 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS man as he is to man as he might have been ? We all admit the blunder of slavery ; it is not good for man to compel other men to fetch and carry for him till he becomes almost as helpless as Lord Avebury's slave-holding ants, which cannot even feed themselves. But must we also pay the penalty for our lavish use of ' lifeless instruments,' as Aristotle called our non-human slaves ? Is the man of the machine age condemned to progressive functional atrophy of all the aptitudes which are useful to the savage but un- necessary for himself ? And is this functional atrophy the beginning of a deplorable atavism such as Dr. Freeman found in his British ' sub-men ' when compared with his West African negroes ? We seem to be getting near the position of Edward Carpenter's ' Civilisation : its Cause and Cure.' And yet, if we were given our wish, and trans- ported back to a century when human muscles did nearly all the work that was done, we should be intensely irritated at the waste of time and energy which we should find every- where. It would not be long before we began to write a book called ' Barbarism : its Cause and Cure,' for the benefit of our benighted contemporaries. It is probably very much too late to reverse the decision which our ancestors made tens of thousands of years ago, and which may, for aught we know, have preserved our valuable species from being nipped in the bud. For better or worse, man is the tool-using animal, and as such he has become the lord of creation. When he is lord also of him- self, he will deserve his self -chosen title of homo sapiens. It is something that we can see before us the dilemma of civilisation. Diagnosis is not the same as cure ; but in some diseases it is more than half of the physician's task. The two anthropologists whose books we have been con- sidering agree in their diagnosis, though they differ as to treatment. Both are convinced that civilised man, in enslaving the forces of nature, has become less of a man than he was before. He has succeeded in partially super- seding himself ; many of his natural activities are left un- used ; and in consequence he is neither healthy nor happy. Outraged nature, as Gibbon says, has her occasional revenges; and civilisation is in danger of becoming, a THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION 253 systematic and sustained outrage against nature. The German savant sees the remedy in more perfect organisa- tion ; in other words, our conquest of our environment is to be made more complete. The Englishman advocates the practice of eugenics and of the simple life for those who are willing to submit to this discipline ; he has, apparently, no hope that the mechanisation of life can ever be turned to the real improvement and happiness of mankind. It may be that as the German, writing before the cataclysm, under- estimates the disruptive forces in society and proposes to ' heal too slightly ' the wounds of modern life, so the Englishman is too ready to assume that the disorders which have followed the war indicate a final break-up of our whole social order. The future will show whether civilisation, as we know it, can be mended or must be ended. The time seems ripe for a new birth of religious and spiritual life, which may remould society, as no less potent force would have the strength to do. EUGENICS EUGENICS, which is the application of biological science to sociology, must at present be judged rather by its aims and promise than by its results. The experts who are engaged in genetical research are agreed in deprecating hasty action. They know the extreme complexity of the problems which they are investigating ; they know the jealousy with which nature guards her most intimate secrets. But they are no less agreed that the creation of a new social conscience I bad almost said a new ethics is imperatively required, if civilisation is to escape utter disaster. The conversion or enlightenment of public opinion would be a great help to the science of genetics. A few thousands of voluntary workers, collecting and tabulating details of their family histories, would be very useful. Gal ton tried to enlist the interest of the public in this work, but the response was not very encouraging. Last year, the Minister of Education in the Swedish Parliament, in supporting the establishment of an Institute for Race-Biology, made the following remarks : It is doubtless clear to everyone who is awake to the cir- cumstances of the time in which we live, that we cannot help feeling anxious about the future of civilised nations. At the centre of the many powerful forces which are at work to improve and ennoble the human race, many regrettable and dangerous conditions show themselves which threaten to under- mine and annihilate the work of these forces. At the same time that the welfare of the people, taken as a whole, is im- proved, the mortality diminished, the average length of life increased, they are threatened by a deterioration of race. The vigour of the race is destroyed, which is too high a price to pay for the advantages gained by the high standard to which our 254 EUGENICS 255 material and mental culture has attained. For some time endeavours have been made to counteract the destroying forces. But they have been chiefly directed to improving the outward conditions of human life, the social environment. With every appreciation of what has been done in this way, one has had one's eyes opened to the fact, that no decisive victory can be won by these means only, against the evils which we are fighting. We do not rely any longer on the effect of improved conditions of environment. The fact of the importance of Heredity for the continuation and improvement of the race is at last getting recognition. There is nothing original or striking about this declara- tion ; but it is significant as coining from a Minister of State. In England we are not so far advanced as the Swedes. At the Galton Lecture last year Mr. Bateson, our leading experimental biologist, referred to what passed on the same occasion in 1919. (It will be seen that I am vain of a compliment from Mr. Bateson.) The Dean of St. Paul's delivered an address full of stimulus and penetration, indicating many indubitable consequences which recent legislation must certainly entail upon the com- position of our population, results altogether outside the pur- view of those from whose action they ensue. Sir Auckland Geddes, in proposing the vote of thanks, after sufficiently indi- cating his own mode of thought by asking us to look with com- placency on the danger of over-population that overwhelming menace to the peace of the world and the stability of civilisation proceeded to affirm that ' in politics, in the affairs with which Governments have to deal, it is not accurate knowledge which matters, it is emotion,' concluding with an exhortation that we should let ourselves go on the great wave of emotion sweep- ing the nation towards the millennium which the Ministry of Reconstruction, unhampered by accurate knowledge, was preparing for us. A nation which takes for prophets irrationalists like Mr. Kidd and Mr. Chesterton has no right to complain of emotional politicians, who despise accurate knowledge. It has deserved them. The anti-scientific temper is our enemy to-day a worse enemy than the Germans. It has become shameless and aggressive, taking advantage of certain anti-intellectualist tendencies in modern 256 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS philosophy, and of dissensions in the scientific camp. The Revolution, which more than a hundred years ago guillotined Lavoisier, ' having no need of chemists,' is now proclaiming that it has no need of ' intellectuals ' of any kind. In Russia they have been massacred and exterminated ; in our own country they are ignored and despised. That intellect as such should be spoken of with contempt is a new thing ; it indicates the barbarisa- tion of public and social life. The trained mind finds it difficult to realise how utterly confused are the springs of action in the majority how self-interest and prejudice and mob-contagion and sentiment and the wish to believe are combined in an irrational jumble, out of which emerges a something which psychologists dignify by the name of the Group Mind, but which is really an undisciplined and unsifted bundle of emotions and prejudices, gathering by preference round a sentiment rather than an idea. Such is the mentality of the average man, who, strong in his numbers, treats the warnings of science with contempt and spurns all authority. Eugenists believe that unless civilisation is guided on scientific principles, it must come to ruin. We are ready to give up all our theories, if we can be proved to be in the wrong ; but we stand by scientific as against emotional or sentimental ethics. We can understand, though we pro- foundly disagree with, those who oppose us on grounds of sacrosanct authority. Just as the political economist has no radical quarrel with the man who says ' Humanity and the fear of revolution make it impossible for us to accept that social system which produces the aggregate maximum of wealth,' but has a great quarrel with the man who says ' Double wages and halve output, and our trade will not suffer at all ' ; so we know where we are with a man who says ' Birth-control is forbidden by God ; we prefer poverty, unemployment, wars of extermination, the physical, moral and intellectual degeneration of the people, and a high death-rate to any interference with the universal command to increase and multiply ' ; but we have no patience with those who say that we can have unrestricted and unregu- lated propagation without these consequences. At this EUGENICS 257 early stage in the science of Eugenics, a great part of our work is to impress upon the public this alternative. Either rational selection must take the place of the natural selection which the modern State will not allow to act, or we shall deteriorate as surely as a miscellaneous crowd of dogs which was allowed to rear puppies from promiscuous matings. The Swedish Minister of Education said rightly that Nature is more important than Nurture. Professor Karl Pearson has pointed out that in spite of unparalleled and very costly efforts to improve environment, our output of first-class ability is decidedly less than it was a hundred years ago. Our policy of encouraging nature's failures and misfits to multiply, while the better stocks are pro- gressively penalised for their support, is producing the results which might have been predicted. Professor J. A. Thomson says that the ratio of defectives to normal persons more than doubled between 1874 and 1896. Professor Pearson has tabulated a long list of natural characters, and another long list of nurtural characters, and has worked out in each class what is called the co- efficient of correlation, that is to say, the percentage of resemblance between members of the same family in natural and in nurtural qualities. His conclusion is that the influence of environment is not one-fifth that of heredity, and quite possibly not one-tenth of it. It is only our ignorance of this fact that has led us to disregard nature in the belief that improved nurture must involve racial progress. The Professor ends with an earnest appeal to realise the importance of the problem, since otherwise we can give no aid to the working man on the points where he needs most education at the present critical time in our national history. Our working classes need more than ever some other guidance than that of the politician and journalist ; neither of these will lead them to see beyond the horizon of class interest, or enable them to look upon the nation as an ever- changing organisation, susceptible of advance or decay, as it obeys or disobeys stern natural laws. Professor Pearson is a socialist ; but the socialism of the man of science differs considerably, it will be seen, from n. s 258 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS the socialism of the platform and the pulpit. His con- stituency includes the unborn, who are of no use at elections. Precise knowledge is at present available, in man, for comparatively few characters, and these, such as the inheritance of eye-colour and of certain relatively rare deformities and diseases, are for the most part not of very great importance. Nevertheless, some interesting laws have been discovered, and in one instance, that of mental defect or feeble-mindedness, the results are of very ominous import indeed. Feeble-mindedness follows simple Mendelian rules. It cannot be bred out of a family in which it has established itself, but it could be eliminated by bringing the infected stock to an end. Unfortunately, the birth-rate of the feeble-minded is quite 50 per cent, higher than that of normal persons. Feeble- minded women, being unable to protect themselves, often have an illegitimate child nearly every year. In one workhouse sixteen feeble-minded women had 116 idiot children. The defect, as we might expect, is closely associated with pauperism, vice, and criminality. ' Again and again,' says Dr. Tredgold, 'in investigating the family history of the feeble-minded, I have found that their brothers and sisters, if not actually defective, were criminals, prostitutes, paupers, or ne'er-do-wells.' Their numbers, in England and Wales, amount to about 150,000. Each of these probably costs the State, on an average, about 1500. These facts are so certain, and the results so mischievous, that the Eugenics Education Society for- sook its usual policy of not meddling with legislation, and actively supported the Act for the compulsory segregation of mental defectives. There are many other diseases in which the influence of heredity has been clearly traced. Epilepsy in a family is considered a serious mark of degeneracy, and is often combined with other physical, mental or moral defects. Havelock Ellis has shown, by the way, that the dis- tinguished men who are said to have been epileptic were probably not so. There is no reason, for example, to suppose that St. Paul's ' thorn in the flesh ' was epilepsy. Haemophilia, or bleeding, to which the poor little Tsare- EUGENICS 259 vitch was subject, is strongly inherited ; but in females it behaves like a Mendelian recessive, remaining latent through life ; so that the disease is transmitted through the apparently healthy sisters of a bleeder. Infected males do not often become fathers ; if they do, there is some reason to think that their sons escape. Davenport gives the pedigree of a family in which there were nine male and nine female bleeders ; this is a very rare exception to the rule that the disease spares the female sex. In order that it may not be thought that I am accusing the poor only of transmitting hereditary taints, my next example shall be taken from the higher ranks. In 1780 (says Mr. Arnold White) a marriage took place between a wealthy girl in whose family there had been insanity and a healthy man in her own rank of life. The couple had three children, of whom one was an idiot and one was normal ; neither of these married ; the third child, who was apparently normal, married and produced nine children, of whom the first was insane, the second to the fifth either insane, suicides, or melancholiacs. Of the subse- quent descendants no fewer than twenty were imbeciles, neurotic, or otherwise abnormal. Seven more were doubtful, and twenty- five were normal. About half the entire stock were tainted, which is what we should expect, and there is no tendency for the abnormality to disappear. Professor Karl Pearson gives a pedigree of inherited cataract. A blind woman had two daughters blind at forty. Of her five grandchildren only one escaped ; the other four were blind by thirty. Of her fifteen great- grandchildren thirteen had cataract. Of the forty-six great-great-grandchildren who can be traced, twenty were already of feeble sight at seven, and some lost the sight of both eyes. ' Forty defective individuals in a stock still multiplying, which nature, left to herself, would have cut off at its very inception ! ' A pedigree of deaf -mutism, drawn up by the same author, shows twenty-two cases in three generations. In this family there were four marriages between two deaf- mutes, with the disastrous results which were to be expected. 8 2 260 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS These examples might easily be multiplied tenfold. But it is enough to say that the proof is complete. We do not know how these abnormalities originate ; we do know the only way in which they may be eliminated. The inheritance of ability is a pleasanter subject, but much more complicated. We have to consider the social advantages enjoyed by the children of a successful man, and the assistance which the father's position may some- times give to his sons in the early stages of their career. But the evidence is that mental qualities are inherited to exactly the same extent as physical, and advantageous variations to the same extent as unfavourable. Galton's book on the inheritance of genius (' ability ' would have been a better word, as he admitted himself) is well known, and all who have studied the subject are familiar with the remarkable pedigrees of the Darwins, with their relatives the Wedgwoods and Galtons, and of the Bach family, several of whom were eminent musicians. The Kembles, in the same way, had a natural gift for acting. From my own observation I think that no kind of ability is more strongly inherited than scholarship, in the narrower sense of the word. It would be almost safe for a classical examiner to give a scholarship to a youth called Sidgwick, Kennedy, or Butler, without reading his papers. If in this place I give as an example the pedigree of my own mother's family, it is not from conceit or egotism, but merely as an instance of the way in which a quite ordinary family record will confirm the views of Eugenists. (1) Ralph Churton (2) William (3) Edward Churton (4) Thomas Churton (5) Whittaker Churton Kalph Churton ! i I (6) William (7)J.W. Ralpn Churton Churton (8) Edward T. Churton (9) Henrv N. Churton Susanna = (10) William Mary i luge Churton ! (11) William Ralph Inge (12) Charles C. Inge EUGENICS 261 (1) Archdeacon, Scholar, and Divine. (' Dictionary of National Biography.') (2) Scholar and Divine. ('Dictionary of National Bio- graphy.') (3) Archdeacon, Scholar, Historian, Minor Poet. ('Dic- tionary of National Biography.') (4) Resident Fellow of Brasenose. Prominent in con- troversy with Tractarians. (5) Learned Hebrew Scholar. (6) Scholar of Eton and King's ; Fellow of King's ; Canon of St. Albans. (7) Proxime accessit for Hertford University Scholarship in his freshman's year ; died aged 21. (8) Scholar of Eton and Oriel ; a Colonial Bishop. (9) First Scholarship at Eton ; Newcastle Scholar ; a Colonial Bishop. (10) Scholar, Fellow, and Provost of Worcester College, Oxford. (11) See 'Who's Who.' (12) Scholar of Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. (13) Archdeacon. No males who lived to grow up are omitted. It will be seen that in four generations no member of the family failed to win a certain degree of success in scholarship, or theology, or both. Whether my orthodox ancestors would have approved of ' Outspoken Essays ' is a very different question. Many problems of great interest and importance are being zealously investigated, but at present without any very certain conclusions. For instance, many persons think that Eugenics begins and ends with the question : ' Should first cousins be allowed to marry ? ' Evidence has been brought that various bodily and mental defects result from such marriages ; but the prevailing opinion is that when a stock is thoroughly sound there is no risk whatever. When some transmissible defect is present, even in a latent condition, it is obviously undesirable that the next generation should have a double dose of it. A kindred question is whether a national stock is improved by miscegenation. Continued in-breeding in a small 262 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS society is certainly prejudicial, and all the great nations, not excluding the Jews, have been of mixed descent. But unchecked mongrelising destroys the symmetry of a national type. Probably alternate periods of fusion with immigrants and of stabilising the results give a nation the best chance of producing a fine type of men and women. The determination of sex is a secret which nature has so far resolutely refused to part with. It has been sug- gested that femininity is a Mendelian dominant, so that every woman is half male, while every male is purely masculine. A male child results from the union of two male germs, a female child from the union of a male and a female germ, the male character being recessive. 1 But this does not account for the greater number of male births which exists in almost if not quite every country. Still less has any reason been found for the much larger excess of male births in certain races. Among the Turko- Iranians the male children outnumber the female by 1236 to 1000. In the white races the proportion is about 1050 to 1000 ; among the negroes the numbers are nearly equal. 2 During the war there was a widespread belief that the proportion of male births had greatly increased. The source of the belief was not observation, but the notion that as Providence is supposed to send an unusually abundant supply of berries for the birds before a hard winter, so the wastage of male lives in the war was being partially made good by an extra supply of boy babies. The forlorn damsels of 1916 were apparently to console themselves with young husbands a quarter of a century later. The strange thing is that when the vital statistics of the war-time became available it appeared that there had actually been a small but appreciable increase (in England and Wales from 1039 to 1046) in the ratio of male births. This phenomenon was common to all the 1 But Mr. J. S. Huxley (in Eugenics fievi&v, July 1922) says: 'In all mammals which have been investigated, it is the male which produces two kinds of reproductive cells, of which one is the female- determining, the other the male -determining. ' 2 In the new edition of Westermarck's History of Human Marriage (vol. iii) this subject is discussed with much detail. But the evidence is conuicting. EUGENICS 263 belligerent countries, and extended to some neutrals affected by the war. No explanation is forthcoming ; but personally I am inclined to think that insufficient food may have slightly increased the male births. Some experiments with animah favour this theory ; but it is right to say that the best authorities reject it. Another question of great importance is whether the age of the parents at the child's birth has much influence on his future career. Here there is plenty of evidence, but it is conflicting. Vaerting, of Berlin, finds that distinguished men are nearly always the sons of young fathers, if the fathers were themselves distinguished, though undistinguished fathers may have distinguished sons up to the age of sixty. It is therefore a fatal mistake for intellectual men to defer their marriage ; their only chance of having children of whom they may be proud is to beget them before thirty. On the other hand, Havelock Ellis, whose studies in this field are always of the highest value, finds that the distinguished fathers of distinguished sons were above the average age when their children were born. There have been fifteen distinguished English eons of dis- tinguished fathers, but instead of being nearly always under thirty and usually under twenty-five, as Vaerting found in Germany, the English distinguished father has only five times been under thirty and among these five only twice under twenty- five. Moreover, precisely the most distinguished among the sons (Francis Bacon and William Pitt) had the oldest fathers and the least distinguished sons the youngest fathers. It seems to be established by the biometricians that children who are born after their fathers are fifty seldom attain distinction, and that on the other hand immature marriages do not produce good results. But these are counsels based on averages ; nature refuses to be fettered. Napier, the inventor of logarithms, was the son of a little boy of sixteen. A very different question is whether alcohol should be added to the short list of racial poisons which may affect the germ-plasm. We have here to be on our guard against the violent prejudice of teetotal fanatics. But my 264 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS honoured friend, Dr. Mjoen, of Norway, who was my guest at the first Eugenics Congress, seems to have demon- strated that pronounced alcoholism in the parent may gravely injure the constitution of the child. The difficulty in this question is that alcoholism is usually a symptom or consequence of degeneracy, so that quite apart from any direct poisoning of the germ-plasm by alcohol, we might expect to see very inferior children from alcoholic parents. Professor Karl Pearson is not convinced that the ordinary heavy drinker does any harm to his children. It is gratifying to a clergyman to find that not only do the clergy live longer than any other profession (this is conclusively proved by the Registrar-General's statistics), but that they are considered the most desirable of parents. Vaerting and Havelock Ellis agree that the list of dis- tinguished clergymen's sons is long and illustrious ; and Sir Francis Galton told me in conversation that he con- sidered the clergy the very best sires from the eugenic point of view. I will not speculate on the causes of this ; but everyone must have noticed the extremely robust appearance of the old-fashioned parson (the younger clergy are mostly drawn from a different class), and the facts, as ascertained by impartial investigators, are certainly a strong argument against clerical celibacy. On the other side, I remember an Eton boy who, when asked why the sons of Eli turned out badly, replied ' The sons of clergymen always turn out badly.' He attributed this startling generalisation to his tutor, who was himself in Holy Orders. Dr. Schiller, of Oxford, who ought to give us a book on scientific ethics applied to sociology for there is no one else in England who could write it with so much wit and wisdom has said that ' civilisation has more than one string to its bow; it is at present bowstringing itself with several.' The most expeditious mode of strangulation is probably war, a ruinously dysgenic institution, which carefully selects the fittest members of the community, rejecting the inferior specimens, takes them away from their wives for some of the best years of their lives, and kills off one in ten or one in five, as the case may be. The loss inflicted on our EUGENICS 265 race by the Great War can never be repaired ; the average quality of the parents of the next generation has been greatly lowered, and this evil is irremediable. Hardly less destructive is social revolution, as we have seen it at work in Russia. The trustees of such culture as existed in Russia have been exterminated ; civilisation in that unhappy country has been simply wiped out in a few years, and the nation has reverted to absolute barbarism. But there is a third bowstring which, because it is always round our necks, we seldom think of, and which because it seems to be inseparable from civilisation as we know it we hardly think of combating ; and this may turn out to be our destined instrument of death. The differences between man and the highest subhuman animals are so great that there must have been a time when he was progressing comparatively rapidly : the time when he was growing a larger brain and more serviceable hands. From the time when he began to be civilised he has pro- gressed no further. His brain is no larger than it was ten thousand years ago ; his natural weapons have atrophied ; civilised man is an inferior animal to the finest of the sur- viving barbarian tribes. To put it shortly, environmental development supplanted intrinsic development ; the tool progressed, the user of the tool remained stationary or even went back. This process, which for long ages moved very slowly, has taken great strides forward since the in- dustrial revolution a hundred years ago. Natural selection, which in uncivilised societies weeds out all nature's failures, has almost ceased to act. A dwarf can mind a machine ; a cripple can keep accounts. The general handiness and adaptability which is second nature to a savage is useless in an age of specialisation. Political changes have deprived the tax-payer of any voice in the disposition of his money, and enormously expensive machinery has been set up to subsidise the incompetent and the wastrel at the expense ot the. unrepresented minority. The inevitable consequence is that the unfit increase, while the fit decay. As Dr. Schiller says : The particular kind of ability society recognises, the cream the society wants, is always rising to the top ; but when it gets OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS there it is always being skimmed off and cast away. Could there be a more crushing confutation of the pretensions of the civilised state to benefit the human race ? It is continually pumping up from the lower strata the particular sorts of ability that are valued, concentrating them in the upper strata, and there destroying fifty per cent, ol them in every generation. We are thus faced with a progressive deterioration of our stock, due to the suspension of natural selection, and the entire absence of anything like rational selection. The evil has been greatly increased by the stupidities of ignorant and unscientific class-legislation. We are threatened with something much worse than a regression to healthy bar- barism. Let anyone contrast the physique of a Zulu or an Anatolian Turk with that of our slum population, and we shall realise that we are breeding not vigorous barbarians but a new type of sub-men, abhorred by nature, and ugly as no natural product is ugly. We cannot find any comfort in the argument that this modification of environment at the expense of natural endowment is in the line of evolution, and therefore not only inevitable but beneficial. ' There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.' So-called progress, which is a rare episode in human history, has before now led a civilisation into a blind alley, from which there is no escape. Our tools have become our masters ; to all appearance we work for them, and not they for us. They ought to be merely our instruments for realising a good and healthy life ; they are in fact the means of our degeneration. Mechanism is morally neutral ; it may be turned to good or to bad ends ; and it is character only which decides whether it shall be well or badly used. A degenerate race cannot use its machinery to any good purpose. With its instinctive shrinking from intellectual effort, from exertion and from enterprise, it will concentrate its attention, as it is doing already, on labour- saving appliances to take the place of muscles and brains, till we shall soon have a generation which will call it a grievance to walk a mile, and which will think it the acme of civilisation to be able on every occasion to ' put a penny in the slot ' in answer to the seductive advertisement, ' You press the button, we do the rest.' It has been proved a EUGENICS 267 thousand times that nature takes away an organ which is not used. All our faculties were evolved during long ages in response to what were then our needs, by the stern but beneficent weeding of nature. In the absence of any systematic race-culture, we shall gradually slide back into feeble and helpless creatures, the destined prey of some more vigorous stock. This is one of those insidious diseases the advance of which is so slow that it is unperceived. An Englishman of Elizabeth's time would be shocked beyond measure if he could revisit his former rural haunts, now covered with masses of unlovely houses, and contemplate the types of humanity which he found there. But we do not reflect on these things. The new population, supported more and more every year out of the labour of the industrious and capable, are looked upon as voters and as receivers of doles ; we do not think of them either as men and women whom nature intended to be formed ' after God's image/ or as superfluous mouths which ought not to be there at all. The disease is insidious and in a sense painless ; we have many other things to think about. There are no doubt many who will stoutly deny that there has been any degeneration at all. Perhaps their confidence may be shaken by evidence which has lately become available from the other side of the Atlantic. The Americans, who are generally believed to be behind no other nation in their average level of intelligence, devised very ingenious tests of mental development for the troops whom they mobilised in 1917 and 1918. These tests were applied to 1,726,966 officers and men who were destined for service in Europe. The examination papers were so arranged as to require very little writing. Alternative answers to simple questions were given, and the men marked with a cross the answer which they thought correct. Most of the questions are so elementary that one may be surprised that they were set to grown men. For instance, the recruits were ordered to decide ' Why cats are useful animals,' and the answers among which they were to choose were (1) Because they catch mice; (2) because they are gentle ; (3) because they are afraid of dogs. A slightly 268 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS harder question was : ' Why is it colder near the poles ? ' The suggested answers were : (1) Because they are farther from the sun ; (2) because the sun's rays fall obliquely near the poles ; (3) because there is so much ice there. The examination, though extremely simple, was a com- prehensive test of mental alertness and common sense. It is reported to have worked admirably. The men were divided into five grades : A and B, men of superior intelligence ; C, of average intelligence ; D and E, men of inferior or very poor intelligence. It was found by experience at the front that the men who had been placed in the two highest classes were in every respect the best soldiers, braver, steadier, more intelligent and able to learn their duties, more able to take the initiative in an emergency. The two lowest classes were practically useless except for the simplest tasks, and many of them were employed only behind the lines. Class E, it was reported, were a loss to the country ; it was not worth while to send them out. Now, what are the statistics of these tests of intelligence ? American psychologists usually class the capacity of those whom they examine in terms of ' mental age/ the standard being fixed by the average proficiency of school children at different ages. The two lowest classes were below the mental age of nine, and many of the third class were below the mental age of thirteen, which in civil life is the limit below which an adult is classified as a ' moron/ or feeble- minded person. The men who found their way into classes A and B numbered 12 per cent. ; the average men 66 per cent. ; and the inferior men, below the mental age of nine, 22 per cent. But, as has been indicated, the standard of efficiency was much lower than that which is adopted in civil life. If ' feeble-mindedness ' had been made to cover all intelligences below the mental age of thirteen, 47 '3 per cent., nearly half the entire draft, would have fallen below the line. This percentage may be taken as applying very nearly to the whole adult male population of America, since though a few highly educated men were no doubt reserved for intellectual war-work at home, at least as many imbeciles were not admitted to examination at all. Although it does not bear directly on our subject, it EUGENICS 269 may be interesting to refer to the comparative intelligence of American soldiers grouped by nationality. England and Holland come out at the top of the list, a result which confirms the opinion that the citizens whom we lose to the United States are much above the average of those who stay at home. Of the negro draft, at the lower end of the scale, only 11 per cent, were above the mental age of thirteen, and 80 per cent, had to be placed in the two lowest classes. Among other nations, the Polish draft had 70 per cent, below the mental age of nine ; the Italian 63 per cent. ; the Russian 60. Italy seems not to send out her most intelligent citizens. 1 America, then, the classical land of democracy, is governed by voters about half of whom are, in intelligence, children of less than thirteen years old. It will hardly be maintained either that our population is more intelligent than the Americans, or that the addition of the female voters would raise the standard. That is what we have come to ; our legislators are chosen, and our policy deter- mined by a body half of whom would be scientifically classed as ' high-grade morons.' And yet both in America and England enormous amounts of public money are wasted every year in attempting to educate those who have proved themselves incapable of education. This kind of national degeneracy corresponds to senile decay in the individual. Calamities like war and pestilence are soon recovered from if the national stock is sound ; but a nation in such a condition as these figures indicate can certainly not afford to lose three-quarters of a million of its best men. Physicians do not bleed a patient who is dying of pernicious anaemia. Mr. Hilaire Belloc has lately given it as his opinion that our civilisation is on the wane. I do not know (since, as a Roman Catholic, he is probably an anti-eugenist) on what grounds he bases this opinion ; but from our point of view he is probably right. Only we need not suppose that the 1 In Mr. Lothrop Stoddard's new book, The Revolt against Civilisation, the significance of these intelligence tests is drawn out with great force. The whole book, which reached me too late to be used in this essay, should be carefully studied. 270 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS case is hopeless. Our future is in our own hands to make or to mar. The science of statistics has put a new weapon against disease into our hands. A nation can now, so to speak, take its own temperature, and make an intelligent diagnosis and prognosis of its own condition. This is an age of science, though scientific ethics have an uphill battle to fight. The results of neglecting the lessons of science are becoming more apparent every year ; and if we do not learn our lesson voluntarily, other nations may force us to face the facts. But the time for repentance is short. The evils which we deplore are, in their present intensity, a new phenomenon. Dr. Stevenson, in a valuable paper on ' The Fertility of Various Social Classes in England and Wales from the Middle of the Nineteenth Century to 1911,' shows that : The increase in range of total fertility from the marriages of 1851-1861, which were 11 per cent, below the mean in the case of Class I (middle class) and 3 per cent, above in that of Class V (unskilled labour), to those of 1891-1896, which were 26 per cent, below the mean in the case of Class I and 13 per cent, above it in Class V, is very apparent. The table seems to suggest that if the comparison could have been carried twenty years further back a period of substantial equality between all classes might have been met with. He adds truly that we have to face ' a formidable fact how formidable is a question which must be left to the consideration of authorities on eugenics.' ' The difference in fertility between the social classes is a new phenomenon, and on that account the more disquieting/ It is a deplorable symptom of official ignorance or indifference that in the census of last year the questions which would have thrown light on the progress of these disquieting symptoms were deliberately omitted. It is not contended that the upper and middle classes are necessarily more desirable parents than the self-supporting working class. There is some reason, perhaps, for thinking that the professional class in this country is the best endowed by nature ; but without insisting upon this, we are surely justified in saying that the disproportionate increase of Class V is an ominous and dangerous symptom. EUGENICS 271 Diagnosis is one thing, and treatment is another. In this case, the first requisite is to get the diagnosis accepted. But a writer on eugenics may reasonably be expected to make some practical suggestions, without which he may be accused of uttering mere jeremiads. Negative eugenics the prevention of the multiplication of undesirable types is more important at present than positive the encouragement of the better stocks to repro- duce their kind. For the country is over-populated to the extent of ten millions, the Prime Minister is believed to have said. Some effective check upon an increase which excluding the war period amounts to about ten per thousand per annum is the indispensable preliminary to social and eugenic reform alike. It is useless, under present conditions, to lecture the well-to-do on the duty of having large families. It is not desirable that they should, and they could not provide for them in their own station. (And here I will say parenthetically that one cause of small families in the richer classes has never, so far as I know, been noticed. It is assumed that people choose to have small families because they are rich and selfish ; the fact very often is that families have become rich because they are small. The money of a dwindling family tends to be concentrated in the hands of the last survivor ; and a prolific family soon ceases to rank among the well-to-do.) What we should aim at is to reduce the average size of the family. The best way to do this would be eiiher to reim- pose school fees, or to enact that the State will educate two children in each family free, but no more. Persons with a definite transmissible taint ought not to be allowed to procreate. Many high-minded men and women already accept this duty and act upon it ; the reckless must be restrained by the State. For it is obvious that when the State takes upon itself the burden of providing for all the defectives that are born, it is entirely within its rights in insisting that the number of these worse than useless mouths shall not be wantonly increased. Positive eugenics must take the form rather of improv- ing the quality than the quantity of births among the fit Certificates of health as a condition of lawful marriage 272 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS might be required by the State ; they involve no more ' inquisition ' than life insurance, to which no one objects. It might be possible to combine this requirement with the obligation for both parties to insure their lives, of course for a very small amount ; this insurance might constitute a contributory old age pension. In the absence of such legislation, the custom might be encouraged of demanding a health certificate on both sides before marriage. There have been several cases of wicked deception, in which an imbecile girl has been carefully trained to behave like an intelligent person in society, and an unhappy man has been tricked into marrying her. And of course every bride or bridegroom has a right to know for certain that the other party is in a healthy condition for the married life. These voluntary certificates might come to have a considerable value. They might include not only a medical certificate of health, but a scientific record of the family history, drawn up by an official board, which could be made self- supporting by fees. An untarnished family history, so certified, would be a source of legitimate pride, and, as public opinion becomes more enlightened, would be of more value to those wishing to marry than five thousand pounds in War Loan. Galton's plan of offering pecuniary induce- ments to the Al class to marry and have children is not, I think, practicable. The possession of Al children ought to be prize enough. In almost all the higher walks of life the old are overpaid and the young ' sweated.' The young presumably acquiesce in this system in the hope of becoming fossils themselves after a time. But it is eugenically bad, making early marriage impossible, or encouraging the dysgenic art of fortune-hunting. This evil is not irremediable. The present system of taxation, and still more of upper- class education, acts as an artificial deterrent to parenthood. The co-education of all classes at the State schools would be a remedy, but the Public Schools of England have been and still are a great national asset, and the loss of them would be a calamity. I notice with great regret that the Oxford and Cambridge Commission proposes to abolish all prize scholar- ships at the Universities, turning them into sizarships. EUGENICS 273 No money is to be given by the Colleges to which the eleemosynary taint does not cling. This will be another blow to the professional claos, and it will be recognised too late that a heavy blow has been struck at liberal education. As a sop to the class which has been taught to expect doles, to ask for them without shame and to accept them without gratitude, great injury has been done to the class which would rather suffer privation than beg for charity. The clever public schoolboy will lose the stimulus which makes him work to secure an honourable and valuable prize, and the pleasure of knowing that he has helped his father and made the home life more comfortable. It is quite right that a rich parent should give back, as a free gift, his son's scholarship money to the College. This has often been done, and would in the future be done still more often ; but the recommendation of the Commissioners turns generosity into a fine, and the scholar's gown into a badge of mendicancy. From the point of view of eugenics, it will still further penalise parenthood among our best families. The prejudices against eugenics are still strong. They find vent in such strange ebullitions as a recent, book by G. K. Chesterton, and in frequent denunciations on the part of Roman Catholics. It is, however, strange that Christians should be auti-eugenists. For though religion is the strongest of nurtural influences, the religion of Christ, like eugenics, makes nature, not nurture, its end. It aims at saving the soul the personality, the man him- self and in comparison with this makes very light of his environment. A man is saved, not by what he has, or knows, or even does, but by what he is. Christianity treats all the apparatus of life with a disdain as great as that of the biologist ; so long as a man is inwardly healthy, it cares little whether he is rich or poor, learned or simple. For the Christian as for the eugenist, the test of the welfare of a country is the quality of the men and women whom it turns out. He cares nothing for the disparity between births and deaths ; for him quality is everything, quantity is nothing. And surely the Christian, who is taught to fix his gaze on ' the Kingdom of God,' and to pray that it may be set up on earth, is bound to think 274 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS of the welfare of posterity as a thing which concerns him as much as that of his own generation. And this welfare is conceived in terms of intrinsic worth and healthiness. The Sermon on the Mount contains some admirable eugenic precepts, reminding us that a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, nor a corrupt tree good fruit. ' Do men gather grapes of thorns, or tigs of thistles ? ' Christ may not have been thinking primarily of heredity, but He enunciates a universal law which applies to the family no less than to the individual. The opposition of traditional religion may be excused on the ground of the intense conservatism of the religious mind, and its reluctance to accept any ethical teaching which does not bear the stamp of its own mint. But what are we to say to the steady hostility of the doctrin- aire socialists to any interference with unchecked and unregulated procreation ? We might have expected a very different attitude, both from the advocates of increasing State interference, and from those who find in our present social order a conspiracy against the manual workers. The socialist government of Mexico has refused to inter- fere with Mrs. Margaret Sanger, the propagandist of birth-control, on the ground that the opposition to this movement proceeds from persons who are themselves in possession of information which they wish to withhold from the workers, in order that there may be a large supply of cannon-fodder for capitalism. This accusation, however unfair, is what one might expect the enemies of our industrial system to bring ; and it is surprising that it has not occurred to our socialists to bring it. It is difficult not to have a suspicion that our revolutionary party are counting on an exacerbation of the economic stress by over-population, and that they welcome the prospect of a condition of things for which there can be no peaceful solution. Meanwhile, we still hear such silly objections as that we value brawn above brain, and that the eugenic state would prevent the birth of men of genius, many of whom would not pass the eugenic test. It is true that men of genius are not always desirable fathers ; but their parents, EUGENICS 275 who possessed no genius, are, almost without exception, people who would easily pass any ordinary tests. Have- lock Ellis has discussed this question, and has found that * in not 1 per cent, can insanity be traced among the parents of British men of genius, and there is not a single instance in which the parent had been recognisably insane before the birth of the distinguished child ; so that any prohibition of the marriage of persons who had previously been insane would have left British genius untouched.' A third objection, that ' we do not know what we want to breed for/ need not trouble us now. We know very well the kind of people whom we do not want ; and the question whether general or specialised ability is the greater asset to a nation may be left to a future time, when knowledge is more advanced and public opinion better educated. It is possible that while we are governed by ' high- grade morons ' there will be no practical recognition of the dangers which threaten us. But those who understand the situation must leave no stone unturned in warning their fellow countrymen ; for the future of civilisation is at stake. Printed in England at THE BALLANTYNE PRESS SPOTTJSWOODE. BALLANTYNK fit Co. LTD. Colchester, London & Eton DC SOUTHERN REGIONA 001 397109 "CflLOHIMBOOKSlRW 45 FOURTH AVE. Hew York City 3, fiRamerc, 5-8354 We Hunt Out-of-Prlnt