LIBRARY OF THE University of California. Class FAITH IN MAN By the Same Author The Mind of Man: Jl Tex^t Book ob^ PeYCHoiirOaY By GUSTAV SPILLER Demy Zvo.^ ys. 6d, " The point of view from which this work is written, will, it is hoped, commend itself to_ the lovers of science. To my mind, the amazing backwardness of psychology is principally due to it having been almost exclusively cultivated by philosophers or those philosophically inclined, i.e., by those who have settled doctrines to begin with, instead of by men of Science who possess only the desire for truth as such. This work will have fulfilled its author's purpose if it accentuates the need of, and assists in establishing a psychology of a strictly scientific character."— £xiraci from Pre/ace. "All that Mr. Spiller says in support of Introspection as ' the method in chief,' and this makes up a considerable portion of the book, deserves careful study. Almost with the fervour of the old devotional writers, he lays stress on the importance of cultivation of habits of correct observation, severe though the discipline be." — Daily Chronicle. " Mr. Spiller had a sound notion of method ; his general point of view is defensive and he makes many acute observations. The method adopted he defines as 'ex- perimental introspection.' Some of the author's most interesting observations, indeed, are directed against all assertions of originality in individuals as distinguished from persons. " — A thenaum. " Some notes of distinction characterize this work. It shows not a little independ- ence of thought. There is neither subservience to authority in matters of opinion, nor reliance on tradition in methods of exposition. The headings of the chapters — Systems as Distributed ; Systems as Organized; Systems as Need-satisfying, and so forth, suggest a freshness of treatment which is in large degree realised in their contents. Constant reference is made to the results of actual experience ; the author has worked assiduously in the introspective laboratory of his own mind, and urges his readers to adopt the same course." — School World. " He has undoubtedly written one of the most original books on psychology that has appeared in recent years. The volume is extremely suggestive throughout." — Philosophical Review. " Mr. Spiller deserves the thanks of students of psychology for the very able and painstaking manner in which he has presented the various systems of the science." — Liberty Review. FAITH IN MAN ZU (E^%ion of tU Zmntkt^ C^ntutjf The Essence of Religion — What is Art ? — Ethics and Science^ The New Faith and Social Reform — The Relation of the New Faith to Philosophy — The Test of Progress — A Democratic Basis for Education — The Ethical Movement. GUSTAV SPILLER (AUTHOR OF <*THE MIND OF MAN," ETC.) LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & Co., LiM. 25 High Street, Bloomsbury, W.C. 1908 fif^f/ifli PREFACE Not all revolutions are heralded and accompanied by disorder and violence. The revolution in thought which Socrates witnessed, and the great French Kevolution were marked, the first by moral confusion, and the second by social anarchy. A mightier revolution is taking place in our genera- tion, — implying profounder readjustments in men's beliefs and actions than the revolutions referred to, — which proceeds with marvellous rapidity and yet almost without protest. The Conscience has eclipsed the Scriptures ; Science has destroyed the belief in Divine Interposition; Demo- cracy and Civism have shown men how to help themselves, and the supreme test and interest of men have become Ethical, and have ceased to be Super- naturalistic. We are even assured that the creeds and 197735 VI PREFACE dogmas are practical moral helps whose truth is a matter of indifference and that the supreme test of a revival is the ethical result. It is not that men are becoming indifferent. It is rather that a new faith, the faith in moral endeavour, is displacing the faith in supernatural hopes and fears. With science and morality dominating men's lives, a radical reconstruction of beliefs has become inevitable, and the object of the present volume is to show the positive and bracing faith in man and society which has been silently emerging out of the bloodless struggle of the last quarter of a century. GUSTAV SPILLER March, 1908. OF CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. The Essence of Eeligion - - . 9 II. What is Akt ? 44 III. Ethics and Science - - - - 70 IV. The New Faith and Social Eeform - 95 V. The Relation of The New Faith to Philosophy 115 VI. The Test of Progress - - - . I37 VII. A Democratic Basis for Education - 157 VIII. The Ethical Movement - - - - 180 FAITH IN MAN CHAPTEE I THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION I The question of the relation between ethics and religion is coming to be acutely felt, not only among philosophers, but among the public at large. Modern scientific advance has introduced the problem to an ever-widening circle of thoughtful persons, and it has thus opened up a field of inquiry in which the interest is intensely personal, for with the majority of in- dividuals a scientific ethics seems to remove the very foundations of their deepest convictions. The problem, however, cannot be shelved. The social tendency at the present day is towards religious reinterpretation, towards scientific explanations in every department of life, and towards tolerance and humanitarianism generally. As a result it is natural that works on ethics should have multiplied during the last century 1 10 FAITH IN MAN and that the supposed necessary connexion between ethics and religion should have been emphasised less and less. At first, under these changed conditions, the tendency was to find a general metaphysical basis for ethics independent of special theologies; but the prevailing humanitarianism and desire for scientific treatment gradually shifted the centre of gravity towards a scientific, civic, and non-metaphysical or autonomous ethics. At the same time the public interested itself in this problem and the cry went up, on the one side, that ethics is in danger because of tendencies which are leading to the dissolution of religious sentiments, and, on the other, that because of the inevitable weakening of religious faith it is im- perative to free ethics from theology and make it autonomous. So soon as the autonomy of ethics had become a much canvassed question, fresh developments were unavoidable. Men began to argue that ethics is in its very nature independent of theology or of God's will, and that a dependent ethics ceases to be an ethics altogether. Whether men believed in a deity or not, it was contended, should make no difference to them morally; for since ethics is independent, belief in a deity can be of no consequence. We see here ethics, as regards its foundations, altogether separated from THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION 11 theology. Once, however, men had advanced thus far, they were not slow to draw further conclusions. Religion, they said, satisfies certain mystical cravings of human nature, and has nothing to do with ethics. Eeligion stands for a personal, philosophical conception ; it is purely speculative, and morality is not its concern. Hence there is really neither an agreement nor a conflict between religion and ethics — ethics goes one way and religion another, and a man's religion and ethics are shut up in cortical compartments which do not communicate. On Sunday morning we go to church and draw religious strength ; on Sunday even- ing we go to a meeting of an ethical body and draw ethical strength. Could there be a more beautiful compromise? Yet in the minds of many of those who pleaded for an autonomous ethics a final con- clusion ripened. They were so overpowered by the majesty and sublimity of the moral law that they declared that it was the Highest, that ethics should, therefore, be regarded as a religion, and that theology, whether false or true, was a philosophical system and had naught to do with religion pure and undefiled. Finally, from this point it was but a step — the last one possible along this line — to the declaration that theologies are out-of-date working hypotheses, and that a naturalistic, scientific, humanitarian and demo- 12 FAITH IN MAN cratic philosophy of life must underlie the new ethics. We have sketched the gradual enfranchisement of ethics from religion, and we have seen the process end, according to a certain school, in a re-afiEirmation of religion, minus theology and plus certain modern conceptions. Under the circumstances it is an indis- pensable task to make a careful inquiry into the nature of religion, more especially from the ethical standpoint, so as to enable us to judge impartially of the claims of the contending parties. The two extreme views have come to agree to a certain extent, that is, that ethics cannot be dissociated from religion ; but they are wholly disagreed as to what religion consists in. Which line of thought, then, is defensible ? Or what is the truth in the matter ? And us to the countless views which mediate between the extremes, the hope for the present of a common understanding, let alone of a common agreement, appears altogether Utopian. Perhaps, therefore, if we analyse the contents of the ordinary religious consciousness and allow fully for changes due to individual and social peculiarities and development, it may become possible to restrict the number of plausible differences and to bring about a closer and a better understanding. THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION" 13 II In a thoroughly organised community men are at home and do not feel lost. "When, however, as at present, owing to rapid and incalculable social changes, almost complete instability in the social relations prevails, men seek for some anchor of the soul which shall make them independent of the vicissitudes of life. They are bewildered by uncertainty; they feel like helpless prey ; they are not equal to struggling with the world; hope and satisfaction seem to forsake them. A child trusts his parents implicitly, and thus his life is organised for him. Similarly by belief in a providence, in a loving father, in a loving saviour, in the essential rightness of things, in the law of compen- sation, or in a happy final consummation, an adult may achieve the same object. Stoicism, Epicureanism, fidelity to a moral or artistic ideal, produce a similar effect. Likewise, a feeling of our oneness with God, with men, or with nature, will take us out of ourselves and make us superior to circumstance. Ideals, of course, vary in breadth; but only those ideals which free life as such from dependence on circumstance are called truly religious. These ideals are principally determined by social conditions, and they only dis- appear where a man knows his place and is allowed to fill it; in other words, when circumstance has been 14 FAITH IN MAN shaped to agree with principle. In an ideal society we are not at the mercy of oppression, of delusion, of ignorance, of weakness, of loneliness, of hatred, of an irrational world, and consequently life offers there what otherwise only an overpowering belief in a very remote or refined ideal could give. When men will have made a unity of the world, they will naturally be at one with themselves, their fellows and the world generally. In the meantime the craving for an anchor of the soul is a very real and a very insistent one ; yet such an anchor is not everything, for it may be inimical to self-reliance and to progress. Thus a child may be happier through complete trust and obedience; but when the period of childhood is past, it is wrong and cowardly to seek happiness in the way children do, and we are then bound to decline the assistance of our parents or our superiors. Indeed, in some transitional periods the sheerest hopelessness is right, while con- tented trust is then criminal. Even to-day the eye should be fixed on what requires improving in society rather than on smugly reposing our faith in some panacea. We may not have peace at any price, least of all moral peace. However, many men yearn for calm and peace and serenity, and where social anarchy prevails which the individual cannot remove, religion secures this to some extent by sending men into the desert, THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION 15 by building monasteries and convents, by laying the stress on the inner life, and by picturing in glowing colours another world as a balance to this. In our day the thought that we are doing our best, and that the best is sure to triumph, ought to lift us above passing circumstance, and should yield a feeling of security and satisfaction. The desire for a reassuring conception of life appears in religion because it appears in society generally. On this account evolution is said to favour the right, and for this reason the same thing is affirmed of the constitution of the universe. Emerson and others never weary of telling us of the law of compensation that rules the world. Many are the voices which assure us that only the good life satisfies ; that there exists an avenging and rewarding conscience; that the triumph of wrong is illusory ; that in the long run justice gains the victory; that injustice and evil are illusions ; that everything tends to a happy consumma- tion ; that life is a mystery, a half-way house, a trial. Modern hedonists inform us that the ethical life brings the greatest pleasure. Epicureans, for the same reason, led the simple and unselfish life. Stoics praise the harmonious life — a consistent self living in a harmonised society, which itself is part of a cosmos. The same end of lending a unity to life is attained by optimistic, 16 FAITH IN MAN melioristic, socialistic, individualistic, anarchistic, and, in a less degree, by radical, liberal and conservative ideals; and similarly, a life of principle, of large purposes, of universal sympathy, of reason, of worship of the eternities, has been extolled above that of impulse and that of trust in the momentary good. Again, hope that our efforts are not vain, strength which we may derive from companionship, assurance that help will be forthcoming, belief that great wrongs can be prevented or remedied, courage which comes from the feeling that we do not stand alone, shame that some one who knows us is possibly aware of a wrong that we are doing, wisdom which we may gain from our superiors — all these vitally influence the average moral life. If these blessings can also be procured from a deity, why in principle should they lose their propriety, value and power ? To this the answer comes that just as earthly fathers think it best for their sons to struggle independ- ently of their parents' help, and as sons feel that they must not be dependent, so men must reject, or all but reject, the assistance of the deity if they are to grow strong and manly. He who is no more a child and yet relies on God as a child on his father, has signed his moral death warrant. Our conclusion concerning this subject is, then, that when justice and desire are foiled^ men evolve or adopt THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION 17 some theory which tends to satisfy and to reinforce justice and desire, and that these theories are frequently of a non-supernaturalistic kind. Compensation, — What shall we say to the religious theory of Compensation? The good man, it is often asserted, acts regardless of compensation. He only wishes to satisfy his own conscience. As Marcus Aurelius contends, the reward of a good deed lies in the deed done, and it is therefore absurd to seek for a second reward, an external one. Desire for compensa- tion, according to Kant and others, would degrade morality and reduce it to a system of selfishness. Erom this point of view all that is said of compensation by theologians is false and immoral. Yet two other points of view are possible and have prevailed. In certain ages men do not do the social deed willingly; they have to be encouraged. And so decided is often the unwillingness that a man, for doing his duty, is not only rewarded but honoured. The hired soldier, policeman, or fireman, is thus thought of highly besides being rewarded. Eeasonably enough, then, the eighteenth century encouraged far-sighted selfishness, and justifi- ably enough, Thomas More defined morality as the (in his time) rare power to deny oneself for the sake of a superior future good. In other words, wherever good- ness has been hard to practise and where the normal 18 FAITH IN MAN rewards of goodness were persecution and suffering as it has been in some ages, there compensation for present disadvantages was preached and believed in, in theological circles and outside them. The wish that the good man's life should not be cramped ; that the good man, as the unfortunate Boethius felt, should not be mocked ; that injustice should not appear to triumph ; that happiness should not be the exclusive right of the bad man ; or, on the other hand, the desire that men should not give way to unlawful temptations, all encouraged the belief that he who is good is, in some way, recompensed. Whether the just man is conceived of, with Plato, as incapable of losing anything valuable ; whether he is regarded, with the Stoics, as indifferent to pleasure and pain ; or whether he is paid in money or consoled with a heaven, is theoretically the same. So soon, however, as social conditions favour morality men's views regarding compensation change until the attitude favouring compensation is condemned altogether — on the tacit assumption that tlie times have changed and that morality is not an incessant struggling against hopeless odds. To ignore all compensation, even the satisfaction of having done our duty, leads to moral fanaticism. The second standpoint from which the compensation theory is defended is a profounder one. We feel that THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION 19 we are in honour bound to pay for a service, even though the service rendered was not due to a hope of pay. It is the duty of him who serves, to delight in the service done ; but it is also the duty of him who is served, not to exploit his benefactor. Here there is no mean view of human nature on either side, and yet the feeling exists that we must not let another suffer harm and that it is wrong to take without, if possible and necessary, giving something in return. If he who saves our life or our reputation loses in consequence health or repute, we feel bound to do all in our power to minimise his loss, even though gainer and loser scorn the thought of being determined by the desire for com- pensation. The benefactor may not, however, have any need of our help, and accordingly he who wins the race gets a laurel wreath or holds a silver cup ; the saviour of his country is hurrahed as he passes through the city, the rich philanthropist receives our utmost respect. We still show in these cases our appreciation, but only in a formal way ; and not to show appreciation would appear mean to us. This point of view is strongly emphasised when we put ourselves in the places of those who should be appreciated. To serve our family, our friends, our profession, our town, our country, our race, without a word of cheer or appreciation when the service is known, would be most discouraging. Our effort has 20 FAITH IN MAN been others' gain, and to have that effort accepted deliberately and yet coldly, in a matter-of-fact way, would imply callousness, for as social beings we owe appreciation. As with the return of services, so appreciation of what others do is a moral demand. Gratitude. — We are grateful to our parents who brought us into being and, in consequence, we feel that we must do much for them and not disgrace them by our conduct. Gratitude to our forefathers compels us to wish to leave the world a little better than we found it, and we consider it shameful to let the rights hardly obtained to be lost without a determined struggle. We feel debtors to Hampden and Cromwell, to John's rebellious barons, to the men of the French Eevolution, to modern reformers. We reason: Hampden did so much for us ; shall we pay no acknowledgment by our conduct ? Shall we not honour his memory ? Shall we not follow in his steps ? If, then, as many believe, Jesus, the man, laid down his life for us, suffered intense agony and shameful disgrace for our sake, shall we do nothing in return for him ? Yes, many say. We shall be loyal to him ; we shall lead the life he expected us to lead; we shall feel deeply grateful; we shall be touched by his story ; we shall act as disciples of his. Of course, too much may be made to depend on gratitude; but the sense of solidarity suggests that THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION 21 gratitude is a natural virtue, while man's ingratitude to man is one of the deepest stains on his character. Shakespeare justly sang : — " Blow, blow, tliou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude." We think that if we were in the benefactor's position, it would wound us to the heart that our work was not appreciated, and we feel that gratitude, active appreciation, is implied in our being social beings and not self-contained individuals. Here, too, as with rewards to good men, we must not do good because men will be grateful ; but we may be cheered by the hope that, where our good works are known, the sense of solidarity will bring appreciation. We often hear that, urged by gratefulness for some large benefit — the saving of life, honour, or the like — men become devoted to their benefactor, and their only concern henceforth is to live for him. Christians are, therefore, human, though not just, when they live for Jesus only, or when they emphasise the gratitude and reverence we owe to the creator of all things. Heie personal gratefulness and attachment, leading as they do to the suppression of the interest in self, produce indirectly the cessation of all vices connected with self-assertion, for by serving another we cease to serve ourselves 22 FAITH IN MAN Much of Christian morality is thus derived from gratitude, although the gratitude we owe to the many others besides Jesus and to former generations generally, is enormously underrated by Christians. One might say that morality at a certain social stage was necessarily individualistic in temper and made, instead of social reform, gratitude and consequent self-obliteration the most sacred portion of morality: we see this in -^sop's Fables, in Grimm's Fairy Tales, and in folklore generally. This conception was naturally transferred to theology, and hence the over- insistence to-day in orthodox — that is out-of-date — circles on gratitude and reverence as against the under- insistence on improving social institutions. " Superiority, — Many men show a profound respect for superiority. If a person has unusual power, he is supposed to have a right to exercise it, and others are expected to wait his bidding. What he demands, weaker vessels must yield as a matter of course, and his doing a thing constitutes its rightness. Such a man is his own law ; that is, the moral law is constituted by his will, even if that will be a changing one. Should he study the welfare of his inferiors, it becomes a case of magnanimity, and we argue with Luther how kind God is, considering that he could make a liell of every hair on our head, or with one Jewish Prayer Book, that THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION 23 the permission to exercise the elementary processes of life is a sign of God's generosity. A man's being strong entitles him to what his strength can bring, and his possessing considerable strength makes him an object of admiration and worship. Logically the will of the stronger dictates here what is right. Hence when morality had not come of age, when external authority determined what was right, when democracy was not yet born, God Almighty could be said to act as He pleased, and no one had a right to complain, or to say that He was not justified in doing what He pleased. He could demand obedience and service, and it was wrong to disobey Him or not to serve Him. He had a right, solely because he willed it, to send men to heaven or hell, and it was wrong to call this right into question. Superiority even now claims some of these privileges. A king may live in splendour while his subjects are starving ; he may treat his courtiers and subjects in a different way to that in which he treats himself and his family ; his wish is, within limits, regarded as law ; and he is favoured in many other ways. Could we get a Questionnaire filled in by noblemen, rich men, men of education, and those who do not belong to the poor and crushed, we should probably be astonished to find how strong is the feeling that superiority demands more or 24 FAITH IN MAN less unconditional and unquestioning service from in- feriority. As with superior power, so with intellect and every mark of superiority. According to the degree of the predominance of any quality, men tend to be a law to themselves, and to make that law the law for those below them, while many inferiors readily agree to the claim. Before the days of constitutional government, in the heyday of despotism, there existed no doubt on this subject. The conception of the deity as arbitrary, as giving the moral law, as demanding implicit obedience to all His dictates, as magnanimous because limiting His power, is a faithful representation of the times when despotism reigned unchallenged. Such words as forgiveness, gratitude, generosity, magnanimity, obedience, humility, service, propitiation, praise, worship, prayer, acquired their peculiar significance under those conditions, and lost their special value with the rise of a self-respecting democracy. The theological claim, therefore, that whatever is right is what God wills, or whatever God wills is right, is psychologically true for certain stages of moral development. Obedience to an outer authority and obedience to an inner authority are the marks of different epochs where, on the one side, despotism, and on the other, equality, reign. It is only as the law of equality and THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION 25 democracy come to be generally recognised that the ethical test begins to exclude the consideration whether one man is superior to another. Aristotle spoke of some men born to be slaves and others freemen, and some of the slaves and many of the freemen no doubt agreed to his dictum. To the farm labourer the squire is often a person who should be honoured and obeyed because he is the squire, and a child unquestioningly obeys and honours his parents, as a dog or horse his master. In Christianity and Judaism men are primarily regarded as weak and wayward children, and as incapable of free and intelligent action ; and as with children, reliance on a superior, or obedience, is the greatest commandment in those religions. Obedience and dis- obedience, therefore, summarised what was called the moral law, and the arbitrariness of the Father in heaven was conceived of in necessary analogy to the arbitrariness of the earthly father. And likewise the Father in heaven, like the father on earth, was thought of as despotic or tenderly loving, as arbitrary or self- restrained, according to the stage of social development. In an age of constitutional monarchy or democratic republicanism, an age of humanitarianism and order, an age when children have large rights and parents many duties towards them, the deity is conceived of differently than in times when monarchic despotism 2 26 FAITH IN MAN rules in the family and in the State, and when callousness and anarchy distinguish a society. That is to say, since in autocracies disobedience is regarded as the severest of crimes, therefore disobedience to the Almighty justly brought in its train eternal punishment; and since the will of the autocrat was morally creative, adoration, awe, forgiveness, mercy, pity, meekness, atonement, were justified. Under such conditions the inferior man is treated as a means, as nearly all men treat domestic animals and animals used for food as means. Iminortality. — Consider now the destiny of the individual. The phenomena of dreams and especially of hallucinations, in connection with an undeveloped intellect which was readily misled, suggested to primi- tive men that man had an existence independent of the bodily one, a perfectly valid conclusion under the circum- stances. A double man and a double world, before and after falling asleep and death, were accordingly justifiable conceptions, and if the deductions from dreams and hallucinations have proved fallacious, that left the conceptions legitimate products of the human mind. The double world was natural both as regards body and ghost, and it would have been as illegitimate to call the second world supernatural as any natural fact of an organic or inorganic order. If, then, early religion had THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION 27 much to do with ghosts and their propitiation, this was due to the accident of a misreading of facts. As in Eome living emperors were looked upon as divine, and more recently saints were worshipped, and as in the theory of magic no two substances are necessary, so religion might have existed without a belief in ghosts and in a ghostly world. In other words, superiority, power, the unknown, glory, or honour, might have formed the kernel of religion, and thus the ghostly man and the ghostly world, present and to come, might have played no part in religious development. As it happened, however, given the primitive mind and primitive conditions, the ' double ' theory was obviously the one more likely to arise. The constitution of the ghostly man and of the ghostly world of the savage, naturally formed a complete counterpart to the palpable world, with all its absurdities and immoralities. The ghosts were ghostly men, and the crudity of the early religions argues the crudity of those times. Only as hopes and fears and social integration gave a definite complexion to the ghostly world, did it grow to be gradually differentiated from the bodily one. More or less powerful rulers came to have a more or less powerful sway in the ghostly realm, and gradually from being only a reflex of the material world, it came to be transfigured into an underworld and into Elysian fields. 28 FAITH IN MAN In this form it served various races as a balance to the ills and imperfections of the present world ; it rose to the dignity of a philosophy of life ; it became a religion. Only when we regard the speculative thinker do we find that the deity and the other world become un- substantial, indefinable, and without a clear reference to life, with its joys and burdens; but that is again because the speculative thinker is satisfied with such a relatively unsubstantial and remote world. The modern belief in immortality is based in all but modern needs. Men rebel against being surprised by death when they are young, or against having the candle of their life snuffed out when they have only lived a paltry eighty years. Yet when men begin, as in this age, to consider themselves as part of nature, and when they feel that they are precious moments in the life of humanity, a new conception of immortality and eternity rises on the horizon. To consider the supernatural hopes as religious, and the other hopes as non-religious, is to lay the importance on the means instead of on the end; and to dissociate completely supernatural from natural hopes is to forget that social factors determined the development of both of them. Supernatural Aid, — Supernatural assistance occupies a similar position. In the primitive, non-religious THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION 29 double world men called for help to their fellows. To have turned towards their fellows in the body and not to those out of the body would have been inconsequent and stupid. When, then, the fallible ghost developed into the infallible god, and men still believed in turning to their fellows for aid when they might have acted independently, they as naturally prayed also for divine assistance. Not to have done so would have argued a serious flaw in their mental organisation. Given, then, that men believe in asking for help, and given that they believe in a powerful deity who can help, it will follow that if they are consistent in their thought, they will turn in their need to the deity. In lower stages, accordingly, we shall have recorded miracles such as those of the five loaves, of turning the water into wine, or of the haul of fish ; in higher stages, inspiration and health will come to us from above, God will move others to help us, and bad weather, epidemics or defeat in war, may be sent as punishments. To ignore the deity would be to ignore the most potent helper, and no thoughtful person would do that. Prayer is, therefore, natural for him who believes in its ef3ficacy and who has no desire to be a moral personality. In social stages of a despotic character prayer will, of course, imply abject prostration, kneeling, folding the hands, crying, calling out unceasingly " have mercy ! " 30 FAITH IN MAN ** spare us ! " ; in the higher, dignified trust and vague aspiration. When, however, men rely on social effort, and even refuse help, their deity will cease to be one which helps ; and when they come to be aware that miracles are impossible, or that mankind is sufficient unto itself, the deity ceases to be appealed to or to be approached in any way. As we, therefore, chance to be socialists or individualists, hopeful of man or des- pairing, so there will be tendencies leading away from or leading to a belief in a deity, active or otherwise. Belief in consistent individualism, in democracy, and in divine assistance represent different stages in social development. If, then, one man trust to Man and another to God for personal or social salvation, they should regard each other as equally religious. A General View. — We have thus far considered a few definite problems which we meet with in analysing the contents of the ordinary religious consciousness. If we take a more general view, the same class of facts is encountered everywhere. We thank God for preserving us in, and restoring us to, health ; life, illness and death are divine dispensations ; misfortune is sent to us as a punishment, and good fortune as a reward ; good or bad harvests, a calm or a tempestuous sea, rain or drought, success or failure in war, come from above ; God preserves us as we enter the house, THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION 31 as we remain in it, and as we leave it; whether we sleep or wake, God watches over us; the innocent and the young are protected by him and the guilty punished; he supplies us with our food; and in any emergency we appeal to him for help. Moreover, God created everything and rules everything. In short, God is man's providence, and to pray for the common good is the most beneficial social activity, for God can change the hearts of bad rulers, of bad em- ployers, and of bad men generally. However, with general progress, this point of view alters, and what were once glowing beliefs become glib phrases which we write in fancy letters over our doors and over our beds, but which no one is supposed to take literally or seriously. On the negative side, through the influence of scientific research, miracles — and therefore prayer — come to be excluded and, on the positive side, there is developed a belief in man's power and duty to protect himself and to right wrongs. In the course of evolution, divine providence is replaced by human providence ; but belief in a providence remains undisturbed. Religions generally. — No matter what religion we turn to, we meet with facts similar to those which we analysed above. In Zoroastrianism the two gods who stand respectively for the good and evil principle in 32 FAITH IN MAN the world ; the omnipresent watchwords ^'good thoughts, good words, good deeds " ; and the care for certain conduct — the treatment of dogs, the exposing of the dead, the keeping pure of the water supply — all point to the concrete interests of that religion. Mohammedanism gives but a slightly different version of the Hebrew providence. Hindooism is intensely interested in cattle, in agriculture, in ceremonies, in explanations of the world, and in social conduct. Buddhism, with its attempt to deal with sorrow, with death, and with the impermanence of things, by suggesting the annihilation of evil desires and the loving of all things living, proves to be a practical religion. Confucianism is known for its social tendency, and the religion of Japan — with all its early superstitions — kept to the same religious model. In the deists of the eighteenth century we come to be far removed from the popular religions, since the demands of the deists — who were educated men belonging to the well-to-do classes, and were therefore generally free from anxieties — were of a less exacting type ; but even here an optimistic view of existence formed the leading characteristic. Only as men come to be interested in metaphysics as such, is there a tendency to satisfy but two instincts, that of curiosity and that of consistency ; but the interest here argues a certain THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION 33 favourable social development or social position which alone makes that interest possess social significance. A mysticism wholly unconnected with conduct is nowhere traceable ; even the awe before the unseen, the all, the unknown, the unknowable, the immensity of things, while they occupy a certain place in some religions, have a definite influence on conduct and represent a mystic philosophy of life. III. Having supplied the material, we may proceed to present some of the more important deductions which the examination of that material suggests. Belief in the supernatural is not identical with religious belief. If we believe in devils, in a god of theft as the ancient Greeks believed in, in innumer- able deities as St. Augustine shows that the Eomans believed in, if we have an unworthy idea of the deity, or if our gods are capricious, we are said to be super- stitious or irreligious. If we believe in Epicurean gods, who do not care for man and for whom man does not care, we cannot be said to be religious. If we acknowledge the truth of the religion current among our people, but are uninfluenced by it, we are without a religion. A naturalistic spiritualism 34 FAITH IN MAN which ignores the existence of a deity, and which accepts personal persistence after death as a simple fact ; or a belief in fairies, elves, hobgoblins, or magic — even of gods, according to Buddhism and according to certain ethicists — all these are unrelated to religion. The ghosts and the ghostly world of the primitive man, when they were not yet connected with a philosophy of life, possessed no religions significance. Nor are we justified in saying that belief in the supernatural is indispensable to religious belief. Our analysis has plainly shown that the religious end is the satisfaction of certain human desires, and that the supernatural means are matched by countless natural ones. "Wherever men have a philosophy of life, such as the Confucian, the Buddhistic, the Epicurean, the later Stoic, the Comtist, there a religion may be said to exist even though supernaturalism play no part, and though the sentiments differ considerably. We speak of art, truth, health, patriotism, as a religion. That idea which deeply colours and moves our being as a whole and stands in its centre, is a religious idea and quickly becomes the kernel of a philosophy of life. Butler's definition that *' religion consists in submission and resignation to the divine will" evidently refers to a particular form of Christianity, and only indicates certain means by which certain human ends and THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION 35 cravings may be satisfied. Lucretius who preached trust in a natural universe and in a simple life and who carried on war against contemporary religions and against contemporary faith in pleasure, wealth and glory because they lead to human misery and rest- lessness, was emphatically attempting to substitute one religion or philosophy of life for another ; he came not to destroy, but to feed, man's deepest cravings. If this be true, then not every philosophy of life is religious, at least not in the stricter signification of the word. He who is conventional, who follows others unquestioningly, who accepts his philosophy as a matter of fact, who does not preeminently connect his views on life with life itself, or who has no definite view of life, is thus far lukewarm and vague in his religion. The speculative philosopher and the scientist approach this non-religious type because they have only a passing interest in a philosophy of life. Moreover, since the philosophy of life, in order to satisfy, must be a helpful one, pessimism, optimism, fatalism, and all forms of religion where caprice plays a leading part, are excluded except so far as strength is drawn from them. Every complete religion, then, represents a needed, a helpful^ and, usually, a reasoned philosophy of life. How, then, shall we define a philosophy of life? 36 FAITH IN MAN The preceding analysis of the religious consciousness will throw light on this. Men wish to know the general features of the world they live in so as to orientate themselves, and they are anxious that their philosophy of life shall be a helpful one. Hence many philosophies of life have existed, and all of them — we cannot even exclude the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, for these also preach salvation — were helpful to those who believed in them, introducing as they did order where chaos would otherwise have existed. At the present day, when science has ruled out miracles and God's help, when morality is es- tablished independently of the will and the inspiration of a deity, and when democratic progress is making social conditions tolerable, is causing men to be self- respecting, and is suggesting that nothing is impossible to men's united will and intelligence, a deliberately accepted philosophy of life appears superfluous because we all believe in such a philosophy without being conscious of the fact. A philosophy of life, therefore, acquaints us with the trend for good or evil which exists in the world and thus enables us to adjust and attune ourselves to it. We must, however, show also the relation which obtains between a philosophy of life and a philosophy of existence, for the two are by no means necessarily THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION 37 identical. Whether there be a noumenal or a phenomenal world ; whether there be an Absolute or an Unknowable; whether matter and spirit or only either of these constitute reality ; whether we believe in atoms, electrons or vortex rings ; whether the universe was once a single atom and is slowly breaking np or whether, on the contrary, the universe is gradually consolidating until it will become a single compact homogeneous mass; and innumerable other scientific and philosophical solutions have no relation, or at least no important or direct relation, to a helpful philosophy of life. The Buddha explained this once to his disciples. Being in a thickly wooded forest, he stretched out his arm and plucked a handful of leaves. Turning then to his disciples he asked them where there were more leaves, in his hand or in the forest. They naturally answered In the forest, whereupon he told them that the knowledge necessary for salvation compared with possible knowledge was in about the same ratio as the leaves in his hand were to those on the trees. A philosophy of life asks only certain questions : is causality, chaos or a supernatural world, the reason for what happens ? Are the forces of the world favouring or opposing goodness and happiness, or are they neutral? Can assistance be obtained from non-human sources, or can assistance be obtained at all? 38 FAITH IN MAN Is man naturally evil, good or perfectible ? If these and suchlike philosophical questions are satisfactorily answered, the philosophy of life is complete, at all events so far as it is definitely helpful and practical, and so far as it does not attempt to rival an en- cyclopaedia. Nor does it even cease to be a philosophy of life when, with some of the Stoics, we entertain the idea that we can expect no consolation from the universe or from society, or, going further, when we are bent on doing the right independently of every- thing outside that right. If we are, therefore, to speak of an ethical religion, we must assume that the ethics is embodied in a philo- sophy of life, for without such a philosophy an ethi- cal religion would lack meaning. In the concrete, the problems of effectuality and ineffectuality, of divine or spirit help, of the sufficiency of man, of the interference of occult and natural powers, of the needs and capacities of man and of society, and much else, would meet us and demand an answer, and that answer, however wavering, would constitute our philosophy of life. Even that ethics which recognises only one motive — respect for the moral law, and which is contemptuous of con- sequences, would be in a similar position, for if the ethics is to result in action there must be a philosophy of life to guide us in our actions. A consistent ethics, THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION" 39 independent of a philosophy of life or outside it, is impossible, and an ethical religion, therefore, is a helpful philosophy of life where ethics occupies the central place, i.e.^ where belief in the efficacy and grandeur of moral principles is substituted for the belief in the efficacy and grandeur of a deity. It is this absence of a definite philosophy of life in Confucianism which has perpetuated ancestor worship and which has opened the door to many superstitious in China, and the same incompleteness has degraded Buddhism almost everywhere. The mere fact of a religion declaring itself to be primarily ethical — and most religions do that to-day — would of itself decide nothing as to the nature of the ethics and as to the presence or absence of supernatural elements, e.g.^ the whole empyrean machinery might remain very nearly intact, obedience to an external authority might be admitted, and the interest in this life and in society might be infinitesimal. Finally, in a modern man's religion the nature of the universe, unless it be conceived of as ethical, will play a wholly subordinate part, while the constitution of man and of society will arouse the greatest and most intense interest. Let us now take a quite general view of religion. That it is not essentially bound up with supernaturalistic facts, motives, means and ends ; that its chief interest 40 FAITH IN MAN does not necessarily rest in the All or in outward nature ; that it changes with individual and social development ; and that it is only partly related to general philosophy, we have seen. We have also recognised that a satis- factory religion expresses a hopeful philosophy of life. However, one of the most persistent features of religion we have not yet dwelt on. A priori we might say that ethics has always been the kernel of religion ; but when we study religion from the widest point of view, that is, anthropologically, we find that at the beginning of history, care for self — not excluding care for the tribe as distinct from care for one's fellows — occupied the central interest, and that while the ethical or social element has gradually weakened self-interest, the latter is still intimately bound up with religion. Men want the world they dwell in to be a justifiable one and they also want to be happy. Faith and hope are virtues prized by every religion. Even an ethical religion, therefore, will either have to interpret the word Ethical liberally or else admit a non-ethical element. Eeligion is a helpful philosophy of life and must satisfy the whole man, and not only the man so far as he is ethical. In the narrower sense an ethical religion is con- sequently impossible for two reasons: it judges itself to be a complete philosophy of life whereas it is only part of one, and it overlooks all non-ethical elements ; THE ESSENCE OF KELIGION 41 but, interpreting the word Ethical generously and allowing a natural foundation for it, a non-theological ethical religion is possible. Conversely, a non-ethical religion becomes possible only when we altogether eliminate ethics from the individual and social life. i,e., by destroying the individual and society, or by going back to times of pure savagery. A religion without ethics and an ethics without religion are doomed to speedy deterioration and rapid extinction. Unless, then, we have altogether incorrectly ana- lysed and interpreted the nature of religion, the answer with regard to the relation between ethics and religion is now more or less evident. All religions, as opposed to superstitions, have tended to be helpful philosophies of life. For this reason, religion rightly claims to-day that to cut out the ethical elements from its being is to undo it or to make it fit only for primitive peoples or for those mythical persons who are instinctively good. Practical ethical work may be done outside the Church ; but the inspiration and the principles must come from within, at least if the Church is to remain a Church. The Church is, then, bound to resist the attempt to transform it into a non- ethical organisation. For this reason, too, it eyes with suspicion the development of a system of practical pliilosophy outside its boundaries and is unsympathetic 42 FAITH IN MAN to the new morality, rurthermore, the Church is probably right in trembling for an ethics which is not connected with some reasoned philosophy of life. For its part an autonomous ethics cannot help con- tinuing to point out that the ethics of the Church is centuries behind the times ; that ethics plays only a subordinate part in the Church; that the Church does not develop the larger part of the moral strength latent in man and society, and that a theological ethics — theological as to basis and theological as to hope, inspiration and assistance — is no longer necessary or defensible. The Church ethics must go willy-nilly. Moreover, an autonomous ethics may claim that religion is a social product and that its ends can be attained to-day without supernatural explanations and assistance, and that innumerable religions or helpful solutions of a non-supernaturalistic character have frequently been believed in. On the other hand, an autonomous ethics must learn several lessons. A completely autonomous ethics is an impracticable abstraction, since every ethics must be a portion of a philosophy of life, and therefore must be clear as to its own motive, means and end. Autonomous it can only be negatively, in the sense of being non-supernaturalistic and democratic. Ethics must, then, be part of a religion ; but how that religion is to be conceived of THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION 43 whether as embracing many points or few, or whether it is to pass by the name of religion, is a secondary matter. Accordingly, a religion, or system of life, whose foundation shall be human solidarity, and whose pillars, in accordance with modern thought, shall be naturalism, science, humanitarianism and democracy, is not out of the question to-day. When these pillars will support the beliefs of all, we shall have a natural and universal religion or philosophy of life. Our answer, therefore, is — ethics and religion are not unrelated ; they are related ; what is more, they are interrelated. CHAPTEE 11. WHAT IS AET ? To US moderns it seems almost impossible to put our- selves in Shakespeare's place when we think of his conception of art. How enthusiastic he is when minutely describing the picture of Troy in The Eape of Lucrece ; how lovingly he dwells on the confusing like- ness of the statue of Hermione in The Winter's Tale ; or how, in Venus and Adonis, he insists on fidelity in reproduction : ** Look, when a painter would surpass the life, In limning out a well-proportioned steed, His art with nature's workmanship at strife. As if the dead the living should exceed." And how frequently Shakespeare returns to his thesis that art is faithful representation, an exact copying of nature ! With the greatest relish he enumerates, almost like an auctioneer, the manifold details, and manifestly implies that the distinction of the artist and the beauty WHAT IS AET ? 45 of the product of his art lie in photographic accuracy and bewildering resemblance. One is reminded of the classic stories of the painter who reproduced grapes with such fidelity that the birds came and pecked at them, and of his brother artist who imitated curtains so faithfully that his fellow tried to push them aside. Such reverence for fact — think of the minute accuracy of a Van Eyck or a Memling — is probably to be explained by social circumstances, for certainly the most striking difference conceivable in art products is that between the reproductions, such as those of the early middle ages generally, which are as a rule — in drawing, in life, in movement, in variety — so imperfect that they appear almost like offensive caricatures of reality, and those others which make one doubt whether the likeness is not due to something like magically produced identity, as in many of the portraits of the older masters. Possibly Shakespeare only knew what art there was in England in his day, and since that art must have been on the whole of a very poor quality, he naturally bowed in prostrate awe before those works which succeeded in transferring and fixing on to the canvas scenes from Hfe. Further development has brought about a result which only differs in a minor respect from that which art, in its first stages, attained. No longer, it is true, 46 FAITH IN MAN are men unable to draw or to paint accurately; but so much attention is sometimes paid to general effect that Shakespeare's canon of richness of detail, the canon which guided the pre-Eaphaelites — Italian, Dutch and German — is wholly ignored. Moreover, the details themselves suffer a sea-change and become symbolic. Instead of a picture appearing more life-like as we approach it, it resolves itself into chaotic patches, and instead of delicate tracing and shading, bold outlines and startling but unnatural colour contrasts are often favoured. In examining, therefore, the essential nature of art, we must abstract all that is due to passing social conditions and to aberrations. We must discover whether art serves a purpose outside itself, whether it is connected with life as a whole, or whether the art realm is as strictly divided from the general life as the sea is from some rocky coast, or whether, indeed, art serves several purposes. If one thing is said to be obvious to-day, it is that faithful reproduction is not art, i.e.^ to represent nature or man as a good photographic camera would, is to miss the artistic end which aims at character and emotion. One with this is the contention that art is impure, is not true art, when it serves any master but itself ; satisfaction to the artist, pleasure to the beholder are WHAT IS AET ? 47 its objects. The art product need not, therefore, be faithful to nature; it may even deliberately falsify nature. He who paints a wood has no intention of pleasing or satisfying the woodman, the botanist, the woodbuyer, the poacher, or the woodowner. He ignores all these, and only remembers the artist within himself. Hence art is also said to be independent of morality. The artist is neither the declared servant of morality, nor is he influenced by moral considerations. Beauty not ethics, is his aim, and whether his produc- tions please or displease, promote or hinder, morality, is not his concern. In short, art satisfies our art nature and that art nature refuses to be dictated to. Art for art's sake ! However, this theory is not without its difficulties and obscurities. What, for instance, does faithful representation mean ? No doubt, in man's first efforts, when reproduction meets with almost insurmountable obstacles, there will be little choice as to what aspect is to be reproduced, and, therefore, there will be a tendency to reproduce what is socially most desired — pictures of saints or the portraits of patricians, for instance, and to reproduce that in mechanical detail, each line as the close observer of that line would draw it and everything regardless of significance. There is here almost no selection in landscapes, times 48 FAITH IN MAN of the day, states of the weather, or in seasons ; there is here no decided individuality, no effective represent- ation of movement and power, and no freedom. The whole which the onlooker sees is made up of de- tails, many of which the spectator did not or could not see. The delicate shadings and the general atmosphere of the landscape are ignored, even though they deeply affect the beholder. The landscapes are all of one type — no representations of spring or autumn colours, of fine sunrises or sunsets — unlike the landscapes which the lover of nature seeks and admires, and sky effects are not aimed at, skies to the end of the sixteenth century being practically without exception gray at the horizon and blue at the zenith and only coming closely to resemble the full reality towards the end of the nineteenth century. Yet to speak of this order of painting as faithful reproduction is manifestly to strain the meaning of the phrase. We can understand that in the earlier stages of art, reproduction should have been painful and unrefiective ; nevertheless it is difficult to see why no higher stage along the same road should be reached* or why the later stages should not be equally, and even more so, regarded as dealing with faithful reproduction. Take, for instance, landscapes. Why should the painter not choose the richest and most varied landscapes ? UNIVEI^SI . ^^njj^oBU^ WHAT IS AET? 49 "Why should he not limit himself to some little corner of a field ? Why should he not select his time of the day, of the season, and of the weather ? Why should he make the spiritless camera, when exposed at haphazard, which is so untrue to admiring observation, his standard, instead of the manifold sentiments which determine what shall fall within the focus ? Why should he not attempt to reproduce indirectly certain feelings by his picture rather than the object precisely as observed by some one interested in details ? Why should he not have his predilections, favouring cows with Cuyper, animals generally with Landseers, peculiar light effects with Turner, chiarusco with Eembrandt, rich colouring with Correggio, Eaphael and Eubens, battle scenes with David, special landscapes with Hobbema, Corot, Eousseau and Constable? Since the interest of the spectator is limited, why need the artist pay equal attention to the details in the picture which he gives us ? So, too, with portraiture. Are soul, spirit, energy, distinction, life, movement, not real ? And if they are, why should they not be faithfully reproduced ? Why should not the artist paint a man at his best, in some interesting pose and situation? Why should he not elect to paint those men who are in some way dis- tinguished in appearance? Why even should he not 50 FAITH IN MAN emphasise in the portrait that which appeals to him most, selecting position, dress, background, light, and the like, and suppressing what he thinks is indifferent ? Men speak of faithfulness of reproduction; but faithfulness in reproducing what ? In the exact sense, omitting allegorical and fanciful pictures, every artist faithfully reproduces who reproduces what is to man some aspect of a reality, and not only he whose mind is too dull to see life in its fulness, whose point of view is that of the phlegmatic camera and not of the throbbing human heart. We may, however, ask : Why do painters not pay homage to the woodman, the poacher and the botanist ? There aie many reasons for this, chief of which is, on the negative side, that the majority of men do not belong to those classes of human beings and could not, therefore, produce or appreciate such works, and, on the positive side, that the general interest is in the exceptional, in fulness, in the typical, without any distinct reference to needs and interests restricted to a few classes of men. The artist produces and reproduces for us what we love or what he loves. We have here a clue to the aim of art. Leaving aside certain exceptional aspects which we shall consider later on, we see at once that art is by no means unrelated to life as a whole ; that, WHAT IS AET ? 51 on the contrary, it is most closely connected with it. If soul, spirit, energy, distinction, did not appeal to men, they would neither reproduce them nor admire them, and if nature, in its various moods, left us unin- terested, landscapes would not be painted. If we loved, say, certain characteristics and activities of an ethical kind, these would be reproduced, and if we were gross and sensual, we would understand and relish grossness and sensuality and depict these. I'or the pious Eoman Catholic artist to understand a Giordano Bruno, and to picture him triumphant over his persecutors, or for a serious-minded artist like Millet or Watts to spend his days painting in the mincing French style of the eighteenth century, would be impossible. He could not enter into the spirit of his theme, and he would not fix on the canvas what is foreign to his nature. To this there may be a plausible reply to the effect that an artist, by virtue of being an artist, is neither pious nor serious-minded or frivolous, but that he is an artist and nothing else. Granting for the moment this con- tention, the question of the attitude of the public remains. The general public certainly embraces many who are serious-minded. These will, therefore, dislike morally objectionable pictures, and favour others of an ethical character. Thus, generally, the taste of the public will appreciate what agrees with its general 52 FAITH IN MAN sentiments, whatever these sentiments may be at any time. The rendering of landscapes, sea-pieces, sky-effects, town, village, aristocratic, bourgeois or working-class scenes, symbolic and religious presentations, battles, love, persons, and much else, will vary with given interests. When, for instance, the Church flourishes, religious painting is the rule ; when industrial princes reign, we have the non-religious pictures of the Dutch school ; when life is gay, we have painters like Watteau and Boucher ; when interest centres in nature, schools of nature-painters flourish. Assuming that the public interest is exclusive or nearly so, and the pictures would in their turn almost exclusively treat of a theme congenial to that interest. It is, therefore, not true — or we will say not self-evident, not likely — that art is wholly or even partly independent of life. We must press the point further. If general interests exist which determine the subject of the pictures painted, we cannot easily admit that the artists who paint these pictures are indifferent to the subjects of their choice. It is startling already to assume that some men should cut themselves off from the stream of social tendency ; but it becomes incredible that such men, who, by hypothesis, do not possess the feelings common to humanity, should give "faithful" repre- sentations of the deepest experiences of man, repre- WHATISAET? 53 sentations deeper than the majority of deep souls could conceive unaided. A Christ on the cross, women gleaning, Erasmus engaged in writing, or, on the other hand, fantastic or gross love making, can only be very inadequately portrayed by those to whom these experiences are really foreign. We must assume consequently, unless most exceptional evidence to the contrary is brought forward, that, generally speaking, artists are inspired by interests precisely as is the general public ; that they feel what they paint and paint what they feel. In other words, not pleasure and an art instinct determine what is to be painted, but, principally, men's chief interests. An objection, which is too strong and too plausible to be passed over, must be removed before we proceed. It will be said that the facts are against the theory which is here proposed. Do not painters paint to-day all classes of subjects, and do not the generality of men admire everything regardless of theme ? Have we not picture galleries, public and private, permanent and seasonal, where, in the same room, classic myths and the story of Jesus, landscapes and sea-pieces, scenes in sympathy with many conflicting causes, pathos and mirth, jostle each other like boon-com- panions? If the theory propounded above were correct, would not that be plainly impossible ? The 54 FAITH IN MAN assertions which are presented in this counter-state- ment are undeniable. Painters, at least many, do paint all classes of pictures to-day; these various pictures are found in the same rooms ; and the general public suspects nothing unnatural in that. Is it, then, true that deeply pious Christians and robust Freethinkers, exclusive lovers of pathos or of mirth, equally enjoy the various pictures in a gallery, and that they detect no incongruity in those pictures appearing all in the same set of rooms ? Emphatically not. It merely argues, we would suggest, a general decomposition and degeneration of strong and deep interests; a dilettante conception of life; a weak sympathy with everything, and a powerful sympathy with nothing. It means that, in a feeble way, we seek to imagine how one would feel if one strongly felt what those feel whose views harmonise with the views pre- sented. In a word, this magnanimous attitude demonstrates the shallowness of our generation as well as of so many artists, and not the independence and all- comprehensiveness of art. This judgment may be verified by a reference to present-day art. Never was there greater wealth in private and in public coffers, never were there such splendid opportunities for art study, for art production, and for WHAT IS AET? 55 exhibitiDg pictures; never perhaps were there more painters ; but do we feel that our art is great or even approaching greatness ? that the enormous sums paid for portraits and pictures imply masterfulness in the productions ? that there is a public demand or apprecia- tion of what is beautiful? No; a Millet or a Watts may paint from conviction, certain that they have a message, and a goodly number may admire their work and sympathise with it ; but the generality of painters have no deep social convictions, and the public has no commanding aims to which it pertinaceously clings, and thus our art is second rate or scarcely that. Except for this factor of indifference towards large purposes, present-day art might be great in every respect, since the conditions are otherwise favourable. Indifference, superficial sympathy with everything, kills art, robs it of its life and its meaning. Better for art general poverty and want of opportunity, with sharply defined beliefs, than apopleptic wealth and anaemic sentiments. The absence of depth of feeling produces spurious art, and, as a necessity, there follows a spurious theory of art. All styles, all subjects, and every kind of treat- ment, are admired, and accordingly we hear the now familiar cry of " Art for art's sake ! " The artist ceases to be bound by any rules or any social considerations, 56 FAITH IN MAN and we get as a consequence, in theory at least, the artistic or Nietzscheian temperament, which is almost the synonym of a lawless temperament, a temperament unsympathetic to religion, to morality, and even to beauty, and in its bloom the incarnation of eccentricity. The modern artist is the brother of the ancient sophist. No wonder, then, that art misses its opportunity when theories of art come to be hostile to what is essential to great art. As with the artists, so with their subjects. Since interest in definite aims is discouraged, art becomes more and more eccentric, until its very meaning is gone and it has lost touch with art proper. Yet shall we say that artists and the public ought not to fraternise with all forms of experience, or that picture galleries are a mistake ? That inevitably follows. Large-heartedness which is general argues general indifference, and that is ethically reprehensible. Extensive interests may and should exist; but they must be deep and not too extensive. Where an interest is not ours, there we shall not lose ourselves in it; we shall, on the contrary, give it a wide berth. Similarly with picture galleries, especially public ones. From the antiquarian point of view and from the point of view of him who is eager to know and to study art treasures, such galleries are commendable because it is WHAT IS AET ? 57 preferable to see pictures under very unsuitable circumstances rather than not at all. As a compromise there might be some classification, and widely differing or discordant subjects might be housed in separate apartments or buildings ; or better still they might be placed appropriately in churches, town halls, parliaments, concert halls, theatres, and like places. In no case, however, could we admit, on our theory, that painters should paint for picture galleries. A gallery is scarcely more the place for pictures than a pawn-shop ; rifles and furniture might as well be made for museums instead of for defence and comfort. Pictures should be found on the inner and outer walls of public buildings, each picture according to its theme in its appropriate position and frame, no picture where it does not fit in harmoniously with the spiritual surroundings. If art is to produce and to reproduce faithfully what a general ethical and human interest demands, does not art cease to occupy a distinct niche ? Does it not lose its independence ? Is it not degraded, and does it not cease to be something extraordinary, exquisite and great? Does not all admiration for the products of art cease ? Do we not discontinue thinking of pictures as beautiful, or as painted in order to yield, in the painting and in the beholding, pleasure ? 58 FAITH IN MAN" These are weighty questions. If the point of view proposed is correct, admiration of, and pleasure in, art products may only enter indirectly. Thus also the beauty of a picture falls away, except as an after- thought. The gifted painter who is a civic enthusiast will create images of patriotic objects and will endeavour to the utmost of his capacity to do justice to those images, and those images, deposited in civic buildings, will serve to remind all citizens of what those images purport to present. Similarly Christian painters will vie with one another in representing Mary as the spiritual and physical perfection they believe her to have been, and to picture with surpassing psychological truthfulness the life of Jesus and his tragic end. Thus with the whole of art. What we call the beautiful, the sense of admiration, the pleasure derived from the contemplation of certain objects, would be components of feelings which the picture rouses in deeply responsive breasts. It must be admitted that the differences in pictures of the same class will suggest comparisons, and that the insight and the workmanship of the painters will be some- times discussed ; but it would be regarded as almost perverse to look at the pictures merely from the point of view of workmanship and to argue that the object of the pictures — say those in churches — is not to rouse WHAT IS AET ? 59 and strengthen feelings and interests, but to proffer scope to the brush of a master worker. Having "degraded" art so far, we are bound to " descend " a step further. Is art unrelated to life as a whole? Is art, its existence or non-existence, in- different to morality ? Should we be right in saying that art is a luxury, a superfluity, without which communities can very well prosper ? To answer these questions affirmatively would be to agree with the theory of art for art's sake which we have been thus far criticising. We must march in the opposite direction, and for that we have some justification. In common life we emphasise only what is prominent and pass lightly over what is customary ; accordingly we find that art comes to be identified with exceptional products which are not essential to the ordinary life. The German philosopher Herbart must have been misled by this common mistake, for he regarded art as unnecessary to life. Art, we must say, is, in the widest sense, synonymous with good work ; and, in an exalted sense, with extremely good or perfect work. If art, therefore, pleases, is admired, is loved, and is regarded as beautiful and valuable, it is because perfect work, work which completely achieves its end, creates such feelings. Naturally, few men approach full perfection, and, therefore, those men who come nearest 60 FAITH IN MAN to embodying it, will be highly revered. At the same time, work which approaches absolute perfection is extremely rare, while most work is not without some merit. Whatever the occupation, then, approach to perfection is a social demand. Of course, better all the essentials of life in a very unsatisfactory form, than a few essentials in a complete form; but measured by the standard of a large and a full life we desire every essential, and much beyond, in the completest shape. For example, a miserable mud hut is better than no shelter at all ; but if we are to be satisfied, we want well-built houses with large and well-furnished rooms. We may like bay-windows, balconies, towers, and perhaps it is our wish to have the whole house expressive of our ideal or profession. From person to person the notion of the kind of house he prefers may differ, and thus profuse variety in dwelling places may exist in the end. What we have crudely said of houses holds of everything, even to our thoughts, to our lives, and to the social organisation of which we are a part. Art, therefore, refers to every form of activity, as would have been at once admitted in the middle ages, and only accident, including machine production, has transferred the emphasis to a few activities. Every workman should be an artist and every life a work of art, and it is deplorable whenever that is not the case, WHAT IS AET? 61 or rather when a low or restricted standard of per- fection is current. The perfect workman, in accordance with Euskin, would produce only what is perfect, and every workman should aim at originality, at variety, thoroughness, and, through it all, at usefulness in every sense. Nor will the worker be conscious of anything except the affirmation of his individuality and the service of the commonwealth. Because of practical considerations, then, the strikingly accomplished worker would be honoured by a special name, that of artist, and, forgetting the non-scientific character of the distinction between artist and worker, there would be a tendency to think of the artist as possessing a special genius or faculty, whereas every man, however humble, is to some extent an artist whose works should receive proportionate honour. For the sake of simplicity we have analysed only one artistic calling, that of the painter ; but, on reflection, it will be seen that what we have said of the art aspect of painting holds good of every art. The cry " Art for art's sake ! " is not only heard in connection with painting, but in sculpture, architecture, poetry, oratory, music, fiction, decoration, dress, furniture, the same cry is also persistently uttered. Everywhere art is regarded as independent and self-dependent, everywhere the choice of subjects is looked upon with indifference, everywhere 62 FAITH IN MAN beauty and pleasure are said to be the ends, everywhere the social interest is lukewarm, and everywhere, in spite of many favouring circumstances, first-rate work is most rare, and a danger exists that these various arts should become eccentric, lose their character, and finally become meaningless and cease. Manifestly, a serious concern for life as a whole is necessary for the salvation and rejuvenation of art. We have seen what striking changes the art of paint- ing would undergo if our standpoint, the standpoint of the great eras of art, prevailed. No smaller would be the transformations demanded in the other realms of art. Music would express, in the first instance, definite feelings and would serve definite and manifold social purposes. Poetry would not be maudlin, private, morbid, and anarchic; but would be primarily social in character and promote ethical ends. Architecture would be revolutionised and de- veloped in the very opposite direction to that which Schopenhauer favoured, the direction of disconnecting it from life and usefulness in general. Meaningless variety and meaningless decorations around windows and between windows, which represent ordinary architecture, would be replaced by what is useful and WHAT IS AET? 63 has meaning. Not novelty alone, but significant novelty, or individuality, would be sought. There would not be houses in the form of castles in which peaceful and plain citizens dwell, and public buildings could not be confused with private ones. When one studies architecture in this light, one can see the enormous advances which are possible here. Especially could reform be inaugurated by authorities who desire to express their special character in their buildings. Schools, museums, town halls, business houses, factories, railway stations, government buildings, and societies could encourage an architecture which has a definite meaning, and where the variety presented could not be suspected of being taken out of a box of tricks. Churches have already meaning to a considerable extent, though the meaning is as yet too general, and true art will multiply meaning indefinitely, until the architectural world will be, without any artificial effort at decoration or at variety, resplendent with what is beautiful. With a few laudable exceptions to-day, if we regard any *fine* row of houses in London, Paris, or Berlin, the absence of meaning and significance will be glaringly evident. The development of individual taste and the break-down of the current art theory which has led to a worship of fantastic and unintelligihle variety, will make peo^ple 64 FAITH IN" MAN disbelieve in art, pleaswe, and heauty, and everything will as a consequence become artistic, delightful and beautiful. Style — Greek, Eoman, Norman, Gothic, Eenaissance or 'Modern' — will still serve as a basis for architecture, but the individual building will have individual meaning superadded. Shall we not argue similarly concerning good prose ? Hume and Gibbons studied the art of writing, and then they applied what they learnt to serious purposes. To- day men profess to make a similar study for the purpose of writing well: the subject, the theme, the thought, are, however, looked upon as being of no importance so long as the phrases sparkle and fascinate. It is now, in many cases, writing for writing sake, and paradox and impressionist pictures are the goal of literature, as some authors and their public conceive that goal. Giant ideas have to be compressed into dwarfish fancies, serious purposes have to be treated as banter or at least rhetorically, and nothing which has not style, in this sense of the word, is likely to be read. Dignity, seriousness, truth, have to move about with cap and bells, and life must be presented as a Punch and Judy show, or at least as a stage play. Consequently, beautiful prose, as a flawless art product, so common in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, exists perhaps nowhere to-day, WHAT IS ART? 65 its place being taken by some trick o' the pen, or by casual brilliant passages in a sea of indifferent material. \ Fiction should also serve a definite and social purpose, as many works of fiction already do. If the classic theory of art were adopted, we would hear less of the love element, less of the aristocracy, less of blinding virtue, shocking villainy, and desperate exploits. In fiction, fortunately, we have not yet sunk to the level of 'beautiful' writing, although the one object of novel reading is supposed to be the filling out of idle hours. The ancient tragedy, just like the Oberammergau passion play, was not wholly written to amuse, to display the beautiful, and to satisfy ravenous and impartial curiosity. The ancient plays had a meaning to the writers and their audiences, and it would be scarcely accurate to regard them as fiction or to look upon them as our age looks upon fiction. The ancient tragedies were not composed to satisfy exigent dramatic critics, and the subjects were not indiscriminately chosen to gratify unbounding curiosity and antiquarian interest. Men were moved by the representations, and they expected as a matter of course that they would be moved. In this direction the modern stage must be reformed, in order that 66 FAITH IN MAN it may significantly express significant thoughts and sentiments. Playwrights, actors and audience must form a league and collaborate for the purpose of achieving a certain social object. To judge plays primarily from the point of view of whether they agree with a certain canon of workmanship, or, worse still, whether they offer opportunities for certain actors, is to mistake wholly the means for the end. We need not labour the theory. In matters of furniture, dress, and of every product of man, re- volutions would equally result if the standpoint adopted were that of classic art. We have destroyed what goes now by the name of art for the purpose of establishing true art as it was understood in the great periods of art activity — in the time of Pericles, in the days of the Gothic cathedrals and in and about the period of Eaphael and Michael Angelo. We have insisted that the form of the art product must not tyrannise over, but be subject to, the purpose of that product. We may become, on reflecting, fully conscious of its beauty, or what is the same thing, of the complete realisation of a significant idea, and we may admit that its contemplation yields pleasure ; but such beauty expresses the incarnation of the loved thought, and such pleasure arises out of the WHAT IS ART? 67 reflection of seeing something which nearly approaches the perfect. The central fact lies in the significance of what is presented, and that must be invariably the stimulus and the measure of art. To abstract the purpose is to remove the canvas, to throw it on to the dustheap as worthless rubbish, and to prize as of supreme value the frame in which the canvas was placed. It is to worship the statue of Jupiter and to despise Jupiter himself. It means going back to the days when there was no spirit, no energy, no life, no movement in art; indeed, the persistence of the current theory threatens the existence of art al- together. Emphasis on the purpose of a product does not imply, as we have seen, the death of art ; rather its revival, its rejuvenation, its expansion, its growth and its triumph. If, other things being equal, the classic standard were applied, significant beauty, like an omnipresent spirit, would pervade every product, every action, and every thought of ours, and we should conceive the world, so far as we possess control over it, in the same radiant light. Art would not be an idle amusement or a contrivance which relieves monotony, but the most substantial part of life. It has been rightly said that only that is beautiful which offers variety within the form of unity. We must, however, at once add that beauty in the abstract 68 FAITH IN MAN only involves smooth, easy, and therefore pleasant activity, and that the standard for such smoothness and ease — and that is the thing to bear in mind — is the stage of intellectual and moral development of any being or society. Dabs of colour may satisfy the savage, regular flower beds and trees reduced to definite shape the person on the next stage, con- siderable complexity of an artificial kind, as the paint- ing of nude figures, the individual on the following stage; but the highest developed man will refuse to satisfy the wants of his nature with what is at best the equivalent of medicine and of gymnastic exercises. He will demand that life itself should be lived on this high plane where perfection rules, and that the beautiful should not be something artificial or apart from life, but should express individuality and a social purpose. The separate cult of the beautiful is thus bound to die out, and with it the artificial satisfaction of that sense by occasional stimulation through pre- sentations prepared for that specific object. As a transitional stage such a separate cult and its emphasis, have an end to serve and can be under- stood; but with the ever closer welding together of life, with the shunning of all that is only of momentary or partial significance or value, with the recognition that life can only be properly satisfied WHAT IS AET ? 69 when it is lived as a complete unity, the idea of art or beauty as separate from the broad stream or basic structure of life will be dismissed as an unbearable incongruity. CHAPTEE III ETHICS AND SCIENCE It is often said that ethics deals with what ought to be, whereas science deals with what is ; and from this is sometimes inferred, though it is never put quite so bluntly, that nothing of what is ought to be, and nothing of what ought to be is. Yet an unfathomable gulf between science and ethics cannot be supposed to exist, for such a foe-like attitude would argue that while we are bound with all the power and wit at our disposal to realise the ought, we are still forced to fail absolutely in the attempt. Morality would thus be barren and meaningless, since it would spur us on to do what, in the nature of things, we cannot possibly achieve. Plainly, the opposition between ethics and science is of a different type. The science of ethics tells us what is right or what ought to be; it draws a picture of what the world would be if the moral ideal were realised; it demands of men to reduce that ideal to ETHICS AND SCIENCE 71 fact; it holds that no fact ought to be permitted to continue to exist if it does not agree with the ethical pattern ; but it does not say that the ought has never been realised, that all that is ought to be changed, or that all that is is not good, and is not as it ought to be. Ethics applies a particiclar standard ; whether men and institutions agree with this standard or not is left to our perception to decide. There need be no conflict between ought and is ; they may be the same. Science and ethics are not, therefore, unrelated or in determined opposition. It is conceivable that human effort shall so transform the world that posterity, like the mythic Jahveh, may look upon the world and pronounce it good. There is a personal reason why moralists should not seek to make themselves independent of science, and that is because they might find themselves left behind by the advancing tide of progress. Their audience might come to consist only of plants and rocks, and their power might cease altogether in the land. The statesman will study political conditions, the hygienist the problem of health, the physicist the control of nature, the captain of industry a revolution in the industrial system, the pedagogue the training of the child, the lawyer the prevention of crime; and when these and other specialists have completed their task 72 FAITH IN MAN there may be nothing left for the moralist to do. He may isolate himself in his pride; but no one will inquire after him, regret him, or remember him. Moral advance will continue independently of him, and at best he will be regarded as a curious fifth wheel in the carriage of social life. Science, then, however indirectly, is working out moral problems, and the moralist must either co-operate with men of science, or else he and his work will be consigned to oblivion. The reign of abstractions, if not gone for ever, is decidedly in abeyance to-day. On all sides science is profoundly influencing moral conceptions. It has revealed to us an ordered universe, a rigidly closed world system which is nowhere broken through by incalculable and foreign forces, an All which is simple and homogeneous in its texture and structure. Science has thus abolished superstition, the enemy to all ordered and peaceful living. No longer need we appease or flatter the gods, or dread an underworld, as the ancient Greeks felt bound to do. No longer need we be confused and confounded by innumerable petty gods whose zig-zag paths inspire terror instead of confidence, as with the Eomans. And no longer do devils and witches fill life with uncertainty and perplexity, and estrange man from himself, from society, and from nature, as was the ETHICS AND SCIENCE 73 case in the Middle Ages. The modern conception of the world offers to human effort a fair field and no favour. With divine interference has gone divine vengeance as well as divine assistance ; the divine ruler of men has departed, and his place has been taken by combined human effort, by beneficent institutions, and by a theory of the universe which inspires confidence and encourages self-respect, sfcrenu- ousness and dignity. Unless ethics wishes to cross swords with science, it is forced to exchange the old theological view of morals — with its insistence on a creator and omnipotent ruler, with its conception of the supremacy of prayer, with its heaven and hell, with its notions of obedience, gratitude and service to God — for a non-theological view, with its emphasis on democratic effort as able to save man from individual and social sin and misery, on dignity and self-respect, on love of others, on prevention and education rather than on warning and punishment, and on respect rather than on obedience. Science has shifted the very centre of gravity of ethics from divine assistance and dependence to mutual dependence and assistance, and the central relation of man to God has changed into the central relation of man to man. Prayer, the force which was supposed to right every wrong and misfortune, has been wholly discountenanced by 5 74 FAITH IN MAN science, and another force, that of social and individual effort, has taken its place. Believers in the old doctrines still exist; but their number is rapidly dwindling. To-day theological religion is chiefly symbolical and poetical, a sure sign that the old is being insensibly and painlessly superseded by the new. The theological or non- scientific theory has still a hold ; but that is chiefly for the sake of ' old lang syne,' and because the new has not yet, as a theory, sufficiently impressed itself upon the general mind. Besides, remnants of supernatural beliefs still linger on, and lovers of * the religion of our fathers ' are busily re-interpreting the old in terms of the new, or retreating to those jungles which science has not yet had time to penetrate. In practice the old theory is surely dead. Sanitary authorities cope with epidemics, meteorological institutes warn the mariner of a coming storm, agricultural chemists improve the soil, engineers invent innumerable implements which lessen labour and increase production, social evils are met by social reforms, and education improves head, heart, hand and muscles. Though the masses of the people are almost profoundly ignorant of the results of scientific research, research has so much influenced social activity that the theological element in society has lost its ETHICS AND SCIENCE 75 virility, its warmth, and its dynamic power, without men being clearly aware of the fact. People abstain from going to church because the Church offers little to-day, or else they go to church to satisfy some vague or mystic desire, if we leave aside the church as a pleasant and respectable Sunday resort. In any case, owing to the advance of science, the practical value of the Church has almost reached the zero point, and naturalistic and social efforts, even within the Church, have supplanted it. In the social consciousness the theological element has been al- together pushed back by the naturalistic and social element. Science has done much more than inspire confidence and show the way to social salvation : it has definitely suggested that we need not accept the facts in nature as unalterable facts. The savage had to be content with the world as it was, with its countless barriers and dreaded adjustments; but to-day marshes have been drained, forests cleared, mountains pierced, rivers bridged, dangerous animals destroyed or domesticated, and ships, railways, telephones, and telegraphs have very nearly succeeded in annihilating distance. Not prayer, not a Stoic attitude of indifference^ not fatalism^ "hut control and change of nature^ science 'preaches. For us moderns nature is neither holy nor unholy. 76 FAITH IN MAN We love it, and we adapt it to our uses. The earth is not an inviolable creation which we must respect and dread; it is our dwelling-place, and we change its features at will until the real coincides with the ideal. In other words, we have unconsciously taken over the role of creators, and it is scarcely conceivable that anything in nature shall prove so obdurate as to resist our efforts to adapt it to ideal purposes. With the help of science the moral ideal challenges everything which opposes it, and philosophies which assume a stable universe unrelated to moral ideals will find that not a problem which they are dealing with as eternal is safe from the interference of the moral ideal. If some god created the world in the first instance, we shall treat this world as clay which can be moulded to any pattern man likes. The very idea of the Creator is endangered by democratic moral idealism in league with science, even more so than by the theory of evolution. From the more general influence of science on ethics which determines the more general ethical outlines, we come to those scientific factors which act more directly by affecting most intimately the ethical con- tent. Ethical matters were once supposed to be the concern of the moralist, and ethical matters meant nothing less than life as a whole, with its activities ETHICS AND SCIENCE 77 and reactions. Science has here produced almost incredible changes. The old doctrines relied on faith in imperatives. * Be healthy/ ' be strong/ * be honest/ *be intelligent/ 'be joyous/ ran the com- mands, and the implication was that imperturbable individual efforts, which everybody could make, would achieve the desired result. ' You ought, therefore you can/ came like a blow to the struggling mortal. Sciences, however, sprang up. Hygiene, personal and communal, developed, and questions of cleanliness, of warmth, of exercise, of diet, came to be scientifically discussed and decided. Health was proved to be neither a very simple matter nor entirely a personal one. Commands and old saws were replaced by scientific formulae and sanitary inspectors. Hygiene* moreover, led to a study of physiology, and that to questions of bodily constitution and heredity. No longer, then, may moralists moralise about health on the basis of what might be deduced from pure reason by pure reason, for the world will not heed advice which omits all references to hygienic discoveries and precepts. Health has become a large subject of inquiry, and matters of diet, of cleanliness, of exercise, and of dwelling-places, are each entrusted to specialists. * Be honest' has met with a similar fate at the hands of science. Not so very long ago every man was ex- 78 FAITH IN MAN pected to be honest, no matter under what conditions he developed or lived. Man's will was free, man's conscience a wholly reliable vade mecum^ and man's responsibility was undivided. Educators, without thinking specially of moral theory, came, however, to lay stress on a number of conditions which either act beneficially or harmfully on the children entrusted to their care. A healthy and supple body, manifold and sweeping interests, a keen judgment and a strong will, besides direct moral instruction, were cultivated in the school. Bad school hygiene and discipline, insufficient feeding, and an objectionable home atmosphere, were all condemned. A child was to be educated morally as well as otherwise, and moral education was held to be essential. How different this sounds from the free- will theories and the conjuring with a heaven and a hell, where a man's particular constitution and his nurture do not enter into the calculations ! On the contrary, education was perhaps too much insisted on, as some believers in heredity over-emphasised heredity. However, as against the abstract moralist, the educationist stood on firm ground, and gradually he undermined the position of the moralist. Interested more especially in the one aspect of human life — that of early growth — the scientific specialist became an expert in moral education, and his ethical interest was ETHICS AND SCIENCE 79 as intense as it was bounded. He claimed the child, and dictated what was good for the young plant. The moralist had here either to turn educator or to find that his voice was unheeded. Men asked of him a close acquaintanceship with child psychology and a knowledge of the effects of various environmental con- ditions on the young. Unless the moralist complied with these conditions, his judgments were regarded as null and void. The command *Be honest' has been modified in another direction. Owing to individual and social imperfections many men become criminals: the old method was to denounce the offender and avenge the crime, or to soften his heart by moving appeals. A certain social callousness led also to the adoption of the theory of indeterminism. The chaos within the soul and within society demanded drastic measures, and the theory of indeterminism was, as a consequence, applied to law. Crime argued perversity, and perversity had to be atoned for. However, with an increasing order in society and in man's thoughts, and with a general softening of manners — these two supporting each other — crime came to be dealt with from a new point of view. The criminologist, the student of crime, arose, and he carefully examined the causes and effects of crime and 80 FAITH m MAN the results of punishments. Accordingly, with Beccaria, Bentham, Quetelet, and Mill several points came to be emphasised, ^.^., punishments should never be brutal; excessive punishments brutalise the offender, his judges, and the people ; punishments should be adequate to the crime — that is, deter probable ofifenders ; punishments must be such as not to degrade the offender, for that would make of him a permanent or a greater criminal ; and an ideal police should prevent crime by making detection certain and instantaneous. At the same time, crime must be treated in new ways. We must seek to reform the criminal, so that he may join the army of honest men ; we must not allow children to be neglected, lest they be handicapped to begin with ; we must change social conditions which cause irregularity of employment or life, and which press with tremendous force on certain individuals ; and we must generally discourage intemperance, luxury, ruthless competition and ex- ploitation, and the causes which foster these and thus indirectly further crime. As Quetelet says, general increase in crime demands a social remedy rather than a judicial one, and it argues social responsibility in addition to individual responsibility. In short, instead of the simple command * Be honest,* accompanied with threats, with severe punishments, and with ETHICS AND SCIENCE 81 passionate pleadings, we have a science which promises far more in the direction of encouraging right living and discouraging crime — a science which scarcely pro- fesses to be part of moral science and which yet cannot possibly be ignored. The moralist must busy himself with the results of criminology, or else he is a social cypher in matters of this kind. Whether he is interested in these new ways of thinking or not, they challenge attention and enlighten mankind as to the nature, the causes, the prevention, and the treatment of crime and criminals. The old theory comes to be displaced, not by a rival moralist, but by a specialist on the study of the conditions of crime who is scarcely thinking of himself as an ethical reformer. Both the educationist and the criminologist find their efforts frequently frustrated by a bad environment. Of what use is it, asks the first, to impart leanings towards fine-feeling honesty and broad interests when, at the risk of being economically ruined, there is no chance of realising these in adult life, and when their opposites have premiums placed upon them ? What purpose does it serve, asks the second, when we know what social conditions will dry up the sources of crime when those conditions remain unrealised, and conditions which form a recruiting-ground for vice and 82 FAITH IN MAN crime flourish ? Hence arises the social reformer. The ideal man, when driven into a desperate situation, may, indeed, defy the world, and that man is devoid of character who, like a timid animal, shrinks from every obstacle and from all pain. But the average man is not an ideal man ; his powers of resistance are limited ; and that situation is far from ideal which throws a man back entirely on himself. The social reformer, therefore, wishes to reconstitute society to a certain extent at least, so as not to put an undue strain on the individual will. He would remove from industrialism that rivalry and desire for wealth which proceeds regardless of the rightfulness and humanity of the means employed. He would alto- gether allay the industrial fever. He would encourage co-operation rather than competition. At the same time, through such changes, as well as through education, he would foster temperance and abolish gambling, betting, and too absorbing an interest in sport. Vice he would attack in the same way. Similarly with the State. He would agitate until the State ceases to be the special protector of the rich and the powerful, and becomes the promoter of the new ethics. Strict justice shall prevail, class and sex privileges shall be abolished, war shall give way to law, education shall absorb much attention, and open ETHICS AND SCIENCE 83 spaces, concerts, plays, libraries, lectures, museums, galleries, and travelling shall become readily accessible to the democracy. Beautiful towns, where the good of all is considered, and a national government having a like end, are to be developed. Sanitary workshops, sanitary dwellings, general sanitary arrangements, a good water supply, and a hundred other demands come from the social reformer. If we add to this that the reformer is an enthusiast, that he seeks to communicate his civic enthusiasm to his fellows, and that he feels how essential universal civic enthusiasm is for the continuous improvement of society, we have something like a picture of the nature and the aims of the social reformer. A State organised to serve the good of the whole is his ideal, and the motive-power, in accordance with the new faith, he places in a conscien- tious, intelligent, and ever-active democracy. Instead of ' Be honest,' the watch w^ord is, * Kevolutionise society so as to promote honesty ; ' and the underlying implication is that commanding and preaching are almost altogether vain under adverse social conditions. In our modern life the moralist must, therefore, like every man, become a social reformer, or at least acknowledge the far-reaching value of social reform. The hygienist, educationist, criminologist, and social reformer fully recognise that they supplement each 84 FAITH IN MAN other to a considerable degree. At first they are strict specialists with no definite moral purpose ; so soon as they obtain a clear insight into their de- partment they acknowledge that it is indissolubly connected with others, and that the common good is the test of the value of their work. The old abstract and all-embracing morality is, therefore, breaking up into a host of moral sciences; and if it is not to be altogether discredited as a useless survival it must become the science of moral sciences, thus allowing that science has produced profound changes in the form and in the content of morality, and that the age of bare moral commands and maxims is gone. The science of anthropology exerts an even more penetrating influence on ethics than the sciences we have just passed in review, for these seem scarcely to affect the moral standard, while anthropology presents us with such startling changes in the moral standards that at the first glance the unreality of right and wrong appears demonstrated. The problems of cannibalism, parenticide, infanticide, slavery, polygamy, are only ethically perplexing in an advanced state of civilisation. The praise of shrewdness, of prudence, of obedience ; the admiration of power; the division of men into rulers and ruled, workers and idlers; the restriction ETHICS AND SCIENCE 85 of the moral ideal, now to the self, now to the family, now to the tribe, and now to nearly-related groups; the practice of torture and asceticism — all these definitely show that morality (or shall we say men's ideals ?) changes with individual constitutions and temperaments, and with stages in social develop- ment. The one unfolding ideal of universal solidarity shines through all the historic haze, maze, and craze ; but a morality which makes the same demands on all men of all times is proved to be a fiction. Anthropology shows us the difference between absolute (or theoretical) morality, which seeks to do justice to all moralities and ideals, and relative (or practical) morality, which refers to some particular age with its peculiar social and individual needs. Anthropology, starting with a general interest in the various races and their mode of life and thought, shows us the way to a comparative ethics, and thence to a science of ethics. The moralist can, therefore, no longer assume that moral conceptions are never transformed, never develop, and never progress. He comes to learn that the duties, and the implications of those duties which he wishes to enforce, change remarkably with the ages, and that, if he does not recognise this, he will be regarded at best as a preacher for his day, but one who fails to understand the primal nature of morality. 86 FAITH IN MAN By insisting on the formation of a science of ethics, science is thus threatening the profession of the moralist who, until lately, was absorbed in Plato and Aristotle. This science seeks to comprehend the essential meaning of ethics and to co-ordinate the various ethical sciences into an ordered whole. The speculative, or unsystematic, method hitherto followed must be abandoned. No longer may we trust to mechanical psychic associations predetermined by prejudices and beliefs, and no longer may we pick and choose our instances. Scientific method demands systematic observation and reasoning. Our observation of ethical facts must be wide, exact, minute, and as nearly as pos- sible exhaustive; unsystematic observation is unscientific observation. Likewise with hypotheses : they pre- suppose very considerable knowledge, and they must be exhaustively verified if they are to deserve the epithet of 'scientific' Wide observation will here mean the study of different races, the study of man from infancy to old age, the study of individual constitutions and temperaments, the study of different social organisa- tions and institutions, and the relation of all these studies to one another. Furthermore, the connecting links between ethics and selfishness, prudence, glory, happiness, pleasure, and consistency will have to be examined. This task will be lightened by the various ETHICS AND SCIENCE 87 moral sciences which are already in existence, and by those which are yet to be established. It will be perhaps found that the moral ought represents certain human desires — certain forces in human nature — which seek to realise themselves, and that the study of ethics is principally concerned in understanding those desires as well as the factors which promote or obstruct their realisation. One of the most important tasks, for in- stance, may be to show that neither mere wealth, nor a life of pleasure or of idleness conduce to happiness. In any case, ethics will have to descend from its fantastic throne in the clouds and join the republic and the brotherhood of the sciences. If it does not do that, it will retain its throne, but its rule would pass to scientific specialists who would do its work. The moralist will then be what the astrologer and the alchemist are to-day. It is often disputed whether the scientific method is fundamentally different from the method employed in common thinking, and the general contention is that such a difference does not exist. We may go deeper still, and ask whether common thinking has everywhere and always been the same. When we see how, in the Odyssey y poor wit and clumsy deceitful- ness are lauded as something extraordinary, how in ^sop's Fables and Grimm's Fairy Tales shrewdness is 88 FAITH IN MAN admired, or how Lucretius, in proving his philosophy, relies on hearsay and exceptional instances, we see that the phrase 'common thinking' has had different values at diff'erent times. In the loftiest example among the ancients, in Aristotle, the process of reasoning is highly developed; yet, though Aristotle was the most eminent ancient scientist, the scientific notion of observation and verification was far from developed in him and by him. The ordinary child generalises recklessly, and the ordinary man is not far removed from the child in that respect. Occasionally, of course, the practice of exactness and minuteness of observation is observable in those who are untrained ; but the systematic process of induction, as propounded by Bacon and developed by science, is a historic and scientific product. Yet, given that science has developed a method, is not the moralist bound to insist on that method becoming the common method which is to be applied invariably in every department of life by every man? The command, 'Be truthful,' must, therefore, read: 'Be truthful by making the scientific method your own.' The moralist must ask that to the subjective desire of being truthful should be added the objective capacity to distinguish between truth and error. The scientific method must become the method of ordinary life. Observation, hypothesis, verification ETHICS AND SCIENCE 89 and reasoning, when they are not systematic, must be condemned until the method applied to the common affairs of life is as systematised and as conducive to correctness of statement and inference as that applied in scientific inquiries. Unfortunately, those who practise the scientific method have imbibed it, as a whole, from others who were equally un- aware of its essential nature, while those who seek to communicate it as a system have not usually had the opportunity of practising it systematically. This, however, is only a historical accident. The time must come when the scientific method is not only employed in scientific research, but is fully understood and deliberately taught ; and from that point it is but a step to its being generally taught in schools until it becomes the method of thought of the ordinary man. The scientific method cannot, therefore, be passed over by the moralist as something extra-moral ; that method must be taught by him as the complement of the virtue of truthfulness. Moreover, science itself is the concern of the new ethics. * Be truthful ! ' What does that mean ? Is the command to be taken literally, or is it to signify ' Be more or less truthful in a few things ? ' If it means the former, then truth generally is the concern of the truthful man. He must wish to know 6 90 FAITH IN MAN the truth about physical, chemical, biological, psycho- logical, and moral phenomena. He cannot be indifferent about what he believes concerning the universe. The truth about art, the truth about society, must be dear to him. He must sympathise with the search for truth generally, and, what is more, he is constrained to make the truth prevail in every department of knowledge, as well as to recognise that it is his duty to be the foe of shams.. The moralist cannot stand, therefore, aside from scientific inquiries. Truth is the object of pcience, and since truth is also one of his objects, he must identify himself both with scientific methods and with scientific aims. The particular development of science has, neverthe- less, brought with it certain difficulties, for, starting with the investigation of physical phenomena, several dangers arose. Physical facts were regarded as the only things real and worthy of respect. Emotions, ideas, and ideals were looked upon as fantastic, fanciful, and unworthy of investigation. The glory of man was to seek for physical truth, and to understand the physical universe was man's highest ambition. Truth itself was regarded not only as the supreme virtue, but as the only virtue, and other human desires were regarded as devoid of truth, as subjective and as unreal. Science, in other words, was intellectualistic ETHICS AND SCIENCE 91 and materialistic. The first compromise, therefore, between truth and needs took place on the physical plane. Science came to be applied, and, as a result, there followed innumerable improvements and dis- coveries of an economic character. The whole of the material life was revolutionised, and labour gained tremendously in value. Greater material comfort and greater material luxury (at least for a few) were the result, and the notion spread that material science would save man from every ill. Moral and similar efiforts were more than ever discountenanced. Yet while the incalculable value of the application of science to industry cannot be doubted, it soon became clear that physical science was unable, by itself, to save man, for fabulous private wealth is consistent with shocking general destitution, and moral turpitude and neglect of health can very well limp side by side with physical advance. What is more, by promoting the production of fiendish instruments of warfare, and by generally placing itself unreservedly at the disposal of the rich — as in mines, in potteries, in chemical works, in division of labour — science has done a huge disservice to man. Applied science may be made a curse as well as a blessing, and the lover of his kind cannot help treating science as an enemy in so far as it puts itself at the disposal of the enemies 92 FAITH IN MAN of peace and democratic good-will. Here alone the new faith may justly censure the man of science. The advance of science will, however, more than neutralise what harm it has been doing. The glorification of the physical sciences is in the decline. We have passed biology already, and such sciences as psychology, anthropology, education, criminology, sociology, and ethics, are rapidly developing. Once a strong and definite interest in social and moral truth arises, and the scientific pendulum will find its centre of gravity there rather than in the physical sciences. Then, we have every reason to believe, there will be the same wonderful and almost incredible progress in moral and social truth and their application as there has been in physics and in material matters. The scientific method, we must remember, is in no way confined to any particular realm of truth, for it may be applied anywhere and everywhere. The moralist need not, therefore, fear that science is concerned only with matter and material comforts; the most refined and spiritual realms are also its concern. We may go further. Just as the scientific method is nothing but the ethical method of research, so the fundamental aims of science are moral aims in that ETHICS AND SCIENCE 93 they primarily tell us our place in nature and society, and give us commanding truths which must ultimately save and elevate mankind. The result of our examination has been that ethics must not and cannot regard science as either a stranger or a foe. For ethics to ignore science is to reduce itself to a phantom and to communicate its substance to its adversary. The scientific conception of the universe is being universally accepted and acted on; insensibly a host of special moral sciences, such as education and hygiene, are developing and are doing the work that ethics used to do; anthropology and sociology are also modifying the common view con- cerning fundamental ethical conceptions; and, lastly, if the moralist will not heed, specialists will come forward who will snatch away the remnant of his power. No conjuring with ought and is, no detection of dialectic differences, no appeals to Plato and Aris- totle, will do in this matter. Science is marching forward, and with it humanity ; and every attempt of the moralist to reinforce or to make plausible the old pre-scientific position means so much time and energy wasted, and so much ground lost. Let the moralist love his subject more than some particular view of it, let him enter into the spirit of the new ethics, let him co-ordinate the moral sciences, 94 FAITH IN MAN and he will march abreast of science — if not, indeed, ahead, as the rightful leader of the vanguard of pro- gressive humanity. CHAPTEE IV THE NEW FAITH AND SOCIAL KEFORM Nothing seems more self-evident to-day than that morality is inconceivable except as having a social character, and yet nothing is less obvious if we regard the matter historically. For us moderns to slight the common good, or to look upon it as of secondary importance, seems to challenge the very being and meaning of ethics. For us, the good man is prim- arily the good citizen and the good neighbour, more especially the former, whose principal duty is jealously and zealously to guard good social and political institutions and to do his utmost to improve whatever institutions flourish. Economic, legal and political systems, absorb his attention. In his opinion the good and the evil of mankind is distilled into these, and these must, therefore, be dealt with in the first instance. "We could imagine a man who possessed such consummate ability that he could achieve for himself what mankind has achieved for 96 FAITH IN MAN humanity ; but men as we know them have only the faintest resemblance to such a man. Eather must we think of mankind as a single individual, perhaps millions of years old and having a single brain. That Individual has developed with almost painful slowness languages, tools, dwelling-places, laws, arts, a common life and a social organism. The successive pulses in the life of that Individual — the human beings who were successively born — are not of necessity faith- ful images of that Individual ; but through the work of the generations being stored up in languages, in traditions, in written laws and communications, in political institutions and in customs, and through the single human creature being nurtured in a social organism where he makes a great part of this legacy his own, the achievements of the past come to be collected in minute selves whose greatest power it is to be receptive to all that has been done, and to react on it. Oral tradition and custom accomplish much in primitive tribes, yet even here the general acquisitions are stored in the tools, clothings, huts and habits. In higher civilisations oral tradition can only play a small part owing to the vastness of the legacy, and special reservoirs are erected to prevent the waste of what the past has accomplished: the common good is thus treasured in institutions and can best be promoted by SOCIAL REFOEM 97 improving old institutions and introducing new ones of a high character. Conscious of these facts, modern ethics has small hope of moral advance where every one builds a wall around himself and, jealous of his individuality, goes so far as to attempt to tear down the common wall. To ignore or despise the past, to preach independence of one's fellows, to profess a horror of institutions, is to march with quick step into chaos where freedom is buried in the same grave with authority, a chaos which throws mankind back into savagery and retards progress for thousands of years. Absolute individualism means the renouncing of the great legacy, even to the point of language, of reasoning and of self-control. Not the individual has genius and is able to do much, but Man. Ponder the history of architecture from the cave dwelling and the covering of branches to the modern palace and church, or that of tools from the chipped stone to the modern locomotive and printing machine, and observe how slow has been the progress and how little even the most gifted person contributes. See the difference between the sagas and myths as accounts of events and compare them with what we conceive the writing of history to be to-day, with its extensive research, its methodical sifting of facts, and 98 FAITH IN MAN its philosophical grasp. Note the development of science and the scientific method out of a mass of almost unintelligible superstitions, suspicions and rumours. How small are men, compared to Man ! It is chiefly the investigations of anthropologists which have suggested the above view of men and Man; but the democratic tendencies of the day have led to a similar conclusion. Democracy, Demos, these words have an unpleasant, almost a grating sound. They remind the literary person of sweaty caps, of coarse manners, of thick breaths, of an un- bridled tongue, of brutality, of irredeemable ignorance and stupidity, and of well-nigh total absence of self- control. *Woe if the government of the country is left to the rabble and the mob ! Woe if the destiny of mankind is to be guided by the crowd! The triumph of democracy is the triumph of confusion and the crushing out of all that is great and refined^ The people are born incapables; and they must have assigned to them a place and be kept in that place by their superiors. We may pity them as dumb, driven cattle ; but cattle they are, and driving can do them little harm, and us, the superior classes, much good. Perhaps, too, that they are dumb because they know their place and are satisfied with it.' All the time that men reason like this, the people, SOCIAL EEFOEM 99 the democracy, are marching on, and marching on to victory. Slavery, serfdom, and mastery have been abolished, and thus innate inferiority is no longer recognised. The law has, at least in theory, ceased to make distinctions between men, though strangely enough women have not yet received their legal and political freedom. And manhood or adult suffrage is all but a universally accomplished fact. No longer may one man beat another with impunity on the pre- text that that other is his possession ; no longer has the baron to pay a small fine for an offence which would cost the serf his life ; and no longer have the rich alone the vote or more votes than the poor. The triumph of democracy is apparently near at hand, and yet, behold ! national and local politics are more progressive than ever and freer than ever from corruption. Still, equal freedom, equality before the law, and equal rights of voting do not satisfy the democracy. Public schools, public galleries, public concerts, public libraries, public parks, are demanded and are being slowly granted, with no ill effect. However, the essential plea is that legislation should be concerned primarily with the common welfare, with the welfare of the large masses, rather than with the protection of the wealthy and the titled — in other words, a revolution in politics is insisted on. Furthermore, the present industrial and 100 FAITH IN MAN economic conditions are looked upon as anarchic and disadvantageous for the workers, and thus a root-and- branch reform of our industrial system is said to be necessitated. Production and distribution are to be democratised and socialised ; a secure, a healthy and a dignified existence is to be assured to all. Here, too, the army of democracy speaks with no uncertain voice and#marches on to its goal with no halting step. The democracy ! Doubtless all that has been said against it has been mostly true at the time it was said. Whether it is true to-day, and how far it will be true to-morrow, is another matter. In the earlier periods of history there is found only individual revolt; it was a decided advance to meet with a rahhle. Later still, comes the moh which possesses not a little homogeneity and oneness of spirit. "When the C7vwd appears, there are suggestions of firm self-control and unity of purpose. A mass meeting, which indicates a further step in the evolution of democracy, is already an organised whole where common ends are clearly recognised and centrally planned and carried out, and a public meeting stands only lower than a meeting of delegates or an elected assemlly^ in homogeneity and intelligence of purpose and action. Individual revolt, rahhle, moh, crowd, mass, people, elected assembly, here we have recorded the growth of democracy, and it SOCIAL EEFOEM 101 is manifestly short-sighted to overlook this advance from chaos to order, from the individual revolt of spiritless slaves to the serried ranks of alert freemen who are guided by ever more capable leaders, and are ever more cajpaUe of dispensing with leaders. Similarly with the habits of the people. Among a certain large section of the poorer classes in London the women have seldom their hair neatly done ; their dress is frequently torn, soiled and untidy ; cleanliness of the body is sometimes absent ; and the conduct is boister- ous, the manners scarcely refined, and the language and thought leave much to be desired. One need hardly say that this picture also fits a great number of un- skilled London labourers who belong to the stronger sex. Yet we cannot reason from London to Paris and Berlin, for in these latter two towns the men and women of the corresponding classes are neat and clean, and their conduct, manners, language, and thought are not of a low order. Exceptions to this are rarely met with. When one considers especially the number of working men who visit the Universites Popidaires in France or those who read serious scientific works in Germany, the whole common or medieval conception of democracy must be fundamentally revised, and with it the whole meaning, hope and machinery of morality. The average man is not horn to serve^ not horn to lahotcr 102 FAITH IN MAN for superiors, not compelled to imitate or to he dependent ; he has the capacity for self-respect, for self-government, for lofty ideaSj for culture, and for combination and government. There is nothing necessarily low, mean or stupid in him. He may assimilate the great achievements of the past and of his age. Nor is there reason to believe that he could not, if educated, matriculate at a University or become a Bachelor of Arts. Where is the social line between high and low to be drawn ? Under these circumstances a democratic conception of morality is not only natural but inevitable. If the people are capable of government and culture, they must have and they will have both, and morally they are bound to aim at becoming the rulers. Yet that does not imply that all men are equal. We have deduced from the facts of history that the most gifted men are scarcely gifted at all when compared with Man, and that the average man is a being able to recognise the good, the true, and the beautiful, and to do much to realise them. There are no statistics to tell us the relative number of able men. Leaving aside what is due to unfortunate social conditions, we are perhaps justified in saying that the overwhelming majority of men represent at least the average ability above depicted, say, perhaps ninety in a hundred. SOCIAL EEFUEM 103 Of the remaining ten individuals, two or three may be assumed to be decidedly dull and the others as more or less approaching in ability the mass of men. If, however, we allow for the enormous pressure of the ninety on the ten, we shall see that the ten scarcely offer a grave problem ; and if to that be added that men will improve their environment and their way of living and come more and more to select their partners in marriage, the percentage of the wholly or almost wholly unfit will markedly sink. On the other side, we must recognise the large proportion of the gifted, the talented and the great men. Of commanding and towering individualities there are only very few, and to some extent we make of them gods by ascribing to them much of what is due to their age and what they have legitimately appropriated from others. Thus Newton is really Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and half-a-dozen stars of the first magnitude fused into one, leaving aside countless orbs of lesser magnitudes which are naturally devoured by the greater sun. The work of the world is done by the average and by a large number of talented persons who are not far removed from the average and whose names, therefore, are not inscribed on the tables of history. If this total view as to human ability be approxim- ately correct, then the rule of democracy, under 104 FAITH IN MAN appropriate social conditions, is justified as the only defensible rule. A Plato, a Shakespeare, and a Darwin, could be appreciated by the many, and therefore there is no danger that the triumph of democracy will mean the death of greatness. Philistinism and superstition rather than democracy are the foes which greatness need dread. At the same time almost infinitely more may be expected from a highly enlightened and ethical democracy than was bestowed on man by its quite exceptional men, while one may justly reason that no state of society will be so encouraging to genius as an enlightened democratic State. Passing dangers there are in the democratic con- ception of morality, for just as the intellectual pursuits of the philosophers tended to identify morality with the worship of reason, so the industrial labours of the many have suggested that the moral problem is a purely economic one and that the solution of the economic problem will leave nothing else to solve. That a harsh and degrading economic system gives rise to mountains of misery and evil cannot be easily dis- puted ; yet it is not less evident that only a feeling of solidarity could maintain a just economic system, while economic freedom is far from being inconsistent with general unhappiness and vice. On reflection we shall find that life is one, and that nothing truly sound can SOCIAL EEFOEM 105 be effected in one direction without reforms in nearly every other. Moreover, it is coming to be felt that the motive power for reform and its stability depend not so much on the preaching of class hatred and economic enfranchisement as on the teaching of a general human and democratic ideal, one of the demands of which shall be to reform or replace the present competitive industrial system. A second difficulty is also due to passing social conditions. Naturally the need at present is for large, for mass reforms. The average man is dissatis- fied, and his interest centres, therefore, around removing common evils. The consequence is that just as he is laying the emphasis on dealing with industrial problems, so he urges mass legislation, as if men were copies of one another like machine products. It is the same as has been the case with science : to understand the world as a whole is the first object of science ; but once this end is approximately achieved, it comes to be recognised that general statements do not exhaust the individual object, and that we must individualise as well as generalise. Once, then, the more comprehen- sive needs of the community are satisfied, the more individual needs will be studied. Not before! for it is obvious that the majority of individuals will be better satisfied by having many and those the most important 106 FAITH IN MAN" needs satisfied, than to have gratified a few needs of comparatively few individuals. Individualisation must come after generalisation. Still, a danger exists that men may be pressed into one form, for we know that much smoulders in individuals which is as easily fanned into flame as smothered. As we saw in the chapter " What is Art ? " we want that everybody should produce what is original, varied, significant and beautiful, and originality will be best encouraged when we are just to the individual and nourish all the healthy tendencies which are within him. No social quality need thus be wasted and no life shorn of its strength. On the whole this is recognised in the new morality. Children are indulged in when they show healthy peculiarities, parents and teachers try to elicit what good is hidden in their charges, and society recognises that it can only gain by diversity of individual endowment and that it loses nothing by individuals living a full, yet socially useful, life according to their inclinations. At the same time far too much may be made of individualisation. Mere diversity, mere differences, lead to an eccentric life which is neither good for the individual nor for society. To look for the personality of a man in his varying from others, is only reasonable in an age when individuality has little chance, or when SOCIAL EEFOEM 107 social action is impossible to the individual. To be an average man, a man of the street — ein Durchschnittsmensch, ein Alltagsmensch — is only a reproach when the social ideal is a mean one. An average man of one society may very well stand far higher and be far freer than the man of genius of another period, Nor does subordination argue in- feriority, for a man may freely join with others. After all, better be a cell in the brain which works out imposing problems than a huge boulder idly resting or heavily tumbling. The love of complete independence is an extreme phenomenon which passes away with unreasonable social conditions. The mean is here golden justice to the individual as a whole and justice to what is original in him, not forgetting that the love of being one with humanity should accompany the love of living a full life. Only in this manner is stagnation avoided and progress assured. Paradoxical as it may appear, the greater danger lies in the opposite direction, in the direction of the democracy not doing justice to itself. A high average is able to do most of the necessary social work, and more and more could be done by the average citizen until even the semblance of bureaucracy passed away. Experts should not rule ; they should give their valu- able advice. The attempt to centralise everything, 108 FAITH IN MAN especially on the ground that it is better to have a little work well done than much work badly done, is a living peril for democracy. In the Athenian democracy — where the workers had no voice ! — the tendency was for everything to be done by public assemblies and for offices to be filled by rotation. Fear of others was here the chief motive. In the new and true democracy something resembling this scheme, though probably not so drastic, will be adopted ; but the motive will be a high one, that of the desire of every individual serving the commonwealth. The new ethics must steer between doing injustice to special and to general talent, and the former must be respected while encouraged to serve the latter. We must level up the average and 'progress^ not enthrone the expert and court social stagnation. We have said that social reform is the very life breath of modern morality, and men are so convinced of that that they think it must have always been the same. Naively we accept duty, right, morality, ethics, goodness and virtue as so many simple and self-evident moral terms. Yet they represent separate systems of thought, systems which have perhaps only in common the fact that they are human ideals. Duty — what is due from us, what we owe — refers primarily to obedience and to authoritative rule, and SOCIAL EEFOEM 109 such a rule has little to do with what we call morality to-day. The serf had to obey the free man because the latter was his superior, and what the free man dictated was generally what furthered his own private purposes independently of whether it served those of the community. May a potter not do what he pleases with his clay ? May the clay claim a voice and a conscience ? May not the potter decide what pots he will make ? Duty meant a dog's morality, doing what one is told and serving one's master. Duty argued a system highly pleasing to those who occupied privileged social positions, and it had nothing in common with the good of the body social, the solidarity of the individual and the race, or the feeling on the part of him who obeyed that he owed something to him who commanded. In its present signification the term Duty is spiritual- ised and moralised, and the reference is to a task and not to persons. Eight is what an individual claims as his own. " The rights of man " do not imply what we call to-day morality. Men claim the right to live, the right to work, the right to travel, the right of free speech, often with never a suspicion that these rights will further the good of the common-weal or their fellows. Men's aim is to establish securely the pillars of their own life, and to achieve this end they unite and labour 110 FAITH IN MAN with others. Duty meant primarily obedience and a relation of inferior to superior ; Eight signifies fundamentally an individual seeking to be independent of others and uniting with others to insure the inde- pendence of each. What is dear to the lover of rights is himself, and at bottom others are no concern of his. Again, the Eight may be interpreted as law, and then with Hobbes and others, the right comes to be decided by an arbitrary tribunal. Morality meant at one time custom or tribal custom. In this sense the term was an extra-moral or general one. Among the customs there might be moral abominations and yet they would be regarded as sacred and had to be followed. In primitive times such an attitude was natural, since the life of the tribe lay in its customs, and since life was yet too simple to allow of a separate department for ethics. Similarly, Ethics meant at one time character or habit, and referred to what is stable in the individual, regardless of moral demands. Good meant always good for something, and thus the meaning of goodness varied with what aims were respected at any time. The term Good embraces far more than what we call Moral to-day, and according to circumstances and individuals it may be in direct conflict with the common welfare. SOCIAL EEFOEM 111 Virtue signified originally manliness or superiority, and that meaning does not cover exactly what is meant by virtue to-day. A virtuous man may very well be without virtue in the modern sense of the word. If one takes into consideration differing social circumstances, the democratic nature of present-day morality is not difficult to understand. When the political arena is open only to few, and when social change and progress are scarcely suspected, individual interest will only be secondarily social. Men will lay the greatest stress, for example, on being above circumstance and bearing with equanimity the capricious blows and presents of fate. So, too, courage, uprightness, love of knowledge, independence of character, will be the ideals. Men will seek to order their own life and make a melody of it, as we see in the Stoics, including St. Paul, Thomas a Kempis and Montaigne. They may even be benevolent, without dreaming that everybody should be that. Honesty, truthfulness and kindness, will not be generally ignored ; but men will be honest, truthful and kind to their 'neighbours,' and not seek to make society, social institutions and the state honest, truthful and kind. Only a democracy is equal to the task of to-day ; that task was an impossible one in days when Faith in Man was absent, and when the work of reform rested 112 FAITH m MAN on a few shoulders. When we speak, therefore, of the various ideals which have been prevalent in the past, it would be best not to consider them without qualification as moral ideals, but preferably as ideals of superiority, or generally as human ideals. The common good has been furthered by most of these ideals, it is true ; yet only indirectly, as has been the case with such an ideal as that of art, where the furtherance of the common good has often been regarded as irrelevant. Different ages have been controlled by differing ideals of conduct which have arisen out of special circumstances. Loving one's 'neighbour,' obeying a divine law, developing one's individuality, hardening oneself against the stern fates, being upright out of respect for self, were popular ideals in their time. Consequently whe7i a democracy — the whole people — is coming to ruhy and when men have learnt the value of historic institutions, a definite human ideal of a certain type emergeSy i.e.y an ethics which lays unparalleled stress on social reform and on improving mankind through improving social institutions hy means of democratic effort. All other ideals no more fit our times than snow storms fit the period of summer. The implications of a democratic ethics are many. We have already spoken of the central idea which must govern politics, that of the good of all, each one SOCIAL EEFORM 113 counting for one and no one for more than one. We have also singled out the demand for a co-operative industry in the place of the present largely competitive one. We must assume as a corollary that all sex and religious privileges are to be abolished, while the form of government must be a republic where the popular will reigns supreme and where every adult is recognised as an equal citizen. National and racial privileges must fall, and with them that hoary monster war, the most dreadful relic of primitive times. The abolition of war will not signify, of course, the abolition of nationalities, any more than that local government can be said to have been done away with because villages, towns and counties no longer carry on war with one another. International amity and organisation will form the complement to national amity and organis- ation. In future parliaments the problem of education will assume the importance hitherto attached to the army and navy, since where all are to be responsible for the proper management of the State there all must be well educated. Democratic morality will not be blind to the development of science and art. Lastly, a true democracy is only reconcilable with sexual purity, with love of a simple life, with strenuous living and labouring, and with large individual and social purposes. The social aspect — a democracy working out its own 114 FAITH m MAK salvation — is the most important aspect of the new faith, beside which the interest in art, science, philosophy and religion, great as it should be, pales almost into insignificance. That aspect is the one clear sign which distinguishes the new ethics from other systems of ethics, and if the new ethics wavered with regard to that bedrock principle, it would soon crumble into pieces. The new ethics must encourage individuality; it must insist on a high-purposed private, family, professional and civic life; it must emphasise respect and love for one's neighbour and for man ; it must laud a character that stands square to the winds of temptation and misfortune — all these qualities it is bound to reverence; but the supreme object of care must be the improving and the perfecting of the political and social fabric. Through this latter process only can the complete solidarity of the individual and the race be assured. CHAPTER V THE RELATION OF THE NEW FAITH TO PHILOSOPHY What are the most significant assertions of the new faith ? They are as follows : We are to trust to social, civic and democratic effort for the purpose of ensuring human salvation ; no powers outside nature need either be dreaded or appealed to ; nature itself is passive, if not friendly, towards our endeavours and is to man, armed with scientific insight, as the clay to the potter ; man is a social and sociable being, dependent on and loving society; man is a progressive being, growing historically more intelligent, refined and capable of good ; moral progress and moral perfection are essentially social progress and social perfection, and hence to improve social institutions, to play the part of the good citizen, is the direct avenue leading to the ethical goal ; man's moral interest is primarily social interest, and in society he loves to be, to move, and to live ; the moral ideal is to weld mankind into one being having one single aim ; the conception of interest opens out from interest in the moment, to selfishness, to prudence, to 116 FAITH IN MAN interest in one's kindred, one's people, one's race, and lastly to mankind and thence to nature and the universe. Human solidarity in motive and end is the goal of the new faith. The attitude of modern morality towards philosophy is, therefore, well defined. The new point of view forbids us to identify ethics with rational self-love, as Bishop Butler did, for the emphasis on self is repugnant to modern sentiment. Individual pleasure is even less the aim, since man asks what will serve the common good and since he is ready to sacrifice his life for that good at a moment's notice. Happiness and misery are, indeed, anxiously studied by the new morality ; but only where happiness agrees with a consistent and harmonious individual and social life. For the in- dividual to interest himself in the common good because of his own good, to hunt after pleasure as the miser after wealth, would be a standpoint at variance with a supremely social and racial interest. Egoistic hedonism is thus obsolete to-day; and where that hedonism takes the form of sacrificing the pleasures of the present life on the understanding that in another world the balance of pleasures will be restored, the modern man equally turns away disapprovingly. Nor are men to-day satisfied with universalistic hedonism, with a belief of promoting the greatest happiness of the THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 117 greatest number, unless we supply a modern interpret- ation to Bentham's formula. Pleasures cannot be calculated — at least not as yet; and what is more important, it is likely that the harmonious satisfaction of the needs of our nature is normally unaccompanied by either pleasure or pain, both of which mark perhaps exceptional states. The moral aim is, therefore, to know the human constitution (moral, intellectual, aesthetic and physical) and to satisfy that as a whole in self and others, rather than the attainment of the greatest possible amount of pleasure which is a subjective, indefinable, and probably incorrect standard as applied to human thought and action. Furthermore, just as happiness may well be interpreted as satisfaction, and that as the satisfaction of man's primary, periodic and other constitutional needs which are readily determined objectively, so the notion of utility, as the utilitarian school developed it, can be reinterpreted to mean that which leads towards complete human solidarity, that which is useful for such an ideal purpose. Certainly, usefulness in the sense of waiting on the pleasures of the senses or on material comfort, is a notion which would be repudiated by the moral sense of to-day. All theories, therefore, which reduce morality to an inter st in selfish pleasure or in pleasure as such, must 118 FAITH IN MAN be rejected, whether the theories refer to this world or to another. He who does not love his neighbour ; he who does not identify himself with his neighbour, is not moral. The moral problem used to be : Can we act otherwise than for our own happiness ? Can we take interest in anything outside ourselves? And men thought they were compelled to answer these questions in the negative. Some heaven or hell, or some metaphysical realm, was said to be necessary for the solution of the riddle. Modern psychology is showing, on the contrary, that the difficulty is created by an incomplete analysis. Objective interests are possible, even to the extent of hating oneself while loving another, and pleasure, and above all selfish pleasure, is not a normal motive in action. It is now seen that the man eaten up with passions looks upon the self-control necessary for ordinary selfishness as impossible and unnatural, while the selfish man regards the consistently prudent man as belonging to a fairy realm, and the prudent man professes unbelief about the possibility of a man living and dying for his fellows. We may say, then, that all theories which reduce morality to interest in self, are proved incorrect to-day both by psychology and by the common moral practice. Men sometimes insist that the 'natural' man, the empirical man, as metaphysicians would say, is selfish, THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 119 and that only the supranatural or metaphysical man can be unselfish. Who, however, is the empirical man? The assumption that the natural man has a certain nature which is alike in all men or even alike at different times in the same man, is more than questionable. The empirical man differs with the ages and with education, and as in early times he was fierce and passionate, so he will be, in time, wholly responsive and attuned to the demands of solidarity. The soldier, the citizen, the parent, the business-man, are often actuated by prudence rather than by a sense of duty ; but not infrequently these persons as naturally follow the right unhesitatingly and would profess disgust and be astonished when they heard of men who never unhesitatingly obeyed moral imperatives. A lofty character may be, alas ! uncommon to-day as a prudent man was at one time a rarity ; but empirical and natural both of them are and equally so. Man's morality is almost unthinkable apart from the process of reasoning, for the moral task, at least that of the civilised man, including as it does many and complicated issues, requires reasoning for its com- prehension and accomplishment. How can we help the man ? we ask ourselves, and perhaps for hours together we seek in our minds for a satisfactory solu- tion. The infant, with its appetites which demand 120 FAITH IN MAN instant attention, has no use for reasoning, nor has the man of impulse ; but he who is thoughtful, who wishes to help everybody and to hurt nobody, must often think for a prolonged period before he acts. He who reasons is a friendly community within himself where the different needs seek to come to terms and aim to attain their ends in a peaceful manner. The reason represents the needs parleying with one another and concluding treaties. A reason which is independent of needs and does not represent needs in fiux and in touch does not exist. Kant's pure reason, imposing moral maxims which are wholly unconnected with sentiments or interests, is accordingly inconceivable. We have here again the problem of the natural man and the metaphysical man, the former guided by the senses and the passions and the latter by the reason. Modern ethics rejects altogether this being whose only concern — one concern he has — is not to contradict himself and not to act inconsistently, and who has no compassion, no tenderness, no love, and is never indignant, a being who remains, like an insensible mechanism, wholly unaffected by what happens in the world. Love, solidarity, identification with our fellows, are the key-note of the new morality. Nor does modern psychology admit that the senses have no considerable element of reason in them or that they are conceivable THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 121 otherwise than as a complex mental product, just as psychology insists on the sense and appetite factor in the process of reasoning; nay more, empirically it is found that many men would consider invariable consistency and non-contradiction unreasonable, thus robbing the pure reason of its last stronghold. Much may be said, of course, in favour of an objective standard and against the dangers involved in being guided by feelings, and in the final resort we must act rightly even when no personal sympathy stirs within us ; but morality loses its meaning and moral insight ceases when there is no tenderness in the heart. Unreasoning habits are good sometimes, and therefore an unreasoning moral habit of grinding out a maxim as a musical box grinds out a tune, may be of assistance under certain conditions, yet he who loves the whole world as a mother loves her only child is more likely to do justice in a world full of complicated isssues than he who applies unreflectingly an objective and formal standard. For a philosopher it is natural to extol the power of reasoning and the need for consistency : thus we find that many, perhaps most, philosophers, from before Aristotle who placed the highest value on the contemplative state, down to Kant and his successors, have lauded an intellectualistio morality where the service of, and the obedience to, reason 8 122 FAITH m MAN played the most prominent part. The new ethics, as we have seen, respects truth and lays stress on the employment of reason ; but it insists also on deep and broad-based sentiments. Nor does it place the reason into an intelligible realm which is a stranger to the world of the senses and of the feelings. For modern ethics the mind is one, and the intellect has neither a supramundane root nor has it a unique or superior value when compared with the emotions or instincts, Intellectualism, emotionalism, and voluntarism, are each one-sided views, from this standpoint. The use of the intellect cannot he too highly recommended in matters moral, the emotions are indispensable and without them the Mood freezes in our veins, and an altogether good will cannot he too fervidly praised — all three are required in the solution of modern problems. The new ethics is supremely characterised by its being democratic, everybody counting for one and no one for more than one. Slavery and serfdom are not recognised, and, at least in morals, no one is privileged in any way. In other ages when the law admitted a hierarchy of powers, authority and superiority determined the moral law. It was the place of the superior to rule, of the inferior to obey ; of the superior to lay down the law, of the inferior to abide by that law. One need not go back to Eoman times to find THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 123 fathers who regard themselves as the absolute head of their house and whose will it is to be unquestioningly obeyed, nor to discover lords and gentlemen who think that superiority is above law because it creates the law. Authority ruled in pre-democratic days and authority took cognisance only of duties, of obeisance, in inferiors. According to circumstances the despotism might be benevolent, haughty, or malevolent, but despotic the rule of authority remained. From those days dates the notion that God is the law-giver, that he has engraven on tables of stone or on the tables of the heart the moral law, that his will is the basis of morals, that morality losig3 its meaning when we do not derive it from a divine law-giver. Those were undemocratic times. To-day when one rule binds all and equally, when in the presence of our rulers we do not prostrate ourselves or kneel down nor even pray, it is considered unwarrantable to found morality on authority. He who does right because he is commanded to do so, does not belong to this age ; he belongs to days when men were graded, and when the majority were ruled over as domestic animals are ruled over now. A man is only respected to-day if he does his duty joyfully; if he helps his neighbour because he delights in helpful acts. The good feelings must bubble up from a good hearty and morality must be derived from human nature 124 FAITH IN MAN itself. Modern ethics is, therefore, independent of external human authority and independent of a law- giver who rules over nature. Nor does morality derive its sanction from the nature of things. Men do not feel to-day that they could not act rightly if the Universe itself did not bear the hall mark * Warranted that morality shall triumph.' On the contrary, the feeling appears to be that such a point of view is strained, that morality must take its chances, and that all depends on how strenuous human efforts are. Each good deed done is judged on its merits, and speculations as to the ultimate victory of the good are relegated to hours of leisure and amusement. The serious question is to help morality triumph now and to promote perfection to-day. The far-off future will take care of itself much, and almost infinitely, better than we can take care of ourselves. It is felt that no ultimate victory could undo the degradation, the imperfection, the waste of moral energy and the misery which has ravaged the world ; that the past can never be undone ; that morality becomes a mockery, a stage play, when we imagine with Tennyson, * ' That nothing walks with aimless feet ; That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete." THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 125 In the Absolute, again, there is no evil ; but in the Absolute the human standpoint is lost and the good with it. Nor may we speak of the procession of life as a beautiful picture where the shadings of evil are necessary to the perfection of the whole, for if we represented life to-day in a picture we should be disgusted with the big black blotches and the chaos presented. Some discord may be necessary to a beautiful melody ; but a melody which would represent the life of yesterday and to-day would be distinguished by disharmonies so profound that we could scarcely call it a melody at all. The good man will look behind these similes, and the sight of one man given over to lust or cruelly oppressed will make it im- possible for him to believe in a moral universe. These compromises are survivals from pre-democratic days when morality was sadly discouraged; they do not satisfy the modern conscience ; they appear grotesque and uninteresting. Men want to be assured that the path of morality is not that of the treadmill, and that while all is not as we would like it to be, yet there is no reason to despair. The scientific view of the world is, therefore, sufficient for the purposes of moral action. If the Universe as such positively inclines to favour the right, so much the better, but our faith is nob chained to such a proposition. 126 FAITH IN MAN The modern attitude deals in a similar way with the conception of indeterminism or free will. The moral interest in this question has almost faded. Theology required this doctrine for its purposes, and the law also found this conception useful for a time ; but when the attempt to justify God and to relieve society of its responsibility is dropped, that doctrine, too, loses its significance. Absolute freedom is no moral virtue. To feel oneself bound by nothing is anarchy, not morality. As regards ethics, we moderns ignore, therefore, the deity who gave man a free will, the intelligible noumenal world where man stands outside the general fact of cause and effect, and the metaphysical realm where man is freed from the physical world around. Modern ethics has no use for the free will theory as thus understood. That theory must go with the virtues and essences of the scholastics. He who is devoted to the right, asks of his will whether it is loving, not whether it is free. However, there is an aspect in which the problem of the freedom of the will interests us moderns, and that aspect is a practical one. We would agree with Kant that a man is not free who is soaked in sense and passion ; that only he is free who can duly deliberate before he acts; and that a man must be his own lawgiver in the sense of acting from conviction. THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 127 So, too, we would hold with Herbart that that man is free who is guided by the idea of a common good and who is able to subordinate his life to such an idea. With Schopenhauer we would say that he whose will is unbending and he who does not act in ignorance is free. Furthermore, freedom from exacting appetites or fierce passions, a harmony of the soul, and a single all-embracing life-purpose comprehending in its sweep the good of mankind are additional marks of human freedom. Needless to say that without outer freedom inner freedom is a mere anodyne, a last refuge of him who is in despair ; and that he who is politically and economically in fetters ought not to be satisfied with such inner freedom, but should strive until political and economic freedom are assured to all. The free man is the perfect man and the perfect man is the free man, and neither freedom nor perfection is possible until society and mankind are perfect and free. Moreover, freedom means individuality, self-improve- ment and originality, and, as a consequence, progress. However, this doctrine must not be pushed too far. To make ourselves independent of others, to cut ourselves off or to stand aloof from others, to pride ourselves that we do not resemble others, is moral rebellion. Individuality and originality are precious; but thej^ must be subordinated to the feeling that y(Q 128 FAITH IN* MAN are proud to be parts of a larger whole, for apart from social interests, personality and originality argue capricious and fanciful conceptions. Tliink of the slow evolution of language, of law, of social organisa- tions, of science, of art, and of industry, and it will be evident that the individual who steps outside society and relinquishes what he owes to it, has signed his intellectual and moral death warrant. Personality and spontaneity must have a social tendency, and must be but aspects of the social personality and spontaneity which should universally predominate. That kind of determinism which denies that the individual has much power, even when he unites with others, and which makes a fetish of the general fact of cause and effect, is very nearly as unpsychological as the indeterminism which is its sworn foe. Both theories, determinism and indeterminism, are survivals, and appeal no longer to modern men. If there is no virtue in being absolutely free, there dwells no terror nor importance in the notion that we are links in the causal chain. The unfreedom we should dread is one which may be removed ; and morality to-day says accordingly to man ' You are not free ; you oicght to be free ; begin at once, individually and collectively, the yvQfk of striking off the chains which fetter paen/ THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 129 Intimately connected with the doctrine of free will, historically speaking, is that of immortality, for both were until recently supposed to be cardinal demands of human nature. The new ethics scarcely knows what to do with the latter doctrine. That he who is passionately interested in himself should not care to die and should wish to grow for ever in individual perfection, is easy to understand ; but how can such a conception flourish in times like ours where the interest lies in carrying onwards towards perfection the life of the society we are living in, and where the individual feels that his life is but a moment in the life of the race ? Can he put an independent value on moment after moment of his own life as it passes? Can he treat each of those moments as separate individualities ? Can he wish each of these moments to develop itself indefinitely, out of relation to the other moments ? No ; we are social beings ; the only life conceivable for us moderns is in the society in which we live, and the only conceivable ideal is to develop that society. Our whole dream lies in making full, rich and precious the moment which we call our life, and to regret, for the sake of society, that it is not more precious, fuller and richer than it is. We do not rejoice over personal death ; we accept it as one of a thousaud limitatipns, Yet morality will do this in th^ 130 ' FAITH IN MAN future : if will all hut abolish death which is not due to old age ; death, hut for the rarest exceptioUy shall come when we are ripe for it and when everybody is jprejpared for its coming ; death shall not stalk abroad as it does to-day y cutting down the fairest blooms and the buds full of promise ; it shall only take what we readily give. The conception of immortality has lost its meaning from the moral point of view, and yet the modern view of life does offer a substitute. It kindles an objective interest in nature, in science, in art, and in humanity, till men appear to identify themselves with the eternities. This view expands man's being through expanding his knowledge and his interests, until a very infinity is crowded together in his short span of life as measured by the clock. Consistently, too, with its boldness the new democratic ethics would meet the cry of those who are unfortunately placed by insisting that social conditions must be changed until there is nobody who is compelled, by circumstance, to lead a petty or an unhappy life. Another world is not necessary to balance this ; the democracy will alter this world so that it shall not need to be balanced. The past we cannot profess to undo or to rehabilitate ; but we can make such provision for the future that the future shall contain nothing which requires to be undone or to be rehabilitated. Glaucon's i^eal was a THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 131 man who remained good however bad the circumstances, and most subsequent ideals were of the passive type, now making a man indifferent to the environment, now referring man to a world beyond, and now persuasively maintaining that the world as we see it is an illusion. It is reserved for an ethical faith, based on democracy and science, to challenge the circumstances and to trans- form the world in accordance with the moral ideal. The question. Is life worth living ? we do not answer with a simple negative or affirmative. We say rather, 'If life is not worth living to-day, we shall not rest until we have made it worth living.' Only an en- lightened democracy, a whole people become educated and self-conscious, could speak thus. The new ethics, we see, is much less concerned with philosophy than the old was, and accordingly every attempt to hitch ethics on to the car of metaphysics or supernaturalism is bound to fail. A social and a democratic ethics, an ethics which assumes objective social interests, has no opening for philosophy. It forms a closed system. We have already discussed in another chapter the relation of ethics to religion, which latter we have defined as a helpful philosophy of life. Ethics cannot exist outside such a helpful philosophy ; but the latter is supplied by the scientific conception of the universe or, shortly, by a helief in 132 FAITH m MAN science, in democracy ^ in the perfectibility of many and in social and civic effort. These form the presupposi- tions of the new ethics, and these together with the ethics constitute an ethical religion, a religion whose principal interest is the solidarity of the human race, individual and social. The supernaturalism of the common type is thus necessarily excluded. General philosophical problems have little interest for the new ethics. Whether mind is a form of matter, as the materialist maintains, or matter a form of mind, as the idealist will have it; whether mind and matter are aspects of one substance, as Spinoza would say, or whether matter and mind are both realities, as the realist would argue, does not concern morality. With Buchner we may assume matter and force to be the ultimate elements; with Epicurus atoms ; with Ostwald energy ; or with some thinkers four-dimensional space, or space and time — all this leaves our morality unaffected. The universe may be an idea, developing through thesis, antithesis and synthesis, as Hegel asserts; it may be, according to Mr. Bradley, an Absolute where every part closely fits into a single whole; it may be an appearance or a manifestation of a reality which, according to Kant and Spencer, is unknowable ; it may be finite, according to Mr, Schiller, or iufiuite with the theologians ; it may THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 133 be one with human experience; it may be a larger self according to Fichte — yet modern ethics remains unmodified. Only where the metaphysics is connected with a particular morality, can there be a clashing with the new ethics. To emphasise the vastness or minuteness of what the telescope or the microscope presents us with, to be overawed by the mystery of the unknown or the unknowable or heatedly to take sides for or against materialism or idealism, only leads to rebukes from the new ethics. Mere size or quantity cannot compare with quality and especially with the quality of goodness, and good men cannot be compared with molecules and mountains ; mystery and ignorance stand far below knowledge in the modern scale of values, and the good man's interest lies in knowledge and not in mystery or ignorance; and lastly, both materialism and idealism are con- sistent mih the same high moral ideal. Each of these views has a historic justification and refers to a time when it was pregnant with meaning. When science first revealed to man the vastness of the world, men were naturally overpowered by the revelation; when knowledge was yet minimal, the immensity of our ignorance made us almost cower; and when materialism meant both interest in science and in material comfort, and idealism meant defending the 134 FAITH IN MAN ideal and living in the clouds, the two parties were naturally much opposed. All is different now, and the difference should be freely admitted. We are familiar with the world's vastness; our knowledge has in- creased by leaps and bounds; and materialists and idealists are both found in the same ethical camp and have both cast off and renounced the errors which youth is heir to. The tendency to-day is for each philosophy to interpret its teachings in such a manner that it shall substantially agree with the new ethics. Minor differences, of course, remain, both due to theory and to practice; but one may be pardoned for passing over such differences in a broad survey. It is worth while reflecting how far philosophy and ethics have changed parts. Before the days of science and democracy, ethics endeavoured to adapt itself to the world as an inviolable fact, while philosophy formed a system of consolations, — as expressed in the three famous Kantian watchwords of Free-will, Immortality and God, the secure establishment of which beliefs was supposed to sum up the task of philosophy. Ethics has now become militant, has changed and is changing the world, and has made meaningless the consolations and explanations of philosophy. Philosophy assumed a stable world and interpreted that world on the sup- THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 135 position of a stationary human mind of a particular type. We are now discovering that the world as it appears to us is due to senses which are developed for utilitarian purposes, and which determine the form and the structure of our world ; that the influence of science, under the guidance of practical needs, may enable us in time to change even what appears most fundamental to-day, so that the philosophical categories may prove only relatively true and important; and that our minds have changed, and will so change that the old categories will become inadequate. There is no limit to what a scientific and democratic morality will accom- plish. Philosophy will perhaps in the future merely register the changes produced by social efforts and will cease even to pretend to deal with what is unchanging and everlasting. Our mental grasp may become so wide, our comprehension so swift, our insight so pierc- ing, that the old philosophies will be perhaps treated as fit only for barbarians. When will men cease bowing in breathless admiration before the past, and thinking that nothing astonishing is reserved for the future ? In what way, however, can we justify to ourselves the modern ethical conceptions ? Morality, we answer, represents a double human need which has been slowly evolving, a regulative need to order the individual and the common life, and sympathy which is the main 136 FAITH IN MAN support of that principle, both with regard to the individual and to the race. Morality, has thus a part to play in the economy of human nature, and no higher justification for it can be or need be found. We are good, in the same way as we breathe, and to demand a further reason for morality, is to go behind instinct, which is impossible. The story of morality is similarly explained. Through the co-operation and the struggle among needs in the individual and between individuals^ a tendency towards complete human solidarity has historically developed, and the whole history of mankind — from the hunting clan to the United States, from private revenge to equal and international justice — is an illustration of this tendency. The rise of the democracy to power is the latest ethical fact in this development, a fact which has utterly revolutionised the whole conception of morality by opening up hither- to undreamt-of possibilities. Concerning the relation of modern ethics to philosophy two things are, therefore, clear : ethics is infinitely less dependent on philosophy to-day than it used to be, and, on the other hand, philosophy promises to be almost altogether dependent on ethics. CHAPTEE VI THE TEST OF PROGRESS There seem to be scarcely two historical facts more in direct opposition to each other than that of resistless progress, on the one side, and that of sworn resistance to progress on the other. The paradox could hardly be avoided in what we may call the second stage of civili- sation, that of savagery, for unless that which was socially inherited were to be squandered in a generation almost, it was essential not to permit a hairbreadth's deviation from current practice. Custom rules among savages. Writing is as yet unknown, monuments embodying institutions do not yet exist, and courses of conduct are not yet reasoned out. Disregard or loose interpretations of customs would soon put out the sacred fire of civilisation. How, under the circum- stances, does progress continue ? Through change in conditions, through insensible transformations, or, frequently, through some revolution which bursts the walls of custom and then builds them a little farther off. Progress is thus often very much retarded, 9 138 FAITH IN MAN although this retardation saves the results of progress from being altogether scattered to the winds. The same forces are at work at a somewhat higher stage, that of barbaric civilisations, where writing is not quite unknown, where some institutions exist, and where a modicum of reasoning is not absent. The scribe in Egypt, for instance, is then naturally the chief representative of the past; the whole community is divided into ranks, thus favouring military rule; and change of any kind in more important matters is dreaded. The religion, the laws, the castes, the social arrangements are looked upon as existing from eternity and lasting to eternity. The Hindoos thus preserved the Vedic hymns and other precious historical matter by inventing and developing an elaborate system of oral tradition and transference which tended to insure absolute fidelity in reproduction. Thus, too, the Jews regarded their laws and customs as sacred, and the same tale is told everywhere. With further growth of civilisation a less excusable factor in resisting progress enters on the scene. It is no longer, or not so much, that the results of progress are in danger; but that despots and those who possess privileges are determined that the existing stage of pro- gress shall be the last. This form of resistance need not be altogether self-conscious as to its aim, since the THE TEST OF PEOGEESS 139 privileged classes would generally believe that the arrangement under which they live and flourish is right, and that anarchy and retrogression would follow if freedom of utterance or action were allowed. More probably, however, these factors co-exist and support each other. Add to this that steady progress is impossible under these circumstances and that many men come, therefore, to hate order as such, and it will be seen that there is a superficial reason, even in this later historic stage, the age of printing, for stemming the current of advance. In our own day opposition to progress can scarcely be defended. The art of printing insures the easy storing of traditions; institutions embodying the progress hitherto made abound ; and men can well comprehend the civilisation in which they live. The past has, therefore, justice done to it, and it is only a question of being fair to the present and to the future. We are not employing the word progress in an abstract sense, nor do we mean by it a process which has no relation to our ideals. The new ethics insists on the complete solidarisation of the individual and the race, and progress means consequently, for the new faith, coming nearer to the realisation of the moral ideal. So long as, instead of co-operation, strife exists within the soul and between men, so long as mankind 140 FAITH IN MAN is not one in spirit and in fact, the ethical man is con- strained to work for progress, and he respects progress for no other reason. The present order of society, as we have seen, is not for us a meaningless something, an absolute starting point, but rather the embodiment of past progress. The new ethics, therefore, in teaching respect for advance towards the ethical ideal generally, respects the present order as a valuable instalment. Future progress is no more precious in itself than past progress, and to neglect or destroy the achievements of the past is no less sacrilege than to rob the present and the future of their opportunity to rise to loftier heights. Eespect for the ideal of solidarity means respect for past, present and future advance. The end of progress is an ideal order, and that order is one which has been slowly developing. /To despise the past and honour the future is to despise the moral ideal itself, since we are unjust to the advance already made and since we are encouraging posterity to treat our present efforts with contempt. ^^ Tested in this wise by the advance already made, it seems almost preposterous that the authorities in many modern countries still conduct themselves as if we lived in the savage state, before the days of writing and printing, and of speedy communication. Take THE TEST OF PEOGEESS 141 Austria, for instance. Is every Austrian in himself a harmonious whole, and is he at one with his compatriots and those beyond the frontiers ? Exists there in his country no misery and immorality ? Yet while the economic and social conditions are far from satisfactory, the liberty of teaching, of free speech, of free publication, and of free combination, scarcely exists. Can we, then, possibly say that nothing must be criticised in that country because everything is morally perfect there ? No ; an enlightened government with ethical ends will not only tolerate freedom of teaching, of speech, of publication, and of combination ; but, and this is the new point of view, it will exercise its utmost efforts to encourage these, so as to insure unceasing reform and progress. Not only the liberty of utterance, but the duty of everyone to think freely and to utter his thoughts, should be preached by governments. He who to-day is satisfied with the past must be looked upon as a danger to the commonweal, as a foe of the moral ideal. In former days it was natural for men to ;plead for liberty of thought for themselves; to-day we must go further and must demand it as a duty of all. We have singled out Austria for special criticism because it is less reactionary than Eussia, and more reactionary than some other countries. At the same 142 FAITH IN MAN time, the spirit of liberty has hardly as yet penetrated the champions of liberty, England and America. Thought is generally free in these countries so far as the law is concerned; but the liberty of teaching is hampered, and religious independence is punished with social, and often with economic ostracism. Instead of men being elected to professorial chairs solely because of their fitness, unpopular opinions unreservedly expressed as to politics, wealth and religion, are almost a certain bar to such positions. As a result, the philosophical chairs in England, for instance, are not always occupied by the boldest thinkers, but by those who, whatever their views, are ready, under great pressure, to make a compromise and to blur a little the clear lines in the face of truth. Similarly, most of the teachers in the English primary schools have had to pass until quite recently through theologically supervised training colleges, and they must either profess the current religion and teach it, or else suffer. Eespect for the past unjustly outweighs here respect for the future. There is no love of a commanding ideal; no suspicion that not only should there be tolerance, but stimulation of progress. Under these circumstances the timid servant can scarcely be blamed for hiding, instead of utilising, the one talent given to him. The new ethics, we have said, teaches not only THE TEST OF PEOGEESS 143 tolerance for free thought, but the duty of it. Why, however, should we so closely connect freedom of thought with progress ? Let us at once admit that freedom of thought as such need not lead to progress. Where men insist on such freedom as an individual and inalienable right, where their ambition is to be independent and to differ from others, where they have respect neither for the past nor for the future, there freedom of thought is likely to lead to confusion, to chaos and back to savagery ; it is almost certain to act as a dissolvent of past achievements, and as a barrier to future ones. Man is a social being, and any attempt at complete in- dependence sets him adrift on a tempestuous ocean where his frail boat must be shattered by the waves or be dashed to pieces on the rocks. Freedom of thought may, therefore, have its drawbacks. Nevertheless it is an indispensable condition of progress ; nay more, it is the sole preventative of retrogression. Where men do not think and are not bound by rigid customs, they lose the understanding for the progress attained, and gradually slip back to lower levels. Progress is swimming against the current, and if we decide not to swim at all, we are swept back. Let us now gain an idea of positive or social free- thought. A man, we will say, wishes to approach more nearly the ideal of the solidarity of the race. 144 FAITH m MAN He accordingly asks himself what that ideal is, and as a consequence of his examination he may be obliged to regard certain current views as erroneous, others as correct, and to these latter he will very likely desire to add new ones which are as yet unrecognised. As with views, so with practices. Certain social practices he will wish to reform, others he will agree with, and others still he will suggest as a result of his inquiry. Negative criticism is thus incidental and not essential to free thought The man of science who, recognising no absolute authority, examines the works and the views of others, may yet admit that he finds nothing to alter or to add ; he may even come to be convinced that his new thought was false and the thought he opposed was true. Present progress on the basis of, not on the ruins of, past progress, robs free thought of censorious- ness. Free thought cannot, of course, recognise an absolute authority, for nothing is so sacred that it must not be examined ; one may only plead that what men consider to be sacred subjects should be reverentially inquired into. So little do we know yet what is truest and best that no axiom, no maxim, no doctrine, no custom, may pass unchallenged. The ethical man is no inquisitive mole; yet he is morally bound and stimulated to make sure that his own views and those of others are correct. Hence belief in relative -^_„THE TEST OF PEOGEESS 146 authority is not excluded. In science, for instance, we may as a rule accept authorities, especially when experts are generally agreed, since scientific formulae are the result of scientific or free thought. Accordingly, the sway of authority will grow larger as more and more departments have been systematically and im- partially examined on many occasions. Never, how- ever, is a consensus of authorities absolutely decisive ; and, indeed, respect for authority must have for its condition freedom to examine its credentials. Freedom of thought is the opposite of authoritative thought, and has thus a negative character, yet while authoritative thought is prevalent, nothing seems more effective in challenging it than the demand for liberty of thought and its free expression and teaching. Given, however, the acceptance of the new ethics, and * scientific thought ' would be a much more positive expression than *free thought.' Perhaps 'progressive thought' might be better still. * Ethical thought' would not imply a distinct reference to progress. Present progress has no privileges over past progress, and consequently we must deal gently with the past. If certain views are dear and precious to others, if they are their guide and consolation, if habit at least for a time has made these views indispensable to them, then our criticism, however thorough, must be respectful. 146 FAITH IN MAN We must recognise the good in the past and admire it ; though our duty also demands that we should do justice to the future. We must make it as easy as possible for others to accept the new views. We must reason with our fellows and persuade them ; not regard them as criminals who must be flogged into advancing. Where the old is ingrained, we are also constrained to allow fully for the difficulty of seeing, under the cir- cumstances, the new point of view or assimilating it. If free thinkers act in agreement with this method, they will be fair to the past and to the future, and the effect of their words will penetrate far. However, nobody should be pathologically sensitive to criticism, and everybody should frequently and sincerely entertain the opinion that his views and his practices are possibly and even probably incorrect or incomplete. Only a non-social being can be indifferent as to whether he wounds others, or as to whether he is doing justice to others' opinions. Eespect for the past holds almost doubly of progress in social activities. On the false theory that, like a stream, we must on and on for ever, and that no purpose controls this flow, it is natural that man should labour for progress irrespective of the common good. Granting this principle, the introduction of machinery which displaces men and causes incidentally the intensest THE TEST OF PEOGEESS 147 misery and degradation, as at the beginning of the nineteenth century or as in the case of the Spitalfields weavers, is by no means to be condemned. However, the question may be put ' Is such callousness essential or necessary ? Is there no other way of progressing ? ' Here the new ethics does not agree with ruthless advance. Once the democracy enters as a determining factor in industry, there will be no marked clashing of the new with the old improvements ; as in many govern- ment departments, progress will not mean the throw- ing out of many men who are used to a class of work which is no longer required. It will involve slow re- adjustments by which the individual will suffer nothing or almost nothing. The new work will be done by the old men, or other work will be gradually found for them. Similarly with the notion of employing only young men, clever men, men working at intense pressure, and generally with the idea of robbing individual existence of its equanimity and security. The same end will be achieved in the new era but not at the expense of ruining the nerves of generations. Such a view calls for a re-interpretation of the notion of progress, for progress may be bought at too great a price. Eather make no advance, we say, than have it accompanied by agonies. Eather stay on the lower plane honestly and happily, than rise at the expense of 148 FAITH m MAN misery and degradation. Solidarity is no abstraction, and if a higher degree of solidarity is to be attained for a little while by nearly dissolving the bonds of humanity, then the solidarity achieved is only a pretence, since we have gone much more backward than forward. The ideal of the new ethics involves steady progress in solidarity and not progress in feverish fits and starts. Besides, the progress made in industry must be compared with any losses arising out of it, and thus industrial progress of a certain type may certainly mean general deterioration and retrogression. Every hour of strife within ourselves and with our fellows subtracts from the tale of progress. There is another grave difficulty connected with the conception of progress. Is swift progress possible ? Do we not require periods of rest, or at least periods of rest in certain departments of life ? Can we properly assimilate what we have no time to digest ? Is progress beneficial when it hurries along wildly ? May not such progress lead to social revolutions which bury the progress made or to individual deterioration which nullifies that progress ? Slow and steady progress, with no danger to the individual, can scarcely be harmful, since it freely allows for readjustments. Even a short spell of rapid advance, as in the period of Pericles or Elizabeth, can only act as a stimulant. When, THE TEST OF PEOGEESS 149 however, progress is violent and breaks out in every possible direction, like some explosion, it leads to prostration, and what is given is absorbed without being properly assimilated. Progress, as we at present see it, even assuming much greater humaneness, is not highly desirable. Better move by steady stages, resting now and then, than rush along as if a fiend were behind us, without being able to collect ourselves, to take stock, or to breathe freely. Such progress as ours is the complement of stagnation and retrogression. It is essentially disastrous to some of the best elements in human nature and society. Progress should never be eruptive, and periods of general progress should be followed by periods of general rest. Such progress as ours is a flight forward, not a joyous advance. It is keeping mankind in perpetual agonies of childbirth. Psychologically, therefore, rapid pro- gress is unjustifiable, while socially, the wheel of progress must not be allowed to crush the mass of mankind in its revolutions. Progress must take account of all individuals and all institutions at every moment of their existence. The very nature of the progress hitherto made has been questioned. Men have said that there is not only a progress upward, but, to speak paradoxically, a progress downward. If fine sympathies and common 150 FAITH IN MAN endeavour have grown, envy, malice, jealousy, fraud, selfishness and all uncharitableness have equally developed and form a substantial part of our civilisation. It must be admitted, therefore, that positive evil as well as positive good develops. Yet the superiority of the positive good over the positive evil is enormous, for the progress, as a whole, has been from ignorance to knowledge, from superstition to control of nature, from general warfare to general federation, from the most primitive tools to the most elaborate machinery, from cannibalism and slavery to equal law, from general tribal considerations to general humanitarian considerations. In comparison with this positive advance the negative advance appears only as a bye-product, as an epiphenomenon of infinitesimal importance. Moreover, examination will probably show that uncharitableness, as it is found to-day, is almost wholly due to the anarchic condition of modern wealth production and wealth distribution, and that with its displacement by an industrial order, the substance at least of that uncharitableness will go. It is not to men's selfishness — of which little is seen in well-regulated families and in savage tribes — but to men's desperate efforts at social adaptation to which the vices are chiefly due. Furthermore, those very vices are often survivals from lower stages of culture, THE TEST OF PEOGEESS 151 and most of them presuppose a relatively high level of development. We need not, therefore, doubt that the moral level which mankind has reached is scarcely atfected by the objections made, and we may readily grant that progress has been generally accompanied by aberration and degeneration. \ Nor need we forsake our melioristid^standpoint when it is contended that progress increases sensitiveness and with that unhappiness. That such is the case with certain individuals and even with certain sections of society is probably correct. Broadly speaking, the greater security, equality and liberty, and the greater humanenness and development, show the assertion to be without strong proof. The fact of adaptation to pleasure and pain, and the difficulties involved in subjective judgments, further weaken the indictment. Much avoidable as well as unavoidable misery exists to-day ; but the advance which mankind has thus far made justifies our believing that democratic effort and scientific insight will make happiness abound in the future as material wealth abounds to-day. Let life only be organised and let the folly of luxury, of class distinctions, and of the vanity of the pursuit of pleasure be exposed, and at present unavoidable or misplaced over-sensitive- ness will vanish. We exceed the lower animals in 152 FAITH IN MAN the possibilities of happiness as in the possibilities of objective culture. The criticism that progress is not wholly due to moral effort may be granted without qualification. Moral eff*ort would involve the conscious desire to introduce harmony into the self and into society, and such effort is rare ; yet the battle of life is essentially a moral one, since it implies a co-operation and a struggle within the self and in society which slowly, but not the less certainly, lead to universal solidarity. Ambition, desire for comfort, defence of privileges, self-absorption, are only relatively low and circuitous ways of achieving the desirable end, while the result often aimed at — material prosperity — leads also to the same goal. Only here, as everywhere, much delay is caused by the indirectness of the methods employed, and as a consequence the very notion of progress comes to be regarded as devoid of moral implica- tions. On the contrary, the new ethics challenges industrial methods which disorganise the individual and the social life, and it will hear of nothing in- evitable which is not also moral. The employment of only young men, over-intensity of application, irre- sponsibility towards the workers, and minute sub- division of labour, must go, however natural and necessary they may seem from a standpoint which THE TEST OF PEOGEESS 153 iguores the full and harmonious development of every single individual. Nothing is so reasonable as a desire for freedom of thought, and only he who dislikes the truth can be its foe on principle. Even on the assumption that our ideal has reference only to our country and is of an aristocratic or exclusive type, or that our ideal is of a religious character demanding implicit obedience, there could be no objection, unless these ideals be built on a lie, to making sure that they were justified. Accordingly, the spirit of inquiry will only be shunned where we suspect the truth of beliefs which we cherish, where we are thoughtless, where we misdoubt the ability of men to inquire, or where we question the reverential nature of the inquiry. Freedom of thought is a modern demand fitting into modern conditions, for broadly speaking men are to-day able to inquire and able to do justice to what they inquire into. We are in direct contact with so many civilisations, the stream of the past has brought down to us so much diversity of opinions, our ideal stretches so far beyond present achievements that it is an insult to our intelligence to ask us to accept our philosophies of life on authority. Why, we inquire, should we follow this particular authority, why not some other ? Why this religion or system of government, why not 10 154 FAITH IN MAN" that ? The diversity of existing beliefs has produced a general doubt, and that has ended in a general demand to let everything be settled by the spirit of inquiry. That spirit has given rise to science and the scientific method, to humanitarianism and democracy, and its being pursued further can only produce further blessings. When men were incapable of sane inquiry, and when opportunities for conducting such an inquiry intelligently were lacking, the discouragement of doubt was natural as doubt might have led only to confusion ; but to-day the censorship of the press, the check, however subtle, on university and other teachers, the ostracising of bold thinkers, the rule of the Koman Catholic hierarchy, are almost wholly inexcusable. In certain stages free thought might have been a public danger and a public nuisance ; but to-day it would be an almost unmixed blessing, for a host of educated men who might be serving mankind are deterred from doing so, or are proceeding along indirect paths, while the laity generally are sufficiently educated to derive advantage from scientific research. The coming age will consist, indeed, only of free thinkers, since the democracy is no friend of privilege and obscurity. Absolute authority is only consistent with an aristocracy or a despotism. If doubts still rise in the minds of thoughtful men as to the fitness of the THE TEST OF PEOGKESS 155 democracy to inquire into and to settle for themselves those vast problems which have agitated the souls of the most eminent thinkers, those doubts will be dispelled if we consider that if men are not to-day quite fit to judge mighty issues^ we must make them fit by improving general education so thoroughly that no superficial or narroiv-minded thinker should remain in the land, Man's imperfection must goad us on to make man perfect. We must distinguish progress from change, caprice and eccentricity, as well as from the desire for self- culture independently of the good of others. At this point a considerable difficulty meets us; but humane and self-respecting men will come to learn how to do full justice to their fellows without being unjust to themselves. Besides, when men have a magnificent social ideal, there will be no fear that they will personally desire to be eccentric or capricious. It is very difficult to be fair to so large and profound a theme in a very few pages. Indeed, there is a danger of crowding too many thoughts together and obscuring the issue. The fundamental principle of progress, however, has been made clear, that is, we are constrained to realise the ideal, and until that ideal — the solidarity of the self and of the human race — is attained, we must press onwards. The 156 FAITH m MAN present order we take, then, to embody the progress hitherto made, while to improve that order is the duty of the moral man. Past, present, and future progress have for us, therefore, an equal value and must be equally respected as representing parts of the ideal. Progress as such has neither value nor meaning. It is the ideal — in its moral, intellectual, aesthetic, and physical aspects — which we must reverence, not a process. CHAPTER VII A DEMOCKATIC BASIS FOR EDUCATION In the chapter on Social Eeform we endeavoured to show that the democracy was not necessarily foul- mouthed, unclean, coarse-grained, brutal, stupid, and incapable of self-control or high aims. We saw that democratic conditions, such as those of to-day, tended to breed a type of average man and woman which had none of those objectionable characteristics. The point should be, therefore, clear that it is not an individual worker here and there who has outgrown the type to which he belongs ; but that his whole class, as a class, has changed its marks. The people, as old German drawings present them, or as Teniers or the Elizabethan playwrights picture them, is rapidly ceasing to exist, and a new people is beginning to arise, not without dignity and self-respect, though far yet from perfection. Democratic government has also been on its trial, and has proved to be superior to any other rule. Corruption, disorder and injustice have visibly, almost startlingly declined, and that in direct proportion to the 168 FAITH IN MAN growth of democracy. Eecent history has made it evident that general interest and fair intelligence is a better ruler than privilege and considerable intelli- gence. Furthermore, we have taken account of the enormous strides in advance which the democracy has made historically. The whole development from slavery to free citizenship, and from a soulless rabble to a people having a clear and single purpose, proves how elastic human nature is, or rather how readily it adapts itself to changes in social conditions. Nor, in the absence of specific evidence, can we say that the limit of develop- ment has been reached. On the contrary, the lesson of the past is unmistakable that culture, high endeavour and refinement may yet be acquired by all. All men, as we have said, may yet possess an education equal to that implied in an ordinary University degree. For a democracy that wishes to be effective there is no more serious question than that of education. If all are to take part in government, and if government is to fulfil a high purpose, all should be well fitted for the great task. The democracy must become an intellectual and moral aristocracy, and what but education can produce this result ? In name the democracy rules now in several countries, not so in complete fact. Manhood suffrage A BASIS FOE EDUCATION 159 exists in Germany, but the government is largely in the hands of the Emperor, his chancellor, and his aristo- cratic advisers, while the distribution of seats tends to falsify the universality of the suffrage. In England the suffrage is nearly complete, except for women being excluded ; but there are severe drawbacks, chief of which are the House of Lords and the difficulty of the poor sending their representatives to the Commons. "With an upper house which is an absolute barrier to every forward movement, and which readily passes bills that supports privilege, almost no sensible progress is possible. The House of Lords illustrates the uselessness and perniciousness of hereditary aristocracy, for while in theory this House should propose and support everything which is for the good of the country, and check the passing into law of what falls short of the ideal, it speaks with nearly a united voice in favour of privilege, monopoly, and wealth, while it treats the general population almost with contempt. The House of Lords is an intolerable nuisance, and no real progress is possible in England while that body exists. It is the mainstay of all that is retrograde in politics to-day, and with its abolition alone can there be substantial advance in legislation. A second chamber is no more required in national than in local government. There does not seem to exist an * upper' house in the world which 160 FAITH IN MAN can compare, even distantly, in ability and progressive- ness with the various ' lower ' houses. A serious objection exists also to the present method by which the people's representatives are selected. Lack of wealth among the general population supports a system of election by which those whose interests are dififerent from, or antagonistic to, the interests of the people, are sent to Parliament. With a House of Lords discouraging and vetoing reform, with aristocrats and plutocrats largely filling the ministerial posts, and with the representatives of the people belonging in the mass to the privileged classes, it is almost a mockery to speak of complete democratic rule. Even greater hindrances to democratic government exist. Now that force cannot be employed against the people, the same end is generally achieved by misleading the electors. Adam Smith already drew attention to these machinations of the privileged classes, and un- fortunately the population as a whole still follows readily suggestions made to it by selfish masters and exploiters. Hence the people is induced by false representations to do willingly to-day what in former days it was compelled to do by force. How are we, then, to meet the double demand of an effective democracy and of a democracy which is not hampered in expressing itself ? Only -through education ! A BASIS FOE EDUCATION 161 An educated democracy will find ways of abolishing upper houses; it will not have aristocratic and plutocratic nobodies filling the government positions; it will have its representatives in full number in the lower houses ; it will perfect the whole system of elections; and it will not be hoodwinked by phrase- makers. It will be able to rule itself, and it will do its duty and assume the rule. Only through education ! But through what sort of education ? ' Up to the age of fourteen the three R*s, history, geography, drawing, gymnastics, French, and a little science, will be taught to the people in a dogmatic way. Then we shall send the young democrats into the secondary schools where they will be dogmatically taught mostly about trades and what belongs to trades in a scientific age. Then they will go to the university, where they will acquire modern languages and all that is necessary to become keen and inventive business- men — chemists, commercial travellers, and the like. Here is, then, a fully educated democrat who has passed not only through the primary and secondary school, but through the university.' Will such a completely harnessed young democrat know his duty and do it ? Plainly, the quality of the education given is of crucial importance, and from the democratic standpoint the present tendency to make technical schools of the 162 FAITH m MAN secondary schools and of the universities can receive nothing but condemnation. Such technical schools may be admirable for turning out business-men, not for producing men and democrats. They may be the ideal of manufacturers and landowners; but it is difficult to see how they can assist general human progress. Through them wealth may grow to extravagant dimensions, though its wide distribution or a good use made of that wealth would remain problems as little solved as they are now. Nor is the pre-technical ideal of education what we want. Suppose a man matriculates at the London University. He passes, let us say, in English, in Elementary Mathematics, and perhaps in Latin, Greek and Logic. He then passes the Intermediate Arts in Latin, Greek, English Literature and History, Logic or Pure Mathematics, and French or some other modern tongue. He continues his studies and obtains the Bachelor of ilrts degree by satisfying his examiners in Latin, in Eoman and Greek History, in pure Mathematics and in French. In a previous chapter we said that the average man might obtain a B. A. degree ; but what will this graduate know of science, of art, of philosophy, of evolution in general and of human evolution, of astronomy, of geology ? Will he know his place in nature and society, and will he know A BASIS FOE EDUCATION 163 himself ? Will he have been trained to apply his judgment freely and independently to serious issues of every kind ? He will not ; and no wonder, then, that a man may be a Master of Arts, a Doctor of Literature or of Science, and yet not be democratically or wisely educated. Comenius, Pestalozzi, Herbart and Froebel have done much to elaborate educational methods, although their suggestions have been adopted in theory more than in practice. The first of the great educational doctrines is that we must hegin with the concrete^ and that step after step we must make sure that we are not shooting ahead of the child's experience. Only as the pupil accumulates material may we depart in the opposite direction and become abstract ; and for this reason also the catechetical, or question and answer, method is introduced in the school. The second great edu- cational doctrine is that the child's comprehension is much restricted, and that we must, therefore, legin with what is free from all complications and only gradually rise to speaking of what is complex, viz., of the nature of society, of the solar system, or of philosophy. These two points cover the psychogenetic method (allowing here also for a third point, gradual development of feelings), a method which allows for the actual lines of development of the child. With 164 FAITH IN MAN this has been connected the historico-genetic method which, repeating in the school the order of racial ascent or development, seeks to do justice to the interests of the developing child. Thus take history as a subject. According to the historico-genetic method we begin with fairy tales, we go on to Eobinson Crusoe, we proceed to myths and sagas, we continue with chronicles, and we end with history as conceived of to-day. Also, in order to be concrete, the immediate surroundings of the home and the school house, allowing for school excursions farther afield, are studied at the commencement, while later on every- thing is related to the fatherland, references to other countries being incidental. At the same time, for the sake of unity, the different school hours in any standard treat, as Jacotot already suggested, one subject from different sides, while all standards are connected by the central thought of an ethical end. Nor does this exhaust the Herbartian scheme, as say presented by Prof. Eein. The school work must he made interesting and a permane7it interest in the subjects must be created. Finally, the teaching is to become effective by following certain * steps ' which make learning easy and natural. We will assume that this theory is psychologically correct and is carried out. Will it in-and-of-itself A BASIS FOR EDUCATION 165 produce capable democrats ? Note the curriculum of the common school referring to children from six to fourteen, as drawn up by Prof. Eein: (1) Bible and Church History, (2) Secular History, (3) Literature, (4) Drawing, (5) Singing, (6) Modelling, (7) Mother tongue, (8) Foreign Language, (9) Geography, (10) Science, (11) Mathematics, (12) Gymnastics, (13) Manual Labour. In the classical secondary school, not designed for the people, in which the boy may remain till about the age of eighteen to twenty, the curri- culum is similar except for Latin and Greek History and Language. The new ethics can manifestly not be satisfied with such a scheme. That scheme is mainly intellectualistic, factual and dogmatic. It deals chiefly with one aspect of education, the psychological one of approaching the child with ease on the intellectual side. Its tendency is also to lay all the stress on one's village and one's country, and to be thus indifferent or hostile to internationalism. Nor does the Herbartian plan ofifer an adequate introduction to a comprehension of science. Man's place in nature and society, as regards being and doing, is to all intents and purposes ignored, and the ethics is of a vague and dogmatic kind instead of centering round social reform. Granting, then, a free field and much favour to the Herbartian enthusiast, 166 FAITH IN MAN and still the results remain most unsatisfactory from our standpoint. His system would turn out not men, but Germans and Englishmen, as the case may be; and not German and English Democrats but Germans or Englishmen who will be fit to carry on the present social system and perpetuate it. The truth is that all education is governed hy a social ideal. The primary school as it exists to-day is supposed to turn out intelligent and docile workers, the secondary school is to lead to the learned profes- sions, and the technical school directly to business. A * natural' curriculum is something meaningless, and the Herbartian seems fully resigned, with his excellent methods on the receptive side of teaching, to support our present social system by his educational scheme. Such a plan, however, is unsuited to democratic conditions. A large view of life is essential to the democrat, and hence a democratic education must aim primarily at producing men and women who will love the common good, who have for their ideal the solidarity of the human race, a7id who are eager to serve loyally, intelligently, manfully and collectively, the cause of social and civic reform. The ethical end thus defined settles other proportions of the educational scheme. The democrat must know his place in nature and in society (for he who is lost in the present and in wealth- A BASIS FOE EDUCATION 167 production will have no safe ideal to guide hira)^ and consequently an understanding of astronomy, of geology, of the development of species, of anthro- pology, of evolution in general, together with a grasp of scientific method, must be the second aim of democratic education. How these things are to be taught and to what extent, is another matter: what is of importance is that the cardinal idea of human and general evolution should be grasped by the scholar both concretely and abstractly, and that idea, there is reason to believe, is not difficult to assimilate. Other subjects will, of course, find their place in the curri- culum. This will imply teachers trained for a much longer 'period^ arid school extended to the end of the sixteenth year. The most perfect educational methods are of little value if we cannot agree to the educational end ; but given that we can agree to the end, the question of method becomes a profound one. Without good methods the goal may never be attained or else it may be attained imperfectly with an immense waste of energy^ \ For this reason many years of schooling may no£ equal to a few. It may even be set down as a general truth that the proper educational end is to-day usually achieved out of school — by couversation, by reading, by discussion, and by observation; and that the end is \ 168 FAITH IN MAN furthered only indirectly by the general school training. On this account the children of cultured parents speak their mother tongue well, reason intelligently and are refined, independently of the schooling which they receive. Given, therefore, some generations of thorough and universal schooling along the line which we have above indicated, and the home may become the chief training ground for what is the democatric educational end. Perhaps with time the schools will be intended for the preparation of parents and for the rooting of what the parents have taught their children. However, both school and home must unite in the educational effort to make the scholar love to progress, love to know his place in nature and society, love the common good and to be a social reformer, and love to keep in contact with all that raises man- hood and womanhood. Without the creation of that love, education misses its purpose and represents the manufacture of tools which are only fit for the lumber room, because no one cares to use them. In these days of cheap books one of the principal aims of education must be that a man should be primarily educated to educate himself, and that the school should be only the vestibule of learning, an introduction, a help and a guide to self -education. The scholar should be assisted to know and appreciate the best sources whence he could derive A BASIS FOE EDUCATION 169 the most nourishing spiritual food. The meaning and the story of the heavens, of the earth's crust, o^ evolution, of human progress, and of history generally, might be familiar to him from his private reading and study. Education has been hitherto chiefly reproductive, everything being communicated in a digested form — facts, ideas, judgments and ideals. | Democratic educa- tion will encourage the liberal application of the comparative method on the part of scholars and teachers ; it will insist on undogmatic presentation and on consulting the judgment of the pupils as well as on allowing questions, doubts and remarks ; it will give the pupils ever larger and larger tasks to be carried out independently until the pupil can proceed altogether without supervision and help; it will encourage co-operation among the pupils ; and the whole of the instruction will be ethical and be filled with the idea of progress. Correctness and ease of remembering, of understanding and of expression — which constitute the present-day educational ideal — will be judged as very important, but secondary to the larger aim which affects the feelings and the will of the scholars. Every subject in the curriculum — from history teaching to manual training — will be transformed into an ethical subject. II FAITH IN MAN If the books on logic contained the whole of what may be known about processes of reasoning, then little could be added to what the Herbartians state concerning educational methods. We would simplify matters to the utmost for the child ; we would be guided by what the race has gone through ; we would make things interesting; and we would depend on a special didactics which makes educational progress easy. Our method would be objective, based on the observation of men's actions, and not introspective, based on the observation of men's motives and ways of thinking. Herbartianism seems to ignore the state of the home, the social conditions, the reformation of subjects, the possibilities of self-education, and the problem of a high social end. It looks upon the world as it is constituted to-day as an eternal, un- changeable fact. It has no intention of remoulding the world. It is psychological and conservative, taking no norm as its guide. It is passive and without large hopes. Only the inauguration of a logic which would seek to trace and reform the present-day processes of thinking by means of the scientific method, could usher in a newer era in education when we shall actually train the child to scientific methods and when we shall change its manner of thinking directly, instead of indirectly by mere ill-understood habituation. A BASIS FOE EDUCATION 171 The development of the scientific method indicates that the old logic is being superseded, if not wholly, at least in substance. We must, therefore, go farther than Herbart and his followers. The new education must exhaustively study the nature of the scientific method and make it its own for the purpose of imparting it to the children. The first rule of method, for instance, learnt by all the pupils, must be that of efificient observation, minute, wide, complete, systematic, allowing for differing circumstances, and applied in all departments of experience. All observation must be scientific. Generalisation is to be equally guarded by being based on effective observation. Eash reasoning must become impossible. At the same time the aim of education is positive : it is not ' Do not observe or generalise incorrectly,' but lObsp.rXQ.. .and generalise correctly.' _Mere scepticism and caution are scarcely better than bad observation and bad generalisation. If, then, the children, who are by nature inveterate observers and generalisers, are taught how and on what basis to form and to verify hypotheses, an incalculable advance will have been made. A host of problems, varying in difficulty according to age, would be placed before the child until the power and the practice of effective observation and generalisation have been developed to the utmost. A student educated in 172 FAITH IN MAN this way might be superior to many thinkers who are wonderfully agile in thought but who lose themselves in a maze of subtleties because scientific observation and generalisation are not theirs. Such a student would have the advantage of being scientific or effective all-round instead of, as is almost invariably the case now, along some one or a few special lines. Space forbids to add anything to the counsels regarding observation, except that it should be, unless unavoidable, direct, and not through models or illus- trations. As to generalisation, recklessness must be obviated by its being graded, that is, our general- isations should not bound along but proceed step by step, according to the general scheme of individuality, variety, species, family, genus, sub-kingdom and kingdom; while verification should be the constant companion of generalisation. Eeasoning must be equally tied to rules. The student would not only seek to prove a case ; but endeavour to show that the contention is only partly justifiable or not at all, that the contrary is true altogether or partly, and that the contention holds of other things as well. Thus the selection of evidence, regardless of truth, which is common to ordinary and gifted men and which is so difficult to circumvent, would be avoided, and the manufacture of an endless series of spurious theories A BASIS FOE EDUCATION 173 would cease. The psychical mechanism automatically attracts what we are interested in, and repels and keeps away what we are not concerned about, and this mechanical psychic tendency towards error and prejudice would cease to exist. In addition, the student would learn in generalising to start from a definite point (in observing matters economic, anthropological, ethical, historical, psychological, etc., a day-tO'day rule is of great advantage, that is, follow- ing a normal event or life for a full twenty-four hours ; living beings may be studied from hirth to death, and from head to foot, or from root to hranches\ books, eras, etc., from leginning to end', and in other cases fixed standpoints are selected arbitrarily) ; and he would choose the simplest possible case (as ^ + J^ ^ — ^, lx}4i /^-T/^). Moreover, he would remove hazy ideas by letting every idea fully develop, and he would seek for likeness and difference as to fact and action everywhere, always checking and generalising his experience. There is scarcely a limit to fruitful applications of the scientific method. The prevalent notion that training in a particular subject means the training of the whole mind, must be abandoned as a most dangerous educational fallacy. Granting, as given, the educational end — the development of a man who knows and loves his place 174 FAITH m MAN in nature and society and labours for social perfection — a method such as we hinted at becomes an invaluable auxiliary. If our contention is justifiable, as we think it is, that one may discover how men think at their best and effectively utilise this discovery, education would gain immensely in two directions. We could teach correct thinking to all, and we need not trust to indirect and tentative efforts which lead to the veriest minimum of effective thinking ; and, secondly, such a method would inconceivably simplify the teaching, since the principal difficulty encountered by the educator of to-day is to master his own ignorance of the right method of thinking. Perhaps three times as much might be taught, and the comprehension quick- ened fivefold and more. Hence school life would be neither so irksome nor proceed at so slow a speed as to-day, and correct thinking could be taught from the very beginning and be acquired early. Indirectly, in this way, it would be much easier to inculcate a love of learning and thus insure shorter years of school study and longer years of study after leaving school. This end would be also measurably furthered by a universal language in which most books could be written, or into which they could be translated ; and by funda- mental reforms in sfpelling, in written characters^ in the teaching of elementary mathematics, and in many A BASIS FOE EDUCATION 175 similar ways. Reliance on dictionaries, atlases, statistical abstracts, and on encyclopedias, rather than on stored memories, would also greatly assist in realising the educational aim. The possibilities which lie in the direction of discovering how men think at their best, and making by training this ' thinking-at-their-best ' the ordinary thinking of the mass of men, are so great that it is almost bewildering to think of them when realised, and yet such possibilities must be definitely entertained by the educator. So, also, if we think of the democracy as thus educated, our many present fears will turn into so many certain hopes. Inefficiency will flee, decep- tions on the part of those who wish to maintain or seek to procure privileges would become impossible, good suggestions would be encouraged and recognised as such when they are made, the need of an uncontrolled bureaucracy would pass, and, what is not the least advantage, a new and higher personal ideal would emerge. Men would love to be strenuous in work and thought ; they would desire to live a simple life ; they would turn away from the pursuit of pleasures ; and they would be controlled and guided by a single and comprehensive individual, social and human ideal. The new ethics would receive delicate interpretations of which we do not as yet dream. 176 FAITH IN MAN At present England can afford some seventy million pounds on supporting an unproductive army and navy. Perhaps a million men are directly and in- directly absorbed in this connexion, and limitless thought and energy are spent on the military organ- isation. Militarism must go; but its place must be taken for some generations to come by an equally important educational organisation which shall absorb as much money, as much energy, and as much inventiveness, as the militarism which it displaces. University and secondary education for all will be considered as solving nothing unless the new educa- tional end is admitted and new educational methods are found. To learn how men think, feel and do at their best, and how to make that best the normal process in the individual and in society, will be the chief anxiety of a host of educational experts. Philosophers speak of the empirical man and of the crowd, as if these were something settled for ever and ever. Already Montaigne had pointed out how strikingly men differ, and in these days of sociological research the very question of the nature of the psychiQ, mechanism is thrown into the crucible. The world of mental images and the orderly recollection of these* are late mental products in natural history. Accord- ingly, what we consider to-day the most rigorous and A BASIS FOE EDUCATION 177 sweeping thought, may yet become the property of every educated ordinary human brain, and the empirical man of the future may be superior to all but the greatest thinkers of the past, and eveu. superior to these last so far as clearness, swiftness and exactness of thinking and research are concerned. It is time that our imagination should do justice to the future as research is doing justice to the past. Have we advanced from the civilisation of the stone age to that of steam and electricity, from the age of crude signs to that of a philosophic language, from incessant warfare to a prospective international federation ; and shall we make the childish supposition that progress has stopped or very nearly stopped, and that the farthest ages of the future will be a faithful copy of our own times? No; we are forced to assume that advance will continue, and that distant future ages will have outstripped us as we have outstripped the distant ages of the past. It argues consequently inbred scepticism to doubt that the way men think and feel at their best now should not become the common way, and that average men of the future should not surpass average men of the present as the latter surpasg the average man of the stone age. Yesterday the rabble, now the mass, and to-morrow highly cultured men and citizens. 178 FAITH IN MAN The chief end of the new faith is the perfecting through social effort, of the State and of the leading social institutions, and the principal means of creating personalities who will effectively do this work is an education that will teach men to know and to honour their place in nature and society. Just because the people is to rule, and just because the goal of govern- ment is the common good and not the satisfaction of a few persons, education and the solution of educa- tional problems become of crucial importance. The new ethics has no more faith in economic panaceas than in religious ones. Through edzocation alone lies ijie direct route to social and moral redemption, and members of all churches, of all advanced political parties, and of all shades of sober opinion, should, therefore, make the solution of the educational problem the very pivot of their endeavours. Faith in science, independence of thought and action, ripeness of judgr. ment, simplicity, purity, sobriety, sympathy, devotion to a social ideal, will be attributes of the average man_ only when that average man has been properly edu- cated. Education is the one certain foe of superstition^ and priest-craft, of the lust for wealth and power^of licentiousness and all forms of self-indulgence, of idle- ness and luxury ; and by educating the mass of men all the evil spirits which dwell in man will be exor- A BASIS FOR EDUCATION 179 cised. Of social needs, therefore, the most important and the most urgent to-day is that of a thorough education for all. CHAPTEE VIII THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT The interest in social salvation is no longer restricted to a few religious preachers or social reformers ; it is almost literally universal. Parliament, the daily papers, the periodicals, Idles lettres, essays, fiction, and religious, philosophical, historical and economic works, pay supreme homage to the ethical factor. Archbishops and Bishops in the House of Lords, or militant religious bodies like the Salvation Army or the Wesleyans, not seldom discuss matters from a purely social point of view and make the appeal to the humanity of their hearers and readers without reference to theology. What is more, protests come from many religious sections that the ethical interest is the supreme religious interest and that ethics is the test of men and gods. After this it is only natural to find that Parliament, the press and the public discuss all serious matters from a moral point of view, and that the perorations of orators as well as the last words of leader writers appeal to the sentiment of humanity. THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 181 In other days classical quotations were beloved in Parliament, leader writers were party men and patriots in the first instance, novelists were absorbed in personal aspects, essayists made much of aesthetics as the supreme concern of man, historians gathered facts, political economists dealt with the proverbial economic man, and moralists spoke of maxims and of an ethics whose centre and circumference was the individual. A charming and bewildering variety of opinions existed, and the leading thought of to-day scarcely received any attention; the suggestion of making it supreme would have been scouted as absurd. What has produced this startling change? Who is the great man who turned men's thoughts in this new direction? The genius theory fails here completely. Scientific research lifted men out of the old theological ruts, and the humanitarian and social trend — the new optimism — is almost wholly due to democratic develop- ment which chained men's attention on the common good and relegated all other questions to a second and subordinate place. Naturally, therefore, few men are conscious of the change which is proceeding, and the new and the old thought seem to be an inseparable mixture. Everywhere the old peeps through the new, and not at all infrequently the new thought wears the old 182 FAITH IN MAN garments. Little of the old has been definitely and consciously abandoned, and hence the new seldom appears without bearing some witness of its predecessor. Only the analytic mind, the mind examining the strata of life, discovers the growing fissure which is rapidly separating the new from the old. Consequently, before men are aware, they have stigmatised as superstitious what they once revered as sacred, and lauded as holy what they once scorned as blasphemous. Owing to this same unsuspected or unconscious factor there are those whom the advance has not affected, who tarry in the sidings oblivious of the trains which are rushing by them. Of Spiritualists, Theosophists, Christian Scientists, the Higher Thought people, and orthodox persons there are yet many ; but few even of these are outside the charmed circle, and in so far as they are outside, they are supremely ineffectual. The new ethics is making its way everywhere, unasked and irresistibly. An ethical movement is observable in the whole of our modern life. Manifestly, it is only a matter of time when such a movement becomes self-conscious, seeks to form a consistent whole, and definitely severs its connection with the movement which preceded it. He who is scientific in spirit will eliminate every vestige of theology, and the enthusiastic democrat will insist on the social and civic character of the new THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 183 ethics. The philosopher will also come and show indisputably that an ethics cannot stand by itself, and that it must form a portion of a philosophy of life or a religion. Finally, the men who are saturated with the new ethics will cease to worship at the old shrines, and they will take vigorous action to establish a new religion which shall represent the new faith with its philosophical, scientific and democratic basis. Then only will the new thought exercise its full effect, and such a consummation is inevitable. A great idea cannot for long go about houseless and homeless and depend on passing charity and on the favour of the winds. Given time and it will build itself a temple, unless indeed the old temples are being transformed to harbour fitly the new spirit. What we have stated to be an inevitable consumma- tion is, as might be expected, already a fact. About thirty-six years ago an American youth of twenty-one, after a stay of three years in Germany, duly received his summa, the highest honour, in philosophy, at Heidelberg. His father, a well known rabbi of New York, wished his son to be his successor. Dr. Felix Adler returned from Germany, and he delivered before a congregation of nearly two thousand people his maiden sermon, which was most warmly received. Here was a worthy successor, such was the universal 184 FAITH m MAN impression. All went smoothly until the sermon appeared in print, when it was found by some that this young aspirant to rabbiship had made in his address no allusion to the deity. A shock of surprise, and partly of horror, went through the congregation. Nevertheless Dr. Adler was formally and officially invited by a deputation to be his father's successor, the only condition being that he acknowledged a belief in a deity. He replied that he was not an atheist, but that he preferred not to bind himself by accepting the post. At the age of twenty- three Dr. Adler became Professor of Oriental Languages in Cornell University, and for two years he taught there. During this period a number of those who had been impressed with his non-theological sermon and who sympathised with its spirit, appealed to him at frequent intervals to found a new religious body which should be free from theology. Professor Adler gave way. A programme was issued and circulated ; he delivered an address in May, 1876 ; and the New York Society for Ethical Culture was inaugurated with a little over a hundred members. ^* Deed, not Creed," was the motto of the leader of the Society. Soon Professor Adler attracted large congrega- tions, and able men — Mr. W. M. Salter, Dr. Stanton Coit, Mr. Burns Weston and Mr. W. Sheldon — ^joined THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT X85 the ranks of the propagandists. As a consequence, ethical societies were established in Chicago, Philadelphia and St. Louis. The idea of the Movement found a quick echo in England, and the London Ethical Society was started by a series of distinguished scholars, including Sir Leslie Stephen, Professor B. Bosanquet, Prof. J. H. Muirhead, Dr. Sophie Bryant, and others. Then, some twenty years ago, Dr. Stanton Coit came to England where he has remained, and where, largely owing to his efforts, there are now in London and the provinces nearly forty ethical societies. Soon, too, the German Ethical Society, which has some fifteen branches, was founded. It is a society which has had as its leaders many able and distinguished men, its President being Dr. Wilhelm Foerster, Professor of Astronomy at Berlin University, and, until his retirement. Director of the Berlin Observa- tory. The Movement spread to Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, and the Colonies, and periodicals in English, German, French and Italian have echoed the new views. There exists also an International Ethical Union, binding together the various national groups.* * International Union of Ethical Societies — Secretary, Mr. G* Spiller# 19 Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C. ; English Union of Ethical Societies — Secretary, Mr. H. Snell, 19 Buckingham Street) 12 186 FAITH m MAN The influence of the Movement has been immensely greater than one could infer by totalling up the number of members. Hosts of men and women have read the pamphlets, periodicals and books issued, or have attended at Ethical Society meetings, and the impression left has been generally a powerful and indelible one. These persons felt, whether they were clearly conscious of it or not, that here were societies which embodied in great purity the modern humanitarian spirit. They felt that the insistence on an ethical test in every department of life was an awe-inspiring doctrine. Thus churches, social reformers, philosophers, the press and the public have been considerably modified by contact, however slight, with the Ethical Movement. What does the Ethical Movement teach? The answer cannot be given in a word, nor can we refer to any book which gives a comprehensive and philosophical exposition of the views of the Movement. Only an Strand, London, W.C. ; American Ethical Union — Secretary, Mr. J. Burns Weston, 1416 Locust Street, Philadelphia, U.S.A. ; Deutsche Gesellschaft fiir Ethische Kultur — Secretary, Dr. R. Penzig, Unter den Linden 16, Berlin. Oesterreichische Ethische Gesell- schaft — Secretary, Wilhelra Borner, lll/g Obere Yiaduktgasse 82, Vienna ; Union pour la V^rite — Director, M. Paul Desjardins, 6 Impasse Ronsin, Rue Vaugirard, Paris ; Ligue pour I'Action Morale — Secretary, Prof. Pelet, Lausanne. General information about the various centres will be gladly giren by the International Secretary. THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 187 indirect reply is possible. The ethical test is applied in every relation of life and that test is regarded as supreme over all other tests."* No belief in a deity, no dogma, no authority, is, therefore, held superior to living the ethical life. The supremacy of ethics is the first doctrine taught. But the supremacy of what kind of ethics? An ethics which appeals for inspiration, help and justice to deities and spirits? An ethics which asks the individual to develop all his powers regardless of social consequences ? An ethics which lays the stress on good intentions (with which the way to hell is paved) or on virtue (which, like piety, forms an excellent mask)? No, the ethics 'preached from ethical platforms, startling as this may seem even to very many members of ethical societies, is definitely non-theological y social, democratic, co-operative, civic; and almost everywhere, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, ethics is held to be, or treated as, a religion. In the first flush of enthusiasm it was thought possible to unite in one organisation all who strongly sympathised with the ethical life, and it was believed that in ethics as such grave differences did not * The general aim of the International Union of Ethical Societies is : "To assert the supreme importance of the ethical factor in all the relations of life, personal, social, national and international, apart from all theological and metaphysical considerations," 188 FAITH IN" MAN exist. Accordingly, men of all and of no churches were invited to join, and the ethical platform was regarded as an open one. In practice, however, the preachers of the new gospel believed in the new ethics, and those who joined the ethical societies were, with few exceptions, those who had emancipated themselves from the older theological and non-democratic views. The desired unity will only be attained on a higher plane when men abandon or crucially modify the older views. Professor Adler was a representative of the new ethics, and consequently his view of morality coincided with what we have called the new ethics, though owing to the practical nature of the Movement the spirit rather than the letter has been emphasised. It was owing to the presence of that spirit that the Movement spread so far and exerted so much influence. That, too, explains how with scarcely any formulation, and with no exercise of authority, the essential traits of ethical societies, as regards preaching and not as regards the formulated principles, came to be everywhere the same. The time spirit rules in these societies. The same fact makes it also clear why the Movement as a movement has as yet no definite and deliberately con- structed philosophy of its own, and why it has not yet felt the necessity for such a philosophy. Nevertheless the time is at hand when the implications of the THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT 189 cardinal tenet of the Movement must come boldly into the foreground, and then ethical societies will cease to believe that all who are interested in ethics — whatever that ethics and its motives — are welcome as members. *'Come and be converted!" not as now "Come and join ! " will be the cry. The masses of civilised man- kind are waiting to be invited, for the old religion is vitally connected with the old morality, and men have definitely broken with that morality. The altogether new wine requires altogether new bottles. The Old and the New Testaments are irreconcilable with the new views of the Universe and of life, with science and with democratic effort. The Ethical Movement has suffered because it has not consciously identified itself with the new ethics. The object of this small book is to give a systematised and clear exposition of the new ethics — of the ethical movement outside the ethical societies and within them — and its chief purpose is to assist in the establish- ment of the new ethics as the new religion. Except perhaps for the chapter on art, the volume professes to expound what are the leading ethical implications in modern life and in the ethical movement. We have sketched the different and inseparable aspects of the most famous of modern movements. Eeligion, Art, Science, Social Eeform, Philosophy, 190 FAITH IN MAN Progress and Education, have been shown in their intimate relation to morality, and especially in the chapters on Philosophy and Social Eeform we saw what definite characteristics modern morality possesses. We have pointed to the fact that a new social synthesis is proceeding which is perhaps more profound than any that mankind has as yet undertaken. Men are turning from theology to science, the rule of social castes is being superseded by the rule of democracy, and men generally feel that so great a power dwells in mutual trust and combined effort that we are at the threshold of the mightiest and most beneficent changes the world has ever witnessed. A world-fact cannot remain for ever hidden, unsuspected or confused with other facts. It must become the centre of an organised movement which shall consciously aim at the full realisation of the ideal which inspires it. The End f ^^ THE \ \ _ OF J W. Jolly and Sons, Albany Press, Aberdeen. 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