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 HUMBOLDT LIBRARY. [No. 55. 
 
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 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS 
 
 OF 
 
 ORALS, 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 BY 
 
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 CATALOGUE OP THE LTBRAHY. 
 
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 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS 
 
 OF 
 
 MORALS, 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS; 
 
 Viz.: RIGHT AND WRONG; THI ETHICS OF BELIEF; THE ETHICS OP RELIGIOK. 
 BY WILLIAM KINGDON CLIFFORD, F.R.S. 
 
 I. ON THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF 
 MORALS. 
 
 BY Morals or Ethic I mean the doc- 
 trine of a special kind of pleasure or dis- 
 pleasure which is felt by the human 
 mind in contemplating certain courses of 
 conduct, whereby they are felt to be right 
 or wrong, and of a special desire to do 
 the right things and avoid the wrong 
 ones. The pleasure or displeasure is com- 
 monly called the moral sense ; the cor- 
 responding desire might be called the 
 moral appetite. These are facts, existing 
 in the consciousness of every man who 
 need be considered in this discussion, and 
 sufficiently marked out by these names ; 
 they need no further definition. In the 
 same way the sense of taste is a feeling 
 of pleasure or displeasure in things sa- 
 vory or unsavory, and is associated with 
 a desire for the one and a repulsion from 
 the other. We must assume that every- 
 body knows what these words mean ; 
 the feelings they describe may be ana- 
 lyzed or accounted for, but they can- 
 not be more exactly defined as feel- 
 ings. 
 
 The maxims of ethic are recommenda- 
 tions or commands of the form, ' Do this 
 particular thing because it is right/ or 
 ' Avoid this particular thing because it is 
 wrong.' They express the immediate de- 
 sire to do the right thing for itself, not for 
 
 the sake of anything else : on this account 
 the mood of them is called the categorical 
 imperative. The particular things com- 
 manded or forbidden by such maxims de- 
 pend upon the character of the individual 
 in whose mind they arise. There is a cer- 
 tain general agreement in the ethical code 
 of persons belonging to the same race at 
 a given time, but considerable variations 
 in different races and times. To th 
 question ' What is right ? ' can therefore 
 only be answered in the first instance, 
 ' That which pleases your moral sense.' 
 But it may be further asked ' What is gen- 
 erally thought right ? ' and the reply will 
 specify the ethic of a particular race and 
 period. But the ethical code of an indi- 
 vidual, like the standard of taste, may b 
 modified by habit and education ; and ac- 
 cordingly the question may be asked, 
 ' How shall I order my moral desires so 
 as to be able to satisfy them most com- 
 pletely and continuously? What ought 
 I to feel to be right?' The answer to 
 this question must be sought in the study 
 of the conditions under which the moral 
 sense was produced and is preserved ; in 
 other words, in the study of its functions 
 as a property of the human organism. 
 The maxims derived from this study may 
 be called maxims of abstract or absolute 
 right ; they are not absolutely universal, 
 ' eternal and immutable,' but they are in- 
 dependent of the individual, and practi- 
 
2 [202] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 cally universal for the present condition 
 of the human species. 
 
 I mean by Science the application of 
 experience to new circumstances, by the 
 aid of an order of nature which has been 
 observed in the past, and on the assump- 
 tion that such order will continue in the 
 future. The simplest use of experience as 
 a guide to action is probably not even 
 conscious ; it is the association by contin- 
 
 2. Derived from experience. 
 
 3. On the assumption of uniformity in 
 
 nature. 
 
 These propositions I shall now endeavor 
 to prove ; and in conclusion, I shall indi- 
 cate the direction in which we may look 
 for those general statements of fact 
 
 whose organization 
 
 complete the 
 
 likeness of ethical and physical science. 
 
 The Tribal Self . In the metaphysical 
 
 ually-repeatecl selection of certain actions I sense, the word ' self ' is taken to mean the 
 with certain circumstances, as in the un- | conscious subject, das Ich, the whole, 
 consciously-acquired craft of the maker of j stream of feelings which make up a 
 flint implements. I still call this science, consciousness regarded as bound to- 
 although it is only a beginning ; because | gether by association and memory. But, 
 the physiological process is a type of what in the more common and more re- 
 
 takes place in all later stages. The next 
 step may be expressed in "the form of a 
 hypothetical maxim, 'If you want to 
 make brass, melt your copper along with 
 this blue stone.' To a maxim of this sort 
 it may always be replied, ' I do not want 
 to make brass, and so I shall not do as 
 
 stricted ethical sense, what we call self 
 is a selected aggregate of feelings and 
 of objects related to them which hangs 
 together as a conception by virtue of 
 long and repeated association. My self 
 does not include all my feelings, be- 
 cause I habitually separate off some of 
 
 you tell me.' This reply is anticipated in them, say they do not properly belong,to 
 the final form of science, when it is ex- [ me, and treat them as my enemies. On 
 pressed as a statement or proposition : j the other hand, it does in general include 
 brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, and j my body regarded as an object, because 
 calamine is zinc carbonate. Belief in a | of the fe'elings which occur simultaneously 
 general statement is an artifice of our | with events which affect it. My foot is 
 
 mental constitution, whereby infinitely 
 various sensations and groups of sen- 
 sations are brought into connection with 
 
 certainly part of myself, because I get 
 hurt when anybody treads on it. When 
 we desire anything for its somewhat re- 
 
 infinitely various actions and groups of j mote consequences, it is not common for 
 actions. On the phenomenal side there these to be represented to the mind in the 
 corresponds a certain cerebral structure | form of the actual feelings of pleasure 
 by which various combinations of dis- j which are ultimately to How from the 
 ' - L ~ ~ ^' - ""' - 1 satisfaction of the desire; instead of this, 
 
 turbances in the sensor tract are made 
 to lead to the appropriate combina- 
 tions of disturbances in the motor tract. 
 The important point is that science, 
 
 they are replaced by a symbolic concep- 
 tion which represents the thing desired 
 as doing good to the complex abstraction 
 
 though apparently transformed into pure self. This abstraction serves thus to sup- 
 
 1 I i 1 . 1 i_ * _ _i . _ -*_ .11 11, ,1 .1 t 
 
 knowledge, has yet never lost its charac- 
 ter of being a craft ; and that it is not 
 the knowledge itself which can rightly be 
 called science, but a special way of getting 
 and of using knowledge. Namely, sci- 
 ence is the getting of knowledge from ex- 
 perience on the assumption of uniform- 
 ity in nature, and the use of such knowl- 
 edge to guide the actions of men. And 
 the most abstract statements or proposi- 
 tions in science are to be regarded as bun- 
 dles of hypothetical maxims packed into 
 a portable shape and size. Every scien- 
 tific fact is a shorthand expression for a 
 vast number of practical directions: if 
 you want so-and-so, do so-and-so. 
 
 If with this meaning of the word 
 ' Science,' there is such a thing as a scien- 
 tific basis of Morals, it must be true that, 
 
 i. The maxims of Ethic are hypothet- 
 ical maxims. 
 
 port and hold together those complex and 
 remote motives which make up by far the 
 greater part of the life of the intelligent 
 races. When a thing is desired for no 
 immediate pleasure that it can bring, it is 
 generally desired on account of a certain 
 symbolic substitute for pleasure, the feel- 
 ing that this thing is suitable to the self. 
 And, as in many like cases, this feeling, 
 which at first derived its pleasurable 
 nature from the faintly represented sim- 
 ple pleasures of which it was a symbol, 
 ceases after a time to recall them and be- 
 comes a simple pleasure itself. In this 
 way the self becomes a sort of center 
 about which our remoter motives revolve, 
 and to which they always have regard ; 
 in virtue of which, moreover, they become 
 immediate and simple, from having been 
 complex and remote. 
 
 If we consider now the simpler races 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [293] 8 
 
 of mankind, we shall find not only that 
 immediate desires play a far larger part 
 in their lives, and so that the conception 
 of self is less used and less developed, 
 but also that it is less definite and more 
 wide. The savage is not only hurt when 
 anybody treads on his foot, but when any- 
 body treads on his tribe. He may lose 
 his hut, and his wife, and his opportuni- 
 ties of getting food. In this way the 
 tribe becomes naturally included in that 
 conception of self which renders remote 
 desires possible by making them immedi- 
 ate. The actual pains or pleasures which 
 come from the woe or weal of the tribe, 
 and which were the source of this concep- 
 tion, drop out of consciousness and are 
 remembered no more ; the symbol which 
 has replaced them becomes a center and 
 goal of immediate desires, powerful 
 enough in many cases to override the 
 strongest suggestions of individual pleas- 
 ure or pain. 
 
 Here a helping cause comes in. The 
 tribe, qud tribe, has to exist, and it can 
 only exist by aid of such an organic arti- 
 fice as the conception of the tribal self in 
 the minds of its members. Hence the 
 natural selection of those races in which 
 this conception is the most powerful 
 and most habitually predominant as a 
 motive over immediate desires. To 
 such an extent has this proceeded that 
 we may fairly doubt whether the self- 
 hood of the tribe is not earlier in point 
 of development than that of the in- 
 dividual. In the process of time it be- 
 comes a matter of hereditary transmission, 
 and is thus fixed as a specific character in 
 the constitution of social man. With the 
 settlement of countries, and the aggrega- 
 tion of tribes into nations, it takes a 
 wider and more abstract form ; and in 
 the highest natures the tribal self is in- 
 carnate in nothing less than humanity. 
 Short of these heights, it places itself in 
 the family and in the city. I shall call 
 that quality or disposition of man which 
 consists in the supremacy of the family or 
 tribal self as a mark of reference for 
 motives by its old name Piety. And I 
 have now to consider certain feelings and 
 conceptions to which the existence of 
 piety must necessarily give rise. 
 
 Before going further, however, it will 
 be advisable to fix as precisely as may be 
 the sense of the words just used. Self, 
 then, in the ethical sense, is a conception 
 in the mind of the individual which serves 
 as a peg on which remote desires are 
 hung and by which they are rendered 
 immediate. The individual self is such a 
 
 peg for the hanging of remote desires 
 which affect the individual only. The tri- ' 
 bal self is a conception in the mind of the 
 individual which serves as a peg on which 
 those remote desires are hung which were 
 implanted in him by the need of the tribe 
 as a tribe. We must carefully distinguish 
 the tribal self from society, or the ' com- 
 mon consciousness ; ' it is something in 
 the mind of each individual man which 
 binds together his gregarious instincts. 
 
 The word tribe is here used to mean a 
 group of that size which in the circum- 
 stances considered is selected for survival 
 or destruction as a group. Self-regard- 
 ing excellences are brought out by the 
 natural selection of individuals ; the tribal 
 self is developed by the natural selection 
 of groups. The size of the groups must 
 vary at different times; and the extent 
 of the tribal self must vary accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 Approbation and Conscience. The 
 tribe has to exist. Such tribes as saw 
 no necessity for it have ceased to live. 
 To exist, it must encourage piety ; and 
 there is a method which lies ready to 
 hand. 
 
 We do not like a man whose character 
 is such that we may reasonably expect in- 
 juries from him. This dislike of a man 
 on account of his character is a more 
 complex feeling than the mere dislike of 
 separate injuries. A cat likes your hand 
 and your lap, and the food you give her ; 
 but I do not think she has any conception 
 of you. A dog, however, may like you 
 even when you thrash him, though he 
 does not like the thrashing. Now such 
 likes and dislikes may be felt by the tribal 
 self. If a man does anything generally 
 regarded as good for the tribe, my tribal 
 self may say, in the first place, ' I like, 
 that thing that you have done.' By such 
 common approbation of individual acts 
 the influence of piety as a motive becomes 
 defined ; and natural selection will in the 
 long run preserve those tribes which have 
 approved the right things ; namely, those 
 things which at that time gave the tribe 
 an advantage in the struggle for exist- 
 ence. But in the second place, a man 
 may as a rule and constantly, being actu- 
 ated by piety, do good things for the 
 tribe ; and in that case the tribal self will 
 say, I like you. The feeling expressed by 
 this statement on the part of any individ- 
 ual, ' In the name of the tribe, I like you,' 
 is what I call approbation. It is the feel- 
 ing produced in pious individuals by that 
 sort of character which seems to them 
 beneficial to the community. 
 
4 294] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 Now suppose that a man has done 
 something obviously harmful to the com- 
 munity. Either some immediate desire, 
 or his individual self, has for once proved 
 stronger than the tribal self. When the 
 tribal self wakes up, the man says, ' In 
 the name of the tribe, I do not like this 
 thing that I, as an individual, have done.' 
 This Self-judgment in the name of the 
 tribe is called Conscience. If the man 
 goes further and draws from this act and 
 others an inference about his own charac- 
 ter, he may say, ' In the name of the 
 tribe, I do not like my individual self.' 
 This is remorse. Mr. Darwin has well 
 pointed out that immediate desires are in 
 general strong but of short duration, and 
 cannot be adequately represented to the 
 mind after they have passed ; while the 
 social forces, though less violent, have a 
 steady and continuous action. 
 
 In a mind sufficiently developed to 
 distinguish the individual from the tribal 
 self, conscience is thus a necessary result 
 of the existence of piety; it is ready to 
 hand as a means for its increase. But to 
 account for the existence of piety and 
 conscience in the elemental form which 
 we have hitherto considered is by no 
 means to account for the present moral 
 nature of man. We shall be led many 
 steps in that direction if we consider the 
 way in which society has used these feel- 
 ings of the individual as a means for its 
 own preservation. 
 
 Right and Responsibility. A like or a 
 dislike is one thing ; the expression of it is 
 another. It is attached to the feeling by 
 links of association ; and when this asso- 
 ciation has been selectively modified by 
 experience, whether consciously or un- 
 consciously, the expression serves a pur- 
 pose of retaining or repeating the thing 
 liked, and of removing the thing disliked. 
 Such a purpose is served by the expres- 
 sion of tribal approbation or disapproba- 
 tion, however little it may be the con- 
 scious end of such expression to any indi- 
 vidual. It is necessary to the tribe thai 
 the pious character should be encouraged 
 and preserved, the impious character dis- 
 couraged and removed. The process is 
 of two kinds ; direct and reflex. In the 
 direct process the tribal dislike of the of- 
 fender is precisely similar to the dislike q 
 a noxious beast ; and it expresses itself in 
 his speedy removal. But in the refle> 
 process we find the first trace of tha 
 singular and wonderful judgment b] 
 analogy which ascribes to other men a 
 consciousness similar to our own. If the 
 process were a conscious one, it might per 
 
 laps be described in this way : the tribal 
 elf says, 'Put yourself in this man's 
 lace ; he also is pious, but he has 
 ffended, and that proves that he is not 
 >ious enough. Still, he has some con- 
 cience, and the expression of your tribal 
 dislike to his character, awakening his 
 onscience, will tend to change him and 
 make him more pio is.' But the process 
 s not a conscious one : the social craft or 
 irt of living together is learned by the 
 ribe and not by the individual, and the 
 >urpose of improving men's characters is 
 )rovided for by complex social arrange- 
 nents long before it has been conceived 
 
 any conscious mind. The tribal self 
 earns to approve certain expressions of 
 ribal liking or disliking; the actions 
 whose open approval is liked by the tri- 
 >al self are called right actions, and those 
 whose open disapproval is liked are 
 called wrong actions. The corresponding 
 characters are called good or bad, virtu- 
 ous or vicious. 
 
 This introduces a further complication 
 nto the conscience. Self-judgment in the 
 name of the tribe becomes associated 
 with very definite and material judgment 
 Dy the tribe itself. On the one hand, this 
 undoubtedly strengthens the motive- 
 power of conscience in an enormous 
 degree. On the other hand, it tends to 
 guide the decisions of conscience ; and 
 since the expression of public approval or 
 disapproval is made in general by means 
 of some organized machinery of govern- 
 ment, it becomes possible for conscience 
 to be knowingly directed by the wise or 
 misdirected by the wicked, instead of be- 
 ing driven along the right path by the 
 slow selective process of experience. 
 Now right actions are not those which 
 are publicly approved, but those whose 
 public approbation a well-instructed 
 tribal self would like. Still, it is impossi- 
 ble to avoid the guiding influence of ex- 
 pressed approbation on the great mass of 
 the people ; and in those cases where the 
 machinery of government is approxi- 
 mately a means of expressing the true 
 public conscience, that influence becomes 
 a most powerful help to improvement. ._ 
 
 Let us note now the very important dif- 
 ference between the direct and the reflex 
 process. To clear a man away as a nox- 
 ious beast, and to punish him for doing 
 wrong, these are two very different things. 
 The purpose in the first case is merely to 
 get rid of a nuisance ; the purpose in the 
 second case is to improve the character 
 either of the man himself or of those who 
 will observe this public expression of dis- 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [2951 -5 
 
 approbation. The offense of which the 
 man has been guilty leads to an inference 
 about his character, and it is supposed 
 that the community may contain other 
 persons whose characters are similar to 
 his, or tend to become so. It has been 
 found that the expression of public disap- 
 probation tends to awake the conscience 
 of such people and to improve their char- 
 acters. If the improvement of the man 
 himself is aimed at, it is assumed that he 
 has a conscience which can be worked 
 upon and made to deter him from similar 
 offenses in future. 
 
 The word purpose has here been used 
 in a sense to which it is perhaps worth 
 while to call attention. Adaptation of 
 means to an end may be produced in 
 two ways that we at present know of; 
 by processes of natural selection, and by 
 the agency of an intelligence in which 
 an image or idea of the end preceded 
 the use of the means. In both cases the 
 existence of the adaptation is accounted 
 for by the necessity or utility of the end. 
 It seems to me convenient to use the 
 word purpose as meaning generally the 
 end to which certain means are adapted, 
 both in these two cases, and in any other 
 that may hereafter become known, pro- 
 vided only that the adaptation is ac- 
 counted for by the necessity or utility of 
 the end. And there seems no objection 
 to the use of the phrase ' final cause ' in this 
 wider sense, if it is to be kept. at all. The 
 word ' design ' might then be kept for the 
 special case of adaptation by an intelli- 
 gence. And we may then say that since 
 the process of natural selection has been 
 understood, purpose has ceased to sug- 
 gest design to instructed people, ex- 
 cept in cases where the agency of man 
 is independently probable. 
 
 When a man can be punished for do- 
 ing wrong with approval of the tribal 
 self, he is said to be responsible. Re- 
 sponsibility implies two things : (i) The 
 act was a product of the man's character 
 and of the circumstances, and his char- 
 acter may to a certain extent be inferred 
 from the act; (2) The man had a con- 
 science which might have been so worked 
 upon as to prevent his doing the act. 
 Unless the first condition be fulfilled, we 
 cannot reasonably take any action at all 
 in regard to the man, but only in regard 
 to the offense. In the case of crimes of 
 violence, for example, we might carry a 
 six-shooter to protect ourselves against 
 similar possibilities, but unless the fact of 
 a man's having once committed a murder 
 made it probable that he would do the 
 
 ike again, it would clearly be absurd and 
 unreasonable to lynch the man. That 
 is to say, we assume an uniformity of 
 connection between character and actions, 
 nfer a man's character from his past ac- 
 tions, and endeavor to provide against 
 lis future actions either by destroying 
 lim or by changing his character. I 
 think it will be found that in all those 
 cases where we not only deal with the 
 offense but treat it with moral reproba- 
 tion, we imply the existence of a con- 
 science which might have been worked 
 upon to improve the character. Why, 
 for example, do we not regard a lunatic 
 as responsible ? Because we are in pos- 
 session of information about his character 
 derived not only from his one offense but 
 from other facts, whereby we know that 
 even if he had a conscience left, his mind 
 is so diseased that it is impossible by 
 moral reprobation alone to change his 
 character so that it may be subsequently 
 relied upon. With his cure from disease, 
 and the restored validity of this condi-. 
 tion, responsibility returns. There are, 
 of course, cases in which an. irresponsible 
 person is punished as if he were respon^ 
 sible, pour encourager les autres who 
 are responsible. The question of the 
 right or wrong of this procedure, is tfre 
 question of its average effect on the char- 
 acter of men at any particular time.. 
 
 The Categorical Imperative -May we 
 now say that the maxims of Ethic are 
 hypothetical maxims? I think we may, 
 and that in showing why we shall ex-r 
 plain the apparent difference between 
 them and other maxims belonging to an 
 early stage of science. In the first place 
 ethical maxims are learned by the tribe 
 and not by the individual. Those tribes 
 have on the whole survived in which cor>r 
 science approved such actions as tended 
 to the improvement of men's characters 
 as citizens and therefore to the survival 
 of the tribe. Hence it is that the moral 
 sense of the individual, though founded 
 on the experience of the tribe, is purely 
 intuitive ; conscience gives no reasons. 
 Notwithstanding this, the ethical maxims 
 are presented to us as conditional ; if you 
 want to live together in this complicated 
 way, your ways must be straight and not 
 crooked, you must seek the truth and love 
 no lie. Suppose we answer, ' I don't want 
 to live together with other men in this 
 complicated way ; and so I shall not 4o 
 as you tell me.' That is not the end of 
 the matter, as it might be with other sci- 
 entific precepts. For obvious reasons it 
 is right in this case to reply, ' Then in 
 
[206] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 the name of my people I do not like you,' 
 and to express' this dislike by appropriate 
 methods. And the offender, being de- 
 scended from a social race, is unable to 
 escape his conscience, the voice of his 
 tribal self which says, ' In the name of 
 the tribe, I hate myself for this treason 
 that I have done.' 
 
 There are two reasons, then, why eth- 
 ical maxims appear to be unconditional. 
 First, they are acquired from experience 
 not directly but by tribal selection, and 
 therefore in the mind of the individual 
 they do not rest upon the true reasons for 
 them. Secondly, although they are con- 
 ditional, the absence of the condition in 
 one born of a social race is rightly visited 
 by moral reprobation^ 
 
 Ethics arc based on Uniformity. I 
 have already observed that to deal with 
 men as a means of influencing their ac- 
 tions implies that these actions are a prod- 
 uct of character and circumstances ; and 
 that moral reprobation and responsibility 
 cannot exist unless we assume the effi- 
 cacy of certain special means of influenc- 
 ing character. It is not necessary to point 
 out that such considerations involve that 
 uniformity of nature which underlies the 
 possibility of even unconscious adapta- 
 tions to experience, of language, and of 
 general conceptions and statements. It 
 may be asked, 'Are you quite sure that 
 these observed uniformities between mo- 
 tive and action, between character and 
 motive, between social influence and 
 change of character, are absolutely ex- 
 act in the form in which you state them, 
 or indeed that they are exact laws of 
 any form ? May there not be very slight 
 divergences from exact laws, which will 
 allow of the action of an " uncaused will," 
 or of the interference of some " extra- 
 mundane force " ? ' I am sure I do not 
 know. But this I do know: that our 
 sense of right and wrong is derived from 
 such order as we can observe, and not 
 from such caprice of disorder as we may 
 fancifully conjecture; and that to what- 
 ever extent a divergence from exactness 
 became sensible, to that extent it would 
 destroy the most widespread and worthy 
 of the acquisitions of mankind. 
 
 The Final Standard. By these views 
 we are led to conclusions partly negative, 
 partly positive ; of which, as might be 
 expected, the negative are the most defi- 
 nite. 
 
 First, then, Ethic is a matter of the 
 tribe or community, and therefore there 
 are no ' self-regarding virtues.' The 
 qualities of courage, prudence, etc., can 
 
 only be rightly encouraged in so far as 
 they are shown to conduce to the effi- 
 ciency of a citizen ; that is, in so far as 
 they cease to be self-regarding. The 
 duty of private judgment, of searching 
 after truth, the sacredness of belief which 
 ought not to be misused on unproved 
 statements, follow only on showing of 
 the enormous importance to society of a 
 true knowledge of things. And any di- 
 version of conscience from its sole alle- 
 giance to the community is condemned 
 a priori in the very nature of right and 
 wrong. 
 
 Next, the end of Ethic is not the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number. Your happiness is of no use to 
 the community, except in so far as it 
 tends to make you a more efficient citizen 
 that is to say, happiness is not to be 
 desired for its own sake, but for the sake 
 of something else. If any end is pointed 
 to, it is the end of increased efficiency in 
 each man's special work, as well as in the 
 social functions which are common to all. 
 A man must strive to be a better citizen, 
 a better workman, a better son, husband, 
 or father. 
 
 Again, Piety is not Altruism. It is not 
 the doing good to others as others, but 
 the service of the community by a mem- 
 ber of it, who loses in that service the 
 consciousness that he is anything differ- 
 ent from the community. 
 
 The social organism, like the individual, 
 may be healthy or diseased. Health and 
 disease are very difficult things to define 
 accurately: but for practical purposes, 
 there are certain states about which no 
 mistake can be made. When we have 
 even a very imperfect catalogue and de- 
 scription of states that are clearly and 
 certainly diseases, we may form a rough 
 preliminary definition of health by saying 
 that it means the absence of all these 
 states. Now the health of society in- 
 volves among other things, that right is 
 done by the individuals composing it. 
 And certain social diseases consist in a 
 wrong direction of the conscience. 
 Hence the determination of abstract 
 right depends on the study of healthy 
 and diseased states of society. How 
 much light can be got for this end from 
 the historical records we possess? A 
 very great deal, if, as I believe, for eth- 
 ical purposes the nature of man and of 
 society may be taken as approximately 
 constant during the few thousand years 
 of which we have distinct records. 
 
 The matters of fact on which rational 
 ethic must be founded are the laws of 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [297] 7 
 
 modification of character, and the evi- 
 dence of history as to those kinds of 
 character which have most aided the im- 
 provement of the race. For although 
 the moral sense is intuitive, it must for 
 the future be directed by our conscious 
 discovery of the tribal purpose which it 
 serves. 
 
 II. RIGHT AND WRONG: 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC GROUND OF THEIR 
 DISTINCTION.* 
 
 THE questions which are here to be 
 considered are especially and peculiarly 
 everybody's questions. It is not every- 
 body's business to be an engineer, or a 
 doctor, or a carpenter, or a soldier ; but 
 it is everybody's business to be a citizen. 
 The doctrines and precepts which guide 
 the practice of the good engineer are of 
 interest to him who uses them and to 
 those whose business it is to investigate 
 them by mechanical science ; the rest of 
 us neither obey nor disobey them. But 
 the doctrines and precepts of morality, 
 which guide the practice of the good citi- 
 zen, are of interest to all ; they must be 
 either obeyed or disobeyed by every hu- 
 man being who is not hopelessly and for- 
 ever separated from the rest of mankind. 
 No one can say, therefore, that in this 
 inquiry we are not minding our own busi- 
 ness, that we are meddling with other 
 men's affairs. We are in fact studying 
 the principles of our profession, so far as 
 we are able ; a necessary thing for every 
 man who wishes to do good work in it. 
 
 Along with the character of universal 
 interest which belongs to our subject 
 there goes another. What is everybody's 
 practical business is also to a large extent 
 what everybody knows ; and it may be 
 reasonably expected that a discourse 
 about Right and Wrong \vill be full of 
 platitudes and truisms. The expectation 
 is a just one. The considerations I have 
 to offer are of the very oldest and the 
 very simplest commonplace and common 
 sense ; and no one can be more aston- 
 ished than I am that there should be any 
 reason to speak of them at all. But there 
 is reason to speak of them, because plati- 
 tudes are not all of one kind. Some plati- 
 tudes have a definite meaning and a prac- 
 tical application, and are established by 
 the uniform and long-continued experi- 
 ence of all people. Other platitudes, 
 having no definite meaning and no practi- 
 cal application, seem not to be worth any- 
 
 * Sunday Lecture Society, November 7, 1875. 
 
 body's while to test ; and these are quite 
 sufficiently established by mere assertion, 
 if it is audacious enough to begin with 
 and persistent enough afterward. It is 
 in order to distinguish these two kinds of 
 platitude from one another, and to make 
 sure that those which we retain form a 
 body of doctrine consistent with itself 
 and with -the rest of our beliefs, that we 
 undertake this examination of obvious 
 and widespread principles. 
 
 First of all, then, what are the facts ? 
 
 We say that it is wrong to murder, to 
 steal, to tell lies, and that it is right to 
 take care of our families. When we say 
 in this sense that one action is right ancl 
 another wrong", we have a certain feeling 
 toward the action which is peculiar and 
 not quite like any other feeling. It is. 
 clearly a feeling toward the action and 
 not toward the man who does it ; be- 
 cause we speak of hating the sin and lov- 
 ing the sinner. We might reasonably 
 dislike a man whom we knew or sus- 
 pected to be a murderer, because of the- 
 natural fear that he might murder us p: 
 and we might like our own parents for" 
 taking care of us. But everybody knows 
 that these feelings are something- quite; 
 different from the feeling which con- 
 demns murder as a wrong thing, and ap-- 
 proves parental care as a right thing. I 
 say nothing here about the -possibility of 
 analyzing this feeling, or proving that it , 
 arises by combination of other feelings; 
 all I want to notice is that it is as distinct, 
 and recognizable as the feeling of pleas- 
 ure in a sweet taste or of displeasure at 
 a toothache. In speaking of right and* 
 wrong, we speak of qualities of action 
 which arouse definite feelings that every-- 
 body knows and recognizes. It is not 
 necessary, then, to give a definition at the 
 outset ; we are going to use familiar terms- 
 which have a definite meaning in the 
 same sense in which everybody uses 
 them. We may ultimately come to< 
 something like a definition ; but what we 
 have to do first is to collect the facts and 
 see what can be made of them, just as if : 
 we were going to talk about limestone, or 
 parents and children, or fuel. 
 
 It is easy to conceive that murder and 
 theft and neglect of the young might be 
 considered wrong in a very simple state 
 of society. But we find at present that 
 the condemnation of these actions does 
 not stand alone ; it goes with the con- 
 demnation of a great number of other ac- 
 tions which seem to be included with th 
 obviously criminal action in a sort of gen- 
 eral rule. The wrongness of murder, for 
 
[298] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 example, belongs in a less degree to any 
 form of bodily injury that one man may 
 inflict on another ; and it is even extended 
 so as to include injuries to his reputation 
 or his feelings. I make these more re- 
 fined precepts follow in the train of the 
 more obvious and rough ones, because 
 this appears to have been the traditional 
 order of their establishment. ' He that 
 makes his neighbor blush in public,' says 
 the Mishna, ' is as if he had shed his 
 blood.' In the same way the rough con- 
 demnation of stealing carries with it a 
 condemnation of more refined forms of 
 dishonesty : we do not hesitate to say 
 that it is wrong for a tradesman to adul- 
 terate his goods, or for a laborer to 
 scamp his work. We not only say that 
 it is wrong to tell lies, but that it is wrong 
 to deceive in other more ingenious ways ; 
 wrong to use words so that they shall 
 have one sense to some people and 
 another sense to other people ; wrong to 
 suppress the truth when that suppression 
 leads to false belief in others. And 
 again, the duty of parents toward their 
 children is seen to be a special case of a 
 very large and varied class of duties to- 
 ward that great family to which we be- 
 long to the fatherland and them that 
 dwell therein. The word duty which I 
 have here used, has as definite a sense to 
 the general mind as the words right and 
 wrong ; we say that it is right to do our 
 duty, and wrong to neglect it. These 
 duties to the community serve in our 
 minds to explain and define our duties to 
 individuals. It is wrong to kill any one ; 
 unless we are an executioner, when it may 
 be our duty to kill a criminal ; or a sol- 
 dier, when it may be our duty to kill the 
 enemy of our country ; and in general it 
 is wrong to injure any man in any way in 
 our private capacity and for our own 
 sakes. Thus if a man injures us, it is 
 only right to retaliate on behalf of other 
 men. Of two men in a desert island, if 
 one takes away the other's cloak, it may 
 or may not be right for the other to let 
 him have his coat also ; but if a man 
 takes away my cloak while we both live 
 in society, it is my duty to use such 
 means as I can to prevent him from tak- 
 ing away other people's cloaks. Observe 
 that I am endeavoring to describe the 
 facts of the moral feelings of Englishmen, 
 such as they are now. 
 
 The last remark leads us to another 
 platitude of exceedingly ancient date. 
 We said that it was wrong to injure any 
 man in our private capacity and. for our 
 own sakes. A rule like this differs from 
 
 all the others that we have considered, 
 because it not only deal- with physical 
 acts, words and deeds which can be ob- 
 served and known by others, but also 
 with thoughts which are known only to 
 the man himself. Who can tell whether 
 a given act of punishment was done from 
 a private or from a public motive ? Only 
 the agent himself. And yet if the pun- 
 ishment was just and within the law, w 
 should condemn the man in the one case 
 and approve him in the other. This pur- 
 suit of the actions of men to their very 
 sources, in the feelings which they only 
 can know, is as ancient as any morality 
 we know of, and extends to the whole 
 range of it. Injury to another man arises 
 from anger, malice, hatred, revenge ; 
 these feelings are condemned as wrong. 
 But feelings are not immediately under 
 our control, in the same way that overt 
 actions are : I can shake anybody by the 
 hand if I like, but I cannot always feel 
 friendly to him. Nevertheless we can 
 pay attention to such aspects of the cir- 
 cumstances, and we can put ourselves 
 into such conditions, that our feelings get 
 gradually modified in one way or the 
 other; we form a habit of checking our 
 anger by calling up certain images and 
 considerations, whereby in time the of- 
 fending passion is brought into subjection 
 and control. Accordingly we say that it 
 is right to acquire and to exercise this 
 control; and the control is supposed to 
 exist whenever we say that one feeling or 
 disposition of mind is right and another 
 wrong. Thus, in connection with the 
 precept against stealing, we condemn 
 envy and covetousness ; we applaud a 
 sensitive honesty which shudders at any- 
 thing underhand or dishonorable. In 
 connection with the rough precept against 
 lying, we have built up and are still 
 building a great fabric of intellectual mor- 
 ality, whereby a man is forbidden to tell 
 lies to himself, and is commanded to 
 practice candor and fairness and open- 
 mindedness in his judgments, and to la- 
 bor zealously in pursuit of the truth. 
 In connection with the duty to our fami- 
 lies, we say that it is right to cultivate pub- 
 lic spirit, a quick sense of sympathy, and 
 all that belongs to a social disposition. 
 
 Two other words are used in this con- 
 nection which it seems necessary to men- 
 tion. When we regard an action as 
 right or wrong for ourselves, this feeling 
 about the action impels us to do it or not 
 to do it, as the case may be. We may 
 say that the moral sense acts in this case 
 as a motive; meaning by moral sense 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [299] 
 
 Offly the feeling in regard to an action 
 which is considered as right or wrong, 
 and by motive something which impels 
 us to act. Of course there may be other 
 motives at work at the same time, and it 
 does not at all follow that we shall do the 
 right action or abstain from the wrong 
 one. This we all know to our cost. But 
 still our feeling about the Tightness or 
 wrongness of an action does operate as a 
 motive when we think of the action as 
 being done by us ; and when so operat- 
 ing it is called conscience. I have noth- 
 ing to do at present with the questions 
 about conscience, whether it is a result 
 of education, whether it can be explained 
 by self-love, and so forth ; I am only con- 
 cerned in describing well-known facts, 
 and in getting as clear as I can about 
 the meaning of well-known words. Con- 
 science, then, is the whole aggregate of 
 our feelings about actions as being right 
 or wrong, regarded as tending to make 
 us do the right actions and avoid the 
 wrong ones. We also say sometimes, 
 in answer to the question, ' How do you 
 know that this is right or wrong ? ' ' My 
 conscience tells me so.' And this way of 
 speaking is quite analogous to other ex- 
 pressions of the same form ; thus if I put 
 my hand into water, and you ask me how 
 I know that it is hot, I might say, ' My 
 feeling of warmth tells me so.' 
 
 When we consider a right or a wrong 
 action as done by another person, we 
 think of that person as worthy of moral 
 approbation or reprobation. He may be 
 punished or not ; but in any case this 
 feeling toward him is quite different 
 from "the. feeling of dislike toward a per- 
 son injurious to us, or of disappointment 
 at a machine which will not go. 
 
 Whenever we can morally approve or 
 disapprove a man for his action, we say 
 that he is morally responsible for it, and 
 vice versd. To say that a man is not 
 morally responsible for his actions is the 
 same thing as to say that it would be un- 
 reasonable to praise or blame him for 
 them. 
 
 The statement that we ourselves are 
 morally responsible is somewhat more 
 complicated, but the meaning is very 
 easily made out ; namely, that another 
 person may reasonably regard our ac- 
 tions as right or wrong, and may praise or 
 blame us for them. 
 
 We can now, I suppose, understand 
 one another pretty clearly in using the 
 words right and wrong, conscience, re- 
 sponsibility ; and we have made a rapid 
 survey of the facts of the case in our own 
 
 country at the present time. Of course 
 I do not pretend that this survey in any 
 way approaches to completeness ; but it 
 will supply us at least with enough facts 
 to enable us to deal always with concrete 
 examples instead of remaining in generali- 
 ties ; and it may serve to show pretty 
 fairly what the moral sense of an English- 
 man is like. We must next consider 
 what account we can give of these facts 
 by the scientific method. 
 
 But first let us stop to note that we 
 really have used the scientific method in 
 making this first step ; and also that to 
 the same extent the method has been 
 used by all serious moralists. Some 
 would have us define virtue, to begin 
 with, in terms of some other thing which 
 is not virtue, and then work out from our 
 definition all the details of what we 
 ought to do. So Plato said that virtue 
 was knowledge, Aristotle that it was the 
 golden mean, and Bentham said that the 
 right action was that which conduced to 
 the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number. But so also, in physical specu- 
 lations, Thales said that everything was 
 Water, and Heraclitus said it was All- 
 becoming, and Empedocles said it was 
 made out of Four Elements, and Pytha- 
 goras said it was Number. But we only 
 began to know about things when people 
 looked straight at the facts, and made 
 what they could out of them ; and that 
 is the only way in which we can know 
 anything about right and wrong. More- 
 over, it is the way in which the great 
 moralists have set to work, when they 
 came to treat of verifiable things and not 
 of theories ail in the air. A great many 
 people think of a prophet as a man who, 
 all by himself, or from some secret 
 source, gets the belief that this thing is 
 right and that thing wrong. And then 
 (they imagine) he gets up and goes about 
 persuading other people to feel as he 
 does about it ; and so it becomes a part 
 of their conscience, and a new duty is 
 created. This may be in some cases, 
 but I have never met with any example 
 of it in history. When Socrates puzzled 
 the Greeks by asking them what they 
 precisely meant by Goodness and Justice 
 and Virtue, the mere existence of the 
 words shows that the people, as a whole, 
 possessed a moral sense, and felt that 
 certain things were right and others 
 wrong. What the moralist did was to 
 show the connection between different 
 virtues, the likeness of virtue to certain 
 other things, the implications which a 
 thoughtful man could find in the common 
 
[300] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 language. Wherever the Greek moral 
 sense had come from, it was there in the 
 people before it could be enforced by a 
 prophet or discussed by a philosopher. 
 Again, we find a wonderful collection of 
 moral aphorisms in those shrewd sayings 
 of the Jewish fathers which are preserved 
 in the Mishna or oral law. Some of this 
 teaching is familiar to us all from the 
 popular exposition of it which is contained 
 in the three first Gospels. But the very 
 plainness and homeliness of the precepts 
 shows that they are just acute state- 
 ments of what was already felt by the 
 popular common sense; protesting, in 
 many cases, against the formalism of the 
 ceremonial law with which they are 
 curiously mixed up. The Rabbis even 
 show a jealousy of prophetic interference, 
 as if they knew well that it takes not one 
 man, but many men, to feel what is right. 
 When a certain Rabbi Eliezer, being 
 worsted in argument, cried out, ' If I am 
 right, let heaven pronounce in my favor ! ' 
 there was heard a Bath-kol or voice from 
 the skies, saying, ' Do you venture to dis- 
 pute with Rabbi Eliezer, who is an au- 
 thority on all religious questions ? ' But 
 Rabbi Joshua rose and said, ' Our law is 
 not in heaven, but in the book which 
 dates from Sinai, and which teaches us 
 that in matters of discussion the ma- 
 jority makes the law.' * 
 
 One of the most important expressions 
 of the moral sense for all time is that of 
 the Stoic philosophy, especially after its 
 reception among the Romans. It is here 
 that we find the enthusiasm 'of humanity 
 the carttas generis humani which is 
 so large and important a feature in all 
 modern conceptions * of morality, and 
 whose widespread influence upon Roman 
 citizens may be traced in the Epistles of 
 St. Paul. In the Stoic emperors, also, 
 we find probably the earliest example of 
 great moral principles consciously applied 
 to legislation on a large scale. But are 
 we to attribute this to the individual in- 
 sight of the Stoic philosophers ? It 
 might seem at first sight that we must, if 
 we are to listen to that vulgar vitupera- 
 tion of the older culture which has de- 
 scended to us from those who had every- 
 thing to gain by its destruction.! We 
 
 * Treatise Baba Bathra, 59 b. 
 
 t Compare these passages from Merivale (' Ro- 
 mans under the Empire,' vi.), to whom ' it seems 
 a duty to protest against the common tendency ol 
 Christian moralists to dwell only on the dark side 
 of Pagan society, in order to heighten by contrast 
 the blessings of the Gospel ' : 
 
 ' Much candor and discrimination are required 
 in comparing the sins of one age with those oi 
 (mother ... the cruelty of our inquisitions 
 
 iear enough of the luxurious feasting of 
 ;he Roman capital, how it would almost 
 lave taxed the resources of a modern 
 pastry-cook ; of the cruelty of gladiatorial 
 shows, how they were nearly as bad as 
 autos-da-ft, except that a man had his 
 fair chance and was not tortured for tort- 
 ure's sake ; of the oppression of provincials 
 by people like Verres, of whom it may 
 ven be said that if they had been the 
 East India Company they could not have 
 been worse ; of the complaints of Tacitus 
 against bad and mad emperors (as Sir 
 Henry Maine says); and of the still more 
 serious complaints of the modern histo- 
 rian against the excessive taxation* 
 which was one great cause of the fall of 
 the empire. Of all this we are told a 
 great deal ; but we are not told of the 
 many thousands of honorable men who 
 carried civilization to the ends of the 
 known world, and administered a mighty 
 empire so that it was loved and worship- 
 ed to the furthest corner of it. It is to 
 these men and their common action that 
 we must attribute the morality which 
 found its organized expression in the 
 writings of the Stoic philosophers. From 
 these three cases we may gather that 
 Right is a thing which must be done be- 
 fore it can be talked about, although aft- 
 er that it may only too easily be talked 
 about without being done. Individual 
 effort and energy may insist upon getting 
 that done which was already felt to be 
 right ; and individual insight and acumen 
 may point out consequences of an action 
 which bring it under previously known 
 
 and sectarian persecutions, of our laws against sor- 
 cery, our serfdom and our slavery ; the petty 
 fraudulence we tolerate in almost every class and 
 calling of the community ; the bold front worn 
 by our open sensuality ; the deeper degradation of 
 that which is concealed ; all these leave us little 
 room for boasting of our modern discipline, and 
 must deter the thoughtful inquirer from too confi- 
 dently contrasting the morals of the old world and 
 the new.' 
 
 k Even at Rome, in the worst of times . . . 
 all the relations of life were adorned in turn with 
 bright instances of devotion, and mankind trans- 
 acted their business with an ordinary confidence in 
 the force of conscience and right reason. The 
 steady development of enlightened legal principles 
 conclusively proves the general dependence upon 
 law as a guide and corrector of manners. In the 
 camp, however, more especially, as the chief sphere 
 of this purifying activity, the great qualities of the 
 Roman character continued to be plainly manifest- 
 ed. This history of the Caesars presents to us a 
 constant succession of brave, patient, resolute, and 
 faithful soldiers, men deeply impressed with a 
 sense of duty, superior to vanity, despisers of boast- 
 ing, content to toil in obscurity and shed their 
 blood at the frontiers of the empire, unrepining at 
 the cold mistrust of their masters, not clamorous 
 for the honors so sparingly awarded to them, but 
 satisfied in the daily work of their hands, and full 
 of faith in the national destiny which they were 
 daily accomplishing.' 
 
 * Finlay, ' Greece under the Romans/ 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [301] 11 
 
 moral rules. There is another dispute 
 of the Rabbis that may serve to show 
 what is meant by this. It was forbidden 
 by the law to have any dealings with the 
 Sabaean idolaters during the week preced- 
 ing their idolatrous feasts. But the doc- 
 tors discussed the case in which one of 
 these idolaters owes you a bill ; are you 
 to let him pay it during that week or not? 
 The school of Shammai said ' No ; for 
 he will want all his money to enjoy him- 
 self at the feast.' But the school of Hil- 
 lel said, ' Yes, let him pay it ; for how 
 can he enjoy his feast while his bills are 
 unpaid ? ' The question here is about 
 the consequences of an action ; but there 
 is no dispute about the moral principle, 
 which is that consideration and kindness 
 are to be shown to idolaters, even in the 
 matter of their idolatrous rites. 
 
 It seems, then, that we are no worse off 
 than anybody else who has studied this 
 subject, in finding our materials ready 
 made for us ; sufficiently definite mean- 
 ings given in the common speech to the 
 words right and wrong, good and bad, 
 with which we have to deal ; a fair body 
 of facts familiarly known, which we have 
 to organize and account for as best we 
 can. But our special inquiry is, what ac- 
 count can be given of these facts by the 
 scientific method ? to which end we can- 
 not do better than fix our ideas as well as 
 we can upon the character and scope of 
 that method. 
 
 Now the scientific method is a method 
 'of getting knowledge by inference, and 
 that of two different kinds. One kind of 
 inference is that which is used in the 
 physical and natural sciences, and it ena- 
 oles us to go from known phenomena to 
 unknown phenomena. Because a stone 
 is heavy in the morning, I infer that it 
 will be heavy in the afternoon ; and I in- 
 fer this by assuming a certain uniform- 
 ity of nature. The sort of uniformity 
 that I assume depends upon the extent 
 of my scientific education ; the rules of 
 inference become more and more definite 
 as we go on. At first I might assume 
 that all things are always alike ; this 
 would not be true, but it has to be as- 
 sumed in a vague way, in order that a 
 thing may have the same name at differ- 
 ent times. Afterward I get the more 
 definite belief that certain particular qual- 
 ities, like weight, have nothing to do with 
 the time of day ; and subsequently I find 
 that weight has nothing to do with 
 the shape of the stone, but only with the 
 quantity of it. The uniformity which we 
 assume, then, is not that vague one that 
 
 we started with, but a chastened and cor- 
 rected uniformity. I might go on to sup- 
 pose, for example, that the weight of the 
 stone had nothing to do with the place 
 where it was ; and a great deal might be 
 said for this supposition. It would, how- 
 ever, have to be corrected when it was 
 found that the weight varies slightly in 
 different latitudes. On the other hand, I 
 should find that this variation was just 
 the same for my stone as for a piece of 
 iron or wood ; that it had nothing to do 
 with the kind of matter. And so I might 
 be led to the conclusion that all matter is 
 heavy, and that the weight of it depends 
 only on its quantity and its position rela- 
 tive to the earth. You see here that I go 
 on arriving at conclusions always of this 
 form ; that some one circumstance or 
 quality has nothing to do with some 
 other circumstance or quality. I begin 
 by assuming that it is independent of 
 everything ; I end by finding that it is in- 
 dependent of some definite things. That 
 is, I begin by assuming a vague uniformi- 
 ty. I always use this assumption to infer 
 from some one fact a great number of 
 other facts ; but as my education proceeds, 
 I get to know what sort of things may be 
 inferred and what may not. An observer 
 of scientific mind takes note of just those 
 things from which inferences may be 
 drawn, and passes by the rest. If an as- 
 tronomer, observing the sun, were to 
 record the fact that at the moment when 
 a sun-spot began to shrink there was a 
 rap at his front door, we should know- 
 that he was not up to his work. But if 
 he records that sun-spots are thickest 
 every eleven years, and that this is also 
 the period of extra cloudiness in Jupiter, 
 the observation may or may not be con- 
 firmed, and it may or may not lead to in- 
 ferences of importance ; but still it is the 
 kind of thing from which inferences may be 
 drawn. There is always a certain instinct 
 among instructed people which tells 
 them in this way what kinds of infer- 
 ences may be drawn ; and this is the un- 
 conscious effect of the definite uniformity* 
 which they have been led to assume in 
 nature. It may subsequently be organ- 
 ized into a law or general truth, and no 
 doubt becomes a surer guide by that 
 process. Then it goes to form the more 
 precise instinct of the next generation. 
 
 What we have said about this first kind 
 of inference, which goes from phenomena 
 to phenomena, is shortly this. It pro- 
 ceeds upon an assumption of uniformity 
 in nature; and this assumption is not 
 fixed and made once for all, but is a 
 
12 [302] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 changing and growing thing, becoming 
 more definite as we go on. 
 
 If I were told to pick out some one 
 character which especially colors this 
 guiding conception of uniformity in our 
 present stage of science, I should cer- 
 tainly reply, Atomism. The form of 
 this with which we are most familiar 
 is the molecular theory of bodies ; which 
 represents all bodies as made up of 
 small elements of uniform character, 
 each practically having relations only 
 with the adjacent ones, and these re- 
 lations the same all through namely, 
 some simple mechanical action upon each 
 other's motions. But this is only a par- 
 ticular case. A palace, a cottage, the 
 tunnel of the underground railway, and 
 a factory chimney, are all built of bricks ; 
 the bricks are alike in all these cases, 
 each brick is practically related only to 
 the adjacent ones, and the relation is 
 throughout the same, namely, two flat 
 sides are stuck together with mortar. 
 There is an atomism in the sciences of num- 
 ber, of quantity, of space ; the theorems 
 of geometry are groupings of individual 
 points, each related only to the adjacent 
 ones by certain definite laws. But what 
 concerns us chiefly at present is the 
 atomism of human physiology. Just as 
 every solid is built up of molecules, so the 
 nervous system is built up of nerve-threads 
 and nerve-corpuscles. We owe to Mr. 
 Lewes our very best thanks for the stress 
 which he has laid on the doctrine that 
 nerve-fiber is uniform in structure and 
 function, and for the word neurz'fity, 
 which expresses its common properties. 
 And similar gratitude is due to Dr. 
 Hughlings Jackson for his long defense 
 of the proposition that the element of nerv- 
 ous structure and function is a sensori- 
 motor process. In structure, this is two 
 fibers or bundles of fibers going to the 
 same gray corpuscle ; in function it is a 
 message traveling up one fiber or bundle 
 to the corpuscle, and then down the other 
 fiber or bundle. Out of this, as a brick, 
 the house of our life is built. All these 
 simple elementary processes are alike, 
 and each is practically related only to the 
 adjacent ones ; the relation being in all 
 cases of the same kind, viz., the passage 
 from a simple to a complex message, or 
 vice versd. 
 
 The result of atomism in any form, 
 dealing with any subject, is that the prin- 
 ciple of uniformity is hunted down into 
 the elements of things ; it is resolved into 
 the uniformity of these elements or atoms, 
 and of the relations of those which are 
 
 next to each other. By an element or an 
 atom we do not here mean something ab- 
 solutely simple or indivisible, for a mole- 
 cule, a brick, and a nerve-process are all 
 very complex things. We only mean 
 that, for the purpose in hand, the proper- 
 ties of the still more complex thing which 
 is made of them have nothing to do with 
 the complexities or the differences of 
 these elements. The solid made of mole- 
 cules, the house made of bricks, the nerv- 
 ous system made of sensori-motor proc- 
 esses, are nothing more than collections 
 of these practically uniform elements, 
 having certain relations of nextness, and 
 behavior uniformly depending on that 
 nextness. 
 
 The inference of phenomena from phe- 
 nomena, then, is based upon an assump- 
 tion of uniformity, which in the present 
 stage of science may be called an atomic 
 uniformity. 
 
 The other mode of inference which be- 
 longs to the scientific method is that which 
 is used in what are called the mental and 
 moral sciences ; and it enables us to go from 
 phenomena to the facts which underlie 
 phenomena, and which are themselves not 
 phenomena at all. If I pinch your arm, 
 and you draw it away and make a face, I 
 infer that you have felt pain. I infer this 
 by assuming that you have a conscious- 
 ness similar to my own, and related to 
 your perception of your body as my con- 
 sciousness is related to my perception of 
 my body. Now is this the same assump- 
 tion as before, a mere assumption of the 
 uniformity of nature ? It certainly seems 
 like it at first ; but if we think about it 
 we shall find that there is a very pro- 
 found difference between them. In phy- 
 sical inference I go from phenomena to 
 phenomena ; that is, from the knowledge 
 of certain appearances or representations 
 actually present to my mind I infer certain 
 other appearances that might be present 
 to my mind. From the weight of a stone 
 in the morning that is, from my feeling 
 of its weight, or my perception of the 
 process of weighing it, I infer that the 
 stone will be heavy in the afternoon 
 that is, I infer the possibility of similar 
 feelings and perceptions in me at another 
 time. The whole process relates to me 
 and my perceptions, to things contained 
 in my mind. But when I infer that you 
 are conscious from what you say or do, I 
 pass from that which is my feeling or 
 perception, which is in my mind and 
 part of me, to that which is not my feel- 
 ing at all, which is outside me altogether, 
 namely, your feelings and perceptions. 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [308] IS 
 
 Now there is no possible physical infer- 
 ence, no inference of phenomena from 
 phenomena, that will help me over that 
 gulf. I am obliged to admit that this 
 second kind of inference depends upon 
 another assumption, not included in the 
 assumption of the uniformity of phenom- 
 ena. 
 
 How does a dream differ from waking 
 life ? In a fairly coherent dream every- 
 thing seems quite real, and it is rare, I 
 think, with most people to know in a 
 dream that they are dreaming. Now, if a 
 dream is sufficiently vivid and coherent, 
 all physical inferences are just asvalid in 
 it as they are in waking life. In a hazy 
 or imperfect dream, it is true, things melt 
 into one another unexpectedly and unac- 
 countably ; we fly, remove mountains, and 
 stop runaway horses with a ringer. But 
 there is nothing in the mere nature of a 
 dream to hinder it from being an exact 
 copy of waking experience. If 1 find a 
 stone heavy in one part of my dream, and 
 infer that it is heavy at some subsequent 
 part, the inference will be verified if the 
 drearn is coherent enough ; I shall go to 
 the stone, lift it up, and find it as heavy 
 as before. And the same thing is true of 
 all inferences of phenomena from phe- 
 nomena. For physical purposes a dream 
 is just as good as real life ; the only dif- 
 ference is in vividness and coherence. 
 
 What, then, hinders us from saying 
 that life is all a dream? If the phenom- 
 ena we dream of are just as good and 
 real phenomena as those we see and feel 
 when we are awake, what right have we 
 to say that the material universe has any 
 more existence apart from our minds than 
 the things we see and feel in our dreams ? 
 The answer which Berkeley gave to that 
 question was, No right at all. The physi- 
 cal universe which I see and feel, and in- 
 fer, is just my dream and nothing else; 
 that which you see is your dream ; only it 
 so happens that all our dreams agree in 
 many respects. This doctrine of Berke- 
 ley's has now been so far confirmed by 
 the physiology of the senses, that it is no 
 longer a metaphysical speculation, but a 
 scientifically established fact. 
 
 But there is a difference between 
 dreams and waking life, which is of far too 
 great importance for any. of us to be in 
 danger of neglecting it. When I see a 
 man in my dream, there is just as good a 
 body as if I were awake ; muscles, nerves, 
 circulation, capability of adapting means 
 to ends. If only the dream is coherent 
 enough, no physical test can establish that 
 it is a dream. In both cases I see and 
 
 feel the same thing. In both cases I as- 
 sume the existence of more than I can 
 see and feel, namely, the consciousness of 
 this other man. But now here is a great 
 difference, and the only difference in a 
 dream this assumption is wrong ; in wak- 
 ing life it is right. The man 1 see in my 
 dream is a mere machine, a bundle of 
 phenomena with no underlying reality; 
 there is no consciousness involved except 
 my consciousness, no feeling in the case 
 except my feelings. The man I see in 
 waking life is more than a bundle of phe- 
 nomena ; his body and its actions are 
 phenomena, but these phenomena are 
 merely the symbols and representatives 
 in my mind of a reality which is outside 
 my mind, namely, the consciousness of 
 the man himself which is represented by 
 the working of his brain, and the simpler 
 quasi-mental facts, not woven into his 
 consciousness, which are represented by 
 the working of the rest of his body. 
 What makes life not to be a dream is the 
 existence of those facts which we arrive 
 at by our second process of inference ; 
 the consciousness of men and the higher 
 animals, the sub-consciousness of lower 
 organisms and the quasi-mental facts 
 which go along with the motions of inani- 
 mate matter. In a book which is very 
 largely and deservedly known by heart, 
 ' Through the Looking-glass,' there is a 
 very instructive discussion upon this point. 
 Alice has been taken to see the Red 
 King as he lies snoring ; and Tweedledee 
 asks, ' Do you know what he is dreaming 
 about?' 'Nobody can guess that,' re- 
 plies Alice. ' Why, about you,' he says 
 triumphantly. ' And if he stopped dream- 
 ing about you, where do you suppose 
 you'd be?' 'Where I am now of course,' 
 said Alice. ' Not you,' said Tweedledee, 
 ' you'd be nowhere. You are only a sort 
 of thing in his dream.' ' If that there 
 King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, 
 ' you'd go out, bang ! just like a candle.' 
 Alice was quite right in regarding these 
 remarks as unphilosophical. The fact 
 that she could see, think, and feel was 
 proof positive that she was not a sort of 
 thing in anybody's dream. This is the 
 meaning of that saying, Cogtto ergo sum, 
 of Descartes. By him, and by Spinoza 
 after him, the verb cogito and the sub- 
 stantive cogttatio were used to denote 
 consciousness in general, any kind of feel- 
 ing, even what we now call sub-con- 
 sciousness. The saying means that feel- 
 ing exists in and for itself, not as a quality 
 or modification or state or manifestation 
 of anything else. 
 
14 [304] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 We are obliged in every hour of our 
 lives to act upon beliefs which have been 
 arrived at by inferences of these two 
 kinds ; inferences based on the assump- 
 tion of uniformity in nature, and infer- 
 ences which add to this the assumption of 
 feelings which .are not our own. By or- 
 ganizing the ' common sense ' which em- 
 bodies the first class of inferences, we 
 build up the physical sciences ; that is to 
 say, all those sciences which deal with the 
 physical, material, or phenomenal uni- 
 verse, whether animate or inanimate. 
 And so by organizing the common sense 
 which embodies the second class of in- 
 ferences, we build up various sciences of 
 mind. The description and classification 
 of feelings, the facts of their association 
 with each other, and of their simultaneity 
 with phenomena of nerve-action, all this 
 belongs to psychology, which may be his- 
 torical and comparative. The doctrine 
 of certain special classes of feelings is or- 
 ganized into the special sciences of those 
 leelings ; thus the facts about the feelings 
 which we are now considering, about the 
 feelings of moral approbation and repro- 
 bation, are organized into the science of 
 ethics and the facts about the feeling of 
 beauty or ugliness are organized into the 
 science of aesthetics, or, as it is some- 
 times called, the philosophy of art. For 
 all of these the uniformity of nature has 
 to be assumed as a basis of inference ; 
 but over and above that it is necessary to 
 assume that other men are conscious in 
 the same way that I am. Now in these 
 sciences of mind, just as in the physical 
 sciences, the uniformity which is assumed 
 in the inferred mental facts is a growing 
 thing which becomes more definite as we 
 go on, and each successive generation of 
 observers knows better what to observe 
 and what sort of inferences may be drawn 
 from observed things. But, moreover, it 
 is as true of the mental sciences as of the 
 physical cnes that the uniformity is in the 
 present stage of science an atomic uni- 
 formity. We have learned to regard our 
 consciousness as made up of elements 
 practically alike, having relations of suc- 
 cession in time and of contiguity at each 
 instant, which relations are in all cases 
 practically the same. The element of 
 consciousness is the transference of an 
 impression into the beginning of action. 
 Our mental life is a structure "made out of 
 such elements, just as the working of our 
 nervous system is made out of sensori- 
 motor processes. And accordingly the 
 interaction of the two branches of science 
 leads us to regard the mental facts as the 
 
 realities or things-in-themselves, of which 
 the material phenomena are mere pict- 
 ures or symbols. The final result seems 
 to be that atomism is carried beyond 
 phenomena.into the realities which phe- 
 nomena represent ; and that the observed 
 uniformities of nature, in so far as they 
 can be expressed in the language of atom- 
 ism, are actual uniformities of things in 
 themselves. 
 
 So much for the two things which I 
 have promised to bring together; the 
 facts of our moral feelings, and the scien- 
 tific method. It may appear that the lat- 
 ter has been expounded at more length 
 than was necessary for the treatment of 
 this particular subject ; but the justifica- 
 tion for this length is to be found in cer- 
 tain common objections to the claims of 
 science to be the sole judge of mental and 
 moral questions. Some of the chief of 
 these objections I will now mention. 
 
 It is sometimes said that science can, 
 only deal with what is, but that art and 
 morals deal with what ought to be. The 
 saying is perfectly true, but it is quite con- 
 sistent with what is equally true, that the 
 facts of art and morals are fit subject- 
 matter of science. I may describe all 
 that I have in my house, and I may state 
 everything that I want in my house ; these 
 are two very different things, but they are 
 equally statements of facts. One is a 
 statement about phenomena, about the 
 objects which are actually in my posses- 
 sion ; the other is a statement about my 
 feelings, about my wants and desires. 
 There are facts, to be got at by common 
 sense, about the kind of thing that a man 
 of a certain character and occupation will 
 like to have in his house, and these facts 
 may be organized into general statements 
 on the assumption of uniformity in na- 
 ture. Now the organized results of com- 
 mon sense dealing with facts are just 
 science and nothing else. And in tke 
 same way I may say what men do at the 
 present day, how we live now, or I may 
 say what we ought to do, namely, what 
 course of conduct, if adopted, we should 
 morally approve ; and no doubt these 
 would be two very different things. But 
 each of them would be a statement of 
 facts. One would belong to the sociol- 
 ogy of our time ; in so far as men's deeds 
 could not be adequately described to us 
 without some account of their feelings 
 and intentions, it would involve facts be- 
 longing to psychology as well as facts be- 
 longing to the physical sciences. But the 
 other would be an account of a particular 
 class of our feelings, namely, those which 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [305J 15 
 
 we feel toward an action when it is re- 
 garded as right or wrong. These facts 
 may be organized by common sense on 
 the assumption of uniformity in nature 
 just as well as any other facts. And we 
 shall see farther on that not only in this 
 sense, but in a deeper and more abstract 
 sense, ' what ought to be done ' is a ques- 
 tion for scientific inquiry. 
 
 The same objection is sometimes put 
 into another form. It is said that laws 
 of chemistry, for example, are general 
 statements about what happens when 
 bodies are treated in a certain way, and 
 that such laws are fit matter for science ; 
 but that moral laws are different, because 
 they tell us to do certain things, and we 
 may or may not obey them. The mood 
 of the one is indicative, of the other im- 
 perative. Now it is quite true that the 
 word law in the expression ' law of nat- 
 ure,' and in the expressions * law of mor- 
 als,' ' law of the land,' has two totally dif- 
 ferent meanings, which no educated per- 
 son will confound ; and I am not aware 
 that any one has rested the claim of sci- 
 ence to judge moral questions on what is 
 no better than a stale and unprofitable pun. 
 But two different things may be equally 
 matters of scientific investigation, even 
 when their names are alike in sound. A 
 telegraph post is not the same thing as a 
 post in the War Office, and yet the same 
 intelligence may be used to investigate 
 the conditions of the one and the other. 
 That such and such things are right or 
 wrong', that such and such laws are laws 
 of morals or laws of the land, these are 
 facts, just as the laws of chemistry are 
 facts ; and all facts belong to science, and 
 are her portion forever. 
 
 Again, it is sometimes said that moral 
 questions have been authoritatively set- 
 tled by other methods ; that we ought to 
 accept this decision, and not to question 
 it by any method of scientific inquiry ; 
 and that reason should give way to reve- 
 lation on such matters. I hope before I 
 have done to show just cause why we 
 should pronounce on such teaching as 
 this no light sentence of moral condem- 
 nation: first, because it is our duty to 
 form those beliefs which are to guide 
 our actions by the two scientific modes of 
 inference, and by these alone ; and, sec- 
 ondly, because the proposed mode of set- 
 tling ethical questions by authority is con- 
 trary to the very nature of right and wrong. 
 t Leaving this, then, for the present, I 
 pass on to the most formidable objection 
 that has been made to a scientific treat- 
 ment of ethics. The objection is that the 
 
 scientific method is not applicable to hu- 
 man action, because the rule of uniform- 
 itydoes not hold good. Whenever a man 
 exercises his will, and makes a voluntary 
 choice of one out of various possible 
 courses, an event occurs whose relation 
 to contiguous events cannot be included 
 in a general statement applicable to all 
 similar cases. There is something wholly 
 capricious and disorderly, belonging to 
 that moment only ; and we have no right 
 to conclude that if the circumstances were 
 exactly repeated, and the man himself 
 absolutely unaltered, he would choose the 
 same course. 
 
 It is clear that if the doctrine here stated 
 is true, the ground is really cut from un- 
 der our feet, and we cannot deal with hu- 
 man action by the scientific method. I 
 shall endeavor to show, moreover, that in 
 this case, although we might still have 9, 
 feeling of moral approbation or reproba- 
 tion toward actions, yet we could not 
 reasonably praise or blarne men for their 
 deeds, nor regard them as morally respon^ 
 sible. So that, if my contention is just, 
 to deprive us of the scientific method is 
 practically to deprive us of morals alto- 
 gether. On both grounds, therefore, it is 
 of the greatest importance that we should- 
 define our position in regard to this con- 
 troversy ; if, indeed, that can be called a 
 controversy in which the practical belief 
 of all mankind and the consent of nearly 
 all serious writers are on one side. 
 
 Let us in the first place consider a lit- 
 tle more closely the connection between 
 conscience and responsibility. Words in 
 common use, such as these two, have 
 their meanings practically fixed before 
 difficult controversies arise ; but after the 
 controversy has arisen each party gives 
 that slight tinge to the meaning which 
 best suits its own view of the question. 
 Thus it appears to each that the common 
 language obviously supports their own 
 view, that this is the natural and primary 
 view of the matter, and that the oppo- 
 nents are using words in a new meaning 
 and wrestling them from their proper 
 sense. Now this is just my position. I 
 have endeavored so far to use all words 
 in their common every-day sense, only 
 making this as precise as I can; and, 
 with two exceptions, of which due warn- 
 ing will be given, I shall do my best to 
 continue this practice in future. I seem 
 to myself to be talking the most obvious 
 platitudes ; but it must be remembered 
 that those who take the opposite view 
 will think I am perverting the English 
 language, 
 
10 [306] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 There is a common meaning of the 
 word ' responsible,' which though not the 
 same as that of the phrase ' morally re- 
 sponsible,' may throw some light upon it. 
 If we say of a book, ' A is responsible for 
 the preface and the first half, and B is re- 
 sponsible for the rest,' we mean that A 
 wrote the preface and the first half. If 
 two people go into a shop and choose a 
 blue silk dress together, it might be said 
 that A was responsible for its being silk 
 and B for its being blue. Before they 
 chose, the dress was undetermined both 
 in color and in material. A's choice fixed 
 the material, and then it was undeter- 
 mined only in color. B's choice fixed the 
 color ; and if we suppose that there were 
 no more variable conditions (only one 
 blue silk dress in the shop), the dress was 
 then completely determined. In this 
 sense of the word we say that a man is 
 responsible for that part of an event 
 which was undetermined when he was 
 left out of account, and which became 
 determined when he was taken account 
 of. Suppose two narrow streets, one 
 lying north and south, one east and west, 
 and crossing one another. A man is put 
 down where they cross, and has to walk. 
 Then he must walk either north, south, 
 east, or west, and he is not responsible 
 for that ; what he is responsible for is the 
 choice of one of these four directions. 
 May we not say in the present sense of 
 the word that the external circumstances 
 are responsible for the restriction on his 
 choice ? We should mean only that the 
 fact of his going in one or other of the 
 four directions was due to external cir- 
 cumstances, and not to him. Again, sup- 
 pose I have a number of punches of va- 
 rious shapes, some square, some oblong, 
 some oval, some round, and that I am 
 going to punch a hole in a piece of paper. 
 Where I shall punch the hole may be 
 fixed by any kind of circumstances ;' but 
 the shape of the hole depends on the 
 punch I take. May we not say that the 
 punch is responsible for the shape of the 
 hole, but not for the position of it ? 
 
 It may be said that this is not the whole 
 of the meaning of the word ' responsible,' 
 even in its loosest sense ; that it ought 
 never to be used except of a conscious 
 agent. Still this is part of its meaning ; 
 if we regard an event as determined by a 
 variety of circumstances, a man's choice 
 being among them, we say that he is re- 
 sponsible for just that choice which is left 
 him by the other circumstances. 
 
 When we ask the practical question, 
 ' Who is responsible for so-and-so ? ' we 
 
 want to find out who is to be got at in 
 order that so-and-so may be altered. If 
 I want to change the shape of the hole I 
 make in my paper, I must change my 
 punch ; but this will be of no use if I want 
 to change the position of the hole. If I 
 want the color of the dress changed from 
 blue to green, it is B, and not A, that I 
 must persuade. 
 
 We mean something more than this 
 when we say that a man is morally re- 
 sponsible for an action. It seems to me 
 that moral responsibility and conscience 
 go together, both in regard to the man 
 and in regard to the action. In order 
 that a man may be morally responsible 
 for an action, the man must have a con- 
 science, and the action must be one in re- 
 gard to which conscience is capable of 
 acting as a motive, that is, the action must 
 be capable of being right or wrong. If a 
 child were left on a desert island and grew* 
 up wholly without a conscience, and then 
 were brought among men, he would not 
 be morally responsible for his actions 
 until he had acquired a conscience by 
 education. He would of course be re- 
 sponsible, in the sense just explained, for 
 that part of them which was left undeter- 
 mined by external circumstances, and if 
 we wanted to alter his actions in these 
 respects we should have to do it by alter- 
 ing* him. But it would be useless and 
 unreasonable to attempt to do this by 
 means of praise or blame, the expression 
 of moral approbation or disapprobation, 
 until he had acquired a conscience which 
 could be worked upon by such means. 
 
 It seems, then, that in order that a man 
 may be morally responsible for an action, 
 three things are necessary : 
 
 1. He might have done' something else ; 
 that is to say, the action was not wholly 
 determined by external circumstances, 
 and he is responsible only for the choice 
 which was left him. 
 
 2. He had a conscience. 
 
 3. The action was one in regard to the 
 doing or not doing of which conscience 
 might be a sufficient motive. 
 
 These three things are necessary, but 
 it does not follow that they are sufficient. 
 It is very commonly said that the action 
 must be a voluntary one. It will be 
 found, I think, that this is contained in 
 m}fc third condition, and also that the form 
 of statement I have adopted exhibits 
 more clearly the reason why the condi- 
 tion is necessary'. We may say that an 
 action is involuntary either when it is in- 
 stinctive, or when one motive is so strong 
 that there is no voluntary choice between 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [307] 17 
 
 motives. An involuntary cough pro- 1 
 duced by irritation of the glottis is no 
 proper subject for blame or praise. A 
 man is not responsible for it, because it 
 is done by a part of his body without con- 
 sulting him. What is meant by htm in 
 this case will require further investigation. 
 Again, when a dipsomaniac has so great 
 and overmastering an inclination to drink 
 that we cannot conceive of conscience 
 being strong enough to conquer it, he is 
 not responsible for that act, though he 
 may be responsible for having got himself 
 into the state. But if it is conceivable 
 that a very strong conscience fully brought 
 to bear might succeed in conquering the 
 inclination, we may take a lenient view 
 of the fall and say there was a very strong 
 temptation, but we shall still regard it as 
 a fall, and say that the man is responsible 
 and a wrong has been done. 
 
 . But since it is just in this distinction 
 between voluntary and involuntary action 
 that the whole crux of the matter lies, 
 let us examine more closely into it. I 
 say that when I cough or sneeze involun- 
 tarily, it is really not I that cough or 
 sneeze, but a part of my body which acts 
 without consulting me. This action is 
 determined for me by, the circumstances, 
 and is not part of the choice that is left to 
 me, so that I am not responsible for it. 
 The question comes then to determining 
 how much is to be called circumstances, 
 and how much is to be called me. Now I 
 want to describe what happens when I 
 voluntarily do anything, and there are 
 two courses open to me. i may describe 
 the things in themselves, my feelings 
 and the general course of my conscious- 
 ness, trusting to the analogy between my 
 consciousness and yours to make me un- 
 derstood ; or I may describe these things 
 as nature describes them to your senses, 
 namely in terms of the phenomena of my 
 nervous system, appealing to your mem- 
 ory of phenomena and your knowledge 
 of physical action. I shall do both, be- 
 cause in some respects our knowledge is 
 more complete from the one source^ and 
 in some respects from the other. When 
 I look back and reflect upon a voluntary 
 action, I seem to find that it differs from 
 an involuntary action in the fact that a 
 certain portion of my character has been 
 consulted. There is always a suggestion 
 of some sort, either the end of a train of 
 thought or a new sensation ; and there is 
 an action ensuing, either tjie movement 
 of a muscle or set of muscles, or the fix- 
 ing of attention upon something. But 
 between these two there is a consultation, 
 
 as it were, of my past history. The sug- 
 gestion is viewed in the light of every- 
 thing bearing on it that I think of at the 
 time, and in virtue of this light it moves 
 me to act in one or more ways. Let us 
 first suppose that no hesitation is involv- . 
 ed, that only one way of acting is sug- 
 gested, and I yield to this impulse and 
 act in the particular way. This is the 
 simplest kind of voluntary action. It dif- 
 fers from involuntary or instinctive action . 
 in the fact that with the latter there is no 
 such conscious consultation of past his- 
 tory. If we describe these facts in terms 
 of the phenomena which picture them to 
 other minds, we shall say that in involun- ' 
 tary action a message passes straight 
 through from the sensory to the motor 
 center, and so on to the muscles, with- ; 
 out consulting the cerebrum ; while in 
 voluntary action the message is passed'- 
 on from the sensory center to the cere-, 
 brum, there translated into appropriate- 
 motor stimuli, carried down to the mo-- 
 ter center, and so on to the muscles.. 
 There may be other differences, but at. 
 least there is this difference. Now oa; 
 the physical side that which determines- 
 what groups of cerebral fibers shall be setJ 
 at work by the given message, and what. 
 groups of motor stimuli shall be set at work, 
 by these, is the mechanism of my brain at. 
 the time; and on the mental side that 
 which determines what memories'shall be-; 
 called up by the given sensation, and; 
 what motives these memories shall bring 
 into action, is my mental character. We: 
 may say, then, in this simplest case of- 
 voluntary action, that when the sugges- 
 tion is given it is the character of me* 
 which determines the character of the en- 
 suing action ; and consequently that I ami 
 responsible for choosing that particular* 
 course out of those which were left open: 
 to me by the external circumstances. 
 
 This is when I yield to the impulse.. 
 But suppose I do not ; suppose that the 
 original suggestion, viewed in the light of 
 memory, sets various motives in action,, 
 each motive belonging to a certain class* 
 of things which I remember. Then I 
 choose which of these motives shall pre- 
 vail. Those who carefully watch them- 
 selves, find out that a particular motive is 
 made to prevail by the fixing of the at- 
 tention upon that class of remembered 
 things which calls up the motive. The 
 physical side of this is the sending of 
 blood to a certain set of nerves namely, 
 those whose action corresponds to the 
 memories which are to be attended to. 
 The sending of blood is accomplished by 
 
J8 [308] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 the pinching of arteries ; and there are 
 special nerves, called vaso-motor nerves, 
 whose business it is to carry messages to 
 the walls of the arteries and get them 
 pinched. Now this act of directing the 
 attention may be voluntary or involuntary 
 just like any other act. When the trans- 
 formed and re-enforced nerve-message 
 gets to the vaso-motor center, some part 
 of it may be so predominant that a mes- 
 sage goes straight off to the arteries, and 
 sends a quantity of blood to the nerves 
 supplying that part ; or the call for blood 
 may be sent back for revision by the 
 cerebrum, which is thus again consulted. 
 To say the same thing in terms of my 
 feelings, a particular class of memories 
 roused by the original suggestion may 
 seize upon my attention before I have time 
 to choose what I will attend to ; or the 
 appeal may be carried to a deeper part of 
 my character dealing with wider and 
 more abstract conceptions, which views 
 the conflicting motives in the light of a 
 past experience of motives, and by that 
 light is drawn to one or the other of 
 them. 
 
 We thus get to a sort of motive of the 
 second order or motive of motives. Is 
 there any reason why we should not go 
 on to a motive of the third order, and the 
 fourth, and so on ? None whatever that 
 I know of, except that no one has ever 
 observed such a thing. There seems 
 plenty of room for the requisite mechan- 
 ism on the physical side ; and no one can 
 say, on the mental side, how complex is 
 the working of his consciousness. But 
 we must carefully distinguish between 
 the intellectual deliberation about motives, 
 which applies to the future and the past, 
 and the practical choice of motives in the 
 moment of will. The former may be a 
 train of any length and complexity : we 
 have no reason to believe that the latter 
 is more than engine and tender. 
 
 We are now in a position to classify 
 actions in respect of the kind of respon- 
 sibility which belongs to them ; namely 
 we have 
 
 1. Involuntary or instinctive actions. 
 
 2. Voluntary actions in which the choice 
 of motives is involuntary. 
 
 3. Voluntary actions in which the 
 choice of motives is voluntary. 
 
 In each of these cases what is respon- 
 sible is that part of my character which 
 determines what the action shall be. 
 For instinctive actions we do not say that 
 / am responsible, because the choice is 
 made before I know anything about it. 
 For voluntary actions I am responsible, 
 
 because I make the choice; that is, the 
 character of me is what determines the 
 character of the action. In me, then, for 
 this purpose, is included the aggregate 
 of links of association which determines 
 what memories shall be called up by a 
 given suggestion, and what motives shall 
 be set at work by these memories. But 
 we distinguish this mass of passions and 
 pleasures, desire and knowledge and 
 pain, which makes up most of my char- 
 acter at the moment, from that inner and 
 deeper motive-choosing self which is 
 called Reason, and the Will, and the 
 Ego ; which is only responsible when 
 motives are voluntarily chosen by direct- 
 ing attention to them. It is responsible 
 only for the choice of one motive out of 
 those presented to -it, not for the nature 
 of the motives which are presented. 
 
 But again, I may reasonably be blamed 
 for what I did yesterday, or a week ago, 
 or last year. This is because I am per- 
 manent ; in so far as from my actions of 
 that date an inference may be drawn 
 about my character now, it is reasonable 
 that I should be treated as praiseworthy 
 or blamable. And within certain limits 
 I am for the same reason responsible for 
 what I am now, because within certain 
 limits I have made myself. Even in- 
 stinctive actions are dependent in many 
 cases upon habits which may be altered 
 by proper attention and care ; and still 
 more the nature of the connections be- 
 tween sensation and action, the associa- 
 tions of memory and motive, may be vol- 
 untarily modified if I choose to try. The 
 habit of choosing among motives is one 
 which may be acquired and strengthened 
 by practice, and the strength of particular 
 motives, by continually directing attention 
 to them, may be almost indefinitely in- 
 creased or diminished. Thus, if by me is 
 meant not the instantaneous me of this 
 moment, but the aggregate me of my 
 past life, or even of the last year, the 
 range of my responsibility is very largely 
 increased. I am responsible for a very 
 large portion of the circumstances which 
 are now external to me ; that is to say, I 
 am responsible for certain of the restric- 
 tions on my own freedom. As the eagle 
 was shot with an arrow that flew on its 
 own feather, so I find myself bound with 
 fetters of my proper forging. 
 
 Let us now endeavor to conceive an 
 action which is not determined in any 
 way by the character of the ageni. If we 
 ask, ' What makes it to be that action 
 and no other ? ' we are told, ' The man's 
 Ego.' The words are here used, it seems- 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [309] 
 
 to me, in some non-natural sense, if in 
 any sense at all. One thing makes an- 
 other to be what it is when the characters 
 of the two tui.igs are connected together 
 by some general statement or rule. But 
 we have to suppose that -the character of 
 the action is not connected with the char- 
 acter of the Ego by any general state- 
 ment or rule. With the same Ego and 
 the same circumstances of all kinds, 
 anything within the limits imposed by the 
 circumstances may happen at any mo- 
 ment. I find myself unable to conceive 
 any distinct sense in which responsibility 
 could apply in this case ; nor do I see at 
 all how it would be reasonable to use 
 praise or blame. If the action does not 
 depend on the character, what is the use 
 of trying to alter the character ? Sup- 
 pose, however, that this indeterminate- 
 ness is only partial; that the character 
 does add some restrictions to those al- 
 ready imposed by circumstances, but 
 leaves the choice between certain actions 
 undetermined, and to be settled by 
 chance or the transcendental Ego. Is it 
 not clear that the man would be respon- 
 sible for precisely that part of the char- 
 acter of the action which was determined 
 by his character, and not for what was 
 left undetermined by it ? For it is just 
 that part which was determined by his 
 character which it is reasonable to try to 
 alter by altering him. 
 
 We who believe in uniformity are not 
 the only people unable to conceive re- 
 sponsibility without it. These are the 
 words of Sir W. Hamilton, as quoted 
 by Mr. J. S. Mill : * 
 
 'Nay, were we even to admit as true 
 what we cannot think as possible, still the 
 doctrine of a motiveless volition would be 
 only casualism ; and the free acts of an 
 indifferent are, morally and rationally, as 
 worthless as the pre-ordered passions of 
 a determined will.' 
 
 ' That, though inconceivable, a motive- 
 less volition would, if conceived, be con- 
 ceived as morally worthless, only shows 
 our impotence more clearly.' 
 
 'Is the person an original undeter- 
 mined cause of the determination of his 
 will ? If he be not, then he is not 2, free 
 agent, and the scheme of Necessity is ad- 
 mitted. If he be, in the first place, it is 
 impossible to conceive the possibility of 
 this ; and in the second, if the fact, though 
 inconceivable, be allowed, it is impossible 
 to see how a cause, undetermined by any 
 
 * Examination, p. 495, 2 d cd. 
 
 motive, can be a rational, moral, and ac- 
 countable cause.' 
 
 It is true that Hamilton also says that 
 the scheme of necessity is inconceivable, 
 because it leads to an infinite non-com- 
 mencement ; and that ' the possibility of 
 morality depends on the possibility of lib- 
 erty ; for if a man be not a free agent, he' 
 is not the author of his actions, and has, 
 therefore, no responsibility no moral 
 personality at all.' 
 
 I know nothing about necessity ; I only 
 believe that nature is practically uniform 
 even in human action. I know nothing 
 about an infinitely distant past; I only 
 know that I ought to base on uniformity 
 those inferences which are to guide my 
 actions. But that man is a free agent ap- 
 pears to me obvious, and that in the nat- 
 ural sense of the words. We need ask 
 for no better definition than Kant's : 
 
 4 Will is a kind of causality belonging 
 to living agents, in so far as they are ra-' 
 tional ; and freedom is such a property of 
 that causality as enables them to be effi- 
 cient agents independently of outside 
 causes determining them ; as, on the 
 other hand, necessity (Naturnothwendig- 
 ketf) is that property of all irrational be- 
 ings which consists in their being deter- 
 mined to activity by the influence of out- 
 side causes.' ('"Metaphysics of Ethics/ 
 chap, iii.) 
 
 I believe that I am a free agent when 
 my actions are independent of the control 
 of circumstances outside me ; and it 
 seems a misuse of language to call me a 
 free agent if my actions are determined 
 by a transcendental Ego who is indepen- 
 dent of the circumstances inside me 
 that is to say, of my character. The ex- 
 pression ' free will ' has unfortunately 
 been imported into mental science from a 
 theological controversy rather different 
 from the one we are now considering. It 
 is surely too much to expect that good 
 and serviceable English words should be 
 sacrificed to a phantom. 
 
 In an admirable book, ' The Methods 
 of Ethics,' Mr. Henry Sidgwick has 
 stated, with supreme fairness and im- 
 partiality, both sides of this question. 
 After setting forth the 'almost over- 
 whelming cumulative proof ' of uniform- 
 ity in human action, he says that it seems 
 ' more than balanced by a single argu- 
 ment on the other side : the immediate 
 affirmation of consciousness in the mo- 
 ment of deliberate volition.' ' No amount 
 of experience of the sway of motives ever 
 tends to make me distrust my intuitive 
 consciousness that in resolving, afto? 
 
20 [310] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 deliberation, I exercise free choice as to 
 which of the motives acting upon me 
 shall prevail.' 
 
 The only answer to this argument is 
 that it is not ' on the other side.' There is 
 no doubt about the deliverance of con- 
 sciousness ; and even if our powers of self- 
 observation had not been acute enough to 
 discover it, the existence of some choice 
 between motives would be proved by the 
 existence of vaso-motor nerves. But 
 perhaps the most instructive way of meet- 
 ing arguments of this kind is to inquire 
 what consciousness ought to say in 
 order that its deliverances may be of 
 any use in the controversy. It is affirmed, 
 on the side of uniformity, that the feel- 
 ings in my consciousness in the moment 
 of voluntary choice have been preceded 
 by facts out of my consciousness which 
 are related to them in a uniform manner, 
 so that if the previous facts had been 
 accurately known the voluntary choice 
 might have been predicted. On the other 
 side this is denied. To be of any use in the 
 controversy, then, the immediate deliver- 
 ance of my consciousness must be com- 
 petent to assure me of the non-existence 
 of something which by hypothesis is not 
 in my consciousness. Given an abso- 
 lutely dark room, can my sense of sight 
 ' assure me that there is no one but myself 
 in it ? Can my sense of hearing assure 
 me that nothing inaudible is going on ? 
 As little can the immediate deliverance of 
 my consciousness assure me that the uni- 
 formity of nature does not apply to human 
 actions. 
 
 . It is perhaps necessary, in connection 
 with this question, to refer to that singular 
 Materialism of high authority and recent 
 date which makes consciousness a phys- 
 ical agent, ' correlates ' it with Light and 
 Nerve-force, and so reduces it to an 
 objective phenomenon. This doctrine is 
 founded on a common and very useful 
 mode of speech, in which we say, for ex- 
 ample, that a good fire is a source of 
 pleasure on a cold day, and that a 
 man's feeling of chill may make him run 
 to, it. But so also we say that the sun 
 rises and sets every morning and night, 
 although the man in the moon sees clear- 
 ly that this is due to the rotation of the 
 earth. One cannot be pedantic all day. 
 But if we choose for once to be pedantic, 
 the matter is after all very simple. Sup- 
 pose that I am made to run by feeling a 
 chill. When I begin to move my leg, I 
 may observe if I like a double series ol 
 facts. I have the feeling of effort, the 
 sensation of motion in my leg ; I feel the 
 
 pressure of my foot on the ground. 
 Along with this I may see. with my eyes, 
 or feel with my hands, the motion of my 
 leg as a material object. The first series 
 of facts belongs to me alone ; the second 
 may be equally observed by anybody else. 
 The mental series began first ; I willed to 
 move my leg before I saw it move. But 
 when I know more about the matter, I 
 can trace the material series further back, 
 and find nerve-messages going to the 
 muscles of my leg to make it move. 
 But I had a feeling of chill before I cho?e 
 o move my leg. Accordingly, I can find 
 nerve-messages, excited by the contrac- 
 tion due to the low temperature, going to 
 my brain from the chilled skin. Assum- 
 ing the uniformity of nature, I carry for- 
 ward and backward both the mental and 
 the material series. A uniformity is ob- 
 served in each, and a parallelism is ob- 
 served between them, whenever observa- 
 tions can be made. But sometimes one 
 series is known better, and sometimes 
 the other ; so that in telling a story we 
 quite naturally speak sometimes of mental 
 facts and sometimes of material facts. 
 A feeling of chill made a man run ; strictly 
 speaking, the nervous disturbance which 
 co-existed with that feeling of chill made 
 him run, if we want to talk about material 
 facts ; or the feeling of chill produced the 
 form of sub-consciousness which co-exists 
 with the motion of legs, if we want to 
 talk about mental facts. But we know 
 nothing about the special nervous disturb- 
 ance which co-exists with a feeling of 
 chill, because it has not yet been local- 
 ized in the brain ; and we know nothing 
 about the form of sub-consciousness 
 which co-exists with the motion of legs ; 
 although there is very good reason for 
 believing in the existence of both. So- 
 we talk about the feeling of chill and the 
 running, because in one case we know 
 the mental side, and in the other the- 
 material side. A man might show me a 
 picture of the battle of Gravelotte, and 
 say, ' You can't see the battle, because 
 it's all over, but there is a picture of it.' 
 And then-he might put a chassepot into 
 my hand, and say, ' We could not repre- 
 sent the whole construction of a chassepot 
 in the picture, but you can examine this 
 one, and find it out.' If I now insisted on 
 mixing up the two modes of communica- 
 tion of knowledge, if I expected that the 
 chassepots in the picture would go off, 
 and said that the one in my hand was 
 painted on heavy canvas, I should be 
 acting exactly in the spirit of the new 
 materialism. For the material facts are 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [311] 21 
 
 a representation or symbol of the mental 
 facts, just as a picture is a representa- 
 tion or symbol of a battle. And my own 
 mind is a reality from which I can judge 
 by analogy of the realities represented by 
 other men's brains, just as the chassepot 
 in my hand is a reality from which I can 
 judge by analogy of the chassepots rep- 
 resented in the picture. When, therefore, 
 we ask, ' What is the physical link be- 
 tween the ingoing message from chilled 
 skin and the outgoing message which 
 moves the leg ? ' and the answer is, ' A 
 man's Will,' we have as much right to 
 be amused as if we had asked our friend 
 with the picture what pigment was used 
 in painting the cannon in the foreground, 
 and received the answer, ' Wrought iron.' 
 It will be found excellent practice in the 
 mental operations required by this doc- 
 trine to imagine a train, the fore part 
 of which is an engine and three carriages 
 linked with iron couplings, and the hind 
 part three other carriages linked with iron 
 couplings ; the bond between the two 
 parts being made out of the sentiments 
 of amity subsisting between the stoker 
 and the guard. 
 
 To sum up : the uniformity of nature 
 in human actions has been denied on the 
 ground that it takes away responsibility, 
 that it is contradicted by the testimony 
 of consciousness, and that there is a phys- 
 ical correlation between mind and mat- 
 ter. We have replied that the uniformity 
 of nature is necessary to responsibility, 
 that it is affirmed by the testimony of 
 consciousness whenever consciousness is 
 competent to testify, and that matter is 
 the phenomenon or symbol of which 
 mind or quasi-mind is the symbolized 
 and represented thing. We are now free 
 to continue our inquiries on the supposi- 
 tion that nature is uniform. 
 
 We began by describing the moral 
 sense of an Englishman. No doubt the 
 description would serve very well for the 
 more civilized nations of Europe ; most 
 closely for Germans and Dutch. But 
 the fact that we can speak in this way 
 discloses that there is more than one 
 moral sense, and that what I feel to be 
 right another man may feel to be wrong. 
 Thus we cannot help asking whether 
 there is any reason for preferring one 
 moral sense to another ; whether the 
 question, ' What is right to do ? ' has in 
 any one set of circumstances a single an- 
 swer which can be definitely known. 
 
 Clearly, in the first rough sense of the 
 word, this is not true. What is right for 
 me to do now, seeing that I am here 
 
 with a certain character, and a certain 
 moral sense as part of it, is just what I 
 feel to be right. The individual con- 
 science is, in the moment of volition, the 
 only possible judge of what is right; 
 there is no conflicting claim. But if we 
 are deliberating about the future, we know 
 that we can modify our conscience grad- 
 ually by associating with people, reading 
 certain books, and paying attention to 
 certain ideas and feelings ; and we may ask 
 ourselves, ' How shall we modify our con- 
 science, if at all ? what kind of conscience 
 shall we try to get ? what is the best con- 
 science ? ' We may ask similar ques- 
 tions about our sense of taste. There is 
 no doubt at present that the nicest things 
 to me are the things I like ; but I know 
 that I can train myself to like some things 
 and dislike others, and that things which 
 are very nasty at one time may come to 
 be great delicacies at another. I may 
 ask, ' How shall I train myself ? What is 
 the best taste?' And this leads very 
 natiufelly to putting the question in an- 
 other form, namely, ' What is taste good 
 for? What is the purpose or function of 
 taste ? ' We should probably find as the 
 answer to that question that the purpose 
 or function of taste is to discriminate 
 wholesome food from unwholesome ; that 
 it is a matter of stomach and digestion. 
 It will follow from this that the best taste 
 is that which prefers wholesome food, 
 and that by cultivating a preference for 
 wholesome and nutritious things I shall 
 be training my palate in the way it should, 
 go. In just the same way our question 
 about the best conscience will resolve it- 
 self into a question about the purpose or 
 function of the conscience why we have 
 got it, and what it is good for. 
 
 Now to my mind the simplest and 
 clearest and most profound philosophy 
 that was ever written upon this subject is 
 to be found in the 2d and 3d chapters 
 of Mr. Darwin's ' Descent of Man.' In 
 these chapters it appears that just as 
 most physical characteristics of organ- 
 isms have been evolved and preserved 
 because they were useful to the individ- 
 ual in the struggle for existence against 
 other individuals and other species, so 
 this particular feeling has been evolved 
 and preserved because it is useful to the 
 tribe or community in the struggle for 
 existence against other tribes, and 
 against the environment as a whole. The 
 function of conscience is the preservation 
 of the tribe as a tribe. And we shall 
 rightly train our consciences if we leacn 
 to approve those actions which tend to 
 
22 [312] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 the advantage of the community in the 
 struggle for existence. 
 
 There are here some words, however, 
 which require careful definition. And 
 first the word purpose. A thing serves 
 a purpose when it is adapted to some end ; 
 thus a corkscrew is adapted to the end of 
 extracting corks from bottles, and our 
 lungs are adapted to the end of respira- 
 tion. We may say that the extraction of 
 corks is the purpose of the corkscrew, 
 and that respiration is the purpose of the 
 lungs. But here we shall have used the 
 word in two different senses. A man 
 made the corkscrew with a purpose in his 
 mind, and he knew and intended that it 
 should be used for pulling out corks. 
 But nobody made our lungs with a pur- 
 pose in his mind, and intended that they 
 should be used for breathing. The res- 
 piratory apparatus was adapted to its 
 purpose by natural selection namely, 
 by the gradual preservation of better and 
 better adaptations, and the killing off of 
 the worse and imperfect adaptations. In 
 using the word purpose for the result of 
 this unconscious process of adaptation by 
 survival of the fittest, I know that I am 
 somewhat extending its ordinary sense, 
 which implies consciousness. But it 
 seems to me that on the score of conven- 
 ience there is a great deal to be said for 
 this extension of meaning. We want a 
 word to express the adaptation of means 
 to an end, whether involving conscious- 
 ness or not ; the word purpose will do 
 very well, and the adjective purposive 
 has already been used in this sense. But 
 if the use is admitted, we must distinguish 
 two kinds of purpose. There is the un- 
 conscious purpose which is attained by 
 natural selection, in which no conscious- 
 ness need be concerned ; and there is the 
 conscious purpose of an intelligence which 
 designs a thing that it may serve to do 
 something which he desires to be done. 
 The distinguishing mark of this second 
 kind, design or conscious purpose, is that 
 in the consciousness of the agent there is 
 an image or symbol of the end which he 
 desires, and this precedes and determines 
 the use of the means. Thus the man 
 who first invented a corkscrew must 
 have previously known that corks were 
 in bottles, and have desired to get them 
 out. We may describe this if we like in 
 terms of matter, and say that a purpose 
 of the second kind implies a complex 
 nervous system, in which there can be 
 iormed an image or symbol of the end, 
 and that this symbol determines the use 
 of the means. The nervous image or 
 
 symbol of anything is that mode of work- 
 ing of part of my brain which goes on 
 simultaneously and is correlated with my 
 thinking of the thing. 
 
 Aristotle defines an organism as that 
 in which the part exists for the sake of 
 the whole. It is not that the existence of 
 the part depends on the existence of the 
 whole, for every whole exists only as an 
 aggregate of parts related in a certain 
 way; but that the shape and nature of 
 the part are determined by the wants of 
 the whole. Thus the shape and nature 
 of my foot are what they are, not for the 
 sake of my foot itself, but for the sake of 
 my whole body, and because it wants to 
 move about. That which the part has to 
 do for the whole is called its function. 
 Thus the function of my foot is to sup- 
 port me, and assist in locomotion. Not 
 all the nature of the part is necessarily 
 for the sake of the whole : the compara- 
 tive callosity of the skin of my sole is for 
 the protection of my foot itself. 
 
 Society is an organism, and man in 
 society is part of an organism according 
 to this definition, in so far as some por- 
 tion of the nature of man is what it is for 
 the sake of the whole society. Now 
 conscience is such a portion of the nature 
 of man, and its function is the preserva- 
 tion of society in the struggle for exist- 
 ence. We may be able to define this 
 function more closely when we know 
 more about the way in which conscience 
 tends to preserve society. 
 
 Next let us endeavor to make precise 
 the meaning of the w r ords community 
 and society. It is clear that at different 
 times men may be divided into groups of 
 greater or less extent tribes, clans, fami- 
 lies, nations, towns. If a certain number 
 of clans are struggling for existence, that 
 portion of the conscience will be devel- 
 oped which tends to the preservation of 
 the clan ; so, if towns or families are 
 struggling, we shall get a moral sense 
 adapted to the advantage of the town or 
 the family. In this way different portions 
 of the moral sense may be developed at 
 different stages of progress. Now it is 
 clear that for the purpose of the conscience 
 the word community at any time will 
 mean a group of that size and nature 
 which is being selected or not selected for 
 survival as a whole. Selection may be 
 going on at the same time among many 
 different kinds of groups. And ulti- 
 mately the moral sense will be composed 
 of various portions relating to various 
 groups, the function or purpose of each 
 portion being the advantage of that group 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [313] 23 
 
 to which it relates in the struggle for ex- 
 istence. Thus we have a sense of family 
 duty, of municipal duty, of national duty, 
 and of duties toward all mankind. 
 
 It is to be noticed that part of the nat- 
 ure of a smaller group may be what it is 
 for the sake of a larger group to which it 
 belongs ; and then we may speak of the 
 function of the smaller group. Thus it 
 appears probable that the family, in the 
 form in which it now exists among us, is 
 determined by the good of the nation ; 
 and we may say that the function of the 
 family is to promote the advantage of the 
 nation or larger society in some certain 
 ways. But I do not think it would be 
 right to follow Auguste Comte in speak- 
 ing of the function of humanity ; because 
 humanity is obviously not a part of any 
 larger organism for whose sake it is what 
 it is. 
 
 Now that we have cleared up the mean- 
 ings of some of our words, we are still a 
 great way from the definite solution of 
 our question, ' What is the best con- 
 science ? or what ought I to think right ? ' 
 For we do not yet know what is for the 
 advantage of the community in the strug- 
 gle for existence. If we choose to learn 
 by the analogy of an individual organism, 
 we may see that no permanent or final 
 answer can be given, because the organ- 
 ism grows in consequence of the struggle, 
 and develops new wants while it is satis- 
 fying the old ones. But at any given 
 time it has quite enough to do to keep 
 alive and to avoid dangers and diseases. 
 . So we may expect that the wants and 
 even the necessities of the social organism 
 will grow with its growth, and that it is im- 
 possible to predict what may tend in the 
 distant future to its advantage in the 
 struggle for existence. But still, in this 
 vague and general statement of the func- 
 tions of conscience, we shall find that we 
 have already established a great deal. 
 
 In the first place, right is an affair of 
 the community, and must not be referred 
 to anything else. To go back to our anal- 
 ogy of taste : if I tried to persuade you 
 .hat the best palate was that which pre- 
 ferred things pretty to look at, you might 
 condemn me a priori without any ex- 
 perience, by merely knowing that taste is 
 an affair of stomach and digestion that 
 its function is to select wholesome food. 
 And so, if any one tries to persuade us 
 that the best conscience is that which 
 thinks it right to obey the will of some 
 individual, as a deity or a monarch, he is 
 condemned d priori in the very nature of 
 right and wrong. In order that the wor- 
 
 ship of a deity may be consistent with 
 natural ethics, he must be regarded as 
 the friend and helper of humanity, and 
 his character must be judged from his 
 actions by a moral standard which is in- 
 dependent of him. And this, it must be 
 admitted, is the position which has been 
 taken by most English divines, as long as 
 they were Englishmen first and divines 
 afterward. The worship of a deity who 
 is represented as unfair or unfriendly to 
 any portion of the community is a wrong 
 thing, however great may be the threats 
 and promises by which it is commended. 
 And still worse, the reference of right 
 and wrong to his arbitrary will as a stand- 
 ard, the diversion of the allegiance of the 
 moral sense from the community to him, 
 is the most insidious and fatal of social 
 diseases. It was against this that the 
 Teutonic conscience protested in the Ref- 
 ormation. Again, in monarchical coun- 
 tries, in order that allegiance to the sov- 
 ereign may be consistent with natural 
 ethics, he must be regarded as the serv- 
 ant and symbol of the national unity, 
 capable of rebellion and punishable for 
 it. And this has been the theory of the 
 English constitution from time immemo- 
 rial. 
 
 The first principle of natural ethics, 
 then, is the sole and supreme allegiance 
 of conscience to the community. I vent- 
 ure to call this piety in accordance with 
 the older meaning of the word. Even if 
 it should turn out impossible to sever it 
 from the unfortunate associations which 
 have clung to its later meaning, still it 
 seems worth while to try. 
 
 An immediate deduction from our prin- 
 ciple is that there are no self-regarding 
 virtues properly so called ; those qualities 
 which tend to the advantage and preser- 
 vation of the individual being only mor- 
 ally right in so far as they make him a 
 more useful citizen. And this conclusion 
 is in some cases of great practical impor- 
 tance. The virtue of purity, for example, 
 attains in this way a fairly exact definition : 
 purity in a man is that course of conduct 
 which makes him to be a good husband 
 and father, in a woman that which makes 
 her to be a good wife and mother, or which 
 helps other people so to prepare and keep 
 themselves. It is easy to see how many 
 false ideas and pernicious precepts are 
 swept away by even so simple a defini- 
 tion as that. 
 
 Next, we may fairly define our position 
 in regard to that moral system which has 
 deservedly found favor with the great 
 mass of our countrymen. In the common 
 
24 [3141 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 statement of utilitarianism the end of right 
 action is detined to be the greatest hap- 
 piness of the greatest number. It seems 
 to me that the reason and the ample jus- 
 tification of the success of this system is 
 that it explicitly sets forth the community 
 as the object of moral allegiance. But 
 ' our determination of the purpose of the 
 conscience will oblige us to make a change 
 in the statement of it. Happiness is not 
 the end of right action. My happiness is 
 of no use to the community except in so 
 far as it makes me a more efficient cit- 
 izen ; that is to say, it is rightly desired 
 as a means and not as an end. The end 
 may be described as the greatest effi- 
 ciency of all citizens as such. No doubt 
 happiness will in the long run accrue to 
 th<* community as a consequence of right 
 conduct ; but the right is determined in- 
 dependently of the happiness, and, as 
 Plato says, it is better to suffer wrong 
 tlian to do wrong. 
 
 In conclusion, I would add some words 
 on the relation of Veracity to the first 
 principle of Piety. It is clear that verac- 
 ity is founded on faith in man ; you tell a 
 man the truth when you can trust him 
 with it and are not afraid. This perhaps 
 is made more evident by considering the 
 case of exception allowed by all moralists 
 namely, that if a man asks you the way 
 with a view to committing a murder, it is 
 right to tell a lie and misdirect him. The 
 reason why he must not have the truth 
 told him is that he would make a bad use 
 of it ; he cannot be trusted with it. 
 About these cases of exception an impor- 
 tant remark must be made in passing. 
 When we hear that a man has told a lie 
 under such circumstances, we are indeed 
 ready to admit that for once it was right. 
 mensonge admirable ; but we always have 
 a sort *of feeling that it must not occur 
 again. And the same thing applies to 
 cases of conflicting obligations, when for 
 example the family conscience and the 
 national conscience disagree. In such 
 cases no general rule can be laid down ; 
 we have to choose the less of two evils ; 
 but this is not right altogether in the 
 same sense as it is right to speak the 
 truth. There is something wrong in the 
 circumstances, that we should have to 
 choose an evil at all. The actual course 
 to be pursued will vary with the progress 
 of society ; that evil which at first was 
 greater will become less, and in a perfect 
 society the conflict will be resolved into 
 harmony. But meanwhile these cases of 
 exception must be carefully kept distinct 
 from the straightforward cases of right 
 
 and wrong, and they always imply an 
 obligation to mend the circumstances if 
 we can. 
 
 Veracity to an individual is not only 
 enjoined by piety in virtue of the obvious 
 advantage which attends a straightfor- 
 ward and mutually trusting community 
 as compared with others, ^but also be- 
 cause deception is in all cases a personal 
 injury. Still more is this true of veracity 
 to the community itself. The conception 
 of the universe or aggregate of beliefs 
 which forms the link "between sensation 
 and action for each individual is a public 
 and not a private matter ; it is formed by 
 society and for society. Of what enor- 
 mous importance it is to the community 
 that this should be a true conception I 
 need not attempt to describe. Now to 
 the attainment of this true conception 
 two things are necessary. 
 
 First, if we study the history of those 
 methods by which true beliefs and false 
 beliefs have been attained, we shall see 
 that it is our duty to guide our beliefs by 
 inference from experience on the assump- 
 tion of uniformity of nature and conscious- 
 ness in other men, and by this only. 
 Only upon this moral basis can the founda- 
 tions of the empirical method be justified. 
 
 Secondly, veracity to the community 
 depends upon faith in man. Surely I 
 ought to be talking platitudes when I say 
 that it is not English to tell a man a Ire, 
 or to suggest a lie by your silence or your 
 actions, because you are afraid that he is 
 not prepared for the truth, because you 
 don't quite know what he will do when 
 he knows it, because perhaps after all this 
 lie is a better thing for him than the truth 
 would be, this same man being all the 
 time an honest fellow-citizen whom you 
 have every reason to trust. Surely I have 
 heard that this craven crookedness is the 
 object of our national detestation. And 
 yet it is constantly whispered that it 
 would be dangerous to divulge certain 
 truths to the masses. ' I know the whole 
 thing is untrue : but then it is so useful 
 for the people ; you don't know what harm 
 you might do by shaking their faith in it/ 
 Crooked ways are none the less crooked 
 because they are meant to deceive great 
 masses of people instead of individuals, 
 If a thing is true, let us all believe it, rich 
 and poor, men, women, and children. If 
 a thing is untrue, let us all disbelieve it, 
 rich and poor, men, women, and children. 
 Truth is a thing to be shouted from the 
 housetops, not to be whispered over rose- 
 water after dinner when the ladies arc 
 gone away. 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [315] 25 
 
 Even in those whom I would most rev- 
 erence, who would shrink with horror 
 from such actual deception as I have just 
 mentioned, I find traces of a want of faith 
 in man. Even that noble thinker, to 
 whom wev of this generation owe more 
 than I can tell, seemed to say in one of 
 his posthumous essays that in regard to 
 questions of great public importance we 
 might encourage a hope in excess of the 
 evidence (which would infallibly grow 
 into a belief and defy evidence) if we 
 found that life was made easier by it. As 
 ' if we should not lose infinitely more by 
 nourishing a tendency to falsehood than 
 we could gain by the delusion of a pleas- 
 ing fancy. Life must first of all be made 
 straight and true ; it may get easier 
 through the help this brings to the com- 
 monwealth. And Lange, the great his- 
 torian of materialism, says that the amount 
 of false belief necessary to morality in 
 a given society is a matter of taste. I 
 cannot believe that any falsehood what- 
 ever is necessary to morality. It cannot 
 be true of my race and yours that to keep 
 ourselves from becoming scoundrels we 
 must needs believe a lie. The sense of 
 right grew up among healthy men and 
 was fixed by the practice of comradeship. 
 It has never had help from phantoms and 
 falsehoods, "and it never can want any. 
 By faith in man and piety toward men 
 we have taught each other the right 
 hitherto; with faith in man and piety 
 .toward men we shall never more depart 
 ,{rom it. 
 
 III. THE ETHICS OF BELIEF. 
 
 7. Tke Duty of Inquiry. A ship- 
 owner was about to send to sea an em- 
 igrant-ship. He knew that she was old, 
 and not over-well built at the first ; that 
 she had seen many seas and climes, and 
 often had needed repairs. Doubts had 
 been suggested to him that possibly she 
 ,was not seaworthy. These doubts prey- 
 .ed upon his mind, and made him unhap- 
 py ; he thought that perhaps he ought to 
 have her thoroughly overhauled and re- 
 fitted, even though this should put him to 
 great expense. Before the ship sailed, 
 however, he succeeded in overcoming 
 these melancholy reflections. He said to 
 himself that she had gone safely through 
 so many voyages and weathered so many 
 storms that it was idle to suppose she 
 would not come safely home from this 
 trip also. He would put his trust in 
 Providence, which could hardly fail to 
 protect all these unhappy families that 
 
 were leaving their fatherland to seek for 
 better times elsewhere. He would dis- 
 miss from his mind all ungenerous suspi- 
 cions about the honesty of builders and 
 contractors. In such ways he acquired a 
 sincere and comfortable conviction that 
 his vessel was thoroughly safe and sea- 
 worthy ; he watched her departure with a 
 light heart, and benevolent wishes for 
 the success of the exiles in their strange 
 new home that was to be ; and lie got his 
 insurance-money when she went down in 
 mid-ocean and told no tales. 
 
 What shall we say of him ? Surely this, 
 that he \vas verily guilty of the death of 
 those men. It is admitted that he did 
 sincerely believe in the soundness of his 
 ship ; but the sincerity of his conviction 
 can in no wise help him, because he had 
 no right to believe on such evidence as 
 was before him. He had acquired his 
 belief not by honestly earning it in patient 
 investigation, but by stifling his doubts. 
 And although in the end he may have 
 felt so sure about it that he could not 
 think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had 
 knowingly and willingly worked himself 
 into that frame of mind, he must be held 
 responsible for it. 
 
 Let us alter the case a little, and sup- 
 pose that the ship was not unsound after 
 all ; that she made her voyage safely, and 
 many others after it. Will that diminish 
 the guilt of her owner ? Not one jot. 
 When an action is once done, it is right 
 or wrong forever ; no accidental failure 
 of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter 
 that. The man would not have been in- 
 nocent, he would only have been not found 
 out. The question of right or wrong has 
 to do with the origin of his belief, not the 
 matter of it ; not what it was, but how 
 he got it ; not whether it turned out to be 
 true or false, but whether he had a right 
 to believe on such evidence as was before 
 him. 
 
 There was once an island in which 
 some of the inhabitants professed a religion 
 teaching neither the doctrine of original 
 sin nor that of eternal punishment. A 
 suspicion got abroad that the professors 
 of this religion had made use of unfair 
 means to get their doctrines taught to 
 children. They were accused of wresting 
 the laws of their country in such a way as 
 to remove children from the care of their 
 natural and legal guardians ; and even of 
 stealing them away and keeping them 
 concealed from their friends and rela- 
 tions. A certain number of men formed 
 themselves into a society for the purpose 
 of agitating the public about this matter, 
 
2G [310] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 They published grave accusations against 
 individual citizens of the highest position 
 and character, and did all in their power 
 to injure these citizens in the exercise of 
 their professions. So great was the noise 
 they made, that a Commission was ap- 
 pointed to investigate the facts ; but after 
 the Commission had carefully inquired 
 into ail the evidence that could be got, it 
 appeared that the accused were innocent. 
 Not only had they been accused on in- 
 sufficient evidence, but the evidence of 
 their innocence was such as the agitators 
 might easily have obtained, if they had at- 
 tempted a fair inquiry. After these dis- 
 closures the inhabitants of that country 
 looked upon the members of the agitat- 
 ing society, not only as persons whose 
 judgment was to be distrusted, but also 
 as no longer to be counted honorable 
 men. For although they had sincerely 
 and conscientiously believed in the charges 
 they had made, yet they had no right 
 to believe on such evidence as ivas before 
 them. Their sincere convictions, instead 
 of being honestly earned by patient in- 
 quiring, were stolen by listening to the 
 voice of prejudice and passion. 
 
 Let us vary this case also, and suppose, 
 other things remaining as before, that a 
 still more accurate investigation proved 
 the accused to have been really guilty. 
 Would this make any difference in the 
 guilt of the accusers ? Clearly not ; the 
 question is not whether their belief was 
 true or false, but whether they entertained 
 it on wrong grounds. They would no 
 doubt say, ' Now you see that we were 
 right after all ; next time perhaps you 
 will believe us.' And they might be be- 
 lieved, but they would not thereby be- 
 come honorable men. They would not 
 be innocent, they would only be not 
 found out. Every one of them, if he chose 
 to examine himself in foro conscientice, 
 would know that he had acquired and 
 nourished a belief, when he had no right 
 to believe on such evidence as was before 
 him ; and therein he would know that he 
 had done a wrong thing. 
 
 It may be said, however, that in both 
 of these supposed cases it is not the be- 
 lief which is judged to be wrong, but the 
 action following upon it. The shipowner 
 might say, ' I am perfectly certain that 
 tny ship is sound, but still I feel it my 
 duty to have her examined, before trust- 
 ing the lives of so many people to her.' 
 And it might be said to the agitator, 
 * However convinced you were of the 
 justice of your cause and the truth of 
 your convictions, you ought not to have 
 
 made a public attack upon any man's 
 character until you had examined the 
 evidence on both sides with the utmost 
 patience and care.' 
 
 In the first place, let us admit that, so 
 far as it goes, this view of the case is 
 right and necessary ; right, because even 
 when a man's belief is so fixed that he 
 cannot think otherwise, he still has a 
 choice in regard to the action suggested 
 by it, and so cannot escape the duty of 
 investigating on the ground of the strength 
 of his convictions; and necessary, be- 
 cause those who are not yet capable of 
 controlling their feelings and thoughts 
 must have a plain rule dealing with overt 
 acts. 
 
 But this being premised as necessary, 
 it becomes clear that it is not sufficient, 
 and that our previous judgment is re- 
 quired to supplement it. For it is not 
 possible so to sever the belief from the 
 action it suggests as to condemn the one 
 without condemning the other. No man 
 holding a strong belief on one side of a 
 question, or even wishing to hold a belief 
 on one side, can investigate it with such 
 fairness and completeness as if he were 
 really in doubt and unbiassed ; so that the 
 existence of a belief not founded on fair 
 inquiry unfits a man for the performance 
 of this necessary duty. 
 
 Nor is that truly a belief at all which 
 has not some influence upon the actions 
 of him who holds it. He who truly be- 
 lieves that which prompts him to an ac- 
 tion has looked upon the action to lust 
 after it, he has committed it already in 
 his heart. If a belief is not realized im- 
 mediately in open deeds, it is stored up 
 for the guidance of the future. It goes 
 to make a part of that aggregate of be- 
 liefs which is the link between sensation 
 and action at every moment of all our lives, 
 and which is so organized and compacted 
 together that no part of it can be isolated 
 from the rest, but every new addition 
 modifies the structure of the whole. No 
 real belief, however trifling and fragment- 
 ary it may seem, is ever truly insignifi- 
 cant ; it prepares us to receive more of its 
 like, confirms those which resembled it 
 before, and weakens others ; and so grad- 
 ually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost 
 thoughts, which may some day explode 
 into overt action, and leave its stamp 
 upon our character forever. 
 
 And no one man's belief is in any case 
 a private matter which concerns himself 
 alone. Our lives are guided by that gen- 
 eral conception of the course of things 
 which has been created by society for so- 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [317] 27 
 
 cial purposes. Our words, our phrases, 
 our forms and processes and modes of 
 thought, are common property, fashioned 
 and perfected from age to age ; an heir- 
 loom which every succeeding generation 
 inherits as a precious deposit and a sa- 
 cred trust to be handed on to the next 
 one, not unchanged but enlarged and 
 purified, with some clear marks of its 
 proper handiwork. Into this, for good or 
 ill, is woven every belief of every man 
 who has speech of his fellows. An awful 
 privilege, and an awful responsibility, that 
 we should help to create the world in 
 which posterity will live. 
 
 In the two supposed cases which have 
 been considered, it has been judged wrong 
 to believe on insufficient evidence, or to 
 nourish belief by suppressing doubts and 
 avoiding investigation. The reason of 
 this judgment is not far to seek : it is that 
 in both these cases the belief held by one 
 man was of great importance to other 
 men. But forasmuch as no belief held by 
 one man, however seemingly trivial the 
 belief, and however obscure the believer, 
 is ever actually insignificant or without 
 its effect on the fate of mankind, we have 
 no choice but to extend our judgment to 
 all cases of belief whatever. Belief, that 
 sacred faculty which prompts the decis- 
 ions of our will, and knits into harmonious 
 working all the compacted energies of 
 our being, is ours not for ourselves, but 
 for humanity. It is rightly used on truths 
 which have been established by long ex- 
 perience and waiting toil, and which have 
 stood in the fierce light of free and fear- 
 less questioning. Then it helps to bind 
 men together, and to strengthen and di- 
 rect their common action. It is dese- 
 crated when given to unproved and un- 
 questioned statements, for the solace and 
 private pleasure of the believer ; to add 
 a tinsel splendor to the plain straight road 
 of our life and display a bright mirage be- 
 yond it ; or even to drown the common 
 sorrows of our kind by a self-deception 
 which allows them not only to cast down, 
 but also to degrade us. Whoso would 
 deserve well of his fellows in this matter 
 will guard the purity of his belief with a 
 very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any 
 time it should rest on an unworthy object, 
 and catch a stain which can never be 
 wiped away. 
 
 It is not only the leader of men, states- 
 man, philosopher, or poet, that owes this 
 bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic 
 who delivers in the village alehouse his 
 slow, infrequent sentences, may help to 
 kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions 
 
 which clog his race. Every hard-worked 
 wife of an artisan may transmit to her 
 children beliefs which shall knit society 
 together, or rend it in pieces. No sim- 
 plicity of mind, no obscurity of station, 
 can escape the universal duty of ques- 
 tioning all that we believe. 
 
 It is true that this duty is a hard one, 
 and the doubt which comes out of it is 
 often a very bitter thing. It leaves us 
 bare and powerless where we thought 
 that we were safe and strong. To know 
 all about anything is to know how to deal 
 with it under all circumstances. We feel 
 much happier and more secure when we 
 think we know precisely what to do, no 
 matter what happens, than when we have 
 lost our way and do not know where to 
 turn. And if we have supposed ourselves 
 to know all about anything, and to be 
 capable of doing what is fit in regard to 
 it, we naturally do not like to find that 
 we are really ignorant and powerless, that 
 we have to begin again at the beginning, 
 and try to learn what the thing is arid how 
 it is to be dealt with if indeed anything 
 can be learnt about it. It is the sense of 
 power attached to a sense of knowledge 
 that makes men desirous of believing, and 
 afraid of doubting. 
 
 This sense of power is the highest and 
 best of pleasures when the belief on which 
 it is founded is a true belief, and has been 
 fairly earned by investigation. For then 
 we may justly feel that it is common 
 property, and holds good for others as 
 well as for ourselves. Then we may be 
 glad, not that / have learned secrets by 
 which I am safer and stronger, but that 
 we men have got mastery over more of 
 the world ; and we shall be strong, not 
 for ourselves,- but in the name of Man and 
 in his strength. But if the belief has been 
 accepted on insufficient evidence, the 
 pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does 
 it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense 
 of power which we do not really possess, 
 but it is sinful, because it is stolen in de- 
 fiance of our duty to mankind. That 
 duty is to guard ourselves from such be- 
 liefs as from a pestilence, which may 
 shortly master our own body and then 
 spread to the rest of the town. What 
 would be thought of one who, for the 
 sake of a sweet fruit, should deliberately 
 run the risk of bringing a plague upon 
 his family and his neighbors ? 
 
 And, as in other such cases, it is not 
 the risk only which has to be considered ; 
 for a bad action is always bad at the time 
 when it is done, no matter what happens 
 afterward. Every time we let ourselves be- 
 
28 [318] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 lieve for unworthy reasons, we weaken our 
 powers of self-control, of doubting, of ju- 
 dicially and fairly weighing > evidence. 
 We all suffer severely enough from the 
 maintenance and support of false beliefs 
 and the fatally wrong actions which they 
 lead to, and the evil born when one such 
 belief is entertained is great and wide. 
 But a greater and wider evil arises when 
 the credulous character is maintained 
 and supported, when a habit of believing 
 for unworthy reasons is fostered and 
 made permanent. If I steal money from 
 any person, there may be no harm done 
 by the mere transfer of possession ; he 
 may not feel the loss, or it may prevent 
 him from using the money badly. But I 
 cannot help doing this great wrong to- 
 ward Man, that I make myself dishonest. 
 What hurts society is not that it should 
 lose its property, but that it should be- 
 come a den of thieves ; for then it must 
 cease to be society. This is why we 
 ought not to do evil that good may come ; 
 for at any rate this great evil has come, 
 that we have done evil and are made 
 wicked thereby. In like manner, if I let 
 myself believe anything on insufficient ev- 
 idence, there may be no great harm done 
 by the mere belief ; it may be true after 
 all, or I may never have occasion to ex- 
 hibit it in outward acts. But I cannot 
 help doing this great wrong toward Man, 
 that I make myself credulous. The danger 
 to society is riot merely that it should be- 
 lieve wrong things, though that is great 
 enough ; but that it should become cred- 
 ulous, and lose the habit of testing things 
 and inquiring into them ; for then it 
 must sink back into savagery. 
 
 The harm which is done by credulity in 
 a man is not confined to the fostering of 
 a credulous character in others, and con- 
 sequent support of false beliefs. Habit- 
 ual want of care about what I believe 
 leads to habitual want of care in others 
 about the truth of what is told to me. 
 Men speak the truth to one another when 
 each reveres the truth in his own mind 
 and in the other's mind ; but how shall 
 my friend revere the truth in my mind 
 when I myself am careless about it, when 
 I believe things because I want to believe 
 them, and because they are comforting 
 and pleasant? Will he not learn to cry, 
 ' Peace,' to me, when there is no peace ? 
 By such a course I shall surround myself 
 with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and 
 fraud, and in that I must live. It may 
 matter little to me, in rny cloud-castle of 
 sweet illusions and darling lies ; but it 
 matters much to Man that I have made 
 
 my neighbors ready to deceive. The 
 credulous man is father to the liar and 
 the cheat ; he lives in the bosom of this 
 his family, and it is no marvel if he should 
 become even as they are. So closely are 
 our duties knit together, that whoso shall 
 keep the whole law, and yet offend in one 
 point, he is guilty of all. 
 
 To sum up : it is wrong always, every- 
 where and for any one, to believe any- 
 thing upon insufficient evidence. 
 
 If a man, holding a belief which he 
 was taught in childhood or persuaded of 
 afterward, keeps clown and pushes away 
 any doubts which arise about it in his 
 mind, purposely avoids the reading of 
 books and the company of men that call 
 in question or discuss it, and regards as 
 impious those questions which cannot 
 easily be asked without disturbing it 
 the life of that man is one long sin 
 against mankind. 
 
 If this judgment seems harsh when ap- 
 plied to those simple souls who have, 
 never known better, who have been 
 brought up from the cradle with a horror 
 of doubt, and taught that their eternal 
 welfare depends on what they believe, 
 then it leads to the very serious question, 
 Who hath made Israel to sin ? 
 
 It may be permitted me to fortify this 
 judgment with the sentence of Milton 
 
 ' A man may be a heretic in the truth ; 
 and if he believe things only because his 
 pastor says so, or the assembly so de- 
 termine, without knowing other reason, 
 though his belief be true, yet the very 
 truth he holds becomes his heresy.' 
 
 And with this famous aphorism of 
 Coleridge 
 
 ' He who begins by loving Christianity 
 better than Truth, will proceed by loving 
 his own sect or Church better than Chris- 
 tianity, and end in loving himself better 
 than all.' 
 
 Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine 
 
 is not to be made once for all, and then 
 
 taken as finally settled. It is never law- 
 
 , f ul to stifle a doubt ; for either it can be 
 
 i honestly answered by means of the in- 
 
 ' quiry already made, or else it proves that 
 
 the inquiry was not complete. 
 
 But,' says one, ' I am a busy man ; 
 I have no time for the long course of 
 study which would be necessary to make 
 me in any degree a competent judge of 
 certain questions, or even able to under- 
 stand the nature of the arguments.' 
 Then he should have no time to believe. 
 
 77. The Weight of Authority. Are 
 we then to become universal skeptics, 
 doubting everything, afraid always to put 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [310] 29 
 
 one foot before the other until we have 
 personally tested the firmness of the 
 road ? Are we to deprive ourselves of 
 the help and guidance of that vast body 
 of knowledge which is daily growing 
 upon the world, because neither we nor 
 any other one person can possibly test a 
 hundredth part of it by immediate exper- 
 iment or observation, and because it 
 would not be completely proved if we 
 did ? Shall we steal and tell lies because 
 we have had no personal experience wide 
 enough to justify the belief that it is 
 wrong to do so ? 
 
 There is no practical danger that such 
 consequences will ever follow from scru- 
 pulous care and self-control in the matter 
 of belief. Those men who have most 
 nearly done their duty in this respect 
 have found that certain great principles, 
 and these most fitted for the guidance of 
 life, have stood out more and more clearly 
 in proportion to the care and honesty 
 with which they were tested, and have ac- 
 quired HI this way a practical certainty. 
 The beliefs about right and wrong which 
 guide our actions in dealing with men in 
 society, and the beliefs about physical 
 nature which guide our actions in dealing 
 with animate and inanimate bodies, these 
 never suffer from investigation ; they can 
 take care of themselves, without being 
 propped up by 'acts of faith," the clam- 
 or of paid advocates, or the suppression 
 of contrary evidence. Moreover there 
 are many cases in which it is our duty to 
 act upon probabilities, although the evi- 
 dence is not such as to justify present be- 
 lief ; because it is precisely by such ac- 
 tion, and by observation of its fruits, that 
 evidence is got which may justify future 
 belief. So that we have no reason to 
 fear lest a habit of conscientious inquiry 
 should paralyze the actions of our daily 
 life. 
 
 But because it is not enough to say, 
 1 It is wrong to believe on unworthy evi- 
 dence,' without saying also what evidence 
 is worthy, we shall now go on to inquire 
 under what circumstances it is lawful to 
 believe on the testimony of others ; and 
 then, further, we shall inquire more gen- 
 erally when and why we may believe that 
 which goes beyond our own experience, 
 or even beyond the experience of man- 
 kind. 
 
 In what cases, then, let us ask in the 
 first place, is the testimony of a man un- 
 worthy of belief? He may say that 
 which is untrue either knowingly or un- 
 knowingly. In the first case he is lying, 
 and his moral character. is to blame ; in 
 
 the second case he is ignorant or mistak- 
 en, and it is only his knowledge or his 
 judgment which is in fault. In order 
 that we may have the right to accept his 
 testimony as ground fc: believing what 
 he says, we must have reasonable 
 grounds for trusting his veracity, that he 
 is really trying to speak the truth so far 
 as he knows it ; his knowledge, that he 
 has had opportunities of knowing the 
 truth about this matter ; and \&s> judgment* 
 that he has made proper use of those 
 opportunities in coming to the conclusion 
 which he affirms. 
 
 However plain and obvious these rea- 
 sons may be, so that no man of ordinary 
 intelligence, reflecting upon the matter, 
 could fail to arrive at them, it is never- 
 theless true that a great many persons do 
 habitually disregard them in weighing 
 testimony. Of the two questions, equally 
 important to the trustworthiness of a wit- 
 ness, ' Is he dishonest ? ' and ' May he be 
 mistaken ? ' the majority of mankind are 
 perfectly satisfied if one can, with some 
 show of probability, be answered in the 
 negative. The excellent moral character 
 of a man is alleged as ground for accept- 
 ing his statements about things which he 
 cannot possibly have known. A Moham- 
 medan, for example, will tell us that the 
 character of his Prophet was so noble and 
 majestic that it commands the reverence' 
 even of those who do not believe in his 
 mission. So admirable was his moral 
 teaching, so wisely put together the great 
 social machine which he created, that his 
 precepts have not only been accepted by 
 a great portion of mankind, but have 
 actually been obeyed. His institutions' 
 have on the one hand rescued the negro 
 from savagery, and on the other hand 
 have taught civilization to the advancing 
 West ; and although the races which held 
 the highest forms of his faith, and most 
 fully embodied his mind and thought, 
 have all been conquered and swept away 
 by barbaric tribes, yet the history of their 
 marvellous attainments remains as an 
 imperishable glory to Islam. Are we to 
 doubt the word of a man so great and so 
 good ? Can we suppose that this mag- 
 nificent genius, this splendid moral hero, 
 has lied to us about the most solemn and 
 sacred matters ? The testimony of Mo- 
 hammed is clear, that there is but one 
 God, and that he, Mohammed, is his 
 prophet ; that if we believe in him we shall 
 enjoy everlasting felicity, but that if we 
 do not we shall be damned. This testi- 
 mony rests on the most awful of founda- 
 tions, the revelation of heaven itself ; for 
 
30 [320] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 was he not visited by the angel Gabriel, 
 as he fasted and prayed in his desert cave, 
 and allowed to enter into the blessed 
 fields of Paradise ? Surely God is God 
 and Mohammed is the Prophet of God . 
 
 What should we answer to this Mus- 
 sulman ? First, no doubt, we should be 
 tempted to take exception against his 
 view of the character of the Prophet and 
 the uniformly beneficial influence of 
 Islam : before we could go with him alto- 
 gether in these matters it might seem 
 that we should have to forget many terri- 
 ble things of which we have heard or 
 read. But if we chose to grant him all 
 these assumptions, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, and because it is difficult both for 
 the faithful and for infidels to discuss 
 them fairly and without passion, still we 
 should have something to say which 
 takes away the ground of his belief, and 
 therefore shows that it is wrong to enter- 
 tain it. Namely this: the character of 
 Mohammed is excellent evidence that he 
 was honest and spoke the truth so far as 
 he knew it ; but it is no evidence at all 
 that he knew what the truth was. What 
 means could he have of knowing that the 
 form which appeared to him to be the 
 angel Gabriel was not a hallucination, 
 and that his apparent visit to Paradise 
 was not a dream ? Grant that he him- 
 self was fully persuaded and honestly be- 
 lieved that he had the guidance of heav- 
 en, and was the vehicle of a supernatu- 
 ral revelation, how could he know that 
 this strong conviction was not a mistake ? 
 Let us put ourselves in his place ; we 
 shall find that the more completely we 
 endeavor to realize what passed through 
 his mind, the more clearly we shall per- 
 ceive that the Prophet could have had no 
 adequate ground for the belief in his own 
 inspiration. It is most probable that he 
 himself never doubted of the matter, or 
 thought of asking the question ; but we 
 are in the position of those to whom the 
 question has been asked, and who are 
 bound to answer it. It is known to medi- 
 cal observers that solitude and want of 
 food are powerful means of producing 
 delusion and of fostering a tendency to 
 mental disease. Let us suppose, then, 
 that I, like Mohammed, go into desert 
 places to fast and pray ; what things can 
 happen to me which will give me the right 
 to believe that I am divinely inspired? 
 Suppose that I get information, appar- 
 ently from a celestial visitor, which upon 
 being tested is found to be correct. I 
 cannot be sure, in the first place, that the 
 celestial visitor is not a figment of my 
 
 own mind, and that the information did" 
 not come to me, unknown at the time to 
 my consciousness, through some subtle 
 channel of sense. But if my visitor were 
 a real visitor, and for a long time gave 
 me information which was found to be 
 trustworthy, this would indeed be good 
 ground for trusting him in the future as 
 to such matters as fall within human 
 powers of verification ; but it would not 
 be ground for trusting his testimony as 
 to any other matters. For although his 
 tested character would justify me in be- 
 lieving that he spoke the truth so far as 
 he knew, yet the same question would 
 present itself what ground is there for 
 supposing that he knows ? 
 
 Even if my supposed visitor had given 
 me such information, subsequently verifi- 
 ed by me, as proved him to have means 
 of knowledge about verifiable matters far 
 exceeding my own ; this would not jus- 
 tify me in believing what he said about 
 matters that are not at present capable 
 of verification by man. It would be 
 ground for interesting conjecture, and for 
 the hope that, as the fruit of our patient 
 inquiry, we might by and by attain to 
 such a means of verification as should 
 rightly turn conjecture into belief. For 
 belief belongs to man, and to the guidance 
 of human affairs : no belief is real unless 
 it guide our actions, and those very actions 
 supply a test of its truth. 
 
 But, it may be replied, the acceptance 
 of Islam as a system is just that action 
 which is prompted by belief in the mis- 
 sion of the Prophet, and which will serve 
 for a test of its truth. Is it possible to be- 
 lieve that a system which has succeeded 
 so well is really founded upon a' delusion ? 
 Not only have individual saints found joy 
 and peace in believing, and verified those 
 spiritual experiences which are promised 
 to the faithful, but nations also have 
 been raised from savagery or barbarism to 
 a higher social state. Surely we are at 
 liberty to say that the belief has been 
 acted upon, and that it has been verified. 
 
 It requires, however, but little consid- 
 eration to show that what has really been 
 verified is not at all the supernal charac- 
 ter of the Prophet's mission, or the trust- 
 worthiness of his authority in matters 
 which we ourselves cannot test, but only 
 his practical wisdom in certain very mun- 
 dane things. The fact that believers have 
 found joy and peace in believing gives us 
 the right to say that the doctrine is a com- 
 fortable doctrine, and pleasant to the soul ; 
 but it does not give us the right to say 
 that it is true. And the question which- 
 

 AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [321] 31 
 
 our conscience is always asking- about 
 that which we are tempted to believe is 
 not, ' Is it comfortable and pleasant ? ' 
 but, ' Is it true ? ' That the Prophet 
 preached certain doctrines, and predicted 
 that spiritual comfort would be found in 
 them, proves only his sympathy with hu- 
 man nature and his knowledge of it ; but 
 it does not prove his superhuman knowl- 
 edge of theology. 
 
 And if we admit for the sake of argu- 
 ment (for it seems that we cannot do 
 more) that the progress made by Moslem 
 nations in certain cases was really due to 
 the system formed and sent forth into the 
 the world by Mohammed, we are not at 
 liberty to conclude from this that he was 
 inspired to declare the truth about things 
 which we cannot verify. We are only at 
 liberty to infer the excellence of his moral 
 precepts, or of the means which he de- 
 vised for so working upon men as to get 
 them obeyed, or of the social and politi- 
 cal machinery which he set up. And it 
 would require a great amount of careful 
 examination into the history of those na- 
 tions to determine which of these things 
 had the greater share in the result. So 
 that here again it is the Prophet's knowl- 
 edge of human nature, and his sympathy 
 with it, that are verified ; not his divine 
 inspiration, or his knowledge of theol- 
 ogy- 
 
 If there were only one Prophet, indeed, 
 it might well seem a difficult and even an 
 ungracious task to decide upon what 
 points we would trust him, and on what 
 we would doubt his authority ; seeing 
 what help and furtherance all men have 
 gained in all ages from those who saw 
 more clearly, who felt more strongly, and 
 who sought the truth with more single 
 heart than their weaker brethren. But 
 there is not only one Prophet ; and while 
 the consent of many upon that which, as 
 men, they had real means of knowing and 
 did know, has endured to the end, and 
 been honorably built into the great fabric 
 of human knowledge, the diverse witness 
 of some about that which they did not 
 and could not know remains as a warn- 
 ing to us that to exaggerate the prophetic 
 authority is to misuse it, and to dishonor 
 those" who have sought only to help and 
 further us after their power. It is hardly 
 in human nature that a man should quite 
 accurately gauge the limits of his own in- 
 sight ; but it is the duty of those who 
 profit by his work to consider carefully 
 where he may have been carried beyond 
 it. If we must needs embalm his possi- 
 ble errors, along with his solid achieve- 
 
 ments, and use his authority as an excuse 
 for believing what he cannot have known, 
 we make of his goodness an occasion to 
 sin. 
 
 To consider only one other such wit- 
 ness : the followers of the Buddha have 
 at least as much right to appeal to indi- 
 vidual and social experience in support of 
 the authority of the Eastern saviour. The 
 special mark of his religion, it is said, that 
 in which it has never been surpassed, is 
 the comfort and consolation which it gives 
 to the sick and sorrowful, the tender sym- 
 pathy with which it soothes and assuages 
 all the natural griefs of men. And surely 
 
 > triumph of social morality can be 
 greater or nobler than that which has 
 kept nearly half the human race from 
 persecuting in the name of religion. If 
 we are to trust the accounts of his early 
 followers, he believed himself to have 
 come upon earth with a divine and cosmic 
 mission to set rolling the wheel of the 
 law. Being a prince, he divested himself 
 of his kingdom, and of his free will be- 
 came acquainted with misery, that he 
 might learn how to meet and subdue it. 
 Could such a man speak falsely about 
 solemn things ? And as for his knowl- 
 edge, was he not a man miraculous with 
 powers more than man's ? He was born 
 of woman without the help of man ; he 
 rose into the air and was transfigured be- 
 fore his kinsmen ; at last he went up 
 bodily into heaven from the top of Adam's 
 Peak. Is not his word to be believed in 
 when he testifies of heavenly things ? 
 
 If there were only he, and no other, 
 with such claims! But there is Mo- 
 hammed with his testimony ; we cannot 
 choose but listen to them both. The 
 Prophet tells us that there is one God, and 
 that we shall live forever in joy or misery, 
 according as we believe in the Prophet or 
 not. The Buddha says that there is no 
 God, and that we shall be annihilated by 
 and by if we are good enough. Both 
 cannot be infallibly inspired ; one or the 
 other must have been the victim of a de- 
 lusion, and thought he knew that which, 
 he really did not know. Who shall dare 
 to say which ? and how can we justify 
 ourselves in believing that the other was 
 not also deluded ? 
 
 We are led, then, to these judgments 
 following. The goodness and greatness 
 of a man do not justify us in accepting a 
 belief upon the warrant of his authority, 
 unless there are reasonable grounds for 
 supposing that he knew the truth of what 
 he was saying. And there can be no 
 grounds for supposing that a man knows 
 
82 [322] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 that which we, without ceasing to be 
 men, could not be supposed to verify. 
 
 If a chemist tells me, who am no 
 chemist, that a certain substance can be 
 made by putting together other substances 
 in certain proportions and subjecting them 
 to a known process, I am quite justified 
 in believing this upon his authority, un- 
 less I know anything against his charac- 
 ter or his judgment. For his professional 
 training is one which tends to encourage 
 veracity and the honest pursuit of truth, 
 and to produce a dislike of hasty conclu- 
 sions and sioveniy investigation. And I 
 have reasonable ground for supposing 
 that he knows the truth of what he is say- 
 ing, for although I am ~no chemist, I can 
 be made to understand so much of the 
 methods and processes of the science as 
 makes it conceivable to me that, without 
 ceasing to be man, I might verify the 
 statement. I may never 'actually verify 
 it, or even see any experiment which goes 
 toward verifying it ; but still I have quite 
 Reason enough to justify me in believing 
 that the verification is within the reach of 
 human appliances and powers, and in 
 particular that it has been actually per- 
 formed by my informant. His result, 
 the belief to which he has been led by his 
 inquiries, is valid not only for himself 
 but for others ; it is watched and tested 
 by those who are working in the same 
 ground and who know that no greater 
 service can be rendered to science than 
 the purification of accepted results from 
 the errors which may have crept into 
 them. It is in this way that the re- 
 sult becomes common property, a right 
 object of belief, which is a social affair 
 and matter of public business. Thus it 
 is to be observed that his authority is 
 valid because there are those who ques- 
 tion it and verify it ; that it is precisely this 
 process of examining and purifying that 
 keeps alive among investigators the love 
 of that which shall stand all possible tests, 
 the sense of public responsibility as of 
 those whose work, if well done, shall re- 
 main as the enduring heritage of mankind. 
 But if my chemist tells me that an atom 
 of oxygen has existed unaltered in weight 
 and rate of vibration throughout all time, 
 I have no right to believe this on his 
 authority, for it is a thing which he can- 
 not know without ceasing to be man. He 
 may quite honestly believe that this state- 
 ment is a fair inference from his experi- 
 ments, but in that case his judgment is at 
 fault. A very simple consideration of the 
 character of experiments would show him 
 that they never can lead to results of such 
 
 a kind; that being themselves only ap- 
 proximate and limited, they cannot give 
 us knowledge which is exact and univer- 
 sal. No eminence of character and genius 
 can give a man authority enough to jus- 
 tify us in believing him when lie makes 
 statements implying exact or universal 
 knowledge. 
 
 Again, an Arctic explorer may tell us 
 that in a given latitude and longitude he 
 has experienced such and such a degree 
 of cold, that the sea was of such a depth, 
 and the ice of such a character. We 
 should be quite right to believe him, in 
 the absence of any stain upon his veracity. 
 It is conceivable that we might, without 
 ceasing to be men, go there and verify 
 his statement; it can be tested by the 
 witness of his companions, and there is 
 adequate ground for supposing that he 
 knows the truth of what he is saying. 
 But if an old whaler tells us that the ice 
 is three hundred feet thick all the way up 
 to the Pole, we shall not be justified in 
 believing him. For although the state- 
 ment may be capable of verification by 
 man, it is certainly not capable of verifi- 
 cation by him, with any means and appli- 
 ances which he has possessed ; and he 
 must have persuaded himself of the truth 
 of it by some means which does not at- 
 tach any credit to his testimony. Even 
 if, therefore, the matter affirmed is within' 
 the reach" of human knowledge, we have 
 no right to accept it upon authority unless 
 it is within the reach of our informant's ' 
 knowledge. 
 
 What shall we say of that authority, 
 more venerable and august than any in-' 
 dividual witness, the time-honored tradi-. 
 tion of the human race ? An atmosphere 
 of beliefs and conceptions has been 1 
 formed by the labors and struggles of our 
 forefathers, which enables us to breathe 
 amid the various and complex circum- 
 stances of our life. It is around and about 
 us and within us; we cannot think except' 
 in the forms and processes of thought 
 which it supplies. Is it possible to doubt' 
 and to test it ? and if possible, is it right ? 
 
 We shall find reason to answer that it 
 is not only possible and right, but our 
 bounden duty ; that the main purpose of 
 the tradition itself is to supply us with 
 the means of asking questions, of testing 
 and inquiring into things; that if we mis- 
 use it, and take it as a collection of cut- 
 and-dried statements, to be accepted with- 
 out further inquiry, we are not only in- 
 juring ourselves here, but by refusing to 
 do our part toward the building up of 
 the fabric which shall be inherited by our 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [323] S3 
 
 children, we are tending to cut off our- 
 . selves and our race from the human line. 
 
 Let us first take care to distinguish a 
 .kind of tradition which especially requires 
 to be examined and called in question, 
 because it especially shrinks from inquiry. 
 Suppose that a medicine-man in Central 
 Africa tells his tribe that a certain power- 
 ful medicine in his tent will be propitiated 
 if they kill their catt.le ; and that the tribe 
 believe him. Whether the medicine was 
 propitiated or not, there are no means of 
 verifying", but the cattle are gone. Still 
 the belief may be kept up in the tribe that 
 propitiation has been effected in this way ; 
 and in a later generation it will be all the 
 easier for another medicine-man to per- 
 suade them to a similar act. Here the 
 only reason for belief is that everybody 
 has believed the thing for so long that it 
 must be true. And yet the belief was 
 founded on fraud, and has been prop- 
 agated by credulity. That man will un- 
 doubtedly do right, and be a friend of 
 men who shall call it in question and see 
 that there is no evidence for it, help his 
 neighbors to see as he does, and even, if 
 need be, go into the holy tent and break 
 the medicine. 
 
 The rule,which should guide us in such 
 cases is simple and obvious enough : that 
 the aggregate testimony of our neighbors 
 is subject to the same conditions as the 
 .testimony of any one of them. Namely, 
 we have no right to believe a thing true 
 because everybody says so, unless there 
 are good grounds for believing that some 
 one person at least has the means of 
 .knowing what is true, and is speaking the 
 truth so far as he knows it. However 
 .many nations and generations of men 
 Are brought into the witness-box, they 
 cannot testify to anything which they do 
 not know. Every man who has accepted 
 the statement from somebody else, with- 
 out himself testing and verifying it, is out 
 of court ; his word is worth nothing at 
 all. And when we get back at last to the 
 true birth and beginning of the statement, 
 two serious questions must be disposed of 
 |n regard to him who first made it : was 
 fee mistaken in thinking that he knew 
 about this matter, or was he lying ? 
 
 This last question is unfortunately a 
 very actual and practical one even to us 
 fit this day and in this country. We 
 have no occasion to go to La Salette, or 
 to Central Africa, or to Lourdes, for ex- 
 amples of immoral and debasing super- 
 stition. It is only too possible for a child 
 to grow up in London surrounded by an 
 Atmosphere of beliefs fit only for the sav- 
 
 age, which have ,in our own time been 
 founded in fraud and propagated by cre- 
 dulity. 
 
 Laying aside, then, such tradition as is 
 handed on without testing by successive 
 generations, let us consider that which is 
 truly built up out of the common expe- 
 rience of mankind. This great fabric is 
 for the guidance of our thoughts, and . 
 through them of our actions, both in the 
 moral and in the material world. In the 
 moral world, for example, it gives us the 
 conceptions of right in general, of justice, 
 of truth, of beneficence, and the like. 
 These are given as conceptions, not as 
 statements or propositions ; they answer 
 to certain definite instincts, which are 
 certainly within us, however they came 
 there. That it is right to be beneficent is 
 matter of immediate personal experience; 
 for when a man retires within himself 
 and there finds something, wider and 
 more lasting than his solitary personality 
 which says, ' I want to do right,' as well, 
 as, ' I want to do good to man,' he can 
 verify by direct observation that one in?- 
 stinct is founded upon and agrees fully 
 with the other. And it is his duty so to 
 verify this and all similar statements. 
 
 The tradition says also, at a definite 
 place and time, that such and such ac- 
 tions are just, or true, or beneficent. For 
 all such rules a further inquiry is neces- 
 sary, since they are sometimes established 
 by an authority other than that of the 
 moral sense founded on experience. 
 Until recently, the moral tradition of our 
 own country and indeed of all Europe 
 --taught that it was beneficent to give* 
 money indiscriminately to beggars. But 
 the questioning of this rule, and investi- 
 gation into it, led men to see that true 
 beneficence is that which helps a man to 
 do the work which he is most fitted for, 
 not that which keeps and encourages him 
 in idleness ; and that to neglect this dis- 
 tinction in the present is to prepare pau- 
 perism and misery for the future. By 
 this testing and discussion, not only ha'a 
 practice been purified and made more 
 beneficent, but the very conception of be- 
 neficence has been made wider and wiser. 
 Now here the great social heirloom con- 
 sists of two parts : the instinct of benefi- 
 cence, which makes a certain side of our 
 nature, when predominant, wish to do 
 good to men ; and the intellectual con- 
 ception of beneficence, which we can com- 
 pare with any proposed course of conduct 
 and ask, ' Is this beneficent or not ? ' By 
 the continual asking and answering : pf 
 such questions the conception grows in 
 
34 [324] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 breadth and distinctness, and the instinct 
 becomes strengthened and purified. It 
 appears then that the great use of the 
 conception, the intellectual part of the 
 heirloom, is to enable us to ask questions ; 
 that it grows and is kept straight by 
 means of these questions ; and if we do 
 not use it for that purpose we shall grad- 
 ually lose it altogether, and be left with a 
 mere code of regulations which cannot 
 rightly be called morality at all. 
 Such considerations apply even more ob- 
 viously and clearly, if possible, to the store 
 of beliefs and conceptions which our 
 fathers have amassed for us in respect of 
 the material world. We are ready to 
 laugh at the rule of thumb of the Austral- 
 ian, who continues to tie his hatchet to 
 the side of the handle, although the Bir- 
 mingham fitter has made a hole on pur- 
 pose for him to put the handle in. His 
 people have tied up hatchets so for ages : 
 who is he that he should set himself up 
 against their wisdom ? He has sunk so 
 low that he cannot do what some of them 
 must have done in the far distant past 
 call in question an established usage, and 
 invent or learn something better Yet 
 here, in the dim beginning of knowledge, 
 where science and art are one, we find 
 only the same simple rule which applies 
 to the highest and deepest growths of 
 that cosmic Tree ; to its loftiest flower- 
 tipped branches as well as to the pro- 
 foundest of its hidden roots ; the rule, 
 namely, that what is stored up and hand- 
 ed down to us is rightly used by those 
 who act as the makers acted, when they 
 stored it up ; those who use it to ask fur- 
 ther questions, to examine, to investigate ; 
 who try honestly and solemnly to find 
 out what is the right way of looking at 
 things and of dealing with them. 
 
 A question rightly asked is already 
 half answered, said Jacobi ; we may add 
 that the method of solution is the other 
 half of the answer, and that the actual 
 result counts for nothing by the side of 
 these two. For an example let us go 
 to the telegraph, where theory and prac- 
 tice, grown each to years of discretion, 
 are marvelously wedded for the fruitful 
 service of men. Ohm found that the 
 strength of an electric current is directly 
 proportional to the strength of the bat- 
 tery which produces it, and inversely as 
 the length of the wire along which it has 
 to travel. This is called Ohm's law ; but 
 the result, regarded as a statement to be 
 believed, is not the valuable part of it. 
 The first half is the question : what rela- 
 tion holds good between these quanti- 
 
 ties ? So put, the question involves al- 
 ready the conception of strength of cur- 
 rent, and of strength of battery, as quan- 
 tities to be measured and compared ; it 
 hints clearly that these are the things to 
 be attended to in the study of electric 
 currents. The second half is the method 
 of investigation ; how to measure these 
 quantities, what instruments are required 
 for the experiment, and how are they to 
 be used? The student who begins to 
 learn about electricity is not asked to be* 
 lieve in Ohm's law : he is made to under- 
 stand the question, he is placed before 
 the apparatus, and he is taught to verify 
 it. He learns to do things, not to think 
 he knows things ; to use instruments and 
 to ask questions, not to accept a tradi- 
 tional statement. The question which 
 required a genius to ask it rightly is an- 
 swered by a tyro. If Ohm's law were 
 suddenly lost and forgotten by all men, 
 while the question and the method of so- 
 lution remained, the result could be redis- 
 covered in an hour. But the result by it- 
 self, if known to a people who could not 
 comprehend the value of the question or 
 the means of solving it, would be like a 
 watch in the hands of a savage who 
 could not wind it up, or an iron steam- 
 ship worked by Spanish engineers. 
 
 In regard, then, to the sacred tradition 
 of humanity, we learn that it consists, not 
 in propositions or statements which are 
 to be accepted and believed on the au- 
 thority of the tradition, but in questions 
 rightly asked, in conceptions which en- 
 able us to ask further questions, and in 
 methods of answering questions. The 
 value of all these things depends on their 
 being tested day by day. The very sa- 
 credness of the precious deposit imposes 
 upon us the duty and the responsibility of 
 testing it, of purifying and enlarging it to 
 the utmost of our power. He who makes 
 use of its results to stifle his own doubts, 
 or to hamper the inquiry of others, is 
 guilty of a sacrilege which centuries shall 
 never be able to blot out. When the la- 
 bors and questionings of honest and brave 
 men shall have built up the fabric of 
 known truth to a glory which we in this 
 generation can neither hope for nor im* 
 agine, in that pure and holy temple he 
 shall have no part nor lot, but his name 
 and his works shall be cast out into thfc 
 darkness of oblivion forever. 
 
 ///. The Limits of Inference. The 
 question in what cases we may believe 
 that which goes beyond our experience, 
 s a very large and delicate one, extend- 
 ing to the whole range of scientific 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [325] 85 
 
 method, and requiring a considerable in- 
 crease in the application of it before it can 
 be answered with anything approaching 
 to completeness. But one rule, lying on 
 the threshold of the subject, of extreme 
 simplicity and vast practical importance, 
 may here be touched upon and shortly 
 laid" down. 
 
 A little reflection will show us that 
 every belief, even the simplest and most 
 fundamental, goes beyond experience 
 when regarded as a guide to our actions. 
 A burnt child dreads the fire, because it 
 believes that the fire will burn it to-day 
 just as it did yesterday ; but this belief 
 goes beyond experience, and assumes that 
 the unknown fire of to-day is like the 
 known fire of yesterday. Even the be- 
 lief that the child was burnt yesterday 
 goes beyond present experience, which 
 contains only the memory of a burning, 
 and not the burning itself ; it assumes, 
 therefore, that this memory is trustworthy, 
 although we know that a memory may 
 often be mistaken. But if it is to be used 
 as a guide to action, as a hint of what 
 the future is to be, it must assume some- 
 thing about that future, namely, that it 
 will be consistent with the supposition 
 that the burning really took place yester- 
 day ; which is going beyond experience. 
 Even the fundamental ' I am,' which can- 
 not be doubted, is no guide to action un- 
 til it takes to itself I shall be,' which goes 
 beyond experience. The question is not, 
 therefore, ' May we believe what goes be- 
 yond experience ? ' for this is involved in 
 the very nature of belief ; but ' How far 
 and in what manner may we add to our 
 experience in forming our beliefs ? ' 
 
 And an answer, of utter simplicity 
 and universality, is suggested by the 
 example we have taken : a burnt child 
 dreads the fire. We may go beyond ex- 
 perience by assuming that what we do 
 not know is like what we do know ; or, 
 in other words, we may add to our ex- 
 perience on the assumption of a uniform- 
 ity in nature. What this uniformity pre- 
 cisely is, how we grow in the knowledge 
 of it from generation to generation, these 
 are questions which for the present we 
 lay aside, being content to examine two 
 instances which may serve to make plain- 
 er the nature of the rule. 
 
 From certain observations made with 
 the spectroscope, we infer the existence 
 of hydrogen in the sun. By looking into 
 the' spectroscope when the sun is shining 
 on its slit, we see certain definite bright 
 lines : and experiments made upon bodies 
 en the earth have taught us that when 
 
 these bright lines are seen hydrogen is 
 the source of them. We assume, then, 
 that the unknown bright lines in the sun 
 are like the known bright lines of the 
 laboratory, and that hydrogen in the sun 
 behaves as hydrogen under similar circum- 
 stances would behave on the earth. 
 
 But are we not trusting our spectro- 
 scope too much? Surely, having found 
 it to be trustworthy for terrestrial sub- 
 stances, where its statements can be veri- 
 fied by man, we are justified in accepting 
 its testimony in other like cases; but not 
 when it gives us information about things 
 in the sun, where its testimony cannot be 
 directly verified by man ? 
 
 Certainly, we want to know a little 
 more before this inference can be justi- 
 fied ; and fortunately we do know this. 
 The spectroscope testifies to exactly the 
 same thing in the two cases ; namely, 
 that light- vibrations of a certain rate are 
 being sent through it. Its construction 
 is such that if it were wrong about this in- 
 one case, it would be wrong in the other. 
 When we come to look into the matter, 
 we find that we have really assumed the 
 matter of the sun to be like the matter of 
 the earth, made up of a certain number 
 of distinct substances ; and that each of 
 these, when very hot, has a distinct rate of 
 vibration, by which it may be recognized 
 and singled out from the rest. But this 
 is the kind of assumption which we are 
 justified in using when we add to our ex- 
 perience. It is an assumption of uniform- 
 ity in nature, and can only be checked 
 by comparison with many similar assump- 
 tions which we have to make in other 
 such cases. 
 
 But is this a true belief, of the existence 
 of hydrogen in the sun? Can it help in 
 the right guidance of human action ? 
 
 Certainly not, if it is accepted on un- 
 worthy grounds, and without some un- 
 derstanding of the process by which it is 
 g'ot at. But when this process is taken 
 in as the ground of the belief, it becomes 
 a very serious and practical matter. For 
 if there is no hydrogen in the sun, the 
 spectroscope that is to say, the measure- 
 ment of rates of vibration must be an 
 uncertain guide in recognizing different 
 substances ; and consequently it ought 
 not to be used in chemical analysis in 
 assaying, for example to the great sav- 
 ing of time, trouble, and money. Where- 
 as the acceptance of the spectroscopic 
 method as trustworthy has enriched us 
 not only with new metals, which is a great 
 thing, but with new processes of inve^ti- 
 gation, which is vastly greater. I. 
 
36 [326] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 For another example, let us consider 
 tfce way in which we infer the truth of an 
 Historical event say the siege of Syra- 
 cuse in the Peloponnesian war. Our ex- 
 perience is that manuscripts exist which 
 are said to be and which call themselves 
 manuscripts of the history of Thucydides ; 
 that in other manuscripts, stated to be by 
 later historians, he is described as living 
 during the time of the war; and that 
 books, supposed to date from the revival 
 of learning, tell us how these manuscripts 
 had been preserved and were then ac- 
 quired. We find also that men do not, 
 as a rule, forge books and histories with- 
 out a special motive ; we assume that in 
 this respect men in the past were like 
 men in the present ; and we observe that 
 in this case no special motive was present. 
 That is, we add to our experience on the as- 
 sumption of a uniformity in the characters 
 of men. Because our knowledge of this 
 uniformity is far less complete and exact 
 than our knowledge of that which obtains 
 in physics, inferences of the historical kind 
 are more precarious and less exact than 
 inferences in many other sciences. 
 
 But if there is any special reason to 
 suspect the character of the persons who 
 wrote or transmitted certain books, the 
 qase becomes altered. If a group of 
 documents give internal evidence that 
 they were produced among people who 
 forged books in the names of others, and 
 who, in describing events, suppressed 
 those things which did not suit them, 
 while they amplified such as did suit 
 them ; who not only committed these 
 crimes, but gloried in them as proofs of 
 humility and zeal ; then we must say that 
 ypon such documents no true historical 
 inference can be founded, but only unsat- 
 isfactory conjecture. 
 
 We may, then, add to our experience 
 on the assumption of a uniformity in nat- 
 ure; we may fill in our picture of what 
 is and has been, as experience gives it us, 
 in such a way as to make the whole con- 
 sistent with this uniformity. And practi- 
 cally demonstrative inference that which 
 ives us a right to believe in the result of 
 it is a clear showing that in no other 
 way than by the truth of this result can 
 the uniformity of nature be saved. 
 
 No evidence, therefore, can justify us 
 in believing the truth of a statement 
 .which is contrary to, or outside of, the 
 uniformity of nature. If our experience is 
 such that it cannot be filled up consistent- 
 ly with uniformity, all we have a right to 
 conclude .is that there is something wrong 
 somewhere ; but the possibility of infer- 
 
 ence is taken away ; .we must rest in our 
 experience, and not go beyond it at all. 
 If an event really happened which was 
 not a part of the uniformity of nature, it 
 would have two properties : no evidence 
 could give the right to believe it to any 
 except those whose actual experience it 
 was ; and no inference worthy of belief 
 could t>e founded upon it at all. 
 
 Are we then bound to believe that nat- 
 ure is absolutely and universally uniform? 
 Certainly not ; we have no right to be- 
 lieve anything of this kind. The rule 
 only tells us that in forming beliefs which 
 go beyond our experience, we may make 
 the assumption that nature is practically 
 uniform so far as we are concerned. 
 Within the range of human action and 
 verification, we may form, by help of 
 this assumption, actual beliefs ; beyond 
 it, only those hypotheses which serve for 
 the more accurate asking of questions. 
 
 To sum up : 
 
 We may believe what goes beyond our 
 experience, only when it is inferred from, 
 that experience by the assumption that 
 what we do not know is like what we 
 know. 
 
 1^ We may believe the statement of an- 
 other person, when there is reasonable 
 ground for supposing that he knows the. 
 matter of which he speaks, and that he is 
 speaking the truth so far as he knows it. 
 
 It is wrong in all cases to believe on 
 insufficient evidence ; and where it is 
 presumption to doubt and to investigate, 
 there it is worse than presumption to be- 
 lieve. 
 
 IV. THE ETHICS OF RELIGION, j 
 
 THE word religion is used is many 
 different meanings, and there have been' 
 not a few controversies in which the main 
 difference between the contending parties 
 was only this, that they understood by re- 
 ligion two different things. I will there- 
 fore begin by setting forth as clearly as I 
 can one or two of the meanings which 
 the word appears to have in popular 
 speech. 
 
 First, then, it may mean a body of doc- 
 trines, as in the common phrase, 'The 
 truth of the Christian religion ; ' or in this 
 sentence, ' The religion of the Buddha 
 teaches that the soul is not a distinct sub-' 
 stance.' Opinions differ upon the ques- 
 tion what doctrines may properly be 
 called religious; some people holding 
 that there can be no religion without be- 
 lief in a God and in a future life, so that 
 in their judgment the body of doctrines 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [327] 
 
 must necessarily include these two ; while 
 others, would insist upon other special 
 dogmas being included, before they could 
 consent to call the system by this name. 
 But the number of such people is daily 
 diminishing, by reason of the spread and 
 the increase of our knowledge about dis- 
 tant countries and races. To me, indeed, 
 it would seem rash to assert of any doc- 
 trine or its contrary that it might not 
 form part of a religion, But, fortunately, 
 it is not necessary to any part of the dis- 
 cussion on which I propose to enter that 
 this question should be settled. 
 
 Secondly, religion may mean a cer- 
 emonial or cult, involving an organized 
 priesthood and a machinery of sacred 
 things and places. In this sense we 
 speak of the clergy as ministers of re- 
 ligion, or of a state as tolerating the 
 practice of certain religions. There is 
 a somewhat wider meaning which it will 
 be convenient to consider together with 
 this one, and as a mere extension of it, 
 namely, that in which religion stands for 
 the influence of a certain priesthood. A 
 religion is sometimes said to have been 
 successful when it has got its priests into 
 power ; thus some writers speak of the 
 wonderfully rapid success of Christianity. 
 A nation is said to have embraced a re- 
 ligion when the authorities of that nation 
 have granted privileges to the clergy, 
 have made them as far as possible the 
 leaders of society, and have given them a 
 considerable share in the management of 
 public affairs. So the northern nations 
 of Europe are said to have embraced the 
 Catholic religion at an early date. The 
 reason why it seems to me convenient to 
 take these two meanings together is, 
 that they are both related to the priest- 
 hood. Although the priesthood itself is 
 not called religion, so far as I know, yet 
 the word is used for the general influence 
 and professional acts of the priesthood. 
 
 Thirdly, religion may mean a body of 
 precepts or code of rules, intended to 
 guide human conduct, as in this sentence 
 of the authorized version of the New 
 Testament: 'Pure religion and undefiled 
 before God and the Father is this, to visit 
 the fatherless and widows in their afflic- 
 tion, and to keep himself unspotted from 
 the world' (James, .L 27). It is some- 
 times difficult to draw the line between 
 this meaning and the last, for it is a mark 
 of the great majority of religions that they 
 confound ceremonial observances with 
 duties having real moral obligation. Thus 
 in the Jewish decalogue the command to do 
 no work on Saturdays is found side by 
 
 side with the prohibition of murder and 
 theft. It might seem to be the more cor- 
 rect as well as the more philosophical 
 course to follow in this matter the dis- 
 tinction made by Butler between moral 
 and positive commands, and to class all 
 those precepts which are not of universal 
 moral obligation under the head of cere- 
 monial. And, in fact, when we come to 
 examine the matter from the point of 
 view of morality, the distinction is of the 
 utmost importance. But from the point 
 of view of religion there are difficulties int 
 making it. In the first place, the distinc- 
 tion is not made, or is not understood, by 
 religious folk in general. Innumerable 
 tracts and pretty stories impress upon us 
 that Sabbath-breaking is rather worse 
 than stealing, and leads naturally on to 
 materialism and murder. Less than a 
 hundred years ago sacrilege was punish- 
 able by burning in France, and murder 
 by simple decapitation. In the next place, 
 if we pick out a religion at haphazard, we 
 shall find that it is not at all easy to divide 
 its precepts into those which are really of 
 moral obligation and those which are' in- 
 different and of a ceremonial character^ 
 We may find precepts unconnected with 
 any ceremonial, and yet positively im- 
 moral ; and ceremonials may be immoral 
 in themselves, or constructively immoral 
 on account of their known symbolism. 
 On the whole, it seems to me most con- 
 venient to draw the plain and obvious 
 distinction between those actions which a 
 religion prescribes to all its followers, 
 whether the actions are ceremonial or not, 
 and those which are prescribed only as 
 professional actions of a sacerdotal class. 
 The latter will come under what I hav 
 called the second meaning of religion, 
 the professional acts and the influence 5 of 
 a priesthood. In the third meaning will 
 be included all that practically guides the 
 lifeof a layman, in so far as this guidance 
 is supplied to him by his religion. 
 
 Fourthly, and lastly, there is a meaning 
 of the word religion which has been 
 coming more and more prominently for- 
 ward of late years, till it has even threat- 
 ened to supersede all the others. Religion 
 has been defined as morality touched with 
 emotion. I will not here adopt this defi- 
 nition, because I wish to deal with the 
 concrete in the first place, and only to 
 pass on to the abstract in so far as that 
 previous study appears to lead to it. I wish 
 to consider the facts of religion as we find 
 them, and not ideal possibilities. ' Yes, 
 but,' every one will say, ' if you mean my 
 own religion, it is already, as a matter of 
 
38 [3281 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 fact, morality touched with emotion. It 
 is the highest morality touched with the 
 purest emotion, an emotion directed to- 
 ward the most worthy of objects.' Un- 
 fortunately we do not mean your re- 
 ligion alone, but all manner of heresies 
 and heathenisms along with it : the re- 
 ligions of the Thug, of the Jesuit, of the 
 South Sea cannibal, of Confucius, of the 
 poor Indian with his untutored mind, of 
 the Peculiar People, of the Mormons, 
 and of the old cat-worshiping Egyptian. 
 It must be clear that we shall restrict 
 ourselves to a very narrow circle of what 
 are commonly called religious facts, unless 
 we include in our considerations not only 
 morality touched with emotion, but also 
 immorality touched with emotion. In 
 fact, what is really touched with emotion 
 ia any case is that body of precepts for 
 the guidance of a layman's life which we 
 have taken to be the third meaning of 
 religion. In that collection of precepts 
 there may be some agreeable to morality, 
 and some repugnant to it, and some in- 
 different, but being all enjoined by the re- 
 ligion they will alfbe touched by the same 
 religious emotion. Shall we then say that 
 religion means a feeling, an emotion, an 
 habitual attitude of mind toward some 
 object or objects, or toward life in gen- 
 eral, which has a bearing upon the way in 
 wiiich men regard the rules of conduct ? 
 I think the last phrase should be left out. 
 An habitual attitude of mind, of a re- 
 ;Kgious character, does always have some 
 .bearing upon the way in which men re- 
 gard the rules of conduct; but it seems 
 sometimes as if this were an accident, 
 and not the essence of the religious feel- 
 ing. Some devout people prefer to have 
 their devotion pure and simple, without 
 admixture of any such application they 
 do not want to listen to ' cauld morality.' 
 And it seems as if the religious feeling of 
 the Greeks, and partly also of our own 
 ancestors, was so far divorced from mor- 
 ality that it affected it only, as it were, 
 by a side-wind, through the influence of 
 the character and example of the Gods. 
 So that it seems only likely to create con- 
 fusion if we mix up morality with this 
 fourth meaning of religion. Sometimes 
 religion means a code of precepts, and 
 sometimes it means a devotional habit of 
 mind ; the two things are sometimes con- 
 nected, but also they are sometimes quite 
 distinct. But that the connection of these 
 two things is more and more insisted on, 
 that it is the keynote of the apparent re- 
 vival of religion which has taken place 
 in this century, is a very significant 
 
 fact, about which there is more to be 
 said. 
 
 As to the nature of this devotional 
 habit of mind, there are no doubt many 
 who would like a closer definition. But I 
 am not at all prepared to say what attitude 
 of mind may properly be called religious, 
 and what may not. Some will hold that 
 religion must have a person for its object ; 
 but the Buddha was filled with religious 
 feeling, and yet he had no personal ob- 
 ject. Spinoza, the God-intoxicated man, 
 had no personal object for his devotion. 
 It might be possible to frame a definition 
 which would fairly include all cases, but 
 it would require the expenditure of vast 
 ingenuity and research, and would not, I 
 am inclined to think, be of much Use 
 when it was obtained. 
 
 Nor is the difficulty to be got over by 
 taking any definite and well-organized 
 sect, whose principles are settled in black 
 and white ; for example, the Roman 
 Catholic Church, whose seamless unity 
 has just been exhibited and protected by 
 an (Ecumenical Council. Shall we listen 
 to Mr. Mivart, who 'execrates without 
 reserve Marian persecutions, the Massa- 
 cre of St. Bartholomew, and all similar 
 acts ' ? or to the editor of the Dublin Re- 
 view, who thinks that a teacher of false 
 doctrines 'should be visited by the law 
 with just that amount of severity which 
 the public sentiment will bear ' ? For 
 assuredly common-sense morality will 
 pass very different judgments on these 
 two distinct religions, although it appears 
 that experts have found room for both 
 of them within the limits of the Vatican 
 definitions. 
 
 Moreover, there is very great good to 
 be got by widening our view of what may 
 be contained in religion. If we go to a 
 man and propose to test his own religion 
 by the canons of common-sense morality, 
 he will be, most likely, offended, for he 
 will say that his religion is far too sub- 
 lime and exalted to be affected by con- 
 siderations of that sort. But he will 
 have no such objection in the case of 
 other people's religion. And when he 
 has found that in the name of religion 
 other people, in other circumstances, 
 have believed in doctrines that were false, 
 have supported priesthoods that were so- 
 cial evils, have taken wrong for right, and 
 have even poisoned the very sources of 
 morality, he may be tempted to ask him- 
 self, Is there no trace of any of these 
 evils in my own religion, or at least in 
 my own conception and practice of it ? ' 
 And that is just what we want him to do. 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [32$] SO 
 
 Bring; your doctrines, your priesthoods, 
 your precepts, yea, .even the inner devo- 
 tion of your soul, before the tribunal of 
 conscience ; she is no man's and no God's 
 vicar, but the supreme judge of men and 
 Gods. 
 
 Let us inquire, then, what morality 
 has to say in regard to religious doctrines. 
 It deals with the manner of religious be- 
 lief directly, and with the matter indi- 
 rectly. Religious beliefs must be found- 
 ed on evidence ; if they are not so 
 founded, it is wrong to hold them. The 
 rule of right conduct in this matter is ex- 
 actly the opposite of that implied in the 
 two famous texts : He that believeth not 
 shall be damned,' and Blessed are they 
 that have not seen and yet have believed.' 
 For a man who clearly felt and recognized 
 the duty of intellectual honesty, of care- 
 fully testing every belief before he re- 
 ceived it, and especially before he recom- 
 mended it to others, it would be impossi- 
 ble to ascribe the profoundly immoral 
 teaching of these texts to a true prophet 
 or worthy leader of humanity. It will 
 comfort those who wish to preserve their 
 reverence for the character of a great 
 teacher to remember that one of these 
 sayings is in the well-known forged pas- 
 sage at the end of the second gospel, and 
 that the other occurs only in the late and 
 legendary fourth gospel ; both being de- 
 scribed as spoken under utterly impossi- 
 ble circumstances. These precepts be- 
 long to the Church and not to the Gospel. 
 But whoever wrote either of them down 
 as a deliverance of one whom he sup- 
 posed to be a divine teacher, has thereby 
 written down himself as a man void of 
 intellectual honesty, as a man whose 
 word cannot be trusted, as a man Who 
 would accept and spread about any kind 
 of baseless fiction for fear of believing too 
 little. 
 
 So far as to the manner of religious be- 
 lief. Let us now inquire what bearing 
 morality has upon its matter. We may 
 see at once that this can only be indirect ; 
 for the Tightness or wrongness of belief 
 in a doctrine depends only upon the nat- 
 ure of the evidence for it, and not upon 
 what the doctrine is. But there is a very 
 important way in which religious doctrine 
 may lead to morality or immorality, and 
 in which, therefore, morality has a bear- 
 ing upon doctrine. It is when that doc- 
 trine declares the character and actions 
 of the Gods who are regarded as objects 
 of' reverence and worship. If a God is 
 represented as doing that which is clearly 
 wrong, and is still held up to the rever- 
 
 ence of men, they will be tempted to 
 think that in doing this wrong thing they 
 are not so very wrong after all, but are 
 only following an example which all men 
 respect. So says Plato : 
 
 4 We must not tell a youthful listener 
 that he will be doing nothing extraordi- 
 nary if he commit the foulest crimes nor 
 yet if he chastise the crimes of a father 
 in the most unscrupulous manner, but 
 will simply be doing what the first and 
 greatest of the Gods have done before 
 him. . . . 
 
 Nor yet is it proper to say in any 
 case what is indeed untrue that Gods 
 wage war against Gods, and intrigue and 
 fight among themselves ; that is, if the 
 future guardians of our state are to deem 
 it a most disgraceful thing to quarrel 
 lightly with one another : far less ought 
 we to select as subjects for fiction and 
 embroidery the battles of the giants, and 
 numerous other feuds of all sorts, in. 
 which Gods and heroes fight against their 
 own kith and kin. But if there is any 
 possibility of persuading them that to> 
 quarrel with one's fellow is a sin oi 
 which no member of a state was ever 
 guilty, such ought rather to be the lan- 
 guage held to our children from the first,, 
 by old men and old women, and all 
 elderly persons ; and such is the strain 
 in which our poets must be compelled to- 
 write. But stories like the chaining of 
 Hera by her son, and the flinging of H'ep- 
 haistos out of heaven for trying to take, 
 his mother's part when his father was 
 beating her, and all those battles of thc- 
 Gods which are to be found in Homer,, 
 must be refused admittance into our state, 
 whether they be allegorical or not. For 
 a child cannot discriminate between what 
 is allegory and what is not ;. and what- 
 ever at that age is adopted as a matter of 
 belief has a tendency to become fixed 
 and indelible, and therefore,, perhaps, we 
 ought to esteem it of the greatest impor- 
 tance that the fictions which children first 
 hear should be adapted in the most per- 
 fect manner to the promotion of virtue.' 
 (Rep. ii. 378. Tr. Davies and Vaughan.) 
 
 And Seneca says the same thing, with 
 still more reason in his day and country : 
 ' What else is this appeal to the precedent 
 of the Gods for, but to inflame our lusts, 
 and to furnish license and excuse for the 
 corrupt act under the divine protection ? ' 
 And again, of the character of Jupiter as 
 described in the popular legends : ' This 
 has led to no other result than to deprive 
 sin of its shame in man's eyes, by showing 
 him the God no better than himself.' la 
 
40 [330] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 Imperial Rome, the sink of all nations, it- 
 was not uncommon to find ' the intending 
 sinner addressing to the deified vice which 
 fee contemplated a prayer for the success 
 of his design ; the adulteress imploring of 
 Venus the favors of her paramour; . . . 
 the thief praying to Hermes Dolios for 
 aid in his enterprise, or offering up to him 
 the first fruits of his plunder ; . . . youths 
 entreating Hercules to expedite the death 
 of a rich uncle.' 
 
 When we reflect that criminal deities 
 were worshiped all over the empire, we 
 cannot but wonder that any good people 
 were left ; that man could still be holy, 
 although every God was vile. Yet this 
 was undoubtedly the case; the social 
 forces worked steadily on wherever there 
 was peace and a settled government and 
 municipal freedom ; and the wicked stories 
 of theologians were somehow explained 
 away and disregarded. If men were no 
 better than their religions, the world would 
 be a hell indeed. 
 
 It is very important, however, to con- 
 sider what really ought to be done in the 
 case of stories like these. When the poet 
 sings that Zeus kicked Hephaistos out of 
 heaven for trying to help his mother, 
 Plato says that this fiction must be sup- 
 pressed by law. We cannot follow him 
 there, for since his time we have had too 
 much of trying to suppress false doctrines 
 by law. Plato thinks it quite obviously 
 clear that God cannot produce evil, and 
 he would stop everybody's mouth who 
 ventured to say that he can. But in regard 
 to the doctrine itself, we can only ask, Is 
 it true ? ' And that is a question to be 
 settled by evidence. Did Zeus commit 
 this crime, or did he not ? We must ask 
 the apologists, the reconcilers of religion 
 and science, what evidence they can pro- 
 duce to prove that Zeus kicked Hephais- 
 tos out of heaven. That a doctrine may 
 lead to immoral consequences is no reason 
 for disbelieving it. But whether the doc- 
 trine were true or false, one thing does 
 clearly follow from its moral character : 
 namely this, that if Zeus behaved as he is 
 said to have behaved he ought not to be 
 worshiped. To those' who complain of his 
 violence and injustice it is no answer to 
 say that the divine attributes are far above 
 human comprehension ; that the ways of 
 Zeus are not our ways, neither are his 
 thoughts our thoughts. If he is to be 
 worshiped, he must do something vaster 
 .and nobler and greater than good men 
 do, but it must be like what they do in its 
 goodness. His actions must not be merely 
 a magnified copy of what bad men do. 
 
 So soon as they are thus represented, 
 morality has something to say. Not in- 
 deed about the fact ; for it is not con- 
 science, but reason, that has to judge 
 matters of fact; but about the worship 
 of a character so represented. If there 
 really is good evidence that Zeus kicked 
 Hephaistos out of heaven, and seduced 
 Alkmene by a mean trick, say- so by all 
 means ; but say also that it is wrong to 
 salute his priests or to make offerings in 
 his temple. 
 
 When men do their duty in this respect, 
 morality has a very curious indirect effect 
 on the religious doctrine itself. As soon 
 as the offerings become less frequent, the 
 evidence for the doctrine begins to fade 
 away ; the process of theological interpre- 
 tation gradually brings out the true inner 
 meaning of it, that Zeus did not kick 
 Hephaistos out of heaven, and did not 
 seduce Alkmene. 
 
 Is this a merely theoretical discussion 
 about far-away things ? Let us come 
 back for a moment to our own time and 
 country, and think whether there can be 
 any lesson for us in this refusal of common- 
 sense morality to worship a deity whose 
 actions are a magnified copy of what 
 bad men do. There are three doctrines 
 which find very wide acceptance among 
 our countrymen at the present day : the 
 doctrines of original sin, of a vicarious 
 sacrifice, and of eternal punishments. We 
 are not concerned with any refined evap- 
 orations of these doctrines which are ex- 
 haled by courtly theologians, but with 
 the naked statements which are put into 
 the minds of children and of ignorant 
 people, which are taught broadcast and 
 without shame in denominational schools. 
 Father Faber, good soul, persuaded him- 
 self that after all only a very few people 
 would be really damned, and Father Ox- 
 enham gives one the impression that it 
 will not hurt even them very much. But 
 one learns the practical teaching of the 
 Church from such books as ' A Glimpse 
 of Hell,' where a child is described as 
 thrown between the bars upon the burn- 
 ing coals, there to writhe forever. The 
 masses do not get the elegant emascula- 
 tions of Father Faber and Father Oxen- 
 ham ; they get ' a Glimpse of Hell.'^ 
 
 Now to condemn all mankind for the 
 sin of Adam and Eve ; to let the innocent 
 suffer for the guilty ; to keep any one alive 
 in torture forever and ever ; these actions 
 are simply magnified copies of what bad 
 men do. No juggling with divine justice 
 and^mercy ' ,can make them anything else. 
 This must be said to all kinds and-condi- 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [331] 41 
 
 tions of men : that if God holds all man- 
 kind guilty for the sin of Adam, if he 
 has visited upon the innocent the punish- 
 ment of the guilty, if he is to torture any 
 single soul forever, then it is wrong to 
 worship him. 
 
 But there is something to be said also 
 to those who think that religious beliefs 
 are not indeed true, but are useful for the 
 masses ; who deprecate any open and pub- 
 lic argument against them, and .think- that 
 all skeptical books should be published at 
 a high price ; who go to church, not be- 
 cause they approve of it themselves, but 
 to set an example to the servants. Let us 
 ask them to ponder the words of Plato, 
 who, like them, thought that all these 
 tales of the Gods were fables, but still fa- 
 files which might be useful to amuse chil- 
 dren with : ' We ought to esteem it of the 
 greatest importance that the fictions 
 which children first hear should be adapt- 
 ed in the most perfect manner to the 
 promotion of virtue.' If we grant to you 
 that it is good for poor people and chil- 
 dren to believe some of these fictions, is 
 it not better, at least, that they should 
 believe those which are adapted to the 
 promotion of virtue ? Now the stories 
 which you send your servants and chil- 
 dren to hear are adapted to the promo- 
 tion of vice. So far as the remedy is in 
 your own hands, you are bound to apply 
 it ; stop your voluntary subscriptions and 
 the moral support of your presence from 
 any place where the criminal doctrines 
 are taught. You will find more men and 
 better men to preach that which is agree- 
 able to their conscience, than to thunder 
 out doctrines under which their minds are 
 always uneasy, and which only a contin- 
 ual self-deception can keep them from 
 feeling to be wicked. 
 
 Let us now go on to inquire what mor- 
 ality has to say in the matter of religious 
 ministrations, the official acts and the 
 general influence of a priesthood. This 
 question seems to me a more difficult 
 one than the former ; at any rate it is not 
 so easy to find general principles which 
 are at once simple in their nature and 
 clear to the conscience of any man who 
 honestly considers them. One such prin- 
 ciple, indeed, there is, which can hardly 
 be stated in a Protestant country with- 
 out meeting with a cordial response ; 
 being indeed that characteristic of our 
 race which made the Reformation a ne- 
 cessity, and became the soul of the Prot- 
 estant movement. I mean the principle 
 which forbids the priest to come between 
 a man and his conscience. If it be true 
 
 as our daily experience teaches us, that 
 he moral sense gains in clearness and 
 power by exercise, by the constant en-t 
 deavor to find out and to see for our- 
 selves what is right and what is wrong, it 
 must be nothing short of a moral suicide 
 o delegate our conscience to another 
 man. It is true that when we are in dif- 
 ficulties and do not altogether see our 
 way, we quite rightly seek counsel and 
 advice of some friend who has more ex-, 
 ^erience, more wisdom begot by it, more 
 devotion to the right than ourselves, and* 
 who, not being involved in the difficul- 
 ties which encompass us, may more easily 
 see the way out of them. But such coun- 
 sel does not and ought not to take the 
 )lace of our private judgment; on the 
 contrary, among wise men it is asked and 
 given for the purpose of helping and sup- 
 Dorting private judgment. I should go 
 :o my friend, not that he may tell me 
 what to do, but that he may help me to 
 see what is right. 
 
 Now, as we all know, there is a priest- 
 lood whose influence is not to be made 
 ight of, even in our own land, which 
 claims to do two things : to declare with 
 nfallible authority what is right and 
 tfhat is wrong, and to take away the 
 jjuilt of the sinner after confession has- 
 been made to it. The second of these 
 claims we shall come back upon in con- 
 nection with another part of the subject. 
 But that claim is one which, as it seems 
 to me, ought to condemn the priesthood 
 making it in the eyes of every conscien* 
 tious man. We must take care to keep this 
 question to itself, and not to let it be con- 
 fused with quite different ones. The 
 priesthood in question, as we all know, has 
 taught that as right which is not right, and 
 has condemned as wrong some of the ho- 
 liest duties of mankind. But this is not 
 what we are here concerned with. Let us 
 put an ideal case of a priesthood which, as 
 a matter of fact, taught a morality agree- 
 ing with the healthy conscience of all 
 men at a given time ; but which, never- 
 theless, taught this as an infallible reve- 
 lation. The tendency of such teaching, 
 if really accepted, would be to destroy 
 morality altogether, for it is of the very 
 essence of the moral sense that it is a 
 common perception by men of what is 
 good for man. It arises, not in one man's 
 mind by a flash of genius or a transport 
 of ecstasy, but in all men's minds, as the 
 fruit of their necessary intercourse and 
 united labor for a common object. When 
 an infallible authority is set up, the voice 
 of this natural human conscience must 
 
4* [332] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 be hushed and schooled, and made to 
 speak the words of a formula. Obe- 
 dience becomes the whole duty of man ; 
 and the notion of right is attached to a 
 lifeless code of rules, instead of being the 
 informing character of a nation. The 
 natural consequence is that it fades grad- 
 ually out and ends by disappearing alto- 
 gether. I am not describing a purely 
 conjectural state of things, but an effect 
 which has actually been produced at va- 
 rious times and in considerable popula- 
 tions by the influence of the Catholic 
 Church. It is true that we cannot find 
 an actually crucial instance of a pure mor- 
 ality taught as an infallible revelation, 
 and so in time ceasing to be morality for 
 that reason alone. There arc two' cir- 
 cumstances which prevent this. One is 
 that the Catholic priesthood has always 
 practically taught an imperfect morality, 
 and that it is difficult to distinguish be- 
 tween the effects of precepts which are 
 wrong in themselves, and precepts which 
 are only wrong because of the manner in 
 which they are enforced. The other cir- 
 cumstance is that the priesthood has very 
 rarely found a population willing to place 
 itself completely and absolutely under 
 priestly control. Men must live together 
 and work for common objects even in 
 priest-ridden countries ; and those condi- 
 tions which in the course of ages have 
 been able to create the moral sense can- 
 not fail in some degree to recall it to 
 men's minds and gradually to re-enforce 
 it. Thus it comes about that a great 
 and increasing portion of life breaks free 
 from priestly influences, and is governed 
 upon right and rational grounds. The 
 goodness of, men shows itself in time 
 more powerful than the wickedness of 
 some of their religions. 
 
 The practical inference is, then, that 
 we ought to do all in our power to re- 
 strain and diminish the influence of any 
 priesthood which claims to rule con- 
 sciences. But when we attempt to go 
 beyond this plain Protestant principle, we 
 find that the question is one of history 
 and politics. The question which we 
 want to ask ourselves Is it right to 
 support this or that priesthood ? ' can 
 only be answered by this other question, 
 'What has it done or got done? ' 
 
 In asking this question, we must bear 
 in mind that the word priesthood, as we 
 have used it hitherto, has a very wide 
 meaning namely, it means any body of 
 men who perform special ceremonies in 
 the name of religion ; a ceremony being 
 an act which is prescribed by religion to 
 
 that body of men, but not on account of 
 its intrinsic Tightness or wrongness. It 
 includes, therefore, not only the priests 
 of Catholicism, or of the Obi rites, who 
 lay claim to a magical character and pow- 
 ers, but the more familiar clergymen. or 
 ministers of Protestant denominations, 
 and the members of monastic orders. 
 But there is a considerable difference, 
 pointed out by Hume, between a priest 
 who lays claim to a magical character 
 and powers, and a clergymen, in the 
 English sense/as it was understood in 
 Hume's day, whose office was to remind 
 people of their duties every Sunday, and 
 to represent a certain standard of culture 
 in remote country districts. It will, per- 
 haps, conduce to clearness if we use the 
 word priest exclusively in the first sense. 
 There is another confusion which we 
 must endeavor to avoid, if we would really 
 get at the truth of this matter. When one 
 ventures to doubt whether the Catholic 
 clergy has really been an unmixed blessing 
 to Europe, one is generally met by the re-' 
 ply, ' You cannot find any fault with the 
 Sermon on the Mount.' Now it would be 
 too much to say that this has nothing to 
 do with the question we were proposing 
 to ask, for there is a sense in which the 
 Sermon on the Mount and the Catholic 
 clergy have something to do with each 
 other. The Sermon on the Mount is ad- 
 mitted on all hands to be the best and 
 most precious thing that Christianity has 
 offered to the world ; and it cannot be 
 doubted that the Catholic clergy of East 
 and West were the only spokesmen of 
 Christianity until the Reformation, and 
 are the spokesmen of the vast majority of 
 Christians at this moment. But it must 
 surely be unnecessary to say in a Protest- 
 ant country that the Catholic Church and 
 the Gospel are two very different things. 
 The moral teaching of Christ, as partly, 
 preserved in the three first gospels, or- 
 which is the same thing the moral teach- 
 ing of the great Rabbi Hillel, as partly 
 preserved in the Pirke Aboth, is the ex- 
 pression of the conscience of a people who 
 had fought long and heroically for their 
 national existence. In that terrible con- 
 flict they had learned the supreme and 
 overwhelming importance of conduct, 
 the necessity for those who would survive 
 of fighting manfully for their lives and 
 making a stand against the hostile powers 
 around ; the weakness and uselessness of 
 solitary and selfish efforts, the necessity 
 for a man who would be a man to Idse 
 his poor single personality in the being of 
 a greater and nobler combatant the na- 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 1338]' '43 
 
 Arid they said all this, after their j 
 fashion of short and potent sayings, per- 
 haps better than any other men have said 
 it before or since. ' If I am not for my- 
 self/ said the great Hillel, ' who is for me ? 
 And if I am only for myself, where is the 
 use of me ? And if not now, when 1 ' 
 It would be hard to find a more striking 
 contrast than exists between the sturdy 
 unselfish independence of this saying, and 
 the abject and selfish servility of the priest- 
 ridden claimant of the skies. It was this 
 heroic people that produced the morality 
 of the Sermon on the Mount. But it was 
 not they who produced the priests and the 
 dogmas of Catholicism. Shaven crowns, 
 linen vestments, and the claim to priestly 
 rule over consciences, these were dwell- 
 ers on the banks of the Nile. The gos- 
 pel indeed came out of Judaea, but the 
 Church and her dogmas came out of 
 Egypt. Not, as it is written, 'Out of 
 Egypt have I called my son,' but ' Out 
 of Egypt have I called my daughter.' St. 
 Gregory of Nazianzum remarked with 
 wonder that Egypt, having so lately wor- 
 shiped bulls, goats, and crocodiles, was 
 now teaching the world the worship of 
 the Trinity in its truest form. Poor, sim- 
 ple St. Gregory! it was not that Egypt 
 nad risen higher, but that the world had 
 sunk lower. The empire, which in the 
 time of Augustus had dreaded, and with 
 reason, the corrupting influence of Egyp- 
 tian superstitions, was now eaten up by 
 them, and rapidly rotting away. 
 
 Then, when we ask what has been the 
 influence of the Catholic clergy upon 
 European nations, we are not inquiring 
 about the results of accepting the moral- 
 ity of the Sermon on the Mount ; we are 
 inquiring into the effect of attaching an 
 Egyptian priesthood, which teaches Egyp- 
 tian dogmas, to the life and sayings of a 
 Jewish prophet. 
 
 In this inquiry, which requires the 
 knowledge of facts beyond our own im- 
 mediate experience, we must make use of 
 the great principle of authority, which en- 
 ables us to profit by the experience of 
 other men. The great civilized countries 
 on the continent of Europe at the present 
 day France, Germany, Austria, and Italy 
 have had an extensive experience of 
 the Catholic clergy for a great number of 
 centuries, and they are forced by strong 
 practical reasons to form a judgment up- 
 on the character and tendencies of an in- 
 ttitution which is sufficiently powerful to 
 command the attention of all who are in- 
 terested in public affairs. We might add 
 the experience of our forefathers three cent- 
 
 uries ago, and of Ireland at this moment ; 
 but home politics are apt to be looked upon 
 with other eyes than those of reason. Let 
 us hear, then, the judgment of the civilized 
 people of Europe on this question. 
 
 It is a matter of notoriety that an aider 
 and abettor of clerical pretensions is re- 
 garded in France as an enemy of France 
 and of Frenchmen; in Germany as an 
 enemy of Germany and of Germans ; in 
 Austria as an enemy of Austria and Hun- 
 gary, of both Austrians and Magyars; 
 and in Italy as an enemy of Italy and the 
 Italians. He is so regarded, not by a few 
 wild and revolutionary enthusiasts who 
 have cast away all the beliefs of their 
 childhood and all bonds connecting them 
 with the past, but by a great and increas- 
 ing majority of sober and conscientious 
 men of all creeds and persuasions, who 
 are filled with a love for their country, and 
 whose hopes and aims for the future are 
 animated and guided by the examples of 
 those who have gone before them, and by 
 a sense of the continuity of national life. 
 The profound conviction and determina- 
 tion of the people in all these countries, 
 that the clergy must be restricted to a 
 purely ceremonial province, and must not 
 be allowed to interfere, as clergy, in pub- 
 lic affairs this conviction and determi- 
 nation, I say, are not the effect of a rejec- 
 tion of the Catholic dogmas. Such re- 
 jection has not in fact been made in Cath- 
 olic countries by the great majority. ]t 
 involves many difficult speculative ques- 
 tions, the profound disturbance of old 
 habits of thought, and the toilsome con- 
 sideration of abstract ideas. But such is 
 the happy inconsistency of human nature, 
 that men who would be shocked and 
 pained by a doubt about the central doc- 
 trines of their religions are far more 
 really and practically shocked and pained 
 by the moral consequences of clerical as- 
 cendency. About the dogmas they do 
 not know ; they were taught them in 
 cbildhood, and have not inquired into 
 them since, and therefore they are not 
 competent witnesses to the truth of them. 
 But about the priesthood they do know, 
 by daily and hourly experience; and to 
 its character they are competent witnesses. 
 No man can express his convictions more 
 forcibly than by acting upon them in a 
 great and solemn matter of national im- 
 portance. In all these countries the con- 
 viction of the serious and sober majority 
 of the people is embodied, and is being 
 daily embodied, in special legislation, 
 openly and avowedly intended to guard 
 against clerical aggression. The mora 
 
44 [334] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 closely the legislature of these countries 
 reflects the popular will, the more clear 
 and pronounced does this tendency be- 
 come. It may be thwarted or evaded 
 for the moment by constitutional devices 
 and parliamentary tricks, but sooner or 
 later the nation will be thoroughly rep- 
 resented in all of them : and as to what 
 is then to be expected, let the panic of the 
 clerical parties make answer. 
 
 This is a state of opinion and of feeling 
 which we in our own country find it hard 
 to understand, although it is one of the 
 most persistent characters of our nation 
 in past times. We have spoken so plainly 
 and struck so hard in the past, that we 
 seem to have won the right to let this 
 matter alone. We think our enemies are 
 dead, and we forget that our neighbor's 
 enemies are plainly alive : and then we 
 wonder that he does not sit down and be 
 quiet as we are. We are not much ac- 
 customed to be afraid, and we never know 
 when we are beaten. But those who are 
 nearer to the danger feel a very real and, 
 it seems to me, well-grounded fear. The 
 whole structure of modern society, the 
 fruit of long and painful efforts, the hopes 
 of further improvement, the triumphs of 
 justice, of freedom, and of light, the bonds 
 of patriotism which make each nation one, 
 the bonds of humanity which bring dif- 
 ferent nations together all these they see 
 to be menaced with a great and real and 
 even pressing danger. For myself I con- 
 fess that I cannot help feeling as they 
 feel. It seems to me quite possible that 
 the moral and intellectual culture of 
 Europe, the light and the right, what 
 makes life worth having and men worthy 
 to have it, may be clean swept away by a 
 revival of superstition. We are, perhaps, 
 ourselves not free from such a domestic 
 danger; but no one can doubt that the 
 danger would speedily arise if all Europe 
 at our side should become again barbaric, 
 not with the weakness and docility of a 
 barbarism which has never known better, 
 but with the strength of a past civilization 
 perverted to the service of evil. 
 
 Those who know best, then, about the 
 Catholic priesthood at present, regard it 
 as a standing menace to the state and to 
 the moral fabric of society. 
 
 Some would have us believe that this 
 condition of things is quite new, and has 
 in fact been created by the Vatican 
 Council. In the Middle Ages, they say, 
 the Church did incalculable service ; or 
 even if you do not allow that, yet the 
 ancient Egyptian' priesthood invented 
 many useful arts; or if you have read 
 
 anything which is not to their credit, 
 there were the Babylonians and Assyrians 
 who had priests, thousands of years ago ; 
 and in fact, the more you go back into 
 3rehistoric ages, and the further you go 
 away into distant countries, the less you 
 an find to say against the priesthoods of 
 :hose times and places. This statement, 
 for which there is certainly much founda- 
 tion, may be put into another form : the 
 more you come forward into modern 
 times and neighboring countries, where 
 the facts can actually be got at, the more 
 complete is the evidence against the 
 priesthoods of these times and places. 
 But the whole argument is founded upon 
 what is at least a doubtful view of human 
 nature and of society. Just as an early 
 school of geologists were accustomed to 
 explain the present state of the earth's 
 surface by supposing that in primitive 
 ages the processes of geologic change 
 were far more violent and rapid than they 
 are now so catastrophic, indeed, as to 
 constitute a thoroughly different state of 
 things so there is a school of historians 
 who think that the intimate structure of 
 human nature, its capabilities of learning 
 and of adapting itself to society, have so 
 far altered within the historic period as to 
 make the present processes of social 
 change totally different in character from 
 those even of' the moderately distant past. 
 They think that institutions and condi- 
 tions which are plainly harmful to us now 
 have at other times and places done good 
 and serviceable work. War, pestilence, 
 priestcraft, and slavery have been repre- 
 sented as positive boons to an early state 
 of society. They are not blessings to us, 
 it is true; but then times have altered 
 very much. 
 
 On the other hand, a later school of 
 geologists have seen reason to think that 
 the processes of change have never, since 
 the earth finally solidified, been very dif- 
 ferent from what they are now. More 
 rapid, indeed, they must have been in 
 early times, for many reasons ; but not so 
 very much more rapid as to constitute an 
 entirely different state of things. And it 
 does seem to me in like manner that a 
 wider and more rational view of history 
 will recognize more and more of the per- 
 manent, and less and less of the change- 
 able, element in human nature. No 
 doubt our ancestors of a thousand gen- 
 erations back were very different being* 
 from ourselves; perhaps fifty thousand 
 generations back they were not men at 
 all. But the historic period is hardly to 
 be stretched beyond two hundred- genera- 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [335] 43 
 
 tions ; and it seems unreasonable to ex- 
 pect that in such a tiny page of our biog- 
 raphy we can trace with clearness the 
 growth and progress of a long life. Com- 
 pare Egypt in the time of King Menes, 
 say six thousand years ago, with Spain in 
 this present century, before Englishmen 
 made any railways there : I suppose the 
 main difference is that the Egyptians 
 washed themselves. It seems more an- 
 alogous to what we find in other fields of 
 < inquiry to suppose that there are certain 
 great broad principles of human life which 
 have been true all along; that certain 
 conditions have always been favorable to 
 the health of society, and certain other 
 conditions always hurtful. 
 
 Now, although I have many times 
 asked for it from those who said that 
 somewhere and at some time mankind 
 had derived benefits from a priesthood 
 laying claim to a magical character and 
 powers, I have never been able to get any 
 evidence for their statement. Nobody 
 will give me a date, and a latitude and 
 longitude, that I may examine into the 
 matter. ' In the Middle Ages the priests 
 and monks were the sole depositaries of 
 learning.' Quite so ; a man burns your 
 house to the ground, builds a wretched 
 hovel on the ruins, and then takes credit 
 for whatever shelter there is about the 
 place. In the Middle Ages nearly all 
 learned men were obliged to become 
 priests and monks. ' Then again, the 
 bishops have sometimes acted as tribunes 
 of the people, to protect them against the 
 tyranny of kings.' No doubt, when Pope 
 and Caesar fall out, honest men may 
 come by their own. If two men rob you 
 in a dark lane, and then quarrel over the 
 plunder, so that you get a chance to 
 escape with your life, you will of course 
 be very grateful to each of them for hav- 
 ing prevented the other from killing you 
 but you would be much more grateful to 
 a policeman who locked them both up. 
 Two powers have sought to enslave the 
 people, and have quarreled with each 
 other ; certainly we are very much obliged 
 to them for quarreling, but a condition 
 of still greater happiness and security 
 would be the non-existence of both. 
 
 I can find no evidence that seriously 
 militates against the rule that the priest 
 is at all times and in all places the enemy 
 of all men Sacerdos semper, ubigue, et 
 omnibus inimicus. I do not deny that 
 the priest is very often a most earnest anc 
 > conscientious man, doing the very best 
 that he knows of as well as he can do it 
 Lord Aoiberley is quite right in saying 
 
 that the blame rests more with the laity 
 than with the priesthood ; that it has in- 
 sisted on magic and mysteries, and has 
 forced the priesthood to produce them. 
 But then, how dreadful is the system that 
 puts good men to such uses ! 
 
 And although it is true that in its ori- 
 gin a priesthood is the effect of an evil 
 already existing, a symptom of social dis- 
 ase rather than a cause of it, yet, once 
 being created and made powerful, it tends 
 in many ways to prolong and increase 
 the disease which gave it birth. One of 
 these ways is so marked and of such 
 practical importance that we are bound 
 to consider it here : I mean the education 
 of children. If there is one lesson which 
 history forces upon us in every page, it is 
 this: Keep your children away from the 
 priest, or he will make them the enemies 
 of mankind. It is not the Catholic clergy 
 and those like them who are alone to be 
 dreaded in this matter; even the repre- 
 sentatives of apparently harmless religions 
 may do incalculable mischief if they get 
 education into their hands. To the early 
 Mohammedans the mosque was the one 
 public building in every place where pub- 
 lic business could be transacted ; and so 
 it was naturally the place of primary edu- 
 cation, which they held to be a matter of 
 supreme importance. By and by, as the 
 clergy grew up, the mosque was gradu- 
 ally usurped by them, and primary edu- 
 cation fell into their hands. Then ensued 
 a ' revival of religion ; ' religion became a 
 fanaticism : books were burnt and univer- 
 sities were closed ; the empire rotted 
 away in East and West, until it was con- 
 quered by Turkish savages in Asia and 
 by Christian savages in Spain. 
 
 The labors of students of the early his- 
 tory of institutions notably Sir Henry 
 Maine and M. de Laveleye have dis- 
 closed to us an element of society which 
 appears to have existed in all times and 
 places, and which is the basis of our own 
 social structure. The village community, 
 or commune, or township, found in 
 tribes of the most varied race and time, 
 has so modified itself as to get adapted 
 in one place or another to all the different 
 conditions of human existence. This 
 union of men to work for a common ob- 
 ject has transformed them from wild ani- 
 mals into tame ones. Century by cent- 
 ury the educating process of the so- 
 cial life has been working at human 
 nature ; it has built itself into our inmost 
 soul. Such as we are moral and ra- 
 tional beings thinking and talking in 
 general conceptions about the -facts that 
 
4Q [33C] 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, 
 
 make up our life, feeling a necessity to 
 act, not for ourselves, but for Ourself, for 
 the larger life of Man in which we are 
 elements ; such moral and rational beings, 
 I say, Man has made us. By Man I 
 mean men organized into a society, which 
 fights for its life, not only as a mere col- 
 lection of men who must separately be 
 kept alive, but as a society. It must fight 
 not only against external enemies, but 
 against treason and disruption within it. 
 Hence comes the unity of interest of all 
 its members ; each of them has to feel 
 that he is not himself only but a part of 
 ail the rest. Conscience the sense of 
 right and wrong springs out of the 
 habit of judging things from the point of 
 view of all and not of one. It is Ourself, 
 not ourselves, that makes for righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 The codes of morality, then, which are 
 adopted into various religions, and after 
 ward taught as parts of religious systems, 
 are derived from secular sources. The 
 most ancient version of the Ten Com- 
 mandments, whatever the investigations 
 of scholars may make it out to be, origi- 
 nates, not in the thunders of Sinai, but in 
 the peaceful life of men on the plains of 
 Chaldaea. Conscience is the voice of 
 Man ingrained into our hearts, command- 
 ing us to work for Man. 
 
 Religions differ in the treatment which 
 they give to this most sacred heirloom of 
 our past history. Sometimes they in- 
 vert its precepts telling men to be sub- 
 missive under oppression because the 
 powers that be are ordained of God ; tell- 
 ing them to believe where they have not 
 seen, and to play with falsehood in order 
 that a particular doctrine may prevail, in- 
 stead of seeking for truth whatever it 
 may be; telling them to betray their 
 country for the sake of their church. 
 But there is one great distinction to 
 which I wish, in conclusion, to call special 
 attention a distinction between two 
 kinds of religious emotion which bear 
 upon the conduct of men. 
 
 We said that conscience is the voice of 
 Man within us, commanding us to work 
 for Man. We do not know this imme- 
 diately by our own experience ; we only 
 know that something within us commands 
 us to work for Man. This fact men have 
 tried to explain ; and they have thought, 
 for the most part, that this voice was the 
 voice of a God. But the explanation 
 takes two different forms : the God may 
 speak in us for Man's sake, or for his 
 own sake. If he speaks for his own sake 
 and this is what generally happens 
 
 when he has priests who lay claim to a 
 magical character and powers our alle- 
 giance is apt to be taken away from Man, 
 and transferred to the God. When we 
 love our brother for the sake of our 
 brother, we help all men to grow in the 
 right ; but when we love our brother for 
 the sake of somebody else, who is very 
 likely to damn our brother, it very soon 
 comes to burning him alive for his soul's 
 health. When men respect human life 
 for the sake of Man, tranquillity, order 
 and progress go hand in hand ; but those 
 who only respected human life because 
 God had forbidden murder have set their 
 mark upon Europe in fifteen centuries of 
 blood and fire. 
 
 These are only two examples of a gen- 
 eral rule. Wherever the allegiance of 
 men has been diverted from Man to some 
 divinity who speaks to men for his own 
 sake and seeks his own glory, one thing 
 has happened. The right precepts might 
 be enforced, but they were enforced 
 upon wrong grounds, and they were not 
 obeyed. But right precepts are not al- 
 ways enforced ; the fact that the fount- 
 ains of morality have been poisoned 
 makes it easy to substitute wrong pre- 
 cepts for right ones. 
 
 To this same treason against humanity 
 belongs the claim of the priesthood to 
 take away the guilt of a sinner after con- 
 fession has been made to it. The Catho- 
 lic priest professes to act as an embassa- 
 dor for his God, and to absolve the guilty 
 man by conveying to him the forgiveness 
 of heaven. If his credentials were ever 
 so sure, if he were indeed the embassa- 
 dor of a superhuman power, the claim 
 would be treasonable. Can the favor of 
 the Czar make guiltless the murderer of 
 old men and women and children in Cir- 
 cassian valleys ? Can the pardon of the 
 Sultan make clean the bloody hands of a 
 Pasha? As little can any God forgive 
 sins committed against man. When 
 men think he can, they compound for old 
 sins which the God did not like by com- 
 mitting new ones which he does like. 
 Many a remorseful despot has atoned for 
 the levities of his youth by the persecu- 
 tion of heretics in his old _ age. That 
 frightful crime, the adulteration of food, 
 could not possibly be so common among 
 us if men were not taught to regard it as 
 merely objectionable because it is re- 
 motely connected with stealing, of which 
 God has expressed his disapproval in the 
 Decalogue ; and therefore as quite, natu- 
 rally set right by a punctual attendance at 
 church on Sundays. When a Ritualist 
 
AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 [337J 47 
 
 breaks his fast before celebrating the 
 Holy Communion, his deity can forgive 
 Him if he likes, for the matter concerns 
 nobody else ; but no deity can forgive 
 him for preventing his parishioners from 
 setting up a public library and reading- 
 room for fear they should read Mr. Dar- 
 win's works in it. That sin is committed 
 against the people, and a God cannot 
 take it away. 
 
 I call those religions which undermine 
 the supreme allegiance of the conscience 
 to Man ultramontane religions, because 
 they seek their springs of action -ultra 
 monies, outside of the common experience 
 and daily life of man. And I remark 
 about them that they are especially apt 
 to teach wrong precepts, and that even 
 hen they command men to do the right 
 lings they put the command upon wrong 
 lotives, and do not get the things done. 
 But there are forms of religious emo- 
 tion which do not thus undermine the 
 conscience. Far be it from me to under- 
 value the help and strength which many 
 of the bravest of our brethren have drawn 
 .from the thought of an unseen helper of 
 men. He who, wearied or stricken in the 
 fight with the powers of darkness, asks 
 himself in a solitary place, Is it all for 
 nothing ? shall we indeed be overthrown ? ' 
 he does find something which may 
 justify that thought. In such a moment 
 of utter sincerity, when a man has bared 
 his own soul before the immensities and 
 
 the eternities, a presence in which his own 
 poor personality is shriveled into nothing- 
 ness arises within him, and says, as plainly 
 as words can say, ' I am with thee, and I 
 am greater than thou.' Many names of 
 j Gods, of many shapes, have men given 
 to this presence ; seeking by names and 
 pictures to know more clearly and to re- 
 member more continually the guide and 
 the helper of men. No such comrade- 
 ship with the Great Companion shall have 
 anything but reverence from me, who have 
 known the divine gentleness of Denison 
 Maurice, the strong and healthy practical 
 instinct of Charles Kingsley, and who now 
 revere with all my heart the teaching of 
 James Martineau. They seem to me, one j 
 and all, to be reaching forward with lov- I 
 ing anticipation to a clearer vision which \ 
 is yet to come tendentesque manus rtpce 
 ulteriorts atnore. For, after all, such a 
 helper of men, outside of humanity, the 
 truth will not allow us to see. The dim 
 and shadowy outlines of the superhuman 
 deity fade slowly away from before us ; 
 and as the mist of his presence floats aside, 
 we perceive with greater and greater clear- 
 ness the shape of a yet grander and nobler 
 figure of Him who made all Gods and 
 shall unmake them. From the dim dawn 
 of history, and from the inmost depth of 
 every soul, the face of our father Man 
 looks out upon us with the fire of eternal 
 youth in his eyes, and says, ' Before Je- 
 hovah was, I am ! ' 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Scientific Basis of Morals I 
 
 II. Right and Wrong , 7 
 
 III. The Ethics of Belief 25 
 
 IV. The Ethics of Religion 36 
 
ON 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY GEORGE. 
 
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