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CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 STUDIES IN FAITH, HOPE, AND DESPAIR 
 
CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 STUDIES IN FAITH, HOPE 
 AND DESPAIR 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE J. BRIDGES 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 ^tz laiter^ibe ^rei^j^ Cambntige 
 
 MDCCCCXV 
 
37 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HORACE J. BRIDGES 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published March tqis 
 
TO MY SPIRITUAL FATHER 
 STANTON COIT 
 
 IN GLAD ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 OF AN ETERNAL DEBT 
 
 O 
 
 00319 
 
** Why dost thou wonder, O Man, at the height 
 of the stars or the depth of the sea ? Enter 
 into thine own soul, and wonder there *' 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction xi 
 
 I. Francis Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven": 
 A Study in Religious Experience . . . i 
 
 II. Mr. G. K. Chesterton as Theologian . . 42 
 
 III. Professor Ernst Haeckel's New Calvinism . 77 
 
 IV. Sir Oliver Lodge and the Evidence for Im- 
 
 mortality 121 
 
 V. Mr. Winston Churchill and Clerical "Heresy" 147 
 
 VI. Ellen Key and the "New Morality" of Free 
 
 Love 176 
 
 VII. The Right to Die: Maeterlinck and Ingersoll 
 
 VERSUS Humanity 227 
 
 VIII. The Victorious Death of Captain Scott . . 263 
 Epilogue: In the Time of War and Tumults . .284 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The eight studies which make up the present volume 
 are intended primarily as illustrations of the faith and 
 hope by which men actually live to-day. In those 
 covered by the term "Despair " in the title, the purpose 
 has been not merely to criticize the doctrines rejected, 
 but to justify faith and hope by destroying the groimds 
 of their opposites. 
 
 It is the writer's belief that the principles which he 
 has endeavoured partially to set forth, though they 
 are not as yet embodied in the formal creed of any 
 Church, and indeed are in radical conflict with 
 many accepted ecclesiastical doctrines, are neverthe- 
 less principles which do in fact regulate the action of 
 ever- widening circles of mankind. 
 
 We are accustomed to a somewhat superficial an- 
 tithesis between creed and conduct. We commonly 
 hear men spoken of as being "better than their 
 creed.'' The antithesis has been formulated by Mr. 
 Bernard Shaw in the statement that "What a man be- 
 lieves may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from 
 the assumptions on which he habitually acts." This, 
 however, is merely a slapdash, journalistic way of 
 speaking. The fallacy it contains becomes self-evident 
 the moment we substitute for the Latin word "creed" 
 
xli INTRODUCTION 
 
 its English equivalent. If we do this, Mr. Shaw's 
 statement will run, "What a man believes may be 
 ascertained, not from his belief, but from the assump- 
 tions on which he habitually acts." Quite evidently, 
 this will not do; but it enables us to see and state the 
 truth which Mr. Shaw has aimed at and missed. The 
 assumptions on which a man habitually acts are his 
 creed; and if he professes to beheve doctrines incom- 
 patible with these assumptions, he misunderstands 
 himself. 
 
 Now, my contention is that large numbers of per- 
 fectly sincere religious people are to-day mistaken as 
 to their real creed. They have inherited the doctrines 
 of a pre-democratic, pre-scientific, and therefore su- 
 pernaturalistic age, and they have failed to detect the 
 fact that the whole of our modern life is animated and 
 guided by inevitable presuppositions which are funda- 
 mentally at variance with those that engendered the 
 time-honoured statements of the ancient Confessions. 
 It is not so much that our new knowledge of the facts 
 of life has made it difficult for us to believe in miracles 
 and in the arbitrary providence of an outside God, 
 but rather that the practical exigencies of life — the 
 concrete experience of the nations of Christendom 
 through the centuries in which democracy and science 
 have been hewn out — have forced us to act upon the 
 assumption that there is no intelligent or providential 
 '\ interference with the order of nature except that of 
 living hiunan beings. 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 One need not be a Pragmatist to see that it is experi- 
 ence which leads to the discovery of truth. I do not 
 affirm that truth is merely that which "works," or 
 that everything which "works" is truth. No doubt 
 things are true before they are found to "work," and 
 therefore that which makes them true must be defined 
 otherwise than by the fact that they do so. My point 
 here is only that we are led to the discernment of truth 
 by the exigencies of personal and social Hfe. Now, we 
 find that the civilized nations of the world to-day, even 
 though they still pay abundant lip-service to super- 
 naturalism and to the doctrine of miracles, act contin- 
 uously and unhesitatingly upon the assumptions that, 
 apart from the human will, nothing ever happens 
 except in terms of the law of causation, which is coex- 
 tensive not only with all actual but with all possible 
 experience, and that miracle is incompatible with the 
 very existence of human society. We are therefore 
 entitled to say that these two principles form part 
 of the real creed of Christendom, and that the day 
 has accordingly come when everything in its nominal 
 creeds which is incompatible with them should be 
 extruded. 
 
 Another revelation which the experience of the ages 
 has at last brought clearly into our consciousness is 
 the truth that moral perfection is the only rightful ob- 
 ject of human worship, and that it is equally worthy 
 of unconditional reverence whether it be embodied 
 in a superhuman person whose power is infinite, or 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION 
 
 in the feeblest and least fortunately circumstanced of 
 human beings. This teaching is not so much a new 
 theory which innovating liberal Churches (like the 
 Ethical Societies) have reached by a process of abstract 
 reasoning, as a regulative principle which does actually 
 animate all the moral judgments, even of those whose 
 formal theology repudiates it. It is of the essence not 
 only of morahty but of democracy. The doctrine of 
 human equality, which, in a Republic like the United 
 States, is universally accepted, can never be justified 
 except upon this inevitable practical assumption. The 
 Ethical Societies, therefore, in asserting the supremacy 
 of the Moral Ideal as " God above all gods worshipped 
 of all nations,'' and in declaring that no being, natural 
 or supernatural, human or superhuman, is to receive 
 worship except because and in so far as it embodies and 
 illustrates the Moral Ideal, are but giving expression 
 to a truth rooted in and vital to the essential sanity 
 of human life. 
 
 It is in the light of these two principles — the prin- 
 ciple of Idealistic Naturalism and the principle of the 
 Supremacy of Ethics — that I have re-examined the 
 special problems dealt with by the writers and think- 
 ers whose works I have used as texts. 
 
 I shall probably not be called upon to defend myself 
 against the charge of theological conservatism. On the 
 other hand, the conclusions as to social ethics which 1 
 have set forth (especially in connection with the ques- 
 tions of Suicide and of Marriage and Divorce) may 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 incur the accusation of moral unprogressiveness. I 
 shall not shrink from this imputation, provided only 
 that those who make it will do me the justice to re- 
 member that my conclusions are in each case based 
 upon experience, and not upon ecclesiastical authority. 
 It is my conviction that a revaluation of moral values, 
 such as Nietzsche planned but never achieved, does 
 not necessarily lead to a transvaluation or disvaluation 
 of them; for I hold that many social standards and in- 
 stitutions which to-day are assailed as obsolete, merely 
 because they are commonly justified on supernaturalis- 
 tic or other imverifiable principles, are, really rooted 
 in the instinctive moral wisdom of man, and that the 
 intellectualistic justifications offered for them were 
 invented ex post facto. If so, these standards and in- 
 stitutions do not fall with their old defences; but it 
 does become necessary to find for them a new theoreti- 
 cal justification, founded in the unassailable truths of 
 universal experience. It is also necessary to distinguish 
 whether admitted evils, associated with them, are in- 
 herent or due to adventitious causes; since in the latter 
 case the evils can be cured without tampering with 
 the essential principles of the institutions affected by 
 them. 
 
 The teaching of this book represents my own at- 
 tempt to apply the principles of the Ethical Movement 
 to certain specific religious and social issues. For the 
 faults and errors which it contains I am alone respon- 
 sible, but whatever in it is sound and good I owe to my 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 teachers and colleagues in that movement, whose influ- 
 ence through many years, both in England and in this 
 country, has been to me an inexpressible blessing. It is 
 not only a duty but a delight to me to mention espe- 
 cially in this connection the name of Dr. Stanton Coit, 
 to whom, after eight years of daily intercourse, my debt 
 is so inexhaustible that it sometimes seems as though 
 I had not a single idea, aspiration or hope which was 
 not the outgrowth of my association with him. Who- 
 ever reads his book on "The Soul of America," or looks 
 through the vast anthology of Ethical scripture and 
 psalmody which he has published under the title of 
 "Social Worship," will readily detect the depth and 
 breadth of my obligations to him. Nor can I deny my- 
 self the pleasure of acknowledging with equal grati- 
 tude the spiritual quickening and mental clarification 
 which I owe to Professor Felix Adler, the founder of 
 the first Ethical Society and of the international Ethi- 
 cal Movement. These two leaders, moreover, would be 
 the first to admit that their thought has neither come 
 to them unmediated from the infinite nor been evolved 
 by themselves a priori, but is the mature expression 
 of a social wisdom, growing out of their protracted 
 contact with life in general, and especially with the 
 organized groups to which they minister. 
 
 My book, accordingly (although the censure of its 
 defects will rightly fall exclusively on myself), is in es- 
 sence no mere individual utterance, but aspires to give 
 voice to a growing synthesis of the common wisdom 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 of a group of men and women who, sensitive to the 
 spiritual trend of our age, have sought to give ex- 
 pression both to its needs and to its quickening in- 
 spirations, in order that the needs may be met and 
 that the inspirations, becoming incarnate in the con- 
 scious will and purpose of mankind, may be made 
 more potent and ejffective for the healing of the na- 
 tions. 
 
 I take this opportunity of thanking my old friend 
 and colleague Mr. G. E. O'Dell for his help in reading 
 the proofs of this book, and for many valuable criti- 
 cisms and suggestions. 
 
 H. J. B. 
 
 Chicago, III., May s, 1914. 
 
CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FRANCIS Thompson's "the hound of heaven": 
 
 A STUDY IN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 Every preacher profits by the comments of friends 
 upon his choice of themes. When, some time since, I 
 announced a sermon on "The Hoimd of Heaven,'' one 
 gentleman told me that he was at a loss to conceive 
 how I could find in the poem material for a discourse. 
 Another, a man of immense reading and of delicate 
 literary and poetic taste, declared that, apart from its 
 amazing richness of imagery and witchery of expres- 
 sion, he could see nothing in "The Hound of Heaven" 
 except a deep and bitter sorrow. 
 
 These friends will pardon me for saying that their 
 judgment betrays a singular obsession .\ It proves that 
 they, like the mass of the uninitiated, are still under 
 the hypnotic spell of the idea that religious experience 
 is dependent upon, and inextricably boimd up with, 
 supernaturalistic theories of the nature, environment 
 and destiny of the human soul./ In spite of the re- 
 searches into religious psychology which in recent 
 years have enriched Anglo-American literature, — in 
 spite of the work of Leuba, Starbuck, James and the 
 
a CRiTieiSMS OF LIFE 
 
 rest, — men continue to regard certain type^jof spirit- 
 ual life as possible of manif estation ^inlyjiLX^Ti jnnr- 
 tion with d octrines which are rapidly and deserv edly 
 losing their gri^ J)^ ^1^^ mind a^d wiVW^f men. The im- 
 plied conclusion — that, if this connection exists, then 
 mankind must for the future be deprived of blessed 
 and exalting experiences which in the past have trans- 
 formed lives and inspired mighty deeds and marvel- 
 lous literature — is one that they either refuse to face 
 or submit to as inevitable, even if regrettable.^) 
 
 The premise, however, is false; and the conclusion is 
 accordingly baseless. The error involved in both will 
 become apparent if we recall to mind two self-evident 
 facts which we ordinarily forget. 
 
 The first is this: that all human beings, whatever 
 their variations of ancestry, tradition, language and 
 immediate environment (psychical and physical), par- 
 ticipate in a commion nature and form part of the same 
 universe of actual and possible experience. Their iden- 
 tity is deeper and wider than their difference. Unless 
 we have carried pragmatism to the length of solip- 
 sism (the philosophical synonym for insanity), we can 
 neither deny the multiplicity of minds in touch with 
 a common reaHty, nor believe that the differences in 
 men's interpretations of the world correspond to actual 
 differences in it. For example, if one man says that 
 animal species were each separately originated by a 
 superhuman fiat, and another that their differentia- 
 tion is due only to efficient causes traceable in hered- 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 3 
 
 ity and environment, we agree that both cannot be 
 right. By one or both of them, the facts must have 
 been misinterpreted, or elements of explanatory the- 
 ory unwarranted by the data introduced. 
 
 The second self-evident proposition is that, just as 
 reality does not vary with the varying theories of dif- 
 ferent minds, so neither does it alter in correspondence 
 with change in the particular theories successively 
 held by any individual person. "Things are what they 
 are" for rationality in general, not necessarily for your 
 or my individual consciousness. {[Experience precedes 
 interpretation, and is common and constant where 
 interpretations differ.'} The mutually exclusive state- 
 ments that the sun goes round the earth and that the 
 earth goes round the sun are relative to an experience 
 which is the same for both theorists. Or, again, I may 
 interpret the thoughts, feelings and voHtions in my 
 mind as due to my conscious and sub-conscious self- 
 activity; another will account for them by the sugges- 
 tions of disembodied spirits, who practise upon me 
 without my knowledge. For both of us the data will be 
 the same, and we shall agree that the difference exists 
 only in our interpretations. 
 
 But if this be so in general, how can we suppose that 
 the case of religious experience stands unique and soli- 
 tary in the world? Why in this one instance should the 
 otherwise universal rule be reversed, and theory pre- 
 cede and beget that which it interprets ? If in every 
 other department of our mental life we find that the 
 
4 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 elements of fact are constant and only their theoretical 
 counterpart in consciousness variable, are we not pos- 
 tulating unawares a stupendous miracle when we af- 
 firm that in religion there are as many different kinds 
 of experience as there are theories, and no possibility 
 of experience where there is no theory ? 
 
 Surely, in regard to the life of religion, we should be 
 led a priori to anticipate that there will be no complete 
 and unaccountable difference between it and other 
 fields of man's contact with reality. We should be led 
 to expect very many common factors in the actual 
 experience, together with many variations in the theo- 
 retical counterpart offered by different persons to in- 
 terpret what they have undergone. 
 
 This anticipation, based on our general knowledge 
 of man and nature, is confirmed a posteriori — by the 
 facts disclosed through the researches of modem psy- 
 chology. Consider the enormous mass of data which 
 Professor James accumulated, and set forth, together 
 with those he had borrowed from Leuba, Starbuck and 
 others, in his Gifford Lectures on "The Varieties of 
 Religious Experience." These instances, which might 
 be indefinitely added to, demonstrate that the actual 
 phenomena of religious experience are the same in all 
 religions; they underlie every shade of belief and un- 
 belief. This statement is the precise opposite of that 
 which Mr. G. K. Chesterton falsely accuses some mod- 
 ern thinkers of making. He pretends that they say, 
 *'The religions of the world differ in rites and forms, 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 5 
 
 but they are the same in what they teach." Nobody 
 except Mr. Chesterton, the supreme genius of inaccu- 
 racy, ever said any such thing; but scientific investiga- 
 tion has demonstrated the fact that the widely differ- 
 ing teachings of the world's religions are attempts to 
 account for a common experience, just as the ever- 
 changing opinions held in successive periods by scien- 
 tific workers are based upon contact with a common 
 reality. 
 
 A man's experiences will naturally be conditioned 
 by his own peculiar balance of instincts, sentiments 
 and emotions. A creed (in the academic sense) may 
 indeed prompt him to seek certain kinds of experi- 
 ences which without it he might miss. But it is 
 equally certain that the absence of such a creed does 
 not preclude the possibility of the experiences in ques- 
 tion. In any case, his interpretation of them will fall 
 into terms of the intellectualistic theory of the universe 
 which he happens to hold. 
 
 Until we grasp this elementary fact, we are shut 
 out from any scientific or humane catholicity of ap- 
 preciation ofsthe world of religious experience — that 
 strange and obscure chamber of reality whence come 
 the airs from heaven and blasts from hell, the joys and 
 terrors, the dumb despairs and the transfiguring in- 
 spirations, which have coloured the lives of some of 
 the most remarkable figures in historyl But when we 
 understand and apply it rightly, we shall be able to 
 classify together, and explain by the same scientific 
 
6 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 formula, the religious experiences of Catholic Saints 
 such as Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Francis of Sales, 
 Catherine of Siena, Teresa; mystics like Meister Eck- 
 hardt; Protestant visionaries like Bunyan, Wesley, 
 and George Fox; freethinkers like Shelley and John 
 Stuart Mill; and, last but not least, of the gifted poet 
 whose tragic career and untimely death we are led to 
 deplore anew by the publication of his Life, and of 
 his collected works. ^ 
 
 The common natural elements in all these cases, and 
 indeed in any possible case of religious re-birth, could 
 not be more concisely described than by Professor 
 James, in the concluding chapter of the work to which 
 we have already referred. He sets forth the process 
 of conversion as follows : — 
 
 I Jt consists of two parts: — 
 
 [i / (i) An uneasiness; and 
 
 [j / (2) Its solution. 
 
 ' / (i) The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is 
 
 / a sense that there is something wrong about us as we 
 
 / naturally stand. 
 
 (2) The solution is a sense that we are saved from the 
 wrongness by making proper connection with the higher 
 powers. 
 
 In those more developed minds which alone we are 
 stud)dng, the wrongness takes a moral character, and 
 the salvation takes a mystical tinge. I think we shall 
 keep well within the limits of what is common to all 
 
 1 The Life of Francis Thompson, by Everard Meynell. The Works 
 of Francis Thompson. Edited by Wilfrid Meynell. In three volumes. 
 (London: Bums & Gates, 1913.) 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 7 
 
 such minds if we formulate the essence of their religioi^^ 
 experience in terms Hke these: — 
 
 The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness 
 and criticises it, is to that extent consciously beyond it, 
 and in at least possible touch with something higher, if 
 anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part there 
 is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but 
 a most helpless germ. With which part he should iden- 
 tify his real being is by no means obvious at this stage; 
 but when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) 
 arrives, the man identifies his real being with the germi- 
 nal higher part of himself; and does so in the following 
 way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is con- 
 terminous and continuous with a more of the same qual- 
 ity, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and 
 which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion 
 get on board of and save himself when all his lower being 
 has gone to pieces in the wreck} 
 
 The question how a man, passing through such an 
 experience, shall interpret it, depends naturally, as we 
 have said, on his philosophic outlook, or on the theo- 
 logical creed he holds. The scientific student, however, 
 is bound to discriminate closely between the actual 
 data and the theoretic elements in the subject's own 
 account of his case. The business of science is neither 
 to accept at its face value the theological or philo- 
 sophical explanation, nor yet to deny the reality of the 
 facts explained. The modem freethinker who declares 
 that there is "nothing in it" — that conversion is a 
 mere fiction or figment of the imagination — is as 
 * The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 508. 
 
8 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 widely astray as the primitive believer who imagines 
 that every article of his creed is verified by the transi- 
 tion which he is conscious of having undergone. It is 
 very necessary to hold fast, as a clue to the lab3n:inth 
 of religious and psychic experiences, to the almost 
 platitudinous remark of Fechner: "Nichts wirkliches 
 kann unmoglich sein." It is also indispensable to re- 
 member that between, let us say, John Stuart Mill and 
 St. Augustine, or between Shelley and Francis Thomp- 
 son, there is no difference of nature, however wide may 
 be the gulf between their theories. Thompson himself 
 has well said that in modern poetry, "what is great and 
 good for the non-Catholic is for the most part great and 
 good for the Catholic." He need not have qualified 
 the statement, and he might well have added that 
 what is actually true for the one is true for the other. 
 It is inevitable that a man of stunted or starved emo- 
 tional nature and rationalistic mental tendencies, who 
 has undergone conversion, will give a prosaic account 
 of his experience, which, nevertheless, the dispassion- 
 ate student will find sufficiently startling and interest- 
 ing. Indeed, such a man^s story may turn out to be, 
 from the psychological point of view, all the more use- 
 ful and informing because he keeps close to the ground 
 of literal fact. This is what we find in the account 
 which Mill gives in his "Autobiography" of his own 
 transition from despair to moral reassurance and the 
 sense of purpose and meaning in life. As this remark- 
 able book is much less read than it deserves to be, and 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 9 
 
 as many readers might fail to realize that the account 
 in chapter v of " A Crisis in My Mental History" is 
 just as truly the story of a religious conversion as St. 
 Augustine's picture of what happened to him in the 
 garden, I shall venture to quote it at some length: — 
 
 From the winter of 182 1, when I first read Bentham, 
 and especially from the commencement of the West- 
 minster Review, I had what might truly be called an 
 object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My con- 
 ception of my own happiness was entirely identified with 
 this object. The personal sympathies I wished for were 
 those of fellow labourers in this enterprise. . . . 
 
 This did very well for several years, during which the 
 general improvement going on in the world and the idea 
 of myself as engaged with ethers in strugghng to pro- 
 mote it, seemed enough to fill up an interesting and ani- 
 mated existence. But the time came when I awakened 
 from this as from a dream. It was in the autumn of 
 1826.^ I was in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody 
 is occasionally Uable to; unsusceptible to enjo5nnent or 
 pleasurable excitement; one of those moods when what is 
 pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or indifferent; 
 the state, I should thinks in which converts to Methodism 
 usually are, when smitten by their first "conviction of sin." ^ 
 In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the ques- 
 tion directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects 
 in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions 
 and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be 
 completely effected at this very instant; would this be a 
 great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible 
 
 * He was then twenty years old — a fact which the student of 
 religious psychology will note with interest. 
 
 * Italics the present writer's. 
 
lo CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 self-consciousness distinctly answered, ^'No." At this 
 my heart sank within me; the whole foundation on which 
 my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was 
 to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. 
 The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever 
 again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have 
 nothing left to live for. 
 
 At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of 
 itself; but it did not. A night's sleep, the sovereign rem- 
 edy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it. 
 I awoke to a renewed consciousness of the woeful fact. 
 I carried it with me into all companies, into all occupa- 
 tions. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a 
 few minutes' oblivion of it. For some months the cloud 
 seemed to grow thicker and thicker. The lines in Cole- 
 ridge's "Dejection" — I was not then acquainted with 
 them — exactly describe my case: — 
 
 A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, 
 A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, 
 Which finds no natural outlet or relief 
 In word, or sigh, or tear. 
 
 In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; 
 those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from 
 which I had always hitherto drawn strength and ani- 
 mation. I read them now without feeling, or with the 
 accustomed feehng minus all its charm; and I became 
 persuaded, that my love of mankind, and of excellence 
 for its own sake, had worn itself out. . . . 
 
 I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the 
 commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship 
 and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the 
 ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to work for; 
 no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN li 
 
 little in anything else. The fountains of vanity and am- 
 bition seemed to have dried up within me, as completely 
 as those of benevolence. . . . 
 
 These were the thoughts which mingled with the dry, 
 heavy dejection of the melancholy winter of 1826-27. 
 During this time I was not incapable of my usual occu- 
 pations. I went on with them mechanically, by the mere 
 force of habit. . . . Two lines of Coleridge, in whom 
 alone of all writers I have found a true description of 
 what I felt, were often in my thoughts, not at this time 
 (for I had never read them), but in a later period of the 
 same mental malady: — 
 
 Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, 
 And hope without an object cannot live. 
 
 In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar 
 as I fancied it, and I doubt not that many others have 
 passed through a similar state ; but the idiosyncrasies of 
 my education had given to the general phenomenon a 
 special character, which made it seem the natural effect 
 of causes that it was hardly possible for time to remove. 
 I frequently asked myself ^ if I couldy or if I was hownd to go 
 on living when life must he passed in this manner. 1 gener- 
 ally answered to myself that I did not think I could possibly 
 bear it beyond a year.^ When, however, not more than 
 half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of 
 light broke in upon my gloom. I was reading, accident- 
 ally, Marmontel's "Memoires," and came to the passage 
 which relates his father's death, the distressed position of 
 the family, and the sudden inspiration by which he, then 
 a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be 
 everything to them — would supply the place of all 
 that they had lost. A vivid conception of the scene and 
 * Italics mine. 
 
12 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 its feelings came over me, and I was moved to tears. 
 From this moment my bm-den grew lighter. The oppres- 
 sion of the thought that all feeling was dead within me 
 was gone. I was no longer hopeless: I was not a stock 
 or a stone. I had still, it seemed, some of the material 
 out of which all worth of character, and all capacity for 
 happiness, are made. Reheved from my ever-present 
 sense of irremediable wretchedness, I gradually found 
 that the ordinary incidents of life could again give me 
 some pleasure; that I could again find enjoyment, not 
 intense, but sufficient for cheerfulness, in sunshine and 
 sky, in books, in conversation, in public affairs; and that 
 there was, once more, excitement, though of a moderate 
 kind, in exerting myself for my opinions, and for the 
 public good. Thus the cloud gradually drew off, and I 
 again enjoyed life; and though I had several relapses, 
 some of which lasted many months, I never again was 
 as miserable as I had been. 
 
 Let any student of psychology compare this in de- 
 tail with the story of St. Augustine, or with Francis 
 Thompson's ^' Hound of Heaven," and the conclusion 
 will present itself to his mind with irresistible force 
 that all three men are talking about the same thing. 
 They have trodden the same paths, and the reality with 
 which they have come into redeeming contact is the 
 same in each case. Each has discovered that the good 
 in himself is, in James's words, "conterminous and con- 
 tinuous with a more of the same quality, which is oper- 
 ative in the universe outside of him, and which he can 
 ... in a fashion get on board of and save himself when 
 all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck." 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 13 
 
 Let us turn first to the relevant passage in the " Con- 
 fessions '' of St. Augustine. After he has left Alypius, 
 when he is weeping and groaning in spirit, he hears the 
 heavenly voice commanding, "ToUe, lege; Tolle, lege." 
 He returns to Alypius, takes the scroll of the Apostle, 
 opens it at random, and reads the text on which his eye 
 first falls: "Non in comessationibus et ebrietatibus, 
 non in cubilibus et impudicitiis, non in contentione et 
 aemulatione; sed induite Dominum Jesum Christimi, 
 et carnis providentiam ne feceritisin concupiscentiis." ^ 
 Returning in sudden marvellous tranquillity to Aly- 
 pius, Augustine shows him what he has read, and 
 Alypius immediately points out, and applies to him- 
 self, the words that follow: "Him that is weak in the 
 faith receive ye." 
 
 No student can fail to note the comparative triviality 
 of the texts which, cropping up at the critical moment, 
 effected the change both in Mill and St. Augustine. 
 The latter, prompted, as he tells us, by an inner voice, 
 opens the Epistle to the Romans at random, and reads 
 a text with which he must have been long familiar; 
 Mill declares that he was reading Marmontel "by 
 chance." One cannot but feel that any one of a thou- 
 sand other passages of literature, met with at the 
 appropriate 'moment, would have produced the same 
 effect; for that effect is the natural supervention of 
 
 ^ Romans xiii, 13 and 14, R.V. : " Not in revelling and drunkenness, 
 not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. But 
 put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, 
 to fulfil the lusts thereof." 
 
14 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 calm after storm. Nowhere in all literature is there so 
 wonderful an account of a protracted period of spirit- 
 ual struggle as is contained in the chapters of St. Au- 
 gustine's "Confessions," preceding the incident in the 
 garden. While Mill enters into no such minute intro- 
 spective analysis, he nevertheless lets us see that his 
 depression had lasted for at least half a year, and that 
 it was so serious that he frequently asked himself 
 whether he could even continue to live, if life must be 
 passed in this manner, and had come to the conclusion 
 that he could not endure it beyond a year. In his 
 anxiety not to exaggerate, moreover, he even falls into 
 self-contradiction by minimizing the greatness of his 
 salvation. He tells us in one sentence that it was only 
 "a small ray of light" that broke upon his gloom. Yet 
 the next few sentences, though written many years 
 after the event, and with evident self-restraint, break 
 into an emotional enthusiasm very rare with the an- 
 alytic logician and economist, and amount to an as- 
 sertion that he passed from death unto life. Truly 
 an amazing effect to be produced by *'a small ray of 
 Ught"! 
 
 We cannot, in any ultimate sense, explain these 
 mysterious moods of the soul. We can only say, in the 
 words of the "Imitation," "Left to ourselves we sink 
 and perish; visited we lift up our heads and live." Our 
 inability to explain the matter, however, is no deeper 
 here than in any other case of natural phenomena. No 
 scientific explanation really explains anything; at best, 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 15 
 
 it tells us of unifonnity in sequence, and enables us to 
 anticipate a given phenomenon when we encounter its 
 customary antecedent. The psychic turmoil of reli- 
 gious experience is just as explicable, and just as inex- 
 plicable, as the transition of the sea from storm to 
 calm. Between the facts of outward nature there is 
 no logical, no rational nexus. We know that they hap- 
 pen; experience shows us the order in which they 
 happen; but why they happen remains a mystery— 
 or an idle question. They are never logically deducible 
 from each other, as are the facts of geometry from the 
 principles of mathematics. Yet this in no wise invali- 
 dates our scientific generalizations, and renders them 
 no whit less useful than they would be if the phe- 
 nomena followed logically from one another. 
 
 We must not, therefore, allow the supernaturalists 
 and miracle-mongers to hoodwink us into believing 
 that there is anything more marvellous in religious 
 conversion than there is in the growth of flowers or the 
 sequence of the seasons. If — or rather when — we 
 become able to state and control the conditions imder 
 which religious experience always occurs, we shall have 
 as complete a scientific mastery of it as we have of 
 agriculture or mineralogy. 
 
 We have compared two stories of conversion, one 
 that of an ancient Catholic, the other that of a modern 
 freethinker, and found their identity in all essential 
 details. We have seen that the data are the same in 
 both cases, and that only the theoretical explanation 
 
1 6 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 differs. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say 
 that the Catholic saint offers a theoretical explanation, 
 in the shape of his theology, whereas the freethinker 
 is content to state the facts without attempting any 
 interpretation. Lest our parallel seem inadequate, as 
 applying to two individuals both remarkable rather for 
 philosophic and psychological insight than for poetic 
 imagination, let us turn to the case of two poets, as far 
 apart in their theological doctrines as Augustine and 
 Mill, yet both unconsciously testifying to the same 
 kind of experience. Even Professor James never dis- 
 covered the fact that Shelley underwent a conversion. 
 Yet any student of religious psychology who will read 
 successively Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" 
 and Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven," will 
 have the same overwhelming sense of identity be- 
 tween the experiences testified to, as arises from com- 
 paring the cases of Augustine and Mill, or indeed any 
 two stories of conversion within the limits of the 
 Christian Weltanschauung. Thompson, it is true, de- 
 picts himself as fleeing from the celestial pursuer; 
 Shelley apparently embraces it on the first challenge. 
 After telling at some length of the "imseen Power" 
 whose awful shadow "floats though unseen amongst 
 us, — visiting this various world with as inconstant 
 wing as summer winds that creep from flower to 
 flower," he proceeds to relate how, — 
 
 Musing deeply on the lot 
 
 Of life, at the sweet time when winds are wooing 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 17 
 
 All vital things that wake to bring 
 News of birds and blossoming, 
 Sudden thy shadow fell on me: 
 I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! 
 
 He tells how he dedicated his life to the unseen Power, 
 and calls the universe to testify that he has kept his 
 vow. He claims that, after this one decisive moment 
 of insight and quickening, — 
 
 . . . never joy illumed my brow 
 Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free 
 This world from its dark slavery; 
 That thou, awful LoveUness, 
 Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. 
 
 That the effects of Shelley's conversion upon his 
 conduct may not always have been such as we can 
 conscientiously approve, in no way weakens my con- 
 tention. It is notorious that imder every religious dis- 
 cipline these effects are often unsatisfactory. Even in 
 the case of Thompson, after the "following feet" have 
 overtaken him, and he has discovered that his gloom 
 was, after all, "shade of His hand, outstretched caress- 
 ingly,'' there were many incidents which caused dis- 
 tress to his friends, and pangs of conscience to himself. 
 Yet nobody can doubt that the tone and level of life 
 for both these men were permanently changed by the 
 mystical experiences which they so wonderfully record. 
 Shelley at the last, in his "Ode to the West Wind," 
 implicitly renews the proud claim that he has not been 
 disobedient unto the heavenly vision. He speaks not 
 only as a poet, but as a prophet, who indeed feels him- 
 
1 8 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 self despised and rejected, and yet is in no wise uncer- 
 tain as to the authenticity of his prophetic credentials. 
 He still believes that his "dead thoughts," driven over 
 the universe, would have power "to quicken a new 
 birth." Hope may be extinct, but faith is not. As 
 much as Thompson, he had come into vivifying touch 
 with a real Power of goodness, outside himself but 
 continuous with the good in him. 
 
 This, then, is the position which an examination of 
 cases of conversion justifies us in assuming: that the 
 experience of all the converts is identical, and that the 
 Power-not-themselves, which enters into and trans- 
 figures their Hfe, is always the same Power. Nor is 
 f the holding of any special form of theological creed, or 
 ; indeed of any creed at all, a necessary condition for 
 ! experiencing this quickening contact. Whether the 
 \ convert calls the power that saves him "The Spirit 
 I of Intellectual Beauty," or "Christ Uving in me," or 
 1 the "Fugitive Ideal," or "The Hound of Heaven," we 
 jiknow that what is connoted is always the same factor 
 j \in experience. We know this scientifically, just as we 
 know any other fact of nature. Science has no other 
 criterion for discovering the identity of an energy man- 
 ifested in different times and places, except the twin 
 facts that it always appears under the same conditions 
 and always produces the same effects. 
 
 It may be granted that our psychological investi- 
 gation reveals the identity of the saving factor which 
 enters into the lives of men of all creeds and of none; 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 19 
 
 yet the significance of this fact may be overlooked by 
 those who are accustomed to thinking only in the con- 
 ventional theological terms. Such thinkers may not 
 realize that the admission of the simple psychological 
 fact, if fact it be, which we have thus defined, annihil- 
 ates for ever the pretension that any supernaturalistic 
 doctrine — Catholic, "Episcopalian," Methodist or 
 any other — is necessary to salvation. If men like 
 Mill and Shelley, whom the orthodox world would 
 unhesitatingly rank as atheists, can be shown to have 
 undergone exactly the same experience as St. Augus- 
 tine or St. Paul, and the experience in their case led to 
 results analogous to those wrought in the lives of the 
 great Christian saints, it becomes self-evident that the 
 doctrinal machinery for bringing the individual soul 
 into contact with the redeeming power is in no wise in- 
 dispensable. This conclusion may be unwelcome to the 
 dogmatist, but it will be hailed with joy by all who feel 
 not only that the world is passing away from the ortho- 
 dox postulates, but that, by every canon of intellectual 
 integrity, it ought to do so. The ecclesiastical condi- 
 tions of salvation are for many of us intellectually and 
 morally impossible ones. We cannot believe to order, 
 and we cannot believe either in the absence of historical 
 evidence or in defiance of such evidence as we have. 
 If a man of modern education cannot undergo con- 
 version except he believe in the physical resurrection 
 of Jesus Christ, or in the continued self-conscious exist- 
 ence of the individualized personaUty of Jesus Christ 
 
 V 
 
 \ 
 
20 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 after death, then conversion is impossible for him; 
 he is, as we said at the outset, excluded from an in- 
 finitely precious and exalting experience. If, on the 
 other hand, we can show actual cases of men who, hold- 
 ing no such beliefs, have yet entered into this saving 
 experience, we have conclusively demonstrated the 
 superfluousness of the ecclesiastical doctrine. 
 
 The principle that "Nothing real can be impossible " 
 is thus seen to be a two-edged sword. It forces us to 
 admit the reality of many abnormal experiences under 
 the Christian theory which the iconoclastic free- 
 thinker is disposed to reject with contemptuous in- 
 credulity. On the other hand, it compels the Christian 
 dogmatist to concede that his dogma is no condition 
 sine qua non for the occurrence of such experiences. 
 
 A careful investigation, conducted with all the rigor- 
 ous precautions of scientific psychology, will, we be- 
 lieve, demonstrate that religious experience of the kind 
 of which St. Paul and St. Augustine are classic in- 
 stances, is much less rare than we commonly imagine 
 it to be. If the factors involved are natural and normal 
 in human experience, it seems probable that many 
 people will pass through just such transformations, 
 though, owing to their unawareness of the kinship 
 of their own cases with those of the great spiritual 
 geniuses, they may never say or even know that they 
 have experienced conversion. Yet the essential facts 
 are quite plainly imiversal facts. We are, in simple 
 truth, all dependent, as Matthew Arnold points out, 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 21 
 
 on a Power greater than ourselves, yet identical and 
 continuous with the highest element of our selfhood. 
 We do not make ourselves, our nature or our circum- 
 stances. We cannot explain or control the fact that a 
 bodily ailment which on one day is an overwhelming 
 obstacle to any great achievement, is, on another day, 
 a most potent incentive to the attainment of our pos- 
 sible highest. Energies and inspirations, "facilities 
 and felicities," do indeed seem to come and go inde- 
 pendently of our volition. "Unless above himself he 
 can erect himself, how poor a thing is man!" This 
 undeniably applies not only to the rare spiritual genius, 
 but to what James calls "the Crumps and Stigginses." 
 Equally universal is the experience of what St. Paul 
 calls " the war in our members." A man may be alto- 
 gether irreligious, he may be entirely self-centred; yet 
 even he will be sometimes able and sometimes unable 
 to do what seems to him good. His ideal may be an 
 idol, his notion of good may be sordid, yet he will ex- 
 perience a kind of rhythmic alternation in his power 
 to approximate towards it. And in proportion as a 
 man's notions of duty are more exalted, in that pro- 
 portion the conflict between aspiration and achieve- 
 ment becomes more apparent and more unendurable. 
 The saint who cries out, " Oh, wretched man that I am, 
 who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" 
 is giving utterance to a feeling that occurs to every 
 man and woman. Or, if we are forced to admit that 
 this experience is not quite universal, we shall at once 
 
22 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 see that the absence of it in particular individuals is 
 the decisive measure of their spiritual poverty and 
 shallowness. He who does not know what it is to miss 
 the mark morally, he who has no aspirations that 
 transcend his capacity of achievement, and who never 
 finds the wail of St. Paul echoing in his own heart, is 
 spiritually deficient to such an extent that he is almost 
 below the human level. He stands to morality as a 
 blind man to colour or a deaf man to music. Nay, he is 
 even worse off than these, for these are at least aware 
 that there is a realm of human experience from which 
 they are excluded, and they do undoubtedly lament the 
 bitter misfortune which shuts them out from it. The 
 man who is morally blind and deaf is unconscious of his 
 condition. He sneers at the alleged experience of others, 
 and denies the reality of the ideals which men strive 
 in vain to attain. He has not even risen so high as to 
 feel " the desire of the moth for the star, of the night for 
 the morrow." 
 
 The experience of moral inability, however, is 
 scarcely more universal in human consciousness than 
 the experience of the influx of moral power. Who 
 is there that upon challenge must not admit that he 
 has often been helped, as it were by a Power outside 
 himself, towards the fulfilment of his ethical aspira- 
 tions? Who has not known at least some rare moments 
 when the ideal flooded the spirit with strength and 
 joy? And the strength and joy that come are al- 
 most invariably in inverse ratio to the intensity and 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 23 
 
 bitterness of the struggle which has preceded their 
 arrival. 
 
 Yet this experience, so ordinary that most men never 
 dream of classifying it as religious, is essentially iden- 
 tical with the most wonderful instances of conversion 
 which literature records. Not being poets, we may not, 
 with Shelley, "shriek and clasp our hands in ecstasy" 
 when the awful Loveliness reaches the volitional springs 
 of our nature. We may not envisage the challenging 
 ideals that rebuke us as the hunting of the soul by the 
 Hound of Heaven. And, not being analytical psycho- 
 logists, we may not, with John Stuart Mill, realize 
 that our gloom and depression are identical with the 
 Methodist's conviction of sin, and our deliverance from 
 them one and the same with the Methodist's new 
 birth. Yet reflection and scientific comparison of 
 cases make the fact of this identity altogether im- 
 deniable. 
 
 But what is the Power that saves? What is this 
 thing of many names, whose every title is so obviously 
 inadequate? It is the Hound of Heaven; it is the Spirit 
 of Intellectual Beauty; it is the voice that calls to St. 
 Augustine, "ToUe, lege; tolle, lege." Yet such imagi- 
 native characterizations are clearly not definite enough 
 for purposes of scientific classification. And from this 
 point of view, to call the saving power "God" is no 
 more helpful than to call it Xj unless we have succeeded 
 in evaluating x, or, in other words, in defining God in 
 terms of verifiable experience. 
 
24 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 Our analysis, however, opens up to us the way by 
 which such an evaluation may be reached. If we attend 
 closely to what happens in the case of those who ex- 
 perience conversion, we find that what they mean by 
 God is, in the first place, the source of the supreme 
 blessings of life. Not only so, but we find that this ulti- 
 mate source of moral strength and spiritual peace and 
 joy is a natural as distinct from a supernatural, an em- 
 pirical as distinct from a transcendental, power. In 
 every case, from St. Paul and St. Augustine to Shelley 
 and John Stuart Mill, what happens is clearly the 
 unlocking of the hitherto unexploited resources of the 
 man's own selfhood, by a key obtained from some 
 other human agency. There is no instance of conversion 
 unmediated by social influences. Even if a man sees 
 a heavenly vision, as did St. Paul, it is always the 
 vision of a human form; and the context of circum- 
 stance always demonstrates that the efficient cause of 
 the experience is the stored-up memory of what that 
 human form stood for when it was alive imder the 
 limitations of earthly experience, and not something 
 which it has done since its withdrawal from within the 
 spiritual organism of living human society. When the 
 transformation is effected through the reading of a 
 sentence in a book, the humanness of the source of sal- 
 vation is still more evident. The command to abandon 
 self-indulgence and to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" 
 originated not in a transcendental sphere, but in the 
 thought of the man Paul. Nobody has ever claimed 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 25 
 
 that Marmonters "Memoires" were either dictated or 
 inspired by any superhuman power. Nor would the 
 most hidebound dogmatist dream of supposing that 
 there does actually and objectively exist a Hound of 
 Heaven, which pursues a man as the dogs pursue the 
 fox. Thompson's Hound and Shelley's Spirit of Intel- 
 lectual Beauty are quite obviously objectifications, 
 poetic bodyings forth, of a mighty ideal which haunts 
 their minds. And this ideal is not a thing which they 
 have created by their own unaided reflection. How- 
 ever great may be their own original contribution, 
 they have received from others — from parents and 
 teachers, and from the living tradition which, through 
 literature, gives a timeless life to human thought and 
 aspiration — the materials out of which they have 
 constructed their imaginative picture of the ideal that 
 haunts them and will not let them go. 
 
 It is necessary to emphasize the fact that a psycho- 
 logical investigation of religious experience definitely 
 disproves the hideous Calvinistic (or more truly Au- 
 gustinian) doctrine of total depravity. If man were 
 totally depraved, he would necessarily remain for ever 
 ignorant of the fact, just as a commimity of men born 
 blind would remain unaware of the existence of vision. 
 Unless there is something in a man's own nattire identi- 
 cal with the goodness that is outside of him, he could 
 never come into contact with the larger forces of spirit- 
 ual strength; for he could never recognize goodness as 
 such. This truth has been stated once for all by Im- 
 
26 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 manuel Kant in his treatise on "The Metaphysic of 
 Ethics": ''Even the Holy One in the Gospel," says 
 Kant, ''is only recognized to be so when compared with 
 our ideal of moral excellence. . . . Whence this idea 
 God, as the supreme archetypal good? Simply from 
 that idea of ethical perfection evolved by reason a 
 priori. . . . Imitation has no place in morals." 
 
 Into the metaphysical question whether the native- 
 born good in man is "evolved by reason a priori'^ we 
 need not here enter. It suffices for our purpose that 
 there is an original goodness in man, whatever may 
 be its genesis. It is in virtue of this endowment of our 
 nature that we recognize goodness as such, whether we 
 find it incarnated in a Hving being, or objectified in the 
 concept of a superhuman person. It is also in virtue 
 of the fact that goodness is the fundamental element 
 of our nature that we realize the inexhaustibility of the 
 ethical ideal. We see that no one man can ever embody 
 to the full the entire possibility of goodness. This is as 
 true of Christ as of any other historic personage. Deep 
 and real as our sense of his unsurpassed greatness may 
 be, we cannot for a moment regard him as more than 
 one illustration, one hint, of the possibilities of moral 
 realization. We may say of him in his relation to the 
 imiversal ideal, as Mr. William Watson says of the 
 sun in its relation to the personified totality of the 
 physical world: — 
 
 Thou art but as a word of his speech; 
 Thou art but as a wave of his hand; 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 27 
 
 Thou art brief as a glitter of sand 
 *Twixt tide and tide on his beach; 
 Thou art less than a spark of his fire, 
 
 Or a moment's mood of his soul; 
 Thou art lost in the notes on the lips of his choir 
 
 That chant the chant of the Whole. 
 
 Nor should it be imagined that when we speak of 
 God as the Ideal we are in any way invalidating or de- 
 nying the reality of God. There could not be a grosser 
 blunder, nor one more disastrous in its consequences, 
 than the antithesis between the ideal and the real. 
 People talk as though the real were coextensive only 
 with the actual, the visible and tangible, and as though 
 anything which does not possess these attributes were 
 unreal. But if — without going into metaphysical con- 
 siderations — we take the merely empirical ground that 
 whatever produces effects is real, and that the most 
 real thing is that which produces the most powerful ef- 
 fects, we see at once that ideals are more and not less 
 real than the phenomena of the sense-world. Only 
 that is unreal which does nothing and can do nothing. 
 Yet nobody, not even the most thoroughgoing materi- 
 alist, can deny that ideals do produce astonishingly 
 great and tangible effects in the lives of individuals, and 
 of human society in mass. It may indeed be maintained 
 that the ideal is itself a mere projection in conscious- 
 ness of material things previously experienced through 
 sensation. That is a tenable position, — impossible as 
 it may be for the materialist to explain how physical 
 facts can translate themselves into facts of conscious- 
 
28 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 ness and standards of moral valuation. Yet even this 
 explanation by the materialist will leave untouched 
 the fact for which alone I am concerned at the moment 
 to contend — that the ideal as such, whatever its gene- 
 sis, is an actual potency, a cause, a force acting upon 
 the mind and will of man, and through these producing 
 effects more significant than any merely physical pro- 
 cess could ever achieve. 
 
 To say, then, that God is the Ideal or that the Ideal 
 is God, is equivalent to saying that God is the supreme 
 Reality. It is also equivalent to identif)dng God with 
 the human and natural; for few would be disposed to 
 contend that an ideal which is our deepest nature can 
 be at the same time supernatural in the sense of super- 
 himian. Super-individual it undeniably is. Often, too, 
 it is higher or deeper than consciousness, even in a man 
 of whose conduct it is the regulative principle, dom- 
 inant over all special passions and all merely self- 
 centred striving. But super-social it is not; at least, 
 we have no experience which could verify the assertion 
 that it is. Nor need we be concerned either to prove or 
 disprove its transcendence in this sense. Its value to 
 man, its preciousness and power, are wholly inherent in 
 that aspect of it which is within the realm of verifiable 
 experience. Even, therefore, if it could be shown to be 
 coextensive not merely with hiunan rationality but 
 with inconceivable choirs and hierarchies of spiritual 
 self-consciousness beyond time and space, and inde- 
 pendent of the limitations that condition our mortality, 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 29 
 
 it could acquire from that consideration no dignity, no 
 majesty, no sanctity beyond what attaches to its hum- 
 blest manifestation as the energizing principle of good 
 in the poorest and least intellectual human being. 
 
 The view of God which I am here attempting to 
 outline, based as it is on ethical psychology, and built 
 up out of demonstrable elements of experience, is a 
 view which makes atheism impossible. Or, more pre- 
 cisely — since the term atheism denotes a volitional 
 rather than an intellectual attitude — I should say 
 that it renders impossible the denial of the existence of 
 God. Only on two grounds could anybody base a nega- 
 tive argument against this doctrine. He might say that 
 no such comprehensive inter-personal and super-per- 
 sonal ideal exists; but this contention we have refuted 
 in advance, by pointing to effects which presuppose 
 such an ideal as their cause. Or he might contend that, 
 inasmuch as this ideal is built up out of volitions, senti- 
 ments, likes and dislikes, and not out of purely rational 
 judgments, it ought not to command the allegiance of 
 a creature like man, in whom reason is the distinctive 
 and highest faculty. Here again, however, our answer 
 is not far to seek. We need only point to the fact, ele- 
 mentary in ethical philosophy, that the discursive 
 reason of man has no place whatever in determining 
 the values and the ends of life. The reason is at home 
 only in the realm of fact. It is the will which is sove- 
 reign in the sphere of values. Our moral judgments are 
 ultimate facts, which the reason may classify and sys- 
 
30 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 tematize, but which it can neither validate nor inval- 
 idate.^ A creature all intellect, but devoid of those 
 instincts, sentiments and emotions out of which con- 
 crete moral judgments are built up, could never come 
 to feel the constraining force of any moral ideal, 
 whether apprehended as purely abstract, or object- 
 ified in any one personal incarnation. But man, hap- 
 pily, is not thus constituted. He does spontaneously 
 love goodness when it is set before him. He is rebuked 
 from within himself by the clash between what he 
 does and what he ought to do. The "ought "of con- 
 science is irreducible. The reality of the ideal is 
 proved not so much by a man's conduct as by his own 
 dissatisfaction with it. Francis Thompson is actually 
 pursued by the Hound of Heaven, and he is never 
 more conscious of the pursuer than when he is appar- 
 ently remotest from it. 
 
 The special temptations to which Thompson was 
 subjected, raise anew the old hard problem as to which 
 type of character is of greater moral worth — the 
 man to whom goodness comes easily, who does the 
 work of the stern Lawgiver and knows it not, who is 
 not embarrassed or deflected from the right path by the 
 solicitations of the senses; or he who achieves good- 
 
 1 That is, as facts of consciousness. It is not intended to deny 
 that conscience is rational, that moral distinctions relate to objec- 
 tive differences, and that the promotion of "the good of all" is a 
 commandment of reason. The contention is merely that the ethical 
 facts could not enter into a consciousness which was devoid of will. 
 The perception of good and evil as such springs out of the clash 
 between what is and what is desired. 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 31 
 
 ness, if at all, only at the cost of a long and bitter 
 struggle. It sounds paradoxical to say that a man who 
 only abstains, let us say, from drunkenness by means 
 of severe and heroic effort is a better man than he who 
 never feels any inclination to drink to excess. Yet it is 
 still more paradoxical to attribute a higher degree of 
 virtue to him who has never known temptation than 
 to him who has fought the enemy at its strongest and 
 fiercest, and come out victorious, even though not 
 unscathed. 
 
 The problem does not arise in the case of the un- 
 tempted man who is self-satisfied. The most repellent 
 creature under heaven is the moral prig. The rich man 
 who never stole, the strong man who never drank, the 
 man of ascetic temperament who never felt the call 
 of the flesh — these, if they thank God that in such 
 matters they are not as other men, are nearer to hell 
 than the man who is heart-broken at his own badness 
 and weakness. Nor is there any question in the case 
 of the much-tempted man who after many battles 
 has at last found peace in self-conquest. For he, having 
 suffered much, has learned a sympathy with human- 
 ity and an insight into the moral needs of others 
 which fit him to be a guide and counsellor to those 
 in trial, as the untried man can never be. 
 
 These considerations are relevant when we think 
 of the tragic element in Thompson's life, represented 
 by his battle with the fiend laudanum. Having been 
 indiscreetly presented by his mother with a copy of 
 
32 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium- 
 Eater," the unhappy youth, who had been forced into 
 a study of medicine which was repellent to him, took 
 refuge from the realities of Manchester — and later of 
 the London underworld — in the dreamland of that 
 soul-destroying drug. Of men so tempted as Coleridge, 
 De Quincey and Thompson, we should think with an 
 infinite sympathy, thanking God not that we are not 
 as they but that we have never been tried as they. 
 Given their temptations, we might have proved as far 
 inferior to them in moral courage and strength as in 
 poetic genius. And nobody who reads Thompson's 
 prose and poetry can fail to see how every temptation 
 and every suffering has been transmuted by him into 
 wisdom and literary beauty. 
 
 My present purpose constrains me to subdue the 
 controversial impulse awakened by the staggering as- 
 sertion of a recent English critic, that the author of 
 the "Anthem of Earth," the "Ode to the Setting Sun," 
 and "The Hound of Heaven," was not a great poet. I 
 find it equally hard to resist the temptation to dilate 
 at length on the wonderful qualities of Thompson's 
 prose. The study of his essays encourages a man to 
 deny what the world at large accepts as a self-evident 
 fact — namely, that all human speech is divided into 
 prose and poetry, and therefore that whatever is not 
 poetry is prose. Even M. Bergson, despite the rarity 
 of such a literary style as his own, acquiesces in this 
 vulgar error. When that amusing philistine, the 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 33 
 
 Bourgeois Gentilhomme of Moliere, is told that such 
 sentences as "Nicole, apportez-moi mes pantoufles" 
 are prose, he expresses huge delight: "Par ma foi, il 
 y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans 
 que j^en susse rien; et je vous suis le plus oblige du 
 monde de m'avoir appris cela ! '' Everybody laughs at 
 his simplicity; yet perhaps they who laugh are sim- 
 pler than he. At all events, one who has learned 
 to know intimately and to love those supreme prose 
 styles which are perhaps a more distinctive glory of 
 our English speech than even its poetic miracles, will 
 feel disposed to contend hotly, as I do, that not all 
 speech which is not poetry is worthy to be called 
 prose. If the "Areopagitica" of Milton, the first book 
 of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," the "Religio Me- 
 dici" and "Urn Burial" of Sir Thomas Browne, and 
 certain quintessential things in Jeremy Taylor, Edmund 
 Burke, Ruskin, Walter Pater and Francis Thompson 
 are prose, — as indeed they are, — then we deny that 
 the thing which masquerades as English in the columns 
 of our daily newspapers and constitutes the poverty- 
 stricken vocabulary of current speech, is worthy to 
 be dignified by the same title. It is no more prose 
 than the verse of Miss Wells's delightful "Whimsey 
 Aathology" is poetry. M. Jourdain was right, even 
 though only instinctively so. He felt the gulf be- 
 tween his talk and the French of Montaigne, of 
 Pascal, of St. Frangois de Sales. Daily speech — the 
 language of the newspaper and the market-place — 
 
34 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 is at best only crude ore. It has to be crushed and 
 sifted, and treated in a hundred ways, before the 
 refined gold which is prose can be extracted from it; 
 and then, out of that refined gold, are cast or moulded 
 or beaten the ornaments and medallions which are 
 poetry. 
 
 There is much, indeed, which hovers on the border- 
 line between real prose and counterfeit. Many times 
 one may be in doubt as to the classification of what one 
 is reading. But whoever has once felt the wizard spell 
 of our "God-gifted organ- voices " will never again be 
 in doubt when the authentic oracle speaks. It is not 
 necessary for such an one to read more than a single 
 page of Thompson's "Paganism, Old and New," or 
 of his essay on Shelley, to realize that here is a new 
 incarnation of the ancient genius of English speech. 
 When one first dips into his pages, the sensation is 
 unmistakable. One feels 
 
 like some watcher of the skies 
 When a new planet swims into his ken! 
 
 Thompson's rebuke to the authorities of his Church, 
 in the second paragraph of the Shelley essay, is alone 
 sufficient to settle the question once for all: — 
 
 Fathers of the Church (we would say), pastors of the 
 Church, pious laics of the Church: you are taking from 
 its walls the panoply of Aquinas; take also from its walls 
 the psaltery of Alighieri. Unrol the precedents of the 
 Church's past; recall to your minds that Francis of 
 Assisi was among the precursors of Dante; that, sworn 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 35 
 
 to Poverty, he forswore not Beauty, but discerned 
 through the lamp Beauty the Light God. . . . 
 
 Truly may we say, the distinction between prose and 
 sub-prose is immensely clearer than that between 
 prose and poetry. Nay, rather, of the two distinctions 
 we should be more inclined to deny the existence of the 
 second. For prose is often only poetry at her ease. 
 Take this exquisite phrase of Thompson's, that Fran- 
 cis of Assisi "discerned through the lamp Beauty the 
 Light God." There is far less poetry in many a score 
 of lines, even by authentic singers, than in that one 
 perfect gem of prose. Nor need one quote the prose- 
 poem which comes a few pages later, beginning "The 
 universe is his box of toys," since all true lovers of the 
 supreme in letters either have it by heart or will pre- 
 fer to read it in its own context. 
 
 It is one of the bitter ironies of life that even in the 
 case of a predestinate poet like Thompson, his sweet- 
 est music can only be wrung from him by sorrow. There 
 is no fact which constitutes a more unanswerable ar- 
 gument for those who doubt or deny the almightiness of 
 God. The fact is undeniable: Suffering of some sort, 
 mental or physical, is the indispensable condition of 
 supreme achievement. Milton's anguish over his blind- 
 ness carries him up to two of the highest of his Hima- 
 layan peaks of song — the sonnet on his blindness, and 
 the invocation to the Holy -Light which opens the third 
 Book of "Paradise Lost.'JNor can it be doubted that 
 the insight of Thompson into the deeps of human woe 
 
^6 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 has been sharpened, and his utterance rendered more 
 poignant and memorable, by his own descent into that 
 London which is much Uke helWThe glorious outcome 
 of the process, however, can never furnish a moral 
 justification for it. 
 
 Half a beast is the great god Pan, 
 To laugh as he sits by the river 
 
 Making a poet out of a man; 
 
 The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain — 
 
 For the reed which grows nevermore again 
 As a reed with the reeds in the river! 
 
 Mr. Wilfrid Meynell has disclosed the interesting 
 fact that the ''Shelley" and "The Hound of Heaven" 
 were " contemporaries — one could say twins." They 
 belong to the days when their author was recovering 
 from the deep wound of his outcast period, and fighting 
 his bitter battle with the drug-fiend and with the harpy 
 melancholy which the struggle brought upon him. 
 ^Francis Thompson, a failure for lack of vocation as a 
 candidate for the priesthood, failing as a medical stu- 
 dent, failing even to enlist as a common soldier, a ner- 
 vous wreck and addicted to drugs, wrought these two 
 masterpieces out of his experience as a dereUct in the 
 streets of London, when he sold matches, papers or 
 shoestrings, slept in fourpenny doss-houses when he 
 ; had the money, and passed the night on the Embank- 
 1 ment, "between heaven and Charing Cross" (or per- 
 ! haps we should say between Charing Cross and hell), 
 when he had not?^ We cannot cease to marvel at the 
 mystery of such achievement growing out of such cir- 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 37 
 
 cumstances, even when we realize that only after the 
 reed has been torn from the river, and hacked and 
 hewed by the great god Pan, can it yield up its hidden 
 music. 
 
 No denial or qualification is possible to Mr. George 
 Wyndham's dictum that the essay on Shelley is "the 
 most important contribution to pure letters written in 
 English during the last twenty years." It is bitter to 
 reflect how much sooner the fame he merited might 
 have come to Thompson if the " Dublin Review " could 
 have taken its tiny stock of courage in both hands 
 and printed that essay when it was first received, in- 
 stead of rejecting it, and bringing it out only after its 
 creator had passed beyond the need of himian help. 
 Yet perhaps when we remember the hideous official 
 tyranny that reigns within the Church of Rome — the 
 malignity that pursued the great, the immortal George 
 Tyrrell beyond death to his very grave — we ought 
 rather to admire the hardihood of Mr. Wilfrid Ward 
 in publishing the "Shelley" at all than wonder at the 
 timorousness of his predecessors. 
 
 We would add to Mr. Wyndham's assertion the 
 further statement that the essay on Shelley is the best 
 possible commentary on its contemporary " The Hound 
 of Heaven," and that both together are as invaluable 
 for their autobiographical significance as for their 
 unique literary quality. Reading in and between the 
 lines of both, we get perhaps closer to the central self- 
 hood of Francis Thompson than any narrator of the 
 
38 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 facts of his life could take us. Mr. Everard Meynell is 
 undoubtedly right in emphasizing the personal signifi- 
 cance of all the poems, and of such things in the prose 
 as the essay on "Darkest England " and the " Shelley. " 
 Consider, for example, how self-revealing is his analy- 
 sis of Shelley's childlikeness: rTo be childlike," he 
 says, "is to know not as yet that you are under sen- 
 tence of life, nor petition that it be commuted into 
 death.'* And what other pen could have drawn such 
 a picture of Thompson as he has incidentally given of 
 himself in describing the lot of Mangan: — 
 
 Outcast from home, health and hope, with a charred 
 past and a bleared future, an anchorite without detach- 
 ment, and self-cloistered without self-sufl5cingness, de- 
 posed from a world which he had not abdicated, pierced 
 with thorns which formed no crown, a poet hopeless of 
 the bays, and a martyr hopeless of the palm ... an 
 exile banned and proscribed even from the innocent 
 arms of childhood . . . burning helpless at the stake of 
 his unquenchable heart. 
 
 If anybody doubts that this is autobiography, let 
 him compare that phrase about "an exile banned and 
 proscribed even from the innocent arms of childhood" 
 with the agonized yearning of the following Unes from 
 "The Hound of Heaven": — 
 
 I sought no more that after which I strayed 
 
 In face of man or maid; 
 But still within the little children's eyes 
 
 Seems something, something that replies. 
 They at least are for me, surely for me. 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 39 
 
 I turned me to them very wistfully; 
 
 But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair 
 
 With dawning answers there, 
 Their angel plucked them from me by the hair. . . . 
 
 I have said that the indispensableness of suffering 
 to supreme achievement is no justification of it if 
 considered as part of a world-plan. But religion to-day, 
 if I mistake not, is no longer concerned to demonstrate 
 (as ordinary theism needs must try to do) that what- 
 ever is is right. The true religious lesson is not that the 
 entire frame of things is ruled in wisdom and goodness, 
 but rather the clue which experience gives to the use 
 which we can make of suffering. It is not only the poet 
 whom the great god Pan hacks and hews. We all have 
 our Gethsemanes, but most of us bleed vainly, not giv- 
 ing back to mankind in character and counsel what 
 we have endured in suffering. Turn your sorrow into 
 song! Like the child who tied his harpstring across the 
 bushes, let us learn the secret by which we may wring 
 from the storm its music. Let us not waste our time 
 in devising idle arguments to explain the inexplicable, 
 or to whitewash a world which is once for all indifferent 
 to our heart-breakings; but let us transmute the heavy 
 discipline of suffering and bereavement, as the poets 
 have always done, into some grace of character or gift 
 of work that shall help to redeem others. There is no 
 truer or wiser counsel for the sufferer than that given by 
 the quiet recluse to whom we owe the ^'Ecclesiastical 
 Music": — 
 
40 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 If thou willingly bear thy cross, it will bear thee. . . . 
 If thou bear it unwiUingly, thou makest thyself a burden 
 and greatly increasest thy load; and yet nevertheless 
 thou must bear it. If thou cast away one cross, without 
 doubt thou shalt find another, and perchance a heavier. 
 
 We have seen that the spiritual experience testified 
 to in "The Hound of Heaven'' is possible to all men, 
 whether they be Catholic, Jew, Buddhist or Agnostic. 
 Let it suffice to add that that experience is also neces- 
 sary to all men, if they are to have any elevation of 
 character, any spiritual dignity, any true valuation of 
 the finer ranges of existence. Our lives will be indeed 
 "strange, piteous, futile things" unless we too be 
 guided and goaded by the mighty Ideal which says to 
 us, as the celestial Hoimd to Thompson: "All things 
 betray thee who betrayestMe," "Nought shelters thee, 
 who wilt not shelter Me." Here speaks the voice of the 
 imiversal spiritual life wfiichTs^ our deepest selfhood,* 
 and is therefore the secret of all worthy achievement, 
 ofall alt and pueLTy, ot all reformation in the common 
 me. 'i1SB spiiiLual" barreuiieas of our day is due to our 
 indifierence to it; and, in so far as we are overcoming 
 this barrenness, it is only in the measure in which we 
 are hearkening to the oracles of that voice, which can 
 alwa ys be heard by the attentive spirit. So indispens- 
 able to true humanity is this experience of the Ideal 
 that it were better for any man to be awakened to it 
 even by blinding sorrow than to remain all his days 
 at the level of sensuous seK-centredness. To listen 
 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 41 
 
 within oneself for this voice is not to fall into the mean 
 idolatry of self-deification, for when it speaks from 
 within, it speaks always in condemnation of what we 
 actually are. It is, nevertheless, our own voice — the 
 Universal in the particular, the Man in men, the God 
 in Man. 
 
CHAPTER n 
 
 MR. G. K. CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 
 
 There is no more fascinating psychological problem 
 in contemporary literature than that of the spiritual 
 development of Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. His numer- 
 ous books reveal him as a most perverse, yet a most 
 lovable man. He belongs to a class, traceable in Eng- 
 lish letters from the days of Chaucer until now, which 
 he has himself defined (in an essay on George Borrow) 
 as that of the "character." He is a singular blend of 
 the seemingly incompatible attributes of Sir John Fal- 
 staff and Dr. Samuel Johnson, combining the riotous 
 good spirits of the one with much of the practical 
 sagacity and moral sanity of the other. 
 
 One is struck, at the first glance over Mr. Chester- 
 ton's Uterary output, by his versatility. He has turned 
 his hand to nearly every possible branch of the book- 
 maker's craft. During a comparatively short literary 
 life, he has turned out poems, novels, biographical and 
 critical studies, detective stories and — most singular 
 of all — a Christian apologetic. Nearly two years 
 ago, I ventured the assertion that the reason why he 
 had not attempted the writing of plays was a well- 
 groimded distrust of his own powers in that direction. 
 I pointed out characteristics in his novels which 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 43 
 
 seemed to justify the conclusion that he could not 
 construct anything sufficiently close-knit and sequent 
 for dramatic presentation. Even a superficial study 
 of his numerous novels reveals a singular incoherence 
 in the workings of his fancy. In all his stories, 
 from "The Napoleon of Notting Hill," down to and 
 including '' Manalive," one is impressed, and indeed 
 oppressed, by the chaotic looseness of the structure. 
 Characters appear and disappear, incident merges 
 into incident, with a reckless disregard of causality 
 and probability which makes them quite incapable of 
 reduction to dramatic form. Hence my conclusion 
 that he did not write plays because he could not. 
 
 Since then, Mr. Chesterton has very kindly gone to 
 the trouble (which must have been considerable) of 
 proving my point for me. It is no unkindness to say 
 of "Magic" that had it been written by any man 
 of less reputation it would never have got even into 
 print, let alone on to the stage. And, despite the at- 
 traction of its author's name and personality, and not- 
 withstanding all the help of an exquisite stage setting 
 and brilliant interpreters, it was such a failure (even 
 at the Little Theatre in London) that it would have 
 had to be taken off after a few performances, had not 
 Fleet Street come chivalrously to the rescue by work- 
 ing up a wholly artificial newspaper boom. Never was 
 such a set of mere masks put through such a series of 
 preposterous situations as in this "fantastic comedy." 
 
 Now, this fimdamental incoherence, this reckless- 
 
44 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 ness of reality, is characteristic not only of Mr. Ches- 
 terton's creative fantasy, but also of his thought on 
 the great issues of life and destiny. His mind is that 
 of a spoiled child, and he spurns at logic as the 
 spoiled child at parental authority. This inherent 
 defect, moreover, has been intensified by the fact 
 that, Uke almost all the successful literary men of the 
 present day, he writes far too much. We find him 
 every week in the "Illustrated London News" and 
 the London "Daily Herald" (to which the allegiance 
 lost by the "Daily News" has been transferred), and 
 almost every month in almost every magazine. Nay, 
 one cannot always open even that grave and reverend 
 Roman quarterly, the "Dublin Review," nowadays, 
 without finding Mr. Chesterton's motley jostling 
 against the philosophic cloak of Mr. Wilfrid Ward. 
 Now it would be inevitable, even with the most pains- 
 taking of craftsmen, that in such an output quality 
 should be sacrificed to quantity; much more, then, 
 with Mr. Chesterton, who is the least painstaking. 
 Even his best and most finished work — even the os- 
 tensibly mature and considered judgments of "Here- 
 tics" and "Orthodoxy" — are palpably spoiled by 
 haste. And no doubt the inadequacy of his book on 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw is partly to be explained through 
 the necessity of complying with time-conditions arbi- 
 trarily imposed by a commercial-minded publisher. In 
 the latter essay, as its victim has pointed out, a whole 
 chapter is spoiled, and the entire estimate of one of Mr. 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 45 
 
 Shawns most important plays is reduced to absurdity, 
 by a "howling misquotation." 
 
 This light-heartedness, this irresponsibility, which 
 leads Mr. Chesterton, in an essay which he must have 
 revised carefully for the press, to misquote and misre- 
 present an old and admired friend, will naturally play 
 havoc with his judgments upon men and things towards 
 which he stands in an attitude, not of sympathy, but 
 of infuriated contempt. It is not too much to say that 
 the tendency towards slipshod quotation and scorn for 
 fact which seems native to him, and which has been de- 
 veloped by the habit of hasty work, has hardened into 
 something like absolute incapacity to estimate fairly, 
 or to express accurately, any point of view with which 
 he does not agree. Take, for example, the following 
 attempt on his part to make out that Ethical Societies 
 and other Uberal churches are exclusively composed of 
 futile idiots, lectured to by their own kind. On page 
 238 (American edition) of "Orthodoxy" the following 
 sentences are to be found: — 
 
 There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and 
 again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: " the 
 religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they 
 are the same in what they teach." It is false: it is the 
 opposite of the fact. * 
 
 It is indeed false! After an intimate acquaintance 
 with Ethical Societies extending over fourteen years, 
 both in England and America, I have no hesitation in 
 saying that Mr. Chesterton never in his life heard this 
 
46 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 moonstruck absurdity uttered in any Ethical Society; 
 nay, he never heard it said by any sane person any- 
 where. It is a misrepresentation so huge and palpable 
 that, if we did not know our Chesterton, we should be 
 inclined to dismiss it as a deliberate falsehood. That, 
 however, it is not. It is the expression of intellectual 
 wilfulness; the dictum of one so accustomed to substi- 
 tute ridicule for fair argument that he can no longer 
 distinguish between them. He thinks that religious 
 liberals ought to talk nonsense, in order to make them 
 easy game for him, and accordingly (by a mental pro- 
 cess peculiar to himself, and therefore indescribable) 
 he arrives at the conclusion that they do. 
 
 The defects of the Chestertonian Uterary style have 
 been pointed out by many critics. Our author is given 
 to riotous exaggeration; nine times out of ten it is im- 
 possible to assume that he means what he says. His 
 warmest friends have to apologize for him and explain 
 him away. In the London "Spectator" of January 4, 
 1 913, there appeared an able criticism, in which the 
 judgment was expressed that this blemish on the work 
 both of Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Shaw is so serious 
 that it will debar both of them from a permanent place 
 in literature. However this may be, it does at least 
 constitute a serious strain upon the interest and at- 
 tention of the reader. One grows weary, especially in 
 Chesterton, of the perpetual use of mere verbalisms, 
 of antitheses which are not antithetical, of the opposi- 
 tion of terms that do not exclude each other. To take 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 47 
 
 the first instance that occurs to one's memory: Mr. 
 Chesterton said, when discussing an old controversy 
 between Ward and Huxley, that the dialectical victory 
 really lay with Ward, but that Huxley secured the 
 popular verdict by reason of his greater powers of liter- 
 ary expression. Mr. Chesterton's wholly false way of 
 stating the case was this: "Ward could think, but 
 Huxley could write." 
 
 This absurd opposition of perfectly compatible terms 
 is typical of a thousand similar misjudgments. It is as 
 though one should say, "Ward could eat, but Huxley 
 could drink." If the writer really meant what he im- 
 plies — that Ward could not write and Huxley could 
 not think — he was guilty of an outrageous libel on 
 both of them. So far does Mr. Chesterton carry this 
 tone of dinner-table chaff into what purport to be 
 serious literary and intellectual judgments, that he has 
 no right to complain of people (as he frequently does) 
 for refusing to take him seriously or to believe that he 
 means what he says. In an hour's examination of his 
 innumerable essays one could mark in the margin at 
 least fifty things which, not being a fool, he literally 
 cannot mean. He must stop his buffooneries if he dis- 
 likes their inevitable consequences. He undoubtedly 
 deserves the crushing censure passed by Mr. Birrell 
 on the style of Macaulay. Macaulay's style, says Mr. 
 Birrell, was admirable for many purposes, but it had 
 one serious defect: it was not adapted for telling the 
 truth about anything. That is what is the matter with 
 
48 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 Mr. Chesterton. He has many and admirable powers, 
 but his capacity for exact accurate statement has been 
 so long abused or disused that it now seems practi- 
 cally destroyed. 
 
 I have shown that he sneers at his opponents, and 
 substitutes for serious argument an appeal to the gal- 
 lery. Let me again illustrate the point by taking the 
 first instance that comes to hand as one turns the 
 pages of his books. I open at random the volume 
 of papers entitled "All Things Considered/' and on 
 page 189, in an essay on "Science and Religion/' I 
 find this complete demonstration of my contention. 
 Mr. Chesterton quotes from some unnamed exponent 
 of the New Theology a passage to the effect that mod- 
 ern science had shown that there never was a his- 
 torical event corresponding to the theological account 
 of the Fall of Man. He comments upon the assertion 
 as follows: — 
 
 It is written with earnestness and in excellent English: 
 it must mean something. But what can it mean? How 
 could physical science prove that man is not depraved ? You 
 do not cut a man open to find his sins. You do not boil 
 him until he gives forth the unmistakable green fumes 
 of depravity. How could physical science find any trace 
 of a moral fall ? What traces did the writer expect to 
 find? Did he expect to find a fossil Eve, with a fossil 
 apple inside her? Did he suppose that the ages would 
 have spared for him a complete skeleton of Adam, at- 
 tached to a slightly faded figleaf ? ^ 
 
 * Italics the present writer's. 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 49 
 
 Observe the jugglery! — and remember that these 
 are the words of one who has presumed to enter the 
 lists in behalf of orthodoxy, and thereby professed him- 
 self familiar, at least in general outline, with the doc- 
 trines of orthodox theology. The writer he is here at- 
 tacking had not suggested that physical science could 
 find any traces of a moral fall. Neither had he suggested 
 or even dreamed that science could prove that man 
 is not depraved. He referred to evidence, not of a moral 
 fall of man, but, explicitly, of an historical event which 
 by orthodox theology has always been alleged to have 
 resulted from the Fall of Man, and that an event of 
 which, if it had occurred, physical science could not 
 have failed to discover abundant traces. His context 
 clearly showed that he had in mind St. Paul's theory of 
 the Fall and its consequences. Now, according to the 
 orthodox doctrine as expounded by St. Paul and as 
 expressed in "Paradise Lost," the Fall of Man was 
 an event which ^^ brought death into the world, and all 
 our woe.'' That is what the New Theologian was 
 talking about. His perfectly plain meaning was, that 
 if the orthodox doctrine were true, our science could 
 not have failed to verify it by showing that at a cer- 
 tain definite epoch the phenomenon called death first 
 took place in the world. What physical science has 
 proved is that death has always been the correlative 
 of life, from the far-off dawn of physical sentiency. 
 Now, if Mr. Chesterton does not know that all ortho- 
 dox Christians have, with St. Paul, understood the 
 
50 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 Fall of Adam as the cause of mortality, then he does 
 not know the first rudiments of what he is talking 
 about. His treatment of his opponent in the passage 
 I have quoted is either a piece of elephantine humour, 
 or else it reveals an ignorance of theology which for 
 ever disentitles him to serious attention. 
 
 It is such deliverances as these that have produced 
 in the minds of readers that incredulity as to his 
 seriousness which so annoys him. The only possible 
 comment one could make is that the above-quoted 
 farrago is barely tolerable if meant as a joke, but if 
 meant otherwise is an unpardonable misinterpreta- 
 tion of his opponent. 
 
 And yet it is with theology that his most important 
 work assumes to deal. It is true that he diplomat- 
 ically abstains from claiming for "Orthodoxy'^ the 
 rank of an ecclesiastical treatise. He calls it "a sort 
 of slovenly autobiography," and one cannot ascribe 
 the depreciatory adjective to any excess of modesty 
 on his part. His book is by no means an ordered argu- 
 ment. In it, he says, he has attempted ^*in a vague 
 and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather 
 than in a series of deductions," to state the philosophy 
 which has enlisted his allegiance. He deliberately omits 
 the only really vital problem — that of the seat and 
 credentials of the authority upon which the orthodox 
 repose their faith. And he never once grapples seri- 
 ously with any one of the formidable forces arrayed 
 against orthodoxy. The book is almost as negative in 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 51 
 
 its effect as is Mr. Balfour's "Foundations of Belief." 
 By this I mean that one might agree with almost all 
 that Mr. Chesterton says in criticism of present-day 
 philosophy and science, and yet find oneself desti- 
 tute of the barest rag of a reason for believing in the 
 Apostles' Creed, which, "as understood by everybody 
 calling himself Christian until a very short time ago," 
 he chooses as his standard of orthodoxy. 
 ; Such, indeed, is my own position. I find myself in 
 cordial agreement with much of his attack upon cer- 
 tain unwarrantable assumptions and certain more or 
 less obscure tendencies of that crude, materialistic 
 determinism which he is pleased to call modern 
 thought. I had passed similar strictures on them many 
 times, long before I read Mr. Chesterton's apologetic. 
 But he omits to notice the important fact that his own 
 criticisms generally apply with far greater force to 
 believers in the faith which he professes than to the 
 modern so-called unbelievers against whom he is 
 crusading. 
 
 In his first chapter, entitled "The Maniac," one finds 
 a fafniliar fact of abnormal psychology wisely and 
 wittily presented. I will not dwell upon the self-con- 
 tradiction involved in his contending at the outset that 
 one must not believe in oneself, and then, in the second 
 chapter (on page 56), maintaining emphatically that 
 one is bound to believe in oneself. Let us rather attend 
 for a moment to the proposition that "the madman is 
 not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is 
 
52 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 the man who has lost everything except his reason." 
 The assertion, of course, is true of some madmen; and 
 Mr. Chesterton's conclusion that the materialist is in 
 danger of becoming mad in this sense is quite undeni- 
 able. But to what school of thinkers does his warning 
 apply half so forcibly as to the whole historic succession 
 of the theologians ? 
 
 Having stated this truth, Mr. Chesterton buttresses 
 it with a misstatement. It is reasoning itself, he tells 
 us, — it is sheer logic, — which sends people mad. 
 Poetry and art, he says, are entirely compatible with 
 sanity; but ratiocination is the road to Hanwell. The 
 truth is that it is no more logic than it is art or poetry 
 which produces insanity. It is some impaired physio- 
 logical correlative of consciousness; some defect of 
 brain or nerve, due to strain or overwork if not to 
 heredity, and quite as likely to be induced by exces- 
 sive toil at art or poetry as by over-indulgence in the 
 logical process. And the peculiarity of the maniac is 
 not his reasoning, but the fact that he reasons in vacuo. 
 He has lost touch with reality. While his logic may 
 be irrefutable, yet it is vitiated through being based 
 upon untested and unverifiable premises. Doubtless 
 there is much akin to madness, as Mr. Chesterton 
 contends, in the baseless and fantastic argurnenta- 
 tion of Haeckel and his school. Yet if one wanted to 
 find the crucial and glaring examples of this kind 
 of derangement, one would have to turn to the theo- 
 logians. From Origen and Tertullian down to Jon- 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 53 
 
 athan Edwards — yes, and even John Henry New- 
 man — one could find a depressing procession of 
 thinkers who, measured by Mr. Chesterton's own 
 standard, show every mark of that alienation from 
 the world of normal experience which is the diagnostic 
 of insanity. The Catholic theologian who asserts that, 
 in the economy of a merciful God, infants less than a 
 span long will be seen crawling on the floor of hell, is 
 the crowning evidence of Mr. Chesterton's contention. 
 He may be an admirable reasoner; but he starts from 
 a premise which has no relation to reality, which is 
 unverified and unverifiable, — because, luckily, it can 
 never be reduced to terms of experience. 
 
 After contending that it is reasoning which sends 
 men mad, Mr. Chesterton maintains that it is mysti- 
 cism which keeps them sane. "As long as you have 
 mystery," he tells us, "you have health; when you de- 
 stroy mystery you create morbidity." Most true ! But 
 see how here the apologist's two - edged sword has 
 wounded him with its reverse edge. Who but the or- 
 thodox theologian has sought to destroy that mystery 
 which is the very life-breath of sanity ? The mystic is 
 the man whose sense of peace in life is so real, whose 
 acceptance of the high privilege of being is so glad and 
 so spontaneous, that he willingly embraces it, with all 
 its unresolved discords, all its insoluble riddles. Or- 
 thodoxy is the polar antithesis of this sane mysticism. 
 The orthodox theologian is the man who cannot en- 
 dure, who cannot even face, "the burden of unintelli- 
 
54 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 gible things." He dares not think of the world until 
 he has a ready-made answer to all the questions which 
 its mystery evokes in the brooding soul. He cannot 
 be happy without a theory, or what he calls a revela- 
 tion, to explain to him the origin of things, the final 
 goal of creation, and the destiny of his soul in a life 
 beyond life. Let us, then, agree with Mr. Chester- 
 ton that it is mysticism which keeps men sane; but let 
 us point out to him that in advancing this argument 
 he has, at the very outset, clumsily annihilated the 
 foundations of his own superstructure. 
 
 His chapter on "The Suicide of Thought" enshrines 
 a truth as evident, and as important, as that which 
 lies at the root of his argument about the maniac. It is 
 perfectly true that the will-worship of Schopenhauer 
 and Nietzsche is anti - rational, and would, if com- 
 pletely acted out, lead to utter futility and frustration. 
 
 But here one encounters what is perhaps the most 
 unpardonable trick of Mr. Chesterton's method. He 
 professes to be refuting modern thought. He alludes, 
 it is true, to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, but in a 
 fashion which leaves in one's mind the gravest doubts 
 as to the extent of his first-hand study of them; and 
 the one representative of "modern thought" with 
 whom he seems really familiar (apart from his friend 
 and enemy, Mr. Shaw) is, of all persons, Mr. H. G. 
 Wells ! This, I say, is the unpardonable thing, — that 
 Mr. Chesterton should base his indictment of what he 
 calls modern thought on the tenth-rate futilities of a 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 55 
 
 stray tale-teller trespassing in the field of philosophy, 
 and moving about in worlds that he has never realized. 
 Mr. H. G. Wells's book entitled "First and Last 
 Things" is of a nature to make EngHshmen blush 
 for the intellectual reputation of their country. It 
 displays an incapacity for philosophical thinking, a 
 blindness to its author's own limitations, a readiness 
 to rush in where angels fear to tread, which can only 
 be described as shameful. 
 
 The particular absurdity upon which Mr. Chesterton 
 fastens as an evidence of "The Suicide of Thought'' 
 is one that reveals, not suicide, but total incapacity 
 for thought; I mean, of course, Mr. Wells's serene de- 
 nial of the validity of the logical law of identity and dif- 
 ference, — a law presupposed in the very act of dis- 
 puting it, and undeniable save in virtue of itself. If 
 it were not true that A is either B or not B, then it 
 would be as useless for Mr. Wells to attempt to write 
 a novel as he has shown it to be for him to attempt 
 to write philosophy. But to take this self-confessed 
 vender at second-hand of the sophisms of a Cambridge 
 schoolgirl as a representative of modern thought is not 
 merely Chestertonian — it is also Gilbertian. It is as 
 ludicrous as it would be to take a Pastor Russell or 
 a ranting street-corner evangelist as a representative 
 of Christian philosophy and theology, and ignore the 
 master-minds of the Church — the Butlers and New- 
 mans, the Hookers and Taylors, the Pascals and the 
 Augustines. If Mr. Chesterton had wanted to deal 
 
56 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 justly and seriously with modern thought he should 
 have joined battle with its real masters, from Arnold 
 and Seeley, let us say, down to Green and Sidgwick, 
 James and Paulsen, Bradley, Eucken and Bergson. 
 This he has not essayed; and, pending further evidence, 
 we may venture without undue presumption to doubt 
 whether he can do it. 
 
 Let us remember, however, that its controversial 
 passages are only introduced for fun, since "Ortho- 
 doxy" claims to be no more than a spiritual autobio- 
 graphy, and much reasoning is declared to make us 
 mad. We are dealing with the record of a personal 
 experience, not with a process of argument. Mr. Ches- 
 terton learned his philosophy of life from the fairy- 
 tales, not of science, but of the nursery. In these, as he 
 has testified many times, he found an attitude towards 
 life which squared with his own temperament and re- 
 inforced him in his spontaneous emotional reactions 
 upon the world in which he foimd himself. From them 
 he first learned the mingled goodness and evil of the 
 world, and the sane balance of deep discontent and 
 yet deeper content. They taught him to doubt the 
 tacit presuppositions of that shallow materialism which 
 he mistakes for modern thought. They encouraged him 
 to trust his own immediate intuition, that the really 
 striking characteristic of the world is not its regularity, 
 its repetition, its classifiability, but its spontaneity, its 
 eternal eruption of individuality, its penchant for the 
 unprecedented and the unclassifiable. 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 57 
 
 In short, Mr. Chesterton claims for himself that he 
 came unconsciously to take the Christian attitude to- 
 wards life — on the authority of fairy-tales. Before he 
 had thought of Christian theology, he had hammered 
 out for himself a brand-new heresy that was first 
 cousin to it; and his subsequent development has been 
 simply the re-discovery (as he humorously expresses 
 it) of what had been discovered before. 
 
 Perhaps the best chapter of his fascinating story is 
 the one entitled ''The Flag of the World." It breathes 
 a spirit of which there is a plentiful lack in our day, 
 and affirms a truth which seems now more than ever 
 to need reaffirming. This is the truth which saves us 
 from the extravagances both of indiscriminate opti- 
 mism and of pessimism. It is the fact, imquestionable 
 as soon as it is clearly stated, that the loyalty which 
 we owe to life is ultimate and unconditional; it is prior 
 to and independent of any calculation of the quan- 
 titative proportions of good and evil in the world. As 
 the patriot does not dream of proportioning his loyalty 
 to the precise amount of worth in his nation; as the 
 child does not mete out his love to his parents by refer- 
 ence to their particular degree of goodness to him, 
 — so the cosmic patriot "accepts the universe," 
 simply because he is in it and of it. For him, as Mr. 
 Chesterton most wisely says, the goodness of the world 
 is a reason for loving it, and its badness a reason for 
 loving it still more. 
 
 But how are we to account for this mixture of good 
 
58 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 and evil in man and nature, — in that universe which 
 we love because we must, because of it we are a part ? 
 Mr. Chesterton finds the answer in the Christian doc- 
 trines of God, and of original sin. 
 
 How these two doctrines hang together, — how the 
 facts of sin in man and of evil in the subhuman world 
 are to be reconciled with the Creator's supposed attri- 
 butes of omnipotence and of infinite goodness, — Mr. 
 Chesterton very unkindly refrains from telling us; yet 
 his silence is perhaps prudent, for the two dogmas stand 
 opposed in eternal and irreconcilable contradiction. 
 But of the fact of sin there is assuredly no doubt. And 
 hereMr. Chesterton, with an inconsequence which again 
 illustrates the incurable looseness I have complained 
 of in his thinking, makes an illicit leap. He passes from 
 the patent fact of sin to the alleged fact of original sin, 
 which is a totally different matter. Original sin, he 
 hardily declares, "is the only part of Christian theol- 
 ogy which can really be proved." But how can the fact 
 that we come into the world with impulses towards 
 evil as well as towards good prove that we are de- 
 scended from an ancestor who originally was devoid 
 of evil impulses ? No more than it can prove our de- 
 scent from one who at first had no good impulses at 
 all. Neither is this fact explained by the naive hypo- 
 thesis of a once complete goodness which became, in 
 despite of omnipotence, inexplicably perverted into 
 an original badness. The explanation needs more 
 explaining than the original mystery. The facts of 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 59 
 
 life no more prove the Christian doctrine than they 
 prove metempsychosis or karma. Either of these 
 theories will fit and explain the facts rather better 
 than does the orthodox notion of the Fall of Man. 
 How queerly this argument of Mr. Chesterton's illu- 
 minates for us the workings of his mind ! The fault 
 it displays is all too common among professional theo- 
 logians, but one might have hoped that the adven- 
 turous literary amateur would escape it; — the fault, 
 I mean, of talking about "proof," when he cannot 
 produce (because he has not got) a single grain of 
 verifiable evidence. 
 
 But life, he tells us, is itself contradictory. It is full 
 of paradoxes, and to its paradoxes answer those of 
 the Church. It is unreasonable, therefore, he urges, to 
 complain of riddles in theology when these manifestly 
 correspond to riddles of experience which are equally 
 insoluble. His theology he takes to be "the best root 
 of energy and sound ethics." Life demands of us an 
 eternal revolution, the inspiration for which, he thinks, 
 can come only from our acceptance of a doctrine of 
 original sin which shall warn us that the best hirnian 
 institutions are in constant danger of being wrested 
 into instruments of oppression. But why do we need, 
 in our warfare against the evil tendencies within us 
 and around us, any other stimulus than the facts 
 themselves of experience? Or, if other stimulus be 
 needed, how can we find it in a doctrine which is itself 
 unverifiable, and itself, when rightly understood (as 
 
6o CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 it was, for example, by St. Augustine, the inventor of 
 that system of theology which Mr. Chesterton loathes 
 and derides under the name of Calvinism), a direct 
 incentive to pessimism as regards the nature of man 
 and his native powers for good ? 
 
 Upon the vague modern doctrines of pantheism 
 and of the identity of man as he actually is with God, 
 Mr. Chesterton makes an onslaught which is brilliant 
 and delightful, and, I think, substantially sound. But 
 even here he does not reach bedrock; he cannot dis- 
 tinguish between the empirical self and the Self of 
 selves, the Man in men. The result is that he inverts 
 and distorts the meaning of Swinburne's "Hertha" 
 (a stanza of which he quotes, with his customary in- 
 accuracy). Swinburne represents the Soul of all 
 things as saying to the individual man, ''I am thou, 
 whom thou seekest to find him; find thou but thyself, 
 thou art I." Whereupon Mr. Chesterton comments 
 as follows: — 
 
 Of which the immediate and evident deduction is 
 that tyrants are as much the sons of God as Garibaldis; 
 and that King Bomba of Naples, having, with the ut- 
 most success, "found himself," is identical with the ulti- 
 mate good in all things. 
 
 If he had taken the trouble to read thirty pages 
 further on in "Songs before Sunrise," he would have 
 discovered that Swinburne by no means identifies the 
 bad in man with God, or admits that all men are 
 divine. God is not the totality of the human, but its 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 6i 
 
 essence y which is a very different matter; and that 
 essence is the good. As thus: — 
 
 God, if a God there be, is the substance of men, which is 
 Man. 
 
 Not each man of all men is God, but God is the fruit of the 
 
 whole; 
 Indivisible spirit and blood, indiscernible body from soul. 
 Not men's but Man's is the glory of Godhead, the kingdom of 
 
 time. . . . 
 
 And later, in the same "Hymn of Man," Swin- 
 burne acknowledges (as he does in a score of passages 
 in the same volume) that by pandering to his lower 
 self instead of following his essential and universal 
 self, man has sinned and failed: — 
 
 Man makes love to disaster, and woos desolation with love, 
 Yea, himself too hath made himself chains, and his own hands 
 
 plucked out his eyes; 
 For his own soul only constrains him, his own mouth only denies. 
 
 Once again, Mr. Chesterton's criticism recoils with 
 disastrous effect upon that theology which he supposes 
 himself to be defending. For orthodoxy, too, has its 
 doctrine of the identity of men with God. By its 
 sacrament of baptism, it professes to make men "mem- 
 bers of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the 
 kingdom of heaven." It assumes to regenerate them 
 into that original divine nature which the first man 
 forfeited. Between the regenerate and the unregener- 
 ate the only difference is that the one has received 
 this sacrament, the other not. The difference is totally 
 
62 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 unrelated to ethics and to character. Have we not 
 here a possible explanation of the spiritual pride and 
 blindness which have characterized the Church in all 
 ages, which underlay the practices of the Inquisitors, 
 and are to-day manifested, for example, in the treat- 
 ment of the Jews in Holy Russia ? 
 
 One has constantly to remind oneself, however, that 
 in "Orthodoxy" one is reading autobiography rather 
 than apologetic. The special interest of Mr. Chester- 
 ton's case is not logical but psychological. A revolter 
 by temperament, he must needs have rebelled against 
 the school of thought, whatever it was, in which he 
 happened to be reared. Because he was trained in 
 theological liberalism, he naturally revolted into its 
 opposite. From agnosticism he has leaped over to 
 CathoHcism; and no attentive student can doubt that, 
 had he been reared in Catholicism, he would have 
 revolted just as spontaneously into agnosticism; — 
 as (by the grace of God) he may yet live to do: into 
 an agnosticism wiser and humbler than that from 
 which he set out. The best picture he has given us of 
 himself is to be found not in "Orthodoxy," but in his 
 freaky novel called "The Man Who Was Thursday." 
 The hero of that fantasy — who is, as usual, but a 
 mask for Mr. Chesterton himself — is described as 
 having "revolted into sanity," because there was 
 nothing else left to revolt into. And how strictly Mr. 
 Chesterton's own development has been an emotional 
 and temperamental one is perhaps shown best of all 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 63 
 
 by the lines in which he dedicates this book to his 
 friend Mr. Edmund Clerihew Bentley: — 
 
 A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, 
 Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. 
 Science announced non-entity and art admired decay; 
 The world was old and ended; but you and I were gay. 
 Round us in antic order their ^ crippled vices came — 
 Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. 
 Like the white lock of Whistler, that Ht our aimless gloom, 
 Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. 
 Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; 
 The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. 
 They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: 
 Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. 
 Weak if we were and fooHsh, not thus we failed, not thus; 
 When that black Baal blocked the heavens, he had no hymns 
 
 from us. 
 Children we were — our forts of sand were even weak as we; 
 High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea. 
 Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd, 
 When all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard. 
 
 But we were young; we lived to see God break their ^ bitter 
 
 charms, 
 God and the good Republic come riding back in arms: ^ 
 We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved — 
 Blessed are they who did not see, but, being blind, believed. 
 
 Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be 
 
 told; 
 Yea, there is strength in striking root, and good in growing 
 
 old. 
 We have found common things at last, and marriage and a 
 
 creed. 
 And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read. 
 
 1 Sic. 
 
64 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 Temperament, then, and that sanity of ethical 
 intuition in which we have found his most admirable 
 attribute, are the factors that explain his change of 
 attitude. And surely he was right to revolt against 
 what he, although mistakenly, imagined to be the 
 inevitable tendencies of modern thought. The doc- 
 trine of the world-machine, the doctrine of mechani- 
 cal determinism, the doctrine of the absolute depend- 
 ence of mind on body, the new mythology in which 
 the hypostatized abstractions called Heredity and 
 Environment replace the Adam and Satan of the old 
 mythology, — all these unverified and unverifiable 
 dogmas lay on the mind of men, and formed a sick 
 cloud upon the soul, when he and his friend were boys 
 together. But was it not enough to expel these harpies, 
 without replacing them by a brood of darkness equally 
 phantasmagorical, equally crushing and annihilating 
 in their impact upon the spirit of man ? For this is 
 what Mr. Chesterton has done. His orthodoxy is new 
 to him; he finds it "all a wonder and a wild desire." 
 But he will find sooner or later, if he scrutinizes it as 
 ruthlessly as he did the ideas current around him in 
 his boyhood, that he has escaped Charybdis only to 
 be hopelessly shipwrecked upon Scylla. 
 
 There is one part of Mr. Chesterton's argument 
 which shows almost grotesquely how dangerous it is 
 to try to defend orthodoxy when you do not yet quite 
 know what orthodoxy is. The gist of his spiritual 
 autobiography is that he invented Christianity for 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 65 
 
 himself; whereafter he discovered with blank amaze- 
 ment that the system which he had painfully hewn 
 out had antedated his own existence by some eighteen 
 hundred years. "I did try/' he says, ^^to found a 
 heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches 
 to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.'' Behold 
 how ingenuously the inexpert player kicks over his 
 wicket in his anxiety to score! The whole contention 
 of orthodox theology is that its scheme is so wonderful, 
 so supernatural, that the imaided powers of the na- 
 tural man could never have shaped it. It is based 
 upon revelation from on high, and is declared to be of 
 such a nature as to carry within itself the evidence of 
 its extra-mundane origin. That modern science which 
 Mr. Chesterton so ungratefully derides has demon- 
 strated, as against this claim, that the orthodox scheme 
 is but one of a series of blundering hypotheses invented 
 to accoimt for the obvious facts of Hfe; and he concedes 
 that men could have invented it — because he did so 
 himself! He does not lay claim to a special private 
 revelation, vouchsafed to him alone, like St. Paul's 
 or Lord Herbert of Cherbury's. He, Gilbert Chester- 
 ton, tried to found a heresy of his own; and when he 
 had put the finishing touches to it, he discovered that 
 it was orthodoxy ! 
 
 His amazement, therefore, at finding that Chris- 
 tian dogma fitted his feelings and answered his ques- 
 tions, is entirely gratuitous. The reason why it does 
 so is simply because other men in other times, of like 
 
66 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 nature with himself, did exactly what he claims to 
 have done. They too founded a heresy of their own, 
 and when they had put the last touches to it, they 
 made it orthodoxy by calHng it so and murdering all 
 gainsay ers. There is nothing more mysterious in the 
 process than there would be if a coat, made to fit a 
 man of Mr. Chesterton's height and girth (let us say, 
 Velazquez's Cavalier), having accidentally survived 
 the centuries, should now be found to fit Mr. Chester- 
 ton. The makers of orthodoxy cut their theology to 
 fit their souls; why then should it not fit Mr. Chester- 
 ton's, since his happens to be of the same size ? 
 
 His objection to the modem doctrines of material- 
 ism, mechanical determinism, and the like, is that 
 they are, or may easily become, the alUes of oppres- 
 sion. I fully admit the possibiHty. But how has Mr. 
 Chesterton succeeded in overlooking the obtrusive 
 fact that his beloved orthodoxy has, throughout his- 
 tory, been fifty times more the ally of oppression than 
 they ? Was it materialism that decimated the Jews of 
 Spain and Portugal, and then broke faith with them 
 and expelled them? Was it modern scientific thought 
 that obliterated the native races of Spanish America, 
 and made a moral and a physical desert, in that mad 
 rush for God and gold which was Spanish imperial- 
 ism? Did mechanical determinism give rise to the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew, or revoke the Edict of 
 Nantes ? Were the fires of Smithfield, the witch-burn- 
 ings and heresy-himtings which blacken the history of 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 67 
 
 England and Scotland, produced by the doctrines of 
 Haeckel or the puzzle-headed scepticisms of Mr. H. G. 
 Wells ? I will not join in the cheap and easy amuse- 
 ment of flinging mud at a great historic institution like 
 the Catholic Church; but I cannot lightly set aside the 
 temperate and irrefragable indictment which Lecky 
 brings against her, that she has "shed more innocent 
 blood, and caused more unmerited suffering, than any 
 other institution known to history." 
 
 Mr. Chesterton has an inborn love of liberty, a 
 hatred of oppression, which entitle him to our pro- 
 found and grateful respect. No man has battled more 
 bravely than he against the hypocritical tyrannies of 
 our present-day political and economic systems. In 
 any purely moral issue, in any battle for genuine free- 
 dom, he is almost certain to be found on the right side; 
 and when he goes wrong — when, for instance, we 
 find him joining in the mediaeval barbarism, recently 
 revived in England, of Jew-baiting — we can generally 
 make a pretty shrewd guess at the identity of those of 
 his fellow-Catholics who have misled him. This char- 
 acteristic in him entitles us to ask why he has em- 
 braced a doctrine which has, throughout the history of 
 fifteen hundred years, been enthroned in power and 
 allied with every kind of oppression; a doctrine whose 
 custodians have slaughtered both souls and bodies in 
 the interests of their spiritual despotism and their 
 Church's temporal power. How is it that he is so ready 
 to tell us of the witch-burnings practised in Puritan 
 
68 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 Massachusetts, and so oblivious of the fact that where 
 Puritanism has slain its thousands, Catholicism has 
 burnt and tortured its tens of thousands ? 
 
 In a recent issue of the "Dublin Review," Mr. Wil- 
 frid Ward testified to the originality of the apologetic 
 work done by Mr. Chesterton in "Orthodoxy." This 
 was uncommonly generous of Mr. Ward, who has him- 
 self done such very fresh and interesting work of the 
 same order, in his "Witnesses to the Unseen" and 
 elsewhere. No one will dispute his claim so far as it 
 relates to the manner of the book; but as regards its 
 matter, it is our duty to remind a busy and forgetful 
 generation that Mr. Chesterton has not the slightest 
 claim to originality. His whole book (in so far as it 
 forgets to be an autobiography and becomes a polemic) 
 is nothing but a rehash of two arguments which wiU 
 be found more ably presented, backed up by far deeper 
 philosophic insight and far greater power of rational 
 thought, in two of the classics of Christian apologetics: 
 the "Analogy" of Bishop Butler and the "Apologia" 
 of Cardinal Newman. 
 
 Bishop Butler's masterly work is little else than a 
 sustained and powerful insistence that the dogmas of 
 Christianity fit and explain the facts of life better than 
 did the complacent optimism of the Deists, against 
 whom he contended. And the great Cardinal's memora- 
 ble book anticipates and presses home (with destruc- 
 tive effect as against Protestantism) the danger of that 
 very suicide of thought which alarms Mr. Chesterton. 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 69 
 
 With incomparable lucidity, Newman shows that 
 an infallible Bible is useless and dangerous unless 
 backed up and interpreted by an infallible visible 
 authority. Scripture, he tells us, is impotent to ' ' make 
 a stand against the wild, living intellect of man." The 
 infallibility of the Church was supernaturally designed 
 "to restrain that freedom of thought, which of course 
 in itself is one of the greatest of our natural gifts, and 
 to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses J ^ This is, 
 indeed, like Butler's, only an argumentum ad hominem; 
 but neither Butler nor Newman has ever been or ever 
 will be answered effectively from the point of view of 
 those against whom each wrote. Readers, therefore, 
 who wish to see the argument for orthodoxy at its 
 best, as it is presented by the great masters of Chris- 
 tian thought, will turn to Newman and Butler, to 
 Pascal, Chillingworth and Hooker. After reading 
 these, they will see in Mr. Chesterton's amateur apo- 
 logetics nothing but a psychological curiosity, to be 
 read, like his novels, for amusement, in some slight 
 degree j^rhaps for edification, but not at all for in- 
 struction. 
 
 For, after all, we are left with the gravest reasons 
 for suspecting not only Mr. Chesterton's argumenta- 
 tive powers, but actually the soimdness of his ortho- 
 doxy. It is alarming to find that in his opinion Chris- 
 tian theology is "sufficiently summarized in the 
 Apostles' Creed." One's apprehensions are awakened 
 by the assertion that "when the word 'orthodoxy' is 
 
70 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 used here it means the Apostles' Creed, as under- 
 stood by eueryhody calling himself Christian until a 
 very short time ago." To what good Catholic can 
 this possibly be satisfactory? If we were addicted to 
 Mr. Chesterton's habit of flippant paradox, we should 
 declare that the Apostles' Creed is not orthodox. That 
 would certainly be quite in his manner. Caring, how- 
 ever, more for truth than for startHngness of state- 
 ment, let us content ourselves with the moderate and 
 incontrovertible assertion that the Apostles' Creed 
 does not sufficiently summarize Christian theology; 
 and no Catholic theologian who knew his business 
 would admit for a moment that beHef in it was suffi- 
 cient to make a man a Christian. No doubt it contains 
 a great deal more doctrine than was believed in by St. 
 Paul and the writers of the Synoptic Gospels, but that 
 only shows what a wonderful thing "development" 
 may be in an unchanging Church. The successors of 
 St. Peter have made the faith once delivered to him 
 and his colleagues into something richer and stranger 
 than he ever dreamed of; and if St. Peter could reap- 
 pear to-day, with only such beliefs as he held when 
 he died, not a Catholic bishop in Christendom would 
 confirm him — much less admit him to Orders. 
 
 For all that, however, the so-called Apostles' Creed 
 is an entirely unsatisfactory statement of the Church's 
 position; and the Church has tacitly admitted the 
 fact. For if the ApostoHc formula expressed its theol- 
 ogy adequately, why was it found necessary in sub- 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 71 
 
 sequent Councils to proceed to the formulation first of 
 the Nicene, and afterwards of the Athanasian Creed, 
 — to say nothing of the Tridentine Decrees, and even 
 later definitions of matters of faith? The truth is that 
 the Apostles' Creed omits the very vitals of orthodoxy. 
 It does not even assert that God the Father is a person, 
 or that the Holy Ghost is God. It contains no allu- 
 sion to original sin; it fails to affirm the deity of Jesus; 
 it makes no mention of the Trinity. It has no glimmer 
 of a reference to the sacraments, to the authority of 
 the Church or of Scripture, or to any doctrine dis- 
 tinctive of the Catholic Church as compared with 
 the Protestant sects. So that even if Mr. Chester- 
 ton succeeded in proving (what he has dehberately 
 abstained from trying to prove) that there is vaUd 
 historic and philosophic groimd for believing in the 
 Apostles' Creed, we should still be as devoid as ever 
 of adequate warrant for following him into the 
 Church's fold. 
 
 The lamest of Mr. Chesterton's many lame argu- 
 ments is his maladroit defence of miracle. In this part 
 of his book he substitutes sneering for argument even 
 more liberally than elsewhere; and his case for mir- 
 acles, if it may be called a case for them at all, works 
 down to the simple-minded contentions, first that 
 miracles happen to-day as much as in the past, and 
 secondly that you must accept unreservedly the asser- 
 tion of any peasant who informs you that he has seen 
 a ghost. You are to believe not only in his veracity, — 
 
72 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 which may well be above suspicion, — but also in his 
 competence to interpret his experience! The whole 
 discussion is rendered profitless by the fact that Mr. 
 Chesterton never condescends to inform us what he 
 means by a miracle. Now the word miracle, as used 
 historically in Christian theology to describe the won- 
 derful deeds of Jesus and his apostles, means a breach 
 of the phenomenal sequences of nature. It is illegiti- 
 mately used when applied to any event, however rare 
 or even totally unprecedented, which arose naturally 
 from adequate phenomenal antecedents. Anything 
 which would happen again if the circumstances condi- 
 tioning it were repeated, is not a miracle; not even 
 though it were a case of resurrection from the dead, or 
 of human generation without the normal process of 
 sexual fecimdation. A perfectly trivial circumstance, 
 on the other hand, such as the bending of a blade of 
 grass, or the freezing of a drop of water, would be a 
 miracle if it occurred independently of its accustomed 
 context of physical antecedents and concomitants. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton is inexcusably mistaken in thinking 
 that those who reject the Christian miracles do so by 
 reason of an a priori conviction that miracles either 
 cannot or do not happen.^ They reject them for lack 
 
 * In the debate held at the Little Theatre in London on January 
 2ist, 1914, as a part of the "boom," referred to on p. 43, which was 
 got up to save Magic from failing, Mr. Hilaire Belloc committed him- 
 self to the astonishing statement that Huxley rejected miracles not 
 for lack of evidence, but because he denied the existence of any "per- 
 sonality behind nature," and therefore held them to be antecedently 
 incredible. A little later he affirmed that to-day "almost all the rich 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 73 
 
 of evidence, just as they reject any alleged natural 
 event, — such as the discovery of America by ancient 
 Jews, affirmed by Mormonism, or the founding of 
 Rome by Romulus and Remus, — for which there is 
 no adequate documentary or other historical warrant. 
 Mr. Chesterton, on the other hand, like his fellow- 
 Catholics, does not base his acceptance of the miracles 
 of Galilee and Lourdes upon the amount and kind of 
 evidence which can be adduced in their support. He 
 believes in them in virtue of an a priori doctrine.^ If 
 it were not so, — if it were merely a question of evi- 
 dence, — he would have to accept a host of alleged 
 
 are on the side of atheism." Both assertions contain eicactly the same 
 amount of truth — and that is none at all. Huxley never in his life 
 denied either the existence of a "personality behind nature" or the 
 antecedent possibility of miracle. He did deny that the particular 
 miracles related in the New Testament, and others vouched for by 
 Catholic tradition, have any such evidence as to justify belief in them. 
 But that is a totally distinct question. The iromoral levity with which 
 a cultured man like Mr. Belloc misrepresents views he does not hold 
 is a precious commentary on the ethical influence of his Church. We 
 know he is a cultured man, because we have his own word for it. The 
 essays on Agnosticism and on The Value of Witness to the Miraculous 
 in which Huxley made his position transparently clear can be ob- 
 tained at any public library, and can be purchased in England 
 (where books are cheap) in an excellently printed edition published by 
 Messrs. Macmillan for sixpence. So there is absolutely no excuse for 
 Mr. Belloc. 
 
 1 His brother Cecil fully admitted this in the debate referred to in 
 the preceding footnote. Dealing with the miracle of the Virgin Birth, 
 he conceded that there is not — as indeed there could not be — any 
 human evidence for it whatever. But, as he quite correctly added. 
 Catholics believe it because they hold it more probable that it hap- 
 pened than that the Church should be mistaken or should wish to 
 deceive. Which amounts to sa3dng that they believe whatever the 
 Church chooses to tell them. The circulus in probandi is complete. 
 The Church is credible because it is attested by miracle — and miracle 
 is credible because it is attested by the Church. 
 
74 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 pagan miracles which he now rejects, but which in 
 truth (Church authority apart) are far better attested 
 than most of those which he accepts. 
 . It is, of course, only a vulgar confusion of thought, 
 as Matthew Arnold long since pointed out, which sees 
 in miracles any evidence to anything beyond them- 
 selves. If a man walked upon the sea, that would 
 prove nothing except the fact that he could walk upon 
 the sea; it would add no jot or tittle of weight to any 
 statements he might make about the nature of God or 
 the life of the soul after death. The procedure of those 
 Christians who have accepted the teachings of Jesus 
 Christ because they believed that he had been able 
 to still the winds and transmute water into wine is an 
 instance of inconsequential reasoning due to philoso- 
 phic illiteracy. 
 
 Those who reject the New Testament miracles need 
 not take either the critical attitude of Hume (who held 
 that in any given case it was more probable that the 
 testimony was false or mistaken than that the alleged 
 miracle occurred) or the standpoint of Kant, who 
 maintained that unless an event were strictly artic- 
 ulated in the causal series, it could not enter into 
 human perception, — causality being a necessary form 
 of all thought and experience, or, as Professor Adler 
 calls it, a ''fimctional finality." We can dispose of the 
 whole question of the New Testament miracles on 
 the ground of their lack of historic support. It is not 
 too much to say, at this time of day, that a man who 
 
CHESTERTON AS THEOLOGIAN 75 
 
 professes to believe in them, in the full, literal, unhesi- 
 tating way in which mediaeval Christians believed in 
 them, is a man who either cannot or will not penetrate 
 to the bottom of the discussion. Mr. Chesterton is 
 such a man. He has not approfondi les choses. He 
 does instead what he unjustly accuses Matthew 
 Arnold of doing: he '' recites his dogma with implicit 
 faith." 
 
 To sum up: Our objection to orthodoxy is, first, 
 that it is unverifiable, either by history or by present- 
 day experience; and secondly, that history proves it 
 to have been actually disastrous in its consequences 
 for humanity, in the very way in which Mr. Chesterton 
 thinks modern thought may be disastrous. It is, as 
 we have said, an imsupported guess at an insoluble 
 mystery. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton ought to have called his book not 
 ''Orthodoxy," but "How I Found God." For it is 
 in truth the story of his attainment of peace, of his 
 tardy and hard-won reconciliation with the eternal 
 order of things. Here, on the ground of experience, 
 the religious liberals at whom he gibes can join hands 
 with him; for they too, in this sense, have foimd God. 
 And they have found a deeper truth than Mr. Chester- 
 ton's; — the truth that for real reconcihation with life 
 no ecclesiastical dogma is necessary, and no answer 
 to the insatiable questionings of man's metaphysical 
 craving. The truly redeemed man is not he who has 
 attained a theory which solves for him the mysteries of 
 
76 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 being, but he who has reached the point where he no 
 longer yearns for a solution of the riddles. In the inti- 
 mate realities of experience itself, — in the loyalty of 
 comrades, in the love of husband and wife, in the 
 mystery of birth and the joy of parenthood; above all, 
 in the sublimity of the moral law, at once consoling 
 and energizing, we find the divine: we attain both the 
 peace that passes understanding and the inspiration 
 for the unending battle with evil. We rejoice with Mr. 
 Chesterton in the joy that he has foimd, though we 
 regret his manifest inability to distinguish between his 
 experience and the muddled and cramping framework 
 of theory into which he has forced it. The God that 
 he has found, the God in whom he truly lives and has 
 his being, is not the God of the Athanasian Creed; it 
 is the much more real and potent factor which inspires 
 the lofty lines of Mr. Zangwill: — 
 
 God lives as much as in the days of yore, 
 In fires of human love and work and song, 
 In wells of human tears that pitying throng, 
 In thunder-clouds of himian wrath at wrong. 
 
 Perchance, O ye that toil on, though forlorn, 
 By your souls' travail, your own noble scorn, 
 The very God ye crave is being born. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 PROFESSOR ERNST HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 
 
 It was wisely remarked some years ago by the late 
 Professor Friedrich Paulsen that '^ an age is character- 
 ized more by the books which it reads than by those 
 which it writes." Paulsen offered this dictum as his 
 justification for devoting a good deal of space to ex- 
 posing the network of fallacies and self-contradictions 
 which make up the great bulk of Ludwig Biichner's 
 once universally known, but now almost forgotten, 
 treatise entitled "Force and Matter." This considera- 
 tion also led him, in the year 1900, to devote a lengthy 
 article in the "Preussische Jahrbiicher" to a minute 
 analysis of the positions set forth in Ernst Haeckel's 
 treatise entitled "The Riddles of the Universe," pub- 
 lished in 1899. After completely shattering the pre- 
 tensions of Haeckel to rank as a philosopher, and ex- 
 posing the egregious incompetence and the blatant 
 dogmatism to which almost every page of his volume 
 bears witness, Dr. Paulsen ended his essay with the 
 following notable words: — 
 
 If every nation and every age has not only the govern- 
 ment but also the literature that it deserves to have, yet, 
 nevertheless, the responsibility for these things lies upon 
 all who have part in them. I have read this book with 
 
78 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 burning shame — with shame for the level of general 
 culture and of philosophic culture among our people. 
 That such a book was possible — that it could have been 
 written, printed, bought, read, admired, and beUeved 
 by the nation that possesses a Kant, a Goethe, a Scho- 
 penhauer: this is painful.^ 
 
 Already in 1900, when this essay of Paulsen's ap- 
 peared, the book of which it treated had obtained a 
 wide notoriety. Since then, however, it has enjoyed 
 a distribution probably unequalled in the history of 
 the world by any other treatise dealing with such 
 serious themes as those which it handles. It has been 
 translated into no less than twenty-four languages, in- 
 cluding Sanscrit. The publisher of the English trans- 
 lation recently informed me that he had sold over a 
 quarter of a million copies of it in England and the 
 British Colonies, the great majority of which had been 
 disposed of in England. Cheap editions of it, excel- 
 lently printed, can be obtained in every European 
 country, and would be available also in America, but 
 for the unintelligent tax on knowledge, by means of 
 which cheap literature, good as well as bad, is excluded 
 
 * " Hat jedes Volk und jede Zeit, wie die Regierung, so auch die 
 Literatur, die sie zu haben verdienen, nun so ist damit auch Jedem, 
 der an ihr Theil hat, die Mitverantwortlichkeit dafiir auferlegt. Ich 
 habe mit brennender Scham dieses Buch gelesen, mit Scham iiber 
 den Stand der allgemeinen Bildung und der philosophischen Bildung 
 unseres Volks. Dass ein solches Buch moglich war, dass es geschrie- 
 ben, gedruckt, gekauf t, gelesen, bewundert, geglaubt werden konnte 
 bei dem Volk, das einen Kant, einen Goethe, einen Schopenhauer be- 
 sitzt, dass ist schmerzlich." — "Ernst Haeckel als Philosoph," in 
 Preussische Jahrbiichcr, 1900. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 79 
 
 from this country. And not only has the book been 
 widely bought, but it has been seized upon as a sort 
 of new gospel by immense circles of the working class, 
 who seem, for some unfathomable reason, to regard it 
 as a message of good tidings and great joy to them. 
 Multitudes of artisans in England (I limit my asser- 
 tion to England because only there can I speak from 
 first-hand personal knowledge) have studied this book 
 with the same kind of fervour and devotion as their 
 forbears gave to the study of the Bible. They have 
 naturally also studied it just as unintelligently. It is 
 known to many who have hardly ever read another 
 serious book in their lives, and who consequently are 
 entirely unable to read it critically or form any ade- 
 quate estimate of its scientific and philosophic value. 
 The result is that although the book is scientifically 
 old-fashioned and philosophically beneath contempt, 
 it is yet regarded by these multitudinous readers as 
 the very latest and maturest wisdom of the human 
 spirit — as being, indeed, what its author modestly 
 calls it, the "ripe fruit of the tree of knowledge." 
 
 The qualities which explain this enormous popu- 
 larity are not difficult to detect. In the first place, the 
 book is written with great pugnacity, and therefore 
 cannot fail to appeal to the combative instinct which 
 is strong in us all, and especially in the mentally im- 
 disciplined. It abounds in sweeping denunciations, 
 not only of priests and priestcraft, but of leaders in 
 any branch of knowledge who dare to suggest that 
 
8o CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 there are or can be in the universe any questions that 
 have not been completely answered by the doctrine 
 of Darwin — more particularly as developed and 
 transmogrified by the prophet of Jena. What is more, 
 although it purports to deal with all the mysteries of 
 time and eternity, of matter and spirit, and either to 
 solve or to point the way to the solution of the seven 
 riddles of the universe which still remained outstand- 
 ing in 1899, it nevertheless does not contain a single 
 sentence which would be beyond the immediate com- 
 prehension of any intelligent artisan, as soon as he had 
 mastered the glossary which is thoughtfully provided 
 in the English translation. This means that the book 
 unconsciously flatters the vanity of the illiterate. It 
 makes them think that their previous inability to 
 grasp the problems of philosophy was due not to any 
 shortcomings of their own, but to the lack of lucidity 
 in the writing of the philosophers. It also gives them 
 an entirely baseless feeling of having learned a great 
 deal and gained new insight. 
 
 In no other way can one explain the almost raptur- 
 ous eulogies poured out upon Haeckel by so vari- 
 ously gifted a man as Mr. Robert Blatchford, the 
 editor of a bright and deservedly popular English 
 Socialist weekly paper called the "Clarion." It was 
 to the "Clarion's" trumpeting that the success of the 
 English translation of "Die Weltratsel" was mainly 
 due. About the time when Mr. Blatchford's first art- 
 icle upon it appeared, I read an interview with him. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 8i 
 
 in which he made the very significant admission that 
 he could not imderstand a single word that he read in 
 Kant. I quote him from memory, and therefore with 
 something less than verbal exactness, but I am quite 
 certain that the purport of his remark was as follows: 
 "I once wasted six shillings on Kant's Critique of 
 the Pure Reason/ and after an hour or two I threw 
 it into the fire. What is the use of wasting time 
 over such a ridiculous and unintelligible metaphysical 
 dream ? *' 
 
 This Httle piece of frank autobiography, coming 
 from Mr. Blatchford, gives us the clue to the back- 
 wardness of the masses as regards philosophy, and 
 their readiness to fall down and worship the first 
 glib and confident pseudo-philosophic charlatan who 
 chances to present himself. Kant is hard to read, not 
 only because of his seriously defective literary style, 
 but also because he had a first-hand vision of the un- 
 plumbed mysteries which surroimd the soul of man 
 on every side. Haeckel, on the other hand, is easy to 
 read, because he wields the pen of a ready writer; he 
 never pauses to make subtle distinctions (but only 
 because he never sees them); and he has never had 
 any glimpse of the vision of mystery which haimted 
 the mind of Kant, as it has haunted the deepest minds 
 of humanity, from before the days of Socrates and 
 Plato down to the days of Rudolf Eucken and Henri 
 Bergson. To quote again from Paulsen's essay, 
 Haeckel, ''since Darwinism solved for him the prob- 
 
82 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 lem of the origin of species, sees no more problems, but 
 only ready-made solutions." ^ 
 
 The success of Haeckel, then, is exactly like that 
 of the cheap- jack Dr. Schutzmacher, in Mr. Bernard 
 Shaw's play of "The Doctor's Dilemma." Schutz- 
 macher, it will be remembered, having begun with 
 no capital, had piled up a fortune before he had 
 reached middle life. Asked how he had worked this 
 miracle, he repKed that it had been done by painting 
 upon his shop window the words, "Advice and medi- 
 cine, sixpence. Cure guaranteed." Obviously, as he 
 says, when people go to the doctor what they want is 
 a cure, and so of course they will go in greatest num- 
 bers to the man who is ready to guarantee them what 
 they want. Thus it is, even with intelligent working- 
 men, such as those who form the rank and file of the 
 great German Social Democratic party, the English 
 Independent Labour Party, the trade unions, and the 
 like. These men (in common with most men of other 
 classes) have but slight equipment for forming an in- 
 telligent judgment on the merits of a book which pro- 
 fesses to explain to them the riddles of the world, just 
 as they have for deciding between the various doctors 
 who seek their patronage. Their one criterion, natu- 
 rally, apart from cheapness, is the confidence with 
 which their patronage is claimed. 
 
 ^ "Er sieht, seitdem ihm der Darwinismus das Problem der Ent- 
 stehung der Arten aufgelost hat, nirgends mehr Probleme, sondern nur 
 bereite Losungen." 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 83 
 
 Their readiness to fall into the snare of pseudo- 
 philosophers like Haeckel is the not unjust Nemesis 
 of the neglect of the human intellect by the Christian 
 Church through eighteen hundred years. Had the 
 Church not been so stupidly convinced that there was 
 only one saviour of the world — had it seen that 
 humanity needed the method and secret of Socrates 
 as much as it needed the method and secret of Jesus 
 — this all-pervading illiteracy would have been elim- 
 inated centuries ago. As it is, the masses are indebted, 
 and know themselves to be indebted, to the modern 
 secular spirit even for the rudimentary education 
 which is nowadays given to them. The orthodox 
 Church has been not only indifferent but actively and 
 criminally hostile to popular education. In Europe 
 to this day orthodoxy and illiteracy go hand in hand 
 together. Popular ignorance and popular devotion to 
 the Church are at their maximum in countries like 
 Russia, Portugal, Spain and Southern Italy. In Eng- 
 land, the establishment of free schools by the Govern- 
 ment was achieved in the teeth of every kind of hos- 
 tility, continued through decades, on the part of the 
 authorities of the Established Church, which, having 
 set up, for the purpose of inculcating its doctrines, 
 a system of ''national" schools, utterly inadequate in 
 accommodation and inefficient in secular teaching, 
 sought to prevent the allocation of public funds for the 
 establishment or support of any other schools. And at 
 this moment the British public schools are still held 
 
84 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 back, cramped and thwarted, and the national educa- 
 tional system remains disastrously incomplete and in- 
 efficient, because of the insensate squabble between the 
 Tweedledum of Anglicanism and the Tweedledee of 
 the non-established sects, over the exact form of dog- 
 matic instruction to be given at the public expense. 
 Preachers of every denomination to-day deplore the 
 violent antagonism of the working classes to ortho- 
 dox rehgion, and, too late, they are lamenting the 
 sway of writers like Haeckel over the minds of these 
 classes. The responsibiHty, however, lies at the door 
 of the Church, which has always been the educator of 
 the nations of Europe, and therefore cannot disclaim 
 culpability for the miserable results of its agelong 
 monopoly. 
 
 What the preacher chiefly deplores in the influence 
 of Professor Haeckel is the childish materialism which 
 this author shares with and intensifies in his readers. 
 But this is only an illustration of the Church's long 
 neglect of its duty. In so far as Haeckel and his dis- 
 ciples are materialists, they are in no wise different 
 from the mass of their Christian opponents. For 
 popular Christianity (as distinguished from philo- 
 sophic and ethical Christianity) has never been any- 
 thing but what Matthew Arnold bluntly but accu- 
 rately called it: a materialistic fairy-tale. It has 
 perverted and petrified the metaphors of its Founder 
 into hard, literal statements of fact. Its central sacra- 
 ment, the Eucharist, is an inexcusable literalization 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 85 
 
 of his poetical figures of speech. It has never taught 
 men, because it has never understood, how to escape 
 from the materialistic point of view. Its hell and 
 heaven of physical torment and delight, its fantastic 
 doctrine of the resurrection of the body (repeated 
 every day, in this twentieth century, by thousands 
 of priests and millions of laymen who know it to be 
 baseless and absurd), its Sultan-like God seated on 
 an actual throne, enjoying throughout eternity the 
 flatteries of his prostrate worshippers — what is all 
 this but a stark materialism, on the mental level of 
 savages and children? 
 
 I do not for a moment deny that there has been, 
 all through the Christian ages, a tiny minority of 
 believers who appraised this fairy-tale at its true 
 worth; but the Church has never told the truth to 
 the people, and it refuses to-day to tell them the 
 truth, although the results of its persistence in hyp- 
 notizing and deceiving them are visible on every hand. 
 Only to-day have candidates for Anglican ordination 
 been released from declaring their unfeigned belief 
 in every word contained in the canonical scriptures — 
 a declaration which nobody outside a lunatic asy- 
 lum could make sincerely. Within the last few years, 
 two English Bishops have combined to inhibit the 
 Reverend J. M. Thompson, of Magdalen College, 
 Oxford, from preaching, because he had dared to set 
 forth, in his excellent volume on "Miracles in the 
 New Testament," the truths, undeniable by com- 
 
86 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 petent scholars, that the New Testament miracles are 
 devoid of evidence, that Jesus Christ never claimed 
 to perform miracles, and that miracles are, in any 
 case, entirely worthless as evidence to anything be- 
 yond themselves. 
 
 The Churches, then, having for ages imposed on the 
 nations one huge materialistic myth, have no right to 
 be surprised at the deplorable fact that the moment 
 the masses break loose from their leading-strings, 
 they embrace another materiaHstic myth. Having 
 been lashed into unquestioning docihty to one Pope 
 and one sacred book, they escape only to follow a fresh 
 self-constituted pope and to believe in the Hteral in- 
 spiration of his sacred book. Why should they not? 
 For the task of self -direction they have never had any 
 training from their ecclesiastical masters. They are 
 like the three milKon so-called free voters of Mexico, 
 ostensibly entrusted with the privileges and responsi- 
 bilities of republican citizenship. That illiterate na- 
 tion, incapable of self-government, is doomed either 
 to be controlled from abroad or to be for many a day 
 the shuttlecock of a series of usurpers of the type 
 either of Porfirio Diaz or of Madero and Huerta. 
 Exactly so is it in the proletarian republic of letters 
 and of religion. Professor Haeckel, with his world- 
 wide influence and his transparent incompetence, is 
 the precise analogue of a Mexican dictator. 
 
 I am aware that HaeckeFs English translator, in a 
 preface to the fifth English edition, declares that the 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 87 
 
 prophet of Jena is not a materialist. "For him/' says 
 Mr. McCabe, "mind is not a product of matter, but 
 something developing concurrently with matter." The 
 good faith of the assertion need not be questioned, 
 because Dr. Haeckers philosophic oracles are a per- 
 petual seesaw of self-contradiction. He certainly does 
 say in one place, "We hold, with Goethe, that ^matter 
 cannot exist and be operative without spirit, nor spirit 
 without matter.'" Such an assertion, isolated from 
 its context, looks impressive; but it becomes less so 
 when we find in the very next sentence that the 
 "spirit" he talks about is identical with the physical 
 energy of the inorganic world. It is a mode of the 
 very same force which is otherwise manifested as 
 gravitation, electricity and the Hke. And how can his 
 translator have succeeded in forgetting the innumer- 
 able sentences of imqualified dogmatic materialism 
 which he himself had first read in the German and 
 then faithfully reproduced in English ? For one sen- 
 tence which seems to be susceptible of an idealistic 
 or dualistic interpretation, there are a hundred in 
 every chapter which absolutely exclude anything but 
 materialistic monism. In turning Haeckel's pages 
 one drops across dozens of sentences like the follow- 
 ing. He is describing the brain as the organ of con- 
 sciousness, and, having depicted the "sense centres," 
 he goes on to talk about "the four great thought 
 centres, or centres of association, the real organs oj 
 mental life; they are those highest instrimients of 
 
88 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 psychic activity that produce thought and con- 
 sciousness." ^ These are the words of the writer 
 whose translator, in a preface to the book containing 
 them, declares that he does not regard mind as a 
 product of matter! Yet thought and consciousness 
 are produced by the thought centres of the brain! 
 Comment would perhaps not be superfluous, if only 
 it were not impossible. 
 
 This philosopher who is not a materialist, and does 
 not regard mind as a product of body, writes elsewhere 
 (in his chapter on "The Evolution of the World") 
 the following profound summary of his new gospel of 
 hope and inspiration for the masses: — 
 
 It seems to me that these modem discoveries as to the 
 periodic decay and re-birth of cosmic bodies, which we 
 owe to the most recent advance of physics and astronomy, 
 associated with the law of substance, are especially im- 
 portant in giving us a clear insight into the universal 
 cosmic process of evolution. In their light our earth 
 shrinks into the slender proportions of a "mote in the 
 sunbeam," of which unnumbered millions chase each 
 other through the vast depths of space. Our own "hu- 
 man nature," which exalted itself into an image of God 
 in its anthropistic illusion, sinks to the level of that of a 
 placental mammal, which has no more value for the uni- 
 verse at large than the ant, the fly of a summer's day, 
 the microscopic infusorium, or the smallest bacillus. 
 Humanity is but sl transitory phase of the evolution of 
 the eternal substance, a particular phenomenal form of 
 matter and energy y the true proportion of which we soon 
 
 ^ Die Weltrdtsel, chap, x, p. 65 of sth English edition. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 89 
 
 perceive when we set it on the background of infinite 
 space and eternal time.^ 
 
 It will perhaps not be superfluous if we take a glance 
 at the marvellous process of reasoning which leads 
 up to this triumphant demonstration of the nothing- 
 ness of man, who is thus declared to be only a form of 
 matter and physical energy. It is well to remind the 
 reader that Haeckel — although, like Sir Ray Lan- 
 kester, Mr. Hugh Elliot, and indeed all his followers, 
 he is perpetually sneering at the philosophers — pro- 
 fesses in this work to be speaking as a philosopher. 
 This school thinks and says repeatedly that all the 
 metaphysicians, from Plato downwards, have contrib- 
 
 * My quotation is taken, with only two small corrections, from Mr. 
 Joseph McCabe's English translation. The italics are mine. In order, 
 however, that the reader may see how even more pessimistic and 
 materialistic Haeckel is than his excessively loyal English advocate 
 makes him seem, I append the paragraph in the original : — 
 
 "Besonders wichtig fiir die klare Einsicht in den universalen kos- 
 mischen Entwickelungsprozess sind diese modernen Vorstellungen 
 iiber periodisch wechselnden Untergang und Neubildung der Welt- 
 korper. Unsere Mutter Erde schrumpft dabei auf den Wert eines 
 winzigen * Sonnenstaubchens' zusammen, wie deren ungezahlte Mil- 
 lionen im unendlichen Weltenraum umherjagen. Unser eigenes 
 'Menschenwesen,' welches in seinem anthropistischen Grossenwahn 
 sich ais 'Ebenbild Gottes' verherrlicht, sinkt zur Bedeutung eines 
 plazentalen Saugetieres hinab, welches nicht mehr Wert fiir das ganze 
 Universum besitzt als die Ameise und die Eintagsfliege, als das 
 mikroskopische Infusorium und der winzigste Bazillus. Auch wir 
 Menschen sind nur voriibergehende Entwickelungszustande der 
 ewigen Substanz, individuelle Erscheinungsformen der Materia und 
 Energie, deren Nichiigkeit wir begreif en, wenn wir sie dem unendlichen 
 Raum und der ewigen Zeit gegeniiberstellen." 
 
 That word " Nichtigkeit " was more than even Mr. McCabe could 
 stand. He has softened Haeckel's assertion of the nothingness of 
 humanity into the phrase, "the true proportion of which we soon 
 perceive," etc. 
 
go CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 uted nothing of the slightest value to human thought 
 or human life. It thinks that metaphysics, together 
 with orthodox theology, should be relegated to the 
 cosmic lumber-room, along with all the other outgrown 
 superstitions of the childhood of the race. Yet, de- 
 spite the preposterous inconsistency of this attitude 
 with Haeckel's own pretensions to found a philo- 
 sophic system, it is about this latter pretension that 
 he is concerned. In the original, his work bears the 
 sub-title, " Gemeinverstandliche Studien iiber monis- 
 tische Philosophic." The English version changes the 
 main title and omits the sub-title altogether. 
 
 My purpose renders it necessary to insist upon this 
 aspect of Haeckel's book. This teacher, who in philo- 
 sophy is everything by turns and nothing long; who, 
 without knowing it, is successively idealist, materialist, 
 dualist and monist; who undertakes, with the cock- 
 sure confidence of a city schoolboy, to derive the sub- 
 ject from the object, and thereby to annihilate the 
 spiritual self-determination of mankind, is, in spite of 
 his scorn for metaphysics, himself a metaphysician. 
 He has his own theory of the relation of thought to 
 being, and of the genesis, nature and limitations of 
 human knowledge. If he spoke merely as a specialist 
 in biology, and confined himself to statements veri- 
 fiable by the methods of that science, it would be 
 beyond my competence to deal with him. He is emi- 
 nent in his own special field, and he made, many years 
 ago, important and valuable additions to our bio- 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 91 
 
 logical knowledge. But he is not satisfied with the 
 reputation which entitles him to speak as one having 
 authority about sea-squirts and radiolaria. He must 
 needs lay down the law to us, not only about all the 
 physical sciences, but also about comparative reli- 
 gion. Biblical criticism, Christian[origins, epistemology, 
 and a dozen other subjects of which he knows prac- 
 tically nothing, and the fundamental principles of 
 which he shows himself incapable of imderstanding. 
 Lest this criticism seem too sweeping, let me illus- 
 trate it by a single instance. The earlier editions of 
 the ^'Riddles of the Universe," in English as well as 
 German, contained a chapter on "Science and Chris- 
 tianity," in which Professor Haeckel undertook to 
 inform his popular audience about Christian origins, 
 the formation of the Gospel canon, and a number of 
 kindred matters. His presentation of these was so 
 tasteless, illiterate and untrue that the whole section 
 had afterwards to be rewritten for him by his English 
 translator. Prior to this kindly doctoring — that is, 
 at the time when Haeckel's book was written by him- 
 self and not by somebody else — it contained the fol- 
 lowing learned description of the formation of the 
 canon of the Gospels: — 
 
 As to the four canonical Gospels, we now know that 
 they were selected from a host of contradictory and 
 forged manuscripts of the first three centuries by the 
 three hundred and eighteen Bishops who assembled at 
 the Council of Nicaea in 327. The entire list of Gospels 
 
92 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 numbered forty; the canonical list contains four. As the 
 contending and mutually abusive Bishops could not 
 agree about the choice, they determined to leave the 
 selection to a miracle. They put all the books (accord- 
 ing to the "Synodicon" of Pappus) together under- 
 neath the altar, and prayed that the apocr3rphal books 
 of human origin might remain there, and the genuine 
 inspired books might be miraculously placed on the 
 table of the Lord. And that, says tradition, really oc- 
 curred! The three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark 
 and Luke — all written after them, not by them, at the 
 beginning of the second century) and the very different 
 fourth Gospel (ostensibly "after" John, written about 
 the middle of the second century) leaped on the table, 
 and were thenceforth recognized as the inspired (with 
 their thousand mutual contradictions) foundations of 
 Christian doctrine.^ 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that this farrago of 
 ignorant nonsense was not allowed to pass unchal- 
 lenged in Germany. Professor Friedrich Loofs of 
 Halle promptly denounced Haeckel, and in doing so 
 deliberately chose such language as would make it 
 possible for Haeckel, if he so desired, to prosecute his 
 critic for libel. This Haeckel never thought fit to do; 
 but the controversy disclosed the interesting fact that 
 the whole of his information about early Christianity 
 and the development of the Church had been derived 
 from a tenth-rate ^'free-thought" book by an obscure 
 English journalist, of which the German translation 
 
 * Op. cit.y chap, xvn, pp. 319-20, English translation, 2d edition, 
 
 XQOI. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 93 
 
 was even worse than the original. No such crushing 
 exposure of presumptuous ignorance was ever made 
 before in the case of a man of academic training and 
 career, who had won for himself deserved honours in 
 his own field. 
 
 I met in Jena in 1909 some imiversity students 
 who, having formerly been enthusiastic disciples of 
 Haeckel, had abandoned their allegiance in disgust 
 because they were convinced that he had deliberately 
 "faked" some of the pictures which illustrated his 
 chapters on human phylogeny and embryology. But 
 I know of no reason for suspecting him of bad faith. 
 All his amazing oracles can be sufficiently accounted 
 for by the hypothesis of ignorance and overweening 
 self-confidence. 
 
 Onejs, however, in a position to state that the 
 information which he gives his readers about the opin- 
 ions of Kant, Spinoza and Berkeley is exactly as valu- 
 able as what he tells them about the dates of com- 
 position and method of ecclesiastical selection of the 
 four Gospels. The myth of the leaping Gospels he had 
 picked up somewhere; but he has invented, out of his 
 own head, the following myth about Immanuel Kant, 
 which to students of philosophy will be equally amus- 
 ing:— 
 
 The great majority of philosophers and theologians 
 affirm, with Kant, that the moral world is quite inde- 
 pendent of the physical, and is subject to very different 
 laws; hence, a man's conscience, as the basis of his moral 
 
94 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 life, must also be quite independent of our scientific 
 knowledge of the world, and must be based rather on 
 his religious faith. On that theory the study of the moral 
 world belongs to practical reason, while that of nature, 
 or of the physical world, is referred to pure or theoret- 
 ical reason. This unequivocal and conscious dualism of 
 Kant's philosophy was its greatest defect; it has caused, 
 and still causes, incalculable mischief. First of all the 
 "critical Kant" had built up the splendid and marvel- 
 lous palace of pure reason, and convincingly proved that 
 the three great central dogmas of metaphysics — a 
 personal God, free will, and the immortal soul — had 
 no place whatever in it, and that no rational proof could 
 be found of their reality. Afterwards, however, the 
 "dogmatic Kant" superimposed on this true crystal 
 palace of pure reason the glittering, ideal castle in the 
 air of practical reason, in which three imposing church- 
 naves were designed for the accommodation of those 
 three great mystic divinities. When they had been put 
 out at the front door by rational knowledge they re- 
 turned by the back door under the guidance of irrational 
 faith.i 
 
 This contrast between the critical and the dogma- 
 tic Kant, who in his capacity of dogmatist declared 
 the moral world independent of the physical, and taught 
 that conscience must be based on religious faith; who 
 superimposed a glittering castle on top of a crystal 
 palace, and stuck three church -naves (with back 
 doors) into the former, is a precious addition to our 
 knowledge of the philosopher of Konigsberg. Not 
 less delicious is the information as to the delimitation 
 ^ Op. cit., chap. XIX, p. 123, 5th English edition. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 95 
 
 of the spheres of pure and practical reason. It teaches 
 us at least one thing: that Professor Ernst Haeckel 
 has not the faintest glimmering of what Kant meant 
 by the pure reason and the distinction between it and 
 the practical reason. He obviously thinks that Kant 
 held successively — at different periods of his life — 
 the doctrine which got rid of God, freedom and im- 
 mortality, and that which reinstated them. He does 
 not know that Kant's work was the destruction of 
 dogmas as dogmas — the eradication of the dogmatic 
 spirit and of the pseudo-rationalism of the older 
 metaphysics. While doing this, however, Kant re- 
 tained the doctrines of God, freedom and immortaHty 
 with the different status of postulates of the practical 
 reason, or, as we should nowadays say, pragmatic as- 
 sumptions. They are not demonstrable, but neither 
 are they disprovable; and (so Kant thought) they 
 serve to justify the intuitions of conscience. But 
 could there be a more outrageous perversion of truth 
 than the statement that Kant, of all people, taught 
 that conscience "must be based on reHgious faith"? 
 Kant, who in the plainest language taught the pre- 
 cise opposite — that religious faith must be based on 
 conscience — and declared that even God and Christ 
 can only be called good in so far as they correspond 
 to the ideal of perfection which is inherent in the 
 nature of man! ^ Such passages enable one to under- 
 stand the '^burning shame" with which a real philo- 
 * Vide Kant, Groundwork of the Metapkysic of Ethics, chap. n. 
 
g6 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 sopher like Professor Paulsen observed the growing 
 popularity of HaeckeFs book. 
 
 Another amusing instance of our monistic philo- 
 sopher's insight is afforded by his presentation of the 
 doctrine of Spinoza, with which he professes to iden- 
 tify himself. Spinoza, as we know, held that the one 
 universal reality manifests itself to us under the two 
 aspects of mind and body. He held the theory of 
 psycho-physical parallelism, from which, among other 
 consequences, it follows that interaction between 
 mind and brain is unthinkable. Professor Haeckel 
 makes a parade of accepting this doctrine, but in the 
 very sentence in which he does so, he reduces it to 
 nonsense by identifying mind with physical force. 
 And, as we have already seen, instead of standing 
 consistently by his doctrine of psycho-physical paral- 
 lelism (which would bar him out completely from 
 denying immortality and the freedom of the will), 
 he flops over to the notion of the influxus physicus. 
 We have already ^ caught him declaring that the brain 
 produces thought and consciousness. These element- 
 ary self-contradictions are, as we have said, not a 
 proof of bad faith. His only fault ("and that is faults 
 enough"!) is an incurable propensity to lay down the 
 law about things of which he knows nothing, with 
 even more than the excessive confidence he displays 
 in expounding that branch of knowledge which is his 
 special field. 
 
 1 Ante, p. 88. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 97 
 
 A man can believe either in psycho-physical paral- 
 lelism or in physico-psychical interactionism, just as 
 he can believe either that the earth is spherical or that 
 it is flat; but it was reserved for this solver of the 
 riddles of the imiverse at the end of the nineteenth 
 century to hold both views simultaneously, without 
 perceiving the difference between them. 
 
 Professor HaeckeFs philosophic competence in dis- 
 cussing and solving his celebrated troupe of seven 
 world-riddles is such as the foregoing might naturally 
 lead us to anticipate. The riddles in question he takes 
 over from du Bois - Reymond, who had enumerated 
 them as follows: — 
 
 (i) The nature of matter and force, 
 
 (2) The origin of motion. 
 
 (3) The origin of life. 
 
 (4) The (apparently pre-ordained) orderly arrange- 
 ment of nature. 
 
 (5) The origin of simple sensation and consciousness. 
 
 (6) Rational thought, and the origin of the cognate 
 faculty, speech. 
 
 (7) The question of the freedom of the will. 
 Professor Haeckel, unabashed by these enigmas, 
 
 which have baffled the mind of man from the begin- 
 ning, and some at least of which will certainly con- 
 tinue until the end of time to baffle all who are capable 
 of seeing the problems they involve, disposes of the 
 whole septette by the ready and easy method of deny- 
 ing their existence: — 
 
98 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 In my opinion, the three transcendental problems 
 (i, 2 and 5) are settled by our conception of substance 
 {vide chap, xn) ; the three which he [du Bois-Reymond] 
 considers difficult, though soluble (3, 4 and 6) are de- 
 cisively answered by our modern theory of evolution; 
 the seventh and last, the freedom of the will, is not 
 an object for critical, scientific inquiry at all, for it is 
 a pure dogma, based on an illusion, and has no real 
 existence.^ 
 
 Ecclesia locuta est; causa finita est I The oracle of 
 Jena has wrapped his pontifical mantle about him and 
 delivered himself officially of the utterance ex cathedra 
 which is henceforth to be binding on all the faithful. 
 Yet stay! We have still one question left: what is 
 "our conception of substance {vide chap, xii) " ? With 
 pardonable impatience we turn in quest of the revela- 
 tion that "settles" the three transcendental problems 
 of the nature of matter and force, the origin of motion, 
 and the origin of simple sensation and consciousness. 
 What do we find ? 
 
 After telling us that, in his opinion, the "law of 
 substance" is "the true and only cosmological law," 
 Professor Haeckel proceeds to explain that this true 
 and only law consists of two other laws. The strik- 
 ing resemblance of this threefold unity to the Athana- 
 sian Trinity cannot fail to impress itself upon reverent 
 readers. We are offered one supreme and all-per- 
 vading law which does not itself relate to any data 
 of experience whatever, but proceeds, apparently by 
 * Op. cit., chap. I, p. 6, English translation, sth edition. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 99 
 
 eternal and transcendental self-generation, from two 
 of the presuppositions of empirical science. These are 
 the chemical law of the conservation of matter, and 
 the physical law of the conservation of energy. As 
 some hardy heretics still venture to dispute that these 
 are "essentially inseparable,^' our philosopher pro- 
 ceeds to furnish the '^ proof " of his thesis in the fol- 
 lowing paragraph: — 
 
 The conviction that these two great cosmic theorems, 
 the chemical law of the persistence of matter and the 
 physical law of the persistence of force, are fundamentally 
 one, is of the utmost importance in our monistic system. 
 The two theories are just as intimately united as their 
 objects — matter and force or energy. Indeed, this 
 fundamental unity of the two laws is self-evident to 
 many monistic scientists and philosophers, since they 
 merely relate to two different aspects of one and the 
 same object, the cosmos. But, however natural the 
 thought may be, it is still very far from being generally 
 accepted. It is stoutly contested by the entire dualistic 
 philosophy, vitalistic biology, and parallelistic psy- 
 chology; even, in fact, by a few (inconsistent) monists, 
 who think they find a check to it in "consciousness," 
 in the higher mental activity of. man, or in other phe- 
 nomena of our "free mental life." 
 
 For my part, I am convinced of the profound import- 
 ance of the unifying "law of substance," as an expres- 
 sion of the inseparable connection in reality of two laws 
 which are only separated in conception.^ 
 
 I assume that the foregoing quotation constitutes 
 
 ^ Op. ciL, chap, xii, p. 76, English translation, 5th edition. 
 
loo CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 the promised proof, because there is nothing else in 
 the entire chapter in the way of evidence for the thesis. 
 The merely lay mind will not be able, I am aware, to 
 find in the above passage any proof of this supreme 
 and all- pervading "law of substance" which Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel has created out of nothing. It may be 
 unduly temerarious to analyze the dicta of infallible 
 authority, but, even at the] risk of excommunication 
 from Dr. Haeckel's new monistic Church, one must 
 point out the utter baselessness of his claim. He has 
 invented, and promulgated without any evidence, 
 his wonderful new law, merely in order to buttress 
 the card-castle of his a priori philosophic structure. 
 The law is, he tells us, "of the utmost importance in 
 our monistic system.'' The ensuing assertion that the 
 two laws must be fundamentally one, "since they 
 merely relate to two different aspects of one and the 
 same object, the cosmos, ^^ is so breath-bereaving that 
 one turns hastily to the German original, to discover 
 whether Dr. Haeckel's meaning has not been uncon- 
 sciously distorted by printer or translator. But no! 
 the "Hibernianism" is Haeckel's own: — "Beide 
 nur zwei verschiedene Seiten eines und desselben 
 Objekts, des 'Kosmos,' betreffen." Was ever such a 
 reason given, not merely for declaring the basic 
 identity of two natural laws, but for erecting the two 
 into three and then declaring that these three are one ? 
 Will Professor Haeckel condescend to inform us of 
 any two or more natural laws which do not relate to 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM loi 
 
 "different aspects of one and the same object, the 
 cosmos ""? On the same ground, we should be justified 
 in affirming the fimdamental imity of the law of gravi- 
 tation and the American Tariff Act. Would anybody 
 except Haeckel ever dream of implying that fifty 
 different scientific generalizations may relate to fifty 
 different worlds of experience ? Instead of making his 
 one universal fimdamental law out of these two prin- 
 ciples alone, he ought to have raked together all the 
 laws that ever were formulated, and fused the lot into 
 one comprehensive hypostatized abstraction, "with- 
 out body, parts or passions." 
 
 And who are these wonderful dualistic philoso- 
 phers, vitalistic biologists, parallelistic psychologists, 
 and inconsistent monists who deny that the law of 
 the conservation of energy and that of the indestructi- 
 bility of matter are inseparably connected in reality ? 
 They do not exist; they are not there. Professor 
 Haeckel has conjured them up out of his own super- 
 heated imagination. 
 
 Nor does the principle of the conservation of energy 
 interfere with any psychological or philosophical 
 theory of consciousness^ except the untenable one to 
 which Professor Haeckel, contradicting his claim to 
 be a monist, has committed himself — that, namely, 
 of interactionism. Of course, if a physical impulsion, 
 traced from the outer world to the periphery of the 
 human body, and thence by the afferent nerves to the 
 brain, could there be shown to be suddenly metamor- 
 
I02 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 phosed into a state of consciousness, this would be 
 equivalent, from the scientific point of view, to a 
 miraculous disappearance or destruction of energy. 
 But no such metamorphosis ever takes place, and no 
 philosophy except materialism necessitates the hj^o- 
 thesis that it does. The whole muddle arises from Dr. 
 Haeckel's preposterous identification of consciousness 
 with physical force. 
 
 We have quoted above the paragraph in which 
 Professor Haeckel declares that, of the seven world- 
 riddles, six are already solved and the seventh is a 
 pure illusion. But the passage cited was only an ap- 
 pendix to a series of pronoimcements which are pre- 
 sumably to be understood as justifying it. Our philo- 
 sopher tells us that " not only the three anthropistic 
 dogmas, but many other notions of the duahstic philo- 
 sophy and orthodox religion, are foimd to be unten- 
 able as soon as we regard them critically from the 
 cosmological perspective of our monistic system." ^ 
 This procession of polysyllables sounds impressive, 
 but all it means is that the notions in question are 
 found to be untenable the moment we arbitrarily 
 adopt a set of unverifiable first principles with which 
 they are incompatible. He then proceeds to formulate 
 such assumptions. I have not space to quote them at 
 length, but I will give a specimen, to show how this 
 novel philosophy first takes for granted everything 
 that it ought to prove, and then gets rid of rival philo- 
 
 * Op. cit., chap. I, p. 5, English translation, 5th edition. 
 
 
HAECKEUS NEW CALVINISM 103 
 
 Sophies by the simple expedient of showing their in- 
 consistency with its own initial assumptions. Haeckel 
 begins in the following fashion: — 
 
 (i) The universe, or the cosmos, is eternal, infinite 
 and illimitable. (2) Its substance, with its two attri- 
 butes (matter and energy), fills infinite space and is in 
 eternal motion. 
 
 Here we have a new creation — a "substance** 
 which is neither matter nor energy nor yet spirit, but 
 to which matter and energy are both adjectival. And 
 this is "monism"! 
 
 Having thus set out with a huge bundle of self- 
 contradictory petitiones principiij the philosopher of 
 course has no hesitation or difficulty in deducing from 
 them his machine-made world of mere chemical and 
 physical causation, in which there is no room for con- 
 sciousness or freedom. There never was a more glar- 
 ing instance of the blunder of which Professor Bergson 
 accuses Herbert Spencer. Bergson's characterization 
 of Spencer's evolutionism is, indeed, a thousand times 
 truer of Haeckel's — viz., that it "consists in cutting 
 up present reality, already evolved, into little bits 
 no less evolved, and then recomposing it with these 
 fragments, thus positing in advance everything that 
 is to be explained." ^ It is thus that Haeckel gets 
 rid of the problem of the origin of the universe, by 
 saying that it "has no beginning and no end; it is 
 
 * Creative Evolution, English translation, Introduction, pp. xiii- 
 liv. 
 
I04 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 eternity." And with respect to the origin of motion 
 (which is really still as mysterious for us as it was for 
 Aristotle) he calmly lays it down that "movement is 
 as innate and original a property of substance as is 
 sensation.'^ 
 
 The student unaccustomed to Professor Haeckel's 
 peculiarities will naturally gasp at the assertion — 
 made as though it were self-evident — that sensation 
 is an innate and original property of substance. We 
 ask him, however, to control his astonishment for the 
 moment. The mystery will be explained a little later. 
 He need not be impatient, for we are getting along 
 pretty fast. We have already got the origin of the 
 cosmos and the origin of motion cleared up in a couple 
 of sentences. Now for the problem of the origin of 
 life. 
 
 In chapter xrv, abiogenesis, or the development of 
 life from non-life, is proclaimed, as it had been pro- 
 claimed earlier in the fourth chapter of HaeckeFs 
 "Evolution of Man." Again, in chapter xx of "Die 
 Weltratsel," Haeckel tells us that the monera "arise 
 by spontaneous generation from . . . inorganic nitro- 
 carbonates." He is careful to restrict this miracle to 
 "the first development of living protoplasm out of 
 inorganic carbonates," ^ thus getting rid in advance 
 of the embarrassing request that he should describe, 
 or reproduce in his laboratory, the process by which 
 living organisms are self-made out of dead matter. 
 
 1 Riddles, chap, xiv, p. 91, English translation, 5th edition. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 105 
 
 But in case anybody is not satisfied with this Topsy's 
 explanation, our solver of world - riddles generously 
 provides us with an alternative, according to which 
 we are to suppose that the distinctive attributes of 
 life — sensation and desire — are universal properties 
 of all material substance whatsoever. He even talks ^ 
 of the "psychology" of atoms, and informs us that 
 "every shade of inclination, from complete indifference 
 to the fiercest passion, is exemplified in the chemical 
 relation of the various elements towards each other, 
 just as we find in the psychology of man, and espe- 
 cially in the Hfe of the sexes." A few sentences further 
 on ^ we are informed that "even the atom is not with- 
 out a rudimentary form of sensation and will, or, as 
 it is better expressed, of feeling (cesthesis) and inclina- 
 tion (tropesis) — that is, a universal ^souF of the 
 simplest character." 
 
 Thus gently and seductively is the inquiring mind 
 of man lulled to sleep in the arms of the all-embracing 
 "law of substance." Benignly accommodating himself 
 to the frailties of human nature, Professor Haeckel pro- 
 vides us with two distinct (and mutually destructive) 
 versions of the origin of life. According to one of these, 
 life begins of itself, by an inconceivable process, at 
 an \mknown time, and under unimaginable conditions. 
 According to the other, it never begins at all, being 
 coextensive with the fimdamental properties of the 
 eternal substance, which, as we have already learned, 
 
 * Riddles, p. 79, 5th English editiou. ' Ibid., p. 80. 
 
io6 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 fills infinite space and is without beginning or end 
 in time. It takes the giant mind of a Haeckel to 
 be able to hold both these antithetical beliefs simul- 
 taneously; but we of feebler powers are not constrained 
 to attempt so magnificent a feat. We can make a 
 Pascalian wager, and decide between the rival claim- 
 ants on our faith by the simple process of tossing up 
 a coin: heads, abiogenesis; tails, the soul of the atom! 
 We need not bother about the lack of evidence for the 
 winner, for both the doctrines have exactly the same 
 amount of evidence in their favour — and that is, 
 none at all. 
 
 Whoever has the mountain-moving faith to imagine 
 that these three *' transcendental world-enigmas" are 
 solved by Professor HaeckeFs ipse dixit, will find 
 nothing to baulk at in the subsequent explanation of 
 the " origin of consciousness and self-consciousness." 
 This, indeed, is but a redupHcation of the thesis that 
 life "growed." With a stroke of his magic wand, Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel transforms the brain of the ape into 
 the human brain, and then (as we have seen above) 
 points out in the latter the organs which produce con- 
 sciousness. Here, then, are four of our seven world- 
 riddles compendiously settled out of hand; and who, 
 after this, will bother about such trifles as the ap- 
 parently pre-ordained order of nature, the genesis of 
 rational thought and speech, and the freedom of the 
 will ? Indeed, we learned at the outset that the so- 
 called problem of the freedom of the will has no right 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 107 
 
 to a place in the list of the "Weltratsel," being, in 
 fact, nothing but a pure dogma based on an illusion. 
 But even here we are not left without a supplement- 
 ary reassurance, furnished out of Professor Haeckel's 
 unbounded intimacy with all the secrets of existence. 
 He tells us (as usual, without condescending to argu- 
 ment) that 
 
 The great struggle between the determinist and the 
 indeterminist, between the opponent and the sustainer 
 of the freedom of the will, has ended to-day, after more 
 than two thousand years, completely in favour of the 
 determinist. The human will has no more freedom than 
 that of the higher animals, from which it differs only in 
 degree, not in kind. . , ,We now know that each act of 
 the will is as fatally determined by the organization of 
 the individual and as dependent on the momentary con- 
 dition of his environment as every other psychic ac- 
 tivity. The character of the inclination was determined 
 long ago by heredity from parents and ancestors; the 
 determination to each particular act is an instance of 
 adaptation to the circumstances of the moment, wherein 
 the strongest motive prevails, according to the laws 
 which govern the statics of emotion.^ 
 
 I have risked overloading my pages with quotations 
 in order to make convincingly apparent the amazing 
 levity with which Professor Haeckel substitutes af- 
 firmation for proof. But I would advise my reader also 
 to read the whole of his book. He will find thereby that 
 the samples I have chosen are strictly representative. 
 
 * Riddles, chap, vn, p. 47, English translation, sth edition. 
 
io8 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 Our philosopher, without hesitation or misgiving, con- 
 tinually offers, as proved, statements which are as 
 improved and unprovable as those of the Athanasian 
 Creed or the Westminster Confession. He also talks in 
 romantic fashion about the world "obeying" the laws 
 which he and his scientific predecessors have formu- 
 lated. His much- trumpeted "law of substance" is not 
 what ordinary thinkers imderstand a law to be — a gen- 
 eralization of the observed uniformities of experience; 
 it is something imposed on the universe from without, 
 and "obeyed" by "the innumerable bodies which are 
 scattered about the space-filling ether." ^ For him, it 
 is no figure of speech that the cosmos and its constit- 
 uent parts are "by eternal laws oi] iron ruled." He 
 is quite convinced that a natural law is itself a force 
 or cause; and he does not escape from this ludicrous 
 fallacy even when talking about an empirical law 
 which he himself has formulated. One of his most 
 useful contributions to the study of hmnan race-history 
 is the hypothesis that the development of the indi- 
 vidual is a brief and rapid recapitulation of the entire 
 evolution of the species. This statement, verified by 
 many correspondences between embryonic develop- 
 ment and the paleontological record of the history of 
 the animal world, he calls the "biogenetic law." It 
 means, to use his own words, that "ontogeny is a brief 
 and condensed recapitulation of phylogeny." One 
 would have expected Professor Haeckel to remember 
 * Riddles, chap, i, p. s, English translation, 5th edition. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 109 
 
 that such a law — even if universally verified, which 
 it is not — would be merely a statement of the fact 
 that certain phenomena happen. Yet over and over 
 again, in his "Anthropogenic," he makes this fact the 
 cause of itself, and talks of things happening "in 
 virtue of the biogenetic law." At the close of this 
 book he writes: — 
 
 There remains only the . . . monistic conception, 
 according to which the human soul is, like any other 
 animal soul, a function of the central nervous system, 
 and develops in inseparable connection therewith. We 
 see this onto genetically in every child. The biogenetic 
 law compels us to affirm it phylo genetically} 
 
 But how can his own home-made law "compel" him 
 to affirm anything of the sort apart from experience, 
 seeing that his law is only a generalization of his ex- 
 perience ? Unless the thesis that the soul is a function 
 of the nervous system (whatever that may mean) can 
 be proved without invoking his biogenetic principle 
 — or, conversely, if the facts are inferred from the 
 principle and not the principle from the facts — his 
 "law" has no claim to be so called, even in the strictly 
 limited scientific meaning of the term. 
 
 The bundle of world-riddles which Professor Haeckel 
 solves by denying their existence, are not necessarily, 
 in all cases, inherently insoluble. A truly scientific 
 and philosophical procedure may, at all events, in 
 
 * Evolution of Man (English translation of Anthropogenie), popular 
 edition, 1906, p. 355. 
 
no CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 future throw much more light upon them than we 
 have to-day. It is, for example, not inconceivable that 
 we may one day be able to define conditions under 
 which a non-biogenetic appearance of life would take 
 place. It is not entirely unthinkable that we may 
 some day learn whether the physical imiverse did or 
 did not have a beginning in time, and whether, if so, 
 its parts were originally in motion or not. We cannot 
 be Pyrrhonists; but it is incumbent upon us to see 
 that we really know what we think we know, and not 
 to deceive ourselves, or be deceived by others, into 
 imagining that we know a host of things about which 
 we really know nothing. 
 
 Now, what Professor Haeckel offers us as proved is 
 a series of affirmations, which must either be based 
 on a supernatural revelation, vouchsafed exclusively to 
 himself, or else mere speculations on the secrets of the 
 imiverse. Who told him that the universe is eternal, 
 infinite and illimitable? What does he know (h3^o- 
 theses apart) of an "infinite space," whether distinct 
 or not from the "substance'^ which fills it? What 
 basis has he for his doctrine of abiogenesis, except 
 the fact that his a priori dogmas make him wish to 
 find it true ? And in regard to the freedom of the will, 
 how does he know that every act of will is fatally 
 determined? If he had ever read Bergson's ''Time 
 and Free Will" ^ he would have seen that the great 
 
 * This book, under its French title (Essai sur les Donn6es immidi- 
 ates de la Conscience), was published many years before The Riddles of 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM iii 
 
 struggle between the opponent and the sustainer of 
 the freedom of the will is by no means settled in favour 
 of the former. He woidd have learned, on the contrary, 
 that it is still possible for a philosopher of high scien- 
 tific competence to dispute the very presuppositions of 
 the mechanical-determinist argimient. What Bergson 
 questions (and in my opinion rightly) is whether the 
 spatial categories of quantity, number and magnitude 
 can legitimately be applied to any states of conscious- 
 ness — even to sensations. No doubt the mind too 
 has its uniformities; but, though these be determinate, 
 they nevertheless manifest a determinism sui generis, 
 whose sequences are not, and never will be, measur- 
 able and predictable by the same standards and in- 
 struments as those of physical nature. 
 
 Let us now return to the enlightening and inspiring 
 conclusion as to the nature and potentialities of man 
 which Haeckel deduces from his body of dogmas about 
 the universe in general. We have seen that he makes 
 mind the product and effect of matter. Without its 
 material substratum it cannot exist, and our philoso- 
 pher accordingly denies dogmatically the immortality 
 of the soul.^ Body, therefore, is the only reality, and 
 
 the Universe was written. But evidently Haeckel has never heard of 
 Bergson. This perhaps is the less to be wondered at, seeing that a 
 recent disciple of Haeckel, Mr. Hugh S. R. Elliot, has written a vol- 
 ume on Modern Science and the Illusions of Professor Bergson, without 
 having ever read Time and Free Will. 
 
 * "These inquiries, which might be supplemented by many other 
 results of modem science, prove the old dogma of the immortality of 
 the soul to be absolutely untenable." (English translation, 5th edi- 
 tion, p. 73.) It is needless to add that in the whole of Haeckel's 
 
112 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 man is but a momentary phenomenon in the eternal 
 flux of things, impotent and transient as foam-flakes 
 on the waves. We have quoted above (p. 88) Haeckel's 
 conclusion that humanity, being but a special and 
 temporary form of matter and force, has "no more 
 value for the universe at large than the ant, the fly 
 of a summer's day," and all the rest of it. 
 
 But what, in such a philosophy, can possibly be the 
 meaning of the phrase, "value for the universe at 
 large"? This wonderful philosopher, having got rid 
 of the idea of any purpose in the world, now falls back 
 upon language which can only mean that, after all, 
 there is a purpose in things. How can anything what- 
 ever be of "value" to such a universe as he has evolved 
 from the abysses of his imagination ? No words could 
 express the depths of Professor HaeckeFs contempt 
 for any theologian who should talk about value to 
 the universe — thereby implying that the imiverse as 
 a whole has ends and purposes in view. The truth is 
 that the category of value has meaning and use for 
 man alone. The question is not so much what we are 
 worth to the universe, but what the universe is worth 
 to us. 
 
 It is needless, at this stage, to add that the central 
 problem of philosophy, which is that of the relation 
 
 eleventh chapter, entitled "The Immortality of the Soul," nothing 
 whatever is adduced to "prove" this comprehensive negative. Apart 
 from the preliminary assumption that the soul is something which 
 the body secretes, the physiological and other facts which he sets forth 
 give no support to his conclusion. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 113 
 
 of thought to its object, has not only not been solved, 
 but has never even been perceived by Professor 
 Haeckel. He speaks of "the absurd idealism" of 
 Berkeley's thesis that the essence of bodies is in their 
 perception. Rushing in, as usual, where angels might 
 fear to tread, he serenely lays it down that the thesis 
 should be corrected to read as follows : — 
 
 Bodies are only ideas for my personal consciousness; 
 their existence is just as real as that of my organs of 
 thought, the ganglionic cells in the grey bed of my brain, 
 which receive the impress of bodies on my sense-or- 
 gans, and form those ideas by association of the impres- 
 sions. ^ 
 
 It has never occurred to him that these wonderful 
 "organs of thought" are themselves only ideas — 
 only items in consciousness. Yet the epiphenomenon 
 which, according to Haeckel, they produce, is the only 
 reality he or anybody else knows immediately and 
 unquestionably. In the same confident fashion, he 
 dismisses Kant's thesis of the transcendental ideality 
 of time and space, by saying that this applies only to 
 the subjective side of the problem, and demanding 
 that we should recognize the equal validity of the 
 objective side. And by "objective" he does not mean 
 what another philosopher would mean — namely, 
 that these transcendentally ideal forms of perception 
 are valid not only for the individual but for conscious- 
 
 1 Riddles, chap, xiii, p. 87, English translation, 5th edition. Note 
 the repetition of the unintelligible dogma that the cells of the brain 
 " form ideas." 
 
114 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 ness in general. No; what he means is that they exist 
 independently of any consciousness; that, like the ma- 
 terial world of his imagination, they are prior to and 
 altogether independent of mind. And he even goes on 
 to say, in a transport of sublime absurdity, that "the 
 reality of time and space is now fully established by 
 that expansion of our philosophy which we owe to 
 the law of substance, and to our monistic cosmogony." 
 That is to say, his evolutionary mythology succeeds 
 in proving the fundamental forms of rationality, which 
 are presupposed in every single step by which the 
 mind advances to its formulation! It is a pity he has 
 never read the metaphysical portions of Green's "Pro- 
 legomena to Ethics." His comments on that book 
 would have been as funny as his remarks on Kant and 
 Berkeley. 
 
 But it is wearisome to heap up the refutation of a 
 creed so manifestly baseless. As Paulsen said, it is 
 infallibility which speaks to us in Haeckel's pages; 
 and only those who are willing to accept a new Pope 
 at his own valuation will be imposed upon by one who 
 seeks to hide beneath a cloud of new and ugly words 
 the beggarly poverty of his thought. Our interest in 
 him and his pronouncements arises merely from the 
 fact that over a million human beings have purchased 
 his work, and thousands of them, in every modern na- 
 tion, actually mistake him for a scientific philosopher, 
 a revealer of new truths, as well as the destroyer of a 
 number of superstitions. 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 115 
 
 Now, what are likely to be the moral effects of this 
 new Calvinism of HaeckeFs, in which original sin is 
 rebaptized heredity and predestination labelled deter- 
 minism, and which has no occasion for a hell after 
 death only because it has provided such an efficient 
 substitute in this life, in the shape of man*s utter impo- 
 tence, and the illusoriness of his spiritual aspirations ? 
 
 One need not anticipate that the diffusion of this 
 new brand of materialism is likely to bring about any 
 widespread moral deterioration; and this for two rea- 
 sons. The first is that, as we have noted before, it is 
 no new thing for the Western world to be materiaUstic; 
 its Christianity has always been so. The second reason 
 is that, as Fichte said, a man's character is not so 
 much determined by his philosophy as is his philosophy 
 by his character.^ In other words, it is because we 
 have always been trained to consider the world of the 
 senses as more real than the world of the spirit, and 
 because even our religion has lost sight of spiritual 
 reaUties through its obsession by the bodily symbols 
 which it has substituted for them, that our age is so 
 completely predisposed to fall a prey to teachers of 
 Haeckel's calibre. His mechanical determinism is truly 
 a doctrine of despair; yet it is no more so than the 
 predestinationism of St. Augustine and Calvin. Both 
 views reduce man's personality to a shadow, a mere 
 
 ^ "Was fiir eine Philosophic man wahle, hangt da von ab, was fiir 
 ein Mensch man ist. Denn die Philosophic ist kein toter Hausrat, den 
 man an- imd ablegen konnte, sondern sic ist beseelt dutch die Seele 
 des Menschen, der sie hat." 
 
ii6 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 pale reflection of outward things, having no force in 
 itself, and lost in illusion when it dreams of resisting 
 its environment. 
 
 What is needed in the modern world is that we 
 should make a clean sweep of both types of fatalism 
 — the theological and the pseudo-scientific alike. If 
 Fichte be right, a philosophic reform cannot precede, 
 but must advance step for step with, a moral and 
 spiritual reawakening. We may thus return to the 
 sense that Plato had, that ideas and ideals are real 
 with a primary reality — more real than the sun and 
 the stars and the many-coloured panorama of the out- 
 ward world. Only this truth can justify our intuitive 
 revulsion from the money-worship and the luxury- 
 worship which, in our time more than ever before, are 
 eating into the souls of nations. America to-day is 
 palsied by the moral scepticism which expresses itself 
 in the conviction that every man has his cash price, 
 and is a fool if he does not make it a high one. Such 
 a standard of values turns life into dust and ashes. 
 In every case of national ruin which history has pre- 
 served to us, it was this practical materialism and 
 ethical scepticism which ultimately caused the col- 
 lapse, by producing the conditions which made it 
 inevitable. If present-day civilization dies, it will die 
 of these idolatries, to which Professor Haeckel's sham 
 philosophy is the appropriate theoretical counterpart. 
 We must go back to the ancient sense that the true 
 values of life lie in goods which cannot even be formu- 
 
HAECKEUS NEW CALVINISM 117 
 
 lated in materialistic terms: in fraternity and justice, 
 in honour and magnanimity, in 
 
 Truth and life-Hghtening Duty, 
 Love without crown or sword, 
 That by his might and godhead makes man god and lord. 
 
 To many minds to-day the sense of uncertainty, the 
 attitude of suspended judgment towards the problems 
 of the world, is so intensely painful that any sort of a 
 ready-made answer to the souFs questions is preferable 
 to it. This it is which accounts for the survival of 
 orthodox theology, as well as for the popularity of 
 Haeckel's new Calvinism, both of which, to quote the 
 words of Mr. F. H. Bradley, "vanish like ghosts before 
 the breath of free sceptical inquiry." But the pain 
 which people feel, in the presence of a mystery ac- 
 knowledged to be such, is due to inadequate reflection 
 on the implications of man's moral nature, and to the 
 false training of fifteen hundred years of ecclesiastical 
 dogmatism, with its insistence that a complete account 
 of the origin and destiny of the universe and of the 
 human soul is a necessary pre-condition of righteous- 
 ness. I will not repeat what in the preceding chapter 
 I have said of mysticism and of its opposition to the 
 certitude of orthodoxy. Suffice it to say that the truly 
 inspiring as well as the truly wise attitude towards life 
 is neither that of the old nor the new dogmatist, to 
 whom nothing is unknown, and for whom life can con- 
 ceal no surprises. It is rather that of the old adventur- 
 ers, who set sail in their feeble boats across the un- 
 
ii8 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 charted seas, not knowing whether even the sequences 
 of nature to which they were accustomed might not 
 be replaced by others in the unknown lands towards 
 which they journeyed. It is this sense of the unex- 
 hausted possibilities of life which we regain through a 
 sceptical re-examination, resulting in rejection, of the 
 materialistic fairy-tales of the priests of theology and 
 of physical science. There is a zest and a charm in the 
 challenging unknown which no mechanistic or finalistic 
 theory can ever impart. It lies in the sense that we in 
 part create the future into which we are ever press- 
 ing. We therefore can stand towards it in the temper 
 of the old mariners, whose adventurous exultation is 
 so wonderfully conveyed in the lines of Coleridge: — 
 
 The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 
 
 The furrow followed free; 
 We were the first that ever burst 
 
 Into that silent sea. 
 
 What may be the end of humanity^s quest for 
 self-realization we neither know nor care to know. 
 Whether, apart from us, the world is animated by a 
 purpose, whether mind can exist apart from body or 
 body apart from mind, whether this mortal shall put 
 on immortality — all these are idle questions; ques- 
 tions that the mystic never cares to put. His joy in 
 life and action is self-justif)dng. He is contemptuous 
 of the answers of materialism to the enigmas of the 
 world, and equally contemptuous of those of orthodox 
 theology. He resents their irrelevance, as well as their 
 
HAECKEL'S NEW CALVINISM 119 
 
 intellectual futility. For him, the very charm of life 
 lies in its inscrutability. He loves too much the 
 presence of the eternal Questioner to desire its de- 
 thronement. He is inspired and impelled to highest 
 achievement not only by the invincible certainties of 
 immediate ethical experience, but also by the sense of 
 
 The sweet strange mystery 
 
 Of what beyond these things may lie, 
 
 And yet remains unseen. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 The English translations of the two most popular of 
 Haeckel's works, "The Riddles of the Universe " and *' The 
 Evolution of Man," are issued by the Rationalist Press 
 Association in London, of which the present writer is a 
 member. This circumstance may seem to the reader of 
 the foregoing chapter to call for some explanation. My re- 
 ply to the criticism which I anticipate is that in my at- 
 tack upon Haeckel I have been, as I trust I am throughout 
 this book, rigidly loyal both to the letter and to the spirit 
 of Rationalism, as officially defined by the Association in 
 the following words: "The mental attitude which unre- 
 servedly accepts the supremacy of reason, and aims at 
 establishing a system of philosophy and ethics verifiable 
 by experience and independent of all arbitrary assump- 
 tions or authority." 
 
 Thus Rationalists are ipso facto freethinkers. The 
 Association is, of course, not responsible for everything 
 written by the authors whose works it publishes. It has 
 erred, in my judgment, by printing and circulating the 
 writings of Professor Haeckel, whose so-called system of 
 philosophy is not verifiable by experience, is a mass of 
 
I20 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 arbitrary assumptions, and is accepted by most of his 
 devotees merely on the authority of its author. But for 
 this error the Association has splendidly compensated by 
 the admirable selection of works of real thinkers which 
 it has issued to the public at the cheapest possible rates. 
 By bringing out the works of such writers as Lecky, Hux- 
 ley, Darwin, Hume, Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, 
 and many others, at twelve cents a volume, it has ren- 
 dered an enormous service to popular thought and culture 
 — a service which it is devoutly to be wished that some 
 public-spirited body would undertake in the United States. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SIR OLIVER LODGE AND THE EVIDENCE FOR 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 The annual Presidential Address to the British Asso- 
 ciation for the Advancement of Science is one of the 
 institutions of England, an institution which has al- 
 ready gathered around it a distinguished tradition. 
 Everybody has read or heard of the address of Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall at Belfast in 1878, in which he made for 
 science the tremendous claim that it would wrest from 
 theology the whole field of human knowledge. The 
 tradition thus set, marking as it did an epoch in that 
 ** warfare between science and theology" for which 
 the nineteenth century is memorable, has been well 
 sustained by the majority of the addresses from the 
 Association's presidential chair which have followed. 
 It is interesting to compare the discourse on " Con- 
 tinuity " delivered in 191 3 by Sir Oliver Lodge with the 
 utterance in the previous year of Sir Ernest Schaefer. 
 The latter is a biologist of the extreme materialistic 
 type, and the burden of his discourse was that all Ufe, 
 including the highest mental processes of mankind, is 
 reducible to the interaction of atoms of matter, accord- 
 ing to unvarjdng chemical laws. He closed his ad- 
 dress by affirming that death is purely and simply a 
 
122 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 physiological process, and by expressing a weird sort 
 of hope that the recognition of this fact will reconcile 
 man to dissolution more than any other thought has 
 been able to do. 
 
 The selection of Sir Oliver Lodge to succeed Sir 
 Ernest Schaefer looks suspiciously like a conspiracy. 
 For many years Sir Oliver has been almost as notorious 
 as a devotee of psychical research as he has been justly 
 famous as a physicist. He has repeatedly, in book after 
 book and in speech after speech, declared himself a 
 believer in human immortality. One cannot say, of 
 course, that the choice of him under these special cir- 
 cumstances was a conscious conspiracy; but there is 
 suflScient evidence of purpose in the matter to justify 
 an argument for design on the part of any belated sur- 
 vivor of the school of Paley. 
 
 One welcomes, to begin with. Sir Oliver Lodge's 
 deniuiciation of the dogmatism of the materialistic 
 school. Direct controversy in a Presidential Address 
 to the British Association is naturally excluded by the 
 traditions of good form associated with the post, but 
 Sir Oliver Lodge gets as near to it as it is possible for a 
 man to do, without actually mentioning names. His 
 whole discourse, more especially in its closing para- 
 graphs, is a direct refutation of the position taken by 
 his predecessor, and of the popular materialism asso- 
 ciated in the public mind with the writings of Professor 
 Ernst Haeckel. Several years ago Sir Oliver Lodge 
 wrote a book called "Life and Matter," which was a 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 123 
 
 critical examination of HaeckePs "Riddles of the Uni- 
 verse/* and in his Presidential Address he repeats, in 
 summary form, the conclusions there advanced. 
 
 In so far as Sir Oliver Lodge rebukes the confident 
 dogmatic denials of the materialistic biologists, I am 
 heartily at one with him; but unfortunately he himself 
 seems to fall into a counter-dogmatism which goes as 
 far beyond evidence and experience as the materialistic 
 position falls short of them. "Science," he says, "can- 
 not make comprehensive denials." "It is always ex- 
 tremely difficult to deny anything of a general charac- 
 ter, since evidence in its favour may be only hidden 
 and not forthcoming." He ought to recognize, how- 
 ever, that, from the scientific point of view, it is quite 
 as illegitimate to make comprehensive assertions in the 
 absence of sufficient verified evidence. 
 
 It may be convenient to outline one's own position 
 with regard to the belief in immortality before dis- 
 cussing that of Sir OHver Lodge. For myself, when 
 the question is put to me, "If a man die, shall he live 
 again ? " I am constrained to answer that, for all we 
 know, it is perfectly possible. Nothing that I have met 
 with in the literature of biology or any other science 
 seems to give the slightest weight to the confident and 
 dogmatic denials of human immortality which one 
 finds in the writings of men like Haeckel. I say this in 
 full consciousness of the strength of the case set up in 
 191 2 by Sir Ernest Schaefer. Nay, I am willing to go 
 beyond the evidence which the materialistic school is 
 
124 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 at present in a position to adduce. Let us assume that 
 biology will at last succeed in proving its contention 
 that life arose originally from non-living matter. Let 
 the familiar dictum of Harvey, *^Omne vivum ex 
 vivo," be completely disproved. Let the actual pro- 
 cess by which the first organisms were engendered by 
 natural development from inorganic matter be repro- 
 duced in the laboratory. Then let it further be demon- 
 strated that every possible activity of the human mind 
 at its highest level is coincident with and correlative 
 to some definitely assignable physical change. It still 
 will not be proved, or provable, that mental and 
 psychic activity are impossible apart from the func- 
 tioning of that special material instrument which we 
 call the human body. 
 
 For the weakness of the materialistic case is that 
 it ignores throughout the only vital consideration. It 
 denies the reality of that one fact which we know 
 directly and at first hand. It reduces consciousness to 
 an illusion, or, to use its ponderous term, an epiphe- 
 nomenon. Consciousness is for this school an acci- 
 dental by-product of physical functioning, hard to ac- 
 count for, but not to be permitted to disturb in the 
 least our physical calculations and conclusions. 
 
 Now, the imanswerable argument, as it seems to me, 
 which one must address to the materialists is that it 
 is this epiphenomenon, this intractable fraction, this 
 residual by-product of the processes that science de- 
 scribes, which is our one and only guarantee for the 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 124 
 
 validity of all our other knowledge. Our very belief in 
 the existence of our own bodies, and in the external 
 world of which they are a part, is dependent upon, and 
 presupposes, complete confidence in the validity of the 
 testimony of consciousness. If mind be unreal, or real 
 with only a secondary degree of reality, then the outer 
 world in which we believe on the testimony of mind is 
 reduced to the level of hallucination. If we cannot 
 trust our only direct experience, our own conscious- 
 ness, then we are compelled to distrust the very argu- 
 ment by which materialistic science seeks to invalidate 
 our belief in the reality of consciousness. For that 
 argument presupposes the thing it seeks to disprove. 
 This is what Schopenhauer meant when he declared 
 that it was "the absurd imdertaking of materialism to 
 derive the subject from the object." 
 
 We find ourselves in a world of sights and sounds, of 
 touch, taste and smell. Yet all these sensations, and 
 the regularities of co-existence and sequence to which 
 they testify, are in fact presented to us only as modifi- 
 cations of our consciousness. Constrained as we are to 
 believe in some sort in the reality of this world of sense- 
 impressions, we are ipso facto constrained to ascribe a 
 prior and deeper reality to our own percipient selfhood. 
 This is the indubitable fact which has led philosophers 
 like Berkeley to declare that the existence of the 
 physical universe consists wholly in the fact that it 
 is perceived or perceivable. 
 
 The materialist who is able and willing to follow this 
 
126 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 argument will, of course, be ready with his reply. Your 
 contention, he will say, is all very well, but you cannot 
 deny that the body, the brain and the nervous system 
 are absolutely necessary to consciousness. I answer 
 that, so far as experience goes, we have no right to say 
 more than that this physical substratum is necessary 
 to the manifestation of consciousness to other conscious 
 agents similarly conditioned. We meet with no dis- 
 closure of the existence of consciousness, no evidence of 
 the presence or activity of mind, except in conjunction 
 with a material body. We are, therefore, entitled to 
 say that, so far as experience goes, mind and body are 
 two aspects of a unity. But this does not justify us in 
 saying that consciousness cannot exist independently 
 of the special physical machinery with which alone we 
 find it associated; and a fortiori we cannot deny that it 
 might manifest itself in activities conditioned by other 
 machinery than that with which we are at present 
 acquainted. 
 
 The argument used by Professor James, in his 
 IngersoU Lecture on "Human Immortality,'' is thus 
 far unanswered and seems unanswerable from the 
 materialistic standpoint. The brain, says the material- 
 ist, is the organ of mind. For every act of conscious- 
 ness there is presumably, and in some cases assignably, 
 a corresponding physiological modification. Agreed, 
 says Professor James; we accept the position that the 
 brain is the organ of mind. But such a statement is 
 susceptible of at least two interpretations. The organ 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 127 
 
 may either produce that of which it is the instrument, 
 or its function may be limited to that of transmission. 
 In our experience, for example, electricity is associated 
 with things like batteries, dynamos and wires. The 
 wire is the organ of the electric current. Without the 
 wire (the argument, of course, was formulated before 
 the days of wireless, but ethereal vibrations will an- 
 swer its purpose just as well) there could be no mani- 
 festation of electricity. But nobody supposes that the 
 wire produces that of which it is the organ, or that the 
 electricity ceases to exist when the wire is disconnected 
 or destroyed. It ceases, indeed, to manifest itself to us; 
 but we know that this absence of manifestation is not 
 identical with non-existence. And so, for all we know, 
 it may be with mind. Its manifestation to us is depend- 
 ent upon the efficient fimctioning of those particular 
 items in consciousness which we call the brain and 
 nervous system. But nothing in our experience, scien- 
 tific or otherwise, entitles us to say that it could not exist 
 apart from its organ, or that it might not, under other 
 conditions and to other conscious agents, be mani- 
 fested through an organ of different nature. Nor is it 
 yet by any means demonstrated that the connection 
 between brain and mind is of the nature of a complete 
 parallelism. The ingenious hypothesis of M. Bergson, 
 that the brain acts only as a screen, to exclude from 
 consciousness the vast mass of psychic elements that 
 are always pressing against it and admit only those 
 that are serviceable at the moment, seems at least no 
 
128 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 less consistent with the ascertained facts than the 
 psycho-physical paralleKsm of Fechner and Paulsen.^ 
 
 One must therefore dismiss the materialistic denial 
 of immortality as a piece of dogmatism, which is as 
 improvable as any of the theological dogmas which 
 the materialistic school rejects. It is an expression of 
 philosophic incompetence, and, in general, of a per- 
 sonal predilection in favour of the negative conclusion. 
 Sir Oliver Lodge makes admirably the point that we 
 have to guard against personal predilection in the 
 negative direction as well as in the affirmative. We all 
 know how theological polemics have been vitiated by 
 the fact that the controversialist's conclusion visibly 
 comes before his premises. His process of reasoning 
 is introduced only to justify a foregone conclusion; 
 his predilection is the parent of his argument. This 
 psychological tendency has to be borne in mind when 
 ^e are dealing with the arguments of those who deny 
 theological positions, as well as of those who affirm 
 them. 
 
 But the greatest error of Sir Oliver Lodge seems to 
 consist in the fact that he confuses the abstractly 
 possible with the actual. He has overlooked a principle 
 of reasoning formulated nearly two himdred years 
 ago by that keenest of theologians, Bishop Butler. In 
 
 1 Bergson's doctrine, set forth in his Matter and Memory, and 
 in his discourse on Dreams, seems more consistent than any other 
 extant hypothesis with the facts of dream-life and of abnormal psy- 
 chology as recently set forth by Freud. See the latter's Interpreta- 
 tion of Dreams and Psychopathology of Everyday Life. (English 
 translations by Brill, published by Macmillan & Co.) 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 129 
 
 Butler's "Analogy of Religion" we find it laid down, 
 with that clear precision which marks the born thinker, 
 that "Suppositions are not to be looked on as true, 
 because not incredible." This is what Sir Oliver Lodge 
 forgets. He stands as the advocate, I will not say of 
 a new superstition, but at all events of a new Aber- 
 glauhe — a belief that exceeds any available evidence. 
 He is as unwarrantably confident in his affirmations 
 as the materialist in his denials. "The facts," he says, 
 "have convinced me that memory and affection are 
 not limited to that association with matter by which 
 alone they can manifest themselves here and now, and 
 that personality persists beyond bodily death." My 
 contention is that Sir Oliver Lodge is not entitled, 
 logically or scientifically, even to this attitude of per- 
 sonal conviction. The true position, in view of our 
 present knowledge, is one of suspended judgment. The 
 finest result of a scientific training is the production of 
 that rigorous standard of accuracy, which enables a 
 man to know at once when he does not know, and pre- 
 vents him from allowing any predilection to force him 
 a single inch in the direction of unwarranted assertion. 
 It is not inconceivable, for example, that in a year 
 from now I may inherit or acquire a fortune of a mil- 
 lion dollars. Anybody who affimied this to be impos- 
 sible would thereby write himself down a pedantic 
 dogmatist. But I in my turn should be extremely 
 foolish if I were to treat this bare possibility as a 
 certainty or even a probability. The path of prudence 
 
I30 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 for me is to assume that a year hence I shall be as 
 dependent for my livelihood on my exertions as I am 
 to-day. And so it is with the question of a life after 
 death. To rush from the bare abstract possibility to 
 a belief in the actuality of such a future is both 
 logically and morally unjustifiable. 
 
 Let us examine one of many instances of the way in 
 which Sir Oliver Lodge makes this illicit leap. In his 
 book entitled "The Substance of Faith Allied with 
 Science/' which is drawn up in the form of a cate- 
 chism, we find on page 20 the following Question and 
 Answer: — 
 
 Question : Are there any beings higher in the scale of exist- 
 ence than man? 
 
 Answer : Man is the highest of the dwellers on the planet 
 Earth, but the Earth is only one of many planets 
 warmed by the sun, and the sun is only one of a 
 myriad of similar suns, which are so far off that 
 we barely see them and group them indiscrim- 
 inately as stars. We may reasonably conjecture 
 that in some of the innumerable worlds circling 
 round those distant suns there must be beings far 
 higher in the scale of existence than ourselves; 
 indeed, we have no knowledge which enables us 
 to assert the absence of intelligence anywhere.* 
 
 The jump from "conjecture" to "must" illustrates 
 
 vividly the process by which Sir Oliver Lodge has 
 
 arrived at his belief in man's survival of death. If it is 
 
 a matter of conjecture whether other worlds than ours 
 
 * Italics mine. 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 131 
 
 are inhabited by intelligent beings, we obviously have 
 no right to say that such beings "must" exist. If the 
 evidence forces us to use the word "must," then the 
 word "conjecture" is grotesquely inapplicable. Sir 
 Oliver Lodge's habit of thought seems invariably to 
 be that if we have no knowledge which enables us 
 to affirm the absence of intelligence, we are entitled to 
 affirm its presence. Logic demands, however, the 
 admission that we have no knowledge which enables 
 us to assert the presence of intelligence anywhere save 
 on earth. This was fully admitted, and indeed con- 
 tended, by a thinker as eminent in science as Sir Oliver 
 Lodge, and, as it happens, not less eminent also as a 
 spiritist: the late Alfred Russel Wallace. The thesis 
 of his recent book on "Man's Place in the Universe" 
 is that the earth alone, of all the worlds observable 
 by us, is fitted to be the abode of intelligent organ- 
 isms. Man as a rational creature, he maintains, stands 
 solitary in the universe. The basis of his argument is 
 that only on the earth does there exist the unique as- 
 semblage of circumstances necessary for the existence 
 of living and intelligent beings. That combination of 
 the temperature necessary to life with a breathable 
 atmosphere and an adequate supply of fresh water, 
 does not exist in any other star or planet discernible 
 through the instruments of astronomy. It well may 
 be that Dr. Wallace went too far in his inferences 
 from the evidence on this point. It is the kind of rea- 
 soning which made some of the ancients pronounce 
 
132 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 the existence of antipodes impossible, and made 
 Locke's Indian prince scout the idea that water in 
 England became solid in winter. I am concerned only 
 to show that Sir Oliver Lodge's belief in intelligences 
 higher than man is indeed a bare conjecture, which 
 he is not entitled to speak of as a belief necessitated 
 by evidence. 
 
 Let us turn now to a brief consideration of the 
 alleged facts which have convinced this distinguished 
 man of science that death is only an incident in the 
 continuous life of man. The reader is presumably 
 familiar with the kind of evidence collected by the 
 Society for Psychical Research and published in its 
 ''Transactions/' as well as in books like Sir Oliver 
 Lodge's ''Survival of Man," Myers's "Human Per- 
 sonality," the book called "Phantasms of the Living," 
 and in spiritualistic literature generally. In Sir Oliver 
 Lodge's book we find that much of the evidence ad- 
 duced, even if it were validated in detail, would give 
 no support to faith in survival. The greater part of his 
 volume consists of evidence for telepathy and for auto- 
 matic writing. If telepathy were proved, it would only 
 demonstrate that the living human mind, associated 
 with a body, possesses powers transcending those 
 hitherto allowed for in our philosophy. If a message 
 can be conveyed from Jones's mind to Brown's, apart 
 from the channels of communication hitherto recog- 
 nized, that only proves that Jones, "whilst this machine 
 is to him," is able to exercise a wider activity than we 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 133 
 
 had supposed. It does not in the least demonstrate 
 that his mind will survive his body. Indeed, the most 
 scientific of the experimenters have maintained that 
 there is a physical medium of communication, consist- 
 ing of ethereal vibrations set going by brain activity, 
 in all cases of telepathy. If this be so, then such com- 
 munication is proved to be as truly dependent on the 
 brain as speech is. 
 
 In the same way, the process of automatic writing is 
 evidence only of hitherto unsuspected sub-conscious 
 powers in the writer. The script may indeed purport 
 to contain messages from other minds, but we are 
 clearly not entitled scientifically to postulate the 
 presence of any mentality other than that of the writer. 
 The cases of secondary and tertiary personality, famil- 
 iar to abnormal psychology, show how unsuspectedly 
 wide is the range of possible mental activity; and the 
 complete forgetfulness which the patient in one stage 
 shows of his conscious activities m another proves how 
 possible it is for the automatic writer to give, in perfect 
 good faith, what purport to be messages from the dead, 
 while they are in fact only the outcroppings of. strata 
 of his own personality which usually He below the 
 threshold of consciousness. 
 
 The case is the same with the argument from appari- 
 tions. We are offered a multitude of instances in which 
 the dying have appeared, apparently in physical form, 
 to friends at a distance. Let us set aside all question 
 of the accuracy of the records and of the subjectivity 
 
134 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 of the visions, and assume, for the purpose of our 
 argument, that the stories are in all cases true. What 
 follows ? No argument whatever for survival; only the 
 fact that one living human being can, under unusual 
 circumstances, perceive a phantasm of another equally 
 living human being. It is not asserted that the phan- 
 tasms are those of persons already dead; they are only 
 those of persons about to die. Their message is^ 
 Morituri salutamus. It is perfectly conceivable that 
 the imminence of death may be the specific condition 
 for the occurrence of such experiences; but we are not 
 entitled on the basis of such evidence to conclude that 
 the dying person survives his physical dissolution. 
 
 The greatest stronghold, however, of the belief in 
 survival is the multitudinous testimony of the seance- 
 room. But this again is vitiated for scientific purposes 
 by the fact that we do not know the limits either of the 
 mind or body of the living human being. Even physi- 
 cally, we are ignorant of the nether limit, so to speak, 
 of our potentialities. Doctors assure us that the undis- 
 coverable causes of many diseases are in all probability 
 ultra-microscopic, — the effects, that is, of organisms 
 which are too small to be made visible, and which give 
 no traceable reaction to the most delicate tests which 
 science has thus far been able to devise. If this be true 
 of the body, how much more true is it of our mental 
 and psychic activities. 
 
 Let us apply this criterion to the mass of mediumis- 
 tic communications, slate-writings and alleged letters 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 135 
 
 from the spirit world, which for many people consti- 
 tute the basis of belief in personal survival. Here 
 again we will set aside all question of fraud, and leave 
 out of consideration the very important problem as to 
 the competence of the investigators. Mr. Sludge, we 
 know, has had hosts of imitators, but we will forget 
 them for the moment. Assuming both perfect good 
 faith in the medium and scientific competence in the 
 witnesses, what is the value of the evidence adduced ? 
 The answer is that the only thing clearly testified to 
 is an unaccustomed and unclassifiable activity on the 
 part of the medium himself. Suppose he speaks with 
 another voice and discloses so novel a context of 
 knowledge and experience as to seem a wholly different 
 person from his normal self. There is still no proof 
 of the presence of an independent individuality. The 
 verification offered for these communications is gen- 
 erally the statement that somebody present knows the 
 facts involved. The medium is ostensibly controlled, 
 let us say, by the spirit of Mr. Gladstone. He talks in 
 Gladstone's person and discloses, we will assume, facts 
 which occurred in Gladstone's experience but not in 
 that of the medium in his primary personality. Such 
 facts can only be verified if some one or more of the 
 observers are acquainted with them. But in this case 
 why should not the source of the medium's knowledge 
 be precisely the consciousness or sub-consciousness of 
 the observer who knows the facts? If telepathy be 
 a reality, how do we know that the medium is not 
 
136 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 unconsciously tapping the mind of the observer and 
 constructing his narrative from hints so obtained ? 
 
 It may be urged that telepathy is not a demonstrated 
 fact; but "secondary personality" is demonstrated; 
 and science and logic constrain us to consider both as 
 possible explanations before resorting to the unneces- 
 sary multiplication of entities involved in the spiritistic 
 hypothesis. 
 
 Most of us, I suppose, are familiar with that queer 
 experience of reminiscence, which consists in finding 
 oneself in a company where one has never been before, 
 and yet having a sudden, convincing premonition of 
 what is next to be said or done. This experience is a 
 common one. Dickens, among others, testifies to it ; and 
 it has more than once happened to myself. Conversing 
 with friends or strangers, sitting on a committee, or 
 conducting a discussion on one of my own lectures, it 
 has many times been my fate to feel an intuitive cer- 
 tainty as to what would be said next; and, so far as I 
 can recall, I have never been mistaken in my anticipa- 
 tion. The "daimon" seems to know his business. How 
 is this to be explained? We do not know; but the 
 simplest h3^othesis seems to be that of an unclassified 
 activity of mind which effects a communication more 
 rapid than that of the normal channels, and therefore 
 anticipates the slower action of the organs of speech. 
 Such an hypothesis would accoimt for a vast percentage 
 of the alleged facts from which spiritists infer the 
 presence of discarnate intelligence. 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 137 
 
 And now, conceding for the sake of argument that 
 man's survival could be proved, there are three criti- 
 cisms to be passed, which seem almost invariably to 
 be overlooked by believers like Sir Oliver Lodge. 
 
 The first of these is that the proof of survival is a 
 totally different thing from the proof of immortality. 
 Sir Oliver Lodge is always talking of immortality, and 
 that in a fashion which leads us to suppose that he 
 considers it sjoionymous with survival. This is another 
 of the illicit leaps in logic which seem to prove that, 
 for him too, the conclusion antedates the premises. If 
 the argument from analogy is good for anything, it 
 would lead us to suppose that a life after death will be 
 transient, like our bodily life on earth. The most con- 
 vinced spiritualist of them all is forced to concede that 
 one of the conditions of that after-life is the attainment 
 of a new instrument, material or "ethereal," analogous 
 to, though possibly finer and more delicate than, the 
 human body. If this be so, how can we suppose that 
 such an instnmient is not subject to a slow attrition 
 akin to that which in time wear^ out our present 
 vehicle of spiritual communication? Since, then, life 
 here is temporary, an after-life may be no less so; and 
 a proof of survival would leave us as far off as ever from 
 a proof of immortality. 
 
 A second unwarrantable assumption made by many 
 believers in an after-life is that the establishment of 
 such a life would be a verification of the dogmas of 
 orthodox Christianity. Here, however, we need to be 
 
138 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 reminded of another of the utterances of the great 
 theologian whom I have already quoted. ^'A proof/' 
 says Bishop Butler, "even a demonstrative one, of a 
 future life would not be a proof of religion." (By reli- 
 gion, of course, he means orthodox Christian theology.) 
 "For, that we are to live hereafter is just as reconcil- 
 able with the scheme of atheism, and as well to be ac- 
 counted for by it, as that we are now alive is." In 
 other words, if a naturalistic philosophy can account 
 for our existence here and now, without the hypothesis 
 of a superhuman personal God, or of miraculous inter- 
 vention in the economy of nature, the same philosophy 
 could equally well account for mental and psychical 
 existence in conditions totally different from those of 
 our present life. The apologist of theology, therefore, 
 must not think that the seance-room is ever going to 
 furnish a buttress for its assumptions. 
 
 The third criticism which one must make, upon such 
 an after-life as would be in store for men if we were 
 compelled to believe in Sir Oliver Lodge's evidence, is 
 perhaps the most important of all. Sir Oliver and his 
 co-believers invariably assume that the after-life must 
 be a far finer, grander and nobler state of being than 
 our present existence. They speak of it with an enthusi- 
 asm akin to that displayed by believers in Christian 
 orthodoxy in their pictures of heaven. But if we ask 
 the grounds for this assumption, we find that there are 
 none. We have here the proof that the so-called scien- 
 tific believers in immortality are in reality not scientific 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 139 
 
 at all. They believe in an a priori theory, and they 
 overlook the contradictions to that theory which lie 
 on the face of the very evidence which they themselves 
 adduce. For if we are to believe in the messages that 
 come from that other world, we shall be forced to con- 
 clude that the himaan spirit after death undergoes a 
 most startling and disheartening deterioration in qual- 
 ity and capacity. I have read masses of these alleged 
 communications, purporting to emanate from the 
 greatest minds that have illuminated the pathway of 
 history, and they seem (to put it mildly) more like the 
 babblings of imbecility than the utterances of genius. 
 Among these messages have been letters from F. W. 
 H. Myers, one of the finest writers, as well as one of the 
 noblest souls, of the nineteenth century. Being vouch- 
 safed in America, these utterances and epistles have 
 been full of Americanisms — surely a startling devel- 
 opment in Myers's use of the English language. They 
 have also been full of errors of grammar for which a 
 sixth-form schoolboy would incur merited chastise- 
 ment. And, for the rest, they have been a tissue of ban- 
 alities which might have emanated from any one of a 
 thousand hopelessly commonplace people, but which 
 never could have been uttered by a profound thinker 
 and a fine scholar like Mr. Myers. The same is true 
 of the alleged messages from a hundred great minds. 
 In a collection of such documents, published in London 
 in 191 2 by Admiral Moore,^ we find communications 
 
 ' ^ Glimpses of the Next State: the Education of an Agnostic. By Vice- 
 Admiral W. Usborne Moore. (London: Watts & Co., 1912.) 
 
I40 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 supposed to come from Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton. 
 One of these affirms the existence of a planet in the 
 solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune; the other 
 denies it. Imagine the two greatest modern astrono- 
 mers, untrammelled by earthly limitations and en- 
 riched with the experience of centuries, contradicting 
 one another on so elementary a question of fact! Yet 
 this is typical of the character of these messages from 
 the other world. No hint of any new discovery, no 
 glimmer of any addition to our hard - won human 
 knowledge, has ever emanated from beyond the veil. 
 If we were to believe in mediumistic messages, we 
 should be forced to conclude that himian originality is 
 a myth, that almost every thought, every invention, 
 every discovery that men have made has been com- 
 municated to them by the discarnate minds of those 
 who have gone before. But such a thought is as base- 
 less as it is revolting. Some of Admiral Moore's "con- 
 trols" informed him that the discoveries of Mr. Edison 
 were due to suggestions from disembodied spirits. This 
 assertion calls to mind the photograph in the recently 
 published "Life of Edison," which depicts him as he 
 appeared after working five days and nights on end 
 on the phonograph. After such herculean labour, after 
 such intense and marvellous concentration upon his 
 task, we are to be told that the man himself deserves 
 no credit for his invention — that it has been given 
 to him by suggestion from incorporeal minds ! 
 Why, if such things are possible, do we never get any 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 141 
 
 intimation of impending disaster from these ubiquitous 
 spirits ? It happened while Admiral Moore's book was 
 passing through the press that his little grandchild was 
 burned alive in its cot, through the negligence of a 
 nurse. A week or more afterwards the spirits turned 
 up in the seance-room to assure the bereaved relative 
 that the little one was happy and well cared for in the 
 other world. But, needless to say, no hint had come to 
 him before, warning him to prevent this distressing 
 catastrophe. Such is the invariable course of things in 
 these messages from beyond. They are, without ex- 
 ception, fatuous and useless. They consist of matter 
 which not even a spiritist would think worth the 
 cost of ink and paper if they were believed to come 
 from living human minds; but because of the weird 
 interest attaching to manifestations believed to be 
 occult, they are trumpeted as revelations and made the 
 basis for a vast mountain of inference which is totally 
 devoid of scientific warrant. 
 
 Of course, the robust faith of the spiritist pro- 
 vides him with an answer to this criticism. The mind 
 and body of the medium, he tells us, furnish only 
 a very imsatisfactory and refractory instrument for 
 these communications. The medium is only "a tele- 
 graph-ofiice " ; and our experience of that marvellous 
 agency, the Western Union Telegraph Company, 
 warns u^ to expect something more than ordinary 
 human fallibility in the operations of such a machin- 
 ery. In the lecture on "The Immortality of the Soul" 
 
142 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 which Sir Oliver Lodge has reprinted in his book 
 called "Man and the Universe/' he says: *'It must be 
 admitted that in all cases, the manner and accidents or 
 accessories of the messages are liable to be modified by 
 the material instrument or organ through which the 
 thought or idea is for our information reproduced." 
 It must indeed be admitted ! And on the same princi- 
 ple we must admit that messages may be created by the 
 sub -conscious mind whose operations are correlative 
 to the medium's brain and body. 
 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to point out the difference 
 between such an after-life as spiritism and ordinary 
 orthodox teaching aJ05rm and the conception of eter- 
 nity which their philosophy implies. No picture of the 
 Christian heaven has ever been able to escape the 
 infection of temporality and spatiality. Even Keble, 
 the most orthodox of poets, is forced to declare that 
 the common ideas of heaven are "poor fragments all 
 of this low earth." Neither spiritualism nor popular 
 theology has been able to grasp or willing to accept 
 the implications of eternity as distinguished from pro- 
 tracted temporality. Milton, declaiming in his splen- 
 did rhetoric about "the dateless and irrevoluble circle 
 of eternity," speaks in the same breath of progression. 
 But progression is exactly what the concept of eter- 
 nity excludes. Eternity stands opposed to time, as 
 perfection to imperfection, without before and after, 
 embracing in a timeless moment past, present and 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 143 
 
 future. The "eternal glance" of which the German 
 philosophers speak is a necessary implication of their 
 thought, inconceivable as it may be to minds limited as 
 ours are. To believe, then, in an after-life tranmielled 
 by time and space, is not to escape from materialism 
 or to attain to the standpoint of eternity. 
 
 There is one lesson forced upon us by Sir Oliver 
 Lodge's advocacy of the survival of man which it is 
 very important for the world to learn. We see already 
 around us signs of a revolt against the expert. The 
 revolt is a healthy one. Its necessity is probably not 
 the fault of the expert as such, but it does arise from 
 the altogether excessive deference which the public 
 has been accustomed to give to his authority. What 
 we are learning now is that one must beware of the 
 expert outside his province. Sir Oliver Lodge is un- 
 doubtedly one of the greatest of living physicists; and 
 any utterance which he may make within the sphere of 
 his special competence commands the respectful atten- 
 tion of the layman. But anybody who compares those 
 parts of his Presidential Address in which he discusses 
 physics, with the paragraphs in which he talks about 
 human survival, can see that he has an enormously 
 more rigorous standard of accuracy in his own sphere 
 than in this other region, in which he is only an adven- 
 turous amateur. His belief in immortality is based on 
 evidence that he would not look at in a physics labor- 
 atory; and, apart from the quality of the evidence, he 
 draws from it conclusions far outrunning the infer- 
 
144 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 ences that would be justified if the evidence were 
 sound. We must learn, then, that the very eminence 
 of a man in his own sphere is a reason for suspecting 
 his deliverances on things outside it. That very con- 
 centration of attention, through many years, which 
 enables him to speak with authority in one branch of 
 science, inevitably excludes such specialized prepara- 
 tion and continuous concentration in another field as 
 would entitle him to authority there. The expert, 
 then, in physics or biology, is no more to be trusted 
 than a well - equipped la5nnan when he speaks on 
 problems of psychology. 
 
 It is worthy of note in this connection that the 
 specialists in mental science are seldom or never con- 
 verted to Sir Oliver Lodge's belief. Men whose special 
 training and lifelong discipline have lain in the field 
 of psychology are not prepared, upon the evidence, to 
 believe in human survival. Such men as Professor 
 Leuba, Professor Morris Jastrow, and even William 
 James, fall far short of the dogmatism of Sir Oliver 
 Lodge, Sir William Crookes, the late W. T. Stead 
 and our other distinguished amateurs of the seance- 
 room. The inclusion of Professor James's name in this 
 category of the sceptical may come as a surprise to 
 those unacquainted with his fijial utterances on the 
 subject. Yet in his posthumous volume of ^'Memories 
 and Studies" he quite definitely declared that after 
 twenty years of psychical research he was still "on the 
 fence" as regards the question whether man survives 
 
EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY 145 
 
 bodily death. Sir Oliver Lodge ought to be in the same 
 position; and his presence in the camp of the convinced 
 believers is evidence that, with him as with the rest 
 of them, the wish is father to the thought. 
 
 Despite all this criticism, however, I would reiterate 
 that my own position involves no denial either of sur- 
 vival or even of immortality. My standpoint is that 
 of complete agnosticism. Inamortality for me is no 
 more proved than it is disproved. I protest against 
 the investigation of this subtle and difficult question 
 by persons like Admiral Moore, whose incompetence 
 is grotesquely apparent, and who are animated by 
 a motive which would vitiate all results, even if the 
 students were relatively competent. The ideal way 
 to handle the problem would be to entrust it to a 
 fairly large commission, composed of men wholly de- 
 void of predilection, and thoroughly trained in the 
 finest and most exact methods of observation which 
 modern psychology has elaborated. To them should be 
 handed over the Eusapia Palladinos, the Mrs. Pipers 
 and the rest of the wonderful people capable of func- 
 tioning as vehicles for minds other than their own 
 conscious ones. It should be the business of the com- 
 missioners to eliminate such evidence as contains 
 signs of fraud or of unconscious dissimulation, and to 
 sift the tenuous residue in the most searching manner, 
 so that they could present to the public v. hatever 
 fragments of indisputable inference might be extract- 
 ible from the data. If such a commission were to work 
 
146 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 continuously and to report, let us say, at ten- or 
 twenty-year intervals, it is possible that in a century 
 we might obtain sufficient evidence to justify a definite 
 affirmative opinion. Until such searching and com- 
 petent investigation has been completed, we have no 
 right to decide; or, if we do decide, we must admit 
 that our position is due not to evidence but to a priori 
 faith or unfaith. 
 
 The loss of belief in immortaHty can make no differ- 
 ence to the moral outlook of humanity. One's only 
 interest in the subject from an ethical point of view is 
 to show that morality is richer and purer when the 
 thought of an after-life has been eliminated than when 
 that thought is brought in as an incentive. The uni- 
 verse has no terrors for the man who has overcome the 
 fear of death. But there is obviously something de- 
 fective in the righteousness which needs the stimulus 
 of the hope of immortality, or the spur of the fear of 
 punishment after death. To buttress morality with 
 such hopes and fears is to degrade it. We may con- 
 fidently trust that if the vision of a life hereafter fades 
 more and more from the minds of men there will be 
 a more general readiness to do justice, to love mercy, 
 and to walk humbly before the ideal which we worship, 
 than has ever been induced by the machinery of 
 unwarrantable hope and fear resorted to by religion in 
 the past. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL AND CLERICAL 
 
 There could be no completer misunderstanding of the 
 age in which we live than that opinion which regards it 
 as indifferent to religion. To many of the traditional 
 forms of religion and to the organizations which stand 
 for these it is indeed indifferent; but this attitude is 
 wholly distinct from apathy in regard to the funda- 
 mental problems of which our traditional theologies 
 assume to offer the solution. Indeed, the very refusal 
 of many men and women to accept orthodox answers 
 to the soul's questions arises from a profounder intel- 
 lectual honesty, a deeper sincerity — in other words, a 
 more truly religious spirit — than has ever prevailed 
 before. 
 
 If evidence be needed of the intense yearning, the 
 inarticulate desire of the present age for a new canali- 
 zation of the spirit of religion, it lies ready to hand in 
 every public library. The output of books dealing with 
 the questions of God and the soul, of conversion, of 
 conduct and character here and of a life hereafter, is 
 altogether unprecedented. We may quite safely follow 
 in this case the economic principle which connects 
 supply with demand. Books to-day are published for 
 profit; and the presence in the market of innumerable 
 
148 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 works on religion is demonstrative evidence of the 
 existence of a widespread public interest in the sub- 
 ject. Every new message has an enthusiastic hearing; 
 and a hearing, moreover, which is not evidence of a 
 mere Athenian curiosity, but one backed by substan- 
 tial monetary support. The world is really on tiptoe of 
 creative expectancy, awaiting and demanding a new 
 religion which shall satisfy the old need for inward 
 harmony and reconciliation with the order of things. 
 Another clue to the mind of an age, which we may 
 safely trust, is furnished by its fiction. The themes 
 which novelists choose are always those in which they 
 have reason to expect a considerable measure of public 
 interest, and even in their most incredible characters 
 the lineaments of their times are inevitably reflected 
 or refracted. Now if we compare the fiction of to-day 
 with that of a hundred or even fifty years ago, we find 
 that the religious motif has in contemporary novels a 
 prominence altogether new. The clerics and the reli- 
 gious-minded la5mien in our older fiction are beset by 
 no theological difficulties and by no discomforting sense 
 of a clash between the ethical standards of their faith 
 and the established social order. Parson Thwackum 
 in '^Tom Jones "is typical of his era. *' When I men- 
 tion religion," he says, "I mean the Christian religion; 
 and not only the Christian religion, but the Protes- 
 tant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, 
 but the Church of England." He is troubled by no 
 misgiving as to the permanent power of the religion 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 149 
 
 of the Church of England to satisfy all the needs of 
 the human spirit, nor are there in his circle any au- 
 ditors to embarrass him with perplexing questions. 
 The case is the same in the great fiction of the nine- 
 teenth century. When Dickens introduces a clergy- 
 man, he is of the type of the Reverend Frank Milvey in 
 "Our Mutual Friend," whose only serious problem in 
 life is that of making a wholly inadequate salary meet 
 the needs of a more than adequate family. For the 
 rest, we find in Dickens incredible Stigginses and 
 Chadbands, but never a minister of religion whose 
 faith causes him any searchings of soul. Even George 
 Eliot's parsons — the Amos Bartons, the Mr. Gilfils 
 and Mr. Casaubons — have no credal perplexities. 
 She never depicts a clergyman undergoing that painful 
 process of detachment from the old moorings with 
 which her own experience had made her familiar. 
 
 It is with Mrs. Humphry Ward's memorable story 
 of "Robert Elsmere" that the figure of the heretical 
 clergyman comes prominently into fiction; and Els- 
 mere was only the leader of a long procession. The 
 repeated presentation in fiction of this situation is 
 testimony, if any were needed, to the increasing com- 
 monness of a tragic fact in life. A clergyman signs a 
 formula or a set of articles, defining a faith which he in 
 all honesty has accepted in his childhood, only to find, 
 as his experience of Hf e broadens and his studies of the 
 past grow more profound, that it is Hterally impossible 
 in the present day for a thoroughly educated man to 
 
I50 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 accept the traditional creeds in the traditional sense. 
 He is then confronted with the painful dilemma either 
 of stifling his conscience to save his living or of sacri- 
 ficing the prospects of wife and children on the altar 
 of his own mental integrity. 
 
 Mr. Winston Churchill has faced this situation, and 
 in his recent novel he presents what is apparently his 
 own solution of the religious problem, as well as his 
 conception of the practical course which a clergyman 
 so placed should adopt. "The Inside of the Cup" is 
 the profoundest presentation of its theme yet given 
 to us in fiction. My reason for rating the book thus 
 highly is twofold. First, Mr. Churchill's heretical 
 clergyman becomes aware of the ethical gulf between 
 the faith and the lives of his wealthy parishioners, as 
 well as of the difficulties presented by the creeds; and 
 secondly, the author makes his hero, after the new 
 revelation has come to him, decide to stay within the 
 Church instead of abandoning his position there. ^ 
 
 Of Mr. ChurchilFs powers of literary craftsmanship 
 it is perhaps late in the day to speak. He has had the 
 courage to revive the long novel. It is true that he 
 has not yet attained to the dimensions of Dickens 
 and Thackeray, but he does present us with canvases 
 large enough to allow for detailed pictures of the minds 
 of his characters. And, despite the length of his books, 
 they do not fail to satisfy that difficult canon of literary 
 
 1 On this second point, however, it is only fair to remember that 
 Mr. Churchill was anticipated by Mrs. Humphry Ward in The Case 
 oj Richard Meynell. 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 151 
 
 criticism which was laid down by Mr. Samuel Weller. 
 When Mr. Weller, Senior, criticizes the abrupt ending 
 of his son's love-letter in the words, "That's rayther 
 a sudden pull-up, Sammy,'' his son demurs on the 
 ground that "She'll wish there was more of it, and 
 that's the great art o' letter-writin'." It is certainly a 
 tribute to Mr. Churchill's art that after five hundred 
 closely printed pages he generally leaves his reader 
 wishing there was more of it. 
 
 Another characteristic of this writer's work that 
 fully justifies his wide popularity is his power of seiz- 
 ing some main trend of the nation's evolution and 
 linking up with this the detailed development of the 
 careers of his characters. He does not give, as did 
 Dickens, pictures of quiet lives apparently quite un- 
 connected with the evolution of the social group 
 amidst which they live. Mr. Churchill's characters live 
 in time, and therefore they grow and change; the crea- 
 tions of Dickens inhabit eternity, and neither wax 
 nor wane. ^Mr. Churchill watches what main currents 
 draw the years, and in the marshalling of his charac- 
 ters and incidents we are conscious of the great trend 
 as well as of private and personal developments. 
 
 In "The Inside of the Cup" he seems less at his 
 ease with his theme than in earlier novels — such, for 
 example, as "Coniston" and "The Crisis." One feels 
 more sense of strain and effort in the working-out of 
 the plot. This is doubtless due to the nature of the 
 subject-matter, and, though an artistic defect, it indi- 
 
152 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 cates the seriousness with which the novelist has faced 
 his task. There is the same skill in characterization 
 to which Mr. Churchill's readers are accustomed. The 
 men, as usual, are highly individualized and differ- 
 entiated; and the women, also as usual, are better than 
 the men. The heroine is a worthy successor to Vir- 
 ginia Carvel and Cynthia Wetherell — a blend of them, 
 with perhaps an infusion of Miss Letitia Penniman. 
 Unfortunately, as the plot develops, the author be- 
 comes so interested in his hero and heroine, and in the 
 spiritual interests that absorb them, that he forgets 
 all about the other characters, so that the close of the 
 book is a tangle of loose ends, and we do not learn what 
 becomes of several people in whom we are interested. 
 But perhaps this means that there is to be a sequel. 
 
 A very brief resume of the chief points of the story 
 will facilitate the reader's appreciation of my criti- 
 cism. We are introduced to the members of the most 
 fashionable Episcopal church in a great city of the 
 Middle West, whose old rector. Dr. Oilman, has re- 
 cently died. The younger people of the congregation 
 are troubled by the disharmony between the religious 
 teaching they have received and the scientific prin- 
 ciples and historical beliefs imbibed in their university 
 courses. They, however, have no hand in the appoint- 
 ment of Dr. Oilman's successor. The vestry, whose 
 task it is to fill the vacant place, are a set of more or 
 less sincerely orthodox men, who yet have no intention 
 of permitting the Church as an ethical force to inter- 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 153 
 
 fere with the conduct of their business Kves. They are 
 capitalists to a man, and almost all of them under the 
 thumb of a master spirit, Eldon Parr, a multi-million- 
 aire who has risen from nothing by means of financial 
 genius and unscrupulousness. The vestry under the 
 circumstances naturally want a "safe" man, "one 
 who does not mistake Socialism for Christianity, '^ and 
 who can be relied upon to preach the same gospel that 
 they have always listened to. As seems to be usual in 
 modern business, they turn for help to their corpora- 
 tion lawyer, one Langmaid, who undertakes a journey 
 to the New England town in which he was born, for 
 the purpose of importing a suitable rector. He returns 
 with the Reverend John Hodder, who has never yet 
 said an unorthodox word and has given no evidence of 
 possessing anything so stupendous and dangerous as a 
 political or economic opinion. The vestry are delighted 
 with Langmaid's discovery, and Hodder is universally 
 liked by the congregation, although the yoimger mem- 
 bers of it remain as dissatisfied as ever, feeling that 
 there is some invisible barrier which prevents them 
 from getting into contact with his mind. 
 
 A year or so in his new parish brings about a total 
 change in the new incumbent's outlook. After a period 
 of singular friendship with Eldon Parr, based largely 
 on pity for the man's solitude and evident imhappiness, 
 he begins to discover disquieting evidence of the way 
 in which his chief vestryman's wealth and power have 
 been built up. He hears whispers of a financial trans- 
 
154 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 action over the street-car service, by which unprofit- 
 able lines, quietly purchased by Parr and his associates, 
 had been re-sold to themselves under another name 
 at a fabulous price, paid by the unsuspecting public 
 in return for worthless stock and share certificates. 
 
 Distressed by his inability to get the slum people 
 into his church, Hodder goes on quest in the slums, 
 where he speedily stumbles across reality and the 
 twentieth century. The first and finest person he meets 
 there, Mr. Horace Bentley, proves to be one whom 
 Parr had quietly but legally robbed of his fortune 
 twenty years before. Hodder makes Bentley's ac- 
 quaintance when 'trying to minister to the wife and 
 sick child of one Garvin, a workingman who had in- 
 vested his life's savings of five thousand dollars in the 
 Consolidated Traction enterprise, on the strength of 
 his faith in Eldon Parr, only to lose every cent he had. 
 Broken in health by his loss, and unable to find em- 
 ployment, the poor fellow finally resorts to suicide. 
 Hodder also learns that one of his leading vestr3nnen, 
 Ferguson, proprietor of the city's greatest department 
 store, is paying to the girls in his employ wages which 
 impel many of them to a life of shame. 
 
 On the other hand, the rector's confidence in the 
 orthodox faith is severely shaken by the questions put 
 to him by some of the finest young people in his con- 
 gregation. He also undergoes serious searching of soul 
 when asked by a Mrs. Constable, whom he highly 
 respects, to re -marry her divorced daughter. As a 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 155 
 
 High Churchman, holding the Catholic theory of the 
 indissolubility of marriage, he feels compelled to de- 
 cline the request; but the incident leaves a permanent 
 mark upon him. Perplexed and bewildered at the 
 abysses which seem suddenly to have opened beneath 
 his feet, he decides to stay in the city for the summer 
 instead of going East on a vacation, and gives up his 
 time to study and thought, with the result that by the 
 end of the summer he has arrived at a reconstruction 
 of his creed and an insight into social problems, on the 
 strength of which he feels compelled to remain in the 
 Church, but to preach a gospel fundamentally different 
 from that which he had formerly expounded. 
 
 If I may venture on a word of criticism, I would say 
 that Mr. Hodder is, on the one side, incredibly inno- 
 cent when he leaves his New England parish, and tha* 
 on the other, his development when confronted witL 
 the new problems is almost inconceivably rapid. It is 
 difficult to believe that a man so active-minded could 
 have remained all his life so blind to the economic and 
 social facts of contemporary society as he is repre- 
 sented as being. Nor is it altogether vraisemblable that 
 a clergyman should arrive so rapidly at a compara- 
 tively mature reconstruction and reinterpretation of 
 faith, such as that which Hodder attains in the course 
 of one summer's reading. Nor, again, is the logic 
 of his apparent inference from the corrupt lives of 
 his vestrymen to the falsity of the creed they profess 
 altogether convincing. Many a High Churchman is 
 
156 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 entirely clear-sighted as to the conditions under which 
 wealth is to-day produced and distributed, and per- 
 fectly aware of the irreconcilable clash between the 
 ethical code professed by milUonaires in church on 
 Sunday and that upon which they act on the other 
 days of the week. Yet these High Churchmen do not 
 conclude that the faith professed on Sunday must 
 therefore be false. They maintain rather that it is the 
 very truth of the doctrine which makes it serviceable 
 as a cloak for hypocrisy. It is the very elevation of the 
 ethical standard of Christianity which makes the im- 
 scrupulous exploiter of his fellows desire the moral 
 prestige which comes from lip-service to it. 
 
 Nor can we be fully satisfied with the theoretical 
 reconstruction of religion in which Mr. Hodder finds 
 rest. His new doctrine is widely held among honest 
 and sincere clergymen of the modern type; but it is 
 not a solution satisfactory to those who have really 
 penetrated to the heart of things. Its supernaturalistic 
 theism is taken for granted, and, although Hodder 
 repudiates the miraculous doctrines of the incarna- 
 tion and resurrection of Christ, he yet inconsistently 
 retains Christ as the central sun of his moral and spir- 
 itual system. The real trend of democratic religion in 
 our time is leading us quite away from this placing 
 of Christ at the centre of the spiritual universe. The 
 change is analogous to that which took place in astro- 
 nomy when men ceased to look upon the earth as the 
 centre of the world and discovered that the sun is the 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 157 
 
 pivot of the solar system. Just as the physical world 
 is no longer geocentric, so the spiritual world can no 
 longer be Christo-centric. Deep and grateful as our 
 reverence for the Founder of Christianity may be, we 
 can no longer assent to the claim that he is unique, 
 unapproachable, and all-sufficient for the spiritual, 
 ethical and intellectual needs of human society. 
 
 Yet Mr. Hodder's resting-place is far in advance 
 of his starting-point. It is a great moral progress to 
 abandon, as he does, the doctrines of the virgin birth 
 and physical resurrection of Christ, not as impossibil- 
 ities but as impertinences. These theories (the former 
 of which was not in the Gospels as they were first 
 written, and the latter of which has clearly grown out 
 of subjective visions like that of St. Paul) are visibly 
 the invention of pedantic and unspiritual minds, who 
 felt that the greatness and purity of the character of 
 Christ needed to be accoimted for miraculously. We 
 are to-day advancing to the point where we see good- 
 ness to be as much a part of man's nature as sin. Our 
 sense of the inherent dignity of hvunanity is teaching us 
 that it is not the greatness of the great and the purity 
 of the pure which need to be explained, but the little- 
 ness and baseness of the mass of men. It is these qual- 
 ities which we feel to be inconsistent with hiunanity. 
 The great, pure, clear-eyed personality embodies what 
 we expect of mankind. He is the norm, the standard; 
 and it is declensions from this standard which we feel 
 called upon to explain. Thus the chief case against the 
 
158 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 miraculous is now seen to be its moral irrelevance, — 
 its implication that goodness and greatness in human 
 character are unnatural, and only to be accounted 
 for by irruptions of a higher order into the human 
 sphere. 
 
 Probably the question most provocative of discus- 
 sion in connection with Mr. Churchill's novel will be 
 the one raised by Hodder's conduct in remaining in the 
 Church after he has abandoned the traditional inter- 
 pretation of the creeds and articles of religion which 
 he had accepted. As this is the most important issue 
 which the book raises, we may be pardoned for dealing 
 with it at some length. 
 
 The answer to the question whether an heretical 
 clergyman has a moral right to remain in his Church 
 (until such time as his plain speaking leads to his ex- 
 pulsion) must depend upon one's view of the nature 
 and sociological function of the Church. That nature 
 and function cannot be discovered by reading the 
 Church's official account of itself. It would doubtless 
 explain (as it does in the Athanasian Creed) that it 
 exists to maintain the integrity of the theological faith 
 of its members, to preserve undiluted the doctrine 
 entrusted to its charge, and thus to secure the salva- 
 tion of souls in a life after death. Its explanation 
 would carry with it the implication that any man who 
 does not hold strictly every article of its creed has 
 neither part nor lot in its communion; and conse- 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 159 
 
 quently it would expect the Hodders and Robert 
 Elsmeres to resign their livings the moment they can 
 no longer conscientiously proclaim the traditional 
 theories. 
 
 We shall learn, however, to take a truer view of the 
 nature and function of the Church if we compare it 
 with the civil State. The civil State at any given 
 moment is committed to the upholding of a certain 
 constitution and certain laws. Yet nobody expects a 
 man who desires changes in those laws or that con- 
 stitution to expatriate himself from the State and to 
 remain apart from it until the alterations he desires 
 have been effected. On the contrary, we all recognize 
 that there is no absolute finality about written laws 
 and constitutions; and that it is often precisely the 
 most patriotic citizen who desires to bring about 
 changes in them. We see, therefore, that there is no 
 conflict between the retention of citizenship and the 
 desire for innovation in the State. 
 
 Now those who frankly take, as I do, the view that 
 the Church is every whit as much a human institution 
 as the civil State, can find no difficulty in reconciling 
 the retention of church membership with desire for 
 change in ecclesiastical creeds and formulas. We main- 
 tain that it was not the creeds that produced the 
 Church, but the Church that produced the creeds. 
 The Church, therefore, is prior to its own formula- 
 tions. They were made for it, not it for them; there- 
 fore the Church is lord also of its creeds. We maintain 
 
i6o CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 that the function of the Church in the world is to act 
 as the standard-bearer of human ideals, to insist upon 
 the distinction between the Hfe of the senses and the 
 life of the spirit, to release the "angel heart of man" 
 from the grip of ape and tiger, and to make channels 
 for the streams of himaan love and service, so that the 
 finer energies of the spirit may be released from the 
 trammels of the baser nature, both of the individual 
 and of society, and poured forth in beneficent service 
 to all. 
 
 It must necessarily follow from such a conception 
 that the Church not only may, but does, carry within 
 itself the forces and machinery by which to effect its 
 own evolutionary transformation. A Church fettered 
 absolutely to the past, incapable of revising its creeds 
 and formularies, would be as unnatural an institution 
 as a civil State which could not modify or repeal any 
 of its old laws or enact any new ones. Such bondage 
 to the letter and to the dead hand of the past is to- 
 tally at variance with the post - Darwinian concep- 
 tion of life as a process of growth and change. A 
 Church which was really in the position in which 
 Catholics suppose their Church to stand would be not 
 merely an anachronism but a downright impossibility. 
 The eternal self - identity which the Catholic com- 
 munion boasts must consist, if it be a fact, not in the 
 formulated theology of creed and catechism, but in 
 an immutable bent of will and direction of purpose, 
 which, because it animated the old creeds, can for that 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" i6i 
 
 very reason supersede them and reinterpret itself in 
 fresh formulations. 
 
 It is, therefore, perfectly possible and consistent for 
 a man to remain in a Church whose creed he desires to 
 change, just as it is possible for a man to remain a 
 loyal citizen of a State whose laws and constitution he 
 sees to need revision. For my own part, then, I entirely 
 approve of the conduct of Mr. Churchill's hero in 
 claiming the right to utter from the pulpit his new 
 social vision and his new insight into the history, 
 development and purpose of the Church. 
 
 The popular feeling on this matter is, to be sure, 
 against Mr. Hodder, and in favour of the demands of 
 the old-fashioned believers within the Church. This 
 popular feeling is expressed in the colloquial phrase 
 that a man ought not to stay "where he doesn't 
 belong." But suppose we agree to this statement; the 
 question will still remain to be decided, Where does 
 such a man "belong"? If it be true that the Church 
 stands ideally for moral integrity, for truth and 
 truthfulness, for conformity between thought and 
 speech, and for the supremacy of the ethical ideal in 
 every region of conduct, how can it be that a man who 
 is more than ordinarily sincere, who is too honest to 
 pretend to believe what he does not believe, who feels 
 like a woimd the stain of uttering with his mouth a 
 belief that his conscience denies, must for that very 
 reason abandon his post in the spiritual army ? Do we 
 not feel the absurdity of a course of action on the part 
 
1 62 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 of such a man which implies that he has neither part 
 nor lot in the one organization which stands for ideals, 
 and that his true place is in the world of secular and 
 material interests — that world which is dominated 
 by the lust for money and the goods which money can 
 purchase ? 
 
 Those who, for the sake of the ideal interests of 
 nations, desire the well-being of the Church, and yet 
 feel that the innovating thinker ought to abandon it, 
 would do well to reflect on the position which would 
 have ensued if Mr. Hodder had resigned his charge at 
 St. John's. It is significant that it is precisely the 
 enemies of justice and righteousness who wish him to 
 do this. The morally blind financiers, the uneasy hy- 
 pocrites who own houses which are let for purposes 
 of vice, and who are consciously pocketing rents en- 
 hanced by this consideration; the employers of sweated 
 labour who only want to maintain the Church as a 
 bulwark against that social indignation which would 
 imperil the possession of their ill-gotten gains — these 
 it is who demand that the brave heretic should aban- 
 don his post, and who even offer him a concealed bribe, 
 in the shape of a possible missionary bishopric, if he 
 will hold his tongue and step aside. In other words, 
 the inevitable result which follows when men of new 
 vision and exalted spirit resign from the Church is 
 that the Church is left tenfold more in the grip of 
 corruption than before. The forces of darkness and 
 retrogression are strengthened and entrenched, and the 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 163 
 
 man who steps aside from the historical organization 
 of moral idealism inevitably dooms himself to com- 
 parative obscurity and ineffectuality. 
 
 If proof of a statement so obvious be needed, I 
 would cite the case of the great ethical movement of 
 our own day within the Roman Catholic Church. The 
 one religious development of modern times which has 
 secured universal attention is that of the school of the 
 Abbe Loisy and the late Father Tyrrell. These are 
 men full of the spirit which places the things of the 
 moral world above the things of the sense - world. 
 These, on the spiritual side, are worthy successors to 
 Thomas a Kempis, to Francis of Assisi and to Francis 
 of Sales; but they are also permeated with the modern 
 spirit of intellectual integrity, with the love of exact 
 accuracy which science engenders, and with a deter- 
 mination to reformulate, at whatever cost, their theory 
 of the spiritual life in harmony with that life itself as 
 they experience it. They insist on their right to re- 
 main members of the Catholic Church and to utter 
 from within its borders the new revelation which has 
 come to men in modern days. By leaving the Church 
 they would have played into the hands of their ene- 
 mies. They would have been quietly ignored, as many 
 another equally fine spirit has been. But by remaining 
 within the Church they compelled the worldly-minded 
 coterie of the Vatican to take notice of them, and to 
 meet their arguments — as best it could. The result 
 was that by the papal Encyclical against Modernism 
 
1 64 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 and by Cardinal Mercier's egregious Lenten Pastoral 
 against Father Tyrrell, the Vatican and its instru- 
 ments made themselves intellectually and morally the 
 laughing-stock of Europe. Inadvertently they gave 
 to Modernism a publicity and a prestige which it 
 could not otherwise have secured, and which are suf- 
 ficiently great to make permanent and imperishable 
 the work of George Tyrrell and his coadjutors. 
 
 The result of the alternative policy can be shown 
 to have been unquaUfiedly disastrous to mankind. 
 When the Reformation broke out, the finest spirits 
 desired to reform the Church from within, so as to 
 avoid the necessity of schism. Such men as Erasmus 
 and Colet and Sir Thomas More saw as clearly as 
 did Luther the necessity for reformation. No reader of 
 Erasmus's ^Commentaries on the New Testament" 
 can doubt that he stood as emphatically for ethical 
 Christianity, and was as strong in his repudiation of 
 the mountain-heaps of mediaeval dogmatism, as any 
 Modernist to-day. To More's liberality of thought, 
 and to his profound and far-sighted conviction of the 
 possibility of religious union without credal uniform- 
 ity, the ^' Utopia '' is a perennial witness. These men 
 and their fellow-Humanists desired a radical purga- 
 tion of the Church, both moral and intellectual. The 
 greatest disaster of the modern world was the failure 
 of this policy. The successors of Luther acquiesced in 
 their expulsion from the Church. They accepted their 
 position as outsiders, thereby implicitly admitting that 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 165 
 
 they had no right within the Catholic fold, — and 
 also that the obscurantists, the friends of spiritual 
 tyranny and moral obliquity, were entitled to mono- 
 polize the wealth, the prestige and the artistic and cul- 
 tural traditions of the Church. 
 
 From then till now, the individualistic insanity of 
 separatism has continued, until we have become blind 
 to the true function of religion and of the Church in 
 the life of nations. We no longer perceive that religion 
 is virile and beneficent only when it is felt to be the 
 soul of national and international life. We overlook 
 the fact that every nation, in so far as it has ideals for 
 itself and for mankind, is a Church, to which every 
 one of its citizens belongs, both in actual fact and 
 by moral right, and whether he knows it or not. We 
 think of religion as a private, personal relation be- 
 tween a man and some supernatural source of char- 
 acter and power; and the natural outcome of the prac- 
 tices begotten of such an illusion is that religion is 
 perverted and deformed into anti-social absurdities 
 like Christian Science and Mormonism, and every 
 nation of the modern world is spiritually divided 
 against itself. 
 
 Whoever has studied the history and the surviving 
 monuments of mediaeval Europe can see at a glance 
 what was the sociological function of the CathoUc 
 Church. That Church may give what accoimt of itself 
 it chooses; but the student of history, psychology and 
 sociology knows that it did in fact serve as the organ- 
 
1 66 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 izer and unifier of the life of mediaeval nations. The 
 halls of the City Companies in London, where the 
 merchant guilds formerly met, with their patron saints 
 and their religious observances connecting commerce 
 with the common ideals, testify to the union between 
 mediaeval industry and the larger spiritual life within 
 which it was integrated. The Church was undeniably 
 the patron of art, of painting, of music, of sculpture, of 
 architecture, and even of the drama. If the Catholic 
 Church was, as Matthew Arnold said, "The prophetic 
 soul of the world dreaming on things to come," it was a 
 soul which more and more was individuating itself into 
 nationalities and solidary group-consciousnesses; and 
 the utter collapse of this unifier of the life of men, 
 which ensued through the wrong policy that prevailed 
 in the Reformation, was the direct cause of the spir- 
 itual chaos which prevails in the world to-day. 
 
 Whereas of old the various interests of life were 
 articulated into an interdependent system, the lower 
 subordinated to the higher, and the whole of life ori- 
 ented towards spiritual goals, there is now scarcely any 
 bond of union within or between nations except that 
 of economic interest. The cash nexus, which is the 
 confession that we are imited only in our sordid and 
 material ambitions — this is the one universal bond of 
 modern humanity. If the policy of Erasmus and More 
 and Colet had been followed out in the past four hun- 
 dred years, we should have had a world no longer at 
 sixes and sevens on its spiritual side and united only in 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 167 
 
 its material interests, but a world in which national 
 and international politics, industry, art, education and 
 science would have been blent into an overarching 
 unity of common ideal purpose. We should have had 
 a Church at once truly national and truly catholic. We 
 should have had humanity fulfilling itself in many 
 ways, in virtue of a conscious imity of ideal purpose 
 and goal. If it be not too late for the world to attain 
 such imity, still the unification can only be effected 
 through a reinterpretation of religion and a recon- 
 struction of the Church. And this can most speedily 
 be rendered possible by an absolute refusal on the 
 part of those whose profession identifies them with the 
 ideal, to abandon that profession when their vision 
 broadens and their knowledge deepens. 
 
 I am not oblivious to the difficult moral problem 
 which confronts the heretical clergyman in regard to 
 the use of the traditional creeds. Those creeds are 
 embodied in the liturgy of the Episcopal Church, and 
 Mr. Churchill's hero feels boimd to repeat them until 
 constitutional authority releases him from the obliga- 
 tion. But it is a blind illiteracy which holds that the 
 creeds of Christendom are so univocal and definitive 
 in their meaning that there can be no variety in the 
 interpretation placed upon them. There is, it is true, 
 no more difficult and embarrassing task than that of 
 the man who goes about to interpret an ancient docu- 
 ment in a sense which it has been commonly assumed 
 to exclude. The keener his insight, the subtler his 
 
1 68 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 intelligence, and the profounder his honesty, the more 
 is he liable to misunderstanding and denunciation. 
 Such, for example, was the fate of John Henry New- 
 man, when, in an effort to reconcile his changed beliefs 
 with his position in the English Church, he sought 
 to place a Catholic construction on the Thirty-nine 
 Articles. The epithet of h3^ocrite was promptly 
 hurled at him. Obviously, no real hypocrite would 
 have subjected himself to the exhausting labour and 
 the danger of misunderstanding which Newman faced. 
 It was, indeed, only the exceptional sincerity of the 
 man which set him upon his task. Like all acute think- 
 ers, he could see various intermediate shades of grey 
 where the vulgar herd could detect only dead blacks 
 and whites. The final resignation of Newman was an 
 injury to the Church of England from which it has 
 scarcely yet recovered. Its result was to cramp the 
 mental freedom of all who remained within her borders 
 — not only the High Church, but also the Broad 
 Church and the Evangelical parties. 
 
 To return for a moment to our analogy between 
 Church and State: is it not obvious that for a man to 
 abandon the Church because of corruption within it, 
 or because he finds its dogmas incredible, is exactly 
 akin in its results to what happens when men abandon 
 political parties because of corruption within them ? 
 The tragedy of American life to-day, as everybody 
 admits, is the reluctance of good men to enter political 
 life. They feel that they cannot touch its pitch without 
 
CLERICAL '^ HERESY" 169 
 
 being defiled; and the result is that those who have 
 no antipathy to the pitch are left, in many cities and 
 States, with almost a monopoly. The only cure for 
 corruption in mimicipal, State and national politics 
 consists in the invasion of political party life by men 
 who have no price, and whose single purpose is the 
 patriotic desire to promote the common good. By 
 standing aloof they only encourage and entrench the 
 shameless exploiters of the nation's life. 
 
 Now, Edmund Burke's famous dictimi that "when 
 bad men combine, the good must unite," applies in 
 religious life as well as in political. And they must 
 imite in opposition not only to conscious badness, but 
 also to moral blindness, and to the erroneous view 
 which mistakes the dogmas of religion for the life 
 of religion. They must persistently refuse to abandon 
 their standing - ground because of apparent incon- 
 sistency between their intellectual positions and the 
 traditional ones of the Church. 
 
 A rule for the guidance of clergymen in Mr. Hodder's 
 position might well be formulated in the blunt phrase, 
 "Stay in and speak out. Don't leave until you are 
 kicked out." Many men of refined and sensitive spirit 
 resign their pulpits because they cannot face the worry 
 of perpetual squabbling, and also because they think 
 it undignified to be expelled. But it is perfectly digni- 
 fied to face expulsion when the question at issue is no 
 mere personal one, but one that involves the fate of a 
 great historic institution, which still stands nominally, 
 
I70 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 as it always should have stood in fact, for the suprem- 
 acy of the higher life of man. 
 
 The present conditions of tenure of office for clergy- 
 men place a direct premium upon insincerity and 
 hypocrisy. The devil himself could have invented 
 nothing more ingeniously maleficent than the system 
 which makes a man's bread and butter depend upon 
 his continuous profession of a definitely formulated 
 belief, whether he holds it or not. One of the many 
 stories told of Benjamin Jowett at Oxford is that, 
 when his duties necessitated his reciting the creed in 
 chapel, he would insert sotto voce the words "used to," 
 so that his creed ran, "I used to believe in God the 
 Father," and so forth. The delightful humour of the 
 legend cannot conceal the danger of demoralization 
 incurred by clergy whose opinions are as heretical as 
 Jowett's. One cannot help suspecting (and the sus- 
 picion is justified by many actual experiences which 
 one is not at liberty to relate) that if a philanthropic 
 fund made it possible for clergymen, who got into 
 trouble with their denominational authorities through 
 sincere speech, to maintain their families after expul- 
 sion, there would be such an outburst of what is called 
 heresy in all orthodox bodies as to compel a radical 
 transformation of the theories of Christianity. 
 
 The day of the heresy-hunt is not yet over, and even 
 in a community so modem as Chicago there have been 
 cases where sincere speech has brought down upon 
 men's heads the thunderbolts of the odium theologicum. 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 171 
 
 The one thing that I regret upon reading the life of 
 Professor Swing, the great Presbyterian preacher 
 of Chicago, is that after the heresy-hunt against him 
 had failed he resigned from the Presbyterian body, be- 
 cause he could not bear to be involved in perpetual 
 bickerings and controversy. American Presbyterian- 
 ism would to-day be broader, humaner and nobler, if 
 Swing had insisted on his right to freedom of thought 
 and speech within that body. On the other hand, it is 
 delightful to know that when an attempt was made 
 some years ago to expel Professor George Burman 
 Foster from the Baptist denomination, he insisted, 
 with irresistible logic and masterly scholarship, that 
 he was as good a Baptist as any of his opponents, and 
 had a perfect moral right to remain within the same 
 fold with them. As a result of his success in carrying 
 this point, the Baptist Church to-day is a finer thing, 
 and truer to its own original inspiration, than it would 
 have been if the heresy-hunters had been suffered to 
 prevail. 
 
 The foregoing rule for modern-minded clergymen 
 is applicable, mutatis mutandis, to the case of laymen. 
 Let them, from within whatever body they may belong 
 to, insist that the true function of the Church is not the 
 maintenance of a formal creed but the purification of 
 the common life of man. If they be Christians, let 
 them insist that Christianity is primarily an ethical 
 discipline, the standard of which is to be found in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, the Parables and the social 
 
172 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 vision of the New Testament. Let them proclaim the 
 obvious fact that the original test of membership in 
 Christ's kingdom was not the acceptance of a creed 
 but the will to serve one's neighbours. Or if they be 
 Jews, let them point out — what every scholar knows 
 to be the truth — that Judaism was originally the 
 national idealism of the Hebrew people, with its inter- 
 est neither in metaphysical theism nor in a life after 
 death, but in politics, economics, civic law and do- 
 mestic life. Let them maintain that the very spirit in 
 the Jewish leaders which led them to change repeat- 
 edly their heaven-sent decalogue and to revise their 
 religious law-codes from time to time to meet their 
 exigencies, must to-day dictate a fundamental trans- 
 formation of Jewish doctrine and discipline to meet the 
 new conditions of the new age. 
 
 The clue to the spiritual unil&cation of mankind is 
 given us in an aphorism of W. K. Clifford's. "Only in 
 a world of sincere men," he said, "is imity possible; 
 but there, in the long run, it is as good as certain." 
 
 My argument leads inevitably to the personal ques- 
 tion, "But why, if such be your view of the duties of 
 people within the Church, are you the spokesman of an 
 outside organization? Why are you the minister of an 
 Ethical Society ? " I answer that the social conception 
 of religion, as moral idealism concreting itself in ethical 
 nationalism, carries with it a discrimination between a 
 sect and a party, which makes such a position entirely 
 logical and clear. I have not space here to analyze this 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 173 
 
 distinction, but in the works of Dr. Stanton Coit, who 
 learned it not only through his studies of Biblical 
 Judaism, but also from the profound teachings of Sir 
 John Seeley, it is elaborated in detail.^ Those in the 
 Ethical Movement who hold this view conceive of their 
 fellowship as a party within the national religious life, 
 just as, for example, the Progressive Party is a factor 
 in the political life of this nation. And as a political 
 party does not isolate itself, but seeks to grapple with 
 its opponents, for the very purpose of arriving at 
 ultimate unity of national conviction and poHty, so 
 we conceive of all the denominations of religion as 
 co-operative groups within the national spiritual life. 
 Among these the Ethical Society has its natural place 
 as the advanced wing, the pioneer party, in which 
 tendencies visibly at work in all the other churches 
 have come into clear consciousness. We are the ene- 
 mies not of other denominations as such, but of the 
 spirit and policy of sectarianism which still animate so 
 many of them. We are the enemies of that conception 
 of religion which rests satisfied with denominational 
 self-dependence and isolation. We stand opposed to 
 this spirit precisely because we believe in religion as 
 necessary to humanity, and we know that only by the 
 breaking down of credal barriers, only by the free inter- 
 course of mind with mind and Church with Church 
 (even though that intercourse at first involve antagon- 
 
 * See especially rAe5<7wZo/^wmca, by Stanton Coit. (New York: 
 The Macmillan Company, 1914.) 
 
174 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 ism and controversy), can ultimate unity be attained. 
 We are not innovators in spirit and purpose. Rather 
 for the sake of the eternal spirit and the abiding pur- 
 pose of religion do we desire innovation, in order that 
 the nobler energies of the human mind may be liber- 
 ated and taught to co-operate. And we believe that 
 the most effective declaration of their new attitude 
 which modern-minded laymen in all denominations 
 can make is to join the Ethical party without renounc- 
 ing their other religious affiliations. 
 
 The modern attitude of the world toward religion is 
 only partially expressed in Mr. Churchill's story by 
 Eleanor Goodrich. Her mother, unable to meet the 
 argiunents of the young people, declares that an old 
 woman must not be expected to change. Eleanor 
 replies, "We don't want you to change. It's ourselves 
 we wish to change. We wish for a religious faith like 
 yours, only the same teaching which gave it to you 
 is powerless for us." The Ethical Movement and the 
 other advanced wings of Christianity and Judaism 
 have been inspired, if I mistake not, by a like senti- 
 ment in relation to the more conservative churches. 
 Only, instead of saying that we wish for a religious 
 faith like theirs, we go further and proudly claim that 
 we have such a faith. We are at one with the Hebrew 
 prophets and with the founder and first apostles of 
 Christianity in bent of will and purpose; but with our 
 modern knowledge, and in view of the complexity 
 of modern economic and social conditions, we say 
 
CLERICAL "HERESY" 175 
 
 frankly that the theoretical counterpart of this voli- 
 tional attitude which satisfied the mind of fifteen hun- 
 dred years ago is valueless for us. We hold that the 
 creeds were nothing but the best interpretation pos- 
 sible in their day to account to the intellect for the 
 bent of will and spirit of self-sacrifice with which it 
 was concretely associated in life. We maintain, fur- 
 ther, that as experience widens every such theoretical 
 formulation necessarily becomes obsolete. Every age 
 ought to write its own creeds; but no future age will 
 fall into' the grievous error of ascribing finality to its 
 formulations. The essence of religion, the eternal ele- 
 ment in it, is the Hfe and not the dogma, the bent of 
 will, the purpose of securing inward peace and social 
 salvation for mankind. Let this be expressed from 
 time to time in accordance with the fullest philosophic 
 and scientific knowledge; but let not the formula 
 become a fetter and a stumblingblock to the spirit 
 which engenders it. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ELLEN KEY AND THE 
 
 LOVE^ 
 
 It is difficult in these days for a man to give utterance 
 to a platitude without incurring the suspicion that he 
 is indulging in paradox. We have become so accus- 
 tomed to subordinating our own judgment to the 
 authority of a sophisticated literary minority, who 
 confound the exceptional with the general, that even 
 the restatement of an obvious fact sounds startling 
 and incredible. Nevertheless, the rule remains the rule, 
 and is more worthy of attention than any or all excep- 
 tions to it which may be cited; and so, at the risk of 
 seeming paradoxical, one must turn first to it. 
 
 The startling platitude, then, which I would begin 
 by formulating is simply this: that of all human insti- 
 tutions the most widely and permanently successful 
 is that of lifelong monogamous marriage. A basis of 
 experience incomparably great and long justifies the 
 assertion that this method of providing for the physical 
 and psychic needs of individuals, and for the continu- 
 ance of the human species, is the one best adapted to 
 these ends. If it were not so, no amoimt of coercion by 
 
 ^ Love and Marriage, translated from a Swedish work entitled 
 Lifslinjer, by Ellen Key. The translation by Arthur G. Chater, With 
 an Introduction by Havelock Ellis. (New York: Putnam, 191 2.) 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 177 
 
 authority, whether ecclesiastical or civil, could have 
 induced mankind permanently to endure it. More- 
 over, there is in modern communities very little left 
 of this authoritative buttressing of monogamy. The 
 chains have been broken, the whip wrested from the 
 driver's hands; yet the slaves oddly persist for the 
 most part in treading freely the accustomed path. 
 
 We hear much, to be sure, of the multiplication 
 of divorces in coimtries like America, where legalized 
 divorce is very easily obtainable. What we do not 
 hear much of is the still more important fact that the 
 number of divorces, huge and menacing as it is, re- 
 mains insignificant as compared with the number of 
 marriages not dissolved. The highest estimate I have 
 seen of the total of divorces in this country places it 
 at one in twelve of the total of marriages. Nor does 
 this mean that of every twelve couples who marry one 
 is sundered by divorce. The statistics are swelled by 
 that naturally increasing number of men and women 
 who, having once snapped an old bond and accepted a 
 new, proceed to make a habit of getting themselves 
 divorced. I recently read, for instance, in the news- 
 paper the story of a gentleman who, having been 
 married and divorced, formed a legal union with a 
 second lady; tiring of this in a year or two, he was 
 again divorced and reunited himself with his wife — I 
 beg pardon, with his first wife; and the newspaper an- 
 nounced in hiccoughing head-lines the fact that he had 
 gone off on a second honeymoon with the mother of his 
 
lyS CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 children.'' The reporter did not seem to think that the 
 circumstances offered any occasion for moral censure. 
 One does not look, indeed, to the ordinary newspaper for 
 ethical sanity, any more than for general accuracy and 
 competence in the presentation of fact; but the absten- 
 tion from moral judgment in such a case as this was 
 merely typical of the general trend of public opinion 
 in the United States to-day. The tone of American 
 SittUchkeit with reference to divorce grows ever laxer. 
 Beginning with tolerance of those whose unions were 
 terminated for good cause, it has grown more and more 
 willing to accept the divorced person, irrespective of 
 the cause of his or her renunciation of the marriage 
 vow. Yet, even with this added incentive to marital 
 laxity, the fact remains that permanent monogamous 
 union is deliberately preferred in eleven cases out of 
 twelve. 
 
 We must pause to insist upon the significance of this 
 fact. British critics of marriage, such as Mr. Bernard 
 Shaw, affirm that the very small number of divorces in 
 England is wholly due to the disastrously barbarous 
 condition of the English divorce law. There is, of 
 course, some truth in their assertion; but it is much less 
 true than they imagine. A closer examination of the 
 facts would disclose a truth which I here mention 
 merely in passing, but to which I must return later: 
 that the bond which unites man and wife is not merely 
 the outward coercion of the law. The law only regis- 
 ters and reinforces an accomplished fact. It does not 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 179 
 
 unite people; they unite themselves, and it ratifies and 
 sanctions their union. The marriage "contract^' is not 
 so much between the man and the woman as between 
 the two of the one part and the community of the 
 other part. The strength of the marriage tie is accord- 
 ingly natural and inherent, as well as artificial and 
 adherent. The facts of American experience prove my 
 point. Here is a vast and heterogeneous population in 
 whom the sense of law and authority is very decidedly 
 weaker than in Europe, and for whom divorce in many 
 States is made dangerously easy. The restraining in- 
 fluence of religion upon this population is certainly 
 no stronger, and almost certainly a great deal weaker, 
 than it is in England. Yet with every opportimity for 
 laxity, with law and public opinion standing ready to 
 further their inclinations in that direction, this popu- 
 lation, in the proportion of eleven to one, voluntarily 
 prefers the lifelong monogamous marriage bond. 
 
 This is the colossal fact which we must bear care- 
 fully in mind when reading such outpourings as those 
 of Mr. Shaw in the preface to " Getting Married," and 
 of Miss Ellen Key in her book on ''Love and Mar- 
 riage." We must be careful to remember it, because 
 these writers never mention it. Yet the fact is one 
 which makes us detect a note of unconscious absurd- 
 ity in the indictments they draw up against lifelong 
 monogamy. If what they say were true, this irre- 
 deemably bad institution must long since have de- 
 stroyed humanity. Mr. Shaw declares that the corner- 
 
i8o CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 stone of the system which produces all our social dis- 
 asters is "the family and the institution of marriage 
 as we have it [sic] to-day in England." * In simi- 
 lar fashion, Miss Ellen Key pictures marriage as an 
 incredibly savage and morally imendurable institu- 
 tion: — 
 
 Whatever abuses free divorce may involve, they can- 
 not often be worse than those which marriage has pro- 
 duced and still produces — marriage, which is degraded 
 to the coarsest sexual habits, the most shameless traffic, 
 the most agonising soul - murders, the most inhuman 
 cruelties, and the grossest infringements of liberty that 
 any department of modem life can show.^ 
 
 Whereupon one can only express a mild wonder that 
 the revolted conscience of mankind has not long since 
 risen and annihilated the abominable thing! But, 
 again, we must keep our balance — we must remember 
 the eleven couples out of twelve, who are as free to 
 dissolve their bonds as the one couple in twelve that 
 does so. How comes it that no glinuner of the ineffable 
 spiritual refinement of Mr. Shaw and Miss Key has 
 broken through the darkness of their souls ? 
 
 The truth is that this modern attack on marriage, 
 in its one-sidedness, and its failure either to remember 
 the exceptionahiess of the exceptional or to grasp the 
 good points of what it attacks, is almost grotesque. It 
 reminds one irresistibly of a ludicrous incident which 
 
 * The Doctor^ s Dilemma, etc., p. 120 (Preface to Getting Married). 
 (London: Constable, 19 11.) 
 ^ 2 Love and Marriage, p. 290. 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE i8i 
 
 happened a few years ago in England. One of the 
 cheap newspapers, — cheap in every sense of the word, 
 
 — wishing to advertise itself, started a campaign of 
 denunciation against the ordinary white bread of com- 
 merce. It declared that this bread contained none 
 of the nutritive properties of the grain, and therefore 
 that to eat it was merely to injure one's digestive sys- 
 tem without receiving any benefit. For this reason, it 
 recommended to its readers a new kind, called "Stand- 
 ard Bread." The public was appalled, and began to 
 rush eagerly to the shops of those bakers whose signs 
 announced that they sold the new style of bread. The 
 bubble was pricked, however, when some man who 
 had not entirely lost his sense of humour arose and 
 asked, "What is the use of telling us that there is no 
 food value but only poison and disaster in a thing 
 upon which we have all been living healthily all our 
 lives ? " To the credit of the English public be it said 
 that this self-evident fact at once convinced them of 
 the absurdity of their alarm. "Standard Bread" was 
 promptly forgotten, and the newspaper proceeded to 
 manufacture fresh methods of self-advertisement. 
 
 Which things are an allegory; and after reading Mr. 
 
 Shaw, Miss Key and a niunber of other wearisomely 
 
 old-fashioned ^ modern thinkers, one can only ask them 
 
 to resuscitate their comatose sense of humour. What 
 
 is the use of their telling us that marriage is anti-social, 
 
 1 This adjective is used advisedly. The writers in question have 
 not an idea among them of later date than the fourth century B.C. 
 
 — as every reader of Plato's Republic knows. 
 
1 82 CRITICISMS OF LIFE" 
 
 anti-human, degrading and soul-murdering, and all the 
 rest of it, when the nations of the world that are most 
 advanced, both spiritually and economically, have been 
 healthily living by it all their lives ? 
 
 Miss Key, of course, is not backward in advocating 
 what she thinks the right alternative to the system she 
 condemns. Every healthy woman is to be recognized 
 by law as having a right to motherhood, whether mar- 
 riage^be for her possible or desirable or not. She is to 
 be safeguarded and respected by public opinion as well 
 as by law, and pecuniary provision, when necessary, is 
 to be made for her and for the children born under 
 such conditions. The permanence, or otherwise, of her 
 relations with the father (or fathers) of her children is 
 to be nobody's business but her own, and none may 
 dare to stigmatize either her male accessories or the 
 offspring. Divorce is to be absolutely free and uncon- 
 ditional — that is, it is to be granted upon the request 
 of both parties, or of one, provided such request be 
 persisted in for a definite period. This involves the 
 position that, however unwilling either the man or the 
 woman may be to accept the sunderance, it is never- 
 theless to be effected. If a man tires of his wife, 
 he notifies some legal official of the circumstance. A 
 year later he reaffirms his decision, and automatically 
 thereupon, without any question as to his reasons or 
 his future intentions, the divorce is conceded. The 
 fact that his wife, the mother of his children, may be 
 absolutely innocent and violently opposed to the pro- 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 183 
 
 ceeding is not to count at all; nor are the children 
 to be consulted. 
 
 It is obvious that, with divorce on such terms, 
 with no questions asked, and with the right to extra- 
 marital motherhood sanctioned by law to every 
 woman (and, by necessary implication, the right to 
 extra-marital fatherhood granted and guaranteed to 
 every man), marriage would, so far as the law is con- 
 cerned, be virtually abolished. The great principle of 
 individualistic anarchism, that the relations of the 
 sexes are the mere private affair of the persons imme- 
 diately concerned, would be established. Public opin- 
 ion might indeed continue upon eugenic grounds to 
 uphold certain standards of chastity and continence; 
 it might continue to maintain that the general and 
 permanent well-being of the race must be the para- 
 mount consideration of every man and woman; but it 
 could neither itself condemn nor ask the law to pro- 
 hibit any making or breaking of unions between men 
 and women. 
 
 It is only just that, before proceeding to criticism 
 of such proposals, one should pay a tribute of respect 
 to the purity and nobility of purpose which animate 
 some, at least, of their advocates. In this category I 
 wish quite imequivocally to place both Mr. Shaw and 
 Miss Key. It would be wholly unfair to accuse or 
 suspect either of them of anti-social intent. As my 
 present concern is mainly with Miss Key, I wish to 
 testify that the study of her works produces a strong 
 
1 84 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 conviction of her purity and sincerity in thought and 
 purpose. She has also rendered an important service 
 in two respects. First, she has, with admirable cour- 
 age, laid bare a side of woman's nature which has 
 generally been concealed from men, and to which men 
 have consequently failed to do justice. She deserves 
 credit for a perfect candour in this matter, without 
 which its adequate discussion would be impossible, and 
 also for a fine and discriminating artistic skill in the 
 presentation of the facts, without which candour itself 
 might be useless and would certainly be repellent. The 
 second service for which I wish to thank her, relates to 
 a matter in which she is at variance with Mr. Shaw 
 and certain other critics of marriage and family life. 
 She sees clearly that the family is the true social unit 
 — "true" in the sense that it is necessitated by the 
 physical and psychic nature and needs of the children. 
 The child has a right to a father as well as to a mother, 
 and its due "nurture and admonition" demands the 
 co-operation of the two parents. How this doctrine 
 can be made to consist with Miss Key's other proposals 
 is a matter which we must leave to her to settle. What 
 sort of homes those will be in which Johnny calls Mr. 
 Jones his father to-day, and Mr. Brown next week, it 
 is not at once easy to understand. There, however, is 
 the situation; and I wish to acknowledge the soundness 
 of Miss Key's plea for the home, while confessing my 
 inability to understand how she reconciles it with her 
 other proposals. 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 185 
 
 But, while admitting her nobility and purity of pur- 
 pose, I find evidences in her work of two serious defects, 
 which vitiate her practical proposals for remed)dng 
 the evils associated with our present law and cus- 
 tom. She seems, in the first place, to suffer from a 
 certain blindness in the discrimination of moral dis- 
 tinctions: that is, she frequently makes suggestions 
 which imply that the moral quality of certain lines of 
 action can be changed by changing their name, and 
 that things immoral in themselves can be made right 
 by being sanctioned by law. The second defect, corre- 
 lative to this, is an inability to foresee the social con- 
 sequences which would necessarily ensue if public sanc- 
 tion were given to her proposals. These are the chief 
 shortcomings of her work. Her obliviousness to the 
 evils which her doctrine would let loose upon society 
 is in a certain sense honourable to her. She reasons 
 too freely from her own aesthetic and ethical standards 
 to those of humanity at large. Living herself on a 
 plane of exaltation and serenity "above the smoke and 
 stir of this dim spot which men call earth," she fails 
 to realize the formidable strength of the baser nature 
 in ordinary men and women, and, for that reason, does 
 not see what floods of evil would be liberated by the 
 removal of the locks and dams of law and social senti- 
 ment which at present restrain them. I shall sub- 
 sequently set forth the evidence upon which these two 
 assertions are based. 
 
 Probably the simplest and most convenient way of 
 
1 86 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 introducing one's criticism will be to state one's own 
 conviction as to the wise and right method of providing 
 for the needs of individuals and of human society, 
 in this supremely important matter. My own ideal, 
 therefore, is that marriage should be a union of one man 
 and one woman for so long as they both shall live. So 
 old-fashioned a doctrine will not commend itself to 
 those seekers after new truth who imagine that all old 
 truth must be discarded when new is discovered. I 
 may, however, succeed to some extent in placating 
 them by the assertion that I hold this view in no sense 
 upon the authority of any Church or of any theological 
 creed. I do not believe in indissoluble monogamy 
 because Christ commanded it. I am by no means 
 certain that he did so. My belief in it reposes upon 
 grounds of agelong and widespread human experience, 
 and would remain unshaken, even if it could be shown 
 that Christ had authorized polygamy, or if the Cath- 
 olic Church were suddenly converted to Mormonism. 
 My belief is a free conviction, resulting from long 
 thought and from such study of historical and an- 
 thropological evidence as I have been able to make. 
 I entirely agree with Miss Key that monogamy was 
 made for man, and not man for monogamy. I hold, 
 further, that monogamy was made by man, and has 
 never at any time been commanded or ratified by any 
 supernatural or superhuman agency. I am willing, 
 also, to draw from these principles their logical con- 
 clusion — that if any other system than that of lifelong 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 187 
 
 monogamy could be shown to meet better than it the 
 physical, psychic and ethical needs of men and women, 
 and to promote better than it the health, sanity and 
 virility of the hmnan race throughout all time, then 
 monogamy would have to be abandoned, and that 
 other system introduced. But what impresses a stu- 
 dent of the world's experience in this matter is this 
 simple fact: that all the alternative systems advocated 
 by our modern theorists, instead of being, as they sup- 
 pose, new and untried, are in fact old and discredited. 
 Every possible alternative to lifelong monogamy is 
 being or has been practised, and monogamy has won 
 its pre-eminence by a protracted struggle for existence 
 in which it gained the victory over all its rivals. This 
 is the conclusion which emerges from the study of such 
 a masterly work as Professor Westermarck's "History 
 of Human Marriage." 
 
 ' There is one important fact, of which we in Christen- 
 dom are almost entirely oblivious. It is this: that in 
 times and places where polygamy and polyandry are 
 sanctioned by law, opinion and religion, monogamy is, 
 nevertheless, widely practised, and tends to predomi- 
 nate exactly in the proportion in which the community 
 progresses towards civilization.^ We commonly as- 
 
 * " Even in Africa, the chief centre of polygynous habits, polygyny 
 is an exception. 
 
 "It is so among all Mohammedan peoples, in Asia and Europe as 
 well as in Africa. ' In India,' says Syed Amir Ali, 'more than ninety- 
 five per cent, of Mohammedans are at the present moment, either 
 by conviction or necessity, monogamists.'" — Westermarck, op. cit., 
 p. 439- 
 
i88 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 sume, by an unconscious fallacy, that in a country 
 where polygamy is allowed, everybody practises it. 
 Apart from the fact that Nature makes this impossible, 
 through her obstinate persistence in producing men 
 and women in approximately equal numbers, it would 
 be quite as reasonable to assume that in countries 
 where divorce is legalized, everybody gets divorced. 
 The widespread practice of polygamy or polyandry, 
 however, is so generally discovered to be a correlative 
 of degraded barbarism as to justify the assumption 
 that where we find monogamy increasing and tending 
 to dominate (whether it be ordained by law and cus- 
 tom or not), civilization is advancing and social sound- 
 ness and virility are being augmented. Such a fact 
 constitutes at least a strong presumption in favour 
 of the claim of monogamy to an even greater pre- 
 dominance than it has hitherto enjoyed. 
 
 I have spoken of the indissoluble lifelong bond as 
 being the ideal of the relation of the sexes. It is Miss 
 Key's ideal also. She imagines, however, that this 
 relation cannot exist in its true beauty and dignity 
 except after all external constraints, both of law and 
 public opinion, have been removed. She holds that its 
 essence consists in the voluntary choice of the parties 
 concerned, and that it is somehow degraded by being 
 legally safeguarded. I hold, on the contrary, that there 
 is no conflict or incongruity between perfect law and 
 perfect freedom, and that men and women cannot 
 suffer in the finest and most delicate aspects of their 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 189 
 
 mutual relations by having their ideal expressed and 
 to some extent maintained by the general will of the 
 community. 
 
 It is necessary, however, to distinguish clearly be- 
 tween an absolute ideal and the extent to which it 
 is justifiable or expedient to impose that ideal upon 
 people by law. The great error of the CathoHc Church 
 was its omission to draw this distinction. It would 
 have escaped much scandal if it had sought to attain 
 its ideal purpose by education instead of coercion. 
 The High Church party in England and America is 
 to-day imperilling its moral influence through falling 
 into the same mistake. I am decidedly of opinion that 
 in a more enlightened age divorce will be as completely 
 obsolete as duelling is to-day in England. But I do 
 not hold that such a state of things can or should be 
 brought about by legal coercion. So far as the law is 
 concerned, divorce should remain possible. Certainly 
 nobody can defend the grotesque injustice of the Eng- 
 lish law, which deliberately restricts divorce to the 
 rich and denies it to the poor, and permits it to the 
 man for only one cause of offence, whereas a woman 
 cannot obtain it for less than two causes, the second 
 of which — cruelty — even in the wide definition given 
 to it by "judge-made law," is peculiarly difl&cult to 
 prove. Nor can any'well-wisher of society contemplate 
 without grave dissatisfaction the anarchic condition 
 of American law on the subject. Divorce is here 
 granted far too freely, and for far too many causes. 
 
I90 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 Owing, moreover, to the differing laws of different 
 States, the absurd situation can and sometimes does 
 arise, that a man or woman is legally married in one 
 State and at the same time liable in another to a 
 charge of bigamy. The immediately necessary reform 
 in America is that there should be one uniform na- 
 tional law of divorce throughout the Union, and that 
 such a law should curtail the number of grounds upon 
 which the marriage tie may be dissolved. I will not 
 attempt to formulate an exhaustive category of the 
 permissible grounds, but the list should not extend far 
 beyond the following: (i) Adultery (with the right of 
 remarriage to both parties, but with such full publicity 
 in the matter of names and facts that it would be 
 impossible for the guilty party to remarry without 
 the new wife or husband knowing the circumstances) ; 
 (2) incurable insanity — the law specifying, however, in 
 rigid terms, the circumstances which shall justify the 
 conclusion that the insanity is incurable; (3) incurable 
 drunkenness — subject to the same stipulation; (4) a 
 prison conviction of either party for seven years or 
 more; (5) the sterility of the union after five years, 
 provided both parties concur in the demand. To 
 grant divorce in this last case at the request of only one 
 party would involve the possibility of hideous injustice 
 to the other. 
 
 My reasons for opposing divorce on the ground of 
 "incompatibility of temper" I shall have occasion to 
 state partially at a later stage of the argument. 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 191 
 
 But what, it may be asked, becomes of the ideal of 
 lifelong monogamy if the marriage bond is to be legally 
 dissoluble on so many grounds ? I answer that the law 
 is not the only agency which may bring about an ele- 
 vation of social standards, and that there are many 
 reforms which a wise statesmanship will seek to effect 
 by extra-legal methods. No law can be effectively en- 
 forced unless its principles be such as command the 
 voluntary and unconstrained allegiance of the mass of 
 the public. By passing measures which are not in- 
 tended to be practised, or which public ignorance and 
 hostility render unenforceable, no good is done, but 
 rather the great harm of destroying men's respect for 
 law and for the ideals it attempts to actualize. Hence 
 arises the hard fact that in Roman Catholic countries 
 there is just as much of the thing divorce (under other 
 names) as among Protestant nations, and laxity of sex- 
 ual life is notoriously not less prevalent among Catho- 
 lic peoples than elsewhere. On the other hand, a general 
 rise in the level of public opinion, and the consequent 
 widening of the* range of its censures, will frequently 
 produce reform so rapidly and effectually as to render 
 legislation superfluous. 
 
 An interesting illustration is afforded by the analo- 
 gous case of excessive drinking. A hundred years ago 
 in England, it was consistent with the canons of good 
 taste and social propriety for the gentlemen at a din- 
 ner-party to finish the evening under the table. Even 
 among members of the clerical profession the standard 
 
192 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 was scarcely higher than for the laity, and many un- 
 edifying anecdotes are preserved of the "two-bottle 
 orthodox." To-day, such conduct would result in 
 social ostracism for any man, no matter how exalted 
 his station in life, who dared to practise it. Yet in the 
 promotion of this immense reform, legislation has had 
 no share. So far as the law is concerned, a man is still 
 free to get drunk every night in the week. The ame- 
 lioration has been effected entirely by public opinion, 
 which has changed in response to the growth of know- 
 ledge and the deepening of refinement. The vinous 
 Pickwickians and Wardles, whom Dickens was able 
 to portray as entirely acceptable members of society, 
 would not to-day be tolerated anywhere save in the 
 most degraded substratum of the populace, and even 
 here they would be constantly censured for conduct 
 which good society a hundred years ago accepted as 
 a matter of course. 
 
 My hope and faith is that divorce will be got rid 
 of by a strictly analogous process. While it remains 
 legally possible, it will be rendered socially impossible, 
 by reason of a growth of knowledge and foresight 
 which will make the blunders that to-day lead to 
 divorce inexcusable except in the very rarest cases. 
 Our scientific knowledge of the facts relating to the 
 imion of the sexes is to-day greater than ever before, 
 and is constantly increasing. We know, with almost 
 quantitative exactness, the conditions under which 
 certain diseases reappear in successive generations. 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 193 
 
 Where quantitative knowledge fails, we know approxi- 
 mately the dangers to be apprehended from the mating 
 of persons among whose ancestry certain defects have 
 appeared. We know, moreover, that the old assertion, 
 "a reformed rake makes the best husband," is a hide- 
 ously dangerous falsehood. This growing knowledge is 
 being thrown into forms in which it can safely be im- 
 parted to young people of both sexes, so early in life 
 that it cannot fail to influence even those non-rational 
 impulses which awaken as maturity is approached. 
 
 The effect of such education will be not so much to 
 provoke a painful clash between reason and inclina- 
 tion, as to prevent inclination itself from taking a 
 dangerous direction. We grossly imderestimate the 
 extent to which the so-called blind impulses of human 
 nature can be guided and controlled by ideational 
 forces. We forget the plain and obvious fact that these 
 impulses hardly ever canalize themselves except in 
 directions generally sanctioned by public opinion. For 
 example, as Sir Francis Galton pointed out in his first 
 plea for eugenics, there is never any difficulty among 
 primitive communities in maintaining the most rig- 
 orous tribal laws regarding marriage. Members of 
 exogamous conmiunities seldom fall in love with per- 
 sons of their own kindred or totem; people in endogam- 
 ous tribes rarely feel any disposition to marry outside 
 the limits of their own conmiunity. Among ourselves, 
 even, it is noteworthy that the sexual impulse almost 
 invariably follows the lines laid down by convention 
 
194 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 and social expectation. A workingman almost never 
 falls in love with a woman of the so-called upper class. 
 A rich man hardly ever feels impelled to marry a 
 woman of the people. When a "lady," technically so- 
 called, marries her butler or elopes with her chauffeur, 
 the most democratic onlooker finds himself (or more 
 frequently herself) adjudging her to be mad — thereby 
 imconsciously testifying that the sexual impulse not 
 only normally is but ought to be canalized within rigid 
 limits of educational and general cultural similarity, 
 these being the necessary conditions of permanent 
 mutual congeniality and common interest. 
 
 There is, of course, the ghastly fact of prostitution, 
 involving a great deal of illicit intercourse between 
 men of the wealthy class and outcast women; but 
 nobody would confuse this with the discriminating 
 selection and individualized affection which leads to 
 marriage. The impulse which seeks its satisfaction in 
 the brothel is the merely animal one, which has no 
 relation to the individuality of its object. 
 
 These considerations suffice to show how compara- 
 tively easy it will be, by means of judiciously forewarn- 
 ing and forearming the young man and the maiden, to 
 avert those tragic blunders which to-day are rectified, 
 hardly less tragically, in the divorce court. Statute law 
 need not necessarily have any part in the process. 
 When once the teaching, called to-day by the impleas- 
 ant and unsatisfactory name of "sex hygiene," is 
 given as it should be given, — that is, by parents, or, 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 195 
 
 failing them, by teachers who impart to the lessons the 
 spirit of awe and reverence which we associate with 
 religion, — we may be certain that there will be cre- 
 ated in the young such a wise alertness to secure their 
 own lifelong well-being, and to promote the sanity, effi- 
 ciency and virility of the future race, that the number 
 of tragic failures resulting in divorce will be reduced 
 almost to the vanishing-point. And when it has be- 
 come practically inexcusable for people to marry with- 
 out sufficient knowledge of one another, and of the 
 probable consequences of a given union to themselves 
 and to their offspring, it will be perfectly just for 
 society to visit upon divorcees, of both sexes, the same 
 heavy censures and penalties that it visits to-day upon 
 the drunkard. 
 
 Let us now turn, however, to the indictment against 
 marriage brought by Miss Key. I have quoted above 
 the summary of her case against it from page 290 of 
 "Love and Marriage." As we have seen, she holds 
 marriage itself responsible for "the coarsest sexual 
 habits, the most shameless traffic, the most agonising 
 soul-murders, the most inhuman cruelties, and the 
 grossest infringements of liberty that any department 
 of modern life can show." These and other horrors, be 
 it observed, she declares that marriage has producedj 
 and is still producing.- Here, however, she overlooks 
 a discrimination which is absolutely essential to all 
 intelligent sociological thinking. She argues in terms 
 
196 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 of the ancient fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. 
 These disgusting circumstances arise after marriage, 
 and Miss Key at once infers that they arise because 
 of marriage. Such a process of reasoning is at once 
 refuted by the fact that in the majority of marriages 
 these things never happen at all. They cannot, there- 
 fore, be necessary results of marriage, else they would 
 arise in every case. There must be some defect of 
 character or circumstance in the persons to whom 
 they do happen. 
 
 If fifty men, for example, are exposed to the midday 
 sun, and two of them get sunstroke, it would obviously 
 not be true to say that the sun's heat was a neces- 
 sary and inevitable cause of sunstroke. If it were, how 
 could the forty-eight escape ? It must be evident that 
 the simstroke is caused by the conjuncture between 
 some weakening predisposition in the victims and the 
 rays to which they are exposed. If that weakness 
 could have been remedied beforehand, their exposure 
 to the sim would not have resulted in their disease. 
 
 It is a sound general rule that no hiunan institution 
 is to be blamed for evils associated with it, unless it 
 can be demonstrated that the institution is itself the 
 cause of the evils, and therefore that its abolition 
 would be their cure. For example, in this coimtry the 
 republican form of government has been, and still is, 
 associated with every description of vile and humiliat- 
 ing poHtical corruption. Under it, ofl&ces have been 
 bought and sold, public servants have shamelessly 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 197 
 
 subordinated their patriotism to their pocket-books, 
 and made the pretence of working for the common 
 weal a mere mask for dishonest self-aggrandizement. 
 Tenth-rate instead of first-rate men have been at- 
 tracted to the public service, and it is still notoriously 
 exceptional to find a politician who is also a gentleman. 
 Indeed, the very title "politician'' in America (alone 
 among English-speaking nations) is almost equivalent 
 to an insult; and to say of any piece of public work 
 that "there is too much politics in it," is synonymous 
 with saying that it has been exploited by dishonest 
 persons for selfish ends. 
 
 Now, these faults have been seized upon by some 
 European advocates of aristocracy or despotism as 
 furnishing a conclusive condemnation of democracy. 
 But in America, so far as I am aware, nobody has ever 
 been foolish enough to suppose that these incidental 
 vices of the political system are due to the fact that the 
 United States is a republic, or that they could be ex- 
 tirpated by changing to a monarchical or aristocratic 
 form of government. Everybody here is aware that the 
 faults are not inherent in democracy, but only ad- 
 herent to it. They arise from defects of character and 
 low moral standards in the professional political class, 
 and they will certainly be got rid of the moment the 
 people in general cease to be obsessed by that mad 
 craze for personal enrichment which makes them 
 neglect their public responsibilities. Already there 
 has been marked improvement, and the spread of 
 
198 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 woman suffrage is advancing that improvement with 
 tremendous speed. 
 
 The same reasoning which distinguishes between 
 corruption as an incident of democracy, and demo- 
 cracy as a cause of corruption, ought also to be ap- 
 plied to marriage, and indeed to every field of human 
 interest. If in any given case it can be shown that 
 admitted evils can be cured without abolishing the 
 institution they contaminate, or, conversely, that the 
 abolition of that institution would still leave the evils 
 unremedied, then the institution itself is clearly not to 
 blame. Now, even Mr. Shaw has discovered (through 
 studying Brieux's play "Les Hannetons") that the 
 evils he complains of in marriage can be developed in a 
 tenfold worse form in ilHcit unions. Where a passion- 
 ately jealous man or woman desires to monopolize the 
 affections and attentions of a partner whose fidelity is 
 secured by no legal tie, their relations become a source 
 of mutual exasperation more heUish than any other 
 human connection. The consciousness that there is 
 no law or pubhc opinion to sanction and uphold their 
 fiercely asserted claim exacerbates the jealousy which 
 arises from the lust of possession; and such degrading 
 horrors could only be multipUed by setting people 
 "free," as Miss Key's proposals would necessarily do, 
 to enslave themselves anew upon every vagrant whim. 
 
 In short, the tacit assumption running throughout 
 "Love and Marriage," and most other books of its 
 kind, is not merely that marriage is the cause of the 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 199 
 
 evils complained of, but that its abolition would be 
 their cure; and this assumption is flatly contradicted 
 by facts of experience within the knowledge of every- 
 body. 
 
 A second presupposition of Miss Key's book is one 
 that one feels a certain difficulty in criticizing. The 
 difficulty arises from the fact that she merely states, 
 without troubling to prove or defend, a position which 
 to her is clearly self-evident, but which to her readers 
 sounds like a frantic absurdity. This position — so 
 obvious, apparently, to Miss Key — is that love and 
 marriage are antithetical and mutually exclusive; that 
 is to say, she holds that where there is marriage there 
 cannot be love, and where there is love there cannot be 
 marriage. She expresses this position in the following 
 words: — 
 
 The import of the moral controversies which now arise 
 with increasing frequency is the examination of the rela- 
 tively higher value for real sexual morality of marriage or 
 love} 
 
 I hasten to explain that the italics are Miss Key's. I 
 could not myself hit upon any typographical device 
 emphatic enough to express the overwhelming aston- 
 ishment which her words create in my mind. If she 
 means what she says, I am merely bewildered; if she 
 means something else, I confess myself unable to di- 
 vine what it can be. Here is an antithesis which has no 
 shadow of a fact in heaven or earth to justify it. One 
 1 Love and Marriage, p. ii. 
 
200 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 might as well discuss "the relatively higher value for 
 morality" of houses or domestic edifices, or the merits 
 of bomiets as contrasted with coverings for the head. 
 Yet this is no mere slip of expression on ^Miss Key's 
 part. The antithesis she here sets up is presupposed 
 throughout the entire course of her argument; so much 
 so that the book might just as well be called "Love or 
 Marriage" as "Love and Marriage." She is seriously 
 con\^ced that these two things cannot coexist. She 
 has somehow succeeded in overlooking the monu- 
 mental fact that in most cases they are synonymous. 
 She really does not know that most people get mar- 
 ried because they love each other, and then obstinately 
 go on loving each other, in spite even of the fact that 
 they are married. She is not aware that this is a rule 
 so universal that the only exceptions to it are degen- 
 erates or grown-up spoiled children. 
 
 If — to hazard a wild conjecture — if Miss Key 
 really means that the issue is between so-called free 
 love and marriage, this would only demonstrate how 
 inveterately she thinks of marriage as consisting 
 merely in the external legal bond. As a matter of fact, 
 however, her own ideal of free love — that is, a con- 
 nection which, though untrammelled, is to remain 
 lifelong and exclusive — is itself the very definition of 
 marriage, which is constituted between the two per- 
 sons by their own free and final selection of each other, 
 and is not created, but only ratified, by the ci\il or 
 ecclesiastical ceremony. She can scarcely mean that 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 201 
 
 children born in wedlock, but not "of love," are in- 
 ferior to children born of a passionate love, whether 
 within marriage or without; for she admits^ that we 
 have no data which could give any scientific warrant 
 to the popular assumption to this effect. 
 
 The next error which we discover in Miss Key's 
 argument discloses that blindness to moral distinctions 
 of which I have ventured to accuse her. It is, briefly, 
 the notion that things immoral in themselves can be 
 made moral by legal sanction, and that the ethical 
 quality of a given form of conduct can be changed by 
 changing its name. This is a serious criticism, and yet 
 I cannot but feel that her book fully justifies it. I will 
 submit two instances of the deficiency to the reader's 
 judgment. 
 
 On page in she writes : — 
 
 ^ ... Free love among the upper class — as among the 
 lower class — will, it is true, contribute to the abolition 
 of prostitution, but not to the exaltation of mankind 
 through a greater love, a higher morality. 
 
 Free love will contribute to the abolition of prostitution. 
 Undoubtedly it will contribute to the abolition of the 
 word, and this will satisfy many; for, as Pascal says, 
 "Le monde se paie de mots, peu approfondissent les 
 choses." Or, to put it in a phrase more generally 
 familiar, "Man does not live by bread alone, but 
 principally by catch- words." But for one who pierces 
 through words to facts, it is difficult to see how the 
 
 * Love and Marriage, p. i66. 
 
202 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 abolition of prostitution can be effected by calling the 
 same thing something else. What are the distinguish- 
 ing marks of prostitution, if not cohabitation regard- 
 less of duty, terminable at pleasure, and transferable 
 at will ? I shall, of course, be told that the essence of 
 prostitution is the fact that indulgence is bought and 
 sold — that the outcast woman does this thing merely 
 for money. I admit that the correction is warranted by 
 some of the present-day facts. Yet if, as eminent med- 
 ical and other scientific authorities are now telling us, 
 there are many women who take to this life not from 
 unqualified pecuniary need, but from preference, then 
 the discrimination cannot be maintained, in view of 
 the fact that such women are by universal consent 
 classed as prostitutes. It is, moreover, as we have 
 seen, a part of Miss Key's argument that the woman 
 who practises free love is, when she becomes a mother, 
 to receive monetary support from the community, 
 both for herself and for her child. I cannot, then, con- 
 clude otherwise than that Miss Key does here display 
 the lack of moral discrimination which I have ven- 
 tured to charge against her. She does seriously propose 
 to abolish this horrible evil by giving it legal sanction 
 under a fresh name. In so far as the causation of 
 prostitution is economic, there is, of course, no evi- 
 dence that "free love" can even contribute towards 
 its abolition. 
 
 It is indeed true that the whole of society to-day 
 shows a moral blindness to the facts regarding prosti- 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE aoj 
 
 tution far more serious than Miss Key's. Wrath and 
 contempt are visited exclusively upon the outcast 
 class of women, and the men whose patronage is 
 responsible for their position go practically imscathed 
 by public condemnation. The fact that every so- 
 called fallen woman represents an indefinite number of 
 men, who equally deserve the epithet "fallen," is sel- 
 dom taken into consideration. The first step towards 
 a true moral estimate of the situation must consist in 
 seeing and saying clearly that society ought to take 
 exactly the same attitude towards the fallen man that 
 it takes towards the fallen woman. By this I mean, to 
 put it in plain language, that if society ostracizes her it 
 should ostracize him. If society invites him to dinner, 
 it should invite her. If society is willing to marry its 
 daughters to him, it should be equally willing — like 
 Gilbey in "Fanny's First Play" — to marry its sons 
 to her. 
 
 The second instance of defective moral vision is 
 analogous to the first. At the commencement of her 
 chapter on "Free Divorce," Miss Key speaks of "the 
 desire of the present day to abolish adultery by means 
 of free divorce." With this desire she clearly sympa- 
 thizes and thinks it possible to comply. She proceeds 
 to explain how, in her judgment, it should be met : — 
 
 The true line of development will quite certainly be 
 this: that divorce will be free, depending solely upon the 
 will of both parties or of one, maintained for a certain 
 time. 
 
204 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 She also, in the name of the new morality, questions 
 whether all adulterers 
 
 in their innermost consciousness, really feel themselves 
 to be sinners. The need which impelled them was per- 
 haps so imperious that it justified them before their own 
 conscience in choosing a lesser evil in preference to a 
 greater. 
 
 Here it is best to express one's dissent in plain lan- 
 guage, by stating that, if Miss Key's proposal were 
 adopted, the only thing that would be abolished would 
 be the word "adultery.'' The thing would remain, and 
 would be ethically exactly what it is to-day. The 
 idea that a statute can turn immorality into morality, 
 or that the heinousness of a sin lies in its name, and 
 can be eradicated by rebaptizing it, is one of those 
 fundamental and widespread moral blindnesses which 
 sometimes tempt one to despair of the spiritual ad- 
 vance of hmnanity. It is exactly as if men should be 
 distressed by the prevalence of theft in our time, and 
 should seriously propose to rid society of it by calling 
 stealing business, and the thief a financier. This, of 
 course, is what we very often do; but in connection 
 with property, though our moral insight may be dim, 
 our sense of humour enables us to see through the 
 verbal jugglery. 
 
 Consider, for example, the instance that I cited at 
 the outset, of a man who divorced his wife, united 
 himself to a new partner, divorced her in turn, and 
 returned to his wife. That man certainly got a certi- 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 205 
 
 ficate from some official of the law to sanction each of 
 the steps he took. My contention, however, is that this 
 precaution on his part did not lessen, by any jot or 
 tittle, the immoraUty of his conduct. Unless the grounds 
 for a divorce are ethically satisfying, altogether apart from 
 their legality, the divorce is a crime, no matter how 
 many statutes sanction it; and the subsequent union 
 cannot be made other than adulterous by all the 
 priests or magistrates in Christendom. Judging the 
 case, therefore, upon its facts, I do not hesitate to de- 
 clare that there was no moral difference between the 
 conduct of this rich man and the practice of those men 
 in the working class who desert and betray their wives, 
 and afterwards return to them, without seeking to 
 narcotize their consciences or hoodwink their neigh- 
 bours by means of a legal sanction. I do not deny that, 
 in some cases, conduct, otherwise moral in itself, may 
 become immoral if practised in defiance of a statute 
 law. This is a large question, upon which I need not 
 here enter. But conduct immoral in itself can never 
 become moral through being legalized. 
 
 We turn now to another, and a still more radical 
 error of Miss Key and her school, — an error born of 
 that anarchistic and atomistic individuaHsm which is 
 the real creed of many who imagine themselves Social- 
 ists. It is the idea, perpetually assumed and frequently 
 stated in overt terms throughout this book of Ellen 
 Key's, that happiness or unhappiness in marriage is a 
 mere blind fatality and finality, entirely imrelated to, 
 
2o6 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 and independent of, the will of the parties concerned. 
 She argues as though love were a thing like measles, 
 which you catch through sheer bad luck, and often 
 through no carelessness of your own, and which may 
 presently pass away, either through or in spite of the 
 efforts of the doctor. The moment the disease is gone, 
 you are to be free to snap any connection which you 
 have formed while under its influence. This is the great 
 new morality of love versus marriage, — a new mo- 
 rality which in Miss Key's mind is entirely distinct 
 from the old immorality, though probably few others 
 will be able to fathom the distinction. She expresses 
 herself in these unmistakable terms: — 
 
 As soon as love is admitted as the moral ground of 
 marriage, it will be a necessary consequence that he who 
 has ceased to love, should be allowed a moral as well as a 
 legal right to withdraw from his marriage, if he chooses 
 to avail himself of this right. ^ 
 
 Notice, incidentally, how Miss Key's queer notion 
 of morality peeps out through this statement. A man 
 is to be allowed a moral right. That is to say, a moral 
 right is a mere convention, and, as such, can be given 
 or withheld by society. To those of us who hold that 
 moral distinctions are embedded in the nature of 
 things, in such wise that they can neither be created 
 nor destroyed by any authority, the idea naturally 
 seems fantastic. A man may, indeed, be permitted or 
 denied the exercise of a moral right, but, as regards the 
 * Love and Marriage, pp. 290-91. 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 207 
 
 right itself, he either has it or has it not, and it can 
 neither be given to nor taken from him. 
 
 But the radical error, illustrated in the t3rpical sen- 
 tence which I have just quoted, goes far deeper than 
 this. It is the error involved in the whole modern 
 practice of divorce for so-called "incompatibility of 
 temper." It is the notion that a man's or a woman's 
 own will and character have no part in determining the 
 happiness or the imhappiness of a union. We take it 
 for granted that, when a marriage is uncongenial, the 
 parties merely find it so; we do not entertain, even 
 in order to reject it, the idea that they may possibly 
 have made their imion unsatisfactory to themselves, 
 or that any self -discipline on their part could make it 
 satisfactory. 
 
 In this connection I may deal with the objection, 
 which must have arisen in the minds of some readers, 
 that *' incompatibility of temper" did not figure in my 
 list of causes for which divorce should be allowed. I 
 reserved my criticism on this head because I wished to 
 deal with it where it logically arises in the considera- 
 tion of Miss Key's argument. I am opposed to divorce 
 on this ground for two reasons : first, because if people's 
 tempers are really so incompatible as to make their 
 lifelong companionship intolerable, they can, and 
 therefore ought to, know this in time to prevent their 
 imion. And, secondly, because such incompatibility 
 as can remain entirely concealed before marriage, can- 
 not possibly be so great but that it may be overcome 
 
2o8 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 and harmonized after marriage, by means of proper 
 self -discipline and true grasp of the idea of duty. 
 
 It is noteworthy that we never think of admitting 
 the principle involved in divorce for incompatibility 
 in any other of the relations of life. No soldier would 
 be pardoned for deserting from the army on the 
 ground that he found his temper hopelessly incom- 
 patible with that of his comrades and his oflScers. No 
 party to a business contract would be absolved from 
 observing its terms upon any such consideration. 
 These analogies are indeed inadequate, but only be- 
 cause marriage is so overwhelmingly important that 
 no other human relation is comparable to it in signi- 
 ficance. Yet no other connection in life, except the one 
 inexpressibly significant and important one, is man- 
 kind willing to sunder on such a ground 1 Indeed, even 
 in the case of blood relations, we seldom or never hear 
 of people repudiating one another, coram populo, for 
 any such reason. Parents and children, brothers and 
 sisters, may have their family quarrels, and may sepa- 
 rate temporarily — a course which is frequently wise 
 and necessary also in the case of married people. But 
 they are hardly ever foolish enough to declare that the 
 differences of taste, interest and inclination between 
 them are so great that they will never meet again 
 or suffer society to recognize their relatedness; and 
 when they do so, we can almost always see that — as 
 in Schopenhauer's case — it is their own preventable 
 perversity which is responsible. 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 209 
 
 This notion, that he or she who has ceased to love 
 must be given a moral and legal right to withdraw from 
 marriage, is a notion which simply denies the existence 
 of duty, except in the narrowest self-regarding sense 
 of the term — Miss Key's wonderful sense, in which 
 "real selfishness ... is one with real morality." ^ The 
 modem free-lover is unwilling to admit that the claim 
 of duty can pass beyond the mere conscious self- 
 direction of the individual. He thinks that, whether 
 a man is truly aware or not of those real organic needs 
 of his personal and social nature which give content 
 to the imperative of conscience, he is, nevertheless, to 
 submit to no guidance or command from outside au- 
 thorities, even though they know more truly than he 
 what is really necessary for him and for the common 
 life. This is a doctrine which would leave a conscien- 
 tious burglar to his own devices, and prohibit, as im- 
 warrantable tyranny, any interference by society with 
 a sweating employer of child labour, or with the patrons 
 of gambling dens. If, in the one department of a man's 
 conduct which is fraught with the most serious im- 
 port to society, he is to be wholly imamenable to law or 
 public opinion, — if here the needs of the community 
 give it no right to interfere, — how can any lesser social 
 exigency be held to warrant either compulsion or 
 restraint ? 
 
 Those, however, who take the view that duty is 
 something more than what a man consciously wants to 
 1 Love and Marriage, p. 126. 
 
2IO CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 do, and is indeed the sovereign and unconditional law 
 of nature and reason, will have a clue guiding them to 
 the exposure not only of the fallacy which we have just 
 laid open, but of several other errors of the free-love 
 school. One of these is the notion, always implied 
 and frequently affirmed in their arguments, although 
 sometimes verbally contradicted, that marriage is 
 wholly or mainly a means to the individual happiness 
 of those who enter upon it. Miss Key, of course, con- 
 tends repeatedly that much more than this is in- 
 volved; she contradicts herself, however, by claiming 
 again and again that a marriage may be dissolved if it 
 fails to secure this. Upon what other principle, in- 
 deed, could one justify divorce at the request of either 
 party to a marriage, without inquisition into the rea- 
 sons for the demand ? The plain fact is that individual 
 happiness cannot be either guaranteed or maintained 
 by any human arrangement whatever. The securing 
 of personal happiness, moreover, is' not the true end 
 of life; indeed, the claim of duty frequently begins to 
 assert itself only when happiness is irretrievably lost. 
 He who enjoys happiness is getting not what he de- 
 serves, but an uncovenanted bonus added to the div- 
 idend of life. He or she who makes the pursuit of 
 happiness the dominant end of existence, is chasing a 
 will-o'-the-wisp. The true end of life for the individual 
 is perfection of character. This is attainable only in' 
 and through the service of [all, and the subordination of 
 self-centred desire to the claims of that higher selfhood, 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 211 
 
 which is co-extensive and identical with the universal 
 human trend towards the actualization of the moral 
 ideal. 
 
 The right to renounce marriage because of unhap- 
 piness would logically involve the right to commit 
 suicide for the same reason. He who thinks his claim 
 to happiness so imchallengeable that he feels free to 
 renounce wife and child in order to secure it, would 
 surely also plead a right to cast away his own life, and 
 his allegiance to the general life, for the same cause. 
 This logical extension of the doctrine displays its 
 monstrousness. Who are we that we should repudiate 
 the universe because it will not devote itself to securing 
 our petty pleasures and happinesses ? 
 
 Akin to this is a still further ethical blunder, in- 
 volved in the perpetual reiteration throughout Miss 
 Key's book of the word "right." We are for ever hear- 
 ing of the right to marriage, the right to divorce, the 
 right to motherhood. The whole theory involves a 
 looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope. 
 We human beings have only such rights as are involved 
 in and deducible from our duties. Debtors as we are 
 to the world for more than we ever can repay, our only 
 rights are those conditions necessary for the discharge, 
 to the utmost of our powers, of the inexhaustible claims 
 of humanity upon us. And marriage, like every other 
 great social ordinance, is instituted not primarily to 
 secure our happiness, but to enable us to discharge our 
 duty, in the matter of the perpetuation and spiritual 
 
212 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 development of the human species, with the possible 
 maximum of racial efficiency. Happily, it also secures 
 incidentally the possible maximimi of personal satis- 
 faction in well-doing; but inasmuch as this is not its 
 first or most important function, it is not to be con- 
 demned when it fails to secure this, provided it does 
 attain its primal and paramount ends. 
 
 From this standpoint, I contend that every one of 
 the evils complained of in marriage by Miss Ellen Key 
 is demonstrably due not to marriage as an institution, 
 but to other causes, all of which are removable without 
 tampering with marriage, and every one of which, 
 unless specially dealt with, would manifest itself under 
 any other system of sex relations which the wit of man 
 could devise. Inasmuch, then, as we still should have 
 to grapple with these other causes of mischief, after 
 we had rooted up the monogamic principle, it is surely 
 advisable that we should seek to begin by getting rid of 
 them, and reserve our criticism of marriage itself until 
 we see how it works out, after they have been abolished. 
 
 These extraneous causes of evil, for the consequences 
 of which marriage is unfairly condemned, may be 
 compendiously summed up under three headings: (i) 
 ignorance, leading to heedlessness in marriage selec- 
 tion, and consequent disasters after marriage; (2) de- 
 fects of personal character, which we wrongly treat 
 as finalities, instead of insisting that the individuals, 
 because they could cure them, must be held responsible 
 for them; and (3) bad economic conditions, legal in- 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 213 
 
 equalities and false social standards. With the first two 
 of these I have perhaps dealt at snflBcient length. Let 
 us pass to the third, by way of a preliminary analysis 
 of another false moral principle, widely prevalent in 
 the modern world. 
 
 That false principle is the tendency of men and 
 women, when they discover a conflict between ideals 
 and facts, to surrender their ideals instead of attacking 
 and overthrowing the facts. One could illustrate this 
 by endless examples; I will content myself with one or 
 two. A few years ago, I saw in England, on the adver- 
 tisement placard of a weekly paper, the words " Should 
 Shop Assistants Marry?" The article turned out to be 
 an analysis of the conditions under which shop assist- 
 ants live — the long hours of labour, the wretched 
 wages, insufficient even for the decent support of a 
 single individual, and the cramped and inadequate 
 housing to which these wages condemn them; and the 
 whole argument was made to issue in the conclusion, 
 quite frankly accepted by the writer, that, in view of 
 their conditions, shop assistants ought not to marry. 
 I can scarcely think of a more dramatic exemplifica- 
 tion of the fact I have alleged. The question which 
 any unhypnotized man would ask, is not ^'Should 
 shop assistants marry?" but rather, "Should any 
 human being submit to conditions which make it 
 practically impossible for him or her to marry?" In- 
 stead of asking this obvious and natural question, 
 however, we submit like cowards to the mere exist- 
 
214 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 ing fact, thereby implicitly assenting to the fatalistic 
 mythology of economic determinism, which teaches 
 that outward circumstance alone controls man. It is as 
 if we should argue that because legs are inconvenient 
 in automobiles (and they are abominably so in most 
 of them!), we ought to amputate the legs. 
 
 Lest this parallel should seem too grotesque, let me 
 hasten to add that here in America we do actually 
 resign ourselves to a practical conclusion scarcely less 
 absurd. In every American city that I know of, it is 
 found that ordinary comfort and decency in the public 
 street-cars are incompatible with large profits to the 
 corporations which own the franchises. This being the 
 case, instead of saying (as a civilized nation would do) 
 that the corporations must be content with smaller 
 profits, we blandly acquiesce in the perpetuation of 
 overcrowding, discomfort, filth and disease-laden air 
 in our public conveyances. If anybody objects to this, 
 the answer — given even by women, whose sense of 
 personal dignity and decency is daily outraged by the 
 intolerable conditions — is that it is impossible to 
 provide seats for all in cities so huge as New York, 
 Philadelphia or Chicago. To which the reply is that 
 in Europe the problem has been solved in cities still 
 larger; and that the alleged impossibility will vanish 
 the moment the American public resolves to make the 
 pecimiary interests of corporations altogether second- 
 ary to that public convenience the service of which 
 alone justifies their existence. 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 215 
 
 The principle involved in our attitude towards those 
 social conditions which make marriage difficult for 
 men and women during the best years of life is exactly 
 similar. Because professional men are poorly paid dur- 
 ing those years when they ought to be perpetuating 
 the sacred gift of Hfe, of which they are the trustees 
 and depositaries, we assent to their not marrying, in- 
 stead of abolishing the conditions which prevent their 
 doing so. Because the unmarried woman, if she is 
 fairly well paid for her work, would have to sacrifice 
 certain comforts and luxuries by accepting the highest 
 functions to which destiny calls her, we think it en- 
 tirely natural that she should prefer pleasure to duty. 
 Instead of regarding it as necessary, or even as pos- 
 sible, so to change the economic conditions that she 
 need lose nothing of value, we accept the brute eco- 
 nomic facts as final, and begin to talk of abolishing 
 marriage and giving the woman a right to mother- 
 hood apart from it. 
 
 Yet how can anyone fail to see that the abolition of 
 marriage and the sanctioning of parenthood in the case 
 of immarried persons would leave the economic diffi- 
 culty exactly where it is to-day ? Those conditions 
 which militate against marriage would be just as inim- 
 ical to parenthood without marriage as within it. If 
 people are too poor to maintain a home, and to beget 
 and bring up children on the basis of legally sanctioned 
 monogamic union, they are equally too poor to have 
 homes and children on the free-love basis. After all, it 
 
ai6 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 is the maintenance of the home and the nurture of the 
 children that cost the money, and therefore constitute 
 the difficulty; and the abolition of marriage without 
 change in the economic conditions would not be even 
 the beginning of a solution of the fundamental prob- 
 lem. How, then, can we dream (as free-love theorists 
 seem to do) that the difficulty arises from the fact that 
 the parents are bound by a legally sanctioned tie, 
 which in normal cases is indissoluble ? The idea that 
 the removal of this tie will produce a reform is a part 
 of that deep-seated confusion of thought which blames 
 an institution for evils manifested in connection with 
 it, under the false impression that they spring from it. 
 But the world to-day is much too ready to make 
 economic conditions the scapegoat for its derelictions 
 of social duty. We hear many men complain, for ex- 
 ample, that they cannot afford to marry and face the 
 expense of a home and children, when what they really 
 mean is that they cannot afford the particular kind of 
 home which the standard of social expectation in their 
 set prescribes as necessary. I recently talked with a 
 gentleman who bitterly bemoaned these hard condi- 
 tions. He was a rich man, but had built up his for- 
 tune by his own exertions. He explained that he 
 had been unable to marry until he was nearly forty, 
 at which time he united himself with a lady of ap- 
 proximately equal age. He told me that it was the 
 standing grief of both of them that they had no chil- 
 dren and could never have any. But, he added, the 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 217 
 
 thing was inevitable, for from the time he was twenty- 
 five until he was approaching forty, he had not earned 
 enough to marry on. I ventured to inquire what his 
 income had been when he was twenty-six or twenty- 
 seven. "Twenty dollars a week," he replied. Here- 
 upon I put a second question: "Are you not aware 
 that at least seventy or eighty per cent, of the families 
 in this country are being run, and run reasonably well, 
 on twenty dollars a week or less, even to-day, when the 
 purchasing power of twenty dollars is far smaller than 
 it was in your time ? " 
 
 This is the hard fact! A man and woman can live, if 
 they have common sense and practical wisdom, and 
 ethical standards instead of merely conventional ones, 
 on a small income such as my friend specified. True, 
 they cannot have automobiles or season tickets for the 
 opera, but they can have "the things that are more 
 excellent" — the things without which luxuries speed- 
 ily become a sickening disappointment. The story has 
 recently been told ^ of a middle-class family in one of 
 the Eastern cities, where the man had for many years 
 been an accountant, enjoying a fairly good salary, 
 which, like most middle-class people, he and his wife 
 had regularly spent, usually on things of no real value. 
 In middle life he lost his situation, had no savings 
 to fall back upon, and was speedily face to face with 
 destitution. In this predicament, it occurred to him 
 
 ^ One Way Out : A Middle-Class New Englander Emigrates to 
 America. By William Carleton. (Boston: Small, Maynard. Eighth 
 issue, 1913.) 
 
ai8 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 — an American by birth and ancestry, who had lived 
 all his life in his own country — that he might try the 
 plan of "emigrating to America." He suggested this 
 to his wife, and found her willing to co-operate in the 
 experiment. He removed to another quarter of the 
 city, took a cheap flat in the working-class district, 
 and accepted a job at nine dollars a week in an Italian 
 labouring gang. Small as his income was, he found 
 himself able to save out of it, now that he had cut 
 himself free from the expensive idolatries of his middle- 
 class life. Having now leisure in his evenings, for the 
 first time in his life, he learned the Italian language, 
 in order that he might be able to converse with his 
 co-workers, and went to the night school, where he 
 learned the higher branches of his trade. His superior 
 education, coupled with his business training, enabled 
 him speedily to rise in his new trade to the position of 
 a foreman, and subsequently he became a contractor, 
 and built up a prosperous business. 
 
 This is an illustration of the real point, that what we 
 commonly mistake for poverty is not really poverty at 
 all, but slavery to preconceived notions dictated by 
 our social set. A man who has the rare and terrific 
 courage to appear poorer than the bulk of the persons 
 with whom he associates, can be much better off than 
 the cowardly mass of us, who, with larger incomes, 
 surrender unconditionally to that sordid tradesmen's 
 conspiracy which bids us deify appearances. The great 
 ends of life, the fundamental needs both of society and 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 219 
 
 of our individual nature, are deliberately sacrificed on 
 the altar of a tawdry, bourgeois respectability; and, 
 having made the sacrifice, we plead our cowardice as 
 its own justification. A sounder sense of the economic 
 needs of man, and a clearer ethical idealism — into 
 both of which things we shall speedily be forced by the 
 ghastly consequences of our present practices — will 
 drive us back to a true simplicity of life, which we shall 
 find, as did the man whose case I have just epitomized, 
 infinitely more satisfying than the life of vain display 
 to which at present we suffer ourselves to be held in 
 bondage. 
 
 All of which, however, is neither in intention nor in 
 effect a defence of conditions as they are. I )H[eld to no 
 man in my economic radicahsm; I am only anxious to 
 distinguish between real poverty and imaginary, and 
 to beat back the widespread hypocrisy which pleads 
 impossibility where no impossibility exists, and denies 
 that an educated man and woman can do what mil- 
 lions of people are already actually doing. Nor am I so 
 impressed as many people are by the argument from 
 economic insecurity. I admit that uncertainty as to 
 the future is a good reason for circumspection and 
 forethought; I deny that it justifies the avoidance of 
 all risks. The cowardice which will take no chance 
 of the possibility of future poverty — which will not 
 marry until it is assured of a sufficient income in per- 
 petuity — is to - day carried to entirely indefensible 
 lengths. People overlook the added spur which respon- 
 
220 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 sibility gives to the spirit of enterprise. I have several 
 times advised young people to make what are called 
 rash marriages, and in every instance my imprudent 
 counsel has been justified by results. The struggling 
 young professional man, who induces the woman of 
 his choice to share life with him, at once has tenfold 
 the incentive of his bachelor confrere to the study and 
 exertion which lead to professional advancement. 
 
 It is astonishing how speedily the increase of wealth, 
 and the consequent raising of standards of social ex- 
 pectation in this country, have sapped the boasted 
 spirit of the pioneer. Men and women whose grand- 
 parents were ready to defy hardships which to us are 
 almost unimaginable, are imwilling to-day to face the 
 possibility of having to substitute the pipe for the 
 cigar or to dispense with supernumerary garments. 
 This slavery to luxury is the most enervating disease 
 that can attack a community. At a time when even 
 artisans have at their command comforts and con- 
 veniences impossible to the European monarchs of a 
 century ago, we find men and women afraid to marry, 
 even when there is, practically speaking, no reasonable 
 ground for fear that they will ever be in want of the 
 necessaries of life. The removal of this fantastic night- 
 mare, and of the hypnosis begotten of it, is at least as 
 necessary as the reform of economic conditions. 
 
 It is entirely necessary that we should redistribute 
 the wealth of the nation on the principle of social ex- 
 pediency, instead of, as at present, on the principle of 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 221 
 
 every man for himself, and the devil take the common 
 good. To pay the bachelor at the same rate as the 
 father of a family, to tax the man who spends his whole 
 income on himself at no higher rate than we tax the 
 man who spends his income on a wife and children, is, 
 socially speaking, insane. To settle questions of wages 
 by what people can be forced to work for, instead of 
 by what scientific knowledge shows to be necessary for 
 civic and national efiiciency, is an instance of individ- 
 ualistic barbarism which, to a future generation, will 
 be unthinkable. To allow an employer to sponge upon 
 private philanthropy and the public purse, by em- 
 ploying girls and women at wages which have to be 
 supplemented from these other sources — thereby 
 making the capitalist the real pauper — is, entirely 
 apart from ethical considerations, an economic im- 
 becility. Of all of these things we shall soon grow 
 heartily ashamed, to such an extent that we shall 
 sweep them away. Meantime, however, let us turn the 
 searchlight on the dark spot in ourselves. Let us be 
 certain that when we absolve ourselves from our most 
 important social duties on the ground of their eco- 
 nomic impossibility, it is a real impossibility that deters 
 us, and not a mere figment of a bemused imagination. 
 
 I have reserved to the last, the examination of the 
 most fundamental reason for opposing Miss Key's 
 doctrine of free love. It is one which seems never to 
 have occurred to her, or to Mr. Shaw or to George 
 
222 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 Meredith. Yet to most of us it seems so self-evident 
 and conclusive that we cannot understand how any- 
 serious thinker could come forward with revolution- 
 ary proposals without taking it into consideration. 
 This fimdamental objection is the fact that, when once 
 the finality of marriage is abrogated, when law and 
 custom sanction unions which to-day are branded as 
 ilUcit, and a right to parenthood apart from marriage 
 is conferred on men and women, the stability of every 
 union would be menaced in such a fashion as to render 
 life intolerable. For then every married man and 
 woman would be as much a possible and legitimate 
 object of sexual selection as unmarried men and women 
 are to-day possible objects of marriage selection. It 
 is curious how widely this patent fact is overlooked. 
 One is always hearing married women, for example, ex- 
 pressing the most genuine and heartfelt sympathy for 
 unmarried women. How shameful, they say, that So- 
 and-So, who would make such an ideal mother, can 
 have no chance of figuring in that capacity! If such 
 women realized that the conferring of society's sanc- 
 tion on motherhood, under such circumstances, would 
 make their own husbands legitimate objects of selec- 
 tion by the unmarried women as fathers for their 
 children, the enormity of the consequences involved 
 in the proposal would at once begin to dawn upon 
 them. The thought of a state of society in which gen- 
 tlemen could make love to their neighbours' wives with- 
 out any censure by law or public opinion, and in whidi 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 223 
 
 ladies could delicately hint their preference for the 
 husbands of their friends, is too repellent to be seri- 
 ously entertained. Yet this would be an inevitable 
 consequence of such changes as those advocated by 
 Miss Key and her school. One cannot tamper with the 
 delicate equipoise of the fabric of practical morality 
 without incurring the danger of overturning the entire 
 system. 
 
 Hard cases constantly arise under our present or- 
 ganization. Most of these can, as I have shown, be got 
 rid of without attacking the fimdamental principle of 
 lifelong monogamy. Yet to the end of time, under any 
 conceivable system, cases of hardship must needs arise. 
 It is vain to suppose that any human arrangement can 
 secure immunity from misfortune, in a world whose 
 forces are blind and indifferent to our fate. But the 
 experience of mankind through the ages has not gone 
 for nothing. Not without good cause has the general 
 will decreed that the choice by men and women of 
 each other must be irrevocable. For one tragedy which 
 the free-love principle would avert, it would cause a 
 hundred. 
 
 It is quite true that men and women to-day, and 
 particularly men, by no means live up to the ideal em- 
 bodied in the principle of Hfelong monogamy. The 
 cynic points to the notorious gap between profession 
 and practice, and urges that this should be got rid of 
 by squaring the ideal with the facts. Such a proposal, 
 however, is childishly superficial. Bad as the facts are, 
 
224 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 low as is the level of actual conduct, things would be 
 made worse and not better by lowering our standard. 
 Moreover, the demand of monogamy is by no means 
 an impossible one. The difficulty of continent celibacy 
 and marital fidelity is grossly exaggerated. It is neces- 
 sary to make high demands on human nature, not 
 merely in order to bring out its best, but even to pre- 
 serve it from utter degradation. 
 
 I have said of Miss Key (and the stricture is equally 
 true of Mr. Shaw) that she thinks of marriage as con- 
 sisting merely in the external legal tie that binds 
 people together. This is the conamon presupposition 
 of the whole of the modern free-love school. If they 
 think at all of the old saying, "They twain shall be 
 one flesh," they think of it as the expression of an ar- 
 bitrary supematuralistic dogma. They do not perceive 
 that it is the statement of a self-evident natural fact. 
 It does not so much declare what ought to be as 
 describe what, in normal cases, actually happens in 
 everyday experience. A man and woman, associated 
 for years in the inexpressible intimacy of marriage, 
 do actually, as a matter of simple truth, become one 
 flesh. The relation between them is verily as indisso- 
 luble as that between themselves and their offspring. 
 This was excellently expressed by Mr. George W. 
 Smith, of the Philadelphia Bar, in an address given 
 before the Ohio Bar Association in 1909: — 
 
 The status of matrimony may be stripped of its inci- 
 dents by the municipal law, but no decree of any court, 
 
ELLEN KEY AND FREE LOVE 225 
 
 or act of legislature, can restore the natural status of one 
 who has been married to that of one who never has been 
 married. Life is full of finalities, and, as has been finely 
 said, there is something tragic in everything that is final.* 
 
 Mr. Smith ought to have added that no decree of 
 nullity pronounced by an ecclesiastical court can re- 
 move the effects of marriage. His statement is so true 
 that, like the platitude with which this chapter com- 
 mences, it sounds to our sophisticated ears paradoxical. 
 The relation of husband and wife is so inherently in- 
 frangible that the sunderance of it by legal decree can 
 be scarcely less tragic than the worst tragedy it is 
 invoked to rectify. The closest ties of consanguinity 
 are themselves derived from this relation, which we 
 strangely enough imagine we can abrogate by a judicial 
 sentence. 
 
 I may not conclude without alluding to one more 
 point in the case against Miss Key, which could not be 
 adequately dealt with save in a lengthy chapter; and 
 I mention it merely that the reader may not suppose I 
 had overlooked it. Sanity and virility demand that 
 that impulse which leads to the union of the sexes 
 should not be suffered to function out of relation to the 
 entire hierarchy of hiunan instincts, emotions and sen- 
 timents. It must be so correlated and systematized 
 with all the other relations between man and woman, 
 that the single person who satisfies the one desire shall 
 
 * Quoted by the Reverend Edwin Heyl Delk, D.D., in an article 
 on "Divorce and Social Welfare," in the Biblical World for January, 
 1914. . 
 
226 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 harmonize with every aspect of the yearning for com- 
 radeship. The man or woman who permits the fleshly 
 attraction to arise towards a succession of persons is 
 on the way to insanity. A "scientific breeding of the 
 hmnan race " such as Mr. Shaw advocates — by al- 
 lowing people "who have never seen each other before 
 and never intend to see each other again '' to have chil- 
 dren (under certain definite conditions) "without loss 
 of honour," would lead to the disappearance of the 
 human race, or at least to the elimination from hu- 
 manity of all that is distinctively human. 
 
 In other words, that union which is based solely on a 
 sub-rational fascination is not worthy of the name of 
 marriage. A true hiunan union is one in which this 
 primordial bond is co-ordinated with every other taste 
 and interest in life. Nor is such harmony of the ra- 
 tional with the emotional by any means so rare or so 
 difficult of attainment as is commonly supposed. Men 
 and women are "masters of their fate" to a far greater 
 extent than we ordinarily admit. Its mastery, how- 
 ever, necessitates severe self -discipline, and a constant 
 vigilance in the adaptation of will to will and of mind 
 to mind. Yet the necessity of such self-control and 
 self-determination, instead of being a tragic hardship, 
 is an indispensable element in moral education and 
 character-building; and the fact that marriage calls for 
 it is one of the strongest of all the reasons in favour of 
 marriage. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE RIGHT TO DIE: MAETERLINCK AND INGERSOLL 
 VERSUS HUMANITY 
 
 Among the world-wide literary reputations of our 
 day, none is more thoroughly deserved than that of 
 M. Maurice Maeterlinck. It is twenty-five years since 
 his name was first trumpeted to the world by Octave 
 Mirbeau, in a glowing article in the Paris "Figaro," 
 entitled "A Belgian Shakespeare." Thanks to this per- 
 haps over-generous appreciation, Maeterlinck "burst 
 out into sudden blaze," and experienced the first 
 flush of a popularity which has since grown more 
 discriminating, but has nevertheless both deepened 
 and widened with the years that have followed. His 
 American admirers, for the most part, read him only 
 in translation; yet inasmuch as they have the rare 
 powers of Mr. de Mattos placed at their service in the 
 humble but important function of translator, their loss 
 is less than it would be under other circumstances. It 
 remains, none the less, a loss; for one can never quite 
 appreciate to the full the subtle quality of Maeter- 
 linck's thought and imagination unless one has the 
 aid of his very characteristic style. There is about his 
 prose an ethereality akin to that of the atmosphere 
 which broods over "Pelleas and Melisande" and over 
 "The Blue Bird." 
 
228 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 This atmosphere, half intellectual, half imaginative, 
 is the literary reflex of that temperamental quality 
 denoted by the fashionable word of the moment: mys- 
 ticism. Now, that word and the thing it signifies, be- 
 cause they happen at the moment to be the vogue, 
 need to be saved from their friends more than in other 
 times they may need to be rescued from their enemies. 
 There is a fashion in philosophies as there is in dress, 
 and popularization seems inevitably to involve vul- 
 garization — using that term in its depreciatory sense. 
 The truth is, the great public does not know a mystic 
 when it sees one, and is accordingly dependent upon 
 the information of reviewers, — as the tourist is com- 
 monly dependent on the asterisks of Baedeker to tell 
 him which of a dozen pictures before his eyes is the 
 masterpiece. Maeterlinck has received his label; we 
 therefore rush to him to see what mysticism is. At the 
 same time we neglect our greater homebred mystics, 
 because our diurnal and hebdomadal oracles have 
 either forgotten, or are themselves unaware, that sev- 
 eral of the greatest mystics of the nineteenth century 
 are to be found in the first rank of American literary 
 men. 
 
 Emerson, the prince of modem mystics (whose 
 so-called "transcendentalism" was, indeed, only a 
 clumsier name for this very quality), is still sold, to be 
 sure, by the cubic foot in pasteboard coffins, in our 
 department stores; and it would be as incorrect not 
 to have him enshrined upon one's shelves as it would 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 229 
 
 be to be caught reading him. He is delivered over, 
 bound hand and foot, to the manufacturer and pur- 
 veyor of editions-de-looks, and so unknown is he to our 
 myriad devotees of "the latest thing" that they do 
 not recognize his voice when it sounds from the gramo- 
 phone records of later and lesser writers whom he has 
 inspired. 
 
 Foremost among these latter is M. Maeterlinck, of 
 whom it is no depreciation to say that, as a thinker, he 
 is essentially unoriginal. His greatness is that of the 
 poet. In this territory he has his own distinctive field. 
 His thought, at its best, is but Emerson-and- water. 
 No Emersonian, for example, could read " La Sagesse 
 et la Destinee" without recognizing a body of doctrine 
 with which he has long been familiar. 
 
 It is unfortunate that the public cannot dispense 
 with labels. America, despite all its utilitarianism, is 
 fundamentally the most idealistic, the most mystical, 
 because the most intuitive, of modem nations; and 
 this quality permeates the writing not alone of Emer- 
 son, but of several other of its poets and prophets 
 whose renown is international, and who therefore (in 
 accordance with precedent) are practically unhon- 
 oured in their own country. Whitman, for example, is 
 a mystic to the core. The utterance of Holmes and 
 Lowell is enriched by the same Vision Splendid. But 
 because the public is familiar with the word mysti- 
 cism rather than the thing, these men are abandoned 
 to a cold-storage immortality. Such writers as Mae- 
 
230 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 terlinck, who are the mere retailers of their inspiration, 
 are credited with a solar instead of a lunar radiance, 
 while the true luminaries are veiled in disastrous 
 twilight. 
 
 All this, I repeat, is no depreciation of Maeterlinck 
 and his kind. The retailer is as indispensable a func- 
 tionary in the world of the spirit as he seems to be in 
 that of commerce, and it does not lie in human power 
 to discharge this function more exquisitely than does 
 our Belgian poet. "The Blue Bird" is a perfect prism 
 into which the white light pours, and from which it 
 passes out with all its latent glories made visible to 
 every eye. Its lesson is the eternal truth of mysticism. 
 The children have revealed to them the inner meaning 
 of all daily familiar things. They search through time 
 and eternity, among the dead and among the unborn, 
 in the kingdom of the past and the kingdom of the 
 future, for ''the great secret of things and of happi- 
 ness." They end by finding it in their cottage — 
 where it has been all the time. 
 
 Definitions, though dangerous, are indispensable; 
 and we must attempt some approximate and working 
 formula for mysticism, if only to shatter the prevalent 
 confusion which makes it synonymous with mystifica- 
 tion. No two things could really be more distinct than 
 these, yet none could be more inextricably confounded 
 in the mind of the devotee of fashion. Our definition, 
 accordingly, may have its use, even though it serve 
 only as a challenge to the label-worshipper. We shall 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 231 
 
 assert, therefore, that mysticism is the doctrine or the 
 spiritual attitude which seeks the meaning of life in its 
 values rather than in its facts. It is thus primarily voli- 
 tionalism as distinguished from intellectualism. It 
 sees that a scientific knowledge of the data and uni- 
 formities of the sense-world can never reveal to us the 
 secrets of reality. These are to be sought in the cate- 
 gories of good-and-bad, beautiful-and-ugly, rather than 
 in that of true-and-false. It does not in the least in- 
 validate the sovereignty of truth, but it emphasizes 
 rather the truth-seeking impulse than the outer facts 
 to the discovery of which that impulse leads. Now, 
 because the will of man is the imique and solitary 
 source of all values whatsoever, mysticism seeks at 
 home for those answers to the eternal riddles which 
 science can only seek vainly abroad. Mysticism adopts 
 the standpoint of Protagoras, that "man is the meas- 
 ure of all things." The choir of heaven and furniture 
 of the earth depend upon the percipient and appraising 
 mind of humanity for their worth and meaning, even 
 if not for their existence. Inasmuch, then, as worth is 
 the supreme human category, mysticism endorses 
 unreservedly the great saying of Isidore: "Why dost 
 thou wonder, O Man, at the height of the stars or 
 the depth of the sea ? Enter into thine own soul, and 
 wonder there." 
 
 Thus it happens that mysticism is the absolute op- 
 posite of dogmatism. It is incurious as to the unan- 
 swered and unanswerable questions which our theolo- 
 
232 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 gies thrust into the foreground, making their guesses 
 at them the basis of religious fellowship, and denying 
 that a man can walk with confidence among the shad- 
 ows, except he take their winking marsh-lights for his 
 soul's guide. 
 
 From this high plane of mysticism, M. Maeterlinck 
 has unfortunately descended in his latest volume.^ He 
 gives us, indeed, much thought on the subject of 
 death that is full of interest and helpfulness. He tears 
 away the grotesque veils and trappings which have 
 concealed the true lineaments of the "dark Mother." 
 But after this, he proceeds to humour that prying curi- 
 osity as to the fate of the individual after he has sub- 
 mitted to death's embrace, which the authentic mystic 
 voice has always rebuked. He does not censure, as 
 a mystic should, the vulgarity which betrays its own 
 insecurity and lack of faith by peering into crystals, 
 consulting the augurs and seeking news of the de- 
 parted at the lips of trance-bound mediums, instead 
 of in the surviving memorials of their human life and 
 work. As M. Maeterlinck here fails us, let us revert 
 to the high and searching words of his master: — 
 
 Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incuri- 
 ous. It is so well that it is sure it will be well. It asks no 
 questions of the Supreme Power. The son of Antiochus 
 asked his father when he would join battle. " Dost thou 
 fear," replied the King, "that thou only in all the army 
 
 1 Our Eternity. By Maurice Maeterlinck. Translated by Alex- 
 ander Teixeira de Mattos. (New York; Dodd, Mead & Co., 1913.) 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 233 
 
 wilt not hear the trumpet? '* 'T is a higher thing to con- 
 fide that, if it is best we should live, we shall live — 't is 
 higher to have this conviction than to have the lease of 
 indefinite centuries and millenniums and aeons. Higher 
 than the question of our duration is the question of our 
 deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, 
 and he who would be a great soul in future must be a 
 great soul now. It is a doctrine too great to rest on any 
 legend — that is, on any man's experience but our own. 
 It must be proved, if at all, from our own activity and 
 designs, which imply an interminable future for their 
 play.^ 
 
 "Higher than the question of our duration is the 
 question of our deserving." There speaks the true 
 prophet of mysticism. He who is concerned rather to 
 deserve than to endure, and to be a great soul now 
 rather than in some remote and uncontrollable future, 
 is the truly regenerate man; and none such will ever be 
 willing to waste in seance-rooms the time that is all 
 too short for this higher and harder task. 
 
 Into the questions of the evidence for personal con- 
 tinuity which M. Maeterlinck raises, we shall not now 
 follow him. Our present purpose is to study his teach- 
 ing in regard to what has been called euthanasia — 
 the doctrine, that is, that the sufferer whose end seems 
 near shall have a right to be set free from the pangs of 
 mortality by the action of the physician. His judg- 
 ment on this point he sets out in the following para- 
 graphs: — 
 
 * Emerson's essay on "Worship,' in The Conduct of Life. 
 
234 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 As science progresses, it prolongs the agony which is 
 the most dreadful moment and the sharpest peak of 
 human pain and horror, for the watchers, at least; for 
 very often the consciousness of him whom death, in 
 Bossuet's phrase, has "brought to bay" is already 
 greatly dulled and perceives no more than the distant 
 murmur of the sufferings which it seems to be enduring. 
 All doctors consider it their first duty to prolong to the 
 uttermost even the cruellest pangs of the most hopeless 
 agony. Who has not, at the bedside of a dying man, 
 twenty times wished and not once dared to throw himself 
 at their feet and implore them to show mercy ? They are 
 filled with so great a certainty, and the duty which they 
 obey leaves so little room for the least doubt, that pity 
 and reason, blinded by tears, curb their revolt and recoil 
 before a law which all recognize and revere as the highest 
 law of man's conscience. 
 
 One day, this prejudice will strike us as barbarous. Its 
 roots go down to the unacknowledged fears left in the 
 heart by religions that have long since died out in the 
 intelligence of men. That is why the doctors act as 
 though they were convinced that there is no known 
 torture but is preferable to those awaiting us in the un- 
 known. They seem persuaded that every minute gained 
 amid the most intolerable sufferings is snatched from the 
 incomparably more dreadful sufferings which the mys- 
 teries of the hereafter reserve for men; and, of two evils, 
 to avoid that which they know to be imaginary, they 
 choose the real one. . . . 
 
 The doctors, on their side, say or might say that, in 
 the present stage of science, two or three cases excepted, 
 there is never a certainty of death. Not to support life 
 to its last limits, even at the cost of insupportable tor- 
 ments, might be murder. Doubtless there is not one 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 235 
 
 chance in a hundred thousand that the patient escape. 
 No matter. If that chance exist which, in the majority 
 of cases, will give but a few days, or, at the utmost, a few 
 months of a life that will not be the real life, but much 
 rather, as the Romans called it, "an extended death," 
 those hundred thousand useless torments will not have 
 been in vain. A single hour snatched from death out- 
 weighs a whole existence of tortures. . . . 
 
 A day will come when science will turn upon its error 
 and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will 
 come when it will dare and act with certainty. Once the 
 doctor and the sick man have learned what they have to 
 learn, there will be no physical nor metaphysical reason 
 why the advent of death should not be as salutary as 
 that of sleep. ^ 
 
 Against this eloquent and at first sight impressive 
 plea for the right of the physical sufferer to be released, 
 and consequently of the doctor to kill, there are many 
 objections to be raised. These I shall divide for con- 
 venience into two classes. The first I shall call the 
 objections of common-sense, the second the ethical 
 objections. The division is, I agree, in the main arbi- 
 trary, and is resorted to only for convenience. Both 
 sets of arguments are entitled to both labels; but 
 those which I shall group under the distinctive title 
 of ethical are those which do not spontaneously occur 
 to the practical man, and are generally absent from 
 discussions of the subject. 
 
 I would first draw attention to the interesting fact 
 that the case for euthanasia in the abstract commends 
 ^ Our Eternity, pp. 19-25. 
 
2^6 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 itself to many who, nevertheless, would find them- 
 selves unwilling to assent to it in any particular in- 
 stance. On general grounds it seems so obvious, so 
 rational and so humane that most of us would hesitate 
 to reject it unqualifiedly. But if we actually find our- 
 selves exceedingly reluctant to practise or to sanction, 
 in some special case, a doctrine to which we have given 
 our assent in the abstract, we must take account of 
 that reluctance in ourselves as a datum in the prob- 
 lem, and re-examine the argument which had before 
 seemed so convincing. 
 
 Several years ago, a lady was suffering from an 
 incurable illness which made it impossible for her to 
 leave her bed, or even to rise to a sitting position. She 
 was what is called a Rationalist, and she sent for a 
 nmnber of prominent gentlemen whose views of reli- 
 gion were approximately the same as her own. These 
 she consulted as to whether, under the circumstances, 
 she was not entitled either to take her own life, or to 
 have her irremediable suffering terminated by her doc- 
 tors. At least two of the gentlemen whose counsel she 
 sought had, in public utterances, endorsed the point of 
 view which M. Maeterlinck has now set forth afresh. 
 But neither of them was willing to accept the respon- 
 sibility of assenting to the invalid lady's plea, although 
 every canon of logical consistency demanded that they 
 should do so. The pragmatic test proved too severe 
 for them. 
 
 I cite this case, not in the least to condemn the gen- 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 237 
 
 tlemen in question, but merely to reinforce the point I 
 have just made. The fact that men who had pubUcly 
 committed themselves to the doctrine that incurable 
 sufferers have the right to death, yet hesitated to 
 accord that right to the one particular sufferer who 
 appealed to them, does, I think, show that when they 
 assented to the general thesis, their sympathies trav- 
 elled faster than their judgment. It is in the con- 
 viction that most men and women who agree with 
 M. Maeterlinck are in the same position, that I venture 
 now to re-examine the grounds of his doctrine. The 
 result of such a procedure should be either to furnish 
 us with valid reasons for rejecting the doctrine, or else 
 so to reinforce it that we shall no longer hesitate to 
 consent in practice to what we have assented to in 
 theory. 
 
 Of the common-sense objections to which I have 
 alluded, the first is that which M. Maeterlinck himself 
 recognizes: "In the present stage of science, two or 
 three cases excepted, there is never a certainty of 
 death." This is a fact which has much more weight 
 with the experienced physician than it commonly has 
 with the laity. The public, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has 
 reminded us, is far too ready to believe in the infalli- 
 bility of the doctor; but the doctor, to do him justice, 
 is very rarely such a fool as to believe in his own infal- 
 libility. He is more apt to say, as did Pius IX of his 
 hot-headed adorers, "Questi infallibilisti mi faranno 
 fallire." The opinions he utters are hedged about in 
 
238 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 his own mind with all sorts of qualifications and pro- 
 visos, which he cannot make intelligible to the anxious 
 relatives of his patient. What they want is a definite 
 assurance, an unqualified yes or no. When he says, "I 
 think your father will die," or, "I helieroe your sister 
 will get better," he is imderstood to say, ^' I know your 
 father will die," or, "// is certain that your sister will 
 recover." The notorious fallibility of these prognos- 
 tications, recognized in general by everybody, is for- 
 gotten by the anxious ones in connection with the 
 case in which they are immediately interested. 
 
 Now if, when a doctor gives a patient up, he should 
 proceed to end that patient's sufferings, it would 
 never be possible afterwards to prove either that the 
 patient would or that he would not have recovered. 
 As illustrative cases have occurred in everybody's ex- 
 perience, I may be permitted to cite two from my own. 
 A man suffering from an incurable disease was on two 
 separate occasions, by two different doctors, given less 
 than twenty-four hours to live. He died seven years 
 later, having in the meantime never, indeed, been 
 restored to full health, but having often been well 
 enough to be up and doing. My second instance is 
 that of a woman who, eighteen years ago, was de- 
 clared to be dying of phthisis, and to have less than a 
 week to live. She is alive to-day, in better health than 
 she ever had before, and with no symptom of phthisis 
 or any similar disease. It is perfectly possible that 
 three or four doctors in consultation might have agreed 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 239 
 
 on the verdicts to which I have referred, — although I 
 gravely doubt whether any set of doctors would ever 
 concur in such a judgment, if the responsibility of act- 
 ing upon their conviction were imposed upon them. 
 Suppose they had done so, however, in my second in- 
 stance : the woman in question would simply have been 
 cut off in the midst of her days, and her family would 
 have been robbed of the joy and consolation of many 
 years of her beneficent activity. When M. Maeter- 
 linck says, "Doubtless there is not one chance in a 
 hundred thousand that the patient escape," he ex- 
 presses immensely more certitude than the competent 
 doctor usually feels. Medical prophecies in such cases 
 are generally the vaguest of guesswork, and the doc- 
 tors (at least among themselves) admit that they are 
 so. Medical science is extremely immature, and the 
 factors in any given case are altogether too compli- 
 cated to warrant a confident induction. 
 
 The second objection on the plane of common-sense 
 is the undeniable possibility of the abuse of the power 
 of hfe and death, by venal physicians acting in collu- 
 sion with interested and imscrupulous relatives. If the 
 right were given at all, it would have to be given to 
 three or four doctors at most, acting upon their unani- 
 mous judgment. We know too much, however, of the 
 blinding effect of self-interest even upon men's con- 
 scientious opinions, to place the issues of life and death 
 in such hands. Witness, in the recent unsavoury case 
 of the man Thaw, the flatly self-contradictory opin- 
 
240 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 ions as to his sanity expressed by the two sets of 
 alienists — those retained in his interest, and those 
 retained by the State. With perfectly shocking unan- 
 imity, his own mental experts declared him sane; with 
 equal confidence the other side voted him insane. To 
 decide when doctors disagree is proverbially difficult; 
 experience also shows, however, that it would often be 
 exceedingly dangerous to act when they do not dis- 
 agree. It seems fairly probable that the average lon- 
 gevity of wealthy people would be materially decreased 
 if their heirs had the right to authorize the adminis- 
 tration of the quietus whenever three or four doctors 
 could be found to concur in declaring recovery impos- 
 sible. This statement may sound cynical, yet it is 
 assuredly not devoid of a justifying basis in experi- 
 ence. 
 
 The third obvious objection is that to make doc- 
 tors responsible for the termination of human suffering 
 would inevitably undermine that sense of the sanctity 
 of human life which is one of the most valuable of the 
 hard-won conquests of civilization. It would increase 
 the already exaggerated horror of mere physical suf- 
 fering, and would place an appalling responsibility 
 upon judgments biased by the contemplation of bodily 
 pain. M. Maeterlinck's own words are here instruc- 
 tive: "Who has not, at the bedside of a dying man, 
 twenty times wished and not once dared to throw 
 himself at their [the doctors'] feet and implore them to 
 show mercy ?" But who, we may add, has not often 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 241 
 
 had this feeling in connection with a patient who has 
 subsequently recovered? The doctor to-day has law 
 and public opinion to reinforce his resistance to such 
 appeals. But if the law were on the side of the agonized 
 lay onlookers, we cannot doubt that the doctor's judg- 
 ment would often be overborne by their importunity. 
 It is interesting to note that the old indifference to 
 the sanctity of life was rooted in insensitiveness to 
 bodily and mental suffering. It would be strange if 
 our developed sensibility to these things should lead 
 finally to a recurrence of the very evil from which it 
 has delivered us — if we should now be willing to sac- 
 rifice life from excessive horror of suffering, just as 
 men in former times sacrificed it through an inade- 
 quate sensitiveness. We are so familiar with modem 
 humanitarianism, that we are in danger of forgetting 
 how very modem it is. Not only do we find among 
 primitive savages the practice of killing off old mem- 
 bers of the tribe, in order not to be handicapped in 
 warfare or to have the food supply unprofitably used; 
 not only in Greece and Rome was the exposure of 
 infants practised, as a ghastly means of reducing the 
 surplus population; but down through the Christian 
 ages, even to the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 human life was treated with a levity which to-day 
 seems unimaginable. Scores of trivial offences were 
 punishable by death. Duelling, blood feuds and pri- 
 vate warfare were widely prevalent. The sacrifice of 
 men by thousands in dynastic and religious wars was 
 
242 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 taken as a matter of course. When to-day we read 
 in *' Sartor Resartus" the vivid picture of thirty men 
 from the British village of Dumdrudge, meeting in 
 Spain thirty from a French Dumdrudge whom they 
 had never seen before and with whom they had no 
 cause of quarrel, the two parties blowing one another's 
 brains out at the word of command, we forget how 
 very novel was Carlyle's moral recoil and protest, even 
 so recently as the eighteen-thirties. Christendom has 
 always assented with its lips to the doctrine that a 
 man is of more value than many sparrows, but in 
 practice it has held that most men are not really worth 
 much more than a comparatively small number of 
 sparrows. The new feeling, which Carlyle voiced, 
 and which is now practically universal (being shared 
 by everybody except monarchs, diplomatists, inter- 
 national capitalists, militarist philosophers and arma- 
 ment manufacturers), is thus a very recent acqui- 
 sition; and, while we must guard against foohsh 
 exaggerations of it, we yet must not suffer it to be lost 
 or even weakened. Those who agree with M. Maeter- 
 linck are undoubtedly in danger of carrying the horror 
 of suffering to such a point that it will overbear the 
 sense of the sanctity of life. 
 
 We turn now to the second class of objections to the 
 Maeterlinck doctrine — those which I have for con- 
 venience called ethical. The first of these is that his 
 argument, although limited by him to the question of 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 243 
 
 euthanasia, would undoubtedly justify suicide. It is 
 true that he is talking of the doctor's right to kill, but, 
 on his own showing, this is derivative from the suffer- 
 er's right to die. Now, a person who has a right to 
 death has the right to kill himself as well as to be 
 killed by others. If, moreover, intense bodily suffer- 
 ing can give this right, it is unthinkable that mental 
 anguish, often much more unendurable, would not 
 equally confer it. There is thus no question but that 
 M. Maeterlinck has given his sanction to far more than 
 he probably intended. There is no logical halting- 
 place between his position and that of the late Robert 
 IngersoU. Both take a stand which, consciously or 
 unconsciously, is based upon the extremest individ- 
 ualism, and both deny, whether wittingly or not, that 
 there is anything absolute or unconditionally binding 
 in morality. Neither takes any account of the duty of 
 the sufferer, or of the services which, during and even 
 because of his suffering, he may be able to render. 
 
 To prove this, I will quote a number of sentences 
 from Colonel IngersolFs letters and newspaper inter- 
 views on the question "Is Suicide a Sin?" ^ 
 
 Under many circumstances a man has the right to kill 
 himself. When life is of no value to him, when he can be 
 of no real assistance to others, why should a man con- 
 tinue ? . . . 
 
 So when a man has committed some awful crime, why 
 
 * These quotations are taken from volume vii of the Dresden 
 edition of IngersoU's works, published by C. P. Farrell, New York, in 
 1900. The italics are mine. 
 
244 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 should he stay and ruin his family and friends ? Why 
 should he add to the injury ? . . . 
 
 Why should a man, sentenced to imprisonment for 
 life, hesitate to still his heart ? The grave is better than 
 the cell. Sleep is sweeter than the ache of toil. The dead 
 have no masters. 
 
 Mr. IngersoU proceeds to defend the suicide against 
 the charge of cowardice. He admits that such a man 
 may lack moral courage, but maintains that he dis- 
 plays a high degree of physical bravery. He then con- 
 tinues as follows: — 
 
 If men had the courage, they would not linger in 
 prisons, in almshouses, in hospitals; they would not bear 
 the pangs of incurable disease, the sense of dishonour; 
 they would not live in filth and want, in poverty and hun- 
 ger, neither would they wear the chain of slavery. All 
 this [sic] can be accounted for only by the fear of death, 
 or "of something after." . . . 
 
 When there is no fear of the future, when death is 
 believed to be a dreamless sleep, men have less hesita- 
 tion about ending their lives. 
 
 He then goes on to denounce the law of New York 
 State which made the attempting of suicide a crime. 
 Of this law he says, with one of his ridiculous rhetorical 
 flourishes, that it was *'bom of superstition, passed 
 by thoughtlessness, and enforced by ignorance and 
 cruelty." In a later utterance, speaking of a man dying 
 of cancer, he writes: — 
 
 This man, suffering agonies beyond the imagination to 
 conceive, is of no use to himself. His life is but a succes- 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 245 
 
 sion of pangs. He is of no use to his wife, his children, his 
 friends or society. 
 
 It will be seen that Mr. IngersolFs doctrine is very far- 
 reaching. Unlike M. Maeterlinck, he issues his plenary 
 indulgence not only to the hopeless invalid, but to the 
 criminal, the man sentenced to Ufelong imprisonment, 
 the inmate of the almshouse or the hospital, and, 
 apparently without any reservation, to all victims of 
 poverty and hunger, filth and want. It is difficult to 
 speak restrainedly of such a teaching; yet it is neces- 
 sary to do so, since much of this seems, however unde- 
 signedly, to be implied in the teaching of M. Maeter- 
 linck, whom I respect, and would seek to turn from 
 the error of his ways. 
 
 The first point to be noted is that suicide is, in the 
 great majority of cases, a retreat from evils which one 
 ought to stay and fight. It was so in the teaching 
 of Seneca. This man, one of the purest moralists who 
 ever lived, submitted to the tyranny of Nero because 
 he clung to the thought that he could at any time 
 escape by means of suicide (as he ultimately did) 
 when that tyranny became unendurable. He laid 
 down, as explicitly as Mr. IngersoU, the doctrine that 
 a man has always the right to choose the time and 
 manner of his death: — 
 
 To death alone it is due that life is not a punishment; 
 that, erect beneath the frowns of fortune, I can preserve 
 my mind unshaken and master of itself. I have one to 
 whom I can appeal. I see before me the crosses of many 
 
246 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 forms. ... I see the rack and the scourge, and instru- 
 ments of torture adapted to every limb and to every 
 nerve; but I also see Death. She stands beyond my 
 savage enemies, beyond my haughty fellow-countrymen. 
 Slavery loses Us bitterness when by a step I can pass to 
 liberty. . . . 
 
 Wherever you look, there is the end of evils. You see 
 that yawning precipice — there you may descend to 
 liberty. You see that sea, that river, that well — liberty 
 sits at the bottom. . . . Do you seek the way to freedom ? 
 — you may find it in every vein of your body. 
 
 Depart from Ufe as your impulse leads you, whether 
 it be by the sword, or the rope, or the poison creeping 
 through the veins; go your way and break the chains of 
 slavery. Man should seek the approbation of others in 
 his life; his death concerns himself alone. That is the 
 best which pleases him most. . . . The eternal law has 
 decreed nothing better than this, that life should have 
 but one entrance and many exits. Why should I endure 
 the agonies of disease, and the cruelties of human tyranny y 
 when I can emancipate myself from all my torments and 
 shake off every bond ? For this reason, but for this alone, 
 life is not an evil — that no one is obliged to live. The 
 lot of man is happy, because no one continues wretched 
 but by his fault. If life pleases you, live. If not, you 
 have a right to return whence you came.^ 
 
 The phrases which I have italicized prove my con- 
 tention. Instead of enduring slavery because by a step 
 he could pass to liberty, instead of submitting to the 
 cruelties of human tyranny because it was in his power 
 
 * These passages, from various writings of Seneca, are collected 
 by Lecky, in his History of European MoralSy vol. i, chap. 2. 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 247 
 
 to emancipate himself, Seneca ought to have organized 
 an opposition to slavery, and a revolution against the 
 insane barbarities of Nero. He ought to have inspired 
 a public opinion which would have made these things 
 impossible, instead of teaching a doctrine of submis- 
 sion, and making it endurable by showing the victims 
 of tyranny how they could escape. No great social 
 evil would ever have been rectified if men had taken 
 the line merely of averting its consequences to them- 
 selves instead of determining to abolish its cause. 
 
 It is peculiarly strange that Colonel Ingersoll (who 
 evidently had got his inspiration from Seneca in this 
 matter) should have omitted to notice that in sanc- 
 tioning suicide, he was doing the very thing which he 
 had always emptied the vials of his wrath upon Chris- 
 tian theologians for doing. These men had used the 
 doctrine of immortality as an anaesthetic. Throughout 
 the centuries they had reconciled the poor to poverty, 
 and women to degradation and moral outrage, by the 
 teaching of an eternity of bliss which was to compen- 
 sate for the evils of the present Hfe. Nobody ever 
 denounced this teaching more fiercely than Robert 
 Ingersoll. He was quite right to do so; and it cannot 
 be doubted that the complete change of attitude in 
 regard to this matter which we see in many churches 
 to-day, is in some measure due to his fiery eloquence. 
 How, then, could he fail to see that in advising peo- 
 ple to escape by suicide from remediable evils, he was 
 doing the very thing which he had always denounced ? 
 
248 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 To offer a dreamless sleep to persons who long to be 
 relieved from suffering is morally identical with offer- 
 ing heavenly bliss. Indeed, Mr. Ingersoll's offer is 
 just as much an unwarrantable assumption of know- 
 ledge as the theologians'. Nor does the so-called agnos- 
 tic escape in this matter without falling into open and 
 flagrant self-contradiction. His argument is a per- 
 petual alternation of dogmatism and denial. In one 
 breath he admits that he cannot aj65rm or deny immor- 
 taUty; in the next, he dogmatically denies it by calling 
 death a dreamless sleep. What supernatural revela- 
 tion had come to this rejector of the supernatural ? 
 Who told him that death is a dreamless sleep ? By 
 calling it so he exactly duplicates the blunder of the 
 theologian in dogmatizing about things of which he 
 knows nothing. 
 
 My argument, however, in no wise stands or falls 
 by any conclusion we may come to on the question of 
 personal continuance after death. Whether death be a 
 dreamless sleep or the gate of a larger Ufe, it still would 
 remain true that our duty is to resist and overcome 
 evils, not to run away from them. The downfall of 
 Rome was due in part to the fact that such men as the 
 Stoics and the great jurists acquiesced in social atroci- 
 ties which they ought to have combated. The long 
 arrest of Christian civilization was due to a similar 
 resignation on the part of those who could have been 
 the pioneers of better things. Seneca's teaching, that 
 man is happy solely because he can run away from his 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 249 
 
 evils, is as demoralizing as the ecclesiastical doctrine 
 that we may not resist divinely-ordained royal scoun- 
 drels, and that we are to reconcile ourselves to their 
 barbarities by thinking of compensations to come in a 
 life hereafter. 
 
 Equally strange is the moral blindness displayed by 
 Colonel Ingersoll in his reiterated assertion that the 
 sufferer from an incurable disease is "of no use'' to 
 himself, his wife, his children or society. Universal 
 experience demonstrates that human wisdom and in- 
 sight are so intensified by suffering that he who has 
 endured most can give the wisest counsel to others. 
 "To have suffered much is like knowing many lan- 
 guages. Thou hast learned to understand all, and to 
 make thyself intelligible to all.'' Mr. Ingersoll fell into 
 the vulgar error of thinking that a hmnan being can 
 only be of "use" when he can do bodily work, or, at 
 all events, such mental work as necessitates physical 
 activity. He forgot that the most profoundly signi- 
 ficant deeds in human life are those that we do with 
 our minds and with our tongues. A word spoken at a 
 solemn moment may be a mightier force for good or ill 
 than any bodily act whatever. lago was only a talker; 
 Socrates and Jesus did little but speak. Who has not 
 known of sufferers from incurable disease who, by their 
 serenity under pain, and their wise counsel to those 
 about them, have been a benediction to mankind ? 
 
 On Maeterlinck's and Ingersoll's principles. Cap- 
 tain Scott and his two companions, instead of awaiting 
 
2 JO CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 death by starvation, would have been entirely justified 
 in precipitating the end. Their fate was a thousand- 
 fold more certain than that of the most hopeless invalid 
 is to the most experienced physician. The odds against 
 their rescue were literally as infinity to one. Prudence, 
 and the philosophy which Ingersoll borrowed from 
 Seneca, would alike have dictated self-slaughter. Yet, 
 because they abstained, and because they endured to 
 the end, they have rendered a service to mankind for 
 all time, which is of more value than all the other re- 
 sults of their expedition combined. 
 
 It is a mere vulgarity to say, even in the case of 
 a man dying of cancer, that he is of no use to himself 
 or others. I have known more than one such case in 
 which the character of the sufferer, through his suffer- 
 ing, became ever more serene and radiant, so that he 
 gave such a gift of example and counsel to the watch- 
 ers at his bedside that their own lives were transfigured 
 thereby. The preciousness of this influence was such 
 that neither the man himself at the time, nor the 
 onlookers in their subsequent retrospect, would have 
 been willing to curtail by a single hour the sufferer's 
 existence. A noble death-bed is one of the most potent 
 and exalting of spiritual influences; yet not through 
 the fact of death, but through the fact of suffering 
 worthily borne, and of spiritual power displayed in 
 spite of it. 
 
 Both Maeterlinck and Ingersoll exhibit a singular 
 psychological ignorance in their contention that the 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 251 
 
 refusal to hasten death is due to the survival of reli- 
 gious terror. The roots of this prejudice, says Maeter- 
 linck, "go down to the unacknowledged fears left in 
 the heart by religions that have long since died out in 
 the intelligence of men." So far is this from the truth, 
 that the sense of the sanctity of life is strongest of all 
 in those who are most completely deh)^notized and 
 freed from superstitious doctrines and from the ter- 
 rors they engender. In the Middle Ages, just as in 
 China to-day, contempt for life and readiness to inflict 
 death were at their maximum when superstition was 
 most rampant. And among the thinkers of Pagan an- 
 tiquity, it is precisely those who are most completely 
 raised above these irrational terrors, who repudiate 
 the notion of a man's right to forsake his post. It is 
 the clear-eyed and fearless Aristotle who declares that 
 the suicide acts unjustly not to himself, but to the 
 State. It is Socrates whose free soul instinctively re- 
 coils from the idea of self -slaughter, — Socrates, who is 
 serenely convinced that no evil can befall a good man 
 either in Hf e or after death, and who discourses at large 
 of the sacred mysteries of the soul, while he is await- 
 ing the execution of that imjust sentence which con- 
 demned his judges more surely than it condemned him. 
 The objection of Socrates to suicide is an expression 
 of the deep moral instinct in him. When Cebes asks 
 why suicide is held not to be right, the keen, ready- 
 witted dialectician is at a loss for a rational answer. 
 He cannot say why, "when a man is better dead, he is 
 
252 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 not permitted to be his'own benefactor." He accord- 
 ingly falls back upon mystical language: — 
 
 There is a doctrine uttered in secret, that man is 
 a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his 
 prison and run away; this is a great mystery, which I 
 do not quite understand. Yet I too believe that the 
 gods are our guardians, and that we are a possession 
 of theirs.^ 
 
 It is entirely consistent with mysticism, as I have 
 above defined it, that a man should sometimes trust 
 his moral intuitions before his intellect has furnished 
 him with a logically coercive justification of them. I 
 do not think, however, that in taking our stand with 
 Socrates, we are cut oJ6f from giving a better reason for 
 our ethical instinct than he furnishes in his reply to 
 Cebes. We can, I believe, translate his mystical lan- 
 guage into ethical terms. That doctrine uttered in 
 secret, that man is a prisoner who has no right to open 
 the door of his prison and run away, and that we are 
 a possession of our guardians the gods — what does 
 it mean when reduced to terms of experience ? It 
 means that man is under obligations which are uncon- 
 ditional. It means that we are the trustees and deposi- 
 taries of the highest and divinest thing in the universe. 
 Self-conscious rationality exists in us, and, so far as 
 we know, in us alone. When we remove it in ourselves 
 or others, we are false not merely to ourselves, our 
 families, and our nation, and not even merely to hu- 
 
 * Plato's Pkedo Qowett's translation). 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 253 
 
 manity at large; we are traitors to the universe, de- 
 serters from the cosmic army. 
 
 Suicide was permitted under the Roman law, and 
 cases are on record of men obtaining explicit permis- 
 sion from the Emperor to resort to it. Yet its preva- 
 lence forced Hadrian to treat attempts at suicide on 
 the part of soldiers as equivalent to desertion, and 
 to punish them accordingly. The Emperor was more 
 poetically inspired than he knew. The only metaphor 
 that adequately expresses the position of man in this 
 life is that which likens him to a soldier already en- 
 listed in an army, and therefore pledged in honour to 
 accept without question the main ends for which the 
 army exists, and not to abandon his duty until he 
 is authoritatively released. The army is the army of 
 humanity; its flag is the flag of the world; its uniform 
 is the physical frame we bear, and the rational and 
 moral nature which the whole of humanity has trans- 
 mitted to each of us. 
 
 The moral blindness which I have complained of 
 in Ingersoll, finds its explanation in the fact, patent 
 to all who read him closely, that he was every whit as 
 much obsessed by the traditional theology as were the 
 theologians whom he attacked, although, of course, 
 in a different manner. Just as they always thought in 
 what are called theological terms, so he always thinks 
 in what are called anti-theological terms. Just as they 
 find the sanction for morality in the alleged will of 
 their supernatural deity, so he argues that, since there 
 
254 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 is no supernatural revelation, there is no basis for 
 any duty which conflicts with a man's apparent self- 
 interest. This is why he falls into the utter absurdity 
 of saying that, in the case of a suicide, "he is to bear 
 the injury, if it be one." His anti- theological animus 
 blinds him to the glaring fact that of all human in- 
 juries the most insupportable is that which the suicide 
 inflicts upon his relations. Let those who have borne 
 this burden testify whether they would not sooner die 
 ten deaths, or lose by natural bereavement their ten 
 dearest connections, than suffer the mingled horror and 
 disgrace of having a wife or husband, parent or child, 
 commit suicide. To the pain of the loss is added the 
 unutterable shame of an implied reproach which, how- 
 ever undeserved, can seldom be proved to others, or 
 even to the bereaved themselves, to have been so. 
 
 There are some who have no more belief in the 
 scheme of traditional theology than has M. Maeter- 
 linck or than had Colonel Ingersoll, yet who have a 
 deeper sense than they of the sanctity of this life, and 
 of the unconditional nature of the claim of duty upon 
 our allegiance. The question for them is not whether 
 we live after death, or whether the abandonment of life 
 is an offence against a superhuman personality. The 
 question is as to the moral effects upon others of our 
 acts in this life, and as to the way in which we best 
 can discharge the obligations under which each of us 
 has been laid by society, from the very foundation of 
 the human world. 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 255 
 
 There are those, indeed, who deny the existence of 
 duty. They maintain that, as we do not choose to 
 come into this Hfe and are not consulted as to the cir- 
 cumstances under which we are born, there can be no 
 such thing as a general claim of humanity upon our 
 loyalty. This position implies that a man has a right 
 to get all he can out of life and to give back as little as 
 possible in return. It is a doctrine that cannot be logi- 
 cally refuted. The man who aflirms it can only be 
 asked to open his eyes and look somewhat more stead- 
 ily at the facts of life than he has hitherto done. He 
 must be asked to imagine what would happen to him 
 if society at large acted towards him upon his own 
 principle. He may perhaps, especially in youth, in this 
 individualistic and self-reliant America, feel strong 
 enough to stand against the world; he forgets, however, 
 that even the bodily strength and the mental shrewd- 
 ness by which he feels able to do this are things which 
 human society has bestowed upon him. He did not (as 
 he has himself argued) make himself. He therefore, 
 by his own reasoning, is not the owner of himself. That 
 trick of chop-logic by which he denies the brotherly bond 
 of mankind is but the flourish of a borrowed sword. 
 And since for him there are no duties but only rights, 
 then human society has no duties towards him, but 
 only rights which it may enforce against him. To put 
 the point even in the terms of a cash bargain, can any'in- 
 dividual person pretend that he has given to mankind 
 value for value in return for what he has received ? 
 
^S^ CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 But we have admitted that the question cannot be 
 settled by argument. Either the validity of the claim 
 of duty becomes self-evident when fairly presented, or 
 else there is some moral abnormality in the man to 
 whom it is not so. I cannot prove to such a man that 
 when he sees a child drowning, he is bound to do what 
 in him lies to save it. I can, however, tell him that he 
 ought to need no argument on this point, and that the 
 very fact that he needs one is a proof of his own perver- 
 sion. I cannot, by reasoning, show the coerciveness of 
 the principle, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the 
 least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
 This is, to use old-fashioned language, the logic of the 
 heart, not of the head. ''Le coeur a ses raisons, que la 
 raison ne connait pas." We are here dealing with the 
 ultimate facts of our moral constitution. We discover, 
 when the exigency arises, that we are built this way, 
 and that, like Luther, we can do no other. Happily, 
 even those men who assert in words that they do not 
 feel this unconditional imperative of conscience, and 
 who ordinarily live in accordance with the diabolical 
 principle they proclaim, are often as blind to their own 
 nature as to that of others; and generally, when some 
 imforeseen appeal is made to the latent good in them, 
 they find themselves acting by the law which they 
 have repudiated. 
 
 The doctrine that suicide is no sin, and that imder 
 many circumstances a man has the right to take his 
 own life, is the most dangerously anti-social teaching 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 257 
 
 ever uttered. Nor are its dangers remote or slow to 
 disclose themselves. IngersoU's utterances on the sub- 
 ject were followed, as everybody remembers, by a 
 perfect epidemic of suicides in the United States. If 
 the misguided man had been a careful student of his- 
 tory, he would have known that the same sequence of 
 events had occurred many times before. Seneca found 
 it necessary to protest against the passion for self- 
 destruction which his own teaching had provoked 
 among his disciples. Cicero tells us of the Cyrenaic 
 philosopher Hegesias, whose teaching had earned him 
 the sobriquet of "the orator of death," and whose elo- 
 quent pictures of the fascinations of the tomb led mul- 
 titudes to free themselves by suicide from the cares of 
 Hfe. 
 
 It is curious to observe the astonishing self-contra- 
 diction and self -stultification to which Ingersoll was 
 driven when asked whether his teaching had not 
 caused many people to take their lives. He replied, 
 "People do not kill themselves because of the ideas of 
 others." On another occasion, in answer to a similar 
 question, he said, "Talk as long as language lasts, you 
 cannot induce a man to kill himself. The man who 
 takes his own life does not go to others to find reasons 
 or excuses." 
 
 That is to say, this man, who all his Hfe had de- 
 nounced the wrong deeds to which people have been 
 led by false teaching, was driven to deny the connec- 
 tion between teaching and practice when confronted 
 
258 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 with the horrors which his own mad doctrine had let 
 loose upon the world! If it were true that people's 
 conduct is unaffected by the doctrine and counsel of 
 teachers whom they respect, then all the diatribes of 
 IngersoU about the horrible results of orthodox theo- 
 logical teaching would be absurd. The reason why 
 they are not so, however, is that there is a real, natu- 
 ral and inevitable connection between teaching and 
 practice. Men imitate one another's deeds, but even 
 stronger is the impulse which leads them to act upon 
 one another's coimsel. The Smithfield crowds in 
 Queen Mary's day assisted or acquiesced in the burn- 
 ing of Protestants for no other reason than that they 
 had been taught that heresy was the worst of crimes, 
 and that it was accordingly just that the heretic 
 should be burned. The disciples of Seneca committed 
 suicide because their revered teacher had sanctioned 
 the practice. And IngersoU was as directly responsi- 
 ble (though, of course, less intentionally so) for the 
 fate of the deluded wretches whose bodies were foimd 
 with his publications in their pockets, as Mrs. Emme- 
 line Pankhurst and her colleagues were for the insen- 
 sate outrages which postponed the political emancipa- 
 tion of women in England. 
 
 It is commonly maintained to-day, particularly by 
 Christian apologists, that the deep - seated horror of 
 the European mind in regard to self-destruction is 
 a result of the ecclesiastical teaching. Such thinkers 
 point to the contrast in this matter between Europe 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 259 
 
 and the East. They ask why it is that life is held so 
 lightly in China, where a man will commit suicide on 
 your doorstep as a means of insulting you, whereas in 
 Europe the most ghastly symbolism was resorted to in 
 order to express the horror evoked in the mind of soci- 
 ety by such an act. We are told that the burial of the 
 suicide in unconsecrated ground, at the cross-roads, 
 and with a stake driven through his body, expressed 
 a mental attitude engendered by Christianity. But I 
 have yet to learn where in the Bible there is any overt 
 and explicit condemnation of the laying of violent 
 hands upon oneself. Hamlet's notion that the Ever- 
 lasting had "fixed his canon 'gainst self -slaughter" is 
 certainly a part of the European tradition which was 
 caught up and transmitted by the theologians; but 
 Hamlet would not have been able to find the canon in 
 question in the Jewish or Christian Scriptures. Instead, 
 then, of saying that it was Christianity which made 
 Europe condemn suicide, the statement should be 
 precisely inverted : it was the normal healthy instinct 
 of Europe which made Christianity condemn it. In 
 this fashion Christianity has been held responsible for 
 many things, both good and bad, which in truth form 
 no part of it. It is thus, for example, that the claim 
 is made to-day that Christianity emancipated women 
 and led to the abolition of slavery, despite the glar- 
 ing facts that the most horrible and oppressive laws 
 against women, which still survive in Germany and 
 England, were passed by Christian legislatures, and 
 
26o CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 that every Christian nation practised slavery for cen- 
 turies, — in some cases, down to a century or two 
 ago. I am not in the least maintaining that slavery, 
 or the degradation of women, or suicide, is consistent 
 with or enjoined by the teaching of Jesus Christ. I am 
 only drawing attention to the fact that between his 
 teaching and that of oflScial Catholicism and Protest- 
 antism there is almost always a great gulf fixed. It was 
 not Christianity that forbade self-destruction. It was 
 the instinctive aversion of humanity to the ultimate 
 disloyalty against itself. For this aversion, no doubt, 
 theology found reasons. It has been said that "meta- 
 physics is the finding of bad reasons for what we be- 
 lieve upon instinct." Unquestionably this is true of 
 theology, which has hitherto shown a genius for find- 
 ing the lamest of reasons for the best of man's instinc- 
 tive desires and aversions. 
 
 The strongest ethical reason against suicide is that 
 suggested by Kant's celebrated criterion. We have to 
 ask ourselves what would happen if everybody acted 
 on the principle on which we propose to act, since a 
 morally sound rule is one which would produce bene- 
 ficent results if universalized. Apply this canon to the 
 doctrine of IngersoU, and we see at once that it would 
 lead to the extinction of human society. Every man 
 and every woman sometimes reaches a point where to 
 die seems better than to live. It is not given to the sons 
 of men to pass through life without experiencing mo- 
 ments (and happy are they to whom such moments 
 
THE RIGHT TO DIE 261 
 
 are rare) when Time seems, to use Tennyson's words, 
 "a maniac scattering dust, and Life a Fury slinging 
 flame." If, at such moments, all men and women were 
 convinced of the truth of IngersolFs idea, every Hfe 
 would end by suicide. The self-destroyer, says Inger- 
 soll, is not a coward. Even so, few men and women 
 are so cowardly as to be incapable of his act, if they 
 share not only his provocation but his principle of con- 
 duct. If Francis Thompson in his outcast days, if 
 Abraham Lincoln, groaning through long years be- 
 neath a burden such as few men have ever sustained, if 
 Shakespeare, in that period of spiritual gloom which, 
 according to some critics, gave birth to his greatest 
 tragedies, — if these had shared the horrible individu- 
 alistic illusion that a man has the right to choose his 
 own time and manner of exit from the world, it is self- 
 evident how ruinous would have been the loss inflicted 
 on mankind. 
 
 Our conclusion, then, is the simple ethical rule that a 
 man should never hasten his departure so long as by 
 deed or word or look he can influence for good the 
 character or the circumstances of any fellow-mortal. 
 It is never certain that one cannot do this, and conse- 
 quently the conditions postulated as justif)dng suicide 
 can never obtain. But, in formulating our rule, we 
 have furnished ourselves with no excuse for judging 
 harshly of those pitiable souls who violate it. The more 
 a man is impressed with the imperative claim of duty 
 upon himself, the more must he strive to avert or cure 
 
262 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 those blinding misfortunes which overbear the reason 
 and conscience of others, and impel them to the last 
 disloyalty. The bare statement of the ethical rule may 
 indeed sound harsh, but we may point out that it 
 is tempered by another practical law which should 
 always be remembered in connection with it — namely, 
 that we are to make for others extenuating explana- 
 tions which we may not make for ourselves. Every 
 suicide is an indictment of the providence of society, 
 and we are bound to feel that we share the guilt of 
 all who, finding life unendurable, take refuge in self- 
 slaughter. The modern world is challenged by an ever- 
 increasing number of such cases. In Germany and 
 England, during the last half-century, the percentage 
 of self-murders has hugely increased in every decade. 
 To show the enormity of the offence is but one of the 
 steps that are necessary to cure the evil. The other 
 and the greater task is to remove all those preventable 
 conditions which combine to produce it. 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER Vm 
 
 THE VICTORIOUS DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 
 
 The story of the expedition made by Sir Robert Falcon 
 Scott and his companions to discover the South Pole 
 and to increase our scientific knowledge of the Ant- 
 arctic region, is one that mankind will not willingly 
 let die. I shall here give only a brief resume of its lead- 
 ing incidents, partly because the facts are so familiar, 
 but chiefly in order that I may devote my space to 
 a consideration of certain trains of ethical thought 
 which the theme suggests. 
 
 The question, Cui bono ? in connection with polar ex- 
 ploration is hard to answer to the satisfaction of those 
 who think of "good" only in commercial-utilitarian 
 terms. But it will never be asked by those whose 
 ideal is the heroic adventurer, not the prudent huck- 
 ster. Of every exploring party, from the days of the 
 Argonauts to those of Amundsen, Peary and Scott, 
 it has been possible to say beforehand that its risks 
 were great and certain, its gains problematical and 
 perhaps non-existent. Columbus spent years in the 
 attempt to convince men that the only answer to this 
 contention must be, "Try it and see." Imprudent or 
 not, it was inevitable in the nature of man that he 
 should not cease from spying out his planetary domain 
 
264 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 until he had penetrated the last fastnesses of the un- 
 known. Nor was it any more improbable antecedently 
 that something of surpassing worth should be await- 
 ing man amid the eternal snows than that Columbus 
 should blunder on this continent, mislaid from eter- 
 nity among the wastes of the western sea. Experience 
 alone could decide either question. We dismiss, then, 
 the notion that the Scott party and their equally ill- 
 fated predecessors of the Southern and the Northern 
 night were vainly sacrificed to a gainless quest. In the 
 preceding chapter we have insisted that a man has 
 no right to take his own life. But nobody can deny 
 that imder many circumstances one has a right — and 
 often a duty — to risk it; and in our comfort-worship- 
 ping age, it is good to have it proved to us that men 
 can still endure hardness for unselfish ends. 
 
 To estimate aright the gallantry of Scott and his 
 colleagues, we must make some attempt to imagine 
 what is involved in spending a year and a half in the 
 utter desolation and the pitiless climate of the great 
 Ice Barrier and the Beardmore Glacier. We who live 
 in the comfort of civilization cannot do justice to this 
 feature of polar exploration. But we can perhaps form 
 some faint conception of the suffering it entails if we 
 imagine ourselves living in canvas tents, for months 
 and months on end, in the fiercest winter weather 
 of the North- Western States. 
 
 This, however, is the experience shared in common 
 by all polar explorers. What impresses one in the case 
 
DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 265 
 
 of the Scott expedition is the almost supernaturally 
 bad luck which dogged their footsteps at every turn. 
 The collapse of the motor sledges was the first of these 
 incidents. Then their pony transport failed them much 
 earlier than they had anticipated; and then they seem 
 to have given up their dogs sooner than was necessary. 
 The actual polar party, consisting of five men, had to 
 tug a heavy sledge hundreds of miles to the Pole, only 
 to be confronted, on arrival there, by the heart-freezing 
 disappointment of finding that they had been antici- 
 pated. 
 
 Their return journey was hindered by blizzard after 
 blizzard; and in the significant words of Scott, "we had 
 not one completely fine day," is contained a sufficient 
 explanation of the ultimate tragedy. 
 
 Then comes the record of the collapse and death of 
 Petty Officer Evans, "the strongest man of the party." 
 The little company is now reduced to four men, all 
 worn by toil to the verge of collapse, and one of them 
 already marked for death. They are hindered in their 
 progress by the ever - worsening illness of Captain 
 Gates, who at last, unwilling to be a burden upon them, 
 decides to lay down his life. Inexpressibly moving is 
 the brief record, penned by Scott's dying hand, of his 
 companion's heroism. After camp is pitched, and when 
 the blizzard is raging. Gates quietly says, "I am just 
 going outside; I may be some time." If this vicarious 
 death was suicide, it was the one suicide of which I 
 have ever heard that seems completely justified. The 
 
lee CRITICISMS of life 
 
 cenotaph erected to commemorate the death of Oates 
 expresses in briefest form the intuitive homage of hu- 
 manity to such a self-sacrifice: ^'Hereabouts died a 
 very gallant gentleman." 
 
 Imagination reels in the effort to follow the march 
 of the three survivors to their final camp, where they 
 arrived with food for two days, but with fuel for only 
 one meal. They were but eleven miles from plenty 
 and comparative safety; but they might as well have 
 been a thousand. They were surrounded by a blizzard 
 which made further progress impossible, even had they 
 been sufficiently fed; and Scott's last message is writ- 
 ten after they have been in their tent four days, and 
 when they must, therefore, have been at least two 
 days without food. The pitiless gale was still raging 
 when the dying hand indited its last message to the 
 world. What happened afterwards can only be inferred 
 from the condition of the tent when at last it was dis- 
 covered by the rescue party. The bodies of Wilson and 
 Bowers were wrapped in their sleeping-bags; that of 
 Scott was outside of his. Evidently he had been able 
 to give this last attention to his friends between the 
 time of their death and his own. 
 
 One gathers the character of Scott, not only from the 
 mere list of events in the expedition, but from many 
 little indications disclosed by his diary. First it stands 
 on record that before leaving for the Antarctic he had 
 arranged that the profits on his book should all be 
 divided among his companions, after their return. He 
 
DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 267 
 
 had not told them of this arrangement; the money was 
 to come to them in the shape of a surprise bonus. 
 
 It is to be remembered, also, that the last message 
 of Scott is the only part of his diary which was con- 
 sciously written for others to read. The diary itself 
 consists of matter which he must naturally have ex- 
 pected to revise before publication. We may fairly 
 assume, therefore, that it contains a real disclosure of 
 his thought and feeling, uncoloured by adaptation to 
 the tastes or expectations of readers. It was written 
 for the most part when the apparition of failure and 
 death was not present to his mind. We may thus 
 expect to obtain by reading it, and by reading between 
 its lines, a more than ordinarily rehable impression of 
 the character of the writer. 
 
 One notes with interest the unaffected regret which 
 Scott expresses on each occasion when he has to send 
 back some of the members of his party. For all of 
 those to whom the favour of participation in the final 
 enterprise could not be extended, he has words of 
 genuine S3mipathy. 
 
 Another characteristic of the man is his repeated 
 rejoicing in the harmony which prevailed among his 
 party, and in their loyalty to himself as leader. He 
 scarcely ever mentions his own share in the work. Yet 
 it lies on the surface of the narrative that the loyalty 
 and harmony, for which he is so grateful, must have 
 been inspired by his own rare personal qualities. We 
 hear much of the unfailing ingenuity of Petty Officer 
 
268 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 Evans; the debt of the expedition to the keen eyes of 
 Bowers is repeatedly commemorated. There is enthu- 
 siastic praise of the wonderful expedition made by 
 Wilson, Bowers and Cherry-Garrard, to the emperor 
 penguin rookery at Cape Crozier. Scott waxes elo- 
 quent in his description of the labour and suffering 
 undergone by his companions in a portion of the ex- 
 pedition in which he did not participate; but there is 
 no record of the even greater trials and torments which 
 he must himself have endured, apart altogether from 
 the tremendous burden of responsibility which inevit- 
 ably fell to the leader's share. 
 
 Still another indication of Scott's calibre is given in 
 his account of the overwhelming disappointment which 
 awaited them at the Pole itself. Here again, although 
 the blow fell heaviest upon him, his only thought is 
 for others: "It is a terrible disappointment, and I am 
 very sorry for my loyal companions. ^^ We find no trace 
 of jealousy or resentment against his successful rival; 
 only a generous testimony to the efficiency of that 
 rivaFs work : "There is no doubt that our predecessors 
 have made thoroughly sure of their mark, and fully 
 carried out their programme." 
 
 The finest fragment of unconscious self-portraiture, 
 however, which this journal gives us is contained in 
 that last moving message to the public, which the 
 starved and dying man penned at the moment of utter 
 defeat. From his tent amid the eternal desolation, with 
 the last flames of life burning low, he writes, "I do not 
 
DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 269 
 
 regret this journey. . . . We took risks; we knew we 
 took them. Things have come out against us, and 
 therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to 
 the will of Providence, determined still to do our best 
 to the last." Then, with characteristic self -forge tful- 
 ness, "Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of 
 the hardihood, endurance and courage of my compan- 
 ions, which would have stirred the heart of every Eng- 
 lishman." And, last of all, that appeal to his country's 
 generosity, on behalf of the dependents of his compan- 
 ions and himself, which could not have failed to move 
 the heart of any nation. 
 
 One's first reaction upon reading such a narrative is 
 a feeling of proud and joyous confidence in the eternal 
 fineness and dignity of the human spirit. It is in the 
 midst of unrelieved tragedy, it is in the very heart 
 of the triumphs of evil, that we find the refutation of 
 pessimism. When I first read the message of Captain 
 Scott, there sprang up at once in my mind the classic 
 lament of Burke over the decay of the knightly spirit; 
 and, together with it, the glad consciousness that 
 Burke had spoken falsely. Let us recall his familiar 
 words, in order that we may see how completely, even 
 to detail, the story of Scott refutes them: — 
 
 The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophists, econom- 
 ists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of 
 Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall 
 we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that 
 proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subor- 
 
ayo CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 dination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude 
 itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought 
 grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of 
 manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is 
 gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of hon- 
 our, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired 
 courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled 
 whatever it touched.^ . . . 
 
 It is characteristic of pessimists to disregard the 
 good in human things. They concentrate attention on 
 exceptional evil, and forget that it is exceptional. They 
 forget that if truth, honesty and justice were not al- 
 ready dominant in large measure, the daily life of 
 human society would be rendered impossible. The 
 heroism of Scott, while its context of tragic circum- 
 stance enables it to stand as a typical refutation of 
 Burke's lament, discloses only an exceptional degree 
 of a quality which is common to all mankind, and dis- 
 cernible in the daily history of every group of human 
 beings. There are always courage, self-abnegation 
 and readiness for death in the service of others, even 
 among the poorest and least fortunately circumstanced 
 of mankind. The height of the wave is evidence, to 
 the initiated, of the depth of the ocean from which it 
 springs; and the individual character of such a man as 
 Scott implies and testifies to the presence of his great 
 qualities in the reservoir of spiritual life from which 
 his own being was drawn. 
 
 ^ Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. 
 
DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 271 
 
 Two main lines of reflection are suggested by the 
 incident which we are here considering. The first 
 of these concerns the attitude of the modern world 
 towards death. 
 
 It is imquestionable that our thoughts nowadays are 
 far less directed towards death than were those of man- 
 kind in the Middle Ages. For then the whole of life 
 was consciously viewed as a preparation for death, and 
 for that larger life which was believed to he beyond. 
 It was one of the great changes in the human outlook 
 which accompanied the revival of learning, the out- 
 burst of the spirit of geographical discovery, and the 
 emergence of the scientific spirit, that the centre of 
 attention was removed to earth, and to the life that 
 now is. In the writings of Bacon, the incarnation of 
 the spirit of science, we find many protests against the 
 morbid focussing of attention on the end of life, which 
 had prevailed down to his time. He points out, with 
 his usual keen psychologica' insight, that there is 
 scarcely any motive in human nature so weak but that 
 it can overcome the fear of death. He further affirms 
 that most of the teachings of philosophers and divines 
 had increased the dread of death, while they offered to 
 cure it; "for, when they would have a man's whole life 
 to be but a discipline or preparation to die, they must 
 needs make men think that death is a terrible enemy, 
 against which there is no end of preparing." 
 
 Spinoza, again, voices the growing protest of his age 
 against a gloomy and excessive contemplation of man's 
 
272 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 mortality. "The free man," he writes, "thinks of no- 
 thing so little as of death, and his wisdom is a medi- 
 tation not of death but of life." 
 
 The modern world has passed to an opposite extreme 
 from that of the Middle Ages. Far from needing the ad- 
 vice of Bacon and Spinoza, we need rather to return to 
 something of that seriousness of mind which made the 
 preparation for death an essential part of the business 
 of life. Our attitude to-day is perhaps best expressed 
 in the words of W. K. Clifford: "That love of action 
 which would put death out of sight, is to be counted 
 good, as a holy and healthy thing, necessary to the 
 life of men, serving to knit them together, and to ad- 
 vance them in the right." 
 
 Whether this be sound advice or not, it is undeniable 
 that it reflects the actual practice of mankind. But is 
 there not a prof ounder wisdom ? Is there not a middle 
 course between the mediaeval brooding over death, and 
 the modem anxiety to forget it? Clifford was a brave 
 spirit, whose early demise was a grievous loss to man- 
 kind: and it is with no desire to reflect upon him that 
 I criticize his counsel in this matter. But there seems 
 something shallow, something even of what is called 
 Dutch courage, in the poUcy of putting death out 
 of sight. It reminds one somehow of that wave of the 
 arm by which Mr. Podsnap was wont to banish into 
 oblivion anything repugnant to the great Victorian 
 English god of comfort and bourgeois respectability. 
 
 If Spinoza is right in asserting that the free man 
 
DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 273 
 
 thinks of nothing so little as of death, it can only be in 
 the sense that the free man has already thought out 
 to the end the prospect of death, and made his peace 
 with it. Only then is he truly free — only then can he 
 afford not to think of it; just as the athlete, who has 
 undergone thorough training, need not trouble himself 
 with the question of his fitness when the hour of the 
 struggle comes. 
 
 We, to-day, are in general far removed from this 
 high freedom. We have put death out of sight; we 
 have not reconciled ourselves to it. And because we 
 have only banished the spectre but not laid it, we are 
 apt to be smitten with horror at every suggestion of 
 its re-appearance. How many of my readers have ever 
 in their lives devoted ten minutes to meditation on 
 the thought that they too must surrender their being ? 
 How many of us have sought in any way to make our 
 peace with death, or to decide whether we loyally 
 accept a life which carries with it, as an inevitable con- 
 dition, the death of the body? It is our business to 
 think this question out to the end; and only when we 
 have done so, can we be "free men" in the sense of 
 Spinoza. 
 
 Various are the ways in which men have made terms 
 with the so-called last enemy. The most common, and 
 the one which probably would still serve the great 
 majority of people, if they seriously considered the 
 subject, is the thought of personal immortality. I can- 
 not here examine this doctrine in detail, and must con- 
 
274 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 tent myself with remarking that there is an inherent 
 weakness in it from the point of view of our moral and 
 spiritual victory over our lower nature. I am not at 
 the moment raising the question of the truth of the 
 doctrine. It may or may not be the fact that death is 
 the gate of a larger Hfe. My point is that the man who 
 overcomes his fear of death by means of his belief in 
 immortality, has not really vanquished his fear at all. 
 To deny the existence of death, as our Christian Sci- 
 ence friends do explicitly, and our orthodox friends 
 implicitly, is not to attain victory over it. There is, 
 indeed, some truth in the bitter words of the satirist 
 who declares that he who finds his refuge in the 
 thought of immortahty, has been so completely over- 
 come by the fear of death that he refuses to die on any 
 terms. Spiritual triumph is only attained by the man 
 who is ready for annihilation, and who accepts the gift 
 of life with that stern possibility attached to it. 
 
 Another class of men there is, who, irrespective of 
 the thought of immortality, welcome death because 
 they are at outs with life. Complete pessimism falls 
 naturally below what Sir John Seeley called the "sui- 
 cide-mark." And, short of such despair, it is obvious 
 that world-weariness, or any profound dissatisfaction 
 with the changes and chances of this mortal life, will 
 make a man take comfort in the thought of death 
 merely as an alternative to an existence so unsatis- 
 factory. This is the attitude expressed in the great 
 threnody of Shelley upon the death of Keats. Keats 
 
DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 275 
 
 is happy in that he has escaped the woes inevitable to 
 man: — 
 
 He is not dead, he doth not sleep, 
 He hath awakened from the dream of life; . 
 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep 
 With phantoms an improfitable strife, 
 And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife 
 Invuhierable nothings. We decay 
 
 Like corpses in a chamel; fear and grief 
 Convulse us and consimie us day by day. 
 And cold hopes swarm Hke worms within our living clay. 
 
 He has outsoared the shadow of our night. 
 
 In like manner, Keats himself welcomes the thought 
 of dissolution as a refuge from the ills of life. Every 
 lover of the "Nightingale" Ode knows by heart the 
 reason why the poet is "half in love with easeful 
 death." It is because for him this world is a place 
 
 . . . where men sit and hear each other groan, 
 Where palsy shakes a few sad, last grey hairs. 
 
 Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies: 
 Where but to think is to be full of sorrow, 
 And leaden-eyed despairs; 
 Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, > 
 Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 
 
 The same note of world-weariness rings through 
 much of our modern poetry. To Swinburne, in some of 
 his moods, the lot of man seems one of inevitable and 
 arbitrary frustration. Human aspirations have been 
 foreordained to failure by the gods from "before the 
 beginning of years." Thus, in the very spirit of the 
 
1^6 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 Greek tragedians, he pronounces the doom of human 
 striving, in that memorable picture of Man which 
 closes the ^'Atalanta'' chorus: — 
 
 His speech is a burning fire, 
 
 With his lips he travaileth; 
 In his heart is a bUnd desire, 
 
 In his eyes foreknowledge of death; 
 He weaves, and is clothed with derision; 
 
 Sows, and he shall not reap; 
 His life is a watch or a vision 
 
 Between a sleep' and a sleep. 
 
 Death, therefore, is welcome, if not for its own sake or 
 for life's sake, at least as a haven of escape from life: — 
 
 From too much love of Hving, 
 
 From hope and fear set free, 
 We thank, with brief thanksgiving, 
 
 Whatever gods may be. 
 That no Hfe lives for ever; 
 That dead men rise up never; 
 That even the weariest river 
 
 Winds somewhere safe to sea. 
 
 And again, in the haunting cadences that close his 
 ''Ave atque Vale" to Baudelaire, it is the incurable 
 troublesomeness of life that makes death welcome: — 
 
 Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done. 
 There lies not any troublous thing before, 
 Nor sight, nor sound, to war against thee more; 
 
 For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, 
 All waters as the shore. 
 
 Probably no more seductive embodiment of the idea 
 tinder discussion could be found than these poetic pre- 
 
DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 277 
 
 sentations of it which I have quoted; yet, despite the 
 magic of the poets, we cannot fail to detect the note of 
 morbidity in their strain. We refuse to assent to the 
 doctrine that life is inherently and irremediably evil; 
 and if we can make our peace with death only by em- 
 bracing this teaching, then with death we must remain 
 unreconciled. But is there no alternative to the choice 
 between the hope of immortality and the despair of 
 this Hfe? Are we shut up to selecting one or the other 
 of these two horns whereon to impale ourselves ? 
 
 Not so. There is still another attitude towards 
 death, which can be adopted by those of us who neither 
 stake our faith upon the thought of eternal existence 
 for the individual, nor are willing to stultify our life in 
 this world by implying that release from it, on any 
 terms, were better than its continuance. This third 
 attitude is hinted at by the mediaeval Catholic, St. 
 Francis of Assisi, and is brought out into clear relief in 
 the ultra-modern American poet of democracy, Walt 
 Whitman. In his "Canticle of the Sun," St. Francis 
 gives thanks, with profound insight, for "our sister, 
 the death of the body.'' And Whitman, in lines which 
 are dear to many in the Ethical Movement, who have 
 known them by heart for years, praises the fathomless 
 universe as whole-heartedly for "the sure-enwinding 
 arms of cool-enfolding death" as he does "for life and 
 joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, and for 
 love, sweet love." Almost startling in their daring 
 seizure of what to many is the most piercing of the 
 
278 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 thorns of life, are his words of welcome to the ghostly 
 visitant: — 
 
 Dark mother, always gliding near with soft feet, 
 Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome ? 
 Then I chant it for thee; I glorify thee above all; 
 I bring thee a song, that, when thou must indeed come, thou 
 come unfalteringly. 
 
 Here, surely, is the rare equipoise of sanity and viril- 
 ity. Here is the harmony which we are seeking. It is 
 because the singer is in love with life that he welcomes 
 death, the inevitable condition of life. It is because 
 "Life's gift outruns his fancies far" that he is prepared 
 to accept it subject to the proviso that it must end. 
 How far in advance is this of the attitude which would 
 put death out of sight! How much finer, morally and 
 spiritually, than the attitude which considers death 
 only a make-believe, only the entry to a fuller life! 
 
 To the reader who has followed me thus far I need 
 not repeat that I do not deny immortality as a fact. 
 My attitude towards it is one of suspended judgment. 
 The would-be scientific evidence for it seems to me, as 
 I have shown in an earlier chapter, as futile as the dog- 
 matic materialism which imdertakes to prove it impos- 
 sible. My point here is, however, that the man who de- 
 pends morally on the hope of immortality, is ipso facto 
 morally poorer than he who does not. There is a defect in 
 the cosmic patriotism of one who needs this assurance; 
 and in these days, when men are losing their hold, much 
 more extensively than is generally imagined, upon the 
 
DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 279 
 
 belief in a life hereafter, it becomes increasingly peril- 
 ous to seek in such a quicksand our moral anchorage. 
 The only way to true spiritual freedom and to ulti- 
 mate peace is to regard this life as the sphere of duty, 
 and to accept duty itself as the supreme and uncondi- 
 tional goal of existence. Such was the depth of moral 
 insight attained by St. Teresa, who, as the legend goes, 
 was seen with a lighted candle in one hand, and a 
 bucket of water in the other, and, being asked what 
 these were for, replied that she wished to bum up 
 heaven and to extinguish the flames of hell, in order 
 that men might love God with a love uncorrupted 
 either by fear of punishment or by hope of reward. 
 This heresy of the Catholic saint is an instance of the 
 finest ethical orthodoxy. If our attitude towards life 
 be thus centred on the fulfilment of duty, if we regard 
 this frame of things as having for its final cause the 
 manifestation of man's highest m.oral attributes, we 
 at once obtain a perfectly clear orientation. We are at 
 once committed to a willing acceptance of life, so long 
 as it can be made to last; and we shall be equally ready, 
 when our day closes, to sing with joy what Bacon calls 
 the sweetest canticle of all, "Now lettest thou thy 
 servant depart in peace." 
 
 The second problem which the fate of Scott forces 
 us to consider is that of the standard of success in 
 life. What constitutes success ? I put aside entirely 
 the vulgar materiahsm which would define it in terms 
 
28o CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 of cash or of newspaper publicity. I assume that none 
 of my readers needs to be converted from a criterion, 
 the fallacy of which is as obvious as its vulgarity. The 
 question I put to myself is whether even that finer 
 standard, which makes success dependent on the reali- 
 zation of one's conscious aim in life, does not also need 
 revision. That this is the criterion of success adopted 
 by many whose character and whose ethical insight 
 are entitled to our respect, does not, I think, need 
 proving. The defect of such a standard is that it 
 groups among failures those who have given to man- 
 kind the very finest and most heroic examples that 
 have irradiated the pathway of history. 
 
 Judging by this standard, Robert Scott failed, and 
 Roald Amundsen succeeded. Judging by it, too, mar- 
 tyrdom is inevitably a proof of failure. Yet do we 
 not feel that there is something amiss with a criterion 
 which classes among failures such men as Socrates, 
 Jesus, Sir Thomas More, Hugh Latimer, and Robert 
 Scott, and such a woman as Joan of Arc ? In regard to 
 each of these we feel, intuitively, the appositeness of 
 the note of triumph which Milton sounds over the 
 death of Samson, in the "Samson Agonistes": — 
 
 Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
 Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt, 
 Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair, 
 And what may quiet us in a death so noble. 
 
 Yet how can this attitude of exultation be made to 
 consist with the verdict of failure on such lives ? Is not 
 
DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 281 
 
 such triumphant acclamation the very hall-mark of 
 success ? 
 
 To return to our modem instance, has not Captain 
 Scott, by the manner of his death, conferred upon 
 humanity something far finer than his triiunphant re- 
 turn would have involved ? To say this is not to mini- 
 mize the tragedy of his loss; it is only to insist upon the 
 eternal value which mankind undaimtedly extracts 
 from the greatest temporal woes. The spontaneous 
 testimony of our consciousness affirms that the attain- 
 ment of the South Pole is worth far less, morally, than 
 the explorer's approximation to the high meridian of 
 spiritual triumph. The glory of the Antarctic Mid- 
 night Sun is dim indeed, when compared with the 
 "supersolar blaze" of the victory of the soul over the 
 body, and over the hostility of the outward world. 
 
 The criterion of success which I would seek to form- 
 ulate, must give a rational justification to the sponta- 
 neous feeling of triumph inspired in us by the heroic 
 death of the martyr. And, upon analysis, our way to 
 formulate such a criterion seems to become clear. It 
 is undeniably a fact that there is in every man and 
 woman something greater than the individual will. 
 Each of us is a transitory incarnation of a universal 
 will, however we may describe it — whether as the will 
 of God or of humanity. Now in the triumph of this 
 greater will — in the fulfilment of the organic law 
 of our spiritual being — there is attained a success 
 far outshining in splendour the achievement of one's 
 
282 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 conscious personal aim in life. The manifestation, in 
 despite of a hostile world, of those qualities of charac- 
 ter which command the immediate admiration of all 
 disinterested observers, constitutes the success of the 
 racial will; and frequently the very condition of this 
 success is the failure of one's conscious purpose. In 
 every case of martyrdom worthy of reverence, from 
 Socrates down to Robert Scott, it is this greater suc- 
 cess which accounts for the triumphant exaltation of 
 our hearts in the face of grimmest tragedy. Let us 
 say, then, that success consists either in fulfilling one's 
 conscious ^purpose or in exemplifying the organic trend 
 of the general will of man ; and only that life is a fail- 
 ure in which neither of these ends is attained. 
 
 Upon the rude monument which marks the last rest- 
 ing place of Scott, Bowers and Wilson, are inscribed 
 the closing words of Tennyson's "Ulysses": "To 
 strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." The lines 
 which end with these words interpret not only the 
 spirit of the explorer, but the whole history of human 
 advance. They nobly sum up the high adventure 
 of humanity, its aeonian striving against incalculable 
 odds: — 
 
 One equal temper of heroic hearts 
 
 Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
 
 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 
 
 In the unpathed desolation of the Antarctic snows, 
 cut off for ever from all that he held dear, knowing that 
 he should never see again the face of wife or child, and 
 
DEATH OF CAPTAIN SCOTT 283 
 
 awaiting the approach of death, Scott was able to say, 
 "I do not regret this journey." May we so live that 
 at the last — in utter desolation, if so it must be — 
 neither we nor they who look to us for example and 
 strength, shall find aught for regret in the tale of our 
 journey through the wilderness of this world. ^ 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 IN THE TIME OF WAR AND TUMULTS 
 
 September, igi4 
 It will be evident to the reader of the foregoing chap- 
 ters that they were penned and made ready for publi- 
 cation before the descent of that avalanche of insanity 
 by which at the present moment Europe is over- 
 whelmed. Without venturing upon prophecy, the 
 author cannot refrain from expressing the hope that 
 before these words meet the reader's eye, the war will 
 have become a memory. To write of such matters 
 under such circumstances is in itself difficult and em- 
 barrassing; but to one placed as the author is, the 
 difl&culty becomes so great that it may well seem an 
 unwarrantable temerity to attempt it at all. On the 
 other hand, silence at such a juncture, in one who had 
 presimied to offer counsel on social and moral issues, 
 might seem an evidence not alone of incompetence 
 but of cowardice. 
 
 Although, like all other members of Peace Societies, 
 whether in America, in England or in the European 
 countries, I had long been convinced that the com- 
 petition in naval armaments between England and 
 Germany, and in military equipment between Ger- 
 many and her Continental neighbours, must inevitably, 
 
EPILOGUE 285 
 
 at some time, issue in strife, yet the expected, when 
 it befell, seemed to me unexpected and incredible. I 
 little thought, when I landed in England on the first 
 of June last, that before I sailed again for home, I 
 should see my native country transformed as by magic 
 into an armed camp — its intellectual and industrial 
 life in abeyance, its credit system so disturbed that 
 Bank of England notes could with difficulty be ex- 
 changed for gold, and the maturing of liabihties had to 
 be deferred by means of a moratorium; its struggle for 
 social justice to the poor and to women arrested, and 
 its party strifes and class antagonisms quelled and 
 replaced by undreamed-of fraternity and singleness of 
 purpose. No layman, uninitiated in the subterranean 
 secrets of diplomacy, could have foreseen that the 
 treasonable talk of civil war in Ireland would so soon 
 be replaced by union between Nationalists and Ul- 
 stermen, both patriotically declaring in the House 
 of Commons that they would join in defending the 
 shores of Ireland against invasion from abroad. 
 
 The case was the same with the multitude of Ameri- 
 can tourists who went to taste the fruits of the long 
 centuries of culture-history treasured up in the cities 
 of continental Europe. Not one of them dreamed that 
 his holiday journey would develop into so unprece- 
 dented an adventure as for thousands of them it has 
 proved. Protracted security had dulled our imagina- 
 tions, and, like the dwellers in Messina and in ancient 
 Pompeii, we had forgotten the titanic energies beneath 
 
286 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 and around us, which could at any moment over- 
 whelm us and plunge the nations into lamentation 
 and mourning and woe. 
 
 The failure of the mass of us to anticipate the cata- 
 clysm at this time, however, can scarcely be ascribed 
 to defect of political insight. For all forecasting of the 
 course of human affairs necessarily presupposes the 
 continuance of average sanity among mankind, just as 
 scientific calculation assumes the continuous work- 
 ing of the normal and familiar forces of nature. Like 
 thousands of other Englishmen, I had travelled and 
 studied in Germany, and always, after the first few 
 days of my sojourns there, had well-nigh forgotten 
 that I was not at home. The identity of race, the 
 family connection of speech, the cultural similarity 
 between England and Germany, seemed certain 
 pledges of continuous amity. Never before, through 
 all the stormy centuries, had England and Germany 
 been at strife. The perfect kindliness of my German 
 hosts and friends, the solidarity of interests of individ- 
 uals and classes of both peoples, and of the two na- 
 tions, in their common efforts for the enduring inter- 
 ests of humanity, were so complete that the notion of 
 warfare between them seemed fantastic. Nor was it 
 to be supposed that those responsible for the policy of 
 the two countries could become oblivious to the dem- 
 onstrated fact that no nation, even though victorious, 
 can profit economically by war. These, however, are 
 considerations which it is idle to address to the capital- 
 
EPILOGUE 287 
 
 ists of international murder, to emperors drunk with 
 mutual jealousy and lust of power, or to professional 
 militarists aching to apply the skill and the weapons 
 they have mastered. 
 
 I will not disobey the wisest voice which has been 
 heard in these distracted times — that of our great 
 and revered President — by seeking to analyze the im- 
 mediate causes of this war or to apportion the blame 
 for its precipitation. This is not the time, nor am I 
 the man, to cast a verdict which only the calm and 
 fully informed judgment of posterity will be able to 
 render with perfect equity. Yet there are some con- 
 siderations which even at this moment may serve to 
 comfort the consciences of all who, during the past 
 ten years, have laboured for a policy by which peace 
 could be not only maintained but effectively insured 
 for the future. To me it is a satisfaction to recall 
 that during those years I protested many times in 
 England, by speech and writing, against what seemed 
 the mistaken and dangerous foreign policy of my na- 
 tive country. But the voice of that tiny minority of 
 us which pleaded for a rapprochement with Germany, 
 and against the dragging of England at the chariot- 
 wheels of Russia, was as that of one crying in the 
 wilderness. The influence of newspapers openly or 
 covertly seeking to promote the interest of the arma- 
 ment capitalists was sufficiently loud and widespread 
 to drown the voice of humanity and prudence, and 
 to keep public opinion in such a condition that no 
 
288 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 effective opposition could be raised to Sir Edward 
 Grey's pro-Russian undertakings. 
 
 On the other hand, the spirit of impartiality de- 
 mands the recognition of two facts : first, that the lay 
 world is not in possession of all the data, and that 
 there may have been many reasons for the policy 
 pursued by Sir Edward Grey which it has not yet been 
 possible for him to disclose; and, secondly, that efforts 
 have undoubtedly been made more than once by the 
 British Cabinet to arrive at a basis of understanding 
 with Germany. We must not forget those " unofficial' ' 
 secret missions undertaken by Lord Haldane — a 
 *'good European" if ever there was one; nor can we 
 fail to perceive that obstacles too great for him to 
 overcome must have been formidable indeed. 
 
 The outstanding lesson of the immediate situation 
 is the fact that nowhere in the world has democracy as 
 yet attained to the control of foreign policy. Here in 
 America it is mistakenly assumed by most journalists 
 that in this matter there is a great difference between 
 the United States and the monarchies and Kaiser- 
 doms of Europe. The difference, however, is by no 
 means so great as it appears: and for this reason, — 
 that whenever among a group of nations one or two 
 are despotically governed, and conduct their inter- 
 national affairs in secrecy and upon the principles of 
 Machiavelli,^ it is impossible to have publicity and 
 
 1 Note, for example, the candid admission of Prince von Biilow, 
 in his Imperial Germany, that national egoism is the only standard 
 
EPILOGUE 289 
 
 democratic control of those affairs in any of the other 
 nations. When, several months ago, President Wilson 
 urged the passing of the Panama Tolls Repeal Bill, he 
 told Congress that if that measure were not passed the 
 American Government would be involved in interna- 
 tional difficulties of great delicacy and complexity. 
 No ordinary American citizen and no journalist — 
 nay, not even the members of the Senate and House 
 of Representatives — really knew to what he alluded. 
 And certainly that minority of writers in our Press 
 which last spring was clamouring for war with Mexico, 
 and sneering at the Secretary of State for his splendid 
 and successful efforts to avert it, was altogether oblivi- 
 ous of the world-wide conflagration which might 
 easily have been precipitated if their bellicose desires 
 had been granted. Democratic as America is, it is no 
 whit more so than are England and France; and the 
 idea that the mass of the electors here controls the 
 foreign policy of the United States is virtually as com- 
 plete a delusion as it would be in France or England. 
 The foreign policy of democracies is controlled by the 
 Czars and Kaisers of despotic countries, since these, 
 having the power to make war, can force defensive 
 militarism upon the nations they menace. 
 Yet the American idea, delusion as it is, defines an 
 
 that governs German foreign policy. Remember, too, that in this 
 matter he is only more candid than the statesmen and diplomatists 
 of other nations, since all have acted upon the principle which he 
 confesses. I would refer also to the history of the pan-German 
 movement in Professor Roland Usher's masterly treatise on Pan- 
 Germanism. (Boston: Houghton MiflElin Company, 1913.) 
 
290 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 ideal. Throughout Europe and America democracy 
 ought to do this thing which it is here mistakenly be- 
 lieved that democracy does. One cannot but hope that 
 as a result of this war there will be such an advance 
 towards constitutionalism in Russia, Austria and Ger- 
 many that the Weltpolitik of those three nations will 
 actually be dominated by their electorates. Only then 
 will it be possible for the same kind of control to 
 be actualized in England, France and America. And, 
 step by step with the gradual attainment of this ideal, 
 the following lessons must be learned, and the condi- 
 tions which they show to be necessary for the main- 
 tenance of peace must be brought about: — 
 
 (i) Each nation must realize that hitherto the end 
 which every Government has consciously or uncon- 
 sciously laboured for in international polity has been 
 not the good of its nation as such, but the advantage 
 of capitalists. England fought the Boer War for the 
 benefit of the cosmopolitan financiers who controlled 
 the diamond mines of Kimberley and the goldfields 
 of the Witwatersrand. Behind the Mexican chaos lay 
 perceptibly the conflicting interests of the European 
 and American capitalists of the oil industry. The 
 French people had no concern in the conquest of 
 Morocco; here again it was the desire of capitalists 
 (and not alone French capitalists, but the financiers 
 of all Europe) to exploit the resources of the country 
 which brought about the shedding of blood. Thus has 
 it been until now with the diplomacy of the entire 
 
EPILOGUE 291 
 
 world; and not one of the wars of recent times — 
 least of all the present war — would have been en- 
 tered upon, had the decision of international questions 
 been governed by consideration for the interests of 
 nations as such. 
 
 It is here that we touch upon the essential weakness 
 of the celebrated argument of Mr. Norman Angell. 
 It is perfectly true, as he contends, that as a whole 
 and in the long run a nation inevitably loses by war, 
 even though it be victorious in the technical military 
 sense. But it is not true that groups of capitalists, rep- 
 resenting interests sufficiently strong to enable them 
 at critical moments to sway the balance between peace 
 and war, are bound to lose by the wars which they pro- 
 voke. International capitalism, as it has developed in 
 Europe and America during the past fifty years, has 
 demonstrated itself to be a thing so soulless that it 
 will always act for the furtherance of its interests, no 
 matter what nation may suffer or be ruined in the 
 process. The democratic Weltpolitik of the future is 
 bound to see to it (even though experience should 
 prove that this can only be done by setting up the 
 economic regime of socialism) that these interests 
 shall be deprived of their decisive voice in the settle- 
 ment of international diifferences. 
 
 (2) The next pre - requisite of a civilized foreign 
 policy must be the abolition of all private trading, 
 both international and intra-national, in armaments 
 and lethal weapons of every description. The nations 
 
292 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 of Europe are to-day plying their mutual destruction 
 with weapons which they have made for one another. 
 The c)niicism of a firm at Birmingham or Essen ex- 
 porting, for private profit, weapons which will quite 
 probably be used against Englishmen or Germans, is 
 so inhuman that no adequate characterization of it is 
 possible. Yet, under the hypnotizing idolatry of busi- 
 ness in which we are all involved, we have patiently 
 suffered it to go on. Here again, we must remember, 
 the beam is in our own eye as well as in that of Europe. 
 Had there been war between the United States and 
 Mexico, our men would have been shot down with 
 guns suppKed to Mexico from America. Now, there is 
 only one way to deal effectually with this situation, 
 and that is by abolishing all private manufacture of 
 and trading in weapons of destruction. Each nation 
 must make this business a national monopoly, and in- 
 ternational law must prohibit any nation from supply- 
 ing any other with armaments. Only in this way can 
 such scandals be obviated as those which were recently 
 brought to light in Germany — where the noble So- 
 cialist Liebknecht exposed the corrupt control exer- 
 cised by the Krupps over the Press and over import- 
 ant departments of the Government — and in Japan, 
 where naval officers have been convicted of receiving 
 bribes, also from the Krupps. I have already alluded to 
 the state of things in England, where influential news^ 
 papers are controlled in the sinister interests of the 
 armament monopolists. If there have not been scan- 
 
EPILOGUE 293 
 
 dais of the same kind in the United States, it is still 
 notorious that incalculable evil is done here through 
 private trading in pistols. Schemes of regulation and 
 licensing cannot prevent this harm so long as private 
 firms are suffered to have a pecuniary interest in sup- 
 plying revolvers to anybody who wishes for them. In 
 Chicago, there is never apparently any difficulty in the 
 way of a highway robber who wishes to provide him- 
 self with the deadly tools of his anti-social business; 
 the result being that homicides in Chicago are more 
 than twelve times as frequent as in London. If the 
 trade in arms were monopolized by the Federal Gov- 
 ernment, this mountainous scandal — which is so con- 
 stantly before our eyes that we have become psychi- 
 cally blind to it — would be rendered impossible. 
 
 (3) The objective of all humanitarians [who be- 
 lieve in the inviolability of nations should be the 
 establishment of an effective treaty between America, 
 Germany, France and England^ for the maintenance 
 of peace among themselves and for its enforcement 
 throughout the rest of the world. With democratic 
 control of foreign policy in each of the nations speci- 
 fied, such a scheme would become feasible, Utopian as 
 it may sound at the present moment. These four na- 
 tions, reinforced as they would be by their colonial 
 dominions, would represent a force such as no con- 
 ceivable combination of other powers could dream of 
 attacking; and the pact might in time be extended 
 to include Russia. A perfectly impartial court for the 
 
294 CRITICISMS OF LIFE 
 
 adjudication of international differences — impartial, 
 because it should represent all the nations, small as 
 well as great, with equal delegations — should be 
 established, as also an international police, both by 
 sea and land, sufficient to prevent any aggression as 
 between other nations. No country would venture 
 upon the exploitation of its weaker neighbours if it 
 knew that it would have to encounter the armed forces 
 not only of its victim but of this invincible union of 
 world-powers. 
 
 It is idle to say that such a fourfold joining of hands 
 in the cause of peace is impossible. If it were so, the 
 hope of the pacific development of humanity would 
 be a delusion. Such a union requires only that level 
 of common honesty and mutual good faith among 
 nations which already exists, which is the necessary 
 pre-condition of the commerce of the world, and 
 which would have sufficed to prevent the present war 
 in Europe save for that sinister influence of emperors 
 and of armament-mongers which our hypothesis as- 
 sumes to be eliminated from the future situation. 
 
 Amid the clash of those peoples over whom the de- 
 stro3dng angel is passing, so that soon, alas! there 
 will be no house where there is not one dead, we 
 in America have cause for unspeakable thanksgiving. 
 We shall prove ourselves unworthy of our high destiny 
 if we suffer the feuds and the estranging hatreds of the 
 Old World to blaze out on our soil. To all Americans 
 of European birth who genuinely give to America 
 
EPILOGUE 295 
 
 their highest loyalty, I, born in England, a candi- 
 date for the citizenship of this Republic, offer the hand 
 of fellowship, and this word of comfort in the grief that 
 afficts us all: Remember that, though your countries 
 and my country are at war, our country is at peace 
 with all mankind. May she preserve her unity, and 
 that nobly disinterested tradition in foreign policy 
 manifested, to the admiration of all Europe, in Cuba 
 and Mexico: so that, when the vials of apocalyptic 
 wrath beyond the seas are spent, she may enter to 
 motion peace — the welcome arbitress of Europe's 
 dissensions, the trusted daughter, first of England, 
 but in lesser degree of all the nations now at strife, 
 called in to cover their shame and to mediate the 
 purgation of their sins. 
 
 THE END 
 
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