n
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER 
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW.
 
 UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME. 
 
 Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, price 8s. 6d. 
 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES HINTON. 
 
 Edited by ELLICE HOPKINS. 
 
 With an Introduction by Sir W. W. GULL, Bart., and 
 Portrait engraved on Steel by C. H. JEENS. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, 55. 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 
 
 Selections from the Manuscripts of the late JAMES HINTON. 
 Edited by CAROLINE HADDON. 
 
 New Edition. Fcap. 8vo, cloth limp, is. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 
 
 By JAMES HINTON. 
 
 LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO.
 
 Ex LibriS 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER 
 
 AND 
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES HINTON 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 MARGARET HINTON 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., i PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1884
 
 gaflantgnc -press 
 
 BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 As the long years bear away the echo of that voice which 
 was my very life, I feel, and all who loved him feel, that 
 my husband was never more truly with us in spirit than 
 he is now. The throbbings of his heart are repeated in 
 ours who read his words, and his hope for the world 
 a hope whose credentials are the more perfect love of 
 the whole human brotherhood is ever finding a wider 
 response. 
 
 It has seemed to me that the later manuscripts, of 
 which this volume contains the first yet published, should 
 no longer be withheld. The responsibility of keeping 
 back thoughts which, surely, are now urgently needed, 
 would be greater than that of presenting them in their 
 present form, especially remembering, as I do, that I am 
 carrying out his often-repeated wish that these manu- 
 scripts should be read, so that, if there were any truth 
 in them, it might bear fruit. He used to say, " If my 
 ideas are false, then the truth must be something better, 
 and I am glad." 
 
 I need not apologise for the informal style and arrange- 
 ment of these writings: they have the advantage of coming 
 direct from the author himself, the passages having been 
 written down each day as the thoughts came to him. I
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 cannot tell how much he would have altered for publica- 
 tion, what strong words he might have withheld or even 
 intensified, for he was ever open to fresh light and fresh 
 impressions. It is certain that some obvious inaccuracies, 
 such as that on p. 1 8 I , would have been corrected, but I 
 have let them stand, feeling that these papers are a more 
 valuable record of the writer's mind if left untouched. 
 
 The following letter, written to me in 1873, tne 7 ear 
 in which the chief portion of Part I. of "The Law-Breaker" 
 was written, will perhaps throw some light upon his 
 choice of the title : * 
 
 " Here are two opposed sets of people : breakers of 
 the law on one hand and keepers of the law the good 
 people on the other. Now Christ stood between keepers 
 and breakers of the ' law ; ' between Jew and Gentile ; 
 fearers and obeyers of God and outcasts disobeying Him. 
 What was His method ? It was not to bring, or try to 
 bring, the breakers back to obey, to reunite them with 
 the obeyers ; it was to call breakers and obeyers alike 
 to duties they both alike had disregarded. To bring 
 them both alike to new, uuthought-of duties, the fulfilling 
 of which made the laws which were so broken not 
 necessary. That was His remedy ; to bring men to see 
 and fulfil the duties the omission of which alone had made 
 the laws to be imposed. He did not bring the refusers of 
 the laws the Jewish laws to obey them ; He supplied 
 the omission the want of love to God within the heart 
 
 * An article in "The Modern Review " for April 1883, called "The 
 Law-Breaker," by Miss Caroline Haddon, was written in ignorance of the 
 existence of this series of MSS., but being founded on conversations with 
 Mr. Hinton, it forms a useful commentary on the leading thoughts in 
 this volume.
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 which had made the laws necessary. He put away the 
 laws by putting away that which made the need for them. 
 That was what He did when He stood in presence of 
 disorder and division. And is it not He who has left 
 us an example that we should walk in His steps ? Are 
 not disorder and division ever to be treated so ? by seek- 
 ing the things the duty the omission of which has 
 made necessary the laws that are broken. How can we 
 expect laws to be obeyed which are made necessary only 
 by the omission of something ? So what a fact it was 
 that Christ took away the sin of the world. He took it 
 away by bringing men law-obeyer and law-breaker alike 
 to see a right, a call of God's, they had both alike 
 overlooked." 
 
 I have no doubt that a feeling of surprise almost 
 of anger will arise in the mind of the reader towards 
 some portions of this book. It will seem as though 
 many of our best and truest feelings were done violence 
 to or ignored. It must be borne in mind, however, that 
 in thinking, as in life, the process of development is 
 carried on by temporary suppressions, in order that these 
 left-out elements may be restored with fuller power when 
 other hidden things have been duly recognised : remem- 
 bering this, I think we shall find that any disregard is in 
 appearance only. 
 
 In proportion as we have faith in the principle that in 
 thought and in society life comes through death that 
 the good passes away only that the better may be we 
 shall be able to give up what seems highest to us, know- 
 ing that there must be a still higher aim set before the 
 race. Such a yielding, however, Mr. Hinton always felt
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 must only come at the unmistakable call of human needs. 
 And if this principle should touch even what is most 
 sacred and best in human life there too we may summon 
 all our faith and be ready for seeming loss, knowing that 
 failure cannot be the end. It may be that our highest 
 ideals can be realised without any change of form only 
 let us be sure that it is the true ideal we strive for, and 
 not its appearance merely ; that human needs do guide 
 us, and not a right that is cruel. Because of the tremu- 
 lous intensity with which we maintain our holy things, 
 the mere thought of any change is like death to us. 
 What if the needs of the perishing constrain it ? Will 
 not our treasure die to live ? 
 
 If any social change is even hinted at, people are 
 ready to think that a convulsion of society is meditated, 
 an uprooting of our really useful regulations ; but no 
 one who reads carefully what Mr. Hinton says need be in 
 fear of this. The change must come from within. Mr. 
 Hinton believed that the desire for a truly human law of 
 service must first be taught to children, and that it will 
 take some generations to effect a general change. Mean- 
 while there may be much blundering and many lives sacri- 
 ficed, but the redudio ad absurdum of our life is coming to 
 be recognised, the system of competition and the avowed 
 maintenance of the principle of "each for himself" bears 
 fruits too evil to be endured, and we must begin anew 
 on another basis. Perhaps we have missed the reading of 
 the true basis taught us hundreds of years ago, and our 
 mistakes, and the pain and distress of the world, may be 
 guiding us back to its true rendering. It is this path 
 that seemed the hope of humanity to one who suffered
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 for the sorrow of the world more than is given to many. 
 Of this hope he wrote to me in the last year of his life in 
 these words : 
 
 " All things come to me with one assurance of hope ; 
 because they always come as a better and completer vision 
 of that great end which man's life is working out. All 
 things come to me with one assurance ; a better kind of 
 goodness than men have been thinking of, of late, is 
 destined for them, and the time is even now come for 
 recognising it and beginning to seek it. All good and 
 all evil, all successes and all failure, speak alike to me 
 this one message : Seek a better goodness. Failure in 
 the attempt at one thing is no evidence that the attempt 
 at another will not succeed. So, love, I am always full 
 of interests, and always have an inexhaustible source of 
 joy. Always of the thing I desire I have a full assurance, 
 one ever growing and becoming clearer and more con- 
 vinced only my ' quickly ' and ' soon,' perhaps, are 
 what seem to others very long and far off: by quick I / 
 mean two hundred years. That is the soonest for any 
 great universal change that can be even imagined. And 
 that seems quick to me ; for besides that it is not long, one 
 may think also of the many individual deliverances that 
 will be achieved in the coming. And I hope more and 
 more that there will be less of fighting and distress and 
 pain in the process than it seemed as if there must be. 
 The world is different from what it was ; and its ears 
 are more open, and its discontent and feeling that it does 
 not know, and must be ready and prepared for the pro- 
 foundest changes, greater than probably they ever were. 
 The time is, above all, one of tolerance and recognition
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 that there must be differences, and so the necessity of 
 changes. We must not think too much that the course 
 of things must repeat itself. We are the inheritors of 
 the labours of the previous ages, and do reap the fruit 
 of their toils and sufferings. And so much is achieved in 
 the admission of Christ's thoughts, even in name." 
 
 I wish to record with gratitude my indebtedness to 
 my friend Mr. Henry Havelock Ellis for his valuable co- 
 operation in preparing this volume. It is at my request 
 that he has written the following introductory remarks. 
 
 M. H.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 HINTON'S intellectual activity falls naturally into the usual 
 three periods. The first, the period of " anticipation," 
 as he might himself have termed it, includes " Man and 
 his Dwelling-Place," published in 1859, and ends with 
 "Life in Nature," in 1862. The next period was one 
 of suppression, of training in practical life, of prepara- 
 tion, mostly unconscious, for larger future activity. His 
 temporary adoption of a literary career produced after 
 1862 nothing of permanent value, and on resuming the 
 practice of his profession he ceased to write altogether. 
 " The Mystery of Pain," which might be considered an 
 exception to the general barrenness of this period, although 
 published in 1866, belongs both in inception and largely 
 in execution to the year 1862. The third period of 
 Hinton's intellectual activity began at the commence- 
 ment of 1870, or a little earlier, and was only ended 
 by death in 1875. This latest and mature period was 
 also that of greatest energy. Hinton wrote more during 
 these five years than during all the previous years, al- 
 though he published nothing except a few short articles. 
 His new attitude towards moral questions was both the 
 starting-point and the centre of his third stage, and it is 
 curious to observe how this attitude had a reflected action 
 on all that he wrote. It introduced a new vitality, a 
 new freedom. It was not till 1870 that Hinton attained
 
 xii INTRODUCTION, 
 
 his own most characteristic note on many other subjects 
 besides morals. He gained also a fresh power of expres- 
 sion, more simple and flexible than his earlier style ; 
 and the occasional force or felicity by which, rather than 
 by its average excellence, his earlier style was distin- 
 guished gave place to a great extent as, for instance, when 
 discussing man's relation to Nature or the function of 
 impulse in human action to a lyrical passion which is 
 of rarer and more individual strain. Perhaps this is best 
 seen in some passages of the unpublished " Autobiography." 
 The first part of "The Law-Breaker" represents the tran- 
 sition from the second to the third period. Chronologically 
 it extends from the end of 1871 to the end of 1874, 
 although the last few pages only were written during 
 1874. In the development of Hinton's thought, however, 
 it comes somewhat earlier ; it shows in what way he con- 
 sidered his ethical conceptions to be related to the teach- 
 ing of Jesus. This first part of "The Law-Breaker" is 
 printed in exactly the same order as Hinton wrote it, 
 with the omission of some passages that are either 
 obscure or are mere repetitions, and also with, in a few 
 places, slight verbal alterations, when such seemed 
 necessary to bring out the writer's meaning. It has not 
 been thought advisable to attempt any re-arrangement. 
 Hinton himself considered that his thoughts had in the 
 order of date a real organic relation. " A chief difficulty," 
 he wrote, "is in the order of my thoughts ; it is hard 
 to get a good external order, an order for presentation. 
 The right order for presentation is not the same as that 
 for thought, and I have a difficulty here from the very 
 fact of my thoughts being in good order in the latter 
 respect. ... I see why this should be. The order for 
 thinking is a vital or organic order, an order of life or 
 growth ; the order for presentation is an anatomical order.
 
 INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 The various parts grow together ; they are one and come 
 contemporaneously, but for demonstration they must be 
 separated, taken each one by itself, the very divisions 
 being partly artificial." 
 
 A continuous argument runs through the whole of the 
 first part of " The Law-Breaker." It is Jesus who is the 
 breaker of laws, that is, of arbitrary laws, setting up in- 
 stead the play of natural law, the response to human needs. 
 But in His treatment of arbitrary laws Jesus was the 
 type of all men of genius. Genius is the law-breaker. 
 And Hinton is never weary of repeating that the man of 
 genius is the man who first finds a new and easier path 
 into which all may enter. He is simply the point of 
 least resistance through which Nature passes into human 
 life. So the method of Jesus, the method of all men of 
 genius, has been the assertion of a law which is binding 
 upon all, because it is the only law which all can fulfil. 
 Even in asserting the authority of Christ, Hinton seems 
 to say, the natural law of a true regard to facts is asserted, 
 to the destruction of all rigid institutions. And if I had 
 to choose a motto for "The Law-Breaker," it would be that 
 which is so often repeated in various forms throughout 
 Hinton's later MSS. : " Man's life is but genius writ 
 large." This appears to be the main argument of the 
 first part of " The Law-Breaker." It will be seen that it 
 resolves itself largely into an attempt to give reality and 
 vividness, a true natural meaning, to the words and 
 actions of Jesus. Both those who accept and those who 
 reject the authority of Jesus will not always be ready to 
 receive Hinton's often careless and arbitrary method of 
 interpretation. He himself seems to have been sensible 
 of the weak character of his exegesis, and in the " Auto- 
 biography " he points out that he uses the New Testa- 
 ment writers in the same way as they used the Old. But
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 when this is put aside it will still, I think, be found that 
 Hinton's conception of the character and work of Jesus 
 retains a considerable degree of force and fascination. 
 He was a man with the yieldingness of genius, sensitive 
 to the elemental touch of Nature, struggling, passionate, 
 tempted, only attaining towards the end of his career the 
 statement of that " new commandment," Love one another, 
 which, as Hinton conceived it, superseded all other 
 moral laws. Throughout this first part the reader will 
 find many characteristics which will recall Hinton's 
 earlier work. The conception of the mimis, of a negative 
 conceived as positive, is still used, though to a far less 
 extent than in " Philosophy and Religion." Thus he 
 generally prefers to speak of selfishness as " not-regard." 
 There is the same over-emphasis in the frequent employ- 
 ment, for example, of italics, and in the use of capital 
 letters for Nature, Man, Genius, &c., even when not 
 distinctly personified, and for the personal pronoun 
 referring to, for example, Jesus. This latter is so frequent 
 that it has here been made invariable. Such pseudo- 
 metaphysical expressions as " the self," in the sense of 
 " selfishness," are constantly used, although the crude 
 conception of altruism which marks some of the earlier 
 writings, as well as the word itself (see, for instance, p. 
 287), gave place later on to a more exact and scientific 
 conception. 
 
 The second part of " The Law-Breaker " is, unlike the 
 first, made up of isolated passages from various series of 
 MSS., especially that entitled " Genius." They are brought 
 together because they throw various lights on the subjects 
 touched on in the first part, and, although not arranged 
 in chronological order, they cover the same years. Among 
 them will be found passages of considerable importance 
 for the right understanding of Hinton's later position in
 
 INTRODUCTION. xv 
 
 regard to genius, morals and religion. The passages 
 bearing on theology have been introduced to show the 
 last developments of many of tfye thoughts which occupy 
 so large a position in the four volumes of printed MSS., 
 and the volume of selections from them which has been 
 published under the title of " Philosophy and Religion." 
 It will be seen that Hinton still seems to retain implicitly 
 the conception of God worked out in greater detail in the 
 earlier MSS. as the reality rather than the cause of things 
 " whatever truly is " or, as he wrote in the last year 
 of his life : " God is the reason of things, the reason of 
 our experience," and also in the sense (equally clear in 
 the early MSS.) of humanity. In the later MSS., how- 
 ever, will be found a more distinct conception of the 
 transitory nature of religions, of the permanent nature 
 of religion. After 1873 there are few passages of either 
 a theological or a metaphysical character. Metaphysics 
 became for Hinton a kind of cosmic game. And in the 
 " Autobiography," where chiefly, perhaps, this transformed 
 metaphysics finds its place, God and Nature are beings 
 of what might be called a mythopceic rather than a 
 theological or scientific character. 
 
 I have been careful to point out the date of " The 
 Law-Breaker." This is very necessary in the case of a 
 writer who developed so continuously, so regularly, and, 
 during his last period, so rapidly. In " The Coming of 
 the Law," which was commenced in 1871 and written 
 up till a few months before his death, it is possible to 
 obtain a glimpse of the last developments of Hinton's 
 ethical thoughts, and for this reason it forms the most 
 important part of the present volume. The passages of 
 which it consists have been selected from a series called 
 " Subjects," and were doubtless intended for subsequent 
 development. Although, unlike the first part of " The
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Law-Breaker," " The Coming of the Law " consists of 
 selected passages, these passages are in nearly every case 
 given entire, as Hinton wrote them, and always in strict 
 chronological order. A considerable portion of " Subjects " 
 that written during the greater part of 1874 is un- 
 fortunately missing in the MS. as it at present exists. 
 It is possible that it formed part of a large quantity 
 of MS. which Hinton himself destroyed during his last 
 illness at St. Michael's. A word may be said as to the 
 title here adopted. Hinton frequently used " The Coming 
 of the Law " as a title during the last few years of his 
 life, both in " Subjects " and as the heading of a distinct 
 series of papers, which, with the exception of a few sheets, 
 cannot now be found. It seems, indeed, to form a neces- 
 sary antithesis to "The Law-Breaker." Another title 
 which Hinton latterly sometimes adopted suggests itself: 
 " The Mystery of Pleasure." But while this well indicates 
 the relation which, as Hinton insisted, his later thoughts 
 bear to " The Mystery of Pain," it seems almost too narrow 
 to cover the new basis of life suggested by these passages, 
 which contain, perhaps in a more clear and concise form 
 than anywhere else, although for that very reason more 
 liable to misinterpretation, Hinton's latest and most 
 mature thoughts on morals. The short preface is that 
 which he himself prefixed to them. Had there been no 
 such preface, the following passage, written in 1871 as 
 a preface to the second volume of the printed MSS., but 
 which gave place to a simple glossary of words used with 
 special meanings, might well have served as an introduc- 
 tion : " These thoughts are rather communicated to than 
 evolved from my own mind. Therefore I can without 
 vanity assert that I believe them to be both unique and 
 important. Yet I am in no haste to see them either 
 arresting the attention or receiving the appreciation of
 
 INTRODUCTION. xvii 
 
 the many. True faith can afford delay. At present I 
 commend them to those souls who are as involuntarily 
 attracted to them as mine has been and is involuntarily 
 inspired by them. There is now a wide-spread, hard 
 tension upon heart and life such as never was before. 
 There will be as its results a spring ; a level hardly 
 glimpsed now will be seen and attained. * I, if I be 
 lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.' " 
 
 It is proposed that this volume should be followed, as 
 soon as possible, by the publication of a selection of 
 Hinton's writings on ethics, arranged in the best and 
 most complete order of presentation. But I venture to 
 hope that, in the meanwhile, these brief sketches may 
 serve to exhibit in outline something of the mind of one 
 of whom it may perhaps be said, that no modern man 
 has shown a finer strain of ethical genius. 
 
 H. HAVELOCK ELLIS.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 IF I believe that Christ is divine, that is of no moment. 
 We all wish to know what man He was ; His mental con- 
 stitution must express the laws of human nature, even as 
 His physical life. His was the constitution of genius. 
 And why should not even early superstitions have re- 
 mained in His mind ? Has not even the very best work 
 been done under such conditions ? Nay, is not some 
 kind of enlightenment hindrance rather than help ? 
 
 How should one " numbered with " transgressors not 
 rule them ? Has He not fulfilled the condition ? This 
 is to be said to them : " Here is the pattern of you. You 
 are not what you truly are ; you do not know yourselves, 
 nor see yourselves aright. Here is the law-breaker, your 
 model. Be what you are ; at least do your own work ; 
 we do not ask you to do other." 
 
 It is seen that Christ introduced an enthusiasm of 
 humanity ; but we need to see how this very passion
 
 2 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 truly existed before (in the self-form) in superstitions. 
 It is arbitrary still while thus thought of; it demands 
 to be seen necessary. It was there, but against its own 
 nature ; that is, against service, bound against it by 
 being in things ; that is, dictated by regard to the self- 
 goodness. But because in their beginning these forms 
 were for service, in being swept away for service they 
 are but fulfilling their own life. 
 
 That this law of life is what Christ's action expressed, 
 is no argument that He was not God. Does not God 
 ever work by means ? Is not necessity the very stamp 
 of His action ? And had not the fulness of time to come, 
 the preparation to be made complete ? The work that is 
 a function has exactly that character. 
 
 What Christ did was this : He asked, Is your right 
 the true right ? This is what is always wanted ; to ask 
 not only if we are doing right, but if our right is the 
 true right. Is it not strange we go on so long not doing 
 it ? Here, in truth, is there not a use and meaning in 
 political economy, formulating for man the proof that his 
 rights are not the true rights, so that the answer is 
 already given before the question is asked ? Is it not 
 striking that this is done now ; so that there can no more 
 be any question of the basis ? It truly shows, though in 
 a strangely inverted way, how much man has gained, 
 how much more true life, or " force " ready to become 
 our life, there is in humanity now ; how ready it is for a 
 new basis of its life, how full of passion for good not 
 suffered to be true to its own nature. Man has been 
 able now to recognise that there is another possible basis 
 of life, so that he can draw the contrast, and say, " It is
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 3 
 
 not that but this." This surely is most significant ; it 
 is as if he were conscious of a tendency within him to a 
 different basis, so that he had need to define which it 
 was, lest there should be a mistake. How full of mean- 
 ing this is. And not only that he has not been able 
 clearly to distinguish it, and say it, but that, in spite of 
 his saying it, with its consequence of trying to accept it 
 (and so with the utmost intensity binding the false rights 
 on himself), in spite of his thus making himself invert 
 his life and hold it against Nature, it has been able to 
 exist and to show so much goodness. 
 
 Ever this is wanted : to ask not only if we are doing 
 the right, but if our right is the true right. Christ has 
 shown us the way ; and as now there is a special pre- 
 paration, as it were, for the asking of this question, a 
 prepared demonstration that ours is the wrong right, 
 so before He asked that question was there not a special 
 prepared demonstration also then ? 
 
 Is Christ seen in anything more than in this : "If the 
 tree is bad let its fruits be bad ? " His heart and thought 
 were on the basis. See how we say now : we must act 
 for self " in this world," but we can get some good fruits 
 while we are waiting. We cannot, so : only deception. 
 If it were true that we must have acting for self at the 
 basis, our only wisdom would be to sweep away all good- 
 ness and all thought of it ; and seek only pleasure 
 pleasure with prudence. 
 
 Does not the " temptation " become more intelligible ? 
 Thus " the kingdoms of the earth " is the temptation to use 
 His powers for His own advantage. Conscious as He was 
 becoming of the power within Him, here was the oppor-
 
 4 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 tunity to use them and be a ruler. The Devil the self 
 tempted Him. Then " Make the stones bread ; " again, 
 use your power for yourself ; a thing quite right to do, that 
 you will do for others ; do it to feed yourself. Is this 
 the thought ? So does not the narrative mean the time 
 when genius is tempted, when it comes first to be con- 
 scious that the old law is not the true law the time 
 when it is tempted to break the law for itself? 
 
 It appears then that we are not told of the first and 
 second stages of Christ's life ; that in which He obeyed 
 the false law, and that in which He broke it not knowing 
 it was right to break it, even unconsciously. 
 
 Christ broke the laws the Jews cared most about ; He 
 blasphemed God by making Himself equal to Him (at 
 least they thought so) ; and did not keep the Sabbath. 
 To keep the Sabbath was not a moral law, and for that 
 very reason it is probable that the Jews cared about it 
 most of all. For (is it not striking ? ) the law which we 
 care most about (that which is expressed in marriage) is 
 ceremonial, strictly a ceremonial law ; a matter of form 
 and arrangement, not moral in any other sense than as 
 the Sabbath is ; not even so much so, probably ; a matter 
 in regard to which different usages have existed, different 
 orders been advocated by men most worthy. 
 
 Is not this clearly the idea of " the Spirit " sent to us ? 
 It is the removal from us of the necessity for restraint ; 
 for putting our powers, that is, to neutralise each other, 
 and making them ineffective. That is giving us power 
 indeed, but see what power it is ; not any new one, but 
 simply the use of the powers we have. And at least we 
 may say that this is the best power to give us. (Before
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 5 
 
 you give a sick man more powers than his own, first 
 restore to him those that are naturally his.) It is the 
 power above all for us ; and is it not truly a power so 
 great that we do not want more ? That is giving us the 
 true power of man ; is it . possible a man should want 
 more ? Is it conceivable a being should be advantaged by 
 having more power than belongs to its nature ? Give us 
 the true human power, and that is the best and utmost 
 gift that can be given us. And it comes simply by not 
 having to restrain ; that is it ; and so this is what the 
 gift of " the Spirit " must be. (Genius again shows this : 
 its power is simply that it has not to restrain itself: 
 which, again, is the same as saying that the self is cast 
 out from it ; for the self brings restraint.) 
 
 Could any thought be worse than ours of " virtue " in 
 interfering with others' pleasures being virtuous at other 
 people's expense ? For this is what it truly is. So do 
 we not see Christ's words more truly, " Neither do I 
 condemn thee ; " silencing the crowd first, He also does not 
 judge. And when He says : " Go, and sin no more," 
 what is it He says ? It is not : " Go, and see that man 
 no more," but this, " Go and serve self no more ; no 
 more act for self; the one sin common to you and all 
 the rest." 
 
 Can we not feel how Christ said those things the Jews 
 counted blasphemy ? Were they not forced from Him by 
 the misunderstandings of His hearers, so that He was not 
 even aware until He had said them ? Would He ever 
 have said them if they had not come thus unconsciously 
 and unintended, though when said He felt them true ? 
 So will inconsistencies be found, especially in the early 
 part of His life ; even as in other men who have made
 
 6 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 the true laws ? For instance, " My Father is greater 
 than I ; " and " I and My Father are one." 
 
 This is striking too, that Christ seems, if not always 
 yet almost so, to have let the act of disobeying the law 
 (whatever law He thus " fulfilled ") precede the explain- 
 ing and reason of what He did. The explaining seems to 
 have come always as a reply to blame. This may not 
 mean a distinct intention, an implied affirmation that 
 that was the right way. May it not indicate rather the 
 freedom from self-consciousness with which He acted, how 
 perfectly He had fulfilled His own precept to become as 
 a little child ? Did He not say and do the things that 
 incurred such blame wholly unthinking whether He were 
 right or wrong, and only perceive as it were, when 
 challenged, that there was a law that He had disobeyed, 
 and which demanded disobeying? If this be so, the 
 progress and history of His life in its outlines is clear ; 
 how the perception that the Jewish system was to be 
 fulfilled and so pass away grew upon His mind, was 
 forced on it by finding that He came, in following service, 
 perpetually under its ban ; that is, that the law assumed 
 something in man which was not true of Him, and as He 
 looked around perceived was not true (as it ought not to 
 be true) of the men around Him (or if of any, only of the 
 Pharisees in whom the false right had itself produced 
 the deadness it supposed). Was that the secret of His 
 pain about the Pharisees, that He perceived how they 
 had been forced into inward evil, had used the very law 
 to kill life within them ? So He said : " Ye make him 
 tenfold more the child of hell than before." And surely 
 He not only felt that the condition within, which that 
 " right " assumed, was not true of Him but that it was not 
 true of those around, not true of the publicans and sinners
 
 THE LA W-BREAKER. 7 
 
 to whom He turned for relief ; seeing clearly that if only 
 that false outside " right " were taken away their hearts 
 were prepared for goodness, and that their evil outside 
 did not mean that they were not. Do we not sec, almost, 
 His gradual, astonished, pained perception that that 
 beautiful God-given system into which He had grown 
 up within a loving home had become a whited sepulchre ; 
 that He was amid men who were under the grip of a law 
 which forbade their doing service ; so that when He 
 unthinkingly did it He was to them a criminal ? So did 
 He not grow to feel that their law was the crime, and by 
 degrees what the law required dawned on Him fidjilling. 
 He went about doing good, and perpetually men treated 
 Him as a transgressor of the law, so that He perceived at 
 last that their law was the " crime." How striking in 
 Him is the twofold attitude to practical life, refusing 
 some restrictions, and charging with guilt accustomed 
 licenses. 
 
 Christ went about doing, this is why He saw ; it was 
 of himself He was speaking when He said : " If ye will 
 do, ye shall know." This is the secret of knowing : 
 the action following at once and effortlessly the seeing. 
 When Christ said : " No man can come unto Me except the 
 Father draw him," was He not really saying the universal 
 truth of true work, that it cannot be done by trying, 
 exactly because it is done by a not-doing ? And this is 
 a true thought for all His life and sayings ; it was of the 
 universal He was ever speaking simply of the fact ; and 
 those around Him put on it its peculiar meaning, and so 
 clothed Him with the theological character in which He 
 stands before us. When we come to understand life, do 
 not Christ's true relation and the true meaning of His 
 words stand clear before us ? Do we not see that He was 
 simply saying the true things, the things that are true
 
 8 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 of all things, the things every man must say, if he truly 
 sees ? And then is that the key to the Gospels that this 
 true seeing of His, the men around, even those who most 
 entered into it, put into limited forms and made into 
 theology, not seeing it as He saw it, as the simple truth 
 of all things ? That He saw it thus, is proved by the 
 fact of His seeing it at all. How can it be seen but 
 as it is presented to us by Nature ? It may be said that 
 Christ expressly asserted that what He saw He did not 
 see in Nature, but that it was revealed to Him by 
 God. But what is the meaning of this ? Does not every 
 one who truly sees Nature feel the same thing, that 
 " God," some Being, is telling Him ? Is that not a 
 mark, inevitably and always present, of truly seeing 
 Nature, that we have the feeling that some BEING is 
 telling us, for is not that truly what it is ? Is not Nature 
 a Being, a conscious Being, and can we truly know 
 her, and have perception of her, without this distinct 
 consciousness that it is a Being telling us, revealing 
 to us that which man's blindness has prevented him 
 from seeing ? So the men around Christ did not 
 see how it was of the universal fact He spoke, and 
 what He meant by saying His Father revealed things 
 to Him. 
 
 Genius cannot doubt that every one will be good 
 enough to do all it can do, knowing how far it is from 
 being goodness in itself that does it ; it is not goodness, 
 only a passion. Is this indeed the plain and true 
 meaning of Christ being tempted in all points as we ? 
 Was He not as bad as any of us, having in Him all that 
 is mean, sensual, greedy, angry, just as we have ; not 
 good, only eaten up by a passion ? So was not this what 
 He meant, simply and plainly, when He said, " Why do
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 9 
 
 you call Me good ? " Did He not mean : " You would 
 not if you knew ? " * 
 
 Christ is to be seen by the history of genius. Is not 
 the very same total change to be traced in Him ? See 
 how His soul must have been filled with reverence for the 
 Law, the Temple, the whole service, with even its scruples 
 and excesses the whole life and hopes of Judea, in that 
 home of His. What a sacred thing it must have seemed 
 to Him ! And when He came to Jerusalem, what He did 
 was to refuse, with anger, to suffer a desecration which 
 all the most reverend doctors accepted ; He was scrupulous 
 and jealous for the Temple beyond all. That is how He 
 began, His soul demanding the most exact observance, 
 refusing the most innocent and established licenses. He 
 made all who saw Him recall the words : " The zeal of 
 Thy house hath eaten me up." That is how He began 
 who ended by saying with joy : " There shall not stand 
 one stone upon another." The man who would not suffer 
 money to be changed in the Temple said afterwards : "It 
 does not matter where men worship, nor any Temple at 
 all." Do we not see the whole universal life in Him ? 
 How He was driven to say that the whole system must 
 fall, which lets even any of its right consist in opposing 
 the service of men. That is enough ; it is poisoned, and 
 poisonous throughout ; no fragment of it can be true or 
 healthy if even any one point is contaminated so : its 
 very life-blood is disease. If any part 'of it is forbidding 
 service, we may know that all the, rest is license, is serving 
 self, sanctified and made to be accounted holy ; wherever 
 we find the one we may know the other also is. Yet 
 that condition of the Jewish life simply meant that it 
 had grown and become a higher and deeper thing, and 
 
 * So thoroughly did He recognise His oneness with mankind generally. 
 Eo.
 
 ID THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 that men were ready for a truer law, so that the very 
 evil and hollowness were proofs of the readiness for good. 
 And is not this natural and inevitable, the sign of a 
 growing life ? The chrysalis is a true illustration of it ; 
 the growing life makes the deadness which cramps and 
 develops it. The motives are too powerful for the duties 
 they are used to enforce ; the right comes (as we see 
 that by the necessity of the self-forbidding pleasure it 
 must) to be in refusing service, and so in allowing 
 ourselves license for the one means and necessitates 
 the other. And then such powerful motives come to 
 enforce such insignificant practical aims; a stress too 
 great is laid on things that are external ; the very growth 
 of the life causes a want of adjustment. Is it not visible 
 in our own life this great stress of motive on things 
 that are so little ? Enormous motives but no scope, even, 
 for results. So here is the hope : the power of the 
 motives set free, given liberty to produce its natural 
 results, how rich it must be in fruits ! And this comes 
 with breaking the yoke that forbids serving ; once break 
 that down and the pent-up forces that choked and 
 killed, how freely and potently they flow, for that very 
 damming up and stagnating has given them new and 
 intenser power, has raised and strengthened them to a 
 fuller life. This is what we see in development. For 
 this the self is made to forbid an end, answered by the 
 union of pleasure and service, so that self must forbid it ; 
 and the service-producing powers, so dammed up for a 
 time, are made higher, more perfect, more fully and 
 deeply living. So the powers which have service for 
 their natural fruit are rendered stagnant for a time, 
 cannot have their effect, and it seems of course as if they 
 were dead ; but in truth they, too, do but lose their life to 
 gain it. Set them free by putting away that restraint
 
 THE LA W-BREAKER. 1 1 
 
 from service, and see what higher powers they have 
 gained. That is what Christ did for man then, by 
 setting free the powers restrained in Judaism ; He called 
 forth the same powers dissipated and lost among the 
 Gentiles too, unknowing what they sought. 
 
 And see in our own life : we bring to bear on sacrificing 
 nothing, or next to nothing, all the motives and spiritual 
 powers which were in exercise in the extremest asceti- 
 cism ; there is an utter disproportion in the powers and the 
 permitted results, a mere sham struggle, as it were, of 
 opposing rights, and desires for good which is and can 
 be nothing but a distortion of our life, our whole nature. 
 For its permitted practical results our life (when it is reli- 
 gious) is overweighted with motive, and so it is made so 
 miserable a distortion, with such stress on things of no 
 true human moment, such tolerance of things intolerable, 
 such wretchedness and unrest within, such paralysis 
 without. Thank God for the unrest, at least ; for one 
 pledge of hope amid the gloom ; that unrest means, it is, 
 the struggle of the cramped-up, stifled powers which are 
 to make life glorious ; saying, " Free us, let us work, oh 
 give us something to do that is according to our powers." 
 The unrest at least there is, and it grows so strong, the 
 bursting of the bonds must be near at hand. These 
 powers of Christian motive that we compel to do 
 twilling, how much they are adapted to do we see in 
 the self-inflicted tortures of the darkest age : there we 
 have the true measure of this force, that which is 
 " natural," proportioned to them : how can our life 
 stagger under their weight ? No wonder that using 
 them (not-using them) as we do, men say : " Let us put 
 them aside altogether; they are mistakes inappropriate 
 to our state." They are so, to our life. Either let them 
 work or banish them. The extremest life of self-torture
 
 12 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 is the true measure of their force and nature ; that, or its 
 equivalent, they must do. What is the equivalent then ? 
 The banishing acting for self, the deliverance from the 
 false law. The ascetic life was the " equivalent " of 
 this; when that ceased it proved this was to come, 
 and till it conies we are consumed and on fire with 
 the disease (the dis-ease truly) of restrained, checked, 
 cramped-up powers, that not being allowed to act 
 according to their nature, rend and kill. These powers, 
 Christ-begotten within us (but indeed also the common, 
 inalienable inheritance of man), must bear fruit accord- 
 ing to their kind, bring results fairly measuring their 
 potency; the life of self-torture displayed them, and 
 again the casting out of acting for self, the true rule of 
 the desire for good, will do it. Either of these are 
 worthy, proportionate, reasonable, but nothing else; 
 above all nothing less. Can it be said that the forces 
 which produced the one are incapable of producing the 
 other ? 
 
 Is there not a true parallel in the life of thought ? 
 The natural powers of the intellect were seen in the 
 Greek speculation with its brilliancy, and they are seen 
 again in science ; but in the meantime they were sup- 
 pressed, and bore no fruits. But science is the same 
 thing as the Greek speculation ; the power which pro- 
 duced the latter simply reappears in the former; it is the 
 same thing, simply in a more perfect form, and that 
 dark time, when it seemed to produce no fruits, was 
 "unnatural" to man; impossible, that is, to continue, and 
 it manifested its " unnaturalness " in the evils it produced, 
 the tension, and restraint, and lack of proportioned action. 
 
 So Christ put away the restraints which kept these 
 powers from producing their effect, and shut them up 
 between license for self on the one hand, and restraints
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 13 
 
 against service on the other. And we see that He 
 assailed as Nature does now not the license, but the 
 false, self-imposed, law-abusing restraints. It was the 
 abuse of law against service, infinitely more than the 
 breaking of it, that He sought to put aside. That 
 banished, all was done. 
 
 Is it not evident how falsely the thought of goodness 
 that is in a man's soul may be interpreted even through 
 the very facts of his life ; how because he takes pain, and 
 even refrains from enjoyments accounted right by his 
 fellows, and goes to the lowest place and shares with the 
 wretched, it may come to be believed that he had a 
 thought of goodness to which his true thought was 
 utterly opposed ; as if his thought was of goodness in 
 restraint when indeed it was wholly the contrary, in 
 perfect freedom to enjoy, to do all service wholly unre- 
 strained from it by its being pleasure ; when his true 
 thought of good was in simple delight, unthinking of his 
 own goodness; when his idea of the world was of a place 
 in which pleasure should rule utterly unhindered by the 
 self; and his thought of the means to it, also, the over- 
 throw of all restraints which meant refusing service ? 
 Even although his thought of good might be this, nay, 
 even because it was this for taking the lowest part is its 
 counterpart men, under the dominion of self, might 
 even be compelled to think that his thought of goodness 
 was in restraining passion and refusing joy ; because this 
 very thought would make him refuse pleasures which his 
 fellows followed, the pleasures against service ; and take 
 for his portion the lot of those who had least and were 
 most miserable. This choice is part of that feeling, 
 inseparable from it. But how it must deceive men 
 under the rule of self; it must look as if it meant that
 
 i 4 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 he thought good was in refusing pleasure ; and how 
 should either his actions or his words prevent men 
 thinking so ? 
 
 Christ broke the Sabbath (as was then thought) to 
 heal : now suppose breaking the Sabbath had been a 
 thing that could not have been done without distinct 
 and even great bodily pleasure in the doing, ought the 
 man to have gone unhealed, and Christ to have said, " I 
 must not break the Sabbath to heal him ? " 
 
 In Christ's time was it not the case that all men 
 who regarded worshipping God with any earnestness 
 were ready to worship Him in spirit and in truth ? 
 What was wanted was simply the sweeping away the 
 laws and restrictions that implied they were not so. It 
 needed only that a clear space should be left, as it were, 
 those weeds uprooted, those rocks and barren stones 
 which choked the ground and life sprang up. The 
 ground was rich with seeds : that was what had been 
 done all that time ; the seeds of that life were being 
 sown, and Christ was as the spring that called them into 
 life. He was the Sun of Eighteousness, and man's nature 
 blossomed beneath His beams. The wilderness and 
 desolate place was glad for Him, the barren soil burst 
 into tumult, and became as a field that the Lord had 
 blessed. And even so is it not now ; yet again is He 
 not to arise, with healing in His wings ; healing of our 
 death, the power again to call into glad uplifting of the 
 buried seeds ? For now are not all who truly care about 
 goodness quite ready to put self wholly away as the basis 
 of their life, to make it wholly a life of desire for good 
 quite ready and needing only the law and restrictions 
 which imply the contrary to be swept away ? Then when 
 the path is made clear will not the buried life spring up ?
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 15 
 
 Will not Christ's work renew and fulfil itself? These 
 very laws, our very rights, are lies, untrue to the fact ; 
 implying what is false. How can our life flourish ? 
 
 How strong every argument would have been against 
 Christ's healing on the Sabbath : was the case so urgent ? 
 Why should He have set such an example to those 
 ignorant people, so ready to take every advantage, so 
 incapable of understanding " this people which Tcnoweth 
 not the law " why should He curse them more ? What 
 was the urgency ? why could He not wait just twelve 
 hours, at the very most twenty-four ? the man who had 
 been ill a long while, was in no danger ; was it necessary 
 to take things into our own hands as if we knew so 
 much better than God, and break His laws merely for an 
 impatience that could not wait a day ? Did not God 
 know when He ordained the Sabbath that sick people 
 would have to wait to be cured ? Did He not design 
 discipline ? is not the seeing of others' sufferings a lesson 
 to us, as well as certainly a blessing to them, if we let 
 God judge of the conditions under which we should try 
 to relieve them? And had He not infinite means of 
 making all amends ? Nay, did not Christ before or after, 
 as much as say so in one of His sneering parables ? 
 Ought we not to recognise what He ordained, and leave 
 to another world what He had forbidden in this ? 
 
 What Christ did above all was to affirm that all were 
 ready, able, to worship God in spirit and in truth, and 
 that what was needed was that the laws (the outside 
 laws) which implied that they were not must be thrown 
 down. And do we not see the special relation of His 
 work to the service of God (as compared with now when 
 it is rather in respect to the service of Man ; thanks to 
 His power). The service of God was what man then was 
 regarding most, was the thing to which his regard was
 
 1 6 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 paid, in respect to which he imposed on himself the false 
 laws which said : " You must act as if you were not serv- 
 ing God in your heart ; as if your hands doing a service 
 on the Sabbath would mean that you were glad not to 
 do God's bidding because it inconvenienced you." (For 
 that is what those laws of the outside mean, and must 
 mean ; they cannot but keep that evil on man by the 
 very fact of their implying it ; they treat him as an 
 enemy to God, and prevent his even knowing when he is 
 not. Is there any surer way to make any one bad than 
 to treat him as being so ; especially when he is not ? 
 That is what those laws on the outside do : is it any 
 wonder that the time for sweeping them away is the 
 very worst time of all ?) Christ's work must have been 
 especially with the laws which related to the service of 
 God, for they were what were binding and ruining men 
 then ; and His so introducing benevolence, active good- 
 will to man, was the expression of this, was the bringing 
 out the serving God from the heart and in spirit ; be- 
 cause that is God's true service. And so how plainly 
 Christ did reveal God's will ; He came to men and said : 
 " You want to serve God ? He does not want your 
 outside deeds in reverence to Him : but in all ways to 
 serve each other." Assuredly He did reveal God : that 
 needs no proof besides. 
 
 Christ introduced a living law ; but again, upon it man 
 has erected a dead one, and so His work wants recognis- 
 ing again. But He has done it; and all. We need but 
 to see that which He truly did. Is there not an image 
 of it in mathematics ? Newton introduced a living pro- 
 cess, but still the ignorance erected on it a dead one 
 again ; so that again it is necessary to see what he truly 
 did. Is the meaning this : that even three ordinates are
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 17 
 
 necessary ? May it be that Paul was to Christ as 
 Leibnitz was to Newton ; would Christ have felt that 
 Paul was letting go of the Life he taught ? 
 
 No invective ever was like Christ's : " Ye make him 
 tenfold more the child of hell." Such anger and scorn 
 never flashed through human lips as through His. And (is 
 it not a striking thing ?) the very utmost and bitterest 
 indignation ever known to be roused in a human breast 
 has been roused, not by vice or wickedness, but by 
 cruelty in the form of piety and virtue, by piety that 
 was cruel. 
 
 This is to be observed of Him : it was upon the goodness 
 of His time He worked ; against that He set himself. 
 In this He was a typical man. Christ overthrew a great 
 system of rights or laws, and put an unity for them 
 the one from absence of which they all came : it seemed 
 less, but how much more it was. And so it was with 
 Copernicus. And now, for all these " rights " of ours an 
 unity is wanted. Judaism supposed the not-serving God 
 in spirit and heart, and so that multitude of external 
 things was necessary or there would have been no serving 
 God at all ; they were means by which, not being within, 
 it was made to be externally or physically. So at the 
 mere putting clearly forth this true relation of serving 
 God, it fell, dissolved away. We must think of this. 
 How unjust it might have seemed to say that Judaism 
 was a system of outside service and meant not-serving in 
 the heart. Yet we see this would also have been true to 
 say ; it was true of the system, though not true of so 
 many individuals who lived in it and were supported and 
 nourished and guided by it. We see it was true of the 
 
 B
 
 1 8 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 system, for at the touch of the thought of the true serving 
 God it dissolved ; in its fall was the blessing. And the 
 same things are true of our external " rights ; " though 
 so much true devoted love has been nourished and guided 
 by it, yet as a system it means and expresses absence of 
 love, acting for self as the basis of the life ; the right not 
 being within has to be without. It is no libel on it also 
 to say this ; and in its fall the very blessing and power 
 is to be. Do we think the dying of the body which 
 seems merely death is a rising into fuller life, and cannot 
 we believe it of the dying of the body of a law ? (Is 
 there not a real parallel here ? ) Are not these individual 
 cases of true life rather the promise that a whole system 
 of life is to come in the place of the dead one ? 
 
 At the touch of seeing that the true service of God is 
 in the spirit, all that system of Judaism dissolved like 
 frostwork in the summer sun. And so our system of 
 right things will dissolve at the sight that the true right 
 is acting wholly not for self. It is just as the Epicycles 
 dissolved, and every system of the " observation-true," at 
 the perception of the fact ; all are but a frostwork. 
 
 That is why the new thought is presented : it re- 
 pudiates not only the badness but the goodness it finds 
 itself in contact with. And saying that, how the secret 
 of its power is revealed ; repudiate the goodness too, and 
 the badness shall be put away ; but not without. For in 
 truth the goodness is that by which the badness supports 
 itself. 
 
 May not Christ's relation to our life be seen more 
 clearly through the history of mathematics ? The fluxion 
 truly includes all, and though not applied fully, yet all 
 that is needed is simply to apply it. Did not Newton 
 mean all, when he spoke of the x and y ? And so when
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 19 
 
 Christ said : " The Sabbath was made for man," did He 
 not sum up the, whole of morals, say all that was to be 
 said, mean all ? Saying, as we have to say, " Marriage 
 was made for man and not man for marriage," is not 
 adding anything ; it is only saying again what He said, 
 and what we have been as yet unable to see : Christ did 
 it all. 
 
 As compared with the Gentiles, the Jews saw that 
 Nature was not capricious : so Christianity, which is 
 truly the saying to man : " Your right must be as Nature's 
 is ; apart from things" must have come through it. It 
 could not have come from the Gentiles at least till 
 science had come ; which more perfectly still banishes \ 
 caprice from Nature. But now through science have we ! 
 not as it were a better Judaism ? Is not science truly as \ 
 Judaism ? So that now more perfectly and fully still 
 we can say : Man's right is to be one .with Nature's, 
 wholly in the action, and apart from things. 
 
 Man's having a "right" different from Nature's, is 
 simply his being untrue to Nature. And so Christ said : 
 " Be as a little child." He might have said : " Be con- 
 verted and become as Nature." " Truth is truth to 
 Nature " applies to the moral life also. 
 
 It is an easier right ; one which sums up in one little 
 thing all they have been trying to do, and so opens the 
 path of a larger and more perfect Tightness to all, brings 
 in a goodness that is more inclusive because deeper ; 
 setting free the wasted power that has been shut up in 
 doing a needless, hard thing in putting away what were 
 good if rightly done, and which can be put away only at
 
 20 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 sacrifice of some good, and in restraining passion, which, 
 if it had not been perverted, would have wanted no re- 
 straint. Do we want as much goodness as possible in 
 men ? Then why mix it up with these hard things ? 
 Why not have it (as it may be) without them ? Is it 
 possible that, without them, the same amount could be 
 as hard ? Anything as hard must be by the equivalent 
 of all their hardness so much more good. 
 
 The impression Christ produced on those who did not 
 understand Him, was that of a man who let his selfish 
 passions sway him, "a gluttonous man." See the oppo- 
 sites in Him : this was His aspect, yet He was the man 
 of sorrows. And that does not mean external sorrows ; 
 it was the pain of His work ; the sorrow, the groaning 
 within ; and yet the free play of His passion, His passions 
 as a man. There was the grief inside, the grief of doing 
 what He had to do. Can it ever not be grief, that work 
 of seeing the better good, the truer right ? Ever not be 
 agony, that giving up, ceaselessly renewed ? It must be 
 a thing loved, delighted in, held with every muscle of the 
 soul, and wound around by every fibre of the heart, or it 
 could not be rightly given up. Will it alter it to know, 
 even ever so surely, that giving up is receiving ? What ! 
 even self-restraint, abstinence, the things counted good 
 and that good has brought, forbidden, and no pain the 
 very world travailing in birth and no agony ! Shall it 
 ever be ? 
 
 And then again : that one passion for service, which is 
 all passions, and lives by the life of them all, has this 
 effect, that then it does not matter what oilier passions 
 there are ; all may be ; all those that would come even
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 21 
 
 to most evil ; there is no reason any passion should not 
 be, within that, as it were ; it must be harmless ; all the 
 passions that make every form of evil and of crime can 
 be, and to the full, within that bosom ; all the power that 
 is in evil also can be thus taken up and made a servant. 
 Is this indeed the thing that constitutes genius ? It not 
 only may have, it must have, the passions which are the 
 workers of ill. And so here is the guide to what we 
 should seek in human life ; not the absence, not even the 
 control, of those evil-working passions, but their using a 
 passion that will make it better for them to be than to 
 be absent. Is it not native to genius not to think .of, or 
 care for, or inquire about right ? That is what is in the 
 bad, only completer and more absolute in genius when 
 the conditions are fulfilled. And so is it not to this that 
 it comes at last, to not thinking, asking, caring about 
 right ? This is its time of power ; it fulfils the conditions 
 of this, that is, it becomes as a little child. (When Christ 
 bade that He spoke from His own experience.) It 
 fulfils the conditions of this. Genius wants in it those 
 passions that not serving the one passion, or with self 
 in them make the evils ; it is by their presence. Now 
 in this is it one with the relation of organic life to the 
 causes of its disease ? The truer right comes by taking 
 in the " passions " that have made " wrong " come ; is 
 this one with a higher grade of organic life coming by 
 embodying, using, the sources of disease ? Does not that 
 too mean a change in the starting-point ? 
 
 In the one passion of genius, also, is shown us what the 
 union of two self-passions means ; of two passions each 
 with a negative in them, becoming the one true passion 
 with the negative banished from each. Are these two 
 passions, the passion which makes vice and the passion
 
 22 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 which makes self-goodness that is, the passion for 
 pleasure and the passion for right each with the self in 
 it ? Unite them, and is it not the passion for service, 
 which is right and pleasure one ? In it we have the 
 passion for pleasure and the passion for right, each with 
 the self banished. But is this to be seen in the individual 
 passions also ? 
 
 Christ spoke from His own experience when He told 
 His disciples they must be made free and become as a 
 little child (which two things are indeed one). And was 
 it not the same when He said to Peter that in his age 
 another should gird him and carry him whither he would 
 not ? Had not He been carried indeed whither He 
 would not ? Was it His thought or design, His youthful 
 ambition or hope, to overthrow the Jewish polity ? Did 
 He not recognise in Peter a nature like His own one 
 destined to be ruled and guided absolutely by another voli- 
 tion ? And so was it He gave to him the keys, and said 
 that on him as on a rock He would found His Church ? 
 (It is surely not unnatural that even His dearest disciples 
 should have misunderstood Him in more instances than 
 those of which the correction is recorded.) Look at 
 what sort of man Peter was; among all the disciples 
 there, was there one that seemed less like a rock ? How 
 weak he was ; yet by that very weakness he was destined 
 to be as adamant, through whom worked a power to 
 resist which would move the universe. 
 
 Did not Christ see that in building upon him He was 
 building on Nature herself, a rock that cannot be moved, 
 because even in moving and it moves to every breath 
 it remains unmoved ?
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 23 
 
 " Greater works than mine shall ye do." Is not this 
 thought the very same as that of the " angels " of those 
 who have become as little children always beholding the 
 face of the Father ? That is, He having gone to the 
 Father would stand in that relation ; a thing He also 
 expressly said : so the works He would do through others 
 in the future (as He saw with joy) would be greater than 
 those even which He did, or were possible to Him, in 
 that life of His. In more than one way probably greater, 
 not only because (how likely) the action through others 
 is a greater and deeper action, but also because of the 
 growing life of man which renders the very same action 
 necessarily greater in its fruits and effects. So was this 
 Christ's thought : " More, much more, shall I do through, 
 and in these, my friends, and other men who will love 
 me even as they, than I could do now." 
 
 But now is it not true that, though Christ said this, 
 yet for any one of us to feel it true of himself or of any 
 friend of his, would be a thing terrible to himself, and 
 abhorred by every Christian ? Are we bound by rever- 
 ence for Christ to disbelieve His words ? What does it 
 mean ? (I do not dwell on the meaning supposed of 
 the apostles doing greater " miracles.") 
 
 Now that we see Nature also bringing her call to a 
 higher standard no more to obey "laws," but to be free 
 from that on which they rest now that we see this which 
 is her " gospel," may we not understand the other Gospel 
 better which was so simple a parallel to it ? For instance, 
 may we see what the special wickedness of refusing it 
 consists in ? Is it not in regarding self in place of human 
 need the very same as that of thinking still of our plea- 
 sure when need calls ? And then do not many parallels 
 arise also ? Christ called men to a higher goodness than
 
 24 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 the Jewish a living goodness instead of one in an out- 
 ward order ; bidding them let that go ; now is it not easy 
 to understand " the sin of unbelief " and how unbelief 
 was His great hindrance ? What would it be but not 
 believing that the truer goodness could be ? That was 
 the hindrance to His work ; the thing men then (of course, 
 as now, as ever) were tempted not to believe ; the feeling 
 in which the dominion of self over them would express 
 itself. And then there must have been other feelings 
 opposing the change, which we can perfectly perceive : 
 the feeling : " No ; I must be virtuous " (self-righteous- 
 ness) ; the feeling : " If I did it, it would be for pleasure I 
 should do it, and I will not ; and I will not believe that it 
 can be otherwise." May we not trace these feelings plainly 
 wheresoever the call comes to man for a truer goodness, 
 in a life that shall put away the carnal ordinances ? 
 Must they not ever be the same ? So in respect to every 
 " gospel," or call to a truer goodness, the " sin " is sure to 
 be unbelief. For it is the very nature of a " gospel" that 
 it is a call to a truer goodness. That is the good news ; a 
 deliverance is come ; a new starting-point ; freedom from 
 that which has made our right false. 
 
 Man's worst evil is the false laws he puts on himself ; 
 and what makes them is regarding himself. What Christ 
 did for him was to show him how to escape ; the one 
 chief and great blessing for which He never can be for- 
 gotten. So He came at an appointed and necessary 
 time ; when things were ripe for this change, for a true 
 law taking the place of a false one. What sort of time ? 
 a bad one, but one of unrest ; when goodness had sunk very 
 low, especially that of those counted good, nay truly seeking 
 good ; when the vicious with all their license and greed 
 (never worse or baser or less restrained) were yet nearer
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 25 
 
 the kingdom of heaven than those in whom the " good- 
 ness " was. This is the sort of time. 
 
 Self-denial cannot be in refusing service, for what but 
 self-regard can make us ? So Christ the law-breaker 
 for service said " deny himself and take up his cross, 
 and follow me." What cross ? Of course his going 
 against the goodness of his age, incurring reproach, giving 
 pain, breaking laws which were not true; that is the 
 cross that comes, not in restraining, but in denying self, 
 " bearing His reproach," how plain in the early Christians 
 it was. Is it likely that when Christ spoke of His cross 
 He meant His bodily privations ? Was that the baptism 
 He was baptized with ? 
 
 How striking the parallel is between Christ's relation 
 to the spiritual life and that of the fluxion in mathe- 
 matics. Men going to right things again after Christ 
 had shown all right to be in the action, was it not as the 
 infinitesimal supplanted the motion ? And Newton said 
 that the very least things are not to be disregarded ; yet 
 he took all things as equal. So Christ said : " Whoso- 
 ever shall break one of the least of these commandments ; " 
 yet which did He show Himself afraid of breaking ? 
 And alike of Christ and Newton do not men speak one 
 thing by their tongues and another by their deeds ? 
 Christ said : " Be perfect as God is perfect ; " we say 
 that men must fall short and sin in this world ; we break 
 commandments and " teach men so." But why should 
 not men be " perfect " with a true law ? Why not let 
 others' wants guide them wholly ? 
 
 And farther : if Christ or Newton had lived, would not 
 a different course of the world have been ? If Newton,
 
 26 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 for example, would not lie have urged the necessity of 
 regarding the motion, and shown how it meant equili- 
 brium, but by that very thing would not results essential 
 to the perfectness of mathematics have been prevented 
 from coming ? So do we see another thing Nature does 
 by causing men to die. She prevents their life from in- 
 terfering with the suppression of their work, that is, with 
 the very condition of its perfecting. 
 
 Thus also there were inconsistencies in Newton ; points 
 in which his thought was imperfect. Was it so also in 
 Christ, so that it was needful for that cause also that 
 there should be the suppression ? Did -His thought also 
 leave the law of " things " not wholly put aside even 
 though its foundation was ? But if Christ had lived 
 would He not have prevented the false right from super- 
 seding again His true one ; and by that very means have 
 kept back the needful perfecting through dying ? 
 
 Christ said : "Be free from laws outside, and have 
 them on the heart." And it is clear these go together ; 
 not being in the heart they must come on the outside ; 
 and further we see, in evils brought by the law on the 
 outside, the call and the power to put them within the 
 heart. This is the order, nor can there ever be other ; 
 it must come into the heart through being put away, for 
 others, from the outside. The laws on the outside having 
 to be put away because preventing good, are brought on 
 the heart by that very process. It is not so much that 
 they are, in that, brought to be on the heart, but by that 
 man is made to recognise that they ought to be there, 
 there fully and wholly, and must be, and that there can 
 be no substitute for it, no evasion of it ; and still more is 
 made to recognise how far they already are there. He 
 is prevented from putting away the true laws, the true
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 27 
 
 heart- goodness, to another state. This it is, surely, above 
 all ; so long as man can put off the goodness within to 
 another state, so long he will. The value of the evils of 
 the laws on the outside calling man to remove them is 
 above all this, that it stops his putting off the attempt to 
 have them on the heart to " another state." 
 
 Is it not suggestive ? That putting off to " another 
 state " is like putting off till " another day ; " it is the 
 very same, and the very preachers who warn against the 
 latter, themselves teach what they condemn. This is the 
 very problem indeed : how to prevent man from putting 
 off the very thought of having the laws truly, or on his 
 heart, away from this world ; and the answer lies, of course, 
 in the evils brought by having them on the outside ; make 
 these intense enough, and it is done. The laws on the 
 outside are but the sign of the absence of them on the 
 heart ; they arise from that ; and so must bear the fruits 
 of it. 
 
 By having, for others, to put away the laws on the out- 
 side, man is made to recognise that they are to be on his 
 heart, and that the outside freedom is the sign of it ; that 
 his call is to fulfil the conditions of that freedom, the con- 
 ditions of goodness to him not meaning less pleasure. It 
 is a new thought of duty, the beginning of a new life ; 
 a new aim comes to him, and the freedom from law out- 
 side becomes a new thing. It had meant wrong and 
 license ; now it has become a new thing, the very power 
 to make good be within. We see the total change ; and 
 especially how that " liberty " outside must be insisted on, 
 and maintained. So the apostles insisted on it. " Stand 
 fast in the liberty with which Christ has made you free." 
 How natural and good it must have seemed to the early 
 Christians to try and bring back the Jewish law. 
 
 They would naturally say : Why not have the laws in
 
 28 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 the heart, and yet obey them externally too? But it 
 could not be ; that freedom outside is the very sign, and 
 more than the sign, it is the power of the laws being on 
 the heart. It makes us insist on the conditions for it 
 being fulfilled. So the apostles said : " Stand fast." 
 Your coming again under the outside law, will mean the 
 power ceasing in the heart. Putting the law outside 
 again will mean again being content with its absence 
 from the heart ; and, indeed, must mean that, for it will 
 mean putting aside others' good. And the effort put 
 there will mean its being withdrawn from within ; the 
 power will be in one form or the other; it cannot be in 
 both ; the laws not meaning others' good must waste the 
 power. The outside law apart from service (and if it is 
 service that is the law on the heart) is simply the pheno- 
 menon or exhibition of the absence of the law on the 
 heart, and apart from that absence cannot continue; even 
 as no phenomenon can without its cause. And again, the 
 outside law could not come back because the life is not 
 to stop, but to go on ; it is but a beginning, and to stop 
 were to decay ; the liberty must be kept for power to 
 advance. 
 
 Now, are the moral laws also, by being put away from 
 the outside, made to be in the heart ? We can see : do 
 they or any of them sacrifice man's good ? If they do 
 their meaning is visible at once ; they call for the con- 
 ditions (of our goodness no more meaning our less plea- 
 sure) to be fulfilled. This freedom outside is in truth 
 the phenomenon of the law on the heart, the mode in 
 which it expresses itself; even as the law outside is of 
 the absence of the law on the heart. The freedom is the 
 " phenomenon " of the perfect law. Thus, this is the 
 relation : that thought and feeling of freedom is of the 
 phenomenal; the actual, the fact, is law. And is this
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 29 
 
 universal ? Is that whole conception of freedom the 
 phenomenon, when it is true, of the perfect law ? 
 
 Then also seeing what it means that the conditions 
 of needing no restraint, of having no reason for goodness to 
 mean less pleasure, are fulfilled we see also why it has 
 had (rightly had, even when falsely dreamed of) a dazzling 
 charm for men ; how liberty stands now, in spite of all, 
 as their great ideal. It is because it is the phenomenon 
 of perfect law. 
 
 Then does it not seem as if one single law, thus com- 
 pelled to be broken for service, was enough to make the 
 complete change ? Thus was not all done by Christ 
 through that one law of the Sabbath ? And now is not 
 the one law that forbids service in the relation to woman 
 enough ? And in the life of thought is it not the same ? 
 One case is enough to bring the complete change : the 
 moon alone was enough to establish the planetary motions. 
 And this is natural, when we see what it is that is needed 
 to be done ; it is simply the bringing the new thoughts, 
 the new aim, or rather the truer consciousness ; for this 
 is what it is, the true consciousness of what he desires 
 and seeks, and of what he has attained and what he 
 needs. It is a revealing of man to his own eyes ; this 
 above all. And so come Christ's words again in a new 
 truth : " (the son of) Man is revealed in Him." In Him 
 man recognised what he was, desired, could do ; he looked 
 afresh into his own heart and saw it more truly. He 
 says his very thoughts of right were false, not only to 
 God's will (the fact of Nature), but to his own being. 
 And this now we need to see again. We do see it, thanks 
 to one false law, so fruitful in ills that we cannot be blind 
 to them longer. One law is enough to teach us all ; 
 let this law it mtans all law be upon the heart.
 
 30 THE LAW-BREAKER, 
 
 If there be the thought of a true life for man, there is 
 one thing it cannot tolerate ; and that is unbelief. We 
 must believe, or how can the passion be given us ? It 
 is the despair that banishes it. We must believe man 
 can be human ; can be delivered from need to exact 
 the laws which must mean torturing the weak. Here 
 is what we do : we consent to make righb mean what it 
 does not mean, and then when poor wretches, with no 
 chance of keeping it, do not keep it, we torture them 
 wrth tortures we know we could not bear, and we know 
 that it must go on, and there is no hope of its ending. 
 And we will not even look on them as children and 
 mercifully slay them : no, we are too virtuous ; we will 
 keep them alive and torture them yet torturing ourselves 
 most in our flaming hells of luxury, that burn the very 
 fingers that grasp them into such cinders that they cannot 
 even quit their grasp. Like hands clenched in torture 
 upon electric balls, we are compelled by the very pain 
 to clasp the tighter, unable to let go through the very 
 pain. Who will stay the pain for us and set us free ? 
 
 This is man's great deliverance : a law put off the out- 
 side by the demands of service. And by a law thus put 
 off the outside, there is given a new consciousness, a new 
 perception within. So Christ gave that to man : He 
 endowed him with a sensibility in his soul which was not 
 in him before. He calls man's moral feeling into a new 
 being ; so that that which was before felt all right, or at 
 least inevitable, and succumbed to, became to him ab- 
 horrent and impossible. And so is not a new sensibility 
 again to come to us from Him, making acting for self, 
 through one seeing what it brings by means of the law 
 it imposes the law of not helping as abhorrent and 
 impossible to us as any other crime or cruelty ?
 
 THE LA W-BREAKER. 3 r 
 
 This new feeling, too, must come by the same means : 
 by having to give up the outside things that implied that 
 acting for self was right ; and together with which alone 
 it could even seem right. For so long as man can have 
 his life so that any evil state whatever within can seem 
 right, so long it will be succumbed to ; even the percep- 
 tion of its evil will not awake. Men had to be such that 
 neither circumcision nor uncircumcision mattered at all 
 to them, but only the condition fulfilled a new life ; and 
 how was it done, how sought ? By saying : Keep cir- 
 cumcision scrupulously, put away all neglects and breaches 
 of it perfectly, first, and then, &c. ? Or rather : Think 
 wholly of the new life you are called to ; seek that, and 
 let circumcision be forgotten ? 
 
 There only the law is truly broken when keeping it 
 externally would be breaking it in the soul, and so to 
 keep it it must be broken. And when it is once thus 
 broken all is done ; for it is shown to all that that is truly 
 keeping it. For they want to keep it all want, indeed, 
 and some more than all things beside. They need but to 
 be shown how ; to be shown that keeping the law does 
 not mean injuring their fellows, and cannot ; that it is 
 kept perfectly in serving them. Once that seen and all 
 is done : who wants to injure others ? (Or above all man 
 want to injure woman ! ) 
 
 Is it the fact that there is no true serving or regarding 
 God which is not distinctly regarding the service of man ; 
 and that any other is truly, at the bottom, acting for self 
 (perhaps either for happiness hereafter ; or for our good- 
 ness' sake) ? Not one with serving man, God's service 
 is a negation merely, a superstition. Is God's service 
 indeed but one of the forms in which the absence of
 
 32 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 regarding man expresses itself? And then here is a key 
 to false " theologies," and all superstition, to all the 
 false invention of " God," our fathers' and ours alike. 
 Why must man's not regarding have this false regarding 
 " God " as one of its phenomena ? A true insight lies 
 here. Is it thus ? The two opposites from not regard- 
 ing (man) are : regarding self-pleasure and self-virtue. 
 Now, has self-virtue the two forms of serving " virtue " 
 merely and serving " God " against service to man ? And 
 if so, has self- pleasure two corresponding forms ? 
 
 This is Christ's revelation : whatever seems to be God's 
 law, but makes us an instrument, even passively, of ill to 
 our fellows, is misread ; it does not mean that. Were 
 there the same things binding the Pharisees against that 
 feeling for others that bind us ? Have not fresh powers, 
 fresh elements of feeling, come in now, for the very end 
 that a farther work may be achieved ? That is, now there 
 are feelings, reasons, rightful emotions making us deaf to 
 others' needs that were not then, nor could have come 
 until long after all the questions that existed then had 
 been laid to rest. And these farther feelings, have they 
 not existed in order that, by bringing in anew the question 
 of whether man's needs shall rule or not, man's life shall 
 be still more deepened and enlarged ? To give man's 
 needs the rule over all other right involves much more 
 now than it did then. And so we may see one reason 
 why these very relations that make the new problem and 
 the new difficulty have been introduced. They give to 
 that simple demand to let human needs rule this increased 
 power. For how interesting it is again ; what comes to 
 us is simply that simple thing that came to them : Work 
 no ill ; let what man needs be. The same power, but in 
 new conditions. So has not God ordered human life that
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 33 
 
 that simple demand coming again and again one demand, 
 the very simplest that can be, to let that which is wanted 
 be, and not ask about ourselves shall have power again 
 and again, to renew it ? Nay, as often as ever again it 
 shall arise, having been refused, will it not again and 
 again make it new ? (Only may we not learn once for 
 all that it must always be ; and so be ready for more 
 teaching ? ) 
 
 Man's life had become such, in Christ's time, that a law 
 of external order had set itself against human wants 
 (under thoughts of holiness, Divine authority, reverence 
 for God, regard to virtue, or consideration of " what all 
 could do," or these and other reasons), and by that con- 
 dition there was power in the simple saying : " All laws 
 are for man's service," with the condition that that implies 
 insisted on, to bring in a whole new life for man, a whole 
 transformation of the world. Of course it made man's 
 life new ; how could it fail ? The conditions involved 
 it ; all had been prepared. And whenever they exist 
 a law made to be against man's service, and under such 
 thoughts there again are prepared the conditions for a 
 new transforming of man's life, a new coming of a law of 
 life into the heart. Then again we may hear Christ's 
 voice, and drink in the power of His life. In every such 
 condition He comes to us anew and bids us receive Him ; 
 says to us : " Here I have shown you the path ; walk in 
 it ; be followers of me. I have wrought out the task for 
 you ; eat of my flesh, and let my blood work in your veins. 
 Here I have overcome : enter into my victory. This false 
 law of things, that bids you be instrument of ill to your 
 neighbours (because some one has told you God commands 
 it, or another that human virtue depends upon it, or be- 
 cause you have never known it done otherwise except for 
 evil, or doubt if all could do it), this false law letting evil 
 
 c
 
 34 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 be to another that you may be good, need never bind you 
 more : I have delivered you from it once and for ever. 
 Look to me, and you are lightened." And so by the 
 virtue of that act how much He did for us ; for every 
 new case He gave us the key ; unloosed for us every new 
 bond ; and though so long ago His fingers work along all 
 the ages. And when that same problem comes again, 
 weighted with immense, innumerable powers and pregnant 
 with the enormous good that life thrown into them would 
 bring us, still His power works for us ; our weakness is 
 made strong with His strength. It is as if His very voice 
 spoke to us, as indeed it does : every sorrow that we 
 suffer to be unaided is as the very sorrow that nerved His 
 hand. 
 
 Baffled, cast down, visibly defeated by evil, despairing 
 now, not hoping even, nay, making a sort of virtue of con- 
 sent to ill and converting it into a dogma to which we 
 prostitute the name of piety and call part of the " faith " 
 now in our despair, when we doubt and tremble and 
 know not what to do ; sure only of one thing (or rather 
 two, which are one) that we must act for ourselves, and 
 that there is a law of God (one law at least) which for no 
 good to man or woman must be set aside one jot ; despair- 
 ing now, sure but of this one two-faced fact in all our 
 moral life, like the very breath of God which they are 
 (for His words as He knew and said were spirit and life), 
 like the very breath of God His words steal across the 
 desert of our souls : " Was man made for the law, or the 
 law for man ? " And the chain is broken. He has made 
 duty clear again, the duty to be such that no tiling shall 
 forbid our serving. 
 
 Does it not seem wonderful how exactly Christ's deeds 
 and words were those which we want now? They fit
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 35 
 
 our very problem, answer our very doubts ; things that 
 might seem so past burn with a fresh light, and are as if 
 now first new, the very thing our life demands. We 
 turn in our perplexity " to see if before there was 
 not known some better way," and behold, Christ has 
 taught us. 
 
 One law alone was wanted to be the occasion of the 
 revealing of the truth of all : one was enough, and so 
 there is visible a reason that the Sabbath was placed as 
 it was before the Jews. It was in order for Christ thus 
 to reveal what the true obeying God meant ; to furnish 
 Him the means to show how fulfilling God's law was done 
 in the heart, and must, called by human good, pass away 
 from the outside deed that it might be there. 
 
 And so appears the meaning of His words that the 
 man's sickness was for the revealing of the glory of God ; 
 that it might be shown the obedience He desired was an 
 obedience in the heart, proved to be there by being 
 perfectly fluent to human good (the only proof that can 
 be given of an obedience in the heart) ; that it might be 
 seen how much God wanted His honour against man's 
 good. Was it not for "this glory of God" the man's 
 sickness had been appointed ? We might be willing to 
 let God's will be done in others' loss that we could help ; 
 but that loss is expressly to teach us that God's will is 
 that we should not. That is what it is for ; to make us 
 know what God means by obeying Him. 
 
 So now, have not these relations of man and woman, 
 and the sickness unto death that has come in them, been 
 made as one of their reasons for this very purpose, to 
 reveal to us yet again " God's glory," to show to us the 
 true " obedience " He requires ? For'this very purpose 
 made, so that on the one hand is placed what we think 
 a command of God (expressed in some dignity of good
 
 3 6 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 and right on man's part) and on the other simply a 
 poor sufferer, a poor suffering body, let us say. Here is 
 the very meaning of God's glory again : how is man to 
 obey Him ? Well prayed he who said : " Show me Thy 
 glory." Was not woman's need made that it might 
 reveal God's glory in man's purity ? 
 
 We say often we want Christ to come again ; but in 
 that act of His He is here. 
 
 How much of the sacrificing others " till I can be 
 good " is practically due to the teaching that is called 
 Christian. When one thinks of what has been done in 
 Christ's name, is it not plain that the true pathos of His 
 life is in that ? Not in His death nor any of the things 
 He did. A deeper pathos lies in the history of His 
 thoughts than anything recorded in the Gospel. How 
 striking the parallel is between Christ and Newton in 
 many things, and in this perhaps even most. Newton 
 said : " The least things must not be disregarded in 
 mathematics ; I warn you against that above all : " and the 
 mathematicians swear by his name, and mathematics is 
 one great disregarding of least things. So Christ : above 
 all He warned us against putting our being good and 
 obeying God above others' needs; and what is our 
 piety ? 
 
 Self-righteousness is inevitably one with making right 
 consist in things, and purity a matter of the flesh. And it 
 is proved that Christ's action was to put service above 
 " being good," was to put away self-righteousness, because 
 it made things nothing. Paul's words, even about cir- 
 cumcision, prove it ; from that one little saying we can 
 see all ; it means others first : the question of right
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 37 
 
 regarded from their needs, not from self. It is proved 
 by that one expression that this was what Christ did. And 
 now, if it be supposed that God has given us a law of 
 things, of certain things to be done, and those alone, even 
 against all visible service, does not this prove that that 
 thought of God is but an expression of the regard to self ; 
 that it is but a hidden form of self-righteousness ? 
 
 The regard for others makes indulgence and restraint 
 alike not-self, and so the flesh nothing. That is the 
 true self-denial. What mischief there is in the false 
 use of that word; making it mean against indulgence 
 instead of against self-indulgence and self-righteousness 
 alike. Turning it against indulgence we turn it away 
 from self, and leave that unassailed. 
 
 So the " believing in Christ " is putting away both 
 self-indulgence and self-righteousness, and the latter 
 first. Now, is not this to be for the race ? Made a fact 
 and placed in woman's hands, it rises to be a true life of 
 man, a life in all. 
 
 Was Christ amiable or loving in the sense in which 
 He is often spoken of as being so ? The feeling that 
 it is of no use to speak to some persons of any truer 
 thoughts was never expressed with such contempt as : 
 " Cast not your pearls before swine." And to His friend 
 Peter, merely shrinking from the thought of His being 
 killed, He said : " Get thee behind me, Satan." In truth 
 we see a reason for Christ's being held Divine in this : 
 that while genius was so unknown it was necessary to 
 insist that He should not be judged by the same standard 
 as other men. So plainly being the moral teacher of 
 the world, yet His actions and words so hard to reconcile 
 with what a man " ought " to do, was not that a reason 
 for His being claimed as Divine, that so a different
 
 38 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 standard might be taken for Him ? And then does He 
 not fulfil it ? 
 
 " Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men," 
 exactly expresses our attitude. It is not teaching the 
 commandments of men that misleads us, but teaching 
 them for doctrines, for absolute commands of God ; as if 
 they were sacred things. And it does not mean an evil 
 commandment of course, only one of man's, expressing 
 his feeling of the best. And the reason of the wrong in 
 it is that, being man's, it must be unfit to be made a 
 fixed thing of. It will be a " thing," a rigid course of 
 doing : God's command is to love, an act. Christ says : 
 Put no rigid deed up as the right. And the consequence 
 too is so clear : in vain do they worship God. Neces- 
 sarily their very goodness is turned to evil. " Wor- 
 shipping God " is the seeking of good, and with a 
 commandment of man put as a doctrine this must be 
 vain. It is a false right ; our very desires of good are 
 made to work against it, the falsity being in the premiss. 
 Our light is darkness. 
 
 The commandment of men will always be that which 
 is passion, restraining, a thing that is beautiful and right 
 on the basis of acting for self ; it may be known by this. 
 And another character will be that it will be always the 
 putting aside of something ; of something pleasurable, 
 naturally tended to and desired. (It will not else come 
 to be commanded ; there would be no occasion for its 
 coming.) A commandment of men will express a good 
 thing made evil. 
 
 It is evident how Christ, in place of the service of God 
 merely, or even of the service of man through serving 
 God, bid men serve God in serving man. His way of
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 39 
 
 treating the Sabbath and the Temple shows this. And 
 even more the saying : " He that hath seen me hath seen 
 the Father." And above all His new commandment is : 
 " Love one another." Now what is the newness here ? 
 He had Himself summed up the old : Love God first and 
 most ; then man. That was the Law and the Prophets. 
 Now when He said : I give you a new commandment, must 
 not the old one have been in the thoughts of all ? What 
 then is the newness He introduced ? That it is no more : 
 Love God, but : Love one another. 
 
 Putting God in that false way first the service of 
 God in the self-form is essentially ascetic : that is, it 
 bears the mark of regard to self, and it is indeed regard 
 to self in the form of regard to God. For how can we, 
 not for ourself, serve a Being who has no needs, who 
 wants nothing from us ? He has no needs to unite 
 goodness with pleasure. That is the defect in Him as 
 an object of service ; He has no needs. And so the 
 true thought of others' needs is that they are God's 
 needs. It is right to put God first, only it must be in 
 the true way. We rightly are to love others, and serve 
 them because that is serving Him, and for His sake. 
 He comes to us so to be loved. As Christ is an incar- 
 nation of God, so all men are His incarnation too ; He 
 takes in them more weakness, because so He serves us 
 most ; serves us in making it possible to us to serve Him. 
 
 Thus Christ, then, as it were, put God aside ; came in 
 His name, saying : Do not regard Me ; love one another. 
 He made God less ; and behold from thenceforth God has 
 been to man not less but infinitely more than ever He 
 had been ; dearer, closer, more omnipotent to command. 
 (Is there not also a great interest in seeing how in this 
 Christ was akin to Buddha ?) And if Christianity dis- 
 appoints (and who does not feel that even if it do not
 
 40 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 fail, yet we are disappointed ?) may it not be because it 
 has let go of that great thought ; and while Christ put 
 man first, and recognised no serving God but in serving 
 him, those who have claimed to be Christians have gone 
 back and again put God as to be served apart from man ? 
 This struck me in speaking to Father Newman : he said 
 that " all Christian bodies agreed with the Church of 
 Eome in this, that God was to be loved and served first, 
 and men in serving Him, and because He loved them and 
 for His sake." Is it not likely that this is true, and that 
 it has robbed Christianity of its power ? Men have not 
 grasped the thought of Christ's, not even those who have 
 loved Him most ; but have gone back to the heathen 
 thought of a God to be served for Himself. 
 
 How wonderful is that saying of Paul's (and how it 
 accounts also for the power he has had over men), that 
 the very thing that most absorbed his soul, that he found 
 best, truest, the sublimest power of good, should also pass 
 away Christ's relation to man. But we may understand 
 how he should have been ready to feel even that ; he had 
 had an experience which taught it to him ; he had had 
 to give up his best, and had found it gain. So he knew 
 what giving up the best and holiest and mightiest for 
 good meant. Is not this how genius ever learns it ? 
 And its being able to do it is its power. 
 
 We should follow Christ in our efforts for the ameliora- 
 tion of the world, even as that was His great work and is 
 our great work too : however far we may be from Him in 
 any other respect, there at least we are one with Him. 
 And He has shown us the type of all such labours, has 
 revealed the only principle on which they can be success-
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 41 
 
 ful (and so long ago He did it, and now science confirms 
 it ; the only true action must be that) : it is putting 
 away restraints from things, and putting away at the 
 same time that which imposes them ; putting away a 
 restraint that lay on things, and bringing it upon the 
 emotions. And this is manifest, if once we see what it is 
 that brings restraints on things, and makes goodness to 
 be in not-pleasure ; what it is that makes some things 
 " sensuous " or low, even although they serve. What can it 
 be but disregarding service ? That makes not only some 
 things, but all things mean and low and degrading. 
 But also, any putting away restraint that does not claim 
 as part of it the new restraint within, fails too, and is not 
 following Him. Here is the test : is it both these ? 
 
 " A new and better righteousness," one possible for 
 all. A better righteousness with giving up of restraints, 
 with less of abstinence. That is the difficulty, the re- 
 straints to be abandoned ; what we would avoid, what our 
 friends urge us to avoid. What it means is that we 
 want the force but cannot give up the form in which it 
 is ; we cannot use the instrument we have made. We 
 want the power, but find it so hard to pay the price. So 
 a man is wanted not valuing these things. 
 
 A right which means not-pleasure will and must mean 
 having pleasure the ruler of our life. As the latter 
 inevitably brings the former, so as inevitably the former 
 brings the latter; they cannot be separated, any more 
 than the two electricities. 
 
 And thus we may gain a key to how Europe now has 
 come to be so utterly under the dominion of acting for 
 self. It seems the effect of the banishing of pleasure
 
 42 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 which it carried to such an extreme. Did not that 
 inevitably bring this result, absolutely implied within it, 
 of giving over the life to self? As having the life centred 
 round pleasure makes right centre round it too, and be in 
 putting it away, so also does not a right centred round 
 pleasure and made to be in putting it away bring a life 
 bound under pleasure ? 
 
 There is this good in our life, that it is the clear 
 insistance, in practice and theory alike, that pleasure is 
 not wrong, nor goodness in its refusal. There is this 
 element of good, the breaking of the false bonds between 
 right and absence of pleasure. Europe is doing that 
 the parallel of the intellectual work in the dark ages. 
 
 Again, in respect to Christ's turning men's regard 
 from God to their fellows, see the "judgment." Those 
 who were thinking about Him He " never knew ; " those 
 served Him who served their fellows without thinking of 
 Him at all. 
 
 What is wanted, when the better right is to come, is 
 not to bid men " Do," but to ask : " Why should I do 
 this troublesome right ? " So here was Christ's power. 
 Not what He bid men do (had not others bidden that, 
 or nearly all, before ? ) but : Do not have to do, learn : 
 here is something you have not thought of. And this is 
 visible in His " new law." Love, it says ; but that is not 
 the whole ; had not that been said before, many times 
 before ? But the command is : Love one another. Is there 
 not a not-doing here also ? Love one another : is not the 
 leaving off the chief power in it ? 
 
 And see again His answer : What good thing shall we 
 do ? It is so natural a question. " Give us some practical 
 directions ; what things shall we do ? How shall we 
 carry out these principles ? What should we do each
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 43 
 
 of us ? " (And John, too, had given a direct answer 
 to that question.) But Christ's answer was as if He had 
 said : "Do not do at all ; have a feeling" 
 
 In the new law, certainly, the new thing was not the 
 " love," it was " one another," and instead of God. And 
 this is so striking in it, men are put strictly instead of 
 God ; God is left wholly aside. In this the new law 
 contrasts with the old, which was : " Love God," but also 
 added : " Love your neighbour," though in less degree. 
 And is it not true ? If we love men, do we not in the very 
 act love God ? He is loved in true love of men. To 
 love man is to love God, at once is it and includes it ; it 
 has no need to be added. But we see the law which 
 began with loving God was not the same ; it had to add 
 on besides the love of men. The love of God first is not 
 complete in the same way ; the neighbours might still be 
 left out. So in that one command Christ summed up all ; 
 nothing is left out. It includes all duties; the love of 
 God and every other command as well. All law raised 
 to absolute unity is there, Love one another. And was it 
 not a natural issue of Christ's life for Him to sum up 
 His experience in a law which thus expressly omits 
 reference to God apart from man? The work He had 
 done was to break the bonds which came from thinking 
 of God apart from man ; to break mischief-rights, to put 
 away nonsense-reasons ; and here He sums it up in a 
 command which says it all : Love one another, and have 
 no other thought of loving God. All false rights fall off 
 then. Do not talk of God ; think of man. 
 
 Seeing the Sabbath among the Jews as having become 
 a mischief-right, that is, a form from which the restraint 
 had passed away, seems a starting-point for very much 
 besides. Having become such a form, we see why it
 
 44 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 became included in the Decalogue. Among the moral 
 laws comes a form. Why ? Because these forms (emptied 
 of restraint), these mischief-rights, even through their 
 having become thus empty, are made matters of paramount 
 importance ; they gain for themselves all the feeling 
 nay, even more of the highest duty. So is it not evident 
 that if we now made a law of moral right we should 
 certainly include in it, and most emphatically, a form of 
 marriage ; and the Hindoos the duty of not killing any 
 animal ? So we can understand why the Sabbath entered 
 so into the Jewish Decalogue, and why also Christ's 
 work centred so much around it. By the very loss of 
 the restraint the form becomes felt so imperative. (If 
 only because it seems that the overthrow of it must be for 
 license : we may judge of the feeling in the other cases 
 by our own.) 
 
 Besides, as we have seen, the Decalogue is not good ; 
 it is the law of things which " kills," saying not one word 
 about not living for self; only do not do certain things 
 which yet may, and must, be done. Is not the contra- 
 diction curious, so close together, between, on the one 
 hand : " Thou shalt not kill," and, on the other, the 
 meritorious massacres ? 
 
 In truth, is not the history of the Decalogue, the 
 period of its writing, and therefore of very much more, 
 clearly implied by the mere fact of the inclusion of the 
 Sabbath ? Is it not proved that it was written at a time 
 when the Sabbath was to the Jews what monogamy has 
 become to us, and not killing animals to the Hindoos 
 a form from which the restraint has passed ? May we 
 not know it was written when the keeping of the Sabbath 
 had let the restraint slip from it, and so had come to be 
 insisted on for its own sake, and had projected its own 
 fictitious reason ? If it had still been serviceable (in a true
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 45 
 
 line, perfectly, with service) it would not have wanted 
 any other reason. So we see the period when the 
 Decalogue (and what was with it) was written ; namely 
 when the restraint had slipped away from the Sabbath, 
 and after it had accordingly projected for itself a fictitious 
 reason. 
 
 It is surely sufficiently evident that the reason given 
 in the Decalogue is a projected one ; and that the com- 
 mand was never introduced for that reason. Having it, 
 and finding that it needed a reason, that thought might 
 come ; but the source of the institution was based on 
 man, not on God. What a new light thus conies on 
 Christ's words : " The Sabbath was made for man." 
 Surely He was speaking not of any " making " by God, 
 but of simple fact and history, speaking of the man who 
 introduced it : "It was made for man." That was its 
 design ; it was not a thing man was to be sacrificed to. 
 It was to their own history He was appealing. (And so 
 how parallel to the appeal now made to the original Vedas 
 against the superstitions of India.) The Sabbath, He tells 
 us, was introduced, not for some reason about God, but 
 for the good of man. 
 
 Was the original thought of the Sabbath, perchance, 
 of mere resf at ftil 1 Tmt of action for others ? (Think 
 how well such an institution might have come from Con- 
 v fucius, for instance, with that intention.) Then could we 
 not well trace it. and see the very same mockery of man's 
 folly at the end ? Acting and thinking wholly for others 
 on one day in seven would mean of course not-doing for 
 self; then the action for others slips away, and the form 
 of it, the not-doing (how like the not-killing !) remains. 
 And the whole process is involved, and it ends in taking 
 care of their own interests, but refusing to help the suffer- 
 
 '*~ i 

 
 46 THE LA W-BREAKER. 
 
 ing. And so what force there would be in Christ's 
 words : " The Sabbath was made for man," if the fact He 
 referred to was that it was originally meant for one day 
 to be given up to man, to others' interests instead of 
 their own. How absolute the inversion had become. 
 (But was it greater than ours is ?) And then how clear 
 the process would be ; the acting for others slipping away, 
 would leave the " form " the not-doing our own things ; 
 this would become sacred then, of course, and would pro- 
 ject its reason (about God resting) ; and would become 
 an abstaining from work merely, based on that notion, 
 and then all would follow. 
 
 With the law of service all days will be truly Sabbaths. 
 And so one lack in those first service-Sabbaths (if it were 
 so) would have been that they were only one in seven. 
 And indeed in this in consenting to six days for self, 
 and only one for service was there not a negation that 
 ensured the failure ? It must have fallen, it was not 
 true. A rottenness consented to in the foundation must 
 destroy the superstructure. 
 
 And as we see of some mischief-rights, was it not of 
 all? They are the great degraders of life, holding men 
 under self ; one and all they make it duty to hurt others, 
 and so spread a blindness all through. Was not Jewish life 
 degraded even chiefly by the Sabbath held against others' 
 good ? The needs of others were by it most of all 
 deprived of power ; and right itself forbidden to follow 
 service, made to accept all license. And may it be that 
 nothing so much degrades the life of India as the refusal 
 to kill ? 
 
 So the law of service is one perpetual Sabbath the 
 serving of man.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 47 
 
 It is no real irreverence even to the Old Testament 
 itself to speak of that reason given for the Sabbath as a 
 nonsense-reason. It is right to feel contempt for that ; 
 it is to honour God, for that was dishonouring Him. It 
 meant that the spirit had gone out of His laws. His 
 own Prophets said the same ; those laws of forms killed 
 the nation, as they ever do ; even as it is the same thing 
 now destroys us. And Christ's own words repudiate the 
 reason given in the Decalogue. 
 
 But though projected reasons are nonsense-reasons : 
 and must be so seen, yet they have their value too, and 
 very possibly have a distinct and important truth, and ; 
 one which could not be given us in any other way. Take 
 the Sabbath for example; may we not say it is very 
 probable indeed that the Being to whom God gave the 
 task of making the " world " did " work " six days and 
 rest the seventh ? Is it true, and does it mean that God 
 did give it to some creature to " make " the world, even 
 as He gives it to others to make an orrery ? Is not 
 the universe itself most assuredly an " image " of some 
 existence ? Why may not God have made it through a 
 creature, and a creature subject to the need of rest ? We 
 know no other " creating." But if the Being who made 
 the world worked and rested, then we are told in that 
 that He was a being like ourselves. This character is told 
 us of the " Elohim." 
 
 In the Decalogue, again, we see a sign of a false 
 thought of God making a false right in the forbidding 
 of art. Does not the second command express a result 
 of the false thought of God ? And this false thought of 
 God, and of serving Him as different from the service of 
 man, was common to the Jew and Gentile. And so it 
 had in both its effects ; in the Gentiles it led to idolatry.
 
 48 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 in the Jews to the forbidding of art, and the other 
 burdensome restraints ; the two halves arising from one 
 negation ; from the thought of God as to be considered 
 and served apart from, and even to the hurt of, man. So 
 how truly these needed and waited to be made one. 
 And their union came in the " new command : " Love 
 one another, and nothing more. So it is true the Jews 
 in one sense did avoid " idolatry," but it was at the 
 price of refusing art. 
 
 Then if this be so, if it be a false religion that directs 
 regard or service to God apart from man, or if Christ has 
 expressly condemned it and given us a law which dis- 
 tinctly puts it aside (and our forgetting it accounts for 
 our failure to be worthy disciples of His, and of Chris- 
 tianity to be worthy of its name), if this be so, then here 
 what a store of power there is, of power available for 
 man, for the renewing of our life. All the power, all 
 the passion, all the human force and life, that go now 
 into the devotion to God, apart from man, are wasted 
 force ; are really ready and waiting to do the things we 
 count impossible, to make the new life we despair of. 
 These emotions, grandest, most potent of all, perchance, 
 that swell the human breast, these are bidden, God bids 
 them, Christ commands, to take a new channel, to find 
 one for themselves. And how human needs stand open 
 to receive them ! Here is a misdirected flood, cast back, 
 and here an empty channel ; each fitted, surely each 
 (from the foundation of the world) prepared for each. 
 Another waste of power here on a false duty; and not 
 now a restraint but a passion. Both elements are given 
 us, both powers are ready waiting to unite to recreate 
 man's life ; a passion of utmost intensity calling for a 
 truer channel on the one hand, and a restraint (of passion 
 only less strong, even if less so) demanding to be put
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 49 
 
 away. All the forces that make strong human life are 
 here united waiting for a new work to do ; and the work, 
 how it waits for them. Here is yet another duty we 
 must give up, and all the power of it free for use. 
 
 And in this is there not an universal ? See these emo- 
 tions, so intense, so lovely, so exquisite, of devotion to 
 " God " (and inevitably expressing themselves in mischief- 
 rights ; from whence indeed their value comes, because 
 through these the want is supplied), these beautiful and 
 mighty feelings, essential to the life of man, are given 
 him first through error ; are devoted to that which is false, 
 and gain power from the delusion. Is it not always so ? 
 Is it not thus all good is given to man and must be ? 
 Through false thoughts, and false rights, all that is most 
 valuable comes first into man's life ; it is first outside, 
 then brought within. For if this " devotion " is not to 
 be, we are to have it in its effect : devotion to God comes 
 also first in its self-form, and is to be perfected by being 
 in its effect. It is only in its self- form that it is devotion 
 to an isolated, separate God, a self- God, an Idol. 
 
 How quickly a change might come : children would 
 only have to see it was not goodness lost but only good- 
 ness in another form. The difficulty with adults is that 
 a change in the form of good which is its ceasing in one 
 and coming in another is felt by them (and till the law 
 is understood must be so) only on one side ; they feel the 
 losing and not the coming. They have to look through 
 the ceasing to see the coming ; but to the children it is 
 different ; it is a simple choice : Will you have the good 
 in this way, or in that ; at the beginning or at the end ; 
 in ways that restrain passion, or give it no reason for 
 being restrained; that forbid good to be, or make it 
 wholly free ? The adult is so used to its absence at the 
 
 D
 
 50 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 beginning, he does not see the want; is not even aware 
 of the vacuity, and so he clings to it so at the end. " A 
 new and better righteousness " must be this seeming 
 losing. 
 
 One of the chief hindrances to a true seeing of any of 
 the moral relations, and almost the chief cause by which 
 our thoughts of Christ especially are kept in a fictitious 
 theological region, is the absence of understanding about 
 \ self-virtue. We do not see that the " mischief-right " is 
 a right which is for self, that is, to the hurt of others. 
 So we seem to need above all to get to understand the 
 meaning of self-virtue, that is, to see what putting self 
 first is, and that that is wrong. But that is to be 
 delivered from it. It needs only to see for why should 
 it be hard to do ? How can it be hard to do when it 
 means not cutting yourself off from pleasure, not making 
 goodness mean restraint ? 
 
 It may be said : But these duties you call mischief- 
 rights are not putting self first, nor regarding self, nor do 
 they come at all from thinking of self; they are obedience 
 to God, and are done for the sake of, and out of regard for, 
 Him. It may be added : They are not even restraints 
 of passion, at least when they are truly done ; they are 
 the joyful expressions of love to God. If this be said, we 
 must still look farther here. Granted they are done " for 
 God," it is still self that is, our own goodness put against 
 others' good. The being commanded by God and done for 
 Him does not make it a different thing ; what is said is : 
 " God commands us to put self first," but it is none the 
 less doing it. And the thought that God commands it, 
 however honest, sincere, devout (as we know well), does 
 not make it better, but rather worse. We can see this 
 in respect to other errors than our own; a false right
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 51 
 
 believed to be God's law is simply so much worse for being 
 so believed ; and the need for a truer thought is but so 
 much the more urgent. Self put first is self first, and brings 
 its fruits, none the less if it be thought to be a command 
 of God. We must repent of thinking so of Him. 
 
 How totally false is that law : " Thou shalt not kill." 
 It concedes all wickedness by what it omits, and what it 
 affirms is false. It says : " You may hate as much as 
 you like, but you may never kill ; " while the fact is that 
 we may not hate, but may kill. And so no wonder the 
 I)ecalogue contradicts thelruth about the Sabbath, affirm- 
 ing it made not for man but for some thought about God 
 and in order to honour Him. And the basis of the other 
 falsities lies in the false presentation of loving God ; in 
 the very thought of the isolated God to the love of whom 
 it was necessary to add a love for man, and such a love ! 
 And this was betrayed by their prohibiting art to them- 
 selves : they had a monotheism, in some shaky fashion, 
 that they had to forego art even to keep such hold on as 
 they kept. And so we see the relation of the Greeks to 
 them ; they forewent monotheism but had art ; and we 
 owe not less to them for their art than to the Jews for 
 their monotheism. 
 
 And here is revealed evidence of an intense relation of 
 art to religion to our thought of God. A false thought 
 of Him excluded art. That is enough; it is even as a 
 false basis of life self-serving sets itself against plea- 
 sure ; it is the proof of a power and destiny of the 
 excluded thing to put away the falsity; proof of an 
 antagonism between them. Here is proof in the very 
 fact of the Jews saying : " No art " for God's sake and 
 in order to worship Him aright that art is destined to 
 make true our thought and worship of God. Art must
 
 52 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 cast out the negation which seeks to cast it out. So we 
 have yet to see more in it, to gain from it a greater 
 benefit. Are we now beginning to see its power aright ? 
 So it will show itself to have a destiny for making our 
 religion truer and completer, similar to that we already 
 begin to recognise in science. If it had not it could not 
 have been felt by the Jews in conflict with it so ; that is 
 the very same feeling as the self-based life feeling itself 
 in conflict with the love of woman. Everything a false 
 life assails is infinitely sacred, and has unseen spiritual 
 power and significance. The falsity knows its destroyer 
 afar off, and betrays its fear. Every such feeling we may 
 understand thus ; every asceticism means that something 
 that has use and good is put away. There is a negation 
 in the life that that thing will cast out. We may be 
 sure of it always. Here, then, is a promise for us. 
 
 It may be that the Decalogue did not mean to exclude 
 art ; but the Jews had it so. Their thought of God did 
 exclude art. Wherever there is a false feeling that is, 
 a lack in man, there will be the endeavour on his part 
 to put aside something that has value (that is, nature) ; 
 and that good, when no more to be put aside, will cure 
 that lack. It means that the two cannot co-exist. (So 
 acting for self puts aside marriage according to service.) 
 This is the law of the letter and of the spirit ; of the 
 letter the putting aside, of the spirit the coming back ; 
 and it gives life. So we see too the meaning of death : 
 it is for life again to be made perfect. 
 
 Now, in this relation of Christ's to the thought of God, 
 His putting away the isolated God who was to be loved 
 and served apart from man, may we find a key to the 
 difference of feeling on the question of His claiming to 
 be Divine ? Is not an appearance of such a claim, as if 
 in a special and exclusive sense, likely to arise from such
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 53 
 
 a feeling in Him, we not entering into it ? So shall we 
 find the true meaning of His words. And thus we may 
 see better how the Christians were counted atheists. 
 
 Christ tried in every possible way to hold to the service 
 of God apart from that of man. His soul tended to it, 
 sought it, was only forced from it. But at length He was 
 forced from it; and so in His new commandment how 
 evident it is : God is as if He were not. Here at last is 
 His true presence. The condition of truly reaching Him 
 is fulfilled when He is treated as if He were not. Here 
 we see religion become true, fulfilling the conditions of 
 truly revealing God. The phenomenal is treated as if it 
 were not. 
 
 Thus too it is visible why God had to be thought 
 of, and entirely regarded and served with all the power 
 of the intensest resolve, in this false way : it was that 
 that might be rightly let go ; might still be, even when 
 banished in its effects. That false had to be as the true, 
 that wrong as the right, in order that the true right 
 might rightly come; the false God as the false right 
 must be sought, loved, valued with all the heart, in 
 order that it may be given up rightly. Here have we 
 not the secret of Christ's strifes and tears ? So every 
 form is made to be valued ; valued to the utmost, and 
 held and striven for as the most sacred of things, that it 
 may be rightly given up ; may be still in its effects. 
 (This is what we see in genius.) So is not this feeling 
 of the infinite sacredness, the isolated God, phenomenal 
 God, and of forms emptied of their life, the same, and for 
 the same reason ; that both alike may be truly and not 
 falsely put aside ? 
 
 And the reason that these are not and cannot be 
 duties demanded by God is simply that there is not and
 
 54 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 cannot be such a God; that the whole thought of Him 
 is phenomenal. There is no Being to make such claims 
 or to be so served. That is to take the phenomenal 
 as existing our great error; to suppose our untrue 
 imaginings to exist. Did not Christ feel that neither the 
 way His fathers the Jews, nor the way His friends the 
 Gentiles, served God would do ? He could say only, Let 
 Hia service be as if it were not. 
 
 Was ever such an adding by a minus as in this new law 
 of Christ, such a doing by leaving out ? What we see 
 is the service of God vanishing and being in its effect. 
 This too comes first in its self-form. Being in effect 
 or truly being is simply being altruistic, and we have 
 the type of all altruistic being in this service of God in 
 serving man ; a true service (to real needs) instead of 
 an arbitrary, artificial one. Is there, then, something 
 answering to these real needs of our fellows, instead of 
 made up demands, in all true or altruistic being, in all 
 coming to be in effect ? And in every case of the 
 "fluxion" is not this what takes place: that a mere 
 phenomenal thing, arbitrary, made up by our " negation," 
 passes, and is in its effect in a reality ? So is there not 
 a truth in the doctrine that the love and service of men 
 must come from and by, must come through, the loving 
 and serving God ? True, if we see : it is by the passing 
 of that loving and serving ; by its being in its effect. 
 That first, and through it the true ; not by mere adding, 
 but by the one thing becoming the other. So the saying 
 is quite true : " Except through the love of God, no love 
 of man ; " only what it means is not known. Only 
 through being forced with utmost reluctance and struggle 
 to abandon that, could man have attained the true love 
 of God. (It is as only through the " observation-true "
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 55 
 
 does the true knowledge come, but it is not joined on to 
 it. That imperfect is merged in the perfect.) And is 
 there not another parallel here ? It is said : " The love 
 of man only through the family;" the home is the 
 training-school for universal love. Is not this true also 
 with an unsuspected truth ? Is not our " home " even as 
 that false serving of God was ? (In truth, is not woman 
 in it even so falsely served as God was, to the loss of 
 her fellows ? Is not the parallel exact ?) The home, as 
 we have made it, is the self-form of the love of man; 
 and even so also to be in its effect ; to be made perfect 
 in seeming to pass away. As Christ from His new law 
 simply left out God, and so gave Him for the first time 
 true dominion ; even so in woman's new law will not the 
 wife simply be left out left out, that serving others may 
 have all the space ? Hers is a throne, and she shall be 
 a queen. For this is the true and only throne for 
 evermore ; the service wholly put for others ; all claims 
 foregone. So we see Him who sitteth upon a throne, to 
 whom all blessing, honour, dominion, and power are for 
 ever ; the King we see enthroned for ever, and the sceptre 
 is laid down, the kingdom disappears, and God is all in 
 all. That is the King of Man; the pattern in whose 
 steps all that is human treads. So also shall the wife 
 rule when her dominion is made complete. 
 
 And how simply this putting aside the service of - 
 God for that of man is serving Him ; it is done for His 
 sake ; is His service, recognised as the service He demands. 
 It is fulfilling the two duties at once ; man served and 
 God ; God in the heart, man with heart and hands as 
 well. Both are done at once. The one is raised to a 
 more perfect life by the coming in of the other. It is 
 exactly the lesson of art ; two demands fulfilled at once 
 in the seeming giving up of one, the given up one therein
 
 56 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 made perfect. Here do we not see the bearing of art 
 upon religion ? That instinct of the Jews to put it 
 away, owing to their false thought, is justified in this : 
 the false putting of God's service first, so as to be against 
 the service of man, must sometimes have demanded art 
 to be put away ; it cannot stand against its lesson of 
 fulfilling two rights at once ; the first right, the one 
 according to the appearance, made perfect in being given 
 up for the claims of other things which it excluded. For 
 here is our first right this self-service of God ; the serving 
 Him not in others is the right according to the appear- 
 ance ; it is serving God according to the appearance 
 of Him ; to our thought of Him based on ourselves, and 
 yet not really true even to ourselves ; and not accord- 
 ing to what He is. And so how simply also such service 
 would be but the true service of the wife the service of 
 her spirit, that is, a spiritual service ; a service " in spirit 
 and in truth." (Have we yet read this aright ? ) Is not 
 this the very thing that serving God as a Spirit is : serving 
 Him in others, that is, serving His Spirit ; serving Him 
 as a giver, a lover? Do we not see, in the serving 
 of the wife's spirit, serving her giving, the true spirit 
 (or spiritual) service ? When Christ said, " God is a 
 Spirit," did He not mean simply, God is a giver, not a 
 taker ? He is not a negation, not a self to require you 
 to think what you must render to Him, but a life who 
 desires you as ministers of His service ; that you too may 
 live. He is 1 a Spirit, and requires Spirit-service, service 
 to those He loves, that He may bless and enrich them 
 through you ; so blessing you the most. Worship Him with 
 spirit-worship ; consent to be so enriched ; give Him the 
 gift of giving. He is a Spirit, and it is in that He lives, 
 and so is woman too ; only let her reveal what her being 
 is. She wants spirit-service.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 57 
 
 But how perfectly this question of service of God and 
 man may be summed up in terms of art ! Here is the 
 law, " Love God perfectly ; " then to that must be added : 
 " Also love your neighbour ; secondarily, as well as you 
 can." It is as in art, saying : " You must draw the 
 object, the outline, exactly, perfectly, with all your effort, 
 all your skill ; " then to that you have to add: " Give 
 atmosphere effects, a feeling of motion, of fulness and 
 multitude; secondarily, as well as you can." And in 
 both, how the two commands are one ! Serve men 
 wholly, and God is perfectly served : give the true effect 
 of Nature's fulness, and the object is perfectly served. 
 
 Through there being a phenomenal to us (seeming to 
 us of course the existing till we have learnt) it must be 
 that all truth and right, when it is truly gained, will be 
 in a phenomenal false and wrong ; will be against that 
 which must first be felt as true and right. So worship 
 in spirit will be phenomenal not-worship. 
 
 It has been urged (arguing for a moral centred on 
 self) that this life of man's is as an embryonic life ; very 
 imperfect and with very ineffective functions ; its chief 
 business the perfecting of its own organs to fit it for a 
 different condition, &c. Now this might perhaps be argued 
 a priori, if there were no experience ; but is it not enough 
 to say that it means this life of ours, every one circling 
 as much as he can of the world round him "with 
 limits ? " Does it not betray itself as a projected reason? 
 Here are these restrictions, &c., and the life has slipped 
 out of them ; and so the whole scheme wants something 
 to rest upon. And see what mischief it is : this has in it 
 all the thought of this life as only a preparation for 
 " heaven ; " it brings all that blinding influence of the
 
 58 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 fancied spiritual apart from this (which is indeed all one 
 with the serving God apart from man) ; it turns the 
 thought from this eternal to the imaginary future. 
 
 But how is this idea of an embryo related to that of 
 this age as a chrysalis-state a " dark " age ? The con- 
 ditions are essentially the same ; it is true of man that 
 now his chief work is the development for a condition 
 that is to come ; but then it is in this world, and one 
 mischief of the other thought is that this " development " 
 is not the bringing on, the working out, of the future 
 condition, but is a preparation only for a change to come 
 outside. 
 
 The thought of this as an embryo-life (in that sense 
 of its being our business to form our own character) is a 
 result of our having taken our pleasure, instead of service, 
 for our life to centre round. Not that in fact it may not 
 be true ; and that our own development is the work of 
 this life ; but the question is how that is to be attained ; 
 whether by the life centering round ourselves or others. Is 
 not the law of service the very means of man's develop- 
 ment ? Granted the perfection of its own organs is the 
 end of an embryo, yet by what does that come ? Does 
 it mean that the thought, the effort, is to be put on that 
 result, or would not that rather be fatal to it ? May we 
 even think of monstrosities as sometimes arising as if 
 from such a misdirection of the embryonic powers ? As 
 if an embryo got it into its head, that its own internal 
 development was its object, and so attended to it. What 
 but an " arrest of development " could ensue ? It would 
 put on some undue restraint ; check this, regulate 
 that, bring to bear on them influences apart from the 
 simple and only question of what was wanted. May we 
 say of some monstrosities that they show us the effects 
 of a " self-virtue " in the embryo ? How should faculties,
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 59 
 
 that are to be for service, be trained or developed, save 
 through devotion to service ? 
 
 And so, indeed, is not the very thought of the isolated 
 God (the self-God) a " projected reason " from the restraint 
 of passion that putting self first makes goodness mean ? Not 
 recognising the true reason for goodness being in restraint 
 (namely, the regard to self), man has, of course, to invent 
 another reason ; and this is the self-God, the God who 
 demands to be served apart from His creatures, the ima- 
 gination, or " idol." We make that God for ourselves to 
 stand as reason for the restraint ; we (although we do not 
 suspect it) having made goodness mean restraint. And is 
 not the basis of it, in one aspect, this also, that we, having 
 a phenomenal perception of our own being (not true, but 
 resting on a non-perception), as isolated selves, suppose 
 a God also, answering to our false apprehension of our 
 own being ? 
 
 And to begin by saying there is a God to be served 
 apart from man, is sure to end in hurting man for 
 God's sake. It must, for that serving of God must mean 
 restraint, and restraint must come to injury. The result 
 is inevitable : " May we not help others so ? " " No ; 
 we must restrain our passions." It must go from bad to 
 worse, and God's service first, apart from men, is sure 
 to come to be against them. So the Decalogue, with 
 God first, apart from man, is strictly idolatrous. And 
 surely it is the worst and most disastrous untruth ever 
 uttered to say : " God spoke these words, and said : " Put 
 me first. 
 
 Then the serving of God and of self are two forms of 
 the same thing that is, of the putting away of pleasure 
 (i.e., the restraining of passion). This is the central point 
 in them ; the one that is common to both, and as forms
 
 60 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 of that they should be regarded. For is it not a law 
 that whenever two things have a character in common, 
 that is the character of them, they are forms of that unity ? 
 That should be seized as the point to be regarded in 
 them. 
 
 This was the " pearl " Christ had " found : " the percep- 
 tion that men did and could " love one another ; " that it 
 was their nature, was real matter-of-fact common sense to 
 expect it ; that that command might be given with true 
 assurance of obedience. It is not that men do not want 
 to love one another, it is not that keeps them back ; it is 
 that they think they have to love God. So the sublimity 
 of Christ's leaving out God from man's love. Put up a 
 loving God that is not loving man, and man's strength 
 is squandered on idle things and mischiefs; he has no 
 power left to love his neighbour, and he avenges himself 
 for his waste makes an equilibrium by not loving his 
 neighbour. That frightful idol kills men's souls, and 
 no being could stand against it a God whom you can 
 serve in drawing-rooms, and carriages, and by devout 
 emotions on Swiss mountains, while your fellows are in 
 cellars. It would kill any being to believe it, for it 
 would turn him into the same image ; he also would 
 become a being that could be served so. 
 \ Qhria^^alsn is to be served as a L _Spirit ; and in our 
 Christianity is He not served as a self? Is not this the 
 key to the passages : " I am the Way, the Truth, and the 
 Life," and other such ? We misread them, thinking 
 He meant, " Put me first." To live His life not to be 
 thinking of Him and His claims that is to come to 
 Him. He has set us an example, in His own revelation 
 of God, how we should think of, and serve Him. Is it 
 not thus Paul says : " If I have known Christ after the
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 61 
 
 flesh, yet henceforth know I Him no more ? " Paul's 
 "flesh " is our " self." "Even Christ as a self I know 
 no more." 
 
 If then in our Christianity Christ is served as a self, 
 is it not, with all its good and beauty, waiting to be 
 merged ? Do we not trace well enough in it the effect 
 of a worship of a self? See the hardness of external 
 bondage that creeps over it perpetually. How beautiful 
 Judaism had been, what Psalms it had prompted, what 
 loving devotion cherished, sustained what sublimity of 
 heroism ! Yet Christ merged it. And so what beauty 
 has not clung around the self-home, what tenderness and 
 devotion it has cherished ; yet shall woman merge it too. 
 Shall Christ alone be condemned to be served as a self 
 for ever ? 
 
 The two forms of self-indulgence, Hell-fire and outer 
 darkness, are the two punishments for those on God's left 
 hand : Life's becoming ; and on the right : Life perfect ; 
 a kingdom ; pleasure made free. 
 
 The "body" raised in glory, the impulse put away 
 with ignominy, comes back made one with Nature. The 
 " raising of the dead " is ever the new life. So Paul 
 says. But some will say : How are the dead raised ; the 
 rule of self cast out ; with what passions then, what im- 
 pulses, do they come ? " (This would be the question 
 arising in respect to a spiritual raising.) And Paul says : 
 " With these same passions and impulses that have been 
 put away in dishonour ; these that were ' self passions ; 
 they are the very spiritual powers themselves." They are 
 buried physical self-things ; they are raised spiritual. 
 
 And so when he said to his Gentile converts : " Stand 
 fast," did he not mean, in your old Gentile freedom, which 
 Christ has changed for you into a true liberty ? If you
 
 62 THE LAW-BREAKER, 
 
 take any law but His of service you come under the 
 whole dominion of the self. 
 
 Why to be Divine should Christ not have had a truly 
 human mind as well as a truly human body ; why not 
 limited in " time " as well as in space ? If He truly had 
 foreknown how His words about the unpardonable sin, in 
 their vagueness to us (as reported), would have been a 
 reason at least of madness, could He, who cured disease, 
 have left them so? And throughout, though the things 
 said are perfect, is there not plain evidence that there was 
 not any superhuman foreseeing of the future ; that what 
 was not within vision then was not seen ? That is, surely, 
 that Christ was Divine in a true, human, real sense, and 
 not a fancied one. 
 
 Has any curse been so great on man as that thought 
 of " heaven ? " It binds him in his contentment, and 
 lets every evil practice and false thought rule unchecked. 
 And it is an expression of the thought that " in this 
 world " goodness must be in putting away pleasure ; for 
 heaven is to be pleasure, and so it must be in another 
 world the passions gone, not raised in glory. So it is 
 not self-not-first to aim at, to work for, to enter into and 
 find at our very doors, and waiting for us, the heaven 
 that is not a dream : not this, but a mere passive change 
 to be waited for ; a falling off of passions and impulses, 
 which even because they are to fall off may be left unre- 
 deemed from self. This is what comes of that fatal 
 dream, which our holding to self-first, with its goodness 
 in not-pleasure, imposes on us for our heaven. This is 
 the palsy it inflicts upon our souls.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 63 
 
 Shall we not have to teach that man's service must be 
 to the universal (that is, to God ; here is the true mean- 
 ing of that feeling ; made false by isolating God or think- 
 ing of Him as a self a not-others) : Man's service is to 
 the universal ; he has been trained to this through service 
 to the individual in the false way as against others. 
 And this service to individuals was beautiful ; it had 
 exquisite characters that human history could not have 
 spared nay, that are beautiful and perfect in their place 
 for ever, and shall always be ; but the imperfection of it 
 was evident too, was shown by what it became. It was 
 one of the things that had to pass. So the service to the 
 individuals as selves or against others stands midway 
 as it were ; it is better than serving and regarding self 
 alone ; though it is not the true form of regarding others, 
 yet it is regarding them. It is as our " free-will " stands 
 between mere passiveness and true freedom. 
 
 Looking at some self-restraining people, quiet, serious, 
 earnest after good, consenting to the intensest sacrifices 
 with unpretentious resignation, how one feels as if it 
 would be quite good enough if all were but as these are. 
 And yet, not only will not God have it, not only could not 
 Nature be known at all if it were so, but these very people 
 and their goodness could not have been if there had not 
 been a man most intensely unlike them. They can be 
 as they are only because Christ threw Himself with 
 utterest recklessness of passion against the Pharisees ; 
 not caring what came to Him, to them, to the very 
 religion He had loved. 
 
 And this life of Christ has made Europe new. Yet is 
 it not strange ? He was not talking of Europe at all, nor 
 of anything that was in Europe. He was talking of 
 things that existed only in a small section of the world,
 
 64 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 among a few people that no one cared anything particular 
 about. To these He said : " You make void the law of 
 God through your traditions ; " with your ideas of goodness 
 and serving God, you make His commands of no effect. 
 And the life of Europe is the echo. Is not that the 
 very central word of all Christ's teaching ? " By your 
 traditions you make God's law of no effect ; " instead of 
 this law of His revealed in human wants, you put words 
 and thoughts of your own. (It is the very same as the 
 problem of science has been : regard the things God 
 shows you ; do not set up your own thoughts ; and with 
 the same conditions.) 
 
 Will not Christ's life be better and more truly seen by 
 being thus seen as one with the bringing of man's thought 
 up to the visible phenomena ? Was not His great say- 
 ing, " Your traditions," the very thing that had to be 
 said of the traditions that put away learning from Nature ? 
 It was thought so much finer to invent our own truth. 
 Did He not stand and call to man, for His life as well as 
 His thought : " Take Nature as your guide ; hear God's 
 voice there ? " And there is in both the same seeming 
 descent from the grand and noble and supersensuous. It 
 is in the intellectual as in the spiritual life. In both 
 humbling is exaltation. 
 
 Christ said : " Not your goodness " (traditions must 
 mean man's aim at goodness), " not your goodness ; do 
 what God wants doing." This is the power of traceable 
 service : it brings man's life (as observation brings his 
 thought) under Nature's hand, to grow thereby. It is 
 one call : " Learn from Nature ; God speaks to you there." 
 And thus we may see quite afresh His reference to the 
 Holy Spirit and His mission. It joins itself to this work 
 of His in bringing man's life under Nature. Did He not 
 feel that in this He had given man the guide into all
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 65 
 
 truth ? Here was man's guide, Nature herself, in the 
 form of visible service, and he had turned aside from her 
 the Holy Spirit, as Christ called her. This makes it 
 simple fact ; Christ thus did bestow on man his guide 
 into truth. Of course it is not merely the visible service, 
 but that to which it leads ; as in science not merely the 
 appearances, but that which comes of studying them. 
 (It is better to say traceable than visible service.) 
 
 " Not your own goodness or virtue, but human good ; " 
 this is, goodness for the bad. For the tradition is sure 
 to be a hard thing (it is this alone that commends it to 
 the self), a putting away pleasure. So sweeping away 
 the " traditions " is goodness for the bad ; it brings the 
 outcasts into the fold. " You condemn people, and cast 
 them out from the power of good for not doing certain 
 things, and God never commanded them : you make them 
 bad." 
 
 By giving to man the " right " of real demonstrable 
 service, Christ delivered him from the need of having to 
 put away pleasure ; that is, from the necessity of having 
 his regard upon himself. So Christ gave man a plea- 
 sure-religion ; a religion with pleasure free ; the old 
 impulse, sown in dishonour, raised again in glory. Christ 
 gave men this, and if it has been lost, is it not clear how 
 it has been ? We have consented to come again under 
 the yoke of bondage ; and (putting theological meaning 
 in His and His disciples' words) have made for ourselves 
 again the goodness that is in putting pleasure away. 
 Then for a time men strove for it, and then they gave it 
 up ; but the longing remains unsatisfied. This is what 
 is amiss : we have lost Christ's gift of the religion of 
 pleasure ; the religion which deprives pain of its power 
 to be better than pleasure (a power it cannot but have 
 
 E
 
 66 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 while self is the regard ; that is, while others are any- 
 where, or to any degree, left out). We have lost Christ's 
 gift ; or may we not express it as the guiding of the 
 Holy Spirit ? We have lost the leading of " Nature," 
 of real demonstrable service, for these are one. So we 
 have lost that which is " heaven," pleasure no more worse 
 than pain. Christ gave man that. 
 
 The coming of sense into man's intellectual life deter- 
 mines that he should have the life to which the free use 
 of sense (even the insistance on its being used to the 
 utmost) belongs. Now, only in Christian countries has 
 this change taken place ; is it therefore truly part of 
 Christ's bringing man to the guidance of the Holy Spirit? 
 For is not man's intellect coming to rule sense through 
 Nature being forced upon him a true fruit of the work 
 of Christ in giving man the law of traceable service ? 
 Since He brought man to Nature and observation, does 
 not the scientific process owe its true parentage to Him ? 
 Was not the old thought of a truth that was above sense 
 one with that of a goodness that was above traceable 
 service ? These are but two expressions of one falsity. 
 And in sending man to look at the real sensible wants of 
 his neighbour for the guide of his actions, He really set 
 in motion the powers which led to his taking real sen- 
 sible appearances for the guide of his thought. (And 
 do we not thus feel a sacredness stealing over sense and 
 its use, over all the sensuous ? We begin to feel that 
 it is in very truth the guiding of the Holy Spirit, and 
 what a new thing it might be to us. And it ceases to 
 be a wonder that by a thing called sensuous, nay, most 
 despised and degraded, should come man's greatest good.) 
 So by bringing man's life to traceable service as its law, 
 or means of guidance and development, did not Christ
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 67 
 
 really bring his intellect to traceable truth as its means 
 of development ? He bound man to Nature ; by bring- 
 ing his heart to her He brought also his thought. 
 
 And so may we see in part how it was expedient for 
 Christ to go away ? Could the dark age have come with 
 His continued influence ? For it was necessary the dark 
 age should come ; that was the essential means of bring- 
 ing man to the guidance of Nature ; the inevitable form 
 of the coming of life. For life must be given according 
 to the nature of life ; must grow as life grows, cannot be 
 given from without. And the bringing man's thought to 
 Nature (the life of his intellect) could only come by 
 sense being compelled on him, even as it was. So that 
 (intellectual) dark age was a true and a visibly right 
 fruit of Christ's life and teaching ; of His bringing man 
 to Nature. It was the inevitable process in respect 
 to thought, even as the morally dark age the having 
 pleasure forced on him before he has accepted the life to 
 which free pleasure belongs, and as the means of bringing 
 him to that life is the necessary process in respect to 
 his spiritual life. What we see in both is the becoming 
 of life ; it is Christ giving life to the world ; life growing. 
 And He did it who said : " Make not the commands of 
 God of none effect by your tradition ; " He who said : "Do 
 not fancy about good and make up your own goodness, 
 but look at traceable, demonstrable needs." He gave us 
 Nature and her freedom, the kingdom of Pleasure and its 
 righteousness. 
 
 Christ's law was simply genius asserting its right as 
 the universal right, even as genius was sure to do. Was 
 it not certain always that the genius-law would be 
 affirmed as man's, and that men would recognise it, even 
 though they misconceived it ? So it is affirmed, and then
 
 68 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 lies latent for a time, and works till the whole is leavened. 
 Is this the meaning of the " leaven ? " It was hidden, 
 as if lost ; but suddenly, behold, the whole lump is so ; 
 prepared, made ready for that law. (Was there in history 
 a " leaven " through all the dark age, working and making 
 ready the human mind for knowledge ? ) And, indeed, 
 is this the affirmation of the genius-right as the right 
 for man the thing that man recognises as divine ? Is 
 it by this that every divine book has had and held its 
 sway? 
 
 " The kingdom of heaven and its Tightness ; " the law 
 of service which makes pleasure free. So do we not see 
 a meaning again in : " Seek first . . . and all these 
 things shall be added ? " If the law of service rules 
 there will be more good, more enjoyments for every one, 
 than any one even desires. To get this law accepted is 
 the only need ; with it all good will come ; without it 
 really and truly, none ; only labour that mocks itself. 
 And thus the opposites in Christ's sayings are clear : have 
 the law of service ruling and all good will be ; it will 
 be the rule of pleasure and its Tightness. But those who 
 try to bring it must accept the loss of all things and 
 become the scorn of men. Here are the two things : the 
 law of service which will bring all good; more to all 
 than any have yet dreamed of yet ; but you who go to 
 teach it, you shall be counted vile, and men will think 
 they do God service in killing you. That law answers 
 perfectly to these characters ; it brings all good and is 
 counted bad the law that makes pleasure free. This 
 comes by God having joined service and pleasure ; by the 
 self for goodness having put pleasure away. The man 
 who preaches God's righteousness must be accounted a 
 sinner. Here it is : all good ; the one simple thing
 
 THE LAW BREAKER. . 69 
 
 that will do all things and relieve from all other need to 
 care ; and that must be taken up at that price and no 
 less. " Seek first " that which puts wholly away 
 making pleasure worse than pain. 
 
 So again, when asked about the kingdom of heaven 
 and what " marriage " would be there, He replied at 
 once : It will be impulse perfectly free ; the Tightness 
 which makes pleasure wholly free is there ; there will be 
 no sign of any reason for pleasure being less good ; they 
 will not marry there, but will be as the angels of God 
 which are in heaven^ in Nature obeying their impulses 
 perfectly. In " heaven " there must be no touch of the 
 feeling that anything is better not to be because there 
 is pleasure in it. All source of that must be abolished 
 utterly. 
 
 For the kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of Nature. 
 The law is : Be Nature, that is, grow. Is it not rather 
 strange that though we know how we give law to children, 
 which we know they have to " grow " into truly obey- 
 ing, and that all their failures and even false attempts 
 are real obedience and the very right things, yet that it 
 has not occurred to us to think whether God's command 
 to man might not be one of the same kind, that is, not 
 Do this, but Learn to do this ? Two errors, which are 
 really one, have prevented us ; one that we did not see 
 that God's true command was one which might be thus 
 prepared for, was one which meant doing automatically 
 (though its very words mean this), and therefore was one 
 which was obeyed in failing, which supposed preparation ; 
 and the other was that we were not thinking of the law 
 as being for man to grow into. We were thinking of 
 the individuals only ; from which point we can truly see 
 nothing.
 
 70 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 The instant reaction of Christ's mind, when the question 
 was raised about marriage in that world of which He had 
 spoken, the world where service was the law and pleasure 
 therefore was free (" Nature and her Tightness "), the 
 instant reaction of His mind when it was asked : " How 
 about pleasure in those days ? " was, " Anyhow " (even 
 as the artist paints), as it is in Nature. Now this is 
 the very same with Paul's " raised in glory." It is one 
 thought. In that life with what impulses do people 
 come ; how about pleasure ? " With the very impulse 
 they had put away with shame," says Paul. And Christ 
 before him : they ask no questions about marriage. 
 
 So man's experience is a revelation by a minus of 
 what is in Nature. He learns so what Nature is ; gains 
 experience of her, is made capable of being one with 
 her, for what is in her has also become in him. And 
 here again appears an identity of " heaven " in Christ's 
 words with Nature ; these things have to be in man as 
 they are in Nature. Is not this one with : " Thy will be 
 done on earth as it is in " Nature ? (Again : man's 
 life is a revelation of Nature by a minus : but that is 
 what art is. Has man's life the same meaning as an art- 
 work ? ) 
 
 How beautiful is the use of a superstition, or feeling 
 that a thing may never be done ; ignoring the question 
 of its use. The problem is to have the regard on others, 
 instead of on self. If the regard is on self, it is wholly 
 unsuspected that it is evil ; nay, it is felt that it is quite 
 right, only certain restraints must be observed. (It is 
 exactly trying to make up a right by two wrongs.) Now, 
 to cure it, see what is done in superstition : a thing is 
 taken which when done for self becomes evidently and 
 obviously bad. So, the self being still first and being
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 71 
 
 taken for granted, the feeling arises that that thing must 
 never be done. There is the superstition : it is the 
 feeling of right with self assumed first. The fhing must 
 never be ; even though human good be sacrificed for it. 
 It remains only by urgency of human need to break 
 through this law (mere forgetting is enough) and the 
 work is done. Then the regard is transferred from self 
 to others ; the thing is done when good demands, refused 
 when good refuses. The law, which was impotent 
 because against service, is mighty because expressing it. 
 And the problem is accomplished ; the regard which 
 was on self is now on good, and superstition is the 
 means. 
 
 Now with this thought can we read back a little into 
 history ? Were all laws those which with us are laws 
 of action, such as killing once laws of things ? Were 
 they not first all the subjects of superstition ? So does 
 the Decalogue, for instance, reveal to us the existence 
 of a time when the law : " Thou shalt not kill," was a 
 dead law, as ours now of marriage ? So has all the 
 advance of man been through the change of laws of things 
 into laws of action, by aid of superstition ? 
 
 Do not the strange superstitious usages everywhere, 
 especially in the earlier civilised East, indicate this, the 
 even universal tendency, to make laws of things ? And 
 so, by the by, if Europe is more " advanced " it may be 
 to some extent because it was later ; and so escaped in 
 part this necessity for a superstition for every right ; 
 that having been borne for it " vicariously " before. 
 
 Then do we see in the universal prevalence of laws of 
 things the reason for the true laws having been so often 
 of no effect ? Was not that the result of the false laws ? 
 When we look back we see such lawlessness, such vio- 
 lence, murder, robbery ; we are astonished ; but did not
 
 72 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 that come, even as our lawlessness in respect to chastity 
 comes, through false laws of things, confounding service 
 and disservice in one common condemnation ? Should 
 we not truly see the former lawlessness in our own ? 
 Other laws were to them made void as the law of chastity 
 is to us. So we are not different from them ; only we 
 have escaped from their superstitions. Laws, that were 
 impotent to them, are no more made impotent to us by 
 a false right ignoring service, but when that false right 
 still exists we are even as they. 
 
 Did not Christ, at the confluence of the Hebrew and 
 the Greek spirits, naturally speak of Nature as the Holy 
 Spirit ? And if so, may we thus understand the blas- 
 phemy against the Holy Ghost ? The man who refuses 
 Nature and her guidance says of that which service 
 bids that it is still evil, vile, wrong. How can he be 
 led aright ? 
 
 Mahomet seems to have been intensely a theological 
 man : his thought was of God, and everywhere he made 
 that a turning-point of the true faith. Is this a chief 
 difference between him and Christ ? Christ was emphati- 
 cally not theological ; His new law simply omitted all 
 reference to God. And so does Mahometanism come as 
 the bringing in again of theology ? 
 
 May we not see clearly the basis of Christ's relations 
 to marriage in His demand for a true Tightness, a true 
 purity ? Our wrong is that we consent to some im- 
 purity ; to an impurity that forbids good. We consent 
 to this : man need not be so pure that service may 
 wholly rule. He may have and keep so much lust that
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 73 
 
 that would be impure. That puts all wrong, all into 
 mere confusion ; turn good itself to evil. But Christ 
 did not consent to. this ; the key to all His sayings here 
 is given in His express forbidding of it. His law was on 
 the desire : man must not " lust, " must not desire against 
 service. (Is not that the true meaning of lust desire 
 against service ? Could it be more perfectly defined ?) 
 So all was simple : He forbade that which alone could 
 make right mean anything else than whatever was for 
 good. So, when a problem respecting the form of 
 marriage came, He put it aside as a thing that could 
 have no meaning in man's life; it would be what was 
 for good; there was nothing more to say. And when 
 the woman was brought to Him, was not His action 
 essentially the same ? These things need no special 
 law ; with life they will be right. " Have traditions 
 made God's law of no effect with you ? Feel it more 
 truly for the future. I do not condemn you, but sin no 
 more." Then when He spoke of divorce, was He not 
 speaking against the habit of refusing the obligations 
 that union with a woman brought in Nature ? 
 
 The point is to desire a thing if it is good, not to 
 desire it if it is against good. The difference is between 
 a rule over the desire and over the deed. What we 
 seem to take as of course is a desire always for the same 
 thing (the pleasant thing) and a control over the deed, 
 an abstinence from it. This we are familiar with, think 
 of as goodness, Tightness, &c. The desire for the 
 pleasant thing is always supposed, whether it be for 
 good or not. Thus the abstinence is sure to become 
 quite irrespective of good. It is the rule of pleasure 
 which comes inevitably with the concession that the 
 desire need not follow good. One comes to the very
 
 74 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 heart of the question here : may or may not the desire 
 be exempted from the law ? 
 
 Surely one would think it was easier to do a thing 
 when it was for good and not to do it when it was for 
 evil, than always not to do it ; easier to desire it when 
 for good, and not desire it when for evil than never to 
 do it whether for good or not. No law can be easier 
 than the law of service except one claiming license for 
 the desire. 
 
 But at least may it not be said that under certain 
 circumstances we do obtain results by abstinence which 
 we cannot by any other means where a law of use 
 according to service would be unavailing ? May it be 
 that man " in this world " is in such a condition as that 
 to which an individual reduces himself by drunkenness ? 
 The true law is beyond his power ; and he must have 
 one that ignores service, and is based upon his defect. 
 But then let those who think so give up Christ and His 
 prayer. Every day that I live I grow more thankful to 
 Christ for the things He said and did. It is upon our 
 problems those passionate lips pronounced their verdict, 
 which the world no, not even those who most claim 
 Him as their authority cannot set aside. 
 
 Also how easy it would be, how simple, to make the 
 demand upon the desire, to bring the law on it. Simply 
 have no other law ; have that the right, the only right ; 
 let there be no other, and man is compelled to attend to 
 his desires, and make his Tightness be in them. But 
 the outside laws apart from service prevent this ; they 
 forbid the desires being upon service. And so they 
 make it seem natural, and a thing of course, that the 
 desires will be on that which is our own pleasure, 
 and that right must be in restraining them. But how
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER, 75 
 
 simple it would be to have a right that must make the 
 question be of the desires. And why should it be 
 harder ? Is it hard to desire good ? Do we not often 
 say : " It is easy to desire ; the doing is the hard thing." 
 And we let the desires go unregulated, and insist upon a 
 doing which not only is restraint on our desires, but is 
 less good for others. 
 
 By this means there would at least be brought to bear 
 upon the desires all the power that is now exerted on 
 the deeds (all the moral and other feelings) ; and do 
 we really need anything more ? But besides this there 
 would be at once added all the power of " good " or 
 service that is now excluded. And it would be all in 
 one direction ; not interrupted or made to contradict 
 itself; it might be constantly felt and regarded and 
 rested on, as it cannot be while there are rights that, 
 on any ground, contradict traceable service. The whole 
 power of that is lost, for to give it sway would be to be 
 led wrong sometimes. 
 
 Is not the false thought of the Jewish life summed up 
 in those words : " Fear God and keep His command- 
 ments ? " This Christ put aside. Nor did He say that 
 the true service of God is in the perfect love and service 
 of man. He adopted the other course, letting God be as 
 if out of sight ; He said not, Serve God by serving man ; 
 Serve man for God's sake, &c., as is said now but 
 simply : " Love one another ; " think of men and their 
 needs. 
 
 And when men say : But we must love God first in 
 order that we may love men ; we cannot love them 
 enough if we do not ; they are not lovely enough : that 
 is a distinct refusal of Christ's command. Christ's com- 
 mand is : Love one another; no easier thing, but that. No
 
 76 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 loving some other Being in order that we may do by 
 men as if we loved them without really loving them. 
 
 How we tend to go back to that law that " whole 
 duty " which is not man's duty, and proved itself not by 
 its failure. And we reap the fruits ; for this thought is 
 one with not seeing that claims are always to be obeyed ; 
 it is one with having our right in things the things we 
 fancy at any time that God commands. Thinking thus, 
 we necessarily make our right in fixed things, and the 
 not-regard to claims is sure to come upon us. We have 
 bound ourselves under subjection to self. In truth, this 
 thought of " God and His commandments " is only 
 another form of that not-regard to claims which is regard 
 to self. 
 
 Is it the fact that the needed becoming " better " is 
 done at certain stages or periods in man's life answering 
 to the process of the working out of a correction of the 
 premiss and that then when this, the hard part, is 
 done, there comes a time when what is wanted is not 
 more becoming " better," but the truer use of what has 
 been gained, a different way of thinking or beginning, in 
 a word, knowledge ? The time when Christ came was one 
 of these, and so it was that He insisted so much upon 
 knowing. And these times are necessarily marked by 
 license and relaxation of bonds ; seeming failure of the 
 power of good ; a loss of what had been the former good. 
 
 Here we see perhaps one reason man has thought of 
 the claims of God instead of his fellow-creatures, namely, 
 that so his rights could remain fixed. " God's claims " 
 as so imagined by man do not change ; so his rights 
 can be in things. Truly seen, indeed, should we not 
 see that not God's claims but the idea of a fixed right
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 77 
 
 was the cause here? Man finding himself with such a 
 dead right necessarily ceasing to have a true reason 
 because Nature changes and her claims 'projects these 
 claims of God ; they are a projected reason. Then also 
 we can see that God's claims rather than his fellows 
 that is, God's claims as a self instead of in others 
 would have fixed themselves on man's thought of duty, 
 while his eye was on himself; because he would make 
 them demands for putting away pleasure (as our fathers 
 thought), or at least for taking only quite refined and 
 elevated ones (as we think) ; in a word, God's claims as 
 thus thought of (as desired and imagined by us instead 
 of as revealed in His works) would be sure to be things 
 man could with self first still feel right and good. 
 Regarding God's claims in man would demand things 
 which with self first were brutal and impossible. We 
 can see, evidently, why man has put imagined claims of 
 God in place of true claims. 
 
 This thought of God's claims imagined instead of 
 revealed is the child man's contrivance for nailing down 
 his compass so that north may always point the same 
 way. Can he have a varying compass ? 
 
 Nature in human wants is God's revelation. We, 
 not dreaming that they could be rightly taken as our 
 guide (since if they were would not " right " be con- 
 stantly changing?) have of course had to suppose other 
 revelations to guide us. For assuredly we need a guide. 
 And now in this Jhought is there not a light upon words 
 of Christ's ? Is it not plain that He looked forward to 
 a guidance by a " spirit," not by a book ? What sign is 
 there at all that He contemplated in the least any such 
 revelation or inspired guide as we have thought we have
 
 ;8 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 in the New Testament ? He referred to a wholly different 
 kind of guidance. And so again does it become clear 
 why He said it was expedient He should go away ? Con- 
 scious as He must have been that He was making all 
 things new to men, did He not feel that it was essen- 
 tial He should die and leave them in order for their 
 own minds to operate spontaneously ? Their souls and 
 thoughts also were to come into relation with Nature 
 the Holy Spirit was to come to them and it could 
 not be until the overmastering weight of His thought 
 and feeling was removed from them. He had stood 
 to them as Nature herself, and His words had been 
 spirit and life to them, but it was to Nature they were 
 to go. 
 
 This is true of every great teacher ; indeed, every 
 teacher says so : I must leave you ; you must go yourself 
 to Nature. 
 
 So in this way, in his needs, man is part of Nature ; 
 in this perhaps most of all ; in these the Holy Ghost 
 speaks to men. Here, above all, to us, is Nature ; to us, 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Have not the " temptations " of Christ a visible mean- 
 ing ? " Worship me " how plain it is, as Christ became 
 conscious of His power, and His desires grew definite : 
 " You see, how, if you insist on the perfect right, the 
 right from the beginning, you will fail, will have before 
 you simply more exclusion and loss of all power to do 
 anything ; but if you will say nothing of that, but let the 
 central evil remain for the present, doing what you can 
 to remedy the immediate evils, and trusting to the general 
 advance of human nature to bring a better state in due 
 course of time, what is there that you will not be able to 
 do ? See your power : you have a new vision of the
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 79 
 
 world, a persuasion none can resist ; all the kingdoms of 
 the earth are yours, and their glory has grown but for 
 you to reap ; you have within you Jew and Greek and 
 Roman ; you unite them all in your thought ; in the fire 
 of your passions they have melted into one. You can do 
 infinite good ; only do not touch the central wrong, and 
 what mischief is there you will not remove ? But touch 
 it and a black veil falls before you ; there is nothing 
 after." The echo of that temptation was : "I saw Satan 
 fall as lightning from heaven." 
 
 Then the other two temptations also have a meaning. 
 If Christ brought man away from the imagined will of 
 God to His revealed will in Nature, or in needs, then the 
 temptation to cast Himself down exactly expresses this ; 
 it was : " Go not according to steps of fact, of traceable 
 order and need ; do not look at Nature for what God 
 wills you to do ; but apart from that, be thinking of what 
 God wills in untraceable ways ; trust to them and follow 
 them ; look away from the visible to the invisible ; serve 
 God, not man. Never mind that it is against the visible 
 order and demands. Has not God angels ? And are 
 there not written commands ? Is not this the very spirit 
 of Scripture : Serve men through God ? " And do we not 
 see the refusal to throw Himself down when He healed 
 the man on the Sabbath day ? He would not trust to 
 God's untraceable purposes of good ; He would use the 
 visible ones. To refuse traceable service, because " God 
 can overrule," &c., is to throw oneself down because God 
 has angels. 
 
 And so we come to the question of the rule of traceable 
 service, with its one emphatic demand now. And is it 
 any wonder ; must not everything rest on that ? It is 
 felt that it does. If the law of service is to rule there 
 our whole life must make itself anew ; it has this power.
 
 8o THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 Is it any wonder therefore that round it all turns ? What 
 a gladness it is that the proof so multiplies ; the demon- 
 stration becomes so clear that it may be used. 
 
 Then has not the temptation to make stones bread a 
 similar meaning ? Was it : Put away ordinary things ; 
 attend to spiritual ones ; never mind earning your living ? 
 And the reply : That is not truly following spiritual 
 things ; we must follow God's revealed, not His imagined, 
 will ; it is expressed in facts. Every word that proceeds 
 out of the mouth of God every fact of Nature these are 
 the very spiritual life for which they would be forsaken. 
 Both show Him clinging to the facts of Nature ; the 
 traceable demands. They are the expression of Christ's 
 bringing man to Nature, His " sending " to them the 
 Holy Spirit. He would do in Nature's way. He could 
 " send " the Holy Spirit to others, for it " came " first to 
 Him. 
 
 Christ refused to look away from Nature the trace- 
 able to trust to and follow the invisible ; yet is not 
 science, every knowledge of Nature, looking at and 
 following the invisible? It is true, but it is with the 
 conditions fulfilled ; it is not looking away from the 
 traceable. So is not science the condition for that look- 
 ing to the invisible to which man is so prone ? And so, 
 too, when Christ said, " Greater works than these shall 
 ye do," did He not refer to science ; that men should 
 come to know her, and avail themselves of her power 
 even more than He, when they had learned not to look 
 away from her ? 
 
 Is it not the union of opposites ? Looking at the 
 invisible and not .at the visible, one of them ; at the 
 visible and not at the invisible, the other. Science is the 
 union, up to a certain stage ; but then again comes the
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 81 
 
 same opposition, and the same demands. (It is the union 
 of sense and intellect.) 
 
 Thus too, through yielding to the traceable, shall not 
 men fulfil the conditions of also knowing, and following, 
 and trusting to the invisible in the moral life ? Is not 
 the law of traceable service like the coming of science, 
 bringing in to do their part those low and despised things 
 that man has thought he has been most like God in being 
 blind to ? 
 
 The intellectual used to despise those whom the senses 
 held ; but knowledge has had to take them wholly in ; 
 to find them even its foremost workers. So how the 
 moral have despised those whom the senses have had 
 power over; yet shall life find them chief among her 
 instruments. 
 
 Christ refused to break the order of Nature, and turn 
 stones to bread ; because He was hungry was no reason. 
 But then suppose He had refused when hungry men were 
 around him ? And did He not eat Himself when He 
 multiplied the loaves ? (Who put all this meaning into 
 these little narratives ? Was it known to them ?) 
 
 How plain is " You strain at a gnat and swallow a 
 camel." Here it is : throwing bad shares upon the 
 market, and setting laws on thieves. And so devour- 
 ing widows' houses, of course : twenty widows may be 
 ruined so at once. Is the difference between Christ's day 
 and ours, that then the devouring was done openly, and 
 we have " advanced " to insisting on not seeing what we 
 do ? We will be able to shut our eyes, or so to close 
 them that all the things we do shall be all right, and we 
 won't look beyond. We will not be thieves any more ; 
 only buyers of what is brought to us. And this is 
 
 F
 
 82 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 wonderful ; though it is worse, and more cruel, yet also 
 it is a real advance ; even in that a step is truly gained, 
 for now we are compelled to see. 
 
 Christ has done His work ; He has put the regard into 
 man's heart ; put it fully. The work is only hidden ; 
 not less done. Touch the world and see ; call it to show 
 itself ; bid the grub reveal what is within it. 
 
 We do not use the goodness there is in men ; do not 
 arrange our life on a plan that is proportioned to it. We 
 act on plans which imply, I suppose, much more of not- 
 regard than exists ; on plans which perhaps might have 
 been necessary, have been true to the not-regard which 
 existed when they were introduced, but are certainly not 
 truly related with it now ; which imply man to be worse 
 than he is. So was not this one thing Christ did for 
 men ? He gave the pent-up goodness the regard that 
 had found life planned against it freedom. The affirma- 
 tion that charmed and delivered man, was : You can serve 
 God as a spirit and in truth ; make it your law and try ; 
 you do not need any more those outside restraints. 
 Man's regard had been growing beneath those outside 
 rules and forms which expressed its absence ; and Christ 
 said : Let it come forth and rule ; act now, O man, 
 according to your nature. To the long-crawling child He 
 said : Arise and stand upon your feet. 
 
 And the parallel shows us how much easier, when the 
 time is come, the life true from the bottom is. It seems 
 much easier for the crawling child to crawl (it was the 
 only thing possible) ; but when it wants to do anything 
 how much harder it is ; it cannot use its hands without 
 such trouble. Is it not so with us ? It seems so much 
 easier to let self-interest be first altogether ; but then
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 83 
 
 what trouble to do anything. And is not man's last con- 
 senting to have self-interest first, the very same as the 
 child who has instinctively tried to run, coming to per- 
 ceive that he must crawl ? "I thought I was a walker," 
 it might say, " like those other beings, but I perceive I 
 am not. There may be, must be, surely, another state 
 for me, when I also shall be able to walk, but not in this 
 state." Then there comes a doubt about that " other 
 state ; " it is not altogether so clear ; but this very doubt 
 means that he is to be a walker here ; in spite of experi- 
 ence, in spite of difficulties, difficulties that have even 
 made him give up. 
 
 And does this new liberty to goodness the life 
 planned upon the true nature always come by regard- 
 ing fresh claims before excluded and made possible to 
 come, indeed, only by these ? As if it were said : Your 
 goodness seemed to demand these claims to be put aside, 
 because your not-regard demanded restraints, but it need 
 not be so ; it is not true any more ; you can regard 
 them, and you must. So it is plain how with the grow- 
 ing regard we add more and more outside things, leaving 
 the plan unadjusted. 
 
 " Not having my own righteousness, which is by 
 abstaining, but God's own righteousness, which is by the 
 passion Christ has given me." Is not the true thought 
 for " faith " the very thought of Prometheus's fire ; that 
 is, light and warmth, knowledge and emotion ? That is, 
 the passion that comes with and by a seeing. And with 
 this how well agrees the explanation of faith ; the evidence 
 the coming into appreciation or regard of things that 
 were absent from it. 
 
 We must learn to see Christ's intellect better. When
 
 84 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 He said He would " send us " Nature, was there not the 
 consciousness in Him that He knew her intellectually as 
 well as morally, and that He had really given man's 
 thought the key of knowledge as well as his heart the 
 key of life ? When we look into His sayings do we not 
 see that there is all science in them, the conservation of 
 force complete ? It is expressed on the moral side, but 
 the physical and the moral are one fact ; and as when 
 we see it physically we feel it at once to be the moral 
 also, so must it not have been with Him ? Perceiving it 
 with such clear eyes in> the moral, must He not have felt 
 it in the physical too ? In bringing men from fancying 
 about the moral will of God to His revealed will in 
 Nature, He had also, virtually and truly, brought them 
 to the true means and mode of knowing. 
 
 So is this too a key to : " Greater works shall ye do ? " 
 Does it refer really to the works of science? The Holy 
 -Spirit would " come " and make them possible. And 
 then this may be the real significance of His miracles : 
 that by His true feeling of Nature He could do things 
 no one else could, even physically ; but that He looked 
 forward with some true vision to our science, and felt 
 that men, by knowing Nature better still, would do much 
 more. 
 
 The law coming on the heart must fall off the hands. 
 This is what men wish to avoid ; they say : Let it be on 
 the heart, but let the things still be done. But it cannot 
 be ; for that means others' hurt, and that is the law not 
 being on the heart. 
 
 If the Holy Ghost in Christ's mouth meant Nature, 
 the unpardonable sin is clear. " It does not matter how 
 you regard me or what you say of me ; I shall not mind ;
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 85 
 
 you will be forgiven. But if you contradict Nature, and 
 will not be guided by her, how can good come to you ? 
 There is never any forgiveness for that. Who can for- 
 give you ? Can you get to a mountain's top by walking 
 down it ? " 
 
 Is there the least sign of any thought in Christ's heart 
 that His followers would ever be paying special regard to 
 a book ? Expressly He looked forward to, and bid us 
 look to, another guide altogether the Holy Spirit. Being 
 guided by that, then, we are obeying Him. And so 
 looking simply at His words and actions we can see what 
 mode of action in us would best fulfil His desire. As- 
 suredly, first and chief of all, that we should take the 
 Holy Spirit and not any writings as our guide. And see 
 how emphatically He said it : All blasphemy against 
 the Son of man, even refusing me not only a book about 
 me shall not matter. But keep close to the Holy Spirit. 
 
 What a sight of sin, of scorned and broken law, the 
 world presents ! But it transforms itself when we see. 
 It is not of broken law, of disobedience, that is the 
 appearance merely, it is man imposing false laws on 
 himself. (And has he not all along done the thing that was 
 the true right, the thing that served ?) What a different 
 sight it is ! Of course there has been the appearance of 
 disobedience, the phenomenon of sin. The disobedience 
 was that he was obliged to make these laws. 
 
 Genius always is not wasting. By this it has its new 
 power and does things without means ; using power that 
 has been wasted. Now, by the light of this, look at the 
 loaves and fishes. Genius does its miracles by not wast- 
 ing ; that is, by ceasing a waste. Christ was conscious
 
 86 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 of this ; He felt that He did. May there be here the 
 very secret of that story ? May it really express, not a 
 thing He did, but a thing He said, with that conscious- 
 ness of His power to do by not wasting ? So should we 
 read the end first and hear Christ say : " Gather up all 
 the power God gives you ; let nothing be lost, and a few 
 loaves and fishes shall feed five thousand men." Are 
 those " miracles " the expression of Christ's consciousness 
 of the power of doing without doing? 
 
 The central nucleus of truth in our thoughts respecting 
 revelation is contained in our thought respecting the Old 
 Testament as an imperfect and adjusted revelation, truly 
 from God, yet partial and needing to be carried farther. 
 This thought needs to be applied to the New Testament 
 on the one hand, and to the sacred books and beliefs of 
 other nations on the other hand. It is a true thought of 
 revelation (as the most sincere Christians avow) ; it is the 
 only one which will apply universally. It is not a true 
 thought, but the true one. And what difficulty and dis- 
 cord cease when it is made universal. What liberty it 
 gives us to embrace what we have excluded. And did not 
 Christ expressly claim this thought, promising a Holy 
 Spirit to guide into all truth ? 
 
 Seeing how distinctly it is by that which is accounted 
 " badness," is despised and trodden upon, that the true 
 work of the world is done, the true law written, may we 
 not see the fact in Christ's coming from Nazareth ? Do 
 we not see a spiritual fact here again reduced to a fleshly 
 level ? And this is a thing we must always be prepared 
 for ; to see in the fleshly statements the spiritual facts 
 that have been sunk into them. Is this a chief key to 
 " miracles ? "
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 87 
 
 Christ's references to Himself strike us as if they must 
 have meant in His mouth that He was to be regarded in 
 some special light, and intended to claim some special 
 even superhuman relation to mankind. But was it 
 truly that in His simplicity He spoke simply as He felt, 
 said what He perceived was true, it not being anything 
 to Him whether it were of Himself or not ? And so we, 
 with our self-regarding reticence, misapprehend Him, and 
 think that He must have meant to claim some super- 
 human place and to fix mankind about Himself. Whereas 
 He said plainly that He wished to lead them to the Holy 
 Spirit to be guided. 
 
 When Christ said : " Seek ye first the kingdom of 
 God ..." was He simply seeing the fruits that would 
 come of a perfect regard, not meaning the persons to 
 whom He spoke (knowing they would lose all), but of the 
 future ? " When the true right is sought God's right, the 
 nature-law then there will be no more any want ; " -a 
 fact simple enough, and that needs no prophet-eye to see 
 it now, even if it did then. 
 
 It may be that that which really constitutes a religion 
 is a new intellectual vision, that is, a truer apprehension 
 of man's life and of the world. And is it thus truly a 
 " binding," that is, bringing into one of the bad and the 
 good ? That is, a religion is ever a cutting out of self- 
 righteousness ; for that is the union of the good and bad, 
 and only that. And it comes only by the being compelled 
 to abandon a restriction. 
 
 Had not Christ the consciousness of relation to other 
 Beings ? And is it not one that becomes obscured 
 and as if lost sometimes ? And so this may be the mean-
 
 88 THE LA W-BREAKER. 
 
 ing of the words, " Eloi, Eloi, . . ." not that God had 
 seemed to have forsaken Him, but that Friend, that Lover, 
 that Being who guided Him seemed to be no more pre- 
 sent. This surely befalls sometimes all who have that 
 consciousness. See the word used, " Elohim," the beings 
 who are Nature. " Nature, O Guide, why cannot I 
 hear your voice ! " 
 
 Assuredly the work of genius is done with a feeling of 
 wrong, that is, the laying down the life. And here is 
 there not an instance of Christ's disciples giving a physi- 
 cal meaning to a spiritual fact ? 
 
 Here is the good thing : the law-breaking blood is 
 really stronger than the law-keeping, however much it 
 may seem the contrary at any time. For all that is 
 genius belongs to it, and Christ above all. And thus do 
 we not see how Christianity has come to mean so different 
 a thing. It has fallen into the hands of the law-keepers. 
 What we see is the law-keepers trying to represent a law- 
 breaker. This accounts for the contrast, and surely for 
 the inventions too. 
 
 When Asia and Europe join hands again will not that 
 be life renewed ? What made Christianity such a source 
 of life was its union of Asia and Europe. Not that Christ 
 was more or better than Buddha, but that through Him 
 Europe and Asia were joined in one. 
 
 And is not one chief good and necessity of the Asian 
 life this very hold to the free joy of man in woman ? 
 Is this a chief thing she will give back to Europe with 
 the conditions fulfilled ? Is not Asia's power and gift 
 this passion of unrestrained joy compelling us, who can- 
 not hare it without its conditions, to fulfil them ; they
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 89 
 
 learning also how not to have to give it up ? And even 
 in its falsity, even in its utmost corruption as now, still 
 does not that free joy keep life heroic there ? 
 
 When we see how intensely ascetic the Buddhist re- 
 ligion is, does it not become visible that Christ really 
 stood against it, that is, as adding to it ? His was 
 perhaps consciously a reform of what was, essentially, 
 Buddhism. So the New Testament is so emphatic against 
 self-righteousness ; and He was called licentious. 
 
 Love and Faith we treat them both the same : they 
 must mean loving and believing in no one else but one. 
 That is the demand we make : the quality of the faith 
 and the love may almost pass unquestioned if only we 
 will be quite sure that for any one else to come in would 
 be to spoil it altogether. 
 
 We need never wonder at any sinking down of spiritual 
 things into physical ; we have it in its utmost form in the 
 thought of the resurrection of the dead ven apart from 
 the idea of the body rising. The resurrection of the dead 
 is the making man alive ; his acting for self no more. 
 What is the thing to be hoped for above all others, the 
 one hope worth our having, worth God's giving, what but 
 man's life, his deliverance, his being brought to have self 
 no more at all the ruler, what but the " resurrection of 
 the dead and the life eternal " ? So Paul said : " For 
 the hope of the resurrection of the dead I am called in 
 question." All his life was folly if man could not be 
 trusted to become able to act not for self. This was his 
 faith, his vision rather of the things not seen, and that 
 seem scarcely visible even yet (nay, more obscured than 
 ever) though Christ had revealed them. His grasp was
 
 9 o THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 on the fact that the appearance of man is not the 
 truth, and that to know him we must go deeper than 
 the surface. 
 
 Poor Man, how hard it seems ! As if he could not get 
 right any way ; neither by refusing pleasure, nor by 
 accepting it, nor by adopting any law. How earnestly 
 he has striven, and how cruelly he has been baffled, as if 
 wantonly, pitilessly ! But how could it be otherwise ? All 
 the while he has been trying to keep a not-regard within 
 him ; he has been trying, with this within, to become 
 true to Nature. How is it possible ? Keeping a not- 
 regard, an untruth, a dissonance, a non-conformity, how 
 could his life go on aright, how possibly be one with 
 Nature ? So he comes to think of course being by his 
 firmly held not-regard out of harmony with Nature that 
 he wants " another world " to be good or happy in. Of 
 course he feels so while he refuses to be according to this. 
 But how could he be right to any world if he keeps a 
 not-regard within him ? It would make him as false to 
 any other as to this ; it is falsity and nothing else. And 
 with it no goodness and no aspiration are of any avail ; 
 they are not to the point. What is wanted is, not good- 
 ness not first at least but conformity to the fact ; 
 without which all goodness is turned wrong. 
 
 And then with this not-regard yet in him how false 
 becomes his religion too ! He looks to " God," and tries 
 by a regard to Him and thoughts of Him, &c. to make up 
 for the not-regard within ; to put a regard to God as a 
 substitute for the regard to facts around. It is inevit- 
 ably vain ; how can it do as a substitute ? The very 
 regard to God built on that not-regard becomes a falsity. 
 So is there not a light on what is wanting in our religion ? 
 It is put wrongly ; made a substitute for another regard.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 91 
 
 And thus how perfect was Christ's new law : " Love one 
 another " have no not-regard ; all else will follow. 
 With the foundation rightly laid the builder's work is 
 secure. But think of building regard to God on a basis 
 of want of regard for man ! How could it but run into 
 every form of monstrous error and cruelty ? 
 
 Is not Asia worse than Europe in so far as it is worse 
 because Asia holds to a tenser, more passion-restraining 
 goodness ; therefore failing more and running into more 
 unrestrained excesses ? So do we see that Christ relaxed 
 for Europe this tenser, harder effort ? He brought in 
 more regard for man, less tense effort on putting away 
 pleasure : which are one. That is, it is not a relaxing, but 
 the casting out of a not-regard. Perfect regard is the 
 true Nirvana, and so had not that also its negative image ? 
 And so was it suppressed, and self-desire accepted ? 
 Christ united Europe's regard to the phenomenal with 
 Asia's restraint. 
 
 As the New Testament is so clearly related to Buddism, 
 so is not the Old with its ceremonies and sacrifices to Brah- 
 manism ? Are the two books, indeed, simply the form in 
 which that great universal crisis has come to us ? A chief 
 thing Buddha did was to abolish caste, and Christ's work 
 also was abolishing caste. And it was regard to men's 
 condition which moved both Sakya Muni and Christ, and 
 moved them both in the same way to put aside the out- 
 side laws and insist on the desire. 
 
 Think of the greed of our beautiful life. Can one not 
 see Christ in His story of Lazarus ? Because he had his 
 good things here the rich man shall be tormented, and 
 Lazarus, because so poor and wretched, shall be comforted. 
 Does not the whole man stand before us with His quiver-
 
 92 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 ing passions ? " Because you rich people cannot see look 
 out." Even the very limits of His thought bind Him to 
 us. We love Him the more that His soul could not 
 endure the contrast ; could not even wait to trace the 
 reasons, to weigh the excuses. And do we not see Him 
 in that passionate story, see Him in His limitations ? 
 Was He as profound and wise a thinker as Sakya Muni ? 
 For one thing, did He not die too soon ? But He had 
 felt the make of Nature, and saw that man would come 
 to know her. He had said (it was all) : " He that will 
 save his life must lose it." And did He therefore feel it 
 was better He should go away, that He should stand less 
 between his friends' eyes and Nature, should bind them 
 less ? 
 
 " Can we not have this good [killing the sick] without 
 waiting for Utopia or the millennium ? " No, surely. Here 
 is the meaning of " Seek first the kingdom of heaven . . ." 
 That is Christ's reply to this question. The key to the 
 passage is that it refers not to the individual, but to man, 
 of whom Christ was constantly thinking. Let man gain 
 the true law, the " right " of the kingdom of heaven, and 
 all those good things he vainly aims at and longs for will 
 come. Christ was thinking constantly of man ; as every 
 one must who feels the real problem, and sees how it de- 
 pends on having the right aim and law, and how, till man 
 accepts the true aim, he must make false laws, which set 
 good absolutely at defiance. 
 
 For this is one key to the mystery of life : we take 
 a wrong point of view ; that of the individual instead 
 of man. The reference and meaning of experience is 
 not to the man as we term him, but to man truly so 
 called. (May it even be that this is the truth of the 
 feeling that man, " in the body," is in an essentially evil
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 93 
 
 and imperfect state ? The individual alone is in the flesh. 
 Man is not in the flesh.) 
 
 The creation of the life of Man is in this individual 
 experience, in all this individual failure and ruin ; to 
 understand these we must see them as the expressions of 
 that fact. And does not this involve that we shall have 
 a " consciousness " that shall be of Man ? Our deliver- 
 ance, our salvation, our fruition, that shall compensate for 
 all, shall be in feeling truly to the fact. This would give 
 the very thing that is meant in the thought of heaven. 
 How can we think any external change is necessary when 
 a change to a truer consciousness would give it ? 
 
 In reference to killing the sick, it is argued that it 
 must not be, because of what life and death are ; that is, 
 because of our thoughts of life and death. But there is 
 another issue to this; the other end the assumption 
 may move. If killing the sick be a duty, then may not 
 that change our thoughts of the meaning of death ? We 
 may have to find a thought of death which will suit the 
 Tightness of killing the hopelessly sick ; this new percep- 
 tion of right may call on us to alter our theory here. So 
 we see two things in respect to thought : one, how moral 
 changes influence it. (Might it not be truly said, indeed, 
 that the intellectual life of man was an offshoot and result 
 of his moral life, moral perceptions always giving the im- 
 pulse to truer intellectual ones ? ) And the other fact in 
 respect to thought is : how always we must remember that 
 the movement may be at either end (as it were) of the 
 force ; it is as if we had a " pole " of force or " line of 
 action." An assumption at one end, results at the other ; 
 the assumption may change as well as the results be 
 maintained or modified. We need to keep this enor-
 
 94 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 mously more in view. And surely the laws of the process, 
 the conditions under which the assumption must move, 
 may be more deeply expressed, some general answer given 
 to that question like a general solution in algebra. 
 
 How far it is from putting Christ aside to see all things 
 as the bringing of man's life. That is what He thought 
 of, lived for, revealed, and made man's possession. To see 
 it in all things, therefore, what is it but to lay them at 
 His feet, to read them by the light that He has given ? 
 What but to see even in Him a new glory, a true revela- 
 tion of His divineness ? For that exclusiveness, whereby 
 we have sought to do Him honour and hedge about a divi- 
 nity too weak and poor to be otherwise sustained, refuses 
 any more to be bound about Him. He has broken the 
 bonds of that sepulchre, cast off those swathing grave- 
 clothes ; that death also cannot hold Him. Why any 
 more seek we the living among the dead ? Behold, He 
 is risen into His true glory. Because the true universal 
 Godhead stands visibly revealed in Him, He is no more 
 ashamed to call all men His brethren. 
 
 Has not every great religious teacher (from Confucius 
 downwards) put aside the service of God ? That was what 
 Christ did. And it is necessarily so, for whenever a cruel 
 and foolish superstition comes into man's heart he in- 
 stantly connects it with God, and says He commands it. 
 All religious teachers of men have come into a world 
 where they found people saying : I love and reverence this 
 Person so much that I shall hurt my fellow-creatures for 
 His sake. And this has determined their action, has 
 made their vision. The secret of their lives is given by 
 it. They have known that God did not will that. And 
 so they have spoken in His name and " with authority,"
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 95 
 
 an authority needing no external source, because conferred 
 in the very act of hearing by the hearts of the listeners. 
 What they have done has been to give to man a different 
 service of God a new heart-service by putting away a 
 service of hurt, that is, a service in things. The truer 
 service necessarily comes with that. Without that in- 
 jury to their fellows, proving it could not be the true 
 law, they would not have been delivered, but have gone 
 on thinking that law the true one. Every putting aside 
 a law of things is bringing the law anew upon the heart. 
 And that is done through the injury it inflicts, making 
 men know that God cannot have commanded it. So this 
 evil wrought for God's sake upon their fellows has wrought 
 their deliverance and been needful for it. 
 
 And thus we see a light in part on that terrible mystery, 
 why so much pain is inflicted by men upon each other. 
 These cruelties have been the means they are the only 
 means by which man can learn that the obedience God 
 demands from him is an obedience of the heart. These 
 cruelties alone compel him to leave off serving Him with 
 mere fixed outside deeds which kill. The latter would 
 enslave him for ever if it were not cruel. Its cruelty 
 has made has inspired all the men who have delivered 
 him. 
 
 Now, how far have all the great religious teachers put 
 aside service to God because cruel ? It is clear in 
 Abraham, but was it so of Moses and of Mahomet ? 
 These are surely instances ; they spent their strength in 
 putting aside idolatries which were doubtless cruel. 
 
 So we see how the power was prepared and stored up. 
 The only way in which God's law has been, or could have 
 been, brought upon the heart and made a heart-service, 
 has been by its falling off from things. For man's service 
 to God does come first in the form of things, as we see in
 
 96 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 the question, " Why does not man restrain his passions ? " 
 That means, " Why does not man serve God in pleasure- 
 restraining things ? " So it is only in transferring the 
 service from things that the true heart-service comes. 
 And in order that this transference may be made it is 
 necessary that these things (the pleasure-restraining 
 things in which man first seeks to serve God, putting 
 absence of his pleasure to do duty for another's good) 
 should be cruel. This is the power by which, the things 
 being for that reason put away, the service of God comes 
 on the heart and rules the act ; and so the whole life is 
 altered, and serving God is no more things added on to 
 it, but the act that constitutes it altogether. And this 
 injury to others, which is thus necessary for the deliver- 
 ance to be wrought, is of course necessary also in Nature, 
 as it visibly is. By the perpetual change rigid things 
 must be cruel, must destroy. And so also it was neces- 
 sary that man's sense of right should lead him to cruelty 
 also, that the false rights offered to God should be avenged 
 with torture. This was also a needed force, and it also 
 was inevitable. When man had made a false worship of 
 hurtful, pleasure-restraining things, he was sure to make 
 torture his means of enforcing it ; so giving the other 
 element of cruelty which should break the yoke. 
 
 Thus the true religious teachers and deliverers have 
 been simply those to whom it was an axiom that God 
 could not be truly served in that which hurt His creatures. 
 That was enough. They did not need to be great, not 
 even probably to have any very special gifts ; only they 
 needed it to be absolutely clear that putting our not- 
 pleasure instead of another's good was mocking instead of 
 serving God. Any one who sees that can deliver man, 
 can deliver him from himself, can say to him, and in a 
 voice that carries with it its own fulfilment, " Put your
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 97 
 
 fellow where yourself has been." That is it is nothing 
 less he can raise the dead. But only because the life 
 has already been working in them, and is ready to be 
 revealed. 
 
 Now how does this perception come ? What will enable 
 a man to see that it is true, not only of other nations' 
 cruel laws of things wherein they sacrifice men to their 
 fancy of God's will, but of his own nation's and the things 
 he himself has thought most sacred? If we could only 
 tell what it was that enabled a man to see that his own 
 accustomed and accepted and revered laws, that had 
 meant purity, reverence, piety to him, because they meant 
 evil to others were not and could not be commands of 
 God, nor any welcome service if we could see that, 
 perchance we too might gain deliverance. A true heart- 
 service might flow in as our cruel laws of things also vanish 
 for evermore. 
 
 What is wanted to make it an axiom that a thing that 
 hurts our fellow cannot be service to God ? Is it anything 
 but pity enough ? Or is it that what is needed is not 
 more pity, but rather simply a power of seeing one thing 
 by another, so as to be truly led by Nature ; to be able to 
 see the truth of that which has most bound even ourselves 
 through being able to see it in another thing ? Is it the 
 power of seeing that a thing is one way even while we 
 feel it in another the emancipation of the intellect ? Evi- 
 dently this would give the power of seeing that a thing 
 was different from what we felt it. 
 
 What is wanted is to see that the cruel thing which 
 we identify with religion and purity and always have iden- 
 tified, and still feel sacred, is the same as the cruel things 
 which our forefathers identified with religion, and felt 
 towards in the same way, and which we see quite easily to 
 have been evil and false. Now this is given by seeing one 
 
 G
 
 9 8 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 thing in another. And is it not visible that Christ had 
 this power eminently ? He was always talking in par- 
 ables. What was it that above all showed Him that the 
 true law was not a law of things, and so must be on the 
 heart ? Surely it was in Nature He saw it, the feeling 
 of her self-less freedom. He saw God made the sun to 
 rise on the evil and the good, and so He did not condemn 
 the sinner. 
 
 Was it not the cruelty of idolatry that introduced 
 monotheism ? And so is not every purification and inten- 
 sification of religion really due to the power of service, 
 arising from a refusal to persist in supposed obedience to 
 God which meant hurt to man, and was really only man's 
 thought of himself? So Moses and Mahomet, the great 
 insisters on God and His laws, would be included among 
 those who put away the service of God, that is, the cruel 
 service rendered to idols, and by putting away that ser- 
 vice had a truer thought of God revealed to them. So 
 we see in Christ putting away the toilsome ceremonies 
 (for were not those long journeys to Jerusalem, for 
 instance, often disastrous ? Had He perhaps known His 
 mother suffer, and seen how hollow they had become ?) 
 putting away the toilsome ceremonies and journeys, He 
 could not but see that God was a Being who demanded 
 spiritual worship. And so, putting away the hurtful 
 " restraints of passion," how can we fail to see that God 
 requires a life with self not first, and must be worshipped 
 so ? If He does not require a journey to a sacred city, 
 He demands a heart-service, which can be rendered 
 everywhere : if not these restraints, then a true ruling 
 desire for good. 
 
 So contrary to Christ is loving God first, and men
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 99 
 
 through God, and for His sake. In fact, do we not love 
 the persons whom we do love best, and Him through 
 them ? And do we not see this in Christ's urging that 
 men should love Him Him, a man, and other men for 
 His sake ? Is it not as if He had said, " Love them, for 
 I too am a man ; for my sake love them ?" And how far 
 is it from being true that to love man we must love God 
 first ; it is as a man we must learn to love God. 
 
 It is plain that if a certain order or law is made neces- 
 sary by a condition of men, then if there came one in 
 whom this condition is not, the necessity will not exist 
 to him, and the order will change, the law will become 
 new. Then here is a key to the change, the renewal, the 
 deliverance that shall come. We may know the answer 
 to the question, " Art Thou he that shall come ?" Does 
 the law alter in his person ? For evidently, if there 
 be a law which is necessitated by a condition of men, 
 there is a possibility of deliverance in another way besides 
 that of obedience, namely, by change of the law. And if 
 that condition be the relation to self, then a different 
 relation to self will give the different law. Here is the 
 whole secret of genius. 
 
 Here there are two laws, resting on two different 
 people ; a law that rests on a condition that is pre- 
 sent in the one, not present in the other. What 
 shall ensue ? Shall there remain permanently two dif- 
 ferent laws ? This, too, has been tried. The traces of 
 this idea are very visible in the social order, especially 
 the older forms ; in monarchs and castes with a dif- 
 ferent law from the rest of the people. And one may 
 see that Christ most emphatically put that aside. Then 
 if there are not to be two laws, which is to be the uni- 
 versal one the one that is made necessary by a con-
 
 ioo THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 dition of men (an evil condition, or at least a less perfect 
 one), or the law which comes when that condition is not 
 present ? One person must give up his law, and take 
 another's ; the question is which. 
 
 And it is assured beforehand ; for the arising of the 
 person on whom the new law comes is but the sign of 
 the readiness to cease of the condition which has made 
 the other law necessary. The law which does not imply 
 that condition of men's is the law that becomes universal ; 
 one can see how it must. It puts nothing in the way 
 of Nature ; it is easier ; it ceases to refuse to let 
 good be. 
 
 In Christ's " new law " we see the service of God 
 treated dynamically as in the fluxion; made a power, 
 held in its effect. Do we ask where the service of God 
 is ? It is here, in having brought, and in maintaining, 
 this perfect service of man. Here we have it in its 
 effect, in a living form, as a spirit. We have it as the 
 astronomers have the observed motions of the heavens ; 
 which it was their first duty to hold as dead burdens, but 
 only that they might become living. 
 
 Poor Christendom, like all the rest of the world, has 
 been trying all these years to persuade herself that she 
 knows. May she not, at last, confess she does not, that 
 she has been but like her fellows ? Has not her genius- 
 time come ? 
 
 Can it be that the God of the Jews was Nature ? 
 Evidently they are constantly identified. " The Lord 
 uttereth His voice" in the thunder. See the law 
 " written on stone : " that is, Nature's law ; it is written 
 on every stone. And it is one law, one God ; this is the
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 101 
 
 most essential thing. Was it not the very feeling of the 
 oneness all through Nature that we have learnt again to 
 see, the unity of force, the very keystone of science ? 
 At least if it be not this is there not a most true parallel ? 
 
 Why Christ put aside " loving God " is clear. And 
 how much we need this too ; for what do we do but 
 make Him an excuse for keeping away from us Nature's 
 demand for a right that should be in the way of doing 
 and not in things ? We use our fancy of His will 
 against His visible law, His audible command. Every 
 superstition which our acting for self makes us put upon 
 ourselves we hang on Him, and profane His name to 
 consecrate. It is inevitable we should. (Is not this a 
 true meaning of superstition : thinking that things which 
 may not be done for self may not be done at all ?) 
 
 We have not been capable of receiving the privilege 
 of loving Him, for we have made it an excuse for hurting 
 our fellows, and keeping hold of that which makes 
 mischief-rights. For, indeed, loving God is a privilege, 
 and demands conditions to be fulfilled. It cannot safely 
 be undertaken with rash hands. See here the ancient 
 thought, Jewish and Pagan alike, of not suffering any 
 to touch or approach divine things. Christ made them 
 free to all : true, but by fulfilling the conditions of having 
 the law upon the heart. With that, it is true : but has 
 this condition been retained ? 
 
 Loving God is a privilege, and demands a condition ; 
 with self first, and the false rights that that brings, it is 
 a fatal danger, for it binds with all the authority of God's 
 will upon men restrictions which their bondage to self 
 that is, their not-regard alone imposes. So it was 
 inevitable that Christ should put it aside ; it is visible as 
 a necessary thing. For, to a being working out a moral 
 
 LIBRARY
 
 102 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 reductio ad dbsurdum, it is evidently a most dangerous 
 thought ; to a being subject to false rights, which there- 
 fore instantly stretch out their hands to cling on to God, 
 and the more tenaciously the more false, and merely 
 imposed by self, and therefore opposed to human good, 
 they are. It is inevitable that a being with not-regard 
 and false rights must abuse the thought of " God's will." 
 And so long as not-regard remains in him, he must go 
 on to abuse it to the utmost hurt, the utmost consecration 
 as divine of evil things. So how simply Christ said : 
 " Leave loving God for the present, and fulfil the condi- 
 tion of its being safely done ; put away all not-regard." 
 
 And so in this love to God, and trying to serve Him, 
 do we not see a use also ? For by it the power has 
 been given to the false rights to remain. And has it 
 not been only as much as was needed ? 
 
 Here is a most palpable way in which we lose intensely 
 by thinking of Christ as different from ourselves. When 
 we say that He did not argue against false laws, but 
 broke them, and so on, it is replied : But He had know- 
 ledge, and power to make laws. . . . And so we are 
 deprived of the value of His example. Suppose, instead 
 of curing the sick people, Christ had left us " Discourses 
 on the right way of keeping the Sabbath." 
 
 A thought half appears respecting the idea of mono- 
 theism as parallel with that of one law. Thus, it is so 
 probable that the chief insistance was not so much that 
 God was one, as that this one God was to be recognised 
 and served. The heathens recognised " one God " in an 
 abstract way, but their gods the gods to them " in this 
 world," as they might have said were the many special 
 separate gods, each relating to its own thing, " gods of
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 103 
 
 things," as it were, instead of the one God of the action, 
 one in all things. The one God was recognised even as 
 we recognise the one law (of service) as if for a higher 
 state, a different condition from ours ; and the many 
 " gods of things " were put as their gods, even as we 
 put the many laws of things. So that we might read : 
 This one God, put so far off, this is the God for you ; 
 your only one ; you may not have, nor seek to serve, the 
 others ; they are " idols " only ; and the serving them, 
 holding them as God, and as having authority, means hurt 
 to men. You must not obey them ; it means cruelty. 
 
 A sort of insight may thus be gained into the intel- 
 lectual life that was and had been then. For in putting 
 away as above and beyond them as only for a higher 
 state perchance this one God, do we not see the clear 
 traces of a sort of Positivism, a restraint, saying : That is 
 above us, we cannot know ; our business is with these 
 things. We know how that comes. And there is a 
 beauty in the subsequent course. This deeper " one " 
 was bidden to be taken as the God, and not the " things " 
 that had usurped His place. Most true and good ; and 
 yet see what Christ did. He, as it were, retraced these 
 very steps; putting aside that which was so great an 
 achievement, and bringing back, only in a different form, 
 the very kind of thing that had been put aside ; coming 
 " down " to the present physical things in the form of 
 human wants. This one God, who had come in to put 
 aside the false idol-gods whose service meant cruelty to 
 man, Him also Christ in His new law left out, and said : 
 " Love man." How perfect it is ! And yet again shall 
 He not return to us ? 
 
 Our thought of Christ's enormous superiority is not 
 false, but it arises from those with whom we compare
 
 104 * THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 Him. It is the glory of Asia that dazzles us in Him ; it 
 is true Europe has never given us His like, but He is one 
 of a long series of Asian men. Buddha also sacrificed 
 himself to deliver the world. That was an old Asian 
 thought that lived again in Christ. 
 
 Is it not true that every man who has had power to 
 found a religion or do anything like it, has always had a 
 strong feeling of other beings around man ; finite intelli- 
 gences, but not merely human ? This was the case even 
 with Buddha. 
 
 It is easy to see how Christ must have foreseen His 
 crucifixion ; it could not have been doubtful in His view. 
 Distinctly He refused the things the Jews thought right. 
 He knew He made it impossible for them not to kill Him. 
 It was even as now a person killing the hopelessly sick, 
 and avowing it, would certainly be hung. 
 
 It is indeed really the same with women who give up 
 their virtue for love. Society deals really with the same 
 problem in that. So in what wonderful relations this 
 stands ! And in truth how all law-breaking stands in a 
 new light through this sharing of it by Christ. 
 
 That was " the glorious liberty wherewith Christ made 
 free : " If you want to know God's will, look at your 
 neighbours. The Sabbath was a little thing a very 
 foolish superstition as men thought of it ; but it sufficed 
 to show to the world that God's will was to be seen in your 
 neighbour's wants. 
 
 How should one possibly say and now too that 
 Christ knew all things ? One must know all things one- 
 self first. And why should He ? He could not have
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 105 
 
 told us. Was it not enough for Him to know as much 
 as He could turn to good ? 
 
 Is it not plain how simple and daily a thing the New 
 Testament is speaking of? There had grown up the 
 greatest system of self-virtue, a pursuing of " goodness " 
 apart from others' good, and crushing it. Now, the put- 
 ting away of that, the recognition that the claims of others 
 are supreme over our self- virtue (the very coming of art 
 into life), was enough to account for all the enthusiasm. 
 It justified the expectation that the fruition the " end " 
 and object of the world had come. It was justified, 
 nay, it was true. It needed only that the light should be 
 perfectly and fully seen. Might we not almost say that 
 if it had not been for the physical relation of man and 
 woman everything had been done ? But that had still 
 to be brought within its sphere. 
 
 Is it not curious that Paul, who so puts aside self-virtue 
 in respect to Jewish things, when he comes to speak of 
 women goes wholly over to it, and gives no sign of recog- 
 nising the other righteousness ? Does it not show how this 
 subject had still to be brought wholly within that domain ? 
 
 Whether it is possible for "a man " to be " more than 
 man," to be the incarnation and so the revelation of 
 Being that is more than man, depends entirely on the 
 relations man bears to other Being ; on what the constitu- 
 tion of Nature is in this respect. Now clearly we do not 
 know this ; we are not able to say whether it is or is not. 
 Why should we think it more impossible to be than not 
 to be ? If some man, then, evidently distinguished from 
 others, and having power more than is usual, says that 
 this is the case with him, is not his opinion by far the 
 most likely to be true, the very best evidence we can have,
 
 io6 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 and with no presumption whatever against it ? Especi- 
 ally if there should have been a series of such men and 
 they should have agreed in this representation, were it 
 not most irrational not to hold it extremely probable ? 
 
 Christ established a law of service against self- virtue. 
 That was how Christianity made a new thing of human 
 life ; it was the overthrow of self-virtue. Now, even from 
 His own recorded words, apart from all other reasons, it 
 seems certain that Christ included in this overthrow of 
 self-virtue and establishment of service as the law, the 
 relations of man and woman. But His disciples (at least 
 those who led the van) did not do this ; their eyes 
 were (as was natural from the conditions of men's 
 thoughts then) on theological relations mainly, on ques- 
 tions of man's " direct " relation to God. And probably 
 questions of service in respect to women had not come 
 much into prominence then. And so in the relations 
 of men and women the very central idea of their life 
 and work was wanting. So we see that Paul, when the 
 question arises, has not a word about love for man, but 
 is as theological and self-virtuous as if he had never 
 left off being a Pharisee. So has not the history of 
 Christian life been inevitable ? See what a history of 
 wretchedness about woman. It was self-virtue and its 
 fruits all through our fathers' lives and our own. If Paul 
 had but said, thinking how his Lord had dealt with every 
 claim of human good : " How can any man who is a 
 member of Christ consent to be the instrument of a 
 woman's hurt ? How treat as a wife any woman whose 
 injury it means, or how refuse any marriage which would 
 mean her good ? " If Paul had said this would not 
 Christianity have had a different history ? What evil did 
 not his self-righteous thoughts here bring after them ?
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 107 
 
 But we can see why this long course was needful. 
 Such degradation and evil had to come that service should 
 have power to compel man's regard from himself. And 
 also the power of asceticism had to be developed too, the 
 hand to be pressed firmly against all self-pleasure. And 
 for this, too, the self-virtuous thought was needed. 
 
 The New Testament (where Christ truly is its centre) 
 is a great paBan of Art. This is how not to have to obey 
 that law that has been upon us. That law is fulfilled, 
 its meaning revealed, its end accomplished. Behold the 
 law is fulfilled, fulfilled and blotted out. And with that 
 comes, of course, the perception (so glad a perception) 
 that a wall of partition is broken down ; that men are no 
 more divided into two, but are one in God's sight ; in- 
 cluded all alike in sin that alike on all He may have 
 mercy. 
 
 If we could but regain this perception, this gladness, 
 that a wall of partition again was broken down, bad and 
 good visibly one again, with one condemnation and one 
 mercy ! At least we should (if we had not all things) 
 have regained the thought, the gladness of the New 
 Testament ; we should be again where it put men ; and 
 its fire too would be kindled in our bosoms. If we could 
 regain that feeling, of a wall of partition broken down 
 again, of those that thought they knew God and obeyed 
 His law, and those who did not or would not, being one 
 before Him, needing a common mercy, then we should 
 know at least we were feeling as Christ had taught Paul 
 to feel. What gladness that sight would be ! And it 
 must come with every correction of a premiss. 
 
 Here is our thought of having the best good we can 
 get : to draw hard and fast the line between good and
 
 io8 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 bad ; to keep it clear, firm, and strenuously enforced. 
 Here is the thought of Christ : to break down the wall ; 
 to see them one ; to treat them with a common mercy. 
 Here is the contrast. And it is simply that which must 
 come if man begins with incompleteness in his starting- 
 point. The one plan is carrying out rigidly the right 
 upon the incomplete basis ; the other simply the correct- 
 ing it. All the characters of it are implied in that. It 
 is saying simply : These elements we have tried to put 
 aside are also included in God's world ; it was the imper- 
 fection of our apprehension of it made us try to put them 
 aside. 
 
 So again one sees that what man was commanded to 
 do was not only not to divide things into good and bad, 
 but not to divide persons also into good and bad. Finding 
 the right that makes things no more good or bad is one 
 with finding the right that divides persons no more into 
 good and bad. When once our eyes are opened how 
 plainly is the whole attitude of the New Testament one 
 with the other corrections of the premiss in human life. 
 
 Could Christ's meaning in saying : "In me you see God" 
 and the related words have been what we might mean by 
 saying : "In me you see Nature ? " Might we not, with 
 a certain feeling of Nature's Being, put the name of 
 Nature for God's name, and so perceive and feel more 
 truly the real thought ? For had not Christ a feeling of 
 life of conscious life where we have it not ? And we 
 must discover that before we can truly feel the meaning 
 of His words. And it must be felt in order to be truly 
 known, not merely thought. Can we not well think of a 
 man saying with distinct consciousness, " In me you 
 see Nature ; " he that has seen me seen the passions, 
 promptings, forces in me has seen Nature ? Nature is
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 109 
 
 revealed in me ; the forces which are in her are those 
 which you see in me. See her through me, you do not 
 see her otherwise." For it is so : some men do reveal 
 Nature in their very being ; in the even terrible strength 
 and power and control, yet without effort, nay, with per- 
 fect yielding ; one may see in them what is in Nature, 
 passive and quiet as she looks. 
 
 Look at the whole tendency of the New Testament 
 throughout. Here is Christ's very first description of the 
 living man : " The wind. ... So is every one that is 
 born of the wind. . . . The Spirit shall guide you." 
 And Paul's answer : " Be led by the wind." Can " born 
 of the wind " mean self-regard put away and so impulse 
 made free ; made as genius, a little child ? Might there 
 have been a doctrine and mode of speaking that Christ 
 had heard, of right being in having the impulses free, and 
 this expressed by " being born of the wind ? " So did He 
 not quote it to Nicodemus as an expression he should have 
 known ? As a man of intellectual activity Christ must have 
 joined Himself to some religious current among the Jews. 
 
 And again the condemnation of self-righteousness all 
 through ; and Paul's words : " Where is boasting then ? " 
 Boasting is excluded ; no one can glory in a right that 
 is simply not putting away pleasure. Being good is to 
 mean nothing to be proud of. Then that Christ Himself 
 turned to Gentiles, and even His followers left the 
 rigidly righteous Jews and turned to the impulse-led 
 Gentiles. And might that saying, "So is every one that 
 is born of the wind," be taken as Christ's expression of 
 His own law and choice of right, His avowal that He 
 acted on His impulses, and that that was His law ? 
 And was not His life that ? 
 
 Men say : " For that you must make men different
 
 no THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 creatures." But that is the very thing that Paul found 
 needed, and affirmed was to be. And Christ's first words 
 were the same : "Be born of water that we may be the 
 children of the wind." 
 
 At the beginning of the Old Testament comes the 
 command not to know good and evil, not to have a 
 different law from Nature. At the beginning of the 
 New : " Except born of water and the wind (fulfilling the 
 condition of obeying impulse) you cannot enter. . , ." 
 At the beginning of each the same thought ; and did 
 not each undergo the same fall ? " Be able to obey 
 impulse," Christ said. " Think of your own salvation 
 and restrain passion," replies the Church. 
 
 So it was assured what Christ would say when He was 
 asked of marriage in the' true human life. He had 
 answered before ; it was included in : " Be born of water 
 and the wind." 
 
 It is true Christ said : " He that loveth father or 
 mother more than me, is not worthy of me." But see 
 His parable also, where those who had truly served Him 
 had expressly not thought of Him. Does not that mean that 
 serving Christ is serving all, is having the eye and heart 
 on every need, and that putting the " home," the imme- 
 diate circle, before this is turning away from Him ? He 
 has told us plainly what the only " doing to Him " is. 
 That love of home and family too must lose its life to 
 gain it. 
 
 Christ (as He is presented) was for some reason in 
 the habit of speaking of Himself as of all men, of man- 
 kind. He had so deep a feeling of this that it moulded
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. in 
 
 His language constantly. In His parable He says : " Ye 
 did it unto me." Is not this then what we should think 
 of always ? For instance : " He that loveth father or 
 mother more than me," than all who have needs. Is 
 the key to His words in the identity of God as a Being 
 who can be served with men who have needs ? " He 
 who has seen me," the men who need his aid, "has seen 
 the Father." Is this then the truth of the thought that 
 Christ is Humanity ? 
 
 I have felt before that our feeling of ourselves as 
 isolated individuals is a diseased feeling, a paralysis 
 whereby we are not conscious of that which we are. So 
 that this would mean that Christ was free from that 
 disease. 
 
 Again : " The pure in heart shall see God." To be 
 "able to do anything," is to be pure in heart; that is, 
 it is to have the regard on needs. Through regard to 
 our fellows which alone can give purity of heart and 
 make us able to do all things alone we can see God. 
 Except through man you must not think to see God. 
 (And indeed otherwise what is even desiring purity of 
 heart but another thought about ourselves ?) In truth, 
 the words are again : " Born of water and the wind." Be 
 pure in heart, with no not-regard, born of water and 
 seeing God is the impulse free. 
 
 We want to aim at a lower good for man here ; we 
 think we must be content with that ; but we cannot get 
 any good so, and here in this great foul city we must at 
 least seek for the better. So when we read " wind " for 
 " spirit " instantly a real, human, and how inspiring a 
 meaning comes into the words ; they mean instantly the 
 better goodness, and challenge us to it. We must be, and 
 must seek for all to be, able to be " children of the
 
 1 1 2 THE LA W-BREAKER. 
 
 wind." Their meaning rises so ; and thus we see that 
 all that great sacerdotal system has come from not seeing 
 the simple meaning, this real, practical thought. That 
 is, it comes really from aiming at too low a good. 
 
 It may be hard to be "a child of the wind," but it is 
 inexorable ; without it we cannot enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven. And now is it not plain what the kingdom 
 of heaven is ? A change must come to us ere we enter 
 it. Now what must we be ere we can be one with 
 Nature, ? what but " born of water and the wind ? " that 
 we are not is what separates us from Nature ; what, 
 therefore, is entering the kingdom of heaven but entering 
 Nature ? (And becoming as a little child is the same ; 
 the child is part of Nature.) 
 
 So man has been right in the feeling that there is a 
 different state, a different world, for him ; and that to 
 that he must look forward. That has not been a delusion. 
 It is his not having any more a different law from Nature. 
 
 Any one who sees what true good is, sees that it will 
 assuredly be done here ; that this world is the place for 
 it ; a place to which it is suited and alone is suited, and 
 which is suited to it. Is not that what Christ saw, and 
 why He bid us pray for it ? ^^ 
 
 Has there been so much that is bad in human life ? 
 Is there anything of evil, or has there been, but not- 
 regard to the facts ? And we see that that is compatible 
 with exquisite goodness. Yet that and its fruits are 
 they not all ? And has there ever been a worse thing 
 than that which is so tolerable to us now the life 
 expressing not-regard and feeling itself good and pious ? 
 
 It is striking also how Christ, whose command was to 
 fulfil the condition of having the impulses free, affirmed
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 1 13 
 
 that a " spirit " (a wind) should come that would be a 
 guide into all truth ; a guide above human knowledge, 
 unimpeded by human ignorance. It is the very fact of 
 impulse when the conditions for obeying it are fulfilled. 
 We see it absolutely in respect to food. There man has, 
 if he will fulfil that condition of letting impulse guide him, 
 " a guide into all truth." Now, is not the real meaning 
 clear in this ? Was it not this fact that Christ knew and 
 spoke of? Having bidden us be " children of the wind," 
 how could He help knowing also that this " wind " the 
 impulses of man would be this perfect guide ? 
 
 The " wind," the guide to truth, is man's impulse 
 when the conditions for obeying it are fulfilled. Be born 
 of the water, and the wind will guide you beyond all 
 human fallibility. So there was necessarily the insistance 
 on this condition. (And so we see in the Church the 
 hypothesis set up which comes always from not seeing the 
 fact.) 
 
 Christ was the man who bade us fulfil the condition of 
 having impulse free ; and He also made the promise that 
 a spirit should come and guide us into all truth, a spirit 
 not fallible, unaffected by human ignorance. But these 
 two are one. To be able to obey the impulses is for them 
 to be a guide " into all truth ; " the very voice and hand 
 of Nature, unaffected by human ignorance, guiding us 
 where our knowledge does not go. 
 
 It is having our moral nature, our souls, work as our 
 body works now. And is there not here a light on the 
 true nature of each ? May not our present experience be 
 a " becoming " of a moral or spiritual " body ? " Is not 
 " spiritual body " a perfectly instinctive spiritual (or, as 
 we term it, " moral," but then " moral " no longer) life ? 
 I have seen before how " a body " of impulses, desires, and 
 feelings is even now being created. 
 
 H
 
 114 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 So in the very command to be able to obey our im- 
 pulses, the coming, to those who obeyed, of this infallible 
 guide is implied. The promise of this wind to guide into 
 all truth means that Nature, so allowed to enter, being in 
 man and dwelling in him, would be an impulse, guiding 
 him and unaffected by his ignorance. How could Christ 
 have preached that law and not seen and announced the 
 consequence ? Being Nature is having the Holy Spirit. 
 And it is what we see and have so simply realised in 
 respect to food. There man, having become able to obey 
 his impulses, has received the spirit, an instinct that 
 guides him into all truth. 
 
 It may well seem absurd to think there can ever be 
 this impulse true and perfect beyond our knowledge. But 
 Christ believed it was sure, affirmed it positively. Yet it 
 must have been harder to see it then. Paul learnt it 
 from Him also. And the loss of it brought the Pope, an 
 artificial substitute for the misapprehended fact. 
 
 And is here the true significance of the feeling that 
 makes people cling to " intuitive " morals ? Is it not 
 the maimed expression of the thought of instinctive or 
 automatic morals ? The demand is for absence of exter- 
 nal guidance appealing to judgment limited by our 
 knowledge, for an impulse, an infallible instinct beyond 
 our ignorance. 
 
 The deliverance of man is from laws he cannot obey, 
 because they are not good enough, having too much 
 accepted not-regard in them. This is the deliverance he 
 craves for now, and must have. Christ delivered man 
 from disobedience and put obedience in its place ; but it 
 was by altering the laws. He did not teach him or 
 enable him to obey the laws he had ; He taught him how
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 115 
 
 to have other laws. And by means of a new thought of 
 God ; He is a Spirit ; serve Him not with deeds, but 
 with motive. This is not putting away the service of 
 God ; it is His most perfect service. 
 
 Having self first makes an impossible law. kept by 
 no one ; and where even externally it is anything like 
 kept, it is only by means of such contrivances and aids, 
 such an elaborate system of means. And what a light 
 comes on the curious connection between superstitious or 
 false religious opinions, and " virtue" or obedience to law. 
 That the law is a false one explains this ; false and super- 
 stitious thoughts are needed to keep it. And so, indeed, 
 has not all superstition arisen chiefly from the false laws 
 that having self first (so needing a self- virtue) imposed ? 
 Are not superstitions, and all the fictitious theology, 
 the nonsense-reasons projected by self- virtue ? And so 
 their source remains, these superstitions cannot be really 
 put away, for the facts cannot be put in their place. 
 To put aside the service of the false laws is the deliverance 
 from superstition. 
 
 This fact that the evil and sin in man is not his breaking 
 laws (as we take for granted), but the making false ones, 
 accounts for the false seeming of men as so divided and 
 contrasted ; as if some were good and others evil. It is 
 evidently not truly so ; but the wrong and sin are the 
 wrong and sin of man, and not of some ; all the wrong 
 of all exhibiting itself where quite extraneous things 
 determine. 
 
 How plainly the knowledge of physiology and medical 
 science are the centre and key of all life. And at least 
 to a physician it may well be the chief fact in Christ's
 
 Ii6 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 history that, against all that was deemed divine law, He 
 cured diseases. Nay, is it possible that in truth Christ 
 was a wonderful physician ; that He had learnt of the 
 human body, and of remedies, and with marvellous in- 
 tuitions had gained unexampled powers of cure ? So 
 one would understand the saying : " Believe me for 
 the works' sake ; " that is : " Indeed I do know Nature 
 these things I tell you are true ; could I make these 
 cures if I had not learnt to understand her ? " And 
 again : " Greater works than these shall ye do ; " that 
 is : " Nature shall be understood still better than I 
 understand her." 
 
 There is another passage that connects itself with 
 " This people ... is cursed " (as meaning : " We know 
 the true law ; that it is spiritual, but these ignorant 
 people must be kept under the letter "), this, namely : 
 " We are Abraham's children, and were never in bondage 
 to any man." Abraham was before the law, and was not 
 under it. And the passage may mean : " We know 
 a man may have freedom from the letter of the law ; 
 that he may live in the spirit ; we are free as Abraham 
 was ; we were never in bondage to any set of literal 
 rules." 
 
 The important thing in Christ's day that for which 
 human, lives and souls were sacrificed was not, as it is 
 with us, marriage, but the Sabbath. And He struck at 
 that. So we have long narratives and discourses re- 
 specting the Sabbath, but respecting marriage only a 
 few transient allusions : the law that men must be able 
 to look on a woman and must not make their right 
 in refusing to look ; the quiet putting aside of special
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 117 
 
 marriage in the true life ; the not condemning the adul- 
 teress ; the quiet mention of the facts, unreproving, to 
 the woman of Samaria ; and, finally, the forbidding of 
 divorce. 
 
 Now, what is this last ? It may have meant this : " If 
 you have reason for another wife, do not turn your back on 
 the one before ; remember that it is a permanent obliga- 
 tion you have undertaken. You must not turn away a 
 woman just for your pleasure ; it is her good you must 
 consider." Never meaning for a moment to imply that 
 at the mutual wish, for reasons true and really good, there 
 might not be a parting. But that sending a wife away, 
 not at her own choice and for reasons of mutual good, but 
 against her will, was to be justified (that is, generally ; it 
 being as all laws of things are) only by adultery ; that 
 there only a wider good could overrule the wife's desire. 
 Was this it ? 
 
 But so because relatively of less importance then, and 
 so less fully spoken of did not even those who most 
 entered into Christ's spirit fail to recognise it here? 
 And here, therefore, the false law established itself, and 
 our history has been learning to see here what Christ 
 told us. 
 
 How should those who do wrong be met ? How did 
 Christ meet the Gentiles ? It was not by enforcing on 
 them the duties others clung to, but by bringing both to 
 recognise new duties they had alike neglected, duties 
 which took away the need for the others that had been 
 partial and refused. Part of that which the Jews called 
 wrong was true to Nature. And so will not every division 
 into bad and good be made one ? 
 
 It is no contradiction that the same man utterly re-
 
 n8 THE LAW-BREAKER, 
 
 pudiated any thought of God's will which was not one 
 with service, and was the man of all others most filled 
 with the feeling of God, most carried away by absolute 
 devotion to Him. The two things are one. He could 
 not let God's law mean hurting a man, because He had 
 thought of Him earnestly, applied Himself with all His 
 heart to know Him. The reason the others could think 
 of His law as being hurt to man was that they had not 
 thought of Him ; had not seriously and deeply pondered 
 on Him and sought Him and searched Him out. Even 
 when they had thought they were thinking of Him they 
 were thinking of themselves. How could a man who had 
 ever seriously thought of God at all think of leaving a 
 man sick for His glory ? (But we think we must leave 
 women sick for it.) 
 
 Is this why Christianity seems so little ; that the 
 harvest is absorbed in a larger seed-time ; that it is a 
 preparation ? Now of what ? Is it that it has initiated 
 the great deliverance from self; the putting away of the 
 (need for a) law of things in respect to woman ? Did it 
 not clear the way for that and put man's energies upon 
 it ? Christ put away that which had made necessary 
 laws of things in respect to God, and so prepared for the 
 work of putting away that which made laws of things 
 necessary in respect to woman. So this then is what we 
 owe to Christ. He has brought us to be able to have a 
 law of service a spirit-law even in respect to woman. 
 This law was not possible perhaps either for Greek or 
 Jew made by them both a cruel indulgence but Christ 
 has made it possible for us. And naturally ; for see how 
 He turned our eyes on our fellows' needs, commanding 
 us to make even the service of God mean that. So as
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 119 
 
 Judaism was, we may say, the correction of the premiss 
 in respect to man's relation to God, so has not Christianity 
 been the correction of the premiss in respect to man's 
 relation to woman ? 
 
 Would it not be beautiful to see Christ's work thus in 
 its historic place ? We have to see the thing that He has 
 done for us. And could any gratitude or homage be 
 deeper than man would give Him who had done that for 
 him, once he. comes to see what it was ? Would he not 
 well see that all the other things supposed were indeed 
 but shadows and images compared with that living fact : a 
 true law of service in respect to women here ? Man at 
 his utmost dream has never dared to think of such a 
 heaven as that. He would indeed, if that were true, 
 wake up to see that Christ had given him more than his 
 heart could desire. I stand here as affirmer of the great- 
 ness of Christ's work, that the thing believed impossible 
 He has done. He is robbed of His glory. He can make 
 man pure here. 
 
 Christ healed the body and was the physician of the 
 soul Then what was the disease in the soul ? It was 
 that which made men think of God as commanding a 
 thing, instead of as revealing His command in the good 
 of men. Was it not clearly that in their goodness they 
 found a need to think of themselves and of what they 
 did ? And from this did not He show them how to be 
 delivered ? Or we might well say that their disease was 
 inventing a God. And that is simple. For needing to 
 have their thought on their own action, they had of 
 course to put their good in restraining. And then they 
 had to invent a God to command the restraint, since 
 man's good did not command it. And this is the 
 evil of having our thoughts on our action ; we make
 
 120 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 restraints that human good does not command, and then 
 we have to invent a God to command them. So that 
 the disease was really inventing a God. Is not that ike 
 disease of man ? 
 
 Christ had a most peculiar and emphatic mode of serving 
 God both in deed and word. And it is striking that the 
 man who, above all, thought of God and felt Him, lived in 
 and for Him, He, above all, took as His absolute service of 
 Him the needs of men. But indeed this must have been. 
 Only lack of the feeling of God's presence makes us feel 
 anything else as His will. The two are not opposed but 
 one. He it is who speaks to us in these. And indeed, 
 is it not only by feeling the needs of man to be absolutely 
 God's voice, that they can be made the absolute rules, and 
 the law of service enthroned ? (The invention of another 
 " law " of God, is the result of the non-feeling of that 
 which is His law.) So long, doubtless, as there is any 
 feeling of the needs of men as being not the absolute and 
 simple expressions of God's command and guidance, so 
 long doubtless there must be a feeling that prevents 
 these being taken as the absolute law ; there must be 
 some latent feeling of antagonism, and so the action be 
 disjoined, more or less, from the needs. And surely it 
 is striking that even when no God at all is recognised, 
 still the simple law of service does not rule. Only with 
 the feeling of their expressing the law of God and His 
 guidance comes the perfect rule of human needs. And, 
 perchance, this feeling of their being the very voice of 
 God can only come with the perception that through them 
 false laws must fall and a new life come. 
 
 But they must be seen to have this virtue before God's 
 voice can be absolutely and wholly heard in them. Till 
 then do they not inevitably seem to be contradictions, in
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 121 
 
 part, of His will? And so man's thought inevitably 
 turns from them. Thus we see how Christ must have 
 felt man's needs to be God's voice, and alone His voice, 
 because He saw that by them the false laws fell, and the 
 new life was brought. It is evident too how their real 
 value is in their power to make life new. It is not 
 merely for the relief of the needs, but for that work on 
 the life, that their value is. So they can only be truly 
 seen to be God's law when this power over man's life is 
 seen in them. It is the use and meaning of them : 
 till they are seen thus they could not even truly be 
 seen to be the voice of God. There must seem to be 
 other and worthier guides, because worthier and better 
 ends. 
 
 Only when the external and material is seen by the 
 regard being on others to be the very highest and most 
 perfect means of attending to the internal life, can we 
 escape from thinking that we must turn away from it to 
 the internal. For it is a true and indispensable feeling 
 that our own life within is a thing of infinite value and 
 necessity. And so the needs of others can be seen in 
 their true meaning and value only when they are seen 
 to be the means of creating this internal life. And 
 what we need to see, and have not seen sufficiently, is 
 that those needs of others which are our pleasure have 
 this function, as well as those which put aside our pleasure. 
 We have recognised this value in the needs of others only 
 in the latter case ; and so we have divided these needs 
 into those which we might so attend to, and those which 
 have less claim on us, nay, some which we even ought to 
 ignore. (Those namely which mean our doing things 
 which with our eye on ourselves we ought not to do.) And 
 this of course robs them all of their power. What we 
 have to see is that all the needs of others have this
 
 122 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 value for the spiritual life. That puts them all into their 
 right relation, makes them all to us inevitably the very 
 voice of God. And then when all needs are God's voice 
 to us, then we perceive we need suppose no other voice. 
 (Only there comes another voice, the Spirit's guidance, 
 impulse restored to its true nature.) 
 
 In truth, are not the needs of others which mean our 
 pleasure those which have really the most power on our 
 spiritual life ? For those which mean our pain we may 
 attend to utterly for ourselves ; and no voice warn us 
 that it is after all for self. But the needs that mean 
 our pleasure, how deep they go. How deep Nature 
 has insisted on their going. How absolutely she pre- 
 pares all things to give them their full power. The 
 division of the needs of others into two opposite portions 
 is fatal. 
 
 In the fact of God's will meaning human needs, and 
 finding its expression in them, do we not see a reason 
 that man has established that will in his thoughts as his 
 ultimate rule and law ? Is not this why even though 
 not knowing he has said : I owe absolute submission and 
 allegiance of hand and heart to God's will ? Saying a 
 truer thing than he knew, namely, that he is thus to his 
 fellows' needs. And then because he did not know, did 
 not perceive, that God's will was but another name for 
 his fellows' needs, how its true meaning has been lost. 
 He has made a shadow, put aside the substance. For, 
 divorced from the needs of our fellows, the will of God is 
 but a name. 
 
 How can man be bad, be a being to be angry with, 
 when the worst, meanest, cruellest thing in him is his 
 goodness ; when indeed his badness comes through his
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 123 
 
 trying to be good ; and if he would only .have obeyed the 
 command not to try to be good he would never have been 
 really bad at all ? 
 
 Conscience has been placed by men as paramount and 
 infallible instead of impulse. The thought of right and 
 wrong the forbidden thing (for the law is not : You 
 shall think of right and wrong, but : You shall not have 
 need to think of right and wrong), has been put where 
 impulse has the true claim to be. The claim and affir- 
 mation of conscience is the image of the true rule of 
 impulse. So we call conscience God's voice in the soul, 
 giving it the name that the true ruler bears. And it has 
 come as the result of absence ; inability to obey impulse 
 sets up its false image the shadow of good things to 
 come in its place. Being obliged to put impulse aside, 
 we have had to bring in an invented substitute. 
 
 How simple it was, putting a being in a fluent, chang- 
 ing world like this, to give him the one direction : Be 
 able to do anything. That is : Do not know good and 
 evil. 
 
 Christ put the service of man above the (formal) wor- 
 ship of God. We have to put the service of man above 
 the putting away of pleasure. The service of man put 
 aside for obedience to God meant that God was not obeyed, 
 was in truth the mere result and expression of His not 
 being obeyed. So the service of man put aside for the 
 sake of pleasure being put away is but the result and 
 expression of its being pursued. It is both result and 
 cause ; it comes from the pursuit of pleasure and gives it 
 a still more fatal rule. For it puts away the very power 
 the absolute claim of service to rule that is the limit
 
 124 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 to pursuit of pleasure. So what remains to prevent plea- 
 sure from ruling and being pursued ? It will not avail 
 to put serving God instead ; that will lead (evidently it 
 must, and we see it does) some into the utmost austerities, 
 and as evidently (as also it is in fact) others will think : 
 " Why does God want us to forego pleasure ? Is it not 
 His will we should pursue it ? " We cannot put serving 
 God instead of serving man as the means of keeping plea- 
 sure from being pursued. The service of man may make 
 pleasure perfectly free, even sought for and incumbent ; 
 but it will not be ruling. But the service of God, while 
 it makes pleasure not free, still leaves it ruling. This is 
 our choice : pleasure ruling but not free ; or pleasure free 
 but not ruling. 
 
 And in this again we ought to see how service to man 
 is the true basis and means of worship and obedience to 
 God ; it must have the same relation to this as it has to 
 the not ruling of pleasure. And to affirm the traceable 
 needs of man to be the law is identical with saying they 
 are God's revealed will. Here are two laws proposed by 
 men : God's will ; man's traceable good : both imperfectly 
 seen until they are seen as one. Except by seeing it as 
 the true command of God, it is impossible really to affirm 
 the traceable needs of man as the law. (That is, because 
 they so forbid our thought of goodness which we attach 
 God's name to in restraint from pleasure.) So is not 
 this recognition of man's needs as the law, as much the 
 means of sustaining the true worship of God as it is of 
 keeping off from us the rule of pleasure ? It is the 
 means of liberty, of God's rule Nature's instead of self s. 
 And we see that none of those who ignore God ever think 
 of affirming simply that the traceable needs of men are the 
 law of right ; they all and surely inevitably insist on
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 125 
 
 some rules, some laws of things, which at the bottom 
 mean restraint from pleasure ; that is, which mean the 
 thought on pleasure, on self. To affirm the absolute law 
 of God as revealed in human needs is the only deliverance 
 from this. 
 
 Is it not clear that the idea of a place to worship God 
 arose partly from that of taking trouble to do it ? (The 
 
 feeling still exists. said, " God likes us to take 
 
 trouble to worship Him.") How inevitable that those who 
 let the needs of men pass without calling for their trouble, 
 should be looking out for something to " take trouble " 
 about. How strange that we cannot let Nature deter- 
 mine the amount and kind of our trouble for us. And 
 " serving God " will not do for it. Lacking the reality 
 it ought to have, wanting a " revelation," and so being 
 left to fancy, it may be so conveniently little (as with 
 us), or go to such extremes ; it will, in a word, be any- 
 thing but doing what is wanted. 
 
 What Christ saw was the relativity of law ; there 
 were conflicting laws. " Our fathers said . . . and you 
 ..." And the answer, how simple : " It does not matter; 
 only serve God in spirit." So if it were said now : " Our 
 fathers said : ' Kill such and such of your children,' and 
 you say : ' Keep all of them alive,' " the answer would 
 be equally simple : It does not matter ; only love and 
 seek the good of all. Is not this the true meaning of all 
 opposing laws, and indeed the only real solution ? The 
 law of worshipping at Jerusalem came because men did 
 not worship God in spirit ; it never would have come but 
 for that. But there are still many people who do not, 
 and cannot be brought to, worship God in spirit ; yet 
 does any one propose they should have to go to Jerusalem
 
 126 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 to worship, or think it would do any shadow of good ? 
 Yet do we not insist on such very things, as if there 
 were some good in having, on those who cannot be right 
 within, the laws that come from being wrong ? Surely 
 if it were seen that those laws were only for those who 
 would keep being wrong within, it would be seen also 
 that they were not needed at all. When once the sight 
 has come that there is a truer right, then the other 
 laws have completed their work and are needed no more 
 at all. 
 
 Christ's new commandment is art ; doing without doing, 
 making to live by leaving out. He leaves out loving 
 God. It shows the instincts, the true apprehensions of 
 the man throughout. And the things to leave out are 
 those which put aside other claims ; Nature must guide 
 to them. The true missing is having them in the other 
 things. Now, it might be asked : " But may not man be 
 served in serving God as well as God served in serving 
 man ? In sacrificing the traceable good of man for the 
 sake of serving God are we not truly serving them, miss- 
 ing that ser-vice only for the sake of serving God, and not 
 at all self-wise and arbitrarily ? Why is not this the right 
 way of uniting the claims ? Has not God the first and 
 chief claim, to which all others are rightly subordinated, 
 in that most truly obeyed ? " Now, respecting this, may 
 it not be truly said that it has probably been man's 
 thought always, and that we ought to apply it in judging 
 of the cruelties of ancient superstitions ? When men 
 killed other men in sacrifice, no doubt they felt that way, 
 and fully believed they were only making the right subor- 
 dination. We see that that was a mistake, and that the 
 traceable good of men should have determined the form 
 of the service of God there, and did rightly determine it,
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. <2; 
 
 inverting that other order. It was a misinterpretation of 
 the fact that God has the first and greatest claim. It 
 was quite misread when it was read as meaning that 
 men should be killed in His honour. What it really 
 means is that God has the first claim to be served as a 
 Spirit ; that His service is a power and a life, not an 
 outside thing. 
 
 Christ's " born of the water and the wind " is so closely 
 parallel to " the wind of God moved on the face of the 
 waters." Now, see how the false (or not-regard) law is 
 overthrown into chaos ; false form and true service are 
 alike put aside and mere disorder comes. Here is the 
 parallel : on this chaos comes the being " born of water 
 and the wind." The chaos, or breaking down of the im- 
 perfect law, prepares the way for the fulfilling of the 
 condition for indulging passion or obeying impulse. It 
 exactly describes the correction of the premiss. And the 
 chaos must come first and prepare for it ; that breaking 
 down is the necessary condition. So that is what Christ 
 said to the chaos the failing, imperfect law of His 
 time ; it is what He says now to the same chaos of our 
 time. Here is chaos ; we experience it. It is as definite 
 and perfect an order as any other. 
 
 The true God is the Nature-God. And so do we not 
 better see polytheism ? Was it not a true instinct, insist- 
 ing that God was the Nature-God, but needing to be 
 suppressed for perfecting ? And so how simple it is to 
 see the problem worked out in so many centuries. God 
 felt to be one with Nature, but then Nature not known ; 
 the mere phenomenon felt to be Nature ; and so what was 
 open but to make Him like all corruptible things ? Then, 
 after how long a time, comes science, teaching us that the
 
 128 THE LAW-BREAKER, 
 
 physical is but phenomenal ; that the fact is something 
 other than that ; and then the conditions for God being 
 to us as a Nature-God are fulfilled. 
 
 Is it not interesting to note as existing in India, for 
 instance, the belief in the physical as illusion with poly- 
 theism (that is, God as the Nature-God) ? This surely is 
 not mere accident. Did those who affirmed God as the 
 Nature-God then really connect this with the affirmation 
 of the physical as but phenomenal ? And so is the poly- 
 theism a degradation of their thought ? 
 
 Christianity must not be taken as more permanent in 
 form than any other good ; it has in it no power to guard 
 itself from decay. It has a power most divine, can save, 
 and to the uttermost ; can lay hold of the lowest and carry 
 them from hell to heaven ; it can save others, but it can- 
 not save itself; cannot prevent itself from sinking into a 
 mockery. That which was true of Christ is true of 
 Christianity and ought to be. To enter into life it ought 
 to die. " Ought not Christianity to have suffered these 
 things and entered into its glory ? " To be present in 
 departing ; to live in dying. To have been trodden under 
 foot and made a scorn and mocking. " We thought it 
 had been it that should have restored " his glory unto 
 man. And even as foolishly do we not regret ? " Into 
 their glory " all things enter by making it possible for 
 themselves no more to be. That it cannot save itself 
 is its praise, not its condemnation. This is the glory of 
 every institution : it saves others ; itself it cannot save. 
 In saving it dies. 
 
 Look at that sad book the Roman Catholics put into 
 the hands even of children : " Hell opened to Christians." 
 As I was showing it to a friend I thought : See to what
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 129 
 
 extremes man's conscience has gone, into what quite false 
 extravagances of self- condemnation. Now why is it ? 
 What do these false self-condemnations mean, making 
 him call any cruelty of injustice right and just if only it 
 is directed against himself ? What has brought it ? Can 
 we trace it in any way ? (Can one find the secret of it 
 in the absence of response to facts ? But then see his 
 way of " escaping ; " still keeping that, only turning it 
 to his own " goodness.") But, whatever its source, is it 
 not full of significance as a fact ? Here has been a false 
 feeling of evil and ill-desert, a perverted self-condem- 
 nation. Now, is all man's self-condemnation truly the 
 same ? Has there been truly any evil in his life ? 
 Has all his feeling of his ill-desert been an untrue 
 feeling like this ? And in fact has not human life been 
 perfect in beauty and good, intensely rich with a pathetic 
 beauty of which the very self-condemnation is but on 
 part ? 
 
 Seeing evils as forces ending in results is seeing them 
 good ; this also is the expression of the use of the moral 
 reason. And it is visibly one with regarding the human 
 relations ; for so evils are powers. In truth, recognise as 
 the end a change in the moral life a spiritual change 
 of truer apprehension or completer response and what 
 can the powers to bring it be but evils ? What but 
 the feelings which that term expresses could be the 
 agents ? 
 
 Human life must be what it is (as all things are) by 
 virtue of its relations ; it is that which is around it which 
 makes it what it is ; and its whole course and character 
 have reference to that. Now, will not a clear recognition 
 
 i
 
 1 3 o THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 of this, and perchance understanding what those relations 
 are, make man's religion new for him ? 
 
 It must be an inversion to say : Love to God, and love 
 to man founded on love to God. It was the very opposite 
 that Christ proclaimed. Yet He, most of all, was full of 
 the love of God and lived in and by it. He went to Him 
 through the true way. And so do Christians also when 
 they truly go, namely, through Christ. They do but 
 conceal the fact from themselves by doctrines. Man is 
 the "way." And in our trying to put the love in that 
 inverted order this thought comes : " that God's provi- 
 dence will overrule the strange miscellaneous powers and 
 principalities of this world, and subdue them in time to 
 the divine purpose." Such thoughts as that come from 
 trying to go to God some other way than through man, 
 to reach Him through vacuum. Of course that must 
 come. And so it looks to us like mere " strange miscel- 
 laneous powers ; " this is the name we give to God's very 
 presence among us, turning our back on it and gazing 
 into vacancy to find Him. And then we say of the dim 
 image we conjure up : He will in time subdue all that to 
 His purpose. But in looking at man's life and seeing 
 the perfect work there carried on then indeed and there 
 we see God. It is no more " strange miscellaneous 
 powers ; " it is God visible. How wise was He who said 
 the way to God is through man. For in looking away 
 from man to see Him we also make to ourselves a false 
 vision of human life. 
 
 Is not Paul's true instruction to us simply to be in 
 an attitude of readiness to see and receive the new life, 
 casting off the old forms ? " All things are ours," all
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 131 
 
 the fresh things God sends, however antagonistic they 
 may seem, death itself, the dying of our dearest convic- 
 tions, our most loved and trusted laws, death is ours. 
 And is it not this that he meant Christ had taught us : 
 this perception of a life (and readiness to receive it) that 
 could be in any forms, or without any ; a life that could 
 let all things freely change, all ordinances live in their 
 effect, the revelation of a law in man's life, a new feeling 
 within coming in with the falling off even of the best and 
 most divine institutions ? Is not this what Paul meant 
 by the life and light that Christ gave, the state within 
 that made all ceasing and passing of institutions, and 
 falling off of laws of things, simply the coming of a 
 new power into the soul ? That enabled him at once 
 to say, on the one hand : " How make the members of 
 Christ members of a harlot ?" how let mere pleasure 
 rule recklessly in such a relation ? and, on the other 
 hand, to put " fornication " with eating blood and things 
 offered to idols ; making it a question simply of good, 
 nothing in itself. This is the very same thought on its 
 other side. 
 
 This is Paul's Gospel : You are free for ever, and in 
 all forms, from all laws of things : law is on the heart. 
 This is the foundation Christ has laid, nor can any man 
 lay another. It was a method He introduced, not a re- 
 sult ; not a different law of things, but how to have 
 none. 
 
 Christ had seen that to be as a power, a life, a thing 
 must die ; that losing life was saving it to life eternal. 
 Surely He felt, too, that He could not make man under- 
 stand this ; that He spoke in vain to that time ; that 
 they would not see truly what He meant. But then did 
 He also see beforehand and recognise that He had assu- 
 redly given science to man ; had brought him to Nature :
 
 132 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 and that through that through the teaching of the 
 Holy Spirit the things He had said should be known 
 and understood and brought to man's remembrance ? 
 (What we read in the Acts of the Holy Spirit was a 
 physical misapprehension. It is the universal mistake, 
 turning spiritual things to physical, and so putting an 
 empty material invention for the eternal fact.) 
 
 We make the New Testament exclusive, as if it was 
 of one event alone, and not a key and interpretation of 
 man's whole life. Whenever there comes a new law 
 within to man the New Testament will be his book. It 
 will be the explanation and revelation of that new coming 
 of life. For it is of that change it is written ; not of 
 those particular events or things. Any thing will do. 
 
 The great crime in men's eyes is to hope, to believe 
 that better may be. How many hold, and do not scruple 
 to say secretly, that our laws are false and bad. That is 
 no wrong in men's eyes ; the wrong is to think they can 
 be made better, to hope, to speak openly in a word, to 
 trust in God. This is the great crime in society's eyes, 
 and that was Christ's great crime. And of course it is 
 the greatest of all. It means freedom, openness, the 
 fading of dead laws, the putting away of safeguards. 
 That is the point : our safeguards or belief in God 
 which ? 
 
 The absence of reference to any other world in the 
 Pentateuch is very striking. May we not see how enor- 
 mous a benefit it might have been ? For ceremonies and 
 religious usages generally tend to fix themselves espe- 
 cially around the future state, and that leads them into
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 133 
 
 any extravagance, betrays them into a cruelty that is 
 limitless. But that restricting the thought to this world 
 and its good and evil to traceable good what a limit 
 and protection against their own foolishness it was. If 
 we lay hold of any other thought of goodness than that 
 of our fellows' good, there is no limit to the cruelty into 
 which even the best and wisest may fall. We see it in 
 our own cruelty ; it is the same as all. There is no 
 limit. 
 
 How plainly Christ's feeling about the absolute autho- 
 rity of traceable good flashes out ! " That the law of 
 Moses may not be broken " the very most emphatic law 
 of God you circumcise on the Sabbath. But here is a 
 man made every whit whole. What is the law of Moses 
 compared to that ? Here by the side of a written state- 
 ment of the law, however authoritative and revered, is 
 God's very present law itself, not written on tables of 
 stone, but on these fleshly tables of our own hearts. 
 Could any terms of the absolute enthronement of the trace- 
 able good of man be more decisive ? And so from this 
 we can see how Christ must have insisted so on Tightness 
 within; as enthroning this revealed will of God, and so 
 demanding the rigid letter- law to cease, He must have 
 demanded the right within that could alone permit its 
 ceasing. 
 
 The idea of " serving God " still lets the thought be 
 upon self; it may be simply a projected reason making 
 use of that which comes nearest. The thought of a 
 " God " or " Creator " being inevitably present, the feelings 
 of self- virtue lay hold of it ; and of course man's first " good- 
 ness " being still about himself comes in the form of a 
 theological devotion, a reference to some god or gods.
 
 134 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 And indeed is it not the fact that to have the regard 
 true is the last thing (in any given application of force of 
 moral kind) that man will do ; that all modes of applying 
 it are tried before that ; in a word, that all the other 
 things than this which is the becoming of his life are 
 simply the effects of the force that is to bring the true 
 regard, operating in various other directions until it can 
 do that ? All the other results mean simply that that is 
 not done. 
 
 And now yet again may we, by the parallel of this 
 force which thus works the life of man, see the working 
 of the force in the organic life ? Do we see the same 
 process there, in the various effects of the force before it 
 produces its last effect of bringing the living or organic 
 state ? Does that come in the same way as the ceasing 
 of a tension (or reductio ad absurdum) ? The force first 
 has various external operations, as it were, before it makes 
 the internal one, which answers to the true regard, that 
 is, the living state. As if this " becoming living " were 
 the special difficulty. But of course this means only that 
 it comes in its turn, when, and as soon as, it becomes the 
 direction of least resistance. 
 
 But thus because in it there may still remain the 
 regard first on self we see how the early stage of man's 
 aim at right will be one with emphatic reference to God. 
 Yet this also surely is an anticipation, and though it has 
 to be put aside is suppressed only for perfecting a true 
 position. Our relation to God our deepest, paramount 
 relation is introduced through this negative of an untrue 
 regard. And here surely is the key to what it is to 
 become. 
 
 It is not that man is so wicked. When he sees how 
 he breaks even his own laws all laws indeed and what
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 135 
 
 cruel evil things he does, of course he thinks : How wicked ! 
 But he looks at the wrong things. It is his life, which 
 expresses itself in making false laws, that is lacking ; of 
 course, because impurity makes false laws. He does not 
 think of saying : I must be a person not making things 
 evils. That would give him a diiFerent thought of his 
 evil. 
 
 The Decalogue throws such a light on Christ's action. 
 So dead it is not a word about loving ; a long insisting 
 on having only one God, and then a long sermon about 
 the Sabbath and then a few moral precepts briefly added. 
 (Is it not as like as possible to the Wahabee telling Pal- 
 grave that the great sins were polytheism and smoking 
 tobacco, and murder and theft were slight offences, and 
 God was merciful ?) Now Christ broke the first two ; 
 those put first and most insisted on ; and surely those 
 most intensely regarded then by the Jews. They had 
 been trained, to regard them most. He broke the laws 
 probably most regarded (and broken ?) in His day. 
 
 And in this is there a light on how far and in what 
 sense He did really claim to be divine ? (It is evident 
 we do not know this at present, for persons the best 
 qualified think quite oppositely.) But may we not know 
 what it was He did by seeing it as a breaking of the 
 letter of that law and fulfilling of its spirit ? Did He 
 not do by that law the very same thing that He did by 
 the Sabbath law ? And so by this we may see the other. 
 That He did break the letter of that law may we not be 
 sure ? and even see plainly in what way ? 
 
 Did not Christ really mean the deliverance from all 
 laws (of things) ? But His thought was not fully seen. 
 It was recognised as delivering from the Jewish law but
 
 136 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 not how far it reached, how total the regard to others it 
 demanded. And so was it that its force became misspent 
 and went so emphatically into self-torture ? Is this a 
 sign of the misapprehension, of the falling short of the 
 application ? There was force (this was the meaning) to 
 deliver from all laws of things ; but this not being seen, 
 the other result necessarily ensued ; the power that had 
 for its true use to turn the regard from self was twisted 
 around self, and so expressed itself inevitably in volun- 
 tary pain. 
 
 Does not the very fact of this false effect show there 
 was a power there which did not fulfil its true end ? And 
 how visibly the meaning of Christ's words was : " Deny 
 yourself; put away all thought of self; fulfil the com- 
 mand to love, and take the liberty it brings ; let the 
 regard be absolutely true." But this not being seen, the 
 true self-denial, the true taking up the cross being un- 
 known, there came instead the thought of a self-denial 
 still with the regard on self, and all its fruits ; its fruits, 
 however, of how infinite a value to us, and doubtless how 
 absolutely needful. 
 
 Is it not pretty *to see how Christ's: "Think of your 
 neighbour " changed into : " Put away your own plea- 
 sure ? " " self-denial " into : " Think all of yourself and 
 how good you can be ? " 
 
 To us this " believing in Christ," and trusting to His 
 death for pardon, has become merely an ideal thing, 
 identified from the first with duty and goodness, with 
 doing what is right and elevating and aspiring; the 
 power is turned out of it. When felt thus, it comes no 
 more in its true significance, as the call to do a thing of 
 utmost meanness and vileness, if done for self ; this aspect 
 of it gets quite hidden and put out of sight. (And so 
 surely hypotheses have been made to supply the void.)
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 137 
 
 This, its great aspect and power when it came first, and 
 when it comes first to a low and degraded man, is hidden 
 and lost. Its true nature is lost sight of. But how 
 striking it really is, and at first must have been, to those 
 old aspiring heathen. Before, all thought of coming to 
 God, to betterness, had been by getting nobler, rising, 
 putting away all the mean. Now, what a sudden change ; 
 to do a thing, which how could it be done ? 
 
 When we look at the evil people, so brutal, so given 
 to wrong, apparently so uncaring and inaccessible, we feel 
 as if the right thing must be to hold ourselves separate, 
 to make a broad distinction and seek to cleave to good, 
 and put the badness at least away from us. And when 
 yet another step comes, and we go forth to try to help and 
 deliver the bad, it is still the same feeling at the bottom ; 
 the distinction, the separating and putting away, is the 
 same; the attempt is to bring some over from one to the 
 other. We are prone altogether to take this stand, in- 
 stead of looking in and seeing, and seeking if we cannot 
 get to the heart and root of the evil and find a goodness 
 which will change and abolish, and really absorb it alto- 
 gether. We find a goodness that in some half kind 
 of way seems to do for us, and we expect it to do for 
 every one. 
 
 But we might have a different thought, a different 
 aim altogether, that of gathering them up into a new and 
 better life altogether. Now this is how Christ stood. 
 This would be following His steps and taking Him to 
 learn from. He stood as if sinful, opening a better way, 
 a truer goodness. (One sees it was purity in heart He 
 taught, for it had for its outward form making things 
 pure, that is, free. So if that teaching ever comes again 
 to us it must have that outward form.) Necessarily He
 
 138 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 stood as if sinful, if He was showing the path of a deeper 
 purity. It could not be otherwise ; for things had falsely 
 been made impure ; and He was showing that God had 
 cleansed them. 
 
 Being led by Christ is seeking ever a better and better 
 goodness, one that makes more and more things not evil. 
 (With that great saying of His as a beacon and guiding 
 star, showing at how much He aimed and what His 
 thought embraced : "In the regeneration they do not 
 even marry." Even there man has the law that comes 
 with purity.) Ever a better and better goodness, never 
 staying. And the mistake that has befallen us is the 
 universal mistake of puttings tilings for actions. We 
 try to hold to what we think were the things Christ 
 affirmed, or set up, instead of seeing that it is His act 
 that is our guide. We put the thing we think He 
 ordained in place of the act He did, the principle He 
 set before us. 
 
 Christ came into conflict with caste law : " We were 
 never in bondage to any law ; but this people . . ." 
 He put aside this error, and affirmed the true law univer- 
 sal. So there is this great thing in our society, that it 
 will not have different laws for different people. And 
 how probably through this very thing, in part, it comes 
 that the laws are so broken here. The insistance on 
 having one renders the false law less able to stand. So 
 the needful change is aided to come. 
 
 And in this do we not see again the part Christ took ? 
 He refused a different law. He was assailed with the 
 temptation (by the Pharisees), but insisted that the true 
 law was for all. By that Christianity exists. But besides 
 this, may we see a meaning again in the words of Paul : 
 " He humbled Himself and took on Him the form of a
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 139 
 
 servant ? " We may (besides all other meanings) find in 
 them this reality : He, though having Nature herself in 
 Him, that is, being genius, the very instrument and pre- 
 sence of Nature, and so subject only to the law of free- 
 dom, though so made free from all laws of things, yet did 
 not claim and use that liberty; He descended from that 
 freedom and accepted the false law we had imposed on 
 ourselves, putting aside His own right, sharing our state 
 of bondage, though not truly under it, in order to raise 
 us to His freedom ; claiming so the true law for all by 
 making Himself one with them. So that claiming His 
 right He claims it for every one. They are brought 
 under the true law with Him, because He has made their 
 law and His the same. (So in Him there is a guide to 
 genius, and how it should claim its freedom so that all 
 may share it.) 
 
 The words of the New Testament seem so large and 
 deep. (So we have put them away from the present 
 realities we live among, and made up theories for them.) 
 But is not the meaning simple ? They express the per- 
 ception of the writers that this world (seeming so little) 
 is really a phenomenal world, the phenomenal of the 
 spiritual. When a person sees this, of course his words 
 begin to relate to the spiritual, the fact. It is as a per- 
 son would speak who had discovered the real heavens in 
 the apparent. His words would become large, too large 
 for the mere appearance. So is it not simply the fact 
 that the New Testament writers had gained that vision of 
 this world as the phenomenon of the spiritual ? And so 
 they began of course to speak and write about the 
 spiritual. Was it not simply a sign of that identifica- 
 tion, perhaps incomplete, and therefore suppressed for 
 restoring ?
 
 140 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 And now is not a similar time come ? We also have 
 learnt that this world is but phenomenal, that is to say, 
 that it is the phenomenal of the actual ; that it is not 
 two worlds, but one. Now, must not like change come 
 over our words and thoughts ? Must they not expand 
 and become too large for the phenomenal because meaning 
 the actual ? 
 
 In respect to Christ's claim to divineness being the 
 raising the law of monotheism from the letter to the 
 spirit, there may be a key in the words : " He that loveth 
 father or mother more than me . . ." Does not this 
 mean " more than man," than human good ? And from 
 that may we not even see a light upon His whole mean- 
 ing and the whole thought of making the monotheistic 
 law a spirit one ? Consider how at that time God was 
 served against man, and how Christ's great thought was 
 to have it recognised that God was to be served in man, 
 and only so. That is the great thought of all the de- 
 liverers from human sacrifices ; the one thought always 
 bringing deliverance. It is the true turning to God, 
 because the true and only turning away from self. And 
 the turning to self is the only turning away from God, 
 because it is merely turning away from fact, is merely not- 
 regard. 
 
 Now if Christ was seeking to bring men to see this, 
 then may we not see how the words came ? By the good 
 of man He meant God in them seeking, serving, follow- 
 ing God as shown in man. Then might it not have come 
 that Christ's me, meaning God in man and as revealing 
 His will in the facts of men's lives, might have come to 
 seem that in Him alone God was revealed ? And so, by 
 exclusiveness, it was robbed of its meaning. There is 
 that tendency always misleading man; and so it may
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 141 
 
 have come that Christ's attempt (which evidently has not 
 been understood) to make it seen that God was to be 
 served in man alone, was applied by an intruding exclu- 
 siveness to His being divine. And does not the insist- 
 ance that God was to be seen and served in man, and 
 not apart from him, truly express a raising of the law of 
 monotheism to the spirit-form ? For if Christ was saying 
 this, and He was not understood, must not such an idea 
 about Himself, as exclusive, have taken the place of the 
 true one ? Some thought instead of that would be wanted, 
 and it must necessarily have been that He said : Not in 
 man, and the traceable facts of his life, God's will is 
 revealed, but in me you see Him. (Was it so the other 
 " divine men " came to be thought divine ? Were they 
 also saying : " You must see God in man," and men 
 responding : " We see God in you" and still shutting 
 their eyes to God in human needs ?) 
 
 Now is that raising the law of monotheism to the spirit- 
 form ? In one sense it seems so ; for indeed the spirit- 
 form of every law (that it means revealed human good) 
 is taking the monotheistic law in the spirit. It is saying 
 that God is in this man, in these present facts. So that 
 to affirm the other laws are spirit-laws is to take this 
 very attitude towards the monotheistic one, and say of 
 God : He is and speaks in this man, in every man, in 
 man. Nay, is the true meaning of the monotheistic 
 law this : There is one God, and He speaks absolutely in 
 every claim ; and there is no superior authority to set 
 it aside ? (If there were many Gods, there might be.) 
 It is one and the same supreme authority who is mani- 
 fested in every fact ; neglect none. 
 
 So it was applied to prove that all nations were 
 brothers ; one God made them. And so, considering that 
 one chief wrong of early times was that tribal antipathy,
 
 142 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 and limiting the regard to their own nation only, may we 
 not see the great significance of the monotheistic law as 
 being an injunction to regard alien nations, a command 
 to put away not-regard ? And so the true meaning of 
 the law is most absolutely expressed when it is made to 
 command the putting away of all not-regard. Is not that 
 its true significance ; and how Christ treated it ? And 
 in making it mean this God seen in human needs did 
 He not restore its true meaning, even exactly as He did 
 that of the Sabbath-law ? Monotheism was made for 
 man. It meant that man's claims were absolute from the 
 first. 
 
 Making a law a spirit-law is so understanding it that 
 it is felt to be fulfilled though its letter is contradicted. 
 We need this, for the thought of " God " otherwise cannot 
 bring the fulfilling in breaking the letter. Now if we 
 look at the law of monotheism there are visible relations 
 in it to this thought. In the first place, may we not see 
 that the law of monotheism was, as the Sabbath-law, 
 " made for man ; " that is, introduced for the sake of 
 traceable human good, to bring in amity instead of 
 enmity among the nations ? For in early history we see 
 that this enmity to neighbours was the great evil. 
 Savage tribes, many of them, are brothers among them- 
 selves, but are in constant war with all around ; and this 
 evil of barbarism infested to a modified extent also the 
 classic civilisations ; all but Greek or Roman were rightly 
 to be hated. Now this hatred of other nations was 
 intimately connected with the idea of separate gods (or 
 of special possession of God) ; other gods made other 
 nations ; so it would become even a duty to hate them ; 
 they would be " sacrificed to God." Now in that state 
 what should a true seer seek to do but above all things
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 143 
 
 to insist that one God made all alike ? He would intro- 
 duce/or man a law of monotheism. 
 
 Now with' this thought of the origin of the monotheistic 
 law, and of its value, we can partly see how Christ stood 
 to it in the same attitude as to the Sabbath. This law, 
 made to introduce and enforce love to all men, was used 
 to injure them. (Give to God instead of to your parents, 
 for example.) Now as Christ said in respect to the 
 Sabbath : " Serving God is in serving men, and you 
 must see God in them," so He took in respect to mono- 
 theism the very same attitude : " Serving God is serving 
 men, and you must see God in them. Monotheism was 
 made for man ; and it is fulfilled only in seeing God in 
 men." 
 
 Apart from men, serving God cannot deliver us from 
 letter-laws. And it is because, though for Him in the 
 other way we may put away pursuing pleasure even to 
 the utmost, yet so we cannot be brought to put away 
 refusing pleasure. There is no power in it to break that 
 form of the dominion of self ; it is because of this won- 
 derful power on us of having not to put away pleasure 
 that the need and potency of serving God in our fellows 
 come. It is not that we may be trained up to or exercised 
 in, or brought even to find delight in restraining pleasure, 
 and doing toilsome and irksome deeds, and controlling 
 passion ; not for anything of that kind is it needed that 
 God's service must be in serving man ; all that can be, 
 would be, has been, done to the utmost in the other form 
 of serving Him. The serving Him in man must be to 
 bring the consenting to pleasure, consenting to lay aside 
 restraint and irksomeness. So we see a reason in the 
 order : first ought to have come the false thought of 
 serving God; that brings the training in the painful 
 things, in the putting away of pleasure, in control and
 
 144 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 restraint ; it has no other meaning ; it comes to us for 
 that, and by its very falsity gives us those benefits. 
 (Does not every falsity, every lack, give us certain fruits 
 we want and ought to have, supplying to us exercise in 
 things needful for the full good of the more perfect 
 thing ?) 
 
 Then the coming of serving God in our fellows is always 
 one thing : it is always the ceasing of the refusal of 
 pleasure. Our fellows are held in reserve because of the 
 power that is stored up in them to make pleasure free, 
 and bid restraints fall off. The thought of God alone 
 means pain and restraint ; the thought of Him in our 
 fellows (that is, the thought of our fellows) means joy, 
 freedom, pleasure, restraint being in its effect. 
 
 God has made our fellow-men, and their needs mean 
 freedom for joy, and restraints removed. And above all 
 is this the case by no more sacrificing first children, 
 then women. Thinking of God in our fellows means 
 freedom of delight everywhere, but above all here, that is, 
 in the home. The two elements of the home are those 
 in which man's thought turning to his fellows most sets 
 free joy, first children, then woman. But is this a sign 
 of what will be universally ? Will every relation to our 
 fellows in its turn be found even as these ? In every 
 respect will the turning of our thoughts to our fellows' 
 good be found not less the instrument of a fresh freedom 
 for delight ; and these two cases only the first ? That is, 
 will it be found truly that in all not-regard is involved 
 really as much restraint from joy (in the form of " self- 
 duty ") as existed in the sacrifice for self-duty of children 
 and of women ? That is, that all our fellows are really 
 as truly organised and adapted for our joy and rapture as 
 our children are, and that in sacrifice of them we do really 
 feel as great a constraint upon our pleasure, as great a
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 145 
 
 burden on our hearts, as our fathers did upon theirs in 
 sacrificing their children. 
 
 Monotheism must be truly a spirit-law ; the letter of it 
 is no more a true law than any other letter. Surely our 
 thoughts have been very perverted here, perverted in the 
 very fact of not making monotheism a law " made for 
 man." For when we put it into metaphysical terms as 
 we do (making it a letter-thing), do we not clearly make 
 it false ? God is one, doubtless, but He is also many. 
 He is not more one than He is many. To make it an 
 abstract statement : " God is one " is to think falsely. 
 It is a law of human good, not a merely abstract law. 
 The very proposition is not true, but expresses a dis- 
 tinctly false thought ; God is not what we conceive when 
 we speak of one. Monotheism is a spirit-law a law 
 which means human good is to be pursued and not a 
 letter-law. It is false when we make it so. The insist- 
 ing on the unity is not a metaphysical correctness ; it is 
 insisting on that aspect of God's being which human good 
 then demanded ; it was not because it was more " true," 
 but because the other hurt man. 
 
 The person who will assail the established things, the 
 things that good has established, our best, the man who 
 will have the instinct for that will be the man who can 
 give them up and yet hold them. He can still keep 
 the good of them, that is, the power, and let it be in 
 another thing ; for " things " are useless for power. 
 Christ was one who could let go a thing and keep the 
 good of it. 
 
 We think always (our whole plan of life is so) : " Men 
 are such creatures ; can we expect anything more than 
 
 K
 
 146 THE LAW-BREAKER, 
 
 this kind of life ? " We think such and such a mode of 
 living must be supposed, " while men are what they are." 
 But we must remember that Christ distinctly refused to 
 consent to a thing allowed " because of the hardness of 
 men's heart's." His thought looked to a different method. 
 And He is put aside in every idea of saying : "But it is not 
 human nature to do otherwise than that," &c. (Here the 
 ascetic system was in one way true to Him. Its mistake 
 was in another direction, in its confusion of putting away 
 self with putting away pleasant things.) We adopt the 
 plan of saying that such an order of society is necessary 
 because of the hardness of men's hearts. 
 
 We think so exclusively of Christ's dying, not regard- 
 ing His being called " a gluttonous man and winebibber," 
 that is, wicked and self-indulgent. We ignore His free 
 relation to pleasure (from which indeed, at least in part, 
 His death arose). Is not this free relation to pleasant 
 things really quite as much as, and indeed in some sense 
 more than, even His death ? For He chose it, insisted 
 on it as His action, while His death He did not choose, 
 but accepted. If the call to lay down His bodily life 
 came He consented, but His self-goodness was the life 
 He laid down. We look at one side only, and not the 
 chief. 
 
 Seeing how the Pharisees refused to consider health, 
 and sacrificed others' lives to self-virtue, does there not 
 come a new meaning into His healing ? He healed, as 
 others could not, by refusing to submit to the self- 
 righteous restraint from healing. He gave health by 
 refusing the " piety " that forbade giving it. Was that 
 what so struck the people around and made them call it 
 the power of God ? So might we see the answer sent 
 to John. We might imagine him doubting : Can this
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 147 
 
 seeming disregard of the law, this departure from ex- 
 ternal piety and restraint, be true ? Is Jesus our true 
 deliverer, or must we still look for another ? (As much 
 as to say : We thought it had been He ; . . . but see, 
 He fought so unwisely ; He is not only wounded but dead ; 
 lost His life in it.) 
 
 And so Christ's reply : Tell him how the blind see, the 
 lame walk. . . . The conditions for serving physical health 
 are fulfilled ; there is no more duty which means suc- 
 cumbing to disease, no longer any forbidding good. Is 
 not that that which should come ? Is there not a light 
 on miracles in this ? It is not " power " but " liberty," 
 freedom to use all that is for good, which is the finger 
 of God. 
 
 Then how complete is the answer to John : This 
 " license " is fulfilling the conditions of giving health to 
 those who need it. And then, of course, the good news 
 to the poor was of the same kind with the sight and power 
 of walking ; not the one physical and the other spiritual. 
 The blind see and the poor hear of a new life and a new 
 right that must mean the ceasing of their distress. (And 
 we see how in losing one we have lost both.) 
 
 So again there is a new meaning in the Jews' charge : 
 He casts out devils by Beelzebub, that is, by wickedness. 
 And Christ's reply : The kingdom of God God's true law 
 is come to you. This new state of the heart, this new 
 direction of the regard that gives liberty for good, this is 
 the kingdom of God. (And is not this always the truth 
 with genius ? Its miracles which men call divine and 
 ascribe to power are freedom, the not having restric- 
 tions.) 
 
 Oh, the hard task imposed on so many, wishing to see 
 their lives and the lives around them letter, and compelled
 
 148 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 to strike at their goodness, their own as well as others', 
 from Abraham downwards. And all one compulsion, one 
 change. It is a goodness that kills ; it hurts others ; that 
 is, it is thinking about self. 
 
 How plainly Christ's attitude was this : the law that 
 supposes a true regard must be for all ; the law that 
 supposes a false regard must not be any more consented 
 to. He saw the time had come for making that change 
 then, at least so far. Now what were the signs of it ? 
 Special goodness ? Apparent special readiness ? (How 
 plainly He said : Let this order be reversed ; let the law 
 that is on those with their eye on service be put as the 
 law. That reversal is so plain.) 
 
 We do not rightly see Christ's life in thinking of it as 
 is usual in respect to its higher goodness. He did not 
 urge and reinforce restraints, but insisted above all on 
 their falling off. His life was an instance of Paul's 
 saying, " to the pure all things are pure." The good He 
 was an example of, which He taught, reinforced, and 
 urged, is that of having the thought true. 
 
 This is what Christ said : Not the things you so insist 
 on, but having the heart right. Now we should say : 
 " Yes, the heart right, but the things too." But what 
 did the apostles find but that keeping the things too was 
 absolute hindrance to the other ? Their experience is of 
 true use and meaning for us. But, as Christ said, men 
 could not bear that then, not even His own friends. And 
 we see they could not. If He came now, would He not 
 say the very same again : " Not these things you so insist 
 on, but having the heart right ? "
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 149 
 
 "Following . . . ivJiithersoever He goeth." We had 
 not thought it might mean, to us also, anything else than 
 where our best thoughts and most cherished aims had taken 
 us. ... But it is whithersoever. And is it really any 
 wonder that there should come the call yet again for going 
 beyond these ? And indeed must it not go on being thus 
 always ; again and again ? Is not that the nature of 
 our advance ?
 
 PART II. 
 
 IN Nelson's face how plain is the character : the quiet- 
 ness, the mere receptiveness and yielding, the utter 
 passiveness before Nature ; with, latent all the while, 
 ready and ever on the watch, the spring, as of a cat or 
 tiger, the instant action too quick to trace. That latent 
 spring, what intentness of eagerness it is ! Every emotion 
 kept so still, it does not need restraining ; and yet it is a 
 passion of desire at its utmost stretch. 
 
 Looking at a portrait of Beethoven, it was evident that 
 his face had in it the face of an animal ; it was plainly 
 the face of an animal combined with that of a man. 
 And this reveals genius again. Genius is a cross between 
 animal and man ; both are in it ; it is an animal com- 
 bined with a man ; its face tells the tale. And is not 
 what it derives from the animal its absence of self-con- 
 sciousness ? In this is a law already known : Nature 
 returns on herself in her advance, and embodies again 
 what has been before. 
 
 Does not this join with the articulate and mollusc 
 being both in the vertebrate ? And, by the bye, how 
 prettily that raising of the articulate animal to be the 
 nervous system of the mammal is parallel to man's own 
 action. It is the sculptor's part. Nature first makes a 
 clay model of the nervous system, and then reproduces it 
 in her " marble." She makes a model (as it were in
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 151 
 
 clay) and puts into it the instincts, the adaptations ; a 
 kind of " working model " it is. These " instincts " of 
 the articulate, are they not the very qualities, the very 
 tendencies or capacities of the human brain ? Is not the 
 character of man's "consciousness," its tendencies and 
 capacities and modes of working, to be studied in the 
 insect's " instincts ? " And then how this indicates man's 
 perfectness in being one with Nature ; here is genius in 
 going closer to her again. It is less different and apart 
 from her than other men. 
 
 remarks on the large mouth and jaw of a 
 
 person of marked genius. I think it is true ; the gift of 
 genius is simply that it cannot keep Nature the sensuous 
 element of Nature out. And that form of the mouth, 
 &c., marks this character more than anything else. Now 
 how pretty it is (if this be so) to see Nature turning our 
 thoughts into a joke. Think what we have imagined 
 about genius ; how it has stood as the name of all that 
 is most grand, spiritual, intellectual, elevated, as a quite 
 super-sensuous inspiration, and how we have regarded 
 these things as indicated, and looked for the signs of 
 them in the face ; what nobleness of brow, spirituality of 
 form, &c. ; and that it should be found in the big mouth 
 and jaw ! That is pretty. 
 
 F. W. Newman is typical of the absence of genius. 
 To take the good side of him first, how he can't see what 
 is against his sensibilities. In all that pamphlet of his 
 on the great social evil there is not one recognition of 
 any badness in woman, not an idea that the corruption of 
 the world has one atom of its root in her depravity. Of 
 courtesans he speaks as " those simple creatures." 
 
 Now this has a certain loveliness. . . . But if any
 
 152 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 clanger could be fearful how fearful it would be for such 
 a hand to be laid on prostitution. What dreadful mis- 
 chief might ensue. One must not think simplicity like 
 that too beautiful. It is more weakness than goodness. 
 
 Then that " purity " which covers with so thick a coat- 
 ing that pamphlet, is it not even loathsome ? Here is a 
 remedy for the world's unchastity to put it into women's 
 heads that to have sexual disorders treated by male 
 physicians is indecent! To commit to unmarried women, 
 merely, all the bleeding heart of whoredom to that which 
 in all humanity can sympathise least with it, can know it 
 least ; not to see that the closest, tenderest thing to that, 
 that which could most profoundly and with least violence 
 to its remaining delicacy be its friend, because known by 
 itself to share its own strength and weakness, must be 
 pitiful, married manhood. 
 
 Then to have its hope always in repression ; evidently 
 not to see that a chastity maintained by fear is as unchaste 
 as harlotry. 
 
 And, in fine, that pervading feeling of which this is 
 but one expression of a kind of anatomical chastity ; a 
 feeling as if some physical relations of things were in 
 themselves pure and others impure, which seems to me 
 the most intense and profound of all possible impurities. 
 It is as if his whole feeling were not at all of conditions 
 of the soul, but of the physical problem how to prevent 
 certain relations of certain tangible things a lowest 
 depth of sensual feeling, than which no lower could be 
 imagined. It is only loathing that can express one's feel- 
 ing for it. It seems as if the only proper answer to 
 it would be deliberately to make a girl, whose purity is 
 something not bodily, a prostitute, and say : See, chastity 
 is a thing of the soul ; the bodily act is indifferent 
 which indeed is, as we see. Nature's and God's reply.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 153 
 
 Newman's pamphlet makes one feel glad that prostitution 
 does exist ; for it reveals to one that there , might be 
 something worse in its place. 
 
 And then, besides, he does not see that his proposed 
 remedy is but a giving up : he does not know that what 
 it expresses is not hope, but despair. And, above all, 
 that if his methods all succeeded perfectly, the result 
 would be but impurity crystallised and turned to stone, the 
 last current even of its feeble and perverted life frozen in 
 its veins, and so its last chance of cure for ever lost. The 
 physical current might be dammed up, but it would be 
 all there, and the chance of its true removal infinitely 
 far off. 
 
 And what a sight were a world so poised between 
 impure desire and fear. ' When we had it what could we 
 wish done with it but that, as soon as possible, it should 
 cease, and no longer uselessly defile the face of Nature ? 
 
 This makes me feel afresh that purity must come, not 
 from any thought, or effort, or anything we can do about 
 the sexual passion itself, but from banishing it from 
 thought, letting it sink down into a mere instrument, as 
 it is, of human life ; not thinking of it at all, but only of 
 its uses. That is the true purity, and it must come. 
 
 Is it not a blessing that the false purity does not and 
 cannot exist alone ; that with it there is and must go 
 on to be mere unrestrained lust and bestiality ? If it 
 were otherwise we might be enslaved by it for ever, and 
 never know that it meant foulness. 
 
 How beautifully, too, this shows the profound truth of 
 the Christian doctrine : " You can't get good by trying." 
 No ; neither can you get pure. We can only be good or 
 pure by life coming into us a true enthusiasm not about 
 ourselves at all. Life is the only thing that purifies.
 
 154 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 I get very strongly the impression that Huxley is a 
 man of genius (decidedly of genius) who is not giving 
 himself to the work to which the true bent of his genius 
 would carry him. And therefore (since he grudges his 
 sacrifices) his work has not the true mark of his genius 
 upon it. Surely the true bent of his genius is to meta- 
 physics. (A strong metaphysical element is surely in- 
 separable from genius.) See how he reads it, is evidently 
 fascinated by it, although repudiating it. In giving 
 himself to science does he not give himself to a subject 
 which has less primary interest for him ? And so he 
 truly sacrifices his genius ; for has his scientific work that 
 stamp of genius it ought to have ? I do not see it. If 
 this be true, here is one man of genius sacrificed to the 
 negative doctrine. He cuts himself off from it because 
 he thinks he ought. But genius when it does genius- 
 work never does that only because it can't help itself. 
 
 Not only is intolerance common to science with theology, 
 but the very same characters seem to show themselves 
 in individuals. We can trace surely the very mental 
 elements which impressed special characters on the forms 
 of the old thought. See Morley, for example, what a 
 stern, rigid Puritan, what tendency to an iron and re- 
 pressive sway. In his hands into what a hard formula 
 life would have been coerced. He is a Calvin and more. 
 In truth, can we not know the past through the present 
 persons as we never could without ? It was as our com- 
 peers would have made it. 
 
 The very same tendencies which we see in different 
 persons operating (tyrannously or otherwise hurtfully) in 
 the old ecclesiastical forms are really visible under science ; 
 and are (now at least) even more dangerous, because under 
 the new forms less known, and so less watched against
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 155 
 
 and apprehended as dangerous. The very same evils may 
 come unsuspected in new forms. (Here is a use of 
 history.) 
 
 The seeming heartlessness and disbelief in good in 
 some parts of George Eliot affect me with an intense 
 pain ; but I think I see the true meaning of it. It is 
 really intellectual and not moral. What irks me is that, 
 well or even perfectly as the individual characters are 
 drawn, there is no unity, no necessity, through the whole. 
 The persons stand in a merely arbitrary collocation. It is, 
 in a word, like a " self-rights " picture, and my art-sense 
 is dissatisfied. This mere collocation of people with no 
 visible necessity or reason is not possible to be the truth; 
 it is at most only an observation-true ; we want here 
 the human mind demands it in human life to the full as 
 much as in anything else a fact that shall make all the 
 " phenomena " to be seen as necessary. 
 
 This truth below the mere individual appearances is 
 what we demand. Most likely the very excellence of her 
 delineation makes us feel the want ; because she is so 
 true she makes us feel we want another truth. Inferior 
 work, doubtless, obscures this ; does not make us feel so 
 strongly that it cannot be the real truth ; a false seeming 
 of reason is suffered to come into it, and hides the neces- 
 sity of a true reason. Now this is but feeling again in a 
 special instance what I have felt so long; that the true 
 work of the dramatist is with man to show men, all men 
 and all their lives, as necessary " phenomena " of the fact 
 of human life. To find the unity which gives that 
 many ; the fact which causes all these appearances to 
 appear. This juxtaposition of individuals must be raised 
 out of the region of mere accident, and shown necessary, 
 before the novel can be " true to Nature." Not enough
 
 156 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 is it to say this man is so and that so ; it is even false the 
 falser for its being true to the appearance. The portrayer 
 of human life must say : " Thus this man must have been, 
 and thus the other, and thus they must have been related, 
 and these are the things that must have happened," and 
 this down to the very bottom. 
 
 But is there also another reason for this absence of 
 unity and necessity that is, of meaning in her presenta- 
 tions of people ; namely, that George Eliot does not see 
 women ? For surely she does not see their complex 
 nature, the opposites united in them. The world in 
 which her women exist is not the world in which we live. 
 Every woman has (at least) two sets of passions, ten- 
 dencies, sensibilities, impulses ; is, in truth, at once a 
 heroine and a woman of the world ; is at once sensitive 
 to moral, heroic emotions, has a passion for tenderness, 
 devotion, self-disregard to the utmost; and, with it, 
 sensitiveness to sensuous prettiness, pleasures, self-centered 
 comforts, splendour, grandeur of material things, a sensi- 
 tiveness to the delight of unscrupulousness, of unthwarted 
 possession, of absorption of the mind in whatever is her 
 special care, however petty. In every woman are (at 
 least) both these. Whichever rules, the other is there also. 
 Under the most worldly breast lies the heroine ; within 
 the most heroic, the worldly thrill. The untemptable 
 Dorothea, for example, does not exist ; nor the merely 
 empty Celia. In the true Dorothea a Celia lies hid ; and 
 in the true Celia there is shut up the germ of a Dorothea. 
 George Eliot does not see women ; she paints them white 
 and black ; sweeps up women's qualities into two heaps ; 
 all of one set here, all of the other there. It is not the 
 world. Women may practically divide themselves so ; 
 choose, or very often have chosen for them, which opposite 
 within them shall rule their life ; but it is the novelist's
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 157 
 
 precise business to show us more than this, to make us 
 see the thing that is latent as well as the thing expressed ; 
 which last indeed is such as it is because the other is 
 latent. 
 
 For by virtue of this very union of opposites within 
 them it is that the actions of women are so marked. 
 The element within them which has the rule given to it 
 rules by that very containing of its opposite with the 
 deeper and fuller dominion. In this again is not woman 
 like genius, the vigour, the absoluteness, coming from the 
 balance ? Now if this were fully seen would there begin 
 to dawn more light on the significance of human life ? 
 May it be indeed that its darkness prevents the seeing, 
 compels the thought to be of some women at least wholly 
 " good," and so clouds all ? Till we see the meaning of 
 what we call " badness " how can we put it into our best ? 
 
 But may it be that women do not know women ? It 
 is the man who draws out the hidden things in them ; 
 his hand alone perfectly unlocks the secret springs 
 within her. Perhaps women never fully see them, and 
 so do not know the oppositeness within each other. Then 
 is this the basis of what truth there is in the saying 
 that women never love each other ; are not " friends ; " 
 that they do not truly know each other ? 
 
 Is it not curious how George Eliot does not see the 
 opposites in women ? Is not Maggie Tulliver the only 
 real woman she has ever drawn ; and for the very reason 
 that the opposites are in her ? And was not she taken 
 from herself? Then does it mean that she does not see 
 looking from without ; that her eye, as it were, resolves 
 the complex thing into a part only ? Or is this true art, 
 a revealing by means of leaving out ?
 
 158 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 What Nature cannot have for her work is a man who 
 mast ever say : "Now I must be good ; " who can go with her 
 to a certain point but then must stop and say : " But here 
 goodness forbids." She must have a man to whom that 
 is never necessary. Nor is it difficult ; it does not need 
 a wonderful man at all, least of all a good one ; only a 
 man with a passion ruling and using all within him, and 
 that is not for himself. Of course this must be so. What 
 she has to teach him is her right and wrong, her good 
 and evil, to teach him a new right. The necessity, there- 
 fore, is that he should not put up his own. Genius means 
 learning to see a truer right ; the demand, therefore, must 
 be that its own feelings of right and wrong, of good and 
 evil, must be wholly put aside, that is, that it must refuse 
 no evil. " He that will lose his life shall save it." 
 
 I am sure this feeling is deeply visible in Christ. Not 
 only in His words about losing life, but in this, for in- 
 stance : " I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners 
 to repentance." Here it stands : " You good people 
 obeying the law, doing your duty, helping society, main- 
 taining order, relieving the distressed, you have your 
 place and work. I do not interfere with you, nor do I 
 propose to make you better. As my nature belongs to 
 another class, so my work is with them. I want them 
 to understand themselves better, to know better their own 
 desires and their meaning. I have 'a new law for them, my 
 own law -Nature's, the only law possible for them or for 
 me. I come to call them to a new thought, a new per- 
 ception, a new passion. I have good news for them, news 
 that this law .(which they cannot obey) they need not, 
 never did need to obey ; that God's law, for which their 
 very sins have been protests, is quite another." No man, 
 I am sure, ever found himself in possession of a new law 
 who did not turn from the keepers to the breakers of the
 
 THE LA W-BREAKER. 1 5 9 
 
 old one, and find his kinship with them. How should he 
 be ashamed to call them brothers who only do, fearfully, 
 blindly, confusedly, without guide or compass, what he 
 with clear intent and a resolution more reckless than 
 their own, is set to do ? They are flesh of his flesh and 
 bone of his bone. 
 
 Genius has liberty to obey its impulse ; that is the 
 price it has paid. Others can do what it does afterwards, 
 the result and meaning being made clear ; it has to do 
 not knowing what will come, not foreseeing, only com- 
 pelled, driven even to recklessness. So here is a reason 
 that its work remains for ever the greatest and unmatched, 
 namely, because never again in the same thing, is there 
 or can there be the same demand for passion. Others 
 afterwards can do in cool blood ; it first, only with pas- 
 sion driven to its utmost, and against a pressure the most 
 intense. Never again can there be in that thing the 
 same united passion and pressure, for they depend upon 
 the ignorance, the result being unforeseen. So that first 
 work is the greatest as well as first ; not because there is 
 more power in the doer, but because in him must be the 
 wilder, intenser passion, and only on him the pressure. 
 So it is the passion only, and not a greater power, makes 
 the greater work ; the passion impossible again in that 
 thing, raised to equal height, because the pressure cannot 
 be again. 
 
 (Is there any light here on the rising of new grades of 
 organic life ? Do they come as genius comes, by the 
 passion and the pressure joined ?) 
 
 Genius is nothing but saying : " You need not abstain 
 from this pleasant thing ; it is for service." 
 
 In this is given the sign that it is to be; namely, 
 that it does not pursue ease and pleasure. Must not
 
 160 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 this be the mark of its " early " work a kind of in- 
 stinctive abstinence from taking the allowed easy and 
 pleasant things (not a putting them formally aside on 
 a theory, or for reasons, or as if for virtue's sake, like 
 " pre-Raphaelitism " seems to be), but a kind of instinctive 
 turning away from them, as from things not desired, a 
 kind of " instinctive asceticism," before the discovery that 
 forbidden ease and pleasure, being for service, may be ? 
 
 And this gives another suggestion as to the relation 
 of the work of genius. Is there not before it comes (or 
 perhaps can come in any efficient form) a state of license, 
 an accepted ease and pleasure which is not for service 
 (as now in our moral life) united with abstinences which 
 are against service ? Is there not always a license as 
 well as a restriction against service ? Is not that uni- 
 versally characteristic of the condition into which genius- 
 work comes ? So the ease and pleasure which genius 
 instinctively rejects is essentially license ; a pleasure for 
 pleasure's sake and not for service. And so in its work, 
 when most it affirms that this pleasant thing may be, this 
 hard thing and restriction be thrown aside, it always 
 affirms an opposite with it, that this license may not be ; 
 all this pleasure and ease, which has not been taken for 
 service, may not continue. And is not its repudiation of 
 the latter the condition of its freedom for the former ? 
 
 Now is there not here a key alike to the past and to 
 other things than morals ? Has not the interpretation 
 ever set aside easy things taken for pleasure, as well as 
 opened easy ways for service ? In thought and in art 
 also, genius with its new freedom also puts aside a 
 license. 
 
 Can we see it in Copernicus and in Turner ? And is 
 not the history in all cases the same ; a restraint first 
 adopted, and, that falling off, a license taking its place ;
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 161 
 
 and by it in part the evils coming whereby the true 
 basis is compelled ? 
 
 But apart from this, does it not seem as if what dis- 
 tinguished genius is a mere and total absorption in its 
 work that banishes alike pleasure and pain ? 
 
 For is it not thus : That when pleasure and pain are 
 not perceived, there can be no law ; the law cannot be 
 perceived ; its basis is gone ? A man cannot be called 
 on to fulfil a law he does not know and is not conscious 
 of. The law falls off him ; and its having fallen off him 
 is its falling off the race, off humanity. 
 
 And so what a promise this is of infinite good for 
 humanity; it means man's rising wholly above right 
 and wrong, out of the region of the " moral ;" his falling 
 into which was his "fall;" and his rising out of which 
 is his only true good. 
 
 So is it not wonderful how perfect an echo Christ's 
 words are to those of Genesis ? The writer of Genesis 
 says that man's evil is that he came to " know good and 
 evil;" that is, to be subject to questions of right and 
 wrong ; and how beautifully Christ repeats and interprets 
 the thought : "To enter into the kingdom of heaven you 
 must become as a little child;" you must escape from 
 having to ask questions of right and wrong; the law 
 must fall off you again. 
 
 Is it not simple ? First, the knowledge of good and 
 evil is negatively denied ; then it comes in the self-form ; 
 then it is positively denied.* It is simply the universal 
 law ; and so there exist now as ever in the " theory " 
 stage the opposites, each with a negative, the self- 
 
 * The subject of positive and negative denial is well explained in a paper 
 by Miss Caroline Haddon, called " A Law of Development." J. Haddon, 
 3 Bouverie Street. ED. 
 
 L
 
 1 62 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 passion and the self-virtue ; and the true good grows 
 up unperceived amid them, ready and destined to absorb 
 into itself the true position of both. We see it already 
 in its germs the goodness that is one with passion. 
 
 To see genius truly, the importance, the absolute 
 bindingness upon all men then, of the law it breaks must 
 be seen. If that be lightly thought of because genius 
 has shown it was no true law it is mis-seen wholly. 
 Especially is it robbed of its true thanks. For that 
 is its one and only claim to thanks ; it does not with- 
 hold its goodness from the sacrifice ; it gives its life. If 
 in that losing it finds it, that is exactly because it gave 
 it utterly, and no thought of finding it again was in its 
 heart. That is its one claim to thanks ; it lays itself 
 utterly and wholly down before Nature, and says : Ride 
 over me wholly ; be a Juggernaut if thou wilt ; here is 
 my neck beneath thy car ; ride on. All thy billows 
 shall go over me ; cast me as a wreck, a corpse, upon the 
 shore ; it matters not. Must I die to look upon thy 
 face ? Behold, I am as a dead man before thee. 
 
 But not to see how terrible that breaking law is which 
 genius does for men, is to rob it of its one claim to 
 thanks. Take that away and nothing remains ; for it is 
 not great, it is not good ; it has not done much, has not 
 had power to do much ; what it seems to do it does by 
 others' power, not its own ; it reaps where other men 
 have sown ; it owes thanks, not deserves them. But 
 one thing it does for man and tears and silence should 
 commemorate the gift, not praise, for it could not help it 
 it gives its life. That is all it does ; it says : " Let 
 me be numbered among the transgressors." It is not 
 much ; only enough to make men silent when they think 
 of it.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 163 
 
 How like the earliest ages must have been to the rest ! 
 That story of Prometheus is exactly genius. It gives 
 fire to man knowledge and passion and it steals it ; it 
 breaks law for it. And then (is it not exact ? How 
 plain the groan comes down through all the ages and 
 makes the very words the heart longs for now) then 
 it is chained to a rock, and a vulture gnaws its heart. 
 
 It is all one story : how can there be an exception 
 ever? How can a "solar myth" end but in sunset 
 sunset and darkness ? Oh me, what pathos it is ! What 
 made you write that story, friend of mine, of old ? 
 What rock was it to which you were chained down, 
 what vulture gnawed you ? 
 
 Was it the same whose talons are in me, yet undis- 
 covered through so many centuries ? Did you think 
 failure had come, failure for ever, not having the light of 
 all the days since yours to confirm your victory? I 
 wonder what you had seen ; of what " art " you gave man 
 the laws. And what laws did you break to do it ? And 
 did you know some man would hear your own voice, say- 
 ing : Pity me, beneath that story, in days more distant 
 than you dreamed of, and would answer back and say : 
 I too have stolen fire for man, and I know the chain, the 
 gnawing ? Did you feel sure of this ? Was it for his 
 fellowship's sake you said it ? Were you weak, too, and 
 full of trembling, and could you not refrain from groans 
 and self-reproach ; not knowing rightly which was joy 
 and which was sorrow in your heart ? Not knowing, and 
 coming even not to care, which was evil and which was 
 good? 
 
 It is because a false right has to be broken that there 
 must be the utter extremity of passion that puts away all 
 rule, all calmness. It is not an action, an effort, but a
 
 1 64 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 spasm, a convulsion, of the soul. Nothing less will do ; 
 at less price the boon cannot be purchased. It is no use 
 to look back and regret ; waste and needless it may seem, 
 but less would not have done ; only passion that would 
 not hear, nor see, nor care. All other things might be 
 done with calmness, with tempered energy, with consi- 
 derate will, with saving of things too precious to be lightly 
 shattered but not that. 
 
 Plain is the story of the Sleeping Beauty ; till the 
 time is come she sleeps (Man sleeps ; the beloved of God ; 
 the bride prepared for her husband) ; and the bones of 
 lovers who have perished whiten the ground around ; and 
 when she is to wake it only happens that another comes, 
 and does not care about the bones ; will be another one 
 to die. If he were frightened at the bones he would not 
 be the man ; that is all. The question is nob whether 
 other men have perished ; only whether she is prepared 
 to wake. 
 
 So Christ said : " The time cometh, and now is, when 
 they that are in the grave shall hear." He did not care 
 for the bones ; the time had come for man to hear. 
 
 The false law from which genius delivers is always one: 
 You must not do this useful thing, because it is pleasurable. 
 Does it not want delivering from ? Or rather does it ? 
 Is it not deliverance enough to say it ? Can any one 
 say it twice ? And that is its freedom and its power to 
 announce to the world its freedom (for it only announces 
 a fact that is), that it desires alike pleasure or pain if it 
 is for its work. That is the secret ; that pleasure is free 
 which would be done equally if it were pain. (That is 
 saying it is not for self.) 
 
 So genius ever preaches deliverance for the captives, 
 breaking of their chain to them that are bound. It says :
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 165 
 
 This pleasure you have been selfishly pursuing or self- 
 righteously refusing, this is the true use of things; act 
 for use. 
 
 Is not this beautiful and true to Nature, nay, ex- 
 quisitely like her (who is a woman to her inmost soul), 
 that the secret of the liberty of genius for pleasure is 
 that it is willing to bear pain ? 
 
 Thus is not genius at once ascetic and indulgent ? It 
 foregoes everything not for use ; it takes everything that 
 is for use, and cannot care whether it is " sin " or not ; it 
 must be willing and ready though unwilling even to 
 sin ; or it cannot do its work. That is its pain. It must 
 be ready to break the laws it loves (just as to grieve the 
 people that it loves). Its goodness is not in its own hands, 
 but in Nature's ; its safety lies simply in the certainty (and 
 only if it be certain) that Nature will not let its desire go 
 beyond the use. It can feel that it is safe, only in so far 
 as it can say : Nature will take me to all that is for my 
 work, and stop me when that ends. 
 
 Is not this the incommunicable thing in genius this 
 putting its goodness out of its own hands, and yet holding 
 to it ; this readiness to be bad and yet not being so ; this 
 not only doing what the bad do in outward form, but 
 being as the bad are in the letting go of goodness ; in 
 pursuing something else and letting it take its chance ? 
 Yet what is it but having a passion absolutely ruling for 
 something that is not for self? Why should not that be 
 for all ? Nay, is not the power of passion that is in the 
 hands of woman pledge of it ? Has not love that very 
 character ? But is it not wonderful that the character of 
 genius should be in this losing hold on goodness ? Is 
 not this that unlikeness to others which fascinates those 
 who are capable of feeling it ?
 
 1 66 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 Is this especially its power to move and take captive 
 women ? For are they not made to be moved above all 
 by this power of doing rightly what is, in another view, 
 wrong ? Is not this emphatically what love and marriage 
 is to them ? Is not this above all the thing that has 
 power over their souls this freedom, true freedom and 
 right, in what also is wrong ? Genius is to them as love, 
 another version, as it were, of the same thing. It is like 
 love, only raised to a higher and fuller revelation. It is 
 love itself going into a new region, enlarging life, showing 
 new possibilities ; making the future new ; darkness and 
 limitation radiant with the glory of the one brightest, 
 surest thing. 
 
 And in this do I not see a glimpse into the soul of 
 woman, how it comes to be the intense, tremulous, 
 passion-laden thing it is ? To her love is almost what 
 genius is to a man. It is a right that is in the giving 
 up of right ; it is the highest and utmost exercise of 
 emotion ; it is that grasping of opposites together which 
 makes a thing to be most intensely be in its own 
 absence. So one feels how to obtain this capacity in 
 woman. Nature must have sacrificed in her the qualities 
 she possessed in man ; they must have been given up for 
 this ; and worthily indeed are they given and well repaid. 
 They are all there, still, and more. It is no wonder 
 woman is so keen-eyed, yet so ready for the true breaking 
 of the law whensoever it comes, so delicately poised to 
 the light touch of Nature, so readily responsive (even all 
 the violence to her nature that our life involves cannot 
 utterly banish that) ; she has that deepest of all experi- 
 ences of the right that is in giving up the right ; the 
 highest law fulfilled in breaking law. That gives her her 
 truth to Nature, her deeper, profounder soul. That is all 
 that genius has.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 167 
 
 Genius not only can say : My passion does not want 
 restraining ; it is bound to go on and say also : And I 
 will not restrain it. How can it abstain from pleasures 
 when they are for good ? That is its very gospel : 
 Pleasure is free ; passion need not be restrained. It 
 would be false to the world, if it restrained it. 
 
 Is one reason why genius has seemed so hard to be 
 married aright to be found in that utter inversion that 
 takes place in its life ? Is it that in its youth it is ascetic 
 truly and sincerely ascetic and so prefers a mate 
 whose goodness is of that kind ; then it turns wholly 
 round and insists on an indulgence unheard of before (for 
 ages at least) ; and how is the mate (who is by no means 
 bound to make any such change) to understand, or be 
 prepared ? 
 
 See how women are attracted by genius, are fascinated 
 and absolutely ruled by it. It is the breaking of law, 
 the power to break it, that commands their souls. Even 
 against themselves and what they have counted dearest, 
 how that new liberty compels their whole nature to itself. 
 And surely this reveals them. Is not woman in her own 
 nature the law-breaker ? In spite of all her proneness to 
 rigid conventionality and strict adherence to the forms 
 of morals when she is " good," is not the law-breaking 
 deepest in her ? In truth, is not that conventionality and 
 strictness of hers a result and sign of this nature, the 
 especial strictness coming exactly because the tendency is 
 so decided to the contrary ? (Does it not indeed palpably 
 go with her intellectual constitution as the " guesser," 
 that is, the defier of appearances ? Even in the intel- 
 lectual she is the law-breaker.) And are not the indica- 
 tions of it in her life visible enough ? What wantonness
 
 1 68 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 of wrong comes up continually among women ; and when 
 a man is ready to break a law is there not always a 
 woman ready to help him ? 
 
 Is there not, then, a wonderful wisdom in that repre- 
 sentation of the woman as the first breaker of the law ? 
 And is it true in this that it is strictly the desire to be wise 
 that prompts her ? Is she not exactly this the breaker 
 of the law not for self? So is she not closely akin to 
 genius, which is the breaker of law, not for self but 
 emphatically " to be wise " to know ? 
 
 Is not that history of woman's part in the Fall the very 
 history of genius ? And then the consequences, have not 
 they a truth also ? From that eating of the forbidden 
 fruit by genius for the sake of knowledge that man 
 may be as God there comes continually, not at first the 
 higher life, but evil upon the human race. Man falls 
 through it. 
 
 What a thought is here ! Do I not see it all through 
 history ? Is it a destiny upon genius ever from that 
 first breaking of law for knowledge sake in Eden onwards ? 
 And is it yet to be yet, even to the end ? But even if 
 it is, it still must come. In no other way can man's life 
 come to him. 
 
 How should genius be afraid of evil, or evil beings ? 
 How afraid of hell or devils being one of them the 
 breaker of the law ? As the girl with rattlesnake blood 
 in her was not afraid of rattlesnakes, nor could be hurt 
 by them, their blood being in her, so is not the blood of 
 the " bad " in genius, and it cannot be hurt by them ? 
 That story is good for genius ; genius is as a birth from 
 man " bitten " by Nature. 
 
 Would that make a better tale ? Genius made as 
 coming from human parents, with an intrusion of the
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 169 
 
 natural powers, and this in the end reclaiming the youth ; 
 working in his blood all along, and disordering all his 
 relations ; and at length bringing into human life 
 Nature herself the force we call inanimate ? That is 
 what genius has always done ; bringing into human life 
 ever more and more fragments of Nature ; bridging the 
 gulf over, till at last the reunion is complete. Genius is 
 the reuniter of man and Nature, and so itself partaker 
 of both natures. 
 
 So all in man that feels itself raised up above Nature 
 refuses it and calls it evil ; says : " You lower me ; it is 
 degradation." It clings to its false rights against it. 
 (And can it be that the thought of Christ's two natures 
 and its reasons is not one with this ?) 
 
 Then is this incapability of genius being hurt by 
 the " bad " the source of the tales of men whom no pas- 
 sion could hurt ? And is there a reference to it in 
 Christ's promise to His disciples that " no deadly thing 
 should harm them ? " Was He not speaking of the 
 spiritual in them, the new vision of good and evil ? He 
 had given them a new relation to all " crime ;" had shown 
 them how to break law, and do all the " bad " did. 
 
 Is it not striking that if a painter try ever so much, 
 and have the utmost skill, by no means can his painting 
 ever be exact ? 
 
 This, by-the-bye, must be one of the things that eman- 
 cipate genius and enable it even not to think whether it 
 is doing its duty or not, when it yields to Nature's call. 
 Genius does not reason, but must it not feel : " This 
 exactness might perhaps be of value, and necessary to be 
 preserved at every loss, if it were ; if there could be true 
 real exactness, one might seek absolutely to hold it ; but 
 why hold, against Nature's urgent demand, a thing which
 
 170 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 cannot even be ? What is the real good of a thing like 
 this that always has been imperfect, evidently always will 
 be ? Why should this be held ? What goodness is 
 given up in giving up this ? " And how evidently now 
 this is the case in life. What sort of " goodness " is it 
 that would be given up in giving up ours ? What like- 
 lihood of perfectness, or any decent pretence of it, in 
 that ? What good in holding a thing that is not ; 
 holding it for something that is not in it, nay, never 
 will be, nor can ? In truth, we may see plainly that 
 this is one of the things that determine when the genius- 
 work is done ; that it comes at the time when, among 
 other conditions, it has become quite clear, felt, even 
 accepted however reluctantly and with refusal to accept 
 it that the goodness aimed at (in this case the restraint- 
 goodness) is, and must be, utterly imperfect, fails and 
 must fail ; and the feeling could not be suppressed that 
 it has been valued at a false worth, and being what it is, 
 can hardly be worth the keeping. This is always a 
 mark of the time when the genius-work is done ; it is 
 one of the things that enable it to let its goodness go. 
 Secretly, in its heart, it knows it is not goodness, and if 
 it were remonstrated with, and asked, " Will you do that 
 badness ?" would it not reply with a bitter smile : 
 " Heaven knows I am bad enough already; that cannot 
 make much difference ; at any rate this can be done 
 my badness may be turned to some use." Can one look 
 at Turner's intermediate pictures without seeing that he 
 must have been sick with the palpable failure of his 
 exactness, with its total falling short of being what, to be 
 what he wanted, it should have been ? The better it got 
 the more he must have become discontented, and have felt 
 that it did not matter much whether he painted so or not ; 
 yet all the while trying and aiming, as his work proves.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 171 
 
 Is it not a pathetic sight ? Lady Godiva, doubtless 
 you too had felt that the modesty around you, and even 
 your own most modest though of women was not muck 
 worth preserving, nor would ever be. As indeed have 
 not the ages proved, for see what that modesty has con- 
 sented to ? That was a true foreseeing in your eyes 
 which saw that what you gave up was not much to lose, 
 nor ever could be. 
 
 I see that by no means could any painter's painting be 
 exact ; his trying would be but prolonged failure ; his 
 best work need, not praise, but pardon. But when he 
 puts it all aside, and his exactness is implicit, when he 
 no more has to do it, but, doing it in his heart, does with 
 his hand something else, then it is, as it were, perfect ; 
 all his failure is blotted out. It is just as if his hand 
 was skilful enough, his zeal and toil absolute enough, to 
 do an altogether perfect thing ; nay, as if that perfect 
 thing were done. If it had been done, if that power had 
 been in his heart and hand, it would have been just the 
 same ; they would still have been put aside, still done 
 only in heart. They are all as if they were there ; all is 
 as good, as perfect, as if they were. He is just as if he 
 had gained that power of drawing that he would have 
 given his life for, and knew he never could gain. He is 
 what he never could have made himself, perfect in 
 righteousness. He prays to God : " O God, make my 
 drawing perfect." And God says : " Yes, I will ; leave 
 off that and do this." Plainly is not " righteousness 
 imputed to him ? " It is all well that the painter cannot 
 do that right which is not the true one ; Nature wants the 
 weakness of his hand as well as its strength. Nay, does 
 she not want that very tendency or " natural passion " 
 whereby part of the weakness and imperfection comes, in 
 order to guide her friend and instrument to truth to her ?
 
 172 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 In all this imperfection of our goodness there is necessity 
 and right ; but in the true right it is as if it were 
 perfect ; there is no falling short, no failing purpose. 
 What does it mean ? Desire the good, have passion for 
 man ; that is, surely, to be one with Christ. This is the 
 faith He commands one sympathy, one passion, with 
 Him. Have this " faith," and is not righteousness, perfect 
 righteousness, " imputed ? " 
 
 How is this a mystery ? Could story be written 
 larger or in characters more legible than this imputed 
 righteousness, without works, through faith, is written 
 wheresoever art has placed her brush? These are the 
 plain and simple matters of fact of our life. And indeed 
 if they had not been, should we have cared about them, 
 even as we do now ? Would they not have been for- 
 gotten, as silly fables, long ago, if they had truly been 
 the things we thought them ? Imagination was never 
 more utterly thrown away than that expended in making 
 up another region, and another bearing, for these things. 
 But we regain our possession of them as we learn to see. 
 It is a mistaken thought that because man rushes into 
 vague speculations about things far away, he has had 
 such a tendency towards theology, and clings so strongly 
 to it still. It is because these things are here and now, 
 and never referred to any other things at all, save the 
 fact of these, that man so clings to them. He makes 
 mistakes about them, but the instinct tells 'that they are 
 the important things. It has only to go to the fact 
 instead of the mere appearance. 
 
 I think I see more clearly even clearly enough, I 
 hope, to make it seen by others what the difficulty is 
 to genius being understood. Surely it is just this : that 
 every true attaining must come in the form of a losing ;
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 173 
 
 that no "better can be except in the giving up of the felt 
 good (no fact except in the passing away of a pheno- 
 menon) ; or, in other words, that the true form of being 
 is " being in absence." This must make the difficulty ; 
 because genius sees and feels the coming of the new and 
 better, but those to whom it speaks feel that same thing 
 as the wresting away of good ; as the contradiction of all 
 that is true and beautiful and sacred. This is its pain. 
 But could not the eye, by a little remembering, be placed 
 on this line ? So that it would be always felt or at least 
 understood, that this overthrowing of what is true, or 
 good, or delightful, or refined, is to it the coming of a 
 better and completer. So that, though with a certain 
 effort of remembering, it might always be thus recog- 
 nised and received ; always felt that this putting aside 
 was the affirmation of a better ; of a good not indeed of 
 that effortful kind, but of one without the self. A better 
 must always come in that form. 
 
 So what Nature wants is a breaker of the law. It is 
 written all beforehand. One sees how no kind of good- 
 ness, of power, of wish for right, of sensibility to a 
 power of beauty, can do her work save as carrying out 
 the process of unreason to its end, as helping to make the 
 intolerableness of the yoke complete. All these things 
 added on to that false structure, built on that false basis, 
 cannot avail ; be they as exquisite, as perfect, as mighty, 
 as magnificent as they may they are all away from the 
 point. Nay, the best things lead to the worst results ; 
 as does the truest logic on false premiss. What Nature 
 must have is a deliverer from the law. That is the uni- 
 versal demand. So how our hearts beat in sympathy 
 with that burst of triumph : " Christ has delivered us
 
 1/4 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 from the yoke of the law." It is the voice of universal 
 man in all ages, in every sphere. 
 
 Thus, because seeing, genius is the rightful breaker 
 of the law. It destroys but fulfils. And (this is the 
 wonder) what it alone at first can rightly do it is sure 
 that all can rightly do also and they can when it has 
 shown them the way. 
 
 But, indeed, what a hard task it is that is laid upon 
 genius to introduce again the doing as we like as the 
 law ; and this with its sensibility to right, with necessity 
 of right so laid upon it. Does it not seem hard and 
 cruel ? And not only has he to do that, made so hard 
 by the opposite necessity in him, but also he has to do 
 it in spite of the righteous condemnation of the world 
 (and his own surely still more intense repugnance) against 
 that very thing as it has been wrongly done. How little 
 Nature seems to care (but indeed she cares) for the crush- 
 ing and bruising of that soft body of his against those 
 hard rocks. She forces him against them, surely as she 
 forces a fungus against a paving-stone, knowing that that 
 little life can raise it, and resolving that it shall. But is 
 it not a terrible force alone that can make him do it ? 
 Only all Nature surging through him as it surges through 
 the fungus. 
 
 Might not this necessity alone suffice to account for all 
 his weak and wayward impulses ? 
 
 " Tempted in all points even as we are." It is an 
 attraction, a charm in Him. He knew how the thief, the 
 murderer, the seducer feels ; was tempted even as they. 
 So what an easy goodness He brings to them ! It is not 
 necessary for them to be different ; their passions need 
 not be put away. He does not want them not to be such
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 175 
 
 people. He knows they cannot balance themselves on 
 such a tottering pinnacle of virtue. He knows the thirst, 
 and that it must be quenched. All these passions may 
 be ; every one dwells in the perfect life ; they need not 
 be put away, nor those in whom they are feel any shame 
 for them. All these worst and lowest are welcome, 
 honoured ; there is place for them. There is only one 
 call, one duty the same for all : to have a passion for 
 the good of men. They may keep all that makes them 
 tempted and need not blush ; only this is bidden them ; 
 only this desire. 
 
 It is hard, very hard often, to love persons, persons 
 who are unlovely, repulsive, or merely instinctively re- 
 pellant to us ; that is true. But it is not hard to love 
 God, that is, to love humanity. All history proves this 
 easy, man's most natural passion ; whatever stands to him 
 for man, that he loves ; the clan, the tribe, the nation, the 
 country. Man God it never was hard for man to love, 
 and with all the heart and soul and strength, too, it is 
 easy thus to love God ; all absorption in any work and 
 labour that does not turn on self is this : it is not hard. 
 Will not the world be different when this is seen as it is ? 
 Now this and its fruit are held sin and checked. 
 
 Genius seems to have such special instincts ; but it is 
 not so at all. It has simply the power of obeying its 
 impulses. Supposing all men but one were gluttonous ; 
 either greedily indulging, or equally greedily restraining 
 and regulating ; and that one had his thought off his 
 pleasure and ate naturally. He would seem to have a 
 wonderful and unmatched " instinct" for eating ; knowing 
 by a kind of special divine endowment exactly what was 
 best. Yet he would simply have the common universal
 
 176 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 power of man, that which all animals have indeed. (And 
 this bears on the whole moral life also. Man in his true 
 life will possess what all the animals have. And think 
 of genius being so akin to the animals ; and of the same 
 appearance in women. Do we not see, as it were, the 
 animals " raised again in glory ? ") When a man is not 
 a glutton as soon as he has escaped from having his 
 thought on his pleasure the " Holy Spirit " comes to 
 him, and " guides him into all truth." Nature acts in 
 him. 
 
 It is simply letting the pressure, as it were, have its 
 full effect freely in all directions, like the pressure of 
 water, not having a stoppage at one point. Why should 
 there be one there ? Why should the force of Nature not 
 have its due, equal effect within as well as without ? 
 How plain it is ! If there be this stoppage, the very 
 adding of the new matter may be must be itself an 
 evil, for it means distortion. 
 
 Why should it be difficult when it is understood ? It 
 is difficult at first, because it is against the conscience. 
 For the sense of right is one of the things that make 
 that refusal to let the force of Nature operate within as 
 well as without. (So in looking at Nature we see no 
 conscience. And that is true ; there is no seZ/'-conscience. 
 There is life, the free working of Nature all through, with 
 no part that refuses her operation.) But see how the 
 refusal to let what is within move and transform itself 
 mars and distorts everything ; how it makes people refuse 
 to see, puts such arbitrary limits on what they can permit 
 themselves to perceive, as well as such arbitrary ways of 
 arranging what they cannot help seeing. That is the, 
 intellectual distress and unreason. 
 
 And what it means is simply that men will not let
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 177 
 
 themselves grow. " No," they say to Nature, " hang on 
 about me what you must and will, and I will sustain it 
 as best I may, and will believe, in spite of all, that there 
 is a truth and goodness at the bottom deeper than I can 
 see. But put no more within ; do not make me grow ; 
 keep life out of my bosom, life which changes ever, and 
 will let nothing rest. Art thou come to torment me 
 before my time ? " 
 
 Is not that eating of the fruit in Eden the forbidden 
 fruit taken for knowledge sake (why, it is the very history 
 of genius) the type of all genius-work and of the con- 
 sequences that come from it ? Does it not ever usher in 
 a fall ? Can human history indeed be interpreted another 
 step by this ? Is man now what he is through such an 
 act as that of genius ? Is that what ever brings the loss 
 of the " anticipation " life of innocence, the " death ? " 
 
 See in history what fruit has come of genius-work. 
 We will not speak of the sword Christ brought, and knew 
 He would bring, into the world. But see it all through. 
 See how the drama died with Shakespeare ; how the 
 " differential " followed Newton ; how art perished, as it 
 were, when it attained its true power; how (as some 
 think) Turner has destroyed English landscape art. Is 
 it true ? Does the next step to the work of genius ever 
 lie through loss and ruin ? And is the meaning of it 
 best seen perhaps in mathematics, but well, surely, in art 
 also that what genius does, with the conditions fulfilled, 
 the world follows, trying to do, without fulfilling them ? 
 
 (But will this be for ever ? When the law is known 
 will it not be different? May not the genius- work be 
 truly entered into by all ?) 
 
 Is not this plain in the calculus ? And in painting I 
 have seen it ; seen how when genius is untrue to things 
 
 M
 
 178 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 because using them merely, and so is truest to them, 
 others through it still serve them, but yet are untruth- 
 ful ; losing the one and not attaining the other ; neither 
 truly serving nor truly using. Now must this ever be ? 
 Or cannot also this result of genius-work in man be had 
 in its effect, and be so no more ? If it is known that the 
 very thing consists in fulfilling the conditions, will not 
 that bring with it the true receiving of the work of 
 genius, instead of the mere imitating the outside ? 
 
 So is here the special significance and condition of the 
 solving of the problem of life. Does that demand espe- 
 cially the recognition of this element the fulfilling con- 
 ditions as the basis of the non-restraint of passion ? The 
 ceasing of the restraint is only possible on that condition. 
 And so does it not cast a light upon all the other problems ? 
 
 The tree of knowledge of good and evil and its eating, 
 might it not be the lament of a savage tribe over its lost 
 innocence ? It would answer exactly to what comes, 
 through the missionaries, to such tribes now ; in every 
 particular it is the same. The missionary is the serpent : 
 it answers exactly. He teaches them to know good and 
 evil ; and by the promise to make them " wise," has 
 things good for food and wisdom to give them ; and that 
 fatal gift lies hidden in it. The knowledge of good and 
 evil comes through him. And the women ever receive 
 him first; they are the persons attracted to the mis- 
 sionary ever ; and the first sign of the new fatal know- 
 ledge is that they become ashamed of nakedness and make 
 themselves clothes, in a fresh sense and with new feelings. 
 It is clear, the missionaries try to do, and do, for 
 such races the very thing the serpent is described as 
 doing : they give them the feeling of some things as evil 
 and others as good ; they teach them a right apart from
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 179 
 
 service, that is, they do introduce acting for themselves. 
 They introduce that which has been a curse among us. 
 May not the future Tahitans, for instance, have precisely 
 such a tradition, and some poet weave it into such a story, 
 and imply a prediction, absolutely true, of the restored Para- 
 dise when service shall be the absolute law, and knowledge of 
 good and evil be no more, nor nakedness make ashamed ? 
 
 But then there is a light, too, upon the serpent. We 
 can well understand the South Sea poet looking back and 
 calling the missionary a serpent ; he would seem so to him ; 
 but we see missionaries are the bearers of a higher know- 
 ledge and a better life ; and the purest zeal took them forth. 
 May it have been so with that serpent too ? 
 
 Now this story is evidently the expression of the 
 absolute spiritual truth ; it tells the tale of the coming of 
 every truer perception, of every truer life. And yet was 
 it not, so far as man's consciousness extended, the lament 
 of some poet looking back to simpler days, and throwing 
 them into that pathetic story ? 
 
 The correction of the premiss means an easier, as well 
 as a better, way ; in the moral life it is the presence of a 
 passion instead of its absence. So, evidently, this was 
 Luther's thought, an easier goodness a passion. (And 
 it is always called " immoral.") But in the case of the 
 Reformation was it not imperfect ? And so we see it 
 never fully triumphing, and now put aside again. What, 
 then, was its imperfection ? 
 
 Our thoughts of a better are of a harder also, of 
 greater effort, more strength, and subduing of opposing 
 things ; we have not had clearly before us the perception 
 that there is a better that is easier too ; and yet as we 
 see in the evangelical theology (and in other instances 
 also) it has ever been flashing before man's eyes, and he
 
 i8o THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 has been thrilled and overpowered by it, and has consented 
 to almost any theories for the sake of holding it. Shall 
 he not have it perfect ? Does everything he is to gain 
 thus come first on him in flashes that he cannot hold ? 
 Seen, but lost again, yet leaving an ineffaceable longing 
 in his heart ; nay, a conviction that no doubt can obliterate 
 nor thought of duty really overthrow. 
 
 The special relation of Christ to the Sabbath is very 
 striking ; and yet how evident it is ! The Sabbath was 
 the point above all in which service was set aside for 
 " right," that, taken in the letter, expressly and delibe- 
 rately, as it were, put aside even the question of good to 
 others ; that might not even be asked. Now with us 
 the relation to woman stands in the very same special 
 relation. It is as if each had been made for that very 
 purpose. In this sense, more full and complete, how each 
 was made for man, made for the glory of God His true 
 will, His nature and law to be revealed. The blind 
 man was blind for that ; the trampled-on and destroyed 
 humanity, destroyed now for that. 
 
 The Sabbath was expressly adapted to take in self- 
 virtuous people ; and even so our feeling respecting fleshly 
 " purity ; " it sets a person, who is thinking about his 
 being right, against service. And whatsoever sets itself 
 against service ties a noose around its neck, and Nature 
 instantly proceeds to tighten it. 
 
 " The sensuous is that which reveals the evil then the 
 body is the light." Now can we gain a truer glimpse of 
 Christ's real attitude ? Look how He put the needs of the 
 body as the expression of God's law, how His eye was upon 
 Nature, and also how theology could not endure Him. 
 
 Was His real attitude this of having His eye and
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 181 
 
 thought always on Nature (that is, on that which we per- 
 ceive as physical ? ) That is, was He the man of science 
 of His day and race ? Was He the person who accepted 
 the physical, saw in it the light, the guide, the maker- 
 manifest ? Was it in defence of that, and of regarding it 
 and accepting God's guidance in it, that He said : " What- 
 ever makes manifest " as this bodily is the thing that 
 does " is light." " " You mistake when you think there 
 is evil in that because it makes manifest so much evil ; 
 that is its very power and glory ; that is its being light." 
 
 So was He a man who had His eye upon the physical, 
 and read God's will in that ? And do we see it in the 
 history of Christianity, it alone possessing science ? True, 
 Mahometans gained it first, but it perished with them, 
 and is lost. Now Christianity has it, and will it not 
 retain it permanently ? 
 
 Was Christ looking on the physical as light ? Observe, 
 we find in it light for the intellect ; but it is light for the 
 soul also. And must there not come the full recognition 
 that the sensuous is light for the soul making it 
 manifest by whether it needs to put it away or not even 
 as the sensible " made manifest " the want in the old 
 Greek thought : there we see it acting as light. Is not 
 this simply a parallel to science, the other half of it, as it 
 were ? Light in its two functions makes manifest, and 
 then shows the path. 
 
 Surely the " light " must be the things which, if we 
 come to them, bring to consciousness the inward state ; 
 which make manifest whether we are evil or not. (Are 
 not such things now the sight of woman's beauty, and 
 giving needed affection ? ) Have there not always been 
 some things in this relation, visibly and especially so ? 
 
 * The reader may notice that Paul's words are here attributed to Christ. 
 The misquotation scarcely affects the argument ED.
 
 1 82 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 Truly every thing is a light ; for everything that can be 
 done is evil, if done (for self) with the evil within ; but 
 some are, as it were, specially singled out by the evil 
 within having made them forbidden ; so that they are 
 special revealers. So there were special things of this 
 kind in Christ's time, and of these He spoke. How dared 
 they refuse to come to facts ? what could make them but 
 their showing evil within ? what gives us light but 
 facts ? Is not this what we have found in science ? So 
 is that coming to the light anything else than the very 
 same thing in life that science is in thought ? 
 
 " Christ shall give thee light," the man who came to 
 facts, who erected them into powers to guide, and so to 
 judge, who bade us refuse to put them aside. So is there 
 not a new light and a new hope ? Coming to facts is the 
 power in morals. Surely it always has been all through 
 history. May it be traced how morals has been made so 
 (and thus at once a harmony between it and science, the 
 oneness not in the things or results but in the act} ? The 
 struggle has been ever that men have been excluding or 
 turning from facts, and so making a goodness or right 
 on a different basis. That is, without basis, a goodness 
 which set itself therefore against fact, being necessarily 
 against pleasure, having no other form to take ; that being 
 the expression of its emptiness, but this being also the 
 introduction of the power. If we have not seen the real 
 force, can we have the natural hope ? Is not life kept 
 evil only by these things being kept away ? Men say of 
 the light : " Let it be away and there is no evil." No ; 
 none to their feeling. 
 
 This is the meaning of theology : it is a reflection of 
 our life for man to judge himself in, and see that he 
 hates it. That is the doctrine of being happier in heaven
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 183 
 
 because of hell ; it is the reflection as in a glass of what 
 we do, and we see that it is hideous. Man is his own 
 Nathan ; and he conies and tells himself his parable, and 
 says : " In heaven it will be so and so." He says what 
 he has done and is doing. 
 
 So shall we not find a key here to theology ? Does 
 not every age tell its own story to itself, as it were ? As 
 these thoughts reflect our life, so do the theologic thoughts 
 of every age reflect theirs. And can each social life and 
 theology be read by each ? It is evident man's thought 
 of God must be a reflection of his own life, as he accepts 
 it and thinks it right. 
 
 God speaks in " dreams and visions of the night." 
 The ideas of theology are dreams, fictions merely sup- 
 posed by man " in the night," but they express the 
 truths of our real experience. They are a fictitious 
 stage, a dream-world, in which the things, feelings, 
 relations which are really in this world are held up as 
 in a vision before us. What has no meaning as ex- 
 pressed in these ideas, because no foundation, is the very 
 key to our life when expressed in terms of reality ; read 
 in this very actual world. (It is like another art to 
 teach us ; so that our life may have light cast on it in 
 every way ; every " imagination," false and cruel ones 
 even, are brought into this service.) In dreams and 
 visions, prompted by darkness and possible only in the 
 very sleep of the soul, still God speaks to us ; puts before 
 us the very image of our life, and extorts from our own lips 
 a prophecy. Here are the heaven and hell : it is a fact, 
 not a fancy, a present fact, not a fancied future, we are 
 speaking of. The dream does its work. 
 
 Why that dream of heaven and hell ? Open your eyes ; 
 the dream has lasted long enough ; its purpose is revealed.
 
 1 84 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 The assumption that man is the highest thing iri 
 Nature comes so insidiously and unsuspected into our 
 minds. The course of science has rendered it inevitable. 
 It is not that the emotions and powers of man's soul, his 
 aspirations, responses, deeds, experiences, are not exqui- 
 sitely lovely ; but it is the false position they are put in, 
 the false exaltation given them, the exclusiveness nay, 
 the compulsion to take the negative parts of them as if 
 they were parts of the good. Their false position spoils 
 them ; exalting itself it comes to be abased. The beauty 
 and the glory are spoilt by being put on that pedestal of 
 a dead Nature. 
 
 What, is it when Wesley exclaims : "Let us find our 
 full salvation perfectly complete in Thee," what but : 
 " Nature, complete our life in being one with you ; 
 not any more of our self-doing, but you in us." 
 
 So any one who will try the thought of Nature being 
 above man, and man to be filled by her, will find that it 
 gives him the evangelical expressions and thoughts again, 
 all full and complete as the expression of the facts of 
 human life, as the terms science wants to express herself 
 in. And surely that would be a real gladness and feeling 
 of gain to every man, whether he had retained or abandoned 
 his hold of them before. How could it be nothing to re- 
 unite thus our own past with man's past ; to restore our 
 disunited lives ; to have such lustre cast on that which 
 had seemed mere mistake ; to reopen an abandoned mine 
 and find it full of a truer wealth than ever had been sought 
 there ! 
 
 How significantly divided thought is now, how definitely 
 grouped around some insoluble centre ! There are four 
 thoughts especially : theism, anti-theism, the disclaiming
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 185 
 
 of any opinion, and the Christian thought more or less 
 complicated solutions. Does it not mean just one central 
 error, the exaltation of man over Nature as the living ? 
 It needs just that touch. 
 
 Is it not as a solution, on the verge of crystallising, is 
 full of such tensions ? 
 
 And looking at our theology the old theology in 
 which the demands of man's nature expressed themselves 
 what a spendid thing, how magnificent, it appears ! 
 What a rich nature the being must have who expressed 
 it so ! Think of it. Its God to be its God must be a 
 being who comes down from heaven. (It is that very 
 story of Yudhisthira. The Christian theology is this story 
 seriously affirmed ; as if when it was thus once expressed 
 the human soul had leapt to it and said : Yes ; that is 
 the truth about God.) He comes down from heaven and 
 takes our nature, our sin, our helplessness, and dies for 
 us. This is the God man's nature demands. And surely 
 the loss of all things were less loss than the loss of this. 
 And this thought of God is the key to the universe. Save 
 by it nothing can be seen. 
 
 Was it not a loss indeed to change this God for that 
 mere Father who is so well content ? 
 
 Man can do with one fiction-geometry, but he wants 
 several fiction-theologies. 
 
 Is not the position of Christianity now like that of 
 Judaism in the time of Christ ? Was that pressed upon 
 by the Roman power the power of fact, of rigid and 
 unbending order, a clear look at this world even as 
 Christianity is now under the force of science ? And did 
 this pressure and hostility produce an effect upon Judaism 
 parallel to that produced upon Christianity now by science ?
 
 1 86 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 And in each does it prepare for a newness ? (And see 
 what suggestion there is in the very word " pressure." 
 It means development. And even through killing, through 
 the very force of destructive influence.) 
 
 Can we not understand how the claims to divinity or 
 divine authority have come ; that they were never direct 
 and spontaneous claims, things said in and for themselves, 
 but always service-acts ? It always came in this way : 
 " If it is true that in order to have a right to do or say 
 these things I must have divine authority, then I have 
 it. I must accept that condition ; for these things must 
 be said and done." Is it not always a response to the 
 question : " By what authority doest thou these things ? " 
 Thus always it was a practical service-claim, not a theory ; 
 never a metaphysical proposition, but an assurance : " God 
 does speak in me, does give me authority to say these 
 things." Monotheism used to mean : " God is one ; there 
 are no divine men." And Christ's reply was : " Yes, 
 there are, men in whom you see and hear God." 
 
 Is there not seen now a clear vision of the close of this 
 period of strife ? Look thus, and is not the destined unity 
 already in view ? For there must come reconstruction, 
 positive affirmation in place of that which is to be put 
 aside ; and when that comes in such a way as to be a 
 reconstruction in which all the parties that seek to destroy 
 can join, will it not be the very thing which those who 
 seek to maintain have been really seeking to hold no 
 contradiction, but a mutual confirmation taking in the 
 same elements ? For so long as the destruction is merely 
 negative it is impotent; no real force can come of that, 
 no real overthrow ; when the reconstruction comes, it 
 must be one in which all who destroy must agree. At
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 187 
 
 present the only distinct reconstruction is the Positivist, 
 but in that so few agree. What is wanted is agreement ; 
 not, perhaps, a single opinion, but complementary opinions, 
 the practical presentment of that which man's nature 
 demands. 
 
 We want, then, a union of the destructive parties in a 
 reconstruction ; that will be their union with absorption 
 of, if they like the preserving parties. Till then they 
 are essentially impotent, or beyond a very narrow sphere 
 only impotent for evil spreading an unearnest scepticism 
 for a time, to be followed in due course by a wave of 
 superstitious earnestness. And it is to this they should 
 direct their efforts, to attain a reconstruction in which 
 they can unite ; their work is now among themselves. 
 Christianity is killed as much as it can be killed ; it is 
 all corpses or ghosts, killed or unkillable. 
 
 Looking at theology as forms prepared and empty, how 
 interesting it is to note that matter and force, the gene- 
 ralisations made up on the scientific side, are also empty ; 
 are an algebra expressing relations, but not anything 
 existing. So then we have two sets of empty formulas. 
 It is curious : Science also finds herself, as soon as she 
 begins to try and express universals, compelled to go, even 
 as theology was before her, into unrealities and use mere 
 symbols. And granted she sooner finds it out, yet this 
 is not much, for it is so plain her symbols won't do for the 
 facts. No one could long go on believing in a real 
 matter and force as the substance and power ; the ideas 
 of theology gave much more excuse. 
 
 But we have now in our possession (thanks to theology 
 and science respectively) two sets of empty formulas. 
 (And we see theology and science thus as parallel, or as of 
 like kinds ; as we see sight and touch both as appearance-
 
 1 88 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 perceptions ; or intellect and emotion both as objectively 
 valid.) One set starts from sensation ; the other surely 
 from emotion, and each gives its own set of symbols, ex- 
 pressing relations, but not answering to existence. Here 
 they stand over against each other ; the relations given 
 by examining sensation, the relations given by examining 
 emotion. Now, what is to be done with these two sets 
 of symbols thus ranged side by side ? Let them be made 
 one, and we have the united relations given by sensation 
 and given by emotion. Here these two stand ready : 
 nothing but relations affirmed on either side. 
 
 It is needless, wasteful, to fight again the battle of 
 Christianity ; what is wanted is for the non-Christian 
 sects to unite in some positive thing, not an opinion 
 these as various as we like but some positive emotional 
 thing which shall be in the place of Christianity ; and 
 then all will be done. For that will surely be Christianity 
 itself, that is, the children on each side will find they are 
 one. The one side will say : " That is what we mean," and 
 the other : " We are grateful to you for keeping hold of 
 these things for us." 
 
 For this is what has been : Christianity has kept hold 
 of these demands of man's nature, but under such a weight 
 of ignorance. And the anti-Christians come and remove 
 that ignorance ; they fulfil the conditions for bringing 
 the fiction-theology to facts. They give it liberty to 
 sacrifice itself. (For this is the universal liberty, the one 
 gospel : You may sacrifice yourself ; you need not hold 
 your (self) right, your (self) virtue, your perfection that 
 comes by being alone.) They " preach the Gospel " to 
 theology, deliverance to that which is bound. 
 
 And this is so interesting : the extreme form of anti- 
 Christianity, that is, atheism, is the form which is of all
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 189 
 
 closest and most akin to it. For atheism, if it is religious 
 at all, is emphatically Christian. Its two great affirma- 
 tions are, and must be, the Christian affirmations, namely : 
 (i.) Look at man for God; (2.) The world is spiritual. 
 So it is these extreme forms that are nearest ; they mani- 
 festly teach and mean the same when atheism becomes 
 a religion at all. And it is still more striking if we look 
 more minutely ; for it is with the extreme form of Chris- 
 tianity itself that atheism is so closely in contact, namely, 
 with Roman Catholicism. It is the extreme right and 
 the extreme left that touch. (Like the beginning of a 
 new octave : atheism is like the " si " that wants but a 
 step to be the old " do " again ; and indeed is but the 
 same, only more intense and twofold ; two in one. Is 
 man making now the scales of his life-gamut ? It is a 
 discordant process, but it means music.) For Roman 
 Catholicism, above all other forms of Christianity, affirms 
 that God is in man, that they are one. Not only in the 
 Incarnation, but in the Pope on earth, and the present 
 inspiration of every priest. And it also affirms that 
 Nature is spiritual. For this is the true meaning of the 
 sacraments ; that the physical is spiritual ; this is what 
 transubstantiation means : nay, it must be the accepted 
 feeling it expresses (see Newman) ; it is no contradiction 
 to say a thing is at once physical and the highest spiritual 
 the very things atheo-religion says. So these two 
 extremes are the points that above all are near. 
 
 So that not only should the object be to unite all the 
 anti-Christian sects in a positive religion to substitute for 
 Christianity, but even more definitely should it be to per- 
 fect and carry out these extremes Roman Catholicism 
 on the one hand, atheism on the other, so as to let them 
 unite. Each leaves out something, cannot each receive ? 
 
 Might one not almost say (even as Christianity is union
 
 1 9 o THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 of monotheism and polytheism) that Christianity is a union 
 of theism and atheism ? Quite truly it appears so. " He 
 that hath seen me (a man) hath seen the Father." As if 
 first there were in Christianity a picture, a kind of symbol, 
 a vision of the whole, but the conditions of its reality not 
 yet fulfilled. Then this symbol becomes divided into 
 two complementary parts theism and atheism. (And 
 observe : this is simply saying there has been the fluxion 
 process ; each element has been bidden to stand aside.) 
 Then if this is so here, and Christianity has been a kind 
 of vision or model of the whole, and then has divided 
 thus into halves, surely this is a universal process in 
 man's experience. 
 
 I said that if the anti-Christian sects could agree upon 
 a positive religion it would be one with Christianity, 
 and in a generation all would be joined. But there is 
 another possibility. There might be only more and more 
 antagonism and putting aside, so that Christianity would 
 be swept from the earth and forgotten, and men might 
 go on for centuries trying to understand human life with- 
 out considering its relations relations which must be 
 emotional, how to have power to make loss gain and 
 sacrifice a good. And then after long ages it may come 
 that some man would say : Had not the ancients a better 
 way ? And he would look and see the Christian way 
 and say : This old method, which our fathers could not 
 grasp completely enough, this is the plan, and we can use 
 it and possess it for ever. 
 
 I cannot help thinking this as among other contin- 
 gencies. See how, just when a new religion of what 
 promise was spreading over Europe, and when per- 
 chance if the old culture and advancement had remained, 
 it might have grown up more perfect and made a true 
 union, just then the old civilisation was swept away, and
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 191 
 
 new, untamed, untaught, undeveloped hordes came over 
 the whole land, and the religion perished utterly, save 
 what perhaps mostly evil, at least for it the new 
 embodied. And so the union was deferred, and long 
 ages passed ere the old Greek culture which might have 
 made Christianity different from the first was regained. 
 See that, and then think whether it be not like the same 
 thing now. True, Europe then was overrun by hordes 
 from without, and they are not here now ; but there are 
 hordes within as numerous, as untrained, as ignorant, as 
 much untouched by the civilising influences of the time. 
 And observe also, it was a decaying of the old religion, 
 and with it the old enthusiasm and reality of life, that 
 gave the external barbarian hordes the power. And 
 does not the same thing give the internal barbarian 
 hordes the power now? Is there, as the old religion 
 perishes, another overthrow destined to come on Europe, 
 a people sweeping over it to whom its old life will be 
 strange, so that Christianity shall truly pass away even 
 as paganism did, and have a long period ere it be again 
 recalled ? Would it not be just ? Ought this " new 
 religion" of atheism also to come in the self-form first, 
 or may we be wiser for the past and need less delay ? 
 (Look at mathematics. Does it not show that the false 
 course must be taken ?) 
 
 The Roman Catholics claim that their religion bids 
 and supports a certain kind of virtue (called by its oppo- 
 nents the ascetic) ; and that this is the true one. And 
 when we come to consider, is not this strange pheno- 
 menon of the uniting together goodness with serving and 
 pleasing self expressly and exclusively a fruit of what 
 is called Protestantism ? Does it not in a sense, and as 
 regards what is essentially distinctive of it, consist even
 
 1 92 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 in this ? So those are really right who refuse to regard 
 it as truly a religion at all. In what it has apart from 
 Catholicism, is it not a not-religion ? 
 
 (But how wonderful that this should have come from 
 Luther's work ! Is it not a wonderful instance how 
 genius breaks law, and there comes death? Is the 
 penalty inexorable ? From breaking law does there and 
 must there come, even though it be rightly broken, and 
 a false law death ? Is it ever written : " In the day 
 that thou eatest thou shalt die ? " Is death so precious ?) 
 
 This is very strange about Protestantism, and worth 
 thinking of. Evidently it is now a negative, not a posi- 
 tive, denial of the ascetic virtue. And in respect to this 
 ascetic Catholic goodness, do we not see in it the legiti- 
 mate superstructure upon the basis of man's self-being, 
 the truthful issue of the thought that he cannot cast out 
 the self? Very well; let that be considered so; the 
 position of the self in him is fixed, and his morals must 
 be adjusted accordingly ; then his goodness must be of 
 that type the ascetic. The Romanist is completely 
 right ; there is no escaping it. So that all Protestantism, 
 all the real moral force in it, is truly (though it is not 
 seen) proof that the self can and will be cast out, that 
 there will no longer be a demand for man's goodness to 
 be ascetic, for virtue to be opposed to use. 
 
 So is not this beautiful ? This is what Protestantism 
 on its moral side truly means ; this is its argument ; one 
 which itself repudiates, but in vain. It says that pleasure 
 is free. How can it avoid implying that the conditions 
 for that can be fulfilled ? 
 
 Then there is another thing which is beautiful also 
 which I have always felt, but in this see still more dis- 
 tinctly : this thought of the casting out of the self and 
 the freedom of pleasure is not opposed to Catholicism, but
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER, 193 
 
 is truly one with it. It does not (as Protestantism) set 
 itself against it, and put aside the ascetic virtue. It admits 
 it, embodies it to the full, is it. In truth it embodies 
 both : " With this basis of life virtue must be ascetic : " 
 " Pleasure is rightly free to man." What contradiction 
 here ? It means that that basis of life is destined to 
 pass away. 
 
 Both Catholicism and Protestantism aid to maintain 
 that thought ; each is one necessary constituent of it. 
 The one says that with the self-basis pleasure is forbidden ; 
 the other that pleasure is not forbidden. What more is 
 wanted ? The Protestant falsely affirms that, on the basis 
 he allows, so much pleasure as he allows may be. The 
 Romanist denies this ; it is not free, and the vitality of 
 his thought proves it. And then if the basis be altered, 
 the lines the Protestant draws also have no basis. The 
 very existence and power of Protestantism prove that the 
 basis can be altered. So that evidently Protestantism is, 
 in this relation, arbitrary ; its right is not any right at all : 
 neither on the self-basis, for then it is too free ; nor on 
 the not-self basis, for then it is too restricted. There are 
 two rights, and Protestantism misses both. 
 
 Any attempt to arrest the progress of disbelief by dog- 
 matic teaching that cannot be demonstrated, and by unani- 
 mous consent, must be absolutely mischievous on the one 
 hand, and on the other entirely needless for any desirable 
 purpose. 
 
 For (i.) the condition of absolute scepticism has been 
 proved to be one in itself not dangerous to any good ; to 
 be perfectly compatible with an exquisite moral life. And 
 (2.) the attempt to teach a non-demonstrable dogmatic 
 religion as a present doctrine must tend to make the 
 scepticism it could not largely avert infinitely more mis- 
 
 N
 
 1 94 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 chievous. For it may easily be felt by all that the failure 
 of the particular forms in which the religious emotions 
 embodied themselves in the remote past, in undeveloped 
 stages of the intellectual life, may have been erroneous, 
 and unable to stand, and yet the sentiment itself and its 
 essential demands be perfectly truthful ; but if the best 
 religion which the intellect can even now propose be 
 baseless, it would almost justify at least it could hardly 
 fail to produce a sort of absolute and scornful scepticism 
 of the most deadening kind. 
 
 And then it seemed to me that the right course to pur- 
 sue was plain, and promising and good enough entirely 
 to content us ; that there is really no danger threaten- 
 ing that need in the least degree alarm us. The absolute 
 sweeping away of all religious doctrine threatens no 
 danger to religion, if it be met truthfully and without 
 panic. 
 
 Let us accept it freely and fully : no specific statement 
 that has been called religious can stand against the evi- 
 dence of modern knowledge. What is the meaning of 
 this ? Exactly the meaning of that decaying of a seed 
 which makes the life ; exactly the meaning of the false 
 astronomy which introduced the perfect. This last surely 
 Eastern races would feel easily. They would see that 
 Europe with its clumsy hand could not help crushing the 
 truth in the very process of completing it. And yet the 
 hand was not clumsy, for it was Nature's ; nor does Nature 
 ever touch anything except so ; never gives her perfect 
 life to anything save on condition of its first giving it up. 
 All of the seed decays except the plumule, and into that 
 goes the life that was in all the rest, and with it infinitely 
 more. So into that plumule which is the ineradicable 
 religious heart of man goes all the life that was in those 
 cotyledons, the doctrines, the unliving bound up with the
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 195 
 
 living, that by their death more life, a true living union 
 with Nature, may come. The decay furnishes the force 
 that shall institute the new growth. Is it not the mani- 
 fest fact as well as the inevitable dynamic law ? What 
 else can become of the life, the force that was and is 
 shut up still in these decaying doctrines, bound close to 
 a reverent and loving heart, but this ? 
 
 And then this must be true of every case ; the " decay " 
 that constitutes the suppression of every anticipation must 
 be in this vital relation to the anticipation ; there must 
 be a plumule, as it were, which is all the while drinking 
 up the force of the falling structures. 
 
 So the same thing is seen in the development of the 
 moth. When its higher life is coming, what comes first 
 is a great process of decay, a casting-oif of that which 
 was part of its very substance, and which no knife could 
 have dissected out without leaving it a shapeless ruin. It 
 casts off part of its very substance and sinks into apparent 
 death. And so it is universally. Every case of antici- 
 pation and suppression (that is, everything) teaches the 
 same lesson. 
 
 Thus, surely, by fully and happily, because understand- 
 ingly, facing the fact of the decaying of religious dogma 
 before the forces of Nature the dying in the kindly 
 ground of science by fully accepting and loving it (as 
 indeed it should be loved by all who love religion) this 
 very process itself might be made to cherish and strengthen 
 the religion of the heart ; to result not in any scepticism, 
 but in the most earnest and faithful, but at the same 
 time rigidly truthful, expectation of, and seeking for, the 
 new forms in which the re-informed and life-swollen 
 sentiment of reverence and faith should manifest itself. 
 We must see that these facts respecting religion prove it 
 instead of casting doubt upon it ; that they show it to be
 
 196 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 exactly in a line with all the other things that are 
 ineradicably based. Whatever thing holds Nature by the 
 hand, or rather dwells in her heart, is fearless of death, 
 and this religion now has proved itself to be. 
 
 First comes a living skin ; then it dies. The creature 
 could never have put on a dead skin directly; but it 
 forms for itself a skin that is destined to become a dead 
 one. Then the power is exercised upon it ; it has gained 
 the condition for its own development. It gains the dying 
 that bears fruit. Thus comes the pressure which raises 
 the life. (Is it that the contracting skin causes that 
 dying of part whereby the higher life of the rest ensues ? 
 and may we apply this to the organic sequence ? The 
 higher are so often also less.) And in respect to the 
 chrysalis condition, the way it comes is this : the 
 caterpillar forms and finds one skin after another die and 
 throws them off. At last there comes a skin that dies 
 and is not thrown off; the caterpillar goes on wearing it 
 dead. 
 
 Now man has formed many religions and found them 
 die, and has thrown them off. But now he has one 
 which, though it is dead, he cannot throw off, but goes on 
 wearing still. (And is not the constraint of its dead con- 
 traction strong upon him ? ) At last he has come to a 
 religion which even when it is dead he cannot but go on 
 wearing. And the reason too is manifest. Formerly 
 when one religion was dead there always came another ; 
 probably another ever stood ready ; now there is none. 
 We go on wearing our dead Christianity because there 
 comes no new religion. (See the attempts : are there not 
 parallels in the chrysalis, abortive attempts at the forma- 
 tion of a new skin ? ) 
 
 And is not the reason in each case that that form or
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 197 
 
 mode of life has come to an end ? The force in that form 
 is exhausted, and the thing that is to come is a different 
 life. But that the dead skin cannot be cast off is not 
 so much that another cannot be carried farther in that 
 direction ; that mode of life has reached its limits, there 
 is to be no more extension ; intension, a more vital life, 
 is to take its place. A different process comes ; the 
 mere growth has reached its limit ; for the caterpillar 
 falls into the butterfly. 
 
 Christianity must have been different from ours when 
 it utterly absorbed Stoicism : true. But by its very 
 degradation can we not estimate the work it has done ? 
 Granted it has lost its force, its life, what then ? It has 
 imparted it. By what it has lost we measure what it 
 has achieved. 
 
 And so must we not think also of every religion ? Is 
 not this why every one so decays and tends to be degraded ? 
 Is not this its doing its work ? Each one comes with a 
 certain power expressed in thought or idea. Then in its 
 work this is lost. But the people are made different and 
 the future begins on a new level. 
 
 Buddha looked at human life and saw its misery ; all 
 misery almost it seemed to him ; and he gave a remedy, 
 too ; Nirvana absence of self-desire. It is the remedy 
 now : human life is still misery ; still one thought of 
 cure, and only one : absence of self-desire. But what is 
 the difference ; what is it three thousand years have done 
 for us ? This : that then this absence of self-desire was 
 sought negatively ; by putting away, shutting out regard. 
 Have not the long centuries brought us this enough, an 
 ample fruit that it must come by a regard made perfect ; 
 by a sensibility to all ; nothing left less heeded ? (It is
 
 198 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 simply a passing from the negative to the positive denial 
 of self-desire. And this is the law : Every self-thing is to 
 be positively denied.) Buddha sought to help man, not by 
 aiding individual distress, but by trying to discover how 
 the whole evil state might be remedied ; by striving for 
 knowledge,. He felt that this condition of experience is 
 by a negation ; opposite to the present Western notion. 
 So what large warns human thought goes in ! The whole 
 Western thought is but one element, one phase, with a 
 relation to that. If the thought that this whole condition 
 of ours is by a minus (not as we have felt about it as a 
 " creation," a plus) comes again, will it not be a union of 
 Asia and Europe ? 
 
 This also is striking in Buddha : he could not endure . 
 the beautiful and delightful things ; was repelled by them, 
 found them intolerable. That was the force ; he could 
 not enjoy them in the presence of the world ; they were 
 hateful. 
 
 Then also can we see further about Christianity ? Was 
 it not as a germ of the East to fertilise the West ; the 
 condition assumed by that great Eastern thought in order 
 to pass over into the West (as it were passing through 
 the Semitic race to come back to another branch of the 
 Aryan ?), so that it might receive from the West what it 
 had to bestow (being "suppressed" also) in order that it 
 might be brought back perfected? 
 
 For it is evident how Christianity in its formal doctrine 
 and ideas that are " above Nature " is the very same as 
 those older and more Eastern thoughts ; it is they, yet 
 with a change ; and by that change they become able to 
 enter into the West. None of the other forms of the 
 Eastern thought have been able to do so. So we may 
 say that Christ gave to the Eastern thought a form which 
 enabled it to enter into the West.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 199 
 
 Buddhism recognises the problem of escaping from the 
 phenomenal condition as a spiritual one. We have lost 
 this (not the New Testament, indeed, which is still 
 Eastern), but the unthinking West has dropped this, 
 with its fancy of getting into the spiritual world by a 
 mere phenomenal change. 
 
 (But Buddha did not recognise the unity of man, and 
 that this was a question of man's life. And so he had to 
 refer it to the individual alone ; and what a task it was ! 
 This recognition of man is a gain of ours. And do we 
 not see it already in the Old Testament ? It is already 
 in our relation to Adam ; we see the condition of all 
 resolved into that of the one. So does not Christianity 
 retain this as one of its chief possessions ?) 
 
 Buddha never thought once of mere dying (a little 
 chemical change, though he did not understand that) as 
 taking one out of the phenomenal. Our feeling of enter- 
 ing the spiritual by " dying " is mere paralysis of reason, 
 contradiction of thought. (Is the idea of a " soul in the 
 body " one whit less absurd than that of angels on pins' 
 points ? ) In this aspect our reason has been crushed 
 and paralysed till it cannot lift its finger. Here it is 
 striking to see the complementary relation : we are to the 
 spiritual as the ancients were to the physical ; unable to 
 give authority to reason. The relation has shifted ; they 
 succumbed impotently to unreason when presented to 
 sense, and had no idea it was their place to say to every 
 such unreason : " You cannot be ; you are irrational ; " 
 but they could put aside unreason in the spiritual ; as we 
 thus see Buddha did. Now we are exactly in the opposite 
 position : as unable to challenge unreason where they 
 escaped it, as they were to challenge unreason where we 
 escape it. Then here what a basis for union ! 
 
 In another respect, too, there are opposites prepared for
 
 200 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 union : our thought is not of how to escape the pheno- 
 menal, but (thinking that must come soon) how to make 
 better " good " the life in it ; this is very marked in 
 this last time ; Bacon truly expressed it when he avowed 
 this as the true end of man's labour. Buddha, on the 
 other hand, sought only about escaping, not about mak- 
 ing it good. Now is there not to be union there of the 
 thought of escaping, and that of making life good also ? 
 Is not that the very thought that has been with me ? 
 We must have a different consciousness, and yet how 
 good this world ; how good to live in it again, and yet 
 again, nay, as phenomenal, to lose it never. 
 
 Most striking is this contrast between East and West, 
 that the East assumes that we cannot get out of the 
 physical by dying ; the West assumes that of course we 
 do. For it is to be observed that neither argues it at 
 all ; each takes it as self-evident. Surely it might be 
 possible to decide which is truest here. And on this 
 does not the whole attitude, the whole spirit, of the 
 thought in great measure depend ? And truly seen on 
 which side is the New Testament ? May it be that the 
 reason there is such an extreme divergence between its 
 spirit and our life now, is that it is really Eastern and 
 we are Western; that we succumbed to it, so far as 
 even yet to retain its name, but that the oppositeness 
 was never really overcome as, indeed, can it be, except 
 by the union of the Western elements with the Eastern ? 
 Christianity had to incorporate the West before it could 
 truly rule the human race. 
 
 Genius gives up its anticipation first, and then its 
 accuracy of detail ; but the first it gives up in tears and 
 sadness, the last in joy. The first is letting pass from 
 sight, the last is emphatically seeing, and the only true
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 201 
 
 seeing. Surely this is sowing in tears and reaping in 
 joy. Is not the seed the strict parallel of the anticipa- 
 tion ? Is not the sowing, the burying in the ground, 
 exactly giving up, passing out of sight, becoming 
 the " unconscious constant ? " The buried seed is 
 the very type of it. So it becomes the mould into 
 which the forces of Nature are cast; they all assume 
 its form, and reappear with its stamp upon them. Surely 
 this growth and multiplication of the seed is the very 
 fact, seen with the body's eyes, of conscious life in every 
 form. 
 
 The seed gives up ; it yields before the forces of Nature ; 
 they enter into it, just as into the anticipation-work of 
 genius the phenomena of Nature enter, and take posses- 
 sion of it, and seem to put it altogether aside ; but the 
 end is, that they reappear as it. The seed " comes again 
 in glory," in the harvest. It comes altruistically ; made 
 one with Nature, embracing her ; truly it comes, because 
 no more itself, but other. And in the mind of genius 
 the anticipation has this character which the seed has 
 that though it gives up, lets Nature come in and take 
 possession of it wholly, it still holds on ; it keeps its life ; 
 it grows. Nature does not subvert it and turn it wholly 
 her own way. Almost all gives way and yields, but one 
 little secret part holds on its life, and all the yielding of 
 the rest, and all that is received by yielding, becomes its 
 life. Genius then, like the fruitful seed, has in it that 
 which at once yields and resists. Here, again, its two- 
 foldness appears. And in this it is as the flower again. 
 In the flower there is decomposition and growth, the up- 
 ward tendency and the downward. In the corolla is the 
 tendency to decay, in the ovary the tendency to growth ; 
 the more tendency from being less carried out. The 
 colours of the corolla are really a premature autumn.
 
 202 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 The flower unites autumn and spring ; it is Nature's hot- 
 house ; the decaying corolla produces the warmth which 
 is like a new spring, and forms the seed. The hothouse 
 truly is but a flower of man's making. These two, the 
 yielding and the not-yielding, are also in the seed ; it 
 incorporates Nature so ; and that is how genius does 
 it too. It casts Nature into its own mould, yielding 
 and resisting at once, but makes her therein the truest to 
 herself. 
 
 It is not that the seed (or genius) compels Nature. 
 Nature assumes the form ; assumes it because it is her own. 
 To become another, to be altruistic, is ever " natural " to 
 her. It is but a direction of less resistance presented. 
 
 Genius gives up its anticipation, its insight, and yet 
 holds fast to it ; it has a secret consciousness it must be 
 true, a conviction of it so firm, indeed, that it does not 
 prevent its looking. It sees that its idea won't stand 
 looking, and yet holds to it while it looks. It is so strong 
 in its conviction that it cannot be afraid. Is not this 
 twofold attitude perfectly seen in Newton's reply to the 
 observations which negatived gravity, " that nothing could 
 stand against facts ? " There is the immediate giving up, 
 recognising that it did not fit ; yet, surely, not less visible, 
 though hidden, the holding fast too. Genius can see that 
 its thought will not do, that the phenomena are opposed 
 to it ; but does not feel either that it is false on the one 
 hand, nor indisposed to look his very best at the pheno- 
 mena on the other ; he sees it won't apply, but does not 
 feel that it is therefore false. He looks and looks, more 
 and more ; takes Nature's force more and more into him, 
 until it moulds itself at last into that form it seemed to 
 oppose. 
 
 But even thus have we arrived really at the bottom of 
 genius ? Take genius in intellect proper, in thought.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER, 203 
 
 Does it depend ultimately on intellectual qualities at all ? 
 Is it not rather on its personal constitution ; as, for 
 example, on its absolute yielding to its intellectual vision, 
 on the fact that this controls it absolutely, and meets with 
 nothing to oppose it ? This is rather a personal than an in- 
 tellectual characteristic, and may well be by a minus. And 
 surely some personal quality of such a kind is essential to 
 genius. Is it not possible that this is ever a minus ? Others 
 cannot yield thus absolutely to the intellectual vision, be- 
 cause they feel other things, and things at least as important, 
 too much. And surely there must be a moral element too, 
 for does it not labour so intensely before it sees ? 
 
 Is it not beautiful thus seeing genius as the seed to 
 see how human life has, as it were, its years : the stream of 
 living force poured through it with the spring, until in 
 its due course it fails with the declining sun, and sinks into 
 the autumn, " the autumn of our discontent ; " then by this 
 very failure the two poles are united, a new spring bound 
 up in winter's bosom, and the harvest is made sure. For 
 the development, the rise to a higher grade, is the very 
 same thing as the multiplication by the seed. So genius 
 also is Nature's hothouse, part of the achieved life sacri- 
 ficed, as in the decaying elements of the flower, to make 
 more. They make a way for Nature to come in afresh, a 
 new channel for the infinite. Yes, truly, in being as a 
 seed genius is strictly a channel. It is most suggestive 
 that man begins with a negative, ignorance, which has 
 this most striking relation to the truth : simply by virtue 
 of its ignorance it makes that affirmation of the unity of 
 Nature which is the last affirmation of science. Surely 
 this ignorance must be knowledge ; knowledge, but not 
 ours ; only recognised by us as ignorance giving the false 
 feeling of knowing. This ignorance, which seems a mere 
 absence, has definite relations to knowledge.
 
 204 THE LAW-BREAKER. 
 
 Must not our sin, our badness, be the same ? It is 
 not the thing it seems to us though as truly bad and 
 needful to be destroyed, as the sole condition of any good, 
 as ignorance is but something having definite relations 
 to good, some altruistic good. 
 
 That ignorance which makes the truest affirmations is 
 not truly ignorance ; and in this must I not come to see 
 how every negative is a true plus ? This is the same as 
 that the child's broken line in drawing is not a mere 
 negation of drawing, but has a definite relation to the 
 broken line of the perfect art. The skilled hand must 
 repeat the utterly untrained. Here we ought to see what 
 anticipation is, and what childhood is also. Childhood 
 preceding manhood is not a mere physical necessity as it 
 seems, of course it cannot be, but here we may see posi- 
 tively a glimpse of the true necessity which causes it. 
 The absence of the powers of manhood has a definite 
 relation to these powers, is they in altruistic form. 
 They are powers which are impotencies to us, as the true 
 joy is in pain. May we say that that which is our igno- 
 rance and impotence is the true knowing, the true power, 
 just as we say our pain is the true joy ? Yes, knowing 
 with ignorance in it is altruistic knowing ; joy with pain 
 in it is altruistic joy. The passive necessity is the same ; 
 it seems a negative, but it is the positive in some altru- 
 istic way. We feel it on the negative side*. It is truly 
 the active necessity. 
 
 Man, too, sows in tears ; humanity has the characters 
 of genius, and each may be read by each. Man holds his 
 anticipations while he gives them up. This is the mean- 
 ing of all that endless fight between the men of progress 
 and the resisters, all the wide and all the narrow men. 
 All that fight is what goes on in genius. It is all there 
 magnified.
 
 THE LAW-BREAKER. 205 
 
 Could a summing up of the law be more perfect than 
 this of Beethoven's : " I have had the temerity to intro- 
 duce a dissonant interval here and there, sometimes 
 leaving it abruptly, sometimes striking it without pre- 
 paration. I hope this is no high treason, and that the 
 judices doctissimi, if ever I meet them in the Elysian 
 fields, will not shake their periwigs at me. I did this to 
 preserve the melody intact, and will be responsible for it 
 before any tribunal of common sense and good taste. 
 Passages that are easy to sing and are not far fetched or 
 difficult to hit cannot be faulty. These severe laws were 
 only imposed upon us to hinder us from writing what the 
 human voice cannot execute ; he who takes care not to do 
 this need not fear to shake off such fetters, or at least to 
 make them less galling." 
 
 Of course the world shall have its genius-period. That 
 will be the age of the integrated Greek. The Greek, 
 how plainly, was the child; the opposing elements 
 lay unopposing side by side in his mind. So he had 
 that free and sportive life, and enormous because un- 
 cramped energy. But it was but the life of the child ; 
 and we see the differentiation begin : Plato and Aristotle 
 mark the epoch, and Greek life under the most favour- 
 able circumstances could have been the true Greek life no 
 more. 
 
 Then came the dark ages, and Christianity swept over 
 the world with its thought of sin and deliverance, and 
 feeling of tremendous moral problems blackening into 
 despair. Just so the youth whose life is not perverted, 
 or heart incapable, grows into a dark and earnest strife 
 with moral questions. 
 
 I say the world must have its genius-period must 
 have ; for differentiation exists but for the sake of integra-
 
 206 THE LA W-BREAKER. 
 
 tion ; and that beautiful unconscious life could not have 
 been suppressed except for perfecting. 
 
 Man is genius, and his life is the genius-life ; he 
 accomplishes ends unforeseen, and does by instinct what 
 he could not do by trying. The method, the conditions, 
 to restore that envied life are plain. It is written in 
 genius.
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I have thought these thoughts in the order and almost 
 in the very words that are here : I cannot alter them ; it 
 were a sort of sacrilege to me. 
 
 People must think of them, and of me, just what they 
 like. My thoughts are these.
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 THIS is the fact, that no external thing is or can be right 
 or wrong, but only the action. It is to this that children 
 have to be trained ; it is the educator's task. He has to 
 make that " license " safe. That is to be fixed in the 
 human heart ; any thing may be done ; but if I act in 
 any way but one, I am a bad wicked man. I must not 
 do it. 
 
 How can this be harder than the other ; or why ? As 
 we have seen, all things teach it and re-echo it ; it has 
 such a perfect basis of reason and unity ; it is not sub- 
 ject as all Tightness that is in external things must be 
 to the sudden question : Why is it wrong ? often so 
 unanswerable ; and so fatal in its asking. 
 
 Man making his right to be in things instead of action 
 condemns himself absolutely to disorder and to failure. 
 These results are written and embodied in his constitution, 
 taking duty so. The stars in their courses fight against 
 him : his own goodness, his best impulses, that might be 
 fruitfullest of good, determine him to ruin. It is true that 
 if the goodness be recognised in the action and not the 
 external thing, men must cease to judge. And surely 
 this holds them as much as anything, or most of all, to 
 that fatal error : that if they give it up the attempt to 
 control men by rewards and punishments must cease, in 
 

 
 2io THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 its present form. Is not this what frightens them, so 
 paralyses them, that in dread of it they cannot see that 
 they passively succumb to, or vainly strive to put down, 
 evils and wrongs boundlessly surpassing what they 
 dread ? 
 
 But why should this right in action, not in things 
 be harder to teach or to enforce upon the conscience than 
 the other ? Even take the mere ground of pleasure, and 
 see what motives it has ; what reasons to enforce it. It 
 is simply that we are to act not for self, or for the sake 
 of pleasure, but for good and use. Now see the obvious 
 reasons by which this is urged upon us. 
 
 First observing two things ; namely ( I .) that by acting 
 not for pleasure does not mean, not under the stimulus or 
 prompting of pleasure ; when the true right is chosen, 
 pleasure becomes the fit and proper prompting and motive- 
 power ; it is made free to become so ; it means only that 
 the pleasure is not to be the object sought. It is the 
 right motive-power, the wrong end. And (2.) that when 
 there is pleasure open to us, and no apparent motive of use 
 either for taking or abstaining, then the taking it is use ; 
 it enriches human life. There is always right in taking 
 pleasure right in form of use if no use forbids. 
 
 I say, on the mere ground of pleasure, what reasons there 
 are for adopting that right of action and not of things. 
 It is not that Nature wishes us not to have pleasure, but 
 in order that we may, that she insists on that as our 
 law. See how she has united pleasure and use ; making 
 the seeking of use to be, inevitably and in all its main 
 current, the accepting of pleasure too. She has provided 
 for our pleasures. She has not left that for us to do ; as 
 if knowing that our very having to do it would be to 
 prevent it. To pursue use means pleasure coming. And 
 see what alone can come of not doing it: these two
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 211 
 
 things ; both simply the banishing of pleasure. First, 
 that in pursuing pleasure against use we introduce dis- 
 order, prevent pleasure from being, and bring in pain 
 instead ; pleasure pursued against use must be its making 
 less. And secondly, by acting for self, we make all 
 pleasures wrong that may not be taken self- wise ; we 
 make the best pleasures forbidden ; we bring down upon 
 us the conscience, which says continually : " For self not 
 that ; " we make our own flaming sword, turning evei'y 
 way, to cut us off from Paradise. Turn which way we 
 will, we put it with our own hands before our selves ; that 
 conscience, armed with the law the self imposes, says : 
 " Not that, not that, not that : that is not right." But 
 if we pursue itse, see how full Nature fills her lap with 
 pleasures for us. We are like children once again in a 
 garden. Even if Nature had been niggard to us and 
 made the use-bearing pleasures scanty, we could not have 
 mended it by neglecting use for self; we should have 
 incurred the same evils, simply made the little less. But 
 when she has been so bountiful and so joined pleasure to 
 all use, what reason have we, what temptation for setting 
 ourselves against her ? Why should we wantonly refuse 
 and spoil ? 
 
 So wonderful it seems to me, this freedom, this fulness 
 of delight, this boundlessness of pleasure, that is for man 
 when once he opens his eyes to see what Nature calls him 
 to, and on what simple condition itself the chief joy of 
 all of regarding use and not himself, of casting off what 
 never was aught but a shackle. Is it not amazing, 
 bewildering with delight ? And this is what men have 
 thought of as that impossible thing the casting out of self. 
 Was ever error more pathetic, more totally mistaken ? Did 
 ever a poor child more pitifully delude itself unto despair ? 
 And all the while they were saying it could not be,
 
 212 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 Nature was showing them that very thing in every man 
 of genius that she made. 
 
 On the Moral Life of Man. How complete a new 
 apprehension is wanted; but we can reach only some 
 fragments. The foundation of all is that the only good 
 is in acting not for self; and that the end and meaning 
 of human life is the bringing this to be. So asceticism 
 is the worked out redudio ad absurdum ; and what has 
 followed is the interpretation. When that was attained 
 there was force enough ; the next thing was to apply it 
 to the new beginning, which must have different results, 
 cannot co-exist with the same. 
 
 The conservation of force the equal opposite processes 
 is the key also to the moral life ; especially in the prac- 
 tical aspect ; the ceasing of force, that is, of an attained 
 result, being the means of attaining another one. And 
 this, in the moral and intellectual, is essentially correction 
 of the premiss. Should one not begin there ? First 
 showing the conservation universal, and then its form in 
 the conscious life. But the correction of the premiss is 
 but one form of it. 
 
 Deliverance from thinking of self can come only in 
 the form of giving up restraints from pleasure as plea- 
 sure ; because these mean thinking of self; and goodness, 
 in self-serving^ can come only in the form of restraints. 
 So not-regarding self must come in this way. For on 
 self-serving in the pleasure-form the true not-regarding 
 self cannot come at all ; only that " goodness " which 
 acting for self makes, namely, the restraint from pleasure, 
 can come then ; so for not-regarding self we must have 
 these two steps : first, the restraint from pleasure as plea-
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 213 
 
 sure (that is, apart from whether it be serviceable or not), 
 and then the giving up of that. Truly it comes, rather, 
 in the form of simply not seeing whether there be plea- 
 sure or not ; going straight up to the service, however it 
 may come ; and only finding out afterwards that it was 
 pleasure. 
 
 It must be in the giving up restraint from pleasure, 
 because goodness cannot come in any other way while 
 taking pleasure means taking it for self. And yet that 
 restraint means thinking of self. Here is the dilemma 
 which admits of but one issue. 
 
 Art speaks morals so inevitably because it shows 
 Nature demanding, as a condition of the more, the leav- 
 ing off also, the not doing the giving up of a thing 
 necessary and right to do, and not to be left off except 
 for the sake of the more. Now this relation shows a 
 dynamic process ; wherever that is, there is a relation of 
 force ; it is force stored up and used. And conversely, 
 wherever there is a dynamic process it will have this 
 character of a more being in, and by a leaving off, force 
 prepared and used. That is what a correcting of the 
 premiss is always. 
 
 We may say that wherever power is to be used it 
 must be collected first. This is a law we must absolutely 
 recognise ; we fancy we can have the effect of power 
 without having stored it, but we cannot. It is a process 
 of moral education, of understanding, that we need. A 
 foolish childish ignorance wants casting out of us ; it 
 expects to have power without having first gone through 
 the attaining it. And it expresses itself in the feeling 
 we have (we being as individuals related to mans life), 
 that the stored- up power is not to be used, but kept as 
 it is ; and then the other thing (which men knew and
 
 214 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 understood they wanted, and indeed aimed at ; and 
 stored up the power for effecting it) this other thing, we 
 find, cannot be done without that stored-up power, and 
 thinking that must be kept as it is, we come to the 
 opinion that it cannot be done at all. It is plain how 
 that thought comes, plain how this special doctrine of 
 ours that man must act for self arises. We are so fasci- 
 nated by the " nutrition " that we object to the " func- 
 tion." Does it not naturally come from our relation, as 
 individuals, to the life of man ? And how plainly is it to 
 be seen in the intellectual life, and by it read in the moral. 
 
 Whether acting not for self that is, doing simply 
 what most wants doing can be substituted for acting 
 for self in man's life ? It can, if he has been so con- 
 stituted that something is " natural " to him, which his 
 moral nature will forbid his doing if he is acting for 
 himself. If it has not been destined to be, it is not 
 because there was difficulty ; it might have been effected 
 in any one of innumerable ways. Only make this rela- 
 tion ; that his moral or emotional nature should come to 
 forbid his doing, while acting for self, anything that his 
 physical nature (or any other element of his nature) 
 implied or was constituted for. That would inevitably 
 bring acting not for self. It is clear that it might be 
 so ; that this simple adjustment, in any one of a multi- 
 tude of ways, would bring it. (Truly the argument is 
 much . stronger : if we see what acting for self is, it is 
 evident that man's nature must imply what his moral 
 nature, while he acts for self, must refuse : that is matter 
 of necessity.) 
 
 And then more things are obvious also : the way in 
 which the substitution must come. How, in a word, 
 acting for self will lead to asceticism ; how the giving
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 215 
 
 up of asceticism will demand, this very substitution ; but 
 that will not come at first ; only after a time. At first 
 there will be the attempt to mix the two, to keep the 
 actinsr for self without the asceticism, and draw lines of 
 
 o * 
 
 what we may and may not do in acting for self. But 
 the only possible end must be the substitution. Now 
 what is there that would mean this ? It must come as 
 a correction of the premiss always comes : by a change 
 of the right. The method of it implies that : something 
 our nature tends to, which our moral emotions forbid 
 while we are acting for self, has to be established ; do 
 that the acting for self may be put away. The kind of 
 change it must be is evident. Now are we thinking 
 as we should, and looking out for this ? If we understood 
 the case truly, would the problem seem so hopeless ? 
 Consider : acting not for self is a change of the premiss, 
 and must have the characters of that : have we thought 
 of this ? 
 
 And then what would it be ? Is it true to think of 
 it as demanding heroic virtue, as too much to be ? 
 What has Nature made acting for service to be ? What 
 are the relations of service ? Taking service as our end 
 makes service of all pleasures that do not hurt ; that is, 
 that prudence could take. It banishes all question of 
 pleasure, all restraint from it. Then also how God has 
 used human folly to give us the feeling that service, and 
 therefore goodness, is in pain when its natural relations 
 are not so, that we may loose our grasp from pleasure 
 which is the only means of making it free to come. 
 
 Then see the " being in effect," especially in its moral 
 forms ; the girl's shrinking in the wife's freedom ; the 
 youth's hatred of being paid in the man's insistance on 
 his due reward, &c. So man's feeling that goodness is 
 in pain ; there will be the effect of that in his life for ever.
 
 2i6 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 Here is the fact now well known (the taking note of 
 this is one of the chief advances of man's thought), that 
 our own pleasure wisely secured, and our doing good or 
 serving, are in the main identical. Now how should this 
 fact be read practically ? Which is reading it in its true 
 order, and which backwards : These two are one, there- 
 fore pursue your own interests wisely ; or : Pursue service ; 
 there is no need to act for self? According as we read 
 them one way or the other there exist two wholly opposite 
 rights. We have to choose between them. If we say : Act 
 for self, then we make goodness mean opposing pleasure, 
 and our right necessarily formulates itself in things, which 
 will not yield to any call, and must refuse any good. If 
 we say : Act not for self, but for service wholly (which 
 comes to the same as the wisest following of pleasure), 
 then our goodness has no relation to pleasure, no possible 
 opposition to it. Our right is as Nature's, wholly apart 
 from things, and can adapt itself to every call. 
 
 If man ceased to make disorder, service and pleasure 
 would correspond. Till then what is wanted for pursuing 
 service is heroism, itself a pleasure (and one that surely 
 would be especially pleasurable now to us, stifled as we 
 are for want of it, it seeming so forbidden, so useless), 
 and a thing that history shows has never been wanting 
 when it has been called for. 
 
 Nature's goodness is living ; it is flexible, adapting 
 itself infinitely to every demand ; ours is dead, in so far 
 as it is bound to things. We want a living goodness 
 instead of a dead one. Nature's is an unseen goodness, 
 and so man has thought she had none. We want her 
 goodness ; ours raised to the unseen, to be eternal or 
 living. 
 
 This is the order of the thoughts : they began practi-
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 217 
 
 cally, with finding that a thing that would be useful was 
 refused on the ground that it would be wrong ; and 
 wrong because, though useful, it would be " indulgence 
 of passion," that is, pleasure : and that was because of 
 man's devotion to self. Then from that came the per- 
 ception : first of how acting for self banishes goodness 
 from all that part of life in which it can find pleasure ; 
 and secondly, how it prevents good itself by turning it 
 away from its true grounds into a question of our self- 
 pleasure. But it started from that practical refusal of 
 service because it meant pleasure. 
 
 We are at a stage, now, at which, for our practical ad- 
 vance in moral respects, a truer understanding is eminently 
 necessary. For it is clear that the understanding as well 
 as the feelings, or will, has a part in man's practical moral 
 condition : this is evident in the case of the individual 
 also ; a truer understanding will often serve to deliver 
 from conditions of embarrassment and even of practical 
 though not intentional wrongness, from which there could 
 be no other escape. It is quite possible to happen that 
 even any intenser or more resolute 'moral activity would 
 only make the false action more intense, because what is 
 wanted is a different thought. In the condition of the 
 world a position of this kind has now arrived. 
 
 The question is : What shall we aim at ? for on that 
 depends what we shall put as wrong, that is, what laws we 
 shall insist on. To alter an aim is to alter a thought, not a 
 moral condition : it is a question of seeking, not of attain- 
 ing : man has practised well, now he needs to aim aright. 
 
 Moreover, man's hand has relaxed on the aim that he 
 had before him ; which indeed is no wonder, for it was 
 not his choice but that of others ; of others who lived 
 ages ago, and under conditions very different from ours.
 
 218 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 The evils we suffer from are out of proportion to our 
 moral state, or our desire. 
 
 The plan of acting for self might do very well perhaps ; 
 it is quite true that it does do much good, and brings 
 wonderful results ; there is much evidence in favour of its 
 being the plan for man's life, and it is a very natural 
 supposition to us, but we have not noticed one thing 
 its effect upon right, or goodness. 
 
 This result simply proves it unnatural ; it is absolute 
 and final : that which does this cannot be man's nature. 
 Acting for self, however it may look, is evidently ascetic. 
 Plainly it accounts for all the forms in which asceticism 
 has existed : the fault in them was not the seeking to 
 be good ; it was that which made that seeking mean 
 refusing pleasure; the fault and error were not even in 
 the false ideas about this world and another ; there is 
 no reason the best way of preparing for another world 
 should be spoiling this ; rather every reason against it, 
 as is often urged now. It was not false ideas of that 
 sort made life ascetic, but simply the setting goodness 
 against pleasure : that was the source of the other false 
 ideas which turned men against " this world," as is easy 
 to see. (So, indeed, these false ideas of another world 
 and so on are thoughts projected by a false practice in order 
 to sustain itself ; and are revealers of the acting for self. 
 They come out of the goodness put against pleasure.) So 
 if we look into our life and find anything felt right, apart 
 from its direct good, we see an effect of the acting for 
 oneself; an ascetic result. It is absolutely ascetic ; it 
 leaves no option but putting away pleasure or goodness ; 
 crushing one or the other of our strongest passions : the 
 form of asceticism in the past and now. And it is 
 curious : is it not as if man had been compelled in each
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW, 219 
 
 period to be ascetic against passion in direct proportion 
 to its strength ? Has not the passion against which we 
 are now compelled to be ascetic been distinctly growing 
 in power namely, the passion for goodness ? So that 
 it is against our strongest passion we, are now made to 
 be ascetic. And in former times was it the converse ? 
 were men compelled to be ascetic against pleasure when 
 and even because the passion for pleasure was the 
 stronger ? Has a change come here ; and the asceticism 
 altered its form accordingly ? Is it not evident that it is 
 in the very nature of asceticism to choose the strongest 
 passion most to crush ? So now are we not ascetic 
 against goodness precisely because that passion is so 
 much the strongest in us ? What mistake could have 
 been more superficial than, in the ages ascetic against 
 pleasure, to say that man did not care about pleasure ? 
 Yet to say now that men do not care about goodness 
 would be the very same. 
 
 Asceticism is putting goodness, needlessly, against 
 pleasure ; but man does this without intending it, with- 
 out even knowing that he does it, thinking he is simply 
 making sure of pleasure. And then when once that step 
 is made he is bound hand and foot till he bethinks him- 
 self of retracing it. He cannot help the results : his 
 goodness is against his pleasure ; he has made it so ; he 
 alone can unmake it. And then also : since it is by 
 this effect on goodness that acting for self is proved un- 
 natural, it is evident also that this is the means by which 
 it must be escaped : through this effect on goodness we 
 must find, must seek, our deliverance. And also, it is 
 clear that till then every attempt at making better must 
 be a making worse : life is upside down. 
 
 This is the crime of man : to think that man cannot
 
 220 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 be truly good until another world ; for that is accepting 
 and consenting to evil and calling it good ; it is not even 
 fighting it, although succumbing ; it is joining hands 
 with it. 
 
 And to do this is his temptation; for it is Satan 
 coming in the form of an angel of light ; the temptation 
 comes in the shape of restriction and restraints of passion ; 
 which make us feel as if we were good. 
 
 And from this there is one deliverance ; the deliver- 
 ance which alone delivers ; and it comes in the form of 
 putting away restrictions; restoring passion unrestrained; 
 with its conditions fulfilled. 
 
 Is not a false thought apt to come here : namely, that 
 restraint from pleasure is valuable, and needed, more or 
 less often, in order to gain " strength ? " Is not this 
 always a mistake ? With acting for self, strength itself is 
 turned to evil ; without it nothing, not even weakness, 
 is evil. It cannot be, for we see in genius what weakness 
 without acting for self means. Weakness without acting 
 for self is the true weakness, it is weakness with strength 
 in it ; the only true strength also. So there is a false 
 thought in the idea that restraint of passion is ever good 
 for the sake of " strength." Absence of acting for self 
 true absence, not mere change of its form is always 
 strength. 
 
 In respect to the meaning of excess, as a seeming more 
 pleasure which is less, have we not a key to our senses 
 as instruments of pleasure or pain ? For this feeling of 
 what is truly less pleasure as more seems a character of 
 them. The sensation is pleasant, apart from whether it 
 is excess or not. 
 
 It seems to be the character of true pleasure that all
 
 THE COMING OP THE LA W. 221 
 
 the elements in the man are used together and in due 
 relation, sense, reason, emotion. Now, is not this the 
 very same as the character of true knowledge : sense, 
 reason, emotion, all used together? So one is to be 
 known by the other. But in knowledge sense is not 
 crushed or put aside, though iised, and not ruling. It is 
 most exercised, most abundantly satisfied, filled with its 
 own delights, its powers and tendencies carried out to the 
 utmost ; even much more developed and constantly exer- 
 cised than otherwise it could be. And so in the true 
 goodness with sense as instrument of pleasure : though 
 used and subordinated, will it not be more filled with 
 even its own delights, more exercised, even made more 
 capable of pleasure, than otherwise it could have been ? 
 Are, perhaps, pleasure and pain to the senses parallel to 
 truth and error by them ? At first there seems to be in 
 both cases more of pain from them and more of error. 
 But in the true use of the senses, the very error is made 
 means of truth ; of more truth by far than their own 
 mere truth can give. So in a true life will it not be 
 with their pain ? They will be the means of pleasure, 
 more pleasure by far than their direct pleasures. So that 
 in thinking of pain through our senses as evil in any 
 way, we are as if we were thinking of the false perception 
 by them as an evil. Is not the pain simply the prepara- 
 tion for a worthy delight, as the false perceiving is for a 
 worthy truth ? 
 
 Also we shall see surely how acting for self makes 
 pleasure mere excess. For excess is derived by a minus 
 from perfect pleasure. 
 
 The right is to do what is wanted ; and if there is 
 anything in a person which is a reason he should not do 
 it, that is a wrong in him and he ought to turn it out.
 
 222 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 (Then how turn it out ? What is the way ? Is it not 
 by doing by doing what is wanted because it is wanted ? 
 That is there not being in him any reason for not doing 
 it.) But, further, it is plain what this wrong is : namely, 
 that it is regarding himself: for only that makes any 
 reason for not doing anything (that is service) : only that 
 can make pleasure be against goodness. So again, it is 
 evident how the doing the thing because it is wanted, is the 
 cure : for that is and that alone the not regarding self. 
 Not doing it although it is wanted is regarding self. 
 
 We might go on with self first if it did not affect 
 right : but since it does that we cannot, we* must not ; 
 for doing that shuts up the kingdom of heaven from 
 half the human race. It keeps others bad : keeps from 
 them even the possibility of being good ; for they cannot 
 be good that way. We have no right to forbid them 
 goodness ; it is the greatest of crimes ; we might break 
 that command of God ourselves and, as it were, " make it 
 up " in some other way ; but we must not " teach men 
 so," because it damns them. Those who could only be 
 good with a goodness from which that self first with all 
 its effects especially its effects of imposing restraint of 
 passion was cast out must not be forbidden it. If we 
 do forbid it we are accursed, whatever else we do, and 
 Christ will drive us from His presence. 
 
 The law of service may rule absolutely if it rules alone. 
 I propose therefore a new society on that basis : on the 
 recognition of the fact that service consists (overwhelm- 
 ingly) in doing pleasant things ; that if it be made the 
 law all pleasant things are free ; that it is the bringer 
 of pleasant things; that without it in its absolute com- 
 pleteness goodness must be ascetic ; and that as a passion
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 223 
 
 for goodness cannot, nor ought to, cease, life cannot 
 otherwise be purged from asceticism ; and that for us 
 this is especially important, because, since asceticism can- 
 not be complete, and self-indulgence has established itself, 
 what we have is both self-indulgence and asceticism as 
 well ; the two opposite evils combined, and therefore with 
 the worst effects of both ; a distorted self-indulgence, and 
 a distorted asceticism, pressing where it should not press. 
 
 What remedy is really ever thought of now except the 
 cat-o'-nine-tails ? That seems to be the one hope of men. 
 (And they don't see the action there : they don't take 
 account of the rage it makes, the cunning scheming, un- 
 sleeping and passionate, it generates in bosoms like mine. 
 They do not take account of the unseen enemies who lie 
 in wait for them.) And if there are any other remedies 
 thought of, how hard they are, how intensely difficult ; 
 for example, having no more children than a very few ; 
 training women so that marriage shall be indifferent, &c. 
 Now why turn to these hard things ? Is there not one 
 simple thing that would do the work of them all, teach- 
 ing children that the right and only right was not to 
 act for self? And so introducing, too, a new right; 
 making right mean a different thing. 
 
 Here is an easy thing which would do altogether 
 instead of all these difficult ones. For why should it be 
 hard to teach that to children ? Simply we have not 
 thought of it. If one wants motives, see them here : one 
 or the other we must have ; either this, or those other 
 things : which were wisest to try ? It is not even 
 necessary to change ourselves : we can go on as before ; 
 but why hard to teach children, why hard for them to 
 learn ? And what too would it mean for us ? The 
 difficulty and painfulness of retracing false steps is in-
 
 224 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 evitable ; but even so what would it mean, what life 
 would it issue in? And that is attainable, for it is 
 teachable to children. 
 
 Man has tried abstaining from indulgence, and it fails : 
 now is there anything else to try ? Have we fairly ex- 
 hausted what might be done ? Is going on in the same 
 path the true call of wisdom ? Evidently there is ful- 
 filling the conditions of indulgence instead of abstaining : 
 a wholly different task. (But never such changes except 
 by acceptance by a new generation ; why do we not seek 
 to bring that ?) 
 
 It makes the question quite new. And clearly it is 
 simply loving ; abstaining from indulgence is not loving ; 
 a falsity in our very thoughts is shown here. 
 
 And then at once we see why there has been the 
 failure in the other ; from a mystery it is turned into 
 perfect reason, order, and good. It was a wrong task ; 
 man was never meant to put away indulgence, only to 
 give it a certain form. His failure in trying to do the 
 other is perfectly right and good even his consenting 
 to it again without the conditions. For this is what our 
 life is : our fathers tried to put away indulgence ; we 
 take it without fulfilling the conditions. 
 
 Amid all efforts for good, all sacrifices, this one fact 
 stands out, and hides, and ought to hide, everything 
 else : that it is accepted, counted right, as a providence 
 of God, that we should have our life of satisfactions even 
 though others are crushed. This great wrong makes 
 wrong all Tightness even, and robs it of its virtue ; the 
 regard for others the maker alive becomes the destroyer. 
 
 But how simple the solution ! It wants but a touch ; 
 and in the life of the intellect how perfect a guide is
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 225 
 
 given. By overlooking the beginning we make our own 
 problems ; and strive vainly in impossible labours when 
 a simple, easy thing solicits us which would put them all 
 away. Instead of all these hard, external motions be- 
 coming more irrational with every fresh exercise of reason 
 on them, this little task seeming so great, so unnatural 
 even, but only try it and see how simple of accepting 
 our own motion, of putting reason first and letting it 
 determine the very beginning of our thought. So, instead 
 of all these desperate problems, growing more cruel even 
 with each new exercise of love for the love is compelled 
 to be cruel, since good is made to be restraint there 
 wants that little one if it seem great, or hard to Nature, 
 try it and see how simple of letting regard to others 
 come in from the first, and determine the very beginning 
 of our thought ; putting it, as reason is put, where it 
 does not come unless an act of our own make it replace 
 its contrary. 
 
 All use of reason (on a false basis) brings ' more un- 
 reason. So in our life all regard to others brings more 
 cruelty. This is because that regard must include also 
 their moral life. This is what necessitates, even to love, 
 the cruelty ; and makes it so that we cannot see it is 
 cruel, only it seems so unhappy: even as the unreason 
 could not seem irrational, only that the world was so 
 strangely made. The unreason answers to the cruelty. 
 This simple thing, in each case, is one that we should 
 say could not be, that would seem impossible, until it 
 occurred to try, until things came to such a condition 
 as to make us think : might we not try that ? 
 
 The greed of our life is worse than that of a schoolboy ; 
 it is a thing the schoolboy does not yield to. Therefore 
 it is not " natural." Something must have subjected us 
 
 p
 
 226 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 to it, some force must have acted on us to produce it. 
 Now what is it ? 
 
 We seek changes, remedies, improvements, which do 
 not involve any very great change within (as indeed we 
 should be sure to do), but is not a great change what is 
 needed ? Then what if there should be some things 
 which involved a great change in us ; would not they 
 be likely to be the right things ? Two such things there 
 are : all men made able to marry, and marriage not a 
 lottery to women : these would involve servjce ruling in 
 pleasure ; a change how great ; absolutely equal to the 
 demand ; and yet how simple, even how little ; nothing 
 but consenting to what is already our desire, our nature, 
 and yet a whole new life. Here is a true remedy, and 
 a sufficient one, and yet is there any single merely super- 
 ficial remedy that is not harder ? 
 
 Why, when one thing is evidently the thing wanted, 
 should we let ourselves remain in the opinion (even though 
 we must have formed it) that that is not to be, and insist 
 on turning our expectation and aim to others. And look- 
 ing at men and women, is any " goodness " which means 
 that they should go without pleasure likely to prevail ? Look 
 at them : is it ? Indeed this is the very reason people say 
 the law of service cannot rule, and acting for self be put 
 away. But it is the very reason it can ; for that is the 
 only goodness that does not mean putting pleasure away : 
 the other thought is a manifest mistake. Look at them : 
 can there be hope for any goodness that means restraint 
 of passion, foregoing pleasure ? Then this goodness that 
 is the freedom of pleasure, the call to indulgence, this is 
 the only goodness that has a chance. Did God make 
 people wrongly ; or bid us keep on with a goodness not 
 adapted to them ?
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 227 
 
 But in this seeking of remedies that involve but little 
 change there is a Tightness, an instinct that is true. 
 For in fact it is useless to seek things that imply power 
 which does not exist ; it is no good to want more than 
 there is for us. The error is in not seeing how much is 
 available ; in not seeing that Nature's law is change of 
 form ; that things may cease and so be in their effect. 
 It is not understanding what the present is ; what force 
 it has in it locked up for use. We are as a housekeeper 
 who, having all sorts of provisions hung up, should try 
 to make a dinner with nothing, looking on them as 
 needful adornments of his home ; or as a miser who 
 should try to add another farthing to his store, while he 
 might buy things that would multiply it tenfold. We 
 do not see the store of force that our life is, that every 
 life must be in every single thing that is restraint and 
 effort. 
 
 Even yet it is a new thing, a thing that would change 
 life to say : " The right thing to do is the thing that 
 wants doing." We have thought : " But then people 
 are not able ; if they are wrong they cannot do this." 
 And so has come the mistake ; we have put up another 
 right that is not right. For the only true right is to 
 become able. That is the thing that is to be sought, 
 and there is no other. So in seeking other things we 
 have sought what we could not get ; we have made laws 
 that could not be obeyed, nor ought. For we have con- 
 sented to the wrong (and the only wrong) ; consented to 
 men being such that they could not do the thing that 
 wants doing. It is this consenting to wrong that is the 
 sin ; here the crime comes in ; and it is indeed the one 
 crime. Being what we are, being as God makes us, as 
 birth determines, there is no " wrong " of ours but con-
 
 228 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 senting to let evil remain and not even take the true 
 right as our right, and make it our law, and count our- 
 selves evil if we did not fulfil it, consenting to leave that 
 law ("Be able to do what wants doing") unobeyed, and 
 yet not counting ourselves wicked : this is the sin. So 
 the good thing in the world is that these false laws have 
 not been obeyed ; those who would not keep them have 
 been the deliverers the people hated, despised, and 
 killed. How differently the " wicked " people, the 
 breakers of the laws, appear at once when we see that 
 the laws ought to have been broken ; how humanity 
 expands to take them in. They have a part they seem 
 not to have ; our hearts are enlarged at once, and human 
 life is seen more fully in its richness and its promise. 
 The thieves as well as Christ were our deliverers : was 
 Christ indeed ever more truly in His place than when 
 He hung between them ? 
 
 The things that Nature (or God) demands and 
 especially in relation to woman are things that demand 
 acting not for self; that have this as their condition, and 
 cannot be without it. We try instead to put aside those 
 things, and keep the acting for self. That is the fight 
 we are engaged in God in His servant Nature fighting 
 against our acting for self. It will cease when we choose. 
 And of course it is to be decided " here," it is here especi- 
 ally that the things that demand the decision exist ; this 
 world especially is spoilt and rendered intolerable by its 
 refusal. 
 
 In two ways we put aside these things that God, 
 in Nature, demands : our virtue and our vice alike are 
 putting them aside ; they are two forms of this one thing ; 
 putting them aside for indulgence, or self-indulgence ; 
 putting them aside for right, or self-righteousness. Here
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 229 
 
 we see well the meaning of the " self; " it is putting 
 aside the things good demands, that service means, 
 refusing God's bidding and Nature's call. 
 
 And it is most important to recognise that self-indul- 
 gence and self- virtue are two forms of the same thing ; 
 two forms holding to acting for self (even as mere specu- 
 lation and the mere observation-true are two forms of 
 ignorance) ; two forms of putting aside service, they agree 
 infinitely more than they differ ; the difference is of form 
 merely, whether pleasure pursued or put away is of no 
 matter ; they are two forms of the one act of refusing 
 service. Our feeling them as so different is but part of 
 our slavery to self, which makes pleasure the determiner. 
 
 And here how there comes a new meaning into the 
 thought of Nature being "an infinite mystery with 
 nothing in it." In order to be an infinite mystery there 
 must also be nothing in it. How this is true of pleasure ; 
 it is an infinite mystery, of wonder, of delight, of power ; 
 but for it to be so there must be nothing in it. It must 
 be nothing to our action ; have no power to determine 
 it. And how especially true of man's relation to woman ; 
 to be the infinite mystery it truly is, it must also be 
 nothing. It must have nothing in it, be absolutely un- 
 important ; have no power to prevent service ; be any way 
 that good bids. Then what an infinite mystery of joy it 
 may be. 
 
 One confusion, easily accounted for, is apt to arise : as 
 if not acting for pleasure meant never yielding to impulse, 
 or being moved and guided by delight. At the bottom 
 is the confusion of acting for self with doing pleasant 
 things. When being guided by impulse, and letting 
 pleasure prompt and guide, is the thing that is service- 
 able to do ; the law of service of course means that. We
 
 230 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 can just as much follow pleasure for service sake as do 
 anything else for it ; and why should not service demand 
 that ? it might be even always. Shall it not be so in 
 truth when man has fulfilled the conditions of obeying 
 his impulses ? 
 
 Law is not even against crime ; it only demands of it 
 to change its form. Crime can as easily crystallise around 
 law as around anything else, and use it for its purpose. 
 Of course ; for it does not say : You must not hate ; only : 
 You must express your hate in such and such ways. So 
 for the sake of that outside control which we gain by laws 
 how much we sacrifice. 
 
 Life is an art with two rights, the right of acting for 
 self, and the right of acting not for self (or the right that 
 turns on pleasure, and the right that turns on need) ; 
 these are the universal two rights. 
 
 And, like all arts, it is created, made to be what it is 
 in its own nature ; it gains consciousness of its true law 
 by trying to attain and to keep the first right, doing its 
 utmost for that and having to give it up. 
 
 Art has two rights ; and genius is simply the bringer 
 in of the second right, the true one. So Christ brought 
 in, not " righteousness," but a " new and better righteous- 
 ness." This is universal. 
 
 The bringing in of a new and better righteousness is 
 the true end ; but this is, of course, the putting away of 
 the former. So we see the affinity of this (which is 
 genius) with crime. Crime is one part of it ; it is the 
 refusing the former right. It, though failing, though 
 also lacking, has that truer goodness in its keeping. 
 And so is it not plain what folly there is in our thought
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 231 
 
 of crime, and treatment of it ? And how fatal it would 
 be if we could prevent or crush it. 
 
 The motives for ceasing to make our lives revolve 
 around our own " success," instead of good, are, among 
 others, these : 
 
 (l.) That we need not have any more a pleasure- 
 standard of right. 
 
 (2.) That the bodily relation between man and woman 
 would be no more " sensual ; " so that there would be 
 no ground for its avoidance, any more than for avoiding 
 fresh air, or flowers. 
 
 (3.) That every good thing, such as health of body or 
 mind, might, in every case, be freely followed, and every 
 ill be freely put away. 
 
 If good is made to be in control of passion, that is, 
 in pleasure put away, then all pleasure all that is of 
 force, of Nature's power, in it is arrayed against good- 
 ness, and its prevalence makes goodness less. (It is 
 said : Goodness is in this very struggle and fighting. Is 
 it not the truth, rather, that the thought of goodness 
 being in and through fighting has been imposed on us 
 through that which made goodness mean to us the 
 control of passion ?) Thus we see that the power that is 
 in pleasure, and in Nature, so far as pleasure expresses 
 Nature, has fought against goodness, and overthrown it. 
 We see how it overthrew the old enthusiastic goodness ; 
 and for ours, how it laughs it to scorn and leaves it as 
 a mocking ; like a fungus on a decaying tree. We see 
 how, if we make goodness restraint of pleasure, pleasure 
 fights against it, and how fatally. But if goodness is 
 not in controlling pleasure, but in being able to do all 
 that is wanted, then the power of pleasure is turned the
 
 232 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 opposite way ; not only is its force against goodness 
 gone, but its power goes to aid it ; the more pleasure 
 demanded, the more absolute the putting away of the 
 rule of self. Pleasure is become identical with goodness. 
 
 Then in respect to life there comes the feeling also 
 that the different starting-point the desire not for self 
 must be so hard ; indeed, impossible. (Of course whether 
 it will be found hard or not in any sense will depend 
 really on what it means ; if it does not mean more 
 putting away of pleasant things, or more restraint of 
 passion than other rights, of course it will not be harder 
 than they in any sense at all.) But this feeling involves 
 a mistake as to what changing the starting-point really 
 means ; it confuses accepting a law with obeying it two 
 different things. The change of the starting-point would 
 be the adoption of the law of not putting self first ; and 
 it would be done in that adoption, apart from all question 
 of how perfectly it was obeyed. The question is of the 
 aim, not of the success. Suppose any amount of failure, 
 still our law is the true law. So changing the starting- 
 point must be easy ; it is only a question of aim. Is 
 man, indeed, ever to keep the law perfectly ? Nay, is 
 there any reason he should ? And so of Nature ; what 
 we see in her is that she is not under the law we make by 
 regarding self; she is not subject to that law. But is 
 there any evidence there is no " sin " in her, no falling 
 short ? May it not well be and indeed be a key to 
 some things that there is sin, absence of perfect fulfil- 
 ment in Nature ? But she is under the true law. 
 
 The ascetics gratified their souls, but crushed their 
 bodies : now we gratify our bodies but crush our souls. 
 Life is to gratify both soul and body ; that is, for there
 
 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 233 
 
 to be no reason for the soul to restrain the body, but to 
 be able to let Nature's demand lead us wholly. And so 
 each more perfectly gratified ; for neither is truly gratified 
 without the other ; it is but a baulking, pretended, half- 
 accomplished thing. Did the ascetics truly gratify their 
 souls ? And how far do we truly attain our sense-gratifi- 
 cations ? Much as is sacrificed in each case, is the thing 
 sought truly gained ? What man has not either firmly 
 to control his impulses, or to reap fruits of chagrin and 
 emptiness in license ? 
 
 How it simplifies life to have no question to ask but 
 of what is wanted ! One question instead of at least 
 two : at once of what is wanted and of what we, may do ; 
 demanding such a balancing of contradictions, that it is 
 no wonder it resolves itself into fixed and rigid rules 
 which are embodied mischief and cruelty alike in the 
 obeying and in the breaking. 
 
 It is not that we regard others too little, or above all 
 that we take too little trouble for them. May it well be 
 indeed that in a true life there will be much less trouble 
 for others, less by far than is taken now ? For assuredly, 
 so far as we can see, it would be much better for the 
 " others " that less should be needed. When we reflect, 
 indeed, is not a very great absence of "trouble for others" 
 essential to their welfare being much secured ? What is 
 needed is having others first the desire on the good. 
 How then should the things that make the " trouble " 
 come ? 
 
 Is there, or is there not, in men now, the readiness 
 absolutely to enter on a new life, the latent force ready 
 to break into flame ? We cannot know by looking ; it
 
 2 34 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 must be judged. Is it not certain, by what has preceded, 
 that it must be ? 
 
 See the movement in India for social reform : as ever, 
 it is against sensuous indulgences ; restrict sense-pleasures, 
 it says, rise above them ; now this carried to the utmost 
 we have seen and perceived is not Nature's path : how 
 then should a little bit, if it be so a little bit not even 
 satisfying the very impulse which calls it into being ? 
 Is there not a beautiful thought here, a parallel most 
 clear in the intellectual life ? See how there comes, in 
 one stage, a distinct action against sense ; it means that 
 the relation to sense has been wrong ; that is all ; not 
 that sense is to have less part, to be less valued, to be 
 put aside, or even permanently reduced and kept under. 
 Not at all that, but intensely the contrary : it is only for 
 the condition to be fulfilled, and sense is to be more than 
 ever; to play a larger part, to be more free, to be con- 
 stantly called in; nothing that does not agree with it 
 and stand its test is to be accepted. It is not yielded 
 to, but insisted on ; it is more, its use, freedom, enjoy- 
 ment more. The putting it away was means, not end ; 
 nor was there any real good until it was wholly and 
 more than wholly restored. Its first presence was an 
 evil ; its restoration was the sign of the evil being past. 
 (For the intellect has had to deal with the senses as 
 well as the moral nature : it has had the same problem, 
 and we see how it has dealt with it. How plain the 
 parallel of the perceptive " impression " in the mental 
 life, and the sensuous " pleasure " in the moral.) We 
 will have all those pleasures back that ever were that 
 were not themselves less pleasure and not steal to them 
 furtively, and with shame and reproach ; but insist upon 
 them, even for the sake of Tightness. Be slaves to plea-
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 235 
 
 sure and you must put it away : know how to use it and 
 it is absolutely free. 
 
 This is the proclamation : Good has nothing to do 
 with putting away pleasure. Come in therefore, you 
 pleasure-led people, and claim goodness as your pos- 
 session. If there is any reason in a man for his putting 
 away pleasure in order to be good, that means evil in 
 him : let him repent. Let him repent and become a 
 new creature. 
 
 So it is not that regard to self alone first is any wrong, 
 any more than accepting sense-impressions alone first is 
 any wrong ; still less that the care of self should be put 
 aside or counted a thing in any way better not to be ; it 
 is only that as sense by being alone it is itself falsified, 
 and made to be contrary to its own nature. In science 
 it is not good for sense-impressions to be alone ; in life it 
 is not good for care of self to be alone. The care of self 
 the utmost enjoyment of pleasures and energy in secur- 
 ing them is not acting for self, except by absence of 
 the regard for others. (Even as sense is not illusion, 
 except by absence of the operation of the intellect.) 
 That absence makes the care of self and pleasure to be, 
 against its nature, for self. So what we have to do is to 
 take note of this ; to see that we are altering it and 
 making it an evil by this omission ; and that that is all. 
 And if it be imagined that it cannot be changed, there is 
 the falsifying of sense by absence of the intellect, alike 
 to show us that it must have been, and that it not 
 only may, but must, cease, and how. 
 
 And in the problem of astronomy the moral process is 
 beautifully imaged. There was the sense alone in the 
 absolute assumption of the earth's rest ; there the intellect
 
 236 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 worked on this assumption with immense labour and 
 vast success. And then the question was forced on men : 
 Ought not the intellect to come in at the, beginning, to 
 have a part in determining our thought respecting the 
 earth's rest ? Then these other laborious and most un- 
 satisfactory exercises of it are not necessary. 
 
 This is what sets the soul on fire the union of good- 
 ness and pleasure. It is a new possibility, a hope we 
 never saw before, a means whereby all may be brought 
 into goodness. For what is it now that makes the 
 " bad " those commonly accounted bad, and made to be 
 so but the hold on them of pleasure ? And this is 
 necessarily so while goodness is bound up with not- 
 pleasure. But if it be not, then clearly there is no 
 reason for the hold of pleasure to even tend to badness. 
 It is what genius shows : goodness separated from not- 
 pleasure, coming down to dwell upon the earth, taking 
 up her abode with pleasure, and with those whose life is 
 in her. 
 
 To degrade pleasure is to degrade woman. That is, 
 her nature claims self not first ; and her will will come 
 to claim it too. So that, while by her nature always she 
 has been the embodied opposition to the rule of self, by 
 her will, too, she should choose and say : " Let pleasure 
 no more be made worse than pain ; for / am pleasure. 
 Let self be no more first ; that I may no more have to 
 blush because my name is Joy." She was made one with 
 pleasure that she might rescue it. Nothing less than 
 this can she claim when once she sees why pleasure is 
 accounted lower than pain, and what it means to her. It 
 cannot fall short in the end, for she is pleasure, and with 
 pleasure her life is bound up. She must raise pleasure
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 237 
 
 to the perfect height of good, or sink with it. She must 
 say to man : Find how not to have to put away pleasure, 
 or put away me with it. And she carries the secret in 
 her soul ; in her body the demand ; in her heart the 
 fulfilment. She need not go into far-off regions to find 
 the art ; no need to ascend into heaven to bring it down 
 to earth ; it is written in her own bosom. The kingdom 
 of heaven the secret open from the first is within her. 
 
 There is a new goodness : not having reason to put 
 away pleasure. It is but the expression of man's feeling 
 now ; his practical deed taking words. It is but saying : 
 Let us have our morals according to our action, and be 
 what we are. Let us see what we are saying by our 
 actions, and come forth and claim our place also in the 
 world ; let us have our share in it ; not utter the words 
 of other men, which our acts wholly disown ; and which 
 therefore while in them they were sublime, in ns are 
 merely absurd. Let us, too, have our share in the world, 
 and make it bear the impress also of our life. One can 
 see the reason of our inconsistency, and how it came : but 
 why should it continue ? 
 
 Man is now acting that there is no reason in him for 
 putting away pleasure, but inconsistently, weakly, every 
 way, because his thoughts do not correspond. But they 
 must, and will ; one or other must be ; either his thoughts 
 will come to correspond with his actions, or his actions 
 will go back to correspond with his thoughts. One or 
 other will certainly be. Either the putting away of plea- 
 sure will return, or he will see consciously, and mould 
 all his life accordingly : there must be no reason in me for 
 pleasure being put away. 
 
 There is one command : Do not make pleasure worse
 
 238 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 than pain ; come under God's law, and within possibility 
 of heaven, where all is pleasure. What a splendid thought 
 of man's heaven was : " The time is coming when pleasure 
 shall not be worse to me than pain ; when all being better 
 in its absence shall be gone." It is only spoilt by his 
 taking the death of the body to bring it. 
 
 In truth the law of man's action is given of course in 
 the becoming instinctive of things first done with effort, 
 this ceasing of the moral is but recognising that law in 
 another region ; it could not fail to be there. So now 
 that we consciously carry out a process we have recog- 
 nised only in physiology before must it not give us a 
 new knowledge ? 
 
 It is being " automatically " moral. Now do not the 
 automatic processes come by a taking off, or rather a 
 falling off, of the attention from the action, and its fixing 
 wholly on the object ? The mechanism having, as it were, 
 been made complete, there comes a restoration of the 
 original (the truly " natural ") way of action, without 
 regard or attention except to the object. (This surely 
 is the law of service.) And the time is come when the 
 impulse to recall that first natural mode of action comes ; 
 that marks the completion of the process. And here we 
 see a meaning in the law that attention directed to a part 
 or its action modifies it ; through this the " completion of 
 the mechanism " is achieved. That is the same as, in the 
 moral, the development of the power by restraint. 
 
 Now in the moral it comes thus : we do for others, but 
 first only the not pleasurable thing ; this enables us to act 
 for others wholly, not regarding whether pleasure or not. 
 Is there a parallel to this in the organic ? Must not the 
 attention directed to the action, in the very fact of it, 
 have an effect equivalent to this, insisting, as it were, on
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 239 
 
 effort ? This seems quite visible indeed, only that which 
 is effort is perceivable by attention ; so " attending " to a 
 bodily action will necessarily have this effect of keeping in 
 it too much effort. It is surely perfectly parallel to the 
 moral attending to our actions which keeps them to refus- 
 ing pleasure. One sees how effort is kept in the action 
 by attention directed to it ; self- virtue demands to be 
 effortful, and so is disadjusted to the object. And no- 
 thing but taking the attention off the action, and letting 
 it fall wholly to the object, can make the effort fall out. 
 
 So by attention, causing effort to be (attention answer- 
 ing to the desire for goodness) that is, restraint the 
 structure, the life is altered ; and then the first natural 
 action is restored. It is simply a correction of the pre- 
 miss. And here we see again a true " instinct," operat- 
 ing without its conditions being fulfilled ; and suppressed 
 to be restored. For the effort stage, the attention is 
 simply the suppression j its characters are given in that. 
 
 Now in morals we wish to stay in this effort-stage ; we 
 shrink from the becoming automatic, not seeing what it is 
 for, not seeing the new activities which Nature has for 
 us, and for which this is a condition. And, as we see by 
 this reluctance, the very effort itself fails, and the stage of 
 suppression is prolonged till it is utterly undermined, but 
 also made more perfect. But this is what genius is it 
 is automatically moral. Its attention is taken off its 
 action and fixed on the object, and so the natural impulse 
 is restored. In it we see a thing done with effort become 
 automatic, and how it shows again man as " one body." 
 How should the individual elements of a body, if they 
 were conscious, have any direct consciousness of forming 
 one? They could only learn it by witnessing its evi- 
 dence in the parts they played. It is automatically moral, 
 and that is its power. Then see the promise to man :
 
 24 o THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 a new power, the very power of genius, stands waiting 
 for him. His preparation is achieved ; let him but no 
 more make pleasure worse than pain, and all this which 
 has absorbed his power shall be automatic straightway, 
 and the genius-work of man shall be seen. 
 
 It is not good for anything to be alone not even for 
 God Himself. This is what Christ did for men in His 
 day. God stood alone to them (and standing alone is 
 standing in antagonism) ; He showed them how to have 
 Him no more alone. So we look at the individual alone, 
 and cannot see. The individual relations are of utmost 
 value they cannot be over-estimated but to have them 
 alone is not to have them truly. Looking at them alone 
 we cannot understand. 
 
 And so, will it not be well when every vestige of the 
 feeling of love being for one alone is absorbed and made 
 implicit in a truer feeling ? This is the universal error 
 we are prone to. Our having the feeling, so far from 
 proving it true, shows that in this we tend to the same 
 falsity, as in all else losing the very thing we seek by 
 making it alone. (But it is the necessary suppression, it 
 is the character of the stage when the thought is upon 
 the action). This is visible in art too : the self-rights 
 painting is having things alone. That which we put 
 alone we fail to have. And so does painting show us 
 true thinking also. 
 
 And is not the scientific interpretation of nature based 
 on the fact that in her nothing is alone ? Always with 
 everything, every law, every force, are present others ; 
 nothing is alone, and her life depends on it. Take any 
 force alone it is death. 
 
 And, by the by, does this suggest the difference to us 
 of the organic and inorganic ? In the inorganic are forces
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 241 
 
 or processes seemingly alone ? But is it not that in the 
 organic we perceive more partially, and see things alone 
 by not perceiving the things that are with them ? Is the 
 non-living by a non-perceiving ? 
 
 Who, looking at the days of decaying Rome, would 
 have thought man capable of such a life as was about to 
 come ; of such restraint accepted ? Does it seem really 
 one bit more unlikely that he should now be capable of 
 a life that means no restraint of passion ? 
 
 Then may it not have been the case that at one time 
 the surroundings were such that celibacy was truly the 
 good thing ? (Paul seems to imply as much in his judg- 
 ment.) So that this good meant more restraint of passion. 
 Then did it come to mean less, the surroundings altering 
 so that celibacy was no more good but evil ? And so a 
 right with less restraint of passion came : man one step 
 nearer to Nature. And now, by altering of the surround- 
 ings yet again, is still less restraint made the good, 
 and man called to be truer to his nature still ? Is it a 
 continuous process ? 
 
 Keep the right order : the change in the woman's 
 relation is the power ; not the thing aimed at, but the 
 means. The aim is the change in the life, in the very 
 seeing of right and wrong, in the whole choice of good. 
 
 The true way to study men or " character " the true 
 thought of them, is not, as is supposed and attempted, as 
 of so many positive things co-existing, but inversely to 
 this. It is to study man, man as the only existence, as 
 one, and to see the individuals as negations ; as forms or 
 modes or presentations of that unity marked by negation, 
 or limits : the " individual " as the absence. So to see
 
 242 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 
 
 all as manifestations of humanity, as instruments of it, 
 showing us nothing of themselves, but revealing by their 
 apparent activities the true activity and life of man. I 
 cannot say this as it should be ; but I feel it will be 
 done ; and then, and not before, there will be some true 
 knowledge and understanding of men. 
 
 And here the idea of free-will as a negative belongs 
 again ; whatever surely is presented as an " action " of 
 the individual is but appearance : it is not that. That is 
 negation and cannot truly act ; the fact is still some 
 act of man's ; seen by us as if it were an act of the 
 individual. 
 
 To the monks was given the task of working out the 
 problem : " You must not pursue pleasure ; " to us the 
 problem : " You must not put pleasure away." How 
 evident it is : this is the problem : " You must neither 
 pursue pleasure, nor put it away ; you must deny, not 
 passion, but self." (And self is double - faced.) Of 
 course ; pleasure must not determine ; what can but what 
 is wanted ? Only let pleasure be put aside from deter- 
 mining, and must not service come in and take its place ? 
 
 Then if man's last task has been to solve the problem : 
 " You must not put pleasure away," how well he has 
 been aided, how adapted the means he has been given. 
 See how exactly suited the culture of science has been, 
 with its inevitable effects, alike upon the intellect and 
 upon the desires. Is there not plain reason that it 
 should have been reserved until this era, an exact adjust- 
 ment and adaptation in the progress ? 
 
 Beautiful in this aspect it is to notice how the intel- 
 lectual and moral progress have been related ; the one 
 giving the very conditions for the other. While the 
 conditions for not putting sense away in thought were
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 243 
 
 being fulfilled, the putting away of pleasure was worked 
 out ; and when sense was put in its right place then 
 science arose, inevitably, and the moral problem then 
 had changed too and became to learn how not to have 
 to put away pleasure ; and science was above all the 
 means : the very instrument had been provided. Has 
 there not been this mutual adaptation all through ? Are 
 not the moral relations also those adapted to furnish the 
 conditions for the intellectual process ? As visibly the 
 moral dark age gives the very conditions for science. 
 
 Then, also, as there has been the perfect adaptation for 
 our moral task, so also was there not for every task before ? 
 Were not the very instruments and powers provided also 
 for those who had to put away pursuing pleasure ? 
 
 Has there not been the very same series of problems 
 for man in his thought-life too ? The command on him 
 is here also : You must not follow sense, you must not 
 (have to) put away sense. (That is, you must receive it 
 freely without being ruled by it. Substitute " pleasure " 
 for " sense," and how plainly the two laws are one.) So 
 the Greeks had the problem: You must not follow 
 "sense;" the "dark ages" the problem: You must not 
 put away sense. And how plainly the last task was the 
 hardest, the cruellest, though leading to the perfect 
 relief; how easy their solution when they saw it ; how 
 simple their " rule of pleasure and its rightness." Yet 
 how painful to reach it. Their task, as ours, the 
 hardest. 
 
 And might we see exact adaptations here also, as in 
 the making ready science for the problem of not putting 
 pleasure away ? What helps and instruments and exactly 
 adjusted conditions were there ? May we trace these in 
 the corresponding states of moral progress? As, for 
 example, did not the awakening of the religious feelings
 
 244 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 present the very means by which sense came into the 
 intellectual life, and refused any more to be put away ? 
 
 Our license of pleasure answers to the ascetics' self- 
 torture. It bears the same relation to the task it has to do. 
 They had to deliver man from following pleasure, and they 
 did it with perverted, mischievous refusal of it ; we have 
 to deliver man from the other form of the rule of self, 
 from putting away pleasure, and we also do our part in 
 the like way, in perverted, mischievous pursuit of it. So 
 our license is truly what their asceticism was, the work 
 done but with a negation in it. (They were right to 
 put away pleasures, but they put away the wrong ones 
 with the right; we are right to consent to pleasures, 
 but we consent to the wrong ones with the right. It is 
 one ignorance, one not-seeing, in both ; not seeing that 
 the claim of service draws the line ; overlooking it and 
 its right to rule, because self was in the eye ; that 
 is, because the eye was closed and did not see ; because 
 blindness was there.) So our license answers to the old 
 bodily asceticism, is its other side, is a partly false 
 opposition to self-righteousness, as theirs was a partly 
 false opposition to self-indulgence. (And it has been 
 plain before how our license is ascetic also ; is the very 
 asceticism of our fathers, but carried another step; a 
 soul-asceticism.) Our pleasure-indulgence is as their 
 pleasure-refusal both are self against others' needs. 
 (And, by the bye, do we not call in Nature as com- 
 manding our asceticism, and they called in God as com- 
 manding theirs ; and both with truth in part ; the service 
 part alike of the abstaining and the taking is God's 
 command and Nature's ; for these are one.) We have 
 complementary tasks, and these opposites are alike their 
 doing. And so also do not their asceticism and our 
 license have the same history ? Both so inconsistent, so
 
 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 245 
 
 constantly breaking down ; it is too heavy a tax, too 
 pleasure-destroying and passion-restraining, and the true 
 work is done in its failing. 
 
 One can see the parallel farther : the Greeks put away 
 sense (in thought) and followed pleasure ; the dark ages 
 succumbed to sense and put away pleasure. The dark 
 ages put away pleasure ; this last time succumbs to 
 pleasure. Now the Greek period was short, the dark age 
 long, but may it not be the converse with pleasure ; the 
 period of its putting away long, of succumbing to it short ? 
 may it not soon end ? For it is over when once we see. 
 
 And how plain the error too, how natural. There 
 comes a voice from heaven, as it were, to man : " Do not 
 follow sense," and he replies : " No, I will put it infinitely 
 far away." And then the same with pleasure. It did 
 not occur to him to take into account how it affected others. 
 This is the difference of death and life. It seemed to him 
 that of course it must turn on pleasure. That feeling must 
 come from the not-regard to others. 
 
 In this course of partial opposites we see how a nega- 
 tion expresses itself. In one sense may we not say that 
 the errors never need have been ? Why might not man 
 have had science two thousand years ago ? If it had 
 but occurred to him to say : " Why put away sense ? 
 why not use it ? Our eyes would deceive us if we 
 followed them ; but we do not shut them, we find out 
 what truth they mean." Might we not have had science 
 four thousand years ago, if we could but have thought so 
 simply ? And so when man found he could not follow 
 pleasure, might he not have said : " Because I cannot 
 follow pleasure, why should that mean that I must put it 
 away ? Why should we not think of what is good to be, 
 is useful to all, or to others, and do that ? Why should 
 our not following pleasure mean our putting it away ?
 
 246 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 We should follow service." Why should not this have 
 been said when first man found he could not follow 
 pleasure ? And so, alike in thought and in life, all the 
 long loss and struggle been escaped ? And then again 
 when the body-asceticism fell, and putting away pleasure 
 was banished again, why should not man have thought 
 again of service and made it his guide, instead of throw- 
 ing himself compassless upon the sea of pleasant things, 
 with no guide to tell him why he must refuse some, and 
 must not refuse others ? Why, when life was so fluent, 
 was it let to encase itself in a hard crust again, and still 
 refusing service, refuse it in a double form more intense 
 even than before ; so that the law of service, when it 
 comes, must come again with fracture, upheaval, bursting 
 of chains ? In the very question is the answer : it is 
 development ; this hard crust is the very means of the 
 more perfect life. Man's life needed to become more 
 within. 
 
 But when we ask why there has been the long progress 
 of loss and strife, instead of man having said respecting 
 pleasure : " Why take such trouble, instead of thinking 
 what is service and doing that ? " is not the answer 
 visible ? It was done because it was the trouble ; because 
 man was such that taking trouble must have seemed the 
 good thing to him. That is the fruit of having self 
 first. And here we see the reason of the long and 
 troubled course ; of the long wandering in the wilderness 
 even when close to the promised land. It was that 
 having self first that has kept back even man's intellectual 
 progress ; things seeming better to him because more 
 troublesome, made to be better by being trouble. So 
 sense was put away instead of used ; it was a finer thing 
 for man to rise above it; finer because harder, more 
 laborious. Evidently it was harder, for we see as soon as
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 247 
 
 man relaxed his effort he fell under its power again. 
 And then was shown the evil of having tried putting it 
 away instead of using it ; it came in its self-form as a 
 tyrant, degrading, destroying, without the conditions of 
 its coming fulfilled. So that it could come also but 
 partially, and its true use could follow only after struggle, 
 nay, after defeat on man's part, and when the very last 
 strongholds from which he had endeavoured to exclude it 
 could be maintained no more. 
 
 Again : the Greeks put away following sense, and for 
 ever. Done by them it was done for all for us. The 
 mere following it could not come back ; and though its 
 being forced on man made a dark age, yet mere follow- 
 ing it could return no more, and so soon as ever the 
 putting it away was no more possible at all, then the 
 dark age ended, and ended in science. Then there came 
 neither following sense nor putting it aside that is, using 
 it. The not-following it, done once, was done for ever, 
 and needed no more doing. With the history of Greece 
 before him (and the effect of her intellectual life within 
 too, which doubtless was still more), man could not fall 
 again into mere following sense ; in the person of his 
 fathers of long ago he had already done that task. And 
 this is even so in respect to pleasure. The ascetics have 
 done for us, in respect to pleasure, what the Greeks did 
 in respect to sense for our fathers. They put away 
 merely following it for ever : no more put away in 
 spite of all its tyranny in this dark age it is also no 
 more followed ; the law of service rules. 
 
 Here we see, then, a significance in the revival of 
 classical learning in Europe : did it not bring in the very 
 element wanted, recalling the other " opposite " the not- 
 following sense ? So Copernicus found this very thing in 
 it sense not followed. And when that was brought back,
 
 248 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 science came ; for with it then there was that which it had 
 lacked, sense not put away. So this going back to the 
 ancients was the thing most perfectly adapted for the change 
 that had to come ; it united, to sense not put away, sense 
 not followed. And in respect to life is it not visibly the 
 same ? The parallel to the revival of the classic litera- 
 ture would be the thought and interest of man returning 
 to the ascetic life. And is it not plainly so ? Could 
 any tendency be better marked ? And with it goes the 
 interest in the East which has been ascetic from the 
 earliest known times. So here we have the elements ; 
 the ancient not-following pleasure coming back with our 
 succumbing to it. The very condition is renewed : our 
 father's work and our own toil and burden together ; that 
 is, pleasure not followed and not put away ; no more 
 ruling and determining our life. What else is possible 
 but service ? It means pleasure made servant and used. 
 That is to the soul as science to the thought. 
 
 We cannot fight selfishness in that contracted space 
 which is given by putting away pleasure. Attack it 
 and see. It is not even assailed yet ; it is consented to, 
 and because it means putting away pleasure. That is 
 how it has retained its dominion so long ; it has used 
 man's passion for putting away pleasure to shield itself. 
 As if it had said : " What ! put away me put away 
 having the eye on self; it will mean your having more 
 pleasure. How can you do that ? " 
 
 How intensely the feeling is in us that selfishness 
 means doing what is pleasant is well betrayed by the 
 expressions so constantly used (even in joke sometimes) 
 about selfishness as shown in those whose life is given to 
 what they most like. It is worth considering how this 
 feeling comes ; for it is not clear that it always has been so,
 
 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 249 
 
 or was likely to be. Has there been always the confusion 
 in men's minds between selfishness and pleasure that 
 there is now even in the body-ascetic ages ? When 
 there was a distinct passion for pain it hardly could have 
 been so. And in Greece before the consciousness had 
 been directed to it, and pleasure simply came naturally, 
 and the eyes were fixed on the relations and uses of 
 things, how could there have been the feeling that plea- 
 sure and selfishness went specially together ? Shall we 
 not find that truly it is a feeling peculiar to this period ? 
 It belongs to the morally dark age, and is one of the 
 powers which make and keep it so ; coming with the 
 deliberate taking pleasure for self by the good ; making 
 the torture and tension of it ; forcing on the human soul 
 the belief that it is condemned to selfishness, which is the 
 black cloud that hangs over modern life. But how it 
 breaks and is gone. Man is condemned to pleasure ; but 
 that does not mean to selfishness. It means the very 
 contrary : that he must be free. Let him look at those 
 pleasures which are service and take them. 
 
 Man in his thought of right in things is left in per- 
 petual wrong. It is a right that refuses claims, and so 
 is at once mischievous and impotent. For that is the 
 character of the false right or law of things the tradi- 
 tion always. It is potent to forbid good, impotent to 
 prevent evil ; it makes even what were good to be done 
 falsely done, and a thing of mischief. For Nature changes 
 her claims perpetually, and so let man try ever so well, 
 ever so truly, he is still always too late. 
 
 And does not this suggest, again, how human life 
 truly seen may be perfect in goodness ? Is it not a 
 perpetual attempt to fulfil the law, to obey the claims, 
 and only always too late ? But that is no wrong. And
 
 250 THE COMING OF THE LAW: 
 
 the evil and failure, the breaking of the laws, are they 
 not simply the process of the new adaptation ? It is still 
 following the claims, only with an interval too long, and 
 with resistance, because man does not know that that is 
 the law. 
 
 Man cannot fulfil the true claims, for Nature is per- 
 petually changing them, and before he has adjusted his 
 life to any, she has already made them different, so that 
 he is always with his life aiming at a response to a right 
 that was before, the right of fifty or five hundred years 
 ago. And this must be the case so long as he thinks 
 of right in things. He makes particular solutions of his 
 problems, and his problem is ever changing, is another 
 before his solution is gained. What he wants is a uni- 
 versal solution, an algebra for the problems of his life ; 
 not special solutions, but a universal one. Is not the 
 algebra for life this : Follow claims ? An algebra duty, 
 or right (the #), means not some special thing, but 
 " claims," a thing with no fixed meaning, to which 
 Nature will affix her own value ever. 
 
 The law of traceable service commands away alike self- 
 indulgence and self-righteousness : it leaves neither corner 
 for the not-regard to creep into. And by being indif- 
 ferent to things it lays an absolute command upon the 
 heart ; it can be obeyed only in act, in spirit, because no 
 things are available. This power it gets by being not on 
 things ; through making them nothing it is a spiritual 
 power. If we could have seen beforehand should we not 
 have seen, as evident, that what we needed was to get a 
 law to which things were indifferent ; to which, there- 
 fore, if any obedience were given, it must be given in act 
 or spirit ? We should have seen that our effort to attain 
 things that is, always certain deeds was an effort in
 
 .THE COMING OF THE LAW. 251 
 
 the wrong direction ; one fatal to our own true aim, 
 indeed, our own true wish ; that we were preventing our 
 law from coming on the soul, keeping away our own deli- 
 verance, and that what we needed to bring the power 
 on the act within was exactly the disentangling of the 
 law from things, that it might demand some other fulfil- 
 ling. Is there not in this a light again on " an infinite 
 mystery or power with no thing in it." By having 
 no thing in it any more the law becomes an infinite 
 power. 
 
 There is such visible leading of man by Nature, but 
 may there not be a different thought of it ? Is it cer- 
 tain that the Being meant by Nature, who leads and 
 trains man, does " know " him, and really foresees what 
 he will do and what is needed for him ? Why may it 
 not be that she is as it were inexperienced, and does not 
 wholly understand how he will mistake, how falsely he 
 thinks and feels ? May she not be astonished, perhaps, 
 and say : " How could I know that you would be so silly 
 as to cling to a thing when it had become mischievous, 
 simply because, having been service, it had been ' right ' 
 before ? How was I to have foreseen you would have 
 fallen into so transparent a mistake as not to know that I 
 must change when the need was for change and that 
 your right had already changed when I had ? Did you 
 not know you were to follow me ? " 
 
 So the command was : " Do not know good and evil ; 
 have no rigid rights ; in the day you have them you will 
 die." We cannot " know good and evil " in a world 
 that changes; nothing is right, nothing is wrong; all 
 things are right and wrong by turns. (And there is one 
 thing in man's life where the right is rigid and we see
 
 252 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 that there is nothing comparable to it ; we see what 
 comes of it, not only positively but comparatively.) It 
 is when not-regard gets embodied in our sense of duty 
 which is a rigid right turned on self that it kills. 
 
 This is what is amiss with man (and this alone) : a 
 not-regard in him, whereby he lays himself under false 
 laws. So things that would be good to be (all of them 
 delights) cannot be. (And he has the feeling that good- 
 ness must be against pleasure.) For a chief instance 
 there is that refusal of good of the sight of beauty 
 marked so long ago as the very first sign of evil in him. 
 This is what he does : he lays himself under false laws 
 forbidding good to be, at once good and delight ; and in 
 this instance too we see its fruits emphatically marked in 
 the intense lustfulness of man's life, due in so great a 
 part to that forbidding ; the intense direction of his 
 thoughts to sensuality by means of the very thing he sets 
 up as purity. 
 
 This is the one perception that I have gained ; that 
 man is not above Nature but below her. And it makes 
 all things new. Not that it is a difference of feeling or 
 even of thought in its truest and deepest aspect. It is 
 the same as very many others would say, but they are 
 held because they are compelled to think of Nature as if 
 she were truly what she is to our impression ; they have 
 not learnt to see clearly, and to feel that the phenomenon 
 is a different thing from the fact. The fact stands there 
 before us, the true relations come, and all is made new. 
 And with it comes a new right, and a new goodness (not 
 only a new earth, but a new heaven too a new thought 
 of good). Man's goodness, his perfectness, his aim, 
 changes from what it was ; the restless struggle sinks to 
 peace ; it is no more in being oh, the hard task, of
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 253 
 
 course only possible to be achieved in " another " world 
 uulike Nature and above her, but in being simply as she 
 is. The very thought is rest. If any place have been 
 thought of rest, here it is and now. 
 
 So one can see that the thought of our goodness being 
 possible only in another world, must have come from our 
 thinking that it must be in being different from Nature. 
 That needs no other source. And thus also it becomes 
 plain what an effect upon man's whole moral life and his 
 religious thought has come from his believing that the 
 phenomenon existed. That has compelled the thought 
 of goodness to be in nonconformity to Nature ; that has 
 compelled the thought that it can only really be in " an- 
 other world." How many other thoughts has not that 
 compelled ; how much of our whole moral life and theo- 
 logical opinions have not really their origin in this of the 
 necessity of "another world" before we can be truly 
 good ? Might it not have given rise to nearly all ? But 
 if our goodness is to be in conformity to Nature, in being 
 according to it, nay, in being simply determined by it, 
 why should it not be here ? Here is the very place for 
 it, and why should it be hard ? 
 
 Not acting for self is nothing but giving due weight 
 to all things ; and is it not strange that this should be 
 thought impossible ? It is thought possible, held incum- 
 bent, that men should do their duty, love God, obey, 
 perform every task of right, but this a thing so simple, 
 merely duly regarding all is impossible. When we 
 look, it is evident that what destroys our life (binding 
 on it an accepted rule of self with all it brings ; laws 
 that cannot follow good, and which Nature will not 
 enforce), is merely a metaphysical notion ; not any moral 
 thing at all, but an idea, a theory about what " self "
 
 254 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 means, and what acting for it is ; the thought that it 
 means some positive power or motive or act, that not 
 doing it would be disregarding something or putting it 
 aside. This notion it is that binds us ; not desire, not 
 tendency to evil. For even let it be granted there are 
 some, even many, who would not obey the law of service ; 
 why should that prevent others from adopting it ? The 
 case is the same with the laws we do adopt ; many 
 people do not obey them, but break them, and we cannot 
 help it. 
 
 It might well be said that among our people there are 
 many of minds so inert and dull they could never be made 
 to understand a law of motive ; that the idea of the deed 
 differing with different motives, and there being no right 
 but in that, would be simple confusion to them, and send 
 their moral nature merely to shipwreck. And it might 
 well be that the law of service would demand that while 
 this is so we should all accept a common law, and not 
 some take the better, leaving the others merely in hope- 
 less darkness. This might be perfectly true ; but then the 
 true law should be recognised as the true, and aimed at. 
 That would be enough. 
 
 Against all these terrible violations of good is there 
 any remedy to be proposed with any real hope of success ? 
 I say there is : to restore to service its rightful power by 
 forbidding , right or anything in the name of right to 
 trample on it. A limited and maimed authority it can- 
 not even keep : try making it absolute and unbounded. 
 Pronounce it absolute, and clear away all the parasites 
 that have claimed the right to check and limit it. Here 
 is the rightful king ; he has been a minor hitherto, and
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 255 
 
 feeble hands have borne the sceptre in his stead. Give 
 him his place and see. 
 
 Indulging passion or obeying impulse is an art ; nay, 
 is it not the art ? Whenever it exists in an eminent and 
 inborn way it is called genius ; that is, the art of indulg- 
 ing passion ; of knowing, or discovering, impulse. License 
 is not indulgence of passion ; it is restraint. That is 
 why it generates its other form restraint for the sake of 
 goodness. So would not the criminals accept the law of 
 service ? It is indulgence of passion. For is it not as 
 certain that mans true impulses must answer to human 
 wants, as that the appetite must express the bodily need ? 
 But the eye must be off pleasure, as we see in every 
 child. And if it be said : But man is diseased ; may it 
 not be said that the having the eye off pleasure is being 
 restored to health ? 
 
 Let men -see that a law of things will not do, and they 
 will see that their task is to be free from the necessity of 
 having one. They will set about that task, to which 
 man has so clear a prompting, but in which he has so 
 often failed, and thinks he has given up. He will dis- 
 cover his powers : he has grown. What more constant in 
 a growing man than trying and failing, and finding after- 
 wards that he can do ? 
 
 Do we not need a sort of adjustment of our thought of 
 man to our thought of the earth ? Recognising the enor- 
 mous sweep of its progressive changes, shall we not learn 
 to have a similar feeling respecting man ? We have been 
 much too hasty in our feeling, as if apything like an end 
 had been come to in respect to him. In this respect the 
 feeling given by the thought of his development is a 
 great gain.
 
 256 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 It is strange that there should be still on any subject 
 a confusion between liking to do a thing and doing it be- 
 cause we like. What comes of it is a law which prevents 
 the most natural of all things from being done most 
 natural because it gives the freest play to all the promptings 
 and impulses of our nature namely, simply doing the 
 things when they are of good, and leaving them when 
 they are not ; going among them, as it were, and gather- 
 ing the ripe fruits and leaving the rest. In truth, is not 
 the law of service absolutely as this ? Men like gather- 
 ing and eating fruit, but they do not like a sour taste, 
 and they leave the unripe fruit accordingly and take the 
 ripe. Is there " restraint of passion " in eating only ripe 
 fruit? Yet it restrains the passion for gathering fruit 
 and eating it. 
 
 Then suppose a law (because men had eaten much un- 
 ripe fruit and kept on doing it very foolishly) that no 
 fruit should be gathered except on certain days, ripeness 
 not to be considered, would not a most unnatural eating 
 of unripe fruit be the result ? How simply the law of 
 service answers to eating ripe fruit; ripe answering really 
 to all the desires and tendencies. The pleasures that are 
 service are fitted to us in every way. (For how strong 
 man's passion for service is, is visible plainly even now ; 
 perhaps even now most plainly.) If man had full liberty 
 to try the contrast, to choose between the pleasures that 
 are service and the pleasures that are not, to look out 
 for that quality as marking fitness, testing and comparing 
 between the two and studying whether its absence did 
 not mean unfitness, would not his choice be certain ? 
 But if things that g have this quality are forbidden, how 
 can he even know that he ought to make the com- 
 parison ? (He cannot even ask himself what he likes.)
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 257 
 
 All this time we have been trying to enforce for our- 
 selves a law Nature could not enforce ; might we not try 
 the experiment (say only for one century ; it is not long) 
 of a law that Nature can enforce, and see if Nature will 
 do it ? Can we know till we try ? Will not indeed 
 the experimental method the method of verification be 
 extended to a larger scale ? 
 
 This world is a discipline ; morals are a training : true. 
 All that can be said of that is accepted. Now the ques- 
 tion comes : Is it a discipline and training only for another 
 world ; or is it also to have its fruit in this ? Is the human 
 race to see and enter into its results here, or is it to be only 
 in another state ? (This question is almost the same as : Are 
 its results to be only individual, or also to include the race ?) 
 Observe that unless the results include the casting out of 
 not-regard, they cannot be of avail for any place. While 
 that continues, the work is not done, nor can be ; nor 
 can change of place, or condition, avail at all. But if 
 the result be or include the casting out of not-regard, 
 then this world is as suitable for it as any can possibly 
 be. Nay, there can be no world not suitable for it, not 
 demanding it ; there never can be a world, nor one con- 
 ceived, in which the casting out of not-regard becoming 
 true to the fact of it is not suitable. The fruit of the dis- 
 cipline must be one suitable to be reaped in this world. 
 It may be in another also ; but putting it off to another 
 is shutting the eyes. And as for the time, and whether 
 it be possible " yet ; " observe that it is a correcting of 
 the premiss. Now the time for that is always ; seeing 
 it wants doing is the time being come. There is no 
 other meaning in the time being come. The whole pro- 
 cess that is wanted before it is simply to enable men to 
 see. For only through doing a difficult task can he see ; 
 
 R
 
 258 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 and then the doing is bringing in an easier. So when he 
 sees it wants doing all is done. All the labour and toil are 
 for opening the eyes. 
 
 Man tries first to have one thing (not-regard indul- 
 gence), and he cannot, and then he tries to have a dif- 
 ferent one (not-regard restraint), and that he cannot also ; 
 though he meant the latter for all good, it will not be so. 
 (Indeed, he honestly meant both to be for good.) Thus, 
 for example, in respect to woman : there was the giving so 
 many to that great man, the king, secluding them with 
 such honour in such beautiful palaces, with every sort of 
 delight ; what could have seemed more exquisite ? Then 
 there was one woman to be strictly to one man ; what 
 could have seemed more honourable, beautiful, just, than 
 that ? And nothing will do : each is a fresh evil. What- 
 ever things he takes all go one course ; a course of evil too 
 great to be endured. What does it mean ? What but 
 this : that man must have no need to have any thing ; 
 but be free for all. It means that what that freedom 
 implies must be achieved within him. 
 
 There is one thing absolutely universal in man's life : 
 namely, that he has to give up everything that good and 
 right first lead him to. This is his difficulty, ever greater 
 and greater with his growing appreciation of good and 
 right, until it is understood, and then it is over. 
 
 In the facts of our life the needs, the demands of 
 service Nature provides us with all these things : a 
 revelation of God's will ; pleasure ; and restraint of passion. 
 Through ignoring service (or not regarding facts), man 
 had deprived himself of Nature's provision of these things 
 for him. She has brought them all and spread them out
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 259 
 
 before him, and he, shutting his eyes, has said : " But I 
 must have a revelation ; but I must have pleasure ; but 
 I must restrain my passions." He has had to make up 
 for himself each of them, because refusing them as God 
 placed them before him. Here is service : a call to 
 indulgence of passion, and a restraint on passion, both 
 in one. And man has made up " revelations " which set 
 him against his fellows, and make him think that the 
 value of his revelation is that others have it not ; pursues 
 his own pleasures and cannot trust them to Nature ; 
 insists on a goodness that shall be in restraining passion. 
 This is distrust of Nature. It is faith he wants. 
 
 Another goodness is at least conceivable ; instead of 
 this " restraint," or doing certain things, to walk straight 
 and simply on with the desire upon service with a 
 perfect heart so that no question of whether there be 
 pleasure or not need arise. This is conceivable. Why 
 should we not teach it ? How emphatic is the command 
 to teach the children aright! 
 
 But here come in two objections ; one that of the 
 Catholics (and those who insist on the ascetic thought of 
 good), that man's nature is corrupt, and needs repression, 
 for the sake of its discipline and internal effect, apart from 
 use ; and the other that of those who say that no enthu- 
 siasm of humanity is enough ; that we must be looking 
 to a larger end, and be seeking to serve God and be 
 devoting ourselves to Him, &c. 
 
 When man thought of "restraint of passion" as the good, 
 the fault was that he did not go deep enough ; that he 
 said it without seeing the meaning of his own words ; 
 contenting himself with restraint on the deeds and leaving
 
 2 6o THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 the whole true evil unremedied. The evil in our life is 
 that the restraint is not on the passion. 
 
 Or may it be that the man who first said : Why do 
 not men restrain their passions ? did truly mean restraint 
 of passion, and that only afterwards the meaning was 
 lost and restraint on the deeds put instead ? When it is 
 said now : Men should restrain their passions, the reply 
 should be : That is the very thing ; their desires should 
 be right, in order that there may be no restraint upon 
 their deeds. 
 
 There are two rights : one that consists in putting 
 away wrongness, the other in using it. We have not 
 seen this in respect to life. There is one right which 
 consists in doing certain things, another which consists in 
 being a certain person. And these two rights do and 
 must exhibit themselves in different deeds ; in refusing, 
 and in yielding to, needs. Here our confusion shows 
 itself; we tend to say: Yes, certainly; let us be such 
 persons ; that is the true right ; but still let us do the 
 things. But it cannot be (and here art holds us up) ; 
 being the person means yielding to the claims. It means 
 having nothing within us that can resist them. 
 
 It is not doing certain things, but doing in a certain 
 way. Any " things " can be done in the most different 
 ways ; whichever we hold fast to deeds or way of doing 
 we necessarily let the other vary. The force being put 
 on the one is not on the other. 
 
 Man is trying for a right at once too hard and too 
 poor ; too hard for him to attain ; too poor for God to 
 give him. A right that need not put away but can use 
 wrongness : this is the key to human life also. And the 
 true thought is that the wrongness is used, is a power ; that 
 it is not merely included, but that its including is the
 
 THE COMING OF THE LA IV. 261 
 
 power by which an effect is worked. In the fact of the 
 thing that has to be done being "wrong" (wrong done 
 in one way, and as done before) there is a power exerted 
 on the way of doing. It is wrongness used, and made into 
 a power; because, through the demand to include, it 
 demands to be made not wrong. It exerts so a power 
 like a leaven through the whole mass. By the fact of 
 this that has to be included being a wrongness, how 
 everything stands with a fresh relation, a fresh necessity, 
 upon it. 
 
 This is the evil : man has directed his efforts at good- 
 ness to his deeds and not to his being. So there have 
 been two stages quite plain : an age of effort the ascetic 
 age ; and our age, succeeding it, an age of exhaustion 
 and relaxation. Two stages, both inevitable ; both with 
 their advantages as well as with their fundamental wrong; 
 both plainly preparing for a state in which the funda- 
 mental wrong shall be escaped ; and the latter especially 
 being a visible preparation and approximation to it, 
 especially as it nears its end. And then besides these 
 two stages showing the effects of the wrong direction 
 of the effort, its mischief, its failure, and the consequent 
 relaxation and inertia besides these is there not visible 
 also a third state before these ; one in which the effort for 
 goodness at all has not in the same way arisen ? Then 
 here is a question full of interest : What is the meaning 
 of this effort for goodness, and of its arising ? What is 
 there in man that insures its coming ? In a word, what 
 is it? 
 
 Now the effort for goodness being directed to the deeds 
 instead of the being is simply one case of the phenomenal 
 put for the actual. And we see too, how the actual 
 goodness (the goodness of being) can only come by regard
 
 262 T'ffE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 to others ; it cannot be attained by effort. It can only 
 come by a ceasing from effort ; as we see in art. And 
 here how plain a light comes on the New Testament 
 writings; on the seeming contradiction, that we are 
 urged so to a true goodness and yet told we cannot 
 attain it by trying ; that God must work it within us or 
 it cannot be. Transfer it to the region of art, and how 
 simply it is seen ! We should say the very same about 
 every art right. For that is the right to attain to which 
 we are called, which alone is of any true good or of any 
 possible permanence ; yet we cannot attain it by effort ; 
 it must be " given " us ; worked in us without our doing ; 
 our attitude must be of receiving. We must be, for 
 it, to Nature, as we are called on to be to God for good- 
 ness. There we see " faith ; " the saving faith that 
 makes a man a new creature. And what is affirmed is 
 simply that living is the universal art, to which all men 
 are called, to which all shall be raised. Here in all art 
 we see the goodness to which men are called, but which 
 also must be given them. Our work is so to ask that 
 we may receive ; which is, simply, not to refuse. 
 
 There is a falsity in our very thought of selfishness. 
 If we look into it we certainly see that we include in it, 
 in some vague way, the desire for pleasure, the response 
 and reaction of the desire and the powers to that which is 
 the source of pleasure. But this is an intense mistake ; 
 this desire and reaction of the feeling towards pleasure is 
 not selfish ; it is part of the perfect good, of the true 
 normal power of Nature by which life is. What is 
 needed is that it should be universal. (Again, it is but 
 that the desire for pleasure too comes first in the self- 
 form. It comes as excluding, we want it as not- 
 excluding.) So far from this action towards pleasure being
 
 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 263 
 
 selfishness, selfishness is its absence ; only the absence of 
 it is selfishness ; that is, the want of response or desire 
 for pleasure or for good. The reaction of the feelings to 
 our own pleasure is part of the perfect good ; the only 
 evil is in its limit, that is, in its excluding. We want 
 it in a not-excluding form. For, indeed, the whole is 
 this : we need the response of desire for pleasure raised 
 from the form in which it excludes to that in which it 
 does not exclude ; simply the universal demand (that 
 which is the fluxion raised from physical to spiritual). 
 
 Not-regard is quite a different thing from selfishness ; 
 nor is Nature's demand : " Do not be selfish ; " but : 
 " Be true to the facts." 
 
 My one perception is this, that force must operate 
 according to the nature of force also in the moral world ; 
 that the continuous life of man is a dynamic thing. 
 
 What I see is simply the dynamic relations in human 
 life. But this is seeing it all as poetry ; it is poetry. 
 Then is all poetry that is truly poetry the same thing 
 essentially, little as it may look like it : the perception, 
 or feeling, rather, of the dynamic relations ? (It is this 
 above all that makes diverse things one.) If it were so 
 then it were one with science, which is also the percep- 
 tion of dynamic relations. And science too is one with 
 art ; so that all the three thus were one. 
 
 The coming of the law of service, how parallel it is to 
 the first introduction of law ! The very fact seems to 
 repeat itself. The very same lawlessness exists again, 
 only in another form ; the very same open defiance and 
 questioning even of the right of law. The very same
 
 264 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 
 
 chaos has come again, only in a different way. Again 
 the call rises up to heaven for law ; but for a different 
 law, and one to be established by a different means. 
 Not now by force ; or rather by a mightier force than 
 arms. 
 
 What a curious circle it is ! We find ourselves 
 having not-regard in us with a right which means 
 restraint of passion. Then this evidently implies some- 
 thing wrong. (Palpably it is an embodied wrongness ; 
 we must have the thought of a truer, better state when 
 right does not mean restraint ; and besides, where right 
 means that sin is sure to be ; goodness cannot be per- 
 fect.) So finding ourselves with this right which visibly 
 implies a wrongness, instead of looking for that which 
 makes the wrongness, and recognising it, and putting it 
 away, seeking a right which does not mean the presence of 
 a wrongness, instead of this, how curiously we say : " In 
 this world there is a wrongness ; it is inherent in it ; it 
 is an evil, inferior world. It is to another world we 
 must look for the true and perfect good." What an inertia 
 of thought it is ; and what a worse inertia of the soul it 
 brings, making it consent to rest in wrongness and evil, 
 and look for deliverance from it, not to a new life, to 
 becoming a new creature (with a new right therefore), 
 but to a mere passive change, to dying ! 
 
 Is not here a clear light on morals ? If men are not 
 thinking according to the fact there inevitably comes a 
 reductio ad absurdum, leading through intellectual and 
 practical mischiefs of every kind, and of utmost degree, 
 to the end that the thought is made true. So if men 
 are feeling falsely that is, if there is in men an emotional 
 consciousness not corresponding to the fact there must
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 265 
 
 follow a reductio ad dbsurdum, leading to utmost emotional 
 and practical mischief; and with the end that the feeling 
 is made true. In both cases alike this must be. The 
 false thought or feeling is in individuals, as it were, and 
 the results also, but it is in man that the process is worked 
 out. And this is an especial character of it ; namely, 
 that there comes a false truth, a false right ; truth and 
 right are made to mean what they do not mean. This is 
 an inevitable part of the process ; its most distinguishing 
 character ; from that indeed come the other characters ; 
 at least the evil and hurtful ones. Because having a 
 false truth or right of course brings refusing right; it 
 means a false law, and that means law refused, with all 
 its consequences, every conceivable complexity and ex- 
 treme of ill. Here then surely we see morals, and all 
 its history : a reductio ad dbsurdum of an emotional state 
 in man not answering to the fact. And as a matter of 
 fact is there not evidence that man does not feel himself 
 the mere individual we have formulated ourselves into ? 
 History has something to say on that point. See the 
 feeling which prompted early nations to treat whole 
 bodies or groups as responsible for each member, and to 
 accept it so, to regard it as right. The reason that man 
 breaks laws is that he makes false ones. But is not all 
 done when he knows the true law, that he must always 
 seek a perfect regard ? For it is not hard, but joy ; no 
 more to make false laws is to obey. 
 
 We see how mixing up the idea of pursuing pleasure 
 with that of " selfishness " perplexes us. We say (when, 
 for example, we speak of man's desire for the good of 
 woman, and the oneness of her heart with his) : " But 
 man is so selfish." And why ? " He is thinking of his 
 own selfish pleasure ; " as if these were the same. He
 
 266 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 
 
 may be thinking instead of his own selfish goodness. 
 His selfishness is merely that he is not regarding the 
 welfare of the other. And how does that come ? Is he 
 not taught it ? Nay, taught it for his goodness ? If we 
 ask whence comes this terrible, cruel not-regard, have 
 we far to look ? Do we need to take it as a primary 
 thing, capable of no tracing to its cause, and no explain- 
 ing ? In what men have been taught, and led into, is 
 there not a visible reason for its being ? 
 
 Regard to self first means that certain things must 
 not be done. Now man's plan is to keep regard to self 
 first and put away the things. And Nature comes 
 against it with inexorable demands. It means that he 
 must put away the regard first to self. This is what we 
 see as man's " moral life : " his effort to put regard to 
 self first and put away things ; that is, to have a different 
 life from Nature. In the ceasing of this we see simply 
 Nature overcoming man. We want a herald, as it were, 
 from man to Nature ; to go out to her with a white flag 
 and bear to her his submission, to tell her that she has 
 conquered, and that the war has ceased. He has tried 
 to poise his life differently from hers with self first 
 and to accept its consequences but he cannot any more. 
 What a pathetic folly is in that distinction he has drawn : 
 Nature ! it is mere matter and force, it does not matter 
 what Nature does ; but / am a moral being ; there are 
 certain things I must never do. " I am a moral being." 
 It means : " I have my eye on myself." 
 
 Man's sin is not that he does wicked things ; but that 
 he is such that he has to aim at a false right (so that his 
 very aim is kept off the true). And so Nature herself in 
 him works unrighteousness ; the natural powers themselves
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 267 
 
 in their action become agents of sin. It is so all through. 
 This is man's crime : that he becomes such, that, having 
 to seek a false right, Nature's very working in him 
 is sin. 
 
 So does not this seemingly great and unnatural thing 
 not having self first appear in quite a new light ? Is 
 not our thought of it itself a twisted or forced one, not the 
 natural idea, but one which is made artificial as it were by 
 our not having seen what it truly is ? So that we only 
 get the notion of its being self put aside, or anything to 
 do with self at all, by a curious inverted way of looking at 
 it; that it is simply the feeling of ' unity ^ almost the strongest 
 and first of all the human instincts or tendencies ; that by 
 which, above all others, all science and all art are made ; 
 one the baffling and putting aside of which is essentially 
 a state of violence and tension to the feeling of man in all 
 things. So that to think of it as a not having self first 
 as if it had anything to do with a self, or were the putting 
 aside of a tendency, &c. is to take the thing up accord- 
 ing to an entirely false seeming ; the fact being simply that 
 the putting it aside is a thing to which man is always 
 forced, and would never do without being forced ; that 
 this putting aside of the instinctive feeling of unity and 
 impulse to it has received the name of acting for self, 
 being really the putting aside of regard to facts, a closing 
 of the eyes, and checking of an impulse ; then this name 
 having been given to the putting aside of the feeling of 
 unity it having been described by this appearance of a 
 "self" put first there has come the quite artificial thought 
 as if the simple restoration of that natural feeling, and 
 letting the forced not-regard cease to be, was a great new 
 thing ; it has been thought of as a great act of putting 
 self not first ; of escaping from the rule of self, &c. It
 
 268 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 is all a perplexed seeming; there is no "self;" it is 
 simply the feeling of unity that has been put aside 
 returning. And this thought of a banished feeling of 
 unity should take the place in our thoughts altogether of 
 that of self being first ; which is merely its appearance to 
 us, and quite a false apprehension. 
 
 Man has tried being a " moral being," and we see with 
 what success. To say nothing of anything else, how it 
 divides him into two ; sets him against himself, puts strife 
 within his very being, makes him into " good " and " bad," 
 opposing, hating, striving against, each other. (Nay, has 
 taught him to accept it as his very nature to be so ; so 
 that he does not even believe any more that he is one at 
 all ; a madness has come over him whereby he believes that 
 he is really several quite distinct persons.) Now shall he 
 try instead not to have to be a moral being ? 
 
 So shall he say hereafter : "In the days when I was 
 a moral being this is what it came to : youths of sixteen 
 thought it no shame to use women for lust, and with utter 
 disregard to all besides ; and women, even the best, had to 
 rely on that for their purity ; and business was a lie ; and 
 poor wretches who never had a chance were flogged, and 
 good Christian men drank souls in their wine. . . . That 
 was when I tried to be a moral being, and base my life on 
 not-regard ; making myself different from Nature, think- 
 ing I could poise myself so and not fall. I thought then 
 that I could sustain myself in mid-space and not fall. I 
 did not think that Nature's laws were everywhere. What 
 a strange pitiful sad time it was, when I chose to make 
 my life such that I had to lay on myself laws that did 
 not mean service, and try to do always the same things 
 but it has borne its fruits."
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 269 
 
 For observe : To have a life perfectly fulfilling the law 
 of a perfect regard it is not necessary to know all things, 
 nor even many things, nor to have the eye at all on all 
 the things that really do need regarding ; it is no matter 
 at all of knowledge ; it is only necessary to know or 
 rather to feel that that is the demand, and to obey it in 
 the heart : that is, to be seeking to follow it and ready to 
 respond to every new call that comes into our knowledge. 
 It is only willingness and readiness that are demanded ; 
 the obedience is perfect in them. 
 
 Pleasure would have been impotent to any great 
 degree against human good, if it had not been given it 
 by virtue. See the savage tribes ; those still free from 
 superstition. Do we not see how the very thought of 
 one's own pleasure against others' good has not come ? 
 It has not occurred to them (that is, within their too 
 narrow bounds ; for that limit is the negation there). 
 As the man said : " It is not the custom with us to eat 
 when another is hungry." It had not come into his head 
 to do so ; the natural relation of the emotions had not 
 been disturbed. (And it is right that gives it this dis- 
 turbance.) Is not this a distinct lesson of savage life ? 
 
 " Could it be for all ? " There is a mistake here : it 
 is the natural thing, natural for all ; just as giving 
 reason rule over sense is natural for all, however it might 
 be impossible for some even for most to 'begin it. It 
 is not doing any hard thing ; it is simply not having to 
 do hard things ; not having right mean labour and 
 restraint ; not having unpleasantness made wantonly 
 and needlessly to mean being better. (This we see in 
 art : the artist's perception and action is not doing any
 
 270 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 
 
 hard thing ; it is simply not having reason for the right 
 being hard things.) 
 
 Now when any of us think of pleasure (of recreation) 
 we turn away at once from the thought of useful things. 
 Yet they are pleasure. Now is there not a simple 
 practical thought : would it not be well (to help to save 
 men and women the trouble of finding their own pleasures) 
 to have a list of things that want doing kept and pub- 
 lished ; so that any one wanting a change might simply 
 have to look over it and see what would please him most 
 to do ? Now we cannot find them ; but how many there 
 are, and how pleasant to do them. (And might not 
 money easily be raised for supervision or instruction ?) 
 
 "YVe hear : " The time will come when all will be 
 mutual helpfulness." This is what we must think ; a 
 vague hope that, after centuries and centuries, there " will 
 come " mutual helpfulness. It is all we can hope. But 
 instead of this dim far-off dream (unhelpful as it is), we 
 may have it now, if we will insist that right shall not put 
 it aside. That is its condition. If we will not let right 
 put mutual helpfulness aside it may come now ; so long 
 as right puts it aside it will never come. It will remain 
 a dream until right ceases to bar its coming. Let that 
 cease to withstand and it may be now. We falsely make 
 it a question of time ; it is a question of refusing right 
 its power to put it aside. We are like the traveller who 
 waited till the river should have flowed past. There will 
 never be any road to mutual help but across that river ; 
 and we may cross it when we choose. (" The river of 
 death : " how strangely it fits the river of laying down 
 our goodness. Is not that the true river we must cross
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 271 
 
 to enter Paradise ? And here the question comes for us : 
 the river rolls before us and Paradise stands beyond.) 
 
 But the thought that the time " will come," instead of 
 seeing what hinders its coming now, is infinitely hurtful 
 to us. It keeps us from seeing the real wrongs, the real 
 banishers of helping, and fixes our eyes on false ones, on 
 merely fancied ones even that do not exist. It is our 
 good, lives, our beautiful Christian homes, our duties so 
 well fulfilled, that keep the evil, not mean greed and sel- 
 fishness ; these are not the causes. We fight against 
 them fruitlessly. They are not, and even if they were, 
 they would not cause the evil. Our efforts are worse than 
 wasted while turned against imaginary evils ; we are kept 
 from seeing our true hindrances. 
 
 We cannot tell what man " likes " to do by what he 
 does (at any one time) ; and now he is not doing what 
 he likes. It is not beautiful for some to be finely dressed 
 while others are in rags ; it can seem so only by shutting 
 up the eyes of the mind and the soul ; and men do not 
 really find it beautiful or like it. Man is a being, whose 
 joy, whose liking, is really determined by his mind, and 
 not by his sense. Is not that what is claimed as his 
 distinction ? 
 
 It is not that we should not have pleasures, but that 
 we have not fulfilled the conditions of having them. (It 
 is more and more striking to me how constant this 
 demand is for fulfilling conditions in everything.) And 
 so we cannot have them enough ; not wide, deep, free, 
 unchecked enough. We can have them in multitudes 
 indeed, but how marred they are and limited ; and how 
 spoilt by that painful shutting of the eyes they demand.
 
 272 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 Let us fulfil the conditions of having pleasure ; those 
 that we can have without are not enough. 
 
 We have to recognise the difference between acting 
 from, impulse, and acting for pleasure. To have confused 
 them is very curious ; for not only do they most evidently 
 not coincide, but in truth they are mutually exclusive. 
 (And impulse is essentially unreflective ; but for pleasure 
 is as much reflective as for pain.) 
 
 The change is so simple ; merely, instead of right 
 being one thing always, that it should be one way of 
 doing all things. (" All things one way," instead of 
 " One thing all ways.") 
 
 Why should it disturb or grieve any one to have it 
 proposed that we should make this exchange of putting 
 the way of doing in place of the things ? Why pain 
 or grieve any one to think whether these two changes 
 might not come together : a new way of doing all 
 through, and the things the other way made to be for- 
 bidden no more put aside ; and so the power given us 
 for another and farther use. True, it grieved and 
 angered the Jews, two thousand years ago, even to kill- 
 ing, to have it suggested to them that the true man 
 should be like Nature, a child of the wind, having nothing 
 forbidden to him, and that this was what was for all. It 
 was probable enough that it should so rouse and pain the 
 Jews then. But why us, two thousand years after, and 
 having learnt so much ? Why pain any one now that 
 man's life should be restored to being one with Nature, his 
 motive so absolutely assured that his deed would be sure 
 to express love ? Or why doubt it ? We have not tried. 
 (It might well have roused utmost anger in the Jews 
 to whom, besides all other reasons, it must have expressed
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 273 
 
 that licentious life of the Gentiles they had been so taught 
 to pride themselves against.) 
 
 In the streets of London at night and not the " de- 
 graded " ones one gets to understand the despair that 
 exists. It is rational enough. And if there were no 
 hope but in the power of what we think of as " good " 
 to fight the evil, it were the only possible conclusion. 
 There would be no real hope. If our only course were to 
 go on trying to add to the good things we have gained, 
 we could not really hope. We must have also the giving 
 them up entirely, and having them in their effect, a new 
 beginning. There were no hope if we were compelled to 
 be misers and could not use our coins. 
 
 But saying : "Do not do that, because all cannot, 
 and they will falsely imitate," &c., is like saying to a 
 merchant : " Do not buy corn with your money, for 
 other people do not understand, and will throw their 
 money into the streets." They won't. 
 
 Art has learnt the method to make what was its wrong 
 its right (that is, to attain a spirit-right instead of a 
 thing-right ; right in modes of doing instead of things 
 done ; a right that can be in any form) : and we call it 
 divine, wonderful ; we stand before the artist as a being 
 more than human. But it is not only art that knows 
 this secret ; if it were we might say it was the special 
 prerogative of art, its gift whereby it is not as other 
 things are : it is the very same with mathematics, the 
 most strict and exact of all exercises of thought ; so that 
 it lies deep in man's nature. Now if life could know 
 the same method, how changed it were ! The law not to 
 know good and evil would have come back with its con- 
 ditions fulfilled. Man would be what we dream of 
 
 S
 
 274 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 angels. (And the law which has not learnt this method 
 is the one which is not obeyed.) And in art and mathe- 
 matics we see that when this method is learnt it is the 
 " wrong " thing that is done, that becomes the constant 
 act. It is not only introduced sometimes, while the 
 mass of the action continues of that which was before 
 the right ; but that which was the wrong becomes the 
 action all through. Now must it not be so in life ? 
 
 We do not see : we can be in Eden again as soon as 
 ever we choose. Nay, we are there and do not know it ; 
 we only want to see. For it is nothing but to have our 
 regard on others and act accordingly, and we are in 
 Eden, in innocence again. (Nothing all the while has 
 been changed at all ; we have made all the change.) It 
 is but to awake up and see what we are, to enter into 
 the fruit of the labours achieved. For now the care and 
 regard of men of more than the half of men and women 
 here in England truly are on others, and what is 
 needed is not any more change there, but to act according 
 to the fact ; to see what is, and let our action correspond. 
 We hang around ourselves fragments of chains that are 
 broken ; what wonder that they do not bind us ? Their 
 very failure to bind proves that they are broken. 
 
 We might say that it is no wonder Adam and Eve 
 " fell ; " for there were no others for them to regard ; 
 there were not the means (which God has provided for 
 us) for keeping the regard off self. Not having others 
 to think of, what could they do but think of their own 
 goodness ? In them do we not see the history of the 
 family, and how fatally it must " fall " if it be not sub- 
 ordinated to claims from without? 
 
 We have lived so long in the wilderness that its 
 habits cling to us even now when we have returned.
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 275 
 
 We bring with us the old ways, the old rights ; and 
 they suit the restored Eden even worse than the other 
 state. It makes a greater perplexity than ever. 
 
 While others have to live as they do, our lives are 
 not pleasant. Nothing but absolute absence of imagina- 
 tion could make them even seem so. And now it is 
 the gain of the modern time the imagination in this 
 way does exist and is powerful, and the life of the well- 
 to-do is lived only at an expense of crushing the imagina- 
 tion (and the desires it prompts), that spoils the life and 
 prevents it from being really pleasurable. 
 
 Mechanical necessity is a negative merely, non-action ; 
 therefore so fit for a universal " form." But now when 
 people say existence is unknown, but our experience is 
 best formulated in terms of matter, of force, may not that 
 be questioned and put to the test ? Since it is all one 
 the physical and the conscious might we not well try 
 if an expression in terms of consciousness would not 
 really suit best ? And the more, that if it all is one it 
 assuredly all is conscious. How can we suppose the 
 same thing conscious here, not conscious there ? The 
 process storing up and liberating force is adapted to 
 be a conscious one ; there is no reason in it for its not 
 being so. How then can we suppose it not so ? How 
 invent a difference ? So to use terms of consciousness 
 is to use truer terms. How can it not be the best ? If 
 we want a guide, here is the very same thing in our 
 consciousness. 
 
 Sensuous pleasure will be to the moral life of the 
 future as sense-impressions are to the knowledge of the 
 present : and with the same history. It will not be a
 
 276 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 
 
 thing put aside, as evil, or degrading, or misleading ; 
 nor merely succumbed to as necessary, or ordained, or 
 irresistible " in this world ; " but recognised as the very 
 basis and means of the life, and used absolutely and 
 to the utmost nay, surely, with enhancements and 
 multiplied powers undreamt of by us. 
 
 The claim for a mode of life that will make pleasure 
 free (taking away the need for our asking : " But how 
 much pleasure will that be to me ? ") is the same as the 
 claim for a mode of thought that shall make sense free. 
 Here is the necessity for insisting on it. See what it 
 is insisting on : a life that shall not make right mean 
 any question of how much pleasure. 
 
 May we not say that every evil exists to correct a 
 premiss ? So we see the mistake of meeting them by 
 mere direct remedies, mere restraining (save for the 
 tension's sake). By this thought our eye becomes wholly 
 false to human life ; man appears a being quite different 
 from that which he truly is. He is not a being with 
 tendencies, and passions, and promptings needing restraint. 
 He is a being simply who needs the premiss, the starting- 
 point, on which his life rests, enlarged and made more 
 and more perfect ever ; and as at once the sign of this and 
 means of its attainment, finds that his tendencies, passions, 
 promptings not evil at all lead to evil that must be 
 put aside. He is a being needing more in the very basis 
 of his life, and so destined (and in perfect good) to make 
 perpetually tensions, and bring by his activities intolerable 
 results alike his passions and his goodness bringing them 
 by which the basis of his being shall be made more 
 true. How different a thought from that which we have 
 made up. And yet our very ignorance has led us to the 
 right work, though so tedious, and so sad. (By the bye,
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 277 
 
 considering how the baby's work of perception itself is a 
 reductio ad absurdum, may we not learn by man's life 
 hitherto to see the baby's ? Is there to the child such 
 consciousness of sin ? Such struggles and such failures, 
 and such distresses ? And even indeed may man's thoughts 
 of his own life bear the impress, as it were, of his baby 
 experience ?) 
 
 So is not that idea we have formed from human life 
 of a being with such evil propensities or passions that 
 need restraint, with positive wrong within him, an im- 
 possible one ? That is the " phenomenon " of a basis of 
 life that needs enlarging. 
 
 Here is the value of pleasure being indefinite : the 
 thought on self cannot co-exist with it. And the ques- 
 tion for man is whether he will accept the condition for it. 
 (The question is not of amount but of fixity.) And one 
 reason for having it indefinite is the power it gives us ; it 
 gives us, to use, all the power expended in keeping it 
 definite. And is there not use for it ? 
 
 And this indefiniteness of pleasure the absence of 
 fixed limit to restraint is itself the joy, the very essence 
 of pleasure itself, more than any pleasant things or multi- 
 plication of them ; this is the pleasure. It is this the desire 
 longs for, which in license and excess it vainly seeks ; not 
 the things, but the absence of limit, is the charm, the 
 temptation. Is it not absolutely true that in all excess, 
 the attraction, the pleasure sought, the thing that deludes 
 and carries away, is the longing for indefiniteness, for 
 freedom from limitation ? It is falsely sought, indeed ; 
 the true freedom from limitation is in Nature's indefinite- 
 ness ; present ever, and never needing to be sought. 
 Sought for, it is already lost. It has this in common 
 with all pleasure.
 
 278 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 Is not the very reason we so pursue pleasant things, 
 indeed, and are so unsatisfied, this, that we have not this 
 indefiniteness this absence of fixed limit not having ful- 
 filled its conditions. And so, failing of the true delight, 
 we want so much to compensate us, and try to satisfy our- 
 selves with that which never can getting at the utmost 
 a false feeling of freedom from fixed limit, not its reality. 
 Lack of the proper infinitude (which is man's desire) 
 drives him to license. (Is it not parallel to trying to 
 gain the idea of " infinitude " by extending space, or 
 thinking of more and more " time " for eternity ?) In 
 freedom from limit all is ; that is infinitude of pleasure, 
 be it much or little. It is the having to forbid ourselves 
 the indefiniteness makes the intenseness on the pleasure : 
 for the joy is forbidden, and we are left hungering with 
 an appetite we cannot fill, because the things we try to 
 fill it with are not its true food. We want not the 
 pleasant things, but freedom from limit. 
 
 Making goodness mean less pleasure cannot prevent 
 the thought from being on pleasure ; rather it must tend 
 to intensify it, as we know we tend to think most of 
 things if they are forbidden. But making goodness mean 
 accepting pleasure involves not having reason to put it 
 away, especially if it makes it an indefinite pleasure 
 which man feels, without that condition, he cannot have. 
 
 So is not the feeling of a demand for indeftniteness of 
 pleasure one emphatically true to Nature relations deter- 
 mined only by force which is one, not bound into rigid 
 things ? Is not this truth to Nature in a man the 
 necessity to feel all things fluent ? This, and perchance 
 unweariable joy of action. And are not the two one ? 
 
 The " everlasting hills," said the Jews : the " everlast- 
 ing motion the changing hills," says science. That
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 279 
 
 marks the change in man's thought, the advance we have 
 made ; it is an action put instead of things. This is 
 science : it will be morals ; action instead of things. 
 
 should have said, in repudiating the " Mystery of 
 
 Pain : " " You say all things should be estimated by their 
 service ; but then you mistake in putting pain as the best, 
 for pleasure is more service." But how necessary it was 
 to see pain thus as good : without it how could pleasure 
 have been seen so ? How could we say : " Indulgence, if it 
 is service, is the most good morally," or : " Service is the 
 most good morally, however much it is indulgence," if we 
 had not first said : " Service is the most good emotionally, 
 however much it is pain ? " These are correlated ; one 
 cannot be without the other ; pain, if it is service, must 
 also be the most good emotionally. We don't " feel " so 
 in either case ; we feel the pain not the most good emo- 
 tionally, and we feel the indulgence not the most good 
 morally. It is a common error of our feeling, and the 
 cause is the same. The question is not how we feel, but 
 what is the relation to the fact ? (How should a limited 
 being, growing into its life, not feel falsely until it has 
 learnt ?) 
 
 We must be walking arm in arm with our fellows, not 
 nursing them with broken limbs. The powers of good 
 are wanted for other things than that ; there is scope 
 enough for them. Yet the nursing is good to have been 
 demanded ; it is good for man not to have had the idea 
 of the walking arm in arm, in order for the other to 
 have been wanted of him ; it was a needed means to 
 train him. Till he had had that harder thing to do, the 
 easier might not have been enough, because the force 
 that is in the other would not have been.
 
 280 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 
 
 We must gain the force first before it can be used ; 
 we need transitory " organs " to give us this force ; then 
 we do not want them any more. Now in moral training 
 might not much be seen in this ? At once we do not 
 seek enough, and we make things too easy. That is, we 
 put children too soon into easy ways of doing, while they 
 should rather be led through harder ones ; then the easier 
 would set free force for doing more. 
 
 The easier, if it had come first, would not, in its 
 coming, have sent a new force throughout. But though 
 it is true, that the hard nursing was needed for training 
 before the easier walking arm in arm came, yet imagine 
 any one proposing, for the sake of the good of the toil 
 of the nursing, to keep on not walking arm in arm ! 
 
 Might we not say that the power which is the restraint 
 exists in three forms (and how possibly never really 
 varying in amount) : either ( I .) the external restraint, 
 or self- virtue, expressed in the laws of things; or (2.) 
 in tension in the life, pain, and discontent ; this in or 
 before its transference to a new region; and (3.) in 
 the changed starting-point, the thought or feeling raised 
 and made living. So that thus one can trace it simply, 
 and, as it were, from the beginning. The living condi- 
 tion, the true vital (force-containing) starting-point, is 
 the equivalent the other form of the very force that is 
 in the restraints or self-virtue, and that (turned against 
 itself) makes the discontent, and bewilderment, and pain 
 of the time when neither the restraints nor the right 
 beginning exist. But then, if this is so, the force that 
 is in the restraints has its nature and source evident, as 
 it is the force which is in that true internal state ; so its 
 having the other forms, its presence so, is simply the 
 expression of its absence there : it is but another aspect
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 281 
 
 of that absence, and is its inevitable fruit. Do we ask 
 whence this power which is in the restraints ? It is the 
 power that is absent in the starting-point, the power 
 that should be life in it. It is man's life, but not yet 
 within his soul. 
 
 And how simple it is ; for how simple and visible a 
 part of Nature man stands, seen with his regard perfect, 
 his eye wholly on good. And without that how evident 
 is his toil, his failure, his painful arbitrary duties that are 
 never performed, his fancies about God. How simply the 
 former is his living. 
 
 And then when life is thus taught how appropriate 
 science will be for education, and how exactly the aid 
 needed ; but must it not have been waited for until this 
 thought of life had come ? How could it be really wel- 
 come, or really used while morals meant, not being true to 
 fact, but having the question of our pleasure first ? For 
 this is what is taught as morals ; they teach it, enforce it ; 
 it is what is made " duty." So how could science which 
 teaches the very contrary thing, the perfect truth to fact 
 be really suitable for education till there was another 
 thought of right than that ? 
 
 So we can understand how there should have been the 
 difficulty about science as a means of education ; the seem- 
 ing unreason in the opposition to it. It wants a condi- 
 tion. But thus we see science may have a parallel place 
 to art in teaching life ; it also teaches truth to Nature. 
 
 And thus do we not see how the old thought of educa- 
 tion as a teaching of life, how to be men and women, 
 comes back. Now training the intellect has taken its 
 place, but it is only a suppression. And how many boys 
 will not respond ?
 
 282 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 
 
 The reason men could not get perpetual motion was 
 because they had it ; that is, they had the true thing 
 they falsely aimed at. And is not this the very type of 
 man's non- success ? He tries for the thing falsely, and 
 needs only to understand and accept the true. Man has 
 tried to attain goodness, but he has truly to understand 
 Nature's and conform to it. It was not perpetual motion 
 that men sought, but to prevent it from changing its form. 
 (Really they were trying to put aside the very condition 
 of its being perpetual.) And so is not man's attempt 
 at goodness the very same non-perception, the very same 
 fixing the eye on a form, instead of the reality ? He is 
 not seeking goodness, but only to prevent it from chang- 
 ing its form, which is the very condition of its being. 
 They thought there was no motion unless a particular 
 wheel moved ; and so now men think there is no goodness 
 unless certain things are done. Now as men left off seek- 
 ing perpetual motion, so will they not leave off seeking 
 such goodness ? And were they the most truly scientific 
 minds those of the kind that now do the best work 
 that gave themselves most to the discovery of perpetual 
 motion ? And so will it be found that those now most 
 intent on keeping goodness in one form will be those to 
 whom a truer goodness most belongs ? Will it not bring 
 in others rather ? 
 
 Now may we not be able to see how a new apprehension 
 of goodness, and acceptance of Nature's goodness, will come 
 to men by seeing how the thought of making motion per- 
 petual ceased in accepting Nature's ? Will not the steps 
 be the same : the failure and the ceasing to try ? That 
 is, the conviction that some other and better way must be, 
 the feeling that there must be a perpetual motion to be 
 got, and yet that we shall never get it so. 
 
 They were not really trying to attain motion only to
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 283 
 
 prevent it from changing its form. And so they were 
 without it, so far as their aim and their feeling went, 
 though it was perfectly perpetual all the same. By 
 thinking of it as only of one form, they lost it, though 
 they had the fruit of it unconsciously. So we, in trying 
 to keep the goodness in things, are not really trying to 
 attain goodness, only to prevent it from changing its 
 form ; and so, to our feeling and so far as our aim goes, 
 how it is lost to us ; yet it is perfect still ; and we really 
 reap the fruits of it. 
 
 The dynamic laws prevail in the moral life : to have 
 force to use some force must be set free. What we want 
 is some exertion of force which may cease without loss of 
 goodness. 
 
 So to prepare it we want something to which there is 
 a tendency in man, and in which, if done in a certain 
 way, there is no wrong, put aside. That is how a store 
 of force should be given us. Then how beautiful our 
 life can be made. We can gain the store of power and 
 hold it while we go on to learn how we should use it. So 
 what a life of conscious wisdom is made possible to us. 
 We are sent force-laden, or living, into the world. And 
 the law of service being less effort, less restraint of passion, 
 there is power ready and enough. It needs only a change 
 and all is done so far. 
 
 In a correcting of the premiss there is a thing not 
 without its goodness, which yet might be absent in two 
 ways : either in a worse condition or a better. This is 
 the state in a correcting of the premiss ; and is it not 
 certain also, conversely, that whenever there is anything 
 of which this is true it is always the middle term of a 
 reductio ad absurdum ?
 
 284 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 Then, observe, this is the case with every restriction, 
 every rigid law whatever. In fact, its ceasing in a better 
 is simply, always, becoming as Nature. Or perhaps this 
 is the question : Is becoming as Nature, in this aspect, a 
 better or a worse ? So we see again how " heaven " is 
 Nature. 
 
 Thus we may see how the idea of " going to heaven " 
 has come. Man has had before him the vision of the 
 ceasing of these " good " things in a better state ; he has 
 felt in his soul the " correcting of the premiss " in which 
 he is engaged, and that these fruits of good were destined 
 to cease in a better ; but he has not been able to grasp 
 the real bearing and meaning of his life, and so the 
 thought of going to heaven comes in as a faint shadow 
 of it. Thus we see the thought of " going to heaven " in 
 its relations ; it has come from man's imperfect appre- 
 hension of the correction of the premiss that his life is. 
 
 And can we even trace the causes which made that 
 thought of going to heaven take the place of a recognition 
 of the fact of the correction of the premiss in man's life ? 
 For one thing, is it not a result of men not seeing that 
 human life is truly one, a whole ; and not a mere set of 
 fragments ? But men did not feel this ; they did not 
 recognise a moral life that was carried out in all ; they 
 thought of the individuals only in that aspect; and this 
 drove them to the thought of a change coming by mere 
 externals ; by mere getting rid of the body. And then 
 see how easily it wrought backwards ; for having to make 
 the truer and better life depend upon being out of the 
 body, they could not but carry out the inference that the 
 being in the body was the evil, and so have their thoughts 
 set on putting away pleasure for goodness ; that is, the 
 thought doubly bound on self, bound for goodness as well 
 as by evil. Here we may trace again how man's thought
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 285 
 
 of goodness in putting away pleasure was bound on him 
 more and more, and how he was made subject to it even 
 unwillingly, and even apart from not-regard to others, 
 how that very not-regard might have been forced upon 
 him. And so one thing worked with another to confirm 
 his wrong. Every thought of mere individual goodness 
 would tend to confirm his idea of " going to heaven," 
 instead of a truer life for man ; and then this would con- 
 firm his thought that here he could not escape from the 
 rule of self, or else what would going to heaven be for ? 
 
 So there is this value besides in the perception of man's 
 life as a correction of the premiss ; it compels us to cease 
 to dwell exclusively upon the individual in respect to the 
 moral life ; compels us to recognise it as a life of man, 
 of the whole ; a life in which we are not many, but one. 
 So what a wall of partition it breaks down ; our very aim 
 at goodness, our very aspiration has been dividing us, 
 instead of doing its true work of making us one, which is 
 seen to be its true work as soon as ever we see that our 
 call is to have our regard true to fact. So how this 
 perception at once fulfils the feelings in man which have 
 claimed and sought a universal life. 
 
 Man is to be one with Nature ; which is simply to 
 take her law. It is all ready. We have misapprehended 
 what being one with Nature is. It does not need any 
 change of our condition. It is a thing now for us to 
 choose. And Nature no sooner has any thing than she 
 begins instantly to fulfil the conditions of its not being. 
 When we think, of course this must be so ; or there must 
 be unreason in her; for it is sure to pass, and the con- 
 ditions for its passing are the things needed. Here man 
 fails : his things pass too ; but he does not prepare ; the 
 passing comes on him with the conditions unfulfilled, and
 
 286 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 he falls into strife and evil. His being one with Nature 
 would be in his ever having the conditions fulfilled for 
 everything to pass, when the time for their passing comes, 
 to carry out that act of Nature's consciously. As soon as 
 man attains anything (knowing it can come only to pass) 
 he should begin to fulfil the conditions of its passing. 
 
 That is Nature's life, her constant moving; ours is 
 to become a moving life too. It is simply accepting 
 Nature's law of constant change : consenting that our 
 life should be what it is, a part of a continually moving, 
 changing whole, and acting according to what this 
 implies. We must seek to fulfil the conditions of every- 
 thing passing instead of trying to keep it rigid. Know- 
 ing the thing has to pass, we turn at once to fulfil the 
 conditions for its passing. So we do not deny but affirm 
 the goodness of the things that are to pass. It is only 
 looking to the fact instead of the form. And see the 
 power in it over the soul : if we are not to have that 
 form (which we find so good, and in which therefore we 
 can rest and be satisfied, though it hides all wrong and 
 badness beneath it), then we must have the goodness, the 
 power. We must insist on that if we are to let the form 
 go. Its time to pass has come when under it can be 
 emptiness or wrong ; when it no more necessarily implies 
 and means the living power. And that is surely at once, 
 instantly that it comes : then is its time to begin to 
 pass. 
 
 The powers or forces remain ; this is the thing to keep 
 the eye upon : The forms vary and must ; and the demand 
 is to have them expressed, whatever changes come : not to 
 identify the form with the presence of the forces, because, 
 by Nature's very being, the forms will change. And this 
 change is our good ; it makes the demand for the force to 
 express itself in new forms. And this has its most evident
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 287 
 
 use ; we can see it in every case ; the form passing, men 
 gain the power in a new sense. It comes more into his 
 apprehension what it is ; what the demand is ; it comes on 
 his soul in a deeper way ; he sees it more truly. The ceas- 
 ing of the form has special value for him. 
 
 In Nature the preparation is ever made for the passing 
 of each form ; man does not prepare ; and so the forms pass 
 and find him unprepared ; so he has to find the new form 
 amid the decay, with strife and fear. Everything is an 
 instrument, and if not used, which is its true " decay " or 
 passing, decays with a mere dead decay. 
 
 This also is a key to morals : Man's part is to fulfil the 
 conditions for morals passing away. (This is one with 
 morals being a stage in his learning to obey his impulses. 
 But we do not think, yet, of this : of how man might not 
 need to be moral.) What a change it would be all through 
 life to have the eye fixed on this. 
 
 There is such an infinite power in the simple recogni- 
 tion that everything passes ; for it means our preparing 
 for its passing. And man's works must pass, for he is 
 also part of Nature. And his works are her works, and 
 obey the laws of hers ; although he does not feel himself 
 so, he is so. And that is what he has to learn : to feel 
 that he is so, and to accept his life accordingly. He has 
 to feel the fact of his life that it is part of Nature, and 
 to make his conscious act in accordance with it. That is 
 his being restored to Nature. And this recognition that 
 all things must pass is simply the law of service ; the law 
 on the act, not on the forms. 
 
 About the word " altruistic " and the suggestion of 
 " otherish," the real meaning of the difficulty about a 
 word for " regard to others," is that we do riot want it. 
 It would mislead us if we had it. The very thought of a
 
 2 88 THE COMING OF THE LA IV. 
 
 true regard being " for others " has in it some of the per- 
 verted thought of goodness. It is not a regard for others 
 we need, but simply a true regard, a regard to the facts, 
 to Nature : it is only a truth to facts in our regard, and 
 its nature is obscured by a reference to " others," as if 
 that were the essential point. It is an accident rather ; 
 the truth to Nature is the essential point. Putting it 
 as to " others " as opposed to self, brings in our false 
 thought of goodness. It puts the idea of regard to 
 self falsely, as if it were a positive instead of a mere 
 not -regard. 
 
 It is not as being for others, but as being true, that the 
 regard for others is demanded. 
 
 I perceive that one thing I propose to do is to match 
 the " fatherhood of God " with the " motherhood of 
 Nature." And as in a child's earliest years the mother's 
 part is the most important, may it not be that as yet it 
 is so also for man, and that he would have done well to 
 have thought relatively more about his Mother. He has 
 had too much to imagine his Father. 
 
 It is felt that the shifting results the law of service 
 instead of things, use instead of holding must at least 
 be hard, and always so, like learning to stand on a rolling 
 ball. But it is not so ; it is not-moving (which is oppos- 
 ing Nature) that is hard. The very simile may show it ; 
 the rolling ball is the earth. It is as if, to keep ourselves 
 balanced on it, we had to ask : How many miles an hour 
 have we to move ? What we have to do is not to think 
 about it, to let ourselves move with Nature. 
 
 The new spirit does not fill out the dead forms, but 
 moulds them into living ones ; it does not fit itself into
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 289 
 
 the crystal, but moulds it into the leaf. It does not 
 enter into and maintain with a new power the rigid 
 things absence of love has imposed, but brings its own 
 forms with it and makes them bud and grow, and 
 never any more be the same. The living thing evidently 
 flows with the flowing nature, is in harmony with it, and 
 expresses it; the inorganic as we apprehend it does 
 not. But then is not this simply saying that, in so think- 
 ing of it, we are thinking of it falsely ? We see in the one 
 response to Nature ; in the other, as it were, refusal of her. 
 (And here is a great place evidently for art : to fill up 
 this lack, and put aside the seeming of that refusal.) 
 And so even in studying the physical world should not 
 children be taught first to begin with the organic ; as 
 presenting it so more truly, giving the right conception 
 to start with ? It shows us Nature operating truly and 
 freely ; the yielding all throughout to her, a true image 
 or vision of the whole, everything moving and adjusting 
 itself, responding to all influences, exhibiting the play of 
 all powers : that perpetual mutual influence and response 
 which is her being, the organic presents. 
 
 So a true feeling would, perhaps, be given, and the 
 false feeling which the inorganic gives avoided, its 
 appearance of not yielding would be easily derived from 
 the other by a palpable " minus " or non-perception of 
 ours. For the not yielding there is not true ; it only 
 seems. The forces operate though they seem not; their 
 effect is present in hidden forms ; we only do not see it ; 
 it is present as innumerable tensions pervading them. 
 (By the bye, is this one secret of electricity ?) By the 
 organic our eyes are opened thus to see the inorganic 
 more truly ; the latter is virtually what the former is 
 practically. 
 
 There is no failure in not attaining when the object is 
 
 T
 
 290 
 
 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 
 
 falsely aimed at. (The success is learning to aim truly.) 
 So in taking in man's life for our point of view, failure 
 is eliminated ; but failure and evil are one ; success is 
 another name for good. 
 
 Not any physical relations, or order, and none there- 
 fore that have even, or are, or can have been, none of 
 them can have been " evil " or failures. No physical 
 relations can have had any true wrong about them, for 
 none is " right ; " none is the object. They are, all 
 alike, forms merely and alone for the spiritual powers, 
 and for man's having his needed experience ; all are 
 equally available for this. And this means that some 
 must accompany our experience of evil and wrong, must 
 furnish the means for the emotions of horror, repentance, 
 consciousness of wrong, others for those of good, of joy, 
 of sacrifice, of right, of life. Some forms for man's 
 needed experience must gain expression, practical value, 
 and power for him to the conditions of not-regard ; 
 others to those of a true regard. But the forms are not 
 therefore good or bad ; the physical relations are but 
 vehicles ; cannot be bad. Nay, we see the very same 
 may be the vehicles either for the expression of life or of 
 death. 
 
 The object is not these things to be done, a physical 
 order to be secured, but man attaining a flexible right, 
 which must come, surely, by the rigid right being made 
 impossible, failing and becoming intolerable to man in 
 every form. 
 
 And so do we see how the organic arises ; how it 
 comes, as it were, from the inorganic the crystal, say : 
 namely, by a mere disintegration first ; by resistances 
 which had withstood the " claims " the forces operat- 
 ing around and which mould the organic through and 
 through not withstanding completely any more, but
 
 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 291 
 
 partly yielding, partly resisting still. And so all sorts 
 of distorted conditions come (which only analysis can 
 unravel), partly the expression of the old arrangement, 
 partly expressing the claims around, but true to neither. 
 That is chaos ; and so life conies from chaos. So is not 
 this the key to our condition ? it is a mixture of the old 
 arrangement and the yielding to claims that is to be. 
 First mere disintegration, and then reconstruction answer- 
 ing to the forces and swaying with the varying forces 
 around ; but the coming in of those forces around 
 the perfect rule of which makes life operates first as 
 disintegrating, as bringing disorder a condition true to 
 nothing. 
 
 In respect to a different right many would say : " Yes, 
 when men are better, but it is not now possible ; we 
 must now have another." But grant that a different law 
 is only possible when more has been attained, let the 
 necessity for an inferior condition first be assumed, still 
 see the bearing of the fact upon the way we should regard 
 the failure and loss of these other " temporary " rights. 
 Their failure and breach is not evil as otherwise it would 
 be ; that failure has to be judged by another test alto- 
 gether from that which would apply if it were a perfect 
 and final right. (Something has been left out in our 
 thoughts here, and they have been false accordingly.) 
 The failure must be judged radically by its relation to 
 the coming of the better and truer right. Not thinking 
 of that we cannot see it truly ; in so far as it arises in any 
 way from even the most distant approach of that, the 
 slightest shaking of the ground from its ever so remote 
 advance, it is good and not evil ; in so far as it prepares 
 the way, and above all gives rise to power to bring it,
 
 292 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 all failure and breach of the other right is good. How 
 else should the truer right come ? 
 
 Let it be granted that with a truer right certain out- 
 side things that with our present right are wrong, would 
 then not be necessarily wrong, but would be judged by 
 a different standard, and might be counted in themselves 
 not wrong, but only wrong if wrongly done ; then how 
 plainly a step towards a truer good it is for people to 
 begin to feel those things not wrong. It is the attain- 
 ment of one element of the better state, though of course 
 it wants the others also added. But in itself it is a dis- 
 tinct advance towards that better, especially one of the 
 conditions of its coming. The new standard must need 
 the old one to fail. 
 
 And altogether in respect to our feelings of wrong, we 
 have to learn that it is not only our deeds, but our stan- 
 dard that is under judgment. Our feeling of wrong and 
 our condemnation may truly be a condemnation not of the 
 deeds, but of the standard. And the attainment of a truer 
 right must consist in learning to condemn our former stan- 
 dard. And this is the striking point, that has such power 
 within, and that we so forget : that the change in the 
 standard involves ceasing to condemn some things as well 
 as condemning others is transferring the judgment from 
 the thing to the act, and so leaves uncondemned as well as 
 condemns. This new leaving uncondemned this fulfilling 
 the conditions of not having to do we so overlook. 
 
 So let it be granted that a less perfect right must be 
 first, and even still, and that a truer one is but for the 
 future, still let that thought also be applied, and remem- 
 bered in our judgment of the facts of life ; its evil and wrong 
 and failure especially stand in quite a new light before it. 
 And there is one thing that surely must follow, namely, 
 a resolve that the truer right should come as soon as it
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 293 
 
 possibly could, because until it does come there can be 
 no real and succeeding good at all ; no laws that we can 
 even hope to find really obeyed. Till the better law does 
 come, law itself must be a failure ; and the very approach 
 of good must mean evil and distress to us. We cannot be 
 content with its absence, if it is to come at all ; our only 
 real good must be in its having come. Its delay is a turn- 
 ing good to evil. The very promise of a better prevents 
 our possession of the less. There is no contentment possible 
 but in having it. 
 
 And here would be a good study for us : to test our life 
 in this way, and understand it better, by seeing what ele- 
 ments in it are due to the fact of this approaching better 
 and truer good ; to see what effects must result from such 
 approach, and to look at our life and to see what facts 
 there are in it that are its result. So might we not appre- 
 hend it more truly, and see that it was a thing less to be 
 discontented with perhaps ? And even by such an exami- 
 nation might we not judge how near it was come ? 
 
 Which is wrong (in any case), the deeds or our stan- 
 dard, is an open question. When we feel a wrong, it is 
 evident there is something wrong, either our standard or 
 the things, but which is it ? If our standard is false (and 
 how can it not have been ?), it will have produced all sorts 
 of twisted results. And if we look, how plainly men's 
 standards have been false. And we see a consciousness 
 of this in men's efforts, everywhere, to remedy it by the 
 belief in a revelation. Here is one of the impulses which 
 have led to the affirmation of a revelation by each nation 
 for itself. 
 
 By the bye, it is curious that Christendom has adopted 
 the revelation not only of another nation, but even of 
 another race. Are there in this at once advantages and dis- 
 advantages ? Might characters of our relation to it, and of
 
 294 THE COMING OF THE LA W, 
 
 its influence on us be traced to this ? Is it not richer and 
 more through this union of the bloods a Semitic affir- 
 mation with Aryan interpretations ? For the blood surely 
 asserts itself, and though it speaks in another's words, puts 
 on them its own meanings. Might not this be an advan- 
 tage through a lack ? perhaps a poverty of Europe whereby 
 it could not create a revelation for itself has given it the 
 benefit of an adopted one ? 
 
 But this attempt to escape (or even if the revelation 
 be as direct from God as ever has been affirmed) from the 
 imperfection of our standards has only a limited success ; 
 as is evident, even with ourselves, the revelation does be- 
 come misunderstood. Necessarily and historically men's 
 standards are false : how should we not always consider 
 what part this bears in our judgments ? It is the most 
 important side to consider by far ; for the falsity of the 
 standard is of more harm and hurt to life, beyond com- 
 paring, than are the wrong deeds ; it must bring wrong 
 deeds, and prevent their being cured. And so long as 
 self is too much first, the standard must be falsified ; that 
 is evident, though we do not consider it. And who does 
 not hold that self is too much first ? Then if we feel 
 wrong things which nature human nature persistently 
 produces, obstinately, unyieldingly presents, does it not 
 mean that our standard is wrong ? (It does not mean, of 
 course, that the feeling is merely wrong ; misjudging that 
 a good thing is evil ; but that there has come through our 
 wrong standard a confusion and disorder, and that the 
 change is needed there.") 
 
 What is this feeling that our standard must be the 
 wrong thing in such cases, but doing what science 
 teaches us to do, learning from Nature and being humble, 
 and not holding our assurances against her teaching ? 
 Has not morals to learn a true " morality " from science ?
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 295 
 
 And indeed must it not be thus in fact : that the wrong 
 must always be in the standard, that is, in the feeling, in 
 the assumption, that this is always what is " wrong ? " So 
 that we have here to make a change,the same as the univer- 
 sally-needed change, of taking into ourselves what we had 
 put outside. And the falsity of the standard is simply the 
 expression of the not-regard ; it means that our judgment 
 is at fault, and we cannot get on. 
 
 How curiously true it is, practically, that this new 
 thought of morals is " looking to see if the ancients had 
 not a better way." It is exactly so ; one finds it con- 
 stantly. And then the parallel could not be more exact. 
 One finds that they had ; distinctly there was at least 
 suggested among them, a law not of things but of the 
 act. (Plato, for example, emphatically. Will Plato be 
 found to have been a sort of Pythagoras in morals ? See 
 his permission of lies to governors, and his freedom of 
 womanhood.) 
 
 And our " advance " has been in introducing so great a 
 number of definite things, of rules and laws. The paral- 
 lel to the position of Copernicus is perfect in this. And 
 then again, finding that " other way," that were so much 
 better if it might but be, among the " ancients," we 
 have to look and see what made it impossible for them, 
 and ask whether what has been added since and been 
 handed down to us has not made the very change neces- 
 sary fulfilled the very condition that it needed the 
 subsequent course indeed having been this very thing, 
 though unsuspected. 
 
 See how emphatically this is done in respect to the 
 enthronement of the good of woman, and the condition of 
 freedom there. Nothing could be more marked than this. 
 It is the emphatic attainment ; and see how plainly it
 
 296 THE COMING OF THE LA IV. 
 
 waits for its true meaning to be shown. There is the 
 aim, the feeling, and it cannot fulfil itself; such desire 
 for her good, and woman how much better off? 
 
 That was what was done by Copernicus. This " better 
 way " proposed by one of the ancients was recognised, and 
 the things which had then made it " wrong " and impos- 
 sible, recognised too, and seen to be the very things that 
 the work done since had put away. It was recognised 
 that some conditions wanted fulfilling, and that man's 
 toils had been their fulfilling. (So how visible a relation 
 would be between Plato and Christ. Christ with the same 
 thought might it even have been from Plato that 
 it had flowed, not to his soul but to his ears ? put- 
 ting into operation the powers by which the conditions 
 for that right of the soul were fulfilled. That would be 
 a beautiful order indeed. And it would perhaps render 
 more plain why the " Christian " Universities have held 
 so to the reading of Plato's " Republic." There would 
 be an instinct visible in that.) For it must be seen that 
 Copernicus did not merely re-adopt a former " way ; " he 
 rjcognised that it needed a condition fulfilled, and that it 
 had been fulfilled. (Now is this what is always done in 
 the re-adoption of any former position by genius ?) 
 
 Christ introduced love, the very thing that is necessary 
 the sympathies ; for Plato's right was not the right 
 exactly of love ; though it was one which did make 
 human things such as infanticide, which, to us, would 
 be brutally inhuman. He had the thought of a right 
 that was on the soul, and made not evil what otherwise 
 would be intolerably so. So by the very process of put- 
 ting aside comes the bringing back. 
 
 In Plato, the human soul looked towards that " right " 
 such an aim or object as should make things that were 
 brutal otherwise good and human and pronounced it
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 297 
 
 good. For no one questions that the old " heathen " 
 morality attained its summit in Plato. The human soul 
 looked at that and pronounced it good, and then it passed 
 away as if it had been a dream, and man went quite 
 another way, as if he had turned his back on it for ever, 
 binding himself with rules and outside laws instead. Is 
 it not like showing man his life in a vision, picturing it 
 before him so as to give his soul an irrevocable tendency, 
 never to be effaced however it might be even forgotten ? 
 
 Is it not reasonable to propose purity to make things 
 free? It restores Nature to her course, and, above all, love to 
 its freedom. The love between man and woman has this 
 exquisite magic in it : its freedom means purity, because it 
 wants and needs all things free, and cannot be free without 
 being pure. That love is gifted with this power by virtue 
 of its union with the body. (Virtue in an impure person's 
 mouth means opposing Nature.) There is a muddle here, 
 and I propose purity, by virtue of its power of making 
 things free, to heal it, to deliver from false bonds (of 
 course counted sacred). This power of purity we have 
 not recognised or used. Many times purity has been 
 urged on us for its own sake and value, as a thing to be 
 prized, attained, and held : and that is well. But there is 
 another reason for it too (and one for which also man was 
 made), another value we have not noticed : it brings in its 
 hand the gift of making things free, of restoring love to 
 its freedom, and Nature to her course. 
 
 It is the true " heaven " the fact of that dream : the 
 perception that earth may be good. " Heaven " is a duty 
 to be glad ; feeling that earth may be good is gladness. 
 
 We have impulses which we feel are not " bad ; "
 
 298 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 yet they cannot merely go unchecked, they want some 
 ordering ; then we so naturally think they must be con- 
 trolled. But that is not enough ; it comes too late. It is 
 not really even what it is called ; it is not the impulse, but 
 only the deed, which is so controlled. We need a dif- 
 ferent thing, to "be able to obey them. And we see the 
 difference perfectly in food. 
 
 One accepted thought the evolution-thought repre- 
 sents the whole on the idea of man as the highest, as 
 the most advanced " fringe," as it were, of Nature. Now, 
 if the case is representable so, it is of course certain that 
 it is representable conversely ; if that one can, the con- 
 verse relation might be carried through consistently : 
 namely, of man as not the highest, but as the least per- 
 fect. Let us try this way. 
 
 That Nature differs from man in being more ; the 
 things that seem wanting are positively, not negatively, 
 denied. This is a new thought, a new key. (Evidently 
 a central new thought, or new method is our want. The 
 old ones divide us.) And is it not certain that if it may 
 be one way it may be the other ; that everything that 
 is true or discovered on view of man as a plug, edging 
 Nature, will work equally on the view of him as a minus ? 
 It is only changing the sign. 
 
 So there is a definite aspiration for man to be as 
 Nature ; and a meaning in the old command : Do not 
 separate yourself from Nature. 
 
 How simple and restful all our thoughts are when we 
 have seen that man is rising to Nature ; that all his self- 
 things and self- attainments, all are his being on the way 
 to the Nature-state ; that he needs to value those only
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 299 
 
 from lack of that. What a light and what a rest has 
 descended upon everything. 
 
 How striking the direction of the mental activity of 
 this age is. It seems becoming even intensely like that 
 of the Middle Ages again : surely it is hardly an exag- 
 geration to say so. The very same subjects are coming 
 again to the fore, and receive the greatest attention. 
 Science itself turns to them, as if in its merely physical 
 attitude it had been a sort of interlude, to supply some- 
 thing wanting perhaps, but only for return to the very 
 same set of problems. Take merely these three papers 
 coming at the same time : Clifford's " Mind and Body " 
 in Fortnightly ; mine in Contemporary on " Emotions ; " 
 and Morley's in Fortnightly on Mill's " Nature." How 
 strikingly the tendency of thought is to these old subjects 
 again surely with new prospects. 
 
 Because man cannot succeed in poising himself against 
 Nature, it does not follow that he cannot take her hand 
 and be lifted to her level. But this would be his 
 becoming unmoral, as a little child. (Here perhaps is 
 why the precepts of Christ have appeared unpractical or 
 impossible. We have not noticed this basis of them all. 
 He is supposing men to have accepted the becoming as a 
 little child.) We have not recognised this element in 
 being raised to the level of Nature, and have sought it 
 (if at all) combined with our morality. The question is : 
 Is Nature infra-moral or supra-moral ? 
 
 So there is plainly a new view possible of the moral 
 world, a view which makes the failure to put away evil 
 things right instead of wrong, a success to be turned to 
 account, not a mere failure to be repaired. (Yes, this is
 
 300 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 it. By this new view man's disasters may be seen as 
 successes, calling for use, for understanding, for following 
 up with joy. This is the delight of recognising a reductio 
 ad absurdum.} There may be a call to put away, not 
 the things, but that which makes them evil. We dread 
 (as Mrs. Lewes about killing the sick) ; but we should 
 remember that in this we should be going towards and 
 with Nature, not trying to be above. We have an 
 example before us of success in that. It is certainly 
 possible. (This is what we attach so much value to in 
 Christ the example proving possibility of success.) 
 
 In Nature we see a witness and example that the 
 absence of that which makes things evil is possible ; nay, 
 it is everywhere except in us. Now, what can we think ? 
 Is it really true that the presence of this (the thing that 
 makes things evil) is the one great excellence and emi- 
 nence of the world ? When we know, too, that a change 
 for good in man does have more or less and might have 
 still more the effect of making things not evil ; when 
 we know that exactly in proportion as a man is more a 
 man and worthier, so are things not evil to him which 
 are evil to those less worthy, and when we know, too^ 
 that Christ set a little child as His pattern, to whom 
 things are not evil. Now, since by a progress in good 
 some things are made not evil which otherwise are evil, 
 why should not this be a process which might embrace 
 all things ? Why should it not go on without stopping 
 at any particular point ? How should it stop ? What 
 is there in it to account for its stopping ? Is it not the 
 nature of progress in good, without any limit at all, to 
 make things that were evil not evil ? 
 
 Through not condemning the act (of not- regard) we are 
 obliged to put evil in things; and then what mischiefs
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 301 
 
 come, and even our own hands are unable to avoid 
 inflicting them. I would carry up the moral judgment 
 again to the act, making it more intense, more inclusive ; 
 again reclaiming the soul for its dominion, and so restoring 
 freedom to the things, taking away the omission that has 
 perverted the moral thought to them. 
 
 We must insist on the right act absolutely, in order to 
 prevent the perversion of the moral judgment ; we obstruct 
 the true channel, and nothing remains but all sorts of per- 
 verted ones. We must insist that not-regard is the sin, or 
 else we must make up a whole number of fictitious sins. 
 
 And this is so curiously parallel to the intellect and 
 emotions making up for themselves a fictitious sphere, 
 because debarred from their true interpretative action. 
 It is but another form of the very same fact. Give it its 
 true work or it does mischief. So the breaking of the 
 thing-laws is parallel to the denial of the " intelligible " 
 world, and now of our invented " spiritual " world. 
 
 The amount of force that is within the human soul is 
 to be known by the amount of hard, restraining, effort- 
 ful things that man has set up, and that have ceased. 
 There the absorbed force is presented to us in obvious 
 forms. 
 
 There are two ideals : the self-ideal which excludes 
 the physical, and the true or nature-ideal which includes 
 it. The ideal comes first in the excluding self-form. (I 
 perceive the word " ideal " has come back to me avail- 
 able for use. I have a place for it.) So in this we see 
 one whole function of science ; it raises man's ideal from 
 a self-ideal to a nature-ideal. Its entry accomplishes the 
 including of the physical.
 
 302 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 
 
 The accepted not-regard makes into lusts and mischiefs 
 needing restraint, feelings and tendencies which are not 
 lusts at all, nor evil, but wholly natural, necessary, 
 innocent, indispensable for good ; about which no question 
 need be raised if only there were a true regard maintained 
 to the demand for good. 
 
 It is said : " There must be that law or that restraint 
 till men are fit." But then we do not direct our effort 
 to getting that which makes fit. Does not history bear 
 on this ? Has not England above all nations taken the 
 risk, and has it not been wise ? 
 
 The advance comes through the children. The diffi- 
 culty of the grown-up men and women is not that they 
 cannot take up the new right, but that they cannot let go 
 the old. But this latter has not to be done by the 
 children at all. The change is in two portions, one hard, 
 one not hard. Now the children have only one of these 
 to do, that which is not hard; the hard one does not 
 come to them. 
 
 Might it not be urged that there have been morally 
 grand periods in the lives of nations, times when it 
 seemed natural and rational to aspire, to act as if some 
 humanity might be calculated on in man, and when that 
 acting did not prove chimerical ? Such a time there was 
 something of, for example, with us in Elizabeth's age. 
 Now do not these times seem often to have corresponded 
 with great intellectual advance as, for example, with the 
 dawn of science, with the entrance of the mind on some 
 expansion of its domain ? And is not that come again to 
 us ? The mind of man is now visibly entering again on 
 a new expansion of its domain, gaining a new sight of
 
 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 303 
 
 Nature, and drinking therefore more of her spirit (which 
 is man's becoming more human). Well, if such a time is 
 approaching again for the thought-life of man, with it, 
 we may feel confident, is coming a time when his soul- 
 life also may spring up and grow, and despondency cease 
 to be rational. So may we not hope, and even try ? 
 
 And so, again, we should see what we are refusing in 
 refusing the thought of a new advance in the method and 
 aim of thought : we are refusing freedom and power of 
 advance to the moral life. There is this reason for hoping 
 it. Nay more, there is all this added evidence that it is 
 to be expected. 
 
 This absence of good- will in man brings these things. 
 Now can we get the good- will ? Yes : by the present 
 force ; but we must transfer it. (This is gained for us by 
 physics ; all fresh doing is leaving off doing. It is as 
 men tried in vain to get perpetual motion ; but that does 
 not prevent us from getting any we want. So we try in 
 vain to get perpetual motion in morals ; but that does 
 not hinder our having any we want.) And it is easier to 
 get a man to seek good than, not seeking, to be " honest." 
 We have put in (or left in) an obstacle that is enormous. 
 That " not seeking " makes such a difficulty. Instead of 
 a simple direct task, as is the seeking of good, there is 
 put one with a direct opposition and hindrance to it ; we 
 have to obtain a result in presence of an opposing force. 
 
 Why do we spend our strength for nought, and our 
 labour for that which is not bread ? Are not the milk 
 and wine here, without money and without price ? And 
 this is what men do still recognise in this ; only it is 
 mixed up with things apart from fact. It is : Come and 
 seek the true (not happiness but) goodness: good-will 
 instead of restraints.
 
 304 THE COMING OF THE LAW, 
 
 The thoughts about sin, which made it a serious thing 
 before and nerved men and women up to resist it those 
 of personal sinfulness, and punishment are losing their 
 force. Now we want some other apprehensions and 
 feelings which shall restore that power ; shall again give 
 seriousness and vigour in respect to them. Whence are 
 they to come ? (Is there not here a clear suppression ? 
 Now what perfecting is needed to restore it ? May it 
 be that there is some law for this, that the lacking thing 
 that makes a suppression necessary is always of a certain 
 order, and that we might know in what direction to look ?) 
 
 We have failed in working at morals because we have 
 not sought rightly. The moral results are not harder 
 to attain, but it takes longer to find the way. This is the 
 change in our thoughts that I seek to introduce. We 
 think moral success lags because it is harder to get ; I 
 would change this view to the thought that it lags 
 because the true method takes longer to find. 
 
 It is the same as " The Mystery of Pain." That said : 
 Do not get rid of suffering, but hold that and get rid of 
 that which makes it bad. So now of liberty, of pleasure, 
 of indulgence : Do not get rid of that, but hold that, and 
 get rid of that which makes it bad. And in this 
 parallel we have a guide, for we see it is not the very 
 same things we keep when that which makes indulgence 
 wrong is put away. (We have a pattern in art.) So 
 surely it is not the same things we shall keep \vhen that 
 which makes it evil to us is put away from sacrifice. 
 There is a misapplied thought in each case of pain and 
 of wrong. This " thing " is evil : get rid of it. No, not 
 so ; but let it be different.
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 35 
 
 The question of a flexible right turns so much on 
 truth and its necessity in the liberalest sense for social 
 confidence. But I see this is not so. As a doctor, I 
 perceive that my holding service as the law of truth does 
 not in the least interfere with my absolute confidence in 
 a doctor. It gives me more trust, for it means that his 
 thought is on me and not on himself, and that is what I 
 want. Not to know he won't deceive me when he finds 
 me morbid and incapable of using my thoughts aright ; 
 but absolutely acting, not with his eye on himself, but on 
 me. And this is the trust society wants ; not trust in 
 verbal truthfulness, but trust in the soul. 
 
 The Mystery of Pleasure. This is the question : Was 
 our discipline through pleasure merely single ; to train us 
 to its due restraint and limiting and abstaining merely ? 
 Was this single process the end ? (Is any process in 
 Nature or in man's life merely single ? And see what it 
 means ; how little restraining on the part of the capable ; 
 how much abstaining inflicted on the weak. That an 
 end ? Look at it in its relations, give it life.) Or is 
 there a double process, another besides this ; for which it 
 even in its excesses is a preparation ; a farther step 
 beyond to have no reason for its putting away or 
 restraining? (So that its putting away or bringing is 
 left to Nature, to fact, to God; nor needs doing by 
 ourselves.) Is this discipline by pleasure only one step ; 
 or does it call on us for two ? 
 
 Obeying impulse and pursuing pleasure are not 
 parallel but contrasted terms. But is it true that obeying 
 impulse comes oftenest in the form of doing pleasant 
 things, and looks outside like pursuing pleasure ? Is it 
 so in fact ? It is doubtful : only when it is not in 
 
 U
 
 306 THE COMING OF THE LAW, 
 
 this form it is not thought of as obeying impulse ; the 
 fact of impulse in the opposite direction is overlooked, 
 even as the fact of pleasant things being serviceable ; 
 and so there comes a false connection in our thought of 
 obeying impulse with doing pleasant things. 
 
 Obeying impulse is adding elements besides those 
 which are in our rational consciousness, so that we can 
 base arguments upon them. Now it may oftenest come 
 in the form of doing pleasant things because owing to 
 our thoughts, and the way our having self first makes 
 our goodness be in refusing pleasure our reason mostly 
 tends to refuse it ; our conscious thoughts have a bias 
 in that direction, and so the added elements must tend 
 to correct that. For it is inevitable that this should be 
 the case with any being which has let self be an end ; he 
 will have set himself falsely against pleasant things. 
 
 In truth, when men have come to see truly and to feel 
 naturally, will they not see, in all our feeling of life, an 
 intense perversion of feeling, as of pleasure made less 
 good ? This on the one hand, and a not less wonderful 
 succumbing on the other to pleasant things that do 
 disservice. For see, we have no clear guide, no help ; 
 nothing to give us either light or strength, for pleasure 
 does (and must) make things less good to us. (That 
 is, to men ; and women are muddled .and succumb, 
 and don't see ; and practically take the same thought, 
 only either less firmly, or with a morbid firmness.) And 
 yet we must have pleasure and take pleasant things 
 all the same ; and so how can we look and see if they 
 do disservice ? The wrong is not to us in the disser- 
 vice for our thought is on our goodness, on " right " 
 but in the pleasure, and we can't put it away ; we have 
 to succumb to it. If pleasure was never suffered to be 
 less good to us never allowed to make less good then
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 307 
 
 we should be able, should be obliged, to look at the 
 service or disservice. But, as it is, our thought remains 
 on one thing as making less good, and yet we are obliged 
 to succumb to it, cannot put it away. And how we feel 
 those that do feel the confusion, the unreason, and 
 yet can't help it. 
 
 People say : " Yes, this ought to come, but the truer 
 life must come first, and then the inferior one will cease. 
 First must come the inner life, and then the outer forms 
 will cease of themselves ; but till that comes they are 
 necessary." (This means really that they are bent on 
 keeping the outward forms as well. This is the true 
 secret.) This is the point that has to be made clear ; 
 that it is the forms standing in the way that keep the 
 true law from having its power ; that it is not for us to 
 bring in this better and truer life, to build this larger 
 edifice around the smaller. God does this ; does it even 
 without our knowing ; and we must open our eyes to see 
 the true call He gives us ; to see what our maintenance 
 of these forms really is. 
 
 God gives man as much power as he needs, not more ; 
 if <te\ will put away that which is innocent he will suc- 
 
 cumb (he or another for his evil) to that which is not 
 innocent. (Nature were wasteful else.) So in respect 
 to the innocent endearments women long for : till man 
 has a diiferent power from self-virtue how can he consent 
 to them ? 
 
 Man with his eye on his pleasure thinks that of course 
 when he has arranged all things rightly round that 
 settled how much, and on what conditions, he may give, 
 and consented to bind himself by that he has done 
 everything. He does not see that the centering round
 
 308 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 his pleasure is the wrong. It wants dreadful calamities, 
 terrible ruin and destruction, hopeless else, to make him 
 feel that the centering round his pleasure at all is the 
 wrong ; that there is no way that can make that right. 
 
 If we suffer no question to be but about motive, it is 
 impossible to be that the motive should not be regarded, 
 and regarded with the intensest force. (If other questions 
 come in about the things then the force is put aside 
 from that.) But before this can be assented to there 
 must be a different feeling about Nature. For it means 
 really the ceasing of the difference between men and 
 Nature ; the giving up and ceasing of all that attitude 
 which makes him feel he is so above her. This is 
 wanted as a condition : a different feeling respecting 
 Nature. So that our grasp should be loosened upon 
 those things. So is not this the thing to be first sought ; 
 a truer and fuller feeling about Nature, that she may 
 stand to our feeling above us, and the becoming one with 
 her be consciously a rising and a gain ? 
 
 This is a universal thought : the true channels for 
 man's life are blocked up ; we are suffering under the 
 effects of that throughout. And one chief remedy is to 
 open them, according to God and Nature. Then the 
 effects of the stoppage will cease. And the cause is 
 clear ; wrong within makes evil what is good ; and then 
 that good is put aside ; that is, a natural channel of the 
 life is blocked. This is how it has come and must have 
 come. And the evil is everywhere, but most in one 
 part of our life. 
 
 It is not so much : Do not regard self, as : Regard self 
 as means. It may be regarding self even more and more 
 perfectly, but ever in that way. The question is not of
 
 THE COMING OF THE LA W. 309 
 
 even doing that but of the way; even this one and 
 absolutely evil thing is right with its conditions fulfilled ; 
 and not it, but the mode of it, is evil. 
 
 And so "the self" may be most intensely thought of. 
 And here again the not-doing is the condition and very 
 fact of the utmost doing. Is it not even as seeing the 
 physical as phenomenal is the most absolute possession 
 of it ? For then it is the only world ; and there is no 
 spiritual for us but it. Now, is not this a thing women 
 feel very clearly the regarding self as a means, or for 
 the sake of others ? And have we not too much spoken 
 of putting regard to self away instead of having it 
 rightly ; that is, instead of fulfilling the conditions of not 
 having to put it away ? 
 
 So a man who engages in philanthropy but is per- 
 sonally selfish and a tyrant, is like a man trying to work 
 without taking care of his tools : his own self is each 
 man's instrument. 
 
 And in connection with this may one see that a person 
 may seem to see something new and important merely 
 by seeing it imperfectly ? But then, if so, is it not 
 always the case that the true understanding is limited, 
 and needs extending ; that there are some who do not 
 see at all ? 
 
 Whenever there is anything spiritual there is sure also 
 to be something material. Not that the material is the 
 cause or basis ; it is the spiritual fact apprehended in 
 another way. But there will be that other way of 
 apprehending it. One mischief of thinking that the 
 spiritual and physical are different existences, instead of 
 one diversely apprehended by diverse perceiving modes 
 of ours, is that we are apt then to let ourselves take 
 up each by itself, without the other, and so to get
 
 3io THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 each falsely. We never truly apprehend either without 
 both. 
 
 It is as one may touch an object truly enough ; but if 
 we open our eyes we shall see it also, and if we don't see 
 it there is something amiss. Now, take art for example : 
 \ve not only see how there is the material fact together 
 with the spiritual, but also how emphatically the material 
 fact is the spiritual. The spiritual is but the material read 
 in its true significance. Take the "painting the spirit of 
 an object : " it is truly enough a spiritual fact we are in 
 contact with, but also it is the plain material fact of 
 drawing two things at once, of doing one thing in the 
 not doing of another. The material fact is the spiritual 
 fact, and only in that is the spiritual fact truly seen or 
 known. It is that being in another, that act of sacrifice, 
 that living in the dying. And the senses can perceive it 
 just as well as the soul; why should they not? 
 
 There is such an effect in not being able any more 
 to feel that one knows right and wrong, in having our 
 firmest convictions overthrown, and things we thought 
 right proved not right, and what we felt most absolutely 
 wrong proved not wrong. So that one can rely no more 
 upon one's present assurance, but has to feel one does not 
 know. It throws all our thoughts absolutely upon the 
 question of benefit or mischief; nothing else remains, and 
 so all goes to this. Must it not keep the thought alert, 
 and the feeling keen ? It is the absolute falling-off of 
 the law of things. This law, this freedom, is upon the 
 soul : there is no right, no duty, which can bar the way 
 to service. 
 
 In respect to self-virtue and its aspirations, restraints, 
 and beauty, we must not forget the positive value of the
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 311 
 
 elements thus added ; they are not only beautiful and 
 true, but indispensable ; things the absence of which 
 made necessary the suppression. As in the intellectual 
 the fiction-region is absolutely necessary to gain the 
 expression of man's demands ; so in the moral it is 
 necessary. And these results are to be perfectly main- 
 tained, just as in the training of the faculties. All the 
 not-regard rights are a fiction-region by leaving out. 
 
 It is plain that there is and so much in Christians 
 the distinctly anti-Christian feeling of virtue. Christ put 
 the traceable needs above virtue, and made loving God 
 demand loving man as its precursor and condition. The 
 other feeling is that man's goodness is the thing to be 
 put highest, and traceable good is to be sacrificed for 
 that; that we are to love our (else not lovable) fellow- 
 creatures through first loving God. That is, that the self 
 is end ; and that we are to turn to our own thoughts, not 
 to facts. 
 
 But it is to be noted that this attitude of mind is 
 needed as a preparation ; here is the justification of the 
 cleaving to it (though it is so strange to call it Christian). 
 The perception that man's life exhibits the relations 
 which we term those of force, gives the key to the two 
 thoughts ; there are needed the two forms of life ; one is 
 the storing up of force, the other the using it. (It is 
 interesting to see that treating the self as an end answers 
 to the storing up of force.) And these two things go 
 together. 
 
 Surely there is a fatal lack in virtue ; it will not do 
 for us, for it has no power to transfer the regard from self 
 to facts. So that we might say, perhaps, that it is excel- 
 lent, even best and worthiest, but that it is not suitable 
 for us. We want the right foundation laid. It cannot
 
 312 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 put this wrong right. It is, as it were, food ; we want 
 medicine. It is good, perhaps, for beings who have a 
 true regard, but not suitable for those who have to gain 
 it. So here is the necessity for recognising the (essentially 
 Christian) thought that man is diseased and wants healing. 
 Christ's problem was not how man shall be good (that is 
 a future one perhaps), but how he shall get life, that is, 
 have his regard made true. 
 
 Man will wake up and say : "If I am regarding this 
 world and I must then it must be for others." And 
 is not this proof indeed that this world is spiritual ? It 
 has the virtue to so turn man's regard, and what could 
 be more a spiritual work than that ? 
 
 Christ, by putting the traceable this world first, 
 instead of virtue, made that transfer. And we have 
 partly reaped the fruits, but not wholly. In respect to 
 the relations of men and women we have not learnt His 
 lesson. 
 
 It may be that there is an error even in our attempts 
 to transfer our thoughts from ourselves to others. We 
 do not proceed in the true order. The real power is not 
 in trying to think of others, but in thinking of facts, in 
 attending to the traceable. By doing that the transferring 
 of the thought to others is brought. And is this the real 
 means of it and the only means that can truly achieve 
 it ? And do we tend to err in trying to gain it apart from 
 this ? Is the attempt to think of others directly, instead 
 of through the effect of thinking of the traceable, really a 
 delusion ? 
 
 Do the words : " These ought ye to have done and not 
 to leave the others undone " indicate a period in Christ's 
 thought when He sought to attain both the outward and 
 the inward rights, the true state within, and also the
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 313 
 
 external laws ? And is not this a period through which 
 the human race, and also every individual who attains a 
 truer right, passes ? 
 
 Rigidity is always deadness ; the law is unchanging 
 and absolute, but that is because its unchangingness is 
 not rigidity, but lies in a perfect flexibility, having that 
 flexibility for its very expression. And this is the 
 demand always : inflexibility with flexibility. 
 
 And in this there is one of the prerogatives of science, 
 one of the characters that (with all its lacks) make it so 
 satisfying and so strong : it presents perfect unchanging- 
 ness united with perfect changeableness, the unchang- 
 ing " force " in the constantly changing forms. Science 
 could not stop till it had attained this, nor can morals ; 
 man's thought of his own life must be as his thought of 
 Nature. 
 
 And then see what has been done for us, what power 
 has been put into bringing this condition so simple, and 
 of course since it involves women. See the power that 
 means. And yet what a simple thing ! What we tend 
 to do in our laws of things is to stop at the body, 
 that it may be fixed. We dread to give our statue a 
 soul ; for then it won't be still ! 
 
 What I want is, that men may not have to put away 
 things because they are pleasant. (This seems a grand, 
 fitting attitude ; but we see what comes of it comes of it, 
 of course, where pleasure chiefly comes.) I stand seeking 
 that pleasure should be absolutely and wholly free, and 
 the means I find for it, the only means and essential con- 
 dition, is that men's thoughts should not be on pleasure : 
 there must come the limiting and refusing if it is. There 
 is no way for having pleasure made wholly free, but in 
 having the thought first set free from it, and standing in
 
 3 i4 THE COMING OF THE LAW, 
 
 complete response to facts. And so is it not inevitable that 
 in order to attain that true response we should insist and 
 take our stand on this : pleasure must be wholly free ? 
 
 See now, if we are thinking of ourselves, what are the 
 pleasures we shall put away. Not the wasteful, mere 
 self-enjoying ones, but those in which affection, emotion, 
 the very soul-life the soul-life of others are. These 
 are the pleasures which if we let our right be in limiting 
 our pleasures we shall limit ; not the wasteful ones. 
 
 This we must keep our eyes open to ; that there be 
 no thought of good in limiting pleasure (which comes of 
 course to every being whose thought is on himself), but 
 that instead of it, absolutely, there be the thought of 
 good in being such as to have no need for that. 
 
 And in this relation there comes a practical error it is 
 most necessary to be on our guard against : this thought 
 of a good in limiting pleasure not only takes place as a 
 " good," and therefore as being service, and so having 
 claim in the name of service (as simple self-virtue) ; but 
 it embodies itself in institutions, and these claim emphati- 
 cally to be upheld for service. So men have not only 
 not-regard virtue, but not-regard institutions, and these 
 demand obedience as if in the name of service. 
 
 And their power to delude is increased and prolonged 
 by this : that even when their real reason ceases, then 
 men surround them with projected ones; with reasons, 
 or values, which are not their origins or supports, but 
 which are made up because they exist. There is emphatic 
 need for not being deluded here ; it is the mode in which 
 the not-regard of man most deceives him, and so longest 
 struggles with him this embodiment of his not-regard 
 in institutions, which then make reasons for themselves ;
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 315 
 
 but all turn on accepted not-regard at the bottom, and 
 are really its guardians and protectors. 
 
 It is curious to note limiting of pleasure thus coming 
 in the name of service, because, in these days, the seeking 
 and extending of pleasure the rule and pursuit of self- 
 interest has come also so emphatically in the name of 
 service. Is it not curious how both these opposing things 
 have come, and indeed come still, in the name of service ? 
 (How can the latter, at any rate, be without the former 
 also ?) It shows, by the bye, a caution necessary in 
 insisting on service as the law : it must be carried to the 
 bottom that false service-things, made " good " by not- 
 regard, may not come in. 
 
 Woman carries this talisman with her : the cure of 
 man from having his goodness in limiting his pleasure. 
 By the very demands of her good she does it. And what 
 a light this casts on the resolute attitude of women to 
 join themselves with men and not be kept apart. Surely 
 it means much more than might appear. Is it not in 
 reality God's spirit humanity in her insisting on man's 
 life ? Is not this the instinct that is guiding her : man 
 shall no more have his goodness in putting away pleasure, 
 that is, me ? We cannot see the meaning of that splendid, 
 impulse-led nature of hers, and of these irrepressible 
 instincts, unless we see thus. It is man's life she is 
 carrying and taking charge of, even if she does not know 
 it ; and this charge it is that prompts her and will not let 
 her be subdued. Neither violence, nor ridicule " nor 
 any other creature." 
 
 So one sees again how much truer a frequent thought 
 is than has been supposed ; namely, that of women having 
 to secure the " purity " of men. They have that task, 
 much more deeply and intensely than has been thought ;
 
 3 i6 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 and this not by the constraint but by the fulfilment of 
 their own impulses to joy. 
 
 Here is the hope : there is an instrument we have 
 not thought of using ; a means we have not employed ; 
 the thought on self does make pleasure evil ; so there is 
 this instrument to use; pleasure is a power we have 
 not made use of it. There is an ideal we have not aimed 
 at, that of having pleasure perfectly free ; a motive, an 
 inducement we have not employed : liberty to do all the 
 good that can be. (What a simple, natural thing it is 
 too, when once the thought is drawn to it.) Here is a 
 demand we have not thought of urging, not to make 
 pleasure evil (and so good refused if it be one with pleasure 
 thus made evil) ; not to turn things against their nature 
 and make them be what they are not. 
 
 What could be conceived more adapted to concentrate 
 all of man's energies than that of keeping pleasure free ? 
 Then all those energies are concentrated on not having 
 self as end. And the reason this is concentrated in the 
 relation of man and woman, summed up and achieved 
 only there, is that that relation, even after all life has 
 become sacred, may still remain infinitely sacreder than 
 all. 
 
 Thinking whether one must not be at liberty to take 
 away from others the burden of one's life, when it becomes 
 a burden to them, this became evident : Is not the idea 
 of a right which has regard to our own duties, which turns 
 on our self in any way, apart from the simple good of 
 others as shown to us in facts, proved impossible ? Has 
 it not come to a reductio ad absurdum ; and proved to 
 end (or tend to end) in a miserable pretence ? It has 
 been tried two ways, and both ways betray. It gave men
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 317 
 
 Egypt, with half the population monks, once ; now it has 
 given us Manchester. For Egypt it might be pardoned ; 
 but Manchester can never be condoned. Has it not been 
 proved that this thought of goodness betrays ? It lands 
 us either in asceticism on the one hand, or in such con- 
 ventional morality as ours on the other. 
 
 That this thought of subordinating our virtue to the 
 needs of others so attracts and delights, and has such a 
 power, might seem at first strange, but it is plain : the 
 reason is that it gives liberty for devotion, liberty for 
 putting others altogether first ; it sets that impulse free, 
 justifies it, makes it not ashamed of itself. For it lies 
 there crushed and bound in all of us, and only this can 
 free it. For otherwise it is bound down by our virtues. 
 The whole way and manner of our right is contrary to it. 
 and prevents it; implies that it is not. 
 
 So it -is no matter if a being made for one law cannot, 
 or does not, or will not, obey another ; there is no wrong 
 in that; what wants rectifying is his turning from his 
 true law to another. (Now surely in the organic there 
 must be parallels to this.) And again, if it is supposed 
 women are chaste, in the sense of thinking a great deal 
 about their bodily relations, it is a mistake. It is not 
 so at all, but the very contrary; women are made so 
 as not to need to think about their bodily relations. 
 And that other kind of chastity is artificially put upon 
 them, which accounts for the facts we see. It is a com- 
 plete twisting of their natural chastity; a twisting at 
 once away from that which is natural to them, and to a 
 thing quite unnatural. 
 
 And how this throws light on their intense feeling 
 about some eternal right, some great and unfathomable
 
 3 i 8 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 goodness. Of course, reverencing this twisting forced on 
 them and never suspecting its true meaning, or that it 
 can be anything but an expression of good and right, 
 they must set up before themselves something to account 
 for it, to explain it ; something of an absolute authority 
 and majesty for it to be done for. Here may there not 
 be a clue to the character of the moral feelings of women : 
 they have to make up some absolute authority that 
 demands of them to be so twisted, and be thinking so 
 much of their bodily relations, never dreaming that that 
 is, above all, " a commandment of men" a mere reflex 
 of their not-regard. And so too we see how it betrays 
 and leaves without guide or support other women 
 women who cannot thus make up reasons. One might 
 say it leaves women at the mercy of their power of making 
 up nonsense-reasons. They can be happy or safe only 
 by being in presence of men who are such as not to need 
 them to be thinking of their bodies. 
 
 This is the difference : not to put away a thing which 
 has been made impure, but to put away that which makes 
 it impure. This is all : then Nature's standard comes in, 
 and her law. It is to restore us joy made pure, to open 
 a gate of paradise which impurity has barred. What a 
 double blessing : it gives us not only the things the 
 things of joy, very many of them simply or chiefly the 
 privilege of giving joy to others. (See how it is this to 
 women : how what it makes pure is above all that privilege 
 of giving.) But also this alone is really giving us purity ; 
 for putting away the things made impure still leaves the 
 impurity ; that is there just as much. The putting away 
 the things is at least as much a sign and fruit of its 
 presence as anything else can be.
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 319 
 
 Will it not be a freedom and a power when we have 
 learnt to remember (whatever we may choose to do our- 
 selves) that the great thing we have to guard against is 
 making things wrong (that is, letting evil come into our 
 hearts ;) or letting them be thought or regarded as wrong ; 
 that this is what we must guard against ; things being 
 suffered to be regarded as wrong. For that means con- 
 senting to the condition in men that makes them wrong ; 
 the thought must be : We must not let that condition 
 come which would make things wrong. That is, we must 
 not be forbidding other people to do things, whatever we 
 ourselves may choose to do or not to do. What a freedom 
 and power it will be. What force now wasted will be 
 given us to use. 
 
 How soon it may come that men shall look back and 
 say : Our forefathers were bound by all sorts of limitations 
 and restraints, making things right and wrong apart from 
 their reasons, so barring themselves even from giving ; 
 nay, barring even others from giving ; forbidding even 
 delight to be, merely because it was delight, because they 
 had made impurity. And we see what does it at once 
 and inevitably. Now we have learnt and see that it is 
 our business to be capable of joy, free for delight ; we 
 must take care we do not let ourselves be not so ; we 
 must guard our thoughts, our desires ; we must be looking 
 within. 
 
 And here is a new meaning again : " The kingdom of 
 heaven is within you ! " You must keep your eye on 
 that which is within you ; there is the secret of its coming. 
 And so for the kingdom of heaven to come, is not one 
 thing only needful ? Is it not ready to come at any 
 moment ? The conditions of its presence are within.
 
 320 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 By making evil what is not evil, and so by needing too 
 much to be put away, making the law too hard (besides 
 so sending the weak to hell), besides this, by making the 
 law too hard there comes the pressure on men, the desire 
 and effort we cannot wonder at, to gain such a " position " 
 that the right may mean to us something not too hard, 
 that is, the struggle for wealth. 
 
 It is the very same to say that things are true which 
 oppose physical facts as to say things are right which 
 oppose physical good. These are two forms of the same 
 attitude of mind, the very same struggle as maintaining 
 the Bible against science. And so how curious it is that 
 the very persons who so clearly see the one is a mistake 
 yet most intensely insist on the other. They also set up 
 their Bible against facts, and think it just as sacred a duty, 
 just as necessary. 
 
 Is there not a parallel in opinions ? It is proposed 
 now that a man shall be at liberty to ' do ' anything, but 
 his desires shall be true. There shall be sincerity, in 
 this sense, in his action. Now of old false opinions were 
 the great crime ; it was thought fatal, impossible, to allow 
 them ; but we allow any opinions to be held and find it 
 quite possible and only insist on sincerity in holding 
 them. And we see how much easier it is to succeed in 
 obtaining sincerity in holding them than uniformity in 
 them. The one can be gained, the other could not. 
 The attempt to gain the uniformity indeed was fatal to 
 the sincerity. (So what does our attempt of uniformity of 
 deeds come to ? There is the seed ; here the fruit.) If we 
 put our aim on the true desire it comes. This very change 
 suggested has come in respect to opinion. And what has 
 come is that we are on the way even to oneness of desire.
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 321 
 
 This is the proposal : to transfer all our feeling (in 
 respect to wrong and right ; feelings of repugnance, love 
 and aspiration) from " things " to motives, or acts. (With 
 hope, of course, that so they will grow in power ; and also 
 even in truthfulness and justice.) But in order to do 
 this it is an obvious condition right and wrong must 
 be transferred also from things to act. The thing must 
 be considered as not having any such character in itself, 
 but only as expressing the act. Visibly the effort to hold 
 the thing has falsified our action, has misdirected our 
 effort. Not being able to let go of the things has 
 thwarted us, and leaves us really doing neither one thing 
 nor the other. And it is visible too how the miscarriage 
 has come, namely, through our starting point ; because 
 by having the regard on self the only right possible (which 
 is not any at all in reality) is in things ; and so we come 
 from a mere thing-right and have to go through the 
 process of this transference altogether. And really we 
 are very far advanced ; we may almost be said to have 
 done it (though not completely or with full vision) in all 
 respects but one. The completeness and perfect truth of 
 any must wait for that. That one yet left out (as organic 
 life in science) will give a new perfectness to all ; for " if 
 one member suffers the whole body suffers with it; " that 
 unincluded state of one mars all the rest ; when it is 
 brought in, then life will be " made whole" 
 
 Our duty is not to restrain our passions ; but to keep 
 pleasure free. There is that in man which makes things 
 evil (every one allows that " evil " is only in the soul, not 
 in physical things), and he tends accordingly to put away 
 the things, the made-evil things instead of the making- 
 evil things. (So he has to fight many things instead of 
 one.) Here has been his error, in the direction of his 
 
 X
 
 322 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 effort. But all the while he has had before his eyes a 
 model in Nature. 
 
 And it is evident what in man is the making-evil thing. 
 Here we see his condition. It is a clear wrongness. Is 
 not here a harmony of all questions about depravity ? 
 Would not seeing this, and accepting it, be essentially a 
 religious revolution ? In truth has not every religious 
 revolution been essentially one of morals and not of theo- 
 logy ? Are our attempts so vain because they seek to be 
 of theology instead of life ? Is not the revolution of life 
 the only real and true religious revolution ? 
 
 There are two ways of gaining a result : one to intro- 
 duce new forces, another to use forces already existing. 
 Now if the latter is done there must be this result also : 
 something will cease to be done. The ceasing of something 
 is an inevitable result of the use of existing forces for 
 something new. Then also the use of forces that are 
 already present is easier than the introducing new ones ; 
 easier by all the difficulty of gaining the new force. 
 (The difficulty indeed is rather in the ceasing than in the 
 new doing.) Every correction of a premiss is a using of 
 already present forces for new results ; this gives it its 
 character. It is like pouring water from one cup into 
 another. Now the present proposal is not to introduce 
 ,new force, but to use force already present. And it has 
 the ceasing of certain effects of force for its condition. 
 
 And may we not say this also : there are certain things 
 for which we intensely want force now in our life. Then 
 should we not look around and see where there is any 
 force which may be used for these purposes ? Should we 
 not look and see if there are any things, and what and 
 how many, among us in which force is employed and 
 which might cease ?
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 323 
 
 And as for our need, our special need, of force to do 
 some fresh things for us : may it not be that this need 
 becomes more urgent as society advances, and that we 
 distinctly now have need of conditions requiring force to 
 produce them to a degree which did not exist in former 
 times ? Is it not pretty to see if this be Nature's plan ? 
 Because force will be needed for some great results in the 
 future, she stores it up in human life, in the form of men 
 doing a number of force-needing, but quite needless 
 things. Then there the force is ready. And so this is 
 the way we should look at our life ; what a number of 
 quite needless things there are which we do, but then 
 they bring force to us available for use. But is not this 
 storing up of force even the great mass of our present 
 civilised life ? Nay, will this present stage of civilisation 
 be seen as the storing up of force in " things," for use in 
 the heart ? Here too is a key to this relation of morals : 
 the place respectively of the heart and of external things. 
 Read from this dynamical relation do not the phenomena 
 of morals appear necessary ? Unless we see the special 
 forms of our life thus as reservoirs, as it were, of force, we 
 cannot comprehend it rightly. 
 
 Also it is interesting to note how these reservoirs of 
 force must come ; how the very need of them within 
 compels the things in which they are embodied. 
 
 But is not the need of a truer foundation for life of a 
 true regard, in a word more urgent as society advances ? 
 And so the order is visibly yet more perfect. These stores 
 of force are made while the need for them is not visible ; 
 not felt at all. 
 
 And so do they come to be more felt as being merely 
 for themselves ; more felt as ends instead of means ; and 
 so grasped as things to be held instead of used ? But is 
 not this also part of the power ? Would they otherwise
 
 324 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 
 
 really contain the power ? For is not the giving up of 
 that feeling at the claim of need the very change within ? 
 But now the need for a change in the ~basis of our life 
 becomes more and more plain, more urgently felt ; the 
 old idea also of referring to an isolated God becomes more 
 and more untenable ; and at the same time is not the 
 hold upon the thing-rights visibly loosened ? Do not 
 the very gains, the very improvements, tend more and 
 more to make felt this need of a truer basis ? The very 
 points in which our life is better convict it of hollowness. 
 
 The great tragedy of the world has been the fight about 
 right. What we must insist on, for the sake of peace, is 
 not that the rules shall not cease, but that the condition 
 of their ceasing shall come. It is a question of putting 
 away made-evil or making-evil, of the ceasing of rules, the 
 coming of being led by the Spirit. Have we not a test 
 then for changes of a true kind, a guide to the true course ? 
 And one source of strife surely the great one is visibly 
 put to rest. There is a clear principle to which to refer. 
 In a word the advance is from things, or rules, to prin- 
 ciples ; from fixity to fluency. We start with fixity and 
 go to unfixity ; that is to something deeper, and more ; 
 which reveals the former fixed things as forms and rightly 
 fluent. This is so marked in science : it is seeing deeper 
 that makes fluent. 
 
 The ceasing or avoiding of strife then will ever be the 
 consenting to an internal. Might we not have the end 
 clear, at least discuss and explore it in general terms, not 
 in deeds that could make anger, and have the question 
 only of time and preparedness ? 
 
 Now the next change, or one of the next and chief, 
 must be about the relations of men and women. Would 
 it not be sad that this also should be by great strife and
 
 THE COMING OF THE LAW. 325 
 
 clashing ? Were it not blessed indeed if it could come 
 without, by an understanding of the real nature of the 
 true changes for the better and the conditions they must 
 fulfil ? And that if strife came it should not be of 
 rights, but of good against evil, not with itself? Were it 
 not a boon indeed to avoid strife there ? For where else 
 could it be so bitter or so sad ? Is it for this that it may 
 be without that sadness it has been reserved till last ? 
 
 Is not this the principle we see, alike in reason and in 
 fact, that with a change of the details (always a ceasing 
 from restrictions which are rigid and not fluent) there 
 comes a general change as well ? A different attitude, feel- 
 ing, mode of action ; in a word, a fulfilling of the conditions 
 of the change. The change is not of form, but of relation 
 of correlated changes. The commandments are " of men," 
 that is, expressing man's state, and these are known by 
 being rigid. Nature's are fluent nay to be fluent is in 
 one sense all. That the whole attitude must alter with 
 the particular thing ; this is the essential. And so we 
 come evidently on marks of reason and relation in things ; 
 the special " things " or details are as means of effect upon 
 this general condition, the channels through which it is 
 operated on ; the particular agencies through which 
 operations are effected upon it. And so when every 
 particular relation has thus had its part and passed from 
 rigid to fluent, with corresponding general change, will 
 not that general change be complete ? 
 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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