[Footnote 1: Introduction to Sordello.]
[Footnote 2: _The Cathedral_. By M.T.K. Huysman. Translated by Clare Bell.]
[Footnote 3: R. P. Pacher, S.J., _De Dante a Verlaine_.]
XIX.
TRACTS FOR THE MILLION.
The paradoxes of one generation are the common-places of the next; what the savants of to-day whisper in the ear, the Hyde Park orators of to-morrow will bawl from their platforms. Moreover, it is just when its limits begin to be felt by the critical, when its pretended all-sufficingness can no longer be maintained, that a theory or hypothesis begins to be popular with the uncritical and to work its irrevocable ill-effects on the general mind. In this, as in many other matters, the lower orders adopt the abandoned fashions of their betters, though with less of the well-bred taste which sometimes in the latter makes even absurdity graceful. In this way it has come to pa.s.s that at the very moment in which a reaction against the irreligious or anti-religious philosophy of a couple of generations ago is making itself felt in the study, the spreading pestilence of negation and unbelief has gained and continues to gain possession of the street. Some fifty years ago religion and even Christianity, seemed to the sanguine eyes of Catholics so firmly rooted in England that the recovery of the country to their faith depended almost entirely on the settlement of the Anglo-Roman controversy; to which controversy they accordingly devoted, and, in virtue of the still unexhausted impetus of that effort, do still devote their energies, almost exclusively. But together with a dawning consciousness that times and conditions have considerably changed, there is growing up in certain quarters a feeling that we too shall have to make some modifications in order to adapt ourselves to the altered circ.u.mstances. It is becoming increasingly evident that even could the said Anglo-Roman controversy be settled by some argument so irresistibly evident as to leave no _locus standi_ to the opponents of the Petrine claims, yet the number of those Anglicans who admit the historical, critical, philosophical, and theological a.s.sumptions upon which the controversy is based and which are presumed as common ground, is so small and dwindling that, were they all gained to the Church, we should be still a "feeble folk" in the face of that tidal wave of unbelief whose gathering force bids fair to sweep everything before it. Also the lingering impression left from "Tractarian" days as to the intellectual pre-eminence of the Catholicizing party in the Anglican Church, which pre-eminence might make amends for their numerical insignificance, is gradually giving way to the recognition of the sobering fact that at present that party in no exclusive sense represents the cultivated intellect of the country. It is no disrespect to that party to say that while scholarship and intelligence are therein well represented by scattered individuals, yet it is c.u.mbered, like most religious movements after they have streamed some distance from their source, with a majority of those whose adhesion has little or no pretence to an intellectual basis; and whose occasional accession to the Catholic Church is almost entirely their own gain.
To give the last decisive push to those who are already toppling over the border-line that divides England from Rome, to reap and gather-in the harvest already ripe for the sickle, is a useful, a necessary, and a charitable work; one that calls for a certain kind of patient skill not to be underestimated; but there is a wider and perhaps more fruitful field whose soil is as yet scarcely broken. It may even be a.s.serted with only seeming paradox that the best religious intelligence of the country is to be found in the camp of negation rather than in that of affirmation; among Broad Churchmen, Nonconformists, Unitarians, and Positivists, rather than among those who seek rest in the unstable position of a modified Catholicism. The very instability and difficulty of that position elicits much ingenuity from its theological defenders, though it also divides their counsels not a little; nor do we quarrel with them for affirming instead of denying, but for not affirming enough. But this attempt at compromise, this midway abortion of the natural growth of an idea, even were it justifiable as sometimes happens when legitimate issues are obscured through failure of evidence, repels the great mult.i.tude of religious thinkers who are not otherwise sufficiently drawn towards Catholicism to care to examine these claims.
To say that there is no logical alternative between Rome and Agnosticism is a sufficiently shallow though popular sophism. At most it means that from certain given premisses one or other of those conclusions must follow syllogistically--a statement that would be more interesting were the said premisses indisputable and admitted by all the world. Still it may be allowed that a criticism of these premisses, which is a third alternative, opens up to religious thought a number of roads, all of which lead away from, rather than towards the extreme Anglican position, and hence that the more searching religious intelligence of the country is as adverse to that position--and for the same reasons--as it is to our own. And by the "religious intelligence" I mean all that intelligence that is interested in the religious problem; be that interest hostile or friendly; be it, in its issue, negative or constructive. For it must not be forgotten that the enemies of a truth are as interested in it as its friends; or that the friendliest interest, the strongest "wish to believe," may at times issue in reluctant negation. So far then as the great ma.s.s of religious intelligence in this country is not "Anglo-Catholic" in its sympathies; and so far as it is chiefly on the "Anglo-Catholic" section that we make any perceptible impression, the conversion of England, for what depends on our own efforts, does not seem to be as imminent a contingency as it would appear to be in the eyes of those foreign critics for whom Lord Halifax is the type of every English Churchman and the English Church co-extensive with the nation--save for a small irreclaimable residue of Liberals and Freemasons.
Those who, influenced by such considerations, would have us extend our efforts from the narrowing circle of Anglo-Catholicism to the ever-widening circle of doubt and negation, are not always clear about the practically important distinction to be drawn between the active leaders of doubt, and those who are pa.s.sively led; the more or less independent few, and the more or less dependent many; between the man of the study and the man of the street--a distinction a.n.a.logous to that between the _Ecclesia docens_ and _Ecclesia discens_, and which permeates every well-established school of belief, whether historical, ethical, political, or religious.
Dealing first with the latter, that is, with those who are led; we are becoming more explicitly conscious of the fact that in all departments of knowledge and opinion the beliefs of the many are not determined by reasoning from premisses, but by the authority of reputed specialists in the particular matter, or else by the force of the general consent of those with whom they dwell. There may be other non-rational causes of belief, but these are the princ.i.p.al and more universal. And when we say they are non-rational causes, we do not mean that they are non-reasonable or unreasonable. They provide such a generally trustworthy, though occasionally fallible, method of getting at truth, as is sufficient and possible for the practical needs of life--social, moral, and religious. There is an inborn instinct to think as the crowd does and to be swayed by the confident voice of authority. If at times it fail of its end, as do other instincts, yet it is so trustworthy in the main that to resist it in ordinary conditions is always imprudent.
That our eyes sometimes deceive us would not justify us in always distrusting their evidence. If a child is deceived through instinctively trusting the word of its parents, the blame of its error rests with them, not with it. And so, whatever error the many are led into by obeying the instinct of submission to authority or to general consent, is their misfortune, not their fault. Of course there are higher criteria by which the general consent and the opinion of experts can be criticized and modified; but such criticism is not obligatory on the many who have neither leisure nor competence for the task. For here, as elsewhere, a certain diversity of gifts results in a natural division of labour in human society; those who have, giving to those who have not; some ministering spiritual, others temporal benefits to their neighbours. Not that a man can save another"s soul for him any more than he can eat his dinner for him, but he can minister to him better food or worse.
The Mussulman child, then, may be bound, during his intellectual minority, to accept the religious teaching of its parents, just as is the Christian child. That one, in obeying this natural but fallible rule, is led into error, the other into, truth, only verifies the principle that right faith is a gift of G.o.d,--a grace, a bit of good fortune. None of those who are not professedly teachers of religion and experts, can be morally bound to a criticism above their competence, or to more than an obedience to those ordinary causes of a.s.sent to whose influence they are subjected by their circ.u.mstances. The ideal of a Catholic religion is to provide, by means of a divinely guided body of authorities and experts, an universal, international, inter-racial consensus regarding truths that are as obscure as they are vital to individual and social happiness; and thus to afford a means of sure and easy guidance to those uncritical mult.i.tudes whose necessary preoccupations forbid their engaging in theology and controversy. This ideal was sufficiently realized for practical purposes in the "ages of faith," when the whole public opinion of Europe, then believed to be coterminous with civilization, was Catholic; when dissent needed as much independence of character, as in so many places, profession does now.
And surely it is a narrow-hearted criticism to prefer the primitive conditions in which none but those strong enough to face persecution could reap the benefits of Christianity. The weak and dependent are ever the majority, and if Christianity had been intended to pa.s.s them by or sift them out, "its province were not large," nor could it claim to be the religion of humanity. The Christian leaven was never meant to be kept apart, but to be hidden and lost in that unleavened ma.s.s which it seeks slowly to transform into its own nature. The majority, in respect to religion and civilization, are like unwilling school-boys who need to be coerced for their own benefit, to be kept to their work till they learn (if they ever do) to like it, and to need no more coercion. The support that Catholic surroundings give to numbers, who else were too weak to stand alone, cannot be overvalued, although it may weaken a few who else had exerted themselves more strenuously, or may foster hypocrisy in secret unbelievers who would like to, but dare not withstand public opinion.
Now it is the gradual decay of this support--of this non-rational yet most reasonable cause of belief, that is rendering the religious condition of the man in the street so increasingly unsatisfactory. Not only is there no longer an agreement of experts, and a consequent consensus of nations, touching the broad and fundamental truths of Christianity, but what is far more to the point, the knowledge of this Babylonian confusion has become a commonplace with the mult.i.tudes. No doubt there are yet some shaded patches where the dew still struggles with the desiccating sun--old-world sanctuaries of Catholicism whose dwellers hardly realize the existence of unbelief or heresy, or who give at best a lazy, notional a.s.sent to the fact. But there are few regions in so-called Christendom where the least educated are not now quite aware that Christianity is but one of many religions in a much larger world than their forefathers were aware of; that the intellect of modern, unlike that of mediaeval Europe, is largely hostile to its claims; that its defenders are infinitely at variance with one another; that there is no longer any social disgrace connected with a non-profession of Christianity; in a word, that the public opinion of the modern world has ceased to be Christian, and that the once all-dominating religion which blocked out the serious consideration of any other claimant, bids fair to be speedily reduced to its primitive helplessness and insignificance. The disintegrating effect of such knowledge on the faith of the ma.s.ses must be, and manifestly is, simply enormous. Not that there is any rival consensus and authority to take the place of dethroned Catholicism. Even scepticism is too little organized and embodied, too chaotic in its infinite variety of contradictory positions, to create an influential consensus of any positive kind against faith. Its effect, as far as the unthinking ma.s.ses are concerned, is simply to destroy the chief extrinsic support of their faith and to throw them back on the less regular, less reliable causes of belief. If in addition it teaches them a few catchwords of free-thought, a few smart blasphemies and syllogistic impertinences, this is of less consequence than at first sight appears, since these are attempted after-justifications, and no real causes of their unbelief.
For they love the parade of formal reason, as they love big words or technical terms, or a smattering of French or Latin, with all the delight of a child in the mysterious and unfamiliar; but their pretence to be ruled by it is mere affectation, and the tenacity with which they cling to their arguments is rather the tenacity of blind faith in a dogma, than of clear insight into principles.
And this brings us to the problem which gave birth to the present essay.
The growing infection of the uneducated or slightly educated ma.s.ses of the Catholic laity with the virus of prevalent unbelief is arousing the attention of a few of our clergy to the need of coping with what is to them a new kind of difficulty. Amongst other kindred suggestions, is that of providing tracts for the million dealing not as heretofore with the Protestant, but with the infidel controversy. While the danger was more limited and remote it was felt that, more harm than good would come of giving prominence in the popular mind to the fact and existence of so much unbelief; that in many minds doubts unfelt before would be awakened; that difficulties lay on the surface and were the progeny of shallow-mindedness, whereas the solutions lay deeper down than the vulgar mind could reasonably be expected to go; that on the whole it was better that the few should suffer, than that the many should be disturbed. The docile and obedient could be kept away from contagion, or if infected, could be easily cured by an act of blind confidence in the Church; while the disobedient would go their own way in any case. Hence the idea of entering into controversy with those incompetent to deal with such matters was wisely set aside. But now that the prevalence and growth of unbelief is as evident as the sun at noon--now that it is no longer only the recalcitrant and irreligious, but even the religious and docile-minded who are disturbed by the fact, it seems to some that, a policy of silence and inactivity may be far more fruitful in evil than in good, that reverent reserve must be laid aside and the pearls of truth cast into the trough of popular controversy.
But to this course an almost insuperable objection presents itself at first seeming. Seeing that, the true cause of doubt and unbelief in the uncritical, is to be sought for proximately in the decay of a popular consensus in favour of belief, and ultimately in the disagreements and negations of those who lead and form public opinion, and in no wise in the reasons which they allege when they attempt a criticism that is beyond them; what will it profit to deal with the apparent cause if we cannot strike at the real cause? In practical matters, the reasons men give for their conduct, to themselves as well as to others, are often untrue, never exhaustive. Hence to refute their reasons will not alter their intentions. To dispel the sophisms a.s.signed by the uneducated as the basis of their unbelief, is not really to strike at the root of the matter at all. Besides which, the work is endless; for if they are released from one snare they will be as easily re-entangled in the next; and indeed what can such controversy do but foster in them the false notion that, belief in possession may be dispossessed by every pa.s.sing difficulty, and that their faith is to be dependent on an intellectual completeness of which they are for ever incapable. Indeed the unavoidable amount of controversy of all kinds, dinned into the ears of the faithful in a country like this, favours a fallacy of intellectualism very prejudicial to the repose of a living faith founded on concrete reasons, more or less experimental.
As far as the many are concerned, much the same difficulty attends the preservation of their faith in these days, as attended its creation in the beginnings of Christianity, before the little flock had grown into a kingdom, when the intellect and power of the world was arrayed against it, when it had neither the force of a world-wide consensus nor the voice of public authority in its favour. In those days it was not by the "persuasive words of human wisdom" that the crowds were gained over to Christ, but by a certain _ostensio virtutis_, by an experimental and not merely by a rational proof of the Gospel--a proof which, if it admitted of any kind of formulation, did not compel them in virtue of the logicality of its form. Further, when the conditions and helps needed by the Church in her infancy, gave way to those belonging to her established strength, it was by her ascendency over the strong, the wealthy, and the learned, that she secured for the crowd,--for the weak and the poor and the ignorant,--the most necessary support of a Christianized, international public opinion, and thereby extended the benefit of her educative influence to those millions whom disinclination or weakness would otherwise have deterred from the profession and practice of the faith.
If the Church of to-day is to retain her hold of the crowd in modernized or modernizing countries, it must either be by renewing her ascendency over those who form and modify public opinion, who even in the purest democracy are ever the few and not the many; or else by a reversion to the methods of primitive times, by some palpable argument that speaks as clearly to the simplest as to the subtlest, if only the heart be right.
An outburst of miracle-working and prophecy is hardly to be looked for; while the argument from the tree"s fruits, or from the moral miracle, is at present weakened by the extent to which non-Christians put in practice the morality they have learnt from Christ. Other non-rational causes of belief draw individuals, but they do not draw crowds.
If we cannot see very clearly what is to supply for the support once given to the faith of the millions by public opinion, still their incapacity for dealing with the question on rational grounds will not justify us altogether in silence. For in the first place it is an incapacity of which they are not aware, or which at least they are very unwilling to admit. A candidate at the hustings would run a poor chance of a hearing who, instead of seeming to appeal to the reason of the mob should, in the truthfulness of his soul, try to convince them of their utter incompetence to judge the simplest political point. Again, though unable to decide between cause and cause, yet the rudest can often see that there is much to be said on both sides--though what, he does not understand; and if this fact weakens his confidence in the right, it also weakens it in the wrong; whereas had the right been silent, the wrong, in his judgment, would thereby have been proved victorious. This will justify us at times in talking over the heads of our readers and hearers, and in not sparing sonorous polysyllables, abstruse technicalities, or even the pompous parade of syllogistic arguments with all their unsightly joints sticking out for public admiration. Some hands may be too delicate for this coa.r.s.e work; but there will always be those to whom it is easy and congenial; and its utility is too evident to allow a mere question of taste to stand in the way.
Moreover, it must be remembered that while many of the cla.s.s referred to are glad to be free from the pressure of a Christianized public opinion, and are only too willing to grasp at any semblance of a reason for unbelief; others, more religiously disposed, are really troubled by these popular, anti-Christian difficulties, the more so as they are often infected with the fallacy, fostered by ceaseless controversy, which makes one"s faith dependent on the formal reason one can give for it.
Though this is not so, yet moral truthfulness forbids us to a.s.sent to what we, however falsely, believe to be untrue. Hence while the virtue of faith remains untouched, its exercise with regard to particular points may be inculpably suspended through ignorance, stupidity, misinformation, and other causes.
In the interest of these well-disposed but easily puzzled believers of the ill-instructed and uncritical sort, a series of anti-agnostic tracts for the million would really seem to be called for. Yet never has the present writer felt more abjectly crushed with a sense of incompetence than when posed by the difficulties of a "hagnostic" greengrocer, or of a dressmaker fresh from the perusal of "Erbert" Spencer. Face to face with chaos, one knows not where to begin the work of building up an orderly mind; nor will the self-taught genius brook a hint of possible ignorance, or endure the discussion of dull presuppositions, without much pawing of the ground and champing on the bit: "What I want," he says, "is a plain answer to a plain question." And when you explain to him that for an answer he must go back very far and become a little child again, and must unravel his mind to the very beginning like an ill-knit stocking, he looks at once incredulous and triumphant as who should say: "There, I told you so!" Yet the same critical incompetence that makes these simple folk quite obtuse to the true and adequate solution of their problems (I am speaking of cases where such solutions are possible), makes them perfectly ready to accept any sort of counter-sophistry or paralogism. A most excellent and genuine "convert"
of that cla.s.s told me that he had stood out for years against the worship of the Blessed Virgin, till one day it had occurred to him that, as a cause equals or exceeds its effect, so the Mother must equal the Son. Another, equally genuine, professed to have been conquered by the reflection that he had all his life been saying: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," and he could not see the use of believing in it if he didn"t belong to it. If their faith in Catholicism or in any other religion depended on their logic, men of this widespread cla.s.s were in a sorry plight. Like many of their betters, these two men probably imagined the a.s.signed reasons to be the entire cause of their conversion, making no account of the many reasonable though non-logical motives by which the change was really brought about. Hence to have abruptly and incautiously corrected them, would perhaps but have been to reduce them to confusion and perplexity, and to "destroy with one"s logic those for whom Christ died."
That we do not sufficiently realize the dialectical incompetence of the uneducated is partly to be explained by the fact that they often get bits of reasoning by rote, much as young boys learn their Euclid; and that they frequently seem to understand principles because they apply them in the right cases, just as we often quote a proverb appropriately without the slightest idea of its origin or meaning beyond that it is the right thing to say in a certain connection. As we ascend in the scale of education, there is more and more of this reasoning by rote, so that critical incompetence is more easily concealed and may lurk unsuspected even in the pulpit and the professorial chair, where logic alone seems paramount. The "hagnostic" greengrocer, in all the self-confidence of his ignorance, is but the lower extreme of a cla.s.s that runs up much higher in the social scale and spreads out much wider in every direction.
But when we have realized more adequately how hopelessly incompetent the mult.i.tude must necessarily be in the problems of specialists, we shall also see that it is only by inadequate and even sophistical reasoning that most of their intellectual difficulties can be allayed; that the full truth (and the half-truth is mostly a lie) would be Greek to them.
If, then, _Tracts for the Million_ seem a necessity, they also seem an impossibility; for what self-respecting man will sit down to weave that tissue of sophistry, special-pleading, violence, and vulgarity, which alone will serve the practical purpose with those to whom trenchency is everything and subtlety nothing? Even though the means involve a violation of taste rather than of morals, yet can they be justified by the goodness of the end? Fortunately, however, the difficulty is met by a particular application of G.o.d"s universal method in the education of mankind. In every grade of enlightenment there are found some who are sufficiently in advance of the rest to be able to help them, and not so far in advance as practically to speak a different language. What is a dazzling light for those just emerging from darkness, is darkness for those in a yet stronger light. A statement may be so much less false than another, as to be relatively true; so much less true than a third, as to be relatively false. For a mind wholly unprepared, the full truth is often a light that blinds and darkness; whereas the tempered half-truth prepares the way for a fuller disclosure in due time, even as the law and the prophets prepared the way for the Gospel and Christ, or as the enigmas of faith school us to bear that light which now no man can gaze on and live. Thus, though we may never use a lie in the interest of truth, or bring men from error by arguments we know to be sophistical, yet we have the warrant of Divine example, both in the natural and supernatural education of mankind, for the pa.s.sive permission of error in the interest of truth, as also of evil in the interest of good. Since then there will ever be found those who in all good faith and sincerity can adapt themselves to the popular need and supply each level of intelligence with the medicine most suited to its digestion, all we ask is that a variety of standards in controversial writings be freely recognized; that each who feels called to such efforts should put forth his very best with a view to helping those minds which are likest his own; that none should deliberately condescend to the use of what from his point of view would be sophistries and vulgarities, remembering at the same time that the superiority of his own taste and judgment is more relative than absolute, and that in the eyes of those who come after, he himself may be but a Philistine.
We conclude then that all that can be done in the way of _Tracts for the Million_ should be done; that seed of every kind should be scattered to the four winds, hoping that each may find some congenial soil.
But even when all that can be done in this way to save the ma.s.ses from the contagion of unbelief has been done, we shall be as far as ever from having found a subst.i.tute for the support which formerly was lent to their faith by a Christianized public opinion. Can we hope for anything more than thus to r.e.t.a.r.d the leakage? The answer to this would take us to the second of our proposed considerations, namely, our att.i.tude towards those who form and modify that public opinion by which the ma.s.ses are influenced for good or for evil. But it is an answer which for the present must be deferred. [1]
_Nov._ 1900.
Footnotes:
[Footnote 1: The Introduction to the First Series of these essays attempts to deal with this further question.]
XX.
AN APOSTLE OF NATURALISM.
"A man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand" and "did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the floor.... Then said Christiana, "Oh, deliver me from this muck-rake.""--Bunyan.
Naturalism includes various schools which agree in the first principle that nothing is true but what can be justified by those axiomatic truths which every-day experience forces upon our acceptance, not indeed as self-evident, but as inevitable, unless we are to be incapacitated for practical life. It is essentially the philosophy of the unphilosophical, that is, of those who believe what they are accustomed to believe, and because they are so accustomed; who are incapable of distinguishing between the subjective necessity imposed by habits and the objective necessity founded in the nature of things. It is no new philosophy, but as old as the first dawn of philosophic thought, for it is the form towards which the materialistic mind naturally gravitates. Given a population sufficiently educated to philosophize in any fashion, and of necessity the bent of the majority will be in the direction of some form of Naturalism. Hence we find that the "Agnosticism" of Professor Huxley is eminently suited to the capacity and taste of the semi-educated majorities in our large centres of civilization. Still it must not be supposed that the majority really philosophizes at all even to this extent. The pressure of life renders it morally impossible. But they like to think that they do so. The whole temper of mind, begotten and matured by the rationalistic school, is self-sufficient: every man his own prophet, priest, and king; every man his own philosopher. Hence, he who poses as a teacher of the people will not be tolerated. The theorist must come forward with an affectation of modesty, as into the presence of competent critics; he must only expose his wares, win for himself a hearing, and then humbly wait for the _placet_ of the sovereign people.
But plainly this is merely a conventional homage to a theory that no serious mind really believes in. We know well enough, that the opinions and beliefs of the mult.i.tude are formed almost entirely by tradition, imitation, interest, by in fact any influence rather than that of pure reason. Taught they are, and taught they must be, however they repudiate it. But the most successful teachers and leaders are those who contrive to wound their sense of intellectual self-sufficiency least, and to offer them the strong food of dogmatic a.s.sertion sugared over and sparkling with the show of wit and reason.
Philosophy for the million may be studied profitably in one of its popular exponents whose works have gained wide currency among the cla.s.s referred to. Mr. S. Laing is a very fair type of the average mind-leader, owing his great success to his singular appreciation of the kind of treatment needed to secure a favourable hearing. We do not pretend to review Mr. Laing"s writings for their own sake, but simply as good specimens of a cla.s.s which is historically rather than philosophically interesting.
We have before us three of his most popular books: _Modern Science and Modern Thought_ (nineteenth thousand), _Problems of the Future_ (thirteenth thousand), _Human Origins_ (twelfth thousand), to which we shall refer as M.S., P.F., H.O., in this essay; taking the responsibility of all italics on ourselves, unless otherwise notified.
Mr. Laing is not regretfully forced into materialism by some mental confusion or obscurity, but he revels in it, and invites all to taste and see how gracious a philosophy it is. There is an ill-concealed levity and coa.r.s.eness in his handling of religious subjects which breaks,
At seasons, through the gilded pale,
and which warns us from casting reasons before those who would but trample them under foot. It is rather for the sake of those who read such literature, imprudently perhaps, but with no sympathy, and yet find their imagination perplexed and puzzled with a swarm of minute sophistries and difficulties, collectively bewildering, though contemptible singly, that we think it well to form some estimate of the philosophical value of such works.
Nothing in our study of Mr. Laing surprised us more than to discover [1]
that he had lived for more than the Scriptural span of three-score and ten years, a life of varied fortunes and many experiences. It seems to us incredible that any man of even average thoughtfulness could, after so many years, find life without G.o.d, without immortality, without definite meaning or a.s.signable goal, "worth living," and that "to be born in a civilized country in the nineteenth century is a boon for which a man can never be sufficiently thankful." [2] [Thankful to whom?
one might ask parenthetically.] In other words, he is a bland optimist, and has nothing but vials of contempt to pour upon the pessimists, from Ecclesiastes down to Carlyle. Pessimism, we are told confidentially, is not an outcome of just reasoning on the miserable residue of hope which materialism leaves to us, but of the indisposition "of those digestive organs upon which the sensation of health and well-being so mainly depends." "It is among such men, with cultivated intellects, sensitive nerves, and bad digestion, that we find the prophets and disciples of pessimism." [3] The inference is, that men of uncultivated intellects, coa.r.s.e nerves, and ostrich livers will coincide with Mr. Laing in his sanguine view of the ruins of religion. The sorrowing dyspeptic asks in despair: "Son of man, thinkest thou that these dry bones will live again?" "I"m c.o.c.k-sure of it," answers Mr. Laing, and the ground of his a.s.surance is the healthiness of his liver.
Carlyle, who in other matters is, according to Mr. Laing, a great genius, a more than prophet of the new religion, on this point suddenly collapses into "a dreadful croaker," styling his own age "barren, brainless, soulless, faithless." [4] But the reason is, of course, that "he suffered from chronic dyspepsia" and was unable "to eat his three square meals a day." A very consistent explanation for an avowed materialist, but slightly destructive to the value of his own conclusions, being a two-edged sword. Indeed he almost allows as much.
"For such dyspeptic patients there is an excuse. Pessimism is probably as inevitably their creed, as optimism is for the more fortunate mortals who enjoy the _mens sana in corpore sano_." [5] However, there are some pessimists for whom indigestion can plead no excuse, [6] but for whose intellectual perversity some other cosmic influence must be sought "behind the veil, behind the veil,"--to borrow Mr. Laing"s favourite line from his favourite poem. These are not only "social swells, would-be superior persons and orthodox theologians, but even a man of light and learning like Mr. F. Harrison." "Religion, they say, is becoming extinct.... Without a lively faith in such a personal, ever-present deity who listens to our prayers, ... there can be, they say, no religion; and they hold, and I think rightly hold, that the only support for such a religion is to be found in the a.s.sumed inspiration of the Bible and the Divinity of Christ." "Destroy these and they think the world will become vulgar and materialized, losing not only the surest sanction of morals, but ... the spiritual aspiration and tendencies," &c.
[7] "To these gloomy forebodings I venture to return a positive and categorical denial ... Scepticism has been the great sweetener of modern life." [8] How he justifies his denial by maintaining that morality can hold its own when reduced to a physical science; that the "result of advancing civilization" and of the materialistic psychology is "a clearer recognition of the intrinsic sacredness and dignity of every human soul;" [9] that Christianity without dogma, without miracles [or, as he calls it, "Christian agnosticism"], shall retain the essential spirit, the pure morality, the consoling beliefs, and as far as possible even the venerable form and sacred a.s.sociations of the old faith, may appear later. At present we are concerned directly with pointing out how Mr. Laing"s optimism at once marks him off from those men who, whether believing or misbelieving or unbelieving, have thought deeply and felt deeply, who have seen clearly that materialism leaves nothing for man"s soul but the husks of swine; who have therefore boldly faced the inevitable alternative between spiritualistic philosophy and hope, and materialism with its pessimistic corollary. That a man may be a materialist or atheist and enjoy life thoroughly, who does not know? but then it is just at the expense of his manhood, because he lives without thought, reflection, or aspiration, _i.e.,_ materialistically. Mr. Laing no doubt, as he confesses, has lived pleasantly enough. He has found in what he calls science an endless source of diversion, he betrays himself everywhere as a man of intense intellectual curiosity in every direction, and yet withal so little concerned with the roots of things, so easily satisfied with a little plausible coherence in a theory, as not to have found truth an apparently stern or exacting mistress, not to have felt the anguish of any deep mental conflict. His intellectual labours have been pleasurable because easy, and, in his own eyes, eminently fruitful and satisfactory. He has adopted an established cause, thrown himself into it heart and soul; others indeed had gone before him and laboured, and he has entered into their labours. Indeed, he is frank in disclaiming all originality of discovery or theory; [10]
he has not risked the disappointment and anxiety of improving on the Evolution Gospel, but he has collected and sorted and arranged and published the evidence obtained by others. This has always furnished him with an interest in life; [11] but whether it be a rational interest or not depends entirely on the usefulness or hurtfulness of his work. He admits, however, that though life for him has been worth living, "some may find it otherwise from no fault of their own, more by their own fate." [12] But all can lead fairly happy lives by following his large-type plat.i.tudinous maxim, "Fear nothing, make the best of everything." [13] In other words, the large majority, who are not and never can be so easily and pleasantly circ.u.mstanced as Mr. Laing, are told calmly to make the best of it and to rejoice in the thought that their misery is a necessary factor in the evolution of their happier posterity. This is the new gospel: _Pauperes evangelizantur_--"Good news for the poor." [14] "Progress and not happiness" is the end we are told to make for, over and over again; but, progress towards what, is never explained, nor is any basis for this duty a.s.signed. Indeed, duty means nothing for Mr. Laing but an inherited instinct, which if we choose to disobey or if we happen not to possess, who shall blame us or talk to us of "oughts"?