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EUTHANASIA.
AN ABSTRACT OF THE ARGUMENTS FOR AND
AGAINST IT.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
�0
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�EUTHANASIA.
T may be well to explain that the publication of this
pamphlet has arisen under the following circum
stances. In the London correspondence of the Western
Morning News of November 13, 1874, there appeared
the following paragraph :—“ It is a serious question
which ought to be faced, if in cases where there is
mortal disease a patient should not be at liberty to
demand his order of release from the burden of the
flesh at the hands of authorised functionaries of the
State. The relief would accrue not only to the
sufferer, but also to those weary and agonised watchers
who have to wait round the bed of pain, and feel that
they are helpless. If we may put a murderer out of
existence for the benefit of society, why may we not
put a saint out of existence for his own unspeakable
benefit—involving, as it would, the exchange of pro
longed torture for the joys of Paradise ? In both cases
life would be taken by properly constituted officials;
but in the one case death would be an execution, in
the other a euthanasia.”
This paragraph excited a good deal of comment,
chiefly of an unfavourable character. It has been
thought desirable to treat the subject somewhat more
fully, and the following pages will contain an abstract
of the arguments used against “ Euthanasia,” and the
replies to them.
Two things, however, should be premised. First,
that by the term “ Euthanasia” suicide is not intended
I
�4
Euthanasia.
second, that the writer thinks it is quite possible argu
ments may he brought forward which would be so
strong as to counterbalance those in favour of “ Eutha
nasia.” He has not met with any such arguments
hitherto, but as they may exist he wishes this
pamphlet to be considered as a contribution towards
a discussion rather than as a final and conclusive
decision.
By the term “Euthanasia” is meant a putting to
death with the full consent of the person concerned,
any one who, being in entire possession of his mental
faculties, and stricken by a mortal and painful disease,
knows that his days are numbered, and desires to avoid
the period of agony that in the ordinary course of nature
lies between him and dissolution. . Under certain cir
cumstances even suicide is deemed lawful. For instance,
when a woman has taken her life rather than lose her
honour, as happened at Cawnpore. Other cases are
conceivable. For example, if a criminal (much more a
righteous man) were about to be put to a horrible
death, such as used to be inflicted in the middle ages,
such as is still inflicted by savage tribes, no one would
blame him if he anticipated his end by a few minutes,
and escaped intolerable torture by a dose of laudanum.
Or take another case—one that too often happens—in
which a shipwrecked crew without food are compelled,
in order that they may not all perish, to cast lots as to
which of them shall die and be eaten. In such a case
no one would condemn as a murderer the man who put
the victim to death. Supposing, in order to spare his
friend that terrible office, the victim put himself to
death, should we not think that he had displayed the
very highest kind of self-sacrifice ? Should we not say
that he had laid down his life for his friends ?
This much is said, not to argue in favour of the right
of suicide, which, however admissible in some cases,
could not be sanctioned as a general proposition with
out opening the door to very grave inconvenience and
�Euthanasia,.
5
mischief, but by way of supporting the argument that
it is lawful under the conditions stated above to take
the life of another. In a word, if, under certain
conditions, a man may take his own life, a fortiori, he
may have it taken for him with his consent.
It has been urged, however, that there is no real
parallel between the cases cited. The Cawnpore case
is admitted to be doubtful and very difficult to decide.
But it is argued that a martyr certainly would not
anticipate his death, and that in the case of the ship
wrecked crew the prime object would be to save life,
not to destroy it. To this it may be replied that the
martyr was not intended. It is probable that his
testimony at the stake may be of so great service to the
truth, and therefore to mankind, that it would be worth
while for him to encounter the severer kind of death.
But if we take the case of a white man falling into the
hands of savages, and knowing that he has a death of
horrible toru^ent before him, and that he has the means
of escaping it by inflicting upon himself a painless
death, we can hardly do otherwise than admit that
he would be right to resort to such means. The other
objection is little to the point. There is no such
antagonism as it suggested. Ex hypothesi there is no
possibility of “ saving ” life. The terms of the propo
sition imply that death is certainly and indisputably at
hand, and the only question at issue is, if death shall
be accelerated in order to save the agony of dying.
This acceleration is described by an adverse critic
as the act of “ a rebel rushing unbidden into the world
of spirits.” But there is no rebellion; on the contrary,
there is entire submission. The doomed man knows
that sentence of death has been passed upon him by his
Maker, and he submits to it without murmuring. He
has received his call to another world, and he hastens
to obey it. It may, indeed, be said that he makes too
much haste; and that is the point under discussion.
But certainly too great eagerness to comply cannot be
�0
Lutbanasia.
called rebellion. There are some diseases of a very
formidable character, concerning which a surgeon will
admit that it is an equal chance if an operation will
cure or kill. The disease will slay (say) in three
months; the operation may slay in a week. No one
would say that the patient had been guilty of “ rebel
lion ” because he chose to have the operation performed,
and died under it, even though he thereby shortened
his life by eleven weeks. Why, then, when there is
no chance of a cure, should not the fatal issue be
anticipated? If it be said that, in the first case, the
object is the preservation of life, while, in the second,
it is the destruction of life, the answer is, that in the
second case the destruction is the will of God, and that
it cannot be “ rebellion ” to act in accordance with that
will. Moreover, if we admit disease to be the servant
of God’s will, if cancer or any other agonizing disease
is his minister, why should we not count opium to be ?
Here the argument is used that euthanasia is unlaw
ful, because it frustrates the purposes of God, who has
“corrective ends” in view when he sends affliction,
and who intends it as a “disciplinary process.” In
other words, pain is discipline, and therefore ought not
to be evaded. If this argument is true, it is difficult to
understand how it can be right to alleviate pain. Why
should it be unlawful to escape from the “discipline” by
one large dose of narcotic, and yet lawful to escape it by
repeated small doses ? At present, in cases of cancer,
a doctor keeps his patient during the last stages of the
disease perpetually under the influence of opiates, and
thinks himself and the sufferer fortunate if he can retain
him in a narcotized condition until the end comes.
Yet no one accuses the doctor of evading the “dis
ciplinary ” process; on the contrary, he would be
thought to fail in duty if he did not carry out this
treatment. It is difficult to see how there can be any
disciplinary process or corrective ends here for anybody,
whether the patient or the friends who watch by his
�Euthdnasia.
7
bedside. In some cases the pain is too great to yield
to opiates. Then patient and watchers alike endure
agony; and the question arises if it be lawful for a man
to sacrifice his life in the battle-field, while full oi
vigour, for the good of his country, is it not lawful for
him also to sacrifice a few weeks of wretched existence
on his death-bed for the sake of his family 1
Something has been said about the possibility of
doctors making mistakes, and giving up as hopeless
patients who have actually recovered. But there are
certain diseases in which there can be no doubt; and
it is only with regard to such, and only with regard to
those of them which are peculiarly painful, that the
question of euthanasia arises. We may be quite sure
that the patient himself will be in no hurry to die.
The tenacity with which men cling to life under the
most desperate circumstances will always tend to pre
vent any premature death of this kind. But even
supposing that the worst does happen, that a patient
is hastened out of life who might have recovered, he
has, if there be any truth in the Christianity we pro
fess, but exchanged a poor, miserable existence for one
of glory and bliss. When we lose anyone dear to us,
we say that we would not have him back again, be
cause it would be to bring him back from the joys of
Paradise to the troubles, and trials, and temptations of
earth. Bearing this in mind, it seems strange that men
should be ready to put a poor, burnt moth out of its
misery, believing, as they do, that it has no other life
in store, yet should think it wrong to put a cancereaten fellow-being out of his misery, though for him
there is reserved an exceeding and eternal weight of
glory.
Here, however, the theological idea comes in. Per
haps it is not endless happiness, but endless misery,
which is in store for him. Without discussing here
the existence of hell and eternal punishment, assuming
indeed that those ideas have an answering reality, we
�8
Euthanasia.
would ask if a man would not be much more fitted to
pass into the more immediate presence of his Judge
with the full consciousness that he was about to die,
and with every opportunity offered him of repentance
and “ making his peace with God/’ than if he were to
pass away in a state of unconsciousness, whether through
the ravages of disease or under the influence of opiates'?
A condemned criminal, unless he be wholly and irreclaimably hardened, usually shows sufficient contrition
during the days which elapse between his sentence and
execution to justify the chaplain in admitting him to
the most solemn rite of the Christian religion. Surely
there would be much more likelihood that a less
grievous offender would be able to make confession of
sin, restitution wherever possible, and in other ways
prepare himself for his future state, if he could choose
his own time for entering it.
Much of the antagonism to euthanasia arises from
the sharp distinction which is drawn between this life
and the next. There are two possible theories about
death—1st, that it is the end of all, and, 2nd, that it is
the entrance into a new life. In the first case, it can
make no difference to a man if he die three months
sooner or later. He escapes so much agony at the cost
of annihilation; but as when he is annihilated he
knows nothing, he is not conscious of any loss, if indeed
to escape three months’ agony be loss. In the other
case, which is the far more generally-accepted theory,
it is difficult to see how a few weeks’ earlier or later
entrance into another life can alter the conditions of it.
True, we know nothing of those conditions; and the
great mystery which hangs over the next world will
nearly always keep men back from entering it volun
tarily. But the hypothesis we have all along supposed
is that of a man compelled to enter at a very early date,
and to whom is left no other choice than one of days.
Another argument used against “Euthanasia” is,
that any one who has watched by the dying bed of a
�Euthanasia.
9
loved relation, must know that the one desire of the
survivors is not to hasten death, but to postpone it till
the latest moment. No doubt this is so, and the feeling would always tend to limit Euthanasia, and it is
desirable that it should be so limited, to those cases
where the sufferings are very great and agonising, and
the fatal issue beyond all doubt. So long as there is
little pain, the parents of a dying child, for instance,
will cling to the last hope of life as a shipwrecked
man will cling to the one plank which is left him in
mid-ocean. Ordinary death itself becomes a Euthan
asia when it is simply a last sigh, and then eternal
calm. But who can tell the agonies that mothers have
endured when watching over a child stricken by one
of those lingering, torturing, internal diseases which
sometimes affect children, and which are known to be
absolutely fatal ? The case of children is, however,
more difficult to determine, because it would not be
easy to obtain from the patient that consent which has
been mentioned as a necessary preliminary condition.
In the case of adults, it would clearly be an act of sel
fishness if the relatives wished to prolong the sufferer s
agonies when he had expressed his wish to end them.
Objectors to Euthanasia say broadly, that no man
has the right to take his life. To this the reply is, that
whether there be or be not a clear and definite canon
against self-slaughter, it can have no bearing upon the
case now in question. In this case, death, the act of
dying has begun ; and, the only question is, how long
the terrible ordeal shall last. If there is any force in
the objection, a criminal called upon to choose between
the gallows and roasting to death over a slow fire,
ought to chose the second because it takes longer, and
gives so many more minutes of life. Similarly, if it
could be shown that in the case of the cancer-tortured
patient already described, the administration of opiates
would shorten life even by only a single day, opiates
ought not to be administered, for, if we may spare the
�IO
Euthanasia.
patient one day of anguish, there is no reason why we
should not spare him ten days or a hundred. In any
case, there is no parallel here between the conditions we
are supposing and an ordinary suicide. The man who takes
a dose of prussic acid because he has sustained a severe
pecuniary loss, or is threatened with exposure to humi
liation and shame, is a coward, and shows that he has
no endurance or fortitude, and no courage to try and
make the best of the many years of life which per
chance might remain to him. But when sentence of
death is passed, there can be no object in prolonging
the act of dying. In a word, suicide means extin
guishing life, Euthanasia means escaping from dying.
The statement which has been made, that Euthanasia
is 11 atheistical,” is scarcely worth noticing. To say that
submission to God’s will without murmuring, and an,
at the worst, too great eagerness to obey it, are tanta
mount to denying the existence of God is a self-con
tradiction so flagrant, that it needs no further words to
expose it. “ Atheist ” is a favourite term applied by
theologians to all who differ from them. It has about
the same meaning in their mouths as the word “bloody”
has in the mouth of the London rough. It is an ex
pletive, and no more.
Finally, a few words remain to be said as to the prac
tical operation of Euthanasia. Manifestly, it would
have to be guarded from abuse by the most rigid and
jealous precautions. It must be carried out with the con
sent of the patient; that, as has been said, must be a
primary condition. Death must be administered only
by the hand, or in the presence of a public functionary,
such as the coroner; and only after a most precise and
unhesitating declaration on the part of two medical
men that death is inevitable, and that it is likely to be
attended with great suffering. Possibly, if these pre
cautions were observed, even the good people who talk
about “atheism,” might in time learn to see that death
so coming was as much the will and the act of a mer-
�Euthanasia.
11
ciful God as the long-drawn agonies of malignant
disease. At the same time, it should be clearly under
stood, as was stated at the outset, that there may be
practical objections to Euthanasia which the present
writer does not foresee, and that these pages are to be
considered rather as a contribution to, than a settlement
of, a discussion. In fact, it has dealt almost exclu
sively with the theological objections, and these the
writer believes have no real foundation.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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Euthanasia: an abstract of the arguments for and against it
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 11 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Date of publication from KVK. Reference to correspondence in Western Morning News, November 13, 1874. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
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[1875]
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Euthenasia
Ethics
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Conway Tracts
Euthanasia
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a5df28e1cd191edd327feeaea4c76d5d
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Text
A FEW THOUGHTS
ON THE
^hilosopltg of ©toil anb (Suffering,
From the Stand-point of Reason and Intuition.
It is impossible for a reflective mind to
contemplate the wonders of creation with
out feelings of awe and admiration at the
manifestations of wisdom and power dis
played in its marvellous adaptations and
developments. The beauty, the grandeur,
the beneficence, that meet us at every
turn, speak of Intelligence and Design.
The Power that governs the varied pheno
mena of nature is apparently unlimited.
Our conceptions of this Almighty Power
will depend either upon the theo’ogical
education we have received, or upon the
deductions of our own reasoning faculties
from the phenomena of earth-life and expe
rience. Starting from premisses which of
necessity must be, to an extent, hypotheti
cal, we proceed to deduce certain principles
which appear to underlie the mysterious
phenomena of Evil and Suffering.
Almost all religious minds will admit the
following propositions: it is therefore not
intended in this paper to discuss them:—
1. That Deity is an Intelligent Principle,
Almighty in Power, and perfect in Good
ness.
2. That Man is an embodied Intelligence,
limited in Power, and imperfect in Goodness.
3. That Man is free to the extent of his
power.
4. That Man survives the change we call
death.
5. That by far the larger portion of
human experiences are pleasurable.
6. That a very large proportion of Evil
and Suffering may be traced to ignorance,
and to errors arising therefrom.
With the rejection of so-called infallible
revelations, the proofs we have of man’s
immortality are scientifically inconclusive.
The universality of the feeling in favour of
immortality may be regarded as a spiritual
instinct. The feeling, however, is not alto
gether one of intuition, but rests upon a
logical necessity, arising out of the utter
impossibility of reconciling the experiences
of life with the existence of a Ruling Power
of infinite Intelligence and Goodness, except
upon some such hypothesis.
A thoughtful mind can hardly rest satis
fied with a negation. When, from the force
of honest convictions, men are compelled
to reject any particular account of the
origin of Evil and Suffering, they are still
pressed with the necessity of forming some
theory to supply the void thereby occa
sioned. The facts are too painfully selfevident to be overlooked in any sytem of
philosophy men may consciously or uncon
sciously entertain. With a profound con
viction of the impossibility of any human
faculties being able to compass the mind of
Omnipotence, we would, with all reverence,
use the powers given to us in endeavouring
�2
A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL AND SUFFERING,
to discover some beneficent purposes which
Evil and Suffering may serve in the Divine
economy.
Our conceptions of Deity will ever be the
reflex of our ideas of Perfection. The em
bodiment of all that is Powerful, Holy,
Righteous, and Good, is man’s highest
conception of God ; and, wherever these
attributes culminate in a high degree in
any human being, that being becomes
man’s best representation or manifestation
of Deity. The immeasurable distance be
tween the finite representation and the
infinite reality must, however, never be
overlooked. Nature, in all its varied phe
nomena, is a manifestation of the Mind of
God. The laws that govern creation are
the expressions of the Divine Will. Motion,
life, sensation, and intelligence, are exhibi
tions of God’s Wisdom and Power. These
manifestations are probably all that man
can know of his Creator in the present
state of existence.
It is impossible to suppose that the
creation of the Universe and all that it
contains is purposeless, or that Creation
can fail to glorify its Creator. If the glory
of God be the object of Creation, it follows
that a Being of infinite Power and Wisdom
must, of necessity, adopt the best means
for the attainment of His purpose. May
we now, without irreverence or presump
tion, assume a necessity even to Deity ?
From the constitution of our nature, we are
justified, I think, iu saying that, according
to finite conceptions, even Deity could not
possibly be glorified by intelligences who
were not free to give or withhold their
homage and affections. We have no facul
ties for perceiving how Infinite Intelligence
could be satisfied with ought less than the
spontaneous love and worship of His own
intelligent creatures. Here, then, in the
free will of man, appears to be the key
which unlocks many of the mysteries at
tached to the presence of Evil and Suffering
in a world created and governed by supreme
Love and Intelligence.
We postulate, then, the Love of the
creature as the desire of the Creator ; and,
if this hypothesis be correct, it follows,
that the free will of the creature is an
indispensable condition to the spontaneity
and perfection of that Love. If this be
allowed, we may be said to have arrived at
the conception of an adequate purpose in
Creation, viz., the generation, development,
and education of intelligences capable of per
ceiving, appreciating, and enjoying, by the
spontaneous efforts of their own free will,
the Love of their Creator. In this way we
may regard the Creator as providing an out
let for the overflowing warmth of His
Love, in the creation of individualized in
telligences capable of glorifying their Divine
Author, in the appreciation and enjoyment
of the endless manifestations of His Perfec
tions. On our hypothesis, it is necessary
that the will of man, though under laws,
should be absolutely free to the extent
of his power; and experience proves the
truth of this position. Hence arises the
necessity for an education, and this brings
us to the consideration of the plan by which
the Creator, as we conceive, is accomplish
ing His divine purpose.
In considering the phenoifiena of earth
experiences we naturally turn our attention
first to the material Universe in which we
find ourselves, and which, from our point
of view, is regarded as the projection of
the Mind of God into the plane of action,
resulting (possibly, through the condensa
tion of spiritual principles, by a process
incomprehensible by us) in the atoms out
of which the Universe has been developed.
These atoms, under the influence of the
Divine Spirit, fulfil, by chemical changes,
involving concentrations, combinations, and
separations, the will of Him from whom
�FROM THE STAND POINT OF REASON AND INTUITION.
they emanated. It is the constant influx I
of the Eternal Spirit into these atomic con
densations, called matter, which appears to
give rise to the dualism of Life and Death,
Good and Evil, which we see throughout
nature.*
The action and reaction of this dualism
is the pulsation of the heart of Deity, pro- |
ducing and upholding at its every beat the
varied phenomena of mind and matter ;
and thus is evolved, in a perpetual series of
progressive and ascending degrees, the end
less variety of atomic combinations or
organisms of which the Universe, with its
varied productions, is composed ; each at
tracting that which it needs and is capable
of receiving from the fountain of Universal
Spirit ; the only limit being capacity, the
only condition receptivity. Thus, from the
most rudimentary atomic combinations to
the most refined human organism, all draw
from the same illimitable Source that which
they are capable of receiving and appropri
ating ; and this by laws which are immu
table, because infinitely wise.
Inanimate Nature thus derives the Motion
by which all its changes and developments
are effected : this is the character of its
receptivity, and this it attracts from the
energy of the Divine Spirit, which fills all
that is. The vegetable kingdom, by virtue
of its advanced organization, in addition to
Motion, is receptive of Life ; and, to the
extent of its capacity, is filled from the
same Divine source. The animal kingdom,
embracing the properties of the lower or
ganizations, advances a step higher in its
receptive capacity, and attracts to itself
Sensation, answering to the instinctive fa
culties, enabling it to fulfil its part in the
*“In the divine order,” says Emerson, '‘intellect
is primary ; nature secondary. It is the memory of
the mind. That which once existed in intellect as
pure law has now taken a body as nature. It existed
already in the mind in solution : now it has been pre
cipitated, and the bright sediment is the world.”
Divine drama of life; whilst, from the same
inexhaustible source in the progress of de
velopment (or order of creation), the human
organism, in all its endless varieties, attracts
to itself, in addition to the faculties pos
sessed by the lower organisms, all those
Spiritual powers of thought and ratiocina
tion which constitute Man a rational being
— an Embryo Spirit ; having, compared
with the animal world, increased perceptive
powers and a receptive capacity for higher
manifestations of the Divine intelligence.
From the reception of this intelligent
principle by the refined human organism,
arises that which constitutes the difference
between the human and animal kingdoms;
a difference not so much in kind as degree,
viz.: —of enlarged perceptive powers—more
refined susceptibilities, and a more acute
sensitiveness, enabling man, by the exer
cise of these improved faculties, to acquire
a knowledge of the constitution of his nature
and the laws that govern it. From an in
tuitive or emotional feeling, arising out of
the development of the intellectual faculties,
originated, most probably, man’s first con
ception of a Creator or God. As these
increased powers of perception and ratio
cination are evolved, the moral sense be
comes developed, and a knowledge of what
is not inaptly termed Good and Evil, with
its attendant responsibilities, is attained.
Thus, the first rays of Light from the
Divine Intelligence break through the dark
clouds of man’s animal nature (dark by
comparison only), producing within him a
consciousness, to an extent, of the dualism
of that nature, and a recognition, to an
extent, of the Will of the Divine Spirit
“in whom he lives, and moves, and has
his being.”
The Light of the Divine Spirit once re
cognised, Conscience may be said to be
formed; and, however dimly this light may
be discerned during the process of intel
�4
A FEW THOUGHTS ON T1IE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL AND SUFFERING,
lectual development, to that extent, and law, and can no longer shield himself under
that extent only, is man responsible to God the plea of ignorance. Man may, from ignor
for the action of his Will. Thus arises the ance, err and suffer; but if his conscience
conflict between so-called Good and Evil— reproach him not, he cannot be said to sin.
the higher and the lower Good—the Flesh The silent monitor, once recognized, ever
and the Spirit. This conflict originates in remains a witness and an accuser. In the
the dualism of our nature, educating us by torments of this inward self-condemnation
its action and reaction, through and by and remorse may be traced the chastening
ourselves, in the wise order of Providence, of a Father’s love, educating in suffering the
into the perception of that which alone can will of His wayward and erring child.
The more we search into the phenomena
make us intelligent, wise, good and happy,
of nature, the more impressed do we become
viz.The knowledge and love of God.
The active recognition of the Spiritual with the fixity of the laws that govern its
character of this warfare between the lower every change, and the marvellous adap
and higher natures, of which man, as an tation of means to ends. This produces in
entity, is a compound, may be well defined the observant mind a conviction amounting
as being “born again of the Spirit.” It to absolute certainty that the wisdom and
brings man into conscious contact with the beneficence here displayed cannot be lack
Divine Spirit, and man perceives, as of ing in the higher phenomena of human life
himself, the Will of God in the eternal and destiny. That the Creator is absolutely
principles of Love and Righteousness, which impartial in His government of the world, is
are the points of universal agreement be to the reflective mind so obvious, that it is
tween men of every creed. And here, needless to dwell upon the fact. Were it
as ever in nature, for God is absolutely not so, all science w'ould be at fault, and
impartial, the conditions of receptivity wise men would lose hope if once it could
are dependent upon the capacity of the be proved that the acts of God are capri
Organism and the direction of the Will. cious. On the contrary, the sun shines and
Experience testifies to the fact that, if the the rain falls on the evil and the good alike.
Light of the Divine Spirit is actively lived If this be so, and if it be allowed that all
out, the capacity to receive further light which emanates from the hands of Infinite
(all irrational influences apart) is corres Wisdom must of necessity be perfectly ad
pondingly increased, and this quite inde apted to the purpose it is intended to fulfil,
pendent of creeds or views which, when we are justified in regarding the world in
not the result of personal thought and which we live, with all the varied expe
investigation, are dependent mainly upon riences of humanity, as the best school for
the development and education of free
educational influences.
When the will of man is in harmony with intelligences, who are to work out their
the will of God, there is Peace, no matter own endlessly diversified individualities
what the stage of intellectual development, (which in itself we conceive to be a great
or what theological views its possessor has source of happiness), and develop by and
imbibed. If, on the other hand, the voice through their individual and combined
of Conscience is disregarded, then the light efforts the inherent possibilities of their
of the Spirit becomes obscured, but not ex nature.
Broken laws fail to explain the whole of
tinguished. When once the spirit of man
has perceived the will of God, he is under the mystery of Evil and Suffering, as is evi
�TROM THE STAND-TOINT OF REASON AND INTUITION.
as necessary aids to man, in provoking
efforts which an atmosphere of ease and
security would most assuredly discourage.
Hence, while, on the one hand, the Love
of the Creator is displayed in providing a
series of ever advancing motives for man’s
progressive aspirations, so, on the other
hand, God’s Wisdom is equally displayed
in providing, by laws that may appear
harsh aud cruel, those necessary incentives
to action and effort by attention to which
man’s health, progress, and happiness, are
assuredly to be attained. Evil—that is,
lower good-and Suffering are the insepar
able conditions of sensitive organic life.
Without the aids of Evil and Suffering we
are unable to conceive any possible means
by which Man, as a free agent, could have
attained to the higher good, or appre
hended Truth and Goodness. Evil and
Suffering are the levers by which God
moves the world.
We are apt to overlook the compensatory
nature of the laws that prevail in connec
tion with Evil and Suffering. The unde
veloped mau has pleasures unappreciated
by the man of refinement. The hardships
ho is thought to endure are more apparent
than real, and his wants are comparatively
few. The anxieties attending material
prosperity, the nervous susceptibilities of
the cultured intellect, and the acute sen
sitiveness to pain of the refined organism,
are absent to a great extent in the ignorant
and undeveloped. The so called evil man,
whilst lacking the power of appreciating
and enjoying the higher pleasures attend
ant upon a perception and appreciation of
the higher good, is nevertheless compen
sated to a degree seldom duly estimated, in
the enjoyment he derives from the gratifica
tion of the appetites of his lower nature.
On the other hand, it must be allowed that
* “ The law of growth,” says a recent writer, “ is the finest, the noblest, and the holiest men
this, that all progress is preceded by calamity, that
this world has produced, have been mould
all improvement is based upon defect.”
dent in accidents by natural phenomena,
and the inevitable decay of the organism,
with its attendant weaknesses and ailments.
In some way, Evil and Suffering are neces
sary accompaniments to progress. Why it
is so we do not know ; but if we are able
to discover Love and Wisdom in the men
tal sufferings and remorse attending the
violation of those moral laws which are re
vealed to all in whom Conscience is formed,
we are justified in concluding that the lower
form of physical suffering is also the best
accomplishment of the Divine ends.
Where the intellect is undeveloped or
the conscience seared by the vacillation of
the human Will, producing a tendency to
physical disorganization or mental retro
gression, we can conceive how beneficent
may be, and probably is, human sensitive
ness to pain. The experience of pain leads
to the investigation of its cause, and this
tends to reflection, and ultimates in know
ledge of a physical and mental character,
the benefit of which, in the process of
human education, is incalculable. This
knowledge is cumulative; and, when men
are free enough to think and investigate
for themselves, and to live in harmony
with the Divine laws, progressively un
folded to the earnest searchers after Truth,
then may the first victory over evil and
suffering be said to be won
As, in the evolution of the world, physi
cal convulsions and disasters are the means
by which, in the inscrutable wisdom of
Providence, Progress, Order, and Beauty
are attained, so, in the development and
education of mind, does it seem a necessity
that human effort should be provoked by
convulsions and catastrophes, which com
pel observation, reflection, and effort.*
Thus considered, Evil and Suffering appear
�6
A PEW THOUGHTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL AND SUFFERING,
ed and purified in the furnace of affliction
and suffering.
How could man know aught of sympathy
and love, were it not for sorrow and suffer
ing which draw them out ? How could man
appreciate the beautiful as beauty, if there
were nothing in the shape of contrast to
guide him to recognize it ? It appears im
possible that self-educated free intelligences
could ever have attained to a knowledge
of such circumstances as Virtue, Pleasure,
Peace, Knowledge, and Truth, without
coming into contact with their opposites,
Vice, Pain, Strife, Ignorance, and Error.
The one is learned by and through cont.ic'.
with the other. Thus, the so-called Evils
of life may truly be looked upon as lower
Goods. Again, the Good of one generation
has been the Evil of the next. The Good of
the ancient Hebrews was to destroy their
enemies. The Good of Jesus was to love
them. By far the larger portion of the hu
man race are still under the influence of
the Evil (lower Good), and desire to destroy
their enemies. The time will probably
come when the religion of Jesus and other
noble reformers will be understood, and the
higher Good they advocated be actively
displayed by the enlightened governments
of a civilized world.
The principle of selfishness, inherent in
sentient life, is an absolute necessity to its
progress, and affords an apt illustration of
the truth of the proposition that all socalled evil may be regarded as undeveloped
good. Selfishness, born of sensation, gene
rates desire, desire provokes action, action
stimulates thought, and the exercise of
thought (observation and reflection) deve
lops intelligence. Indigenous to the soil of
intelligence are those spiritual faculties or
perceptions which correspond to the moral
sense, in the exercise of which man inspires
eternal principles from the all-pervading
Spirit of Deity. The evolution and cultiva
tion of these spiritual faculties appear to
be at once the object and business of life.
Man thus learns by and through the selfish
ness of his animal nature, to perceive, by
comparison, the higher good of disinterested
unselfishness or love in its highest (spiritual)
sense.
Man, thus, is born in ignorance, and de
veloped gradually from the lower Good to
the higher, that he may learn for himself,
through the experiences of life, which are
alternately painful and pleasurable, of his
own free will to choose the higher and
forsake the lower Good. The evils and
sufferings of life from this point of view
may be truly and intelligently regarded as
beneficent necessities, through and by which
man is enabled to perceive God—first, in His
works, then, in the operation of His laws,
evidences of His will—and, finally, rise to
the power of appreciating and enjoying the
endless manifestations of the Divine love
and perfections. If we can thus trace, with
our present limited capacities and know
ledge, evidences of wisdom and goodness in
the so-called evils and sufferings of hu
manity, constituting a beneficent necessity |
in the development and education of free I
intelligences, we may reasonably infer that
the sufferings of the animal kingdom are I
neither vindictive nor purposeless. We are
here more in the dark, from the fact of our 1
being unable to enter into the experiences i
of the animal creation, or to gauge their
sensitiveness to pleasure or pain. Change h
and decay, life and death, good and evil, |,
certainly seem inseparable conditions to the |s
combination of spirit with matter, in its la
early stage of development. Thus, with |di
animals as with man, the individual amount Bn
of suffering can only be fairly reckoned in
i
the account; and again the term of suffering I: i
must not certainly be regarded without refer- »■■si
ence to the pleasure of existence. In the Ijj
case of slaughtered animals, or those who
�FROM THE STAND-POINT OF REASON AND INTUITION.
are the victims of beasts of prey, they pro
bably have none of those sufferings by sus
pense and anticipation which must be far
greater than the sudden, unexpected,
and, perhaps, unconscious separation of
life from the organism. In addition
to this, from the lack of sensitive
ness in the organisms themselves, the
sufferings of animals may possibly be re
duced to the minimum. The laws relating
to the conjunction of spirit with matter (if
God be impartial) are compensatory. The
capacity for enjoyment is coextensive with
the sensitiveness to pain ; hence, the more
refined and complex the organism the
greater the capacity for pleasure, the more
sensitive is it to pain. On the other hand,
the lower and simpler the organic combina
tion the less acutely it experiences either
pleasure or pain. Our ignorance as to the
experiences and destiny of the lower king
doms makes it more difficult for us to trace
a cause for their undoubted sufferings ; but
that there is no suffering without a reason,
a purpose, and a compensation, is shown to
us by those beneficent results of suffering
we are enabled to trace in the kingdom to
which we belong.
To sum up our thoughts. It appears
that all creation derives from the Divine
Spirit, who upholds and governs it, that
which it is adapted to receive and appro
priate in order to fulfil its destiny. Man,
an intelligent individuality, derives from
the Divine Energy which fills the Universe
that Life which the condition of his animal
organization enables him to receive and ap
propriate ; and, from the Divine Intelli
gence, that Light which from his condition
physically., mentally, and morally, he is ca
pable of receiving and appropriating. Phy
sical conditions are dependent upon the
bodily organism which, though capable of
considerable modification and improvement
by the action of man’s free will, neverthe
7
less, to an extent, retains its inherent in
dividuality. This involves an endless va
riety of receptive capacities, a wise and
beneficent arrangement, contributinggreatly
to human happiness. The condition of men
tal receptivity depends upon the degree of
intellectual development and mental culture,
the extent of a man’s knowledge, and the
perfect freedom he enjoys to observe, reflect,
and investigate. The condition of man’s
moral receptivity is dependent upon the ac
tion of his will. When a man is honestly
living out his conscientious convictions as to
what is Good and True, that man (with per
fect intellectual freedom) must of necessity
be progressing in the knowledge and love of
his Creator; and, where this is combined
with a healthy organism, we are justified
in regarding that man as possessing as much
of human happiness as humanity is capable
of enjoying. Thus, simply stated:—We
have what we are capable of receiving,
and are what we make ourselves. The in
comprehensible Intelligence, whom we call
God, governs His creation by laws that are
infinitely wise. The apparent contradic
tions and inexplicable expedients that
appear to be adopted in the evolution of a
world and the development of individualized
intelligences are the conditions by which the
immutable laws of God are transforming a
nebula of chaotic Atoms into a World of
beauty, grandeur, and intelligence, in
whose womb are generated, and on whose
bosom are developed, educated and puri
fied, immortal spirit-entities, who, in the
furnaces of affliction and suffering, and in
the warfare against the propensities and
passions of their lower nature, are made
thereby meet to glorify their Creator in an
active obedience to His will, in which is
involved their own everlasting happi
ness.
If this is clear to us, it follows that the
sufferings of the Animal Kingdom are also
�8
A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL AND SUFFERING/
the results of wise and beneficent laws, em
ploying apparently cruel agents in the ac
complishment of equally benevolent ends.
Under any circumstances, the difficulties are
enormously increased on the theory of Evil
and Suffering being the result of a single act
of disobedience committed in the infancy of
the race.* Earth-Life thus appears to be
the first chapter in a Book the pages of
which are endless, the theme of which is
the Wisdom, Power, and Goodness of God,
and its earliest teachings the rudimentary
principles of Spirit existence. To attain a
knowledge of these principles, appears to be
the work of every individual soul, and the
means best adapted to the purpose are, in
the wisdom of God, the experiences inci
dental to this stage of existence. In the
action and reaction of God’s immutable laws
(material and spiritual), men are ever learn
ing lessons, the full value of which, like
children at school, they will realize in after
life.
In a recent essay by Moncure D. Conway
on “ Theism, Atheism, and the Problem of
Evil,” he says, —“ Seeing so much, we re
member that we have come to it only very
gradually. We know that the human mind
once saw disorder in many regions where it
now sees order; that knowledge reveals
good in many things which ignorance held
altogether evil, consequently we are war
ranted in believing that more and more ex
perience, and increasing knowledge, will
make clear the surrounding realm of dark
ness.” .... “ If we could now by a
word remove from the world all that has
been done for it by pain and evil, we should
behold man relapsing from the height he
has won by struggle with unfriendly ele
ments and influences, falling back from
point to point, losing one after another the
energies gained by mastering evil, and sink
ing through all the stages of retrogression
to some miserable primal form too insigni
ficant to be attacked, too nerveless to suffer. ”
. . • . ‘ ‘ But even now this darkness
rests only upon the final cause of evil, that
is, upon the inquiry why the ends secured
by evil were not reached by a more merci
ful method. If, in reply to the question,
Why is not the universe painless ? we must
answer, We do not know. In reply to the
question, What good end does evil serve ?
we may answer, We know very well.”
I am here reminded of a question put to a
distressed parent by a little girl during a
prolonged and painful illness, ‘‘Why does
Maggie sutler so?” The parent was wise,
consequently silent. Religion may tranquilize, intuition whisper hope, and philo
sophyproduce resignation; but reason is here
out of its depth. We can but say,—we do not
know. Theories are propounded, and it is
impossible for thoughtfuT’taen, consciously
or unconsciously, to avoid entertaining some
views with regard to the presence of Evil
and Suffering in a World created by Infinite
Wisdom, governed by Infinite Love, and
upheld by Infinite Power; but so long as
we are under the influence of reason, and
alive to the dictates of conscience, we can
* The sincere evangelical Christian believes that not rest satisfied with any explanation of
the Evils and Sufferings of men and animals, and the
natural dissolution of living organisms, are all the re this mysterious phenomenon which involves
sults of “The Fall”; that death leads to an eternity
the contradiction of the highest and noblest
of misery for all who are unable intellectually to ap
impulses of our nature, or the absence of
prehend and consciously to lay hold of such doc
trines as “The Trinity” and “The Atonement.” It those principles of Righteousness and Jus
must be left to the reason and conscience of intelli
tice which are the intuitions of the civilized
gent men to judge on which side the balance of proba
conscience.
bility lies.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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A few thoughts on the philosophy of evil and suffering, from the stand-point of reason and intuition
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Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 8 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed in double columns.
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[187-?]
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Rationalism
Evil
Ethics
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Conway Tracts
Evil
Reason
Suffering
-
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Text
THE
MYSTERY OF EVIL
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD
LONDON, S.E.
1875.
Price Ninepence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE FULTENEY STREET
HAYMARKET.
�THE
MYSTERY OF EVIL.HIS subject is not one of mere sectarian or"
temporary interest. It touches a depth far
deeper than even the differences which separate
disciples of Naturalism from those who profess faith
in a miraculous book revelation. The following
inquiry reaches down to the “ bed rock ” of all intel
lectual and moral life, and deals with the source and
development of force in the universe, with the nature
of human actions, and with the true fulcrum which is
to bear the leverage by which this still suffering and
disordered world is to be raised towards perfect har
mony with taw, and with the highest ideal of human
intelligence and happiness.
Orthodox guides are constantly warning their
people against this proposed line of investigation. We
are cautioned that the study of such a topic is unprac
tical and unprofitable—if not actually profane —
*
that it involves a mystery which is hopelessly inex
plicable, that attempts to solve the mystery have been
made over and over again by the “ carnal ” intellect,
but always with the same unsatisfactory result—the
mocking of our hopes, the answering of our questions
by empty echoes, which but rebuke our presumption.
This has been the favourite way of silencing the
T
* To proscribe as profane, studies beyond the comprehension of a par
ticular school or sect is a very old habit. The wisest Greek philosopher
maintained that Astronomy was a subject unfit for human inquiry, and
that the gods took it under their own special and immediate control.
B
�6
The Mystery of Evil.
questionings, the difficulties, and the fears of “ doubt
ing believers;” There can be no harm, we are told
in making qurselves acquainted, as a matter of history,
with how the loyal defenders of the faith have been
accustomed to “ hold the fort ” against the “ infidel,”
for we should ever be ready to give a reason of the
hope that is in us. But to venture to reason out the
point independently for oneself is to enter on a path
beset with danger and leading to despair. Minds of
any siamma, however, and especially if familiar with
the wonderful disclosures which science and critical
scholarship are daily making, are not likely to submit
much longer to this restraint of priestly leading
strings. They will insist on the right of testing the
most “mysterious” teachings of the church for them
selves, undeterred alike by threats of ecclesiastical
taboo in this world and of divine punishment in the
next. The light of truth—formerly claimed as the
sole prerogative of a pretended “ sacred order ”—now
finds its way as freely into the poor man’s cottage as
into the palace of the archbishop, and will, sooner or
later, compel the dullest to examine for themselves
with an urgency that cannot be repressed.
If I looked upon the question under consideration
as simply affording scope for curious speculation, I
should be content at once to relegate it for decision
to the learned hair-splitters who make it their busi
ness solemnly to adjust the distinction between
“ homoousion ” and homozousion.” But I am fully
convinced that the alleged “ mystery of evil ” is
essentially a practical question, and one upon which
hangs the true theory of the universe, a right concep
tion of man’s physical and moral relations, and a just
understanding of the nature of the human will and
human accountability. Moreover, the vulgar notions
on this subject will have to be abandoned before the
many philanthropic persons whom theological super
stitions have misled, are likely to unite in any effectual
�The Mystery of Evil.
7
attempt at man’s physical, rational, and moral eleva
tion. With all becoming reverence for the earnest
and often profound efforts of the wise and the good
in past times to master the difficulties of this subject,
we, in this age of riper learning and more extensive
scientific acquisition, occupy a vantage ground in
discussing it which was not possible to any previous
generation.
“ Evil ” is a term having a theological origin,
though it has in some measure been adopted in the
language of common life. We usually understand by
it whatever is contrary to our ideas of moral rectitude
and tends to interfere with the general happiness
of mankind physically, morally, and socially. It is
but too easy to find endlessly varied traces of the
wretchedness and wrong that seem to defy all
attempts to reconcile them with the rule of infinite
power, wisdom, and goodness in the universe.
What shall we say of the tribes and races that
have been permitted to live many centuries in inter
necine strife, ignorance, filth, and pestilence, and to
perish without contributing one thought worth pre
serving to the stock of human ideas ? And still it is
often around the haunts of the wandering savage or
the uncultivated boor, who is incapable of appreciat
ing the sublime, that nature puts forth her grandest
feats of power and beauty. Then what shall we
think of the havoc and sorrow which are the heritage
of multitudes born into the world with constitutions
naturally predisposing them to suffer pain or to
violate the sentiments of justice and humanity, and
brought up in homes that infallibly foster vice, cruelty,
and crime. Nor does it relieve the difficulty to view in
temperance, the sickly frame, the life-long disease, the
plague and the pestilence as being, directly or remotely,
penalties for the neglect of sanitary and moral laws ;
for reason will persist in asking, “ Why, if the universe
be ruled by a Being of infinite power, wisdom, and
�8
The Mystery of Evil.
love, was not this deep turbid river of misery stemmed
at the fountain ? ” Nay, there are forms of suffering
yet more appalling and that yet more perplex and
overpower us: the storm that dashes a thousand
helpless vessels in pieces in spite of every expedient
tried by the crews to escape an ocean grave; the
earthquake that engulfs towns and cities so quickly
that science and forethought are powerless to avert
it; the explosion of the mine that suddenly scorches
to death many an honest toiler and deprives many a
family of its bread-winner. And if we turn from the
fury of the unconscious elements to the conscious
and troubled inward experience of human beings, the
cloud of “ natural ills that flesh is heir to,” thickens.
The tangled affairs of social and moral life is patent
to us all. Why, in this century for instance, should
law and order, truth and right, have so little influence
upon civilised nations, to say nothing of those we
deem barbarians ? Look back, too, in history, and
behold the long perspective of prophets and martyrs,
who have sealed their loyalty to truth and righteous
ness with their blood, while the tyrants who slew
them died without one pang of remorse. Look
around and see all ages cut down, apparently at ran
dom ;—in many cases the wise and vigorous, the use
ful, the talented, and benevolent, withering away in
the morning or noontide of their days with their
gifts increasing in number and activity, while the effete
and the stupid, the besotted, the selfish, the useless,
are spared. Knavery arrayed in purple and fine
linen fares sumptuously, and at its gate honest
poverty clothed in rags, desires in vain to eat of the
crumbs that fall from the rich charlatan’s table.
Consider the millions that have innocently pined in
the dungeon, or that have been worked as beasts,
flogged as beasts, and sold as beasts. Consider the
throng of once blooming maidens ruined by heartless
human monsters. Think of nations in the first rank
�The Mystery of Evil.
9
of civilisation, bowing at the same altar, and rising
from their devotions to slay each other by weapons
of fiendish ingenuity. And with the spectacle also
before us of the greed of ambition, the vapourings
of pride, the treachery of the false, the meanness of
the little, the vices of the bad, and the frailties of
the good, the moral instinct within us cannot help
reiterating the question, “ Is this the sort of world
we should have expected under the government of a
Deity clothed with the attributes of perfection ? The
good man—crude though his ideal be—if he had the
power as he has the wish, would at once reduce this
chaos to order ; and does not the Theist believe in a
God infinitely better than the most benevolent of
men ?
An eminent living physical philosopher has said
“ Nature seems to take some care of the race, but
bestows very little on individuals.” And in brooding
on the dark side of this problem, a man of literary
note once exclaimed, in a private circle, “For the
credit of our conception of what goodness ought to
be, let us hope there is no God.” This, too, rightly
or wrongly, was the very thought put by Byron into
the mouth of Gain in his reply to Lucifer :
Why do I exist ?
Why art thou wretched ? why are all things so ?
Even He who made us must be as the Maker
Of things unhappy ! To produce destruction
Can surely never be the work of joy;
And yet my sire says He’s omnipotent.
Then why is evil ?—He being good ?
The same thought is strongly expressed by Mrs.
Browning:—
My soul is grey
With pouring o’er the total sum of ill.
*****
With such a total of distracted life
To see it down in figures on a page,
Plain, silent, clear
*
*
*
�IO
The Mystery of Evil.
*
*
*
That’s terrible
For one who is not God, and cannot right
The wrong he looks upon.
*
This problem of evil has stirred deeply inquiring
minds from the earliest times. In the ‘ Naishadha
Charita ’ (xvii. 45), a Charvaka, or materialistic
Atheist, is represented as addressing Indra and other
gods on their return to heaven from Damayantis
Svayamvara, and ridiculing the orthodox Indian doc
trines of the Vedas :—“ If there be an omniscient and
merciful God, who never speaks in vain, why does
he not, by the mere expenditure of a word, satisfy
the desires of us his suppliants ? By causing living
creatures to suffer pain, though it be the result of
their own works, God would be our causeless enemy,
whilst all our other enemies have some reason or
other for their enmity. ”f
Sophocles has lines to the same effect:—“ It is
strange that those who are impious and descendants
of wicked men should fare prosperously, while those
who are good and sprung from noble men should be'
unfortunate. It was not meet that the gods should
thus deal with mortals. Pious men ought to have
obtained from the gods some manifest advantage,
while the unjust should, on the contrary, have paid
some evident penalty for their evil deeds, and thus
no one who was wicked would have been pros
perous.” J
It may be convenient at this point to glance at
some of the methods that have been employed to
ease or remove the contradiction between the painful
phenomena of life and the credited rule of an allmighty, all-wise, and all-good Father. We shall
* ‘Aurora Leigh.’
t ‘ Additional Moral and Religious Passages, Metrically rendered
from the Sanskrit, with exact Prose Translations ”—Scott's Series.
t Quoted by Dr. Muir in the ‘Additional Moral and Religious
Passages.’
�The Mystery j)f Tvil.
ri
thus have an opportunity of detecting the fallacies
which lurk under all such methods of harmonising,
and which render them nugatory.
Epicurus, from a Theistic point of view, stated the
case very comprehensively when, in syllogistic form,
he said :—“ Why is evil in the world ? It is either
because God is unable or unwilling to remove it. If
he be unable he is not omnipotent. If he be
unwilling, he is not all-good. If he be neither able
nor willing, he is neither all-powerful nor all-good; ”*
and it is difficult to see how escape is possible from
between the horns of this dilemma on the supposition
that an infinite God exists.
The Manichseans believed good and evil or pleasure
and pain to be rival powers in the universe. This
was also virtually the Persian theory on the subject,
only the latter was clothed in oriental dress.f Bolingbroke and the sceptics of his day, accounted for the
phenomena referred to on an aesthetic principle—the
proportion of parts in the scale of sentient being.
Every animal has bodily members of varied grades
of honour and importance, and all in harmonious
subserviency to the general convenience of their
possessor. Every picture has an arrangement of
colour producing light and shade. All harmony
must consist of voices attuned from alto to bass.
Every considerable dwelling must have apartments
in the attic as well as on the ground floor, and of
greater or less capacity. So the world is formed
on a gradational plan from high intelligence, by
imperceptible degrees down to life of so doubtful a
* The great Lord Shaftesbury, in his “ Inquiry concerning Virtue,”
‘Characteristics,’Vol. II.,page 10,puts the case thus:—“If there be
supposed a designing principle, who is the cause only of good, but
cannot prevent ill which happens . . . then there can be supposed, in
reality, no such thing as a superior good design or mind, other than
what is impotent and defective; for not to correct or totally exclude
that ill . . . must proceed either from impotency or ill-will."
t Ormuzd and Ahriman. This is also the germ of the Christian
dogma of God whois “ Light,” and the Devil “ The Prince of Darkness.”
�12
The Mystery of Evil.
character that it is impossible to determine whether
it be vegetable or animal. In the moral sphere,
too, there is a ladder whose top reaches the loftiest
unselfishness, and whose rounds gradually descend
to the grossest forms of moral life. It is argued
that the world would be tame and monotonous
without these inequalities in the structure of
universal life, and that it is the constant fric
tion between beings of high and low degree which
helps to give that healthful impulse to human activity
that keeps the universe from stagnating; and
unavoidable accidents but quicken the forethought
and contrivance of men to provide against such
occurrences. It will be felt, however, by the most
ordinary thinker, that such a theory utterly fails to
cover all the facts, and fails especially to account for
the more formidable sufferings of humanity. It is
but the view of an artist who lives in a one-sided and
unreal region, surrounded by plenty, who simply
looks out upon the world through a colewr de rose
medium, and projects the image of his own luxurious
home upon the landscape outside.
There is another theory popular with a large class
of airy minds, which regards evil as a modification
of good. Right and wrong, truth and falsehood pro
ceed from the same source, and are degrees of the
same thing. Lust is only a lower form of love, and
what would be described as cruelty inflicted upon
others is not intended to cause suffering as cm end,
but only occurs in some rather abrupt and uncere
monious attempt being made by a person to reach
some object much wished for. But the one who
suffers happens to be, unconsciously perhaps, an
obstacle in the way of that object being attained;
and the suffering is occasioned simply by accident,
just as we stumble against a neighbour who has
the misfortune to cross our path at the moment
when our attention is fixed on something we
�The Mystery of Evil.
13
eagerly want to get at on the opposite side of
the street. So much the worse for the neighbour if
he sustain injury by the impact, but it is no fault
of ours !•
AVhat goes by the name of meanness, according to
the same theory, springs as truly from a wish to be
happy in the mean nature as nobility does when
manifested by a noble nature. As little harm is
intended by the one nature as by the other. But it
seems only necessary to state this method of meeting
the difficulty in order to see its inadequacy. Even
granting that the misery occasioned by men to each
other were reconciled by this mode of reasoning,
there is a class of troubles which are wholly beyond
human agency and control that remains utterly
unaccounted for ; and respecting the evils which the
theory professes to explain away, the question crops
up afresh, why, if the government of the world be
conducted by a Being of infinite power, wisdom and
love, is so much distress permitted to be caused,
howeu&r casually, by men to one another ?
Perhaps the most elaborate and closely-reasoned
attempt ever made to harmonise existing evil in the
world with perfect wisdom, power, and goodness, in
a Creator, was the celebrated “ Essay on the Origin
Qf Evil,” by Archbishop King. The writer postu
lates, as an axiom, that the universe is the work of a
God of infinite intelligence, power, and goodness ;
and he deals in precisely the same manner with the
alleged existence of freedom and responsibility in
human beings. The pith of the Archbishop’s explana
tion of moral evil is contained in the following
passage: “ The less dependent on external things,
the more self-sufficient any agent is, and the more it
has the principles of its actions within itself, it is so
much the more perfect; since, therefore, we may con
ceive two sorts of agents, one which does not act
unless impelled and determined by external circum
�1’4
The Mystery of Evil.
stances, such as vegetable bodies; the other, which
have the principle of their actions within themselves,
namely, free agents, and can determine themselves to
action by their own natural power, it is plain that the
latter are much more perfect than the former; nor
can it be denied that God may create an agent with
such power as this; which can exert itself into
action without either the concourse of God or the deter
mination of external causes, as long as God preserves
the existence, power, and faculties, of that agent;
that evil arises from the uniawful Use of man s faculties ;
that more good in general arises from the donation of
such a self-moving power, together with all those
foreseen abuses of it, than could possibly have been
produced without it.”
The gist of the Archbishop’s reasoning is in ’the
words : “ Evil arises from the unlawful use of men’s
faculties.” But this is a mere begging of the
question, and a shifting rather than a settlement of
the difficulty ; for even granting the assumption putforward, the inquiry naturally recurs: Why, in a
world created and sustained by such a perfect Being
as Theism recognises, was any arrangement tolerated
by which men should exercise their faculties unlaw
fully—especially as the results are so painfully dis
cordant with our notions of happiness ? It is assumed
by the Archbishop that man and not his maker is
responsible for the moral chaos that has always
characterised the condition of the race. But this is
only a repetition of the now exploded theologioal
fiction that man was created with his faculties and
circumstances equally and entirely favourable toobedience; and that his departure from law was his
own voluntary choice—a choice determined upon by
him with a full consciousness that he ought to have
acted differently, and that he was free to have done
so. By the voluntary depravation of his own mind
and by the force of his bad example he involved all
�Fvr.1
The Mystery of Evil.
i5
his descendants in the moral and physical conse
quences of his transgression. But with the undeni
able revelations of modern scientific and historical
research before us such a view is too absurd to need
refutation. In any case we are justified in holding
that on the hypothesis of a miracle-working God,
there is no tendency to disobedience, error, or vice,
in mankind that might not have been easily checked
in its first outbreak by an act of omnipotence. The
power that is asserted to have rained manna from the
skies, arrested the setting of the sun, changed water
into wine, and raised the dead, might surely have
been exerted in a way more worthy the dignity and
goodness of an infinite God, in stopping the first
outburst of moral disorder that has filled the world
until now with cruel and deadly passions and over
whelmed millions of sensitive spirits in intense
anguish.
By the same superficial and evasive reasoning, has
this writer disposed of those calamities which cannot
owe their origin, anyhow, to the will of man. He
coolly tells us that “ it is no objection to God’s good
ness or his wisdom to create such things as are
necessarily attended with these evils . . . and that
disagreeable sensations must be reckoned among
natural evils as inevitably associated with sentient
existences, which yet cannot be avoided. If anyone
ask why such a law of union was established, namely,
the disagreeable sensations which sentient creatures
experience, let this be the answer, because there could
be no better ; for such a necessity as this follows ; and
considering the circumstances and conditions under
which, and under which only, they could have exist
ence, they could neither be placed in a better state,
nor governed by more commodious laws.” That is
to say, God in his wisdom and goodness did his best
to secure the general well-being of the universe and
signally failed, as the physical accidents and agonies
�i6
The Mystery of Evil.
endured by innocent multitudes, prove! Yet this is
a book of which a distinguished Theistic philosopher
said: “ If Archbishop King, in this performance,
has not reconciled the inconsistencies, none else need
apply themselves to the task.” If the data of Arch
bishop King as regards the existence of a personal
Deity, clothed with infinitely perfect physical and
moral attributes, and as regards the free agency of man,
had been correct, the most logical course for him
would have been to have simply admitted the hopeless
irreconcilableness of these data with the state of the
world as we find it, and to have betaken himself to
the favourite retreat of orthodoxy,—mystery,—and
spared himself the pains of elaborating a tissue of
metaphysical fallacies which only make the confusion
to be worse confounded. But I reserve his data for
fuller examination afterwards.
The only other theory, which I shall notice, as
differing from the one to be subsequently proposed,
is that of fatalistic Deism, which was held in the last
century by a large class of European philosophers,
and sought to be refuted by Butler. The following
is an epitome of the argument of this school:—The
existence of Deity, as infinite and uncreated, is a
necessary fact, intuitively perceived. If God’s exist
ence be necessary, the conditions of his existence—
physical, mental, and moral,—and the modes of its
action and development, must be alike necessary. As
the visible universe is the outcome of this necessary
existence, all the forms of being contained in the
universe must also be necessary, by which we are to
understand that we cannot conceive the possibility of
their being otherwise than they are. If so, then all
the orders of existence in the universe, proceeding
from the depths of his infinite nature and constantly
dependent upon his support, are fated to form links
in one chain of eternal and unalterable necessity, and
to be precisely as they are. Therefore the develop-
�The Mystery of Evil.
17
ment of human beings, and of every other variety of
life, is destined to assume the particular form under
which they are found to exist at any given stage of
the evolution of the universe. Consequently, what,
in the vocabulary of mortals, is called freedom, is but
an illusion,—the actions and characters of rational
beings of all degrees of intelligence and moral
culture being included in that ceaseless development
which is controlled by the same central and allembracing principle of unexplainable necessity.
*
It is further maintained by the same class of
Deists that amidst all the apparent confusion that
prevails, indications of a process of orderly develop
ments are discernible, whether we trace the con
solidation of the earth’s crust, or the progressive
advance of vegetable and animal forms upon it,
or the gradual uplifting of the human species.
This evolution, it is asserted, is either caused
and directed by some controlling Intelligence,
or is the result of chance, or arises from some
inherent spontaneous power in the universe itself.
But our conception of chance excludes it from the
rank of a causal and regulating force, for we only
understand by the term what is fortuitous, blind,
undesigning, and impotent. Again, to suppose that
some inherent spontaneous power in nature itself is
shaping and directing universal progress would be to
endow the universe with physical, rational, and moral
power; in other words, to identify it with God, or to
view it as God. Therefore, it is concluded,—these
alternatives failing to satisfy the demands of logical
consistency,—the only tenable view left is that the
framework and development of the universe, is the
work of a Deity answering to the 0eos of Homer,
who represents the God of his conception, as being
* The reader will be reminded of a remarkable passage in the
‘Prometheus Vinctus ’ of uEschylus: “Even Jove is not superior to
the Fates.”
�The Mystery of Evil.
the source of all the good and evil of life. I confess
that for a time, while my own mind was passing from
supernaturalism to naturalism, and while I believed
that my choice in dealing with “ the mystery of evil ”
lay alone between rival forms of Theism, this notion
of God as the primal cause alike of happiness and
misery was the only one which seemed co-ordinate
with all the facts, and effectually to solve the mystery.
But, as will appear later in this paper, two objec
tions ultimately arose in my mind which shook my
fatalistic Deism to its foundation. The first of these
was, that the God I thought myself bound to believe
in fell far short of the ideal of virtue and goodness
at which an average high-minded man felt himself
obliged to aim, and thus I was conscious of doing
violence to my better nature in holding to such a
faith. The second objection was that the intuitive
idea of Deity was found by me to be a gratuitous
assumption which, with other beliefs of this descrip
tion, collapsed under the unsparing analysis to which
the intuitive philosophy has been subjected by the
inductive philosophy—the latter being the only one
which seems to me to accord with the universal
principles of truth.
After the preceding statement of attempted solu
tions of this alleged mystery by Theistic and Deistic
theories, it will probably be admitted that any method
of accounting for the existence of evil based on the
twofold hypothesis of an Almighty God of omniscience,
wisdom, and goodness, and the doctrine of the free,
self-determining action of the human will, cannot
escape from the charge of mystery—or, more properly,
of palpable logical contradiction. In presence of
these two conceptions, evil must inevitably remain a '
mystery. Let them be surrendered, however, and the
mystery instantly vanishes.
When a scientific analyst discovers that a hypo
thesis fails to cover and explain all the phenomena,
�The Mystery of Evil.
he unhesitatingly abandons it, and there is no other
alternative left to an inductive theologian—if there
be such a person—when he is placed in a similar
position. The facts in the present instance are
agreed upon by all. There is a large proportion,
if not preponderance, of what is known as JBvil
in the world; and if the idea of an infinitely
wise and good personal Deity tend to embarrass
instead of allaying the difficulties we have been
examining, clearly the idea of an universal ruler
ought, in loyalty to truth, to be removed from the
category of our beliefs, let the sentimental associa
tions be ever so hallowed and strong that have
gathered round it, and the same remark applies to
the allied dogma of free will in man.
As regards the first of these points, the justice of
the course recommended is strengthened when we
consider that the existence of such an almighty
person is incapable of scientific or any other kind of
proof worthy consideration. At the same time, in
venturing this remark, I wish emphatically to dis
claim all sympathy with positive Atheism; for a
dogmatic negation of any vitalizing and controlling
force in the universe, not being itself the universe, is
almost as objectionable as the most dogmatic form of
Theism. All I contend for is, that there is no ground
for believing in what theologians call a personal God,
in other words, “ a magnified man ” invested with
certain characteristics of humanity attributed to him,
these attributes being only infinitely extended.
Doubtless Theists, and particularly Christian Theists,
will be ready to adduce in reply their usual argu
ment for the existence of a personal Deity derived
from their intuitions. This, consistently enough, is
also the stronghold of Christian faith in the doctrine
of “ a supernatural gospel,” namely, “ its felt adapta
tion to the spiritual wants of Christian believers.”
And the more rapidly and convincingly the evidences
�20
The Mystery of Evil.
of science and historical criticism accumulate on the
non-supernatural and non-Theistic side, they shut
their eyes the closer, scream the louder against “ the
wickedness of Atheistic materialism,” and plunge
deeper into the sentimental abyss of their “ intuitions.”
Here is a passage a propos, written by one of the
ablest and best read leaders of the reactionary, semi
mystic, evangelical school which owes its origin (as
opposed) to the “ fierce light ” of modern thought,
against which the writer lifts a warning voice.
“ But whether we represent a ‘ new school ’ or a
theological ‘ reaction ’ we say frankly that, in our
judgment, the exigencies of the times require that
Christian Churches, and especially Christian ministers,
should meet the dogmas of materialism and anti-super
naturalism with the most direct and uncompromising
hostility. It is not for us to permit men to suppose that we
regard the existence of the living God as an open ques
tion. Nor shall we make any deep impression on the
minds of men if our faith in Jesus Glvrist rests on
grounds that are accessible to historical, scientific, or
philosophical criticism. If we are to meet modern
unbelief successfully we must receive that direct
revelation of Christ which will enable us to say ‘ we
have heard him, we have seen him ourselves and
know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour
of the world! ’ ” The great object of this school
seems to be to make a religious “impression ” in
Evangelical fashion, and stamp out all that frustrates
their doing so, proceeding from the sceptical camp.
The historical truth or error of the thing taught
seems to be of secondary consideration provided it
can be made to dovetail with Evangelical intuitions.
These intense believers deliberately tell us that it is
of no use our calling their attention to discrepancies
in the Gospel narratives by which these sources of
Christian facts are rendered historically untrust
worthy. They assure us that such criticism is idle
�The Mystery of Evil.
21
and beside the mark, and they console themselves
with the belief that these discrepancies are only
apparent, and that if we could but compare the
original documents (which, by the way, nobody has
ever seen or can find the least trace of) instead of
the mere copies of them (these pretended copies
being all we possess), we should be immediately
convinced !
*
So in regard to the existence of a personal Deity,
instead of looking at the facts as they are, they
assure us that, if we could only know all the compli
cations of the divine government, our difficulty in
believing in their Deity would disappear. But those
who fall back on the fitness of their conception of
Deity to their intuitions as a proof of his existence,
while perhaps feeling that this argument affords
perfect satisfaction to themselves, place an insuper
able barrier against all interchange of reasoning
between themselves and those who hold opposite
convictions. Any one who hides in the recesses
of his intuitions, has sunk into a state of intel
lectual somnolency from which no argument can
wake him.
’
There are some Theistic apologists, however, who
still have unshaken faith in the argument from design,
as establishing the existence of a beneficent designer.
But the fallacy of this argument is obvious. The
premises and conclusion stand thus :—“Every object
which bears marks of design necessarily points to
the existence of an intelligent designer. The universe
is such an object, therefore it had an intelligent
designer.” But it is usually forgotten that this con
clusion is arrived at by comparing the universe with
an object—a watch for example, that can bear no
* The weak point in this intuitional argument is that it proves too
much. It is the favourite proof with large sections of the adherents
of Buddhism, Brahminism, Fire-worship, and Mahometanism respec
tively, by which these systems are all Jett to be supernatural revela
tions. Therefore by proving too much it proves nothing.
�22
The Mystery of Evil.
analogy to it. It is taken for granted that the uni
verse sustains the same relation to a personal Creator
which a piece of mechanism does to a mortal con
triver.
Now, it might be perfectly fair to compare one piece
of human handiwork with another, and infer that
both suggested the application of power and intelli
gence equal to their construction. But in comparing
the universe—there being only one, and that one
infinite, with articles of man’s invention, which are
many and finite—are we not comparing the known
with the unknown, and carrying the principle of
analogy into a region where it can have no place ?
It may be just to infer that as one work of human
arrangement naturally implies skill in the maker, so
another work bearing marks of human contrivance,
should, in like manner, suggest to us the action of a
thinking mind. But science is so far in the dark as
to the mainspring of life, motion and development in
the one universe that we should be totally unwarranted
by the laws of thought in arguing from the origin of
what is discoverable to the orgin of what is undiscover*
able
To reason, therefore, from design in the
operations of man to design in the operations of
nature is illogical and impossible.
One of the most remarkable signs of change, of
late, in the conception of Deity, among progressive
thinkers, who still cling to the skirts of recognised reli
gious institutions, is the effort that has been made to
reconcile an impersonal Power influencing and shaping
the evolution of the universe with the teachings of
the Bible. The line of thought in Mr. Matthew
Arnold’s ‘ Literature and Dogma ’ has very decidedly
this leaning. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say
* Axiom V., in the Tractates Theologico-Politicus of Spinoza is
decisive on this point. “ Things that have nothing in common with
each other cannot be understood by means of each others i.e., the.concep
tion <f the one does not involve the conception of the other."
�The Mystery of Trail.
23
that this writer labours to turn the current notion of
a personal God into ridicule, and even seeks to prove
that, at least, the ancient Hebrews were not in sym
pathy with such a notion. Some will take leave to
doubt whether Mr. Arnold’s views of the Hebrew
conception of God be not more ingenious than accu
rate, and whether he may not have foisted far-fetched
theories of his own upon the text of the Bible in his
zeal to make out his case. But, at any rate, we have
the phenomenon of a writer cherishing devotion to
the teaching of Scripture and concern for the main
tenance of the national Church, and yet sapping the
foundations of orthodoxy, and actually sneering at
the idea of faith in a personal Deity, though pro
fessed gravely by eminent bishops—the two whose
names he repeats ad nauseam throughout the essay.
Another recent book of essays, written with a
similar purpose, but in a more reverent and philo
sophic spirit, is not unworthy of notice. The author
*
is a Nonconformist minister, and a member of the
London School Board—a gentleman of marked ability
and wide culture. The peculiarity of his position is
that while, like the Broad Church clergy, conducting
his service with a liturgy and a hymn-book, fashioned
after orthodox models, he has openly renounced the
dogma of the Supernatural in his pulpit teaching, and
rejected the notion of a personal God. He has chosen
to represent himself as a “ Christian Pantheist,”—a
term which we may be excused for deeming para
doxical—and strives throughout the volume to bring
his statements into accord with certain passages in
the New Testament. The essays reveal more than an
average (as well as a discriminating) acquaintance
with ancient and modern philosophy and theology,
and with the results of modern science in relation to
* 1 The Mystery of Matter, and other Essays.’ By J. Allanson Picton,
M.A. Macmillan. 1873.
�24
The Mystery of Evil.
the nature of the Universe. His thoughts are, now
and then, diffuse, but they are always expressed with
a wealth of language and sometimes with an eloquence
•not ordinarily met with in theological disquisitions.
There are, however, as it seems to me, weak points,
I had almost said occasional contradictions, in his
reasoning, into which he may have been unconsciously
led by his unique ecclesiastical relations, but which it
is beyond the scope of the present paper to criticise
at length. Nevertheless, he forcibly opposes the old
error which made a distinction between matter and
spirit, and he reduces the Universe, with Professor
Huxley, to a unity, namely, substance, of which what
have been vulgarly described as matter and spirit are
simply the phenomena. He further boldly rejects all
theories which regard Deity as one amidst a host of
other beings, and while, with religious fervour, recog
nising the presence of an efficient though unnameable
energy as vitalising and controlling all molecular
forces, he seems, at the same time, to identify that
unkown efficient energy with universal substance,
and accords to it the right and title to be formally
worshipped. I respectfully think he is not always
clear and consistent in this part of his theme. Some
times he refers—as Spinoza himself does—to this
vitalising and all-comprehending essence as if it were
invested with attributes of intelligence, wisdom, and
goodness, without which attributes the writer’s insistance upon the worship of universal substance as deity
would be a misnomer. And yet, difficult though it be
to discover homogeneity between certain parts of
these essays, in one respect the author’s aim through
out is unmistakeable. He emphatically pronounces
against the existence of a personal Deity. Some of his
remarks in opposition to the design argument are
especially worth quoting :—
“ It is demonstrable that there must be some fallacy
in such an argument as that of Paley. For if it be
�The Mystery of Evil.
25
rigorously applied, it cannot prove what Paley cer
tainly wished to establish—the existence of an omni
potent and omniscient worker. . . . If we are to
see design only when we can compliment nature on
an apparent resemblance to operations of human skill;
and if, the moment that resemblance ceases, we are
to confess our ignorance and to refrain from carrying
the analogy further, would it not be better, seeing
’how infinitely larger is our ignorance than our know
ledge, to recognise in both bearings of the analogy
an appearance only which, though for some purposes
practically useful, is infinitely below the divine reality.
. . . Of whatever value the analogy of human
design may be, no one would think of insisting upon
its admitted imperfections as a part of the argument;
and yet, without pressing those imperfections, it is
impossible to make the argument consistent. But if
it be fairly carried out, what it proves is this, that an
omnipotent designer, intending to produce a beautiful
and perfect work, went through millions of opera
tions, when a single fiat would have sufficed; that
these operations consisted not in clearly-aimed and
economical modifications of material, but in the evolu
tion of a thousand imperfect products, amongst which
some single one might form a step to the next stage,
while all the rest were destroyed; and thus the living
material wasted was immensely greater than that
which was used; that myriads of weaklings, were
suffered to struggle together, as though omniscience
could not decide, without experiment, which were
the better worth preserving; that in each successive
modification the worker preserved, as far as was pos
sible, the form of the previous stage, until it was found
to be inconsistent with life; nay, that he carefully
introduced into each successive product parts which
had become obsolete, useless, and even dangerous—
and all not through any inevitable conditions—for
omnipotence excludes them, but in pursuit of a
�26
The Mystery of Evil.
mysterious plan, the reasons for which, as well as its
nature, are acknowledged to be utterly inscrutable.
Analogies which lead to such issues surely cannot be
of much value for the nobler aims of religion.” *
The other cause of the difficulty encountered in
probing “ the Mystery of Evil ” is the traditional
notions entertained by many, of the action of the
human will. Man is represented by the orthodox as
a “free agent ” (I except, of course, hyper-Calvinists
who now form a very small minority among Chris
tians), and the doctrine of volitional liberty has
acquired prominence in theological and philosophical
discussions; not from any practical influence the doc
trine can exert, one way or another, on the actual
conduct of life, but simply from the accident that the
question whether the will was absolutely free or deter
mined by necessity happened to be thrown to the
surface, in the fifth century, in the theological battle
between the Augustinians and the Pelagians. The
inquiry is itself interesting and important, but many
mental philosophers from that period until recently,
having a dread of the odium theologicum, have been
desirous it should be known that they were “ sound ”
on the subject, and have been particular in declaring
themselves on the orthodox side. The strong enun
ciation of one view has called forth an equally vigor
ous statement of the opposite theory, and hence
philosophers have filed off into two sharply defined
parties—libertarians and necessitarians—so that the
importance that has come to be attached to the
free-will controversy is, in a great measure, adven
titious.
The introduction of moral evil into the world, as
before stated, has been ascribed by the greater number
of Christians to the voluntary disobedience of the pro
genitor of the race. Tradition has handed down the un
scientific and unhistoric story of an original man who,
♦ ‘ Mystery of Matter,’ pp. 330, 340,345.
�The Mystery of Evil.
i7
having been severely plied with temptation in order
to test bis virtue, voluntarily broke a certain arbitrary
and positive command of his maker, and involved him
self and his posterity in tendencies to wrong-doing
which could only be corrected by supernatural means.
But, without debating the wide question of the origin
■of mankind, manifestly men are so constituted and
surrounded that limitations are placed as indubitably
upon their volitional faculty as upon their other men
tal powers. So that in no libertarian sense can we
be said to be free agents. The form a man’s charac
ter takes is necessarily dependent on his innate pre
dispositions and capacities—the form and size of
brain and cast of temperament which he derives from
his parents—and on the nature and extent of the in
fluences under which he is trained. Some natures
are constitutionally more attuned to intellectual and
moral harmony than others, and when impelled by
favourable influences from without, there is little
merit in their moving in the line of conformity to
truth and right. There are other natures that inherit
less fortunate tendencies, to whom virtue must always
be the result of conscious effort, and especially if
they be encircled with influences unfriendly to the
culture of a high and noble life. It is certain that if
such persons attain any considerable degree of good
ness, the end will be reached through the experience
.of error and folly and of the natural penalties attach
ing to both. As far as I can understand, the chief
ground of the alarm affected by a certain class of phi
losophers and theologians at the idea of human actions
being determined by necessity is the morbid and ficti
tious weight they have given to the doctrine of indi
vidual responsibility; I say morbid and fictitious, be
cause whether a man violates the laws of nature or of
society he is sooner or later made to bear more or
less of his share of responsibility in enduring the
natural punishment due to the offence. Had the
�28
The Mystery of Evil.
same amount of concern been felt by society about
their collective share of responsibility in reference to
the physical, intellectual, and moral well-being of
individuals as is felt about the influence of necessi
tarianism upon “ men’s felt sense of individual respon
sibility ” the results to the community and the race
■vyould have been much more rational and beneficial.
I am persuaded that the individual conduct of citizens
—be they good or bad—is not affected in the slightest
degree, for better or for worse, by the views they
may entertain of the philosophy of the human will.
This might be proved demonstratively did space
permit.
The kernel of this controversy, then, lies in the
inquiry, Whether the will is absolutely self-determina
tive, and capable of arbitrarily kicking the beam,
when motives present to the mind, and tending in
opposite directions, seem to be evenly balanced; or
whether, in every instance, the motive, embracing a
great variety of considerations in the mind itself as
well as in the circumstances around it, do not infal
libly determine the character of the choice that is
made. If the libertarian view be the right one, no
certainty can be ever predicated as to the effect upon
the conduct of uniformly good or bad motives, and,
consequently, the most earnest and philanthropic ex
ertions to improve the world are, at best, dishearten
ing. But since it can be demonstrated that the for
mation of human habits is governed by necessary
laws, and that these laws can be ascertained and acted
upon with the undoubted assurance that correspond
ing results may be anticipated, the labours of science
and philanthropy are animated by a well-founded
hope that they need not be expended in vain. What,
then, is “ will ” but simply that faculty or power of
the mind by which we are capable of choosing ? And
an act of will is the same as an act of choice. That
which uniformly determines the will is the motive which,
�The Mystery of Evil.
29
as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest.
The motive is that which excites or invites the mind
to volition, whether that be one thing singly or many
things conjointly. By necessity, in this connection, is
meant nothing more than the philosophical certainty
of the relation between given antecedents and conse
quents in the production of actions. Man, like every
other sentient being, is necessarily actuated by a
desire for happiness, according to his particular esti
mate of it. It would be a contradiction to suppose
that he could hate happiness, or that he could desire
misery for its own sake, or with a perception that it
was such. He is placed in circumstances in which a
vast variety of objects address themselves to this
predominating desire, some promising to gratify it in
a higher degree, some in a lower, some appealing to
one part of his nature and some to another. He
cannot but be attracted to those objects and those
courses of conduct which his reason or his appetites,
or both combined, assure him are likely to gratify
his desire of happiness. The various degrees or kinds
of real and apparent good, promised by different ob
jects or courses of conduct, constitute the motives
which incline him to act in pursuance of the general
desire of happiness which is the grand impulse of
his nature. Sometimes he really sees and sometimes
he imagines he sees (and as regards their influence
on the will they come to the same thing) greater
degrees of good in some objects or proposed courses
of conduct than in others; and this constitutes pre
ponderance of motive, that is, a greater measure of
real or apparent good at the time of any particular
volition. This preponderance of motive will be as is
the character of the moral agent and the circum
stances of the objects, taken conjointly. This pre
ponderance of motive will be, therefore, not only
different in different individuals, but different in
different individuals at different times. That which
�30
The Mystery of Evil.
at any particular time is or appears to promise the
greatest good, will uniformly decide the Will. This
*
necessarily flows from the tendency of a sentient
nature to seek happiness at all, and is, indeed, only a
particular application of the same general principle;
inasmuch as it would imply as great a contradiction
that a being capable of happiness should not take
that which it deems will confer, all things considered,
a greater degree of happiness rather than that which
will confer a less, as it would be to imagine it not
seeking happiness rather than the contrary, or some
happiness rather than none. This certainty of con
nection between the preponderance of motive and
the decisions of the will is what is meant by necessity,
as simply implying that the cause will as certainly
be followed by the appropriate effect in this instance
as in any instance of the mutual connection of cause
and effect whatever,f
Motive sustains a dynamical relation to will, as a
cause does to an effect in physics. Therefore the only
liberty which man possesses or can possess, is not the
liberty of willing as he will—which is an idea philo
sophically absurd—but of acting as he wills, accord
ing to the laws of necessity. Otherwise he would
be independent of cause; and, indeed, libertarians
actually assert that a motive is not the cause, but
only the occasion of choice.^ Either human volitions
are effects or they are not. If they are effects, they
are consequents indissolubly associated with the an
tecedent causes or motives which precede them;
• “ The greatest of two pleasures or what appears such, sways the
resulting action, for it is this resulting action that alone determines
which is the greatest.”—Bain on the ‘ Emotions and the Will,’ p. 447.
t This is the course of argument adopted by Edwards in his re
markable book on the Will, and it is admirably summarised by Henry
Rogers in his ‘Essay on the Genius and Writings of Edwards,’pre
fixed to the Complete Edition of his Works, pp. xx to xxiv.
I For this distinction, enforced by Drs. Clarke and Price, see remarks
in Bain’s ‘ Mind and Body,’ p. 76; also in ‘ The Refutation of Edwards,’
by Tappan.
�The Mystery of Evil.
31
and therefore “ the liberty of indifference ” is im
*
possible.
If human volitions be not effects, the
actions of men are independent of condition or rela
tion, undetermined by motives or antecedents, and
for that reason removed beyond the domain of that
principle of necessary law which is the sole guarantee
for the order’and progress of the Uni verse, f
The elimination from this problem, therefore, of
the conception of a Deity clothed with personal and
moral attributes and of the notion of a self-deter
mining will in man, liberates it from all mystery and
difficulty whatsoever; for if there be no personal
God the existence of physical evil casts no imputa
tion upon the infinite character attributed to him.
And if there be no “ liberty of indifference ” in man,
he is exempt from the charge of being, in any sense,
the originator of moral evil, as the circumstances
that constitute his motives are made for him and not
by him; and therefore the praise of virtue and the
blame of vice and, in fact, the whole theory of con
science as held by the vulgar, are annulled.
What is the distinct reality left to us, then, after
we have parted with these two inventions of fancy ?
The pith of the matter may be conveniently summed
up in a few simple propositions :—
* Definition VII. In the ‘Tractatus’ of Spinoza runs thus:—“That
thing' is said to be free which exists by the sole necessity of its own nature,
and by itself alone is determined to action. But that is necessary or
rather constrained which owes its existence to another and acts according
to certain and determinate causes.”
+ The controversy on Free Will and Necessity has, within the last
quarter of a century, passed from the region of mere theological wrang
ling into the circle of scientific studies, and has assumed to the social
and moral Reformer practical importance. The subject now claims the
attention of all who would have intelligent views of the moral condi
tion and prospects of Humanity and who seek to work hopefully for
its regeneration. It is not within the province of this Essay to par
ticularise the various recent phases of the controversy, but those who
are alive to the importance of the subject cannot fail to find intensely
interesting those chapters bearing upon it in sucii works as Mill’s
• Lximination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy,’ Bain’s ‘Com
pendium or Mental ana McrcL Science,’ and Herbert Spencer’s ‘ Study
■of Sociology.’
�32
The Mystery of Evil,
1. All we can know of the Universe is phenomena,
—(including the molecular force-centres into which
existing organisms are resolvable by scientific analysis)
—and the fixed uniformity of the laws that regulate
and control the physical and moral evolutions and
developments of universal substance; but of noumena
we can know nothing, and consequently any dogmatic
definition—positive or negative, of a primal cause, in
or beyond substance, or not in or beyond substance
—is totally unsustained by facts. Therefore the sys
tems of Theism, Deism, Pantheism, and Atheism
are mere hypotheses, which all involve unproved
assumptions. As regards the existence of any over
ruling power, we are in a state of nescience. As
regards motives and actions, all we know is the uni
form and necessary relation of sequence that exists
between them—nothing more.
2. The universe, or, at least, the portion of it with
which we have immediate acquaintance, is being
slowly and gradually developed from rudimental
elements, from confusion and discord to order and
harmony ; and this remark applies, throughout, to
physical, intellectual, and moral life. Thus it follows
that the generations of mankind, up to the present,
having been brought upon the planet before it has
reached the state of complete development and per
fect equipoise of forces, are fated to suffer those
physical trials which arise from storms, floods, earth
quakes, droughts, blights, and other casualties, which,
when the material agencies around us have attained
more perfect equilibrium, may be expected to dis
appear. There are many more physical inconveniences
experienced by the race by reason of their still
necessarily limited knowledge of the operations of
nature, of the laws of being, and of their true
relations to the world and humanity, and by reason
of the yet very imperfect stage of human culture.
It is inevitable, therefore, that numerous diseases and
�The Mystery of Evil.
33
sufferings should be encountered, which a broader
intelligence and a clearer forethought will, in the
distant future, be able to anticipate and prevent.
3. “ Evil ” is a word which originated with theolo
gians, and which, from its vagueness and ambiguity,
has introduced much of the mystification and error
that have beclouded past investigations of the subject.
In its primitive signification and as applied in theo
logy, evil had a penal character assigned to it, and it
derived that character from the childish tradition long
believed by adherents of churches, that physical dis
asters, including disease and death, were the result of
a trivial transgression committed by “ Adam.” The
same cause has been adduced to account for all the
moral obliquities which have brought pain and misery
upon the descendants of the first man. “ Sin,” which
denotes the moral side of evil, in the language of
theology, is represented as being at once an effect
and a cause of the first transgression. But with the
rejection of the idea of a personal Ruler of the world,
“ evil ” and “ sin ” in the sense in which they are
usually understood by the orthodox, are rendered
meaningless. Both these terms point back to a period
in the intellectual and moral childhood of mankind,
before the universal and uniform action of Law was
dreamt of, and when human duty was held to consist
only of a series of positive commands, formally pro
claimed by an infinite personal governor, and con
stituting his “ revealed will,” for the direction of his
creatures. And for the perpetuation of this anti
quated belief down to the present we are indebted to
stereotyped creeds, which clergymen and ministers of
religious bodies still solemnly pledge themselves to
maintain. But the light of science presents the
source of duty and the nature and standard of
morals, in our time, in an altered aspect. In this
amended view there is nothing corresponding to the
theological ideas of evil and sin in the world, at all.
�34
The Mystery of Evil.
What is caZZed evil is simply a synonym for imper
fection in the material or moral circumstances of
humanity, or in both. The earth has not yet attained
its ultimate and perfect form, and the mind
of man has not yet acquired a full and prac
tical knowledge of the working of law so as to
guard successfully against collisions with the more
violent and dangerous agencies of nature, and so as
to use nature as a minister of good. What is known
as sin or wrong-doing is nothing more than the
result of human ignorance, which is but another form,
again, of imperfection. Many acts, I am aware, are
called sinful by clerics and their votaries, but such
transgressions, though ranked by orthodox teachers as
equally obnoxious to divine displeasure with acknow
ledged natural immoralities, are found when looked
into to be only ecclesiastical sins—sins of priestly
manufacture which have no place in nature and no
recognition in the enlightened conscience. That this
is the only true account of the matter is evident
from the fact that, as men become familiar with the
uniform operations of nature in their bearing on
human welfare, the ills of life perceptibly diminish,
and the necessity of conforming, in every sphere of
existence, to natural law comes to have the force of
a safe and efficient guiding impulse. No sane being
ever did wilfully what he knew to militate against
individual or social happiness as an ulterior end, and
no one ever continued to practise habits having this
tendency a single moment after his mind became
really sensible, of the character and influence of his
doings. That acts mischievous and cruel are too
often committed there can be no doubt; but the
mischief or the cruelty is always and only accidental
to the design the malicious person has in view.
Many, it is true, persist in doing what they profess to
know is at variance with the principles of justice,
honour, and utility, and hence the apparent anomaly
�The Mystery of Evil.
35
of proper knowledge and improper conduct some
times being found united in the same person. But
the anomaly is only apparent; for the individual
professing to know what befits his relations to the
universe and to society, and yet doing what contra
dicts that knowledge, deceives himself that he
possesses suitable knowledge at all. Knoioledge, in
such a connection, is confounded with notions. A
man may have a notion or a dim idea of what he
ought to do or to be, in his imagination or his memory,
but in this instance the notion is held by the mind as
an impotent sentiment or a barren tradition, the mere
semblance of actual knowledge. The notion of a
thing is but a theoretic or hypothetical conception, and
does not penetrate the mind and touch the springs of
action. All knowledge, worthy to be so designated,
enters into us and becomes conviction, modifying
thought, feeling, and will. So that all the faults—
so-called—committed by individuals and communities
have proceeded from their not knowing better. Even
the crucifixion of the founder of Christianity is
ascribed, in the New Testament to this cause. “ I
wot,” says St. Peter, “ that ye did it ignorantly.”
This point receives irresistible confirmation on every
hand. The vast proportion of crimes of violence,
such as wife-beating, garotte-robbery, manslaughter,
and murder, are confined for the most part to one class
of society—those who live beyond the pale of education
and refinement, agencies by which feelings of decency
and humanity are fostered. And the only cause of
the difference between this social stratum and the one
above it is that the training of the better class of
people is favourable to the controlling of their
■passions, at least as regards the commission of
crimes of that hue. The sexual vices, again, are not
confined to any particular social grade. They are
probably indulged in as great a ratio by the well-to-do
as by the lower orders. But if we compare the victims
�3^
The Mystery of Evil.
of licentiousness, of whatever social grade, with the
philosophic and the devout who have been taught to
hold these vices in abhorrence, we here, again, find
the same rule hold good. The culture of the pureminded has been specially directed to the instructing
of the mind in the bad consequences of this sort of
vice, and to the habituating of the mind to the
moderation and government of animal appetencies.
In like manner the difference between the false ideas
and practices of many at one period of their lives,
and their improved ideas and practices at another,
lies alone in the fact that they have come to know
better.
The drift of this reasoning is plain. The ever
widening circle of knowledge, the knowledge of mani
fold truth in physics and morals, is the grand power by
which the upward march of Humanity is to be secured.
But, as has been already observed, knowledge, con
sidered as the great curative principle, is not. a mere
fortuitous concourse of facts, however good and useful
in themselves, thrown into the mind, any more than
food is muscular strength. Our diet must first become
assimilated with the tissues; and so knowledge, which
strengthens, renovates, and elevates, is the concen
trated essence of principles which the thoughtful
mind extracts from any given collection of facts.
This representation of the case is as consoling as
it is true; for it reveals a “silvery lining” in the
cloud of prevailing human suffering, which inspires
joy and hope as we contemplate the future of the
world. It is a law of nature that every common
bane should carry with it a common antidote, and
a careful inspection of history makes it clear that
it is the tendency of each separate species of error
and wrong-doing to wear itself out. The discovery of
imperfection, usually made through enduring the
painful results thereof, leads towards perfection in
every department of human interests. Every dis
�The Mystery of Evil.
37
comfort, physical and moral, that vexes the lot of
man, reaches a crisis; human effort is immediately
braced up to grapple with the crisis, and inventive
brains are excited to devise expedients for its removal.
Thus have all social and political improvements been
effected.
The method of viewing the problem of evil whicn
has been adopted in the preceding pages is the only
one compatible with an unruffled state of mind in
presence of the defects of our race that frequently
offer us such bitter provocation in daily life—bigotry,
cruelty, stupidity, selfishness, ingratitude, and pride.
A wise man once remarked ironically : “ There are
words in Scripture that afford me unspeakable conso
lation when I have to encounter a person who is
unreasonable and unjust. ‘ Every creature after its
kind.’ If such a man attempts to over-reach or insult
me; if he show treachery or unkindness; if he deceive
or malign me, I look at him with pity, and my sym
pathy for his misfortune in inheriting a defective
organisation, or in lacking efficient intellectual and
moral discipline, neutralises the anger I should other
wise feel towards him.” Thus the practical philosopher
remains undisturbed by the turbulent passions that
blind and warp the minds of the mass, who are
affected chiefly by superficial effects, the causes of
which they have not the patience or the capacity to
discriminate.
When the principles that have been enunciated
become intelligently and generally recognised, they
will not fail to produce a revolution in our whole
system of dealing with vice and legislating for crime.
The popular way of treating offences of all kinds at
present is as absurd as it would be, after the fashion
of our ancestors, to carry a bay-leaf as a preventive
of thunder, or to remove scrofula by hanging round
the neck a baked toad in a silk bag. Social irregu
larities of whatever kind, in a more rational age, will
D
�38
The Mystery of Evil.
no longer be visited with inflictions of corporeal pain,
whether deficient nourishment, the application of the
cat, confinement in a dismal cell, imposition of aimless
grinding labour or chains. Far less will the mur
derous propensity to kick or beat or stab or poison a •
fellow-creature, be punished by so preposterous an
instrument as the gallows or the guillotine. When
acts of violence against society come to be viewed as
the result of an imperfect nature or deficient know
ledge and culture, care will be taken by the State to
lay hold of the child through the influence of the
school, and insist by compulsion on every citizen from
tender years being taught the laws, social and legal,
under which he is expected to live. And when any
are found in riper years to give suspicion that the
lessons of their youth are overborne by innate bad
tendencies, public opinion, then enlightened as it
will be by science, will, in a spirit of philosophic
sympathy for the misfortune of the wrong-doer,
demand his prompt separation for a time, at least,
from his more fortunate neighbours, and his subjection
before any extreme manifestation of his propensity
accrues, to a beneficent regime, partly educational and
partly medical, to enable him, as far as possible, to
obtain the mastery over his besetting morbid tenden
cies, and merit a place once more, if possible, among
well-conducted members of the community. The
attempt, as now, to set the world right by teaching
theological dogmas and by the agitations of revivalistic
or ritualistic fanaticisms, or by the existing lex talionis
of our criminal law, is mere ridiculous and wasteful
tinkering. To permit a system of commerce which
offers the worst temptations for the commission of
fraud and fosters a heartless competition, that often
*
drives the honest and the weak to the wall, and then
* The noble-souled Robert Owen used to denounce it as “that
monster, competition; ” and by the way.it is worthy of remark, that
the evident tendency of social reform now is in the very wake of the
�The Mystery of Evil.
39
to treat as outcasts the victims of intemperance and
poverty which this unnatural system contributes to
produce, and punish them with the degradation of
the jail or the workhouse, is as senseless and cruel as
to sanction gins and snares in the highway and then
whip men for falling into them. These social absur
dities, arising from crass ignorance of the constitution
of man, and of physical and moral law, cannot last
for ever. They may be hallowed by prestige, pom
pous judicial ceremony, and Parliamentary prece
dent, but they belong to a transitional stage of social
life which is doomed before the triumphs of science
and philosophy. The old shallow and mischievous
scheme of reformation which exhibits a jealous Deity
consigning wrong-doers to eternal death and the ma
gistrate as “a terror to evildoers,” will be superseded
by a method of government in which the revolting
penal code now practised by civilised nations will
have no place, and in which, without exception, the
reform of the offender will be the supreme considera
tion, while the peace and safety of society will be
found to be promoted thereby. And surely such
happy anticipations for the race are a satisfactory
compensation for the sacrifice truth compels us to
make in parting with the illusions of our intellectual
childhood,—the dogmas of a personal God and a self
determining will.
The world is, indeed, racked and torn by selfish
ness, cruelty, ignorance, and folly. Communities
and individuals have writhed under burdens of sorrow
from the beginning. But manifestly the natwral
tendency of physical and moral law is not to produce
system of Owen which the “ respectable classes ” used to smile at as
Utopian. Most intelligent men are either tacitly or openly coming
round to the persuasion that “ Man is the Creature of Circumstances.
Mr. Owen probably inadvertently left out certain factors, indispensable
to the success of his “New Moral World.” But he has pointed out
for us the only true path, and the failure of his scheme was a grand
success.
�40
The Mystery of Evil.
these effects, but quite the contrary; and the com
plete happiness of the race is to be attained through
the knowledge of law and yielding submission to it.
But this great consummation can only be accom
plished by slow degrees. A thousand years in this
business is “ as a watch in the night.” If it should
be asked, why should this training to perfect virtue
and happiness be sb slow and painful, and why
should such slow and painful discipline be the only
safe and solid basis on which the progress of
humanity can be established, there is no answer
except that in the nature of things it must be so.
Suppose that we were living on some fair and perfect
planet when the earth was in its once fluid state, and
that we saw the huge animals belonging to that
geological period wallowing in the mire and obscured
by the dense fogs which then enveloped the half
formed world. If that had been our first introduc
tion to the present abode of man we should probably
have concluded, had we no previous experience of
such a state of things elsewhere, that a world of sea
and mud, with volcanoes ever and anon spouting
forth their lava and steamy vapours shutting out
the light, could never become fitted for human
habitation. But this, nevertheless, was the elemental
chaos, out of which our globe was, in the course of
countless ages, evolved. So the present development
of the moral world bears some analogy to the physi
cal state of the earth in the primeval ages. It is
still very gradually emerging out of its original intel
lectual and moral formlessness, and is yet a long
way from the harmony and beauty with which
humanity will, in future ages, be crowned. For any
one, therefore, to judge of the tendency and goal of
the universe from the seething troubles and pangs
that harass the world’s life now in its slow transition
state, would be as rash as for the imagined spectator
of the chaotic earth before man came upon it to
�The Mystery of Evil.
41
suppose that it could never be built up into a
habitable world. The error consists in judging the
whole circle of material and moral development by
the very small segment of the circle which we have
an opportunity of seeing. But a retrospect of
human history justifies the assurance that in nature
there underlies all present contradictions and incom
patibilities, a moulding principle that will eventually
transmute all incongruities into palpable consistency.
The very tardiness, therefore, of the process by which
humanity is to attain its highest possible life may be
taken as a guarantee for the permanent advance of
that life when it is realised. It is not for us now
living, or for immediately succeeding generations to
participate in this Elysium of prophetic forecast, at
least in our present state of existence; but instead
of moping Over our inevitable fate, and groaning
over the woes of the world, it is more becoming w cul
tured manhood to bear that fate with philosophic
fortitude, make the best of it, and help our. fellow
mortals to do the same. The idea of “ the Colossal
Man,” first worked by a great German writer, and
repeated in the retracted essay of Dr. Temple, looks in
the direction to which these remarks point. Humanity
must be viewed as a whole. Particular nations may
decay, but man is destined to rise to a higher plane
of being. For an indefinitely long period he is kept
under the tutelage of grievous trials, which, in the
wonderful economy of nature, have the effect of
unfolding and invigorating his powers, that he may
rise to the highest possible knowledge, and use that
knowledge in correcting his faults, so that at length
he may be brought into perfect accord with his own
noblest moral ideal, and with the general progressive
movement of the universe. Even if, for scores of
thousands of years, vast continents and islands of
savage or semi-barbarous people live and then perish,
there is no waste. Neither is there waste anywhere
�42
The Mystery of Evil.
in the laboratory of nature’s forces. Had .we seen
the germs which afterwards developed into primeval
forests, when these germs were just beginning to
sprout in the bare rocky earth, we could not have
dreamt of so mighty a use in store for them. But
could we come back to the spot centuries afterwards
when these tiny beeches and pines had grown into
giant trees, the function of the insignificant germs
would be obvious. The yearly shedding of the leaves of
the trees into which they have grown has covered with
mould the once barren surface in which they were
planted, and supplied land suitable for the sowing of our
crops. So the primeval trees in the forest of humanity,
the first races, to all appearance not worth the power
expended on their existence and support; these early
races and tribes—so unproductive for ages—have
been permitted to shed their millions of human
leaves to make soil in the moral world. The bar
barism that once reigned over the greater part of
the earth is a pledge, in the arrangements of nature,
that humanity will never, as a whole, return to
barbarism again. The child cannot grow into the
shrewd, cautious, enterprising man, but through the
tumbles and bruises of childhood and the mistakes
of passionate youth. Our measured intelligence,
charity, and tolerance in the present century, has
grown out of the ignorance, superstition, and intoler
ance of all the ages that have preceeded. The primi
tive races were allowed to live a life of low civilisa
tion, and so by the picture of wretchedness they
present for the warning of those who come after
them, prove at once a beacon of warning and an
effectual safeguard against the higher races that come
after, sinking back to the same condition. The same
consoling reflection applies to all the pains and dis
comforts which the good and the bad alike suffer in
our present condition. These untoward circumstances,
dark though they be, are not a mere waste of power,
�The Mystery of Evil.
43
but mark an epoch in universal progress—needful,
disciplinary, transitional, leading to grander issues,—
to universal conformity to the standard of universal
harmony. If in this unique development the interests
of individuals and races,—whose lot happens to be
cast in the early or intermediate periods of that
development,—are not so favoured as those of mankind
will be in the happier and more remote future, such a
consideration is subordinate, and not to be named in
comparison with the final result—the expansion,
culture, and coherent use of all the faculties of
humanity, the extinction of disease, want, strife, and
suffering of every kind ; and if such an end is only
to be gained, for a permanence, through physical and
moral suffering in preceding ages of the world, the
result may possibly well repay the cost. Nay, I
think science justifies me iji going farther. I might
venture to add that the trials to which individuals
and nations have ever been exposed in this life are
introductory to a state of being beyond the present,
when the island earth will be one in spirit with the
invisible “ summer-land,” when free and pleasant
communion between the embodied in the former
state, and the disembodied in the latter, will be
possible, when the sea of material and moral discord
that now divides the one state from the other will
be dried up, and when the last speck of imper
fection that sullied the purity and splendour of
regenerated humanity will be effaced.
In the immortal words of our Laureate :
“ 0! yet, we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubts and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When Nature makes the pile complete.
�44
The Mystery of Evil.
That not a worm is cloven in vain,
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire
Or but subserves another’s gain.
Behold we know not anything—
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last—to all,
And every winter change to spring.”
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Dublin Core
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Title
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The mystery of evil
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 44 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Misc. Tracts 4. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, Haymarket, London. Includes bibliographical references. No author given.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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1875
Identifier
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G4869
Creator
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[Unknown]
Subject
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Ethics
Evil
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The mystery of evil), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Good and Evil
-
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08021b8fe829bca451d71ca4a8c510fe
PDF Text
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unb mif trauifcfter ju macften; unb bag Srgeftnif war
jule^t bod? ber Salt ber ©ewalttyerrfdjaft unb bie (fin^
futjrung beg Sreiftaateg. ©ie @ried;en wa'ren
geredd geltug, ben fteiben Sredjeitgmdrtprern' ben
(Rufern biefeg Umfdwungeg juguerfennen. (©ie fpradfen
itid?t, wie altfluge fteiglinge, bon „falfdjerSBal)I beg 3ei
Inmtteg", bon „uberftitrjter unb eigenmdcfttiger ^6anb=
lunggweife;" nod) and) Ijeulten fie bag -idtteweiber^ieb,
baf „!Diorb nie junt @uten fii^re."
-2Iud) bie Corner, fclftft tnt tiefften llnglud, (iefen
iftre grofen ©runbfdtje nidjt bon ber SBldffe ber ®e
*
banfenfetgl;ett anfranfeln. <©ie flatten eg ptr £efwe
erftoftett, bdfi, tm Mile eineg begbottfd)en %tgriffg auf
bie reftuftlitanifcfe SSerfaffung feber QMtrger jumOlid)^
ter gegen ben ©efe^eguftertreter fteritfen fei; unb btef?
jRidjteramt augjitiiften, ober feine sXugftftung wcntg^
fteng ju berfud)en, war eineg jeben Kreien $fHd)t,
felftft menu bet -?luggang beg SSerfttdfeg nicftt ftdjer
war. SJtit etnem ®orte: man Ijielt ©twag auf £Red?tg<
gbfulfl, aftgefefen bout ©rfolg. <©o ^at benft bieMfat
�8
beS 3 r it t it 0 unb faffing ifre i begeifterten
fpretfer gefunben, wentt and) — au§ ©riinben, bie fier
uicft entwicfelt werben fbnnen — bie Sobbing (Sdfar’g
nicfft bie 8'olgen f atte, bie fte unter anberen Umjtdnben
gefabt faben wurbe. (Sic ero, Seneca, 3lutarcf
(falls wir leljteren ju ben Olbmern recimen woUen)
unb eine 2)lengc anbrer ©(friftfteder beffelbett Beit'
alters: alle fontmen barin itberein, bie 3crnicf tung
mm llnterbrudern afS ein lobenSwertfeS llnternef men
§u Breifen. 2Bie tiefbieUeber^eugung bon ber £Recfyt=
mdfigfeit biefer >§anbtunggweife ini rbtnifclien ®ewif=
fen begriinbet war, geft u. 21. auS . ben 3riefett beS
-3rittuS fervor, in beren eitteni if nt bie2leuferunginben
WZunb gelegt wirb, baft er, jum Scfyu^e b.er Breifeit,
„feinen 3ater wieber tobten wurbe, wenn er attf bie
@rbe jurucft'efrte."
@eft man auf bie italienifcfe- Siteratur beS 2)litteU
alters unb ber mobemen Beit f erab, fo ftnb bie SBelege
^ur Befre bon ber -3erecftigung beS SvrannenmorbeS
faum rninber reicffaltig.
laffen fief) QJet rarea,
S)ante, 2)1 ac.cfia Sell, ber gelefrte 2Hur at.ori;
unb bon SQcueren 2)1 o it t i, 21 I f i e r i, ll g o
5‘oScolS u. f. w. anfiifren. ■ 3on ber fatfolifefen
Siteratur tftomS, bie ben Sfrannenmorb natiirlid) bom
tfeolratifd)=bWfcfen Stanbfmnft auffaft, braueft
fauni gefproeben ju werben. 2)latt weift, baft bon
@ r egor bcm ® r of en bis auf bie neueren Scfuiten
ferab, biefe iSoftrin in fd)drffter SBeife bott fatfolifcfeit
2lutoritdten aufreeft erfalten wurbe.
,, 2Benbet mau fid) juritd jubenjenigen ScfriftjMIern
unb Sddjtern, bte im ©ittne beS ftortfcfritteb wirften,
fo finbet man unter. ben ISeutfcfen ber Dceu^eit
namentlid) Berber, Beffing, ©(filler, Sean
$aul unb SjSIaten alg SSertfeibiger beg Sfrannen
*
morbeS. llnter ben ^ranjofett: 2)1 o n t e S q u i eu unb
Pouffe an. llnter ben (Sngldnberu: 2)1 ilt on,
Algernon Sibitei), Sibmoutf unb (S.obbetL
�9
5fuf fonferbatiber, ober fe'fftft aftfolutiftifdfer Settc
.fhtbei ftcf> bantt wieber: unter ben ©eutfcften, nanteni^
ltd) ber ©efdndftsfdfreifter 51 r eft e n ft o Ig; unb @ e n ft,
ber Wotofolffufrer ber Ifeiligen 5iniang. llnter ben
^rangofenrbe 2)£aiftre, ber ©riinber einer Staat^
fjftilofoJpftie in ber faller'fdjen 5Beife. Unter ben 3ta^
lienern ber ©egenwart: ber aftfolutiftifcfte ®rat
(Solar bella ifttargfterita, bag DSerbaupt ber
reaftiondren £|3ai
t
*ei
in QJienwnt. Unb unter ben
©nglanbern: SHfraeli, ber (Scftafttang’ler eirteo
Sor^SRinifferiitrng, ber in einern feiner ®ebid)te „bie
*f?anb fegnet," bie „ben fbniggmbrberifcften (Staftl fiiftrt,
uitt ben ©rant einer Station in bent SBlut eineg Sbran=
Ken^augjulofcften."
:,‘-i
n’cu'i . •'
_• ■ i
r' - ••ju® ....
II.
£>ie beutfcfte flaffifdfe Biteratur ift reicft an Steffen,
in benen ber Sftrannenntorb entweber alg eine uitber=
mtiblidje ^olge ber 5Billfurfterrfcftaft entfdfulbigt, ober
jtfg eine <§anblung ber ipatriotifcfen <§ingeftung geftrie=
fen unb jur SQadfaftntung entipfoftlen wirb. (Selftft
ber ebangelifd^fanfte Dfterfoftfiftorialratl) Berber
farm nidft untftin, bie Sftat beg SBrutug unb (fafftug
■jit recfttfertigen. 3n feinen „3been gur ©efcfticftte ber
■^enfd’fteit'1 nennt er ben „©olcft" bie „traurige, after
rtot'ftwenbige Sufhtcftt alter Ungfucflkfien."
• 5lucft Sean haul’d fcftwarnterifcfte 2)tilbe fcftridt
nidit bar bent ©ifen juriicf, bag einen ntdcfttigen
Unterbruder fait unb ffuntnt ntacften folLl®!^
Berber ftinauggeftenb, erfteftt er bie entfdffoffene Sftat
ber alfrontifdfen ©erfcftworenen in ben foiminel, unb
rixftntt fte alg ipreigwitrbig, beg Sftacfteiferng wertfj.
Sean $aul gieftt baftei eine ©renglinie jwifcQen ben
fwlitifcften Sobtungen, bie bon ber d$anb eineg 8reU
I;eitgfreunbeg gefcfteljen, unb benen, bie einer begfwtU
fd;en 5lftffcftt iftren Urfprung berbanfen. Bwifdfen
fteiben,fagt er, fei „einUnterfcftiebwiegwifd)en
�Sugettb unb SBer foremen.
Sttgenb erfennt
er ben Solcfjftofi an, ber gegen Ofar gefiit)rt ivurbe.
SBerbredjen branbmarft er bie ®rntorbung >§ein=
rid)§ IV. burdj ben 3efuitenfned)t fftabaittac. 3n
feinem @ifer fur ben roafjren Si)rannenmorb geftt
Sean^aul, fo weit ju fagen, baft e£ jeben ed)ten
■^atrioten fief fdptterjen miifte, etnen SBrutuS fur
feine <§anblung leiben ju felsen; mal)renb ein ttiabaittac
anf ber ffolterbant il)tn tein 2Jcitleib einftbf e! *
mag unterlaffen werben, auf bie Mannteren
<Stetten in ©filler, („bie 9Burgfd)aft,'‘ (,5BiIt)eInr
Sett,") it. 91. einjugel)en. <Sie fittb in SebermannS
tPlunbe. Slur uber einige 23orfdtte ber neueren beut<
fd)en ®efct)i(d)te, unb bie bamit j-ufantmenijdngenben
literarifcfyen @rfd)einungen, feien nod) einige ttBorte ge=
fagt:
Set ttSerfud) be£ Stubenten (Siaftg, Seutfdflanb
bon bent Socfye Sla^poIeonS jit befreien, fanb bei bielen
unferer @elel)rten jener 3eit nid)t blofje ftittfdjroeigenbe
SBittigung, foitbern offene Slnerfennung. Sief mag
uni fo weniger SBunber nefjnten, ba befanntlid) ein
politiftt)=b®lomatifd)er Sdfriftftetter, ber bie Sntereffen
be§ bftreid)ifd)en <§ofe§ gegen Sia^oleon berfodft, natm=
lid) Saron bon ®en^, offen bie Sobtung beS orftta=
nifdfen Ufurpatorg" aU eitt Strebejiel fur atte ®utge=
ftttnien empfaW. 93ietteid)t mag eS manefen Befer er«
batten, utter bie Qlnfltf ten @ e n § in biefer <Sad)e
etroaS ®enauere§ ju erfafren. SGir rootten batjer ein
menig ausfoien, urn ben Sufammenfattg Harer ju
mad)en.
■
•
'
■
-ri'/u
• **
it'
*) 3n 23ejug auf Charlotte Sorbaty unb ®anb l;at Seanspaul bcfannt(icf) eine ben rebplutionairen SJieinungen ent»
gegengefc^te faltung eingeticmmen. ®ie§ ttjut jebi?d£
jnr
®ad)C, ba e8 ftcb, bci cbigcit SluSjiigen auS ben ©gniftflellern berfc^iebcnet Seitcn, nut uin ben ® r u n b f a § ber
rannentpbtung
^anbeit. ®ie Slnrwtbung Weifct bent Sir.jelnen fibetiaffen.
�11
u 3nt Satyre 1806 wurbe bent bantaligen engltfc^en
SRinifter beg Qlugtvartigen, <£errn Sox, etn Qlnerbieten
gentactyt, SBonaVarte ju tbbten. Sox—bet luatyrfotyetn
*
ltd} einert Sallfiticf roitterte —• ttyeilte bag Qlnerbteten
bent frattjbftfctyen ©efanbten Salletyranb mit; Itety jebocty
ben HJienfctyen, ber ben -SBorfctylag ber (Srntorbung ge
*
ntactyt, rutyig feineg SSegeg jietyeit, 3n einent SBriefe
an StaHeliranb fyracty nun Sox feine ©ntruftung bar
*
uber aug, bafi eg ^erfonen geben bonne, bie ftcty nicf}t
entblobeten, ju bent SJlittel beg Wtorbeg ityre Sufluotyt
ju netymen,- tint einen gefiirctyteten ®egne£ log ju werben. ®arauf tyitt fctyrieb ^rofeffor ®enty, ber SBieiter
<§ofratty, ber 23ertraute ber beutfctyen jJiglontafie, ber
ftydtere (Sctyriftfutyrer ber tyeiligeit Sllliaitj, einen bon=
nernben SBrief an Sox, norin er biefeit alg eine 5lrt
SBerrdttyer unb Otenegaten anflagte—bie Serfuctye @a=
boubal’g, Olaboleoit butcty <§bKenntaf(tyinen in bie
Sufi ju fprengen, billigfe — nub fctyltetylicty ben eng
*
lifctyen Wnifter beg Qlttgwdrtigen fragte: wie er benn.
baju bomnte, ftcty gegen ben Styrannenntorb ju etfldren,
ba booty (Saboubal, unter feinein SBorgdnger $itt, „bon
ben actytbarften fperfonen ®nglanbg protegift toorben
fei," unb gegemrdrtig >„von ber ®lite ber eurotydifctyeit
©efeUfctyaft beweint werbe?" — „®ie .Stage," fctyrieb
®en|, „ob eg ein Setbteotyen fei, einert folctyen Wien
*
fctyen wie Bonaparte ju iobfett,. tyangt' lebiglicty
boit ber Stage uber bie Segalitdt feiner Wlactyt
ab.
iffier ityit fur einen rectyfmdfigen Jperr
*
fctyer tydlt, ntag bie Stage befallen; wer abet in
SBonatyarte nur einen IXfurtyator ftetyt, muff
anberg urttyeilen (doit en juger autrement).
<§err Sox folite bie ©ctylutyrictytigfeit biefeg @ateg eitt
*
fetyem 9liemalg tyaben banner feiner 5)enfiinggart
eine Qlbneigung gegen ben Xtyranneninorb getyabt, obex
bagegen broteftirt. @laubt <§err Sox, baty SBonatyarte
eitt Ufutpator fei, fo nuifj er ein autyerotbentlicty infon
*
fequentet ©enfer fein, wenn er.ein ^rojeft, ben Ufur
*
�12
pator ju beftrafen, miffbidigt. ©ein -Slbfdjeu faun
nur.Verftnnben werbet^ wenn er SBonaparte fur eintit
redftmdfigen <§errfd?er tjalt. -Slber <§err fyor.- tantt
fid)erlid) nicfyt oerlangen, baf5 Qlnbere mit i$m bari'tber
ubereinftimmen follten!" 3m Serlauf bed ©dreibend
nennt ®en§ ben Qlgenten, ber bei 3o.r bad Jtomplctt
fiir bie ©rtnorbung Slapoleon’d borgefddagen, einen
„wof)lmeinenben ■ (Smigrgnten,". ber bad wa^redKittel
gefunben Ijabe, wie bet Priebe wieberlferjuftetlen fed./Iu
*'
■ ©od? barnit genug uber bie tiberalen unb reaction#
*
reit SBert^eibiger ber politifd)ert Xbbhtng’itf‘©)eutfd^
lanb. r>4 :!>a
.tm
“
ff , i '■
. • t u Vt ' <
)
*
, , '
‘C/
*
£nDT?
3u fyranfreid; itberge^enb, mag bemefft werben, haff
bie bortige Siteratur, jumal feit ber SPHtte bed 17.Saljt?
'bunbertS, boll bon SInfpiegetuhgen ift, bie bie gewalt=
fame. Sludrofiung bon uhterbrudpm recQffertigen.
tftanjbfifcfye © id; ter unb forefather wetteifern in ’ i;er
$npreifung ber patriotifdjen Setyre. ©ogar fo qeiviegte
imb gemdfjigte banner, wie -Pl o n t e d, q.u i e u,. — ber
SBewunberer ber englifdjen SBerfaffung!' ber wixrbige
$qtf) Betin $grlament ju -SBorbeaur !■ — neljmen bie
$mpfel)lung'biefer je^t geddfteten Set)re auf fid). 2Kon=,
tedquieu nennt ben Singriff auf bad Seben ber ©.e^pesp.
fen „ein'e ©ugenb, bie fi$f bergeffe, um fidj^
felt> ft j u it b er tr e f f.e n.fl; unb mit rid;tiger £ogi£
frggt er, wie. ed benn mbgtid; fet, eine Ufutpation, bie
dlte ®efe|edorbnung jn Plidpe gemadjt l)abe, anberd ju
ftrafen aid burd; eine Bdptorbung ? (antrement gue
par un assassinat?) .
"n'tiUto’®
3n 9lo uf f ea u, • unb dljnlidjen ’ in reboluftontor
OUcbtung rebeitben ©d?riftfteHern, finbet fid? nafurfi$
Material genug fur ben borliegenben 3wed. <£d fet
inbeffen Ijier bielmefjr eined.Ultra4tbfoIutiften gebad?ify
ber in franjbftfdnrSpradfe fd;rieb, unbbeffen ©dfrif'
ten, neben.benen patter’d, aid ber Sludbunb t^eotratif^
bedffttifd)er Qlnftdjten gelten. £®ir meinen be-5ftni$r^
:
AT'
.
9&
�13
3n feinent SBu^e „33on bent $abftu frridjt ftcb be
SUiftre in folgenber QBeife aug:
.■
- „dSenn man Von ©egpotigmug unb abfoluter 9tegie=
rung rebet, weifj man felten, wag man fagt. (?§ eriftirt
burcbaug feine fftegierung, bie Qllleg Vermag. Jtraft
eineg gbtfli^en ©efe^eg gibt eg tinnier, neben ieber
fgouVerdnitdt, irgenbmelcbe SUcfyt, bie ibr alg Bitgel
bient. SSalb ifi eg ein Sfteft Von ©efefeen, balb ein
Bolfggebraucf, balb bag ©ewiffen, balb ein Wefter=
flab, bate ein® oI d ... abet eg ift intnier ©twag!' 2'(lg
Subwig XIV. fid? eineg Sages erlaitbt fjatte, vor eini^
gen feiner £ofleute jufagen, baf er feine ftftbnere 8le=
giertmg fenne, alg bie eineg orientalif^en ®obl)i, ba
^atte einer ber ^bflinge, id) glaube ber Slarfdall
b’©ftreeg, ben eblen Stutl), $u antworten: „Qlber,
3l)re SUjefiat, idflpabe beren bret in meinent Vebett er=
wiirgen fe^en!" — „Ueberall," fdl;rt bann be Staiftre
fort, „wo bern ©ouVerdn bag SUedjt juftetyt, bireft gu
ftrafen, ba ntufj aucf) bag £Red)t beftefen, if)n ju ridjten,
gbspjfe^en, unb Vont Beben jum Sobe ju bringen; unb
Wenn baruber fein fefteg tRedd vorfyanben ift, fo follte
bie fyeimlicfye ©rmorbung eineg (SouVerdng feinegwegg
bie ©inbilbunggfraft bet Sienfdfen erfdteefen ober
i^ned gar Qlbfcfeu einfiof en. 3n gewiffen llmftdnben
ift eg Vielmefyr unbebingt nbtl)ig, baft man an
einen $rhtjen bie <§anb anlege' unb itjn iobte."
■- %ud)® attel, bie anerfannte ?lutoritdt itttSSblfet
*
nnb ©taatgrecbte, redjtfertigt bie ©rmorbung beg!poti=
fd)er Siirften in fallen, too fetne anbre foidfe mbgl'id).
^SBenn ber §urft,“ fagt er, „ju einer ©eifel beg ®taa=
teg fijirb, fo entwiirbigt er fid; felbft; er ift bann nidjt
beffer, alg ein bffentlidfer ^einb, gegen ben bie illation
ftci) Verfljeibigen barf uno foil: unb wenn er feine
rannei auf ben f)bd}ften @©fel erfwben fat, warum
follte bag Beben eineg fo graufamen unb treulofen
^einbeg ber ©efellfdjaft gefcbont werben?" Setten,
bie Vor ber Beftre Von bem ^rannenntorb aug ©rilnben
�14
ber ntenfdflidjen SWilbe gurud6eben, legt Mattel bie
Stage bor: „ob fte benn, auf biefelben ©riinbe geftit|t,
aud? berlangen, baf et)rlid?e SWenfdjen ftcf? benlRdubern
unb $irafen nictjt wiberfeisen follen, ba bief) fa eben=
falls SBlufbergiefen f)erbeifiil)ren fbnnte?'1 3d? frage,
ruff Satie! auS, waSfiir einSriebe bag in ber SBelt
ware, ber nur ben 2)ibrbern unb Unterbriidern ju ©at
fame? Soil bag Bantnt, ofne ben Sequd) eineS 9BU
berftanbeg, feinen >§alg tyinbieien, unt bon bent gefrdfU
gen Wife gerriffen ju werben? Sine folcbe Sorberung
erflart Sattel fur unfmnig. ©r enrpfie^lt bielntefr
tabferen SCBiberftanb—SBiberftanb unt feben SreiS;
ffricfyt ©enjentgen, ber aug el;rgeijigen Qlbfitbfen eine
freie Serfaffung ltinftiirge, beg t)b.d)ften Serbredjeni
fdjulbig, bag in ber SSelt beritbf werben tonne; unb
begeidgnet einen foldjen llfurpator alg einen „Seinb beg
©enteinwefenS unb eine S|left ber ^enf^eit/1 — „eine
Wt bie ntan iljrent Sljarafter gentdf; be I) an
*
belnntuffe." »■
©ent in neuerer 3«t fa oft wiebergefauten Unftnn,
baf eg nicfjt ebel, nid?t ritterlid), nidjt ber Srefaeit
witrbig fei, mit nieitdlerifcfyer Ueberrafcbung gu berfa^
rett, begegnet Sattel einfac^, aber fdjlagenb. „©aS
Sblferredjt," Jagt er, „legt nidjf bie $flid?t auf Mrieg
gu erfldren mit ber ^ibftc^i, einent bemidden Setnbe
3eit gur Sorbereitung einer ungeredtfen Sertljeibigung
■git geben." Unb weiter: „2>iorb iff itnnter gu unter'
fdjeiben bon blo£lid?ent Ueberfall; weld? lebterer int
jtrieg ofne Stage erlaubt iff. SBenn etn entfcffloffener
©olbat fid? bei Sad?t in Seinbeslager ftie^lf, in bag
Self beg Selbt)errn bringt, unb fan erftifat, fo ift in
foldjem Serfaljren SifatS, wag ben ©efeben beg jtrie
*
ge§ wiber)brdfae. — Dlifatg fogar, wag nicfyt in einent
geredjten unb nofawenbigeit Jtriege ent b fol) len wer=
benfonnte." Unb banttf feut 3t»eifef iibrig bleibe,
ertldrt Sattel an anbrer ©telle, baf; gwiffaen ©brannen unb Unterbriidten — gunial gwiffaen Brannen
�15
unb ben bon fatten. unierjodden Sitrgern eineg
fremben Staateg — ein beftdnbiger ^rteggjufianb
perrfcfe, bet alle QUittel, beg ©egpoten logjuwerbett,
red)tfertige. SBag intmer an ©raufamfeit begangen
werben ntuffe, urn biefett Bwed ju erretd)en, bag
fade nicft auf bie Unterbrudten, bie ftd) ju erfieben
fudjen, fonbern auf ben ©ewaltfierrfc^er, ber juerft bom
££fab beg ©efe^eg abgewiegen, unb ber febe 45 it tfe auf
red)tlid)em SBege unmbglid) gemad)t f)abe.
So ber alte Sattel. ©r fd?rieb ju einer Beit, wo
fid) eine fd)wdd)ltd)e, nur ben ^einb fdjonenbe QRilbe
nod) nid)t fo Breit gemad)t patte, n?ie t)eute.
III.• • -1 -J. >!
, .
. , ■.
£>afl bie Nation, bie einen Snttug ju iljren Jeroen
gdplt, bor ber £et)re bon ber 9Hed)tmd^igfeit ber Styran
*
n&ntobtung nid)t juritdgebebt, begreift fid) ol;ne gug=
fuf)rlid)en Seweig. ©in genauereg ©ingeljen in bie
betreffenbe italienifdje Biteratur, — auf bie Stetten in
Setrarca, 5)ante, SDturatori, StRonti, Qltfieri, Ugo §og=
colo u. QI.—mag atfo mit 3ug I)ier unterbleiben. Qlur
jwei itatienifdje Sd)riftfteller feien angefubrt, beren
Beugnif uni fo fdflageitber ift, ba ber eine bcr=
felbett, ini borigen Saprpunbert, alg gtunbfa^
tidier ©egner ber Xobegftrafe befannt war, wdtjrenb ber
anbere petite alg ^aupt ber reactionairen Sartei in
Sarbinten beriid)tigt ift. QBir fprecpen bon Seccaria
nnb bent ©rafen Solar bella QRargperita. Seccaria,
ber oftgenannte QBerfaffer beg Sudjeg „Dei delitti
e delle pene” (Son ben Setbrecpen unb ben Strafen),
bag fiir eine menfcplicpere ©erecptigfeitgpflege bie Satin
brad?,—Seccaria, bent felbft ber ntilbeant eineuber=
triebene QRilbe jum Sorwurf mad)te, — fcpeute fid)
nict)t, bie Sered)tigung beg tDolcpeg gegen einen Ufur?
pator unb 2)egpoten anjuerfeniten.
£>ie Qleufierungen beg ©rafen Solar bella
sDt a r g p e r i t az eineg unferer Beitgenoffen, ftnb rtic^t
J r ' ■. •
•’
�16
rninber merfwurbig. 3n tlnn, einem ©djitler be
S^aiftre’g, If at bag aftfblutifHfdppfdfflfdfe dtegierunggfbftem, wie eg wnter bem farbinifcften Jtbuig dtarl 511=
■ftert bur 1848 ftliityte, feine waljre aSerfbrfterung ge<
funben. S’fmben Styrannenmorb ftrcbigen gu fturen,
gewdlgrt baiter einigeg (Srgofeen. „S)ie Wanmi," fagt
®raf (Solar in feiner <©djrift „ Awedimenti politici,”
„ift beraftfdfeuungbrcurbig: ber Styratm ift aufgett
l)alft bent®efe|. ®egen tyn ift Olufru^r nidgt Ofafi
rulfr, fonbertt ber gerecfste SBBibefftanb ber fteleibigten
Wenfdtlfelt. (Sin Jtbnig fann, olfne bafi babur^
ein OSerbredfen' ftegangen wurbe, getbbtet
werben, wettn er bie fbniglicftc @ewalt auf tbrannifcfte
OBeife geftraudyt. Non injuste rex potest destrui,
si potestate regia tyrannice abutatur.”
S)odf wir eilen, gu ben (Sngldnbern gu fommen, — fit
jettent moralifdfen QJolfe, bag „ben ISorb bom tiefften
@runbe beg 4ergeng beraftfdfeut," unb bon bem fo oft
irrtlfuntlidf angenommen wirb, eb Ifafte feine ^rei^eit
lebiglicf) mit fogenannten gefeftlidwit SRitteln erruntjeft.
SQidytg fawn in ber Shat after falfdger fein, alg biofe
Olnnalgme. ®iftt eg irgenb ein Banb, in weldfem „ftolitifcfter 3Jlorbn in auggebelgntem SXVape geitftt unb auf
literarifdfent OBege gerecfttfertigt wurbe, fo ift eg gerabe
(Snglanb. ®er fo oft gelfbrte Qlugbrttd: — „£olitifcber
SJtorb ift bent (Sitglanber berlfafit; er iff unenglifdf'—
enttydlt einfad? eine Sadfcrlidyfeit unb eine gefdudttlidfe
UnwafsrftMt. Side -Barteien in (Snglanb ijaften alt
wecftfelnb gu gewaltfamen, Ifeimlidf borftereiteten Sfttfe
teln ilwe Bufludit genontmen, urn eineg ftolitifeften
©egnerg log gu werben. 5)lan ftramftt nur auf
feington unb feine ©enoffen fHngubeuten, bie ficft
gegen bag Seften ber .ftbnigin (Slifaftetlf berfdyworettbann aufbie^ulberberf^worungj aufCStyben^
bant unb Olnbere, bie nad) bent Soften ©liber Gromwell'g traded en; auf bag 91 ft e = a ti'g = G owt =
b I o 11 • auf bie SBerfcftwbrung (Sit 3ol;n §ielbg
�17
unb feiner greunbe, _ bie SBilpelnt ben ©ritten
ju ermorben gebacpten; bann auf-bie bielfacpen politic
ftpen Sbbtungen in Stpoitlaitb u. f. w. u. f. w. ©er
SBeweiS ift- baburcp pinreicpenb geliefert, bap 2)tonar=
epiften, Ultramontane, $roteftanten unb Otepublifaner
in ©nglattb, We in gleicper ®eife ben „ politif(pen
JUiorb" ubten: weppalbeg ftcperlicp etwag gewagt er=
fd?eint, benfelbeit alg anti national, bent englifcpen
*
SBolfscparafter burdjaug unbefannt, pinjufteUen.
. Bubent tnag matt ftcp erinnern, bap Sitglanb eiuer
berjenigen europaifcpen <£>taaten ift, in welepent bie
gropte Wjapl bon Itbnigen, nicpt blop abgefept, fon«
bern pingericptet wurbe. ®5ir nentten (SbuarblL,
fftitparb II.'unb H'arl I., bon benen ber lept er=
wdpnte ■ auf bem Scpaffot fein Beben enbigte, wdp=
renb hie beiben erfieit pcinilifp im Jierfer getobtet
wurbeit. Jhtrj, Snglanb ift, gefcpicptlicp betracptet,
nicpt blop bag Banb, ■ in weltpem Sbbtungen aug
politifcpen ©riinben am pdufigften borfamen,, fonb.ern eg ift aucp ganj befottberg unb borjuggweife
bag Banb:>ber ■ „ Jlbniggmbrber.11 SBie man in
©nglanb — niept bon <Seiten ber fRepublifaner,
fonbern bon Seiten nebenbuplerifcper .ft'roitprdten
*
benten — bett Jvbniggmorb betrieb, baritber gibt
ber Sob (fbuarb’g beg
unb Olibparb’g beg BrneU
ten feplagenbe SBelege. ©buarb wurbe burcp ein
gliipenbeg ©ben getobtet, bag man ipnt bttrd) benQlfter
in bie @ebdrmeftiep;...\Sftid»arb berenbete am-§unger=
tob, nacpbent er bierjepn Sage opne iRaprung gelaffen
roorben war....... ©ag waren bie SRittel, mit benen pep
englifepe SRonarcpen iprer Segenfbntge entlebigten!
©ie {Republifaner paben ftep mit .ber Wt begniigt, urn
bag Beben - eineg S.urften ju enbigen, ber burcp feine
grdnjenlofe <§errfcpfudp, feine Sreulofigfeit unb ®rau=
famteit ben Sob taufenbmal berbient patte.
. BBie ©nglanb wefentlicp bag Banb ber Jtbmggmbr=
�18
Wift, fo ift e§ aitcf) Vorjuggweife bag Banb, beffett Bi®
teratur reid) aw Jternfttflen fin bie Stecftnidfiigfeit ber
Wannentbbtung. Slug ber ©Jaffe bon Sdiriftftellern,
©trftfertt, Staatgnidnnern' u. f. w. fyebe'n wir nur
’3otn $nor, ben ^teforntator; Sljafrpeare;
©Jiltott; Stlgernow Sibneb: Swift; ©r.
©t)ontag ©town;' Sir Militant 3otteg; ©ro®
feffor SBilfon; ben 53orb®©berricbter ©enman;
ben ©ifdjof £oartI); Gobbett; Soutlj-et); (SBe
*
ne jer G'lliot; SB. Savage Banbror; Gar®
f t) I e nnb © i 5 r a e I i liervor — inbewt wir babei be®
tnerfen, baf f)ier nur bie befannterctt Scaftten -genannt
finb.
.'Hu"
:n i ;■■
■ Studf in ben Slugjitgen aug&er englifcfjen Biteratiir
wollett wir ung furj faffett, ba ber Stoff gar ju reid)=
fjaltig fur biefe ©latter augfaUen wurbe, wenn attan eS
unterndfme, itberaU in’g Gin^elne ju'gelw. ©etrot
wir inbeffen einige Stollen aug betannten britif^m
Scfniftftellern geben, fei juerfi eineg nierfwittbigew.
literarifcben Grjeugniffeg gcbacft, bag feinen Urfprttug
ber Sober It a r I’g beg Bweiten von Gnglanb Verbanft.
Stig Itarl, bin ©erbannter, unter bent Scbu'ge beg
^arbinal'g ©Jajartn auf franjbftfd)ein ©oben weilte,
etfctnen eine ©roflamation, in weldjer berfliicl)tige©rd®
tenbent Sebent, ber „einen gewiffen genteinen <£erl, 91a®
nteng ©liver Gr o nt w e-l I, aug bent SBege fdjaffe, fei
eg burst) bie ©iftole, ben ©egen, buret) ® ift, Wr it®
getrb etn anbereg ©Httel," .eine ©eloljnung von.500
©funb Sterling 3a^reggel;alt vetfpritbi, ’bit auf ©ie
Grben beg ©hater g itbergeben folle; auferbent folle bet
©f)dter junt Slitter gefd)lagen, unb wenn er bent
angetsbre, init einer ©briften® ober anberen SteHe be®
lol)nt werben, bie ,,fcinent ©erbtenfte unb feiner -gottge
*
fdlligen ©aiwltmg entforeefie.'1 * —©fef? alg Qlntwort
)
__________■.
i
qtf/f
s-’5* StoS Slttenflutt beginnt-tnit ben SBorten: •‘■‘•Whereas a-cer
)
tain mechanic fellow, by name Oliver Cromwell, hath
�19
fur'Sorb ©erlb, ber, bei ©elegentjeit bet ©rftni’fdjkn
Xfyai, mit p^arifdif^er ^eudfelei ®ott gebanft Ijattrf
bafj bie (Sabaliere bon (Snglanb folder fc^eu^lic^ett
<§.anblunggroeife nie fdtjig'genufen.
9ladj biefem furjen fftudblid auf bie ^nfeffairnngen
bte unter englifdjen sKonardfenubet bie IRedjtmdfjigfeit
begn bolitifd^en SHorbeg oorgenaltet, mbge' nun ein
Slugjug aug Chilton uber bie Stage? bet Sbrannen
*
fobbing gegeben werben. ©rei ©cbriften Wlton’g,■—■
Iconoclastes (S)er SBilberfiurmer), The Defence
of the People of England, (S)ie SSertfyeibigung
beg ®olfeg bon ©nglanb), unb The teinure
of Kings and Magistrates (©it Qlmtggemalt bon
$onigen unb Dbrigfeiten) ■— ent^gUen in biefer 33e=
jielmng eine Sunbgrube bon frdftigen ©teUen. 3n
bet ^Imtbgenmlt bon Jtbnigen unb ©brigfeiten" fudjf
Shilton ju berceifen, „bap eg gefetdid) ift, unb in alien
3e.italtern fur gefe^lid) gefjalten rouroe, baf Seber, ber
bte 2)iad)t.baju Ifat, einen Sijrannen ober fd^ec^ten
^bnig jur Sftedienfd^aft jieljen," —■ ja, „.if)n bom Seben
jum Tobe bringen burfe, menu bie gewb^nlidfe iPlagk
firatur ilfre $flitf)t ju t^un berfdumt Ijat, ober it)re
$fli(f)t ju tlpun ftcb ueiger.t?'
, :
„©ag/‘ fagt Wlilton, ,,'befenne icQ frei alg roefenD
lichen 3d;eil meineg ©laubepgbefenntniffeg, bafj, menu
eg irgenb einen Surffen gibt, auf beffen SBefefyl maffen=
^afte dlle^eleien gegen feine getreuen Untertffanen aug=
gefufsrt wurben,—mag er ^bnig, ©brann, ober Uaifer
fein,—bag ©cproert ber @ered)tigfeit ift uber ifjm; unb
in meffen d?anb genixgenbe -Kactyt gefunben wirb, urn
biefe SBergiefjung fdmlblofen iBlfiteg ju radfen, ber
most tyrannically and traitorously usurped the supreme
power over these kingdoms; the rightful claimant hereby
gives free leave to any man whomsoever, by pistol, sword,
poison, or any other means, to destroy the life of the
said Cromwell; wherein he will do an act acceptable to
God and good men.”
- •
’
1
�20
l)at bag$iedpt, bag
ber ®eredjtiig?i
feit ju gebraudien." -2ln anbrbr ©telle erfldrt.
SDlilton, bie ^inricftung eineg .©egboten folle, n». ntbglid}, nad) borgangtger' geridjtlidjer Qlburtlieilung'
ftattfinbcn. $iad)e after ber Buftanb beg £anbeg ©iejt
unf^unlid), fo jet bie -2lnwenbung „jebw eber auf; er
*
o r b e n 11 i d^tt ® e w a 11" nidjt blof; entfdjulbbar uub;
ratffant, fonbern eitte gebieterifcfye $fftd)t.
. tsnil'
©ie ©riedjen unb Stonier," fafyrt dtolton fort, r;nsie
ifjre Ifaubtfddjlidqten ©cfriftfteller ftejeugen, Ijielten eg
nid;t filofrffir gefei^nidfng, fonbern fitr eine ruljmreidje
unb Ijelbenljafte ©bat, bie man bffentlid? ntit SBilk
fdulen unt> SBliintengewinben belofmte, einen iite
famen ©Ijrantten ju jeber Beit, withof; it e': Ur 11;e il, it i eb er ju nt adj e n (to
kill an infamous tyrant at every time wit4
hout trial); unb eg ift nur redjt unb billig; bafr
ber, wefdicr alleg ©efefc mil jyufjen tritt, n i fy t bie'
2Bol)ltt)at beg ©efe^eg geniefien folle (and but reason,
that he who trod down all law, should not be
vouchsafed the benefit of law.” „©ieu iftfo waljr/1
faljrt SWilton fort, „bafi Seneca, ber ©rauerfpielbidj
*
ter, ben <£>erfuleg, jenen grofien 33ernid;ter ber ©brans
nett, mit folgenben SSorten einfuljrt:
->
“Victima haud ulla amplior
Potest, magisque opiina, mactari Jovi,
Quam rex iniquus,”
3n SPlilton’g Ueberfe^ung:
•’ ! dt
'■ i
“There can be slain
- T/d —
*
No sacrifice to God more acceptable
/j'Jh nt
. Than an injust und wicked King.”
9ladj biefen frdftigen ©ii^en aug einent ©d)riftftel=
ler, ©idjter unb ©taatgmann, ber bon bem liberalen,
broteftantifdien Snglanb alg einer ber Sbelften unb
Seften bere^rt wirb, woUen wir gleid; attf bie neuefte
3eit iibergeljen — auf bie 3^1 ber Jtdmipfe jwifdjm
©rofibritanien unb Dlafwleon bem Srften. ©d?on im.
�21
erften Qlbf<^nitt feiefer 5lb^anblung wurbe: borauf tjin^
gewiefen, wie in jenen ©agen, wo Snglanb mit bem
Dorfen rang, iRicbtg bon ber ©entimentalitdt gu mcr=
Jen war, bie fid) tjeutgutage fo Ijduftg gu ©unften ber
©Brannen Brett ma^t. Qllg eg irn Sntereffe Snglanb’g
lag, bie SRatfyt Sfatyoleon’g big auf bie We @£ur aug?
gurotten, ba war man gu jebent -Kittel bereit, ben ge=
furcbteten ©egner aug bent -SBeg gu rdumett. ©ie
englifcfye Slriftolratie gab bag ©elb gu ©aboubal’g
<§bllenmafcf)ine b)er. S itt ftaf mit in ben Homblot
*
ten, bie gegen Sonabarte gefdbmiebet wurben — unb
fe'lbft bie ©iplomatie ©rofsbritannien’g l)alf an ben
©obtunggblanen mit, wie ©iefi aug bem aiifgefunbenen
Sriefwedjfel beg englifdfen Sebollmddjtigten ©rate
in SKunctyen gur ©eniige er^edt. ©amalg flofj mandjeg >§iinberttaufenb fPfunb Sterling aug bem britu
fdjett ©taatgf^a^ fur jenen „unenglifdjen'‘ Sweet —
bolitifdjen QJlorb. ©amalg Jprebigten ©orieg unb
®l;igg, Honferbatibe unb fHabitale, in ber ^reffe unb
felbft im Sarlamentg^aug bie 3led)tmdfngteit beg Qln=
griffg auf bag Seben beg frangbftfcben Ufurbatorg.
©amalg fcfyrieb ber liberate SBilliam Sobbe.tt,
bei ©elegen^eit eineg auf SQaboleon gemacfyten ©ob
*
tungbberfudjeg: „©ie Sage beg Horfen gegenixber ben
^rangofen gleidft berjenigen eineg (Rduberg (burglar)
gegeniiber bem d?errn beg doaufeg, in bag er eingebroctien 5
unb wer bon ung wurbe nicfjt bem ©cburfen, ber einert
Sinbrud) unb einen ©iebftaljl bei ung berfucfyte, gern
bag ©eljirn augblafen? .... Sin Ufutpator ift im=
mer ein ©eac^teter, ein au^er^atb bent ©efe^e <5tel;enber. Sr ift in einem Suftanb beg Hriegeg gegen jeben
SDienfctienim Staat. SBir gotten unfern Seifall ber
<§anblung beg Srutug, ber ben gottergleixfjen (Stofj
ful;rte; fa bie Silbfdule biefeg felben Srutug ift in ber
>§alle ber frangofifdjen Hammer aufgeflellt: furg,
Srutug ift allgemein bereft alg einer ber SBixtbigfien
bie|er SKelt. SBarurn benn alfo jene Stangbfen tabelrt,
�22
bie eb berfudjten, ibr &utb bon einent ufurbirenben
Brannen ju befreien, ber jepnmal graufatner urab w
terbruderifctjer ift, alb ber rbmifc^e Sebpot? Wenn
Srutub emen gbttergleidjen ©top fnljrte, to arum fo&
ten tvir ben iPartfer. Wagen eine <§ollenma[dMne
nennen?S
,/Derjenige/ —fdjrieb ©o'bbett, ein paar Sags fpater,
in feiner Beitung „$orcupine,"—„nmrbc ein ebelperji
*
ger Sranjofe, ein maprer ffreunb feineb £anbeb fein,
ber bie ©rbe bon einern S^rannen befreien wiirbe, auf
beffen ©ewiffen eine fol^e fylutp bon Slut tfaftet
.©icperlicb, eb gibt im Himmel eine Serjeibung fur ben
Sffiann, welcper ein Ungeheuer, einen $einb beb rnenfrf^
lichen ©efcblecpteb aubrottei." Qin anbter @telle fu'prt
©obbett aub,baft „bab franjbftfcpe Self, gentdf ben
allgemein angcttommenen ©efe^'en beib
^riegeb, ein unjmeifelpafteb IRed^t pabe, Sonaparte
$u tobten (to kill him)." Unb able bie fdflauen
Herren beb Qlarifer Qlational=3nftituteb werben aufge=
forbert, „biefe Sogif, menu fie eb bermogen, unijuftoften^
llebrigenb ift eb befannt, baf ber erfte QlapoUott
felbft ben politifcberi Skorb billigte. 3n feinern Ie£t=
milligen Setnwkfyinifi fejjte er bie ©ttimne bon 10,00©
&art fen fiu ©ant ill on artb, alb 5)anf bafiir, baf
biefer eb berfudjt patte, ben <§erjog oon Wellington, bei
feinem Qlufent^alt in Qhrib, burcf) einen Siftolenfc^tf
ju tbbten. S)er Jtorftfcbe 2)ebpot erflcirte in feitwwt
Seftament fbrmlicfj, baft biefer politifc^e -SRorb g e r e d) t
*
fertigt unb billigenbneertf) fei, reel! ber fperjog
bon Wellington ilm liabe in’b ©ril auf einen einfamen
®elfen febaffen laffen. ©b ift ebenfallb befannt, baft
£ouib Qtapoleon bab Sermdd)tnip feineb So-rgdngerb,
fammt Binfen, aubjalilte, unbbiefebimparifer QRoitU
tear mit eignerUnterfcbrift, unb mit ber Sejeictmung
“Approuve,” beroffentlidrte. Siepe bab Sierte ©o
*
bicill Napoleon Suonaparte’b, d. d. Bongmoob, 241
Qlpril 1821, unb OR o nite nr, 6. QRai 1855. '
�—
23
—
®et)en wir auf bie gegenwdrtige fiiteratitr ©nglanb’g
^e-ra'6, fo finben wir Sait bo r al? einen $rebiger be?
Xl)rannenmorbe?, ben er al? „gered)tfertigte unb prei?=
wiirbige Sobtung" bon assassination unterfd)eibet.
®af Sanbor ftcf) gegen bie beabfid)tigte -§inrid)tung
eine? befiintmien franjb.fifcf;en Brannen auSgefpro
*
d)en, tl)ut 9lid)t? i3ur ®ad)e. -©enug, baji er ben
©runbfa^ aufftellt • bie Qlnwenbung, wie fd)on fritter
Benterft, inufj notljwenbig jebent ©injelnen uberlaffen
BleiBen. Sebenfall? erfiarte Sanbor nod) filrjlid) bie
Xbbtung SBontBa’? unb anberer Ungeheuer al? ein ber®
bienftlid)e? SBerf, ju beffen gbrberung er felbft bie no®
tljigen ©elbmittel ge(wteivl)at.
SBill man after etwas -Rraftbolle? aug ber mobernen
£
*iteratur,
engli;f(ft)en'
fo mu'^ man bie SBer'fe 33enja=
min £>i?raeli’?, be? ©d^fanjler? 3l)rer SRajcftat
ber Jtbnigin bon ©rofjftritannien, jttr foattb nefmtcn.
£>ort trifft man auf ©tellen, an 'benen ftd) bd§ rcbolit®
tiondre <§erj weiben mag. Sort finben fid) ©trnfdjen,
bie ba? Slut ftod)en macften,—gewaltige (5troft^en boll
bion ber ©riergie unb bent fatten ©cftauber einer' :Jge^
tyofften Olad)e, Sent Sold) be? Olemer? ut® bem
O^feil be? <5d)weijer Sanbmanneg’jfngtSifraeli’? 29lufe
ein £rdd)tige? Soblicb. 3a, -auf alle Seiten f)inau?
fpricfyt SiSraeli ben .@egen uber bie $aftferen,:.bie mit
entfd)ioffenein Stop il)r fBaterlanb
UnterpriMferfi
ftefreien werben:—
“Blessed be the hand, that dares to wield
The Regicidal steel that shall redeem
A nation’s suffering with a tyrant’s blood 1”
©§ ware ein £eid)teg, au? ber neueren ®efd)id)te unb
£iteratur .©nglanb’g nod) eine Wlenge SBetfpiele angu®
fiiljren, bie barauf l)inweifen, bafj bie Oied)tfertigung
ber iU)rannentbbtung bon ben geftilbetften Jtlaffen bie®
fe? bem gefe^licben ffortfe^ritt I)ulbigenben Sanbe? al?
ein loften?wertl)er fwlitifd)er ©runbfaij angenommen
�24
wtrh. nSluf ben en'glifcbau Uniberfitdtett ift bag ^itr
nnb BBiber" tit SBejttg auf bie Snitorbung ©dfar’g, unb
bie Otecbtindpigbcit ber ^mricfytung Jtarl’g beg Srften,
ein ftebenbeg Sterna; ittib eg braiicbt taunt gefagt ju
werben, bap bei ber 5lbftiimnung intnier bag „?hir' bie
SQtebr'^eit l)at. ©iefi ift unt fo meniger ju verrvunbern,
ha felbft unter ntancQen .rontifdien Sntperatoren bag
Bob beb Sbrannentnorbeg in ben (Sdntlen erlaubt roar.
- 'iv > 'but '
■v-.
/uj?
1
1
!j
■
-■ .4/ SXllJ
■• to® [.ttntfUli
SSir fyaben mit her britifdien Siteratur ge
*
fdjloffen, Weil neuerbingg Ijaufig auf jeneg 2anb
alg auf ein S3orbilb fill beutfdie politifd)e ®nt
*
*
Wicflung gejeigt Wirb. — SSeWiefett Ijaben Wir
febenfaUg, baff bie 2el;re bon bent 9ied)te, bie Sty;
rannen $u tbbten, bon alien grofjen ©eiftern getyrebigt, unb bon ben berfdjiebenften Spartelen ber=
fod)ten Wurbe: bafj batyer ein neuer Sell, Weit
entfernt ein SSerbredjer ju fein, biehnefyr bie fBe;
Wunberung ber 9IW unb SladjWelt anfprectyen,
unb auf breifjig Satyrtyttnberte ber ebelften Biteratur
alter Slattonen alg auf elite Stectytfertigung feiner
Styat Wirb tyinbeuten fonnen.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Von dem Rechte die Tyrannen zu toedten
Description
An account of the resource
Title translation: 'The right to kill tyrants'
Place of publication: Freiberg
Collation: 24 p. ; 16 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Text in German. Tentative date from KVK.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[c.1848]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5695
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Unknown]
Subject
The topic of the resource
Ethics
Language
A language of the resource
German
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THE
MYSTERY OF EVIL.
��THE
MYSTERY OF EVIL.
. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1875.
Price Ninepence.
�JLONDON:
FEINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE FULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET.
�THE
MYSTERY OF EVIL.
HIS subject is not one of mere sectarian or
temporary interest. It touches a depth far
deeper than even the differences which separate
disciples of Naturalism from those who profess faith
in a miraculous book revelation. The following
inquiry reaches down to the “ bed rock ” of all intel
lectual and moral life, and deals with the source and
development of force in the universe, with the nature
of human actions, and with the true fulcn/in which is
to bear the leverage by which this still suffering and
disordered world is to be raised towards perfect har
mony with law, and with the highest ideal of human
intelligence and happiness.
Orthodox guides are constantly warning their
people against this proposed line of investigation, We
are cautioned that the study of such a topic is unprac
tical . and unprofitable—if not actually profane —
*
that it involves a mystery which is hopelessly inex
plicable, that attempts to solve the mystery have been
made over and over again by the “ carnal ” intellect,,
but always with the same unsatisfactory result—themocking of our hopes, the answering of our questions
by empty echoes, which but rebuke our presumption.
This has been the favourite way of silencing the-
T
* To proscribe as profane, studies beyond the comprehension of a par
ticular school or sect is a very old habit. The wisest Greek philosophermaintained that Astronomy was a subject unfit for human inquiry, and
that the gods took it under their own special and immediate control.
B
�6
The Mystery of Evil.
questionings, the difficulties, and the fears of “ doubt
ing believers.” There can be no harm, we are told
in making ourselves acquainted, as a matter of history,
with how the loyal defenders of the faith have been
accustomed to “ hold the fort ” against the “ infidel,”
for we should ever be ready to give a reason of the
hope that is in us. But to venture to reason out the
point independently for oneself is to enter on a path
beset with danger and leading to despair. Minds of
any stamina, however, and especially if familiar with
the wonderful disclosures which science and critical
scholarship are daily making, are not likely to submit
much longer to this restraint of priestly leading
strings. They will insist on the right of testing the
most “mysterious” teachings of the church for them
selves,. undeterred alike by threats of ecclesiastical
taboo in this world and of divine punishment in the
next. The light of truth—formerly claimed as the
sole prerogative of a pretended “ sacred order ”—now
finds its way as freely into the poor man’s cottage as
into the palace of the archbishop, and will, sooner or
later, compel the dullest to examine for themselves
with an urgency that cannot be repressed.
If I looked upon the question under consideration
as simply affording scope for curious speculation, I
should be content at once to relegate it for decision
to the learned hair-splitters who make it their busi
ness solemnly to adjust the distinction between
“ homoousion ” and homozousion.” But I am fully
convinced that the alleged “ mystery of evil ” is
essentially a practical question, and one upon which
hangs the true theory of the universe, a right concep
tion of man’s physical and moral relations,, and a just
understanding of the nature of the human will and
human accountability. Moreover, the vulgar notions
on this subject will have to be abandoned before the
many philanthropic persons whom theological super
stitions have misled, are likely to unite in any effectual
�The Mystery of Evil.
7
attempt at man’s physical, rational, and moral eleva
tion. With all becoming reverence for the earnest
and often profound efforts of the wise and the good
in past times to master the difficulties of this subject,
we, in this age of riper learning and more extensive
scientific acquisition, occupy a Vantage ground in
discussing it which was not possible to any previous
generation.
“ Evil ” is a term having a theological origin,
though it has in some measure been adopted in the
language of common life. We usually understand by
it whatever is contrary to our ideas of moral rectitude
and tends to interfere with the general happiness
of mankind physically, morally, and socially. It is
but too easy to find endlessly varied traces of the
wretchedness and wrong that seem to defy all
attempts to reconcile them with the rule of infinite
power, wisdom, and goodness in the universe.
What shall we say of the tribes and races that
have been permitted to live many centuries in inter
necine strife, ignorance, filth, and pestilence, and to
perish without contributing one thought worth pre
serving to the stock of human ideas ? And still it is
often around the haunts of the wandering savage or
the uncultivated boor, who is incapable of appreciat
ing the sublime, that nature puts forth her grandest
feats of power and beauty. Then what shall we
think of the havoc and sorrow which are the heritage
of multitudes born into the world with constitutions
naturally predisposing them to suffer pain or to
violate the sentiments of justice and humanity, and
brought up in homes that infallibly foster vice, cruelty,
and crime. Nor does it relieve the difficulty to view in
temperance, the sickly frame, the life-long disease, the
plague and the pestilence as being, directly or remotely,
penalties for the neglect of sanitary and moral laws ;
for reason will persist in asking, “ Why, if the universe
be ruled by a Being of infinite power, wisdom, and
�8
The Mystery of Evil.
love, was not this deep turbid river of misery stemmed
at the fountain ? ” Kay, there are forms of suffering
yet more appalling and that yet more perplex and
overpower us: the storm that dashes a thousand
helpless vessels in pieces in spite of every expedient
tried by the crews to escape an ocean grave ; the
earthquake that engulfs towns and cities so quickly
that science and forethought are powerless to avert
it; the explosion of the mine that suddenly scorches
to death many an honest toiler and deprives many a
family of its bread-winner. And if we turn from the
fury of the unconscious elements to the conscious
and troubled inward experience of human beings, the
cloud of “ natural ills that flesh is heir to,” thickens.
The tangled affairs of social and moral life is patent
to us all. Why, in this century for instance, should
law and order, truth and right, have so little influence
upon civilised nations, to say nothing of those we
deem barbarians ? Look back, too, in history, and
behold the long perspective of prophets and martyrs,
who have sealed their loyalty to truth and righteous
ness with their blood, while the tyrants who slew
them died without one pang of remorse. Look
around and see all ages cut down, apparently at ran
dom ;—in many cases the wise and vigorous, the use
ful, the talented, and benevolent, withering away in
the morning or noontide of their days with their
gifts increasing in number and activity, while the effete
and the stupid, the besotted, the selfish, the useless,
are spared. Knavery arrayed in purple and fine
linen fares sumptuously, and at its gate honest
poverty clothed in rags, desires in vain to eat of the
crumbs that fall from the rich charlatan’s table.
Consider the millions that have innocently pined in
the dungeon, or that have been worked as beasts,
flogged as beasts, and sold as beasts. Consider the
throng of once blooming maidens ruined by heartless
human monsters. Think of nations in the first rank
�The Mystery of Evil.
9
of civilisation, bowing at the same altar, and rising
from their devotions to slay each other by weapons
of fiendish ingenuity. And with the spectacle also
before us of the greed of ambition, the vapourings
of pride, the treachery of the false, the meanness of
the little, the vices of the bad, and the frailties of
the good, the moral instinct within us cannot help
reiterating the question, “ Is this the sort of world
we should have expected under the government of a
Deity clothed with the attributes of perfection ? The
good man—crude though his ideal be—if he had the
power as he has the wish, would at once reduce this
chaos to order ; and does not the Theist believe in a
God infinitely better than the most benevolent of
men ?
An eminent living physical philosopher has said :
“ Nature seems to take some care of the race, but
bestows very little on individualsAnd in brooding
on the dark side of this problem, a man of literary
note once exclaimed, in a private circle, “For the
credit of our conception of what goodness ought to
be, let us hope there is no God.” This, too, rightly
or wrongly, was the very thought put by Byron into
the mouth of Cain in his reply to Lucifer :
Why do I exist ?
Why art thou wretched ? why are all things so ?
Even He who made us must be as the Maker
Of things unhappy ! To produce destruction
Can surely never be the work of joy;
And yet my sire says He’s omnipotent.
Then why is evil ?—He being good ?
The same thought is strongly expressed by Mrs.
Browning:—
My soul is grey.
With pouring o’er the total sum of ill.
With such a total of distracted life
To see it down in figures on a page,
Plain, silent, clear
*
*
*
�IO
The Mystery of Evil,
*
*
* . That’s terrible
For one who is not God, and cannot right
The wrong he looks upon.
*
This problem of evil has stirred deeply inquiring
minds from the earliest times. In the ‘ Naishadha
Charita ’ (xvii. 45), a Charvaka, or materialistic
Atheist, is represented as addressing Indra and other
gods on their return to heaven from Damayantis
Svayamvara, and ridiculing the orthodox Indian doc
trines of the Vedas :—“ If there be an omniscient and
merciful God, who never speaks in vain, why does
he not, by the mere expenditure of a word, satisfy
the desires of us his suppliants ? By causing living
creatures to suffer pain, though it be the result of
their own works, God would be our causeless enemy,
whilst all our other enemies have some reason or
other for their enmity.
Sophocles has lines to the same effect:—“ It is
strange that those who are impious and descendants
of wicked men should fare prosperously, while those
who are good and sprung from noble men should be
unfortunate. It was not meet that the gods should
thus deal with mortals. Pious men ought to have
obtained from the gods some manifest advantage,
while the unjust should, on the contrary, have paid
some evident penalty for their evil deeds, and thus
no one who was wicked would have been pros
perous.” J
It may be convenient at this point to glance at
some of the methods that have been employed to
ease or remove the contradiction between the painful
phenomena of life and the credited rule of an allmighty, all-wise, and all-good Bather. We shall
* ‘Aurora Leigh.’
+ ‘ Additional Moral and Religious Passages, Metrically rendered
from the Sanskrit, with exact Prose Translations ”—Scott’s Series.
I Quoted by Dr. Muir in the ‘Additional Moral and Religious
Passages.’
�The Mystery of Evil.
11
thus have an opportunity of detecting the fallacieswhich lurk under all such methods of harmonising,
and which render them nugatory.
Epicurus, from a Theistic point of view, stated the
case very comprehensively when, in syllogistic form,
he said :—“ Why is evil in the world ? It is either
because God is unable or unwilling to remove it. If
he be unable he is not omnipotent. If he be
unwilling, he is not all-good. If he be neither able
nor willing, he is neither all-powerful nor all-good ; ”*
and it is difficult to see how escape is possible from
between the horns of this dilemma on the supposition
that an infinite God exists.
• The Manichaeans believed good and evil or pleasure
and pain to be rival powers in the universe. This
was also virtually the Persian theory on the subject,
only the latter was clothed in oriental dress.f Bolingbroke and the sceptics of his day, accounted for the
phenomena referred to on an aesthetic principle—the
proportion of parts in the scale of sentient being.
Every animal has bodily members of varied grades
of honour and importance, and all in harmonious
subserviency to the general convenience of their
possessor. Every picture has an arrangement of
colour producing light and shade. All harmony
must consist of voices attuned from alto to bass.
Every considerable dwelling must have apartments
in the attic as well as on the ground floor, and of
greater or less capacity. So the world is formed
on a gradational plan from high intelligence, by
imperceptible degrees down to life of so doubtful a
* The great Lord Shaftesbury, in his “ Inquiry concerning Virtue,”
* Characteristics,’ Vol. II., page 10, puts the case thus:—u If there be
supposed a designing principle, who is the cause only of good, but
cannot prevent ill which happens . . . then there can be supposed, in
reality, no such thing as a superior good design or mind, other than
what is impotent and defective; for not to correct or totally exclude
that ill . . . must proceed either from impotency or ill-will.”
t Ormuzd and Ahriman. This is also the germ of the Christian
dogma of God who is “ Light,” and the Devil “ The Prince of Darkness.
�12
The Mystery of Evil.
character that it is impossible to determine whether
it be vegetable or animal. In the moral sphere,
too, there is a ladder whose top reaches the loftiest
unselfishness, and whose rounds gradually descend
to the grossest forms of moral life. It is argued
that the world would be tame and monotonous
without these inequalities in the structure of
universal life, and that it is the constant fric
tion between beings of high and low degree which
helps to give that healthful impulse to human activity
that keeps the universe from stagnating; and
unavoidable accidents but quicken the forethought
and contrivance of men to provide against such
occurrences. It will be felt, however, by the most
ordinary thinker, that such a theory utterly fails to
cover all the facts, and fails especially to account for
the more formidable sufferings of humanity. It is
but the view of an artist who lives in a one-sided and
unreal region, surrounded by plenty, who simply
looks out upon the world through a coleur de rose
medium, and projects the image of his own luxurious
home upon the landscape outside.
There is another theory popular with a large class
of airy minds, which regards evil as a modification
of good. Right and wrong, truth and falsehood pro
ceed from the same source, and are degrees of the
same thing. Lust is only a lower form of love, and
what would be described as cruelty inflicted upon
others is not intended to cause suffering as an end,
but only occurs in some rather abrupt and uncere
monious . attempt being made by a person to reach
some object much wished for. But the one who
suffers happens to be, unconsciously perhaps, an
obstacle in the way of that object being attained;
and the suffering is occasioned simply by accident,
just as we stumble against a neighbour who has
the misfortune to cross our path at the moment
when our attention is fixed on something we
�The Mystery of Evil.
*3
eagerly want to get at on the opposite side of
the street. So much the worse for the neighbour if
he sustain injury by the impact, but it is no fault
of ours!
What goes by the name of meanness, according to
the same theory, springs as truly from a wish to be
happy in the mean nature as nobility does when
manifested by a noble nature. As little harm is
intended by the one nature as by the other. But it
seems only necessary to state this method of meeting
the difficulty in order to see its inadequacy. Even
granting that the misery occasioned by men to each
other were reconciled by this mode of reasoning,
there is a class of troubles which are wholly beyond
human agency and control that remains utterly
unaccounted for ; and respecting the evils which the
theory professes to explain away, the question crops
up afresh, why, if the government of the world be
conducted by a Being of infinite power, wisdom and
love, is so much distress permitted to be caused,
however casually, by men to one another ?
Perhaps the most elaborate and closely-reasoned
attempt ever made to harmonise existing evil in the
world with perfect wisdom, power, and goodness, in
a Creator, was the celebrated “ Essay on the Origin
of Evil,” by Archbishop King. The writer postu
lates, as an axiom, that the universe is the work of a
God of infinite intelligence, power, and goodness ;
and he deals in precisely the same manner with the
alleged existence of freedom and responsibility in
human beings. The pith of the Archbishop’s explana
tion of moral evil is contained in the following
passage: “ The less dependent on external things,
the more self-sufficient any agent is, and the more it
has the principles of its actions within itself, it is so
much the more perfect; since, therefore, we may con
ceive two sorts of agents, one which does not act
unless impelled and determined by external circum
�14
The Mystery of Evil.
stances, such as vegetable bodies; the other, which
have the principle of their actions within themselves,
namely, free agents, and can determine themselves to
action by their own natural power, it is plain that the
latter are much more perfect than the former; nor
can it be denied that God may create an agent with
such power as this; which can exert ‘itself into
action without either the concourse of God or the deter
mination of external causes, as long as God preserves
the existence, power, and faculties, of that agent;,
that evil arises from the uniawful use of man s faculties ;
that more good in general arises from the donation of
such a self-moving power, together with all thoso
foreseen abuses of it, than could possibly have been
produced without it.”
The gist of the Archbishop’s reasoning is in the
words : “,Evil arises from the unlawful use of men’s
faculties.
But this is a mere beggino of the
*
question, and a shifting rather, than a settlement of
the difficulty ;.for even granting the assumption put
forward, the inquiry naturally recurs : Why, in a
world created and sustained by such a perfect Being
as Theism recognises, was any arrangement tolerated
by which men should exercise their faculties unlaw
fully —especially as the results are so painfully dis
cordant with our notions of happiness ? It is assumed
by the Archbishop that man and not his maker is
responsible for the moral chaos that has always
characterised the condition of the race. But this is
only a repetition of the now exploded theological
fiction that man was created with his faculties and
circumstances equally and entirely favourable to
obedience ; and that his departure from law was his
own voluntary choice—a choice determined upon by
him with a full consciousness that he ought to have
acted differently, and that he was free to have dono
so. By the voluntary depravation of his own mind
and by the force of his bad example he involved all
�The Mystery of Evil.
15
his descendants in the moral and physical conse
quences of his transgression. But with the undeni
able revelations of modern scientific and historical
research before us such a view is too absurd to need
refutation. In any case we are justified in holding
that on the hypothesis of a miracle-working God,
there is no tendency to disobedience, error, or vice,
in mankind that might not have been easily checked
in its first outbreak by an act of omnipotence. The
power that is asserted to have rained manna from the
skies, arrested the setting of the sun, changed water
into wine, and raised the dead, might surely have
been exerted in a way more worthy the dignity and ,
goodness of an infinite God, in stopping the first
outburst of moral disorder that has filled the world
until now with cruel and deadly passions and over
whelmed millions of sensitive spirits in intense
anguish.
By the same superficial and evasive reasoning, has
this writer disposed of those calamities which cannot
owe their origin, anyhow, to the will of man. He
coolly tells us that “ it is no objection to God’s good
ness or his wisdom to create such things as are
necessarily attended with these evils . . . and that
disagreeable sensations must be reckoned among
natural evils as inevitably associated with sentient
existences, which yet cannot be avoided. If anyone
ask why such a law of union was established, namely,
the disagreeable sensations which sentient creatures
experience, let this be the answer, because there could
he no better; for such a necessity as this follows ; and
considering the circumstances and conditions under
which, and under which only, they could have exist
ence, they could neither be placed in a better state,
nor governed by more commodious laws.” That is
to say, God in his wisdom and goodness did his best
to secure the general well-being of the universe and
signally failed, as the physical accidents and agonies
�16
The Mystery of Evil.
endured by innocent multitudes, prove ! Yet this is
a book of which a distinguished Theistic philosopher
said: “ If Archbishop King, in this performance,
has not reconciled the inconsistencies, none else need
apply themselves to the task.” If the data of Arch
bishop King as regards the existence of a personal
Deity, clothed with infinitely perfect physical and
moral attributes, and as regards the free agency of man,
had been correct, the most logical course for him
would have been to have simply admitted the hopeless
irreconcilableness of these data with the state of the
world as we find it, and to have betaken himself to
the favourite retreat of orthodoxy,—mystery,—and
spared himself the pains of elaborating a tissue of
metaphysical fallacies which only make the confusion
to be worse confounded. But I reserve his data for
fuller examination afterwards.
The only other theory, which I shall notice, as
differing from the one to be subsequently proposed,
is that of fatalistic Deism, which was held in the last
century by a large class of European philosophers,
and sought to be refuted by Butler. The following
is an epitome of the argument of this school:—The
existence of Deity, as infinite and uncreated, is a
'necessary fact, intuitively perceived. If God’s exist
ence be necessary, the conditions of his existence—
physical, mental, and moral,—and the modes of its
action and development, must be alike necessary. As
the visible universe is the outcome of this necessary
existence, all the forms of being contained in the
universe must also be necessary, by which we are to
understand that we cannot conceive the possibility of
their being otherwise than they are. If so, then all
the orders of existence in the universe, proceeding
from the depths of his infinite nature and constantly
dependent upon his support, are fated to form links
in one chain of eternal and unalterable necessity, and
to be precisely as they are. Therefore the develop-
�The Mystery of Evil.
x
17
ment of human beings, and of every other variety of
life, is destined to assume the particular form under
which they are found to exist at any given stage of
the evolution of the universe. Consequently, what,
in the vocabulary of mortals, is called freedom, is but
an illusion,—the actions and characters of rational
beings of all degrees of intelligence and moral
culture being included in that ceaseless development
which is controlled by the same central and allembracing principle of unexplainable necessity.
*
It is further maintained by the same class of
Deists that amidst all the apparent confusion that
prevails, indications of a process of orderly develop
ments are discernible, whether we trace the con
solidation of the earth’s crust, or the progressive
advance of vegetable and animal forms upon it,
or the gradual uplifting of the human species.
This evolution, it is asserted, is either caused
and directed by some controlling Intelligence,
or is the result of chance, or arises from some
inherent spontaneous power in the universe itself,
But our conception of chance excludes it from the
rank of a causal and regulating force, for we only
understand by the term what is fortuitous, blind,
undesigning, and impotent. Again, to suppose that
some inherent spontaneous power in nature itself is
shaping and directing universal progress would be to
endow the universe with physical, rational, and moral
power; in other words, to identify it with God, or to
view it as God. Therefore, it is concluded,—these
alternatives failing to satisfy the demands of logical
consistency,—the only tenable view left is that the
framework and development of the universe, is the
work of a Deity answering to the 0eos of Homer,
who represents the God of his conception, as being
* The reader will be reminded of a remarkable passage in the
‘ Prometheus Vinctus ’ of JEschylus: “ Even Jove is not superior to
the Fates.”
�18
The Mystery of Evil.
the source of all the good and evil of life. I confess
that for a time, while my own mind was passing from
supernaturalism to naturalism, and while I believed
that my choice in dealing with “ the mystery of evil ”
lay alone between rival forms of Theism, this notion
of God as the primal cause alike of happiness and
misery was the only one which seemed co-ordinate
with all the facts, and effectually to solve the mystery.
But, as will appear later in this paper, two objec
tions ultimately arose in my mind which shook my
fatalistic Deism to its foundation. The first of these
was, that the God I thought myself bound to believe
in fell far short of the ideal of virtue and goodness
at which an average high-minded man felt himself
obliged to aim, and thus I was conscious of doing
violence to my better nature in holding to such a
faith. The second objection was that the intuitive
idea of Deity was found by me to be a gratuitous
assumption which, with other beliefs of this descrip
tion, collapsed under the unsparing analysis to which
the intuitive philosophy has been subjected by the
inductive philosophy—the latter being the only one
which seems to me to accord with the universal
principles of truth.
After the preceding statement of attempted solu
tions of this alleged mystery by Theistic and Deistic
theories, it will probably be admitted that any method
of accounting for the existence of evil based on the
twofold hypothesis of an Almighty God of omniscience,
wisdom, and goodness, and the doctrine of the free,
self-determining action of the human will, cannot
escape from the charge of mystery—or, more properly,
of palpable logical contradiction. In presence of
these two conceptions, evil must inevitably remain a
mystery. Let them be surrendered, however, and the
mystery instantly vanishes.
When a scientific analyst discovers that a hypo
thesis fails to cover and explain all the phenomena,
�The Mystery of Evil.
ig
he unhesitatingly abandons it, and there is no other
alternative left to an inductive theologian—if there
be such a person—when he is placed in a similar
position. The facts in the present instance are
agreed upon by all. There is a large proportion,
if not preponderance, of what is known as Evil
in the world; and if the idea of an infinitely
wise and good personal Deity tend to embarrass
instead of allaying the difficulties we have been
examining, clearly the idea of an universal ruler
ought, in loyalty to truth, to be removed from the
category of our beliefs, let the sentimental associa
tions be ever so hallowed and strong that have
gathered round it, and the same remark applies to
the allied dogma of free will in man.
As regards the first of these points, the justice of
the course recommended is strengthened when we
consider that the existence of such an almighty
person is incapable of scientific or any other kind of
proof worthy consideration. At the same time, in
venturing this remark, I wish emphatically to disclaim all sympathy with positive Atheism; for a
dogmatic negation of any vitalizing and controlling
force in the universe, not being itself the universe, is
almost as objectionable as the most dogmatic form of
Theism. All I contend for is, that there is no ground
for believing in what theologians call a personal God,
in other words, “a magnified man” invested with
certain characteristics of humanity attributed to him,
these attributes being only infinitely extended.
Doubtless Theists, and particularly Christian Theists,
will be ready to adduce in reply their usual argu
ment for the existence of a personal Deity derived
from their intuitions. This, consistently enough, is
also the stronghold of Christian faith in the doctrine
of “a supernatural gospel,” namely, “its felt adapta
tion to the spiritual wants of Christian believers.”
And the more rapidly and convincingly the evidences
�20
The Mystery of Evil.
of science and historical criticism accumulate on the
non-supernatural and non-Theistic side, they shut
their eyes the closer, scream the louder against “ the
wickedness of Atheistic materialism,” and plunge
deeper into the sentimental abyss of their “ intuitions.”
Here is a passage a propos, written by one of the
ablest and best read leaders of the reactionary, semi
mystic, evangelical school which owes its origin (as
opposed) to the “fierce light” of modern thought,
against which the writer lifts a warning voice.
“ But whether we represent a ‘ new school ’ or a
theological 1 reaction ’ we say frankly that, in our
judgment, the exigencies of the times require that
Christian Churches, and especially Christian ministers,
should meet the dogmas of materialism and anti-super
naturalism with the most direct and uncompromising
hostility. It is not for us to vewn men to suppose that rve
regard the existence of the living God as an open ques
tion. Nor shall we make any deep impression on the
minds of men 2/ our faith in Jesus Christ rests on
grounds that are accessible to historical, scientific, or
philosophical criticism. If we are to meet modern
unbelief successfully we must receive that direct
revelation of Christ which will enable us to say ‘ we
have heard him, we have seen him ourselves and
know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour
of the world ! ’ ” The great object of this school
seems to be to make a religious “ impression ” in
Evangelical fashion, and stamp out all that frustrates
their doing so, proceeding from the sceptical camp.
The historical truth or error of the thing taught
seems to be of secondary consideration provided it
can be made to dovetail with Evangelical intuitions.
These intense believers deliberately tell us that it is
of no use our calling their attention to discrepancies
in the Gospel narratives by which these sources of
Christian facts are rendered historically untrust
worthy. They assure us that such criticism is idle
�21
The Mystery of Evil.
-and beside the mark, and they console themselves
with the belief that these discrepancies are only
apparent, and that if we could but compare the
original documents (which, by the way, nobody has
ever seen or can find the least trace of) instead of
the mere copies of them (these pretended copies
being all we possess), we should be immediately
convinced !
*
So in regard to the existence of a personal Deity,
instead of looking at the facts as they are, they
assure us that, if we could only know all the compli
cations of -the divine government, our difficulty in
believing in their Deity would disappear. But those
who fall back on the fitness of their conception of
Deity to their intuitions as a proof of his existence,
while perhaps feeling that this argument affords
perfect satisfaction to themselves, place an insuper
able barrier against all interchange of reasoning
between themselves and those who hold opposite
convictions. Any one who hides in the recesses
of his intuitions, has sunk into a state of intel
lectual somnolency from which no argument can
wake him.
There are some Theistic apologists, however, who
still have unshaken faith in the argument from design,
as establishing the existence of a beneficent designer.
But the fallacy of this argument is obvious. The
premises and conclusion stand thus :—“ Every object
which bears marks of design necessarily points to
the existence of an intelligent designer. The universe
is such an object, therefore it had an intelligent
designer.” But it is usually forgotten that this con
clusion is arrived at by comparing the universe with
an object—a watch for example, that can bear no
* The weak point in this intuitional argument is that it proves too
much. It is the favourite proof with large sections of the adherents
of Buddhism, Brahminism, Fire-worship, and Mahometanism respec
tively, by which these systems are all _fe.lt to be supernatural revela
tions. Therefore by proving too much it proves nothing.
C
�22
The Mystery of Evil.
analogy to it. It is taken for granted that the uni
verse sustains the same relation to a personal Creator
which a piece of mechanism does to a mortal con
triver.
Now, it might be perfectly fair to compare one piece
of human handiwork with another, and infer that
both suggested the application of power and intelli
gence equal to their construction. But in comparing
the universe—there being only one, and that oneinfinite, with articles of man’s invention, which are
many and finite—are we not comparing the known
with the unknown, and carrying the principle of
analogy into a region where it can have no place ?
It may be just to infer that as one work of human
arrangement naturally implies skill in the maker, so
another work bearing marks of human contrivance,
should, in like manner, suggest to us the action of a
thinking mind. But science is so far in the dark as
to the mainspring of life, motion and development in
the one universe that we should be totally unwarranted
by the laws of thought in arguing from the origin of
what is discoverable to the orgin of what is undiscover*
able. To reason, therefore, from design in the
operations of man to design in the operations of
nature is illogical and impossible.
■ One of the most remarkable signs of change, of
late, in the conception of Deity, among progressive
thinkers, who still cling to the skirts of recognised reli
gious institutions, is the effort that has been made to
reconcile an impersonal Power influencing and shaping
the evolution of the universe with the teachings of
the Bible. The line of thought in Mr. Matthew
Arnold’s ‘ Literature and Dogma ’ has very decidedly
this leaning. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say
* Axiom V., in the Tractaius Theolcgico-Politicos of Spinoza is
decisive on this point. “ Things that have nothing in common with
each other cannot be understood by means of each other; i.e., the concep
tion of the one does not involve the conception of the other.”
�The Mystery of Evil.
23
that this writer labours to turn the current notion of
a personal God into ridicule, and even seeks to prove
that, at least, the ancient Hebrews were not in sym
pathy with such a notion. Some will take leave to
doubt whether Mr. Arnold’s views of the Hebrew
conception of God be not more ingenious than accu
rate, and whether he may not have foisted far-fetched
theories of his own upon the text of the Bible in his
zeal to make out his case. But, at any rate, we have
the phenomenon of a writer cherishing devotion to
the teaching of Scripture and concern for the main
tenance of the national Church, and yet sapping the
foundations of orthodoxy, and actually sneering at
the idea of faith in a personal Deity, though pro
fessed gravely by eminent bishops—the two whose
names he repeats ad nauseam throughout the essay.
Another recent book of essays, written with a
*
similar purpose, but in a more reverent and philo
sophic spirit, is not unworthy of notice. The author
*
is a Nonconformist minister, and a member of the
London School Board—a gentleman of marked ability
and wide culture. The peculiarity of his position is
that while, like the Broad Church clergy, conducting"
his service with a liturgy and a hymn-book, fashioned
after orthodox models, he has openly renounced the
dogma of the Supernatural in his pulpit teaching, and
rejected the notion of a personal God. He has chosen
to represent himself as a “ Christian Pantheist,”—a
term which we may be excused for deeming para
doxical—and strives throughout the volume to bring
his statements into accord with certain passages in
the New Testament. The essays reveal more than an
average (as well as a discriminating) acquaintance
with ancient and modern philosophy and theology,
and with the resnlts of modern science in relation to
* ‘ The Mystery of Matter, and other Essays.’ By J. Allanson Picton,
M.A. Macmillan. 187.3.
�24
The Mystery of Evil.
the nature of the Universe. His thoughts are, now
and then, diffuse, but they are always expressed with
a wealth of language and sometimes with an eloquence
not ordinarily met with in theological disquisitions.
There are, however, as it seems to me, weak points,
I had almost said occasional contradictions, in his
reasoning, into which he may have been unconsciously
led by his unique ecclesiastical relations, but which it
is beyond the scope of the present paper to criticise
at length, nevertheless, het forcibly opposes the old
error which made a distinction between matter and
spirit, and he reduces the Universe, with Professor
Huxley, to a unity, namely, substance, of which what
have been vulgarly described as matter and spirit are
simply the phenomena. He further boldly rejects all
theories which regard Deity as one amidst a host of
other beings, and while, with religious fervour, recog
nising the presence of an efficient though unnameable
energy as vitalising and controlling all molecular
forces, he seems, at the same time, to identify that
unkown efficient energy with universal substance,
and accords to it the right and title to be formally
worshipped. I respectfully think he is not always
clear and consistent in this part of his theme. Some
times he refers—as Spinoza himself does—to this
vitalising and all-comprehending essence as if it were
invested with attributes of intelligence, wisdom, and
goodness, without which attributes the writer’s insistance upon the worship of universal substance as deity
would be a misnomer. And yet, difficult though it be
to discover homogeneity between certain parts of
these essays, in one respect the author’s aim through
out is unmistakeable. Se emphatically pronounces
against the existence of a personal Deity. Some of his
remarks in opposition to the design argument are
especially worth quoting :—■
“ It is demonstrable that there must be some fallacy
m such an argument as that of Paley. For if it be
�The Mystery of Evil.
25
rigorously applied, it cannot prove what Paley cer
tainly wished to establish—the existence of an omni
potent and omniscient worker. ... If we are to
see design only when we can compliment nature on
an apparent resemblance to operations of human skill;
and if, the moment that resemblance ceases, we are
to confess our ignorance and to refrain from carrying
the analogy further, would it not be better, seeing
how infinitely larger is our ignorance than our know
ledge, to recognise in both bearings of the analogy
an appearance only which, though for some purposes
practically useful, is infinitely below the divine reality.
. . Of whatever value the analogy of human
design may be, no one would think of insisting upon
its admitted imperfections as a part of the argument;
and yet, without pressing those imperfections, it is
impossible to make the argument consistent. But if
it be fairly carried out, what it proves is this, that an
omnipotent designer, intending to produce a beautiful
and perfect work, went through millions of opera
tions, when a single fiat would have sufficed; that
these operations consisted not in clearly-aimed and
economical modifications of material, but in the evolu
tion of a thousand imperfect products, amongst which
some single one might form a step to the next stage,
while all the rest were destroyed ; and thus the living
material wasted was immensely greater than that
which was used; that myriads of weaklings were
suffered to struggle together, as though omniscience
could not decide, without experiment, which were
the better worth preserving ; that in each successive
modification the worker preserved, as far as was pos
sible, the form of the previous stage, until it was found
to be inconsistent with life; nay, that he carefully
introduced into each successive product parts which
had become obsolete, useless, and even dangerous—
and all not through any inevitable conditions—for
omnipotence excludes them, but in pursuit of a
�26
The Mystery of Evil.
mysterious plan, the reasons for which, as well as its
nature, are acknowledged to be utterly inscrutable.
Analogies which lead to such issues surely cannot be
of much value for the nobler aims of religion.” *
The other cause of the difficulty encountered in
probing “ the Mystery of Evil ” is the traditional
notions entertained by many, of the action of the
human will. Man is represented by the orthodox as
a “free agent ” (I except, of course, hyper-Calvinists
who now form a very small minority among Chris
tians), and the doctrine of volitional liberty has
acquired prominence in theological and philosophical
discussions; not from any practical influence the doc
trine can exert, one way or another, on the actual
conduct of life, but simply from the accident that the
question whether the will was absolutely free or deter
mined by necessity happened to be thrown to the
surface, in the fifth century, in the theological battle
between the Augustinians and the Pelagians. The
inquiry is itself interesting and important, but many
mental philosophers from that period until recently,
having a dread of the odium theologicum, have been
desirous it should be known that they were “ sound ”
on the subject, and have been particular in declaring
themselves on the orthodox side. The strong enun
ciation of one view has called forth an equally vigor
ous statement of the opposite theory, and hence
philosophers have filed off into two sharply defined
parties—libertarians and necessitarians—so that the
importance that has come to be attached to the
free-will controversy is, in a great measure, adven
titious.
The introduction of moral evil into the world, as
before stated, has been ascribed by the greater number
of Christians to the voluntary disobedience of the pro
genitor of the race. Tradition has handed down the un
scientific and unhistoric story of an original man who,
* ‘ Mystery of Matter,’ pp. 330, 340, 345.
�The Mystery of Evil.
17
having been severely plied with temptation in order
to test his virtue, voluntarily broke a certain arbitrary
and positive command of his maker, and involved him
self and his posterity in tendencies to wrong-doing
which could only be corrected by supernatural means.
But, without debating the wide question of the origin
of mankind, manifestly men are so constituted and
surrounded that limitations are placed as indubitably
upon their volitional faculty as upon their other men
tal powers. So that in no libertarian sense can we
be said to be free agents. The form a man’s charac
ter takes is necessarily dependent on his innate pre
dispositions and capacities—the form and size of
brain and cast of temperament which he derives from
his parents—and on the nature and extent of the in
fluences under which he is trained. Some natures
are constitutionally more attuned to intellectual and
moral harmony than others, and when impelled by
favourable influences from without, there is little
merit in their moving in the line of conformity to
truth and right. There are other natures that inherit
less fortunate tendencies, to whom virtue must always
be the result of conscious effort, and especially if
they be encircled with influences unfriendly to the
culture of a high and noble life. It is certain that if
such persons attain any considerable degree of good
ness, the end will be reached through the experience
of error and folly and of the natural penalties attach
ing to both. As far as I can understand, the chief
ground of the alarm affected by a certain class of phi
losophers and theologians at the idea of human actions
being determined by necessity is the morbid and ficti
tious weight they have given to the doctrine of indi
vidual responsibility; I say morbid and fictitious, be
cause whether a man violates the laws of nature or of
society he is sooner or later made to bear more or
less of his share of responsibility in enduring the
natural punishment due to the offence. Had the
�28
The Mystery of Evil.
same amount of concern been felt by society about
their collective share of responsibility in reference to
the physical, intellectual, and moral well-being of
individuals as is felt about the influence of necessi
tarianism upon 1‘ men’s felt sense of individual respon
sibility ” the results to the community and the race
would have been much more rational and beneficial.
I am persuaded that the individual conduct of citizens
—be they good or bad—is not affected in the slightest
degree, for better or for worse, by the views they
may entertain of the philosophy of the human will.
This might be proved demonstratively did space
permit.
The kernel of this controversy, then, lies in the
inquiry, Whether the will is absolutely self-determina
tive, and capable of arbitrarily kicking the beam,
when motives present to the mind, and tending in
opposite directions, seem to be evenly balanced; or
whether, in every instance, the motive, embracing a
great variety of considerations in the mind itself as
well as in the circumstances around it, do not infal
libly determine the character of the choice that is
made. If the libertarian view be the right one, no
certainty can be ever predicated as to the effect upon
the conduct of uniformly good or bad motives, and,
consequently, the most earnest and philanthropic ex
ertions to improve the world are, at best, dishearten
ing. But since it can be demonstrated that the for
mation of human habits is governed by necessary
laws, and that these laws can be ascertained and acted
upon with the undoubted assurance that correspond
ing results may be anticipated, the labours of science
and philanthropy are animated by a well-founded
hope that they need not be expended in vain. What,
then, is “ will” but simply that faculty or power of
the mind by which we are capable of choosing ? And
an act of will is the same as an act of choice. That
which uniformly determines the will is the motive which,
�The Mystery of Evil.
29
as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest.
The motive is that which excites or invites the mind
to volition, whether that be one thing singly or many
things conjointly. By necessity, in this connection, is
meant nothing more than the philosophical certainty
of the relation between given antecedents and conse
quents in the production of actions. Man, like every
other sentient being, is necessarily actuated by a
desire for happiness, according to his particular esti
mate of it. It would be a contradiction to suppose
that he could hate happiness, or that he could desire
misery for its own sake, or with a perception that it
was such. He is placed in circumstances in which a
vast variety of objects address themselves to this
predominating desire, some promising to gratify it in
a higher degree, some in a lower, some appealing to
one part of his nature and some to another. He
cannot but be attracted to those objects and those
courses of conduct which his reason or his appetites,
or both combined, assure him are likely to gratify
his desire of happiness. The various degrees or kinds
of real and apparent good, promised by different ob
jects or courses of conduct, constitute the motives
which incline him to act in pursuance of the general
desire of happiness which is the grand impulse of
his nature. Sometimes he really sees and sometimes
he imagines he sees (and as regards their influence
on the will they come to the same thing) greater
degrees of good in some objects or proposed courses
of conduct than in others; and this constitutes pre
ponderance of motive, ‘that is, a greater measure of
real or apparent good at the time of any particular
volition. This preponderance of motive will be as is
the character of the moral agent and the circum
stances of the objects, taken conjointly. This pre
ponderance of motive will be, therefore, not only
different in different individuals, but different in
different individuals at different times. That which
�30
I
The Mystery of Evil.
at any particular time is or appears to promise the
greatest good, will uniformly decide the Will. This
*
necessarily flows from the tendency of a sentient
nature to seek happiness at all, and is, indeed, only a
particular application of the same general principle;
inasmuch as it would imply as great a contradiction
that a being capable of happiness should not take
that which it deems will confer, all things considered,
a greatef degree of happiness rather than that which
will confer a less, as it would be to imagine it not
seeking happiness rather than the contrary, or some
happiness rather than none. This certainty of con
nection between the preponderance of motive and
the decisions of the will is what is meant by necessity,
as simply implying that the cause will as certainly
be followed by the appropriate effect in this instance
as in any instance of the mutual connection of cause
and effect whatever.
!
*"
Motive sustains a dynamical relation to will, as a
cause does to an effect in physics. Therefore the only
liberty which man possesses or can possess, is not the
liberty of willing as he will—which is an idea philo
sophically absurd—but of acting as he wills, accord
ing to the laws of necessity. Otherwise he would
be independent of cause; and, indeed, libertarians
actually assert that a motive is not the cause, but
only the occasion of choice.J Either human volitions
are effects or they are not. If they are effects, they
are consequents indissolubly associated with the an
tecedent causes or motives which precede them;
* “ The greatest of two pleasures or what appears such, sways the
resulting action, for it is this resulting action that alone determines
which is the greatest.”—Bain on the * Emotions and the Will,’ p. 447.
t This is the course of argument adopted by Edwards in his re
markable book on the Will, and it is admirably summarised by Henry
Rogers in his ‘ Essay on the Genius and Writings of Edwards,’ pre
fixed to the Complete Edition of his Works, pp. xx to xxiv.
. t For this distinction, enforced by Hrs. Clarke and Price, see remarks
m Bain’s ‘ Mind and Body,’ p. 76 ; also in ‘ The Refutation of Edwards,’
by Tappan.
I
�The Mystery of Evil.
31
■and therefore “ the liberty of indifference ” is im■ possible.
*
If human volitions be not effects, the
actions of men are independent of condition or rela
tion, undetermined by motives or antecedents, and
for that reason removed beyond the domain of that
principle of necessary law which is the sole guarantee
for the order and progress of the Universe.f
The elimination from this problem, therefore, of
the conception of a Deity clothed with personal and
moral attributes and of the notion of a self-deter
mining will in man, liberates it from all mystery and
difficulty whatsoever; for if there be no personal
God the existence of physical evil casts no imputa
tion upon the infinite character attributed to him.
And if there be no “ liberty of indifference” in man,
he is exempt from the charge of being, in any sense,
the originator of moral evil, as the circumstances
that constitute his motives are made/or him and not
by him; and therefore the praise of virtue and the
blame of vice and, in fact, the whole theory of con
science as held by the vulgar, are annulled.
WTat is the distinct reality left to us, then, after
we have parted with these two inventions of fancy ?
The pith of the matter may be conveniently summed
up in a few simple propositions
* Definition VII. in the ‘ Tractatus ’ of Spinoza runs thus:—“That
thing' is said to be free which exists by the sole necessity of its own nature,
and ly itself alone is determined to action. But that is necessary or
rather constrained which owes its existence to another and acts according
to certain and determinate causes. ”
+ The controversy on Free Will and Necessity has, within the last
quarter of a century, passed from the region of mere theological wrang
ling into the circle of scientific studies, and has assumed to the social
and moral Reform er practical importance. The subject now claims the
attention of all who would have intelligent views of the moral condi
tion and prospects of Humanity and who seek to work hopefully for
its regeneration. It is not within the province of this Essay to par
ticularise the various recent phases of the controversy, but those who
are alive to the importance of the subject cannot fail to find intensely
interesting those chapters bearing upon it in such works as Mill’s
‘Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy,’Bain’s ‘ Com
pendium ot Meniai and Moral Science,’ and Herbert Spencer’3 ‘Study
of Sociology.’
�32
The Mystery of Evil.
1. All we can know of the Universe is phenomena,
—(including the molecular force-centres into which
existing organisms are resolvable by scientific analysis)
—and the fixed uniformity of the laws that regulate
and control the physical and moral evolutions and
developments of universal substance; but of noumena
we can know nothing, and consequently any dogmatic
definition—positive or negative, of a primal cause, in
or beyond substance, or not in or beyond substance
—is totally unsustained by facts. Therefore the sys
tems of Theism, Deism, Pantheism, and Atheism
are mere hypotheses, which all involve unproved
assumptions. As regards the existence of any over
ruling power, we are in a state of nescience. As
regards motives and actions, all we know is the uni
form and necessary relation of sequence that exists
between them—nothing more.
2. The universe, or, at least, the portion of it with
which we have immediate acquaintance, is being
slowly and gradually developed from rudimental
elements, from confusion and discord to order and
harmony ; and this remark applies, throughout, to
physical, intellectual, and moral life. Thus it follows
that the generations of mankind, up to the present,
having been brought upon the planet before it has
reached the state of complete development and per
fect equipoise of forces, are fated to suffer those
physical trials which arise from storms, floods, earth
quakes, droughts, blights, and other casualties, which,
when the material agencies around us have attained
more perfect equilibrium, may be expected to dis
appear. There are many more physical inconveniences
experienced by the race by reason of their still
necessarily limited knowledge of the operations of
nature, of the laws of being, and of their true
relations to the world and humanity, and by reason
of the yet very imperfect stage of human culture.
It is inevitable, therefore, that numerous diseases and
�The Mystery of Evil.
33
sufferings should be encountered, which a broader
intelligence and a clearer forethought will, in the
distant future, be able to anticipate and prevent.
3. “ Evil ” is a word which originated with theolo
gians, and which, from its vagueness and ambiguity,
has introduced much of the mystification and error
that have beclouded past investigations of the subject.
In its primitive signification and as applied in theo
logy, ev^ had a penal character assigned to it, and it
derived that character from the childish tradition long
believed by adherents of churches, that physical dis
asters, including disease and death, were the result of
a trivial transgression committed by “ Adam.” The
same cause has been adduced to account for all the
moral obliquities which have brought pain and misery
npon the descendants of the first man. “ Sin,” which
denotes the moral side of evil, in the language of
theology, is represented as being at once an effect
and a cause of the first transgression. But with the
rejection of the idea of a personal Ruler of the world,
“evil” and “sin” in the sense in which they are
usually understood by the orthodox, are rendered
meaningless. Both these terms point back to a period
in the intellectual and moral childhood of mankind,
before the universal and uniform action of Law was
dreamt of, and when human duty was held to consist
only of a series of positive commands, formally pro
claimed by an infinite personal governor, and con
stituting his “ revealed will,” for the direction of his
creatures. And for the perpetuation of this anti
quated belief down to the present we are indebted to
stereotyped creeds, which clergymen and ministers of
religious bodies still solemnly pledge themselves to
maintain. But the light of science presents the
source of duty and the nature and standard of
morals, in our time, in an altered aspect. In this
amended view there is nothing corresponding to the
theological ideas of evil and sin in the world, at all.
�34
The Mystery of Evil.
What is called evil is simply a synonym for imper
fection in the material or moral circumstances of
humanity, or in both. The earth has not yet attained
its ultimate and perfect form, and the mind
of man has not yet acquired a full and prac
tical knowledge of the working of law so as to
guard successfully against collisions with the more
violent and dangerous agencies of nature, and so as
to use nature as a minister of good. What is known
as sin or wrong-doing is nothing more than the
result of human ignorance, which is but another form,
again, of imperfection. Many acts, I am aware, are
called sinful by clerics and their votaries, but such
transgressions, though ranked by orthodox teachers as
equally obnoxious to divine displeasure with acknow
ledged natural immoralities, are found when looked
into to be only ecclesiastical sins—sins of priestly
manufacture which have no place in nature and no
recognition in the enlightened conscience. That this
is the only true account of the matter is evident
from the fact that, as men become familiar with the
uniform operations of nature in their bearing on
human welfare, the ills of life perceptibly diminish,
and the necessity of conforming, in every sphere of
existence, to natural law comes to have the force of
a safe and efficient guiding impulse. No sane being
ever did wilfully what he knew to militate against
individual or social happiness as an ulterior end, and
no one ever continued to practise habits having this
tendency a single moment after his mind became
really sensible of the character and influence of his
doings. That acts mischievous and cruel are too
often committed there can be no doubt; but the
mischief or the cruelty is always and only accidental
to the design the malicious person has in view.
Many, it is true, persist in doing what they profess to
know is at variance with the principles of justice,
honour, and utility, and hence the apparent anomaly
�The Mystery of Evil.
3^
of proper knowledge and, improper conduct some
times being found united in the same person. But
the anomaly is only apparent; for the individual
professing to know what befits his relations to the
universe and to society, and yet doing what contra
dicts that knowledge, deceives himself that he
possesses suitable knowledge at all. Knozvledge, in
such a connection, is confounded with notions. A
man may have a woftm or a dim idea of what he
ought to do or to be, in his
or his memory,
but in this instance the notion is held by the mind as
an impotent sentiment or a barren tradition, the meresemblance of actual knowledge. The notion of a
thing is but a theoretic or hypothetical conception, and
does not penetrate the mind and touch the springs of
action. All knowledge, worthy to be so designated,
enters into us and becomes conviction, modifying
thought, feeling, and will. So that all the faults—
so-called—committed by individuals and communities
have proceeded from their not knowing better. Even
the crucifixion of the founder of Christianity is
ascribed, in the New Testament to this cause. “ I
wot,” says St. Peter, ££ that ye did it ignorantly.”
This point receives irresistible confirmation on every
hand. The vast proportion of crimes of violence,
such as wife-beating, garotte-robbery, manslaughter,
and murder, are confined for the most part to one class
of society—those who live beyond the pale of education
and refinement, agencies by which feelings of decency
and humanity are fostered. And the only cause of
the difference between this social stratum and the one
above it is that the training of the better class of
people is favourable to the controlling of their
passions, at least as regards the commission of
crimes of that hue. The sexual vices, again, are not
confined to any particular social grade. They are
probably indulged in as great a ratio by the well-to-do
as by the lower orders. But if we compare the victims
�36
The Mystery of Evil.
of licentiousness, of whatever social grade, with the
philosophic and the devout who have been taught to
hold these vices in abhorrence, we here, again, find
the same rule hold good. The culture of the pureminded has been specially directed to the instructing
of the mind in the bad consequences of this sort of
vice, and to the habituating of the mind to the
moderation and government of animal appetencies.
In like manner the difference between the false ideas
and practices of many at one period of their lives,
and their improved ideas and practices at another,
lies alone in the fact that they have come to know
better.
The drift of this reasoning is plain. The ever
widening circle of knowledge, the knowledge of mani
fold truth in physics and morals, is the grand power by
which the upward march of Humanity is to be secured.
But, as has been already observed, knowledge, con
sidered as the great curative principle, is not a mere
fortuitous concourse of facts, however good and useful
in themselves, thrown into the mind, any more than
food is muscular strength. Our diet must first become
assimilated with the tissues; and so knowledge, which
strengthens, renovates, and elevates, is the concen
trated essence of principles which the thoughtful
mind extracts from any given collection of facts.
This representation of the case is as consoling as
it is true; for it reveals a “ silvery lining ” in the
cloud of prevailing human suffering, which inspires
joy and hope as we contemplate the future of the
world. It is a law of nature that every common
bane should carry with it a common antidote, and
a careful inspection of history makes it clear that
it is the tendency of each separate species of error
and wrong-doing to wear itself out. The discovery of
imperfection, usually made through enduring the
painful results thereof, leads towards perfection in
every department of human interests. Every dis
�37
The Mystery of Evil.
comfort, physical and moral, that vexes the lot of
man, reaches a crisis; human effort is immediately
braced up to grapple with the crisis, and inventive
. brains are excited to devise expedients for its removal.
Thus have all social and political improvements been
effected.
The method of viewing the problem of evil whicn
has been adopted in the preceding pages is the only
one compatible with an unruffled state of mind in
presence of the defects of our race that frequently
offer us such bitter provocation in daily life—bigotry,
cruelty, stupidity, selfishness, ingratitude, and pride.
A wise man once remarked ironically : “ There are
words in Scripture that afford me unspeakable conso
lation when I have to encounter a person who is
unreasonable and unjust. ‘ Every creature after its
kind.’ If such a man attempts to over-reach or insult
me; if he show treachery or unkindness ; if he deceive
or malign me, I look at him with pity, and my sym
pathy for his misfortune in inheriting a defective
organisation, or in lacking efficient intellectual and
moral discipline, neutralises the anger I should other
wise feel towards him.” Thus the practical philosopher
remains undisturbed by the turbulent passions that
blind and warp the minds of the mass, who are
affected chiefly by superficial effects, the causes of
which they have not the patience or the capacity to
discriminate.
When the principles that have been enunciated
become intelligently and generally recognised, they
will not fail to produce a revolution in our whole
system of dealing with vice and legislating for crime.
The popular way of treating offences of all kinds at
present is as absurd as it would be, after the fashion
of our ancestors, to carry a bay-leaf as a preventive
of thunder, or to remove scrofula by hanging round
the neck a baked toad in a silk bag. Social irregu
larities of whatever kind, in a more rational age, will
D
�38
The Mystery of Evil.
no longer be visited with inflictions of corporeal pain,
whether deficient nourishment, the application of the
cat, confinement in a dismal cell, imposition of aimless
grinding labour or chains. Far less will the mur
derous propensity to kick or beat or stab or poison a
fellow-creature, be punished by so preposterous an
instrument as the gallows or the guillotine. When
acts of violence against society come to be viewed as
the result of an imperfect nature or deficient know
ledge and culture, care will be taken by the State to
lay hold of the child through the influence of the
school, and insist by compulsion on every citizen from
tender years being taught the laws, social and legal,
under which he is expected to live. And when any
are found in riper years to give suspicion that the
lessons of their youth are overborne by innate bad
tendencies, public opinion, then enlightened as it
will be by science, will, in a spirit of philosophic
sympathy for the misfortune of the wrong-doer,
demand his prompt separation for a time, at least,
from his more fortunate neighbours, and his subjection
before any extreme manifestation of his propensity
accrues, to a beneficent regime, partly educational and
partly medical, to enable him, as far as possible, to
obtain the mastery over his besetting morbid tenden
cies, and merit a place once more, if possible, among
well-conducted members of the community. The
attempt, as now, to set the world right by teaching
theological dogmas and by the agitations of revivalistic
or ritualistic fanaticisms, or by the existing lex talionis
of our criminal law, is mere ridiculous and wasteful
tinkering. To permit a system of commerce which
offers the worst temptations for the commission of
fraud and fosters a heartless competition, that often
*
drives the honest and the weak to the wall, and then
* The noble-souled Robert Owen used to denounce it as “ that
monster, competition; ” and by the way, it is worthy of remark, that
the evident tendency of social reform now is in the very wake of the
�The Mystery of Evil.
39
to treat as outcasts the victims of intemperance and
poverty which this unnatural system contributes to
produce, and punish them with the degradation of
the jail or the workhouse, is as senseless and cruel as
to sanction gins and snares in the highway and then
whip men for falling into them. These social absur
dities, arising from crass ignorance of the constitution
of man, and of physical and moral law, cannot last
for ever. They may be hallowed by prestige, pom
pous judicial ceremony, and Parliamentary prece
dent, but they belong to a transitional stage of social
life which is doomed before the triumphs of science
and philosophy. The old shallow and mischievous
scheme of reformation which exhibits a jealous Deity
consigning wrong-doers to eternal death and the ma
gistrate as “a terror to evil-doers,” will be superseded
by a method of government in which the revolting
penal code now practised by civilised nations will
have no place, and in which, without exception, the
reform of the offender will be the supreme considera
tion, while the peace and safety of society will be
found to be promoted thereby. And surely such
happy anticipations for the race are a satisfactory
compensation for the sacrifice truth compels us to
make in parting with the illusions of our intellectual
childhood,—the dogmas of a personal God and a self
determining will.
The world is, indeed, racked and torn by selfish
ness, cruelty, ignorance, and folly. Communities
and individuals have writhed under burdens of sorrow
from the beginning. But manifestly the natural
tendency of physical and moral law is not to produce
system of Owen which the “ respectable classes ” used to smile at as
Utopian. Most intelligent men are either tacitly or openly coming
round to the persuasion that “ Man is the Creature of Circumstances.
Mr. Owen probably inadvertently left out certain factors, indispensable
to the success of his “New Moral World.” But he has pointed out
for us the only true path, and the failure of his scheme was a grand
success.
�40
The Mystery of Evil.
these effects, but quite the contrary; and the com
plete happiness of the race is to be attained through
the knowledge of law and yielding submission to it.
But this great consummation can only be accom
plished by slow degrees. A thousand years in this
business is “ as a watch in the night.” If it should
be asked, why should this training to perfect virtue
and happiness be so slow and painful, and why
should such slow and painful discipline be the only
safe and solid basis on which the progress of
humanity can be established, there is no answer
except that in the nature of things it must be so.
Suppose that we were living on some fair and perfect
planet when the earth was in its once fluid state, and
that we saw the huge animals belonging to that
geological period wallowing in the mire and obscured
by the dense fogs which then enveloped the half
formed world’. If that had been our first introduc
tion to the present abode of man we should probably
have concluded, had we no previous experience of
such a state of things'elsewhere, that a world of sea
and mud, with volcanoes ever and anon spouting
forth their lava and steamy vapours shutting out
the light, could never become fitted for human
habitation. But this, nevertheless, was the elemental
chaos, out of which our globe was, in the course of
countless ages, evolved. So the present development
of the moral world bears some analogy to the physi
cal state of the earth in the primeval ages. It is
still very gradually emerging out of its original intel
lectual and moral formlessness, and is yet a long
way from the harmony and beauty with which
humanity will, m future ages, be crowned. For any
one, therefore, to judge of the tendency and goal of
the universe from the seething troubles and pangs
that harass the world’s life now in its slow transition
state, would be as rash as for the imagined spectator
of the chaotic earth before man came upon it to
�The Mystery of Evil.
41
suppose that it could never be built up into a
habitable world. The error consists in judging the
whole circle of material and moral development by
the very small segment of the circle which we have
an opportunity of seeing. But a retrospect of
human history justifies the assurance that in nature
there underlies all present contradictions and incom
patibilities, a moulding principle that will eventually
transmute all incongruities into palpable consistency.
The very tardiness, therefore, of the process by which
humanity is to attain its highest possible life may be
taken as a guarantee for the permanent advance of
that life when it is realised. It is not for us now
living, or for immediately succeeding generations to
participate in this Elysium of prophetic forecast, at
least in our present state of existence; but instead
of moping over our inevitable fate, and groaning
over the woes of the world, it is more becoming cul
tured manhood to bear that fate with philosophic
fortitude, make the best of it, and help our fellow
mortals to do the same. The idea of “ the Colossal
Man, ’ first worked by a great German writer, and
repeated in the retracted essay of Dr. Temple, looks in
the direction to which these remarks point. Humanity
must be viewed as a whole. Particular nations may
decay, but man is destined to rise to a higher plane
of being. For an indefinitely long period he is kept
under the tutelage of grievous trials, which, in the
wonderful economy of nature, have the effect of
unfolding and invigorating his powers, that he may
rise to the highest possible knowledge, and use that
knowledge in correcting his faults, so that at length
he may be brought into perfect accord with his own
noblest moral ideal, and with the general progressive
movement of the universe. Even if, for scores of
thousands of years, vast continents and islands of
savage or semi-barbarous people live and then perish,
there is no waste. Neither is there waste anywhere
�42
*
The Mystery of Evil.
in the laboratory of nature’s forces. Had we seen
the germs which afterwards developed into primeval
forests, when these germs were just beginning to
sprout in the bare rocky earth, we could not have
dreamt of so mighty a use in store for them. But
could we come back to the spot centuries afterwards
when these tiny beeches and pines had grown into
giant trees, the function of the insignificant germs
would be obvious. The yearly shedding of the leaves of
the trees into which they have grown has covered with
mould the once barren surface in which they were
planted, and supplied land suitable for the sowing of our
crops. So the primeval trees in the forest of humanity,
the first races, to all appearance not worth the power
expended on their existence and support; these early
races and tribes—so unproductive for ages—have
been permitted to shed their millions of human
leaves to make soil in the moral world. The bar
barism that once reigned over the greater part of
the earth is a pledge, in the arrangements of nature,
that humanity will never, as a whole, return to
barbarism again. The child cannot grow into the
shrewd, cautious, enterprising man, but through the
tumbles and bruises of childhood and the mistakes
of passionate youth. Our measured intelligence,
charity, and tolerance in the present century, has
grown out of the ignorance, superstition, and intoler
ance of all the ages that have preceeded. The primi
tive races were allowed to live a life of low civilisa
tion, and so by the picture of wretchedness they
present for the warning of those who come after
them, prove at once a beacon of warning and an
effectual safeguard against the higher races that come
after, sinking back to the same condition. The same
consoling reflection applies to all the pains and dis
comforts which the good and the bad alike suffer in
our present condition. These untoward circumstances,
dark though they be, are not a mere waste of power,
�The Mystery of Evil.
43
but mark an epoch in universal progress—needful,
disciplinary, transitional, leading to grander issues,—
to universal conformity to the standard of universal
harmony. If in this unique development the interests
of individuals and races,—whose lot happens to be
cast in the early or intermediate periods of that
development,—are not so favoured as those of mankind
will be in the happier and more remote future, such a
consideration is subordinate, and not to be named in
comparison with the final result—the expansion,
culture, and coherent use of all the faculties of
humanity, the extinction of disease, want, strife, and
suffering of every kind ; and if such an end is only
to be gained, for a permanence, through physical and
moral suffering in preceding ages of the world, the
result may possibly well repay the cost. Nay, I
think science justifies me in going farther. I might
venture to add that the trials to which individuals
and nations have ever been exposed in this life are
introductory to a state of being beyond the present,
when the island earth will be one in spirit with the
invisible “ summer-land,” when free and pleasant
communion between the embodied in the former
state, and the disembodied in the latter, will be
possible, when the sea of material and moral discord
that now divides the one state from the other will
be dried up, and when the last speck of imper
fection that sullied the purity and splendour of
regenerated humanity will be effaced.
In the immortal words of our Laureate :
“ 0 ! yet, we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubts and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When Nature makes the pile complete. »
�44
IFhe Mystery of Evil.
That not a worm is cloven in vain,
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire
Or but subserves another’s gain.
Behold we know not anything—
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last—to all,
And every winter change to spring.”
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The mystery of evil
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Upper Norwood, London S.E.
Collation: 44 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Published anonymously. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. From the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Thomas Scott
Date
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1875
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RA1828
N508
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Ethics
Evil
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[Unknown]
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The mystery of evil), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Evil
NSS
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Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The ethics of social reform: A paper read at a meeting of The Fellowship of the New Life, London
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Adams, Maurice
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 26 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Publisher's advertisements on front and back endpaper.
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W. Reeves
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1887
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G898
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Ethics
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Ethics
Social Reform
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PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, 8.E.
Price Fourpence.
�I I
�EUTHANASIA.
“ T HAVE already related to you with what care they
J. look after their sick, so that nothing is left
undone wfflich may contribute either to their health or
ease. And as for those who are afflicted with incurable
disorders, they use all possible means of cherishing
them, and of making their lives as comfortable as pos
sible ; they visit them often, and take great pains to
make their time pass easily. But if any have tortur
ing, lingering pain, without hope of recovery or ease,
the priests and magistrates repair to them and exhort
them, since they are unable to proceed with the busi
ness of life, are become a burden to themselves and all
about them, and have in reality outlived themselves,
they should no longer cherish a rooted disease, but
choose to die since they cannot but live in great misery;
being persuaded, if they thus deliver themselves from
torture, or allow others to do it, they shall be happy
after death. Since they forfeit none of the pleasures,
but only the troubles of life by this, they think they
not only act reasonably, but consistently with religion;
for they follow the advice of their priests, the expound
ers of God’s will. Those who are wrought upon by
these persuasions, either starve themselves or take
laudanum. But no one is compelled to end his life
thus ; and if they cannot be persuaded to it, the former
care and attendance on it is continued. And though
they esteem a voluntary death, when chosen on such
authority, to be very honourable, on the contrary, if
�4
Euthanasia.
any one commit suicide without the concurrence of the
priest and senate, they honour not the body with a
decent funeral, but throw it into a ditch.”*
Tn pleading for the morality of euthanasia, it seems
not unwise to show that so thoroughly religious a man
as Sir Thomas More deemed that practice so consonant
with a sound morality as to make it one of the customs
of his ideal state, and to place it under the sanction of
the priesthood. As a devout Roman Catholic, the
great Chancellor would naturally imagine that any
beneficial innovation would be sure to obtain the sup
port of the priesthood; and although we may differ
from him on this head, since our daily experience
teaches us that the priest may be counted upon as the
steady opponent of all reform, it is yet not uninstructive to note that the deep religious feeling which dis
tinguished this truly good man, did not shrink from
the idea of euthanasia as from a breach of morality, nor
did he apparently dream that any opposition would (or
could) be offered to it on religious grounds. The last
sentence of the extract is specially important; in dis
cussing the morality of euthanasia, we are not discus
sing the moral lawfulness or unlawfulness of suicide in
general; we may.protest against suicide, and yet uphold
euthanasia, and we may even protest against the one
and uphold the other, on exactly the same principle, as
we shall see further on. As the greater includes the
less, those who consider that a man has a right to
choose whether he will live or not, and who therefore
regard all suicide as lawful, will, of course, approve of
euthanasia; but it is by no means necessary to hold
this doctrine because we contend for the other. On the
general question of the morality of suicide, this paper
expresses no opinion whatever. This is not the point,
and we do not deal with it here. This essay is simply
* Memoirs. A translation of the Utopia, &c., of Sir Thomas
More, Lord High Chancellor of England. By A. Cayley the
Younger, pp. 102, 103. (Edition of 1808.)
�Euthanasia.
5
and solely directed to prove that there are circum
stances under which a human being has a moral right
to hasten the inevitable approach of death. The subject
is one which is surrounded by a thick fog of popular
prejudice, and the arguments in its favour are generally
dismissed unheard. I would therefore crave the reader s
generous patience, while laying before him the reasons
which dispose many religious and social reformers to
regard it as of importance that euthanasia should be
legalised.
In the fourth edition of an essay on Euthanasia, by
P. D. Williams, jun.,—an essay which powerfully sums
up what is to be said for and against the practice in
question, and which treats the whole subject exhaust
ively—we find the proposition, for which we contend,
laid down in the following explicit terms :
“ That in all cases of hopeless and painful illness, it
should be the recognised duty of the medical attendant,
whenever so desired by the patient, to administer
chloroform, or such other anaesthetic as may by-and-by
supersede chloroform, so as to destroy consciousness at
once, and to put the sufferer to a quick and painless
death ; all needful precautions being adopted to prevent
any abuse of such duty; and means being taken to
establish, beyond the possibility of doubt or question,
that the remedy was applied at the express wish of the
patient.”
It is very important, at the outset, to lay down
clearly the limitations of the proposed medical reform.
It is sometimes thoughtlessly stated that the supporters
of euthanasia propose to put to death all persons suf
fering from incurable disorders ; no assertion can be
more inaccurate or more calculated to mislead. We
propose only, that where an incurable disorder is accom
panied with extreme pain—pain, which nothing can
alleviate except death—pain, which only grows worse
as the inevitable doom approaches—pain, which drives
almost to madness, and which must end in the intensi
�6
Euthanasia.
fied torture of the death agony—that pain should be at
once soothed by the administration of an anesthetic,
which should not only produce unconsciousness, but
should be sufficiently powerful to end a life, in which
the renewal of consciousness can only be simultaneous
with the renewal of pain. So long as life has some
sweetness left in it, so long the offered mercy is not
needed; euthanasia is a relief from unendurable agony,
not an enforced extinguisher of a still desired existence.
Besides, no one proposes to make it obligatory on any
body ; it is only urged that where the patient asks for
the mercy of a speedy death, instead of a protracted one,
his prayer may be granted without any danger of the pen
alties of murder or manslaughter being inflicted on the
doctors and nurses in attendance.
I will lay before
the reader a case which is within my own knowledge,—
and which can probably be supplemented by the sad
experience of almost every individual,—in v’hich the
legality of euthanasia would have been a boon equally
to the sufferer and to her family. A widow lady was
suffering from cancer in the breast, and as the case was
too far advanced for the ordinary remedy of the knife,
and as the leading London surgeons refused to risk an
operation which might hasten, but could not retard,
death, she resolved, for the sake of her orphan children,
to allow a medical practitioner to perform a terrible
operation, whereby he hoped to prolong her life for
some years. Its details are too painful to enter into
unnecessarily; it will suffice to say that it was per
formed by means of quick-lime, and that the use of
chloroform was impossible. When the operation, which
extended over days, was but half over, the sufferer’s
strength gave way, and the doctor was compelled to
acknowledge that even a prolongation of life was im
possible, and that to complete the operation could only
hasten death. So the patient had to linger on in almost
unimaginable torture, knowing that the pain could only
end in death, seeing her relatives worn out by watching,
�Euthanasia.
7
•and agonised at the sight of her sufferings, and yet
compelled to live on from hour to hour, till at last the
anguish culminated in death. Is it possible for any
one to believe that it would have been wrong to have
hastened the inevitable end, and thus to have shortened
the agony of the sufferer herself, and to have also spared
Sier nurses months of subsequent ill-health. It is in
»uch cases as this that euthanasia would be useful. It
s, however, probable that all will agree that the benefit
conferred by the legalisation of euthanasia would, in
nany instances, be very great; but many feel that the
objections to it, on moral grounds, are so weighty, that
10 physical benefit could countervail the moral wrong.
These objections, so far as I can gather them, are as
bllows:—
Life is the gift of God, and is therefore sacred, and
nust only be taken back by the giver of life.
*
Euthanasia is an interference with the course of
•lature, and is therefore an act of rebellion against God.
Pain is a spiritual remedial agent inflicted by God,
.-jid should therefore be patiently endured.
Life is the gift of God, and is therefore sacred, and
.nust only be taken back by the Giver of life. This
objection is one of those high-sounding phrases which
mpose on the careless and thoughtless hearer, by catchng up a form of words which is generally accepted as
m unquestionable axiom, and by hanging thereupon
in unfair corollary. The ordinary man or woman, on
tearing this assertion, would probably answer—“ Life
tacred ? Yes, of course ; on the sacredness of life
lepends the safety of society ; anything which tampers
vith this principle must be both wrong and dangerous.”
Ind yet, such is the inconsistency of the thoughtless,
hat, five minutes afterwards, the same person will glow
.vith passionate admiration at some noble deed, in
* We of course here have no concern with theological questions
nuching the existence or non-existence of Deity, and express no
pinion about them.
�8
Euthanasia.
which the sacredness of life has been cast to the winds
at the call of honour or of humanity, or will utter words
of indignant contempt at the baseness which counted
life more sacred than duty or principle. That life is
sacred is an undeniable proposition; every natural gift
is sacred, i.e. is valuable, and is not to be lightly
destroyed ; life, as summing up all natural gifts, and
as containing within itself all possibilities of usefulness
and happiness, is the most sacred physical possession
which we own. But it is not the most sacred thing on
earth. Martyrs slain for the sake of principles which
they could not truthfully deny ; patriots who have
died for their country; heroes who have sacrificed
themselves for others’ good ;—the very flower and glory
of humanity rise up in a vast crowd to protest that
conscience, honour, love, self-devotion, are more precious
to the race than is the life of the individual. Life is
sacred, but it may be laid down in a noble cause ; life
is sacred, but it must bend before the holier sacredness
of principle ; life which, though sacred, can be de
stroyed, is as nothing before the indestructible ideals
which claim from every noble soul the sacrifice of per
sonal happiness, of personal greatness, yea, of personal
*
life
It will be conceded, then, on all hands, that the
proposition that life is sacred must be accepted with
many limitations : the proposition, in fact, amounts
only to this, that life must not be voluntarily laid
down without grave and sufficient cause. What we
have to consider, is, whether there are present, in any
proposed euthanasia, such conditions as overbear con
siderations for the acknowledged sanctity of life. W e
* The word “ life ” is here used in the sense of “ personal exist
ence in this world.” It is, of course, not intended to be asserted
that life is really destructible, but only that personal existence, or
identity, may be destroyed. And further, no opinion is given on
the possibility of life otherwhere than on this globe; nothing is
spoken of except life on earth, under the conditions of human
existence.
�Euthanasia.
9
contend that in the cases in which it is proposed that
death should be hastened, these conditions do exist.
"We will not touch here on the question of the
endurance of pain as a duty, for we will examine that
further on. But is it a matter of no importance, that
a sufferer should condemn his attendants to a prolonged
drain on their health and strength, in order to cling to
a life which is useless to others, and a burden to him
self ? The nurse who tends, perhaps for weeks, a bed
of agony, for which there is no cure but death whose
senses are strained by intense watchfulness whose
nerves are racked by witnessing torture which she is
powerless to alleviate—is, by her self-devotion, sowing
in her own constitution the seeds of ill-health that is
to say, she is deliberately shortening her own life. We
have seen that we have a right to shorten life in obedi
ence to a call of duty, and it will at once be said that
the nurse is obeying such a call. But has the nurse a
right to sacrifice her own life—and an injury to health
is a sacrifice of life—for an obviously unequivalent
advantage? We are apt to forget, because the injury
is partially veiled to us, that we touch the sacredness
of life whenever we touch health : every case of over
work, of over-strain, of over-exertion, is, so to speak, a
modified case of euthanasia. To poison the spring of
life is as real a tampering with the sacredness of life
as it is to check its course. The nurse is really com
mitting a slow euthanasia. Either the patient or the
nurse must commit an heroic suicide for the sake of
the other—which shall it be ? Shall the life be sacri
ficed, which is torture to its possessor, useless to
society, and whose bounds are already clearly marked ?
or shall a strong and healthy life, with all its future
possibilities, be undermined and sacrificed in addition
to that which is already doomed 1 But, granting that
the sublime generosity of the nurse stays not to balance
the gain with the loss, but counts herself as nothing in
the face of a human need, then surely it is time to urge
�IO
Euthanasia.
that to permit this self-sacrifice is an error, and that to
accept it is a crime. If it be granted that the throwing
away of life for a manifestly unequivalent gain is wrong,
then we ought not to blind ourselves to the fact, that
to sacrifice a healthy life in order to lengthen by a few
short weeks a doomed life, is a grave moral error, how
ever much it may be redeemed in the individual by the
glory of a noble self-devotion. Allowing to the full the
honour due to the heroism of the nurse, what are we
to say to the patient who accepts the sacrifice 1 What
are we to think of the morality of a human being, who,
in order to preserve the miserable remnant of life left
to him, allows another to shorten life 1 If we honour
the man who sacrifices himself to defend his family, or
risks his own life to save theirs, we must surely blame
him who, on the contrary, sacrifices those he ought to
value most, in order to prolong his own now useless
existence. The measure of our admiration for the one,
must be the measure of our pity for the weakness and
selfishness of the other. If it be true that the man who
dies for his dear ones on the battlefield is a hero, he
who voluntarily dies for them on his bed of sickness is
a hero no less brave. But it is urged that life is the
gift of God, and must only he taken hack hy the Giver
of life. I suppose that in any sense in which it can be
supposed true that life is the gift of God, it can only be
taken back by the giver—that is to say, that just as
life is produced in accordance with certain laws, so it
can only be destroyed in accordance with certain other
laws. Life is not the direct gift of a superior power :
it is the gift of man to man and animal to animal, pro
duced by the voluntary agent, and not by God, under
physical conditions, on the fulfilment of which alone
the production of life depends. The physical condi
tions must be observed if we desire to produce life, and
so must they be if we desire to destroy life. In both
cases man is the voluntary agent, in both law is the
means of his action. If life-giving is God’s doing, then
�Euthanasia.
11
life-destroying is his doing too. But this is not what
is intended by the proposers of this aphorism. If they
will pardon me for translating their somewhat vague
proposition into more precise language, they say that
they find themselves in possession of a certain thing
called life, which must have come from somewhereand
as in popular language the unknown is always the
divine, it must have come from God : therefore this life
must only be taken from them by a cause that also
proceeds from somewhere—i.e., from an unknown cause
—i.e., from the divine will. Chloroform comes from a
visible agent, from the doctor or nurse, or at least from
a bottle, wich can be taken up or left alone at our own
h
*
choice. If we swallow this, the cause of death is known,
and is evidently not divine ; but if we go into a house
where scarlet fever is raging, although we are in that
case voluntarily running the chance of taking poison
quite as truly as if we swallow a dose of chloroform,
yet if we die from the infection, we can imagine the
illness to be sent from God. Wherever we think the
element of chance comes in, there we are able to imagine
that God rules directly. We quite overlook the fact
that there is no such thing as chance. There is only
our ignorance of law, not a break in natural order. If
our constitution be susceptible of the particular poison
to which we expose it, we take the disease. If we
knew the laws of infection as accurately as we know
the laws affecting chloroform, we should be able to fore
see with like certainty the inevitable consequence ; and
our ignorance does not make the action of either set of
laws less unchangeable or more divine. But in the
“ happy-go-lucky ” style of thought peculiar to ignor
ance, the Christian disregards the fact that infection is
ruled by definite laws, and believes that health and
sickness are the direct expressions of the will of his
God, and not the invariable consequents of obscure but
probably discoverable antecedents ; so he boldly goes
into the back slums of London to nurse a family
�12
Euthanasia.
stricken down with fever, and knowingly and deliber
ately runs “ the chance ” of infection—i.e., knowingly
and deliberately runs the chance of taking poison, or
rather of having poison poured into his frame. This
he does, trusting that the nobility of his motive will
make the act right in God’s sight. Is it more noble
to relieve the sufferings of strangers, than to relieve the
sufferings of his family ? or is it more heroic to die of
voluntarily-contracted fever, than of voluntarily-taken
chloroform 1
, The argument that life must only be taken back by the
life-giver, would, if thoroughly carried out, entirely pre
vent all dangerous operations. In the treatment of
some diseases there are operations that will either kill
or cure: the disease must certainly be fatal if left alone;
while the proposed operation may save life, it may
equally destroy it, and thus may take life some time be
fore the giver of life wanted to take it back. Evidently,
then, such operations should not be performed, since
there is risked so grave an interference with the desires
of the life-giver.
Again, doctors act very wrongly
when they allow certain soothing medicines to be taken
when all hope is gone, which they refuse so long as a
chance of recovery remains : what right have they to
compel the life-giver to follow out his apparent inten
tions ? In some cases of painful disease, it is now
usual to produce partial or total unconsciousness by the
injection of morphia, or by the use of some other
anaesthetic. Thus, I have known a patient subjected
to this kind of treatment, when dying from a tumour
in the sesophagus; he was consequently, for some
weeks before his death, kept in a state of almost com
plete unconsciousness, for if he were allowed to become
conscious, his agony was so unendurable as to drive
him wild. He was thus, although breathing, practi
cally dead for weeks before his death. We cannot but
wonder, in view of such a case as his, what it is that
people mean when they talk of “ life.” Life includes,
�Euthanasia.
13
surely, not only the involuntary animal functions, such
as the movements of heart and lungs; but conscious
ness, thought, feeling, emotion. Of the various con
stituents of human life, surely those are not the most
“ sacred ” which we share with the brute, however
necessary these may be as the basis on which the rest
are built. It is thought, then, that we may rightfully
destroy all that constitutes the beauty and nobility of
human life, we may kill thought, slay consciousness,
deaden emotion, stop feeling, we may do all this, and
leave lying on the bed before us a breathing figure,
from which we have taken all the nobler possibilities
of life; but we may not touch the purely animal exist
ence ; we may rightly check the action of the nerves
and the brain, but we must not dare to outrage the
Deity by checking the action of the heart and the
lungs.
We ask, then, for the legalisation of euthanasia,
because it is in accordance with the highest morality
yet known, that which teaches the duty of self-sacrifice
for the greater good of others, because it is sanctioned
in principle by every service performed at personal
danger and injury, and because it is already partially
practised by modern improvements in medical science.
Euthanasia is an interference with the course of
nature, and is therefore an act of rebellion against
God. In considering this objection, we are placed in
difficulty by not being told what sense our opponents
attach to the word “ nature; ” and we are obliged once
more to ask pardon for forcing these vague and highflown arguments into a humiliating precision of mean
ing. Nature, in the widest sense of the word, includes
all natural laws; and in this sense it is of course
impossible to interfere with nature at all. We live,
and move, and have our being in nature ; and we can
no more get outside it, than we can get outside every
thing. With this nature we cannot interfere : we can
study its laws, and learn how to balance one law
�14
Euthanasia.
against another, so as to modify results; but this can
only be done by and through nature itself. The
“ interference with the course of nature ” which is in
tended in the above objection does not of course mean
this, impossible proceeding ; and it can then only mean
an interference with things which would proceed in
one course without human agency meddling with them,
but which are susceptible of being turned into another
course by human agency. If interference with nature’s
course be a rebellion against God, we are rebelling against
God every day of our lives. Every achievement of civili
sation is an interference with nature. Every artificial
comfort we enjoy is an improvement on nature.
“Everybody professes to approve and admire many
great triumphs of art over nature: the junction by
bridges of shores which nature had made separate, the
draining of nature’s marshes, the excavation of her
wells, the dragging to light of what she has buried at
immense depths in the earth, the turning away of her
thunderbolts by lightning-rods, of her inundations by
embankments, of her ocean by breakwaters. But to
commend these and similar feats, is to acknowledge
that the ways of nature are to be conquered, not
obeyed; that her powers are often towards man in
the position of enemies, from whom he must wrest, by
force and ingenuity, what little he can for his own use,
and deserves to be applauded when that little is rather
more than might be expected from his physical weak
ness in comparison to those gigantic powers. All
praise, of civilisation, or art, or contrivance, is so much
dispraise of nature; an admission of imperfection,
which it is man’s business, and merit, to be always
endeavouring to correct or mitigate.”* It is difficult
to understand how anyone, contemplating the course of
nature, can regard it as the expression of a divine will,
which man has no right to improve upon. Natural
law is essentially unreasoning and unmoral: gigantic
* “Essay on Nature,” by John Stuart Mill.
�Euthanasia.
*5
forces clash, around us on every side, unintelligent, and
unvarying in their action. With equal impassiveness
these blind forces produce vast benefits and work vast
catastrophes. The benefits are ours, if we are able to
grasp them; but nature troubles itself not whether we
take them or leave them alone. The catastrophes may
rightly be averted, if we can avert them; but nature
stays not its grinding wheel for our moans. Even
allowing that a Supreme Intelligence gave these forces
their being, it is manifest that he never intended man
to be their plaything, or to do them homage; for man
is dowered with reason to calculate, and with genius to
foresee; and into man’s hands is given the realm of
nature (in this world) to cultivate, td govern, to im
prove. So long as men believed that a god wielded
the thunderbolt, so long would a lightning-conductor
be an outrage on Jove; so long as a god guided each
force of nature, so long would it be impiety to resist,
or to endeavour to regulate, the divine volitions. Only
as experience gradually proved that no evil consequences
followed upon each amendment of nature, were natural
forces withdrawn, one by one, from the sphere of the
unknown and the divine. Now, even pain, that used
to be God’s scourge, is soothed by chloroform, and
death alone is left for nature to inflict, with what
lingering agony it may. But why should death, any
more than other ills, be left entirely to the clumsy,
unassisted processes of nature ?-—why, after struggling
against nature all our lives, should we let it reign
unopposed in death ? There are some natural evils
that we cannot avert. Pain and death are of these;
but we can dull pain by dulling feeling, and we can ease
death by shortening its pangs. Nature kills by slow
and protracted torture; we can defy it by choosing a
rapid and painless end. It is only the remains of the
old superstition that makes men think that to take life
is the special prerogative of the gods. With marvel
lous inconsistency, however, the opponents of euthan
�i6
Euthanasia.
asia do not scruple to “interfere with the course of
nature ” on the one hand, while they forbid us to inter
fere on the other. It is right to prolong pain by art,
although it is wrong to shorten it. When a person is
smitten down with some fearful and incurable disease,
they do not leave him to nature; on the contrary, they
check and thwart nature in every possible way; they
cherish the life that nature has blasted; they nourish
the strength that nature is undermining; they delay
each process of decay which nature sows in the dis
ordered frame; they contest every inch of ground with
nature to preserve life; and then, when life means
torture, and we ask permission to step in and quench
it, they cry out that we are interfering with nature.
If they would leave nature to itself, the disease would
generally kill with tolerable rapidity; but they will not
do this. They will only admit the force of their own
argument when it tells on the side of what they choose
to consider right. “Against nature ” is the cry with
which many a modern improvement has been howled
at; and it will continue to be raised, until it is gener
ally acknowledged that happiness, and not nature, is
the true guide to morality, and until man recognises
that nature is to be harnessed to his car of triumph,
and to bend its mighty forces to fulfil the human will.
Pam is a spiritual remedial agent, inflicted hy God,
and should therefore he patiently endured. Does any
one, except a self-torturing ascetic, endure any pain
which he can get rid of? This might be deemed a
sufficient answer to this objection, for common sense
always bids us avoid all possible pain, and daily expe
rience tells us that people invariably evade pain, when
ever such evasion is possible. The objection ought to
run : “ pain is a spiritual remedial agent, inflicted by
God, which is to be got rid of as soon as possible, but
ought to be patiently endured when unavoidable.”
Pain as pain has no recommendations, spiritual or
otherwise, nor is there the smallest merit in a voluntary
�Euthanasia.
J7
and needless submission to pain. As to its remedial
and educational advantages, it as often as not sours the
temper and hardens the heart; if a person endures
great physical or mental pain with unruffled patience,
and comes out of it with uninjured tenderness and
sweetness, we may rest assured that wre have come
across a rare and beautiful nature of exceptional strength.
As a general rule, pain, especially if it > be mental,
hardens and roughens the character. The use of anaes
thetics is utterly indefensible, if physical pain is to be
regarded as a special tool whereby God cultivates the
human soul. If God is directly acting on the sufferer s
body, and is educating his soul by racking his nerves,
by what right does the doctor step between with his
impious anaesthetic, and by reducing the patient to un
consciousness, deprive God of his pupil, and man of
his lesson ? If pain be a sacred ark, over which hovers
the divine glory, surely it must be a sinful act to touch
the holy thing. We may be inflicting incalculable
spiritual damage by frustrating the divine plan of edu
cation, which was corporeal agony as a spiritual agent.
Therefore, if this argument be good for anything at all,
we must from henceforth eschew all anaesthetics, we
must take no steps to alleviate human agony, we must
not venture to interfere with this beneficent agent, but
must leave nature to torture us as it will. But we
utterly deny that the unnecessary endurance of pain is
even a merit, much less a duty; on the contrary, we
believe that it is our duty to war against pain as much
as possible, to alleviate it wherever we cannot stop it
entirely ; and, where continuous and frightful agony
can only end in death, then to give to the sufferer the
relief he craves for, in the sleep which is mercy. “ It
is a mercy God has taken him,” is an expression often
heard when the racked frame at last lies quiet, and the
writhed features settle slowly into the peaceful smile of
the dead. That mercy we plead that man should be
allowed to give to man, when human skill and human
�18
Euthanasia.
tenderness have done their best, and when they have
left, within their reach, no greater boon than a speedy
and painless death.
We are not aware that any objection, which may not
be classed under one or other of these three heads, has
been levelled against the proposition that euthanasia
should be legalised. It has, indeed, been suggested
that to put into a doctor’s hands this “ power of life
and death,” would be to offer a dangerous temptation
to those who have any special object to gain by putting
a troublesome person quietly out of the way. But this
objection overlooks the fact that the patient himself must
ask for the draught, that stringent precautions can be taken
to render euthanasia impossible except at the patient’s
earnestly, or even repeatedly, expressed wish, that any
doctor or attendant, neglecting to take these precautions,
w’ould then, as now, be liable to all the penalties for
murder or for manslaughter; and that an ordinary
doctor would no more be ready to face these penalties
then, than he is now, although he undoubtedly has
now the power of putting the patient to death with
but little chance of discovery. Euthanasia would not
render murder less dangerous than it is at present, since
no one asks that a nurse may be empowered to give a
patient a dose which would ensure death, or that she
might be allowed to shield herself from punishment on
the plea that the patient desired it. If our opponents
would take the trouble to find out what we do ask,
before they condemn our propositions, it would greatly
simplify public discussion, not alone in this case, but
in many proposed reforms.
It may be well, also, to point out the wide line of
demarcation, which separated euthanasia from what is
ordinarily called suicide. Euthanasia, like suicide, is
a voluntarily chosen death, but there is a radical dif
ference between the motives which prompt the similar
act. Those who commit suicide thereby render them
�Euthanasia.
*9
selves useless to society for the future j they deprive
society of their services, and selfishly evade the duties
which ought to fall to their share ; therefore, the social
feelings rightly condemn suicide as a crime against
society. I do not say, that under no stress of circum
stances is suicide justifiable ; that is not the question ;
but I wish to point out that it is justly regarded as a
social offence. But the very motive which restrains
from suicide, prompts to euthanasia. The sufferer who
knows that he is lost to society, that he can never
again serve his fellow-men ; who knows, also, that he
is depriving society of the services of those who use
lessly exhaust themselves for him, and is further injur
ing it by undermining the health of its healthy mem
bers, feels urged by the very social instincts which
would prevent him from committing suicide while in
health, to yield a last service to society by relieving it
from a useless burden. Hence it is that Sir Ihomas
More, in the quotation with which we began this essay,
makes the social authorities of his ideal state urge
euthanasia as the duty of ,a faithful citizen, while they
yet, consistently reprobate ordinary suicide, as a Ibsemajeste, a crime against the State. The life of the
individual is, in a sense, the property of society. The
infant is nurtured, the child is educated, the man is
protected by others; and, in return for the life thus
given, developed, preserved, society has a right to
demand from its members a loyal, self-forgetting devo
tion to the common weal. To serve humanity, to raise
the race from which we spring, to dedicate every talent,
every power, every energy, to the improvement of, and
to the increase of happiness in, society, this is the duty
of each individual man and woman. And, when we
have given all we can, when strength is sinking, and life
is failing, when pain racks our bodies, and the worse
agony of seeing our dear ones suffer in our anguish,
tortures our enfeebled minds, when the only service
�20
Euthanasia.
we can render man is to relieve him of a useless and
injurious burden, then we ask that we may be per
mitted to die voluntarily and painlessly, and so to
crown a noble life with the laurel-wreath of a selfsacrificing death.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Euthanasia
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Besant, Annie Wood
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 20 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Author not named on pamphlet but known to be Annie Besant. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Also published with the added subtitle: 'A pamphlet advocating the legalization of the administration of poison by a medical attendant to persons suffering from incurable and painful diseases'.
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Thomas Scott
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[1875]
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G5502
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Euthenasia
Ethics
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Euthanasia), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Annie Besant
Conway Tracts
Death
Ethics
Euthanasia
Health
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THE
REIGN OF LAW
IN MIND AS IN MATTER,
AND ITS
BEARING UPON CHRISTIAN DOGMA AND MORAL
RESPONSIBILITY.
FART I.
BY
CHARLES
BRAY,
AUTHOR OF “A MANUAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, OR SCIENCE OF MAN,” “ MODERN
PROTESTANTISM,” “ILLUSION AND DELUSION,”„&C.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
��THE
REIGN OF LAW IN MIND AS IN MATTER,
AND ITS
■
BEARING UPON CHRISTIAN DOGMA.
“At first laying down, as a fact fundamental,
That nothing with God can be accidental.”
Longfellow.
ECKY’S admirable histories of Rationalism and
European Morals, show most clearly that there is
a law of orderly and progressive transformation to which
our speculative opinions are subject, the causes of
which are to be sought in the general intellectual con
dition of society. Every great change, therefore, in
the popular creed is always preceded by a great
change in the intellectual condition of the people,
and speculative opinions which are embraced by
any large body of men, are accepted, not on account
of the arguments upon which they rest, but on
account of a predisposition to receive them. Opinion
pervades society as water does a sponge, or like yeast
cells growing in a fermented mass. Reasoning, which,
in one age, would make no impression whatever, in the
next is received with enthusiastic applause. This is
owing to the fact, that, as a general rule,—not entirely,
however, without exception,—it is our feelings and
not the intellect that rule us; it is the feelings that
connect us with the prevailing state of public opinion
with which we are en rapport that shape our conduct,
and not our theoretical convictions. It is this that makes
L
�4
The Reign of Law
missionary efforts so fruitless, and proselytising almost
impossible in old and partially civilized countries
which have already a religion of their own. Mr Becky
shows us that the history of the abolition of torture,
the history of punishments, the history of the treatment
of the conquered in war, the history of slavery, all pre
sent us with examples of practices which in one age
were accepted as perfectly right and natural, and
which in another age were repudiated as palpably and
atrociously inhuman. In each case, the change was
effected much less by any intellectual process than by
a certain quickening of the emotions, and consequently
of the moral judgments.
Galileo was condemned because the Scripture says,
that “ the sun runneth about from one end of the earth
to the other,” and that “ the foundations of the earth
are so firmly fixed, that they cannot be moved.”
Science might show that the earth did move notwith
standing, but then many refused to look through Gali
leo’s telescope, and those who did were disposed to
compromise the matter like the young student who,
when asked by the examiners whether the earth moved
round the sun, or the sun round the earth, said, with
a spirit of “ reconciliation ” worthy of the present age,
“ Sometimes one, and sometimes the other.” Even the
great Lord Bacon was sceptical on this question of the
earth’s motion, although not quite in the same direc
tion ; he said, “ It is the absurdity of these opinions
that has driven men to the'diurnal motion of the earth,
which I am convinced is most false.” It took a cen
tury and a-half to reconcile mankind to the Copernican
Astronomy, and there are many now who refuse to
believe that the earth is round, the fact being con
trary to Scripture : for how in such case could people
at the antipodes see the Son of God descending in his
glory ? If there are some who thus suspect their geo
graphy to be unorthodox, there are others equally at
fault in their natural history. Being religiously
�in Mind as in Matter.
5
"brought up, and therefore in early possession of a
Noah’s Ark, they know perfectly well the truth of the
story about it■ but as they get older, they do not see
very well how all the animals could be got into it, and
in this discrepancy between Science and Scripture, df
■course, the former has to give way. They are not pre
pared to accept St Augustine’s road out of the difficulty,
that the assembling the animals in the ark must have
been for the sake of prefiguring the gathering of all
nations into the Church, and not in order to secure the
replenishing of the world with life.
But if it took so long to introduce the Copernican
system, it took much longer to get rid of witchcraft, or
the firm conviction which all had, that the Devil,
through ugly old women and others, interfered per
sonally in our affairs. The horrors attending this be
lief it is impossible to describe or even to conceive.
The way in which the truth of the accusation was
tested, had the logic that peculiarly distinguishes theo
logical controversy ; the witch was put into water, and
if she was drowned, she was innocent, if not, she was
guilty, and burned alive. Chief Baron Sir Matthew
Hale’s reasoning seems almost equally conclusive.
Charging the jury in the trial for witchcraft of Amy
Duny and Rose Callender in 1664, he says, “That
there are such creatures as witches, I make no doubt
at all ; for, first, the Scriptures have affirmed as much ;
and secondly, the wisdom of all nations, particularly of
our own, hath provided laws against them.” Among
•others, an Anglican clergyman, named Lower, who was
now verging on eighty, and who for fifty years had
been an irreproachable minister of his church, fell
under suspicion. He was thrown into the water, con
demned and hung, and we are told that, “ Baxter re
lates the whole story with evident pleasure.” Lecky,
Rationalism, Vol. i. p. 117. “As late as 1773, the
divines of the Associated Presbytery passed a resolu
tion declaring their belief in witchcraft, and deploring
�6
The Reign of Law
the scepticism that was general,” Lecky, Vol. i. p. 147..
John Wesley also was a firm believer in witchcraft, and
for some time we know inhabited a haunted house. He
said that the giving up of witchcraft was in effect
giving up the bible. But, notwithstanding the strenu
ous opposition of the clergy everywhere, the belief in
witchcraft died a natural death. It was not argument
that killed it, but it could not breathe the spirit of the
age, and it was then very naturally discovered that the
word translated witch in Leviticus may be translated
“ poisoner.” Both the translation and explanation of
the Bible have always admitted of great adaptation and
reconciliation.
The belief in the devil’s agents and imps having
gone out in the light of the age, the belief in the devil
himself is fast following ; he is getting very faint; in
fact, he is not admitted at all into polite society. The
belief in the existence of a personal embodiment of the
principle of evil may be said no longer to exist among
educated people, but at one titne it was a most vivid
reality. To Luther he was a constant presence, and the
black stain is still shown in the castle of Wartburg,
where he threw his inkstand at him. He gradually,
however, got more accustomed to him, and he tells us
how, in the monastery of Wittemberg, hearing a noise
in the night, he perceived that it was only the Devil,
and accordingly he went to sleep again.
We now ask, Is public opinion prepared to accept the
doctrine that the Reign of Law is universal in Mind as
in Matter ? That there is no exception to the Reign of
Law ? That there is no such thing as chance or spon
taneity, or a free-will, or a free anything, but that there
is a sufficient cause for everything ? I fear this ques
tion must be answered in the negative. Natural
Science has gradually substituted the conception of har
monious and unchanging law, for the conception of a
universe governed by perpetual miracle, or capricious
will, or chance in the world of matter; but that law, or
�in Mind as in Matter.
7
necessity, or certainty, equally pervades tlie world of
mind, is at present confined to philosophers, and to
those only who have made the Science of Mind their
study. Still it is a great truth which must ultimately
prevail, and when it does, it will bring as great and
beneficial a change in our system of ethics, as the Coper
nican system has in our Astronomy.
By reference to the first volume of Grote’s Greece,
we find that Socrates treated Physics and Astronomy
as departments reserved by the gods for their own
actions, and not subject to ascertainable laws, and that
human research was even impious. “ In China at the
present day,” says Eitel, “ the Chinese sages see a golden
chain of spiritual life running through every form of
existence, and binding together as in one living body
everything that subsists in heaven above, or in earth
below. But this truth is with them a mere hypothesis,
not a generalization from observed facts. Experimental
philosophy is unknown in China. They invented no
instruments to aid them in the observation of the
heavenly bodies, they never took to hunting beetles
and stuffing birds, they shrank from the idea of dissect
ing animal bodies, nor did they chemically analyse in
organic substances, but with very little actual know
ledge of nature they evolved a whole system of natural
science from their own inner consciousness, and ex
panded it according to the dogmatic formulae of ancient
tradition.” This is precisely the condition of our
clerical sages at the present time in the department,
not of physics, but of mental science. Things may or
may not happen, not according to any known or calcul
able law or order, but according to the free will of the
actor, which is supposed to obey no law. And this
free will is the key-stone of both their morality and
religion.
Mr Herbert Spencer truly says, “ There can be no
complete acceptance of sociology as a science, so long
as the belief in a social order not conforming to natural
�8
The Reign of Law
law, survives. Hence, as already said, considerations
touching the study of sociology, not very influential
even over the few who recognise a social science, can
have scarcely any effects on the great mass to whom a
social science is an incredibility.”
“I do not mean,” he says, “that this prevailing imper
viousness to scientific conceptions of social phenomena
is to be regretted. . . . The desirable thing is, that a
growth of ideas and feelings tending to produce modi
fication, shall be joined with a continuance of ideas
and feelings tending to preserve stability . . . That in
our day, one in Mr Gladstone’s position should think
as he does, seems to me very desirable. That we
should have for our working-king one in whom a
purely scientific conception of things had become
dominant, and who was thus out of harmony with our
present social state, would probably be detrimental,
and might be disastrous.” * Mr Gladstone has, how
ever, since explained (Contemporary, December 1873),
that he was misunderstood; that he does not either
affirm or deny either evolution or unchangeable law,
but that what he wished to imply was, that, be they
either true or false, certain persons have made an un
warrantable use of them. That a law-maker should
not be much in advance of his age may be true enough,
but that the “ prevailing imperviousness ” to the great
truth, that law and order equally prevail in mind as in
matter, is, I think, much to be regretted. The induc
tive philosophy applied to mind will work as great a
revolution as its application to physics has done since
Bacon’s time.
I shall first consider, then, what this great truth is,
and then its application both as to what it would de
stroy, and what it would build up. The great truth
is, that there is no such thing as freedom of will.
Men formerly believed that the sun went round the
earth : they saw and felt that it did. The supposed
freedom of will is equally an illusion and delusion.
* The Study of Sociology, p. 365.
�in Mind as in Matter.
9
J. S. Mill tells us that ££ The conviction that pheno
mena have invariable laws, and follow with regularity
certain antecedent phenomena, was only acquired gra
dually, and extended itself as knowledge advanced,
from one order of phenomena to another, beginning
with those whose laws were most accessible to observa
tion. This progress has not yet attained its ultimate
point; there being still one class of phenomena
(human volitions) the subjection of which to invariable
laws is not yet recognised. ... At length we are fully
warranted in considering that law, as applied to all
phenomena within the range of human observation,
stands on an equal footing in respect to evidence with
the axioms of geometry itself.” Such, I believe, is the
conviction of all the great leaders in science—certainly
in mental science—of the present day. I need quote
only a few. Let us first go back a generation. Jona
than Edwards, in his work on the freedom of the will,
has always been considered as unanswerable, but
having proved the certainty of all events by reason, he
accepts free-will from Scripture. Now, that any
thing can be certain but at the same time contingent
is a contradiction. He says, “ Nothing comes to pass
without a cause. What is self-existent must be from
eternity, and must be unchangeable; but as to all
things that begin to be, they are not self-existent, and
therefore must have some foundation for their exist
ence without themselves.” ££ In no mind,” says
Spinoza, ££ is there an absolute or free volition ; but it
is determined to choose this or that by a cause,
which likewise has been fixed by another, and this
again by a third, and so on for ever.” He also says,
££ Human liberty, of which all boast, consists solely in
this, that man is conscious of his will, and unconscious
of the causes by which it is determined.” That is, he
is often unconscious of the motives that govern the
will, and still more so of the causes that govern his
motives—the same action that always accompanies and
B
�]o
The Reign of Law
precedes every feeling and volition always goes on un
consciously, and the conscious volitions tell him nothing
of it.
Consciousness thus deludes us into the conviction
that our volitions originate in ourselves, we being un
conscious of the train of physical forces in which they
originate; hy ourselves meaning the aggregate of our
mental powers, and if there is no impediment to their
action that is what we call “ freedom.” Locke used to
say, “ That we should not ask whether the will is free,
hut whether we are free to follow its dictates,” for this
is really all that men mean hy their boasted freedom.
A free action, as to an accomplished result, can only
mean that the agent was not externally forced to do it.
This is probably all that Lord Houghton means by
freedom, hut he confounds this freedom of action with
freedom of will. He says, as president of his section
on Social Economy (1862), “I think we shall see that
there enters into this question an element which is
almost contradictory of strict scientific principle. That
element is human liberty, the free-will of mankind.
Without that free-will no man can have individual
power of action, no man can call himself a man,” &c.
It is this confounding the freedom from physical con
straint which enables us to act in accordance with the
will, with the freedom of the will itself, which dictates
the action, that produces the confusion on the subject.
When it is said freedom of will is a fact, that we feel
we are free to do as we please, &c., all that is meant is
this freedom from the constraint that would oblige us
to do, or leave undone, one thing rather another, and
not that the mind, or will, or what we please to do, is
free or independent of causation.
Professor Mansel, however, believed differently; he
says (Prolegomena Logica, p. 152), “ In every act of
volition I am fully conscious that I can at this moment
act in either of two ways, and that, all the antecedent
phenomena being precisely the same, I may determine
�in Mind as in Matter.
11
one way to-day and another to-morrow.” That is, the
same causes (all the antecedent phenomena) may pro
duce one effect to-day and another to-morrow, and all
who believe in the freedom of the will are obliged
logically to accept this conclusion. Choice, or to “ act
in either of two ways,” implies a preference or motive
for choosing one rather than the other ; if, as is almost
impossible, the mind is equally balanced, then somephysical cause, not within the field of consciousness,
dictates the choice. That the action has no cause is
impossible. This power of choice that we feel we pos
sess is simply that, when freed from physical constraint,
we can do as we please, but what we please to do de
pends upon our nature, which, in both mind and body,
is governed by its own laws.
It is upon this freedom from external constraint by
which we can do as we please, i.e., act in accordance
with our will, that the intuition, which with the many
is stronger than reason, is founded. Kant says, “ No
beginning which occurs of itself is possible,” and yet he
believed in the freedom of the will, thinking that the
intuition, based upon a delusive experience, was more
reliable than the reason.
Dr Laycock (Mind and Brain) says, “ There is, in
fact, no more a spontaneous act of will than there is
spontaneous generation. Strictly, such an act is a
creation, and belongs only to creative power.” There
are those who think that the creative power of God is,
or may be, exercised without cause or motive, and that
He has bestowed upon man, in a minor degree, the
same power, and that this is man’s distinguishing cha
racteristic from the brutes; but if so, this dignified
attribute is only that of a madman, who alone is sup
posed to act without cause or motive.
Lewes, in his new work, “ Problems of Life and
Mind,” p. 128, also gives his testimony in favour of ne
cessity ; thus, he says, “ The moralist will be found pas
sionately arguing that the conduct of men, which is
�12
The Reign of Law
simply the expression of their impulses and habits, can
be at once altered by giving them new ideas of right
conduct. The psychologist, accustomed to consider the
mind as something apart from the organism, individual
and collective, is peculiarly liable to this error of over
looking the fact that all mental manifestations are
simply the resultants of the conditions external and in
ternal.”
Professor Huxley’s utterances are a little more ob
scure. He is represented by C. B. Upton, B.A., as
“ rejecting almost contemptuously the freedom of the
will,” and he himself says (On the Physical Basis of
Life), “ Matter and law have devoured spirit and spon
taneity. And as sure as every future grows out of
every past and present, so will the physiology of the
future gradually extend the realm of matter and law
until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling,
and with action.” But he elsewhere says (Fortnightly
Review), “ philosophers gird themselves for battle
upon the last and greatest of all speculative problems.
Does human nature possess any free volition or truly
anthropomorphic element, or is it only the cunningest
of all nature’s clocks ? Some, among whom I count
myself, think that the battle will for ever remain a
drawn one, and that, for all practical purposes, this
result is as good as anthropomorphism winning the
day.” Would not “ sometimes one and sometimes the
other,” do quite as well as a drawn battle ? The Doc
tor evidently agrees with Kant, that “ no beginning
that occurs of itself is possible he appears to be also
of opinion :—
“ That what’s unpossible can’t be,
And never, never conies to pass.”
Colman’s “ Broad Grins.”
that is, very seldom, comes to pass !
There is nothing perhaps more remarkable in the
whole history of thought, than the intellectual shuffling
of all our great thinkers, to avoid meeting this fact of
�in Mind as in Matter.
*3
“ certainty ” face to face. I hope, however, to be able
to show that for all practical purposes it is most impor
tant that “ the realm of law should be co-extensive
with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.” But
the comparative recent discovery of the persistence of
force or the conservation of energy, furnishes the
modern practical proof that law is present everywhere;
as Herbert Spencer concisely puts it, “Force can
neither come into existence nor cease to exist. Each
manifestation of force can be interpreted only as the
effect of some antecedent force ; no matter whether it
be an inorganic action, or animal movement, a thought,
or a feeling. Either this must be conceded, or else it
must be asserted that our successive states of consci
ousness are self-created.” Which, of course, they must
be if the will is free : to determine is to use force,
which can “ be interpreted only as the effect of some
antecedent force.” Mr Spencer also says, “ If such co
existences and sequences as those of biology and socio
logy, are not yet reduced to .law, the presumption is,
not that they are irreducible to law, but that their laws
elude our present means of analysis for as Buckle
shows, “ the actions of man have the same uniformity
of connection which physical events have ; and the
law or laws of these uniformities can be inductively
ascertained in the same way as the laws of the material
world.”
The causational theory of the Will has hitherto been
called Philosophical Necessity, but just exception has
been taken to this, as we know of no necessity, we
know only of certainty. Mr J. S. Mill says, “ A voli
tion is a moral effect, which follows the corresponding
moral causes as certainly and invariably as physical
effects follow their physical causes. Whether it must
do so, I acknowledge myself to be entirely ignorant, be
the phenomenon moral or physical; and I condemn,
accordingly, the word necessity as applied to either
case. All I know is, that it always does." For myself,
�14
The Reign of Law
I regard all power or cause as will-power, and every
cause and effect as at one time consciously and volun
tarily established to serve a set purpose ; this mental
relation has passed in the ages into what we call
physical laws, that is, the unconscious or automatic
mental state, but the connection is not necessary, and
might be dissolved when the purpose was no longer
served. We have some curious illustrations, however,
of the habit being continued where the purpose is no
longer served; where organs that were useful lower down
in the scale are passed on to higher grades when they
are no longer of any use,—Nature, for instance, having
got into the habit of making teeth, makes them some
times—as in the guinea pig, who sheds them before it
is born—when they are not wanted. These apparent
exceptions to design are made the most of for atheist
ical purposes.
This view of things at present, I suppose, may be
said to be exclusively my own, but I do not see why
we may not fairly infer that what takes place at present
in man on a small scale, has previously been the law
of mind in Nature. If an action serves its purpose we
repeat it, and the action becomes habitual, then struc
tural, and is transmitted and becomes what we call
instinct, and what is instinct in men and animals
becomes invariable law in nature. We know of no
mind in the universe unconnected with body, and
therefore not liable to follow the same law. As Pope
well expresses it:—
“ All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul.”
That the order of nature was originally voluntary
to serve a purpose, and that its uniformity and invari
ability is consequent upon its being the nature of all
mind connected with structure to become automatic, I
think we may regard as highly probable. The prin
cipal purpose that this invariability now serves is that
�in Mind as in Matter.
*5
it enables men and animals to regulate their actions
and to adapt their conduct to the fact that what has
been will be. Of course, if the will, or anything, were
free, this invariability would not exist, and men could
not look forward or reason at all.
This certainty is very different to the iron-bound
necessity of the mere physicist and positivist, and
leaves room for special intervention if such should be
required j and as animal instincts adapt themselves to
new conditions, so according, at least, to our present
knowledge, there appears to be many a gap in evolu
tion, and many a space in Natural Selection and the
'Origin of Species to be filled up, that do so require it.
The missing link, after all, may be found in the direct
will-power of conscious intelligence, which has been
called' special providence. There is a whole field of
mesmerism, of clairvoyance, and of animal instinct at
present altogether inexplicable on what is known of
the natural laws of mind. It is said God cannot inter
fere with his own laws, but as their permanence—the
present connection between cause and effect—depends
entirely upon its utility, I do not regard this as a rule
without exception.
But this great truth of the philosophical certainty of
human volitions is at present a mere abstraction,
existing only in the brains of mental philosophers,
thought to be impractical and even dangerous by those
who acknowledge its truth; but is it for ever thus to
lie buried, and is it altogether at present incapable of
a practical application ? Popular prejudice and clamour
may be expected for some time to be against it, but is
it not a truth that even now ought to form the basis of
our legislation? There are two writers and lecturers
who have lately taken up this subject on the orthodox
religious side: the Rev. Daniel Moore on the part of
the Christian Evidence Committee of the Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Rev. Dr Irons.
The first, one of the clearest writers and reasoners on
�16
The Reign of Law
■ the orthodox side, and the other, as it seems to me,,
with the especial gift of “ darkening counsel by words
without knowledge.” The Rev. D. Moore says, “■ Take
the theory of philosophical necessity. As an abstract
truth we accept it. As a fact of life-experience we
ignore it altogether.” {The Credibility of Mysteries,
p. 14.) Again he says, “ The will, of course, is deter
mined by motives, and so far the will is not free. But,
then, what governs the motives ? Why, the life, the
habits, the cherished states of mind and feeling, all
that enters into the liberty and spontaneity of the
personal man.” Of course, those things were as much
determined by motives as the present, so that it only
throws the difficulty, if there be one, a few stages back,
and there is evidently no more freedom or spontaneity
in one case than the other. He says, “ With the free
dom of the will, therefore, we have nothing to do.
We have only to do with the liberty of acting accord
ing to the determination of the will, — a liberty
which, as Hume observes, is universally allowed to
belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains.”
{Man's Accountableness for his Religious Belief, p. 15.)
It is evident that in theory there is no difference
between Mr Moore and ourselves,—freedom from ex
ternal constraint is all he contends for, and this is all
that people generally mean by freedom of will—the
freedom, for instance, to walk which way they choose
when their legs are not tied.
Dr Irons says {Analysis of Human Responsibility,
p. 11, in a paper read before the Victoria Institute) :
“ The position supposed in the Duke of Argyll’s
thoughtful and popular book, The. Reign of Law,—
viz., ‘ that all human actions are calculable beforehand^
may indicate a point now reached in England by the
prevailing ethics; and it may well arouse our attention,
though it would be wrong to conclude at once that the
calculable may not be contingent, a priori, as the doc
trine of chances may show.
�in Mind as in Matter.
*7
“ That this doctrine of the ‘ Reign of Law ’ is by no
means peculiar to a Scottish philosophy, will be felt
indeed by all who mark the ethical assumptions of our
best-known literature. The writings of Mr Buckle,
Mr Lewes, Mr Tyndall, Mr Mill, and others, are per
vaded by a kind of fatalistic tone, which society inclines
to accept as ‘ scientific,’ though an open denial of
responsibility is of course rarely ventured upon.
What is absolutely needed now is that men should he
compelled to say carefully and distinctly that which
they have been assuming vaguely, so that the prin
ciples may be known and judged.”
I quite agree with Dr Irons; it is quite time that
men did speak out, and I intend to do so, “ carefully
and distinctly,” and, I trust, truthfully and intelligibly.
Sir Wm. Hamilton is of opinion that the study of
philosophy, or mental science, operates to establish that
assurance of human liberty, which is necessary to a
rational belief in the dogmas of the church. Free-will
was a truth to him, mainly, if not solely, because it is
a necessary foundation for theology, i.e., for orthodox
theology.
The Rev. Baden Powell is obliged to admit (Chris
tianity without Judaism, p. 257) that 11 nothing in
geology bears the smallest resemblance to any part of
the Mosaic cosmogony, torture the interpretation to
whatever extent we may,” and we may say, with equal
truth, that “ The Reign of Law,” or the causational or
scientific view of human nature, is equally irreconcil
able with the Pauline cosmogony of the New Testa
ment, that is, with the popular or orthodox religion.
For although it brings us nearer to God, making it a
reality “ that in Him we live and move and have our
being,” yet it completely cuts up by the root the com
monly-received religious creed. Science and Religion
are here altogether irreconcileable.
Let us translate the scientific truth into more popular
language, and say exactly what it means, and then w&
�18
The Reign of Law
shall see better how to apply it. It means that no act
under the circumstances—the then present conditions
—could possibly have been other than it was. That
the same causes must always again produce the same
results, and that, consequently, if you wish to alter the
effect, you must alter the cause.
God, therefore, in placing our first parents in the
garden of Eden, must have known perfectly well what
would happen; and if He had wished things to have
happened differently, He must have altered the condi
tions. Either the “ forbidden fruit ” would not have
been forbidden, or He would have made Eve stronger,
or He would have kept out the serpent. Knowing
perfectly well what must happen, elaborately to prepare
a beautiful paradise, from which our parents were
immediately to get themselves turned out, was a mere
“ mockery, delusion, and a snare.” What could Eve
know of the consequences, which were death, never
having known death ? “ In the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die,”—this was the threat,
but it was never kept. If it had been, we should have
had either another mother, or no race of men, a thing
comparatively of little consequence. But the conse
quences to Eve were to be, not death to herself on that
day, but death and damnation to all her posterity. I
should not think it worth while to mention this libel
upon our Creator, if this alleged fact of the Eall of
Man, now looked upon by intelligent people as a mere
allegory,* were not made the foundation of a libel
against our Creator still more atrocious. But it is
* “ Immediately after the return of the Jews from captivity we
find them re-editing their literature, and prefacing their own book
•of early traditions (Genesis) with the myths of the Persian cosmo
gony. . . The first chapter of Genesis, which relates the story
of Eve’s temptation and of Adam’s fall, is a plain and unmistakeable reproduction of one of the myths or legends of this ancient
(Pagan) faith. It is a copy of a tradition, or rather of a poetic
allegory, that belonged to the earlier world. But on this narrative
all the doctrinal systems of our modern churches depend,— it is the
•common foundation upon which they have all been built. The
�in Mind as in Matter.
*9
said Eve was free, and might have done otherwise. If
the will was free, what she would do was uncertain,
■contingent, dependent upon chance, upon her sponta
neous action, and not upon any rule or law : any speci
fied action might be, or might not be, and therefore
God himself could not tell what she would do : for how
nan that be foreseen which is uncertain and may not
-come to pass ? Dr Irons, however, thinks that it would
he wrong to conclude at once that the calculable may
not be contingent. I should also say, and I think
with more reason, that it would be wrong to conclude
at once that God would have left the beginning of a
new world and such awful contingencies to mere chance
.as to how a woman would act whose will was governed
by no motive and no law. This awful gift of free-will,
if it were possible to bestow it, which I deny, as every
thing or agent must act in accordance with its nature,
—the power to use this attribute to damn herself and
all her posterity no wise and benevolent being could
possibly bestow upon another.
This supposed fact of the Eall of Man is not only
opposed to reason and common sense, and all the
higher feelings of our nature, but it is equally opposed
to all history and experience. Geology, ethnology,
anthropology, all show man to have been very gradu
ally rising from the savage to a civilized state. Pro
gress, not retrogression, has been the law. It is true
people and states die like individuals, but it is only
fall of man is the only basis on which the doctrine of the atonement
can rest. If there was no fall, the atonement is a manifest super
fluity, and it could not then have been the mission of Jesus of Na
zareth to have made one. Our knowledge of the ‘ Tree and Serpent
worship’ of the ancient heathen world proves that the Jewish nar
rative of Adam and Eve, and the forbidden fruit, is but an old
heathen fancy—a fable, and not a fact—and, being so, there is but
one opinion at which reasonable men can arrive with regard to the
doctrine of the atonement which rests so exclusively upon it, and
which, apart from it, has no possible basis.” (Tree and Serpent
Worship, by J. W. Lake.)
�20
*
The Reign of Law
that, as with individuals, new and increased life and
vigour may spring up elsewhere.
If, then, there has been no fall of man; if, also, man
could in no case have acted otherwise than he did act,
the elaborate theological system, based upon the oppo
site suppositions, must fall to the ground.
Nothing has taken place contrary to the will of Om
nipotence, and it would be a contradiction even to
suppose that it could ever have done so; for if it were
really His will nothing could prevent it.
Neither is God expected to know that which may not
take place,—that is, is contingent or free,—that is,
may happen or may not happen.
Neither have we to reconcile God as Supreme Euler,
or as governing all things, with man’s freedom: also
God does not require to be reconciled to a world which
He himself has created.
God’s justice does not require to be satisfied by the
sacrifice of an innocent person for a guilty one, nor that
one “ who knew no sin should be made sin for us, that
we might be made the righteousness of God in Him,”
—if any one knows what this means, or how it is
possible.
God is not wroth with that which He has ordained,
and which could not have been otherwise ; neither are
His anger and vengeance to be feared, for they would
be unjust.
Atonement is not required, and vicarious atonement
is unjust. Neither are we required to believe that an
infinitely benevolent God is the creator of hell.
Those things, which are palpable contradictions to all
who dare to use their reason, are, in the Christian
scheme, only mysteries to be cleared up in another
world. This will be evident if we proceed to examine
what the orthodox creed requires us to believe about
them.
Justification by faith is the fundamental doctrine of
the Church; belief in the atonement—that Christ’s
�in Mind as in Matter.
21
-death was necessary as a satisfaction of God’s offended
justice. But let me, as far as possible, use the words
of the creeds themselves, lest I be accused of miscon
ception and misrepresentation. The Athanasian Creed,
which the English Church has recently resolved to
retain, as truly and clearly expressing the meaning of
Scripture, says, among other things—
“ Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is
necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.
“ Which faith, except every one do keep whole and
undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
“ The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor
created, but begotten (and therefore, I suppose, began
to be, and yet)
“ The whole three persons are co-eternal together,
and co-equal. He therefore that will be saved must
thus think of the Trinity, . . . who suffered for our
salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day
from the dead.
“ He ascended into heaven, He sitteth on the right
hand of the Father, God Almighty; from whence He
shall come to judge the quick and the dead (His dis
ciples saw Him taken up, bodily into heaven; and a
cloud received Him out of their sight, and afterwards
St Stephen, looking up steadfastly into heaven, saw
the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand
of God).
“ At whose coming all men shall rise again with
their bodies, and shall give account of their own work.
(The hour is coming, Jesus said, when they that are
in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man,
and they that hear shall live).
“ And they that have done good shall go into life
■everlasting; and they that have done evil into ever
lasting fire.
“ This is the Catholic faith : which, except a man
believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.
“ Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the
Holy Ghost.
�'ll
The Reign of Law
“ As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be, world without end. Amen.”
Perhaps no single error has produced more misery
in the world than the supposition that a man is “free”
to believe what he pleases. It is this that lighted the
fires of the Inquisition ■ and yet a man can only believe
what appears to him to be true j he could not believe
black to be white, even although he was to be damned
for not doing so ; and it is the same of all minor
degrees of belief. We can only believe what is credible,
and love what is loveable. It is true a man may play
the hypocrite, and profess to believe what it is made to
appear to be his own interest to believe ; he may de
ceive himself; he may hide the truth by refusing to
examine, and to this extent only is belief in his
own power. And yet salvation depends upon faith,
and in the early days of the Church “ in every prison
the crucifix and the rack stood side by side,” and good
men in their “ sweet reasonableness ” burnt their fel
low-men alive by a slow fire, to give them more time
to believe what appeared to them to be incredible, and
to repent that they had not done so. “That the
Church of Rome,” Lecky tells us, “ has shed more inno
centblood than any other institution that has everexisted
among mankind, will be questioned by no Protestant
who has a competent knowledge of history. . . . The
victims who died for heresy were not, like those who
died for witchcraft, solitary and doting old women, but
were usually men in the midst of active life, and often
in the first flush of active enthusiasm, and those who
loved them best were firmly convinced that their
agonies upon earth were but the prelude of eternal
agonies hereafter.”
“ What,” said St Augustine, “ is more deadly to the
soul than the liberty of error,” that is, the liberty
which we must all take, whether we will or no, of be
lieving what appears to us to be true. The error was
in the system and not in the persecutions which were
�in Mind as in Matter.
^3
only its logical and humane result, for what was the
burning here to an eternal burning. Consequently,
when Protestants got the upper hand, they did just the
same things ; Catholics are tortured and hung, and as
Lecky shows us, “ the Presbyterians, through a long suc
cession of reigns, were imprisoned, branded, mutilated,
scourged, and exposed in the pillory/’
These efforts to make men profess a religion they
could not believe, were of course attended with the
fruits that might have been expected. The fathers laid
down the distinct proposition, that pious frauds were
justifiable and even laudable, till the sense of truth
and the love of truth were completely obliterated, so
far at least as their influence extended. God was re
presented as He is now in the Athanasian Creed, as
inflicting eternal punishment for religious error; as
“ confining his affection to a small section of his crea
tures, and inflicting upon all others the most horrible and
eternal suffering j ” the fathers felt with St Augustine
that “ the end of religion is to become like the object
of worship,” and, as Lecky shows, “ the sense of divine
goodness being thus destroyed, the whole fabric of
natural religion crumbled in the dust.”
But it is not he that believeth, but he only that helieveth and is baptized that shall be saved, consequently
the belief of the Church is, that infants that have not
been baptized cannot be saved, but “ be punished, as
St Pulgentius says, by the eternal torture of undying
fire; for, although they have committed no sin by
their own will, they have, nevertheless drawn unto
them the condemnation of original sin, by their carnal
conception and nativity.” As some other equally
pious saint expressed it, “ he doubted not there ■were
infants not a span long crawling about the floor of hell.”
The Gorham controversy with the late Bishop of Exeter
must remind us that Baptismal Regeneration, or the
necessity for infant baptism, is still the doctrine of the
Church of England. St Thomas Aquinas suggested
the possibility of the infant being saved who died
�.24
The Reign of Law
within the womb. “ God,” he said, “ may have ways
of saving it for ought we know,” a heresy, for which,
doubtless, in his time, he would have been burned if
he had not been a saint. In the English Church,
Chillingworth and Jeremy Taylor have also thought it
possible infants might be saved. The opposite, how
ever, has generally been deemed a mere truism, con
sequent on original sin and transmitted guilt.
Tertullian was of opinion that the Almighty can
never pardon an actor, who, in defiance of the evan
gelical assertion, endeavours, by high-heeled boots, to
add a cubit to his stature (De Spectaculis, cap. 23). But
as the late Professor Mansel and other eminent theolo
gians believe in “ complete fore-knowledge co-existing
with human freedom,” or, in other words, that God has
some means of foreseeing that which is contingent, or
may happen, or may not happen, let us hope that he
may find some way even of saving poor actors.
The Scotch Calvinists, following Jonathan Edwards,
are more logical than the Anglicans. They are quite
aware that what has been foreknown must come to
pass, with as much certainty as if it had already hap
pened. They, therefore, see clearly, that as God is
Almighty, and has created all things with a full know
ledge of all that would take place, that what is fore
known must have been also foreordained.
The Westminster Confession of Eaith, upon which
the Scotch creed is based, tells us here :—
“ By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his
glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto
everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting
death.
“ These angels and men, thus predestinated and
foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably de
signed ; and their number is so certain and definite,
that it cannot be either increased or diminished.
“ Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectu
ally called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but
the elect only.
�in Mind as in Matter.
25
“ The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according
to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby
he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for
the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to
pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath
for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”
“ To the praise of his glorious justice,” is not meant
ironically, as may be seen from the sermon of Jonathan
Edwards “ On the justice of God in the damnation of
sinners,” and from the diary of Mr Carey, which tells
us of the “pleasure ” and “ sweetness ” he had expe
rienced in reading that sermon. We are told some
must be saved, others cannot, still it is their own fault.
There we have free-will and necessity, and as all things
seem to have been fixed beforehand, it does not seem
to matter much, if, as Huxley says, it should always be
a drawn battle between them !
We must not suppose that this belief has become
obsolete as some would have us believe. The Rev.
Fergus Ferguson, of Dalkeith, in May 1871, was
brought to book by the U. P. Church, when, among
others, the following proposition was submitted to
him :—
“ That notwithstanding the inability of the will
through sin, as taught in our Confession, unbelievers
are fully answerable for their rejection of the offer of
salvation which the gospel makes to them.”
Or, as I lately heard it put in a good evangelical
-discourse in an English Church, “We are all dead in
trespasses and sins, with literally no more power to
help ourselves than a dead man, yet, if we would but
get up and go to Christ, he would save us.”
Mr Ferguson intimated his unqualified assent to the
proposition submitted to him, and Dr Cairns “ offered
thanks to God for the harmonious and happy result.”
Thus, here also as in the Garden of Eden, we have
another “ mockery, delusion, and a snare.”
We are called upon to believe, that God, “for the
�26
The Reign of Law
manifestation of His glory,” and “ for the glory of His
sovereign power over His creatures,” and “ to the praise
of His glorious justice,” doomed the great majority of
mankind from eternity to damnation, and then sent
His Son into the world to mock them with the false
promise of redemption He had previously decreed for
them should never be. Here we have the logical
outcome of the “ drawn battle ” between free-will and
necessity, or rather of accepting both doctrines, but is
there any one who really believes it, whatever they
may profess ? If any one tells me that I must believe
it, and “ without apology,” that I shall be damned if
I don’t, all I can say is, I’ll be damned if I do.
Surely, as Lord Bacon says, “It were*better to have
no opinion of G-od at all, than such an opinion as is
unworthy of Him.”
And yet this is the religion which a large party think
it necessary to have taught at the public expense in
our public schools. For instance in the New Board
Schools in Scotland, supported by a public rate, on
December 8th, 1873, a motion by Dr Buchanan, that
instruction in the Bible and Catechism should be given,
was carried by nine votes to six. The Catechism is
the Shorter Catechism, and contains all the above
soothing and salutary doctrine.
Neither are we much behind this in England. The
chairman of the London School Board, Mr Charles
Heed, M.P., speaking recently at the annual soiree of
the Leeds Young Men’s Christian Association, says he
does not see “ how it is possible to separate entirely
the secular and religious.” “ How, for instance, he
says, could I teach my child geology without referring
to Him who, having made all things, pronounced them
good ? How could I teach my child astronomy without
referring to Him of whom the Psalmist says, £ When
I consider Thy Heavens, the work of Thy hands, and
the moon and the stars which Thou hast created?’ I
cannot understand why it should be necessary, even if
�in Mind as in Matter.
it were possible, that these things which are so closely
and inseparably united should be disunited by any act
of man in the instruction of those who are under his
care.”
But surely Mr Reed would not teach geology and
astronomy from the old Jewish Traditions. He must
know that “ nothing in geology bears the smallest
resemblance to any part of the Mosaic Cosmogony,
and the astronomy which makes our little world the
centre of the universe, is worse than the geology.
“ Pronounced them good,”—good for what 1 If Adam
was to be immediately turned out of paradise, the
earth was to be cursed for his sake, and he and his
posterity damned from all eternity to all eternity, I can
not see the good of this, neither could the children, I
should think.
“ A salvation ordained before the foundation of the
world ” means, also, according to the popular creed, a
damnation equally ordained, and that, too, for the great
majority, and yet Diderot is accused of blasphemy for
saying, “ il n’y a point de bon pere qui voulut resembler
a notre Pere celeste.” And this creed that makes evil
absolute, and God the ordainer of it, is to be taught in
the common schools and at the public expense. No
doubt all is good, if men will but see things rightly.
The largest amount of enjoyment possible for all God’s
creatures is provided ; the greatest happiness of the
greatest number is secured. To the Necessitarian good
and evil are purely subjective, the mere record of our
own pleasures and pains—the pains the stimulant to,
and the guardian of, the pleasures.
I recollect, when a young man, being very much
impressed by John Foster’s Essay “ On some of the
Causes by which Evangelical Religion has been
rendered unacceptable to persons of cultivated taste.”
Polite literature was proclaimed to be hostile to that
religion, and Pope’s Essay on Man, which I had
for years carried about with me in my pocket, was
�28
The Reign of Law
peculiarly anti-Christian. I am not now surprised at
the distaste, as it is, and as it was by Foster stated to
be, opposed to the natural man, that is, to all the
higher instincts of our nature. A man must indeed
be born again to accept it. Vicarious suffering is
opposed to the moral sense, and every gentleman would
at once object to allow another to suffer for his sins,
and we cannot be surprised, therefore, at the exclama
tion and commentary of the old Scotchwoman, who,
bedridden, and living on the borders of a large parish,
had never before been visited by a parson, and had the
mysteries of redemption explained to her. When she
was told how Christ was crucified, not for any fault of
his, but to save sinners, that is, the few who were of the
elect, she replied, “ Eh, Sir ! but it is so far off, and so
long sin’ that we’ll e’en hope it is not true.” *
The Edinburgh Review, October 1873, accuses Dr
Strauss of “ ignorant blasphemy or hypocritical sarcasm”
for professing to understand these things literally, and
says that he had better go to school once more and
learn “what that really is which he blasphemes,
and what those precious truths really are which lie
enshrined in ‘ Oriental Metaphor,’ and mediaeval
•dogma.” . . . “What,” the writer asks, “has
been discovered, that should really justify any honest
* If the reader wishes to see the opposite view to this well put,
let him read the article in the January Contemporary .Review,
“ Motives to Righteousness from an Evangelical Point of View,”
by the Rev. F. R. Wynne. Of course, the elect regard the dam
nation, from which they are exempt, very differently, but how
any one can be so joyous and grateful over his own salvation, when
only one, much more the great majority, were left to an eternity
of misery, I cannot understand, and therefore cannot appreciate.
It appears to me to be the very essence of selfishness. The Evan
gelical creed is only possible by our completely ignoring the fact
that God is the author and disposer of all things—the evil (as it is
called) as well as the good. If it is to be regarded as a fight
between God and the Devil, in which the devil, in spite of all
God’s efforts, gets by far the best of it, then it is just possible to
understand the thankfulness and the enthusiasm of the reverend
gentleman that “a crown of glory” has been reserved for him
through his Saviour’s merits. Still we might wonder why it should
�in Mind as in Matter.
man in breaking -with the church as it is presented
in England ? ” I think we might ask him that ques
tion, and also whether the English Church admits, as
he affirms, that its “precious truths lie enshrined,
in Oriental Metaphor and mediaeval dogma,” or
whether it is yet willing to throw over the Old Testa
ment altogether, which he recommends. “We are
not Jews,” he says, “and there is no reason in the
world why we should be weighted with this burden of
understanding, and defending at all risks, the Jewish.
Scriptures.” Certainly there is increasing difficulty in
“ reconciling” the Old Testament either with science or
the modern conscience, but what becomes of the fall of
man and the whole scheme of redemption if we give it
up ? He also says, “ Is it right, is it truthful, is it any
longer possible in the face of all that is now known
upon the subject, to pretend that legendary matter has
not intruded itself into the New Testament, as well as
into the Old.” I should think not, but will the church
admit as much ? Dr Strauss is accused of having been
“so long absent from his place in church that he is
unaware of the great change which has come over the
minds of our ‘ pious folk ’ during the last twenty years.”
The Doctor is evidently unacquainted with the new
truth dug out of “ Oriental Metaphor and mediaeval"
dogma,” but, no doubt, great progress has been made
be laid up for him in particular, as he admits it was from no merit,
on his part. Mr Wynne says, “ What can bring hope for time and
eternity to the saddened heart, what can touch it with the sense
of God’s loving-kindness, like the simple faith that God forgives
all sin the moment the sinner takes refuge in Jesus Christ ? ” But
what of those who are left out and who do not take refuge ? And
how are we to reconcile God’s loving-kindness with his omnipotence
if any are left out ? Surely the fact that all punishment is for our
good, to warn us from evil and to effect our reformation, and that
forgiveness, therefore, would be an injury, and to show this direct
connection between sin and suffering, would be far higher and
more salutary doctrine. I do not doubt, however, all that is said
of the effect of Evangelical teaching among the lower class of'
minds, for I have often witnessed it, but it is not “the pure and
noble feeling that is fanned into a flame,” but the selfish fear of
punishment or hope of reward—the fires of hell or the crown of ’
glory. ”
t
�jo
The Reign of Law
in reconciling the spirit of the age to theological
doctrines. “ They may not,” as the writer in the
Edinburgh says, “ hitherto have been quite rightly
explained, they may not yet have been wholly divested
of their graceful drapery of fancy.”
Principal Tulloch, in an article in this month’s
Contemporary Review (January 3, 1874), entitled
“ Dogmatic Extremes,” seems to De little less angry
with Mr James Mill than the Edinburgh is with
Strauss. He complains of a “passionate and conten
tious dogmatism on the side of unbelief,” that literary
and philosophic unbelievers do not do justice to
Christian dogmas. They state them “ in their harshest
and most vulgar form,” instead of looking at them from
the spiritually appreciative point of view. J. S. Mill,
for instance, reports his father as speaking with great
moral indignation of “ a being who would make a hell,
who would create the human race with the in fallible
fore-knowledge, and, therefore, with the intention, that
the great majority of them were to be consigned to
horrible and everlasting torment.” “ Surely we are
■entitled,” he says, “ in the case of such men as James
Mill, to look for some wider thoughtfulness and power of
discrimination than such a passage implies.” Principal
Tulloch tells us that “ all creeds and confessions, from
the apostles downwards, are nothing else than men’s
thoughts about the Christian religion. . . . Tn so
far, as it is supposed possible or right to bind men’s
faith in the present age absolutely to the form of
Christian thought of the seventeenth century, or the
fourth century—in so far such a church is opposing
itself to an inevitable law of human life and history. .
. . . Creed subscription, in so far as it interferes
with this freedom, is a wrong at once to the people and
the clergy. . . . The question which is really
interesting and pressing is not how to get outside of
the church, but how to enlarge and make room inside
it for varieties of Christian intelligence and culture.
. . . To call in (with our scientific dogmatists) the
•
�in Mind as in Matter.
31
"Coarser conceptions of popular religion, those forms of
thought as to heaven or hell, or any other aspect of the
spiritual world, to which the religious mind naturally
falls, from sheer inability in most cases to preserve any
ideal of thought—to call in such coarser types of the
religious imagination as the normal dogmas of Chris
tianity, entering into its very life and substance, is as
poor and unworthy a device of controversy as was ever
attempted. Popular Christianity is no product of
religious thought. It is a mere accretion of religious
tradition. And “ the whole function of thought is to
purify and idealize inherited traditions here as in
every other region of knowledge.”
Consequently, any allusion to “ the naughty place ”
and its occupants is never made now in the week
days; it is thought coarse and vulgar, and only a
“ purified and idealized ” version of it is hinted at
on Sundays, while devils “with darkness, fire, and
chains” are only kept to frighten children within
our common schools, and without which religious
instruction, it is thought, it would never do to trust
them with secular knowledge.
The fact is, the tendency of a large party in the
church is to judge al] doctrines by their intuitive
sense of right, and when Bible doctrines do not accord,
they re-translate them to make them fit. Still admitting
to the full the usefulness of the church and the pre
sent necessity for its continued existence, the question
will recur to every honest man, as it has done to Dr
Strauss and to others, Are we Christians ? The
ethics of the New Testament we must reject as not
based on science, as we have already done the physics
of the Old, and the question is, Is it true, as a critic
affirms, that the religion which calls itself revealed,
contains, in the way of what is good, nothing which is
not the incoherent and ill-digested residue of the
wisdom of the ancients ? Still it is affirmed, and very
generally believed, that the difference between the
Caucasian and the inferior races of men is entirely
�32
The Reign of Law.
owing to Christianity, as also is the whole difference
between civilization and barbarism. Our progress, it
is said, is not owing to science and induction, but to
the Christian religion.
The tendency of the age, of the Broad Church party
especially, is not now to insist on dogma, but to fall
back on the morality of the New Testament. But the
Rev. J. M. Capes says that even “ The Sermon on the
Mount altogether must be interpreted by what people
popularly call common sense, or else it becomes imprac
ticable or even mischievous, and what is common sense
but the application of the test of general utility ?
{Contemporary, December 1873).
Barrington {On the Statutes, p. 461) proves the
superiority of Englishmen, because, as he says, more
men were hanged in England in one year than in
Erance in seven, and writers on the “Evidences” show
that the discrepancies and contradictions in the gospels
prove their inspiration a.nd genuineness, and Butler isof opinion that even the doubting about religion
implies that it may be true; but if the creed of either
the Catholic or Protestant Churches is really to be
found in Scripture, then we must agree with Matthew
Arnold “that the more we convince ourselves of the
liability of the New Testament writers to mistake, the
more we really bring out the greatness and worth of
the New Testament. . . . That Jesus himself may, at
the same time have had quite other notions as to what
he was doing and intending .... That he was far
above the heads of his reporters, still farther above the
head of our popular theology, which has added its own
misunderstanding of the reporters to the reporters’ mis
understanding of Jesus.” {Literature and Dogma, pp.
149, 150, 160).
With these admissions, which are becoming more
common every day, much may yet be made of the
Bible by way of popular instruction, and which may
help to carry us on to the general acceptance of the
Reign of Law in Mind as in Matter.
�
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"The reign of law" in mind as in matter, and its bearing upon Christian dogma and moral responsibility. Part I
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Conway Tracts
Dogma
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Responsibility
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Text
IN MIND AS IN MATTER
AND ITS
BEARING UPON CHRISTIAN DOGMA AND MORAL
RESPONSIBILITY.”
PART II.
THE TRUE MEANING OF RESPONSIBILITY.
BY
CHARLES
BRAY,
AUTHOR OF “A MANUAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, OR SCIENCE OILMAN,” “MODERN
PROTESTANTISM,” “ILLUSION AND DELUSION,” &C.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
�J
�THE
REIGN OF LAW IN MIND AS IN MATTER
Part
IL
THE TRUE MEANING OF RESPONSIBILITY.
‘ ‘ In the eternal sequence we take the consequence.” —H. G. A.
UT it is said, if men are not free, if they must act
in accordance with the laws of their being, if no
act could therefore have been otherwise than it was,
what becomes of virtue, what of morality ?
If a man could not have done otherwise, where was
the virtue ?
This doctrine of necessity or certainty, it is alleged,
is “ fatal to every germ of morality.”
For what, if it is true, becomes of Responsibility?
You cannot, it is said, properly or consistently use
either praise or blame, reward or punishment, if a man
is not free. The opposite, as I shall show, is really
the case.
Let me answer these questions as shortly as I have
put them. Virtue is not that which is free, but that
which is for the good of mankind, for the greatest hap
piness of all God’s creatures. Our goodness or virtue,
it is said, if necessary or dependent upon our nature, is
no goodness at all; but the goodness of God, which
also is dependent upon his nature, and could not be
otherwise, is the highest goodness of all. Man is good,
because he might, it is supposed, be otherwise; God is
B
�4
The Reign of Law
good, because he could not be otherwise. “ The good
ness of the nature of the Supreme, we are told, is neces
sary goodness, yet it is voluntary,” that is, in accordance
with the will, but which will is governed by the nature.
Still I do not suppose that if a man’s nature and
training were such that he could not do a mean thing,
he would be thought the worse of on that account.
Morality concerns the relation of man to his fellows,
—it comprises the laws and regulations by which men
can live together most happily, and the more they can
be made binding upon all, and not free, the better for all.
Responsibility only means that we must always
take the natural and necessary consequences of our
actions, whether such actions are free or not.
Responsibility, or accountability, in the ordinary
acceptance of the term, means—and this is the meaning
usually thought to be essential to virtue and morality—
that it will be just to make people suffer as much as they
have made others suffer; it means retribution, retalia
tion, and revenge. Some one has done wrong, some one
must make atonement—that is, suffer for it; it does
not much matter who it is, so that some one suffers,
and particularly since it is supposed that the wrath of
God has been appeased by an arbitrary substitute of the
innocent for the guilty. This kind of responsibility
or retribution is not only unjust, but useless.
External things or objects are moved by what we
call Force; the mind is moved by motive, which is
mental force; but equally in each case the strongest
force prevails. “ It may be, or it may not be,” in any
supposed two or more courses—not because this action
is free or contingent, but according as one or other force
or motive shall become the strongest and prevail. The
strongest force always does prevail, and any uncertainty
we may feel is only consequent on our want of know
ledge. In'Physics we know the force must always be
made proportionate to the end we wish to_attain; in
�in Mind as in Matter.
5
Mind this is overlooked, or left to what is called the
Will; hut it is equally true. This fact is overlooked
both by the Fatalists and by those who believe in the
freedom of the will. The first hold that things come
to pass in spite of our efforts; the latter, that they are
not necessarily dependent upon them. The will is
governed by motive, and as the strongest always neces
sarily prevails, what we have to do is to increase the
strength of the motive or moving power in the direction
we wish to attain. The Eev. Daniel Moore speaks of
“ his consciousness as prompting him to put forth an
act of spontaneous volition, and thus proving the moral
agent free.” “The force of instinct,” he says, “is
stronger than the conclusion of logic.” Certainly it
must be so in this case, or logic would say an act lost
its spontaneity just in proportion as it was prompted or
influenced. Praise and blame, reward and punishment,
are the ordinary means taken to strengthen motives.
If the will were free—that is, capable of acting against
motives, or if it acted spontaneously—these meaijs
would be useless and unavailing.
It is not till an action is passed that our power over
it ceases ; then God himself could not prevent it. We
may always say we can; never that we could. The
motive may have been good or bad, but whichever it
was, the strongest must have prevailed, and the action
could not thus have been different to what it was.
Eesponsibility can have relation to the future only—
the past is past. Punishment for an act that could not
have been otherwise would be unjust, and as the act is
past it would be useless.
Punishment, therefore, that has reference to the
future, and that has for its object the good of the
sufferer, or of the community of which he is a member,
alone can be just and useful.
As every act was necessary, and could not have been
otherwise, there is no such thing as sin, as an offence
against God—only vice and error.
�6
The Reign of Law
All vice and error must be to the detriment of the
person erring, and punishment that prevents it in
future must be for his good.
To pray, therefore, to be delivered from such pm-iishment—that is, for the forgiveness of sin—is praying
for that which would injure us rather than benefit.
Let us take an illustration. A schoolboy may have
been told that “we should not leave till to-morrow
what we can do to-day,” so he eats all his plumcake
before he goes to bed. He takes the natural conse
quences, and is ill the next day, and the master is very
angry; but the boy says very truly, “Please, sir, I
could not help it.” “ I know you could not, my dear
boy,” says the master, “ but when you have had a black
draft and a little birch added to your present intestinal
malaise, it will enable you to help it for the future,
and will teach you also that there is no rule without
an exception.”
Responsibility means that we must take the natural
and necessary consequences of our actions—of the
“ eternal sequence we take the consequence,” and which
natural consequence may be added to by others to any
extent, with the object of producing in the future one
line of conduct rather than another; but it does not
mean that a person may be justly made to suffer for
any action that is past.
Responsibility or accountability also includes that if
a person has done another an injury, he owes him all
the compensation in his power.
Dr Irons says :—“ To incur the consequences of our
actions, and feel that it ought to &e so—to be subject to
a high law, and feel it to be right, this is moral
responsibility” (“Analysis of Human Responsibility,”
p. 25). I accept this definition entirely, but in a dif
ferent sense to that accorded to it by Dr Irons. We
accept the consequences of our actions, and feel that
“ we ought to do so,” and therefore “ that it is right,”
because it is by its consequences that a reasonable man
�in Mind as in Matter.
7
guides his conduct; they govern his motives, and the
motives govern the will. But this is on the supposi
tion that the consequences of our actions will be always
the same in like circumstances—that the causes, under
like conditions, will always produce the same effects,
which could not be the case if the will were free, and
obeyed no law. It is this feeling, this intuitive
perception of consequences, that people call feeling
accountable —“the great and awful fact of human
responsibility.” This feeling is transmitted, or becomes
hereditary, and then it is called Conscience, and gives
the sense of “ ought.”
Dr Irons also says:—“ It is a fact of our nature that
wrong-doing, such as stirs our own disapproval, is
haunted by the belief of retribution.” No doubt of it.
In the early ages this retribution or revenge was the
■only law, and the fear of it was often the only thing
that kept people from doing wrong, and this fear has
been transmitted, and now haunts us; but that is no
reason why revenge, or retributive justice, as it is
called, is right. A sense of duty and responsibility—
that is, of what is due to our own sense of right, and
-of the consequences to ourselves and others—still
influences, and ought to influence, our conduct; but it
■cannot be otherwise than that the strongest motive
must prevail, and when the action it dictates is past,
it could not have been otherwise. It may have been
very well for a young world, when man had to fight
his way up from the lower animals, to entertain the
■delusion that things might have been otherwise, but
we require now an entire reconstruction of the accepted
modes of thought, which shall not only accept the inevi
table in the past, but conscience must cease to blame us
or others for what must have happened exactly as it
did happen.
The great question, as we are told, is, whether the
universe is governed and arranged on rational or nonrational principles ? and this question is asked by those
�8
The Reign of Law
to whom free will is a necessary article in their creed.
Certainly, if the mind or will obeys no law, then theuniverse must be governed on non-rational principles,
for reason is based upon certainty, as opposed to con
tingency, in the order of nature. Science alone gives
prevision, necessary to the guidance and regulation of
action.
If prayer had the efficacy which is ordinarily
assigned to it, it would make this “ order of nature ”
impossible, there would be a constant breach in the
chain of cause and effect, and prevision and the exer
cise of reason, which is based upon unbroken law and
certainty, could not exist. “ Requests for a particular
adjustment of the weather,” says the Rev. W. Knight,
“ are irrelevant, unless the petitioner believes that the
prayer he offers may co-operate to the production of
the effect.” The same must be said of all prayers;
they are efficacious only so far as they tend to answer
themselves, and they themselves produce the effect
desired. But wherever prayer is sincere, and not
gabbled over by rote in our public service, this is
generally the case. We are governed or moved by
motive, and sincere prayer is the greatest possible
strengthener of motive. Prayer thus acts through
motive upon man, and through man upon matter and
the universe. But in proportion as we recognise the
Reign of Law, and we become conscious that there is
a natural way by which all we desire may be brought
about, prayer will no longer take the form of asking
for what we can and ought to do for ourselves, but of
simple aspiration and devotion to that unity of which
we all form a part.
We feel that we ought to take the consequences of
our actions, and that it is right we should do so,
because we have no other rule to discriminate between
right and wrong. It is not in actions themselves, or
in the motives that dictate them—being all equally
necessary—that the right or wrong consists, but in.
�in Mind as in Matter.
9
their consequences to ourselves or others. If, as a rule,
the actions are attended with pain, they are wrong; if
with pleasure, they are right. This is God’s simple
and intelligible revelation to all the world alike. The
floral Governor carries on his moral government, not
by calling people to account ages after, when the record
of every idle word would be rather long and prosy even
in eternity, but by immediate intervention—by the
direct punishment or reward or pain or pleasure attend
ing their actions.
Jeremy Bentham says:—“No man ever had, can, or
could have, a motive different to the pursuit of pleasure
or the avoidance of pain.” This has not been generally
accepted, because it has not been understood. It has
been supposed to refer only to physical or bodily pains,
and not mental. We must discriminate also between
pleasure and what are usually called pleasures. The
stern delight of fortitude would hardly be called a “plea
sure;” still delight is a highly pleasurable sensation.
Men have certain impulses to action to attain certain
ends. When these ends are legitimately attained,
.pleasure attends the action; when the ends are not
attained, then there is pain. It is these ends that are
pursued, not pleasure or pain, but pleasure or pain
attending for our guidance and compulsion. The
.aggregate of these pleasures we call happiness—of the
pains, which are the exception, misery.
These impulses, which we call propensities and senti
ments, have various objects, and are more simple and
•calculable than is generally supposed. They are self
protecting, self-regarding, social, moral, and aesthetic.
They are all connected with the brain, and the im
pulses to action are ordinarily strong in proportion to
the size of the parts of the brain with which they are
connected, the dynamical effect being dependent upon
statical conditions in mind as in matter. The impulse to
action is pleasurable, becoming painful if not gratified.
Appetite is slightly pleasurable, hunger is painful, and
�io
The Reign of Law
the pleasure of eating is in proportion to the appetite
or hunger. All the other feelings have their appetites,
hunger, and gratification, with the pleasures and pains
attending them. The object of the intellect, the action
of which is very little pleasurable in itself, is the guid
ance of these feelings towards their proper ends, and
involves the element of choice in the selection of means.
Locke says, “The will is the last dictate of the under
standing,” but it is not the dictate of the understanding
itself, but of the impulses it may set in motion. It is
the feelings, not the intellect, that ordinarily govern
the will. Bentham’s “ pursuit of pleasure or avoidance
of pain” means the pleasures or pains attending the
action of all our mental faculties. If the propensities
predominate in a character, then the pleasures are only
of an animal nature ; if the moral feelings predominate,
then our pleasures are as intimately connected with the
interests of others as -with our own ; and these feelings
may be so trained and strengthened as to give the in
terests of others a preference over our own (i.e., we may
have more pleasure in promoting the interests of others
than our own). It is these moral feelings that make the
principal distinction between men and other animals,
subordinating individual interests to that of the com
munity. They enable men to combine and co-operate;
upon which their principal strength depends. They
probably do not so much differ in kind from those of
other animals as in degree. They are dependent upon
parts of the brain, which in animals are either absent
or merely rudimentary. The pains of conscience are
often stronger than any mere physical pains, and the
pain attending the breach of his word and the outrage
to all his highest feeling must have been greater to
Regulus than the fear of any physical pain, or other
consequences to which he could be subjected by his
enemies. Of course a man without these higher feel
ings would have sneaked away—there was no free-will
in the matter. But we do not admire Regulus the less,.
�in Mind as in Matter.
11
though few of us perhaps would be able to follow his
example. The habitual exercise of the highest, or un
selfish feelings as they are called, regardless of imme
diate consequences, produces the highest happiness,
although it may sometimes lead, as in Regulus’s case,
to the barrel of spikes; and this is only to be attained,
not by free-will, but by careful training and exercise.
It is exercise that increases structure, and the strength
of the feeling, and its habitual or intuitive action, de
pends upon its size. We love that which is loveable,
and hate that which is hateful; and if we are to love
our neighbour he must make himself loveable, or love
falls to the colder level of duty. The poor toad, not
withstanding the jewel in its head, aesthetically is not
beantiful, and it has few friends or admirers, and few
find out its virtues, and the blame that belongs to
others is laid upon its poor ugly back. We never in
quire if the toad made itself, or if it was its own free
will to be ugly. It is precisely the same with every
thing else—that which gives us pleasure we love, and
that which gives us pain we hate, with small reference
to whether this pain or pleasure was voluntarily given
to us or not. It is the same with all consequences ; as
they are required for the guidance of our actions, they
follow just the same, whether our actions are voluntary
or not. Whether we burn ourselves by accident or
voluntarily, the pain is just the same—the object of
the pain being to keep us out of the fire. This is true
responsibility or accountability which governs the will,
which is not free—no freedom fortunately being allowed
to interfere with God’s purposes in creation.
We are told that “no cogent reason has yet been
advanced why men should not follow their, own wicked
impulses, as well as others follow their virtuous ones.”
The best of all reasons I think has been assigned—
viz., that painful consequences attend the vicious im
pulses, and pleasure the virtuous ones; so that unless
a man prefers pain to pleasure, he has the strongest of
�12
The Reign of Law
all possible motives for good conduct. We indefinitely
increase the pains as additional motives, and where no
punishment is deterrent, as in some exceptional cases,
restraint, or even capital punishment, is justly re
sorted to.
The writer in the Edinburgh, to whom we have be
fore alluded, says : “ If these anti-christian and atheistic
sentiments should gain the wide acceptance which Dr
Strauss and his school anticipate for them, what is to
prevent a reign of universal chaos ? What is to stave
off the utter shipwreck of human society ? What hope
can survive for man when every redeeming ideal is de
stroyed; when blind destiny is enthroned in the seat
of God; and when the universe is come to be regarded
by all mankind as a dead machine, whose social law is,
that
‘ He may get who has the power,
And he may keep who can. ”
That universal anarchy will then begin, and that the
unchained passions of a human animal, devoid of the
usual animal instincts of restraint, will plunge both
himself and the social fabric he has for ages been
erecting into ruin, no one in his senses can reasonably
doubt. And such is the consummation for which
writers like these are diligently working. Such is the
chaos into which a merely destructive criticism, and a
‘ positive ’ science which, in the domain of religion, is
purely negative, and is therefore falsely so called, are
hurrying the deluded votaries of a godless secularism.”
This “ godless secularism,” as if there were any part of
the creation from which God could be excluded, would
appear to point clearly to the authorship of this article,
as none but a person whose “ calling ” was supposed to
be in danger could write like this, except it were the
American newspapers on the eve of a presidential elec
tion. The New York Herald has also its pious as well
as its political side. In commenting lately upon the
death of a rather notorious character, it says : “He
�in Mind as in Matter.
J3
•calmly fell asleep without a struggle, when, no doubt,
angels accompanied his soul to the peaceful shores of
eternity, there to dwell with his Maker for ever.” The
Edinburgh used to be considered an organ of advanced
liberalism, but think of being able to find a writer in
the present day who evidently knows something of
science, who believes that social order and progress de
pend upon a creed, and such a creed !
li It is the business of morality or moral science,”
says Herbert Spencer, “to deduce, from the laws of life
and the conditions of existence, what kinds of actions
necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds
to produce unhappiness; and having done this, its de
ductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct.”
Morality relates, notwithstanding the high-flown lan
guage usually used with respect to it, simply to the
laws and regulations by which men may live together
in the most happy manner possible—the laws, in fact,
■of their wellbeing—and as it is the “law” of their
nature to seek their happiness or wellbeing, the interests
of morality are fortunately sufficiently assured. Of
-course this will be called a “ godless secularism,” and it
is said that these natural motives will be very much
.strengthened if we add to them the rewards and punish
ments of another world; but the highest morality is
independent of such low personal motives, and people
-do what is right because it is right—that is, because it
promotes the best interests of the community at large—
-of others besides themselves. As to the laws of “ an
eternal and immutable morality,” the laws of morality
have always varied according to the varying interests of
mankind, and with advancing civilisation; as the family
has extended to the clan, the clan to the country, the
country to the world. What has been right in one age
-and country has been wrong in another, as the interests
of the community were different at one time and place
to what they were in another. It is rather singular
that we should hear most of eternal and immutable
�14
The Reign of Law
morality from those whose whole theological system isbased upon vicarious atonement, upon the sacrifice of
the just for the unjust.
Coleridge says : “ It is not the motive makes the
man, but the man the motive.” This is ordinarily ad
duced to prove that as man makes the motive, and the
motive governs the will, the man must be free, and his
will also; but it is just the reverse. Objectively, a
man is judged by his motive; subjectively, it is man—
that is, the man’s nature that dictates the motive. If
he is of a benevolent disposition, this furnishes the
motive to kindly action; if he is conscientious, the
motive to act justly. The appeal of outward circum
stances will be answered according to the nature of the
man, and whatever you may want to get out of him, if
it is not in him, you cannot get it out of him. A man
does not always act in accordance with his conscience, or
sense of right and wrong; he acts according to his
nature, and the strongest feeling predominates, whetherthat be conscience, fear of punishment, or self-indul
gence at the expense of others. A man with the natureof a pig will act like a pig, whatever may be his know
ledge of his duties to others. To say that he has the
ability to act otherwise, is to say that a pig might be
an angel if he pleased, or at least act in accordance with
those higher human attributes which he does not possess.
As to an appeal to his free-will, there is no free-will in
the case, any more than a blind man is free to separatedifferent colours. All the preaching in the world would
not turn him into the higher man, any more than it
would the pig itself. He might be taught to talk
piously, but he would not be less a pig underneath.
Very little can be done towards a change of nature in
one generation. I am quite aware of the effect of what
has been called “ conversion,” but it does little more
than keep people outwardly correct in their conduct,
and give selfishness another direction; that is, turn
worldliness into other-worldliness. A man, however,.
�in Mind as in Matter.
15
is not the less responsible—i.e., is not the less liable to
take the consequences of his actions, whatever his nature
may be; the consequences, if painful, being intended
to improve that nature, and push him forward to a
higher grade. The conviction that different circum
stances act upon different individuals according to their
nature--which nature depends upon race, organisation,
civilisation, and education—is gradually extending, and
it must continue to extend, till all admit that no action
could have been otherwise than it was under the cir
cumstances. If you want to alter the action, you must
alter the man or alter the circumstances, and cease to
trust anything to free-will.
In the early days of our missionary societies, a savage
presented himself for baptism. Among other things
he was asked how many wives he had. He said five.
He was told that Christianity only admitted of one
wife, and that he could not be received into the Church.
The next year, when the missionary was on the station,
he presented himself again as a candidate, with only
one wife. He was asked what had become of the other
four. He said he had eaten them. This is among the
conditions to which wedlock is liable in some other
countries. The way in which the marriage ceremony
is initiated among the bushmen of Australia is equally
simple and humane, not to say loving, and it is less
costly than with us. The man, having selected his
lady-love, knocks her down with a club, and drags her
to his camp.
Sir Samuel Baker has lately told us of the interesting
customs of the people whom he has lately sought to
emancipate and bring within the borders of civilisation
in Africa. The king, who attacked his stronghold in
his absence, and whom he afterwards defeated, had just
celebrated his accession to the throne by burying all
his relations alive. If the young child of a chief dies,
the nurse is buried with it—sometimes alive, sometimes
she has her throat cut—that she may look after it in
�16
The Reign of Law
the next world. Sir Samuel found the natives verymuch opposed to slavery, and solicitous to aid him in
putting it down. They objected to it because the
traders took their wives, daughters, children, and fol
lowers without compensation. One of the strongest
objectors offered to Sir Samuel to sell his son for a
spade ■, this he thought the right thing.
These little differences of thought and custom be
tween these interesting people and ourselves will
scarcely, I think, be laid altogether to free-will. The
people and circumstances surely had something to do
with it.
But even this seems matter of opinion. Thus the
Bev. J. A. Picton, agreeing with me, says, “ Is the
will as free to give its casting vote for generosity and
righteousness in a Troppman, or a Nero, or a savage, as
in a civilized St. Francis, or a Washington ?” But why
not, if the will rules the motives, and not the motives
the will ? On the contrary, the Spectator thinks that
we can, by a heave of the will, without motive, and
undetermined by the past, alter our whole life. It
says, “ Certainly we should have said that if there is
one experience more than another by which the “ I ” is
known, and known as something not to be explained
by “ a series of states of feeling,” it is the sense of
creative power connected with the feeling of effort, the
consciousness that you can by a heave of the will alter
your whole life, and that that heave of the will, or
refusal to exert it, is not the mere resultant of the
motives present to you, but is undetermined by the past
—is free.”—(Feb. 21, 1874, p. 234.) It certainly
must have required a very considerable “ heave of the
will ” to have enabled the Spectator to arrive at such a
state of consciousness, and it must have been quite
“undetermined by the past” experience, or present
reason 1 I have no such consciousness of truly creative
power, that is, of something made out of nothing.
�in Mind as in Matter.
17
Quite as great differences as between these savages
and ourselves exist in the very midst of our civilisation.
There are a class of people amongst us whose animal
propensities so decidedly predominate, that, turned
loose upon society, they cannot help but prey upon it.
There are others whose animal and human faculties
are so nicely balanced that their conduct depends entirely
upon education and circumstances.
Others are so far a law unto themselves that if they
fall it must be inadvertently, or from strong temptation.
All these may plead “Not guilty” to our ordinary
notion of responsibility. Each may say truly, whatever
he had done, “I could not help it.” What, then,
vrould be our conduct towards them1? Why, exactly
that, and no more, which would enable them to pre
vent it for the future. The first we should confine for
life, or if it was a very dangerous animal, perhaps put
it out of the way altogether (capital punishment). But
if society will breed such animals, it ought to take the
responsibility, and be obliged at least to go to the
expense of keeping them for life. To the second we
should apply just that discipline that would incline the
balance of motive and action in favour of society for
the future. The third would require only to be put
into the path of right to go straight for the future.
“ Turn to the right, and keep straight forward,” are the
only directions required to be given to them.
The only effort that I know of to induce our
legislators to apply science in this direction, in the
discrimination of character and the classification of
criminals, was made by Sir George S. Mackenzie, in
February 1836. He petitioned the Right Hon. Lord
Glenelg, the then Secretary for the Colonies, that a
classification might be made of criminals in accordance
with the above threefold division. This was accom
panied by certificates from a long list of eminent men
that the Science of Mind we possessed was quite adequate
to the purpose. Sir George says, “ that a discovery of'
�18
The Reign of Law
the true mental constitution of man has been made,
and that it furnishes us with an all-powerful means to
improve our race. . . . That man is a tabula rasa, on
which we may stamp what talent and character we
please, has long been demonstrated, by thousands of
facts of daily occurrence, to be a mere delusion. Dif
ferences in talent, intelligence, and moral character, are
now ascertained to be the effects of differences in
cerebral organisation. . . . These differences are, as the
certificates which accompany this show, sufficient to
indicate externally general dispositions, as they are
proportioned among one another. Hence, we have the
means of estimating, with something like precision, the
actual natural characters of convicts (as of all human
beings), so that we may at once determine the means
best adapted for their reformation, or discover their
incapacity for improvement, and their being propdr
subjects of continued restraint, in order to prevent
their further injuring society.” Sir George says, with
reference to cerebral physiology, that “ attacks are still
made on the science of phrenology; but it is a science
which its enemies have never, in a single instance, been
found to have studied. Gross misrepresentations of
fact, as well as wild, unfounded assertion, have been
brought to bear against it again and again, and have
been again and again exposed.” This kind of injustice
I firmly believe to be quite as applicable, if not more
so, to the present time as it was then. The testi
mony then given by the anatomists, surgeons, eminent
physiologists, and others, was generally to the effect
■that “the natural dispositions are indicated by the
form and size of the brain to such an extent as to
render it quite possible, during life, to distinguish men
•of desperate and dangerous tendencies from those of
good disposition;” and that “it is quite possible to
determine the dispositions of men by an inspection of
their heads with so much precision as to render a
knowledge of phrenology of the utmost importance to
�in Mind as in Matter.
*9
persons whose duties involve the care and management
■of criminals?’ And, allow me to add, it will be found
of equal importance to all persons who have the care
and management of any one, whether schoolmasters,
doctors, or parsons. For want of this knowledge of
cerebral physiology, James Mill was very nearly killing
his son, John S. Mill, or making him an idiot for life,
by overworking a brain whose activity already amounted
-almost to disease. The brain gave way, however, when
he was above twenty years old, and he had one of
those fits of mental depression which are well known to
-attend its overwork. It is a singular fact that neither
he nor any of the reviewers of his autobiography seem
to be aware that it was not Marmontel’s “ Memoires ”
•or Wordsworth’s “Poems” to which he was indebted
for recovery, but to his wanderings in the Pyrenean
mountains, the love of natural beauty, and the rest of
brain. It has been J. S. Mill’s ignorance of cerebral physi
ology, and his diversion of the public mind from the
subject by his “Logic” and “Examination of Sir
William Hamilton,” that has mainly helped to bring
back P>erkeley and the reign of Metaphysics, and to put
off the true science of Mind, based on physiology,
half a century.
The discrimination of character is not so great a
mystery as some people suppose. Statistics show that
people act very much alike under the same circum■stances. People fall in love, and marry according to the
price of bread, and even the number of people who put
their letters into the post without an address are the same
in a given area; knowledge is constantly narrowing
the space between general rules and particular cases.
Of course Sir George Mackenzie’s advice could not
be taken; public opinion was not prepared for it;
neither is it at present, as is evidenced by the return
to torture (flogging) during the last few years, and the
whole spirit of the public press. Take an illustration
from one of our first-class Journals. The Pall. Mall
-Gazette of January 9, 1874, says :—
�20
The Reign of Law
“Imprisonment is not only fast losing its terrors, but,,
owing to the kindness of magistrates and judges, it is becom
ing a real boon to the dishonest and violent, to whom it is
doled out, like funds from the poor-box, according to their
necessities. The other day ‘ a novel and suggestive applica
tion,’ it is stated, was made to the Recorder in Dublin by a
female prisoner, aged twenty-nine years, who had been forty
eight times convicted of indictable offences, and pleaded
guilty to a charge of stealing 7s. 6d. from the pockets of a
drunken man in the streets. The Recorder was proceeding to
sentence the prisoner to twelve months’ imprisonment, when
she earnestly implored him to make the sentence one of five
years’ penal servitude, alleging as a reason for desiring the
change that she might then have a chance of earning an honest
livelihood, whereas if she only got twelve months’ imprison
ment she could do nothing but return to the streets. The
Recorder, ‘ believing her to be sincere in her desire to lead
an honest life, complied with her wish. ’ This was very kind
to the prisoner, but rather hard on those who will have to
support her for five years instead of for one, because she
requires the lengthened period for her own convenience. It
is of course most desirable that prisoners, when they leave
gaol, should ‘earn an honest livelihood;’ but imprisonment
is intended as a punishment, and not as a boon.”
That is, punishment is retributive, and not reformatory.
But I wonder society does not discover that this rough
and ready method of dealing with criminals does not
pay, and that forty-eight convictions in a person only
twenty-nine years old is a very expensive way of taking
its revenge. No, I suppose it would never do to.
admit that a man’s conduct was the result of his mental
constitution and the circumstances in which he was
placed—that there was no freedom in the matter,
except the freedom to act in accordance with the dic
tates. of the will. It would be most dangerous doctrine
to allow that no man could have acted differently to
what he did act—that the strongest motive, whatever
it was, must of necessity have prevailed; and that
all we had to do, therefore, was to alter the constitu
tion and circumstances, and prevent such motives,
whether of conscience—that is, sense of right—or of
fear, that would enable him to do differently for the
�in Mind as in Matter.
21
-future. No, the vengeance of the law must continue
still to be visited upon our Bill Sykeses, and Fagins,
and Artful Dodgers, although it is well known to others
besides M. Quetelet that “ society prepares crime, and
the guilty are only the instruments by which it is
■executed?’ We must still continue to dole out so
■much suffering for so much sin, without reference to
■cause and effect, either past or future; for is not a man
responsible for his actions—that is, may we not justly
■retaliate and make another suffer as much as he has
•entailed upon us ? To the popular mind vengeance
seems a divine institution; and it is impossible ‘ to love
•our enemies and to do good to those who despitefully
use us and persecute us,’ as long as this vulgar notion
of moral desert prevails. It is only Science—the
Science of Mind—that can put an end to this; and
that there is a Science of Mind is at present not even
recognized by the President of the Social Science Asso
ciation. When we have a Science of Man we may
have a Science of Society, and we shall then advance as
rapidly towards its improvement as we have done in
Physics since Bacon’s time. Induction is equally
-applicable to mind and matter, any supposed difference
is consequent upon our ignorance. Bree-will and spon
taneity will disappear as our knowledge extends, and
all will be brought within “the reign of law.” When
we have a Science of Mind we shall cease to take the
absorbing interest we now do in kitchen-middens and
the dust heaps and bones of the past, and shall take to
the study of cerebral physiology, upon which the laws
■of mind depend. Our attention will not be given, as
now, exclusively to short-horns and south-downs, or to
horses and dogs, but to improving the race of men. If
we wish to induce any special line of conduct which
we call moral—that is, more to the interest of society
at large than another—we must collect and direct the
force of mind that will produce it. This can only be
done and become habitual by growing the organization
�' 22
The Reign of Law
upon which it depends. Preaching and dogma go only
a very little way towards it; and education, upon which
so much reliance is now placed, will not do much more.
Education has a refining influence, and so far as it
may tend to direct the propensities, and call the higher
feelings into activity, it is of value. Its influence is
very much overrated; for, as we have said, it is the
feelings and not the intellect that govern the will, and
reading, writing, and arithmetic have little direct in
fluence upon them. It is on this account that many
well-disposed people are so anxious to add religion to
the instruction in our common schools. By religion
here little more is meant than, “ Be good, my boy, or
Bogie ’ll have you,” and surely it is not worth drag
ging religion into all the dirt, and familiarity which
breeds contempt, of our common schools for this, to the
injury of all that deserves to be called religion in after
life. It would be much better to teach the natural
consequences—the real responsibility that attends all
the children’s actions—how, if they lie, no one will
believe them; if they steal, no one will trust them,
&c., attended with short and sharp immediate punish
ment. Future rewards and punishments have a very
remote bearing upon immediate conduct, and I doubt
the policy of turning the Almighty into a sort of head
policeman, with his eye always upon them, ready to
strike if they do wrong. This may beget fear, but never
love, and children soon find out that as far as the imme
diate consequences to themselves are concerned it is not
true, and this damages their faith in their real liability.
But the Science of Mind will introduce a truer
knowledge of what really constitutes Education, which
means the developing and perfecting of all our facul
ties, social, moral, religious, and aesthetic,* as well as
the intellect. This only will make a complete man,
this only will make him find his happiness and there* See “Education of the Feelings,” 4th edition.
■& Co.
Longmans
�in Mind as in Matter.
23
fore his interest in virtue, and enable him to do his
duty here, without either hope of heaven or fear of
hell. The study of the nature of each mental faculty,
and-its direction towards its legitimate objects, is what
is required by Education. Of how much may be done
by education is seen in the cultivation of musical
talent.
Social evolution follows the law of organic modi
fication. It is the exercise of the feelings we wish to
predominate that alone will strengthen them and in
crease the size of the organs with which they are con
nected. The commercial age in which we live-—its
machinery and facility of intercourse—is making all men
better off, and binding all together by a common tie of
interest. When a man is well off and happy he desires
to make others so, exercising his benevolence. When
he is in daily close intercourse with his fellows it shows
him the necessity for honesty and integrity, and this
exercises his conscientiousness or sense of justice. Men
are thus obliged to live for others as well as for them
selves ; they everywhere find it their interest to help
one another, and as combination and co-operation thus
increase, so do civilization and the growth of those
mental habits which enable men to live most happily
together.
We thus progress surely, but slowly, not in con
sequence of, but in spite of, our conflicting creeds, and
when at last we arrive at the conviction that nothing
could have happened otherwise than it did; that the
present and the future only are in our power—-when
we have determined to “let the dead past bury its
dead ”—we shall have made a great advance towards
the more easy practice of justice and benevolence. Of
course, the usual cry about gross matter and materialism
and iron fate may be expected, but all that is highest
which man has ever reasonably looked forward to may
be more immediately expected when science and cer
tainty are welcomed in the place of chance and spon
�24
The Reign of Law
taneity. We are approaching daily in practice, if not
in theory, in this direction. At present our religious
creeds stand directly across our path. But utility, if
not philosopy, is teaching our law-makers that they
cannot mend the past, and this gradual application of
the Science of Mind to legislation will ultimately ex
tend to the people for whose benefit the laws are made,
until all will feel that nothing must be left to accident
in the moral world any more than in the physical.
The effect upon the individual of the reconstruction
of his ethical code upon a scientific basis is most
favourable to the growth of all the higher feelings
upon which conduct and happiness depend. The sup
position that things ought to have been otherwise, and
might have been otherwise, is the source of half the
worry in the world, and revenge, remorse, and retri
butive punishment cause half its misery. Revenge is
not only wicked, but absurd; as applied to the past, it
is like a child beating a table. When we have done
wrong, the experienced consequences are generally suf
ficient for our future guidance, and “ repentance whereby
we forsake sin” is admirable, but remorse for that
which could not have been otherwise is both absurd
and useless. An Irish priest told his congregation that
it was a most providential thing that death had been
placed at the end of life, instead of at the beginning,
as it gave more time for repentance. With this we
can scarcely agree. Our verdict, as it must be now,
would be rather that of the Irish jury, “ Not guilty,
but would advise the accused not to do it again.” But
is this verdict of not guilty just ? Certainly it is, as
regards the past; it could not have been otherwise.
But surely it will be said this is dangerous doctrine.
Is no one to be blamed for anything he has done?
Blame is both unjust and useless as applied to the>
past ; it is only so far as it may influence the future
that it can be of any use. This praise and blame is a
rough-and-ready way of influencing future action, which
�in Mind as in Matter.
25
has a very uncertain effect upon conduct. We assume
that people might have done differently, and, after
scolding or punishing, we leave them to do so, but
there is no certainty that they will. Would it not be
better to inquire into the causes that induced them to
act as they did, and alter them, otherwise they are
certain to do the same again. Society’s conduct with
respect to offences at present is very much like Bartie
Massey’s ideal of woman as cook, -— “ the porridge
would be awk’ard now and then; if it’s wrong, it’s
summat in the meal, or it’s summat in the milk, or it’s
summat in the water.” Is it not time that we, as well
■as our cooks, began to measure the proportion between
the meal and the milk ? As to dangerous doctrine, we
must not forget that “ philosophical certainty ” implies
that everything that will influence conduct in the pre sent or the future is still open to us, only in one case
we trust to science and law, in the other to chance and
free will. In proportion as we extend our dominion
over the darkness of ignorance, and are able to conquer
fresh fields of knowledge, as the domain of law becomes
every year wider and wider, and we gain enlarged
views of the eternal sequence and universal order, all
contingency and spontaneity must vanish. What we
call chance or free-will is nothing more than the action
of hitherto undiscovered causes. As to the past, that
we feel is inevitable, and more, it could not have been
otherwise—the causes then in operation must have pro
duced the effects they did—and when we know a thing
is inevitable we can “grin” and bear it; it is the
mental worry, not the mere physical pain that is hard
to bear. As the proverb says, “ It is of no use crying
over spilt milk.” Few know the peace of mind and
internal quiet which the habitual practice of this mental
attitude secures, but all may know it as science ad
vances, and it is this state of mind which it is the true
function of philosophy to enable us to attain.
There is infinite peace also in the conviction that we
�26
The Reign of Law.
are in higher hands than our own ; that the interests of
morality and virtue are ultimately assured, being based
upon law; that we may forget ourselves in the glory of
the whole of which we are so infinitely small a part;
and that we may thus rest satisfied that something
much better is being secured than the freedom of the
will, and with which that Will will not be allowed to
interfere.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS. PRINTERS. EDINBURGH.
�
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"The reign of law in mind as in matter, and its bearing upon Christian dogma and moral responsibility." Part II. The true meaning of responsibility
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Bray, Charles [1811-1884]
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Collation: 26 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
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i3'3'
*
NATIONALSECULARSOCIETY
, MO) 3
RIGHT AND WRONG:
THE SCIENTIFIC GROUND OF THEIR DISTINCTION.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 7tJi NOVEMBER,
1876.
BY
Professor W. K. CLIFFORD, F.R.S.
Reprinted from the ‘Fortnightly Review,’ by kind permission of the Editor.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1876. ’
Price Threepence.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE
SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually— from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 23rd April,
1876, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available-for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s.; being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter) to the
Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester
Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door One
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�SYLLABUS.
We feel that, it is wrong to steal or tell lies, and right to
take care of our families ; .and that we are responsible for
our actions. The aggregate of such feelings we call.Conscience,
or the Moral Sense.
In this lecture it is proposed to consider what account can
be given of these facts by the scientific. method. This is a
method of getting knowledge by inference ; first of pheno
mena from phenomena, on the assumption of uniformity of
nature, and secondly of mental facts simultaneous with and
underlying these phenomena, on the assumption that other
men have feelings like mine. Each of these assumptions
rests on a moral basis; it is our duty to guide our beliefs in
this way.
A man is morally responsible for an action in so far as he
has a conscience which might direct it. Moral approbation
and reprobation are used as means of strengthening this con
science and bringing it to bear upon the action. The use of
this means involves the assumption that the man is the same
man at different times, i.e., that the effect of events is pre
served in his character ; and that his actions depend upon
his character and the circumstances. The notion of respon
sibility is founded on the observed uniformity of this connec
tion.
The question of right or wrong in a particular case is
primarily determined by the conscience of the individual.
The further question of what is the best conscience (the
question of abstract or absolute right) is only to be deter
mined by knowledge of the function or purpose of the con
�4
Syllabus.
science ; and this must be got at by study of its origin and
evolution. This leads to Mr. Darwin’s doctrine that the pur
pose of conscience is the advantage of the community as such
in the struggle for existence. There are two kinds of pur
pose : one due to natural selection, the survival of the best
adaptation, the other (design) due to a complex nervous
system in which an image or symbol of the end determines
the use of the means. The conscience must always be based
on an instinct serving a purpose of the first kind ; but it may
be directed by a purpose of the second kind.
Allegiance to the community, or piety, is thus the first
principle of morals. This involves the negative duty of
abstaining from obvious injury to others, and the positive
duty of being a good citizen in each department of life. It is
to be distinguished from altruism, and from a sentimental
shrinking from the idea of suffering.
Truth, or straightforwardness, is a consequence of piety,
and depends upon faith in man. The duty of searching after
truth is based upon the great importance to mankind of a
true conception of the universe. Belief is a sacred thing,
which must not be profanely wasted on unproved statements.
It is not necessary even for other people to believe what is
false in order to do what is right.
�RIGHT AND WRONG:
THE SCIENTIFIC GROUND OF THEIR DISTINCTION.
HE questions which are here to be considered are
especially and peculiarly everybody’s questions.
It is not everybody’s business to be an engineer, or a
doctor, or a carpenter, or a soldier ; but it is evervbody’s
business to be a citizen. The doctrines and precepts
which guide the practice of the good engineer are of inter
est to him who uses them and to those whose business it
is to investigate them by mechanical science ; the rest
■of us neither obey nor disobey them. But the doctrines
and precepts of morality, which guide the practice of
the good citizen, are of interest to all; they must be
either obeyed or disobeyed by every human being who
is not hopelessly and for ever separated from the rest of
mankind. No one can say, therefore, that in this inquiry
we are not minding our own business, that we are med
dling with other men’s affairs. We are in fact studying
the principles of our profession, so far as we are able;
a necessary thing for every man who wishes to do good
work in it.
Along with the character of universal interest which
belongs to our subject there goes another. What is
everybody’s practical business is also to a large extent
what everybody knows; and it may be reasonably ex
pected that a discourse about Right and W rong will be
full of platitudes and truisms. The expectation is a
just one. The considerations I have to offer are of the
very oldest and the very simplest commonplace and
common sense ; and no one can be more astonished than
I am that there should be any reason to speak of them
at all. But there is reason to speak of them, because
platitudes are not all of one kind. Some platitudes
have a definite meaning and a practical application, and
are established by the uniform and long-continued ex-
JL
B
�6
Right and Wrong.
perience of all people. Other platitudes, having 11»
definite meaning and no practical application, seem not
to be worth anybody’s while to test; and these are quite
sufficiently established by mere assertion, if it is auda
cious enough to begin with and persistent enough after
wards. It is in order to distinguish these two kinds of
platitude from one another, and to make sure that those
which we retain form a body of doctrine consistent with
itself and with the rest of our beliefs, that we undertake
this examination of obvious and widespread principles.
First of all, then, what are the facts ?
We say that it is wrong to murder, to steal, to tell
lies, and that it is right to take care of our families.
When we say in this sense that one action is right
and another wrong, we have a certain feeling towards
the action which is peculiar and not quite like any other
feeling. It is clearly a feeling towards the action and
not towards the man who does it; because we speak of
hating the sin and loving the sinner. We might reason
ably dislike a man whom we knew or suspected to be a
murderer, because of the natural fear that he might
murder us ; and we might like our own parents for
taking care of us. But everybody knows that these
feelings are something quite different from the feeling
which condemns murder as a wrong thing, and approves
parental care as a right thing. I say nothing here about
the possibility of analyzing this feeling, or proving that
it arises by combination of other feelings ; all I want to
notice is that it is as distinct and recognisable as the
feeling of pleasure in a sweet taste or of displeasure at
a toothache. In speaking of right and wrong, we speak
of qualities of actions which arouse definite feelings that
everybody knows and recognises. It is not necessary,
then, to give a definition at the outset; we are going to
use familiar terms which have a definite meaning in the
same sense in which everybody uses them. We may
ultimately come to something like a definition; but
what we have to do first is to collect the facts and see
what can be made of them, just as if we were going to
talk about limestone, or parents and children, or fuel.
*
* These subjects were treated in the lectures which immediately preceded
and followed the present one.
�Right and PFrong.
7
It is easy to conceive that murder and theft and
neglect of the young might be considered wrong in a
very simple state of society. But we find at present
that the condemnation of these actions does not stand
alone; it goes with the condemnation of a great number
of other actions which seem to be included with the ob
viously criminal action in a sort of general rule. The
wrongness of murder, for example, belongs in a less
degree to any form of bodily injury that one man may
inflict on another ; and it is even extended so as to in
clude injuries to his reputation or his feelings. I make
these more refined precepts follow in the train of the
more obvious and rough ones, because this appears to
have been the traditional order of their establishment.
“ He that makes his neighbour blush in public,” says the
Mishna, “ is as if he had shed his blood.” In the same
way the rough condemnation of stealing carries with it a
condemnation of more refined forms of dishonesty: we
do not hesitate to say that it is wrong for a tradesman
to adulterate his goods, or for a labourer to scamp his
work. We not only say that it is wrong to tell lies, but
that it is wrong to deceive in other more ingenious ways;
wrong to use words so that they shall have one sense to
some people and another sense to other people ; wrong
to suppress the truth when that suppression leads to
false belief in others. And again, the duty of parents
towards their children is seen to be a special case of a
very large and varied class of duties towards that great
family to which we belong—to the fatherland and them
that dwell therein. The word duty which I have here
used, has as definite a sense to the general mind as the
words right and wrong; we say that it is right to do our
duty, and wrong to neglect it. These duties to the
community serve in our minds to explain and define our
duties to individuals. It is wrong to kill any one ; unless
we are an executioner, when it may be our duty to kill a
Criminal; or a soldier, when it may be our duty to kill
the enemy of our country ; and in general it is wrong to
injure any man in any way in our private capacity and
for our own sakes. Thus if a man injures us, it is only
right to retaliate on behalf of other men. Of two men
in a desert island, if one takes away the other’s cloak, it
�8
Right and Wrong.
may or may not be right for the other to let him have
his coat also ; but if a man takes away my cloak while
we both live in society, it is my duty to use such means
as I can to prevent him from taking away other people’s
cloaks. Observe that I am endeavouring to describe
the facts of the moral feelings of Englishmen, such as
they are now.
The last remark leads us to another platitude of ex
ceedingly ancient date. We said that it was wrong to
injure any man in our private capacity and for our own
sakes. A rule like this differs from all the others that
we have considered, because it not only deals with phy
sical acts, words and deeds which can be observed and
known by others, but also with thoughts which are
known only to the man himself. Who can tell whether a
given act of punishment was done from a private or from
a public motive ? Only the agent himself. And yet if
the punishment was just and within the law, we should
condemn the man in the one case and approve him. m the
other. This pursuit of the actions of men to their very
sources, in the feelings which they only can know, is as
ancient as any morality we know of, and extends to the
whole range of it. Injury to another man arises from
anger, malice, hatred, revenge; these feelings are. con
demned as wrong. But feelings are not immediately
under our control, in the same way that, overt actions
are : I can shake anybody by the hand if I like, but 1
cannot always feel friendly to him. Nevertheless we
can pay attention to such aspects of the circumstances,
and we can put ourselves into such conditions, that our
feelings get gradually modified in one way or the.other;
we form a habit of checking our anger by calling up
certain images and considerations, whereby in time the
offending passion is brought into subjection and control.
Accordingly, we say that it is right to acquire and to exer
cise this control; and the control is supposed to exist when
ever we say that one feeling or disposition of mind is right
and another wrong. Thus, in connection with the pre
cept against stealing, we condemn envy, and covetous
ness ; we applaud a sensitive honesty which shudders, at
anything underhand or dishonourable. In connection
with the rough precept against lying, we have built up
�Right and Wrong.
9
and are still building a great fabric of intellectual.mora
lity, whereby a man is forbidden to tell lies to himself,
and is commanded to practise candour and fairness and
open-mindedness in his judgments, and to labour zea
lously in pursuit of the truth. And in connection with
the duty to our families, we say that it is right to culti
vate public spirit, a quick sense of sympathy, and all that
belongs to a social disposition.
Two other words are used in this connection which it
seems necessary to mention. When we regard an action
as right or wrong for ourselves, this feeling about the
action impels us to do it or not to do it, as the case may
be. We may say that the moral sense acts in this case as
a motive ; meaning by moral sense only the feeling in
regard to an action which is considered as right or
wrong, and by motive something which impels us to act.
Of course there may be other motives at work at the
same time, and it does not at all follow that we shall do
the right action or abstain from the wrong one. This
we all know to our cost. But still our feeling about the
rightness or wrongness of an action does operate as a
motive when we think of the action as being done by us ;
and when so operating it is called conscience. I have
nothing to do at present with the questions about con
science, whether it is a result of education, whether it
can be explained by self-love, and so forth ; I am only
concerned in describing well-known facts, and in getting
as clear as I can about the meaning of well-known words.
Conscience, then, is the whole aggregate of our feelings
about actions as being right or wrong, regarded as tend
ing to make us do the right actions and avoid the wrong
ones. We also say sometimes, in answer to the question,
“ How do you know that this is right or wrong ? ” “ My
conscience tells me so.” And this way of speaking is
quite analogous to other expressions of the same form;
thus if I put my hand into water, and you ask me how I
know that it is hot, I might say, “ My feeling of warmth
tells me so.”
When we consider a right or a wrong action as done
by another person, we think of that person as worthy of
moral approbation or reprobation. He may be punished
or not; but in any case this feeling towards him is quite
�IO
Right and Wrong.
different from the feeling of dislike of a person injurious
to us, or of disappointment at a machine which will not
go. Whenever we can morally approve or disapprove a
man for his action, we say that he is morally responsible
for it, and vice versa. To say that a man is not morally
responsible for his actions, is the same thing as to say
that it would be unreasonable to praise or blame him for
them.
The statement that we ourselves are morally respon
sible is somewhat more complicated, but the meaning is
very easily made out; namely, that another person may
reasonably regard our actions as right or wrong, and
may praise or blame us for them.
We can now, I suppose, understand one another pretty
clearly in using the words right and wrong, conscience,
responsibility; and we have made a rapid survey of the
facts of the case in our own country at the present time.
Of course I do not pretend that this survey in any way
approaches to completeness; but it will supply us at
least with enough facts to enable us to deal always with
concrete examples instead of remaining in generalities ;
and it may serve to show pretty fairly what the moral
sense of an Englishman is like. We must next consider
what account we can give of these facts by the scientific
method.
But first let us stop to note that we really have used
the scientific method in making this first step; and also
that to the same extent the method has been used by all
serious moralists. Some would have us define virtue, to
begin with, in terms of some other thing which is not
virtue, and then work out from our definition all the de
tails of what we ought to do. So Plato said that virtue was
knowledge, Aristotle that it was the golden mean, and
Benthan} said that the right action was that which con
duced to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
But so also, in physical speculations ; Thales said that
everything was Water, and Heraclitus said it was All
becoming, and Empedocles said it was made’out of Four
Elements, and Pythagoras said it was Number. But we
only began to know about things when people looked
straight at the facts, and made what they could out of
them; and that is the only way in which we can know
�Right and Wrong.
II
anything about right and wrong. Moreover, it is the
way in which the great moralists have set to work, when
they came to treat of verifiable things and not of
theories all in the air. A great many people think of
a prophet as a man who, all by himself, or from some
secret source, gets the belief that this thing is right and
that thing wrong. And then (they imagine) he gets
up. and goes about persuading other people to feel as
he does about it; and so it becomes a part of their con
science, and a new duty is created. This may be in some
*
cases, but I have never met with any example of it in
history. When Socrates puzzled the Greeks by asking
them what they precisely meant by Goodness and Justice
and Virtue, the mere existence of the words shows that
the people, as a whole, possessed a moral sense, and
felt that certain things were right and others wrong.
What the moralist did was to show the connection be
tween different virtues, the likeness of virtue to certain
other things, the implications which a thoughtful man
could find in the common language. Wherever the
Greek moral sense had come from, it was there in the
people before it could be enforced by a prophet or dis
cussed by a philosopher. Again, we find a wonderful
collection of moral aphorisms in those shrewd sayings of
the Jewish fathers which are preserved in the Mishna
or oral law. Some of this teaching is familiar to us all
from the popular exposition of it which is contained in
the three first Gospels. But the very plainness and
homeliness of the precepts shows that, they are just
acute statements of what was already felt by the popular
■common sense; protesting, in many cases, against the for
malism of the ceremonial law with which,they arecuriously
mixed up. The rabbis even show a jealousy of prophetic
interference, as if they knew well that it takes not one
man, but many men, to feel what is right. When a cer
tain Rabbi Eliezer, being worsted in argument, cried
out,, “ If I am right, let heaven pronounce in my favour 1”
there was heard a Bath-kol or voice from the skies, say
ing, “ Do you venture to dispute with Rabbi Eliezer,
who is an authority on all religious questions ? ” But ,
Rabbi Joshua rose and said, “ Our law is not in heaven,
but in the book which dates from , Sinai, and, which j,
�12
Right and Wrong.
teaches us that in matters of discussion the majority"
makes the law.”*
One of the most important expressions of the moral
sense for all time is that of the Stoic philosophy, espe
cially after its reception among the Romans. It is here
that we find the enthusiasm of humanity—the caritas
generis liumani—which is so large and important a
feature in all modern conceptions of morality, and whose
widespread influence upon Roman citizens may be traced
in the Epistles of St. Paul. In the Stoic emperors, also,
we find probably the earliest example of great moral
principles consciously applied to legislation on a large
scale. But are we to attribute this to the individual in
sight of the Stoic philosophers ? It might seem at first
sight that we must, if we are to listen to that vulgar vitu
peration of the older culture, which has descended to us
from those who had everything to gain by its destruc
tion.f We hear enough of the luxurious feasting of the
Roman capital, how it would almost have taxed the
resources of a modern pastrycook; of the cruelty of
gladiatorial shows, how they were nearly as bad as autida-fe, except that a man had bis fair chance, and was
* Treatise Bab. bathr. 59. b. I derive this story and reference from a
most interesting book, Koi K6re (vox clamantis), La Bible, le Talmud, et
l’Evangile; par le R. Elie Soloweyczyk. Paris : E. Brifere. 1870.
+ Compare these passages from Merivale (‘ Romans under the Empire,’
vi.), to whom “ it seems a duty to protest against the common tendency of
Christian moralists to dwell only on the dark side of Pagan society, in order
to heighten by contrast the blessings of the Gospel.”
“Much candour and discrimination are required in comparing the sins of
one age with those of another................. the cruelty of our inquisitions
and sectarian persecutions, of our laws against sorcery, our serfdom and
our slavery; the petty fraudulence we tolerate in almost every class and
calling of the community; the bold front worn by our open sensuality; the
deeper degradation of that which is concealed; all these leave us little
room for boasting of our modern discipline, and must deter the thoughtful
inquirer from too confidently contrasting the morals of the old world and
the new.”
“ Even at Rome, in the worst of times. ... all the relations of life
were adorned in turn with bright instances of devotion, and mankind
transacted their business with an ordinary confidence in the force of con
science and right reason. The steady development of enlightened legal
principles conclusively proves the general dependence upon law as a guide
and corrector of manners. In the camp, however, more especially as the
chief sphere of this purifying activity, the great qualities of the Roman
character continued to be plainly manifested. The history of the Caesars
presents to us a constant succession of brave, patient, resolute, and faithful
soldiers, men deeply impressed with a sense of duty, superior to vanity,
despisers of boasting, content to toil in obscurity and shed their blood at
the frontiers of the empire, unrepining at the cold mistrust of their masters,
not clamourous for the honours so sparingly awarded to them, but satisfied
in the daily work of their hands, and full of faith in the national destiny
which they were daily accomplishing.”
�Right and Wrong.
13
not tortured for torture’s sake ; of the oppression of
provincials by people like Verres, of whom it may even
be said that if they had been the East India Company
they could not have been worse; of the complaints of
Tacitus against bad and mad emperors (as Sir Henry
Maine says) ; and of the still more serious complaints of
the modern historian against the excessive taxation
*
which was one great cause of the fall of the empire.
Of all this we are told a great deal; but we are not told
of the many thousands of honourable men who carried
civilisation to the ends of the known world, and adminis
tered a mighty empire so that it was loved and worshipped
to the furthest corner of it. It is to these men and their
common action that we must attribute the morality
which found its organised expression in the writings of
the Stoic philosophers. From these three cases we may
gather that Right is a thing which must be done before
it can be talked about, although after that it may only
too easily be talked about without being done. . Indivi
dual effort and energy may insist upon getting that
done which was already felt to be right; and individual
insight and acumen may point out consequences of an
action which bring it under previously known moral
rules. There is another dispute of the rabbis that may
serve to show what is meant by this. It was forbidden
by the law to have any dealings with the Sabasan idola
ters during the week preceding their idolatrous feasts.
But the doctors discussed the case in which one of these
idolaters owes you a bill; are you to let him pay it
during that week or not ? The school of Shammai said
“ No ; for he will want all his money to enjoy himself at
the feast.” But the school of Hillel said “ Yes, let him
pay it; for how can he enjoy his feast while his bills are
unpaid ?” The question here is about the consequences
of an action; but there is no dispute about the moral
principle, which is that consideration and kindness are
to be shown to idolaters, even in the matter of their
idolatrous rites.
It seems, then, that we are no worse off than anybody
else who has studied this subject, in finding our mate
rials ready made for us; sufficiently definite meanings
* Finlay, ‘ Greece under the Romans.’
�Right and Wrong.
given in the common speech to the words right and
wrong, good and bad, with which we have to deal; a
fair body of facts familiarly known, which we have to
organise and account for as best we can. But our
special inquiry is, what account can be given of these
facts by the scientific method ? to which end we cannot
do better than fix our ideas as well as we can upon the
character and scope of that method.
Now the scientific method is a method of getting
knowledge by inference, and that of two different kinds.
One kind of inference is that which is used in the phy
sical and natural sciences, and it enables us to go from
known phenomena to unknown phenomena. Because a
stone is heavy in the morning, I infer that it will be
heavy in the afternoon; and i infer this by assuming a
certain uniformity of nature. The sort of uniformity
that I assume depends upon the extent of my scientific
education; the rules of inference become more and more
definite as we go on. At first I might assume that all
things are always alike; this would not be true, but it
has to be assumed in a vague way, in order that a thing
may have the same name at different times. Afterwards
I get the more definite belief that certain particular
qualities, like weight, have nothing to do with the time
of day; and subsequently I find that weight has nothing
to do with the shape of the stone, but only with the
quantity of it. The uniformity which we assume, then,
isnot that vague one that we started with, but a chastened
and corrected uniformity. I might go on to suppose, for
example, that the weight of the stone had nothing to do
with the place where it was ; and a great deal might be
said for this supposition. It would, however, have to be
corrected when it was found that the weight varies
slightly in different latitudes. On the other hand, I
should find that this variation was just the same for my
stone as for a piece of iron or wood; that it had nothing
to do with the kind of matter. And so I might be led
to the conclusion that all matter is heavy, and that the
weight of it depends only on its quantity and its position
relative to the earth. You see here that I go on arriving
at conclusions always of this form; that some one cir
cumstance or quality has nothing to do with some other
�Right and Wrong.
*5x
circumstance or quality. I begin by assuming that it is
independent of everything; I end by finding . that it is
independent of some definite things. That is, I begin
by assuming a vague uniformity, and I end by assuming
a clear and definite uniformity. I always use this assump
tion to infer from some one fact a .great number of other
facts ; but as my education proceeds, I get to know what
sort of things may be inferred and what may not. An
observer of scientific mind takes note of just those things
from which inferences may be drawn, and passes by the
rest. If an astronomer, observing the sun, were to record
the fact that at the moment when a sun-spot began to
shrink there was a rap at his front door, we should know
that he was not up to his work. But if he records that
sun-spots are thickest every eleven years, and that this
is. also the period of extra cloudiness in Jupiter, the
observation may or may not be confirmed, and it may or
may not lead to inferences of importance; but still it is
the kind of thing from which inferences may be drawn.
There is always a certain instinct among instructed people
which tells them in this way what kinds of inferences
my be drawn; and this is. the unconscious effect of the
definite uniformity which they have been led to assume
in nature. It may subsequently be organised into a law
or general truth, and no doubt becomes a surer guide by.
that process. Then it goes to form the more precise
instinct of the next generation.
What we have said about this first kind of inference,
which goes from phenomena to phenomena, is shortly this.
It proceeds upon an assumption of uniformity in nature ;
and this assumption is not fixed and made once for all,
but is. a changing and growing thing, becoming more
definite as we go on.
If I were told to pick out some one character which
especially colours this guiding conception of uniformity
in our present stage of science, I should certainly reply,
Atomism. The form of this with which we are most
familiar is the molecular theory of bodies; which repre
sents all bodies as made up of small elements of uniform ,
character, each practically having relations only with the,
adjacent ones, and these relations the same all through
—namely, some simple mechanical action upon each
�i6
Right and Throng.
other’s motions. But this is only a particular case. A
palace, a cottage, the tunnel of the underground railway,
and a factory chimney, are all built of bricks ; the bricks
are alike in all these cases, each brick is practically
related only to the adjacent ones, and the relation is
throughout the same, namely, two flat sides are stuck
together with mortar. There is an atomism in the sci
ences of number, of quantity, of’space; the theorems of
geometry are groupings of individual points, each related
only to the adjacent ones by certain definite laws. But
what concerns us chiefly at present is the atomism
of human physiology. Just as every solid is built up of
molecules, so the nervous system is built up of nerve
threads and nerve-corpuscles. We owe to Mr. Lewes our
very best thanks for the stress which he has laid on the
doctrine that nerve-fibre is uniform in structure and func
tion, and for the word neurility, which expresses its com
mon properties. And similar gratitude is due to Dr.
Hughlings Jackson for his long defence of the proposition
that the element of nervous structure and function is a
sensori-motor process. In structure, this is two fibres
or bundles of fibres going to the same grey corpuscle ; in
function it is a message travelling up one fibre or bundle
to the corpuscle, and then down the other fibre or bundle.
*
Out of this, as a brick, the house of our life is built. All
these simple elementary processes are alike, and each is
practically related only to the adjacent ones; the relation
being in all cases of the same kind, viz., the passage from
a simple to a complex message, or vice versa.
The result of atomism in any form, dealing with any
subject, is that the principle of uniformity is hunted
down into the elements of things ; it is resolved into the
uniformity of these elements or atoms, and of the rela
tions of those which are next to each other. By an ele
ment or an atom we do not here mean something
absolutely simple or indivisible, for a molecule, a brick,
and a nerve process are all very complex things. We
only mean that, for the purpose in hand, the properties
of the still more complex thing which is made of them
have nothing to do with the complexities or the differ* Mr. Herbert Spencer bad assigned a slightly different element. Prin
ciples of Psychology, vol. 1, p. 28.
�Right and Wrong.
17
ences of these elements. The solid made of molecules,
the house made of bricks, the nervous system made of
sensori-motor processes, are nothing more than collec
tions of these practically uniform elements, having cer
tain relations of nextness, and behaviour uniform y
depending on that nextness.
,
The inference of phenomena from phenomena, then, is
based upon an assumption of uniformity, which m the
present stage of science may be called an atomic uni-
The^other mode of inference which belongs to the
scientific method is that which is used in what are called
mental and moral sciences ; and it enables us to go from
phenomena to the facts which underlie phenomena, and
which are themselves not phenomena at all. it 1 pmch
your arm, and you draw it away and make a face, I infer
that you have felt pain. I infer this by assuming that
you have a consciousness similar to my own, and related
to your perception of your body as my consciousness is
related to my perception of my body. Now is this
the same assumption as before, a mere assumption o
the uniformity of nature ? It certainly seems like it at
first • but if we think about it we shall find that there is
a very profound difference between them. In physical
inference I go from phenomena to phenomena ; that is,
from the knowledge of certain appearances or represen
tations actually present to my mind I infer certain other
appearances that might be present to my mind. I rom
the weight of a stone in the morning—that is, from my
feeling of its weight, or my perception of the process of
weighing it, I infer that the stone will be heavy mthe
afternoon—that is, I infer the possibility of similar feel
ings and perceptions in me at another time. The whole
process relates to me and my perceptions, to things con
tained in my mind. But when I infer that you are
conscious from what you say or do, I pass from that
which is my feeling or perception, which is in my mind
and part of me, to that which is not my feeling at all
which is outside me altogether, namely your feelings and
perceptions. Now there is no possible physical inference,
no inference of phenomena from phenomena, that will
help me over that gulf. I am obliged to admit that this
�18
Right and Wrong.
second kind of inference depends upon another assump
tion, not included in the assumption of the uniformity of
phenomena.
How does a dream differ from waking life ? In a
fairly coherent dream everything seems quite real, and
it is rare, I think, with most people to know in a dream
that they are dreaming. Now, if a dream is sufficiently
vivid and coherent, all physical inferences are just as
valid in it as they are in waking life. In a hazy or im
perfect dream, it is true, things melt into one another
unexpectedly and unaccountably ; we fly, remove moun
tains, and stop runaway horses with a finger. But there’
is nothing in the mere nature of a dream to hinder it
from being an exact copy of waking experience. If I find
a stone heavy in one part of my dream, and infer that it
is heavy at some subsequent part, the inference will be
verified if the dream is coherent enough; I shall go to
the stone, lift it up, and find it as heavy as before. And
the same thing is true of all inferences of phenomena
from phenomena. For physical purposes a dream is just
as good as real life; the only difference is in vividness
and coherence.
What, then, hinders us from Saying that life is all-a
dream ? If the phenomena we dream of are just as good
and real phenomena as those we see and feel when we
are awake, what right have we to say that the material
universe has any more existence apart from our minds than
the things we see and feel in our dreams ? The answer
which Berkeley gave to that question was, No right at
all. The physical universe which I see and feel and
infer, is just my dream and nothing else; that which you
see is your dream ; only it so happens that all our dreams
agree in many respects. This doctrine of Berkeley’s has
now been so far confirmed by the physiology of the
senses, that it is no longer a metaphysical speculation
*
but a scientifically established fact.
But there is a difference between dreams and waking
life, which is of far too great importance for any of us to
be in danger of neglecting it. When I see a man in my
-dream, there is just as good'a body as if I were awake;
muscles, nerves, circulation, capability of adapting means
to ends. If only the dream is coherent enough, no
�Right and Wrong.
*9
physical test can establish that it is a dream. In both
cases I see and feel the same thing. In both cases I
assume the existence of more than I can see and feel,
namely the consciousness of this other man. Bnt now
here is a great difference, and the only difference: in a
dream this assumption is wrong ; in waking life, it is
right. The man I see in my dream is a mere machine; a
bundle of phenomena with no underlying reality ; there
is no consciousness involved except my consciousness,,
no feeling in the case except my feelings. The man I
see in waking life is more than a bundle of phenomena ;
his body and its actions are phenomena, but these pheno
mena are merely the symbols and representatives in my
mind of a reality which is outside my mind, namely, the
consciousness of the man himself which is represented by
the working of his brain, and the simpler quasi-mental
facts, not woven into his consciousness, which are
represented by the working of the rest of his body.
What makes life not to be a dream is the existence of
those facts which we arrive at by our second process
of inference ; the consciousness of men and the higher
animals, the sub-consciousness of lower organisms, and
the quasi-mental facts which go along with the motions
of inanimate matter. In a book which is very largely
and deservedly known by heart, ‘Through the Looking
glass,’ there is a very instructive discussion upon this
point, Alice has been taken to see the Bed King as he
lies snoring; and Tweedledee asks, “ Do you know what
he is dreaming about?” “Nobody can guess that,”
replies Alice. “ Why, about you,” he says triumphantly.
“ And if he stopped dreaming about you, where do you
suppose you’d be?” “Where I am now, of course,”
said Alice. “Not you,” said Tweedledee, “you’d be
nowhere. You are only a sort of thing in his dream.”
“If that there King was to wake,” added Tweedledum,
“ you’d go out, bang! just like a candle.” Alice was
quite right in regarding these remarks as unphilosophical.
The fact that she could see, think, and feel was proof
positive that she was not a sort of thing in anybody’s
dream. This is the meaning of that saying, Cogito ergo
sum, of Descartes. By him, and by Spinoza after him,
the verb cogito and the substantive cogitatio were used to
�20
Right and Wrong.
denote consciousness in general, any kind of feelinoeven what we now call subconsciousness. The saying
means that feeling exists in and for itself, not as a
quality or modification or state or manifestation of any
thing else.
We are obliged in every hour of our lives to act upon
beliefs which have been arrived at by inferences of these
two kinds ; inferences based on the assumption of uni
formity in nature, and inferences which add to this the
assumption of feelings which are not our own. By orga
nising the “common sense ” which embodies the first
class of inferences, we build up the physical sciences;
that is to say, all those sciences which deal with the phy
sical, material, or phenomenal universe, whether animate
or inanimate. And so by organising the common
sense which embodies the second class of inferences, we
build up various sciences of mind. The description and
classification of feelings, the facts of their association
with each other, and of their simultaneity with pheno
mena of nerve-action, all this belongs to psychology,
which may be historical and comparative. The doctrine
of certain special classes of feeling's is organized into
the special sciences of those feelings; thus the facts
about the feelings which we are now considering, about
the feelings of moral approbation and reprobation, are
organized into the science of ethics, and the facts about
the feeling of beauty or ugliness are organized into the
science of aesthetics, or, as it is sometimes called, the
philosophy of art. For all of these the uniformity of
nature has to be assumed as a basis of inference; but
over and above that it is necessary to assume that other
men are conscious in the same way that I am. Now in
these sciences of mind, just as in the physical sciences,
the uniformity which is assumed in the inferred mental
facts is a growing thing which becomes more definite as
we go on, and each successive generation of observers
knows better what to observe and what sort of inferences
may be drawn from observed things. But, moreover, it
is as true of the mental sciences as of the physical ones,
that the uniformity is in the present stage of science an
atomic uniformity. We have learned to regard our
consciousness as made up of elements practically alike,
�Right and Wrong.
21
having relations of succession in time and of contiguity
at each instant, which relations are in all cases practi
cally the same. The element of consciousness is the
transference of an impression into the beginning of
action. Our mental life is a structure made out of such
elements just as the working of our nervous system is
made out of sensorimotor processes. And accordingly
the interaction of the two branches of science leads us
to regard the mental facts as the realities or things-inthemselves, of which the material phenomena are mere
pictures or symbols. The final result seems to be that
atomism is carried beyond phenomena into the realities
which phenomena represent; and that the observed uni
formities of nature, in so far as they can be expressed
in the language of atomism, are actual uniformities of
things in themselves.
So much for the two things which I have promised to
bring together; the facts of our moral feelings, and
the scientific method. It may appear that the latter
has been expounded at more length than was necessary
for the treatment of this particular subject; but the
justification for this length is to be found in certain
common objections to the claims of science to be the
sole judge of mental and moral questions. Some of the
chief of these objections I will now mention.
It is sometimes said that science can only deal
with what is, but that art and morals deal with what
ought to be. The saying is perfectly true, but it is
quite consistent with what is equally true, that the
facts of art and morals are fit subject-matter of science.
I may describe all that I have in my house, and I may
state everything that I want in my house ; these are two
very different things, but they are equally statements of
facts. One is a statement about phenomena, about the
objects which are actually in my possession ; the other
is a statement about my feelings, about my wants and
desires. There are facts, to be got at by common sense,
about the kind of thing that a man of a certain character
and occupation will like to have in his house, and these
facts may be organized into general statements on the
assumption of uniformity in nature. Now the organized
results of common sense dealing with facts are just
�22
Right and Wrong.
science and nothing else. And. in the same way I may
say what men do at the present day, “ how we live now,”
or I may say what we ought to do, namely, what course
of conduct, if adopted, we should morally approve ; and
no doubt these would be two- very different things.
But each of them would be a- statement of facts. One
would belong to the sociology of our time; in so far
as men’s deeds could not be adequately described to
us without some account of their feelings and inten
tions, it would involve facts belonging to psychology as
well as facts belonging to the physical sciences. But
the other would be an account of a particular class of
our feelings^ namely, those which we feel towards an
action when it is regarded as right or wrong. These
facts may be organized by common sense on the assump
tion of uniformity in nature just as well as any other
facts. And we shall see farther on, that not only in this
sense, but in a deeper and more abstract sense, “ what
ought to be done ” is a question for scientific inquiry.
The same objection is sometimes put into another
form. It is said that laws of chemistry, for example,
are general statements about what happens when bodies
are treated in a certain way, and that such laws are fit
matter for science; but that moral laws are different,
because they tell us to do certain things, and we may or
may not obey therm The mood of the one is indicative,
of the other imperative. Now it is quite true that the
word
in the expression “ law of nature,” and in the
expressions “ law of morals,” “law of the land,” has two
totally different meanings, which no educated person
will confound; and I am not aware that any one has
rested the claim of science to judge moral questions on
what is no better than a stale and unprofitable pun.
But two different things may be equally matters of
scientific investigation, even when their names are alike
in sound, A telegraph post is not the same thing as a
post in the War Office, and yet the same intelligence
may be used to investigate the conditions of the one and
the other. That such and such things are right or
wrong, that such and such laws are laws of morals or
laws; of the land, these are facts, just, as the laws of
chemistry are facts; and all facts belong to science, and
are her portion for ever.
�Again, it is sometimes Said that moral questions have
been authoritatively settled by other methods; that we
ought to accept this decision, and not to question it by
any method of scientific inquiry; and that reason should
give way to revelation On such matters. I hope before
I have done to show just cause why we Should pronounce
*
on such teaching aS this no light sentence of moral con
demnation : first, because it is our duty to form those
beliefs which are to guide our actions by the two
scientific modes of inference, and by these alone; and,
secondly, because the proposed mode of settling ethical
questions by authority is contrary to the very nature of
right and wrong.
Leaving this, then, for the present, I pass on to the
most formidable objection that has been made to a
scientific treatment of ethics. The objection is that the
scientific method is not applicable to human action,
because the rule of uniformity does not hold good.
Whenever a man exercises his will, and makes a volun
tary choice of one out of various possible courses, an
event occurs whose relation to contiguous events cannot
be included in a general statement applicable to all
similar cases. There is something wholly capricious and
disorderly, belonging to that moment only; and we have
no right to conclude that if the circumstances were ex
actly repeated, and the man himself absolutely unaltered,
he would choose the same course.
It is clear that if the doctrine here stated is true, the
ground is really cat from under our feet, and we cannot
deal with human action by the scientific method. I
shall endeavour to show, moreover, that in this case,
although we might still have a feeling of moral appro
bation or reprobation towards actions, yet we could not
reasonably praise or blame men for their deeds, nor
regard them as morally responsible. So that, if my
contention is just, to deprive us of the scientific method
is practically to deprive us of morals altogether. On
both grounds, therefore, it is of the greatest importance
that we should define our position in regard to this con
troversy; if, indeed, that can be called a controversy in
which the practical belief of all mankind and the consent
of nearly all serious writers' are on one side.
�24
Right and Wrong.
Let us in the first place consider a little more closely
the connection between conscience and responsibility.
Words in common use, such as these two, have their
meanings practically fixed before difficult controversies
arise; but after the controversy has arisen, each party
gives that slight tinge to the meaning which best suits
its own view of the question. Thus it appears to each
that the common language obviously supports that view,
that this is the natural and primary view of the matter,
and that the opponents are using words in a new mean
ing and wresting them from their proper sense. Now
this is just my position. I have endeavoured so far to
use all words in their common every-day sense, only
making this as precise as I can; and, with two excep
tions, of which due warning will be given, I shall do my
best to continue this practice in future. I seem to my
self to be talking the most obvious platitudes; but it
must be remembered that those who take the opposite
view will think I am perverting the English language.
There is a common meaning of the word “ responsible,”
which though not the same as that of the phrase “ mo
rally responsible,” may throw some light upon it. If
we say of a book, “A is responsible for the preface and
the first half, and B is responsible for the rest,” we mean
that A wrote the preface and the first half. If two
people go into a shop and choose a blue silk dress to
gether, it might be said that A was responsible for its
being silk and B for its being blue. Before they chose,
the dress was undetermined both in colour and in material.
A’s choice fixed the material, and then it was undeter
mined only in colour. B’s choice fixed the colour ; and
if we suppose that there were no more variable condi
tions (only one blue silk dress in the shop), the dress was
then completely determined. In this sense of the word
we say that a man is responsible for that part of an event
which was undetermined when he was left out of account,
and which became determined when he was taken account
of. Suppose two narrow streets, one lying north and
south, one east and west, and crossing one another. A
man is put down where they cross, and has to walk.
Then he must walk either north, south, east, or west,
and he is not responsible for that; what he is responsi-
�Right and Wrong.
25
hie for is the choice of one of these four directions.
May we not say in the present sense of the word that
the external circumstances are responsible for the restric
tion on his choice? we should mean only that the fact
of his going in one or other of the four directions was
due to external circumstances, and not to him. Again,
suppose I have a number of punches of various shapes,
some square, some oblong, some oval, some round, and
that I am going to punch a hole in a piece of paper.
Where I shall punch the hole may be fixed by any kind
of circumstances ; but the shape of the hole depends on
the punch I take. May we say that the punch is lesponsible for the shape of the hole, but not for the posi
tion of it ?
It may be said that this is not the whole of the mean
ing of the word “ responsible,” even in its loosest sense ;
that it ought never to be used except of a conscious
agent. Still this is part of its meaning; if we regard
an event as determined by a variety of circumstances, a
man’s choice being among them, we say that he is
responsible for just that choice which is left him by the
other circumstances.
When we ask the practical question, “ Who is respon
sible for so-and-so ?” we want to find out who is to be
got at in order that so-and-so may be altered. If I want
to change the shape of the hole I make in my paper, I
must change my punch; but this will be of no use if I
want to change the position of the hole. If I want the
colour of the dress changed from blue to green, it is B,
and not A, that I must persuade.
We mean something more than this when we say that
a man is morally responsible for an action. It seems to
me that moral responsibility and conscience go together,
both in regard to the man and in regard to the action.
In order that a man may be morally responsible for an
action, the man must have a conscience, and the action
must be one in regard to which conscience is capable of
acting as a motive, that is, the action must be capable of
being right or wrong. If a child were left on a desert
island and grew up wholly without a conscience, and
then were brought among men, he would not be morally
responsible for his actions until he had acquired a con
�2.6
Right and Wrong.
science by education. He would of course be responsible
m the sense just explained, for that part of them which
was left undetermined by external circumstances, and if
we wanted to alter his actions in these respects we
should have to do it by altering him. But it would be
useless and unreasonable to attempt to do this by means
of praise or blame, the expression of moral approbation
or disapprobation, until he had acquired a conscience
which could be worked upon by such means.
It seems, then, that in order that a man may be
morally responsible for an action, three things are ne
cessary :—
1. He might have done something else; that is to sayz
the action was not wholly determined by external cir
cumstances, and he is responsible only for the choice
which was left him.
2. He had a conscience.
3. The action was one in regard to the doing or not
doing of which conscience might be a sufficient motive.
These three things are necessary, but it does not fol
low that they are sufficient. It is very commonly said
that the action must be a voluntary one. It will be
found, I think, that this is contained in my third con
dition, and also that the form of statement I have
adopted exhibits more clearly the reason why the con
dition is necessary. We may say that an action is in
voluntary either when it is instinctive, or when one
motive is so strong that there is no voluntary choice
between motives. An involuntary cough produced by
irritation of the glottis is no proper subject for blame or
praise. A man is not responsible for it because it is
done by a part of his body without consulting him.
What is meant by him in thia case will require further
investigation. Again, when a dipsomaniac has so great
and overmastering an inclination to drink that we cannot
conceive of conscience being strong enough to conquer
it, he is not responsible for that act, though he may
be responsible for having got himself into the state..
But if it is conceivable that a very strong conscience
fully brought to bear might succeed in conquering the
inclination, we may take a lenient view of the fall and
say there was a very strong temptation, but we shall
�Right and hRrong.
'^T
still regard it as a fall, and say that the man is respon
sible and a wrong has been done.
But since it is just in this distinction between volun
tary and involuntary action that the whole crux ot the
matter lies, let us examine more closely into it. 1 say
that when I cough or sneeze involuntarily, it is ready
not I that cough or sneeze, but a part of iny body which
acts without consulting me. This action is determined
for me by the circumstances, and. is not part of the choice
that is left to me, so that I am not responsible for it.
The question comes then to determining how much is to
be called circumstances, and how much is to be called
m Now I want to describe what happens when I volun
tarily do anything, and there are two courses open to
me. I may describe the things m themselves, my feel
ings and the general course of my consciousness, trust
ing to the analogy between my consciousness and yours
to make me understood ; or I may describe these things
as nature describes them to your senses, namely, in terms
of the phenomena of my nervous system, appealing to
your memory of phenomena and your knowledge of phy
sical action. I shall do both, because in some respects
our knowledge is more, complete from the one source,
and in some respects from the other. When I look back
and reflect upon a voluntary action, I seem to find that
it differs from an involuntary action in the fact that a
certain portion of my character has been consulted.
There is always a suggestion of some sort, either the end
of a train of thought or a new sensation ; and there is an
action ensuing, either the movement of a muscle or set
of muscles, or the fixing of attention upon something.
But between these two there is a consultation, as it were,
of my past history. The suggestion is viewed in the
light of everything bearing on it that I think of at the
time, and in virtue of this light it moves me to act m
one or more ways. Bet us first suppose that no hesita
tion is involved, that only one way of acting is sugges
ted, and I yield to this impulse and act in the particu
lar way. This is the simplest kind of voluntary action.
It differs from involuntary or instinctive action in the
fact that with the latter there is no such conscious con-
�28
Right and Wrong.
saltation of past history. If we describe these facts in
terms of the phenomena which picture them to other
minds, we shall say that in involuntary action a message
passes straight through from the sensory to the motor
centre, and so on to the muscles, without consulting the
cerebrum; while in voluntary action the message is
passed on from the sensory centre to the cerebrum, there
translated into appropriate motor stimuli, carried down
to the motor centre, and so on to the muscles. There
may be other differences, but at least there is this differ
ence. Now, on the physical side, that which determines
what groups of cerebral fibres shall be set at work by
i.en^Ven rnessaSe’ and what groups of motor stimuli
shall be set at work by these, is the mechanism of my
brain at the time; and on the mental side, that which
determines what memories shall be called up by the
given sensation, and what motives these memories shall
bring into action, is my mental character. We may
say, then, in this simplest case of voluntary action, that
w en the suggestion is given it is the character of me
which determines the character of the ensuing action ;
and consequently that I am responsible for choosing that
particular course out of those which were left open to
me by the external circumstances.
This is when I yield to the impulse. But suppose I
do not; suppose that the original suggestion, viewed in
the light of memory, sets various motives in action, each
motive belonging to a certain class of things which I
remember. Then I choose which of these motives shall
prevail. Those who carefully watch themselves find out
that a particular motive is made to prevail by the fixing
of the attention upon that class of remembered things
which calls up the motive. The physical side of this is
the sending of blood to a certain set of nerves—namely,
those whose action corresponds to the memories which
are to be attended to. The sending of blood is accom
plished by the pinching of arteries ; and there are special
nerves, called vaso-motor nerves, whose business it is to
carry messages to the walls of the arteries and get them
pinched. Now this act of directing the attention may
be voluntary or involuntary, just like any other act.
en tn© transformed and reinforced nerve-message
�Right and Wrong.
29
gets to the vaso-motor centre, some part of it may be so
predominant that a message goes straight off to the arte
ries, and sends a quantity of blood to the nerves supply
ing that part; or the call for blood may be sent back for
revision by the cerebrum, which is thus again consulted.
To say the same thing in terms of my feelings, a particular
class of memories roused by the original suggestion may
seize upon my attention before I have time to choose
what I will attend to; or the appeal may be carried to
a deeper part of my character, dealing with wider and
more abstract conceptions, which views the conflicting
motives in the light of a past experience of motives, and
by that light is drawn to one or the other of them.
We thus get to a sort of motive of the second order or
motive of motives. Is there any reason why we should
not go on to a motive of the third order, and the fourth,
and so on ? None whatever that I know of, except that
no one has ever observed such a thing. There seems
plenty of room for the requisite mechanism on the phy
sical side; and no one can say, on the mental side, how
complex is the working of his consciousness. But we
must carefully distinguish between the intellectual deli
beration about motives, which applies to the future and
the past, and the practical choice of motives in the
moment of will. The former may be a train of any
length and complexity ; we have no reason to believe
that the latter is more than engine and tender.
We are now in a position to classify actions in respect
of the kind of responsibility which belongs to them :
namely, we have—
1. Involuntary or instinctive actions.
2. Voluntary actions in which the choice of motives
is involuntary.
3. Voluntary actions in which the choice of motives is
voluntary.
In each of these cases what is responsible is that part
of my character which determines what the action shall
be. For instinctive actions we do not say that I am
responsible, because the choice is made before I know
anything about it. For voluntary actions I am respon
sible, because I make the choice; that is, the character
of me is what determines the character of the action.
�jo
Right and Wvwig„
In me, then, for this purpose, is included the aggregate
of links of association which determines what memories
shall be called up by a given suggestion, and what mo
tives shall be set at work by these memories. But we
distinguish this mass of passions and pleasures, desire
and knowledge and pain, which makes up most of my
character at the moment, from that inner and deeper
motive-choosing self which is called Reason, and the
Will, and the Ego; which is only responsible when
motives are voluntarily chosen by directing attention to
them. It is responsible only forthe choice of one motive
out of those presented to it, not for the nature of the
motives which arc presented.
But again, I may reasonably be blamed for what I did
yesterday, or a week ago, or last year. This is because
I am permanent; in so far as from my actions of that
date an inference may be drawn about my character
now, it is reasonable that I should be treated as praise
worthy or blameable. And within certain limits I am
for the same reason responsible for what I am now,
because within certain limits I have made myself. Even
instinctive actions are dependent, in many cases, upon
habits which may be altered by proper attention and
care; and still more the nature of the connections
between sensation and action, the associations of memory
and motive, may be voluntarily modified if I choose to
try. The habit of choosing among motives is one which
may be acquired and strengthened by practice, and the
strength of particular motives, by continually directing
attention to them, may be almost indefinitely increased
or diminished. Thus, if by me is meant not the instan
taneous me of this moment, but the aggregate me of my
past life, or even of the last year, the range of my
responsibility is very largely increased. I am responsible
for a very large portion of the circumstances which are
now external to me ; that is to say, I am responsible for
certain of the restrictions on my own freedom. As the
eagle was shot with an arrow that flew on its own
feather, so I find myself bound with fetters of my proper
forging.
Let us now endeavour to conceive an action which is
not determined in any way by the character of the agent.
�Right and Wrong,
3<
If we ask, 11 What makes it to be that action and noother ? ” we are told, “ The man’s Ego.” The wordsare here used, it seems to me, in some non-natural sense,
if in any sense at all. One thing makes another to be
what it is when the characters of the two things are
connected together by some general statement or rule.
But we have to suppose that the character of the action
is not connected with the character of the Ego by any
general statement or rule. With the same Ego and the
same circumstances of all kinds, anything within the
limits imposed by the circumstances may happen at any
moment. I find myself unable to conceive any distinct
sense in which responsibility could apply in this case
nor do I see at all how it would be reasonable to use
praise or blame. If the action does not depend on the
character, what is the use of trying to alter the character ?
Suppose, however, that this indeterminateness is only
partial; that the character does add some restrictions tothose already imposed by circumstances, but leaves the
choice between certain actions undetermined to besettled by chance or the transcendental Ego. Is it not
clear that the man would be responsible for precisely
that part of the character of the action which was deter
mined by his character, and not for what was left un
determined by it? For it is just that part which was
determined by his character which it is reasonable totry to alter by altering him.
We who believe in uniformity are not the only peopleunable to conceive responsibility without it. These are
the words of Sir W. Hamilton, as quoted by Mr. J. S.
Mill*
“Nay, were we even to admit as true, what we cannot think
as possible, still the doctrine of a motiveless volition would beonly casualism; and the free acts of an indifferent are, morally
and rationally, as worthless as the pre-ordered passions of a deter
mined will.”
“That, though inconceivable, a motiveless volition would, if
conceived, be conceived as morally worthless, only shows our
impotence more clearly. ”
“ Is the person an original undetermined cause of the determina
tion of his will? If he be not, then he is not a free agent, and the
scheme of necessity is admitted. If he be, in the first place, it is
impossible to conceive the possibility of this ; and in the second, if
* Examination, p. 556.
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Right and IVrong.
the fact, though inconceivable, be allowed, it is impossible to see
how a cause, undetermined by any motive, can be a rational,
moral, and accountable cause. ”
It is true that Hamilton also says that the scheme of
necessity is inconceivable, because it leads to an infinite
non-commencement; and that “the possibility of morality
depends on the possibility of liberty; for if a man be not
a free agent, he is not the author of his actions, and
has, therefore, no responsibility—no moral personality
at all.”
I know nothing about necessity; I only believe that
nature is practically uniform even in human action. I
know nothing about an infinitely distant past; I only
know that I ought to base on uniformity those infer
ences which are to guide my actions. But that man is
a free agent appears to me obvious, and that in the natu
ral sense of the words. We need ask for no better defi
nition than Kant’s :—•
“ Will is that kind of causality attributed to living agents, in
so far as they are possessed of reason; and freedom is such a pro
perty of that causality as enables them to originate events inde
pendently of foreign determining causes ; as, on the other hand
(mechanical), necessity is that property of the causality of irra
tionals, whereby their activity is excited and determined by the
influence of foreign causes.”*
I believe that I am a free agent when my actions are
independent of the control of circumstances outside mej
and it seems a misuse of language to call me a free
agent if my actions are determined by a transcendental
Ego who is independent of the circumstances inside me
—that is to say, of my character. The expression “ free
will” has unfortunately been imported into mental
science from a theological controversy rather different
from the one we are now considering. It is surely too
much to expect that good and serviceable English words
should be sacrificed to a phantom.
In an admirable book, ‘ The Methods of Ethics,’ Mr.
Henry Sidgwick has stated, with supreme fairness and
impartiality, both sides of this question. After setting
forth the “almost overwhelming cumulative proof” of
uniformity in human action, he says that it seems “ more
* ‘ Metaphysic of Ethics, ’ chap. iii.
�Right and Wrong.
33
than balanced by a single argument on the other side:
the immediate affirmation of consciousness m the moment
of deliberate volition.” “ No amount of experience of
the sway of motives ever tends to make me distrust my
intuitive consciousness that in resolving, after delibera
tion, I exercise free choice as to which of the motives
acting upon me shall prevail.”
. , ,
, <t
The only answer to this argument is that it is not on
the other side.” There is no doubt about the deliver
ance of consciousness ; and even if our powers of self
observation had not been acute enough to discover it,
the existence of some choice between motives would be
proved by the existence of vaso-motor. nerves. But
perhaps the most instructive way of meeting arguments
of this kind is to inquire what consciousness ought to
say in order that its deliverances may be of any use
in the controversy. It is affirmed, on the side of uni
formity, that the feelings in my consciousness m the
moment of voluntary choice have been preceded by
facts out of my consciousness which are related to them
in a uniform manner, so that if the previous facts had
been accurately known the voluntary choice might have
been predicted. On the other side this is denied. To
be of any use in the controversy, then, the immediate
deliverance of my consciousness must be competent to
assure me of the non-existence of something which by
hypothesis is not in my consciousness. Given an abso
lutely dark room, can my sense of sight assure me that
there is no one but myself in it ? Can my sense of
hearing assure me that nothing inaudible is going.on?
As little can the immediate deliverance of my conscious
ness assure me that the uniformity of nature does not
apply to human actions.
It is perhaps necessary, in connection with this ques
tion, to refer to that singular Materialism of high
authority and recent date which makes consciousness a
physical agent, “ correlates ” it with Light and Nerve
force, and so reduces it to an objective phenomenon.
This doctrine is founded on a common and very useful
mode of speech, in which we say, for example, that a
good fire is a source of pleasure on a cold day, and that
a man’s feeling of chill may make him run to it. But
�34
Right and Wrong.
so also we say that the sun rises and seta every morn and
night, although the man in the moon sees clearly that
this is due to the rotation of the earth. One cannot be
pedantic all day. But if we choose for once to be
pedantic, the matter is after all very simple. Suppose
that I am made to run by a feeling of chill. When I
begin to move my leg, I may observe if I like a double
series of facts. I have the feeling of effort, the sensa
tion of motion in my leg; I feel the pressure of my foot
-on the ground. Along with this I may see with my
eyes, or feel with my hands, the motion of my leg as a
material object. The first series of facts belongs to me
alone; the second may be equally observed by anybody
-else. The mental series began first; I willed to move
my leg before I saw it move. But when I know more
about the matter, I can trace the material series further
back,, and find nerve messages going to the muscles of
my leg to make it move. But I had a feeling of chill
before I chose to move my leg. Accordingly, I can find
nerve messages, excited by the contraction due to the
Tow temperature, going to my brain from the chilled
skin. Assuming the uniformity of nature, I carry
forward and backward both the mental and the material
series. A uniformity is observed in each, and a paral
lelism is observed between them, whenever observations
can be made. But sometimes one series is known
better, and sometimes the other; so that in telling a
story we quite naturally speak sometimes of mental
facts and sometimes' of material facts. A feeling of chill
made a man run; strictly speaking, the nervous disturb
ance which coexisted with that feeling of chill made him
run, if we want to talk about material facts; or the
feeling of chill produced the form of sub-consciousness •
which coexists with the motion of legs, if we want to
talk about mental facts. But we know nothing about
the special nervous disturbance which coexists with a
feeling of chill, because it has not yet been localised in
the brain ; and we know nothing about the form of sub
consciousness which coexists with the motion of legs;
although there is very good reason for believing in the
existence of both. So we talk about the feeling of chill
and the running, because in one case we know the
�Right and Wrong.
3.5
mental side, and in the other the material side. A man
nanght show me a picture of the battle of Gravelotte, and
say, “ You can’t see the battle, because it is all over,
but there is a picture of it.” And then he might put a
chassepot into my hand, and say, “We could not repre
sent the whole construction of a ehassepot in the picture,
but you. can examine this one, and find it out.” If I
now insisted on mixing up the two modes of communi
cation of knowledge, if I expected that the chassepots in
the picture would go off, and said that the one in my
hand was painted on heavy canvas, I should be acting
exactly in the spirit of the new materialism. For the
material facts are a representation or symbol of the
mental facts, just as a picture is a representation or
symbol of a. battle. And my own mind is a reality from
which I can judge by analogy of the realities represen
ted by other men’s brains, just as the chassepot in my
hand is a reality from which I can judge by analogy of
the chassepots represented in the picture. When,
therefore, we ask, “What is the physical link between
the ingoing message from chilled skin and the outgoing
message which moves the leg? ” and the answer is, “A
man’s Will,” we have as much right to be amused as if
we had asked our friend with the picture what pigment
was used in painting the cannon in the foreground, and
received the answer, “ Wrought iron.” . It will be found
excellent practice in the mental operations required by
this doctrine to imagine a train, the fore part of which is
an engine and three carriages linked with iron couplings,
and the hind part three other carriages linked with iron
couplings ; the bond between the two parts being made
out of the sentiments of amity subsisting between the
stoker and the guard.
To sum up ; the: uniformity of nature in human actions
has been denied on the ground that it takes away re
sponsibility, that it is contradicted by the testimony of
consciousness, and that there is a physical correlation
between mind and matter. We have replied that the
uniformity of nature is necessary to responsibility, that
it is affirmed by the testimony of consciousness when
ever consciousness is competent to testify, and that
matter is the phenomenon or symbol of which mind or
�36
Right and Wrong.
quasi-mind is the symbolized and represented thing. We
are now free to continue our inquiries on the supposition
that nature is uniform.
We began by describing the moral sense of an English
man. No doubt the description would serve very well for
the more civilised nations of Europe; most closely for
Germans and Dutch. But the fact that we can speak in
this way discloses that there is more than one moral sense,
and that what I feel to be right another man may feel
to be wrong. Thus we cannot help asking whether there
is any reason for preferring one moral sense to another;
whether the question, “What is right to do ?” has in any
one set of circumstances a single answer which can be
definitely known.
Now clearly in the first rough sense of the word this is
not true. What is right for me to do now, seeing that
I am here with a certain character, and a certain moral
sense as part of it, is just what I feel to be right. The
individual conscience is, in the moment of volition, the
only possible judge of what is right; there is no con
flicting claim. But if we are deliberating about the
future, we know that we can modify our conscience
gradually by associating with certain people, reading
certain books, and paying attention to certain ideas and
feelings ; and we may ask ourselves, “ How shall we
modify our conscience, if at all? what kind of conscience
shall we try to get ? what is the best conscience ?” We
may ask similar questions about our sense of taste. There
is no doubt at present that the nicest things to me are the
things I like; but I know that I can train myself to like
some things and dislike others, and that things which are
very nasty at one time may come to be great delicacies
at another. I may ask, “ How shall I train myself ?
What is the best taste ?” And this leads very naturally
to putting the question in another form, namely, “ What
is taste good for? What is the purpose or function of
taste?” We should probably find as the answer to that
question that the purpose or function of taste is to dis
criminate wholesome food from unwholesome; that it is a
matter of stomach and digestion. It will follow from
this that the best taste is that which prefers wholesome
food, and that by cultivating a preference for wholesome and
�Right and Wrong.
37
nutritious things I shall be training my palate in the way
it should go. In just the same way our question about
the best conscience will resolve itself into a question about
the purpose or function of the conscience—why we have
got it, and what it is good for.
Now to my mind the simplest and clearest and most
profound philosophy that was ever written upon this sub
ject is to be found in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Mr.
Darwin’s ‘ Descent of Man.’ In these chapters it appears
that just as most physical characteristics of organisms have
been evolved and preserved because they were useful to the
individual in the struggle for existence against other indi
viduals and other species, so this particular feeling has been
evolved and preserved because it is useful to the tribe or
community in the struggle for existence against othei’
tribes, and against the environment as a whole. The func
tion of conscience is the preservation of the tribe as a tribe.
And we shall rightly train our consciences if we learn to
approve those actions which tend to the advantage of the
community in the struggle for existence.
There are here some words, however, which require care
ful definition. And first the word purpose. A thing serves
a purpose when it is adapted to some end ; thus a corkscrew
is adapted to the end of extracting corks from bottles, and
our lungs are adapted to the end of respiration. We may
say that the extraction of corks is the purpose of the cork
screw, and that respiration is the purpose of the lungs. But
here we shall have used the word in two different senses.
A man made the corkscrew with a purpose in his mind,
and he knew and intended that it should be used for pulling
out corks. But nobody made our lungs with a purpose in
his mind, and intended that they should be used for
breathing. The respiratory apparatus was adapted to its
purpose by natural selection—namely, by the gradual pre
servation of better and better adaptations, and the killing
off of the worse and imperfect adaptations. In using the
word purpose for the result of this unconscious process of
adaptation by survival of the fittest, I know that I am
somewhat extending its ordinary sense, which implies con
sciousness. But it seems to me that on the score of conve
nience there is a great deal to be said for this extension of
meaning. We want a word to express the adaptation of
D
�38
Right and JVrong.
means to an end, whether involving consciousness or not;
the word purpose will do very well, and the adjective pur
posive has already been used in this sense. But if the use
is admitted, we must distinguish two kinds of purpose.
There is the unconscious purpose which is attained by
natural selection, in which no consciousness need be con
cerned ; and there is the conscious purpose of an intelligence
which designs a thing that it may serve to do something
which he desires to be done. The distinguishing mark of
this second kind, design or conscious purpose, is that in the
consciousness of the agent there is an image or symbol of
the end which he desires, and this precedes and determines
the use of the means. Thus the man who first invented a
corkscrew must have previously known that corks were in
bottles, and have desired to get them out. We may
describe this if we like in terms of matter, and say that a
purpose of the second kind implies a complex nervous
system, in which there can be formed an image or symbol
of the end, and that this symbol determines the use of the
means. The nervous image or symbol of anything is that
mode of working of part of my brain which goes on simul
taneously and is correlated with my thinking of the thing.
Aristotle defines an organism as that in which the
part exists for the sake of the whole. It is not that
the existence of the part depends on the existence of
the whole, for every whole exists only as an aggregate
of parts related in a certain way; but that the shape
and nature of the part are determined by the wants of
the whole. Thus the shape and nature of my foot are
what they are, not for the sake of my foot itself, but
for the sake of my whole body, and because it wants
to move about. That which the part has to do for the
whole is called its function. Thus the function of my foot
is to support me, and assist in locomotion. Not ail the
nature of the part is necessarily for the sake of the whole;
the comparative callosity of the skin of my sole is for the
protection of my foot itself.
Society is an organism, and man in society is part of an
organism according to this definition, in so far as some
portion of the nature of man is what it is for the sake of
the whole—society. Now conscience is such a portion of
the nature of man, and its function is the preservation of
�Right and Wrong.
39
society in the struggle for existence. We may be able to
define this function more closely when we know more about
the way in which conscience tends to preserve society.
Next let us endeavour to make precise the meaning of
the words community and society. It is clear that at dif
ferent times men may be divided into groups of greater or
less extent—tribes, clans, families, nations, towns. If a
certain number of clans are struggling for existence, that
portion of the conscience will be developed which tends to
the preservation of the clan; so, if towns or families are
struggling, we shall get a moral sense adapted to the ad
vantage of the town or the family. In this way different
portions of the moral sense may be developed at different
stages of progress. Now it is clear that for the purpose of
the conscience, the word community at any time will mean
a group of that size and nature which is being selected or
not selected for survival as a whole. Selection may be
going on at the same time among many different kinds of
groups. And ultimately the moral sense will be composed
of various portions relating to various groups, the function
or purpose of each portion being the advantage of that
group to which it relates in the struggle for existence.
Thus we have a sense of family duty, of municipal duty, of
national duty, and of duties towards all mankind.
It is to be noticed that part of the nature of a smaller
group may be what it is for the sake of a larger group to
which it belongs; and then we may speak of the function
of the smaller group. Thus it appears probable that the
family, in the form in which it now exists among us, is
’determined by the good of the nation ; and we may say
that the function of the family is to promote the advan
tage of the nation or larger society in some certain ways.
But I do not think it would be right to follow Auguste
Comte in speaking of the function of humanity; because
humanity is obviously not a part of any larger organism
for whose sake it is what it is.
Now that we have cleared up the meanings of some of
our words, we are still a great way from the definite solu
tion of our question, “ What is the best conscience ? or
what ought I to think right ? ” For we do not yet know
what is for the advantage of the community in the struggle
for existence. If we choose to learn by the analogy of an
�4°
Right and Wrong.
individual organism, we may see that no permanent or
final answer can be given, because the organism grows in
consequence of the struggle, and develops new wants while
it is satisfying the old ones. But at any given time it has
quite enough to do to keep alive and to avoid dangers and
diseases. So we may expect that the wants and even the
necessities of the social organism will grow with its growth
and that it is impossible to predict what may tend in the
distant future to its advantage in the struggle for existence.
But still, in this vague and general statement of the func
tions of conscience, we shall find that we have already
established a great deal.
In the first place, right is an affair of the community,
and must not be referred to anything else. To go back to
our analogy of taste ; if I tried to persuade you that the
best palate was that which preferred things pretty to look
at, you might condemn me a priori without any experience,
by merely knowing that taste is an affair of stomach and
digestion—that its function is to select wholesome food.
And so, if any one tries to persuade us that the best con
science is that which thinks it right to obey the will of
some individual, as a deity or a monarch, he is condemned
a priori in the very nature of right and wrong. In order
that the worship of a deity may be consistent with natural
ethics, he must be regarded as the friend and helper of
humanity, and his character must be judged from his
actions by a moral standard which is independent of him.
And this, it must be admitted, is the position which has
been taken by most English divines, as long as they were
Englishmen first and divines afterwards. The worship of a
deity who is represented as unfair or unfriendly to any
portion of the community is a wrong thing, howevcr great
may be the threats and promises by which it is commended.
And still worse, the reference of right and wrong to his
arbitrary will as a standard, the diversion of the allegiance
of the moral sense from the community to him, is the most
insidious and fatal of social diseases. It was against this
that the Teutonic conscience protested in the Reformation.
Again, in monarchical countries, in order that allegiance to
the sovereign may be consistent with natural ethics, he
must be regarded as the servant and symbol of the national
unity, capable of rebellion and punishable for it. And this
�Right and Wrong.
41
has been the theory of the English constitution from time
immemorial.
The first principle of natural ethics, then, is the sole and
supreme allegiance of conscience to the community. I
venture to call this piety, in accordance with the older
meaning of the word. Even if it should turn out impossible
to sever it from the unfortunate associations which have
clung to its later meaning, still it seems worth while
to try.
An immediate deduction from our principle is that there
are no self-regarding virtues properly so called ; those quali
ties which tend to the advantage and preservation of the
individual being only morally right in so far as they make
him a more useful citizen. And this conclusion is in some
cases of great practical importance. The virtue of purity,
for example, attains in this way a fairly exact definition :
purity in a man is that course of conduct which makes him
to be a good husband and father, in a woman that which
makes her to be a good wife and mother, or which helps
other people so to prepare and keep themselves. It is easy
to see how many false ideas and pernicious precepts are
swept away by even so simple a definition as that.
Next, we may fairly define our position in regard to that
moral system which has deservedly found favour with the
great mass of our countrymen. In the common statement
of utilitarianism, the end of right action is defined to be
the greatest happiness of the greatest number. It seems
to me that the reason and the ample justification of the
success of this system is that it explicitly sets forth the
community as the object of moral allegiance. But our
determination of the purpose of the conscience will oblige
us to make a change in the statement of it. Happiness is
not the end of right action. My happiness is of no use to
the community except in so far as it makes me a more
efficient citizen ; that is to say, it is rightly desired as a
means and not as an end. The end may be described as
the greatest efficiency of all citizens as such. No doubt
happiness will in the long run accrue to the community as
a consequence of right conduct; but the right is deter
mined independently of the happiness, and, as Plato says,
it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.
*
* The word altruism seems to me unfortunate, because the community,
(my neighbour) is to be regarded not as other, but as myself. I have endea
voured to defend this view elsewhere.
�42
Right and Wrong.
In conclusion, I would add some words on the relation
of Veracity to the first principle of Piety. It is clear that
veracity is founded on faith in man; you tell a man the
truth when you can trust him with it and are not afraid.
This perhaps is made more evident by considering the case
of exception allowed by all moralists—namely, that if a
man asks you the way with a view to committing a murder,
it is right to tell a lie and misdirect him. The reason why
he must not have the truth told him is that he would make
a bad use of it, he cannot be trusted with it. About these
cases of exception an important remark must be made in
passing. When we hear that a man has told a lie under
such circumstances, we are indeed ready to admit that for
once it was right, mensonge admirable; but we always have
a sort of feeling that it must not occur again. And the
same thing applies to cases of conflicting obligations, when
for example the family conscience and the national con
science disagree. In such cases no general rule can be laid
down ; we have to choose the less of two evils; but this is
not right altogether in the same sense as it is right to speak
the truth. There is something wrong in the circumstances
that we should have to choose an evil at all. The actual
course to be pursued will vary with the progress of society;
that evil which at first was greater will become less, and in
a perfect society the conflict will be resolved into harmony.
But meanwhile these cases of exception must be carefully
kept distinct from the straightforward cases of right and
wrong, and they always imply an obligation to mend the
circumstances if we can.
Veracity to an individual is not only enjoined by piety
in virtue of the obvious advantage which attends a straight
forward and mutually trusting community as compared
with others, but also because deception is in all cases a per
sonal injury. Still more is this true of veracity to the
community itself. The conception of the universe or aggre
gate of beliefs which forms the link between sensation and
action for each individual is a public and not a private
matter; it is formed by society and for society. Of what
enormous importance it is to the community that this should
be a true conception I need not attempt to describe. Now
to the attainment of this true conception two things are
necessary.
�Right and Wrong.
43
First, if we study the history of those methods by which
true beliefs and false beliefs have been attained,we shall
see that it is our duty to guide our beliefs by inference
from experience on the assumption of uniformity of nature
and consciousness in other men, and by this only. ppty
upon this moral basis can the foundations of the empirical
method be justified.
Secondly, veracity to the community depends upon faith
in man. Surely I ought to be talking platitudes when I
say that it is not English to tell a man a lie, or to suggest
a lie by your silence or your actions, because you are afraid
that he is not prepared for the truth, because you don t
quite know what he will do when he knows it, because
perhaps after all this lie is a better thing for him than the
truth would be; this same man being all the time an
honest fellow-citizen whom you have every reason to trust.
Surely I have heard that this craven crookedness is the
object of our national detestation. And yet it is constantly
whispered that it would be dangerous to divulge certain
truths to the masses. “ I know the whole thing is untrue :
but then it is so useful for the people; you don t know
what harm you might do by shaking their faith in it.
Crooked ways are none the less crooked because they are
meant to deceive great masses of people instead of indivi
duals. If a thing is true, let us all believe it, rich and
poor, men, women, and children. If a thing is untrue, let
us all disbelieve it, rich and poor, men, women, and children.
Truth is a thing to be shouted from the housetops, not to
be whispered over rose-water after dinner when the ladies
are gone away.
Even in those whom I would most reverence, who would
shrink with horror from such actual deception as I have
just mentioned, I find traces of a want of faith in man.
Even that noble thinker, to whom we of this generation
owe more than I can tell, seemed to say in one of his post
humous essays that in regard to questions of great public
importance we might encourage a hope in excess of the
evidence (which would infallibly grow into a belief and
defy evidence) if we found that life was made easier by it.
As if we should not lose infinitely more by nourishing a
tendency to falsehood than we could gain by the delusion
of a pleasing fancy. Life must first of all be made straight
�44
Right and Wrong.
and true ; it may get easier through the help this brings to
the commonwealth. And the great historian of mate*
rialism says that the amount of false belief necessary to
morality in a given society is a matter of taste. I cannot
believe that any falsehood whatever is necessary to mo
rality. It cannot be true of my race and yours that to
keep ourselves from becoming scoundrels we must needs
believe a lie. The sense of right grew up among healthy
men and was fixed by the practice of comradeship. It has
never had help from phantoms and falsehoods, and it never
can want any. By faith in man and piety towards man we
have taught each other the right hitherto ; with faith in
man and piety towards man we shall never more depart
from it.
* Lange, ‘ Geschichte des Materialismus.’
PRINTED BY C. W. liEYNELL, LITTLE rULTENET STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Right and wrong : the scientific origin of their distinction : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 7th November, 1876
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Clifford, William Kingdon [1845-1879]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 44 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Sunday Lecture Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1876
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N093
Subject
The topic of the resource
Ethics
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Right and wrong : the scientific origin of their distinction : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 7th November, 1876), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Ethics
NSS
Right and wrong