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THOUGHTS
ON
THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL.
BY
PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Threepence.
�My Dear Scott,
I do not know whether you will take interest
in this paper, which, in preparing to change my abode,
I have routed out of a drawer. You will observe that
it is dated 1841. At that time I had gone far from
“ the creed of the Reformers,” but had not quite cut the
last cords that bound me to the idea of Supernaturalism.—
Yours ever,
F. W. N.
June 9 th 1872.
�THOUGHTS ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL.
T is impossible to extend inquiry and contemplation
ever so little beyond the bounds of ordinary thought,
without discerning how crude and untenable is the
popular conception of divine Omnipotence. The child
who is informed that God is Almighty, asks in great
simplicity, why then does God let any body be unhappy?
We may unhesitatingly deduce, that there is a real
contrariety between the divine perfections, as conceived
of by the child, and the existence of any evil. With
the same logical force, though with more rudeness, some
have alleged that the deity ought to have made man
other than he is. Nor has the highest intellect and
deepest piety ever essayed even to modify and relieve
the difficulty, except by suggestions drawn from the
topics of Optimism. It is said, “ Perhaps the allwise
God sees that it is best so to be: he sees ends to be
obtained, which, could not be obtained so well in any
other way; and which are valuable enough to deserve
being bought at such a price.” In different forms, this
is substantially the meaning of all that the humble
and pious can adduce. Whether learned or unlearned,
philosophic or simple, the topic to which they refer
us, is, “ Perhaps the Allwise God saw that there was
no better way."
A sentiment, even conjectural, which comes to us
recommended by such authority, cannot be deemed rash
and profane. If it is impious, what else is more pious?
Is it not the zealous effort of piety to shelter and
I
�4
Thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
defend its own existence 1 It is, and whether it be a
just sentiment or not, at any rate it is devotional and
humble. And yet, let us examine what it virtually
means. The evil which God has either ordained or
permitted is partly moral and partly physical; yet this, it
is suggested, was probably seen by him to be the best
means of attaining some eminently good end. Now it
cannot be intended to imply that he thinks slightly of
moral evil; an idea subversive of reverence for his holy
character, and degrading him into one who will employ
wicked means to compass his purposes. It must re
main, that the argument intends to say, that inscrut
able limitations exist in the divine power, which could
never have been suspected until the broad facts pro
claimed it; so that the deity had to submit necessarily,
at least for a time, to a state of things contrary to his
mind, as an essential prerequisite towards the attaining
of a glorious end beyond.
A recent essayist, whose work has attracted more
than usual notice, the Rev. Henry Woodward, has
forced prominently forward the fact, that nearly all
our reasonings concerning the Wisdom of God imply
some limitation of his power. To a being, Omnipotent
in the gross and popular sense, wisdom must be wholly
useless, and in fact becomes in him an unintelligible
quality. As policy is superfluous, to a conqueror who
can apply overwhelming force, so is wisdom superseded
by omnipotence. We admire the adaptation of lungs
to air, and of air to the lungs, on the supposition that
a difficult problem has been proposed,—how to free
the blood from noxious particles 1 But if we are asked,
“ why might not the divine fiat have done it as well?”
one reply alone is to be had,—that there are other
objects to be gained by adhering to the general laws of
matter, which objects could not have been so well
gained by a direct exertion of divine power. If other
wise, there would be no intelligible wisdom in employ
ing a circuitous, rather than a direct method of effecting
�Thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
5
the end. The like may he observed in every other
case. Hence, wisdom and power are in one sense
antagonistic qualities ; the more you enlarge the sphere
of the latter, the more you diminish that of the former;
and every time we ascribe wisdom to the divine agent,
we virtually imply some unknown limitation to his
power, and deny the existence of almightiness in its
vulgar sense.
To ignorant persons, who have imbibed with their
devotional feelings the popular idea of omnipotence, it
is apt to appear a profane thing to assert, that it is not
within the power of the Almighty to recall the past; or,
to construct a square which shall have the properties of a
circle. But all thoughtful and philosophical minds
have long been aware, that that which is self-contra
dictory does not lie within the sphere of power;
and that it is no degradation to the Almighty that
he cannot make the same thing both to be and not
to be.
It being then certain, that limitations to the opera
tions of his power may exist, and do exist, which the
thoughtful of our race can discern, but of which the
ignorant and unthinking are not aware; we may
presume that other limitations possibly exist, which
no human mind would guess at a priori, and which may,
as yet,be concealed from all. And it has appeared,
that an analysis of every argument which ascribes
wisdom to the deity, manifests that there is a secret
conviction in all religious minds of the reality of that
which has been just called a presumption. Applying
such principles to the creation of intelligent and free
beings like man, we presently fall upon the conception,
that to be able to love God, man needed to be able
to hate him ; if free to go right, man is free also to go
wrong. At present it is enough to assert, that it is at
least a plausible opinion that the two sorts of ability
are inseparable. It is not only unproved that to create
a being capable of holiness without being liable to sin,
�6
thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
is within, the sphere of divine power; hut the prima
facie aspect of the case is the reverse, tending to con
vince us that the very idea is as self-contradictory as
that of a square circle. For when we try to analyse
the notion of freedom, or indeed of holiness, we find it
essentially implies a power of sin. For who would call
a man honest, who had no natural power to he dis
honest? or meek, who was physically unable to be
angry? or humble, who could not help his humility?
and so of all other moral excellences. Every one
of them implies a tfpoaipttsis or free choice; and they
not only could not be praised, but could not even exist;
for it would not be a soul if there were no freedom.
A liability to go wrong is then essentially inseparable
from a capacity to go right, as much as convexity from
concavity. They are little more than the same thing
viewed from opposite sides. We do not praise a stone
image of Xenocrates for temperance; for it cannot be
gluttonous ; and we do not blame a hog for gluttony or
a fox for theft, for they are incapable of the virtues of
temperance and of honesty.
Now if this does not wholly satisfy any one, let it be
at least allowed that the opinion is not wholly imaginary
or absurd, but that it has a measure of probability.
That probability appears at once to be turned into prac
tical certainty by the powerful testimony of matter of
fact on the same side. We do find, to an amazing
and appalling extent, moral disorder spread over the
whole world as known to us; and the greatest difficulty
is met in accounting for such a phenomenon within the
realm of so beneficent and wise a ruler as we believe to
superintend the earth. The fact forces on all pious
contemplators the conviction, that, in some sense or
other, he could not help it, consistently with the attain
ing of some paramount ends. If it is a physical
difficulty which he could not overcome, that no doubt
tends to degrade our conception of divine power; but
if it is a metaphysical difficulty, not at all. On the
contrary, our own minds are in fault for having invented
�Thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
7
an absurdity, and then proposed it as a problem for
his power to effect. The latter is at once both the
alternative to which the case itself points us, and that
which preserves the honour of the divine attributes.
It does then appear to have as much proof as have any
of the received propositions of natural theology, that to
create a being capable of having a holy will, essentially
implies the endowing him with a power to sin; and that
even almighty power cannot separate the two, since the
idea is self-contradictory. •
If this is conceded, the first great question press
ing on us is; “ whether the evils resulting from
the creation of man, as a being capable of holiness,
are so enormous, as to outweigh all the conceivable
advantages.” We cannot set aside this, by imagining
some metaphysical necessity to have forced the deity to
the creation of mankind; without falling into a system of
mere fatalism. It would make out, that he is not our
voluntary creator, but is himself a kind of tool or machine
in the hands of destiny; and by breaking the moral con
nection between the creator and his creatures, would
appear to subvert all intelligent piety. Nor indeed can
the intellect approve such a conception, any more than
does our devotional feeling; for what can be a more
unmeaning phrase, than that God should create us by
necessity, and without his own choice? Forced then
to regard the act as chosen deliberately and voluntarily
on his part, we cannot help urgently desiring some
ground to believe, that the contingent evils thence
resulting are slight in comparison with the good. To
suppose either that he knew they would outweigh the
good, or that his foresight was defective, and that he
did not know how great they would prove, would
grievously impair our conception either of the goodness
or of the wisdom of God.
It is useless to deny that the doctrine of eternal
misery, whether as popularly understood, or as philoso
phically explained, spreads an impenetrable cloud over
the whole divine character. It matters not whether w&
�8
Thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
conceive of God as exerting a direct act of judgment, to
torture in everlasting flames the vast majority of the
human race; or whether the wicked are to endure
countless and never-ending agonies from accusing con
science and evil passions. The two doctrines possess
in common the fact of everlasting misery and everlast
ing sin, in appalling and ever increasing intensity; and
this, to a vast majority of the children of Adam. Even
if the last point were omitted, yet if there be millions
on whom this horrible lot would fall, the human heart
seems incapable of conceiving how this awful evil can
ever be a desirable purchase money for some greater good;
but we are forced back on the inevitable persuasion, that
it had been better that man had never been created.
Nay, could we realize what eternal sin and eternal agony
mean, perhaps we should conclude that such suffering
and such moral evil to a single individual would be too
great a price to pay for the everlasting blessedness and
perfection of all the rest of our race. No generous
mind,—or rather, no heart not harder than flint,—could
desire to purchase for itself a heaven at the price of a
hell to its brother; but would wish a thousand times
over that not one of the family had ever come into ex
istence. Such is the unconstrained utterance of ordin
ary human feeling; and if we are not to ascribe the
like to the supreme creator, if we are to suppose his
strength of mind such, that he does not flinch from
bringing about the welfare of the few, by results so
appalling to the many; devotion is crushed into super
stition, and adoration ceases to be intelligent. No
effort can be made to dispel the darkness resting on the
character of the most high, if the doctrine of eternal
punishment, in the philosophical and exact sense of the
term eternal, is true.
It is, however, certain, that one who is contemplat
ing the facts of the world with the eye of a natural
theologian, will not encumber himself with this doc
trine. It is, if sanctioned by Christianity, a load to be
supported by the credit of “ revelation; ” a new diffi-
�Thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
9
culty introduced, of which we know nothing from a
contemplation of nature : and in this case it must be
allowed, that so far from bringing us “ good news,” and
clearing up the difficulties which distressed faith and
perplexed intellect, Christ has brought us the worst
news we could possibly have had, worse than the
wildest misanthrope could have imagined, and has in
tensely aggravated all pre-existing perplexities.
In
short, whatever is the amount of evidence testifying to
the truth of the Christian revelation, it might seem an
obvious axiom that it is the duty of every good man, as
it must be the impulse of every humane man, earnestly
to hope that Christianity may turn out to be a fiction,
rather than that this doctrine should be true : and this
circumstance loads it with so enormous an improbability,
as would suffice to overturn all intelligent faith in the
doctrine, were it even far better supported by Scriptural
evidence than it is.
Supposing then that this doctrine is set aside, let us
recur to the question, whether evil (physical and moral)
may not ultimately prove a sort of evanescent quantity,
in comparison to the good. The first step towards this
will assuredly be taken, if it is believed that the evil ix
temporary, the good eternal. Now, to this, the general
spirit of the Christian Scriptures strongly testifies ; nor
are there wanting special texts bearing on this result.
All sin is regarded as of the nature of corruption; and
is counted as “ of this agewhile all righteousness
and goodness is regarded as both coming down from God,
and as partaking of his nature, which is incorruption
and eternity. To the same conclusion both conscience
and philosophy point. From the very necessity of the
case, inexperience appears to draw after it errors ; we
make allowance for the indiscretions of youth: we
should think it inhuman to wish a man to be punished
to his dying day for his early offences. Moreover, the
punishment which they draw after them has a very per
ceptible tendency to correct and improve the man. It
would be unwise to desire that sin should not. tend to
�io
Thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
bring after it misery; for it would be to lose a whole
some instructor: but as we must wish the punishment
to be only in due measure, and to cease after it has an
nihilated that of which it was the chastisement, so we
have the testimony of experience, that this is ordinarily
the case. Man being himself finite, his sin is not in
finite in its’ effects on others, nor on himself; and if
not always remediable, yet it tends to self-exhaustion.
All virtue and goodness, being self-consistent, strengthen
continually with growth : but vices in every shape are
opposed to one another, and though occasionally they
may strengthen each other, the contrary happens far
oftener. Indeed, in different men, vices are in the long
run obviously and surely opposed, and wear each other
out in many ways. Now the fact is (however it be ex
plained) that man comes into this world with intellect
and conscience wholly unformed, and he has to be built
up into a moral and spiritual being. It would be more
reasonable to expect a person to be able to swim before
entering the water, than to expect a human being to
learn to go right, without ever going wrong. But if in
manhood we look back with a smile and without pain
at the sorrows of childhood, so also do we look back
without shame or remorse at the peevishness, greediness,
impatience, or other follies incident to that age ; nay,
nor does any sound minded man feel humbled at the
faults of youth,when they are merely the necessary
defects of that age, and not his own personal and
peculiar transgressions—I mean, such defects as the
being too sanguine and ardent, hasty and imprudent,
too ready to form friendships and to trust strangers,
too vehement in love and in expectation, somewhat too
confident of one’s own opinion. Just in proportion as
any of these were a voluntary transgression, they will
call for and produce humiliation, but no further. But
again, whatever may have been our past sufferings, yet
when at last we obtain honourable and permanent
repose, the remembrance of them is rather pleasant;
and if they have brought us spiritual improvement, we
�Thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
11
may well count them a real good. No amount then of
mere outward suffering, not connected with our own
sin, during this short life, need cause the slightest dif
ficulty in our present argument. All evil is ultimately
annihilated, in comparison with the good. As concerns
the moral evil in which each of us may have been in
volved, no one can repine and justly regret, if the fire
which burns in the soul from this cause is fierce and
gnawing. If remorse do its work, and the man learn
to go softly all his days in the bitterness of his soul;
he will only the better learn that sin stingeth as a
serpent and biteth as an adder. In fact, as regards the
mass of mankind, perhaps no wise man would desire
to have the tormenting power of remorse lessened.
Nevertheless, as in the case of slight transgressions,—
an unkind word—a proud thought—a selfish neglect of
another—there is a soothing of the conscience, when
contrition has wrought its results,—confession and resti
tution ; so of greater offences there may be a genial
repentance, quite unlike mere remorse, and where there
is, some ultimate lesson may be taught both to the
offender himself and to others : and though it is not to
be imagined that it is better to him to have gone wrong,
than to have been both wise enough and good enough
to go right, yet his sin may in the end be a mere pro
cess of rising higher; just as the false notes on a violin
are but a state of transition towards better play. Hence
even the worst cases of guilt become reconcilable with
the divine wisdom in ordaining the present scene of
things : for in short, though all are transgressors, yet at
the worst one portion is led on towards moral perfection
and consequent happiness; and another portion, if it
does not attain this, yet at some period ceases to exist.
No difficulty arises, except on the belief that the sin
and misery of the latter is unsubdued and everlasting.
Exclude this conception ;—believe that goodness alone
is eternal; and it remains clearly intelligible, how
the divine wisdom may have ordained, on the one hand,
that man should gain a stable independent holy will,
�t
2
Thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
so as to be capable of friendship with his infinite crea
tor ; but that, on the other hand, this essentially de
manded that he should be left free to sin, and conse
quently moral evil has abounded and abounds, but only
for a time. Sin and its effects, remorse and misery, are
to be abolished, and the fruit of holiness shall flourish to
everlasting life.
But it will be inquired, is not this, after all, to main
tain, that the holy God uses base and unholy means to
work out his designs ? Does it not confound our sense
of moral distinctions, and make evil to be good when
it tends to a good end, if the view above given is
correct ? This objection exerts a force that is hard to
account for upon many minds ; for it does not seem to
have any intrinsic weight. It might seem to have
been borrowed from the barbaric reasoning of King
Agamemnon in Homer, or from a bye-gone Predestinarian school, whose doctrine annihilated all human
agency, arid imputed to the deity the acts of all men.
Certainly such a doctrine makes it impossible to defend
the moral character of our creator. If vice and cruelty
are bad, and he is as truly responsible for their exis
tence, as though he were the immediate agent, there is
an end of reasoning. The tyrant may justify himself,
by saying, that when he oppresses, he is only the tool
by which God scourges men. But the first principle of
all intelligent worship recognizes in ourselves a power
to resist the will of God, which constitutes sin against
him. It is in extravagant inconsistency with this first
principle, to imagine that because God gives us the
power to sin, therefore God ordains the sin and is
responsible for it. If with reverence we may use the
phrase, we may say that he is responsible for the general
result of investing us with such a power. Consistently
with goodness and wisdom, he must have foreseen that
in the long-run this arrangement was beneficent; and
consistently with justice, he must have provided that
no individual should suffer disproportionately, beyond
his deserts, from such an arrangement. But this may
�'Thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
i2
co-exist with a steady upholding of the belief in his
fixed hatred of moral evil. A wise father will give his
son an allowance of pocket money, in order that he may
learn to spend judiciously : and even when he sees him
about to employ it foolishly, he will not check him,
deeming it better that he should learn by experience,
than by dictation. Without alleging that the cases are
perfectly parallel, this suffices to put into a clear light
the fact, that to make a beneficial disposal of affairs, well
knowing that the parties so invested with power will
partially abuse it, is quite consistent with the purest
disapproval of such abuse. All that is needed to justify
him who so ordains, is, a clear belief that in no other
way will so good a total result be gained.
In this light we must look on the men who are gene
rally regarded as the scourges of mankind. Who can
read without shuddering the atrocities of a Timour or
an Attila ? Indeed, in the latter, it appears less fright
ful from his very savageness.
We judge of him as
a wild beast, rather than as a man. But Timour was a
legislator and a would-be reformer. Alexander the
Great was eminent for political intellect. Our question,
however, is not, What are we to think of the men ?
but, How are we to vindicate the divine providence
which permits their action? It does not seem to be
difficult, after the above. Indeed, an Attila may be
classed with earthquakes or volcanoes; fearful visitations
not caused by moral evil; and no one who holds that
these physical evils are consistent with divine goodness
(partly as the results of good laws impressed on nature,
partly, as directly remedial) will find much difficulty in
believing the same of Attila. But we may go further.
Not only is it certain that we should injure man’s
nature, if we could wholly extinguish ambition; cer
tain, that the flame which in Alexander or Napoleon
burned to intense and baneful fury, is in its milder forms
quite essential to man’s welfare: but it is credible,
that, if we did but know the alternative possibilities
(which we never can know), we might find that the
�14
Thoughts on the Existence of Evil.
permanent good effected (blindly) by Alexander, by
Julins Caesar, by Napoleon, far more than out-balances
their evil. We may even venture to believe, that,
until mankind is otherwise more perfect, it is beneficial
on the whole that men of unbridled ambition do exist,
and will exist. This is God’s great influence for fusing
into one the separated tribes of the human race by con
quest ; the method by which the superior energies and
talents of one nation are ultimately diffused over
another : and although it produces countless miseries
on the way, inasmuch as the conquerors are not aiming
at good or concerned to use virtuous methods (and this is
their sin), yet an extensive survey of human history
will convince any well-judging mind, that our race
would never have attained its present elevation or its
present prospects of improvement, if ambition had
always been thwarted before it could overflow in
conquest.
It is striking to contemplate the analogy offered us
in the whole field of nature, as to the slow progress of
whatever is to be ultimately great. In the botanical
world it has been long proverbial, that vast growths are
slow; and the discoveries of geology magnificently
illustrate the saying. But there is another aspect from
which the same facts may be viewed. In one sense,
the material universe may be called always the same.
Having the same repulsions and attractions and the same
material masses, only the same phenomena (it might
seem) must for ever recur, did not organic life break in
to disturb the monotony. The influx of vegetable
forms introduces wonderful variety; yet each vegetable
in itself is, within near limits, ever like itself; nor
does any improvement in the individual, nor much in
the species, take place. Moral growth is the last and
most complicated of organic growths. If ferns took
many thousand years to perfect themselves, it is but
little to allow a hundred thousand years to man.
�-L /6Cz JUllUU.'UUJ J. {.UlLjyiCLVLb U/KL ± Ct^C/d //tCty (7CJ /UlU Utb UALWT&58(H(/
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Thoughts on the existence of evil
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Newman, Francis William [1805-1897.]
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
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Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Lecture written in 1841. [From author's note on title page verso]. Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end.
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[1872]
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Ethics
Evil
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Evil
Morris Tracts
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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
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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
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1875
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RA1828
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Ethics
Evil
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Evil
NSS
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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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Victorian Blogging
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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 Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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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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[s.n.]
Date
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[187-?]
Identifier
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G5358
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Rationalism
Evil
Ethics
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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 (A few thoughts on the philosophy of evil and suffering, from the stand-point of reason and intuition), 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
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Evil
Reason
Suffering
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/355365470324c9927309ecc06937c6b7.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=If-FE4LmLXCntsRkKw9C%7E5VOUXLk61j%7EOcsBsqkSJT7tSPW3nVWaPeLK--xi6ZOPzqcXBFuUDoIuBLoPWnjOvvpZHs0gUxVEP4ZssbLmoX8yPriYuLUGpM%7Eu1YhJk-jMdii-5010NQOGfqZgpHQ--FGm%7E0N6sR%7EaNKjDnkAJFMh-lLVhlfJ%7Ejppcrmh7DpiWPt7lbR-FGYmxLm-cyfOwFOirv2D2UbbW6576hY2fv%7EZONI-F1WdKqDm%7E4dLL5IM0N%7E-tS4YjNasRgEVKozLmgAcc29NUdQKWXGd2V7wI2jRMAgQ-FzMBtoKOXcoknZkCHl2h6XZbfdd0LCHSsttSJw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
d716fcc5354c923901ba7b238149ccab
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ZSZ 1 & W o|?
LIBERTY AND MORALITY:
3. ^isrnixrsf
GIVEN AT
SOUTH PLACE'CHAPEL, FINSBURY.
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
Notice.—The proceeds of this Pamphlet will be given by Mr. Conway
to a Testimonial to Mr. Truelove, if such shall be offered, on his
release from prison.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1878.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�LONDON Z
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH,
28, STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
Among the most painful phenomena of nature are those of
recurrence in things evil. From the earliest period, man’s
courage has been daunted by the perception that though it
might conquer an evil thing, that thing was pretty sure to
return. Darkness vanished before the dawn, but it returned;
the storm-cloud cleared away, but it came again; the sickly
season might pass, but went its rounds again under its dog
star ; fevers were only intermittent; the cancer was eradi
cated only to reappear; the tyrant might be slain, tyranny
remained. Such phenomena underlie all those ancient
fables which led man up to the conception of Fate—the
doctrine of despair. Hercules might kill any one head of
the nine-headed hydra, but two heads grew in its place; and
when he had burned away all the other heads, one was
immortal, and he could only bury it; but its venomous
breath came up and gave life to venomous creatures after its
kind. Science has, to a large extent, released the European
man from this paralysing notion of fatality in things evil.
Some of the old hydras it has slain altogether. It has
trampled out leprosy, and the black death, and some other
ancient plagues, and civilisation has cleared some regions of
the wolf, the bear, and the worst serpents.
But there are other regions among us—in us—where the
phenomena of evil recurrence are still present and powerful,
and where some bow before them with a feeling of despair.
There are social hydras whose heads seem to be immortal.
Tyranny is a monster that never dies. It has passed into a
proverb that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; and
that is because the spirit of oppression is never destroyed,
and, on its part, is sleeplessly vigilant. Behold here to-day
this great people, whose passion for liberty is recorded in
splendid pages of history, whose resolution to build on these
islands a commonwealth of justice and freedom is written on
every acre of its soil in their heart’s blood, and in royal
blood too; and yet after all those sacrifices and heroic
�4
LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
martyrdoms, the scratch of one man’s pen can run through
the achievements of centuries, and turn the arm of England
to a bulwark of barbarism.
The cause of such recurrences is not far to seek. The
fatality is not in the evil thing, but in some strange popular
hallucination like that which Hercules had about the ninth
hydra head. Instead of killing that, he hid it under a
stone; and, in the same way, whenever in history the AngloSaxon has vanquished a wrong, he has always spared one of
its heads. He hides it away; he calls it obsolete ; but, after
lying still for a long time, up it starts again at the call of
some ambitious partisan, all through this curious disinclina
tion to eradicate a wrong utterly and leave no germ of it
behind. The chief art of reform is to be radical. No un
repealed statute is ever obsolete. The head of every wrong
lives still while its principle is spared, and though it seem
antiquated one day, it may be a “spirited policy” the next.
The evil that is vanquished, but not slain-—only hid—has
not only power of recurrence, but of self-multiplication.
Where one head fell, behold two, or perhaps more. The
resuscitation of irresponsible power anywhere is accom
panied by a corresponding revival of old oppressions gene
rally. Vernacular Press Laws in India, Turkish alliances,
and attacks on free printing at home, have all one neck. If
anyone had told me ten years ago that I should some day
have to defend freedom of thought and of the press in this
metropolis of civil liberty, I should have been as much sur
prised as if he had predicted that we should all be hunting
wolves out of Epping Forest. I should have said to him,
“ Why, John Milton settled all that over two hundred years
ago. Do you mean to say that the time can come again
when a man can personally suffer for his honest thought and
its honest publication ? ”
Such a prophet ten years ago might, indeed, have reminded
us of how often the oppression of intellectual liberty had
recurred since Milton’s time ; of how long Richard Carlile
and his sister lay in Dorchester Gaol for selling Paine’s
works; but he would have been rash, indeed, had he pre
dicted that we should live to assemble in our free societies,
hard by a prison in which an innocent Freethinker lan
guishes, and beside a court which robs a mother of her child
because of her metaphysics.
But now, let me say, such a prophet would have been only
half-right. Though oppression of thought has returned, it
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
5
has had to put on such a disguise, that it cannot be universally
recognised. It is, I believe, true that it would be impossible
at this day to punish a man for his opinions in any such
open way as Richard Carlile and Holyoake were punished.*
I will not say such oppression will never return, for as our
Prime Minister once said, the impossible is always coming to
pass; but, at any rate, no attack on free thought or free
printing, open and above-board, could now be made without
very serious and general resistance. This recent oppression
has, if you will allow me the expression, sneaked back; it has
subtly complicated itself with the moral feeling of the com
munity ; it has hid its horns under a white cowl rf purity
it has masked itself as a defender of virtue and suppressor of
vice. By so doing oppression of thought confesses that it
cannot otherwise succeed even in seizing here and there an
exceptional victim.
In the English breast there is but one sentiment higher
than that of liberty—the moral sentiment. Nearer to man
than his nation is his family, and dearer even than the free
dom of his tongue is the purity of his home. As the moral
sentiment when educated makes a nation’s greatness, when
ignorant it becomes a nation’s weakness. All history has
shown that when oppression has been foiled on every other
side, its last resort is to alarm the moral sentiment of the
masses, to confuse their common sense with black spectres of
immorality. In that fear, that confusion, selfish power has
often found a community’s vulnerable heel, and there planted
its fang. We can see through such masks in the past; we
can recognise in many massacres which pretended to defend
virtue the concealed hand of vice; but, alas, the lessons of
history are not yet wisdom for the people, and the old
device may still, it seems, be tried with success. I hardly
need remind you that the recent cases in which Freethought
has been judicially punished were complicated with moral
questions. The priest watched for that opportunity. For
years the mother had promulgated her religious heresies; it
was only when a moral heresy was ascribed to her that his
blow could be struck without recoiling upon himself from
every heart in England that knows what is manly towards
woman, and what is due to a mother. For years, Edward
Truelove, as honest a man as any in England, had openly
sold the books which sent men to prison in the last genera
tion ; it was a book unrelated to the old struggle for free
printing, a book apparently involving moral questions, which
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LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
was adroitly used to confuse the public mind and veil this
last stab at the heart of personal liberty.
These things could not have occurred were it not that the
public mind is at sea so far as the precise relation between
liberty and morality is concerned.
The absence from
popular discussions of any clear principle by which liberty
is distinguishable from licentiousness, constitutes a new and
startling danger. For liberty of thought involves liberty of
speech, of printing, and of moral action. Liberty is no
more sacred when it criticises the creed of the community
than when itcriticises moral institutions. Freedom of thought
were an empty name if it did not carry with it the freedom
that brings thought to bear upon the social laws and customs
founded on past and fettered thought. “ Unproductive thought
is no thought at all.” The intellect is man’s instrument for
conforming society and the world to reason and right; and
to restrain its free play among the moral and social super
stitions of mankind were like folding a living seed in
wrappings of a mummy.
Many crimes, it is said, have been committed in the name
of liberty; yes, but never one by the reality of liberty.
Many crimes have been committed in the name of religion,
I but they were none the less irreligious. The very common
mental confusion which regards things evil as only good
pressed too far, is continually shown in the common phrase
about “ liberty degenerating into licence.” That is taking
the name of liberty in vain. You cannot press a good
r principle too far.Liberty cannot degenerate into licentiousI ness; not any more than a diamond can degenerate into
J. glass. Liberty can only be ascribed to a man as member of
society, and means his right to seek happiness, to develop his
nature, to do his duty, all to the best of his ability—in fact,
his right to be a man—without hindrance from others or
from the community, to whose well-being he is loyal. By its
very essence, therefore, liberty can never mean the destruc
tion of others’ liberty, the sway of brute force, or selfish
defiance of the public welfare. You may call that reckless
ness, if you please, or licentiousness, or anarchy, but it has
no relation whatever to human liberty; liberty never runs
to that kind of seed, but, on the contrary, finds in such the
tares and briars that choke its growth.
But how, it may be asked, are we to distinguish the wheat
from the tares ? how discriminate the licentiousness to be
punished from the liberty that is essential ?
I
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
7
In the cases that concern freedom of thought and of
printing, the Courts have recently given their answer to the
question—an answer which, I affirm, cannot be maintained,
and which could not be equally applied in any community
without bringing on revolution. A man publishes and sells
a certain book. Somebody dislikes the sentiments of that
book, and believes the perusal of such sentiments would
corrupt the community. He asks the judge to restrain his
neighbour from circulating that book. The judge calls about
him a jury, and asks them if they think the book will tend
to deprave public morals. They say, Yes. Then the judge
orders the book to be suppressed, and the seller of it to be
punished. From first to last, the whole procedure is specu
lative. It is not shown that any injury has been done; it is
not shown, or even suggested, that any evil was intended;
it is a decision based upon the powers of imagination, at best;
more correctly, perhaps, upon capacities for panic.
Such a decision reverses the chief aim of all real law, '
which is to protect the weak from the strong, to protect the !
individual from the brute-force .of majorities It changes
the jury from defenders of rights to inquisitors of opinion. 1
The judges of Athens put Socrates to death on the ground
that his opinions tended to corrupt the youth of that city. The
High Court of Jerusalem sentenced Jesus to death on similar
grounds. Practical Pilate asked, “ What evil hathhe done ?”
—but he got no answer. Jesus had done no evil; he had
only advanced opinions which the majority considered sub
versive of the moral foundations of society. And, in short, i
there is no persecution, no oppression of conscience, no
massacre in history which may not be justified on the prin- i
ciple that you may punish a man for the evils which may be
imaginatively and prospectively attributed to the influence of
his opinions. Nay, all contemporary discussion of vital I
problems, all new ideas, are thus placed at the mercy of
nervous apprehensions. It is very probable that you might
take the first twelve men you happen to meet on the street,
and find that, put on oath, they would .affirm their belief that
the opinions of Dr. Martineau, of the Jewish Rabbins, of
our own chapel, must tend to deprave public morals. Such
doctrines, they would say, by taking away hell, remove the
restraints of fear from human passions, and by denying
authority of the Bible, tend to destroy the influence of the
clergy, of Christianity, and the ten commandments. The
.same arguments which imprisoned Edward Truelove would
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LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
imprison any liberal thinker, if his jury happened to be
orthodox, and the same authority which suppresses one
honestly-written book would suppress another if it happened
to be distasteful to a jury.
It makes no difference that one book deals roughly with
moral conventionalities, while another attacks such as are
theological. That may make a great deal of difference to
.our tastes and sentiments, but none at all as to the principle
of justice. Every idea must have its influence on morals ;
whether that influence will be good or evil, cannot be deter
mined by any foresight, least of all by the prejudices of those
who do not hold that idea, who hate it, and have not impar
tially studied its bearings. Many of the best books in the
world have been pronounced immoral and wicked in their
time, and after it; and if the .average commonplace of any
period, as represented by judges that know only precedents,
and jurors instructed by them, be allowed to suppress all
thoughts and works that do not merely repeat the prevailing
notions, all inquiry is at an end, all progress paralysed.
. What defence, then, has -society against obscene books ?
it may be asked. Are we to allow men under plea of liberty
of the press to send forth a stream of pollution into our
homes, and corrupt the people ?
I answer, No. Every person who is guilty of such an
offence should be punished. Many such have been punished
and nobody has raised any protest, because they really were
guilty. They have never defended their publications. But
you must show a man to be guilty before you can safely
punish him. The verdict of a jury is not infalliable even
then; but we need not quarrel about that: it is the best
means we can have of discovering guilt. The cases would
be very rare where a jury would unanimously affirm wicked
ness in a man whose life has been upright. Where, for in
stance, is the jury willing to swear that they believe Edward
Truelove to be a wicked, corrupt, and malicious man, who for
base and selfish ends has aimed to deprave society and
injure his neighbours ? No such jury could be empannelled'.
in England. In the trial of Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant,.
the jury were careful to assert the innocence of the accused,,
and the rectitude of their purpose in publishing the book
they condemned. The judge then compelled them to bring
in a verdict of “ G-uilty; ” forced them to pronounce guilty
persons they had just declared innocent on oath !
Suppose the charge had been one of murder, and the jury
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
&
had brought in a verdict, that though the prisoner had killed
a man, it was in the effort to do that man a service, what
would have been said had a judge compelled them to find
that prisoner guilty of murdering the man he was trying to
benefit ? Or suppose, instead of an obscene libel, it had been
a personal libel; suppose a man charged with printing a
libel on another, and the jury declared that the matter printed
was not meant to injure, that it was without malice, put forth
in good faith and purely for the public good, would it be
possible for any judge to turn that into a verdict of guilty—
even if the plaintiff were injured—and to punish a public
benefactor as if he were a criminal ?
There are ordinary civil cases—cases of damages, where
the law rightly ignores the question of intent; but it is not
so in criminal cases. There, character is involved; there
punishment implies guilt; and it is unjust where there is no
guilt. Malice aforethought makes murder; and a guilty
mind must equally characterise every blow aimed at social
virtue. Where the law is violated, the law is compelled to
assume such guilt, because it does not know more than the
appearance; but when innocence is proved—when it is
admitted—it is criminal to act on the technical and dis
proved assumption. Such has been the grievous wrong done
by the recent decisions—criminal intent being arbitrarily
excluded from consideration in each case, when it was the
essence of each case.
So much for the persons involved. But let us recur to
the books indicted. They may not be to your taste or mine ;
they may be contrary to our moral views; that is not th equestion. Have those who believe such views true and i
beneficial to society the right to advocate and advance them !
openly? Has society any right to suppress them by force
because they are unwelcome to the majority ? Once let it be
admitted that the publication is in good faith, meant for the
public good, entirely free from corrupt motive, and it cannot
be suppressed without violation of the fundamental princi
ples of liberty. This would appear at once if such suppres
sion were equitably applied to all works which are liable to
the charge of offending the conventional moral sentiment.
Goethe, being once in Kiel, was invited to attend a meeting
called by some clergymen, for the suppression of obscene
literature. He attended, and proposed that they should begin
with the Bible. That ended the conference, and it was
never heard of again. And that will end all these attempts
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LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
to suppress books called immoral by prurient imaginations,
just so soon as the same measure is meted out to Freethinkers
and Bible Societies. Edward Truelove is in gaol, but justice
sees Solomon by his side and those who circulate Solomon ;
and St. Paul also, and Shakespeare, Bocaccio, Montaigne,
Dean Swift, Smollett, Goethe, and many other great men,
who were not afraid to write of the facts of nature; nay,
many naturalists and physiologists of our time and
country would be there with him to-day if equal justice
were done.. There is no difference between the plain speech
in many classic works and in those which have been lately
condemned as immoral, and no difference is alleged between
the motives with which they are all published. The book
may be very able in one case, very poor in another, but the
principles of freedom and right protect them equally. To
contend that a book which is decent for the rich becomes
indecent when priced within reach of the poor, is a mere
insult to the people; it is on a par with the religion which
regards subscribers visiting the Zoological Gardens on
Sunday as pious people, whereas sixpence would make them
Sabbath-breakers.
Unless this nation is prepared to assume that all religious
truth has been attained, it must allow free criticism of popular
opinions, even though the majority say such criticisms destroy
millions of souls. Unless the nation assumes that it has
I reached the supreme social and moral perfection it must
■ allow free criticism of social and moral customs; and if such
1 freedom be accepted as right, all ita results must be accepted.
If the honest Malthusian can be thrown into prison for cor
rupting morals, the honest heretic may be thrown there for
destroying souls. In every branch of inquiry errors will
arise : that is incidental to the search for truth. But Milton
uttered the mature verdict of mankind when he said:
1 “ Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play
upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously,
by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let
her and falsehood grapple. Who ever knew Truth put to the
worse in a free and open encounter ? Her confuting is the
1 best and surest suppressing.”
Nay, confutation by Truth is the only suppression of error.
Persecution only fans it into strength by mingling with its
smoke the glow of martyrdom. In the present cases, several
poor pamphlets have been drawn out of their obscurity and
scattered broadcast through the land; and any man of com-
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
11
mon-sense must have known that such would have been the
result of attempting their suppression.
What, then, are we to infer concerning those who have
instituted these recent proceedings ? Are we to suppose they
have not the common-sense to know that they would in
crease enormously the circulation of the opinions they pro
fess to abhor ?
I am sorry to say that, for one, I can not come to so
charitable a theory—not even after the blundering ignorance
shown by their rigidly righteous lawyers. I can not believe
that this is any bond fide effort to suppress immorality.
There are too many signs about it which compel to the
sorrowful conclusion that there has grown up among us
a Society, whose original aim may ha’ve been to suppress
vice, but which has now fallen under control of persons
with other aims. It would appear that to these the circula
tion of many thousands of a book they call vicious is of
little importance compared with making a sensation, and
parading their own spotlessness before the public; and
beyond this, it is to be feared that a still baser influence has
been at work to degrade this association of (originally, no
doubt) well-meaning, though weak-minded people. There is
money in it. A good deal of patronage and wealth has gone
to it in the past, and its agents are highly paid ; and if this
stream of money and patronage is to continue to flow and
gladden the host of agents, they must keep up a show of
activity. They must always be attitudinising as purifiers of
society. If the nests of crime and vice are trampled out,
and the funds begin to fall low, they must try and make
their subscribers think there are nests where there are none ;
and, knowing well how unpopular Freethinkers are, how few
friends they have in high places, they found among them a
book which repeated the details of ordinary physiological
and medical books—a book whose pages, with all their faults,
are nowhere of biblical impurity. It must have brought
their secretaries, and their lawyers, and their secret-service
agents, a golden Pactolus from orthodox purses to thus
prove that the society might do injury to Freethinkers under
cover of attacking immorality. The old privilege of the
orthodox to imprison their opponents—the privilege so loved,
but lost—must seem about to come back again, when it has
been decided that facts familiar in the libraries of medicine
and science cannot be printed by Freethinkers in a form
accessible to the people without imprisonment. They know
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LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
that many of these Freethinkers value their freedom highly
enough to go to gaol for it, and they are, no doubt, hoping
for more victims and a flourishing business with plenty of
vice to suppress.
For that organisation, which, in its degradation, reveals
that most miserable social gangrene, selfishness and hypocrisy
affecting the sentiments of virtue and philanthropy, I, forone, feel only loathing. But there is nothing new and
nothing very formidable in that kind of thing, and it
reaches its level at last.
Lucifer began, mythologically, as a heavenly detective.
He was the lawyer retained by the gods for the suppression
of vice; and, from long engaging in that business, he
came to love it. When he had nobody to accuse, he was
in distress, and went about accusing innocent people. So he
was called the Accuser. And then he fell lower still, and
went about tempting people to sin, in order that he might
prosecute them ; and then he was called Satan. That was
the course of the first Vice Society, and the end of its
attorney.But while we may smile at these traders in corruption, the
degree to which they have been able to infect the Bench,
and through it large numbers of the least thoughtful people,
supplies grave cause for alarm. There are some ugly chap
ters in English history connected with attempts to suppress
conviction, to throttle its expression under pretence of its
being wicked or immoral. But we are so far away from
those eras, that many hardly remember their lesson ; which is
a pity, for such lessons are costly, and, if forgotten, can
sometimes only be recovered at a heavier cost. The lesson
taught by every effort to repress honest and public discussion
of any subject whatever is, that all such efforts are revolu
tionary. Every honest man in prison is tenfold more
dangerous than fire burning near fire-damp. The majesty of
law is defiled when the innocent are punished deliberately
with the guilty. Edward Truelove, in prisou, has exchanged
places with his judges, and his sentence on them, for their
most immoral judgment, will be affirmed when their decisions
have become byewords of judicial prejudice and folly.
They who menace man’s freedom of thought and speech
are tampering with something more powerful than gun
powder. They who suppress by force even an erroneous book
honestly meant for human welfare, are justifying all the
crimes ever committed against human intelligence ; they are
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
13
laying again the trains that have always ended in revolu
tion ; and, right as it is to suppress books notoriously meant
for corruption, and punish the vile who through them
seek selfish ends at cost of the public good, even that is a
task requiring the utmost care and wisdom. Better that
many base men and many bad books escape, than that one
honest woman be robbed of her child by violence calling
itself law, or one honest man suffer the felon’s chain from
the very hand provided for protection of honesty.
�14
READINGS
From Milton’s Areopagitica.
This is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever
should arise in the Commonwealth: that let no man in this world ex
pect ; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and
speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty obtained
that wise men look for.
Martin V., by his will, not only prohibited, but was the first that
excommunicated the reading of heretical works; for about that time
Wickliffe and Husse, growing terrible, were they who first drove the
papal court to a stricter policy of prohibiting. Which course Leo X.
and his successors followed, until the Council of Trent and the Spanish:
Inquisition, engendering together, brought forth or perfected these
catalogues and expurging indexes, that rake through the entrails of
many a good old author, with a violation worse than any could be offered
to his tomb.
Nor did they stay in matters heretical, but any subject that was not
to their palate, they either condemned in a prohibition or had it
straight into the new purgatory of an index. To fill up the measure of
encroachment, their last invention was to ordain that no book, pam
phlet, or paper should be printed (as if St. Peter had bequeathed them
the keys of the Press as well as of Paradise) unless it were approved
and licensed under the hands of two or three gluttonous friars...........
“ To the pure all things are pure; ” not only meats and drinks, but all
kinds of knowledge, whether of good or evil; the knowledge cannot
defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not
defiled. For books are as meats and viands are, some of good, some of
evil substance; and yet God in that unapocryphal vision said without
exception, “ Rise, Peter, slay and eat;” leaving the choice to each
man’s discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little^
or nothing from unwholesome; and best books, to a naughty mind, are
not unapplicable to occasions of evil.
As, therofore, the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be tochoose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil?
... I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and
unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks
out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not with
out dust and heat. Our sage and serious poet Spenser (whom I dare
be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas), describing
true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his
palmer through the Cave of Mammon and the Bower of Earthly Bliss,,
that he might see and know, and yet abstain............ They are not
skilful considerers of human things who imagine to remove sin by
�removing the matter of sin-; for, besides that it is a huge heap,
increasing under the very act of diminishing, though some part of it
may for a time be withdrawn from some persons, it cannot from all, in
such a universal thing as books are; and when this is done, yet the sin
remains entire. Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, 1
he has yet one jewel left, ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. I
Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline^
that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste
that come not thither so; such great care and wisdom is required to theright managing of this point. Suppose we could expel sin by this
means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of
■ virtue, for the matter of them both is the same; remove that, and you
remove them both alike. It would be better done, to learn that the law
must needs be frivolous which goes to restrain things uncertainly yet
equally working to good and evil. And were I the chooser, a dram of
well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible
hindrance of evil-doing.
He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have obtained the
utmost prospect of reformation which the mortal glass wherein we con
template can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this
very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth..............The
light which we have gained was given us not to be ever staring on, but
by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. . . .
Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself
like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks : me
thinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling
her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam ; purging and unsealing
her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while
the whole noise of Jrmor.Qus and flocking birds, with those also that love
the twilight, flutter about, amazed at—what she means............... The
temple of Janus, with his two controversial faces, might now not unsignificantly be set open............ Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who
ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter ?
�
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Evil
Liberty
Morality
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
BIG BLUE BOOK NO. T> 1 Q
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
A
Resist Not Evil
Clarence Darrow
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
�z
Copyright, 1902,
Clarence S. Darrow.
Copyright, J 925,
Haldeman-Julius Company«
Printed in the United States of America.
�CONTENTS
Chapter
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI,
Page
Foreword ............................................................................................................ 5
Preface ......................................................................................................................... 7
The Nature of the State................................................................................... 9
Armies and Navies.................................................................................................18
The Purpose of Armies..................................................................................... .»16
Civil Government .........................................................
18
Theory of Crime and Punishment.............................................................. 31
Remedial Effects of Punishment................................................................ 34
Cause of Crime........................................................................................................ 30
The Proper Treatment of Crime................................................................ 35
Impossibility of Just Judgment................................................................... 37
The Judge of the Criminal....................................................................... ......40
The Measure of Punishment........................................................................... 42
Who Deserves Punishment............................................................................. 47
Natural Law and Conduct............................................................................... 49
Rules Governing Penal Codes and Their Victims............................. 52
The Machinery of Justice................................................................................ 56
The Right Treatment of Violence........................................................ 60
�Judge not, that ye be not judged.
Matthew $ :1.
Ye have heard that it hath been said: An eye for
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you,
that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee
on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Matthew 5:38, 39.
�FOREWORD
This little book was written and first published twenty-five years
ago. At that time 1 was a devoted admirer of Tolstoy, and my thought
was largely inf’uenced by his remarkable books. I still admire Tolstoy
and class him as one of'the greatest and highest type of . literary artists
that the world has ever known. However, my scientific studies have
convinced me that man can never reach a state of non-resistance. His
structure is fixed and is moved by stimuli like all other animals, and
under sufficient inducement the primal emotions will sweep away all
the inhibitions and restraints that culture has woven around him. This
was fully demonstrated in the great war. In spite of this change of vie v
I am convinced that this book in the main is true, and with this foreword
am glad to have it once more issued in its original form.
September 1,1925.
Clarence Darrow.
��PREFACE
It is not claimed that the following pages contain any new ideas.
They Were inspired by the writings of Tolstoy, who was the first, and
in fact the only, author of my acquaintance who ever seemed to me to
place the doctrine of non-resistance upon a substantial basis. After
reading Tolstoy I determined to make a careful study of the subject,
but on a thorough search of book stores and libraries could find next to
nothing dealing with the question, while the shelves were crowded with
literature extolling the glories of war and the beneficence of patriotism.
The first part of this volume which deals with the state is very
fragmentary, and in no wise so complete as can be found in many other
volumes, but in the portion which deals with crime and punishment, I
have found a much newer field, and one which has generally been dis
cussed by those who have little practical knowledge of the machinery of
courts of justice.
It has been my purpose to state the reasons which appeal to me in
support of the doctrine of non-resistance, rather than to give authorities
to sustain the theories advanced. Still, I believe that the student who is
interested in the subject of criminology, and wishes to carefully investi
gate crime and punishment, will find that most of the great historians,
philosophers, and thinkers will amply corroborate the views herein set
forth, as to the cause of crime, and the evil and unsatisfactory results of
punishment.
Clarence Darrow.
Chicago, November 1,1902.
��RESIST NOT EVIL
CHAPTER I
THE NATURE OF THE STATE
N this heroic age, given to war and conquest and violence, the
precepts of peace and good will seem to have been almost sub
merged. The pulpit, the press, and the school unite in teaching
patriotism and in proclaiming the glory and beneficence of war;
and one may search literature almost in vain for one note of that “Peace
on earth, and good will toward men” in which the world still professes to
believe; and yet these benign precepts are supposed to be the basis of all
the civilization of the western world.
The doctrine of non-resistance if ever referred to is treated with
derision and scorn. At its best the doctrine can only be held by dreamers
and theorists, and can have no place in daily life. Every government on
earth furnishes proof that there is nothing practical or vital in its teach
ings. Every government on earth is the personification of violence and
force, and yet the doctrine of non-resistance is as old as human thought
—even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth.
The doctrine of non-resistance to evil does not rest upon the words
of Christ alone. Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Socrates, show the evil and
destruction of war, of conquest, of violence, and of hatred, and have
taught the beneficence of peace, of forgiveness, of non-resistance to
evil. But modern thought is not content to rest the conduct of life upon
the theories of moralists. The rules of life that govern men and states
must today be in keeping with science and conform to the highest reason
and judgment of man. It is here that non-resistance seems to have
failed to make any practical progress in the world. That men should
“turn the other cheek,” should “love their enemies,” should “resist not
evil,” has ever seemed fine to teach to children, to preach on Sundays,
to round a period in a senseless oratorical flight; but it has been taken
for granted that these sentiments cannot furnish the real foundation for
strong characters or great states.
It is idle to discuss “non-resistance” in its effect upon life and the
world without adopting some standard of excellence by which to judge
results. Here, as elsewhere in human conduct, after all is said and done,
men must come back to the fundamental principle that the conduct which
makes for life is wise and right. Nature in her tireless labor has ever
been developing a higher order and a completer life. Sometimes for long
periods it seems as if the world were on the backward course, but even
this would prove that life really is the highest end to be attained. What
ever tends to happiness tends to life,—joy is life and misery is death.
In his long and toilsome pilgrimage, man has come to his present
estate through endless struggle, through brutal violence administered
and received. And the question of the correctness of non-resistance as
a theory, like any other theory, does not depend upon whether it can be
enforced and lived now or tomorrow, but whether it is the highest ideal
�10
Resist Not Evil
of life that is given us to conceive. In one sense nothing is practical
excepting what is; everything must have been developed out of all the
conditions of life that now exist or have existed on the earth. But to
state this means little in the settlement of ethical questions, for man’s
future condition depends quite as much upon his mental attitude as
upon any other fact that shapes his course.
Everywhere it seems to have been taken for granted that force and
violence are necessary to man’s welfare upon the earth. Endless volumes
have been written, and countless lives been sacrificed in an effort to prove
that one form of government is better than another; but few seem seri
ously to have considered the proposition that all government rests on
violence and force, is sustained by soldiers, policemen and courts, and is
contrary to the ideal peace and order which make for the happiness and
progress of the human race. Now and then it is even admitted that in
the far distant ages yet to come men may so far develop toward the
angelic that political governments will have no need to be. This admis
sion, like the common concept, presumes that governments are good;
that their duties undertaken and performed consist in repressing the
evil and the lawless, and protecting and caring for the, helpless and the
weak.
If the history of the state proved that governing bodies were ever
formed for this purpose or filled this function, there might be some
basis for the assumption that government is necessary to preserve order
and to defend the weak. But the origin and evolution of the political
state show quite another thing—they show that the state was born in
aggression, and that in all the various stages through which it has passed
its essential characteristics have been preserved.
The beginnings of the state can be traced back to the early history
of the human race when the strongest savage seized the largest club and
with this weapon enforced his rule upon the other members of the tribe.
By means of strength and cunning he became the chief and exercised
this power, not to protect the weak but to take the good things of the
earth for himself and his. One man by his unaided strength could not
long keep the tribe in subjection to his will, so he chose lieutenants and
aids, and these too were taken for their strength and prowess, and were
given a goodly portion of the fruits of power for the loyalty and help
they lent their chief. No plans for the general good ever formed a por
tion of the scheme of government evolved by these barbarous chiefs.
The great mass were slaves, and their lives and liberty held at the
absolute disposal of the strong.
Ages of evolution have only modified the rigors of the first rude
states. The divine right to rule, the absolute character of official power,
is practically the same today in most of the nations of the world as with
the early chiefs who executed their mandates with a club. The ancient
knight who, with battle-ax and coat of mail, enforced his rule upon the
weak, was only the forerunner of the tax-gatherer and tax-devourer of
today. Even in democratic countries, where the people are supposed to
choose their rulers, the nature of government is the same. Growing from
the old ideas of absolute power, these democracies have assumed that
some sort of government was indispensable to the mass, and no sooner
had they thrown off one form of bondage than another yoke was placed
�Clarence Darrow
11
upon their necks, only to prove in time that this new burden was no less
galling than the old. Neither do the people govern in democracies more
than in any other lands. They do not even choose their rulers. These
rulers choose themselves and by force and cunning and intrigue arrive
at the same results that their primitive ancestor reached with the aid
of a club.
And who are these rulers without whose aid the evil and corrupt
would destroy and subvert the defenseless and the weak? From the
earliest^ time these self-appointed rulers have been conspicuous for all
those vices that they so persistently charge to the common people whose
rapacity, cruelty and lawlessness they so bravely curb. The history of
the past and the present alike proves beyond a doubt that if there is, or
ever was any large class, from whom society needed to be saved, it is
those same rulers who have been placed in absolute charge of the lives
and destinies of their fellow men. From the early kings who with
blood-red hands, forbade their subjects to kill their fellow men, to the
modern legislator, who, with the bribe money in his pocket, still makes
nbery a crime, these rulers have ever made laws not to govern them
selves but to enforce obedience on their serfs.
The purpose of this autocratic power has ever been the same
in the early tribe the chief took the land and the fruits of the earth’
and parceled them amongst his retainers who helped preserve his strength.
Every government since then has used its power to divide the earth
amongst the favored few and by force and violence to keep the toiling
patient, suffering millions from any portion of the common bounties of
the world.
In many of tne nations of the earth the real governing power has
stood behind the throne,, has suffered their creatures and their puppets
to be the nominal rulers of nations and states, but in every case the real
rulers are the strong, and the state is used by them to perpetuate their
power and serve their avarice and greed.
�12
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER II
ARMIES AND NAVIES
OW is the authority of the state maintained ?. In whatever guise,
or however far removed from the rudest savage tribe to the
most modern democratic state, this autocratic power rests on
violence and force alone. The first great instrument which
supports every government on earth is the soldier with his gun and
sword. True, the army may be but rarely used. The civil power, the
courts of justice, the policemen and jails generally suffice in civilized
lands to maintain existing things; but back of these, to enforce each
decree, is the power of armed men with all modern implements of death.
Thousands of church organizations throughout the Christian world
profess the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, of peace on earth and good
will to men, and yet each of these Christian lands trains great bodies
of armed men to kill their fellows for the preservation of existing
things. Europe is made up of great military camps where millions of
men are kept apart from their fellows and taught the trade of war alone.
And democratic America, feeling the flush of victory and the glow of
conquest, is turning her energies and strength to gathering armies and
navies that shall equal those across the sea. Not only are these trained
soldiers a living denial of the doctrines that are professed, but in
obedience to an eternal law, deeper and more beneficent than any ever
made by man, these mighty forces are working their own run and death.
These great armies and navies which give the lie to our professions of
faith exist for two purposes: first, to keep in subjection the people of
their own land; second, to make war upon and defend against the other
nations of the earth. The history of the world is little else than the story
of the carnage and destruction wrought on battlefields; carnage and de
struction springing not from any difference between the common peo
ple of the earth, but due alone to the desires and passions of the rulers
of the earth. This ruling class, ever eager to extend its power and
strength, ever looking for new people to govern and new lands to tax,
has always been ready to turn its face against other powers to satisfy the
ruler’s will, and without pity or regret, these rulers have depopulated
their kingdoms and carried ruin and destruction to every portion of the
earth for gold and power.
Not only do these European rulers keep many millions of men whose
only trade is war, but these must be supported in worse than useless idle
ness by the labor of the poor. Still other millions are trained to war and
are ever ready to answer to their master’s call, to desert their homes and
trades and offer up their lives to satisfy the vain ambitions of the ruler
of the state. Millions more must give their strength and lives to build
forts and ships, make guns and cannon and all the modern implements of
war. Apart from any moral question of the right of man to slap his fel
low man, all this great burden rests upon the poor. The vast expense of
war comes from the production of the land and must serve to weaken
�Clarence Darrow
13
and impair its industrial strength. This very force must destroy itself.
The best talent of every nation is called upon to invent new implements
of destruction—faster sailing boats, stronger forts, more powerful ex
plosives and more deadly guns. As one nation adds to its military stores,
so every other nation is also bound to increase its army and navy too.
Thus the added force does not augment the military power, but only
makes larger the burden of the state; until, today, these great armies,
aside from producing the moral degradation of the world, are sapping
and undermining and consuming the vitality and strength of all the na
tions of the earth. Cost of labor and strength means cost of life. Thus
in their practical results these armies are destroying millions of lives
that a policy of peace and non-resistance would conserve and save.
But when these armies are in action how stands the case? Over and
over again the world has been submerged by war. The strongest nations
of the earth have been almost destroyed. Devastating wars have left
consequences that centuries could not repair. Countless millions of men
have been used as food for guns. The miseries and sufferings and bru
tality following in the wake of war have never been described or imag
ined, and yet the world persists in teaching the glory and honor and
greatness of war. To excuse the wholesale butcheries of men by the
governing powers, learned apologists have taught that without the havoc
and cruel devastation of war the human race would overrun the earth;
and yet every government in the world has used its power and influence
to promote and encourage marriage and the rearing of children, to pun
ish infanticide and abortion, and make criminal every device to prevent
population; have used their power to heal the sick, to alleviate misery
and to prolong life. Every movement to overcome disease, to make
cities sanitary, to produce and maintain men and women and children
has received the sanction and encouragement of all governments; and
still these glorious rulers have ruthlessly slaughtered in the most bar
barous and cruel way tens of millions of their fellow men, to add to their
glory and perpetuate their names. And philosophers have told us that
this was necessary to prevent the over-population of the earth!
No single ruler, however cruel or ambitious, has ever yet been able
to bring the whole world beneath his sway, and the ambitions and lusts
of these separate chiefs have divided the world into hostile camps and
hostile states. Endless wars have been waged to increase or protect the
territory governed by these various rulers. In these bloody conflicts the
poor serfs have dumbly and patiently met death in a thousand sickening
ways to uphold the authority and prowess of the ruler whose sole func
tion has ever been to pillage and rob the poor victims that fate has placed
within his power. To these brutal, senseless, fighting millions the bound
aries of the state or the color of the flag that they were taught to love
could not in the least affect their lives. Whoever their rulers, their mis
sion has ever been to toil and fight and die for the honor of the state
and the glory of the chief.
But, today, even national preservation demands that the rule of
peace shall give place to the rule of war. In the older countries of the
earth the great drains made upon industry and life to support vast armies
and equip them for slaughter is depopulating states and impoverishing
the lands. And besides all this, so far as external power is concerned, no
�14
Resist Not Evil
nation adds to its effectiveness to battle with the others by increasing its
army and navy. This simply serves to increase the strength of the
enemy s guns and to make new combinations between hostile lands until
the very strength of a. nation becomes its weakness and must in turn lead
to its decay and overthrow. The nation that would today disarm its
soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more
to its building up than by all the war taxes wrung from its hostile and
unwilling serfs. A nation like this would exhibit to the world such an
example of moral grandeur and true vitality and worth that no nation
however powerful, would dare to invite the odium and hostility of thé
world by sending arms and men to conquer a peaceful, productive nonresistant land. If the integrity and independence of a nation depended
upon its forts and guns the smaller countries of Europe would at once
be wiped from the map of the world. Switzerland, Holland, Greece,
Italy and Spain are absolutely powerless to defend themselves by force’
If these nations should at once disarm every soldier and melt every gun
and turn the worse than wasted labor into productive, life-saving work
they could but greatly strengthen themselves among the other nations of
the earth. Not only this, their example would serve to help turn the tide
v
world from the barbarous and soul-destroying path of war toward
the higher, nobler life of peace and good will toward men.
But not alone are these small nations made still weaker by war but
every battleship that is built by England, Russia, France, Germany, or
the United States really weakens those nations too. It weakens them
not alone by the loss, of productive power but by the worse than wasted
energy which is required to support these implements of death, from the
time their first beam is mined in the original ore, until scarred and
worthless and racked by scenes of blood and violence and shame, they
are thrown out upon the sands to rot. But every battleship weakens a
nation by inviting the hostility of the other peoples of the earth, by com
pelling other rulers to weaken their kingdoms, to build mighty ships and
powerful guns. Every preparation for war and violence is really a vio
lation of the neutrality under which great nations profess to live. They
are a reflection upon the integrity and humanity of their own people and
an insult to every other land on earth. The building of a man of war,
the rearing of a fort, or the planting of a gun can be likened only to a
man who professes to live in peace and quiet with his neighbors and his
friends and who goes about armed with pistol and with dirk.
But these patent evils and outrages are after all the smallest that
flow from violence and strife. The whole pursuit of war weakens the
aspirations and ideals of the race. Rulers have ever taught and encour
aged the spirit of patriotism, that they might call upon their slaves to give
their .labor to the privileged'class and to freely offer up their lives when
the king commands. Every people in the world is taught that their coun
try and their government is the best on earth, and that they should be
ever, ready to desert their homes, abandon their hopes, aspirations, and
ambitions when their ruler calls, and this regardless of the right or wrong
for.which they fight. The teaching of patriotism and war permeates all
society, it reaches to the youngest child and even shapes the character of
the unborn babe. It fills the soul with false ambitions, with ignoble de
sires, and with sordid hopes.
�15
Clarence Darrow
Every sentiment for the improvement of men, for human justice,
for the uplifting of the poor, is at once stifled by the wild, hoarse shout
for blood. The lowest standard of ethics of which a right-thinking man
can possibly conceive is taught to the common soldier whose trade is to
shoot his fellow man. In youth he may have learned the command,
“Thou shalt not kill,” but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters man
hood and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet through
his neighbor’s heart,—and this unmoved by passion or feeling or hatred,
and without the least regard to right or wrong, but simply because his
ruler gives the word. It is not the privilege of. the common soldier to
ask questions, to consider right and wrong, to think of the misery and
suffering his act entails upon others innocent of crime. He may be told
to point his gun at his neighbor and his friend, even at his brother or
father; if so he must obey commands.
Theirs npt to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
represents the code of ethics that governs a soldier’s life.
And yet from men who believe in these ideals, men who sacrifice
their right of private judgment in the holiest matter that can weigh upon
the conscience and the* intellect, the taking of human life,—men who
place their lives, their'consciences, their destinies, without question or
hesitation, into another’s keeping, men whose trade is slaughter and
whose cunning-consists in their ability to kill their fellows,—from such
men it is expected to build great states and rear a noble humanity!
These teachings lead to destruction and death; the destruction of the
body and the destruction of the soul. Even on the plea of physical evo
lution in the long sweep of time, these men must give way to the patient,
peaceful, non-resistants, who love their brothers and believe in the sa
credness of life. Long ago it was written down that “He who takes the
sword shall perish by the sword.”
�16
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER III
THE PURPOSE OF ARMIES.
UT the great armies and navies are not really kept today for for
eign conquest. Now and then, in obedience to the commercial
spirit that rules the world, these vessels of destruction are sent
to foreign seas. But the' rulers of the earth live on fairly
friendly terms. Long since, the most ambitious have abandoned their
dreams of world power and are content to exploit a portion of the earth.
When warships are sent to foreign seas they usually fire a salute rather
than train their guns for death. Monarchs the world over respect each
other. They are bound together by ties of common interest, if not of
common love. When a ruler dies, even though the most tyrannical and
despotic, every other ruler promptly sends condolences to the sorrowing
court; their own subjects may die unwept, but a touch of common feeling
moves them to mourn a ruler’s death. Nations are bound by many ties
to preserve peace among each other. Scions of royal families are handed
round in marriage from court to court, treaties of all sorts are made and
ratified in most solemn form; and even more than this, the real owners
of the world, those who possess the stocks and bonds which rest upon the
wealth that the poor have labored to create, these real rulers whd make
war or peace by giving or withholding funds, these own the great bulk
of the property of the various nations of the world, and will not lightly
suffer their possessions to be destroyed. And yet these same real rulers,
who stand behind the thrones of all the world, approve of this prepara
tion for war, approve of taking millions of men from their homes and
training them to kill, approve of every fort and gun and battleship.
More than this, they contribute largely of their private funds to build
batteries and equip militia, especially in the great cities of the earth.
Through the speeches of their agents and the voice of their press, all
this grim visage of war is for the_stranger without their gates. But in
reality the prime reason for all the armies of the world is that soldiers
and militia may turn their guns upon their unfortunate countrymen when
the owners of the earth shall speak the word. And these unfortunate
countrymen are the outcast and despised, the meek and lowly ones of the
world, the men whose ceaseless toil and unpaid' efforts have built the
forts and molded the cannon and sustained the soldiers that are used to
shoot them down.
1
To say that these armies and frowning forts and gatling guns are
needed to maintain peace and order at home is to admit at once that the
great mass of men are held captive by the more powerful few. Organ
ized soldiers and policemen, courts and sheriffs, with guns and forts and
jails, have the greatest advantage over the disorganized mass who cannot
act together, and who know not which way to turn to keep outside the
meshes of the law. Not one in a thousand needs be trained to arms and
authority to keep the unorganized mass in the place reserved for it to
live. The purpose of guns and armies is to furnish the few an easy and
sure way to control the mass. Neither are these armies made of the
ruling class. The officers, it is true< are generally taken from the fa
�Clarence Darrow
17
vored ones, but the regular soldier is the man too poor and abandoned
to find his place in any other of the walks of life. He is only fit to be
an executioner of his fellow man. No ruler can love his subjects when
he takes their money and their labor to buy cannon and train men to
shoot them down. That this is the real purpose of standing armies and
warlike equipments is plain to all who have eyes to see. More and more
the rulers have learned to build their barracks and massTheir troops not
on the borders of their land but convenient to great cities, in thè middle
of districts thickly populated by working men. As nations grow older
the opportunities of the masses grow less. More men are called to serve
the state, and greater preparations are made to preserve the possessions
of the rich. These soldiers are moved from place to place, are massed
at time of need, not in accordance with the petition of the citizens from
whose ranks the soldiers come, but in response to the request of the
ruling class.
Quite apart from the question of the rights of capital on one hand
and labor on the other, what must be the effect of this policy of force
and violence when reaching over long periods of time? A nation is
really great and possessed of the lasting elements of strength in propor
tion as her people are strong, intelligent, and free. The rulers of a na
tion should owe their subjects some duty in return for the homage and
taxes they receive. The ruler who deliberately governs his subjects by
violence and force, and through tyranny and fear, must find in time
that this policy of hatred and outrage is destroying and sapping the
foundations of the state; the more strength and vitality that he draws
from the poor and the more soldiers required to support arbitrary power,
the greater the chasm that yawns beneath his feet. The loyalty that is
kept through fear is lost with opportunity. The rulers of Rome before
her destruction, had drawn all the soldiers from the people that the
fields and shops could spare, and used these to support their tottering
power. Kings can gain nothing by governing soldiers alone. They must
have farmers, artisans, all sort of producers, or their conquest is not
worth the price. The policy of hatred and violence must in the end de
stroy the state. It can breed only hatred in the hearts of the outcast and
the poor. If their subjection is incomplete, the throne is resting upon
the shifting sands. If perfect and complete, their subjects are lifeless
xnachines and their empires crumbling to decay. It is really idle to spec
ulate as to whether love and brotherhood could accomplish more; it is
certain they could not do less. To disband the armies and destroy the
forts, to diffuse love and brotherhood, and peace and justice in the place
of war and strife, could tend only to the building up of character, the
elevation of the soul, and the strength and well-being of the state. True,
the class lines wòtild disappear. Brotherhood would have neither ruler
nor ruled, would have no authority of man over man, would treat all as
brothers and co-equals, and from it would grow a stronger state and a
higher manhood than the world has known. Peaceful industry relieved
from the burdens of soldiers and arms would inevitably increase, and
life, rendered less burdensome by the exactions of authority, would
lengthen and sweeten through the beneficent influence of love. No
nation can be really great that is held together by gatling guns, and no
true loyalty can be induced and kept through fear.
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Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER IV
CIVIL GOVERNMENT
H FTER the evolution of society through 'brute force and the first
Jg stages of militarism, comes civil government. In its forms and
methods civil government differs from military government
Civil crn AUt in
esseHce, its real purpose and effect, it is the same’
Civil government, like military government,.rests on violence and force
As society reaches the industrial stage, it is easier and costs less waste
of energy for the ruling class to maintain its supremacy through the
intricate forms and mazes of civil government, than through the direct
means, of soldiers and guns.
, 11 9V1 governments like military governments, are instituted and con
trolled by.the ruling class. Their purpose is to keep the earth and its
resources in the hands of those who directly and indirectly have taken it
for themselves. This can only be done by the establishment and main
tenance of certain rules and regulations concerning the disposition of
property and the fate of men. A vast army of officials, governors legis
lators, tax-gatherers, judges, sheriffs, policemen, and the like are’maintained by the governing class to enforce these rules and regulations and
keep the exploited in their place. The decrees of courts and the various
orders of civil government are enforced by violence, differing only in
kind from the general’s commands. The decrees of courts, whether
rightful or wrongful,' must be obeyed, and the penalty of disobedience
is the forcible taking of property, the kidnapping and imprisoning of
men, and if need be, the taking of human life, flf it shall ever occur
that the civil authorities have not sufficient force to compel obedience
the whole power of the army and navy may at once be made subservient
to the civil power.
. .. 7^ vast army which is charged with enforcing and maintaining
civil law is drawn largely from the ruling class and those who contribute
as their willing tools. This, class must be supported and maintained in
greater luxury than that enjoyed by the ordinary man, and the support
entails ceaseless and burdensome exactions from the producing class.
These exactions are a portion of the price that the worker pays for the
privilege of being ruled. It is true that-a portion of the money forcibly
taken through the machinery of government is used for those cooperative
commercial purposes that are incident to a complex social life, but it has
never yet been, shown that an autocratic power like a political state is
needed to provide the common resources incident to social life.
Practically the whole army of officials, with its wastefulness, its ex
travagance and its endless peculation, is supported and kept in worse than
idleness for the purpose of ruling men through violence and force. Even
in.so-called democracies the civil law., with its ponderous and costly ma
chinery, serves the same purpose as in monarchical states. It is easy to
understand that when the decrees of a ruler are absolute it can matter
little whether these decrees are issued to an army and carried out by
force of the bayonet and gun, or whether they are crystallized into law
and carried out by the orders of courts to be enforced by consigning
�Clarence Darrow
19
troublesome and rebellious subjects to the prison or the block. In either
event the will of the sovereign is law,|5nd the law is made for the benefit
of the ruler, not the ruled?}
In democracies, the fcJfm is somewhat changed, but the results are
not unlike. Every democracy begins with a great mass of regulations in
herited from the autocratic powers that have gone before. These laws
and customs are originally the same decrees that have gone forth from
the absolute rulers of the earth, and every change in- forms and insti
tutions is based upon the old notions of property and rights that were
made to serve the ruler and enslave the world.
Then, too, authority has the same effect on human nature whether
in an absolute monarchy or a democracy, and the tendency of authority
is ever to enlarge its bounds and to encroach upon the natural rights of
those who have no power to protect themselves. The possession of au
thority and arbitrary power ever tends to tyranny, and when autoci atic
orders may be enforced by violence, liberty and life depend upon suffer
ance alone. A close community of interest naturally springs up between
those circumstanced alike. The man who possesses one sort of power, as,
for instance, political privilege, is very friendly to the class who possess
another sort, as, for instance, wealth, and this community of interest
naturally and invariably arrays all the privileged classes against the
weak. The laws and regulations of a democracy tend no more to equality
than those of a monarchy. Under a democratic government inequality of
possession, of opportunity, of power, is quite as great as under absolute
monarchies. Given the right to use force of. man over man and the
strongest force will succeed. You may forbid it in one direction, it will
but find a new method to accomplish the same result, like the pent-up
torrent that will find its outlet, in however circuitous a route it is obliged
to move. The legislators who make laws come either from the ruling
class or draw their honors, rewards, and emoluments from this class;
and the statutes of the most democratic states are not unlike the dictates
of the absolute monarch, and the decrees of both alike may be enforced
by all the power and violence of the state. But laws do not execute
themselves, and every official appointed or self-chosen to enforce the
law either comes from or naturally gravitates toward the ruling class.
Here again power grows by what it feeds on. Order is more important
than liberty, and at all costs order must be enforced upon the many. The
few have little need for law. Whatever is, is theirs, and may they not
use their own to suit themselves? The business of the courts and of
ficials is to enforce order upon the great mass who must depend upon
the few for the means of life. To enforce order upon them means that
they may only live in certain ways.
But admitting the orthodox view of government to be correct, then
how stands the case? The great majority of mankind still believe in
the utility of the state. They not only believe that society could not ex
ist without the state, but likewise that this political institution exists and
is maintained for the public good; that all its functions and activities in
some mysterious way have been conferred upon it by the weaker class of
fociety, and that it is administered to save this class from the ravages of
the vicious and the strong. Of course, there are many humane officials,
men who use their power to promote the public good, as they see and
�20
Resist Not Evil
understand the public good, 1 hese, in common with the community,
look upon the endless provisions of our penal code as being the magical
power that keeps the state from dissolution and preserves the lives and
property of men from the vicious and the bad. The idea of punishment,
of violence, of force, is so interwoven with all our concepts of justice
and social life that but few can conceive a society without force, without
jails, without scaffolds, without the penal judgments of men. The
thought, never suggests itself to the common mind that nature, unaided
by man’s laws, can evolve social order, or that a community might live
in measurable peace and security moved only by those natural instincts
which form the basis of and render possible communal life. To be sure,
the world is full of evidence that order and security do not depend on
legal inventions. From the wild horses on the plains, the flocks of birds,
the swarming bees, the human society and association in new countries
amongst unexploited people, suggestions of order and symmetry regu
lated by natural instincts and common social needs are ample to show
the possibility at least of order or a considerable measure of justice with
out penal law. It is only when the arrogance and the avarice of rulers
and chiefs make it necessary to exploit men that these rulers must lay
down laws and regulations to control the actions of their fellows. And
the more fixed the caste, the better settled the community; the more
complete the private appropriation of land, and the longer the penal code,
the greater the number of victims that are caught within its snares.
Turning from the examples everywhere present of the naturalness
of order and system to what we observe of the daily acts of men, the
thought that right conduct has little relation to penal laws is still further
confirmed. :'In the myriad acts of men it is only rarely that one is done
diiectly because of law.*'j To turn to the right when you meet vour neigh
bor on the street; to imperil your happiness and even your life to help
in dire need; to protect the helpless; to defend the weak; to tell the truth ;
in fact, to obey all that natural morality or right conduct requires, is the
first instinct of man, and ever prevails, not only regardless of human law
but in spite of human law, and this, too, for the best and most abiding
reason that can influence the life of man. Nature provides that certain
conduct makes for life, and in the sweep of time, those who conform to
this conduct live and their offspring populate the earth when they are
gone; those who violate the laws of communal life will die or leave no
descendants or leave weak offspring to be the last survivors of their line.
The unschooled child and the uncivilized race alike tell the truth; they
obey the laws of nature and the laws of life. It is only after the exploiter
appears with his rules for enslaving man that he must needs build jails
in which to pen those who'defy or ignore their power.
�21
Clarence Darrow
CHAPTER V
THEORY OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
HOSE who believe in the beneficence of force have never yet
agreed upon the crimes that should be forbidden, the method
and extent of punishment, the purpose of punishment, nor even
its result. They simply agree that without force and violence
social life cannot be maintained. All conceivable human actions have
fallen under the disfavor of the law and found their place in penal
codes: Blasphemy, witchcraft, heresy, insanity, idiocy, methods of
eating and drinking, the manner of worshiping the Supreme Being,
the observance of fast days and holy days, the giving of ihedicine
and the withholding of medicine, the relation of the sexes, the right
to labor and not to labor, the method of acquiring and dispensing
property, its purchase and sale, the forms of dress and manner of
deportment, in fact almost every conceivable act of man. / On the
•other hand, murder, robbery, pillage, rapine, have often been com
mended by the ruling powers, not only permitted, but under certain con
ditions that seemed to work to the advantage of the ruler, this conduct
has been deemed worthy of the greatest praise?. The punishments for
illegal acts have been as various as the crimes. -Death has always been
a favorite visitation for the criminal, but the means of death have varied
with time and place: Boiling in oil, boiling in water, burning at the
stake, breaking on the wheel, strangling, poisoning, feeding to wild beasts,
beheading, and in fact every conceivable way down to the humane meth
ods of electrocution and hanging by the neck until dead. Death, too, has
been made the punishment for all sorts of crimes, always for the crimes
of denying your Maker, or killing your ruler. After death has come
public flogging, standing in the stocks, ducking, maiming, down to the
humane method of penning in a cage. No two sets of rulers have ever
agreed upon the relative enormity of the various crimes, the sort of pun
ishment they merited, the extent and duration of punishment, or the pur
pose to be accomplished by the punishment. One age has pronounced
martyrs and worshipped as saints the criminals that another age has put
to death. One law-making body repeals the crimes that another creates.
Some judges with venerable wigs have pronounced solemn sentence of
death upon helpless, defenseless old women for bewitching a cat. Grave
judges have even sentenced animals to death after due and impartial trial
for crime. The judges who pronounced sentence of death on women
for witchcraft were as learned and good as those who today pronounce
sentence for conspiracy and other crimes. It is quite as «possible that
another generation will look with the same horror on the subjects of our
laws as we look upon those of the years that are gone. It is but a few
years since a hundred different crimes were punishable with death in
England, and the wise men of that day would not have believed that the
empire could hold together had these extreme statutes been limited to
one or two.
_ But however drastic the laws at different periods of civilization,
�22
Resist Not Evil
they have never been so broad but what a much larger number of blame
worthy acts were outside than inside the code. Neither have they ever
been enforced alike on all. The powerful could generally violate them
with impunity, but the net was there to ensnare the victim whom they
wished to catch.
Neither has the method of determining the victim for these various
laws been as accurate and scientific as is generally presumed. Sometimes
it has been by torturing until the victim is made to confess; sometimes by
wager of battle; sometimes by tying the victim’s feet and hands and
throwing him into a pond, when if he sank he was innocent, if he swam
he was guilty and promptly put to death. The modern method of ar
raying a defendant in court, prosecuted by able lawyers with ample re
sources, tried by judges who almost invariably believe, in the prisoner’s
guilt, defended as is usually the case by incompetent lawyers, and with
out means, is scarcely more liable to lead to correct results than the
ancient forms. From the nature of things it is seldom possible to be
sure about the commission of the act, and never possible to fix the moral
responsibility of the person charged with crime.
For ages men have erected scaffolds, instruments of torture, built
jails, prisons and penal institutions without end, and through all the
ages a long line of suffering humanity, bound and fettered, has been
marching to slaughter and condemned to living tombs; and yet human
governments charged with the responsibility of the condition and lives of
these weak brothers, have never yet been able fo agree even upon the
purpose for which these pens are built. All punishment and violence is
largely mixed with the feeling of revenge,—from the brutal father who
strikes his helpless child, to the hangman who obeys the orders of the
judge; with every man who lays violent unkind hands upon his fellow
the prime feeling is that of hatred and revenge. Some human being has
shed his neighbor’s blood; the state must take his life. In no other way
can the crime be wiped away. In some inconceivable manner it is be
lieved that when this punishment follows, justice has been done. But
by no method of reasoning can it be shown that the injustice of killing
one man is retrieved by the execution of another, or that the forcible
taking of property is made right by confining some human being in a
pen. If the law knew some method to restore a life or make good a loss
to the real victim, it might be urged that justice had been done. But if
taking life, or blaspheming, or destroying the property of another be an
injustice, as in our short vision it seems to be, then punishing him who
is supposed to be guilty of the act, in no way makes just the act already
done. To punish a human being simply because he has committed a.
wrongful act, without any thought of good to follow, is vengeance pure
and simple, and more detestable and harmful than any casual isolated
crime. Apologists who have seen the horror in the thought of vengeance
and still believe in violence and force when exercised by the state, con
tend that punishment is largely for the purpose of reforming the victim.
This, of course, cannot be held in those instances where death is
the punishment inflicted. These victims at least have no chance to be
reformed. Neither can it be seriously contended that a penal insti
tution is a reformatory, whatever its name. A prisoner is an outlaw,
�Clarence Darrow
an outcast man, placed beyond the pale of society and branded as
unfit for the association of his fellow man phis sentence is to live in
silence, to toil without recompense, to wear the badge of infamy,
and if ever permitted to see the light, to be pointed at and shunned
by all who know his life.
*
*
/
X
<•
�24
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER VI
REMEDIAL EFFECTS OF PUNISHMENT
HE last refuge of the apologist is that punishment is in
flicted to prevent crime. No one can speak from experience
as to whether punishment prevents what is called crime or not,
for the experiment of non-resistance has never yet been
fairly or fully tried. To justify killing or penning a human being
upon the theory that this prevents crime should call for the strictest
proof on the part of those who advocate this course. To take the
life or liberty of a fellow man is the most serious responsibility that
can devolve upon an individual or community. The theory that
punishment is a preventive to unlawful acts does not seriously mean
that it is administered to prevent the individual from committing a
second or a third unlawful act. If this were the case the death
penalty should never be inflicted, as life imprisonment accomplishes
the same results. Neither would it be necessary to restrain men in
the way that is done in our penal institutions, to deprive them of all
pleasures and the income of their labor. All that would then be
needed would be to keep men safely locked from the world. But
most unlawful acts are committed hastily in the heat of passion or
■ upon what seems adequate provocation, or through sore need. Such
acts as these would almost never be repeated. Genuine repentance
follows most really vicious acts, but repentance, however genuine,
gives no waiver of punishment.
Then, too, many men who commit no act in violation of the law
are known to be more likely to commit such acts than others who
through some circumstances may have violated a criminal statute.
Men of hasty temper, of strong will, of intemperate habits, often
with no means of support, all of these are more liable to crime than
one who has once overstepped the bounds. But it is obvious that
this is not the real reason for punishment; if it were it would be the
duty of judge and jury to determine, not whether a man had com
mitted a crime, but whether he wras liable to commit one at some
future time, an inquiry which is never made and which it is obvious
could not be made.
The safety aimed at through punishment does not mean safety
for the individual, but it is contended that the fact that one per
son is punished for an act deters others from the commission of
similar unlawful acts; it is obvious that there is a large class who
are not deterred by these examples, for the inmates of prisons never
grow less, in fact prisons grow and increase in the same proportion
as other institutions grow. But here, too, the theories and acts of
rulers have been as various and contradictory as in relation to other
matters concerning crime and its punishment. If the purpose of pun
ishment is to terrorize the community so that none will dare again
to commit thesa» acts, then the more terrible the punishment the
surer the result. This was generally admitted not many years ago,
�Clarence Darrow
25
but in its treatment of crime the world ever prefers to be illogical
and ineffectual rather than too brutal.
If terrorisih is the object aimed at, death should again be sub
stituted for the various crimes, great and small, which ever justified
taking human life. Death, too, should be administered in the most
cruel way. Boiling, the rack, wild beasts, and slow fires should be
the methods sought. It should be steadfastly remembered by all
squeamish judges and executioners that one vigorous punishment
would prevent a thousand crimes. But more than all this, death
should be in the most public way. The kettle of boiling oil should
be heated ttdth its victim inside, out upon the commons, where all
eyes could see and all ears could hear. The scaffold should be
erected high on a hill, and the occasion be made a public holiday for
miles around. This was once the case even within the last half cen
tury. These public hangings in Europe and America have drawn
great crowds of spectators, sometimes reaching into the tens of
thousands, to witness the value that the state places on human life.
But finally, even stupid legislators began to realize that these scenes
of violence, brutality and crime bred their like upon those who came
to see. | Even governments discovered that many acts of violence
followed a pubilc hanging;. The hatred of the state which calmly
took a human life engendered endless hatred as its fruit. And in all
countries that claim a semblance of civilization, public hangings are
now looked back upon with horror and amazement. Hangings today
take place inside the jail in the presence of a few invited guests, a
state doctor who watches carefully to see that the victim is not cut
down before his heart has ceased to beat, a chaplain who calls on
the Creator of life to take back to his bosom the divine spark which
man in his cruelty and wrath is seeking to snuff out. Even the state
is not so cruel but that it will officially ask the Almighty to look
after the soul that it blackens and defiles and does its best to ever
lastingly destroy. A few friends of tbe jailer are present to witness
the rare performance, and the newspapers too are represented, so
that the last detail, including the breakfast bill of fare, may be
graphically- set before the hungry mob to take the place of the real
tragedy that they had the right to witness in the good old days.
Many states today have provided that executions shall be inside the
penitentiary walls, that the victim shall be wakened, if perchance
he is asleep, in the darkness and dead of night; that he shall be
hurried off alone and unobserved and hastily put to death outside
the gaze of any curious eye; that this barbarism shall be done, this
unholy, brutal deed committed in silence, in darkness, that the
heavens and earth alike may cover up the shocking crime, from
which a sensitive public conscience stands aghast. The ever-present
public press in many cases is allowed to print only the barest details
‘ of the bloody scene, so that oblivion may the more quickly and
deeply cover this crowning infamy of-the state.
The abolition of public hangings may speak something for the
sensitiveness, or at least, the squeamishness of the state. But it is
evident that all of this is a terrible admission of guilt upon the
part of those who uphold this crime. It is possible that one might
�26
Resist Not Evil
believe at least in the sincerity of those who argue that punishment
prevents crime, if these terrible scenes of violence were carried out
in open day before the multitude, and fully understood and discussed
in all their harrowing, shocking details of cruelty and blood. If
the sight of punishment terrorizes men from the commission of
crime then., of course, punishment should be as open as the day.
In so far as the state is successful in keeping secret the execution
of its victim, in this far does it abandon every claim of prevention
and rests its case for punishments on vengeance and cruelty alone.
The rulers of this generation, who are ashamed of their deeds, may
be wiser and more sensitive than those of the last, but our ancestors,
although less refined, were much more logical and infinitely more
honest than are we.
The whole question of punishment is not only proven but fully
admitted by our rulers in their dealings with the death penalty.
It is now everywhere admitted that the brutalizing effects of public
executions are beyond dispute. It was only after the completest evi
dence that the believers in the beneficence of punishment and vio
lence abandoned public executions, for to abandon these was to
utterly abandon the principle on which all punishment is based.
It would, of course, be impossible to prove the exact result of. a
public execution. Somewhere in a quiet rural community, growing
out of sudden passion or some unexplained and temporary aberra
tion, a man takes the life of his fellow man. To the shock incident
to this fatal act is added a long public trial in the courts where
every detail is distorted and magnified and passed from tongue to
tongue until even the lisping babe is thoroughly familiar with every
circumstance of the case with all its harrowing details iterated and
reiterated again and again. There grows up in the public mind a
bitter hatred against the unfortunate victim whose antecedents, life
and motives they can in no way understand or judge. It is really
believed that no one has the right to look upon this person with
any feeling save that of hatred, and the least word of pity or sign
of sympathy for the outcast is set down as sickly sentimentalism
and the mark of mental and spiritual disease. Weeks and months,
sometimes even years, elapse in the slow and unending process of
the courts. The whole tragedy has been well nigh forgot, at least it
no longer has any vital effect upon the community. Finally it is
announced that on a certain day a public hanging will take place.
Once more every detail of the tragedy is recalled to the public mind;
once more each man conjures up a monster in the place of the
hunted, weak, doomed victim whose act no one either fathoms or
seeks to understand. A sightly spot is chosen perhaps upon the
village green. For several days men are kept busy erectkig a strange
and ominous machine; the old men and women, the middle aged,
the boys and girls, the little children, even the toddling babes,, filled
with curiosity watch the work and discuss every detail of the weird
and fatal trap. At length the day arrives for the majesty of the law
to vindicate itself. From every point of the compass comes a great
throng of both sexes, all conditions and ages, each to witness the
most startling event of their lives; children are there, babes in arms,
�Clarence Darrow
27
and even the unborn. A rope is tied around a beam, a noose is
formed of the other end, a trembling, helpless, frantic, friendless
victim is led up the steps, placed on a trap, his hands and feet are
bound, a black cap is pulled down to hide his face, the noose is
securely fastened around his necik below his ears. The crowd
watches breathless with suspense, the signal is given, the trap opens,
the man falls through space, he is caught in mid-air by the rope
tightening about his neck and strangling him to death. His body
heaves, his legs and arms move with violent convulsions, he swings
a few minutes in mid-air before the crowd, a ghastly human pendu
lum moving back and forth, the mortal body of a man created in the
image of God whom the state has led out and killed to show the
glory and majesty of law!
' The advocate of punishment is right in the belief that such^a
scene will produce a profound impression upon all who see or hear
or know. The human being does not live who can witness such a
tragedy or even know its details and not receive some impression
that the rest of life cannot efface. The impression must be to
harden and brutalize the heart and conscience, to destroy the finer
sensibilities, to cheapen human life, to breed cruelty and malice that
will bear fruit in endless ways and unknown forms. No parent who
loved his child and who had any of the human sentiments that
should distinguish man from the brute creation, would ever dare to
trust that child to witness a scene like this. Every intelligent loving
mother carrying an unborn babe would close her eyes and stop her
ears and retire to the darkest corner she could find lest the unborn
babe marked by the baleful scene should one day stand upon the
same trembling trap with a rope about his neck.
The true morality of a community does not depend alone upon
the number of men who slay their fellows. These at most are very
few. The true morality depends upon every deed of kindness or
malice, of love or hatred, of charity or cruelty, and the sum of
these determine the real character and worth of a community. Any
evil consequences that could flow from a casual killing of a human
being by an irresponsible man would be like a drop of water in the
sea compared . with a public execution by the state.
It would probably not be possible to find a considerable num
ber of men today who would believe that a public hanging could
have any but bad results. This must be true because the knowledge
of its details tends to harden, embitter and render cruel the hearts
of men. Only in a less degree does the publication of all the details
affect the characters and lives of men, but unless they are at least
published to the world, then the example is of no effect. The state
which would take life without any hope or expectation that the
community would in any way be bettered could not rank even
among savage tribes. Such cruelty could only be classed as total
depravity.
But the effect of other punishment is no whit different save in
degree from that- of hanging. Cultivated, sensitive people have long
since deplored the tendency of newspapers to give full and vivid
accounts of crimes and their punishment, and the better and humaner
�2U
Resist Not Evil
class of citizens. shun those journals which most magnify these
details. All of this has a tendency to familiarize man with violence
and force, to weaken human sensibilities to accustom man to cruel
ty, to blood, to scenes of suffering and pain. What right-thinking
parent would place this, literature before his .child and familiarize
his mind with violence practiced either by the individual or the
Sute1i p"114 -yet
Punishment is a deterrent, the widest publicity
shouid be given to. the story of every crime and the punishment
inflicted by the state.
That men even unconsciously feel that punishment is wrong is
shown by their attitude toward certain classes of society. A hang
man would not be tolerated in a self-respecting body of men or
women, and this has been the case for many years, in fact since
men made a trade of butchering their fellow man. A professional
hangman is really as much despised as any other professional mur
derer. A detective, jailer, policeman, constable and sheriff are not
generally regarded as being subjects of envy by their fellows. Still
none of these are as much responsible for their acts as the real rulers
who make and execute the law. The time will come when the pub
lic prosecutor and the judge who sentences his brother to death or
imprisonment will be classed with the other officers who lay vio
lent and cruel hands upon their fellows.
If the imprisonment of men tended to awe others into obedience
to law, then the old ideas of penal servitude are the only ones that
can be logically sustained. A prison should be the most horrible
gruesome, painful place that can be contrived. Physical torture
should be al common incident of prison life. The victim' himself is
beyond the pale of society. His life should be used to aid the com
munity by frightful example:
Dark dungeons, noxious smells,
vermin, rats, the hardest, most constant toil, long terms of impris
onment, and a red mark to be branded on his brow, when he
at last is turned loose to the light of day. Prisons should be open
public, so that the old and young" can constantly witness the
terrible effects of crime. Prisons and jails should be in every community and in the most conspicuous place. The young should not
be left to hear casually of public punishments or to imagine a penal
institution. The living horrible example in all its loathsome, sicken
ing details should be ever kept before their eyes. Most men now
regard these public exhibitions of the malice of the state exactly as
they now look on public hangings, as tending to degrade and debauch
and harden the hearts of those who become familiar with the sight.
But if the open sight and knowledge of a penal institution tends to
degrade and harden the heart, then the secret, imperfect, covert;
knowledge produces the same effect only in less degree.
All communities and states are in reality ashamed of jails and
penal institutions of whatever kind. Instinctively they seem to un
derstand that these are a reflection on the state. More and more the
best judgment and best conscience of men are turned toward the
improvement of . prisons, the introduction of sanitary appliances,
the bettering of jail conditions, the modification of punishment, the
treatment of convicts as men. All of this directly disproves the
�Clarence Darrow
29
theory that the terrible example of punishment tends to prevent
crime. All these improvements of prison conditions show that society
is unconsciously ashamed of its treatment of so-called criminals;
that the excuse of prevention of crime is really known to be humbug
and hypocrisy, and that the real motive that causes the punishment
of crime is malice and hatred and nothing else. The tendency to
abrogate capital punishment, to improve prisons, to modify sen
tences, to pardon convicts is all in one direction. It can lead to but
one inevitable result, the abolition of all judgment of man by man,
the complete destruction of all prisons and the treatment of all men
as if each human being was the child of the one loving Father and
a part and parcel of the same infinite and mysterious life.
�30
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER VII
CAUSE OF CRIME
JJF the punishment of so-called crimes tended in any way to
||| prevent violent acts, this tendency would be manifest in.
some conclusive way. Whether brotherhood love and nonresistance would lessen crime may be a matter of debate,
but that punishment does not lessen it, seems to be as well
established as any fact that cannot be absolutely proved. The
death penalty was for years drastically enforced for the crime
of smuggling, but its enforcement in no way tended to prevent
the practice which flourished in spite of executions without
number,—the. common consciousness would not accept this pun
ishment as just and finally rulers were forced to modify the
punishment in self-defense. The punishment of death for larceny
did not prevent the crime. Nearly every religion has made its
way in the face of the severest penal statutes.
Its converts
have all been criminals and they have accepted and taught their
faith at the risk of life. Every organization of working men has
grown up in violation of human laws, and the jails, prisons» and
scaffolds have been busily engaged in suppressing this species of
crime; but in spite of the fact that judges still imprison and execute
for this crime, these associations are now almost as firmly estab
lished as any institution of the world. All new political ideas, de
mocracy, socialism, nihilism have met the same fact and have made
their way regardless of scaffolds and jails. Even in the common
crimes, like burglary and larceny, prisons have had no effect. From
the dawn of civilization an endless procession of weak and helpless
victims, handcuffed, despised and outlawed, have been marching up
to prison doors and still the procession comes and goes. Time does
not stay nor punishment make it less. In fact the older the com
munity and the better settled and undisturbed its life, the greater
^the number of these unfortunates whom, for some mysterious reason,
the Infinite has decreed a life of shame and a death of ignominy and
and dishonor. If scaffolds and prisons and judges and jailers have
no effect to prevent and lessen crime, common wisdom, to say nothing
of humane instincts, ought to seek some other plan.
Intelligent men have long since ceased to believe in miracle or
chance. Whatever they may think of ancient ’miracles and the original
chance that brought the universe into being, still most people now be
lieve that the world’s affairs, be they small or great, physical, intellectual,
or moral, come within the realm of law.
- In the ordinary affairs of life, men everywhere seek the causes
that produce effects. Men are called into being, live their lives and pass
away in obedience to natural laws which are as immutable as the move
ment of the tides. In our half civilized condition we partially compre
hend this fact. The defect of the born cripple, the idiot, the insane is
no longer charged to the poor victim who, unhampered by the world,
still has a burden as heavy as should be given to mortal man to bear.
B
�Clarence Darrow
31
The physician who would treat fever or measles or diphtheria without
considering the cause would be considered the veriest bungler an re
sponsible for his patient’s death. It is not so very long ago that a world
about as intelligent as our own believed that disease, deformity, and
sin came from the same cause,—some sort of an evil spirit that found
its abode in man. The way to destroy the evil spirit was generally to
destroy the man. The world will perhaps, grow wise enough not
only to believe that disease, deformity, and sin have a common cause,
but perhaps so wise as to find their common cause. No skilful physician
called to the bedside of a child suffering with scarlet fever would up
braid the child for the evil spirit that caused its pain; no more would he
punish the consumptive for his hacking cough; he would understand
perfectly well that the physical condition of each was due to some natural
cause, and that the disease could be cured in these patients and avoided
in others only when the cause was destroyed, or so well known that •
no one need fall a victim to the malady. Even in diseases of the most
contagious sort, where the isolation of the patient is necessary to protect
the lives and health of others, this isolation would be accomplished not
in hatred or malice but in the greatest tenderness and love,, and the isola
tion would last only for the purpose of a cure and a sufficient time for
cure; and every pains would be taken to destroy and stamp out the
cause which produced the disease.
The theory of disease is so well understood today that our physicians
clearly recognize mental disease as well as physical. Insanity is no
longer punished as a crime as in the days gone by, and even kleptomania
is now a well classified and recognized disease. No intelligent person
doubts the disease of kleptomania; its symptoms are too well established.
When a person steals a thing he does not need, it is an evidence, of ■
kleptomania, an ungovernable will. When a poor person takes a thing
he needs and cannot live without, there is no evidence of an ungoverna
ble will.
Many facts have been classified concerning physical disease and our
knowledge of its nature, cause, and cure grows year by year. Malignant
spirits and accident are no longer considered in reference to disease;
while the origin of all bodily ailments is not yet known, so many have
been ascertained as to make it sure that with sufficient knowledge,
all could be traced to their natural cause. And while the means have
not yet been found to cure each disease, still so much is known as to
. warrant the belief that there is no physical ailment that will necessarily
cause death.
And intelligent research is constantly adding to the known and ever
narrowing the realm of the mysterious and unexplained. In physical dis
ease long observation has shown that certain climates and certain locali
ties are favorable to this disease or that; some places naturally breed
malaria, and the mind of man is turned to discovering methods to over
come the conditions which produce the disease. If fevers abound, the
conditions are carefully observed to find what breeds the infectious
germ. It is not difficult to imagine that if the medical profesison should
ever labor purely to cure disease, instead of to make money for itself,
< and should continue its research and investigation, that few would die
�32
Resist Not Evil
ushers°iHnge Sh°uld terminate Jife as simply and naturally as birth
m the+ re-alm of the mental and the moral, the law has been
content for centuries to rest at ease. Our practical dealings with crime
e based on the same theories of evil and evil spirits that made wise
piysicians drive the devils into swine and swine into the sea. If anv
progress has been made it has been in believing that, instead of one
being possessed of a devil, he really is a devil. When the physical
dhion of fhV
1S S“ff*lent1^ far removed from the physical conhe is treated for^hn ?hlCh
t0 rePresent the n°rmal man,
varies fromdthfaf nfh!hdlSeT’ When
mental condition sufficiently
varies from that of the ordinary man, the normal man, he is promptly
imprisoned or put to death. Judges and juries debate and ponder over
done bv h’V 1 whetheS arm,an has done s°me act that is nJt commonly
art th7 hls,fellows> aI?d lf they determine that he is guilty of doing the
clL tJUiment follows that he must have wilfully and perversely
h X V° Wrong* N.° one then mcjuires why he did the act and
w ether there are conditions of disease present in the community that
will lead others to do like acts. There is but one thing to do The man
is evil. The state must lay violent hands upon him-must meH evil with
malice
is but one cure for “alfce and thS is
rule^nf XT“™?’*
law, and its administrators, some of the
rules of conduct have been brought to light: while iudp-es
iwon
sentencing, and haqgmen and jailers plying their gruesome trades there
?nXbner(?ihinkerSfa”i1 TT"48 and hiftoriaisgX“t beiiev:
' ishment
W!fihcrait a?d evil sPirits on which human punck^?Hed fniZ
J n These,stude1nts and scholars have labeled and
classified facts and have at least learned something as to the cause
wedd0tognroveWthhatfmen °En?Ugh at least has been discovIrimet P
H
pumshment has absolutely no effect to lessen
nc -Tihe an?ents believed in the existence of the body and the soul
ntithedreonpdhni entltle,s* . Each bad its own sphere
action and
In
T had any r-C atl?n tO the other' This idea has c°me down
d 1S+i?-reSnt J-n a l rour dealmgs with our fellow man. Par
ticularly is this the view of government in its tender care of those
v o^ are the subjects of its laws. The care and treatment of the
teaVeTnfYh
Jhke . Provjnce of .the physician. The care and
treatment of the soul belong to the priest and the hangman. Whether
man has a soul that ever existed or can exist independent of the body
™ay n! 7i?UfSu°n th,at wiI1 remain forever °Pen to occupy our
thoughts. But this at least is true: that the condition of the body
has the greatest influence over the mental and so-called moral nature
•ot man./ lhe body and mind grow together and decay together.
Health in one generally indicates health in the other. The overfeed
ing. or the starvation of the one means the disease of the other
VL d°ubtful
W mental characteristic or abnormal condition
could not be traced to its physical cause either in the individual or
ms ancestors, if science were far enough advanced.
Everyone who is familiar with the inmates of jails and penal
�Clarence Darrow
33
institutions has learned to know the type of man that is confined as
a criminal. In nearly every case these are inferior physically to the
average man. In nearly every case they are also inferior mentally
to the average man. One needs but visit our criminal courts day
after day to find that the average criminal is a stunted, starved, defi
cient man. More than this, almost universally they come from the
poorer class—men and women reared in squalor and misery and
want, surrounded from youth by those who have been compelled to
resort to almost any means for life; people who, whatever their own
code of ethics, have not been able in their growth to maintain those
distinctions in conduct which to the common mind constitute the
difference between lawful and unlawful acts. Here and there of
course one finds someone in jail who has been differently reared;
but these are the exceptions which in no way disprove the rule.
These cases too can be traced to their cause like all the rest.
There are certain moral diseases like speculation, for instance, that
seize on men exactly as the measles or the mumps. These diseases
generally flourish in great cities and are not indigenous to country
life. Not only are these prisoners deficient in stature and intellect,
but the shape Jp their heads shows them different from other men.
As a class their heads are much less symmetrical and what are
known as the higher faculties are much less developed than with
jthe ordinary man.
If it were established even that the criminal type is inferior
mentally and physically and that they have all misshapen heads,
this alone ought to be sufficient to raise the inquiry as to who was
responsible for their acts. Long ago a wise man said that no one
could by taking thought add a cubit to his stature, and yet we
hang and pen because these unfortunates have not grown as tall,
as large, or as symmetrical as the ordinary man. But the mental
actions of man have been shown to be as much due to law and
environment as his physical health,—certain sections of the world are
indigenous to men who kill their fellows; and more than this, cer
tain portions produce men who kill with-guns, others who kill with
a knife, others still who administer poison.- In certain sections, the
chief crime is horse stealing; in others, running illicit distilleries;
again, burglary; in some places, poaching; sometimes, robbery; and
again, smuggling. A study of conditions would reveal why each of
these crimes is indigenous to the particular soil that gives it birth,
and just as draining swamps prevents the miasma, so a rational
treatment of the condition caused by the various crimes would cure
them, too. If our physicians were no more intelligent than our law
yers, when called to visit a miasmic patient, instead of draining
the swamp they would chloroform the patient and expect thus to
frighten all others from taking the disease.
Observation as to so-called crime has gone much further. The
number of inmates of our jails is much larger in winter than in
summer, which ought to show that there is something in the air
that produces a wicked heart in the winter, or that many persons
directly or indirectly go to jail because in winter food and warmth
are not easily obtained and Work is hard to get. For many years it
�34
Resist Not Evil
has been observed that jails are very much more crowded in hard
times than in good, times. If work were sufficiently plenty or
remunerative both jails and almshouses would be compelled to close
their doors. Long ago it was ascertained from statistics that the
number of crimes rose and fell, in exact accord with the/price of
bread. All new communities, where land is cheap or free and labor
has ample employment, or, better still, a chance to employ itself, are
very free from crime. England made Australia its dumping ground
for criminals for years, but these same criminals when turned upon
the wide plains with a chance to get their living from the soil, became
peaceable, orderly citizens fully respecting one another’s rights.
England, too, used certain portions of her American colonies'where
she sent men for her country’s good. These criminals like all the
criminals of the world were the exploited, homeless class. When
they reached the new country, when they had an opportunity to live,
they became as good citizens as the pilgrim fathers who were like
wise criminals themselves. As civilization has swept westward
through the. United States, jails have lagged behind. The jail and
the penitentiary are not the first institutions planted by colonists in
a new country, or by pioneers in a new state. These pioneers go to
work to till the soil, to cut down the forests, to dig" the ore; it is
only when the owning class has been established and the exploiting
class grows up, that the jail and the penitentiary become fixed insti
tutions, to be used for holding people in their place. '
�35
Clarence Darrow
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PROPER TREATMENT OF CRIME
Kf^SKlEASON and judgment as well as an almost endless array of
JI facts has proven that crime is not without its cause. In showi
its cause> its cure has been made plain. If the minds and
fcUSOl energies of men were directed toward curing crime instead of
brutally assaulting the victims of society, some progress might be made.
It is often difficult to trace results, because their relations are not
always direct and plain. Even in the realm of physical facts it is always
easy to stray from the straight path between cause and effect. When we
observe the conduct of men and seek to find its cause the problem is
still more complex. Each human being is an entity made up of all that
is and of all that has gone before. It may not be possible to tell from
whence he obtained every quirk or peculiarity of his brain, but one
thing is sure, he did not form his own skull and could have but little
part in arranging the brain cells within the bone. This portion came
from his father, that his mother gave, this was bequeathed by a bloody
ancestor who died long generations since ; but all who went before did
their part, and gave their little mite to make the composite brain that
drives its possessor here and there.
While the exact cause of any act may not be ascertained, still the
general causes are beyond dispute. A stunted body means that either
its owner or its ancesor has almost surely been starved and that want
and hunger have left their traces on the brain. An inferior mind means
some incapacity, disease or disadvantage, either in the individual or his
ancestor, that has left him different from his fellow men. An asym
metrical head may reach back to the early ape, and account for any
possible seeming deficiency or peculiarity in the brain, which after all
must be molded in the shape that the bones allow it to assume. Starved
bodies can be cured by food. True, it may take more than one gen
eration to cure them as it may have taken several to produce them,
but, after all, they can be cured by food ; and a rational humane world
would commend itself more to thinking men and to the posterity which
will judge us, by feeding these starved bodies rather than imprisoning
them in pens. An inferior mind or an ill-shaped head can be reached
in a generation or more by feeding the body that supports it, by treating
it with tenderness, charity and kindness, rather than ruling it with
hatred, bitterness and violence.
Nearly every crime could be wiped away in one generation by giving
the criminal a chance. The life of a burglar, of a thief, of a prostitute,
is not a bed of roses. Men and women are only driven to these lives
after other means have failed. Theirs are not the simple, natural lives
of children,.nor of the childhood of the world; but men and women
can learn these professions or be bred to them. After other resources are
exhausted they will be chosen for the simple reason that life is sweet.
With all its pangs and bitterness, it is the nature of life to send its poor
�3b
Resist Not Evil
tendrils deep into the earth and cling with all its force and power to this
poor, fleeting, transitory world.
Men are slow to admit that punishment is wrong and that each
human soul is the irresponsible, unconscious product of all that has gone
before; and yet every kind and wise parent in the world proves by his
every relation with his child that he knows that he is the author of his
being and the molder of his character, and that he, the parent, is in
finitely more responsible for the soul he launches than is the child
himself. There might be some measure of justice in trying and punish
ing the parent for the conduct of the child, but even this does not reach
back. The.source of every life runs back to the Infinite itself. Every
right thinking' father does his best to have his child reared in those
influences and surroundings which will best contribute to his physical,
mental and moral growth. Even then he feels that the future is doubt
ful enough; that mag is weak and finite and blind; that he sees but a
little way into the dim, uncertain future; that he is filled with passions,
emotions and desires; that he must travel a path beset with all sorts
of temptations and promises; that his weak sight will look upon beau
tiful cities and fair prospects which are only mirages and sent to beguile
and ensnare his soul. Few judges, if called upon, would not sooner slay
their innocent sleeping child with their own loving hands, than abandon
him to grow up in the streets or make his way unaided through the
tangled mazes that confront’ the homeless and the poor; and yet these
same judges will coolly arraign men who all their lives have walked
in the shadows through a tangled maze beset with passion and fear
and sentence them to death and ask God to have mercy on their souls'
Every man who loves his child and seeks to surround him with what is
best for his physical, mental and moral needs denies in his very life the
right of man to judge and punish his fellow man.
�37
Clarence Darrow
CHAPTER IX
IMPOSSIBILITY OF JUST JUDGMENT
ATURAL laws rule the world. It is a mistake to believe that
the conduct of man is outside of natural law. The laws, of
being that move all the sentient world rule him. His first
impulse is to preserve his life, and his next to preserve the
species. Nature planted these instincts so deeply in his being that no
civilization can root them up. To destroy these instincts would be
to destroy the human race. The first instinct- of man is to pre
serve his life. To do this he must obtain the food, shelter and raiment
that enable him to live. His constant effort has been ever to get
these at the smallest expenditure of time and strength. In a semi
cooperative state like ours the strongest choose the easiest, most re
munerative occupations society can bestow. The less fortunate the
next best, and so on down the scale. At the lowest place some are
forced to abject toil, to practical slavery, to beggary, to crime. Men
would not steal sheep if they had land on which to raise mutton. Men
would not explore their neighbor’s houses at dead of night, if their own
were filled; and women would not sell their bodies if society left them
any other fairly decent and pleasant way to live.
Even if punishment by the state could ever be justified, no man
is wise enough or_good enough to administer that punishment. It is
the theory of the law that by means of its magical wisdom it is enabled
to fix a code enumerating the acts that are sufficiently evil to consti
tute a crime; and for each of these enumerated acts it sets a penalty
which it presumes is sufficiently severe and drastic in some mysteri
ous way to atone for, excuse, absolve or at least in some way make
right, or certainly make better the commission of the act. Punishment
must proceed upon the theory that some are wilfully bad, possessed of
devils, and the bad must be punished when found bad, to prevent others
who are bad from committing crime. Men could only be punished be
cause they are wilfully bad. If men are part good and part bad it
will not do to punish. Plow could the law or courts fix the exact line
as to how bad a man might be to deserve punishment, and how good
to excuse it? Neither is it the act that should be punished, for it
would be a hard and cruel and strange code of negative ethics that
should say that a man should be punished for an evil act and not be
rewarded for a virtuous one; and even judges might find difficulty in
balancing the good and bad; and besides, does not the law in its wisdom
say that an evil act shall be punished regardless of its consequences?
I may steal my neighbor’s horse at night and return it in the morning.
I am none the less a thief and my home is the prison. I may burglarize
a safe and find it empty, but the crime has been completed and it de
serves the penitentiary. In each case I deserve the penitentiary because
my heart is bad. Thus the old theory is the only one on which the
believer in punishment could rest for a moment, that some men are
bad and some are good—at least some are bad.
The law is not concerned with the good. Its business is not re
H
�38
Resist Not Evil
warding, but punishment; not love, but hate. How can human judg
ment determine what heart is bad ? Men’s lives are a strange mixture
of thought, motive and action; an infinite mixture of good and evil, as
it is given to finite man to know good and evil. No life is wholly good,
and no life is wholly bad. A life of great virtues may here and there
be interspersed with an evil act. The law picks out the evil and ignores
the good. A life barren of real affirmative goodness may still be free
from serious positive sin, and thus escape the condemnation of man
and his courts. The conduct which falls under the observation of
others is not so much due to the goodness or badness of the heart
as to the emotion or placidity of the nature. In balancing the evil
of a life against the good, no one can give the exact weight to each
for no two men weigh moral worth or turpitude with the same
scales. Neither can a man’s standing be determined until his life
is done. Acts which seem evil if left to develop character are often
the means of softening the heart, of developing love and charity and
humanity, of really building up the moral worth of man. But no
person can be judged even by his conduct. Goodness and evil are
both latent in man and this fact shows the evil of resistance and
force. One may be intrinsically good and live a long life and still
never be touched upon the proper side to develop character and
reveal to the world the real self. It requires circumstance, oppor
tunity and the proper appeal to develop the best in man, the same
as to develop the worst in man. To judge the character of a human
soul from one isolated act, would be as impossible as to judge his
physical health by testing his sight or hearing alone. Every person’s
first impressions show how often these are really wrong, and how
much they depend upon the circumstances.of time and place. To
really judge another’s character requires almost infinite knowledge,
not of his acts alone, but of his thoughts and aspirations, his tempta
tions, and environment, and every circumstance that makes up his
life. But if the administration of punishment is to depend on
the good or evil of the man, then each person must be judged from
his own standpoint. One’s merit or demerit depends not on what
he does but on his purpose and intent, upon his desire to do good
or evil. In short, upon the condition of his heart, which can only be
- told in part from his isolated acts.
Each person has his own rule of conduct and of life. The high
est that can be done by any human soul is to live and strive accord
ing to his best conception of the highest life. To one man an act
appears harmless which to another is a heinous crime. One man
would blaspheme, but under no circumstances would beat a dog or
kill a fly. One might commit larceny or even murder by the very
strength of his love. Again, real character, merit and demerit cannot
be judged except in view of the capacity, the opportunity, the teach
ing of the life. No honest judgment of the worth of any soul can be
measured except with full knowledge of every circumstance that
made his life, and with this knowledge the man who would accuse
would but condemn himself. But even if every act of every life were
open to the sight of man, this could furnish no guide to true char
acter. The'same temptation does not appeal alike to all. One man
�Clarence Darrow
39
fnay not be tempted by strong drink and may never fall. Another
with an appetitie born in a remote ancestor may struggle. manfully
and fail. The temptation to take property by force does not appea
to one who can get it by inheritance or gift or fraud. The desire
Jo kill never moves the soul of the placid man. To know what it
means requires an intimate, infinite knowledge of every emotion of
Se soul of every fiber of the body, and the understanding not of
how the temptations or inducements that he met would affect, the
judge, but how they would affect the mam Science has determined
a way to measure the height and the girth of an individual 1o tell
the color of his eyes and hair, to determine the shape ^d contour
of his skull. It has not yet found a way to look beneath the skull
and weigh the actions and responsibilities of that hidden involved
mystery—the human brain, or to look at the real man the huma
soul, and judge whether the Infinite Maker made it white or black.
If every man who passed an unjust judgment on his fellow shou
be condemned, how many judges would be found so vain and foo
as to review and condemn their Maker s work.
�40
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER X
THE JUDGE OF THE CRIMINAL
I^^^T even if some men deserve punishment, who is to judge?
The old injunction still comes back and ever will return
when man arraigns his fellow, “Let him who is without sin
cast the first stone.” To find a judge without sin in the
ordinary meaning of the word is necessarily out of the question.
They must of course pretend to be holier than the rest, and or
ganized society helps out the farce and fraud. At the best, one
guilty man is.set up. to judge another,—one man filled with his
weaknesses, his infirmities, his shortcomings, sets himself up to
judge not only that his fellow man is a criminal but that he him
self is better than his fellow. And yet all the past and the present
have conspired to make him good, to keep him from temptation, that
he might the better pass judgment on another, while all the world
have conspired to place the victim where he is. Verily, in the light
of infinite justice, no greater crime .could be committed than to
judge and condemn your fellows, and if there shall ever be a final
day when the crooked is made straight and the purpose of all shall
be revealed and understood, safer far will be the man who has
received the sentence than the one who has dared to pass judgment
on another’s life and pronounce it bad.
But how is this judge to determine the guilt or innocence of
his fellow? He cannot know his life and does not seek to know,
To understand fully another’s life would require infinite pains and
Such research as no judge could give or pretend to give. The judge
cannot balance, up the character of his victim; he simply seeks in a
poor, clumsy, imperfect way to ascertain whether he did a certain
act. Whatever else he did, his attitude of mind, his necessities, his
early training, his opportunities and temptations, the number of
temptations resisted before one proved too much.—all of this is
beyond the power of a human judge to know; yet all of it bears upon
the real character of the man and should go to show whether, on the
whole, he deserves blame or praise, and the extent of each.
In the light of all this, how many human souls could be guiltily
cast out as bad ? It requires infinite pains and almost infinite knowl
edge to judge -one’s physical condition. A man is suffering from
some ailment and a doctor is called to treat him. The disease may
be of long standing and located income organ beyond the reach of
sight and.hearing; he patiently -watches every symptom to know the
real condition of the physical man and the cause that made him ill.
He calls the wisest surgeons to consult and these may never be able
to locate the disease, or the cause that made the patient as he is.
But twelve untutored jurors and a judge wantonly and carelessly set * themselves up to pass on the condition of a human soul—a soul no
man has seen or by any chance can ever see,—a life they do not
know and could not understand and do not even seek to understand.
They take this soul and, with their poor light, which at the best is
�Clarence Darrow
41
blackest darkness, they pronounce it bad, and in violence and malice
deny it the right of fellowship with its human brothers, each equally
a portion of the great Infinite which takes all of good and all of bad
and makes of these one great, divine, inclusive whole.
The judge must and does view the conduct of his victim accord
ing to his own ideas of right and wrong. At his best he takes with
him to the judgment tribunal every prejudice, bias and belief that
his education, surroundings and heredity have left on him. He
measures the condemned by the ideal man, and the ideal man must
be himself, or one made from his weak, fallible- concepts of right
and wrong. Naturally he places little weight or value upon those
vices which are a portion of his own character, or those virtues
which he does not possess, or especially admire. A judge can see no
character or virtue in an accused man, who would rather suffer
imprisonment or death than to betray his fellows. In the judgment
of the courts the betrayer is rewarded, the man of character and
worth condemned. A judge reads the code, “Thou shalt not steal.”
He cannot understand how a so-called thief should have forcibly
taken a paltry sum. He cannot conceive, that he, himself, could
under any circumstances have done the like. .Such conduct must
come from a depraved and wicked hea-rt—a devil that dwells .within
the culprit. The common thief looks at the judge arrayed in fine
linen and living in luxury and ease, with nothing to do but pass
judgment on his fellowman. He dimly understands how much
easier it is for the judge to obtain his large salary than for him
to get the poor wages of his hazardous and shifting trade. But the
judge does not begin to comprehend that, if he could not have
received his salary or obtained a tolerable life in any of the endless
grades of activity between his profession and the thief’s, very easily
he might have been the victim with some other fortunate man to
pronounce him bad. Human judgments are not passed in view of
all the circumstances of the case. If this was the condition of human
judgments, no man could be condemned.
�42
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER XI
THE MEASURE OF PUNISHMENT
UT admitting the right to punish, where is there a man with
the wisdom to inflict punishment? By what magical scales
can he weigh the guilt of a human being, and by what
standard can he determine the judgment that is propor
tionate to his guilt? It must be evident that the wit of man
never did invent or can invent a measure that shall determine
the just amount of punishment for any human act. The punish
ment administered does not in any way indicate the extent of
the culprits transgression, but simply shows the degree of bru
tality of the law, and of those who are given the power of fixing
the extent of punishment to be imposed. The victim whom the
law catches in its net is at the mercy of the judge. His fate
depends not upon his life, not upon what society has done for
n°’" uPon h°w he kas repaid the debt. Nor does it depend upon
the intrinsic value of his souh for no human judgment can reach this.
Neither does it depend upon the ratio between the brain he had, and
the temptation he resisted, or the ratio between the overpowering
force he met and the. weak will and intellect which heredity had
bequeathed to him. His. fate rests with the humanity or inhumanity
displayed, the point of view, the experience, the prejudice, the social
surroundings, the physical condition, the appetite or the breakfast
of the judge, whose, light and easy duty it is to pronounce judg
ment on the life or liberty of a fellow man.
Given the best equipment and the greatest knowledge and sense
of responsibility on the part of the judge, how then will stand the
case? A. prisoner is arraigned for forcibly taking a pocketbook on
the public street. The instinct to do the act may have come upon him
in a moment’s time, as the opportunity seemed suddenly present and
the need seemed great. Under the peculiar circumstances of the time
and place, he may have been impelled to act when a moment’s reflec
tion. would have stayed his hand. In a hundred cases the oppor
tunity for the reflection was present, and he passed through un
scathed, and then there came a time when the judgment had no
chance to speak and he was lost. The crime even at its worst dif
fers only in degree, perhaps not in that, from the actions of our daily
lives. We look at another’s pocketbook and covet it, or covet his
home or coat or wealth—the case presents the same evil heart. Our
action, however, is tempered and controlled by judgment and the
power of will.
Assuming the man is bad, where is the judge who can measure
the punishment he ought to have? How many endless, silent, shame
ful days, each made of hours that seem eternities, should he be con
fined for this? How many days should drag their endless weary
length into, months and years before the act should be atoned ?
And is justice done when the victim, old and bent, and silent, and
�Clarence Darrow
43
gray, with health destroyed and character and hope forevei gone, is
once more led out into the strange, bewildering light of day?
There can be'no measure for human conduct. All scales, rules
and measures are valueless when used to judge the soul. Even time
cannot be counted. The judge upon the bench lightly consigns his
victim to a prison pen. He measures the victim s years by t e
swiftly gliding days that pass like magic in his joyous life, io the
judge, time strides with seven league boots; even the grim specter
at the end, the one skeleton at his feast, even this ever-present
shadow but hastens the magic flight of years. But the clock that
ticks away the joyous wasted moments at the banquet hall is not
the same timepiece that hangs upon the penitentiary walls. One
pendulum leaps gladly back and forth; the other moves with the
weight and gravity of human life, of human death, of endless agony,
of unmitigated pain. Time is the most obstinate of the delusive gifts
that fate bequeaths to man. When we would have her speed she
moves with leaden foot. When we would have her halt she flies
with magic wings.
.
,
Rulers have invented and used all sorts of punishments ana
constantly alternated from one to the other; each one in use seeming
to be inferior to some one hitherto untried. .Corporal punishment
has respectively come and gone. Public floggings and private flog
gings, tortures, and death in various ways, have met the approval
and then the disapproval of the governing power. But with all of
them, crime has gone on and on, unmindful alike of the form or
extent of the punishment in vogue.
The effect of an act of cruelty and violence can never be mea
sured or understood. No one can tell the full consequences that
occur to every human being when the state puts one to death, or
flogs, or maims, or imprisons, or even fines. A violent a-ct produces
injury, hardship and suffering to the victim who is powerless in the
strong grasp of the law. But the evil does not end with him.
In ever-widening circles the results of cruelty move on and on
until to some degree or part they reach every member of society.
Unless punishment lessens the sum of human suffering, increases
the measure of human joy, and thus lengthens and adds to life, it has
no right to be.
Punishment brings positive evil. Any possible good that it may
produce is at the best problematical and wholly impossible to prove.
From the first victim whom the state degrades with punishment,
the evil and the hardship and suffering moves on to family and ,
friends. In no theory of the law is compensation, or recompense,
or making good, any part of punishment. If taking the life, of the
prisoner could bring to life the victim whom he killed there might be
some apparent excuse for the punishment of death. If imprisoning
in the penitentiary in any way retrieved a wrong or made up a loss,
a prison might be tolerated, and some relation might be shown
between punishment and crime. Even in cases where a fine is admin
istered, in place of imprisonment, the fine does not go in any way
to retrieve any loss, but goes to the state as pure punishment and
nothing else. Everywhere in the theory and administration of pun-
�44
Resist Not Evil
ishment is the rule the same. The one purpose is to injure, to
harm, to inflict suffering upon the individual whom society sets
apart.
.
When traced to the end, the sole theory on which punishment
is based is that a certain man has committed an act of violence and
crime, and that, therefore, in some mysterious way this is to be
made right by inflicting an injury on him. That the original wrong
will not be undone has no bearing on the case—that others entirely
innocent may suffer more grievously than the accused is not to be
considered in the infliction of punishment. The father may be taken
from the helpless children, and these left to grow up as best they
can, with their own hardships and their father’s evil name to bear, but
society stands, unmoved. Though the heavens fall, justice must be
done, and justice can only be done by inflicting pain. The execution
or imprisonment of the father may not unreasonably turn the chil
dren to follow in the path the state marked out for him. This is not
the affair of government,—not prevention or recompense or reward
is the function of the state; but vengeance, vengeance sure and com
plete.
Justice is not the function of the state; this forms no part of
the scheme of punishment. Punishment is punishment. A wife and
helpless babes may be left in want when the state lays its hand in
wrath upon the man. Under the law of natural justice the child has
a right to support and care from the father, who is responsible for
its life. Still, the state, not with a prior right, but with a greater
power, takes, the. father from his child, kills him or pens him, and
turns the child into the byways of the world, giving it only the
heritage of the father’s shame. It is no answer to say that such a
father, is of no value to the child. Many a kind, indulgent father
has violated the penal codes of man. Many a father has been sent
to prison because he so loved his child that he committed crime.
From the nature of things there can be no justice in punish
ment. Justice imposes relation between act and consequence. The
judgment of man is utterly powerless to pass upon the merits or
elements of a human soul. But justice from the state to its citizens
imports some ratio between the rewards, opportunities and punish
ments meted out to each. As to rewards and opportunities, the
state does nothing except to assist the strong to despoil the weak.
It furnishes no opportunity for its helpless, no chance for develop
ment and life, and gives no rewards for meritorious conduct, and
makes no allowance for resisting temptation from crime. But aside
from all this, within the realm where the state pretends to do jus
tice, there, is no equality meted out between its various members.
The code is unyielding, the positive dead letter of the law is man’s
highest and profoundest judgment as to the conduct of his fellows.
Each human soul is a separate entity, with its own hopes, de
sires and fears; some impassive and stolid, some sensitive and
shrinking. To be accused of crime means more to some natures
than years of imprisonment to others. The body is not alone the
subject of punishment. Man, with his tortures and cruelties, seeks
to reach the mind even more than the body. Striped clothes furnish
�Clarence Darrow
45
the same warmth as other garments, but to some the stripes are an
ever-consuming flame. To others, properly educated and hardened
by the state, this consciousness does not add to the punishment
involved. One day of forced confinement, or one moment of the
indignity of handcuffs, means more to some than a year of hard
labor. The terms of imprisonment are not the same to all. To
some a term, however short, means the blighting of a life, and the
destruction of a family—perchance a wife and child, a father or a
mother, whose sorrow and shame are greater for being indirect.
With a sensitive soul no punishment ends when the prison gates
are opened up. Its consciousness lives as long as life endures. No
day is so bright, and no prospect so pleasing, but the black shadow
is ever-present, blighting life, and driving hope and sunshine from
the soul.
In cases where fines are meted out those who can afford to pay
escape with comparative ease; others are forced to shift a burden
of debt upon father, mother, wife, children, or friends, who are thus
punished for years, not for crime, but for their loyalty and love.
If, perchance, through any effort the money for a fine can be ob
tained, the state cruelly and brutally takes the unholy, ill-gotten
cash, although it may mean that a home is scant of food and shiver
ing in cold or darkness; or a little child is forced from school to a
factory or store. It may mean a plundered girlhood and abandoned
-womanhood, that the vengeance of the state may be appeased. The
taking of money by the state in payment of crime is infinitely more
damnable than private theft. The evils of force and violence are
unending—bold and ignorant, indeed, is he, whether ruler, official,
or.private citizen, who sets in motion bitterness and hate. It is an
evil force set loose upon the earth to wander up and down, canker
ing, polluting and despoiling all it meets, augmented by every other
force, to be conquered and subdued, if ever conquered and subdued,
only by infinite mercy and charity and love.
Every man ,whether ruler, juror, judge or whosoever that is
called upon or volunteers to pass judgment on the conduct of others,
must do it according to his own flickering, feeble light, according
to the experiences that have made up his life. It is for this reason
that good men are so bad, and bad men so good. Life ordinarily
means breadth. Some, of course, are born deaf and blind, and the
longer they travel the road the more contracted, cold and unchar
itable they become; but to the ordinary person life means suffering
and, above all other lessons, it teaches charity. As the real man
grows older, less and less does he believe in or administer punish
ment, and more and more does he see the extenuating circumstances
that explain and excuse every act. The stern and upright judge is
an impossibility. No one can be stern and upright. In proportion
as he becomes truly upright, really just, the more nearly he ap
proaches the character of the ideal judge, the more nearly does he
understand the injustice of violence and cruelty, and the eternal
unfailing righteousness of charity and love. Where is the man so
wise or the judge so great and just that he could take any two
-human beings with their different ancestry, environment, oppor
�46
Resist Not Evil
tunities, passions and temptations, and pronounce a judgment that
would equalize the two? Lawmakers, since the world began, have
been busy undoing each other’s wrongs. Courts have been estab
lished whose sole duty it is to correct other courts. Unjust judg
ments are necessarily incident to the infirmities of man. The wise
judge who looks back over a long career, the judge who knows
human life and has a human heart, the judge who seeks to be ruled
by his conscience, will find much in his past career he would wish
undone. He .will look back on many unjust judgments, on many
things done in anger and hatred, cruelty and wrong, on blighted
hopes and ruined lives. But in his whole career he will regret no
act of charity, no deed of mercy that he has been moved to do.
He will look back on judgments he would reverse, but these are not
judgments of love or forgiveness or charity, but judgments of force,
of violence, of hate.
*
�Clarence Darrow
47
CHAPTER XII
WHO DESERVES PUNISHMENT?
F there is any justice in human punishment it must be based
upon the theory of intrinsic evil in the victim. Punishment
■
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limflflPrl hpponcp rz +
z-x-f l-m+v-»1*-.»..
'T'q
1
1
I
1
I
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�48
Resist Not Evil
they might produce a very different effect. It is like a body in mechan
ics operating upon another smaller or larger body. The laws of the
universe are not at work in one place and held in abeyance in another.
In these cases reason and judgment have no opportunity to act. Re.
flection and conscience in no wise enter into the affair. Feeling, emo
tion, passion alone are responsible for the deed. The human feelings
as they sweep through that uncharted land, the human soul, produce
infinitely varied results, like the moving wind, whose sound depends
entirely upon the unconscious instrument with which it toys,
�Clarence barrow
49
CHAPTER XIII
NATURAL LAW AND CONDUCT
ANY of the crimes fixed by law are purely arbitrary. To
commit them or to refrain does not necessarily imply innocence
or guilt. Of such a character, for instance, are revenue laws,
the observance of holy days and the like. A large number of
forbidden acts that are generally supposed to imply moral guilt are also
purely arbitrary. Most of the laws governing the taking and obtaining
of property, which constitutes the great burden of our penal code, are
arbitrary acts, whose sole purpose is to keep the great mass of property
in the hands of the rulers and exploiters and to send to jail those who
help themselves and who have no other means within their power to sus
tain their lives. Most of the so-called thieves and other offenders against
property, dimly know this fact. Without being able to analyze or logi
cally realize it, they, after all, feel that they have committed no wrong,
and that they took the only road life had left open for their feet.
/Nearly our whole criminal code is made up of what may be called
property crimes, or crimes against property, if they may be so called.
These crimes, are burglary, larceny, obtaining property by false pre
tenses, .extortion, and the like. The jails and penitentiaries of every
nation in the world are filled to overflowing with men and women who
have been charged with committing crimes against property. Probably
nine-tenths of all the business of criminal courts come directly from
property crimes./ A very large proportion of the balance comes indi
rectly from this cause. Nothing could more completely show the hum
buggery, knavery and the absolute hypocrisy of all punishment by the
state than the patent facts with reference to these crimes. From first
to last these inmates of jail and penitentiary, these suffering outcast
men are utterly without property and have ever been. In the penal
institutions of the world are confined a motley throng charged with
committing assaults upon property, and yet this whole mass of despised
and outcast humanity have ever been the propertyless class, have never
had aught whereon to lay their heads. But where is all the property
that has been the subject of these dire assaults? No matter where you
turn your eyes in the world, the whole property is in the hands of a
chosen few, and the so-called owners of all this wealth created by the
labor of man and the bounty of nature—these co-called owners have
committed no crime against property. The statement of the fact is
sufficient to show the inequality of the whole system under which the
fruits of the earth are kept in the possession of the few. These despised
and outcast ones have violated no law of conscience or justice, have
committed no unrighteous assault on property. The plain fact that will
one day stand clearly forth to explain the whole brutal code which is
used to imprison and enslave,—the plain reason and object of these laws
is the fact that the rulers who have forcibly seized the earth have made
certain rules and regulations to keep possession of the treasures of the
world, and when the disinherited have reached out to obtain the means
of life, they have been met with these arbitrary rules and lodged in jail.
�50
Resist Not Evil
worlJheAdV0CateS °f Pu"ishnlent believe that law controls the natural
¡faSSfeSR«
diminish iwrt KT« t/
-m r , r .seasons of the year increase or
6 wdd f™l flies north in summer and south
in Winter Th f
v1 r Th sYarmm£ of bees> the homes of ants in short all the
activities, lives and deaths of the brute creation are surely seen to t
depends upon the same powers and forces, the same great source of
But when man is reached it would seem that the rule of law is at
dnp^n'rt
lfe and death’ his goin^s in and out, his myriad acts are
due to no rule or system or law, but are the result of capricious will
alone. True, in many of his acts man recognizes the great force in whn««
*ePa0WH,?e TT ‘hVnSeCt’ °r the ^ain 'S —Thy S
nAy v Hi and there he seems to dimly understand the great laws
fath!
Lty\°i se(luence, of consequence, that govern human life Everv
father who takes pains in the rearing of his child, who surrounds h
wi h the influences that build up character and develop judgment and
men“th?Xnrth of ThV “T*7’ the controlling power of environent, the strength of habit and circumstance. The life of tribes and
races and nations show that fixed laws control in the actions of men
as everywhere e se within the realm of nature. Man is a part of nature’
the highest evolution of all, but still a part firmly bound by law to
verse contains^ ^7^
PtrtlCF °f force which the wide unif?11131118’ Th? llfe and death of man, his distribution over the
Hfpth’Ma
aS an mdlvlduaI or a tribe, depend upon all other
e. Man draws his sustenance from the animate and inanimate world
The lives of bees depend upon &e flowers, their number and condition'
their coming and going; their birth and death is due to this natural cause
outside the control of the individual bee. The life of man depends unon
SfSlifUePP Itfs tf00dihni -Shver’ UP°n hin abiHty t0 obtain ^necessities
th«
1
lhat in ?ls Progress he is no longer bound so closely
i tbe ,eartb as m hJs early stages. He has learned something of the
laws of . nature and is able to take some thought for the morrow: but
^et fam3ne destr°ys him, disease overcomes him; severe droughts pro
tracted heat, great inundations of flood, all these affect his life, cha7<
population, destroy vast numbers, always the weaker, those less able to
provide for themselves, those who, from circumstances, have taken the
smallest thought for the morrow.
. EvenJn the most civilized, progressive lands man is dependent on
nature The constant thought of much the largest portion of mankind
is for the piocurement of those things that will sustain, prolong and
render their lives more comfortable. The vast majority of men are
closely bound to the soil and their whole life is a struggle for the means
tn1piVKi
arge “aJority of tbose whose condition is the most
tolerable, find life an endless struggle and anxiety their constant com
�Clarence Darrow
51
panion. Such a thing as a free choice of life is out of the question for
the vast majority of men born upon the earth; their residence, occu
pation, hours of labor, method of life, are fixed almost irrevocably in
obedience to the demands of their physical being. After those whose
conditions of life are the most tolerable, come a great mass whose exist
ence is most precarious, dependent upon the condition of the harvest,
the condition of trade, the amount of rain or snow, the quantity of sun
shine, and a thousand circumstances far beyond their control.
As a consequence of his desire for life and the means that make
it certain and pleasant, man has ever turned his attention toward the
conquest of nature, reducing vegetable and animal life to his control.
But his conquest does not end here. Not vegetables and animals alone
must be his slaves, but man as well. Ever has man enslaved his fellow;
from the beginning of his career upon the earth he has sought to make
his own existence pleasanter and more certain by compelling others to
toil for him. In its more primitive stages slavery was enforced by the
ownership of the man. In its later and more refined stages it is carried
on by the ownership of the things from which man must live. All life
comes primarily from the earth and without access to this great first
source of being, man must die. Passing from the ownership of indi
viduals, rulers have found it easier and more certain to own the earth—
for to own the earth is to fix the terms on which all must live. More
and more does the master seek to control access to land, to coal, to
timber, to iron, to water—these prime requisites to life. More and more
certainly, as time and civilization move on, do these prime necessities
pass to the few. Every new engine of production makes it easier for
the few to reduce the earth to their possession. Even land itself is of
no value without the railroads, the harbors, the mines and the forest.
Everywhere these have passed into the hands of the few. From the
private ownership of men, the rulers have passed to the private owner
ship of the earth and the control of the land. The rulers no longer
have the right to buy and sell the man, to send him here and there to
suit their will. They simply have the power to dictate the terms upon
which he can stand upon the earth. With the mines, the forests, the
oil, the harbors, the railroads, and the really valuable productive land
in the rulers’ hands, the dominance and power of man over his fellows
is not necessary to show that it is the ruling class who own the earth—
the owners of the earth must be the ruling class.
�52
Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER XIV
RULES GOVERNING PENAL CODES AND THEIR VICTIMS
HE rulers make penal codes for the regulation and control of the
earth and all the property thereon—the earth which was made
long ages before they were evolved, and will still remain ages
after they are dust. Not only do they make these rules to
control the earth for their brief, haughty lives, but they provide that it
may pass from hand to hand forever. The generations now living, or
rather those that are dead and gone, fixed the status of unborn millions,
and decreed that they shall have no place to live except upon such terms,
as may be dictated by those who then controlled the earth. To retain
all the means of life in the hands of the few and compel the many to do
service to support-these few requires the machinery of the state. It is
for this that penal laws are made, and the effort of the despoiled to
reach out in their despair and obtain a small portion of the natural
heritage of all, is directly and indirectly the basis of all property assaults.
Every person who has observed cattle knows that if the pasture is
good the animals are quiet, and will stay where they are placed ; but let
the pasture grow thin until hunger comes and they will learn to jump.
There were never cattle so quiet and well behaved that they could not
be made to jump, and never cattle so breachy that they could not be
made tame. Even successive generations of starving and abuse will not
so far pervert their nature but that successive generations of kind treat
ment will bring them back to a peaceful, gentle life. Human beings are
like cattle in a field. They are cattle in a field. Give them a chance to
live and. prosper, and violent acts will be unknown ; but bring them close
to the line of starvation or want and their natural rights assert them
selves above the forms and laws that man has made to hold the earth
and enslave his fellows. Of course here and there may be found cases
where generations of outlawry and exploitation have left their marks
upon men, until they seem to prefer this life; but in those cases fair
treatment would generally remove this in the first generation, and always
before many generations had come and gone.
All energy manifests itself along lines of least resistance, and the
first energies of man are devoted to the procurement of the means of
life. . It is only where organized tyranny has made violence and force
the line of least resistance that men will deviate from the normal path,
and so long as the cupidity and brutal selfishness of man shall make this
the line of least resistance, all the laws on earth cannot overcome the
primal instincts and feelings upon which life depends. A race that would
starve, or beg, or accept alms before violating the brutal laws that fence
the children of nature from their source of life, would quickly degenerate
into abject slavery and finally into nothingness. All so-called animals
do not reason out the cause that placed them where they are. Instinc
tively they feel that they are doing what they must. This class hâve
generally lived for years, sometimes for generations, so near the border
line, have lived such precarious lives that their callings and avocations »
�Clarence Darrow
53
have grown as natural and normal as monopolizing the earth has grown
to another class. They are fully aware of the dangers incident to their
craft, of the scanty recompense that their lives afford, and, like all other
men, would at once abandon their calling for an opportunity to lead
more normal lives. They are in no sense devoid of these common in
stincts of humanity upon which nature rests all life. Given a child fall
ing into a river, an old person in a burning building, a woman fainting
in the street, and a band of convicts would risk their lives to give aid as
quickly at least as a band of millionaires.
Nature takes little account of atoms, her operations are on a. wide
field, a broad scale'. She brings famine, a million men must, die; she
does not seem to pick out the individual men—she draws a straight hard
line, and those who step across cannot return. Nature and man com
bine to make hard the condition of human life for the great majority
that live upon the earth. A very few choose the roads of luxury and
ease; the vast mass are scattered in all the avenues of life; some serve
by abject toil; some enter the hazardous callings of the railroads and
the mines; some the extra hazardous of making gunpowder and nitro
glycerine ; and some the still more hazardous—these are thieves. or
burglars or robbers or prostitutes, as the case may be. Conditions im
prove, and man moves up in the scale; the toilers have greater luxury;
those in hazardous callings take an easier place; the extra hazardous
rise to the hazardous; and the still more hazardous to the extra hazard
ous. The conditions of life become more severe and the current flows
-the other way. It is then that the jails and the penitentiaries are crowded
to the utmost limit they will hold.
Statistics have shown that the number of inmates in our prisons
increases with every rise in the price of food. If a combination increases
the price of flour a cent a pound and ten thousand men are sent to jail
throughout the world, in the judgment of infinite wisdom and justice
who will be held responsible for the crime? Every time that the trust
raises the price of coal some poor victims are sent to jail, and at every
raise in the price of oil some girls are sent out upon the streets to get
their bread by a life of wretchedness arid shame.
That these property laws are purely arbitrary is shown by the
slightest thought. The criminal statutes forbid extortion and swindling,
and yet the largest part of business is extortion, and much of the bal
ance is swindling. When the law forbids extortion and swindling, it
simply forbids certain forms and methods of these acts, and these forms
and methods are the ones not practiced by the ruling class. They are so
small and insignificant as not to constitute business but only petty annoy
ance to the ruling class. To go directly to a victim and by threats of
violence compel him’ to pay more for some commodity than it is really
worth is generally extortion, but this is a very clumsy and infrequent
act. Real extortion is taking for any service more than it is fairly worth
by means of agencies created by the extorter to despoil his victim, and
' this is the business of the business world. Nearly every street-car line
and every gas plant in the world operates its business by means of
special privileges, and from one-half to three-fourths of the money
they receive is extorted from that portion of the community that has
no redress. The railroad companies, who, through watered stocks and
�54
Resist Not Evil
bon^and combinations, charge the consumer twice and more the value
stait ThrV1Ce Te?’ t0UrCh the pocket Of every°ne who
Un a modern
state. The production of iron, clothing, many kinds of food in fact the
largest part of what is used in daily life, is controlled by combinations
ose sole pui pose is extortion; they scheme to control the market ab
solutely and take from the consumers what they have. And vet for this
extortion which reaches every home and despoils every fireside the law
furnishes no redress. Either it does not come withi/the provisions of
to r^°fVe Se i0? Wh° -re char£ed with
enforcement do not care
to reach this sort of extortion which is the only kind that reallv affects
the world In either case it shows that the penal code is made and
enforced by the ruling class, not upon themselves, but to keep the weak
at the bottom of the social scale.
p
The law forbids swindling at least in certain ways and vet a larim
part of business consists in making the public believe7that they are getTh±n f°r
th?AjVe tha” the tradesman can possibly
attord. Die daily papers are filled to overflowing with lying advertiseScedCwhh°T
m? thC rhef- °Ur fences’ rocks and Gildings are
aced with vulgar, hideous lies m order to swindle men out of their
much coveted, cash. All our merchants and tradesmen frantically call
out their lies m every form, that they may sell their ware for a larger
price than they are really worth. And yet, to all of this, the criminal
code has no word to say. This is not the class of swindlers it was
made to reach. The man who can buy the space of a great paper to tell
e wondrous qualities of the wares he has to sell is not the sort of
man
to come within the meshes of the penal code.
People in.the jail and people out, when reproached for certain
conduct, almost invariably respond that they have done no worse than
o eone else who stands uncondemned, and this retort is true when
motives are fully analyzed and conduct thoroughly understood The
actions of men are wondrously alike. When we look at the criminal in
?s nni
°r? mUr \nemy in the street’ we do not see ^e man. This
is not due to him. It comes from the malice, the hatred the want of
human charity that dwells in our own hearts. Through’this fog and
mist there can be no clear true sight. “To the pure all things are fure ”
To the just all souls are really white.
P
The web of the law reaches so far that there are very few who have
not m some way been touched by its meshes. One infallible proof as to
t e real nature of crime and the character of the criminal is open to
almost everyone who wishes to observe. Few men are so poor and out
cast as to have no friends The victims who cluster around the corridors
and entrances of our jails are.as pitiable as those who dwell inside.
o those friends who. know him the criminal is a man, a man for
whom they will sacrifice time, money, sometimes honor and even life.
If it is nothing but a poor wife, or a helpless child who has known the
kind heart of a husband or a father, these are there to prove that the
wretch is not a. monster, but a man—these are the ones who knew
1m, who saw his life, who touched him on the human side, the side
hat shows the real true kinship of man. Judges, lawyers, clergymen
physicians, all classes of men readily come forward and tell of the
virtues of the criminal whom they know, they tell of the extenuating
�Clarence Darrow
I
55
circumstances that led to his act, or they show that, in spite of these,
they understand the worth of the man. The criminal is always the
man we do not know or the man we hate—the man we see through the
bitterness of our hearts. Let one but really love his fellow and he
knows full well that he is not a criminal. He sees his pulsing heart, he
knows his weak flesh, his aspiring soul, his hopes, his struggles, his
disappointments, his triumphs and his failings, and he loves the man
for all of theses
I
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Resist Not Evil
CHAPTER XV
THE MACHINERY OF JUSTICE
HE state furnishes no machinery for arriving at justice. Even
if it were possible under any circumstances to judge, and even
though men were really criminals, the state has no way of
arriving at the .facts. If the state pretends to administer jus
tice this should be its highest concern. It should not be interested
in convicting men or punishing crime, but administering justice be
tween men. It is obvious to the most casual observer that the state
furnishes no machinery to accomplish this result. The penal law
simply takes a man into its hopper and grinds out a criminal at
the end. f A. force of able-bodied, well fed, well paid men are kept
busy in their search for crime, i These find pecuniary reward in
the crime of their fellows. An indictment is easily returned against
a friendless man—a suspicion is enough in any case where the victim
has no friends. If he is poor he is at once lodged in jail. Later he is
placed on trial in the courts. When he steps into the dock both judge
and jurors look on him as a guilty man—believe he has committed
crime. He is carefully guarded by officers, like a guilty, hunted thing.
Arrayed against him is an able ’ prosecutor, well paid, and having per
sonal and political ambitions dependent on the number of men he grinds
into criminals. The prosecutor has ample means for the conduct of the
case. The prisoner, helpless enough at best, is rendered absolutely
powerless to prepare his case by being lodged in jail. Without money he
has no advocate with either the learning, influence or ability to help
his cause. If he is silent he is convicted. If he speaks no one believes
his words. Innocent or guilty, it is a miracle if he escapes, and in this
miracle the fact of his innocence or guilt plays but the smallest part.
Given a few suspicious circumstances, a helpless prisoner, an indictment
—another victim is the sure result. And in the hands of a shrewd
lawyer, or under the belief of guilt, any circumstances are suspicious
circumstances. Almost all acts are subject to various interpretations,
and the guilt or innocence of a circumstance depends not upon the act
but upon the mind that passes judgment on the act. We look back
with horror at the criminal courts of England, of Spain, of Italy, even
upon our own Puritan judges who sentenced witches to death. These
judges were doubtless as intelligent as our own. Their brutal, cruel
judgments did not grow from a wicked perverted heart, but from the fact
that they were passing judgment on their fellow man. These unjust
judgments are the fruit of the cruel system of force and barbarism
which clothes one man with the authority and power to condemn his
fellow. All prosecutions are malicious, and all judgments are meted
out in anger and hatred. Our own judges are constantly showing this.
In nearly every instance they condemn a prison to a term of servitude,
and when passion has fled and the sane and holy feelings of mercy, of
charity, of humanity once more regain their sway, they call on the
pardoning power to rescind their cruel acts. In all these cases of pardons
reflection shows the judges that the punishment meted out was at
�Clarence Darrow
57
least too severe. The difference is in the frame of-mind of the judge
when engaged in the business of administering judgment, and when
in the mood for listening to those feelings of human charity which are
the diviner part of man.
Punishment, to in any way be justified, should diminish the sum
of human misery, the result of the bitterness and hatred of men.. But
here, as everywhere else, punishment falls short. Wherever the judg
ment of courts enters it is to corrupt and to destroy. The misery and
suffering entailed on man by scaffolds, racks; blocks, dungeons and
jails has never yet begun to be told. Blood and misery and degradation
has marked the administration of punishment
Since man first penned his fellow men,
Like brutes, within an iron pen.
Let any reasoning being consider the tens of thousands who have
been burned, and hanged, and boiled, and otherwise put to death for
witchcraft; the millions for heresy; the thousands of noble victims who
have suffered for treason; the victims of fire, of torture, of scaffold,
of rack and of dungeon, for all the conceivable crimes since time began.
Let him consider the oceans of blood and rivers of tears shed by the force
and brutality of the rulers of the world; the cruelty, torture and suffer
ing heaped upon the helpless, the weak, the unfortunate; and then ask
himself if he believes that punishment is good. Even could violence ever
prevent crime, the brutality, suffering, blood and crime of the rulers has
towered mountain high above that of the weak and obscure victims whose
wrongs they have pretended to avenge. And this cruelty does not abate.
It is simple madness that doubts the justice of past condemnations and
believes in the righteous judgments of today. No condemnation is just,
and no judgment is righteous. All violence and force are cruel, unjust
and barbarous, and cannot be sustained by the judgment of men.
But the evil of judgment and punishment does not end with the
unfortunate victim. It brutalizes and makes inhuman all who are
touched with its power. Under the influence of punishment jailers,
policemen, sheriffs, detectives and all who deal with prisons are brutal
ized and hardened. The iniquities produced upon helpless prisoners
leave their effects upon the captor as well as the captives. To witness
the constant suffering and indignities of prison life is to destroy the finer
sensibilities of the soul. Men who are otherwise kind in the various relatons of life do not hesitate at cruelty to these despised prisoners whom
the law has placed outside its ban. To underfeed and overwork, to
insult, degrade and beat are common incidents of prison life, and this,
too, not because jailers are naturally cruel and bad, but because prisons
are prisons, and convicts are outcasts. Instead of approaching these
unfortunates as brothers in fellowship and love, their only concern is
to make them feel that the heavy hand of the state has been laid upon
them in malice and violence.
However thoroughly the futility, cruelty and injustice of punish
ment may be shown, men will still persist that it must exist. The
thought that society could live without prisons and policemen seems to
be beyond the conception of the common man. If punishment has no
�58
Resist Not Evil
effect to diminish or prevent crime, then no danger would be incurred
to dismiss our jailers and jurors and close our prison doors. The results
of this policy can, of course, not.be proven absolutely in advance, but
so sure as the existence of man is consistent with justice, charity and
love, so sure is this policy right and would produce good results. It is 1
not necessary to prove the theory of non-resistance to show that this
policy is practical today. Society, as now organized, rests upon violence
and wrong. The* non-resistant pleads for a better order, one in which
the law of love and mercy- will be the foundation of every relationship
of man with man.. The present unjust system is supported by violence
and force. The unjust possessions of the rich are kept in their place by
soldiers, guns and policemen’s clubs. If these were withdrawn would
the weak at once take the earth and all its fullness from those who for
ages have ruled the world?
No violent and forcible readjustment of this,sort could come. Force
is wrong both to commit and to redress evil. In the rule of force the
weak must always fall. For the poor and oppressed to advocate the use
of force means that they must still be the victims, for the strongest force
must win.. All that can help the weak is the rule of brotherhood, of love.
Unless this can be proved, there is no way to destroy the injustice that
is everywhere the rule of life. To make the weak strong, and the strong
weak, could neither destroy injustice nor permanently change the wretch
ed order of the world. A bayonet in the hand of one man is no better
than in the hand of another. It is the bayonet that is evil and all of its
fruits are bad.
The world must learn that violence is wrong. Individuals who
understand this truth must take no part in violent acts, whether to
enslave or to free. The inherent cohering forces will hold society together
and cause man to co-operate for his highest good. A large part of present
society is purely voluntary and due to natural law. It is for force and
violence, and injustice that the aid of the state is called. Society should
not punish. I The great burden that rests upon the production to support
armies, courts and prisons with all their endless officers and staggering
weight should be taken from the shoulders of the poor. This of itself
'would so relieve industry and add to the possibilities of life that the
very hazardous occupations that we call criminal would almost wholly
disappear. The class from which these victims come is known to be '
the outcast and the poor.l,A small fraction of the vast sum squandered
for violence and force would easily place all these dangerous persons
beyond the temptations of criminal activity. Even now, with all the
injustice of today, the expenditure of public money to relieve suffering,
to furnish remunerative employment, rationally to prevent crime by
leaving men with something else to do, would produce better results
than all the imagined benefits that follow in the wake of scaffolds and
of jails.
The effort of the penal codes has never been to reach any human
being before violence is done, except to awe him by the brief transitory
show of force; but after the act is done the state must spend its strength
and substance for revenge. Most men are driven to criminal acts from
the necessities of life and the hatred bred by the organized force they
meet. Remove dire poverty, as could be easily done with a tithe of what
�Clarence Darroiu
59
is now spent on force; let organized society meet the individual, not
with force, but with helpfulness and love, and the inducement to commit
crime could not exist. Let society be the friend not the tyrant, the brother
not the jailer, and the feeling will be returned a thousandfold. No man
or no society ever induced love with clubs and guns. The emblem of
the state is the soldier, the policeman, the court, the jail. It is an emblem
that does not appeal to the higher sentiments of man—an emblem that
so long as it exists will prevent true brotherhod and be a hindrance to
the higher sentiments that will one day rule the world.
Even if now and then passion and feeling should gain control of
man, this passion and feeling would be brief and transitory; if it accom
plished destruction, no power could make it whole. The concern of
society would then be to call back this soul to saner thoughts and a
truer, nobler life; not to blacken and destroy, nor to plant bitter hatred
and despair in the soul of one who might be brought to a fine and high
realization of human conduct and human life. Under this sort of treat
ment a large proportion of those who commit violent deeds would be
brought to a full realization of their acts, and they themselves would
seek in every way to repair the ill effects of their evil deeds.
�Resist Not Evil
60
CHAPTER XVI
THE RIGHT TREATMENT OF VIOLENCE
ES-g7?®|ENTIMENTAL and humane thoughts and purposes are
often, perhaps generally, based on real life, and have a natural reason for their being. To “turn the other cheek” or to
“resist not evil” may seem at first glance to have no support
in the facts of life, but after all that which makes for a higher
humanity, a longer life, and a more vigorous community, is. the
true philosophy. To use violence and force upon the vicious
and the weak must produce the evil that it gives. /Like produces
likeA Clubs, jails, harsh language, brutal force inevitably tend to
reproduce the same state of mind in the victim of the assault.
This is not merely a fact in human nature. It is a fact in all
nature, plant and animal and man. So long as the gentle spring
time rather than the cruel winter brings vegetable and animal life
to an awakening earth, just so long will kindness and love triumph,
produce joy and life, where force and violence bring only evil and
death. Harsh treatment kills plant life, and kind .treatment builds
it up. Violence and brutality produce their like in animal life, and
kindness tames and subdues. With gentleness and kindness a
swarm of wild bees may be handled and controlled, but approach
them with violence and force and each bee is converted into a
criminal whose only purpose is to destroy.
With all animal life the same rule exists; even those beasts
whose nature calls for a diet of flesh and blood may be subdued in
time by gentleness and love. Man with his higher intellect and
better developed moral being is much more susceptible to kindness
and love, f Likewise he more easily learns to fear and hate.l Man
readily discerns the feelings and judgment of his fellows, and as
readily renders judgment in return. The outcast and abandoned
form not the slightest exception to the rule—they know and under
stand the ones who meet them with gentleness and love, for these
they make sacrifices, to these they are faithful, to these they exhibit
the higher qualities that show the possibilities of the soul. Cases
where one convicted of crime comes from a place of safety and risks
his liberty and life to help save his friend are not rare in the. least.
True comradeship and loyalty is met quite as often here as in the
higher walks of life. Nothing is more common in ordinary selfish
society than to see one man refuse all aid and help to another in
financial need. Many convicts and outcasts could teach a much
needed lesson of loyalty and generosity to the exemplary man.
No amount of treatment can reclaim an evil heart if the treat
ment is administered without love. As children at school we knew
with our young natural instincts the teacher who loved us and.the
teacher who despised us—the one awoke feelings of love and kind
ness, the other hatred and revenge. No heart is so pure that it may
not be defiled and hardened by cruelty, hatred and force, and none
so defiled that it may not be touched and changed by gentleness and
�Clarence Darrow
61
love. Unless this philosophy of life is true the whole teaching of
the world has been a delusion and a snare. Unless love and kind
ness tend to love, then hatred and violence and force should be
substituted and taught as the cardinal virtues of human life. The
mistake and evil of society is in assuming that love is the rule of
life, and at the same time that large classes of people are entirely
outside its pale. No parent ever teaches his child any other philoso
phy than that of love. ^Even to quarrelsome playmates they are
taught not to return blows and harsh language, but to meet force
with kindness and with loveA The parent who did not depend on
love to influence and mold the character of the child rather than
force would be regarded not as a real parent but a brute.» Force is
worse than useless in developing the conduct of the child* It is true
that by means of force the little child may be awed by superior brute
power, but he gives way only under protest, and the violence that
he suppresses in his hand or tongue finds refuge in his heart.
Violent acts are not evil—they are a manifestation of evil. Good
conduct is not goodness. It is but a manifestation of goodness.
Evil and goodness can only be conditions of the inmost life, and
human conduct, while it generally reflects this inmost life, may be
so controlled as not to manifest the real soul that makes the man.
Every child needs development, needs training to fit him to live
in peace and right relations with his fellow man. Every intelligent
and right-thinking person knows that his development must be
through love, not through violence and force. The parent who
would teach his child to be kind to animals, not to kill and maim
ruthlessly, would not teach this gentleness with a dub. The in
telligent parent would not use a whip to teach a child not to beat
a dog./ The child is not made into the good citizen, the righteous
man, by pointing out that certain conduct will lead to punishment,
to the jail or the gallows. The beneficence of fear was once con
sidered a prime necessity in the rearing of the child, and this theory
peopled the earth with monsters and the air with spooks ready to
reach down and take the helpless child when he wandered from the
straight and narrow path; but this method of rearing children does
not appeal to the judgment and humanity of today. The conduct of
children can only be reached for good by pointing to the evil results
of hatred, of inharmony, of force, by appealing to the higher and
nobler sentiments which, if once reached, are ever present, influenc
ing and controlling life. The code of hatred, of violence and force,
too, is a negative code. The child is given a list of the things he
must not do, exactly as the man is furnished a list of the acts for
bidden by the state. At the best, when the limits of this list are
reached and the forbidden things are left undone, nothing more is
expected or demanded. But no code is long enough to make up
the myriad acts of life. Kindness or unkindness can result in a
thousand ways in every human relationship. If the child or the man
observes the-written code through fear, the unwritten moral code, infinely longer and more delicate, will be broken in its almost every
line. But if the child or the man is taught his right relations to the
world and feels the love and sympathy due his fellow man, he has
�62
Resist Not Evil
no need of written codes; his acts, so far as those of morals can be
will be consistent with the life and happiness of his fellow mam
And this not through fear, but because he bears the highest attitude
toward life.
With our long heredity and our imperfect environment, even if
the organized force of the state should disappear, even if the jails
and penitentiaries should. close their doors, force would only com
pletely die in course of time. Evil environment and heredity may
have so marked and scarred some men that kindness and love could
never reach their souls. It might take generations to stamp out
hatred or destroy the ill effects of life; but order and kindness most
surely would result, because nature demands order and tolerance and
without it man must die. No doubt here and there these so-called
evil ones would arouse evil and hatred in return, and some sudden
act of violence would for a time occasionally be met with violence
through mob law in return. CBut uncertain and reprehensible as mob
law has ever been it is still much more excusable and more certain
than the organized force of society operating through the criminal
courts. Mob law has the excuse of passion, of provocation, not the
criminal nature of deliberation, coldness and settled hate. Mob law
too generally reaches the objects of its wrath, while evidence is
fresh and facts are easily understood and unhampered by those rules
and technical forms which ensnare the weak and protect the strong.
And unjust and unwise as the verdicts of mob law often are, they
are still more excusable, quicker, more certain and less erring than
the judgments of the criminal courts.
But neither civil law nor mob law is at all necessary for the
protection of individuals. Men are not protected because of their
strength or their ability to fight. In the present general distribution
of weapons, in one sense, every man’s life is dependent on each per
son that he meets. If the instinct was to kill, society as organized
presents no obstacle to that instinct. When casual violence results
it is not.the weakest or most defenseless who are the victims of the
casual violence of individuals. Even the boy at school scorns to war
upon a weaker mate. The old, the young, the feeble, children and
women, are especially exempt from violent deeds. This is because
their condition does not call for feelings of violence, but rather
awakens feelings of compassion, and calls for aid and help. The
non-resistant ever appeals to.the courageous and the manly. With
out weapons of any kind, with the known determination to give no
violence in return, it would be very rare that men would not be safe
from disorganized violence. It is only that state that ever lays its
hands in anger on the non-resistant.
Neither would non-resistance in the state or individual indicate
cowardice or weakness or lack of vital force. The ability and in
clination to. use physical strength is no indication of bravery or
tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies.
Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery. In
the lower, animals it is more pronounced than in man. The bulldog
and the fighting cock are quite as conspicuous examples of physical
bravery as the prize-fighter or the soldier. The,history of all war-
I
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63
shows either that physical bravery is not an indication of
t excellence or that supreme excellence is very common, in fact
,.ost a universal possession. Under the intoxication of patriotism,
the desire for glory, or the fear of contempt, most men will march
HMwith apparent willingness into the face of the greatest danger. ,
■ Often it requires vastly more courage to stay at home than to enlist
■ -more courage to retreat than to fight. Common experience shows
■ .ow much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thou■ sand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man
will dare espouse an unpopular cause. An army well equipped and
ready for action has less terror for the ordinary man than the un
favorable comment of the daily press. True courage and manhood
come from the consciousness of the right attitude toward the world,
the faith in one’s own purpose, and the sufficiency of one’s own /h
approval as a justification for one’s own acts. This attitude is not
that of the coward, for cowardice is really disapproval of self, a con_ sciousness of one’s own littleness and unworthiness in the light of
on^’s own soul, which cannot be deceived.
...
Intelligent men are willing to accept many truths that they be-'
heyig are not fitted for the universal acceptance of mankind, and
however they may feel that punishment is wrong they still urge
that it will not do to teach this doctrine to the great mass of men
and to carry its practice into daily life. But sooner or later all con
duct and all life must rest on truth. It is only fact that can form a.
basis for permanent theories that tend to the preservation of the
race. No one is too poor, or too young, or too vicious to know
the truth, for the truth alone is consistent with all the facts of life,
and this alone can furnish any rule of life. The truth alone can make
free. When society is taught the truth that it is wrong to punish,
to use force, to pass judgment on man, it will have no need for jails.
The man who really knows and understands this truth can have no
malice in his heart, can use no force and violence against his fellow,
but will reach bim with love and pity. The name or society that
understands this truth will know that so-called crime is only soKilled crime.; that human conduct is what the necessities of life make
K the individual soul. Then in reality, as now only partially, men
Mill turn their attention to the causes that make crime. Then will
they seek to prevent and cure, not to punish .and destroy. Then man
will learn to know that the cause of crime is the unjust condition of
human life; that penal laws are made to protect earth’s possessions
|' the hands of the vicious and the strong. Man will learn that
poverty and want are due to the false conditions, the injustice which
Jooks to human law and violence and force for its safeguard and
3rot^£tion. Man will learn that crime is but the hard profession that
to a large class of men by their avaricious fellows. When
«^unities for life are given, a fairer condition of existence
adually be.opened up and the need for violence and the cause
violence will disappear.
Instead of avenging a murder by taking a judge, sheriff, jurors,
messes, jailer, hangman, and the various appendages of the court,
foe^nd staining their hands with, blood and crime, the
r
"
�VviZ
Resist Not'“’“'"...
be,
world will make the original murder impossible, and thus. sawn,
crimes of all. Neither will the vicious control without the aid of ’e
Society ever has and must ever have a very large majority v>
naturally fall into order, social adjustment and a rational, peim
sible means of life. The disorganized vicious would be far le> powerful than the organized vicious, and would soon disappear.
Punishment to terrorize men from violating, human order is like
the threat of hell to terrorize souls into obedience to the law of
God. Both mark primitive society, both are degrading and debasing,
and can only appeal to the lower instincts of the lower class of men.
M Most religious teachers have ceased to win followers by threats, of
hell. Converts of this sort are not generally desired.. The religion
that does not approach and appeal to men along their higher conRs, duct is not considered worthy to teach to man.. And those souls who
-w ' cannot be moved through the sentiments of justice and humanity,
rather than threats of eternal fire, are very, very rare, and even
should such a soul exist the fear of hell would cause it still further
to shrivel and decay.
-Too
Hatred, bitterness, violence and force can bring only bad ref- suits—they leave an evil stain on everyone they touch. No human
soul can be rightly reached except through charity, humanity and
love.
64
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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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>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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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
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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
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Resist not evil
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Darrow, Clarence
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Girard, Kansas
Collation: 64 p. ; 22 cm.
Series title: Big Blue Book
Series number: No. B-18
Notes: Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer, a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform. Contents: The nature of the state --Armies and navies --The purpose of armies --Civil government --Theory of crime and punishment --Remedial effects of punishment -- Cause of crime --The proper treatment of crime -- Impossibility of just judgment --The judge of the criminal --The measure of punishment --Who deserves punishment --Natural law and conduct --Rules governing penal codes and their victims --The machinery of justice --The right treatment of violence. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Haldeman-Julius Company
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1902
Identifier
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G5770
Subject
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Crime
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 (Resist not 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
Crime and Punishment
Evil
NSS
Passive Resistance