1
10
4
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/80d9661234f6df58ad4ef7b5bef0d56f.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=j5OeCBHXXiP99a5nhA-mGmYB0J6ylacy%7E5ypsziUicZzclupx8eoqZEaA74HXtcIy%7ETJdtucTPobDfDT43eBL9cKvpQ016AHzkm3fGh3a4RNOwwr0ORYEvH42lgxT9JdGTRRtdG0g%7EyrxoQOcbEhloajTUz%7Em4ZNmStCBGyCKQEQhs0AaV8K2Cnd18eB9QrCvbTNVbLAFqlihJHulkY%7ETLulZ0VuPuKPS5uy9PRzhBi-q6ywI1PzaV2oxraUfcEOM58juhh8-EozSkm01CqFG8-UU8fido4ukkpVOBaCjckcCAWYu8xpfA-9CWyh0vuTsxj0l9ef3mFHN18m7729vQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
d487a8ab46a58541204047b9e0caacc5
PDF Text
Text
WHAT OF THE FUTURE.
BY D.
G.
CBOLY.
INTRODUCTORY.
N the chapters which follow this preface I shall try to forecast
something of the future. That the attempt is a presumptous
one, I am well aware; but l am certain it is quite time that some
one should lead the way in showing the advantages of studying
or at least speculating about our earthly hereafter. We are too apt to
animadvert upon the Chinese for their elaborate worship of ancestors;
but while we do not pay homage to our progenitors in a religious sense,
surely too much of the attention of our best and wisest scholars and
writers is given to the annals of the past. I insist that the only value
of history, apart from a natural curiosity as to what has taken place on
the earth before we came into conscious existence, is to give us data by
which we may forecast the future. So long as the race believed that
infinite Caprice in the form of supernatural and irresponsible wills gov
erned the universe, there could be no hope of a science of history.
This was impossible until the conception of universal law accounting
for all phenomena, the course of human events included, became cur
rent among the advanced thinkers of the race. We have had a good
deal, especially in modern times, of what is known as the philosophy
of history. Indeed all recent annalists have generalized more or less;
but' their theories of events are confined exclusively to the past, and
explain with greater or less accuracy what has already taken place, and
why it has come about. But the age demands something in advance
of this; the time has- come when the attempt at least should be made
to lay the foundations of what may be termed the science of human af
fairs. It is idle to speculate upon history and attempt to explain the
laws which govern the movements of human society, without endeavor
ing to apply the knowledge of the laws thus obtained in trying to realize
in thought what may occur hereafter. In the progress of this induction
I shall, of course, make many, very many, serious mistakes, but some
one must make the attempt; and it is inevitable that whoever does so
will help other inquirers in the same field by his very failures.
There is a very natural curiosity felt by every intelligent person
touching what will take place after he has passed from this earthly
sphere—what our children and our children’s children will do—what
T
�74
WHAT
OF
THE FUTURE.
they will probably believe—what form or forms of government will
control them—what will be the material condition of the masses of
mankind—what changes in the maps of the world—what inventions
to aid man’s control over the forces of nature, and what effect all Wiese
changes will have upon human conditions. The belief is becoming
general that man himself can very largely control his own future;
that the race can be, and in many respects even now is, a “ ruling prov-'
idence” to itself, and that the natural laws which govern human society
can be modified in their complex relations by the interposition of
human will—not arbitrary will, but intelligent human volition, having
definite objects in view, and itself controlled by necessary material con
ditions.
In the articles which are to follow I beg of my readers to give me
their indulgence. They must understand that the field is almost
wholly untrodden, and it is inevitable that some very wild guesses will
be made. This much, however, I can confidently predict, that the
most incredible statements I shall venture will really be the most trust
worthy, and that I shall be more apt to make mistakes in that depart
ment of inquiry in which I shall be least questioned ; that is to say, in
speculating upon the future of religion, of the movements of popula
tion, of the course of opinion, and of the social changes which will
take place, I shall very likely be most at fault, because the data for
these speculations have not as yet been formulated. The most aston
ishing results in the future will be brought about by the command to
be yet obtained by man over nature, by the discovery of mechanical
and chemical appliances which will add marvelously to the happiness
and comfort of the race. To illustrate: If at the beginning of this
century some theorizer should have set out upon the same inquiry upon
which I have dared to enter and should have speculated upon the
course of opinions, the fluctuations of religion, the social changes to
take place, he would probably have been heard with attention, and if
his reasoning was apparently sound, would have secured many assent
ing listeners; but if he had attempted to foretell the future of tele
graphy or the application of steam to transportation, he would have been
set down as a lunatic, a dreamer of fantastic dreams. Now, the most
marvelous changes in human conditions, in the future as in the past, will
be brought about by the discoveries of science as applied to the arts.
What some of these discoveries may be, I shall try to state in the'
papers which are to follow in this series; and just here, where I really
stand upon the most solid ground, I shall seem most wild in my vati
cinations. A simple invention may do more to alleviate certain forms
of human misery than the preachings of thousands of clergymen and
the wailings of as many poets. The “ Song of the Shirt ” stirred our
sympathies, but the sewing machine—what pen or tongue can tell the good it has accomplished for myriads of working women ? Could the
press and pulpit combined have had a tithe of the effect of this one
�WHAT
OF
THE
FUTURE.
75
beneficent invention ? But speculations as to the religious future, or
the social future, will necessarily be incomplete by reason of the com
plexity of the phenomena which will accompany them, and the as yet
unformalized science of society. In the present state of knowledge—
especially that which relates to the conditions of human society—the
ripest and most cultivated intellect would be at fault, not only by rea
son of the want of information, but because of his preconceived theories
and notions. It is very evident that in speculating upon the future,
men will be controlled very largely by their settled convictions and per
haps by the religious faith in which they have been nurtured. Suppose,
for instance, an intelligent Christian, a sceptic, and a scientist, were
each to give his views upon the future ; it is very clear, that although
each might mean to tell the truth, still each would give a different solu
tion of the problem before him—none of them could help being influ
enced by their preconceived impressions. From this cause of distrac
tion the writer is not of course free. Indeed any scheme of the future
—any hope of what is to come hereafter—must be based in great part
upon a religious theory; that is, a theory which embraces a conception
of the social and religious future as well as of man’s history.
The science of history was not possible so long as merely super
natural wills were understood to be the controlling powers in the uni
verse; but with the conception of invariable law, then a science of
human affairs becomes possible ; but that very conception is in itself
essentially a religious one.
There is still another element of uncertainty in endeavoring to fore
cast the hereafter, and that is the surprising results which sometimes
are brought about by accidental discoveries in science. The share
played by accident is as discreditable to man’s invention as it is morti
fying to his vanity. Bacon points this out in the 59th Aphorism of
his Novum Organum, in which, besides giving examples, he says:—
“ We may also derive some reason for hope from the circumstance of several
actual inventions being of such a nature, that scarcely any one could have formed a
conjecture about them previously to their discovery, but would rather have ridi
culed them as impossible. ********
We may therefore well hope that many excellent and useful matters are yet
treasured up in the bosom of nature, bearing no relation or analogy to our actual
discoveries, but out of the common track of the imagination, and still undiscovered,
and which will doubtless be brought to light in the course and lapse of years, as
others have been before them.”
*******
Conscious of his own deficiencies, the present writer cannot but
think that however poor his execution may be, such a work as this can
not but be suggestive, and may lead to the discovery of data by which
we may in a measure forecast the future. It is the first serious attempt
ever made to estimate accurately the forces at work in society, and to
point out what may result unless new agencies are brought into play.
Every existing human institution has a history which changes with
�76
THE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
the course of time. Now, in what direction do these changes tend?
This is the inquiry to which the papers that follow will be a partial
answer.
Those who are disposed to criticise the shortcomings of what is to
follow, would do well to bear in mind the acute remark of Herbert
Spencer, who says:
“ Not directly, but by successive approximations, do mankind reach correct con
clusions ; and those who first think in'the right direction—loose as may be their
reasonings, and wide of the mark as their inferences may be—yield indispensable
aid by framing provisional conceptions, and giving a bent to inquiry.”
CHAPTER I.
THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE.
The relations of the sexes ; what will they be thirty, fifty, one hun
dred years hence ? Is it possible to estimate the force of the agencies
at work modifying the old ideal of the institution of marriage, and to
point out what will be the probable issue ? Any one who has observed
the course of modem history, cannot but have been impressed with
certain tendencies concerning which there can be no chance of mistake.
During the middle ages and down to the reformation, marriage was
a sacrament of the church. It was God, according to this view, who
brought people together, and his command was that whom he had
joined no man should put asunder. Children, also, under this general
theory, were a gift of God ; it was by his will and not by man’s agency
that they were brought into existence.
This, however, is not the modern theory of the relation of the sexes.
Protestant Christendom regards marriage as a purely human institu
tion, and each State now claims the authority to separate those whom
it has joined together in the event of certain infractions of the law
regulating the institution. Roman Catholicism still sternly adhères
to its historical traditions of the sacramental character and to the
indissolubility of marriage, but the modern theory has beaten the
old church on its own ground, and in communities composed almost
exclusively of its own members. Indeed, this “free love” movement
was a potent force in the original outbreak against the church of
Rome ; as witness Luther’s marriage with a nun, his subsequent
acknowledgment of the validity of the union of a German prince to a
second wife, the first being still alive ; and also the tremendous conse
quences of Pope Clement’s refusal to divorce Henry VIII from Queen
Catherine. In every modern nation the first victory over the sacerdotal
power of mother church is signalized by the substitution of the civil
�THE
FUTURE
OF
MARRIAGE.
Tt
for the sacramental marriage, and the passage of laws admitting of
divorce under certain contingencies. The recent enactment of a civil
marriage law in Austria was made the occasion of a national holiday ;
the Spanish revolution was signalized by the recognition of the legiti
macy of such unions ; and the highest courts in Italy, in spite of the
protests of the. church, have solemnly affirmed the legal validity of the
marriage of priests.
But the substitution of the civil for the sacerdotal marriage was
only one step in this social revolution. The personal theory or the
relation of the sexes is what now obtains the widest sanction. In this
view marriage is a mere contract between two persons ; living together
is a sufficient proof that the couple are man and wife. This is the
American idea of marriage, which needs the sanction of neither church
nor state—only the consent of the two persons directly interested to
insure the respectability of the connection and legitimatize the off
spring.
Nor is this all ; this theory of mere consent giving validity to the
relation involves the further consequence that a separation may ensue
when either party becomes dissatisfied. If .marriage is a mere matter
of human convenience or pleasure, then it can be dissolved at will ; the
same persons who made the contract for their mutual happiness should
have the power to dissolve it when their comfort is not enhanced by
complying with its conditions. And this is the exact view taken by
John Stuart Mill, who represents, probably more than any other living
writer, the most advanced view of the times on all topics of social
concern.
And as a consequence of this growing conception of marriage as a
mere personal matter between individuals, what do we see in society at
large ? Why a constant tendency to loosen the ties which bind the
sexes together ? The statement may be broadly made that since the
reformation all legislation in modern Christendom has been in thé
direction of the entire freedom of the affections. Not a single instance
can be furnished of legal enactment to bind still firmer the marriage
bonds, or to go back to a stricter law of divorce. On the contrary,
every change or amendment of the ordinances which society imposes
on the sexes for its protection and their happiness tends to make the
bonds lighter and separation more easy. In our own country, which
Booner than any other adopts all the so-called improvements in legisla
tion, divorce laws are notoriously lax and the number of separations
extraordinarily large. Even in so conservative, and in one sense reli
gious a State as Vermont, there is an average of one separation to every
eleven marriages, and in Connecticut (among Americans), one to nine.
Of course, in other States, especially those settled by emigrants from
New England, the proportion is still greater.
Nor do I see in any quarter a desire to go back to a more stringent
rule. There is occasionally a feeble protest from some old-fashioned
�78
THE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
divine, but the church as a body has taken no action, and seems quite
willing that the marriage laws should be practically abrogated in time.
And here it may be remarked that our present monogamic mar
riage is not a Christian institution.- The Bible was written by and for
a nation of polygamists. There is not a text of Scripture, from Genesis
to Revelation, which prescribes that the man shall have but one wife,
and the woman but one husband. It is true there was such a limita
tion so far as bishops were concerned in the early church, but this Very
exception proved the rule to have been otherwise. Luther recognized
this in an instance I have already mentioned. And here again it must
be borne in mind that the relation of the sexes is purely conventional;
there is no absolute rule governing all the nations. We must dis
criminate between a permanent and a transient morality. In all ages,
and among all people, it has been considered wrong to murder, lie, or
steal; but there has been no general rule recognized among men gov
erning the relation of the sexes. It has varied widely in every age and
clime. There was a time when men married their sisters, and the
priests blessed the union. The law,“ Thou shalt not commit adultery,”
was given to a polygamous people, and was understood very differently
from the way we regard it.
The brothel is deemed infamous in New York, but is a govern
ment institution in Paris; while the tea-gardens as they are called in
Japan are as respectable as the school-house or tfie temples, and are
supposed to be quite as useful in their way. Hence in discussing this
subject of marriage, we must bear in mind that our conventional
standards are not common to the entire race, but only to a small part
of it, and have not therefore the same sanction as those rules of con
duct which are recognized universally.
So far there have been the following variations of the sexual rela
tions recognized openly or tacitly by mankind:
1. Polyandry, or several men the husbands of one wife. This was
probably the prevalent institution when the race was in its infancy
and still in a very savage state—when man was the hunted rather than
the hunters of beasts of prey; and hence what was needed to fight the
wild beasts of the forest was the strong male rather than the child-bear
ing female. This accounts for the custom which still obtains in the
East of killing female infants at birth. Polyandry is still a custom in
Thibet, and in other parts of Asia.
2. Polygamy was the next form of marriage, and the one which has
always been held in the highest favor by the great mass of mankind
within the historic period. Probably three-fourths of the race to-day
practice or tolerate polygamy.
3. Monogamy. This is undoubtedly the very highest form of the
relation of the sexes so far instituted among men, and has given us the
noblest types of women, as wife and mother, of the race. Some form
of the monogamic marriage is always associated with an advanced
civilization.
�THE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
79
4. Concubinage. This is a real institution of monogamic commu
nities, though in disrepute, and not recognized legally. Statistics
would show, if it were possible to collect them accurately, that in all
nations where the one-wife rule obtains legally, there are a certain defi
nite number of women who act as the temporary or permanent second
wives of married or unmarried men. Among the Jews the concubine
was but an inferior kind of wife, which is just what the kept mistress
is with us—only the position of the latter is disreputable, which was
not the case with the Jewish concubine.
5. Prostitution. This is also an institution almost exclusively pecu
liar to monogamic communities. Wherever the one-wife system pre
vails, whoredom is an inevitable accompaniment. In modern Europe
and America it is estimated that one woman in every sixty practically
ignores the conventional law 'of marriage either as a prostitute or as a
kept mistress, or by indulging in occasional liaisons. From the nature
of the case it is difficult to get at exact figures, but it is known that
each of these three classes bear a certain fixed proportion to the popu
*
lation in all single-wife communities.
6. Celibacy. It is perhaps a misnomer to class this state under the
head of the relation of the sexes, when in fact it signifies'an absence
of relation; but old maids form so large and growing a proportion of
'our population, that they must be considered in any discussion of the
general subject of marriage, especially the future of marriage. Celibacv
is probably the most cruel of all the institutions which control women;
it entails vastly more physical and mental suffering than prostitution,
apart, of course, from the contagion engendered by the latter, because
it affects such numbers of the sex. There are probably two hundred
* Since writing the above, further thought on the subject has led me to the
conclusion that prostitution is simply polyandry under another name. Both insti
tutions spring from the same real or fancied necessities of the race. In both a few
women are set apart for the satisfaction of the sexual passions of many men. Poly
andry, however, involves offspring, and is hence an honorable estate among the
savages who practice it: while prostitution has no aim beyond satisfying a sexual
appetite on the part of the male. The one is a permanent relation, and was and is
sanctified by habit and affection; the other is a transient flirtation, in nine cases out
of ten wholly animal. Concubinage also is simply the polygamy of monogamic
communities. It has been said that there was more polygamy in London than in
Constantinople, and this is probably true, only in the one case it is an honored in> stitution, and in the other a disreputable gratification, yet both satisfying pressing
social needs.
Hugh Miller, in combating the theories of progress rife in his time, attempted
to prove from geology that a process of degradation or retrogression was going on
as well as progression. What he did show was that upon the advent of a new race
of superior beings, the one which had before held the vantage ground fell back in
the scale of creation. Thus all living animal types were better represented on this
planet than they have been since the advent of man.
The same law seems to hold good with human institutions. Polyandry and
polygamy, which were once legal and honored institutions, have become degraded
in the presence of the highest form of the relation of the sexes as yet known to
large masses of men, viz., monogamy; yet it must not be forgotten that prostitu
tion and concubinage are real, permanent institutions in our present civilization,
which zoill exert themselves as social forces, and which cannot be ignored by the
sociologist.
�80
THE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
unmated women for every one prostitute, and in some respects the
latter has an advantage over the former. Her instinct of sex is grati
fied to the uttermost, while every purely womanly passion in the old
maid, widow, or young maid unmated, is a matter of secret shame and
perpetual disappointment. To make matters worse, the whole past
education of women has been to train them for marriage, as their sole
business in life. That so large a proportion of women are permanently
unmated in our modern civilization is proof positive that the theories
which have heretofore obtained touching theii’ exclusive devotion to
domestic life do not meet all the wants of society. And then the num
ber of involuntary celibates tends constantly to increase. For this
there are many causes, among which are the higher standard of com
fort and luxury, the greater industrial activity of women, and especially
the emigrating tendencies of men caused by the cheapness and rapidity
of modern travel. In England it is estimated that of every one hun
dred grown women only fifty-five are married; the rest are unmated.
So much for the past and the present.
But now what of the future ? What changes or variations may we
expect in marriage before the year 2000 ? Let us apply Comte’s concep
tion of historical filiation or Herbert Spencer’s law of evolution to
this subject, and see whither we are tending.
Historically, then, it is evident that we are passing from a super
natural to a purely human conception of marriage. It is no longer a
mystic rite or sacrament; it is an institution designed to perpetuate
the race and add to human happiness. All existing criticisms on mar
riage are from a purely human standpoint. Hence the tendency is to
greater individual freedom of action. All legislation, without any ex
ception in modern Christendom, is in this direction. Individual con
sent is now the bond between the sexes, not sacerdotal authority. The
metaphysical and anarchical doctrine of human rights, now urged with
so much vehemence all over the Christian world, is disintegrating mar
riage.
So much for the historical tendency, as any one can see who keeps
his eyes open. And now what does the law of evolution lead us to
expect ? This law is that in human institutions as well as in the or
ganic world about us, the tendency is from the homogeneous to the
heterogeneous, from the simple to the complex ; that what are at first
apparently accidental variations, become at length permanent character
istics ; in short, that a process of differentiation is constantly going on.
Now, if this is true, it will lead to some consequences, in considering
marriage, which will startle conservative people. Yet it is very evident
that in comparing a savage with a civilized people, one of the marked
distinctions will be the simplicity of the marriage institution in the
one, and the complex character of the relation of the sexes in the other.
A rude, simple community will tolerate but one rule or practice, but a
score of variations from the conventional requirement is winked at in
�THE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE’
81
Rome, London, and Paris. As I have shown, monogamic communities
are forced to tolerate Polyandry and Pologamy in the form of Pfostitution and Concubinage, but there are many variations of the sexual re
lation that do not come under those heads which need not be par
ticularized here, and which are practised in all civilized communities.
This differentiation will, I think, go on until the scientific law or
laws governing the relation of the sexes has been discovered. What
these variations may be, it is now our business to try and point out.
One variation of marriage is that of the present Protestant theory
of the relation of the sexes carried to its logical conclusion. This in
volves marriage and divorce at will, without recognizing the authority
of any one or any organization outside of the couple most interested.
Practically we have almost reached that stage now. There is nothing
to hinder people separating and forming new unions, provided both
parties interested are willing. The embarrassment in the way is the
dependence of the woman, especially if she has children; but the equal
rights agitation is teaching her self-help, and the necessity of women
working and being pecuniarily independent of men. This general
form of marriage may be defined as the Protestant or individual sov
ereignty marriage, and has in itself many variations. So far it involves
an idea of faithfulness to each other while living together, but if there
is to be no check to individual freedom—if the man or woman is not
responsible to any one but him or herself, it is no one’s business but
their own with whom they consort, or how often they change partners.
Thus we come to absolute free love, and there is no logical stopping
place short of that on the prevalent individual rights theory. In a
greater or less degree this is the outcome of the marriage relation in
Protestant Christendom. The prevalent free-trade, no-government,
and every-man-for-himself notions which are generated by our political,
woman’s rights and social discussions, intensifies this tendency. Were
there no children to be considered, and were women as self-helpful as
men, there is no doubt that this form of the relation of the sexes
would soon be very common in Protestant and sceptical communities.
But the great bulk of women are not independent of men pecunia
rily, and children will be born, however undesirable they may be deemed
by those who wish to realize the theory of marriage which Protestant
communities are consciously or unconsciously working out.
The class of women workers, however, are constantly increasing,
and in a short time tens of thousands of the sex as artists, writers,
physicians, professors, teachers, and heads of establishments, will have
employment which they will not give up to fill the station of life in
volved in the old theory of marriage. Hence will come partial unions
which may be for a time or for life, which may involve absolute faith
fulness to each other or entire freedom of change. All this is certain
to come about whether we like it or not, and very probably in the next
generation. It is very likelv that for the next two generations the
�82
THE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
monogamic form of marriage will obtain with the great mass of people,
but th«Tirregular unions I have pointed out will be not only tolerated—
they will not be under any social ban, for many worthy people will, in
all likelihood, deliberately rid themselves of the marriage fetters which
society now imposes. I expect very soon that among the large class of
professional women who will earn their own livelihood and whose oc
cupation do not admit of household cares, it will not be deemed dis
reputable to have children without any marriage formality. At first, of
course, this will create scandal, but if it is countenanced by a few women
of real character, standing, and professional reputation, it will soon be
tolerated, especially if it is done deliberately and in accordance with
some social and religious theory then prevailing, or which may be
promulgated to sanction such practices. An assumed noble motive or
religious conviction will give respectability to the wildest social aber
rations. A man or woman of recognized professional ability, who is
known to be honest, public-spirited and self-denying, could easily set a
fashion of this kind, which would be generally tolerated, though not
often imitated. A marriage contract for a limited time has been
seriously discussed in several of the Woman’s Rights and Spiritualist
journals. It is noticeable that it is the women who propose those
schemes. Here is a specimen and one very likely to be tried during
the coming years:
Ellen Storge sends a communication to the Woman’s Advocate, of Dayton, 0., •
in which she proposes the following social platform :
“ 1. Let the marriage contract be limited to from one to three years, at the coi
tion of the contracting parties.
“2. Discard the erroneous idea that this contract is divine; admit that this is
but a human transaction, intended to perpetuate the species and produce human
happiness.
“ 3. Make both parties equal; do not exact, special promises or terms from one
sex to its disadvantage and the advantage of the other. Exact pledges of mutual
fidelity and co-operation during continuance of the marital contract; but let love
alone. Love is a sensitive, spontaneous outgrowth of the heart, subject to the con
trol of treatment and circumstances rather than formal promises ; it is too tender,
too sacred, for the public gaze.
“ 4. Let the marriage contract embrace the contingency of issue, with full and
unequivocal provision therefor. If one child, let its custody devolve by written and
recorded agreement, void during coverture ; if two or more children, the same, or
division by such agreement, provided that the party refusing to renew the expired
contract, at the instance of the other party, or the offender in case of premature an
nulment, shall be compelled to maintain the offspring and be the custodian thereof,
at the option of the opposite party.
“ 5. Enact just laws for the determination of all such contingencies as might
arise under this new order of things : make them applicable only to those now un
married ; let there be no ex post facto taint about the matter. During coverture,
us also in the event of non-renewal of the contract., let each party control its own
finances ; of that they shall have together amassed, let there be an equal division.”
The complex marriage: ‘ this is what obtains at. present, in the
Oneida Community, and is simply organized free love. Wives and
w
�TEE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
83
husbands are alike common. To make this relation practicable, as
may be well understood, the very strongest social and religious influ
ence must be brought to bear, as the tendency would naturally be toward
pure- license, and a riot of the passions, with no care or even thought
of offspring. It could never be even tried except in a community
dominated by a strong will, or a stringent public opinion based upon a
definite social and religious creed. The complex marriage involves : A
non-recognition of preference between two persons of opposite sex, ex
cept for the time being. As a consequence, “ sweet love is slain,”—that
is to say, the romantic and sentimental side of that passion, which
invariably involves a conception of absolute possession as well as con
tinuance and perpetuity, is sternly reprohibited and stamped out. Love
in any of its so-called higher phases, involves exclusive possession of
the loved object, and this brings in jealousy, a feeling which'cannot be
tolerated in a community where all the men and women are common.
This necessary crucifixion of the sentimental side of love leaves merely
the animal passion to be gratified, and replaces the sense of personal
attachment by a conception of womanhood very different from that
which now obtains.
The Oneida Communists have practiced this complex marriage for
some twenty years. It is the most novel experiment in the relations of
the sexes ever tried, and deserves the most serious study from the
sociologist. This community is also testing some of the problems of
stirpiculture, or the scientific propagation of human beings. It is
needless to point out the very great value of the data they are collect
ing upon this most important of all the mysteries connected with the
life of the race upon this planet.
Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that the current theories with
regard to scientific breeding will have their effect in giving us several
new variations of the sexual relation. One well known writer has
seriously proposed that married men who are conscious of their own
unfitness for paternity, should introduce men of superior strains of
blood to their marriage bed. “Why,” he asks, “should not a man
desire splendid children in his home as well as carefully cultivated
flowers in his garden, or superior animals on his farm ?” So far this
has been urged privately ; but I have no doubt the writer will, in a
short time, make his views public. It will seem a monstrous proposi
tion to ninety-nine persons in a hundred, but here and there a few
crotchety people may make the experiment. If public opinion would
permit, there are to-day hundreds of well-to-do women who would have
children by men they admire, but whom they cannot or would not marry.
There is still another form of the sexual relation suggested by
Madame Clémence Royer, whicfy has been described as follows :
“ Her mode of mobilizing the family is to abolish the family. Woman, she
says, needs and must always have a permanent abode. She cannot rove, as man can
and must do ; therefore let her be no longer tied to any man in particular, or any
�»4
THE FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
man to her. ‘We must then/ she says, ‘ mobilize the family, destroy its indissolu
bility. This is the only way of saving it from shipwreck ; it is only in reforming
courageously that we can prevent its falling into complete desuetude.’ So she pro
poses that the marriage-contract should be dissolved on the simple request of either
of the parties, and that there should be instituted a kind of marriage correspond
ing to the confa/rreatio of the Romans, sufficient to legitimize the woman’s position
and the birth of her children, but not binding on her or her husband longer than
he or she pleases. The woman being the more permanent person, Madame Royer
proposes that she, and not the father, should give her name to the children and be
the legal head of the family, the father being relegated to a secondary position, and
constituting in domestic life a kind of shadowy auxiliary, of no moral influence or
weight, and not necessarily known to his children ; and the mother taking as many
husbands in succession as her fancy or circumstances suggested; the result being
perfect happiness, purity, and freedom for all concerned, and an end, total and com
plete, to the quarrelings, falsehood, and oppression of the present system. The
scheme is worked out with much ability, and its bearings on property and other
social arrangements are fairly considered.”
This may seem very chimerical now, yet it but needs a place in
some religious or social scheme to have it tried almost any day.
There will be other variations of the marriage relation which it is
impossible to forecast now, but we may be sure that great diversity will
result from the individualistic theories which now obtain. The future
is in this respect anything but reassuring to the social philosopher and
philanthropist; it is easy enough to write calmly and in cold blood of
these possible experiments on the social relations, but they will all in
volve much human misery and some terrible heart tragedies.
For myself I have no faith in the permanence of the Individual Sov
ereignty conceptions of the relation of the sexes. It may endure for a
generation or two, but because it is individual it is necessarily anti-social,
and therefore unscientific. Whatever is purely egoistic and selfish is an
archical and self-destructive. Hence, while all these theories of marriage
will be worked out,—indeed it is indispensable to the real progress of the
race that they should all be tested by actual experiment,—they cannot
endure after their unsoundness as solutions of the great problem have
been demonstrated. For there is really a most notable problem to
solve. Our present marriage relation is not what it should be; it is a
makeshift, and must be scientifically reconstructed. The woes, disease,
miseries, divorces and murders which are incidental to the present sys
tem, or rather want of system, must give place to something which
will work out better results, especially in the way of offspring. What
that future relation may be it would be premature to point out now;
it is, however, certain it will not take the form of free love, but will be
an institution purer, more chaste, more self-denying, more altruistic
than any form of marriage which has yet been established among men.
Until the problem is solved all true reformers will watch and wait,
and conform in their own lives to the noble ideal of the monogamic mar
riage propounded by Auguste Comte—a marriage which admits of no
divorce for anyjsause, and which decrees eternal widowhood to the sur
viving partner.'
�1» T E AM
AS
A
FA CTOR.
86
CHAPTER II.
STEAM AS A FACTOR IN SOCIOLOGY.
The use of steam and its application to transportation are so mod
em, that we as yet scarcely realize what wonders it has accomplished,
much less the marvels it has in store for us. We know in a general
way of the conveniences of railway and steam travel; but thus far no
one has apprehended all the consequences which will result from this
rapid method of intercommunication. We know that one of the first
effects of railway traffic was to develop and enrich the centers of popu
lation. Cities grew at the expense of the rural districts. This has
been true of all parts of the world into which railroads have been intro
duced. Another effect has been the rapid equalization of prices. The
inability of agriculturists to market their crops economically at the
centers of population, led in the past to great differences in prices.
During the last century, and up to the first third of the present, it was
a matter of frequent occurrence for all but bankrupt families in En
gland, to retire to some rural district on the continent to recruit their
fortunes, being able in that way to live on one-quarter or one-fifth of
their expense at home. In theory it was supposed that the building
of railroads would reduce prices at the centers of population ; but such
does not seem to have been the case. The converse fact, however, is
true, that it has largely enhanced prices in the rural districts.
Wherever railroads have run, the prices of agricultural products have
increased and have been equalized with the prices which formerly ob
tained in the large centers and controlling markets of the world. In
this country it is not so long since the cost of living away from the
large cities was very small. It is within the experience of us all that
as means of communication were established, country living became
more and more costly. This equalization of prices is having a most
important effect upon accumulation of wealth, and the relation of the
city to the country. Our farming class are becoming enriched. The
comparative poverty which characterized the agricultural community in
the past, has given way in these more recent years to comfort and in
some cases to affluence. The labor of the agriculturist is better paid
and the enjoyments of civilized life have been extended to an enlarged
and constantly enlarging class of people. What effect this will have
upon the education, the intelligence and the refinement of the farming
community, it is needless here to dwell upon.
Curiously enough, while the first effect of railroads has been to
build up great centers of population, it has had and is having a dispersing
effect upon these same centers. For instance, New York and London
have grown enormously since the general use of railroads, but, as an
�V
86
STEAM
AS
A
I
..
FACTOR.
offset to this packing of population, the railroad is coming in as a dis
persive agency also. It has added hundreds of square miles to the
available area of very large cities. The street railways, the dummies,
and the swarm of local steam railroads, which spring up to accommo
date the traffic between large cities and their suburbs, are having the
effect of scattering dense populations. Travelers in Europe may have
noticed that all the old cities, such as Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, Vienna
and others, are notable for the extreme height of the houses, many of
them having from ten to fourteen stories. The reason for this packing
of population upon a small area of ground, was manifestly the impos
sibility of living at any great distance from the actual place of busi
ness. There was a limit to the spread of population with the growth
of business, and hence the people who could not be accommodated by
a lateral extension, remedied the difficulty by piling story upon story
of their houses. This is the secret of the “ Paris Flats,” so called,
which some of our unthinking architects have been trying to intro
duce into our American cities. The plea of necessity for either tene
ment houses or flats no longer exists ; all that is needed is the proper
extension of railroad facilities, the complete systematizing of trans
portation of local passengers; and the ground to be occupied is practi
cably illimitable. This is a matter of supreme importance to the resi
dents of large citiqs, and it is one which has as yet been almost entirely
overlooked. The remedy for the overcrowding of cities, is not the
erection of model lodging-houses or improved tenement-houses, or
“ Paris flats,” or any contrivance for packing people together in dense
masses. It is to be found in the extension of our railroad system, so
that every city business or working man may have his own home—his
own vine and apple-tree.
There is a larger view to take of the application of steam to rail
way and ocean navigation, which also has been hardly thought out,
and that is its effect upon the distribution of population. We have
seen that one of the most palpable effects of railway extension is the
equalization of the prices of produce ; and that further along in their
history, the equalizing of the wages of labor between city and country.
It will also be noticed that there is a dispersing as well as concentrating
action in the development of railroad traffic. Applying this conception
to the whole civilized world, we can readily see what changes may yet be
made in the distribution of population. History shows us how unequal
the distribution of population has been in all countries, in some deiise,
in others very sparse, the cause always being the dearness and difficulty
of transportation between the densely populated parts of the earth’s sur
face and. the portions not populated at all. But steam navigation is just
beginning to change all this. Its cheapness and rapidity is bringing it
year by year more and more within the means of the poorer classes.
One of the most extraordinary phenomena of modern times is the
equalizing of populations by the emigration of vast numbers of people.
�STEAM
AS
A
FA CTOR.
87
Such voluntary-quovement of masses of men and women as have been
witnessed since the introduction of steam power for the purposes of
transportation, were never known or even dreamed of before. Travel
has increased a hundred, aye, a thousand fold. We are still in only the
beginning of these enormous movements of population from one part
of the earth’s surface to another. Indeed this mighty flux of nations is
to be one of the most conspicuous features of the travel of the future.
When the post-horse system had reached its perfection in England
at the beginning of the present century, it ia estimated that there were
never more than eighty thousand persons per day traveling at any one
time. It is now estimated that in England alone, the railroads are
patronized by nearly one million persons per day. We have no figures
touching the rapid interchange of population by means of railroads in
this country, but from the general wealth of the community, and the
mental and bodily activity of the people, we know that the change
must have been far greater here, and it is not too much to say that five
hundred persons now travel by railway for every one person who trav
eled by stage-coach in the first years of the history of the Republic.
This easily generalized fact will show us that some of the problems of
modern society are to be solved by this ease of transit, in a way quite
unexpected to past writers upon political economy. Free travel will b$
found to be a mightier agency for elevating pauperized populations
than free trade. The common people of Ireland, of Germany, and of
England have begun to find out that there is an opening on other por
tions of the earth’s surface, and that there is no real necessity for them
to remain in their old homes, and starve, when they can go elsewhere
and live in abundance; and hence the armies, mightier than those com
manded by Timour, Genghis Khan or Attila, or led by Peter the Her
mit—armies not with weapons of war in their hands, but with instru
ments of labor, and willing and able to work, which are on the march
to attack the wild portions of the globe with the view of making them
the homes of civilized peoples. Hence the rush of population to our
Western Territories and the Pacific coast, the overflowing of New Zea
land, Australia, and the Islands of the Indian Ocean, and the rapid
extension of population even in South Africa. The streams, of emigra
tion from Southern Europe which have set in toward Brazil and other
parts of South America are indices of a mightier influx of population
in the future. The most portentous of these changes has already com
menced upon our Pacific coast. The Mongolians have discovered the
enormous riches of California, and are only waiting for proper facilities,
such as steam will yet afford, to overrun the whole of the Western
coast of the United States; and if not interrupted, millions of that
race will yet find their way into the Mississippi Valley, and even to the
North Atlantic coast.
*
This article was written in 1867.—Author.
�88
STEAM
AS
A
FACTOR.
It is not so difficult, though the magnitude of the result may be
surprising, to forecast the effect of these changes of population upon
human conditions. All can be predicted with tolerable accuracy. The
agricultural poor of England are to-day the most debased of any class
in Europe—are the worst fed, worst used, and worst paid. This cheap
agricultural labor lies at the very basis of the aristocratic features of
English landed property, and of their whole tenant system Let the emi
gration fever once reach this lowest strata of English-Society—and it is
reaching it—and a heavy blow will have been dealt at the great tenant
farming interest of that country, and at the wealth of the large aristo
cratic landed establishments. A very small advance in the wages of
English agricultural laborers, will make the raising of wheat and of all
the cereals an unprofitable business in that country. It has already to
a great extent done so, and hence the attention which has been paid in
the last fifteen or twenty years to the growth and development of supe
rior cattle. But here again the equalizing tendencies of steam naviga
tion comes into play. While meat is extremely dear in England and
the west of Europe, owing to the density of the population and the
small amount of ground available for pasture, there are portions of the
earth’s surface where meat is worth scarcely anything. The problem is
¿o transport the meat from the place where it is very plenty to the
place where it is very scarce. Science is now at work upon the proper
method of preserving the meat; and it is believed that if this be not
as yet accomplished, it is on the very point of accomplishment. Steam
navigation will most certainly supply the necessary facilities for bring
ing the cheap meat and the dear meat countries into intimate relation;
and then another heavy blow will be dealt at the farming and aristo
cratic interests of Great Britain. Wages will be raised in that country
and food cheapened.
But the most important problem for us to solve in connection with
this coming flux of nations is, what shall we do with the millions of hea
thens willing to work for little more than a bare livelihood, who will be
swarming upon us from Eastern and Southern Asia ? What will become
of our working classes if this practically inexhaustible supply of laborers
be available for our industrial wants ? It is idle to talk of restrictive laws,
though they will undoubtedly be tried; indeed they have been tried.
The spirit of the age is all against this stoppage of emigration. We
may pile act of Congress upon act of Congress, and station war-ships
before every port in the Pacific, yet it would be impossible practically
to prevent this influx of Chinese and Hindoos upon our western coast.
Nothing will do it but the equalization of the prices of labor in Asia
and America. Undoubtedly there is trouble, a great deal of it, in the
future working of this question. We have already experienced some
of the effects of the influx of cheap labor from Europe ; but so far, our
mechanics have had such ready access to cheap lands, that the price of
labor has been upheld in the fact of a very large emigration. As the
�STEAM AS A
FACTOR.
89
foreigners arrived and embarked in the various trades, the American
mechanics started for the West and secured homes of their own. But
this change of employment will soon reach its limit. It will not/ be
many years before all the public lands will be taken up, and then will
commence the enhancement of the price of all the lands of this coun
try. The solution of this labor problem, it will be found, is not a local
matter; it is not confined to any one country, and no one nation will
be able to pass laws or create any conditions by which its own poor
will be well used, well fed and properly educated, without also taking into
consideration the feeding and educating of all peoples upon the globe.
The trades-unions in England, despite of all that has been said against
them, have really had the effect of raising the rate of wages in that
country, but in all those occupations in which the unionists succeeded
in banding together, they found that the chief obstacle in the way of
the success of their strikes and demands for higher wages, was the
ability of the English manufacturers to import laborers from France
and Belgium. This has, in a measure, been prevented by the English
workmen through the forming of labor-unions in Belgium and France,
and by having an understanding that there should be no competition
between the workmen of either of the three nations. This furnishes a
hint as to the solution of this labor problem. Steam is bringing about
that dream of the French socialists, the solidarity of the nations. The
working classes will find out that to permanently better their condi
tion, they must take into consideration, not only the workmen in their
own locality, but the laboring class of every other population under the
sun, and in time they will realize that, with the extremely rapid and
cheap system of transportation which is about to obtain all over the
world, there can be no very great differences of condition between the
laboring population of different countries; and this fact may yet bring
about that dream of the past:
“ Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new ;
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.”
This rapid interchange of populations will also have other and far
wider effects. What becomes of local patriotism in the face of a chang
ing fluctuating population ? The farmers in the country and the
bouseholders in the city may have sentiments of local attachment, but
the great trading community, the traveling and working population
who have no stake in the soil—what will they care for one country
more than another ? What attachment will then exist to bind them
to any particular spot of earth ? Is it not reasonable to suppose that
the extension of this agent of modern civilization, steam, may tend to
increase the number of cosmopolitans, people who care more for the
whole earth than for any particular part of it, for the race at large
rather than any of its natural divisions ?
Then again as to government, do we not already see that the ex
�90
STEAM AS A
FACTOR.
tension of the railroad has had most important effects in changing the
map of the world. The “ shrieks of locality ” are no longer heeded;
state lines have no longer the sacredness formerly attributed to them.
The history of modern governments is the history of the growth of
centralization. All efforts of late years towards rebellion or secession
have miserably failed. The South could not escape from the grasp of
the North. Hungary was beaten in her attempt to separate from
Austria. Ireland failed, entirely in her moral agitation to effect a repeal
of the act of union with Great Britain. Not so with efforts to consoli
date nations. Prussia to-day represents some forty smaller nationalities
that existed but a few short years ago. Italy is one nation where but
yesterday were six or seven. The United States Government keeps
adding steadily to its possessions; Russia encroaches upon Central Asia;
England extends her dominions in Southern Asia; and so as the means
of intercommunication multiply, the smaller become merged in the
larger nations. Contemporaneously with this enlargement of the
boundaries of great states, we find another curious and hitherto unsus
pected effect of the influence of modern steam travel, which is the
extension of suffrage to larger and still larger classes of the community.
There is no doubt whatever that this rapid flux of population is really
at the bottom of this equalizing of men’s position as regards the gov
ernment. In England, in America, in France, in Germany, in Italy,
in Spain—in every civilized nation, we see that greater and still greater
concessions are being made to the laboring population in the way of
political power. But strangely enough, and yet naturally enough, if
we regard it in the right light, with the extension of the voting privi
lege to the laboring classes we see a greater concentration of power in
the central authority. This follows naturally from the obliteration of
localities. All can see that New York State at large, through its legis
lature at Albany, takes the power away from New York City; that
Washington absorbs much of the power formerly centering in Albany.
Berlin to-day represents twenty small capitals of ten years ago. Paris,
in the van of civilization, has.long been the virtual head of all France.
The reason for this change is obvious. When the doctrine of States
rights in this country was preached in its early vigor, Washington was
in point of fact at a greater distance from the city of New York than it
is to-day from the city of Delhi. In point of actual time, it took
over two weeks to reach Maine from the capital, and a still greater
length of time to reach New Orleans. There could be no wise govern
ment of provinces which were so distant in point of time, where infor
mation to head-quarters took so long to go, and commands therefrom
so long to come. And this has been the real force of the argument in
favor of the exclusive government of localities by the people thereof;
but human conditions have changed marvelously within the last few
years, and distance in relation to time is practically annihilated by the
use of the telegraph, while space has been greatly abridged by the
�STEAM AS
A
FACTOR.
91
application of steam to transportation. The telegraphic wires have
become the real nerves of the human race. They communicate sensa
tion from all parts of the body politic, and in the fullness of time there
must be, as in the human organism, one great brain to which this sen
sation will be transmitted, and which must act intelligently for all
parts of the corporate body. I do not see how statesmen, political
economists, and philosophers generally can avoid realizing that the
mighty change in human conditions created by the use of steam will
change radically (indeed is changing radically) the relations of locali
ties to the central authority; and that while the equality of human
conditions brought about by steam and electricity has had the effect to
extend the right of the choice of rulers to wider circles of population,
and may yet include even women, it has taken more and more power
from localities, and concentrated it in the central governments. In no
part of the world to-day do we see any powers taken away from the
central governments; in every part of the world, with the extension of
suffrage we see more and more power added to the central authority.
In fact, when the active intelligent and effective part of the population
are rapidly moving from place to place, locality to locality, they are no
longer any better judges of the interests of that locality than are people
who permanently live at a distance. If in the future, therefore, an agi
tation in favor of local rights and State authority should prove feebler
than in past times in the history of our government, it can be readily
understood that this change is made by the agency of steam in effect
ing rapid intercommunication between all parts of the country.
To sum up, then, the effects of the application of steam to transpor
tation—
1. It has built up the centers of population at the expense of the
rural districts, thus stimulating the growth of large cities.
2. In its fullest development it will have a dispersive effect upon
large cities, and prevent overcrowding by rendering available larger
areas of country for business purposes. Cheap steam travel is the real
and certain cure for the tenement-house horror, and most of the evils
of overcrowding. One cheap, swift road, reaching out into the country
from the heart of a great city, is a greater beneficence to the poor than
could be conferred upon them by a generation of Peabodys.
3. Steam travel is equalizing the price of all commodities as well as
the wages of labor. So far the effect has been to enhance prices when
they were low; the reverse effect has rarely taken place; the leveling
has been up, not down. This is a fact upon which depends conse
quences most momentous to the future of the working classes the
world over.
4. Steam is giving an immense impetus to emigration, and is solv
ing the problem of over-population, or perhaps it would be more pre
cise to say, is making that problem one upon which the whole race
must sit in judgment rather than any one people. Like water, wages.
�92
STEAM AS
A
FACTOR.
prices, and population will find their level. The most momentous fact
of the immediate future will be the “flux of nations,” the emigration
of the laboring poor from places where land is dear to where it is
cheap, and from crowded communities to sparsely inhabited settle
ments.
5. This vast emigration will make the social future of the working
class a cosmopolitan question, and will in effect bring about that dream
of the continental socialists, the “ solidarity of the peoples.”
6. The railroad and telegraph, in helping to conquer time and
space, is bringing about the reign of a centralized democracy all over
the world. They tend on the one hand to extend the privilege of the
ballot to every grown human being, and on the other to center more
power in the general government. Localities are constantly getting to
be of less account.
Note.—The three chapters above given will form part of a book upon “ The
Future,” should I ever find time to write it. One other chapter, “ By 1900, What ? ”
was published in Appleton's Journal. In addition I have the rough drafts of about
a dozen other chapters, the contents of which may be judged by their titles, as
follows:
1. The Future of Language.
2. Synthetic Chemistry, and what it will Accomplish.
3. The Future of Money and Prices.
4. Will the Coming Man Sleep ?
5. Can Human Life be Prolonged, and How ?
6. The Food of the Future, and its probable effect upon the Structure of the
Human Body.
7. On the Equalization of the Temperature of the Globe.
8. The Probable Governments of the Future.
9. The Tendency of Educational Changes.
Of course the range of topics is endless, and none of them in the present state of
Sociological Science can be discussed with the intelligence they demand to be made
profitable as objects of serious study. The test of science, as Comte pointed out, is
prevision, and the foundations of a science of human affairs canndt be said to have
been begun until we are able speculatively to anticipate the future. Now all I can
do is to try and point out the tendency or drift of things. I may be mistaken on
every point, but of one thing I am sure—that those who follow me will succeed
where I have failed. All the value I claim for my speculations is the attempt to
deliberately foreeast the future. Now I firmly believe this not only can be done,
but some time or other it will be done.
D. G. C.
�THE SEXUAL QUESTION.
*
T is to the conspicuous disgrace of the medical profession, that so
far it has not supplied the public with any standard work upon
the intimate relations of the sexes. Of all the subjects relating to
the7 life of man upon this planet, there is no one of such prime
importance as the generative act between the sexes. So far it has prac
tically been regarded as a brute instinct, and an indecent shame has
prevented the wise, pure and good of both sexes from fully under
standing all about the act, as well as all the consequences it entails.
The curiosity with regard’to the sexual organs and their uses, not
withstanding this conventional, indelicate reticence, in every one con
scious of sex is necessarily very great, but it has to be gratified illegiti
mately. Mothers do not instruct their daughters, nor fathers their
sons touching this most important of all the relations of their life, not
only because of the sinful shame they feel in conversing upon such
topics with their children, but because of their own amazing ignorance
of the antecedents to and consequences of the act by which the race is
continued.
It may be broadly stated that there as yet has never been written
or published in any language one comprehensive and exhaustive work
upon the generative organs, their uses and abuses. Science has not
yet occupied that field: it has been left to quackery and empiricism.
The works appended are useful as an indication that some few
physicians at least, are becoming aware that these matters must be
discussed from a scientific standpoint, and that the knowledge in the
possession of the medical profession must be given to the public. The
real difficulty in the way, however, is the singular unacquaintance of
the profession with all that relates to the sociological side of this dis
cussion. Comte complained that in his day physicians were little
better than horse doctors when they came to regard man sexually.
They looked upon the male as an animal, and paid no attention to the
enormous modifications brought about by society, and the course of his
tory upon the human family. And this fruitful field is even yet left
unoccupied. Now that women are getting into the medical profession
there is reason to hope for some intelligent discussion of the sexual
question; for it is remarkable to note that the women are far less
squeamish than the men when this topic is broached in the press or on
I
* The Preventive Obstacle.—Dr. Bergeyet.
den&r. Common Sense.—Dr. Foote.
Conjugal Sin A—Dr. Garr-
�94
THE
SEXUAL
QUESTION.
the platform. All pure women feel what all artists and poets have ever
felt, that there is no sin or shame in any of the legitimate gratifications
of the sense of sex. And in considering this subject women seem to
realize more truly than men the social aspects of the case. These are
now up for comment and settlement, especially so far as they relate to
the means to be used in limiting the size of families.
The different methods in use to keep down population or prevent
an undesirable increase in families in times past, may be summed up as
follows:
1. The killing of infants after they are horn.—This is the most
ancient practice, and obtains to this day in the East and in exceptional
cases among the very poor in so-called civilized communities. The
Spartans made a wise use of this practice to rid themselves of mal
formed children, as well as those who should not have been generated.
2. Abortion—the killing of the foetus in the womb.—This is done to
a fearful extent in all " civilized ” communities. It is a worse practice
than infanticide, as it entails far more physical and moral evil. It
generally injures the physical system of the mother and prevents the
birth of desirable as well as undesirable offspring. Then, in spite of
all efforts, a number of half-killed children are born, and live to add to
the sum of human misery. Our laws tacitly recognize the right of
mothers to kill their unborn offspring. Throughout Christendom
there is not a law on any statute-book forbidding or punishing a
woman for killing the unborn fruit of her womb. It is only those who
make a business of committing abortion upon women who are dis
countenanced by law; but all enactments on this subject are practically
null. In New York city abortion is an open and lucrative profession,
as witness the advertisements in the papers and Mad. Restell’s splendid
mansion on Fifth Avenue.
3. Preventative measures.—George Sand is reputed to have said,
apropos of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, that the great
concern in the life of a Parisian woman was not “ how to conceive
without sin, but how to sin without conceiving.” Omitting all notion
of sin in the matter, this is the problem nearly all married couples in
modern civilization are compelled to try and solve. How is it possible to
nave sexual intercourse without resulting offspring ? That this is done
in myriads of cases every one is aware, but can these various practices be
kept up without peril to health ? As yet medical science has given no
decisive or satisfactory answer; but what little the profession does say
is against all attempts to interfere with the propagative act. Bergeret,
Gardener, Mayer, as well as nearly all who have written on the subject,
assert that all preventative measures are hurtful, and that the increase
of uterine diseases among women is due to them. But it is evident
from the loose popular way in which these books are written, that as
yet this problem is without a scientific solution which is likely to be
generally accepted. By commo’h consent it is considered desirable that
�THE
SEXUAL
QUESTION.
95
men and women should marry in order to satisfy the most intense and
exacting of all human passions; but at the same time the foremost
minds of the age insist upon the necessity of married people control
ling the number of their offspring. John Stuart Mill, who represents
the most advanced wing of the political economists, never tires of bear
ing testimony to the criminality of bringing more children into the
world than the family can well take care of, and the common sense of
the community supports this view.
We are agreed as to the'what, but how ? asks the married men and
women most interested.
Science has as yet no answer; the medical profession so far as it
has spoken says, “ absolute continence except when you are willing to
assume the responsibilities of paternity.” Here, then, is the dilemma.
All the best social influences conspire to induce people to marry; when
married, every consideration of prudence -and common sense prompt
them to try and control propagation; but the physicians say this cannot
be done without peril to health, except by complete abstention, some
times extending over years; for, according to Bergeret and his medical
confreres, no intercourse is allowable during pregnancy and lactation,
nor after the woman’s “turn of life.” Yet, every one knows that these
canons of conduct in the sexual relation are universally disregarded.
The Oneida communists profess to have solved this problem by
what they call “ male continence.” The sexes have intercourse, but the
male stops short of the emission of semen. But this is one of the
practices which Bergeret declares is destructive of health. Per contra,
the communists insist that they are not injured but benefited in health
by this peculiar custom, which has been in vogue among them for over
a score of years, and they point to their exemption from disease and
longevity as compared with their neighbors, as a proof of the truth of
their claim.
The simple truth is, the relations of the' sexes have not yet been
put under scientific co-ordination. Marriage and propagation are not
subject to the “ higher law.” Hence prostitution, celibacy, polygamy,
free love, disease, the gratification of mere brute instincts in marriage
and out of it, and, as a consequence, the social disturbance, the propa
gation of faulty human beings as well as the generation of hideous
diseases. The work to be done is to collect all the verified facts rela
ting to the intercourse of the sexes, and generalize the laws which con
trol them. When we have discovered those laws, all there is to do is to
obey them. In the preliminary discussions, what is needed is pure
thinking and plain speaking. The tawdry sentimentalizing which dis
tinguishes Dr. Gardener’s book, for instance, is extremely offensive.
Things must be called by their right names; but it must never be for
gotten that, as the sexual act involves the highest interests of society,
it must be lifted out of the slough of mere animality and discussed
from a religious point of view.
�96
UNIVERSOL OGY.
TEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS’S «Primary Synopsis of Universology,” embraces his scheme of a scientific universal lan
guage. • It is a condensation of another work, covering the
whole field of philosophy, as yet unpublished. I do not
propose to pass any verdict upon this preliminary work. Its author
makes a most tremendous claim. He alleges that he has discovered
the Science of Sciences—that he has supplied the connecting link
between the body of all human knowledges. In other words, he has
not only discovered a new Method, but the Method of Methods. If
this claim can be established, America has at length produced a philos
opher of the very highest type—a greater than Aristotle, Bacon, Des
cartes, Spinoza, or Comte. The audacity of Mr. Andrews’s claim can
not but challenge attention from the scientific world. It is quite safe
to predict that, whether his work has any value or not, it will be re
ceived with a storm of derision from all the old schools of thought.
The Modern Thinker, however, declines to pass a verdict until all the
testimony is in. Mr. Andrews is undoubtedly a man of unusual powers
of mind—he is an acute thinker, and has rare powers of persuasion
and exposition. We say this much because ordinary readers who take
up his book will be repelled by its terminology. Comte points out the
great value it would be to mankind if all phenomena could be referred
to some one law, such, for instance, as that of gravitation, but in the
same chaptei’ he denies that it is possible to formulate such a law.
Man is finite, and the universe is infinite, and therefore it is chimerical
to expect ever to discover the secret of the grand Unity, if indeed there
is a Unity. Now Mr. Andrews declares that what Comte pronounced
an eternally impossible feat he has accomplished. The very splendoi’
of the claim ought to command respect, at least; but I judge it will
not, and that for a long time to come he will have to submit to a good
deal of abuse and ridicule.
I am inclined to believe that Mr. Andrews has made a real discovery
in his universal language; at least, if he has not solved the problem
himself, he has pointed out how it may be done by some one else.
There are about sixty-four primary sounds in all languages. Every
one of these, Mr. Andrews alleges, is charged by nature with certain
meanings, which he prints in his new vocabulary. The instances Mr.
Andrews gives to prove his claim will carry a great deal of weight with
philologists who have made a study of phonetics. As there is a science
of harmony, which was not invented, but discovered, so, says our
author, there is a science of sound, expressing sense, which we must
find out by careful induction. When discovered, we will have the
Language of Man, which must, in time, be common to the whole planet.
It is possible that Mr. Andrews has been bedeviled by analogies; indeed
his universology is confessedly a science of analogies; but I believe he
has in this conception of a universal language hit upon something of
supreme importance to the race.—D. G.
S
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
What of the future
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Croly, David Goodman [1829-1889]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [73]-96 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Croly was an American journalist. From 1870 to 1873, he published the journal Modern Thinker which served as a vehicle for the positivist and Spencerian positions of himself and a small circle of colleagues. Chapter headings: The Future of Marriage; Steam as a Factor of Sociology; The Sexual Question. From Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870.||(BND) Some uncut pages. Includes bibliographical references. Printed in red ink on cream paper.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[American News Company]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1870]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5416
Subject
The topic of the resource
Society
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (What of the future), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Future Life
Industrialization
Marriage
Sexual Behavior
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d7b0a036996bd862cc15889979e36d3b.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=C1GUAVs7F8Vzv17zJWbU8He8hbiabUKLAOi474k6h%7ELSzOmMd7ufpa9pf9Gqqw56sa9Y0D6W0eFlZtdJCFubFmktP2IWHM5ns8DRZXbCCFZvVyzufWuDaoKTD40CgdsS9w-P6Y97GxM3n7QrD9gdvzUal0Ze%7EIuVfXFwORdshbsgxBilGVEkio4XiZDCVSs0pye%7EbklPO%7ExevTF4mlVMIC0ofFM20TfCsHnG2tsVeTm14DAR407JDQeFGcONulOYKYUuGFRmjntqYoYIM-VG7DhTXAr-eSVHteZ72QV0Z2t7mxQABPVfzfDDRYIpVl3plr7lhSrVVVnLfX84Ol9lTw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
2b18a1949245d81eda6fdd087999a837
PDF Text
Text
ON THIS AND THE OTHER WORLD.
BY
FRANCIS W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence
��THIS WORLD AND THE OTHER WORLD.
HE title I have assumed for this tract may appear
gigantesque : hut the reader will kindly remember
that no author need attempt to exhaust his subject. In
fact, I do but intend to make various remarks chiefly
on one writer who has devoted intense effort to the
topic. The philosophers who will have no theology,
except such as can be elicited by the study of that
which is external to the human mind, may attain to a
belief in some world-ruling Supreme Being, but in no
case are likely to have even the faintest expectation of
renewed existence for individual man after death. In
extreme contrast to this, such Theists as were Lord
Herbert of Cherbury, and, recently deceased, Theo
dore Parker and Mazzini, make human immortality a
first principle of religion. So is it with the Bengali
Theists, members of the Brahmo Somaj ; to whom I
cannot allude without expressing admiration and sym
pathy. My friend, Miss F. P. Cobbe, an ardent ad
mirer of Theodore Parker, is by far the most vigorous
and prominent advocate of this doctrine among ourselves;
which, in spite of the double-edged nature of the argu
ments on which she relies, deeply moves me.
In republishing her Essays on Life after Death, which
appeared in the Theological Review, she has prefixed an
elaborate, and, in many respects, valuable Preface,
commenting on Mr J. S. Mill’s three Posthumous
Essays. Perhaps it may seem needless to say, that in
T
�4
On this World and the other World.
everything which Miss Cobhe writes, there is sure to
be much that commands my interest and true sym
pathy ; but I avow this distinctly now, because I am
about to express strong dissent from her cardinal argu
ments and statements : and it may be well here to quote
from her what I regard as a primary truth, p. iii.
“We shall never obtain our truest and most reliable
idea of God from the inductions which science may help
us to draw from the external world. Spiritual things
must be spiritually discerned, or we must be content
never to discern them truly at all. In man’s soul
alone, so far as we may yet discover, is the moral
nature of his Maker revealed,” as in a mirror..............
“ If (as we must needs hold for truth), there be a moral
purpose running through all the physical creation, its
scope is too enormous, its intricacy too deep, the cycle
of its revolution too immense, for our brief and blind
observation. It must be enough for us to learn what
God bids us to be of just and merciful and loving, and
then judge what must be his justice, his mercy, his
love,” &c., &c.
One caution I desire here to add. Owing to essen
tial differences of nature, we need to practise virtues
which cannot exist in God. The exhortation, “ to
imitate him,” in order that we may attain high virtue,
is a precept in the Sermon on the Mount, which Miss
Cobbe, with many assenting, regards as high wisdom,
p. 216 ; but to me it seems a profound mistake, vir
tually reproved by my quotation from her, just made.
We do not see by our outward eyes the moral virtues
of the most High. We find nothing of him outside
of us to imitate ; we only gain some knowledge of him
by first knowing and feeling pure and noble impulses
in ourselves. But when Miss Cobbe deduces from this
precept of imitating God’s indiscriminateness, “ which,
for eighteen centuries has rung in men’s ears,” that
“ we ought to make the same sacrifices for the vicious,
as we should readily make for a beloved friend,” she
�On this World and the other World.
5
seems to forget that we cannot imagine the possibility
of God making any sacrifices at all. At least I do not
yet believe that she would seriously assert that “ mak
ing sacrifices ” is one of his virtues. When from an
imaginary quality in Him, she deduces a superlatively
high-flown and doubtful duty for us, this may warn us
how dangerous is the method she employs.
Nay,
poetry may sternly warn us :—
“ Must innocence and guilt
Perish alike ?—Who talks of innocence ?
Let them all perish. Heav’n will choose its own.
Why should their children live ? The earthquake whelms
Its undistinguish’d thousands, making graves
Of peopled cities in its path ; and this
Is neav’n’s dread Justice ; ay, and it is well.
Why then should we be tender, when the skies
Deal thus with man ? ”
(Mks Hemans’ Vespers of Palermo.)
Surely this is as good an argument as that based upon
the Rain. We cannot be wise in imitating the action
of the elements. All such precepts are an ignis fatuus.
In my belief, duty must stand on its own basis, as a
purely human science, to which religious knowledge
contributes absolutely nothing.
Upon pre-existing
morals, spiritual judgments are built. Religion cannot
tell us what is moral, though it can give great force to
moral aspirations. It can immensely aid us to self
restraint and sacrifice for the attainment of virtue,
hereby in turn making individuals nobler, and conduc
ing to more delicate moral perception, out of which
rises an advance of moral science itself.
But I proceed to Miss Cobbe’s topic, The Hopes of
the Human Race,—that is, the doctrine of human im
mortality. The new Hindoo Theists propound it as a
spiritual axiom. Apparently this was Theodore Parker’s
idea, who, nevertheless, also reasoned for it, if I re
member, from the alleged universal yearning of man
kind. The fact that all men so yearn, always appeared
�6
On this World and the other World.
to me very doubtful; nay, from the history of Hebrew
religious thought, a formidable objection arises : nor is
any such yearning of unspiritual men to me a worthy
argument. Indeed, what do they want ? A life as
closely like this life as possible, only more comfortable.
How can such desires, however universal, be an omen
that they will be gratified ? But when it is asserted,
that in proportion as men become sounder in morals,
and purer in religion, so does this belief of an after
existence, in which sin shall be subjugated, and evil
practically annihilated, grow up and take deep root;
the assertion (if true), comes to me with great weight.
It may not be decisive against objections, but I (cannot
make light of it; and the very possibility of an after
life, has, in my belief, a specific influence on spiritual
thought and feeling.
But to Miss Cobbe mere * possibilities and probabi
lities seem feeble : she is a bolder reasoner. To express
my own judgment, I fear I must say, she is an audaci
ous reasoner. The “ existence of evil ” is with her I a
dread mystery,” which (I am glad to say), she tries to
present as an exception; yet, she only doubtfully admits
Paley’s assertion, that “ it is a happy world after all
and calls his solution (pp. xlii., xliii.) “ an easy-going
optimism.” Truly, in my sentiment, the surrender of
this fact (for, a fact I consider it) would inflict on
Theism a most formidable wound. If there be no
future life, “ Man (she says), is a failure, the consum
mate failure of creation.” On this assertion she bases
the belief, that there must be a future life, to set right
what was wrong here. Seeing that we (the few) are
here happy, and that others, “ no worse than we, and
often far better,” (i drag out lives of misery and priva
tion of all higher joy, and die, perhaps, at last, so far
as their own consciousness goes, in final alienation and
revolt from God and goodness,” therefore, we demand
for these [Italics in the original] “ another and a better
life at the hands of the Divine Justice and Love: and
�On this World and the other World.
7
in as far as any one loves both God and man, so far he
is incapable of renouncing that demand.
One who
thanks God for hisTown joys, and is satisfied without
making “ demand for farther existence for himself or
anybody else,” she entitles “ selfish,” pp. lxiv., lxv.
Now, I try to apply this by taking the case of some
singularly wicked man, whose crimes or vices bring
him to a shameful death; and I ask myself, Could I
approach God in prayer, with this man’s name on my
lips, and say : “Thou hast created him, and hast not
hitherto shown him common justice, or common kind
ness ; thou hast allowed him to become depraved and
miserable ; therefore, I demand of thee a renewed life
for him, in which thou mayst redress thy injustices
and neglects.” To my feelings, such an address is the
height of presumption : even a harsher word may seem
appropriate. It reminds me of a much milder prayer,
that of a Frenchman, opening with the words “ Fear
not, 0 my God, that I am about to reproach thee.”
Yet I cannot see wherein my hypothetical prayer differs
from Miss Cobbe’s argument, except that the one is
said inwardly to one’s self, the other is said inwardly to
him who reads the heart. In substance they are the
same. My reason, as well as my sentiment, is shocked
by it; yet, she “ commends it to us as the true method
of solving the problem of a life after death,” p. lxvii.
Such an avowal is to me very revolting; and from one
whose many high qualities are justly appreciated,
cannot be passed over without definite protest and
disavowal.
Why are we to admit that man, as we see and know
him in this world, “is a failure,—the consummate
failure of creation?” This is a natural idea to those
who believe that the first man was perfect in virtue, and
that a golden age was succeeded by ages of silver, of
brass, of iron, and of clay. “2Etas parentum pejor
avis,” &c. 1 From one who not only has laid aside the
fables of Gentile religions, but reads Lubbock, Darwin,
�8
On this World and the other World.
and Tyndall, we might far rather expect a cheerful
light-heartedness, if not a joyful exultation, that by the
mysterious guidance of a hidden providence, our race is
ever advancing. History is to me a book so bitter of
digestion, that when consulted by aspiring ladies, I
have never dared to advise their study of it, without
warning them how very painful it is. Yet history
brings to me an unshaken conviction that man is no
failure, but a noble success,—the noblest success in the
only world open to our moral sight. The men of the
present day, collectively and on the average, are far
superior in virtue, as well as in knowledge, to those
of oldr
“ Atrides ! speak not falsely, when
Rightly to speak thou knowest.
For us, our boast it is to be
Far better than our fathers.”
Let those who tremble at crumbling creeds fancy
that man is becoming viler and viler, that the ages of
faith and goodness are past, and that we are ripening
for a fiery deluge, as Noah’s contemporaries for the
flood. But from Miss Cobbe I claim a clear perception
that the sway of reason is ever winning on passion and
caprice; that compassion wins on selfish recklessness ;
forethought how crime may be hindered, wins on rude
vengeance ; mild rule wins on severity; woman wins
on man; slavery is fast dying, serfdom is doomed; the
millions obtain a consideration never before accorded to
them; not only is public war less inhuman, less reck
less, less permanent in its ravages, but insurgents too
are less frenzied and milder in their successes ; nor are
foreigners so alienated as once. Man claims foreign
men for brethren as never before. Superstition,
bigotry, persecution are disowned, and are marvellously
abated. All the civilized profess, however little they
practise, equal morality to all races of men ; in all the
strongest communities, science and literature unite
many nations. The increased brilliancy of our light
�On this World and the other World.
9
discloses, alas ! the blackness of our guilt as never
before ; but this is a necessary part of our shame, our
repentance, and our purification. Our crimes and our
vices cause thousands of English hearts to weep
inwardly, as if they were daily afflicted by great
domestic calamity. We will not dissemble nor dis
parage the guilt, which is our common disgrace, and, to
the right-minded, the greatest of afflictions; yet it is
good to be thus afflicted, and it is a part of the agency
by which our nation and all the foremost nations of the
world are to be elevated; yes, and we may boldly say,
this ennobling process is perpetually going on, and
that, with very sensible acceleration. What more
(David Hume well asks) can we wish for than the
gratification of a [noble] passion ? and what passion can
be, in a man, more noble than the longing after a
better and better future for mankind? Miss Cobbe
herself expects this better future; “To judge from
irresistible analogy (she says), every future generation
will have a livelier sympathy with the joys and
sorrows of all sentient beings, such as scarcely in
their tenderest hours the most loving souls of former
ages experienced” (p. xx.). If human nature thus
advances, why does she account man to be a consum
mate failure, if there be no life after death ? Certainly
I, for one, cannot allow that to contribute to the
permanent and true welfare of the human race, of
which we are organic parts, is a slight honour, an
insufficient reward for a whole life of virtue; and
whether from Miss Cobbe, or from anyone else, I must
regard it as mischievous, delusive, and morbid, to pre
tend that life is a mournful dream, an empty bubble,
unless it is to be followed by an immortality. If
seventy years of life are worthless, so are seven
millions. The multiplication of bubbles gives nothing
but bubbles : it cannot change the quality. Life, in
the instinctive belief even of the miserable, is worth
having,—is intrinsically full of joy to every healthy
�io
On this World and the other World.
being. At least, suicides are but a fraction of the
race, and Miss Cobbe will not claim them as par
ticularly sound-minded. To the sound-minded, life
is surely precious; and if it have many pangs, of body
or mind, she herself does not wish it otherwise. Every
great birth comes forth with severe travail; and the
less we have to grieve for personally, the greater the
heartache which must be borne for others. Neverthe
less, every good man joyfully accepts this, nor can it
disturb his serene peace. To hold that pain is an
essential part of the high-training through which God’s
wisdom leads mankind, will not be called by Miss
Cobbe “ an easy-going optimism.” It has long
appeared to me that Virgil, in his treatment of this
whole topic, showed himself a wise philosopher,—
wiser than Christians and wiser than Atheists. “ Pater
ipse colendi Haud facilem esse viam voluit, &c., ...”
“ It was Jupiter (says he) who added evil venom to the
hideous serpent, and ordered the wolves to prowl and
the sea to heave; and shook down the honey from the
leaves, and hid away the fire, and stopped the wine
that ran abroad in rills; that use by practice might,
little by little, hammer out diverse arts—.” To earn
bread by the sweat of the brow, was, in Virgil’s belief,
no curse fulminated from an angry God on the human
race, but a stem necessity imposed by a wise God,
counselling for our exaltation, and “forbidding his
realms to become benumbed in drowsiness.” Miss
Cobbe, in her Intuitive Morals, emphatically proclaims
that virtue is the highest human good, which also it is
the grand unchanging purpose of God to promote in
his human world. She evidently has not changed from
this conviction. She must refuse to admit that the
physical pains suffered by the human race (however
inexplicable in separate instances), do at all in a broad
view affect the great argument of Theism. Moral evil
alone can, in her view, weigh against it.
Consider then the two opposite extreme cases of
�On this World and the other World.
11
her moral argument quoted above. Take, first, a
robber tribe—from the hills of India or from an
Eastern archipelago—or take a family of Thugs.
They were brought up from childhood with a very
narrow moral horizon. Duty to their nearest kin or to
their tribe, they understood; but truthfulness, or mercy,
or justice, to any beyond their tribe, they no more
dreamed of as duty, than an English sportsman thinks
of truthfulness or justice to salmon or hares, or an
ancient Greek or Roman to barbarians whom it was
convenient to attack. Surely it is a great mistake to
account men as wholly without virtue, or wholly miser
able, because the circle within which their virtue is to
be exercised is deplorably narrow. To deny the piety,
or morality, or mental happiness of an ancient Hebrew
king, because of his ferocity to Moabites or Ammonites,
does not belong to a very deep philosophy. His con
science did not condemn him. The Thug had a still
stranger and more perverse religion, coupling itself
more visibly with avarice. He perhaps may be cor
rectly described as having never had a chance of
attaining a noble moral state, and at last dying under
the English hangman, “in alienation to God” Yet
few persons, I think, will see in the fact any proof
that Thugs have a claim on God for a future life in
order to win a nobler morality. In contrast to this,
take the deplorable case of a man of high and refined
genius, subtle talent, poetical gift, easy and fluent
eloquence—acceptable alike to the cultivated and the
rude—a man reared in the highest cultivation both of
the family and of the schools (such a man was well
known in my youth)—who nevertheless surrendered
himself to the love of wine, beer, spirits, laudanum—
in short, any narcotic; and first disgraced himself
beyond recovery, becoming enamoured of the coarsest
company, and before long went down into the grave,
a miserable victim of his debaucheries. Will Miss
Cobbe say, “ God is neither just nor merciful, unless
�12
On this World and the other World.
he doom this man to be saved in another and a better
life ? ” To me the whole argument seems inadmissible;
but I must leave it to the reader’s judgment.
At the bottom of all seems to reside an assumption,
that if God permits wrongs and “undeserved suffering”
in this life, he must needs give retribution in another
life. Man, she says, is bound to do justice and mercy
without delay; but God, having an eternity to work in,
may put it off to a distant time (p. xxxvi.). In early
theology, the Divine Ruler was compared to a human
king, who had his throne and his court, his errand
bearers, his armies, his judges or judge, his executioners
and his prison. Minos, 2Eacus, Rheadamanthys, accord
ing to 2Egypto-Greek notions, judged the dead, as Jesus
for the Christians. Retribution for the crimes of earth
was of course a paramount object in such mythology.
Retribution for our sins or errors we often suffer here,
and therefore may suffer also in a future world; but in
neither case (in my estimate) barely because God is just.
Miss Cobbe propounds (p. 117), as a solemn fact of the
future, a mental purgatory of awful misery, and con
cludes its description by the words, “ when it has been
accomplished, the blessed justice of God will be vindi
cated” (p. 119). Perhaps by justice she here means
nearly the same as goodness; in which case I reverently
accept the thought as possible: yet I fear that the word
contains with her the idea of retribution—of forensic
punishment—which is notoriously the prevalent creed.
“Virtue,” says she (p. 28), “cannot be without reward;
nor can the crimes which human tribunals fail to reach
escape retribution for ever” (so p. 41, 42). But the
analogy from human to divine punishments breaks
down entirely. Indeed, no wise law-giver punishes
for retribution’s sake. Though, without past guilt, the
judge has nothing to punish (for of course he dares not
to touch the innocent); yet the purpose of punishment
is to prevent guilt in the future. ~Li the officer of law
could have prevented it in the past, and did not, he
�On this World and the other World.
13
would be himself to blame. What theology will pro
nounce that God was incapable of hindering sin in the
past, but will be capable of it in the future ? or that,
having been capable in the past, he neglected his duty,
but he will be more attentive in the future ? To put a
chasm and a convulsion between his present and his
future action, seems to me both morally and intellectu
ally inadmissible. The argument that he can delay
punishment, because he has an eternity to work in, is
singularly weak, as if his convenience were the matter
in question; but we have to consider what is equitable
and beneficial to his frail creatures. Elsewhere I have
used a comparison, which I venture here to reproduce,
of punishments by a schoolmaster. These should be
applied day by day, to keep the boys from offence.
The quicker the punishment follows the offence, the
more effective it is as a preventive : hereby it is kept
light—mere chidings may suffice for good discipline.
But if the master were to reserve all punishment to the
year’s end, and meanwhile only threaten and warn, the
volatile temper of children, unable to look far forward,
would make his warnings vain. Impunity would over
throw all discipline, and lead on into actual crime.
Then we should severely blame the master, and almost
exculpate the children. Now, if we are to reason
morally concerning the divine action, we cannot believe
him to leave the guilty unpunished in the present
world, and then to reserve severe punishments for them
in the distant unknown hereafter; nay, without even
public intelligible warning of a future tribunal; though,
indeed, to men as frail and short-sighted as children, no
such warning could be of avail. For this reason, all
idea of future retribution, as such, seems to me quite
untenable in the present stage of knowledge. Such a
Theodice as Leibnitz made an axiom, has no plausi
bility. The punishment of guilt Miss Cobbe regards
as entirely purifying, remedial, and beneficial. Good.
But for the innocent, and for those guilty ones whose
�14
On this World and the other World.
guilt is their misfortune, she intensely demands redress
of wrongs.
“ A tortured slave, a degraded woman,
must be immortal; for God’s creature could not have
been made for torture and pollution” (p. 49). It
would be unjust in the Creator (she alleges, p. xxxvii.)
to create a being “who endured on the whole more
misery than he enjoyed happiness.” An infant which
is born sickly, and, after lingering in undeserved pain
(p. xli.), dies without enjoying life, in her estimate is
injured by its Creator unless it has hereafter a balance
of happiness—a dialect more like to Bentham than we
might expect from her. Of course animals have never
“deserved” the torments which cruel men inflict on
them: must not a just God give them future redress ?
It is almost necessary for her, and she seems not averse,
to adopt from Bishop Butler the immortality of dead
animals. I will only here say, that such a theory
seems to break down with its own weight.
The
essence of justice (she says, p. 42) is, that 11 no one
being shall suffer more than he has deserved, or undergo
the penalty of another’s guilt.” What moral beings
have “ deserved ” is hard to know; that we must suffer,
one for and from another, is involved in the unity of
our race, but not as a forensic penalty.
What perhaps shocks me most, is the instability of
faith to which Miss Cobbe’s logic would lead us. After
much discussion, she brings out the flat avowal, as the
net result (p. 48)—“ Either man is immortal, or God is
not just!1 The whole passage seems to glance at what
I have myself written: my kind friend evidently hopes
to lead me forward to her more elevated position, while,
alas ! she repels me. She seems quite to forget how
limited is our knowledge of the possible and the im
possible ; and that it is by no means certainly beyond
the sphere of external science to establish that the
re-existence of an individual man, whose body has
crumbled to dust, is a physical contradiction. Wherein
Identity consists, no one seems able to say. We know
�On this World and the other World.
15
that our minds and souls were either bom with our
bodies; or, if with Plato we say they pre-existed, their
previous existence was nothing to us. I cannot shut
my eyes to the possibility of its being hereafter accepted
as a physical and metaphysical certainty, that a disem
bodied soul of man is a monstrous idea, against nature,
intrinsically absurd, and incapable of being identified
with a man who has lived in organic flesh. If this
were proved to me beyond dispute, should I then con
clude (or would my friend draw the inference) there
fore God is unjust ? Miss Cobbe herself seems nearly
convinced that memory has been scientifically proved to
depend on “the brain-tablet” (pp. 74-77). What would
future existence be to any of us, if it cut away all the
memory of the present world 1 I confess, if my con
fidence that God is just, depended on the certainty that
man is immortal, while the latter opinion is possibly
disprovable by science, I could have no firm faith in
the attributes of God at all. Miss Cobbe means to
make faith in God primary, and a belief of man’s
immortal life secondary (p. xiii.). Most rightly; but
in fact her proposed dilemma overthrows faith in God,
if immortality be disproved. This I hold to be a very
grave mischief. We censure those preachers who assert
that all moral law rests on supernatural evidence, on
miracles, on an infallible Bible, and that whoever dis
believes miracles may as well be immoral as moral. We
say that such preachers lay a trap for men’s feet, and
prepare for them a career of profligacy so soon as they
unlearn superstitions. But is not Miss Cobbe laying a
net for our feet, a dilemma to cast us into black darkness
of religious sentiment, if ever the progress of external
science happen to prove (which, for anything which she
or I know, may happen) that identity is absolutely
irrecoverable when the vital organs are all dissolved ?
If this were established to-morrow, my cheerful, happy
faith in God would remain undisturbed. I cannot
look with terror on science, but believe that all truth
�16
On this World and the other World.
is good for us. That God works under strict conditions,
all thoughtful persons know, who ascribe wisdom to
him. Mr J. S. Mill, it seems, imagined religious people
to be unaware of this, and thinks to refute them, when
he is saying, coarsely indeed, yet in substance the same,
as they say reverently; but this merely shows how
little intercourse he ever held with any high religious
mind. But only the fanatical can insist that reverence
for God shall depend on his doing for us things intrin
sically impossible.
Miss Cobbe seems anxious to
possess us with an agonizing despair concerning this
present world, if there be not an immortality awaiting
us. She fancies that nothing but clear light or total
darkness is possible: any intermediate position she
calls “playing fast and loose with our beliefs in
immortality” (p. xi.). But between certain knowledge
that a proposition is true and certain knowledge that it
is false, there must very often (and oftenest in the
highest inquiries) be an intermediate state of great
uncertainty; and if this be inevitable to our present
condition, it must be accepted as best for us by all who
revere God.
Spasmodic discontent with inevitable
ignorance, is a morbid state. It is not our task to
govern the world. As we are not “ equal to eternal
cares,” how can we wisely undertake to decide what
conduct is required from the divine justice? It is
astonishing to me that a deeply pious mind can enter
on such an argument. Never did I imagine that on a
religious question I should find myself on the side of
Mr J. S. Mill, and against Miss Cobbe: but so it
seems now to turn out. Sadly and scornfully she
rejects his declaration that the benefit of the doctrine
of immortality I consists less in any specific hope than
in the enlargement of the scale of the feelings.”
Specific hope 1—I never had any, and I am convinced
that very few people have; but the intellectual con
ception of a life after death I feel to be enlarging and
ennobling, though incapable of being fixed. Mr Mill,
�On this World and the other World.
17
I think, does not exhort us to cultivate delusions con
cerning it: he only insists that immortality is not
(cannot he) a proved and certain truth.
That no
proof has hitherto been attained available for all
spiritual minds, appears to me an undeniable certainty.
Not the less is it possible, that always to discuss the
topic and never settle it, enlarges the human senti
ment.
No argument seems to me less weighty than that
favourite one, “ I could not have a day’s happiness,
unless I believed I should meet my babe, or my
husband, or my sister, in Paradise : therefore there
must be a Paradise.” This is certainly very deep in
Miss Cobbe, who indicates that she was brought to a
belief in immortality by the death of one deeply
beloved.
Deep grief has its values,—grief for the
loss of friends, as well as grief of other kinds: I
certainly do not plead for heartlessness or apathy.
But as, when a revered parent departs in very full
age, grief is milder and soon fades into sweet and
sacred remembrance, so too ought it surely to be with
every loss, though for a while acuter. But to nourish
perpetual grief, to refuse every consolation but a belief
in immortality,—vowing to be miserable for life, if we
cannot attain this conviction,—presents itself to me as
emphatically morbid.
With the educated, the whole idea of God’s govern
ment of the world is essentially changed, since the
time that Christianity became prevalent.
Jew and
Christian, Manichaean and Arab, Saxon and Celt, so
far as they believed in any divine government at all,
supposed it to be carried on by direct intervention.
Jesus himself (if we believe his biographer), announced
the doctrine : “ If I pray to my Father, he will
presently give me more than twelve legions of angels.”
While this angelic theory was current, all the reasonings
concerning divine rule were different from what we
can now accept. At present neither of our Protestant
Archbishops, nor yet Archbishop Manning, expects
�18
On this World and the other World.
divine aid for the church through the swords of angels.
We hold universally, that divine influence follows
subtler paths for working its designs; a procedure
for which there must be profound reasons. Some
reasons we understand, but our knowledge must ever
remain mutilated and very partial.
If cruel and
undeserved torture had been prevented, that of course
would be the thing to rejoice us; that it has not been
prevented, startles us dreadfully; but after it has been
permitted, it cannot be undone. If it be an imputa
tion on the Divine Justice, let it have what weight it
may. To raise animals or men from the dead, and
give them a balance of happiness as a late compensation
for injustice, does not exalt my idea of the divine rule;
and for man to devise, this method of divine compensa
tion for injuries, which, according to our barbarian
reasoning, God ought to have prevented, strikes me
as reasoning equally barbarian.
This leads to a matter already touched on,—the
assumption that God’s future rule is to differ from his
past rule. If theology could be a web spun entirely
out of the head and heart, we might abide by our own
theories of divine rule, unmolested by material science.
But in fact it is from the outer world, reasoned on by
us, that the first suggestion of a World Spirit comes,
and from our own spirits we reason out some of the
attributes of that Spirit from whom is our origin.
Then we are bound to check our notions by observed
facts. We cannot disregard external attestations: then
we discover to our dismay that the divine rule is
wonderfully, nay, terribly, different from what we
expected.
Surely then humility should conclude;
“We are somewhere in mistake : God is wiser and
better than we, and our fancies were folly.”
How
then can we add, “ Because he has not done now what
we thought he ought to do, we are quite sure he will
do it hereafter, else he would not be just.” I had
fancied that only an infantine philosophy could expect
God’s future rule to differ from his past; that is, a
�On this World and the other World.
19
different law of justice to rule in a future (or in an
unseen), world, from that which exists in the seen and
known world.
To argue: “ This present world is
terribly bad, therefore there is an unseen world in
which everything is good; or if not, then God is
unjust,” appears to me to be planting the germ of
Atheism, and not at all to attain the wisdom, or even
the humility, of modern science. I cannot consent to
condemn as bad, the only world of God which I surely
know. There is evil in it which appals us, and evil
against which we are bound all our lives to struggle ;
but it is not, therefore, simply bad, and requiring a
supplementary world to be believed in, before we will
praise God for the present world. To say so, is to
throw contumely on all the religion of the early
Hebrews. Yet with its abundant infantine errors, it
originated for us that inward piety, which Miss Cobbe
with me values as life ; a piety, which according to
her, if I rightly understand her logic, was with them
groundless, because they did not believe in immortality..
But again, the future world which Christians
imagine (and apparently Miss Cobbe also), is to have
no evil in it. Whether this mean physical or moral
evil, in both cases it seems to me incredible. Beings
which have no bodies cannot have bodily pain j yet if
we imagine a community of personalities without
wants, none seem to have duties : something of want
and possible pain appears even desirable.
And if
there be duties (without which we are not moral
beings) finite creatures must always make partial
failures and be liable to error, wrong-doing, sin; and
virtue, which in a finite being cannot be divinely
perfect, must always need effort, sometimes even
struggle, to rise. Is it credible, that our Creator, who
put us in this world for present duty, should intend us
to hammer out for ourselves the image of an unrevealed
world, and plant this in the front of our adoration of
him, as something to be believed as firmly as his
existence and goodness 1 I confess, nothing has made
�20
On this World and the other World.
me so sympathize with the Secularists, as reading this
Book of Miss Cobhe. A future life which can only
be conceived most dimly, hidden away in the back
ground and reverentially contemplated as possible, acts
on us profoundly, like gazing into nightly darkness, and
seeing the mysterious infinite universe. It acts much
on the sentiment, little on the intellect; it does not
use up the mind by fruitless activity, nor has it any
influence at all for evil. As for its reasonableness,
even so severe a reasoner as J. S. Mill does not
censure, and rather commends it. But a doctrine of
immortality, thrust into the front of religion, intruded
upon us as a condition without which we may not
believe God to be just, distorts all proportions and
perspective, and perniciously carries minds into endless
argumentation hostile to tranquil serene reverence.
Thereby it defeats the end which my very devout
friend sincerely proposes to herself.
I more than ever doubt, whether religious thought
concerning these particular matters has changed since
the age of Cicero. In his dialogues are found sub
stantially all that our materialists can now urge against
a divine rule. It has often occurred to me, that the
Oriental doctrine of the stubbornness of matter was
perhaps only their mode of stating, that God works
under conditions,—partially known to us.
Side by
side with Atheism or Pantheism, were men, like
Cleanthes, who held to the belief of a perfect and just
God. The Stoics and Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus
did not need the belief of future existence (though like
Socrates many of them half believed it), to maintain
that virtue was the chief good, and that this remained
true even to a martyr dying on the rack. If Miss
Cobbe, assuming the character of a Satanic tempter,
had put to Thrasea her question, “ Why is it worth
while for you to persevere in virtue, when you are in
five or ten minutes to be annihilated 1 ” he would have
replied, “simply because virtue is the chief good;”
and I think she would applaud.
�INDEX TO MB SCOTT’S PUBLICATIONS,
ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED.
The, following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing
a letter enclosing the price in postage stamps to Mr THOMAS
SCO TT, No. 11, The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.E.
Price
». d.
ABBOTT, FRANCIS E., Editor of ‘Index,’Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A.
The Impeachment of Christianity. With Letters from Miss F. P. Cobbe and
Prof. F. W. Newman, giving tlieir reasons for not calling themselves Christians 0 3
Truths for the Times
-03
ANONYMOUS.
A Plain Statement,
-03
Address on the Necessity of Free Inquiry and Plain Speaking,
- 0 3
A. I. Conversations. By a Woman, for Women. Parts I., II., and III., 6d. each 1 6
Christianity and its Evidences
-06
Euthanasia; an Abstract of the Arguments for and against it,
- 0 3
A Few Self-Contradictions of the Bible -10
Euthanasia,
-.
-03
Modern Orthodoxy and Modern Liberalism
-00
Modern Protestantism. By the Author of “The Philosophy of Necessity.”
-06
Nine Yea'rs a Curate -03
One Hundred and One Questions to which the Orthodox, &c. Per dozen
- 1 0
On Public Worship
----03
Our First Century
.06
Primitive Church History --09
Sacred History as a Branch of Elementary Education. Part I.—Its Influence
on the Intellect. Part II.—Its Influence on the Development of the Con
science. 6d each Part
- ’
- 1 0
The Church and its Reform. A Reprint ’ ---JO
The Opinions of Professor David F. Strauss
- 0 6
The Twelve Apostles
■ -06
Via Catholica-; or, Passages from the Autobiography of a Country Parson
Parts I., II., and III., Is. 3d. each Part
- 3 9
Woman’s Letter
-03
AN EX-CLERGYMAN.
What is jhe Church or England ? A Question for the Age.
_ -' _ - 0 6
BARRISTER, A.- Notes on Bishop Magee’s Pleadings for Christ - 0 6
Orthodox Theories of Prayer
-.-03
BASTARD, THOMAS HORLOOK. Scepticism and Social Justice - 0 3
BENEFICED CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
The Chronological Weakness of Prophetic Interpretation - 1 0
The Evangelist and the Divine
-10
The Gospel of the Kingdom »
-06
BENTHAM, JEREMY. The Church of England Catechism Examined. Reprint 1 0
BERNSTEIN, A.
Origin of the Legends of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Critically Examined 1 0
BESANT, Mrs A.
Natural Religion, versus Revealed Religion
- 0 4
On Eternal Torture -06
On the Deity of Jesus. Parts I. and IL, 6d. each Part
- 1 0
On The Atonement
' -06
BRAY, CHARLES.
Illusion and Delusion ; or Modern Pantheism versus Spiritualism,
- 0 6
The Reign of Law in Mind as in Matter. Parts I. and II., 6d each Part
- 1 0
Toleration: with Some Remarks on Professor Tyndall’s Address at Belfast,
- 0 6
BROOK, W. 0. CARR. Reason versus Authority - 0 3
BROWN, GAMALIEL.
An Appeal to the Preachers of all the Creeds
- 0 3
Sunday Lyrics -03
The New Doxology
-03
CANTAB, A. Jesus versus Christianity
-06
CLARK, W. G., M.A., Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
A Review of a Pamphlet, entitled, “The Present Dangers of the Church of
England”
■ -06
�List of Publications—continued.
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
cs co ca co os os so
0
0
0
M co«o
1
co
0
co
0
sooscosocost
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
os os
CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
An examination of Liddon’s Bampton Lecture
----Dr Farrar’s “ Life of-Christ.” A Letter to Thomas Scott
Letter and Spirit
--------The Analogy of Nature and Religion—Good and Evil The Question of Method, as affecting Religious Thought Rational Piety and Prayers for Fair Weather Spiritual Gambling; or, The Calculation of Probabilities in Religion,
CONWAY, MONCURE, D.
Consequences, ---------The Spiritual Serfdom of the Laity. With Portrait
• The Voysey Case
--------COUNTRY PARSON, A.
The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Creeds,—Their Sense and their Non-Sense.
Parts I., II., and III. 6d. each Part
-----COUNTRY VICAR, A.
Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. Review of a paper by Dr Lang
CRANBROOK, The late Rev. JAMES.
On the Existence of Evil
------On the Formation of Religious Opinions '
On the Hindrances to Progress in Theology
----The Tendencies of Modern Religious Thought
.
.
God’s Method of Government,
—
----On Responsibility,
--Positive Religion—Four Lectures, ----each
DEAN, PETER. The Impossibility of knowing what is Christianity Dr CARPENTER at Sion College ; or
The View of Miracles Taken by Men of Science DUBLIN DIVINITY STUDENT—Christianity and its Evidences—No. I.
DUPUIS. Christianity a form of the great Solar Myth F. H. I. Spiritual Pantheism -------FOREIGN CHAPLAIN.
The Efficacy of Prayer, a Letter to Thomas Scott
Everlasting Punishment. A Letter to Thomas Scott,
FORMER ELDER IN A SCOTCH CHURCH. On Religion
GELDART, Rev E. M.. The Living God
-----GRAHAM, A. D.
On Faith ----------Cruelty and Christianity : A Lecture,
-----HANSON, Sir R. D., Chief-Justice of South Australia.
Science and Theology --------HARE, The Right Rev FRANCIS, D.D., formerly Lord Bishop of Chichester.
The Difficulties and Discouragements which attend the Study of the
Scriptures
------HENNELL, SARA S.
On The Need of Dogmas in Religion. A letter to Thos. Scott
HINDS, SAMUEL, D.D., late Bishop of Norwich.
Another Reply to the Question, “What have we got to Rely on, if we
0
0
0
0
6
6
9
6
0
0
0
0
3
6
6
3
0 8
0 6
0 4
0 6
0
6
CANNOT RELY ON THE BIBLE
-06
to the Question, “Apart from Supernatural Revelation, What
is the Prospect of Man’s Living after Death ?”-06
A Reply to the Question—“Shall I seek Ordination in the Church of
England ?”
-06
The Nature and Origin of Evil. A Letter to a Friend
- 0 6
A Reply
HOPPS, Rev J. PAGE.
Thirty-nine Questions on the Thirty-nine Articles. With Portrait
HUTCHISON, THOMAS DANCER—The Free-Will Controversy, -
- 0 3
- 0 6
JEVONS, WILLIAM.
The Book of Common Prayer Examined in the Light of the Present Age.
Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part
-10
Claims of Christianity to the Character of a Divine Revelation, Considered 0 6
The Prayer Book Adapted to the Age
-03
KALISCH, M. Ph.D.,
Theology of the Past and the Future. Reprinted from Part I. of his Commen
tary on Leviticus. With Portrait -10
�List of Publications—continued.
s. d.
KIRKMAN. The Rev THOMAS P., Rector of Croft, Warrington.
Church Cursing and Atheism
------On Church Pedigrees. Parts I. and II. With Portrait. 6d. each Part On the Infidelity of Orthodoxy. In Three Parts. 6d. each Part
Orthodoxy from the Hebrew Point of View. Parts I. and II. 6d. each,
LAKE, J. W.
Plato, Philo, and Paul; or, The Pagan Conception of a “Divine Logos,” shew
to have been the basis of the Christian Dogma of the Deity of Christ, LA TOUCHE, J. D., Vicar of Stokesay, Salop.
The Judgment of the Committee of Council in the Case of Mr. Voysey - LAYMAN, A, and M.A., of Trinity College, Dublin.
Law and the Creeds --------Thoughts on Religion and the Bible
-----LEWIS, TERESA. Cremation.............................................................................
MAOFIE, MATT.
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience to the Laws of the Universe The Religious Faculty : Its Relation to the other Faculties, and its Perils,
The Cardinal Dogmas of Calvinism traced to their origin, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge.
Pleas for Free Inquiry. Parts I., IL. in. and IV. 6d. each Part
MACKAY, CHARLES, LL.D. The Souls of the Children MACLEOD, JOHN
Recent Theological Addresses. A Lecture
MAITLAND, EDWARD.
Jewish Literature and Modern Education: or, the Use and Abuse of the
Bible in the Schoolroom
-------How to Complete the Reformation. With Portrait
The Utilization of the Church Establishment MUIR, J., D.C.L.
Religious and Moral Sentiments. Freely translated from Indian Writers,
Three Notices of the “ Speaker’s Commentary,” translated from the Dutch
of Dr. A. Kuenen,
---M.P., Letter by. The Dean of Canterbury on Science and Revelation
NEALE, EDWARD VANSIT TART.
Does Morality depend on Longevity ?
I
Genesis Critically Analysed, and continuously arranged; with Introductory
Remarks
---------The Mi'thical Element in Christianity
-----The New Bible Commentary' and the Ten Commandments
NEWMAN, Professor F. W.
Against Hero-Making in Religion James and Paul
----On the Causes of Atheism.
With Portrait
_
On the Relations of Theism to Pantheism ; and On the Galla Religion On the Historical Depravation of Christianity On this World and the other World,
-----Reply to a Letter from an Evangelical Lay Preacher The Controversy about Prayer
----.
_
The Divergence of Calvinism from Pauline Doctrine
. The Religious Weakness of Protestantism
The True Temptation of Jesus. With Portrait
Thoughts on the Existence of Evil The Two Theisms
-------Ancient Sacrifice,
----OLD GRADUATE. Remarks on Paley’s Evidences
OXLEE, The Rev JOHN, a Confutation of the Diabolarchy PADRE OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH.
The Unity of the Faith among all Nations
PARENT AND TEACHER, A.. Is Death the end of all things for Man? PHYSICIAN, A.
A Dialogue by way of Catechism,—Religious, Moral, and Philosophical
Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part
------The Pentateuch, in Contrast with the Science and Moral Sense of our Age
Part I.—Genesis, Is. 6d. Part II.—Exodus, Is. Part III.—Leviticus, Is.
Part IV.—Numbers, Is. Part V.—Deuteronomy, Is. Part VI.—Joshua, 6d., PRESBYTER ANGLICANUS.
Eternal Punishment. An Examination of the Doctrines held by the Clergy of
the Church of England
H
The Doctrine of Immortality in its Bearing on Education
1
1
1
1
0
0
6
0
0
0 &
0 6
0 «
0 3
0
0
0
2 0
0 3
0 3
1 6
0 6
0 6
0 6
0 6
0 6
0 6
1 0
1 0
0 3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1 0
6 O
0 G
0 6
�List of Publications—continued.
s. d.
ROBERTSON, JOHN, Ooupar-Angus.
Intellectual Libertt
-66
The Finding of the Book
-20
SCOTT, THOMAS.
Basis of a New Reformation
.
-09
Commentators and Hierophants ; or, The Honesty of Christi'an Commentators
in Two Parts. 6d. each Part
-10
Practical Remarks on “The Lord’s Prater."
- 0 6
The Dean of Ripon on the Physical Resurrection of Jesus, in its Bearing
on the Truth of Christianity
. ... 0 6
The English Life of Jesus. A New Edition
- 4 4
The Tactics and Defeat of the Christian Evidence Society
- 0 6
SHAEN, MISS—Prayer and Love to God, per doz. 1 0
STRANGE, T. LUMISDEN, late Judge of the High Court of Madras.
A Critical Catechism. Criticised by a Doctor of Divinity, and defended by
T. L. Strange
.06
An Address to all Earnest Christians
.....
Clerical Integrity
...
-03
Communion with God .....
...03
The Bennett Judgment
....
...03
The Bible; Is it “The Word of God?”
-06
The Speaker’s Commentary Reviewed
-26
The Christian Evidence Society
.
-03
The Exercise of Prayer,
.
.
-03
SUFFIELD, Rev. ROBERT RODOLPH.
The Resurrection An Easter Sermon at the Free Christian Church, Croydon - 0 3
Five Letters on Conversion to Roman Catholicism
- 0 3
The Vatican Decrees and the “Expostulation,” - 0 6
VOYSEY, The R6v. OHAS. On Moral Evil
- 0 6
W. E. B.
An Examination of some Recent Writings about Immortality - 0 6
The Province of Prater,
-06
WHEELWRIGHT, Rev. GEORGE.
The “Edinburgh Review” and Dr Strauss
- 0 3
Three Letters on the Voysey Judgment and the Christian Evidence
Society’s Lectures,
-06
WORTHINGTON, The Rev W. R.
On the Efficacy of Opinion in Matters of Religion
- 0 6
ZERFFI, G. G., Ph.D.
The Origin and the Abstract and Concrete Nature of the Devil, -03
SCOTT’S “ENGLISH LIFE OF JESUS.”
In One Volume, 8vo, bound in cloth, post free, 4s. 4d.,
SECOND EDITION OF
THE
ENGLISH
LIFE
OF JESUS.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR,
THOMAS SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Notice.—Post Office Orders to be made payable to Thomas Scott,
Westow Hill Office, Upper Norwood, London, S.E.
Friends to the cause ofu Free Inquiry and Free Expression,” are
earnestly requested to give aid in the wide dissemination of these
publications.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
On this and the other world
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Newman, Francis William [1805-1897.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 20, [4] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Publisher's list on unnumbered pages at the end. Date of publication from British Library catalogue. Critique of Frances Power Cobbe's 'Essays on life after death' republished from Theological Review, with an added 'elaborate, and, in many respects, valuable Preface commenting on Mr. J.S. Mill's three Posthumous essays'. p. [3]. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Date of publication from British Library catalogue.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1875]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G4857
G5501
Subject
The topic of the resource
Death
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (On this and the other world), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Afterlife
Conway Tracts
Frances Power Cobbe
Future Life
Morris Tracts
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/ec9496044e9a0412a63eb28fed48afd0.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=sltQt8LhaxvVaUqqU8aoRjuUVFcReX%7EgXp7sZ1n-SKjrLfQly6EmiZHLPzPdLj-DQcY9cSiSu0siM93LDxUpaZVwS6dkOheyrG3iEe1doN2-bisEYcnQt-BEaRFsW3nuzHYSU6jElkvKQlTR6HNC8Yg4LiaL2uKpHVwJTC%7EP3RkCkL5bwpHGd0USrPXAsho8gcXHiBBIIN61bsXV3QYsvztyoLQRcjMAfCYBGKHF0bl-z66h1tmPd%7ENnOwew6OqbxORUarqkeK2S8hencFpR3kejVD2pqq%7EYmu5WqOLg5En80zGUypivdBL9KE%7EQdHFgD3nPk5l%7E5AdH3De69V6qCw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
6146df00ac523b2f672b66349fe93099
PDF Text
Text
MTOETALITY IN HARMONY WITH MAN’S NATURE
AND EXPERIENCE—CONFESSIONS OF SCEPTICS.
Br THOMAS BEEVIOB.
“ Strangers born on mountains and living’ in lowland places, pine in an incurable homesickness. We belong to a higher place, and therefore an eternal longing consumes us.”
Jean Paul Richter.
The universal belief in a Future Life among all races of men
through all the historic ages, and even, as is now known, in
pre-historic times, is a broad fact of human experience of which
materialistic and sceptical philosophies can give no adequate
explanation. They have two favourite methods of dealing with
it. They first seek to disallow its alleged universality on the
ground of certain exceptions. We are told that there are whole
tribes of men who have no such belief, and that in almost
every community there are individuals and sometimes entire
sects who disbelieve or doubt of any life after death; and secondly,
that the belief has. its origin solely in human ignorance and fear,
in baseless hopes and poetic fancies.
We at once admit that there are exceptions to the belief in
question, though these are of so limited a range that they no
more affect the conclusion deduced from a general survey of
mankind, than the elevations and depressions of the earth’s
surface affect its spherical form. They are far less numerous
than has been supposed. Many tribes, who were once thought
destitute of this belief, have been found on more careful enquiry
and with a more intimate knowledge of their language and
customs, to share in some form in this common belief of man
kind. The few real exceptions are of a kind which fairly
considered rather confirm than invalidate the rule.
If the belief was simply due to human ignorance, we should
naturally expect to find it most inveterate where that ignorance
was most nearly absolute, and that it would pale its ineffectual
fire under the advancing sunlight of knowledge. Is this so ?
So far as its absence from any entire tribe of men is concerned,
quite the contrary. The tribes so triumphantly appealed to by the
Materialist are the very lowest in the scale of humanity. If there
is any truth in the theory of the development of man from some
lower form of animal life, it would be just among those tribes, if
anywhere, that we should expect to find “ the missing link,”
,
�2
In tribes whose intelligence and moral nature is so unde
veloped that they cannot count their fingers, and have no word
expressive of thanks or gratitude, we can scarcely expect that
a spiritual belief of any kind is possible. It would seem that
the very faculties to which such belief makes appeal were not
yet sufficiently developed to receive it, and we might as rea
sonably contend from these instances that the powers of
numeration or the sense of gratitude were not common to
mankind, as from these examples to impugn the belief in
question as a universal faith.
The doubt and denial of a Future Life in civilized com
munities, and especially the prevalence of modern unbelief, is a
grave and far more complex problem.
In the official Report on Religious Worship, 1853, we read:—
There is a sect, originated lately, called “Secularists,” their chief tenet
being that, as the fact of a Future Life is (in their view) susceptible of some
degree of doubt, while the fact and necessities of a present life are matters of
direct sensation, it is prudent to attend exclusively to the concerns of that
existence which is certain and immediate, not wasting energies in preparation
for remote and merely possible contingencies. This is the creed which,
probably with most exactness, indicates the faith which, virtually though
not professedly, is held by the masses of our working population.
And the report, speaking specially of artisans and other
workmen, adds:—
It is sadly certain that this vast, intelligent, and growingly important
section of our countrymen is thoroughly estranged from our religious institutions
in their present aspect.
The members of the .Evangelical Alliance, during their
recent session, admitted and deeply deplored the increase and
wide range of Materialism, and sought means to arrest it.
Mr. Farrar, in his Witness of History to Christ, 1871, tells us
that in the previous century the attacks on Christianity were
rare : “ It is not so now ; we are, as it were, in the very focus
of the storm. It is not that every now and then there is a burst
of thunder and a glare of lightning, but the whole air is electric
with quivering flame.”
Dean Goulbourn, of Norwich, writes :—“ The frightful
prevalence of sceptical views among all classes of the community,
and the alarming fact that even among the clergy themselves
insidious objections to the things which are most surely believed
among us are gradually winning their way, seems to make it
imperative upon all persons and societies entrusted with the
guardianship of the faith to make some definite effort to stem
the evil.” The Hon. Robert Dale Owen, in a letter to the
New York Tribune, writes :—“ A bishop, who is held in deser
vedly high estimation by the orthodox body to which he belongs^
stated to me his conviction that evidences of infidelity are daily
�3
multiplying among intelligent men ; adding that he had lately
heard a Professor of Harvard College express the opinion that
Ehree-fourths of our chief scientific men were unbelievers.”
No doubt similar testimonies might be quoted in regard to
every nation of Christendom, where a spirit of free enquiry
prevails, and free speech and writing are allowed. Many who
entertain these views are men of much information and ability,
some even of eminence, and generally, I doubt not, their doubts are
as honest as the faith of those who subscribe to the orthodox creed.
To deal adequately with, the problem thus presented would
require far more space than is at my command; but there are
some obvious considerations which I think may greatly help us
in its solution.
Very much of our Modern Scepticism is but the natural,
and on the whole wholesome, reaction against the excessive
and unenlightened credulity and superstition of former ages;
the protest of the human reason and conscience against certain
representations of the nature and conditions of that life re
volting alike to both. These crude! and cruel conceptions
of a barbarous and ferocious time, from which the human
mind has not yet fully emancipated itself, require to be
separated and distinguished from the essential belief with, which
they are associated, and which they so cruelly disfigure and
discredit. The wonder is, not that so many rejeet the doctrine
of a Future Life when so presented, but that any can accept it.
It is a striking proof of the vitality of this belief as a perma
nent element in human nature that ft is able to survive at all
under the weight of so oppressive and terrible a burden. Let
the Future Life be but presented as Spiritualism reveals it,
and it will neither shock the intellect nor the heart, but will be
found entirely consonant with both; and I am fully persuaded
that when its teachings are better understood it will be hailed
by thousands who, repelled by the crude, false and gloomy
representations of theologians, now reject it as incredible.
There are crises in individual life, especially of the sensitive
and thoughtful, when we must pass through the wilderness of
doubt to the Canaan of our rest; when the heavens above us
are as brass, and a thick palpable darkness broods all around,
when we reel and stagger under an unwonted burden; when
thought and feeling are painful from their intensity, and old
forms of faith shrivel in their glowing fires, by which however
the dross is finally purged from the pure gold of a diviner faith.
■ Again, it is to be noted that the human mind advances not •
equally and simultaneously on all sides, but as it were by
irregular leaps and movements, now in one direction, now in
another; one period is pre-eminently an age of faith, another
�4
of philosophical speculation, in a third, art is in the ascendant.
The philosophers of Greece and Rome despised the mechanical
arts as base and unworthy of philosophers. When learning
and culture were almost exclusively confined to ecclesiastics!
theology and scholastic philosophy were deemed all-important,
and any curious prying into the secrets of nature was regarded
with suspicion, and denounced as magic. During the last cen
tury physical science has made greater progress than perhaps
in any cycle of human history. Its progress has been so
rapid and startling, and it has conferred such vast benefits
on mankind, that it need excite small surprise that, dazzled
and fascinated, its votaries should occupy themselves almost
exclusively with its objects and methods, and that they should
be sceptical as to the existence of a spiritual world not to
be discovered by the telescope, or of a soul in man which
eludes all chemical analysis and physiological research. We are
naturally tempted to set a disproportionate value on our own
favourite study, and to attach comparatively slight regard to
studies of an opposite kind, jin like manner in our own day,
men preoccupied and engrossed with the study of the contents
and phenomena of the material universe, neglect and slight the
study of psychology (properly so called), and of that larger
spiritual universe, which though infinitely transcending it in
importance, yet does not admit of verification by their, instru
ments and tests, and which they therefore hold to be either
non-existent, or at best, incapable of proof. I fail to see how
this materialistic tendency of science is to be arrested save by
those sensuous and palpable demonstrations of spiritual existence
which may now be found on every hand, meeting the sceptical
scientist on his own ground, by presenting those experimental
proofs of a life beyond death which alone he is prepared to
accept as satisfactory and conclusive.
A still more potent cause of Modern Scepticism is, I think,
to be found in the position which has generally for now upwards
of a century been taken with increasing boldness and tenacity
by Protestant churches and theologians.
To make this more clear^ let us briefly enquire what has
been the origin of this universal belief in a Future Life? and
by what means has it been chiefly sustained? It did not, we
may be sure, originate in b priori reasonings on the subject.
It was not born into the world after long gestation in the brains
of subtle metaphysicians^ nor was it the idle creation of poetic
fancy. The long elaborate chain of metaphysical argument
now employed against unbelievers was the product of a later, a
more critical and sceptical age; and whatever influence it may
at any time have had over a few speculative and thoughtful
�5
•
»
r
minds, it has never had any considerable weight in determining
the general belief of mankind on this great question.
“ Man goeth down into the grave, and where is he ?” would
indeed have been a doleful enquiry had the response come
from no other oracle than this. When all that had been
visible of friend or kinsman was buried or burned to ashes,
what but the most positive evidence, the most absolute proof,
could establish the belief of his continued existence ? 11 This
opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is
diffused, could become universal only by its truth. Those that
never heard of another world would not have agreed in a tale
which nothing but experience could render credible.” The
united testimony of travellers, and the history and literature
(sacred and secular) of all peoples, show that this belief has its
root in actual knowledge; in direct experience of spirit-appear
ance, manifestation, intercourse, and revelation; and that
it is mainly by these direct proofs, responding to our in
tuitions or natural tendencies, that the faith in immortality is
kept alive and nourished, conquering the incredulity which
otherwise would probably have remained invincible.
Even John Stuart Mill, in his posthumous essay On Theism,
just published, urges that—
“ The argument from tradition, or the general belief of the
human race, if we accept it as a guide to our own belief, must
be accepted entire; if so we are bound to believe that the souls
of human beings not only survive after death, but show them
selves as ghosts to the living; for we find no people who have
had the one belief without the othe^. Indeed, it is probable
that the former belief originated in the latter, and that primitive
men would never have supposed that the soul did not die with the
body, if they had not fancied that it visited them after death.”
I do not mean by these remarks to disparage the value of
those moral facts and considerations usually appealed to in this
controversy. But however these may be appraised, they con
fessedly raise the argument no higher than probability; and
even among believers there are many’, like Dr. Johnson, who
want more evidence, and more direct and conclusive evidence
than this. In default of obtaining it, they may indeed content
themselves with the assurances of Revelation; but to un
believers in a Future Life, who do not recognise its authority,
any appeal to it would be manifestly futile.
The Christian Church was not founded on a set of Articles,
or a bundle of propositions voted by the majority of a council;
but on the recognition that as a fact one among them had risen
from the dead, and had as a spirit frequently been seen by, and
held converse with, his disciples and friends. This was the
�6
cardinal doctrine of the early Christians, the central fact the
acknowledgment of which was their common bond of union.
This was their common faith and hope; they had an un
doubting assurance that as He lived they should live also. This
inspired the joyful paean, “O death, where is thy sting!”
This inspired them with enthusiasm, and a courage to brave
torture and death. It was the apparition of Christ—the risen,
the glorified spirit, that converted Saul the persecutor into Paul
the apostle, and transformed the heresy of an obscure provincial
sect into a universal faith. And this faith was confirmed by
manifold signs and wonders: by manifestations of supernatural
power, and the outpouring of spiritual gifts—the discerning of
spirits, speaking in unknown tongues, casting out evil spirits,
healing by the laying on of hands, visions, trances, and revela
tions. The Greek and Latin churches maintain the continuance
of these gifts and their perpetuity, and especially as the accom
paniment of pre-eminent sanctity and Divine favour. The
fathers of th® Reformation—Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Knox ;
the founders of churches—Fox, Swedenborg, Zinzendorf,
Wesley, Irving; the most learned and able divines of the
sixteenth and ^seventeenth centuries—Glanville, Cudworth,
More, Baxter, maintained the continued exercise of spiritual I
powers, both good and evil, visibly intervening in the affairs of
men; and like the Spiritualists of to-day they appealed to-these
facts in confutation of Atheists and Sadducees. “ Many,” says .
Baxter, “ are convinced by these arguments from sense, who can
not yet reach, and will not be persuaded by, other demonstration.”
But as the sceptical philosophy of Hume and Middleton,
Douglas and Farmer, has penetrated the churches, and per
vaded their theology, Ithey have become powerless against
the advancing hosts of unbelief. Their admissions have been
fatal, and the truth has suffered in consequence more from its
defenders than its assailants. The province of the supernatural
m human affairs was first circumscribed within a small geograph
ical area; then its duration was limited; the age of miracles
ceased, we were told, after five centuries of Christianity, the
limit was soon reduced to three centuries, and then to the
Apostolic age; and now, as might have been expected, divines and
learned professors are finding out that even this last small reserve
must be abandoned with the rest. No wonder that unbelievers
regard their victory as Complete, and that writers like Frances
Power Cobbe now contemptuously dismiss the New Testament
narratives of Christ’s resurrection and visible appearance as
c , ,ewish Ghost-Stories”—the last lingering rag of prejudice
folded around an effete superstition.
How dim, shadowy, and uncertain are the ideas of the
�7
Future Life of its professed believers. How much unconscious
and practical infidelity concerning it prevails among them I
How little they realise the strength, the joy, the consolation it
should impart I Enter a Christian cemetery, see the mourners
draped in melancholy black; the sombre cypress and the weep
ing willow overshadowing the tombs; the broken pitcher, the
shattered column, the inverted torch, all around you I Were
it the avowed conviction that death is an eternal sleep, what more
fitting symbols could be devised? Words indeed are read over
the grave expressing a solemn hope of the resurrection and the
life, and this is often all that reminds us we are not in a burial
place of Pagans. Frances Power Cobbgiin Dawning Lights thus
depicts the general tone of thought andjfeeling on this subject.
11 We have contrived to banish our own immortality to a
twilight limbo, which we place nowalfe in the universe of space,
. anc|j conceive of as nowise affected by.the limitations of time.
We believe, indeed, that we shall exist hereafter; and that in
some unknown existence our moral sense will be satisfied by the
reward of suffering virtue and the punishment of vice unchas4:tised upon this planet. But iDeyonclfeSO
telleth a tale of
unspeaking death?’ Who ventures so much as to cast an
image from the magic-lantern of fancy upon that dread 1 cloud’
which receives all the dead out of our sight, and whereon our
fathers fearlessly threw the phantasmagoria of the Divina Commedia^ and the triumphal vision with which closes the Pilgrim!s
Progress?..........................The world®, enveloped in mist, are
fading away into comparative insignificance. We do not think
of them as we once did. We cannot measure the latitude of
our voyage over life’s ocean by orbs hidden behind the clouds.
Without denying, or even gravely doubting, we allow the
future to pass into dim distance, and the present to fill the whole
« foreground of our thoughts.”
With, on the one hand, men of science affirming that there is
nothing more supernatural than matter, in which we are to seek
all the potencies and possibilities of life and mind; and on the
other, theologians resting the belief in immortality on uncertain
reasonings, and on waning authority and ancient traditions which
on their own showing are ouwof harmony with all later and
present experience, what wonder that there is an “ eclipse of
faith,” and that men generally, even when not avowed
Materialists or Sceptics, should seek to content themselves with
the certainties of the present world, and “jump the life to
come ? ”
But this condition and temper of mind, whether due to
general causes or special experience, or their conjoint operation,
is in its nature exceptional and transitory.
�8
“ Thanks to the human heart, by which we live,” it is not
possible as a finality in which the soul can rest; nor can it find
its full satisfaction in merely secular good. Those who have
tried its capacity to the utmost, who have sounded the depths
and shallows of life, and its possibilities of enjoyment, have in
proportion to their own largeness of nature felt its insufficiency,
and confirmed the old sorrowful conclusion of the preacher, “All is
vanity !” Professor Tyndall acknowledges that science does not
satisfy his emotional nature; and in speaking of the charge of
Materialistic Atheism brought against him, he says:—“ I have
noticed during years of self-observation that it is not in hours of
clearness and vigour that this doctrine commends itself to my
mind; that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought
it ever dissolves and disappears,' as offering no solution of the
mystery in which we dwell, and of which we form a part.”
At the recent Church Congress at Brighton, in its discussion
on Modem Scepticism, Professor Pritchard read a paper in
which he says:—
“ Savages have brains and capacities far beyond any use to
which, in their present condition, they can apply them. And
we too possess powers and capacities immeasurably beyond
the necessities of any merely transitory life. -There stir
within us yearnings irrepressible,^ longings unutterable, a
curiosity unsatisfied and insatiable by aught we see. These
appetites, passions, and affections come to us, not as Socrates
and Plato supposed, nor as our great poet sang, from the dim
recollection of some former state of our being, still less from
the delusive inheritance of our progenitors; they were the
indications of something within us, akin to something immeasur
ably beyond us; tokens of something attainable, yet not hitherto
attained; signs of a potential fellowship.with spirits nobler and
more glorious than our own; they were the title deeds of our
presumptive heirship to some brighter world than any that had
yet been formed.”
One of the foremost intellects of the modem world, who
knew it well from large and long experience, gives us the
following as his Curriculum Vitce^ or—
SONG OF LIFE.
I’ve set my heart upon nothing you see; I set my heart first upon wealth,
Hurrah J
Hurrah!
And so the world goes well with me.
And bartered away my peace and
Ha! ha!
health,
And who has the mind to be fellow <of
But, ah!
mine,
The slippery change went about like air,
Why, let him take hold and help me And when I had clutched me a handful
drain
here
These mouldy lees of wine.
Away it went there.
�9
I set my heart upon woman next,
Hurrah!
For her sweet sake was oft perplexed,
But, ah !
The False one looked for a daintier lot,
The Constant one wearied me out and
out,
The Best was not easily got.
I set my heart upon travels grand,
Hurrah!
And spurned our plain, old Father
land ;
But, ah!
Naught seemed to be just the thing it
should,
Most comfortless bed and indifferent
food,
My tastes misunderstood 1
,.
*
I set my heart upon sounding fame;
Hurrah!
And, lo! I’m eclipsed by some upstart’s
name;
But, ah I
When m public life I loomed quite high,
The folks that passed me would look
awry;
Their very worst friend was I.
And then I set my heart upon war,
Hurrah!
We gained some battles with ficlat,
Hurrah 1
We troubled the foe with sword and
, flame,
(Andgsome of our friends fared quite
the same,)
I lost a leg for fame.
Now I’ve set my heart on nothing you
see ;
Hurrah 1
And the whole wide world belongs to
Hurrah!
The feast begins to run low no doubt,
But bat the old cask we’ll have one
goqdabout.
Come, drink the lees all out.
Such, according toM®. many-sided Goethe, is human life;
a round of sensual pleasures and? defeated aims; and the idea
of a deeper purpos^j or of a life to whihmthis is but the prelude
and preparation, is tossed off with a cup of wine and a hurrah!
The pale face of Death, j withu moggB eyes, lurks at the
bottom of every wine cup, and looks ou^ftom behind every
garland; therefore brim the purple beaker higher, and hide the
unwelcome intruder under more flowers.
Heine is perhaps the chief apostle of this gospel of the
senses, “ his pages reek with a fragrance of pleasure through
which sighs, like, a fading wail Wm the solitary string
of a deserted harp struck by a lonesome breeze, the per
petual refrain of Death! death! death! His motto seems
to be, ‘ Quick ! let me enjoy what there is, for I must die.
0, the gusty relish of life! O, tfhei speedy mystery of
death!’” But, though Riding to the enchantments of the
siren, he could not but feel deeply the degradation, and in one
of his better moods, contrasting his later experience with the
noble faith and aspirations of his. yo®M he sadly confesses,
“ It is as if a star had fallen from heaven upon a hillock of
muck, and swine were gnawing at it.” Great talents and even
noble virtues sometimewo-exist with Materialism, but they are
not its product; all its tenderfcies are of the earth, earthy.
Turning from the gross idoTators of sense and pleasure, shall
we consult the leading oracle of Western transcendentalism? His
sentences are often instinct with the life of thought; and if he
cannot create a soul under the ribs of Death, he casts over its
�10
bare bones a detent garment of fine fancies and poetic similes.
Shall we enquire of him the mystery of being—the purpose of
life, the riddle of man ? If we may accept his own account, no
one is better qualified to satisfy our doubts either as to the
present or the future. Nature in familiar tones thus addresses
him as her votary :—
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, Bible, or of speech ;
Wrote on thy mind’s transparent table
As far as the incommunicable.
Taught thee each private sign to raise,
Lit by the super-solar blaze:
Past utterance and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief,
The mysteries of Nature’s heart;
And though no mu^e can these impart,
Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.
Let us then listen reverently to one whom Nature has so
highly favoured, to whom all is clear from east to west. Here
is his response:—
Alas ! the spirit that haunts us
Deceives our rash desire:
It whispers of the glorious gods,
And leaves us in the mire.
We cannot learn the cypher
That’s writ upon the wall;
Stars help us by a mystery
Which we could never spell. ’
If but the hero knew it,' |
The world would blush in flame,
The sage, tell he but the secret,
Would hang his head in shame.
But our brothers have not read it,
Not one has found the key;
And henceforth we are comforted—
We are but such as they !
Cold comfort, indeed, from one who sees so clearly, and
knows so much, to be told that we are all deceived by the spirit
that haunts us, and that we are all alike hopelessly in the dark.
Let us hope it is no u super-solar blaze” which has thus revealed
to the seer only darkness visible—that after all it may be only
a poor will-o’-the-wisp he has been following, and which thus
leaves him in the mire.
Sir Thomas Browne remarks u It is the heaviest stone that
melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the
end of his beingand the general experience of mankind
confirms the truth of his observation. There may be some men
(though such instances are rare), who, like Professor Newman,
profess that they have no wish for the perpetuation of life
�beyond the grave. Whether such exceptional indifference springs
from natural defect (as some men are indifferent to the charms
of music and of poetry), or whether, as I incline to think, it
is due to accidental causes and morbid conditions, physical and
mental—such for instance as those which tempt men to the
unnatural act of suicide, a transient mood rather than a faithful
reflection of the soul—abundant evidence might be cited from
the most confirmed and eminent Materialists and Sceptics to show
how repugnant even to them^^jt^yidea of annihilation, how
eagerly they would welcome any conclusive evidence of immor
tality; how gladly their spiritual nature, starved and shrunken
a/it is, would welcome the revelation of a future life, if it were
proved to them to be in harmc^^Mmi the divine laws of man’s
being, and stript of those barbaric conceptions which have
perverted the gracious assurance of immortal life into what
Professor Kingsley, with grim irony, has called “ the gospel of
damnation.” Byron, when his scepticism was at full tide and at
its best, checks his scornful
—
Yet, if as holiest men have deem’d, therebe
A land of souls beyond that sable shore,
To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee
And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore ;
How sweet -it werd in concert to adore
With thosamM made HmfeMjfaadaE&s MBmBTO,.
To hear eaclie^oe laMMb MgaisMra? rjMK
Behold each mighty shade reveal’d to sight,
The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right.
And in another poem, written in aavei^lifferot, though not
less sceptical mood, aftcj^^^gr
wi^P<^bnW'^—
That in
years,
All nations have believed that from the dead,
A visitant at intervals appears.
He significantly adds—
And what is strangest UDonjffi^stBange head
Is, that whateven|K®ithe reasonrears I I
’Gainst such belief, therestronger still
In its behalf, leaalwe^^^^m|«Mag|^'
Shelley, in his early poem of “Queen Mab,” startled the
still air with his wild shriek of Atheism; yet even at this
time, as is evident from his pomaorp1 D (SOME felt how grim
and ghastly, in his philosophy, was the pale spectre of which
he wrote:—
This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the
all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow,
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
�12
The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.
Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death ?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come ?
Who fateteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide
w
* indin.g
eaves of the peopled tomb ?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see ?
As however his min^matured, we see increasing indications of a
more ideal—a more spiritual philosophy—which, did the limits
of this essay permit, it would be interesting to trace. In his
conclusion to j£ The Sensitive Plant,” he says :—
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one Considers it,
To own that death itself may be
Like all the rest a mockery.
*
He seems indeed to have had an intuitive belief in immortality;
and his spirit intensely yearned for proofs of kinship with
another world!, and his mind was ever filled with spiritual
imaginings. He even cherished the hope of holding communion
with the departed. At the time he was defying the learning of
Oxford to refute his “ Plea for Atheism,” he was the subject of
the wondering belief of which he speaks in the “ Hymn to In
tellectual Beauty”:—
WWle yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
And he thus concludes his “ Adonais;” an elegy on the death of
his friend the poet Keats g—
I am borne darkly, fearfully afar
Whilst burning through the inmo^^fof Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
Robert Burns, writing of the Future I Life to his esteemed
friend Mrf. Dunlop, exclaims | Would to G od I as firmly believed
it as I ardently wish it!” Thomas Cooper, when his scepticism
was at its climax, was so appalled at the thought of annihilation
that in his great epic, The Purgatory of Suicides, apostrophizing
the sun, he exclaims with passionate fervour :—
Farewell, grand Sun ! How my weak heart revolts
At that appalling thought—that my last look
At thy great light must come! Oh, I could brook
The dungeon, though eterne ! the priests’ own hell,
�13
Ay, or a thousand hells, in thought unshook,
Rather than Nothingness! And yet the knell
1 fear is near, that sounds—to consciousness, farewell!
may be said these are only the idle fancies of poets,
influenced by emotion rather than by reason. Well, I believe
there are times when—
The heart may give a useful lesson to the head.
KWjen, as many have experienced—•
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part;
And like a man in wrath, the heart
Stood up and answered,—' I have felt! ’
‘
When the natural language of emotion goei®b a truth, while
Beason—blinded by the sophistries of a false philosophy—misses
its way, and for a weary time
Finds no end in wandering mazes lost.
Like Christian
m an may
find a key in his bosom called Promise, which will unlock the
(dungeon doors of Doubting Castle ^^e will but use it. Or,
to quote a simile from dkgra Paul—IM^ep-lowiiw of the heat
relights the extinguished torch in the night of the intellect, as a
beast stunned by an electric shock in the head is restored by
an electric shock in t^i b^Basgjjgt
But let us turn to oW| witnesses! HjgeBM instance, is one
who claims to be governed solely by the severest rules of reason
and of logic,—to Comte, the founder of “ The Positive Philoso
phy,” and to whom indeed we might justly apply the remark
addressed by Friend Allen to Robert Owen, u Friend Robert,
thee ought to be very right, thee art so very positive I” Yet
when tlOpjrings of his emotional nature were touched, it was
to him a revelation which led him to see how defective was the
system of materialisms philosophy he had so laboriously con
structed; and his lateijviews on peligiom weremMsuch marked
contrast with it, that some of his followers deemed it evidence
of aberration of mind, and as such it was actually urged in a
court of law to set aside the' W.that he had made. Professor
Maurice, after quoting a sketch of his life, remarks :—“ From
this profoundly interesting narrative we learn that human love
awakened Comte to a conviction of the inadequacy of his
philosophical scheme J He must have a religion to graft upon
it. There is no help^or it; he must deny facts—facts which
he has realized—if he pretends that his notion of science is
sufficient to explain them. His followers perceived clearly—
and complained bitterly—that by taking this course he is giving
up the principles for which they had hailed him as the last
�14
great discoverer, as the man 1 who had grasped the true power
for the co-ordination of the sciences.’ ”
Voltaire in his article, “ Soul,” in the Philosophiacffl^^^
tionary, tells us that of “its origin, nature, and destiny Kill
know and can know nothing; that it is a subject on which we
must ever continue in a labyrinth of doubts and feeble con
jectures
and our questionings on the matter he says are
“ questions of blind men asking one another, ‘ What is light ”
Yet this prince of sceptics and scoffers in the article “Magic” of
the same work, writes, “ This soul, this shade, which existed,
separated from its body, might-'very well show itself upon
occasions, revisit the place which it had inhabited, its parents
and friends, • speak to them and instruct them. In all this there
is no incompatibility.”
Renan—the brilliant countryman of Comte and Voltaire—
goes even further, he dedicates his Life of Jesus, “ To the pure
soul of my sister, Henrietta, who died September 24, 1861J’
In the course of thildedication he thus invokes her:—“ Reveal
to me, O good Genius—to me, whom thou lovedst—those truths
which conquer death, deprive it of terror, and make it almost
beloved.” Mr. G. J. Holyoake, founder of “ Secularism,”
which, like “ Positivism,” denies or ignores God and a Future
Life, in a passage of great tenderness and pathos, describing the
death of his child, in his Last Trial by Jury for Atheism, avows
that even to him a pure and rational faith in immortality would
be more congenial than the cold negations and dreary platitudes
to which his life has mainly been devoted.
'
“My dada’s coming to see me,” Madeline exclaimed on the night of her
death, with that full, pure, and thrilling tone which marked her when in health.
“ I am sure he is coming to night, mama,” and then remembering that that
could not he, she said “Write to him, mama, he will come to see me}” and these
were the last words she w®fed—and all that remains now is tneunemory of
that cheerless, fireless room, and the midnight reverberation of that voice
which I would give a new world to hear again. * * * * Yes, though I
neither hope—for that wouffl be presumptuous—nor expect it, seeing no foun
dation, I shall he pleased to find a life after this. Not a life where those are
punished who were unable to believe without evidence, and unwilling to act in
spite of reason—for the prospect of annihilation is pleasanter and more profitable
to contemplate: not a fife where an easy faith is regarded as “ easy virtue” is
regarded among some men—but a life where those we have loved and lost here
are restored to us again—for there, in that Hall where those may meet who
have been sacrificed in the cg®se of duty—where no gross, or blind, or selfish,
or cruel nature mingles, where none sit but those whom human service and
endurance have purified and entitled to that high company, Madeline will be a
Hebe. Yes, a future life, bringing with it the admission to such companionship,
would be a noble joy to contemplate.
Well would it have been for him, and for the influence he
has exercised, had he in this matter fully realised the truth
expressed by himself in his essay on The Logic of Death
“ Plainly, as though written with the finger of Orion in the
�15
vault of night, does man read the future in his heart. The
impulse of fiction that leaps unbidden to his breast, which,
■rough suppressed in comparative strife, or withered by cankering cares, yet returns in the woodland walk and the midnight
musing, ever whispering of something better to be realised.”
Yes ! and the whisper is no “ fiction 5” the language of the heart
does not deceive us.
A late eminent English philosopher, whose autobiography
enables us to understand how it came to pass that, as he pro
fessed he never had
yet when his emotional
nature was stirred to its depths by the bereavement of a beloved
wife, felt so little the consolations of his own philosophy, that he
daily visited her tomb, sometimes, it is I said, remaining there
for hours together, in bitterness of spirit, at what he regarded
as an irreparable loss. O, that as he sat there, disconsolate,
he could have opened his sorrowing heart to the comforting
assurance of the angel, “ She is not here, she is risen !”
Hobbes confessed that to him death was “a leap in the
dark
and of Hume, the acutest of sceptics, and the influence
of whose philosophy has perhaps been the most penetrating and
persuasive, it has been truly
Sears, that
u Perhaps there is nmj a more significant passage in religious
literature than the supprSea passage of Mr. Hume, where he
describes the influence of his speculations. He surveys the
habitation whicu, withBnfiw^^)^M s^Wie has builded about
him, and he starts with horror ^j^gMb'of the gloomy and
vacant chambers.” The
is the passage referred to:—
I am astonished and affrighted at the forlorn solitude in which I am placed
by my philosophy. When I look about I see on every side dispute, contradiction,
and distraction. When I turn my eyes inward, I find nothing but doubt and
ignorance. Where am I, and what ? fca®® what causes do I derive existence,
and to what condition do I return ? jjl
with these questions, and
I begin to fancy myself- in the most dejgog^le
imaginable, environed
in the deepest darkness.
In Carlyle’s Life of
is a passage, remarkable for
its graphic force, which may
taken as‘ an epitome of the
sceptical philosophy^concpming a Future Life, and as such is
quoted with approval Bv M^Holy<awl|^ his Logic of Death.
It reads thus :—
What went before and what>v3]^o®Ww me, I regard as two black im
penetrable curtains, which hang down at the two extremities of human life, and
which no living man has yet drawn aside. Many hundreds of generations
have already stood before them with their -torche^gugssin g anxiously what
lies behind. On the curtain of Futurity many
own shadows, the
forms of their passions enlarged and put in motion; they shrink in terror at this
image of themselves. Poets, philosophers, and founders of states, have painted
this curtain with their dreams, more smiling or more dark, as the sky above
them was cheerful or gloomy ; and their pictures deceive the eye when viewed
from a distance. Many jugglers, too, make profit of this our universal
�16
curiosity : by their strange mummeries they have set the outstretched fan<5y'u3
amazement. A deep silence reigns behind this curtain; no one once within
will answer those he has left without; all you can hear is a hollow echo of your
question, as if you shouted into a chasm.
No doubt priests and jugglers have made profit of our
universal curiosity on a question in which we are so profoundly
interested, but that no one once within the veil will answer
those he has left without, is a statement in flat denial to known
experience in all ages, and most emphatically so to that of our
own age, in which we have the most ample and conclusive
evidence that death is no impenetrable curtain separating us
wholly from those who have gon$ before ; and it is moreover a
view as gloomy as it is false.
*
Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on j^his pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn !
How far more cheering and ennobling is the faith enunciated
by Fichte:—
The world of nature, on which but now I gazed with wonder and admiration,
sinks before me. With all its abounding life and order and bounteous increase,
it is but the curtain which hides one infinitely more perfect—the germ from
which that other shall develope itself. My faith pierces through this veil, and
broods over and animates this germ. It sees, indeed, nothing distinctly; but it
expects more than it 'pan- conceive, more than it will ever be able to conceive,
until time shall be no more.
A prominent Sceptic, conversing on Spiritualism with a
mutual friend—a believer—remarked, “ I would give every
thing, could I but held your unfaltering convictions on this
subject.
What, indeed, has Materialism to offer us in exchange for
the faith in immortality it calls upon us to surrender ? When the
heart is lacerated
l°ss of wife, or child, of friend, to be
told that all must one-day suffer alike experience; that perhaps
time may blunt the edge of sensibility, and awaken new interests;
that the material atoms of the beloved form are imperishable,
and may re-appear in tigbes and grass and flowers, is but to mock
our grief. I do not argue that we are to accept this, or any
belief, simply because it is agreeable to us. Of course, the
primary question is, not what would be pleasant, but what is
true. If it can be proved that life, thought, feeling, conscious
ness perish with the body, let us bear our fate with what
fortitude we may. My present purpose is only to show that
the faith in immortafflty is congenial to the human heart; that
when it finds free utterance the most confirmed Sceptics, the
most obdurate Materialists, confess as much, despite the confirmed
and inveterate prejudice to” the contrary. It is not death,
but life for which we pant—that more and fuller life, eternal
�17
in the heavens" At least one entire side of our nature,
and that not the least trustworthy, responds to this belief,
and is- never fully reconciled to its contrary. And although
in this matter instances abound in which the other side of our
nature falters and is recalcitrant, yet it would surely be
irrational to conclude that even here this discordance is necessary
and final. Harmony is our normal condition, the true law of
our being, and we need never despair of its attainment, though
the evidence to co-ordinate with faith may have to be sought
elsewhere than in the jiommon Ftheology offehe pulpit or the
philosophy of schools.
Some of my readerswwilL doubtless smile when I affirm my
conviction that this evidence is supplied in the facts of modern
Spiritualism. YeO^^B no hasty conclusion, but my deliberate
and matured iudgmew^MMya^ years’ investigation and
experience. And now after more than a quarter of a century’s
contemptuous denial of these facts, and unmeasured scorn and
vituperation of those who asserted them, as within the range of
their own personal knowledge, the most distinguished scientists,
after full investigation and every application of crucial tests, are
fast admitting
scientists of
the highest reputation have expressed a contrary opinion; but
there is this difference, that while the latter speak without any
proper knowledge
subject, and have been at no pains to
inform themselves concerning it, the former have made it a
matter of deep research, and Ihave^^enWitl years of careful
experimental investigation. Wherever the inwstigation has
been most thorough, raonvStat has been most complete. And
it would be difficult to name any better test fef truth than this.
As remarked by a, Roman Catholic writer in the Dublin
Review :—
The invariable .law of a plausible lie is this—let it be received at first with
open arms; intelligeil^MaSlwho have no interest in supporting it and no
prejudice in favour of
and inquire;
it gradually, and,
as it were, day by day loses its hold on the credence of men, and at length
vanishes utterly and for ever.
opposite of this has been the fortune
of the phenomena we are speaking of. Among men of keen and cultivated
minds they were at first received, not only with disbelief, but with laughter and
derision: they were rejected as untrue, not because not proven, but because
incapable of proof, because they were impossible—and, Hfeed, impossible they
are, as we shall see, to mere human power and skill. Among the characteristics
of the world in modern times a tendency to
preternatural most
certainly can not be reckoned. The phenomena of Magnetism and Spiritism at
least appear preternatural: the
BjreMlSMilrainst accepting them:
it was predicted that, before the generation that witnessed their rise had died
out, they would hav^ffi^ppeared aaMBeen forgotten. Well, years have rolled
on, and men who formerly wo»smmM without impatience read or listen to the
accounts of these phenomena (the TOSaMiEBer was one of these), had at
length been led to examine what was making such a noise in the world, and
from mature, and for a time prejudiced, examination, have been led to conviction.
�18
In this way have been brought round several of the ablest and most learned
men m Europe, Catholic theologians, physicians, and philosophers and others,
Catholic, Protestant, and free-thinking. Authority does not necessarily nor
even. generally, prove an opinion: in a matter of mere opinion the mosl
enquiring and cautious men may be greatly deceived, and have been so
deceived. But here there is question of facts and of the testimony of the
senses—of facts sensible to the sight, the hearing, the touch—of facts and
testimonies repeated over and over again, beyond the possibility of calculation
in the greater part of.Europe and America, and recorded year after year down to
the present day. It is quite impossible that about such facts such a cloud of
such witnesses should be all deceived.
The spiritual nature and future life of man are then not only
within the range of the knowable, but have become actually
known to thousands of independent and qualified investigators,
including several of the ablest and most learned men in
Europeand we may add, of its most distinguished men of
science * Materialism has demanded plain palpable facts, and
by these it has been confuted. It has challenged sensuous and
scientific demonstration, and its terms have been accepted, and
the demonstration is complete and overwhelming. As with the
hammer of Thor the strong walls and towers of Materialism
have been broken by it into fragments.
We have seen by the confessions of its chief expounders
what a dismal outlook it presents; but this can only be fully
realised by those who have dwelt in and emerged from those
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades,
Where peace and rest can never dwell,
Hope never comes.
Dr. George Sexton, for twenty years one of the leading
advocates of Secularism, and by far its most learned and scientific
representative, after long and careful investigation into Spiritu
alism, fully satisfied himself of its truth, and is now one of its
most earnest. advocates. Speaking of the state of mind to
which Scepticism leads, he says :—
No man knows.better what this state of mind is than I do, having had many
years bitter experience of the doubts and uncertainties which it involves. To
be, as the poet says,
“ Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind,”
and yet not to feel able to recognize the Divine in Nature and the spiritual in
man, is a condition which is easier felt than described. Gleams of light occa
sionally shooting through the dense darkness, serving only to make the darkness
a. erwards more intense; a few drops of rain on the parched and dried up
ground, the sight of food to the hungry, or water placed before the eyes as
c -° +F k° ?1°C7 ,e v,lsl0n
h™ wbo is dying of thirst, are similes which but
faintly shadow forth the state of mind of the Sceptic.
Q
4? th® “0SJ recent examples inEngland see “A Defence of Modern
bpintualism, by Alfred Russell Wallace, in the Fortnightly Review for
ay an June, 1874; and “ Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called
pin ua , unng the Years 1870-3,” in the Quarterly Journal of Science, for
nuary, 874, by its editor, William Crookes, F.R.S. The Report on Spiritugtism of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, 1871, also gives a
m,ass of evidence on this subject.
s
(
�!T9
■ttffiRnSy manner Gerald Massey, in his admirable essay con
cerning Spiritualism, testifies:—
Spiritualism will make religion infinitely more real, and translate it from the
domain of belief to that of life. It has been to me, in common with many
others, such a lifting of the mental horizon and a letting in of the heavens—
such a transformation of faiths into facts—that I can only compare life without
it to sailing on board ship with hatches battened down, and being kept a
prisoner, cribbed, cabined, and confined, living by the light of a candle—dark to
the glory overhead, and blind to a thousand possibilities of being, and then
suddenly on some splendid starry night allowed to go on deck for the first time,
to see the stupendous mechanism of the starry heavens all aglow with the glory
of God, to feel that vast vision glittering in the eyes, bewilderingly. beautiful,
and drink in new life with every breath of this wondrous liberty, which makes
you dilate almost large enough in soul to fill the immensity that you see around.
One who has followed the Apostolic injunction—“ Add to
your faith, knowledge; ” and whose public ministrations as a
teacher of religion have, in consequencelbeen marked by an
intelligence, as well as a strength and fervour, which carry to
other hearts the conviction of his own, remarks:—
This doctrine of a God who is indeed our Father ; this glorious assurance of
everlasting life in Him ; this long line of witnesses who have caught some ray
of His divine beauty and shed it upon us—these things, which religion grafts
upon philosophy, make life rich indeed. We can fly for shelter from Infinite
Law, and take refuge and find peace in Infinite Love. . . . . And when
the fear of death comes on us, we can look through the darkness to the light
beyond, and lie down in hope, knowing in Whom we have believed, and confident
that He will keep that which, in life’s last act of renunciation, we commit to
Him. It is this tone of triumphant confidence, this enthusiasm of faith in the
truth of the Universe, this fanaticism of trust in the veracity of God, which
gives zest to life. It is this hope which brightens the eye and nerves the hand,
makes us strong and happy in the conflict of duty, and enables us to overcome
the world. It is this certainty of faith which turns belief into knowledge, and
is the everlasting Rock on which we stand secure amid the changes and
calamities of time.”*
When Dr. Tyndall in his celebrated Belfast address went
out of his way to speak of Spiritualism as “ degrading,” he
spoke not with the intelligent impartiality due to the high
position he occupied, but with the vehement prejudice of a
disciple of the Lucretian philosophy of which he appears
enamoured; but to which it seems to me the term he used might
fitly be applied. Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, who has made
Spiritualism a special and careful study, and whose judgment
concerning it is therefore of far greater weight, remarks that its
phenomena combined with its higher teachings, “ constitute a
great moral agency which may yet regenerate the world.”
For the Spiritualist who, by daily experience, gets absolute knowledge of
these facts regarding the future state—who knows that, just in proportion as
he indulges in passion, or selfishness, or the exclusive pursuit of wealth, and
neglects to cultivate the affections and the varied powers of his mind, so does
he inevitably prepare for himself misery in a world in which there are no
physical wants to be provided for, no sensual enjoyments except those directly
associated with the affections and sympathies, no occupations but those having
* Scientific Men and .Religious Teachers, by P. W. Clayden.
�20
for their object social and intellectual progress—is impelled towards a pure, a
sympathetic, and an intellectual life by motives far stronger than any which
either religion or philosophy can supply. He dreads to give way to passion or
to falsehood, to selfishness or to a life of luxurious physical enjoyment, because
he knows that the natural and inevitable consequences of such habits are future
misery, necessitating a long and arduous struggle in order to develope anew the
faculties whose exercise long disuse has rendered painful to him. He will be
deterred from crime by the knowledge that its unforseen consequences may
cause him ages of remorse ; while the bad passions which it encourages will be
a perpetual torment to himself in a state of being in which mental emotions
cannot be laid aside or forgotten amid the fierce struggles and sensual pleasures
of a physical existence. It must be remembered that these beliefs (unlike those
of theology) will have a living efficacy, because they depend on facts occurring’
again and again in the family circle, constantly reiterating the same truths as
the result of personal knowledge, and thus bringing home to the mind even of
the most obtuse, the absolute reality of that future existence in which our
degree of happiness or misery will be directly dependent on the “mental fabric”
we construct by our daily though®^ and words, and actions here........................
The assertion, so often made, that Spiritualism is the survival or revival of
old superstitions, is so utterly ®u founded as to be hardly worth notice. A
science of human nature which ^^founded on observed facts, which appeals only
to facts _ and experiment,
takes no beliefs on trust, which inculcates in
vestigation and self-reliance as the first duties of intelligent beings, which
teaches that happiness in a future life can be secured by cultivating and develop
ing to the utmost the higher faculties of our intellectual and moral nature and
by no other method, is and must be the natural enemy of all superstition.
Spiritualism is an experimental science, and affords the only sure foundation for
a true philosophy and a puSEelieapn. It abolishes the terms “ supernatural”
and “ miracle” by an extenWjm of the sphere of law and the realm of nature ;
and in doing so it takes up and explains whatever is true in the superstitions
and so-called miracles of all ages.
Contrast the moral influence of thisPknowledge—not only as
Mr. Wallace has here done with that of the popular religion and
theology—but with that of the latest gospel of our high priests
of science that matter is the final cause of all things ; and that
man is but an automatic machine, the product of its atoms
evolved through the lower forms of organic life; and soonr
u like streaks of morning cloud, melting into the infinite azure
of the pastwhile religion, “ though valuable in itself, is only
man’s speculative creation,” concerning which “ ultimate fixity
of conception is here unattainable.” Look on that philosophyr
and on this ; and then let intelligent reasonable men determine
which is elevating and which degrading.
Mr. John Stuart Mill, while considering the evidence for our
hope of personal immortality to be but slender and dubious,
insists that it is a part of wisdom to let the imagination dwell
by preference on a possibility “ at once the most comforting and
the most improving.” Spiritualism enables us to read “ cer
tainty” for “ possibilityand when even the faint hope of a
nobler destiny is most comforting and most improving, what
must be the effect when we no longer walk with faltering
uncertain feet, but feel the ground firm under us ; and can look
upward to the heavens in the serene confidence of knowledge?
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Immortality in harmony with man's nature and experience - confessions of sceptics
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brevior, Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 20 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Includes bibliographical references. Pseudonym of Thomas Shorter. Date of publication from KVK.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1875]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5334
Subject
The topic of the resource
Free thought
Immortality
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Immortality in harmony with man's nature and experience - confessions of sceptics), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Future Life
Scepticism
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/b227ba9884180992f8ada6ac1157d981.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=bJl62Vr7-aEydFxkdAd2Yx8JlwEJKMcSToG05E5EtTivk1Qo9fh14UpXN4zG0fe7Fp-bmQ3ZecKmF-nRDp872JB9tOFRh14wQ7WqH4EPVoBcg8o9f5BvbkliDjFqs4Y9JX4TI1nhn5aWlJUkP7c6iubFj3NEQhxdXTSPpquje8gn-hmC5u71ziHQhDj1rWrs1Yc02BihYph1jSJjVR8czSaArhQwuU5aIwvAeco8kn1nwomm6F5drQikn1bxGji8hZuUPwCJjaQFAi0ISkA57NJE6WEgF36gilGeQq7vZRYRfAp8mBGhmAV3RyvFeyxDNMYF86tnMI6jzi3vdMPhIA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
319bd1149075ff007b28e61c4712fd83
PDF Text
Text
HEREAFTER?
“ Warte nur; bald ruhest du auch.”—Goethe.
From 1
THE INDEX.’
Time, Midnight.—Scene, a sick chamber: Julius sits by the
bedside of his dying -father.
FATHER.
Julius, my sands of life are running low.
My hours are numbered, and thou holdst a hand
Which soon must rest as marble in thy grasp.
To-morrow’s sun will look on thee bereaved
Of him who gave thee life and who has reared
His only son with tender, loving care.
x
JULIUS.
Father, I cannot through my blinding tears
See now thy features, which to me have seemed
The index of a soul so pure and kind,
That I have almost worshipped while I loved
Him who to me was father, brother, friend.
My life will seem all desolate when thou,
My guardian and instructor, art no more.
I cannot think it true that I so soon
Must hear for the last time thy gentle voice
Inciting me to noble aims of life.
( Weeps).
�2
Yet tell me, father, is there aught that thou
Wouldst give me as a last, a dying charge 1
Doubt not, I’ll do it, if ’tis in my power.
FATHER.
Nothing, my son; the wishes of my heart
Dor thy great life-work are already known.
Go steadfast on with nobleness of soul
In the high path thou treadst with honour now ;
So shalt thou also, when life’s evening comes,
Lie down with equanimity to die.
JULIUS.
Father, of all the problems of the soul
"Which we have oft discussed, there is not one
"Which has so occupied our thoughts as this:—
Is man immortal ? Is he still to live
In conscious being after this frail clay
Is decomposed to native dust once more ?
When last we spoke of this, thou hadst no light,
No fixed assurance of another life;
The future looked impenetrably dark,
And immortality was held by thee
Not as a certainty, but as a hope.
How does this awful question now appear,
Now when the flame of life is burning low
And Death’s dread shadow holds thee in its gloom ?
FATHER,
The same, my son, as when the ruddy blood
Was coursing healthfully through all my veins,
And when that seemed a subject quite abstract,
Which never could have reference to me,
A living, breathing man in the full flush
�3
Of health and vigour. It is as you say:
I then could find no proof that we should liveBeyond this brief existence, though I held
Of such a future fife a solemn hope.
I see no clearer fight than then I saw,
Yet I am calm and die without a fear,
Of this assured, that nothing I can do
Will change a hair’s breadth that which is to be,
’Tis well if I awake; ’tis also well
(Perchance e’en better), if I sleep; for who
Can tell what mode of being may await
The soul which leaves its tenement of clay 1
s
Therefore I rest in perfect peace of mind:
My only grief to say farewell to thee.
JULIUS.
My Father, I confess ’tis without hope
That I approach thee with a strange request;
But I would fain try every mode which may
Throw light upon the gloom beyond the grave,
’Tis claimed by many that their absent dead
Hold converse with them still from spirit realms.
We oft have smiled at this thought in contempt,,
And ridiculed such fancies as absurd;
Yet, father, if in truth thou still shouldst five
After thy spirit quits this mortal frame,
And canst by any means convey to me
News merely of the fact of such a life,
I do implore thee, by our mutual love,
Eeveal it to my lonely, broken heart!
Come to me as I sit beside thy form, 1
Before I lay it in the silent grave!
A constant, loving watch I’ll keep for thee,
Longing and waiting for thy slightest sign.
�4
FATHER.
My son, thou knowst I had a brother onee,
"Who died a score of years since, in the flower
Of beautiful young manhood ?
JULIUS.
'
Father, yes.
FATHER.
When he lay dying, as I do to-night,
His bright eyes clouding in the film of death,
With bitter tears of grief and broken words
I made of him the same request which thou
Hast made of me.
JULIUS.
And what was the result ?
FATHER.
Dead silence ! Never from behind the veil,
The dark, thick shroud which hid him from my sight,
Came voice or sign. And so it is with all.
I pity those deluded souls who sit
Gaping and trembling round a creaking board,
Invoking through shrewd tricksters their loved dead !
Dismiss all possibility of such
A revelation from another world,
And learn to live on, patient and resigned,
Until the mystery is solved by Death.
JULIUS.
So be it, then ! But how profoundly sad
That such must be the fate of every soul I
�5
To yearn unutterably for the light,
To crave with bitter tears that blessed boon—
The sweet assurance of a future life,
And yet to be compelled to calmly wait,
See one by one the dear ones all depart,
Nor know what fate is theirs beyond the tomb !
How horrible that not a ray of light
Comes from that darkness, on whose border land
We say the last farewell to those we love !
Alas ! what are we ? Puppets that are made
To dance their part out on a reeling stage 1
Or, weaklings though we be, have we a spark
Of that diviner essence which shall live,
Nay, more, must live through everlasting years ?
FATHER.
Draw back the curtain, Julius •, let me look
Once more upon the glorious expanse
Of glittering worlds upon their rhythmic dance.
{Julius draws back the curtain.)
See yonder brilliant orb ! Its waves of light,
Moving with swift pulsations through the depths
Of azure space, fall now upon my eye
Fatigued with years of travel since they left
With lightning-like velocity their source.
Around that distant sun move glowing worlds,
Abounding doubtless like our own with life.
Such suns and systems are dispersed through space
As motes in sunbeams,—what then is our earth 1
A speck in vast immensity’s domain !
Moreover, from this speck, while yonder clock
Ticks out its smallest increment of time,
There pass away full thirty human lives !
What then is mine ? By what audacity
�6
Can I claim endless being as my right ?
If it shall be my lot to re-awake
In conscious continuity of self,
Why then I shall rejoice,—
(gasps suddenly.)
Ah ! this keen pain
Comes once more—in my heart. Thy hand, my son I
’Tis dark !—I see no more thy face. Farewell!
I’ll press thy hand—till—I—
JULIUS
(kneeling and clasping his father's hand: after a pause.)
And this is death !
His hand grows icy cold within my own ;
His breath grows fainter, and the flame of life
But flickers in its socket ere it dies !
My father ! Canst thou hear me ? It is I!
Press but my hand once more if thou dost hear I
Gone I Gone 1 and whither ? Is this icy clay,
Which here I kiss, the father whom I loved 2
These are his features,—these his loving hands
Which but a moment since pressed mine again.
So have I seen him often lie in sleep;
But from this sleep, alas ! no filial voice
Can e’er awake him I Still the starry light
Falls gently"on his eyes, which take no note
Of that which kindled thought a moment since 1
Was there a soul which ruled in this dear form,
Which willed, and loved, and thought,—a conscious self?
Distinct and free from its environment ?
An entity which nothing can destroy
Nor yet diffuse or merge into aught else ?
Or was it but a part of the great whole)
A drop of water prisoned in a shell
�7
And floating on the bosom of the sea,
Which at the breaking of the shell by Death
Has mingled once more with it parent waves ?
Or yet again, was it a kind of force,
Like that which animates the waving plant
And draws the juices upward to its leaves,
Which now has been released from this poor form
To work in others that we know not of ?
If so,—’twere vain to ask its present place
Or mode of action, as ’twould be to seek
The whereabouts of an extinguished flame,
Or of the breeze which lately fanned my cheek.
Insoluble enigmas ! who can know
The end of this poor, transitory life ?
Well did my father say : “I calmly rest
In peaceful equanimity of soul,
With firmness waiting that which is to be.”
With such a calm philosophy of fife
He passed away, without a shade of fear.
He could look back upon a life well spent,
With powers used wisely for a noble end.
’Tis well. If still he lives, those powers will be
More ripe for future usefulness. If not,
Yet think upon the good they have achieved,
Which still remains on earth in worthy lives
Ennobled, aided, and reclaimed by him.
Such immortality he has attained,
And thus can well dispense with added life,
If it should be denied. Here, father, here
•On thy dead form, which I bedew with tears,
I vow to strive thus for a deathless life :
A life which shall continue in men’s souls
Long after I am gone ; a constant power
Inspiring them to pure and noble deeds,
�8
And raising them from worthlessness and vice F
Such power is now thy immortality !
Thou liv’st again in me and hundreds more,
To whom thou didst impart thy lofty thoughts,,
Thy generous impulses, thy tender love.
So may 1 live, for evermore a source
Of lasting good on this evolving globe
In the sad drama of our human life !
J. L. Stoddard.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hereafter?
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stoddard, John Lawson
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 10 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1877
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5520
Subject
The topic of the resource
Theatre
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Hereafter?), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Drama
Future Life