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MORALITY
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GOD
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��Pamphlets
for the People
No. 2
MORALITY
WITHOUT
GOD
CHAPMAN COHEN
THE PIONEER PRESS
��Morality Without God
i.
Christianity is what is called a “revealed” religion. That
is, God himself revealed that religion to man. In other
religions man sought God—some god—and eventually
found him, or thought he did. In the case of Christianity
God sought man and revealed himself to him. The revela
tion, judging by after events, was not very well done, for
although a book made its appearance that was said to
have been dictated or inspired by God so that man might
know his will, yet ever since mankind has been in some
doubt as to what God meant when he said it. Evidently
God’s way of making himself known by a revelation is
not above criticism. There seems a want of sense in giving
man a revelation he could not understand. It is like
lecturing in Greek to an audience that understands nothing
but Dutch.
What was it God revealed to man? He did not reveal
science. The whole structure of physical science was built
up very gradually and tentatively by man. He did not
teach man geology, or astronomy, or chemistry, or biology.
He did not teach him how to overcome disease, or its
nature and cure. He did not teach him agriculture, or
how to develop a wild grass into the life nourishing wheat.
He did not teach man how to drain a marsh or how to dig
a canal so that he might carry water where it was needed.
He did not teach him arithmetic or mathematics. He
taught him none of the arts and sciences. Man had no
revelation that taught him how to build the steam engine,
or the aeroplane, or the submarine, the telegraph or the
wireless. All these and a thousand other things which we
regard as indispensable, and without which civilization
would be impossible, man had to discover for himself.
There is not a Christian parson who would to-day say that
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�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
God gave these things to man. That, perhaps, is not quite
true. Some of the clergy will say that God gave every
thing to man, inasmuch as he let him find them out. But
at any rate none of the things I have named is said to
have been revealed to man. He had to discover or invent
the lot. And in inventing them or discovering them he
behaved just as he might have behaved had he never heard
of God at all.
What was there left for God to give man? Well, it is
said, he gave man morality. He gave man the ten com
mandments. He told him he must not steal, he must not
commit murder, he must not bear false witness; he told
children they must honour their fathers and their mothers,
but somehow he forgot the very necessary lesson that
parents ought also to honour their children. He mixed up
with these things the command that people should honour
him, and he was more insistent upon that than upon any
thing else. Not to honour him was the one unforgivable
crime. But, and this is the important thing, while there
is no need for an inspired arithmetic or an inspired geo
metry, while there was no inspired chemistry or geology,
there had to be, apparently, an inspired morality, because
without God moral laws would be without authority, and
decency would disappear from human society.
Now that, put bluntly, lies behind the common state
ment that morality depends upon religious belief. It is
not always put quite so plainly as I have put it—very
absurd things are seldom put plainly—but it is put very
plainly by the man in the street and by the professional
evangelist. It is also put in another way by those people
who delight in telling us what blackguards they were till
Christ got hold of them, and it is put in expensive volumes
in which Christian writers and preachers wrap up the
statement in such a way that to the unwary it looks as
though there must be something in it, and at least it is
sufficiently unintelligible to look as though it were good
sound theological philosophy.
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�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
Is the theory inherently credible? Consider what it
means. Are we to believe that if we had never received
a revelation from God, or even if there were no belief
in God, a mother would never have learned to love her
child, men and women would never have loved each other,
men would never have placed any value upon honesty or
truthfulness, or loyalty? After all we have seen an animal
mother caring for its young, even to the extent of risking
its life for it. We have seen animals defend each other
from a common enemy, and join together in running down
prey for a common meal. There is a courting time for
animals, there is a mating time, and there is a time how
ever brief when the animal family of male, female and
young exist. All this happened to the animals without
God. Why should man have to receive a revelation before
he could reach the moral stage of the higher animal life?
Broadly, then, the assertion that morality would never
have existed for human beings without belief in a God
or without a revelation from God is equal to saying that
man alone would never have discovered the value of being
honest and truthful or loyal. He would not even have
had such terms as good and bad in his vocabulary, for
the use of those words implies a moral judgment, and
there would have been no such thing—at least, so we are
told.
I am putting the issue very plainly, because it is only
by avoiding plain speech that the Christian can “get away”
with his monstrous and foolish propositions. I am saying
in plain words what has been said by thousands upon
thousands of preachers since Paul laid down the principle
that if there was no resurrection from the dead, “let us eat
and drink for to-morrow we die”.
Sometimes the theory I have been stating is put in a
way that throws a flood of light on the orthodox conception
of morality. It is so glaringly absurd to say that without
religion man would not know right from wrong, that it
is given a very slight covering in the expression, “destroy
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�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
religion and you remove all moral restraints”. Restraints!
That expression is indeed a revelation. To the orthodox
Christian morality stands for no more than a series of
restraints, and restraints are unpleasant things, because they
prevent a man doing what he would like to do. It is acting
in defiance of one’s impulses that makes one conscious
of “restraints”. A pickpocket in a crowd is restrained by
the knowledge that there is a policeman at his elbow7. A
burglar is restrained from breaking into a house by hearing
the footsteps of a policeman. Each refrains from doing as
he would like to do because he is conscious of restraints.
It may be God; it may be a policeman. God is an un
sleeping policeman—I do not say an unbribable one,
because the amount of money given to his representatives
every year, the Churches that are built or endowed in the
hopes of “getting right with God”, totals a very con
siderable sum.
From this point of view, what are called moral rules
are treated much as one may treat the regulation that one
must not buy chocolates after a certain hour in the evening.
The order is submitted to because of the “sanctions” that
may be applied if we do not. So to the type of Christian
with whom we are dealing the question of right or wrong
is entirely one of coercion from without. If he disobeys
he may be punished, if not here, then hereafter. He asks,
“Why should a man impose restraints on himself if there
is no future life in which he is to be rewarded or punished?
Why not enjoy oneself and be done with it?” On this
view a drunkard may keep sober from Monday morning
till Friday night on the promise of a good “drunk” on
Saturday. But in the absence of this prospect he may say,
paraphrasing St. Paul, “If there be no getting drunk on
Saturday, why should we keep sober from Monday to
Friday? If there is to be no drunkenness on Saturday,
then let us get drunk while we may, for the day cometh
when there will be no getting drunk at all”.
But all this is quite wrong. The ordinary man is not
conscious of restraint when he behaves himself in a decent
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�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
manner. A mother is not conscious of restraint when she
devotes herself to nursing her sick child, or goes out to work
to supply it with food. A man who is left in the house of
a friend is not conscious of restraint when he refrains from
pocketing the silver, or when he does not steal a purse that
has been left on the mantelpiece. A person sent to the
bank to cash a cheque does not feel any restraint because
he returns with the money. The man who is conscious
of a restraint when he does a decent action is not a “good”
man at all. He is a potential criminal who does not com
mit a crime only because he is afraid of being caught. And
when he is caught the similarity of the Christian frightened
into an outward decency and the detected pickpocket with
the policeman’s hand on his shoulder is made the more
exact by the cry of, “O Lord be merciful to me a miserable
sinner”, in the one case, and “It’s a fair cop” in the
other.
The religious theory of mortality simply will not do. It
turns what is fundamentally simple into a “mystery”, and
then elevates the mystery into a foolish dogma. It talks at
large of the problem of evil, when outside theology no
such problem exists. The problem of evil is that of re
conciling the existence of wrong with that of an all-wise
and all-good God. It is the idea of God that introduces
the conundrum. The moral problem is not how does
man manage to do wrong, but how does he find out what
is right? When a boy is learning to ride a bicycle the
problem is not how to fall off, but how to keep on. We
can fall off without any practice. So with so many oppor
tunities of doing the wrong thing the moral problem is
how did man come to hit on the right one, and to make
the treading of the right road to some extent automatic?
But in the philosophy of orthodox Christianity man is a
potential criminal, kept from actual criminality only from
fear of punishment or the expectation of reward in a future
life. If the Christian teacher of morals does not actually
mean this when he says that without the belief in God no
such thing as “moral values” exists, and that if there is
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�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
no after-life where rewards and punishments follow, moral
practice would not endure, then he is more than mistaken;
he is a deliberate liar. Fortunately for the world,
Christians, lay and clerical, are better than their creed.
11.
We are back again with the old and simple issue of the
natural versus the supernatural. This is one of the oldest
divisions in human thought, and there is no logical com
promise between them. Morality either has its foundations
in the natural or in the supernatural. In asserting the first
alternative I do not mean to imply that there is a morality
in nature at large. There is not. Nature takes no more
heed of our moral rules and judgments than it does of
our tastes in art or literature. A man is not blessed with
good health because he is an example of a lofty morality,
nor is he burdened with disease because he is a criminal
in thought and act. Nature is neither moral nor immoral.
Such terms are applicable only when there is conscious
action to a given end. Nature is amoral, that is, it is with
out morality. The common saying that nature “punishes”
us or “rewards” us for this or that is merely a picturesque
way of stating certain things; it has no literal relation to
actual fact. In nature there are no rewards or punishments,
there are only actions and consequences. We benefit if we
act in one way; we suffer if we act in another. That is
the natural fact; there is no ethical quality in natural
happenings. Laws of morals are human creations; they
are on all fours with “laws” of science—that is, they are
generalizations from experience.
So morality existed in fact long before it was defined
or described in theory. Man did not first discover the
laws of physiology in order to realize the need for eating
or breathing, to digest food or to inhale oxygen. Nor did
the rules, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, etc.,
first make stealing and killing wrong. A moral law makes
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�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
explicit in theory what is implicit in fact. The fact creates
the rule; it is not the rule that creates the fact.
Non-recognition of this simple truth is mainly respon
sible for the rubbish that is served up by so many teachers
of ethics, and also for the unintelligent attack on ethics
by those who, because they are, often enough, dissatisfied
with existing standards of moral values, feel justified in
denouncing moral values altogether. As we shall see
later, moral rules stand to human society pretty well as
laws of physiology do to the individual organism. They
constitute the physiology of social life, with the distinction
that whatever rules we have must be modified in form
from time to time to meet changing circumstances.
Let us feel our way gradually, and in as simple a manner
as possible. We begin with the meaning of two words,
“good” and “bad”. What is their significance? There
are many religious writers and many of those who aim
at founding a religion of ethics—as though the association
of religion with moral teaching had not already done
sufficient harm in the world-—who speak of certain actions
as being good in themselves, and who profess a worship
of the “Good” as though it were a substitute for “God”.
There are others who puff themselves out with a particu
larly foolish passage from Tennyson that to follow right
because it’s right “were wisdom in the scorn of conse
quence”, and there is a very misleading sentence cited from
the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, expressing his “awe” at
man’s moral sense. We should always be on our guard
when the sayings of great men become very popular. It
is long odds that they embody something that it not very
wise, or that its wisdom has been lost in the popularization.
It should be very obvious that it is the height of stupidity
to do things in “scorn of consequence”, since it is the
consequences of actions that give them their quality of
goodness or badness. If getting drunk made people happ;er,
better, and wiser, would anyone consider drunkenness a
bad thing? In such circumstances the moral rule would
be “Blessed is he that gets drunk”, and the more drunken
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�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
he was, the better the man. If we can picture any actions
that are without consequences, they would not come within
the scope of morals at all.
The first point to remember is that there is no such
thing as good in the abstract. A thing is good in relation
to its consequences, or as it realizes the end at which we
are aiming. Tennyson was talking nonsense. These ethical
and religious philosophers who “blather” about the
“reality” of good in itself, are talking nonsense. It is not
possible to do right in scorn of consequences because it
is the consequences that make the action either good or
bad. It may be unpleasant or dangerous to do what is
right, and we admire the one who does right in such cir
cumstances, but this does not affect our standard of value.
It must also be remembered when we are seeking a
natural basis for morals, that—if the teleological language
may be permitted—nature requires but one thing of all
living creatures. This is efficiency. The “moral” quality
of this efficiency does not matter in the least. A Church
without a lightning conductor is at a disadvantage with a
brothel that possesses one. A man who risks his life in a
good cause has, other things equal, no advantage over a
man who risks his life in a bad one. Leave on one side
this matter of efficiency and there is not the slightest
attention paid to anything that we consider morally worthy
in the organism that survives.
Finally, efficiency in the case of living beings is to be
expressed in terms of adaption to environment, a fish to
water, an air-breathing animal to land, a carnivorous
animal to its capacity to stalk its prey, a vegetable feeder
to qualities that enable it to escape the attack of the
carnivora, and so forth. An animal survives as it is able
to adapt itself, or as it becomes adapted to its environment.
It is well to bear in mind this principle of efficiency,
because while what constitutes efficiency varies from time
to time, the fact of its being the main condition determining
survival remains true whether we are dealing with organic
structure or with mental life.
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�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
Now if we take ethical terminology, it is plain that the
language used implies a relation, and one of a very definite
kind. The part of the environment to which these terms
are related is that of other and like individuals. Kindness,
truthfulness, justice, mercy, honesty, etc., all imply this.
A man by himself—if we can picture such a thing—could
not be kind; there would be no one to whom to be kind.
He could not be truthful; there would be none to whom
he could tell a lie. He could not be honest, or generous,
or loyal; there would be none to whom these qualities
would have any application. Every moral quality implies
the existence of a group of which an individual is a
member. And as the group enlarges so moral qualities
take on a wider application. But this cardinal fact, that
ethical qualities, whether they be good or bad, have no
significance apart from group life, remains constant
throughout.
Now let us revert to man as a theoretically solitary
animal, a condition that has nowhere existed, for the
sociality of man is only a stage in advance of the gre
gariousness of the animal world from which man has
descended. But as an animal he must develop certain
habits and tastes in order to merely exist. Somehow man
must usually avoid doing things that threaten his existence.
Even in matters of food he must develop a taste for things
which preserve life and a distaste for things that destroy it;
and, as a matter of fact, there are a number of capacities
developed in the body that automatically offer protection
in the case of food against things that are too injurious to
life. But it is quite obvious that if a man developed a
taste for prussic acid, such a taste would not become
hereditary.
Human life, in line with animal life in general, has to
develop not merely a dislike for such things as threaten
life, but also a liking for their opposite. The development
of this last capacity means that in the long run the actions
which promote pleasure, and those which preserve life,
roughly coincide. This is the foundation and the evolu
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�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
tionary basis of the theory of Utilitarianism, or one may
say, of Neo-utilitarianism.
But man never does exist as an individual only, one
that is fighting for his own hand, and whose thoughts
and tendencies are consciously or unconsciously concerned
only with his own welfare. Man is always a member of
a group, and the mere fact of living with others imposes
on the individual a kind of discipline that gives a definite
direction to the character of his development. The law of
life is, that to live an organism must be adapted to its
environment, and the important part of the environment
here is that formed by one’s fellow-beings. The adaption
need not be perfect, any more than that the food one eats
need be of the most nutritious kind. But just as the food
eaten must contain enough nutrition to maintain life, so
conduct must be such as to maintain some kind of harmony
between an individual and the rest of the group to which
he belongs. If an individual’s nature is such that he will
not or cannot adapt himself to his fellows then he is, in
one stage of civilization, killed off, and in another he is
subjected to pains and penalties, and various kinds of
restraints that keep his anti-social tendencies in check.
There is a selective process in all societies, and even more
rigid in low societies than in the higher ones, in which
those ill-adapted to the common life of the group are
placed at a disadvantage even in procreating their kind.
And side by side with this process of selection within
the group there is going on another eliminative process
on a larger scale in the contest of group with group. A
group in which the members show little signs of a com
mon action, of loyalty to each other, is most likely to be
subjugated, or wiped out and replaced by a group in which
the cohesion is greater and the subordination of purely
individualistic tendencies to the welfare of the whole is
greater.
The nature of the process by which man becomes a
moral animal is therefore given when we say that man
12
�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
is a social animal. Social life is in itself a kind of disci
pline, a training which fits a man to work with his fellows,
to live with them, and to their mutual advantage. There
are rules of the social game which the individual must
observe if he is to live as a member of the tribe. Man is
not usually conscious of the discipline he is undergoing,
but neither is any animal conscious of the process of the
forces which adapt it to its environment. The moralizing
of man is never a conscious process, but it is a recognizable
process none the less.
It may also be noted that the rules of this social game
are enforced with greater strictness in primitive societies
than is the case with later ones. It is quite a mistake to
think of the life of savages as free, and that of civilized
man as being bound down by social and legal rules. Quite
the opposite is the case. The life of uncivilized man is
bound by customs, by taboos, that leave room for but
little initiative, and which to a civilized man would be
intolerable.
But from the earliest times there is always going on a
discipline that tends to eliminate the ill-adapted to social
life. Real participation in social life means more than an
abstention from injurious acts, it involves a positive con
tribution to the life of the whole. A type of behaviour
that is not in harmony with the general social characteristics
of the groups sets up an irritation much as a foreign sub
stance does when introduced into the tissues of an organ
ism. Thus we have on the one hand, a discipline that
forces conformity with the social structure, and on the
other hand a revolutionary tendency making for further
improvement.
There are still other factors that have to be noted if we
are properly to appreciate the forces that go to mould
character and to establish a settled moral code. To a
growing extent the environment to which the human being
has to adapt himself is one of ideas and ideals. There
are certain ideals of truthfulness, loyalty, obedience, kind
13
�MORALITY WITHOUT GOD
ness, etc., which surround one from the very moment of
birth. The society which gives him the language he speaks
and the stored-up knowledge it possesses, also provides
him with ideals by which he is more or less compelled to
guide his life.
There are endless differences in the form of these social
ideals, but they are of the same mental texture, from the
taboo of the savage to the “old school tie”.
The last phase of this moral adaption is that which
takes place between groups. From the limited family
group to which moral obligations are due, we advance to
the tribe, from thence to the group of tribes that constitute
the nation, and then to a stage into which we are now
entering that of the relations between nations, a state
wherein, in its complete form, there is an extension of
moral duties to the whole of humanity.
But wherever and whenever we take it, the substance
of morality is that of an adaption of feelings and ideas
to the human group, and to the animal group so far as
they can be said to enter into some form of relationship
with us. There is no alteration in the fundamental
character of morality. Its keynote is always, as I have
said, efficiency, but it is an efficiency, the nature of which
is determined by the relations existing between groups of
human beings.
If what has been said is rightly apprehended, it will be
understood what is meant by saying that moral laws are
to the social group exactly what laws of physiology are
to the individual organism. There is nothing to cause
wonder or mystification about moral laws; they express
the physiology of social life. It is these laws that are
manifested in practice long before they are expressed in
set terms. Human conduct, whether expressed in life or
formulated in “laws”, represents the conditions that make
social life possible and profitable. It is this recognition
that forms the science of morality; and the creation of
conditions that favour the performance of desirable actions
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and the development of desirable feelings constitutes the
art of morality.
Finally, in the development of morality as elsewhere,
nature creates very little that is absolutely new. It works
up again what already exists. That is the path of all
evolution. Feelings of right and wrong are gradually ex
panded from the group to the tribe, from the tribe to
the nation, and from the nation to the whole of human
society. The human environment to which man has to
adapt himself becomes ever wider. “My neighbour’’ ceases
to express itself in relation to those immediately surround
ing me, begins to extend to all with whom I have any rela
tions whatsoever. It is that stage we are now entering,
and much of the struggle going on in the world is due
to the attempts to adapt the feeling already there to its
wider environment. The world is in the pangs of child
birth. Whether civilization will survive those pangs remains
to be seen, but the nature of the process is unmistakable
to those who understand the past, and are able to apply its
lessons to the present and the future.
There is, then, nothing mysterious about the fact of
morality. There is no more need for supernaturalism here
than there is room for it in any of the arts and sciences.
Morality is a natural fact; it is not created by the formula
tion of “laws”; these only express its existence and our
sense of its value. The moral feeling creates the moral
law; not the other way about. Morality has nothing to do
with God; it has nothing to do with a future life. Its
sphere of application and operation is in this world; its
authority is derived from the common sense of mankind
and is born of the necessities of corporate life. In this
matter, as in others, man is thrown back upon himself
and if the process of development is a slow one there is
the comforting reflection that the growth of knowledge
and of understanding has placed within our reach the
power to make human life a far greater and better thing.
If we will! !
Printed by G. T. Wray Ltd. (T.U.), 332 Goswell Road, London, E.C.l,
and Published by G. W. Foote and Company Ltd.,
103 Borough High Street, London, S.E.l.
����
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
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Title
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Morality without God
Creator
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Cohen, Chapman [1868-1954]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Series title: Pamphlets for the People
Series number: No. 2
Notes: Printed by G.T. Wray Ltd., London; published by G.W. Foote and Company Ltd. Tentative date of publication from KVK. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Pioneer Press
Date
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[1910?]
Identifier
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N160
Subject
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God
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Moral values
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WHAT 18 RELIGION?
(F. Max Midler's First Hibbert Lecture)
A DISCOURSE
GIVEN AT
^OUTH
j-’LACE
J^HAFEIz,
MAY $th, 1878,
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
LONDON :
SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY,
PRICE TWOPENCE.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY WATERLOW AND SONS LIMITHD,
LONDON WALL.
�WHAT IS RELIGION?
The community may congratulate itself upon the fact
that the bequest of an advanced liberal man for the
promotion of free religious inquiry, should find its
fulfilment in the ancient chapter-house of Westminster
Abbey. It is probable that if the dogmas which
founded that Abbey still reigned, the first Hibbert
lecturer would have been sooner burnt than listened
to. But now, amid those historic walls are repre
sented ideas of religion which have been raised quite
out of the region of authority, and worthily claim only
to stand or fall along with the reason and knowledge
of man,—acknowledging no revelation but the history
of man.
On Thursday last, in his second lecture, the Pro
fessor remarked that even if the theory of human pro
gression could be proved m all other affaiis of mankind,
that would not prove the same theory true of religion.
�4
This remark applied to the far past; and it is true
that what is called religion was for ages the unpro
gressive, the stationary institution of the world. And
this because the religious sentiment was confused with
theology,—identified with alleged revelations,—thus
removed from the normal current of human interests.
But the scene- in the chapter-house marks a great
change. The Hibbert Trust is, I believe, outcome
of money earned by toiling negroes on West Indian
plantations. The House of Commons freed those
slaves. The wealth they coined comes back to the
room in «which the House of Commons first sat.
There African degradation is turning to English cul■ ture. The progress in civilisation represented in that
fact is not greater than the religious progress it
implies. The leading Unitarian (Martineau) and the
. Dean of Westminster have united to bring a German
liberal there to raise the standard of a human religion.
It is now a religious House of Commons. Four
centuries ago an old monk frescoed the walls of it
with the visions of the Apocalypse. The angels and
dragons are now fading around a wider apocalypse.
The Isle of Patmos sinks beneath the horizon. The
■ Isle of England rises from the night, its awakened eye
■ holding the Apocalypse of Man.
The eminence of Max Muller is the work he has
. done in recovering the vast fields of human experi
�5
ence represented by the Aryan race. No West Indian
slave was more bound under his master than our:
English brains under thraldom to ancient Semitic
notions. Hebraism waved its sceptre over European
culture, and excluded two-thirds of the world and of
history as heathenism and devil’s work. Many have
been our deliverers from that prison, but no one of
them has done more than our first Hibbert lecturer
to carry this liberation from the scholar’s study to
the layman’s home. It was because of this that he
was called to expound the religion of humanity amid
walls built to fortify the dogmas of one tribe against
the rest of mankind, and against universal progress.Westminster Abbey has survived to hear sentence
passed upon every creed for which it stood. And so
at last even tardy religion is caught up into the great
loom of the world to be woven in with general civili
sation.
That is, so far as it is a sound thread. But is it
sound ? Is it real ? Some say it is rotten, some say
unreal: man’s childish awe of phantoms, conjured up
by his own ignorance. But Max Muller detaches re
ligion from all its special forms or accidents; maintains
its reality and vitality; rests it upon the universal human
sense and feeling of the Infinite. He appeals to the
broad facts common to the civilized man and the
barbarian, to East, West, North, South; and he thus,
�6
in laying his foundation, leaves out of sight those
facts not universal; such as the special and narrow
theories of which a Christian may feel conscious here
and a Buddhist there. His question relates not to
this so-called religion or that, but to religion itself.
All religions might perish, and this essential religion
still stand. That he declares to be a natural thing,
which has had natural evolutions comprehensible by
science. Supernaturalism may, therefore, so far as the
present atmosphere of Westminster Abbey is con
cerned, be regarded as a small way one religion] has
of saying to another “ Stand aside, I am holier than
thou.” The interest of the human intellect has
passed beyond that pious egotism. It is now pro
foundly concerned to know, not whether Christianity
is true, but whether religion itself is real; or whether
our spiritual emotion is merely surviving emotion of
waves after the blasts of superstition have so long
swept over them.
The main principle affirmed is, that religion is man’s
apprehension of the Infinite. In searching the largest
and the smallest, man reaches an end of his com
prehension, the limit of the heavens he can see, the
limit of the atom he can divide; but where compre
hension ends, apprehension continues; imagination,
wonder, admiration, faith, hope, soar on into an immea
surable expanse; and the emotion awakened within
�7
for that transcendent immensity is the religious emo
tion.
Now there are certain inferences from this principle
which it hardly lay in the way of the lecturer to un
fold. It was intimated, however, in what he said
about the progressive development of conceptions of
colour, and I will use that to illustrate my own point.
In arguing that the ancient races of men apprehended
the Infinite vaguely, though they had no word for it,
he said, 11 We divide colour by seven rough degrees.
Even those seven degrees are of late date in the evolu
tion of our sensuous knowledge. In common Arabic, as
Palgrave tells us, the names for green, black and brown
are constantly confounded. In the Edda the rainbow is
called a three-coloured bridge. Xenophanes says that
what people call Iris is a cloud, purple, red and yellow.
Even Aristotle still speaks of the tricoloured rainbow,
red, yellow and green. Blue, which seems to us so
definite a Colour, was worked out of the infinity of
colours at a comparatively late time. There is hardly
a book now in which we do not read of the blue sky.
But in the ancient hymns of the Veda, so full of the
dawn, the sun and the sky, the blue sky is never men
tioned in the Zendavesta the blue sky is never men
tioned ; in Homer the blue sky is never mentioned;
in the Old, and even in the New, Testament, the blue
sky is never mentioned. In the Teutonic languages
�S'
blue comes from a.root which originally meant bleak
and black. The Romance languages found no useful
word for blue in Latin and "borrowed their word from
the Germans.’7
The Hibbert lecturer believes those ancients saw
the blue sky as we do, but they had no word
for it because they had not detached it mentally from
dark or bright. But whether the outer eye has un
folded or the inner eye,—visual power or the analytic
mind behind it,—it is equally shown that the full
phenomena were not revealed; and we are again
reminded that in going back to the ancient world for
his beliefs man suffers a relapse from the height he
has attained. In the matter of blue sky the Bible is
as much a blank as the Vedas. So far neither was a
revelation—or unveiling—of phenomena. That know
ledge, by natural means and scientific culture, we have
reached, and see seven colours where our ancestors
saw three or four. Are we to suppose their spiritual
senses were finer, while their other senses were duller,
than ours? Are we to suppose that their religious
analysis was more perfect than ours ? If so, it would
be a miracle; but where is the evidence of any such
miracle? Compare the God of the Vedas or of the
Bible—Indra or Jehovah—with the God of Theodore
Parker, nay, of any living Theist, and only a blindness
worse than blue-blindness can declare those thunder--
�9
gods equal to the Divine Love adored by the en
lightened heart to-day.
That conclusion is inevitable from the moment it
is admitted that religion is a subject for scientific
treatment. Once let it be admitted that religion is to
be dealt with by unbiassed reason,—by such calm
sifting of facts as if the subject were electricity,—and
from that instant every particular system of religion
must take its place in the natural history of mankind.
Be it Brahminism, be it Christianity, it comes down
from the bench and goes into the witness-box. Each
testifies what it knows, but it cannot coerce the judg
ment of Reason, Christianity may testify that it saw
miracles; Confucianism that it saw none; Islamism
that it was revealed from Allah ; but it is no longer
the sword which determines their credibility; it is
Reason. So their testimony goes for precisely what
it is worth. If they saw only three colours where
there were seven, possibly they also saw miracle
where there was only natural fact. The world cannot
go back to the year One for its ideas of the Infinite
any more than for its optics. It may recognise in
Christ a great religious teacher, just as it recognises
in Aristotle a great scientific teacher; but as it
cannot diminish the known colours because Aristotle
knew only three, so it cannot deny religious facts
because unknown to Christ. But it may find fresh
�IO
reason for faith in science and religion in that, with
grand vitality, they far outgrow both Aristotle and
Christ, and all the systems that would confine them.
Now, as to this apprehension of the Infinite in
which the Hibbert lecturer finds the religious faculty;
it sounds at first rather metaphysical. It is tolerably
clear that no abstract notions of the Infinite can have
any commanding power over the nature and passions
of mankind. We must, therefore, in considering
historic religions, think rather of the forms with which
human imagination has peopled the Infinite. The
Infinite in itself is metaphysical; but its vault, popu
lous with gods, becomes practical. The creed which
has. swayed the world has been in an Infinite just
transcending man s finite in power or excellence ;
while it is finite enough to deal with him and feel
with him. The god or personality which man asso
ciates with infinitude may be of unknown strength,
so separate from finite man; but he may be angry»
loving, ambitious, so-linked on to the finite?
It is just in this twofold aspect of these images of
the Infinite that we may discover the reality and
meaning of religion. To which side of the god does
it belong—his finite or his infinite side ? his likeness
to man or his transcendency of man? his compre
hensibility or incomprehensibility.
Religion,—whether it be a sense of dependence, or
�II
awe, of emotion, or aspiration—whatever its aspect,
•refers to that in which the object of worship passes
beyond the worshipper. In this it differs from
theology, which concerns itself with that side of the
god which is within the knowledge of man. The
Theology of one period may describe the gods, as the
Greeks did, even to the colour of their hair; the
Theology of another period may disprove such gods’
existence, substituting invisible Beings, as that of Paul
‘did. One Theology may build up a Trinity; another
may supersede it with a Quatemity or Unity. ‘ But it
would be an error to suppose that Religion is either
directly making those images, or directly replacing them.
These personifications are the successive inventions
of a changing science; they are utilised by priests who
support theologians to maintain them, or, when they
become discredited, to modify or replace them. But,
although the religious condition of man may be har
monious with such images at one time, discordant
with them at another, what human worship adores is
the unknown, the eternal, the vast, the perfect, all
expanding beyond its conception, but yet believed to
be powerfully existent.
' Thus Religion is different 'from Fear. Man would
never fear the Infinite. It is only when to its vastness
Theology adds a smallness like man’s own that men
begin to tremble. It is not J ove, the incomprehensible
�12
Heaven, man fears; but Jove, the comprehensible
Chieftain, going about with a thunderclub to kill him.
That Jove men fear, because they understand him;
they go about themselves with clubs less big but
equally murderous. That is not Religion—it is
Theology; a primitive speculative science of gods.
But we have reached now a Science of Religion, and
understand that its reverence, its devoutness, emotion,
love, so far as really awakened in man, were for what
rose above his own weakness, his passions, and his
sorrows.
What, then, does this apprehension (which must be
distinguished from comprehension) this feeling about
the Iniinite amount to ? Simply to man’s belief in
something better than himself. Man believes in a
Wisdom greater than his own. Theology may per
sonify it in Minerva, or in the Holy Ghost; but the
worship is not for the work of man’s wisdom—it is
for the wisdom ascending beyond man. So the forms
perish : the worship of wisdom perishes not. Man
adores a power beyond his own: theology may
identify it with mountain and lightning, sea and whirl
wind, and these may overawe his heart so long as he
knows nothing of them : but when the mountain is
climbed, and the sea voyaged over, the cloud seen as
vapour, the wind weighed, the lightning bottled and
sealed up, the ever-kneeling spirit of Religion passes
�i3
onward, and amid innumerable forms and names that
come and go, seeks still the better, the wiser, the >
more powerful and happy,—ever leading on from the
finite to the Infinite.
And this high seeking, born of each heart’s faith in
a better than, it knows, is the religious force, because
it is the controlling and creative force. It is idle to'
tell us, in face of the moral progress of the world,
that the life of man has been the result of correct
metaphysics, theological definitions, abstractions about
the Absolute and co-eternal Persons. The force that
is moving the world onward is the longing in each
human being for somewhat more perfect than what
they have or are. It is Maya in India praying her
babe Siddartba (Buddha) may be wise beyond all men
she ever knew; or Mary in Palestine praying the same
as she watches her baby Jesus ; or any mother that
hears- me, whose tender breast feels stirring within
hope that the new nature she has started on its career
may ascend till she can kneel in homage before it. It
may be the humblest workman dreaming of a more
perfect skill; the young artisan feeling after an inven
tion pregnant with results incalculable. Wherever
and however manifested it is the great vision of a
glory transcending our own; and though such ideals
are always being reached and passed by—infinites
becoming finites—so, endlessly the spirit grows, so
�14
immortal is its nature, so unceasing the work of
creation, the outline is never filled up. Over crumbled
gods and goddesses, religion ascends for ever, burning,
disintegrating, generating, regenerating,—Humanity’s
passion for the Perfect.
There is a danger in the method of the historian
and archseologist of religion. Because he must trace
the evolution of religion through its visible and
definable effects—fetish, shrine, dogma, temple—
there is danger that these may be regarded as types
and forms of religion itself. When a geologist walks
over hills, cliffs, rocks, he traces the path of drifting
glaciers scratched on rock; he finds sea-shells on
the hill-tops, boulders dropped in meadows, pebbles
rounded by waves long ebbed away to channels many
miles distant: he says, seas and rivers have smoothed
and deposited these shells and sands, and shaped
these undulations of hill and vale. Yet these are
not the sea,—they are but fringes and accidents in the
history of the sea. But in religion men still have the
habit of seeing the shards and shells of theory—the
pebbles of theology worn from crumbled temples—as
forms of Religion itself. They are but things which
Religion influenced, they report its ancient tides and
currents, but they are not—never were — religion
itself.
Having now detached the religious sentiment from
�i5
the forms which have borrowed its consecration;
having identified it as man’s impulse towards the
Perfect—which philosophy calls the Infinite—let us
ask whether we are genuine and true in calling this
religion. Or is our use of that word only a piece of
conventionality ? Does Religion mean anything diffe
rent from morality, or different from conscience ? If
not, then our use of it is mystification, conformity,
cowardice.
I believe Religion to be a different thing from
Morality. I understand by morality rules and stan
dards of conduct relating to recognised social duties.
But there is something in man which leads him to
defy the rules and standards around him. A bad man
violates moral rules for the sake of self: but another
man breaks them at the cost of self. What leads Jesus
to break the Sabbath, or Buddha to refuse offerings
to the gods ? Or what leads the reformer of to-day to
challenge the social and political order ?
Are such men seeking the benefit of the majority ?
The majority are against them. The majority is made
uncomfortable by them. Are they seeking general
advantages ? They are often plunging everything into
revolution, and doing it consciously. You might per
suade a freethinker that to disestablish the Church
would leave the majority poorer than now; or that
innumerable advantages to millions would be lost if
�t6
the Athanasian Creed were exploded. But would any
consideration of majorities make him support the
Church: would any advantages make him advocate
the Creed ? It may be said he is obeying the voice of
conscience. That explains nothing. Conscience is
an organ of forces beyond itself. It dictates war to
one tribe, peace to another. Conscience is a majestic
throne, but we search for the power behind the
throne.
Now, here we have a force in man which often
confronts customs, moralities, the social and political
order, which disregards majorities and their interests,
disregards self-interest also; and this force with
passion, enthusiasm and martyrdom, seeks something
it never saw, something that never existed. It is
manifested in all history, and is known in universal
experience; it actuates theists and non-theists; it is
especially visible in the overthrow of popular idols
and dogmas claiming its worship. Is that morality ?
Not a whit more than it is politics, or trade, or art, or
any one of the manifold human interests which slowly
but steadily follow the lead of that pillar of cloud and
fire.
I call it Religion, because that is a universal name
which no sect or nation has ever tried to monopolise :
but I do. not care for that name if any one has a
better. I do care that it shall not be confused with
�'1'7
wholly different things, with either morality, politics
or science. Much less, with Theology. For Theology
is the great enemy of religion. Morality, Society,
Science, are its ministers, but Theology is its rival,—
the Opposer that would arrest the current of its life,
and nail man down to bestow upon a fragment of his
universe and himself the passion born for aspiration
to the perfect whole. To call it ideality, poetry,
harmony, love of humanity, is to name the fruits by
which this religious life is known. To name it
Religion may, indeed, be very inadequate ; neither
etymologically or practically can that word do more
than preserve the distinction and witness the existence
of that which language cannot define; but as in
accuracy of words like “ sunrise ” and “ sunset ”
cannot now mar the glories they suggest, so no
etymologic fault can disparage that only catholic
name we have (Religion) so long as it is left
us by Sectarianism and Superstition to • designate
the universal aspirations of mankind. Christianity
can only claim to be a religion; it cannot claim
to be Religion. No sect can claim to be Religion
itself. That is an older banner than any existing
nation or church; under its broad folds and
heaven-born tints thousands of sects have perished;
it widens with the ages, blends with all grandeurs
without and within, leads onward the steady march of
�i8
man with his world to that supreme beauty which
enchains his senses and enchants his heart.
For essential religion no adequate word or definition
has ever been discovered, or is likely to be discovered.
If the lecturer’s statement there halts, it is because
the Infinite, the Perfect, cannot be defined. To call
it the Infinite leaves the moral sentiment unexpressed.
To call it “ morality touched with enthusiasm,” leaves
the progressive life untold. The philosophers of Germany
and America in the beginning of this generation called
it Transcendentalism;—but that white light wanted
fire, and faded. Some have called it absolute Being.
Jesus called it Love; and no fairer emblem of it was
ever named than that supreme glory which quickens
the world, from the marriage of flower with flower
which to-day clothes the earth with blossoms, to the
mother and her babe, and all the manifestations of
that unselfish joy which alone can transfigure human
passions. But man needs Light as well as Love.
And so it is that the highest in us is as ineffable as that
which it seeks. When we have dwelt on its varied
intimations ; when we have thought of Ideality and
Poetry, perfect Being, the Infinite, the Immortal,
Supreme Reason, pure Beauty, universal Love—even
then the wise heart is conscious that it has touched
but a few chords of the harp with a thousand strings ;
and when the thousand strings have all been swept,
�when human language has rehearsed all its concepts
and its dreams to the last accent, yet in the silent
heart the still small voice will go on sweetly singing of
a dawn fairer thap. all the rest.
Waterlow & Sons Limited, Printers, London Wall, London. '•
�•■9
•
WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY.
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Human Sacrifices in England
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Intellectual Suicide
The First Love again
Our Cause and its Accusers
Alcestis in England
Unbelief: Its nature, cause, and cure
Entering Society ..
The Religion of Children
The Peri! of War
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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What is religion?: a discourse given at South Place Chapel, May 5th, 1878
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 19, [1] ; 15 cm.
Notes: Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. 'F. Max Muller's First Hibbert Lecture' [From title page]. Publisher's list on back page. Printed by Waterlow & Sons, London Wall.
Publisher
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[South Place Chapel]
Date
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[1870]
Identifier
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G4885
Subject
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Religion
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (What is religion?: a discourse given at South Place Chapel, May 5th, 1878), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
God (Christianity)
Moral Philosophy
Morality
Morris Tracts
Religion and science
Science and Religion
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BY
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E. S. P. HAYNES
Author of “Religious Persecution,” ete.
London :
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�Ml e\
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
MODERN MORALITY AND
MODERN TOLERATION
BY
E. S. P. HAYNES
Author of "Religious Persecution,” etc.
[issued
for the rationalist press association, limited]
London :
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
�HJeOicateò
WITH AFFECTIONATE REGARD
TO
Mrs. THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
�INTRODUCTION
The two essays here published are, so to speak, pendants to
my book on Religious Persecution, which was published when
I was only twenty-seven years of age. The subject might
well occupy a lifetime, and it is scarcely surprising that I
should continue to meditate upon it in such moments of
leisure as I enjoy. The first essay was read to ten male
undergraduates at Oxford, and to about fifty male and
female undergraduates at Cambridge.
Both audiences
belonged to the flourishing society of “ Heretics.”
It is,
perhaps, not odd that Oxford should still continue her tradi
tion of discouraging heretics until they are senile or dead,
but one very trenchant Oxford critic helped me to define and
distinguish points which I had not sufficiently elaborated.
At Cambridge I was told that the example of Jesus Christ’s
life was a potent force in contemporary morality ; and I
could only reply that the example of men and women whom
we have actually known and admired in youth, and even in
later life, ought to be equally potent. Personally, I should
consider it more potent ; but it is impossible to see quite
inside the minds of others.
As each year passes it seems to me more and more
impossible to take any abstract system of thought seriously
unless it intimately affects the practical problems of every
day life ; and I have known many excellent Freethinkers in
the older generation who made a point of attending church
because they thought that the decline of churchgoing would
entail a moral cataclysm. If such admirable people as these
can be induced to think otherwise, our Association will
prosper even more than it has done hitherto.
3
�INTROD UCTION
4
I have to thank my friend Mr. Belloc for kindiv allowing’
me to reprint my second essay from the columns of the
Eye- Witness. It is at least consoling' to reflect that we shall
never relapse into complete “quietism” while Mr. Belta©
lives ; and the cordial admission of a Rationalist to th®
columns of his brilliant review shows that militant Catholicism
is by no means incompatible with certain qualities of intel
lectual curiosity and comprehensive vision which Rationalists
would always desire to see associated with their own cause.
I have used the personal pronoun without regard to the
snobbish and vulgar prejudice against it. The fear of this
prejudice often forces some writers into ponderous peri
phrases which no less often suggest that the writer’s personal
opinions are those of an influential majority. It is at once
humbler and more courageous to avoid pretending that
individual opinions have more than an individual value ;
and, in the matter of style, Cardinal Newman’s example is
good enough for me.
E. S. P. H.
SA John's Wood.
January, igis.
�I.
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND
MODERN MORALITY
Among Agnostics of the nineteenth century, and to
some extent to-day, it was, and is, largely held that the
disappearance of Christian, or even theistic, belief
involves not only no relaxation, but also no change, of
ethical sanctions or conduct. The latter view is, to my
mind, a perilous fallacy. Clearly, the Agnostic sanc
tions must be different; and if this be true, it follows
that conduct will also be different. Unless our society
is prepared to face this fact, and also to impart to the
rising generation some solid principles of ethical
training, it must, as Goldwin Smith long ago pre
dicted, be prepared to face a “ very bad quarter of an
hour.”
In a book which I wrote some years ago on Religious
Persecution I distinguished what I call “ civic morality ”
from what I call “ individual morality.” I defined “ civic
morality as that part of conduct which relates to other
citizens, and is regulated by the appointment of State
penalties for the enforcement of it. I defined “ individual
morality ” as conduct which is only regulated by social,
not legal, agencies, and is therefore more spontaneous.
Broadly speaking, civic morality depends less on senti
ment than on utilitarian common sense, though, of
course, legislation is adapted to changing views of
individual morality. Civic morality is, therefore, so
much the less likely to be moulded by religious
emotions or sanctions, except where the State is theo
cratic, as in the case of medieval Europe or modern.
Islam.
5
�6
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
Let us now analyse the Christian or theistic concep*
tion of morality. Christian morality is essentially a
matter' of duty towards God and a Creator. God is.
assumed by the Catholic Church and many other
Christian bodies to forbid, among other things, suicide,
divorce, limitation of the family, or the sacrifice of the
infant’s life to the mother’s life in childbirth without any
saving clause whatsoever. The use of anaesthetics and
cremation is still viewed with suspicion even where
allowed. God is understood to have made certain
definite arrangements for the life of each human being
and the propagation of the species, which must on no
account be interfered with. Imbued with some such
belief, the early Christians declined to shave their
beards, as they would not blasphemously attempt to
improve upon the handiwork of their Creator.
Moreover, the Church declares that Socialism is
sinful. To quote an excellent pamphlet of Ernest R.
Hull, S.J.: “The right of private property is a divine
ordinance....... the state of probation does not suppose
equality in the present lot of men....... There is to come
a final reckoning day in which all inequalities will be
levelled up and compensated for.”1 Men, therefore,
must not try to improve upon the social structure set
up by their Creator as exemplified in the Christian
world.
A different set of considerations emerges in regard to
the nature of the ethical sanction. Morality, according
to the theologian, is primarily concerned with God, who
rewards and punishes men exclusively in relation to
their obedience or disobedience to his commands. An
old man, alone in the world, without ties or obligations,
may prefer euthanasia to a slow and painful death by
cancer. This man is (theologically) quite as inexcusable
in the eyes of God as the man who by his suicide leaves
a wife and family to starve. God has ordered all men to
1 Why Should I be Moral? y. 95.
(Sands & Co.)
�AND MODERN MORALITY
I
live until the unavoidable moment of death. God has
also commanded all men and women to increase and
multiply, subject to the conditions laid down by the
Church. The Catholic Church has always told the wife
to comply with the husband’s demands for conjugal
rights in case he should be tempted to offend God by
committing adultery. Consequently, many a man has
forced his wife to have children every year till she died.
He has then married another wife and continued the
same course of conduct till the second wife died, and so
forth. This is a perfectly true picture, not only of
medieval Christendom, but also of Victorian England.
“ Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die ”
sums up the situation. “ Reasoning why ” may fre
quently lead to eternal damnation.
Starting with these ideas of duty to God, religious
thinkers quite logically proceed to indicate certain
changes in modern morality as the direct result of
religious unbelief, such as, for example, a greater
tolerance of suicide, divorce, and limitation of the
family, as well as a tendency to try and improve human
society from a purely terrestrial point of view. I
cordially agree with them, and am sorry to see so many
Agnostics attempting to deny the fact. I cannot see
the use of attacking the Christian religion except with
a view to substituting a rational morality for Christian
or theistic morality.
Theologians can no longer
interfere with modern science, but they can and do still
block the progress of modern morality.
The theologians defend their position by suggesting
that even on utilitarian grounds modern morality is
dangerous. “ Once admit euthanasia,” they argue,
“and suicide will become epidemic.
Once admit
divorce, and society will become promiscuous.” Again
I cordially agree with them. All moral changes are, in
the last degree, perilous, unless men know clearly what
they want and define clearly the sanctions on which they
rely. It is, therefore, all the more important not to
�THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
continue pretending1 that Christian morality is inde
pendent of the Christian religion.
It would be idle to deny that Christian morality
connotes a great deal of morality that is common to all
human societies, and it is of course largely based on
the Stoic and humanitarian ideas which filled the
atmosphere in which Christianity was born. That is
why it is so necessary to determine exactly how much
of our morality to-day is traceable to distinctly Christian
influences. I have tried up to now to define the
Christian basis of morality ; but it is equally incumbent
on me to try and indicate what I consider to be the
basis of modern, as distinct from Christian, morality.
A friend of mine once remarked that society was only
respectable because we did not all want to commit the
seven deadly sins at one and the same moment. The
reason why we do not want to commit them is because
we are for the most part the slaves of moral habits
inculcated in early youth. Our moral habits and
faculties have been hammered into us by a long process
of evolution. I cannot do better than quote again a
passage from Father Hull’s dialogue, in which he is
putting certain arguments for the Agnostic view into
the mouth of one of the many speakers whom he
subsequently refutes :—
We have no evidence to show how ethical ideas first came
into the human mind—whether they formed part of it from
the very first origin of the race, or were gradually evolved as
time went on. It is notorious that the “ moral sense ’’ flourishes
best in a moral environment—that is to say, in a circle where
both public and private opinion stand on the side of morality,
and the supremacy of the moral code is accepted by all without
question, and taught to and enforced on the young from their
very birth. Among the savage races and the criminal classes
it hardly appears at all ;T and experiments seem to show that
children separated from all moral influence irom birth grow up
apparently quite destitute of the ethical sense, and show little
or no capacity for imbibing it later on. May it not therefoie
x This is clearly untrue of savage races.
works passim.
See Dr. Westermarck’»
�AND MODERN MORALITY
9
be that evolution is right in explaining that the whole cluster
of moral ideas is the outcome of a gradual process of develop
ment, which, starting from practical experience and the clash
of interests, gradually gave rise to social conventions and tribal
laws, thus creating a habit of thinking in a groove which in
course of time became a sort of a second nature, indistinguish
able from nature itself? My contention in this case would be
that the ideas of right and wrong and the categorical form of
the dictate of conscience are indeed facts of consciousness ;
not, however, pertaining to our nature as such, but artificially
induced by the habit of generations—by perpetually drumming
into the minds of the young, as absolute truths, the ideals
which are already stereotyped in the minds of the old. A
similar example occurs in the department of manners. The
European and the Hindu are both so imbued with their
ancestral customs of eating and the rest, that so long as they
remain apart each takes for granted that his is the only feasible
way of going on. And even when they come together this
conviction remains so immovably fixed in the mind that they
detest each other’s ways heartily, and simply cannot tolerate
them. May it not be the same with the ethical ideas of the
■ intuitional theory—that they are so ingrained by tradition in
the mind as to become inseparable from it, and are thus taken
as part of the intrinsic constitution of human nature ; whereas
in fact they are merely an adventitious accretion, the inherit
ance of countless ages !
To this Father Hull adds, on his own side :—
So long as this view seems possible, so long does an air of
uncertainty pervade the whole sphere of ethics ; and so long
does it remain possible to doubt the absolute validity of its
principles and its dictates.1
Father Hull, of course, lays down the Christian
principle that all morality, being a divine command, is
comprehensive in every detail, and does not vary from
age to age. He deduces a great deal from the operation
of “Conscience,” and seems to forget Montaigne’s
apophthegm “Conscience is custom.” This view is
clearly repugnant to the modern Agnostic. Perhaps
the best statement of what ought to be an Agnostic’s
point of view is set forth in Sir Leslie Stephen’s Science
of Ethics. Stephen reconciles the utilitarian and evolu1 Op. cit.,
p. 77.
�IO
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
tionary theories, and points out that the aim and object
of every society is to achieve a certain kind of social
hygiene which will probably produce a social, though
not necessarily an individual, happiness. He points
out, for example, how a man who is too morally
sensitive for his generation, is liable to suffer just
because of this very fact.1 Shortly, however, the
ordinary modern test of our morality is its social value.
This view has been violently contested by writers like
the late Mr. Lecky. Mr. Lecky satirically commented
on the social position of the prostitute, in spite of her
seemingly obvious claim to honour on the utilitarian
ground of her existence being essential to the chastity of
other women.1 I do not see how Lecky’s contention can
2
be denied so long as we are content to admit that the
supposed chastity of all other women justifies the social
evil of prostitution ; nor must we forget that both in
ancient Greece and modern Japan (as opposed to Chris
tian countries) the prostitute enjoyed, and still enjoys,
the social esteem and recognition accorded to the ordinary
self-supporting citizen. The whole tendency, however,
of modern England is to rely less on prostitution as an
instrument of social welfare, and to attach a less super
stitious value to female chastity. Advanced thinkers—
like Mr. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw—attach more
importance to the economic independence than to the
chastity of women ; and in many cases, of course, female
chastity needs the security of economic independence.
I have chosen this particular example because Mr.
Lecky made his most effective point by means of it.
But in every region of morality we are to-day measuring
acts exclusively by their social consequences. Had a
strike, for example, occurred in the Middle Ages, the
population would at once have asked each other whether
1 A perfect example of this would be Sir Samuel Romilly, the sensitive
humanitarian, whose contemporaries thwarted almost every effort h©
made to remedy the barbarous cruelty of his age.
2 In his Introduction to the History of European Morals.
�AND MODERN MORALITY
11
the strike pleased or displeased God, and would have
supported or opposed the strike according to what they
imagined to be God’s will. Had the strike coincided
with a pestilence breaking out among the strikers, this
would have meant that God did not intend the strike
to continue, and the State would have taken measures
accordingly. The modern man discusses such a pheno
menon simply from the social point of view. He asks
himself whether the strike is or is not likely to promote
the ultimate welfare of society. For that reason a great
deal of modern morality is made up of compromises
between conflicting claims. In short, social harmony is
preferred to the development of particular virtues as ends
in themselves. Many thinkers vastly prefer the doctrine
of civic order and efficiency to the workings of Christian
charity. Again we subordinate so-called moral principles
to social convenience. It is to-day frankly acknowledged
that society would be instantly dissolved by any serious
adoption in practice of the Sermon on the Mount. It,
therefore, seems odd that medieval morality was in some
respects more inconsistent with Christian morality than
our own. Crimes of lust and hatred were far more
common in the Middle Ages than they are to-day. The
uncertainty of marriage was a perfect scandal, in spite
of the unquestioned dogma that the marriage was indis
soluble except by death. Private warfare was rampant
throughout medieval Europe, though it was quite unsafe
to challenge the inspired word of the Prince of Peace.
It must, however, be remembered that moral trans
gressions could be easily remedied by indulgences and
death-bed repentance. The more mundane process of
terrestrial cause and effect was obscured from view by
the supernatural machinery.
The improved and more stable morality of our civilisa
tion is of itself an argument in favour of what I call
modern morality. If theological conceptions produce
no better results than they did in the Middle Ages,
when they were far more literally accepted than they are
�12
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
now, they clearly cannot command as much confidence
as the appeal to reason. Moreover, the historian would
probably admit that the humanitarian movement of
to-day is rooted in the new doctrines of society that
came to birth at the end of the eighteenth century, and
in these doctrines religion is undoubtedly postponed to
human welfare.
It may be specially remarked that
Christian morality, as such, exercises very little influence
on the modern world. Such influence as it has can only
be observed in certain departments of human life where
old traditions have survived and escaped analysis.
I may perhaps take as an example the law of marriage
■and divorce in England. Whatever the merits of dis
cussion may be on social grounds, it is perfectly
ludicrous that the matter should be discussed with refer
ence to the textual condition of an old manuscript, or
that any intellectual body of persons in our generation
should concern themselves with a controversy conducted
on those lines; yet in 1910 we had the astonishing
spectacle of bishops appearing before the Royal Com
mission on Divorce, and solemnly arguing this grave
and weighty matter as if the solution of the problem
depended upon the doctrine of verbal inspiration.
It may be argued that modern Churchmen are more in
line with other humanitarian movements of to-day, and
the social , reforms of the nineteenth century are often
attributed to religious influences such as the influence of
the Wesleyan and Evangelical movements. Men like
Lord Shaftesbury are frequently cited in this connection.
It is difficult to prove anything strictly in discussing so
large a question ; but the study of history disposes many
people to believe that religion follows morality rather
than morality religion, and that both are deeply influ
enced by economic changes. It seems odd that Chris
tianity should have continued for 1,800 years without
producing the enormous humanitarian and ethical
changes which occurred in the first fifty years of th©
nineteenth century, and that these changes should then
�AND MODERN MORALITY
E3
be ascribed to a “revival ” of Christianity.1 Undoubtedly,
• writers like Voltaire and Rousseau and Fielding had
produced an enormous effect, and the new wealth of the
industrial revolution became widely diffused. The rail
way, the novel, the newspaper, and scientific discoveries
enormously enlarged the sympathies of the average man.
Nor did the “ revival ” of Christianity continue. The
whole forward movement here referred to became asso
ciated with the most formidable spread of sceptical ideas
known to European history. A curious sidelight on the
connection of religion with moral progress is thrown by
Mr. Joseph Clayton’s book on the Bishops as Legislators.
Why should the bishops have so sturdily and consis
tently declined to abolish a barbarously varied system of
capital punishment for small thefts if the Church was
really achieving the moral improvement of England
during this period, or if the bishops themselves had an
atom of real confidence in the moral influences of the
religion which they professed ?
The fact remains that men are not moral without some
sort of reason for being so, or without growing up in
moral habits ; but the time is long past when the young
could safely associate moral truths with the truths of
orthodox Christianity. Yet the advocates of secular
education for the most part tend to forget the need for
f As a specimen of Christian morality in eighteenth-century England
the following extract from Lecky’s History of England in the Eighteenth
Century deserves quotation (Vol. III., p. 537, Library Edition). It relates
to a case mentioned in Parliament in 1777 of a sailor taken by the press
gang from a wife not yet nineteen years of age, with two infant children.
“The breadwinner being gone, his goods were seized for an old debt,
and his wife was driven into the streets to beg. At last, in despair, she
stole a piece of coarse linen from a linen-draper’s shop. Her defence,
which was fully corroborated, was : ‘ She had lived in credit and wanted
for nothing till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her ; but
since then she had no bed to lie on and nothing to give her children to
eat, and they were almost naked. She might have done something
wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.’ The lawyers declared that,
shoplifting being a common offence, she must be executed ; and she was
driven to Tyburn with a child still suckling at her breast.” What were the
Christians doing at this date? Little, it is to be feared, but enjoying
rather gross pleasures and discussing how to make the best of both
worlds.
�14
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
some kind of moral training, and that if we are to give
the young moral training we must clearly give them
cogent reasons for moral conduct. It is worse than
useless to attach importance to religious sanctions of
morality unless we are prepared to justify the truth of
those sanctions up to the hilt. Are we to tell our
children that they must not lie or steal because God will
send them to Hell if they do, or because lying and
stealing are injurious to society and incidentally to
themselves? That is the question which modern society
shirks answering.
Modern society tries to meet the difficulty by a com
promise, which consists in hiring teachers who frequently
do not believe in the Christian religion to pretend that
they do. Indirectly, of course, these teachers employ
other inducements to morality besides the sanctions of
the Christian religion ; but the whole system is so
chaotic that it frequently ends in producing moral
chaos.
For these reasons it seems to me that the modern
Agnostic must not be content with the mere avowal of
disbelief in the Christian religion. If he does not
believe in the Christian religion, he cannot possibly
believe in the Christian sanctions of morality. If he
does not believe in the Christian sanctions, he must
find other sanctions, as I have indicated. If these
sanctions hold good for him, he must admit that they
will hold good for other people who have lost faith in
the Christian religion, and he must be prepared to make
an open profession of these principles, in spite of the
fact that the moral reformer encounters worse prejudice
than the religious reformer.
Rightly or wrongly, Agnostics believe that the
Christian religion is declining, and will progressively
continue to decline. If this be true, it means that an
increasingly larger number of persons will reject the
sanctions of Christian morality, and must either find
other sanctions for themselves or else be taught on an
�AND MODERN MORALITY
i5
entirely new system in early youth. This seems to me
far the most important concern of the modern Agnostic,
more especially because it has been neglected by the
old-fashioned type of Agnostic who wished to vindicate
himself and his friends from the suggestions of immorality
that were at one time made by the less scrupulous kind
of Christian. We cannot, and must not, therefore, shirk
the obvious conclusion that the old morality based on
Christian sanctions must be largely modified in accord
ance with social sanctions. Society must not, for
example, enforce celibacy on a particular class of men
because they are devoted to the service of God, though
society may well be justified in enforcing celibacy or
sterilised marriage on those who are unfit to become
parents. The real danger to-day is our inclination to
put the wine of this new social morality into the old
bottles of the Christian religion.
It may be asked how anything so fluctuating as the
social sanction can serve as a standard. When, for
instance, Antigone buried her brother in defiance of the
State, was she obeying or disobeying a social sanction ?
Assuming that she disobeyed, are we to deny her the
right of appeal to the social sanction of a future genera
tion ? Are not all heretics constantly trying to modify
or even destroy the social sanctions of their own age?
Indeed, is any social sanction of any ethical value
unless it is the spontaneous agreement of individuals,
and not a compulsory code enforced by a bureaucratic
or social tyranny? No one can be more alive to these
difficulties than a strong Individualist like myself; but
I maintain that in any society most people are fairly
well agreed on a number of questions concerning the
moral hygiene of that society, such as the reprobation
of murder or theft. Society can at least agree that the
starting-point of all discussion must be the welfare of
society, and not the textual criticism of antiquated folk
lore.
I should compare the social sanction with a debenture
�16
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
—that is to say, a floating charge on the present and
future assets of a company.
The property affected
by it varies from year to year ; in ten years it may be
entirely different from what it was. The terms of the
debenture bond or stock may be changed from time to
time ; but no variation of the terms of the loan or of the
assets makes the debenture less real or legally enforce
able. The debenture perishes only on redemption ; and
the social sanction will perish only with the abolition of
the criminal law. When every individual ungrudgingly
and spontaneously fulfils his social obligations, the
social sanction will become superfluous ; at present it
represents the claim of society to enforce such actions
on the individual as are determined for the moment to
be his duties to society.
In this connection it may be useful to illustrate my
meaning by applying the principles I have formulated
to modern Socialism. I should say at once that I am
no Socialist. Most of the Socialist writers I have read
seem to me to ignore either economic truths or the
truths of human psychology. They seem to me to
assume a state of society in which no one has an axe to
grind, and to draw too large cheques on public spirit
and altruism ; but their power and influence are largely
due to the omission of those who are not Socialists to
preach and to practise a social code of morals. Even
bishops hesitate nowadays to console a starving man by
telling him that he will be better off in the next world
than the rich man. They do not usually exhort him to
take no thought for the morrow, and to live like the
lilies of the field.1 Society must be prepared to justify
itself on a rational basis ; to convince the labourer that
he is receiving his proper hire, and to give him a
reasonable opportunity of earning what is due to him.
Society must also tackle the whole sex problem on rational
1 Except, perhaps, in regard to the irresponsible propagation of large
families.
�AND MODERN MORALITY
i7
lines. Marriage must be rational ; men must share
equitably with women the responsibilities for children
born out of wedlock; female labour must not be sweated;
and the whole question of venereal disease must be
scientifically handled.
The word “sin” must be
eliminated from the discussion of social or medical
remedies, for it has invariably been used as an excuse
for shirking social or medical remedies—as, for example,
when we are told that a certain venereal disease is the
“ finger of God.”1
The Socialists are bound to win all along the line
unless their opponents are prepared to face the question
of sanctions fairly and squarely, because in the meantime
Socialists are allowed by others to arrogate to them
selves the profession of public service and of working
exclusively for the public good. Christianity, however
one may twist its doctrines, is concerned with the end of
an old world. The business of the Agnostic is to share
in the beginnings of a new world.
1 An edifying remark frequently made by a deceased English officer
who was once Governor of Gibraltar.
c
�II.
THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN
TOLERATION
The word “ toleration ” has been used so constantly in
a theological sense, while theology has become so much
less prominent in our thoughts than it used to be, that
the word sounds almost obsolete, except perhaps in con
nection with the position of religious orders in countries
like France and Portugal. About ten years ago I wrote
a book to demonstrate that nearly all that we understand
by the name of Toleration was necessarily associated in
its religious sense with an undercurrent of scepticism,
either implicit or explicit, in regard to ultimate pro
blems, and that no really free discussion is allowed by
any human society concerning matters which they think
all-important. On the other hand, I was forced to
admit that our generation had more cosmopolitan
interests, more intellectual curiosity, and far more
novels and newspapers to read, all of which promoted
and necessitated a larger freedom of discussion.
During the last ten years I have constantly been
wondering how much toleration exists in regard to free
discussion of subjects outside religion, and especially of
what John Stuart Mill called “experiments in life.” On
the whole, I think that any contemporary observer is
bound to admit that the issues raised by the contro
versies of to-day are amazingly wide and deep as com
pared with those of the nineteenth century.
The two main obstacles to free discussion have at all
times been the conviction (i) that the principle “salus
populi, sziprema lex''1 must express the permanent
attitude of the State to public criticism ; and (2) that
18
�THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERA TION 19
those fundamental principles of morality on which
human society is deemed to repose must never be
subjected to the test of reason or argument. Thus, for
instance, there could be no free discussion of religious
problems so long as (¿z) it was feared that such dis
cussion might bring down the wrath of the gods on the
State or community which permitted the discussion ; or
(¿) the identification, or close association, of morality
with religion compelled men to believe that reli
gious creeds and moral principles must stand or fall
together.
On either assumption the free discussion of religious
problems necessarily provokes a breach of the peace
and becomes a matter of police supervision, as we see
in modern Spain, where Rationalism becomes confused
with anarchy. The State may sometimes bridge over
difficulties by tolerating a sort of passive heresy in
religion or morality, as, for example, the Romans did
in the case of local or particular cults, or as our Indian
Penal Code of to-day tolerates obscene works of art
connected with purely religious representations ; but
such partial toleration as this is not extended to any
kind of missionary effort or proselytism.
Yet to-day we behold the astonishing spectacle of
entirely free discussion in regard to the most crucial
problems of State and society. I need only refer to
disarmament, socialism, anarchism, the endowment of
motherhood, and the treatment of crime as disease.
Nor is all this discussion without practical results.
Arbitration is now a real force in European politics, the
Socialists have found their ideas embodied in a so-called
Liberal Budget, discontented artisans and suffragettes
increasingly disregard the King’s Peace, unmarried
mothers are less harshly treated by society, and prisons
are seemingly more attractive than workhouses. All
these changes evoke deep disgust in a large number of
citizens ; but they take place in a piecemeal and tranquil
fashion which never gives an opportunity for real
�2o
THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERATION
fighting-. Even modern revolutions come to pass with
out appreciable bloodshed.
So far from this result being anticipated, it may be
remembered that Mill dreaded the uniformity and
mediocrity of democracies as an engine of obscurantism.
But the democratic uniformity of to-day is principally
manifested in the cosmopolitan habits of modern Europe,
which make less for repression of the individual than
for international peace. We seem to be achieving a
sort of Chinese “harmony,” a spirit of pacific com
promise, in all departments of life. The only coercive
force appears in that bureaucratic tyranny which so
often distinguishes the more pacific types of society.
All these characteristics point either to an almost
universal confidence in the common sense of mankind,
and in the capacity of human nature to revolt effectively,
in the last resort, against intolerable abuses, or to a
prevalent conviction that nothing is much worth fighting
about. Some will be heard saying : “Magna est Veritas
et prcevalebit”; others that no principle on earth is
worth going to the stake for. The first attitude of mind
seems curiously associated with the second. Belief in
the ultimate victory of truth seems easily to breed indif
ference as regards the immediate prospects of truth.
All persecution, however, necessarily implies an attitude
of distrust towards those who would allow the collective
intelligence of mankind free play. The persecutor will
not accept the consolations that Newman found in
repeating the words “Securus judicat orbis terrarum.”
False theology must be suppressed as speedily as false
economics ; for men will either not distinguish the true
from the false, or else will resent the toil and incon
venience of always making the effort to do so. I choose
the analogy of economics because false economics are
likely to alarm the modern world more than false
theology, and we live in an atmosphere of Socialist and
anti-Socialist leagues, and of Free Trade and Tariff
Reform leagues. Indeed, all disputation about burning
�THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERATION
21
questions, such as property, seems bound to entail a dis
turbance of civil order, even if men really care little about
distinctions between true and false theories, and rely on
the financial common sense of the community. Thus,
however strongly I may be convinced that socialistic
experimentswill never destroy the proprietary instincts of
humanity, yet I may violently resent the inconvenience
of temporarily losing my property while such experi
ments are going on. Nevertheless, in modern society
such questions rarely tend to reach a violent, or even
decisive, issue. Some sort of compromise is nearly
always practicable. Ina given year I may have to pay
to the State one-eighth of my income, instead of onetenth ; but, in the first place, there is always the hope
that the electorate may stand this no longer, and, in the
second place, it is clearly more enjoyable to spend seven
eighths of my income in freedom than to be imprisoned
for resisting even a tyrannical and unjust surveyor of
taxes. The instinct of the highly civilised man leads
him to avoid the employment of force even where he would
not be opposing the State. If an armed burglar comes
to my house, and I am insured against burglary, it may
save a great deal of trouble, not to mention my life, if I
request him merely not to abstract articles of sentimental
value, but otherwise to make a free choice. An increas
ing disrespect for the ideal of chastity may lead to men’s
marital or paternal rights over their wives and daughters
being less strictly regarded; but it is quite old-fashioned
for an injured father or husband to aggravatethe scandal
by assaulting the offender.
The spirit of compromise seems, in fact, to increase
with all civilisation, and it is especially characteristic of
the oldest civilisation we know—namely, the Chinese.
In the Independent Review for April, 1904, an acute
observer recorded the tendency in Chinese civilisation
to encourage only an “ irreducible minimum " of the
virtues.1 “ Man,” he wrote, in describing the Chinese
1 Mr. A. M. Latter.
�22
THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERA TION
philosophy of life, “ is a difficult animal ; and human
intelligence must devise the best means of inducing hi®
to live in peace with his neighbours, to make the earth
yield to him its utmost, and to develop the most useful
part of him—-his intelligence. To this end certain moral
ideas are doubtless useful ; but the foundation of all such
ideals is harmony in society, and, in so far as any other
ideal appears to conflict with this, it must be checked.
Inasmuch as harmony is the end of all civilised beings,
with regard to other ideals the best thing to do in practice
is to use the irreducible minimum of them ; and it is in
the discovery of the irreducible minimum that the Mon
golian intellect has developed most completely its civilisa
tion.” As a concrete instance, the writer, who is and
was a practising barrister, cites “ the attainment of justice,
without either the discovery of truth or the employment
of dishonesty. The harmony of the people forbids the
decree of a gross injustice ; the harmony of the magis
trate and the yamen forbids the abstention from bribes ;
the actual circumstances of the case are impossible to
discover; while the fact that the litigants have, by mere
litigation, disturbed the general harmony” leads to a
decision whereby “ both sides are punished slightly, and
the side that recommends itself to the tribunal is also
rewarded.” This attitude is forcibly contrasted with the
old European ideal of seeking the highest development
of particular virtues as ends in themselves without
making social and political harmony the paramount
aim. Side by side with all this one remarks the pacific
character of Chinese civilisation, based not so much on
humanitarian feeling as on motives of general con
venience.
I have quoted all these observations on China because
they seem curiously applicable to the tendencies I have
before noted in modern Europe.
Such progressive
toleration as we see to-day seems to indicate a growing
subjection of the emotions to reason. Mr. Shaw has
been preaching this doctrine for years in regard to the
�THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERA TION
23
military virtue of courage. Mr. Wells and other
Socialists prefer the doctrine of civil order and efficiency
to the spirit of Christian charity. Modern men and
women set a higher value in society, politics, and
business on tact than on veracity. Advanced thinkers
attach more importance to the economic independence
than to the chastity of women. We all demand an irre
ducible minimum of armaments. The criminal is no
longer to be a pariah ; he is to be adapted to the uses of
a society which he must be taught to love. We deplore
nothing so much as physical pain or violence. Fight
ing, whether on the hustings or the battlefield, is begin
ning to appear nothing but a futile waste of time.
In such a climate of opinion toleration is bound to
thrive; but this very climate of opinion impliesan almost
revolutionary transformation of European ideals and a
radical overthrow of our older traditions. Its existence
can scarcely be denied. It is what the journalist really
means when he writes about “ materialism ” or “lack of
public spirit.” This spirit of “peace at any price” or
“anything for a quiet life ” may or may not have set in
permanently. But the late Mr. Charles Pearson, who
called it “the decay of character,” thought that it had
set in permanently, and resigned himself to the prospect
with stoical calm. Indeed, a future generation may con
ceivably take the view that we have initiated a social
harmony which is the only real and substantial fruit of
human reason and progress.
Whatever the ultimate result may be, the fact remains
that our modern toleration is conditioned by, and points
to, either an absence of really strong convictions in the
mass of men, or a collective conviction that the peace of
invariable compromise must in all circumstances and at
all costs be maintained. This has visibly come to pass
in the sphere of theological controversy, and it is also
coming to pass in the sphere of all other controversy.
The duellist can only resort to the law courts, the fanatic
to the pulpit, the moralist to the newspapers, and the
�24
THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERATION
politician to the hustings. We have abolished the pistol,
the rack, the pillory, and almost the gallows. We are
trying with some success to abolish war. It will be
interesting to see if we have set up a stable or unstable
equilibrium. The achievement of free debate concerning
all subjects, reposing on a foundation of internal and
external peace, has been the »goal of human effort for
centuries, and especially of liberal thinkers in the nine
teenth century. But the success of the achievement
would possibly be damping to men like John Bright or
John Stuart Mill, whose enthusiasms were not precisely
those of the quietist.
For the most salient object of human endeavour is a
“quiet life.” We seek for the community the same sort
of existence, free from accidents and disturbance, that
Metchnikoff prescribes for the individual man with aspira
tions to longevity. Our ideals have lost a certain belli
gerency, except in so far as they imply class-warfare; they
have become more terrestrial than celestial. The late
Mr. Charles Pearson so admirably sketched out the future
on these lines nearly twenty years ago that I need not
elaborate the theme. The accuracy of the prophecy
depends very much on the course of international politics.
The most civilised societies are constantly broken up by
more primitive foes, and the future historian may find
some analogy to the phagocytes of the human body in the
bureaucrats of the community. The bureaucrats begin
to wear out the community just as the phagocytes begin
to wear out the body, as each becomes old. Complete
freedom of discussion may be only a symptom of national
decline and individual degeneracy, due to an exaggerated
development of intelligence at the expense of more
primitive qualities. The next fifty years will at least be
of keen interest to all those who feel that our society is
passing through a phase of experiment.
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Modern morality and modern toleration
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Haynes, E.S.P. (Edmund Sidney Pollock) [1877-1949]
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Collation: 24 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. The Christian religion and modern morality (p.5-17)--The experiment of modern toleration (p.18-24). Publisher's list (Works by Joseph MacCabe and J.M. Robertson) inside front and back covers respectively. R.P.A. Sixpenny reprints listed on back cover. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Ethics
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Morality
NSS
Toleration
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Text
DOES MORALITY
DEPEND ON LONGEVITY?
BY
EDW. VAN SITTART NEALE.
PUBLISHED
BY
THOMAS
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
187|.
Price Sixpence.
SCOTT,
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. EEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W.
�A
DOES MORALITY
DEPEND ON LONGEVITY?
F any one were to maintain that it is impossible
to give children any sense of the excellence of
truthfulness and the evil of falsehood; that they
cannot be induced to exercise any control over their
tempers, or to keep from pilfering sweet things ; that
they cannot be brought to obey the commands given
them by their parents, though no eye may witness
the disobedience, because it is right to obey and wrong
to disobey them; that, in short, they cannot be
formed into virtuous and noble characters unless you
can assure them that they will certainly live to be
very old men and women, and during this long period
—endless to the imagination of a child—will reap
the fruits of all their childish virtues in a prosperous,
happy life, or gather up the bitter consequences of
a contrary conduct in a miserable existence;—we
should laugh at such a disputant as one who defied
the teachings of experience, and lived in a world of
self-deluding dreams. And no one, I think, could
expose this folly more forcibly than “ Presbyter
Anglicanus,” if he thought it worth while to pull
such notions to pieces. Yet, what is the doubt
which the Presbyter so seriously expresses in his
tract, part of this series, ‘ On the Doctrine of Immor
tality in its bearing on Education ’ ? “ Whether, if
I
�4
Does Morality defend
we cut existence short at the moment which we call
death, there can be any morality at all ” (p. 7), but
an exaggerated form of the proposition that children
cannot be induced to exercise childish virtues and
eschew childish vices, unless you can assure them of
a long extension of life, in which they will experience
the good or bad consequences of their childish
actions.
But if it be true of children, in whom the genuine
tendencies of our nature manifest themselves in their
most native purity, that in order to produce goodness
it is not necessary to appeal to remote future conse
quences, but that it is necessary only to awaken
into activity the instinctive feelings of truthfulness,
gentleness, self-denial for the sake of others—the
harmonies of love, hidden beneath the conflicting
impulses of passion, but as a directing power which,
once aroused to action, claims the right to rule,—why
should we question the sufficiency of the same force
if it is appealed to in our subsequent life, to carry on
the work commenced in childhood, without intro
ducing as a motive the calculation of future conse
quences either on the earth or after death ? I cannot
find in the reasoning of “ Presbyter Anglicanus ”
any ground for such a questioning, except the state
ment, which I do not dispute, that the present edu
cation of English youth “ is based upon the idea of
their existence hereafter as well as here ; that the
teaching of all our great schools, and, probably, of
all the schools of every denomination, is not only
founded upon, but steeped in, this idea.”
Now, no doubt if the alternative of not insisting on
this belief as the foundation of moral principle were
what the Presbyter seems to contemplate, namely,
that it must be based solely on an appeal to the
calculation of its advantages to the individual in the
conduct of life, combined with a positive assertion
on the part of the teacher “ that after this fife is over
�on Longevity <?
$
there is and can be. no future life,” the consequence
might be expected'to be a general break-down of
morality. But it appears to me that both our present
experience of human nature in children, and the his
tory of mankind, prove this alternative to be by i o
means the only one left us. And at the present time,
when, as “ Presbyter Anglicanus ” will, I am cer
tain, admit, the customary proofs of the doctrine of
immortality, drawn from the assumed infallibility
of the Scriptures, are giving way, on all sides, before
the progress of critical research into those Scrip
tures ; which must, sooner or later, force upon all
honest and well-informed inquirers the conviction
that, whatever is their value—and to me it is very
great—they are simply human productions, no more
able to reveal the state of things in unseen
wotlds than is the ‘ Phaedo ’ of Plato; it does
appear to me, also, of no small importance in the
education of the young, that we should rest the
principles of conduct upon the knowable and pre
sent, instead of upon a future about which we can
only dogmatize without knowing anything certain.
With this view I propose to adduce some considera
tions, such as seem to me to show that there is no
necessity for making this uncertain forecast in
order to gain a solid foundation either for religion
or morality.
I. Antiquity offers us the spectacle of two adjoin
ing nations, which have filled an important part in
the religious history of mankind—the Egyptians and
the Jews. We know now that the whole religious
System of Egypt was founded upon the firm convic
tion that the conscious spirit survived death, and
entered into a state determined by the deeds done in
the body. Among the Jews, on the contrary, notwith
standing their long intercourse with Egypt, the idea
of immortality appears scarcely to have found en
drance at all till after the Babylonian captivity, when
�6
Does Morality depend
they seem to have borrowed it from the Persians,
Even in the work which especially deals with the
matters now most commonly relied upon as postu
lating, so to speak, our own future being if we would
not deny the Being of God, namely, the unmerited
sufferings of the good,—even in the Book of Job,
this idea is wanting. For the Goel of chapter xix. is*
very clearly, no God to be seen after death; but a
deliverer in whom Job confides that He will appear
at last on earth to justify him, as, in fact, he does
appear in the concluding chapters of the Book. Can
anything be more startling ? Here are writings
which have furnished the storehouse of the profoundest religious feeling for successive ages; writings
which have been the well-spring of the living water of
trust in God. Yet it is clear that the writers by
whom they were produced had no firm hold on the
idea of their individual conscious existence after
death, if, indeed, they had any faith in it at all. Now
suppose that, instead of the Psalms and Prophets,
mankind had been fed upon extracts from the ‘ Book
of the Dead,’ or any similar Egyptian work, will any
one maintain that the religious or moral effect could
have been as great, and rich, and varied as the effect
of the knowledge of the Old Testament has been ?
But this is not all the lesson which the story of
the Jews teaches. After the captivity they learnt
from their Persian deliverers the idea of immortality.
Under its influence they produced, as we learn from
the recent critical researches into the Canon of the
Old Testament, the Books of the Ceremonial Law,
the Books of Chronicles, the Visions of Daniel and
accompanying Apocryphal writings, and that system
of the authoritative interpretation of the ancient
Scriptures, which first stifled their spiritual life
beneath the formality of Pharisaism, and ultimately
replaced the Bible by the Talmud. In exact contrast
with what modern theories would induce us to expect,
�on Longevity f
7
we find the Jewish spirit full of religious life when
it did not believe in the prolongation of individual
existence, and sinking into a mummified torpor when
it took a firm hold on this expectation.
II. At the opposite extremity of Asia Minor to the
home of the Jewish race, we find that of the most
highly-gifted member of the great Aryan family—the
Greeks. To them, as to the Egyptians, a future state
of reward and punishment for their conduct in this
life was a matter of religious faith. The popular
morality, the traditionally orthodox education of
their youth, was founded on it. Was the morality
thus based able to resist the influences of increasing
wealth, growing power, and the manifold temptations
which the life of cities brings with it ? The story of
Thucydides and Xenophon, the comedies of Aristo
phanes, and the complaints of Plato, offer abundant
evidence that it was not.
But within this corrupt civilisation there grew up a
body of men whose morality, however much we may
find to criticise in it, undoubtedly did rise to a level
far higher than that of their countrymen in general—
a body of men who, during a long succession of gene
rations, under the political annihilation which came
over Greece with the rise of the Macedonian and
Roman empires, continued to be the living witnesses
for the efficacy of principles of conduct not based
upon any calculation of external advantages, to pro
duce virtuous action—I mean, of course, the Greek
philosophers ; of whom we must remember that they
were not merely a few eminent men, but a numerous
body of persons, professing to follow certain fixed
rules of life, and who appear to have, for the most
part, fulfilled this profession.
Now, among these Greek philosophers, it seems
clear that the doctrine of individual immortality met
with very doubtful acceptance, and, even where it
was accepted, did not occupy a prominent place as the
�8
Does Morality depend
foundation of moral conduct. Socrates, for instance,
according to the account of the speech made by him
at his trial given by Plato, presents two alternatives :
E
’ ither, he says, death is a dreamless sleep, in which
case it cannot but be a gain, if we compare this per
fect quiet with any other night or day of our whole
life; or, it is a migration to some state where the dead
might live in delightful intercourse with the great
men who bad died before them.* And this is all that
he says about it. Again, in the intimate conversation
narrated in the ‘ Phtedo of Plato,’ to have taken place
on the day of his death, where he heaps up a variety
of arguments to establish the position that the soul
is eternal by its nature, he does not present'this con
ception at all as the foundation of morality, but only
as a consideration which should make the philosopher
welcome death rather than fly from it. “ For how,”
he asks, “in truth, should those who philosophise
rightly not wish to be dead, how should not death be
to them, of all men, the least terrible ? Would it not
be the height of unreason if those who have always
quarrelled with the body, and longed to possess the
spirit in itself, should be fearful and angry when this
happens, instead of eagerly going there, where, when
they arrive, they may hope to attain what they have
elected throughout their life ; for they have chosen
wisdom, and to be delivered from that with which they
quarrelled so long as they possessed it.’’f Of the
argument so much in favour with the moderns, which
identifies the prolongation of our individual existence
beyond the tomb, with trust in the goodness and
justice of God, there is scarcely a trace in the
‘ Phsedo the only approach to it being the “ cawZmn,”
that, if the soul is incapable of destruction, and death,
therefore, cannot deliver us from the consequences of
our past acts, the wicked cannot be freed by it “ at
once from their sins and their souls; but the only
* Apology towards the end.
t Phsedo, § 34.
�on Longevity?
9
deliverance from evil must lie in a good life.”* But
this conception is so far from having formed the basis
of the moral teaching of Socrates, that, to judge by
the tone of this conversation, his notions on the
immortality of the soul would appear to have been
kept by him as a subject for his private meditations,
and to have been communicated to his friends, only
upon the close approach of his own death. And
they rest, for their chief support, upon the persuasion,
entirely strange to our modern conceptions of immor
tality, that our souls come to us out of a previous
state of conscious existence, and bring with them the
knowledge of ideas, or general principles, which the
experiences of sensation gradually re-awaken in our
memories.
Passing from this beginning of philosophical specu
lation to a point far advanced in its course, to the age
of Cicero, we find a yet more striking absence of any
connection between the idea of immortality and the
principles of morality in the eloquent treatise where
this great Roman thinker sums up, in his old age, the
reasonings of Greek philosophy on this subject in the
first book of his Tusculan disputations. Although
he expresses his own belief in the Platonic doctrine
of immortality, which he rests principally upon an
argument ascribed to Socrates in the Phcedrus of
Plato, that that must be eternal which possesses the
power of self-motion, and, as this power is possessed
by the soul, the soul must be eternal; an argument
which he applies to all living creatures,f yet all the
concluding portion of the treatise is occupied in
demonstrating that death is not to be dreaded, even
although it should involve the total loss of conscious
ness. How little morality depended in his judgment
* Phsedo, § 130.
f Inanimum est enim omne quod pulsu agitatur externo, quod autem
est animal id motu cietur interiore et suo. Nam haec est propria natura
animi, atque vis ; quae, si ipsa semper moveat, neque nata certa est, et
eterna est.—Ch. 23.
�IO
Does Morality Depend
on the continuance of individual existence, we gather
from the declaration made by him towards the close
of this argument, that “ no one has lived too short a
time who has perfectly discharged the duties of per
fect virtue.” * It is still more conclusively shown by
the fact that his celebrated “ Offices,” his great work
on moral duty, is avowedly founded upon the treatise
by Pansetius, who on this point, as he tells us, “ dissented
from Plato; whom everywhere else he calls divine,
the wisest, the holiest, the Homer of philosophers,
but whose doctrine of the immortality of the soul he
Rejected on the ground that whatever is born must
die, and whatever is subject to disease must be sub
ject to death.f This, it should also be observed, was
the general doctrine of the Stoics, of whom Cicero
says that they “ likened men to crows, asserting that
the soul lasted a long time, but not always.” J Yet
the Stoics are notorious for having taught a morality
which, if open to the charge of being wanting in
tenderness, undoubtedly exercised a most powerful
influence over the' minds of those who embraced it,
moulding their whole course of life, and leading
them, in very numerous instances, to an almost
ascetic renunciation of the pleasures of sense.
We see, then, that the history of four of the most
remarkable nations of the ancient world by no means
supports the notion that man is not furnished by his
Maker with sufficient motives for noble action deriv
able from the world in which he finds himself placed,
and the faculties of which he finds himself possessed,
but must draw the stimulus to present goodness from
a future to which he has no access. On the other
hand, if we consider what have been the consequences
of acting upon the latter assumption, we shall, I
think, find still more reason for questioning its truth.
Six centuries after Semitic and Aryan thought had
effected a union in Christianity, took place that fierce
♦ Ch. 45.
t.Tusc. Quest., I., ch. 32.
J lb., ch. 51.
�on Longevity ?
II
outburst of Semitic faith in the absolute will and
unconditional sovereignty of God, called by us
Mahometanism. The great instrument by which the
triumphs of this creed were effected was its uncom
promising declaration of a future state, where the
faithful would obtain from Allah a recompense for
his toils and sufferings in endless joys, and the un
believer would be precipitated by his relentless com
mand into endless tortures. “ Hell is much hotter,”
was the reply of the Prophet to the remonstrances of
the Arabs who, on his proclamation of war against the
Romans, “ objected the want of money, or horses, or
provisions, the season of harvest, and? the intolerable
heat of the summer.” * “ Paradise is before you, the
devil and hell-fire in your rear,” was the pithy
exhortation of the Arab generals to their troops,
before the battle of Yermuk, which gave to the
Moslems the possession of Syria, f The imagination
enlisted on the side of Islam proved as powerful to
sustain the active courage of the fanatic warrior, as
it had been, in earlier times, to sustain the patient
fortitude of the Christian martyr.
IV. If the East has thus testified to the danger
which may await morality when it is built upon a faith
emancipated from the control of present experience,
the West has borne a not less powerful witness to the
same truth in the history of the attempts made within
the Christian Church to extinguish heresy. Gibbon,
basing his calculations upon the number of martyrs
whom Eusebius states to have suffered in Palestine
during the great persecution in consequence of the
Edict of Diocletian, and upon the probable propor
tion borne by the population of Palestine to that of
the rest of the empire, estimates the number of
Christians on whom capital punishment was inflicted
by judicial sentence throughout the Roman Empire
♦ Gibbon, ch. 50 ; Ed. 1855.
t lb., ch. 51; 76, 318.
�12
Does Morality defend
during the ten years that this persecution lasted, as
somewhat less than 2,000; * while Grotius declares
that, in the Netherlands alone, 100,000 of the subjects
of Charles V. suffered death as heretics under the
hands of the public executioner. Even if we assume,
as M. Guizot appears to do, that the estimate of
Gibbon is below the mark, and allow, with Ruinart,
in his ‘ Acts of the Martyrs,’ greater credence to the
vague statements of “innumerable witnesses,”! while
we reduce the victims of the persecution in the Nether
lands with Fra Paolo to 50,000,J there remains a
terrible witness, in this case, to the excess of cruelty
of which Christians have been guilty, on religious
grounds, towards other Christians above that of which
the ancient heathen world was guilty in its attempts
to repress the spread of Christianity. It is notorious
that this evidence is far from being a solitary testi
mony to the fact. To what are we to attribute a
result so astoundingly unlike what might have been
reasonably expected from the spirit of profound love
which animates the Gospels ? Can it be doubted that
the cause has been the belief in the endless duration
of the soul, combined with the belief that its welfare
during this endless period might be irremediably
destroyed by the opinions which it entertained while
on earth ? Accept these beliefs as true, and it becomes
a duty, far more sacred than the duty of preserving
man’s mortal body from violent assault, to preserve
his undying soul from the contamination of any
opinions as to which we may be convinced that they
have this appalling issue. Even the probability of
such a result is sufficient to raise this duty. For, if
we are mistaken, the injury we do to the individual
who suffers is insignificant, since his immortal soul
will not suffer ; while, if we are right, the good that
* Gibbon, ch. xvi., Ed. 1855, II. 284.
t Note in Milman’s Gibbon, Second Ed., I., p. 598.
t lb. ch. xvi.; I., p. 600.
�on Longevity ?
13
we may do to others, if not to the individual sufferer,
is incalculable.
Ko doubt, if we adopt the view of “ Presbyter
Anglicanus,” there would be no danger of our falling
into such excesses. If the whole of our unceasing
existence is assumed to be a continuous course of
education, by which all shall ultimately be “ brought
into a state where they will think rightly and act
rightly, because they will be filled through and
through with the love of God,—that is, with the love
of that which is true, and pure, and just,” we may
contentedly leave the Divine educator to work out
His own method of instruction, without stepping in
to His aid by abruptly dismissing any of His pupils
from one class to another in the never-ending school.
But when “ Presbyter Anglicanus ” maintains that the
religious instruction of the great schools throughout
England is “ not only founded on, but steeped in,
the belief ” in immortality, I would remind him that
it is certainly not such a belief as this. That instruction,
where it really dwells on our imaginations of the future
as the base on which our conduct in the present should
be founded, is, I conceive, far more closely represented
by the unbelieving belief of that self-important selfnullifier, Dr Pusey, that, if men make any impor
tant slip in what the teacher calls orthodoxy, no
matter what their conduct may have been in other
respects, “ their shrieks will echo for ever along the
lurid vaults of hell,” than by the loving trust of the
Presbyter. The doctrine of immortality, theoretically
taught in the great majority of English schools, where
any stress is laid upon it, is the doctrine of which the
fires of Smithfield were the legitimate fruit; and, if it
does not produce this fruit now, the reason is that,
practically, it is not believed,—that the only part of
the doctrine which has any general influence on men’s
minds at the present time is one scarcely connected
with morality at all, namely, the sentimental hope
�14
Does Morality depend,
of.reunion in “ another and better world ” with those
we have loved and lost in this.
How much hold the idea of continuous existence has
upon men’s minds under this form, we see by the rapid
growth of belief in the so-called Spiritual manifesta
tions. And when we consider how very unspiritual the
character of these alleged manifestations appears to
be ; how entirely destitute it is of any conceptions of
a nature likely to ennoble the lives of those whose
minds are occupied with them, we cannot form a high
estimate of the influence of the mere notion of con
tinuous existence upon the conduct of mankind, Of
the conception as “ Presbyter Anglicanus ” would pre
sent it to us, I must form a very different estimate ;
if, as he no doubt supposes, the continued life of the
individual is conceived to be a career of active use
fulness, in spheres of action of continually increasing
extent and importance, according to the perfection of
the will by which the active power is regulated,
certainly this conception would operate as a power
ful stimulus to the noblest use of all the faculties
which we possess here. Yet when we remember how
peculiarly liable such a stimulus is to be misdirected,
if we allow ourselves to dwell upon the dreams of a
future of which we know nothing rather than upon
the ideas which can be tested by present experience,
we shall, I think, be disposed to look upon the use of
this stimulus with great suspicion.
That morality alone, even in its purest and most
ideal form, is sufficient to be the permanent source
of spiritual blessing tomankind, I do not believe ; and
that not because our lives are short and uncertain, but
because morality belongs properly to the intellectual,
analytical side of our nature, and therefore, though it
is very efficient in telling us what we ought to do, is
very feeble in furnishing the motive power to do it.
‘ Conduct, to use the words of Mr Matthew Arnold,
in his remarkable ‘ Essays on Literature and Dogma ’
�on Longevity T
15
“ is the simplest thing in the world so far as knowledge
is concerned, but the hardest thing in the world so
far as doing is concerned.”* To gain this power of
doing, we require to turn to the other great factor of
Our being, the constructive principle of will, and the
impelling force of love by which this principle can be
at once strengthened and guided. Now, the spirit of
loving Will is the spirit of Religion.
Awake in man the trust that the power which can
glow in his own bosom governs the universe—that
God is no mere name for “ the true, the pure, the
just,” but is the Eternal Spirit of purity, justice,^
and truth, with whom the spirit of man can have
communion, on whom it may rely in death as in life,
in sorrow as in joy, and you will not require the
doubtful dogma of continuous existence to furnish
motives to action, which the present reality will
abundantly supply, but to use the beautiful words in
which Cicero winds up his argument against the fear
of death, will hold “ nothing to be evil that is deter
mined either by the immortal Gods, or Nature the
parent of us all; for not hastily, or by chance, are we
born and created, but assuredly there is a power
which takes counsel for the human race, and has not
produced and nourished it, that when it has gone
through all its toils, it should fall into eternal evil at
death ; rather should we think that it has prepared for
it a haven and place of refuge.”f
In regard to the place which the conception of con
tinuous individual existence should occupy in the
education of the young, I think Presbyter Anglicanus
will agree with me, that it cannot continue to be what
it has been. Whatever arguments Plato or. Cicero
could use in support of this faith, it is open to us to
use now. We may, perhaps, add to them others, from
the knowledge of Nature which scientific research
is opening to us. But with the faith in infallible
* ‘Cornhill,’ Oct., 1871, p. 485.
t Tusc. Quest. I., 49.
�16
Does Morality defend
teaching,—and to the Presbyter, if I am not much
mistaken, no less than to myself, this faith is gone,
irreparably gone,beyond remedy by decrees of councils
be they ever so imposingly vouched, or plasterings of
learned ingenuity be they ever so skilfully applied,—
there is gone also all certainty in any assertions about
that world of which we can know nothing unless,
indeed, we are ready to be “ rapped ” into conviction,
and delight ourselves with the fantastic Hades of our
new spiritual “ Home.” It must become us, then, to
substitute, on this subject, modest hope for dogmatic
arrogance. But it does not follow that our faith in
the eternal should be less vivid, because it ceases to be
identified with a belief in the Longeval.
For myself I am persuaded that the conception of
infallible teaching, and the certainty of so-called im
mortal life associated with it, has constantly inter
posed itself between man and God, and that the faith
in an ever-present Deity will never be generally rea
lised till the faith in these counterfeits of His pre
sence has died away. To God, the source of all
good, we must direct man’s thoughts alike for the
education of the young, and the solace and guidance
of maturer age. Once quicken mankind to trust in
His presence as a living reality, and we may conclude
with Schleiermacher, whom “ Presbyter Anglic anus ”
finds so hard to understand, that only those who “ care
to live well rather than to live long ” can partake in
that immortality which belongs to truth and love,
whether or not the conditions of existence allow a
continuous prolongation of individual being to those
who live in the aspiration after love and truth.
What, indeed, can be more absurd than for a man
to say to his Maker, “ 0 God, the love of Thee, and
the study of Thy acts, and the following of Thy
Spirit, would be sufficient to satisfy my soul for count
less ages, but it will not suffice for fifty years. For
so short a time it is not worth my while to be en-
�on Longevity ?
i7
lightened by Thy truth, and cheered and warmed by
Thy love. Every attraction of sensuous delight,
every dream of self-seeking gratification, every im
pulse of passion, is preferable. Give me endless
existence, and I yield myself up to Thy service, which
is perfect freedom. Deny it me, and I serve myself,
though to serve myself is to become slave to a devil.”
Yet what is the assertion that the belief in immor
tality is essential as a support to morality but this
sentiment in disguise ? The notion I take to be the
legitimate product of that false religious teaching
which, by substituting authority for conviction, con
verts morality into legality. Divines of the stamp of
Dr Pusey instinctively feel that the edifice of apparent
goodness which they may raise rests in the great
majority of cases upon a foundation of sand, to which
they can give solidity only by the pressure of fear.
It is perfectly consistent in them, therefore, to insist
on the faith in an endless duration of individual ex
istence, which furnishes the heavy rammer that they
require. But divines who, like “ Presbyter Angli
canus,” would build goodness upon love, should feel,
what Dr Pusey, I am persuaded, feels to be his own
case, that they need no such extraneous support—•
that “ the rain may descend ” and “the floods rise,”
and “ the winds blow upon that house,” but it “ cannot
fall,” for it is “ built upon the rock.”
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Does morality depend on Longevity?
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Neale, Edward Vansittart [1810-1892]
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 17, [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Publisher's list on unnumbered page at the end. Printed by C.W. Reynell, London. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Thomas Scott
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1871
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CT95
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Ethics
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Conway Tracts
Ethics
Longevity
Morality
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216
*
UNBELIEF:
ITS NATURE, CAUSE, AND CURE.
A DISCOURSE
GIVEN AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL.
APRIL Zth, 1877.
BY
MONCURE
PRICE
D.
CONWAY.
TWOPENCE.
��UNBELIEF.
In the new magazine, the 11 Nineteenth Century, ’ a
new kind of article has been introduced. It is called
a modern “ Symposium.” A group of eminent men
Of various schools of belief set themselves to consider
whether, or how far, human -morality depends upon
religious belief. Most of the statements appear to me
remarkable for the elaboration with which they beat
about the heart of the problem without touching it.
The simple question is, whether the religious belief is a
revelation from without, or an evolution from within,
human nature. If Christianity, for instance, is a super
natural revelation it must have been given to make the
world better, and of course the world would lose
morally if belief in it should fail. On the other hand,
if Christianity be an evolution, a historic product of
human nature, the same force which created it will
work on as it disappears and bear us above it.
As to the plain proposition whether a man’s morality
is related to his belief, there is no question at all.
�2
The experience of mankind in every age and place is
that recorded in the Bible, “As a man thinketh in his
heart so is he.” But he must think it in his heart.
It must be a genuine conviction. The “ Symposium ”
would never have been written if this genuineness had
not departed from the popular faith in the theology
whose forms stand around us. “All that we are is
founded in our thought,” said Buddha. Our moral
systems are so because man so thought. He once
thought hanging the right punishment for theft, and
then men were hung for stealing. That once moral
law has become immoral because the underlying belief
has changed. Men still think hanging necessary to
prevent murder, and so long as they think so men will
be hung for murder. Man once thought men could be
made moral by threats of hell and promises of heaven;
he has found out that these threats and promises
easily disconnected themselves from morality, and even
encouraged immorality by persuading men that by
priestly conjuration they could pass from the worst life,
from the very scaffold, straight to the arms of Jesus.
Supernatural religion was of old the rival of
morality. Its wrath was poured out on those who
trusted in morality and good works. We have among
us two totally different and discordant religions. One
is for the glory and pacification of God; the other is
for the improvement of man and the culture of this
�3
world. One is a religion whose legitimate embodi
ment is in sacraments, ceremonies, mysterious creeds,
all related to man’s estate in another world. The
embodiment of the other is in social duties, charities,
law and order, equal justice, and the pursuit of happi
ness. If belief in either of these religions were to fail,
the institutions growing out of it would fail. If the
root of belief in the other-world religion were cut, its
foliage and fruit would wither—that is, sacraments,
supplications, mysterious dogmas, priests, bishops,
and a vast number of litigations and quarrels, whose
•cessation would hardly demoralise society however
deplored by the lawyers. If belief in the religion of
morality were uprooted, then the corresponding growths
would decay—love and truth, charity and sympathy,
justice and purity, all the social and civic duties.
Because the branches of these two trees mingle in
society they must not be supposed to have one root.
The priest and the moralist are both interested in the
preservation of peace and social order. The priest
cannot carry on his temple amid social chaos, and he
borrows the ethical system. The moralist finds man
kind selfish and passionate, so he borrows some of the
menaces of the priest to frighten people into obedi
ence. By this alliance our Society has been formed
in which morality is labelled Christian, and Christianity
is warranted moral.
�4
Nevertheless, it was never an alliance of equals.
Christianity at an early period gained the upper hand,
because it was believed to command the more terrible
sanctions of reward and punishment. Morality could
threaten or bribe a man for only the few years of life ;
but the binding and loosing of the priest extended
through endless ages. He could always look down on
kings and laws, and say to the people “ Fear not them
that at most can only kill the body; but fear us who
have power to cast both soul and body into hell for
ever.”
So Christianity became a throned ecclesiasticism :
the priest became supreme. He denied that morality
was any religion at all ; it was only a. policeman. He
would not deny it might be valuable if it supported
his ceremonies and authority, but if it claimed to be
the main thing, he made war against it.
So poor Morality had to make the best terms it
could; and it has gone on until now conceding that
Christianity was the main thing, itself a dependent;
prayer it agreed was more important than justice,
belief in the Trinity more essential to life than kind
ness, and theft a mere peccadillo compared with
confounding the substance or dividing the persons of
the godhead.
By this subordination the two as master and servant
managed to get on peaceably until now. But now—
�5
even in our own day—a tremendous break has oc
curred between them. And it came about in this way.
The progress of knowledge discovered and proved
that the fundamental dogmas of supernatural religion
are untrue,—the speculations and dreams of ancient,
ignorant tribes. This discovery has brought on a new
set of moral questions altogether. The servant has
been called suddenly to judge the character of his
master. Does his master speak the truth ? Certainly
he has not in the past. Will he in the future ? What'
and admit all his divine knowledge to have been a
pretence 1 Impossible. Then, says Morality, can I re
main moral and still support untruth ? Theology
suggests, Why not shut your eyes to this discovery of
untruth in your old master, or at least wink at it ? But
is that moral ? asks Morality, anxiously. Is there not
a morality beside that of conduct,—a morality for the
intellect ? If there are mental duties, then to assent
to a fiction is as immoral as adultery. To believe a
proposition aside from its truth, to believe it merely
because of some advantage, becomes intellectual pros
titution. The purity of the mind is bargained away.
It is vain now to claim the old authority of religion
over morality : it is a part of the new discovery that
there can be no authority but truth. So the system
which sits in the seat of a religion, but finds itself
opposed in the name of morality, has be$n compelled
�6
to try and save itself by claiming to be the very soul
and self of popular morality. Disbelieve, it says, if
you must, but keep quiet about it; for if the masses
come to disbelieve with you, they will break all
restraints. They hold what morality they have, only
because the priest has adopted morality, and told
them it is part of their means of escaping hell; but if
you take away all their prseternatural terrors, they will
not be restrained by mere considerations of public
good, or the beauty of virtue.
To this Morality, merely as a prudential thing, con
fidently replies : Admitting your old hopes and fears
still bind the ignorant, it is only the ignorant. You
leave the educated world suspended between the old
and the new; what is to keep the keepers—to lead the
leaders—to prevent the cultivated class from sinking
into mere hypocrisy, luxury, selfishness ? Nay, the obli
gations your superstition imposes on the ignorant must
become ever weaker even for them. The spread of
knowledge, which is inevitable, will mean the spread
of lawlessness. Every new schoolhouse we are build
ing must prove a centre to radiate recklessness. As
a mere practical policy your attempt to keep up the
delusions is itself a delusion.
But Morality has a higher answer than that. As
superstitious religion crumbles, Morality itself has
ascended to be a religion. From being servant it
�7
assumes to be master; it claims to be itself a faith, a
belief, and affirms that truth is to be maintained on
principle and apart from any possible overt acts. It
is not mere outward rule and law, but contains an
inward life which inspires it to believe in what it
affirms, and to religiously trust that the fruit of right
will never be wrong, whatever may be the appear
ances to the contrary.
This is the living faith of the present; it will be the
commanding faith of the future. Theologians call it
unbelief, but in no sense is it that. Its attitude to
wards the superstition which sometime superseded it
is that of disbelief; but there is a vast difference between
disbelief and unbelief. The unbeliever is one who has
not accepted a thing; the disbeliever has positively
rejected it. The unbeliever may not believe a thing
because he never heard of, or never examined
it, or does not wish to admit it; the disbeliever has
considered and denied. Consequently unbelief does
not imply that there is any belief at all in the mind.
Disbelief implies that a proposition has been rejected
because there is something already in the mind which
excludes it. Consequently a man cannot be a dis
believer of one thing without being a believer in some
other thing. But unbelief is a mere blank, passive
state of mind ; and it deserves some of the evil accent
it bears to the religious mind, because it is generally
�8.
the counterpart of a torpid indifference. He who
dfebelieves in science, he who believes in morality,
he who worships humanity, or adores reason, cannot
be called an unbeliever. He is a great believer. As
to the rest, no intelligent mind exists which does not
disbelieve something.
The Christian calls the man of science an infidel, or
unbeliever; the Mussulman calls the Christian an
infidel. Every religion is infidelity to other religions;
and while sectarians thus call each other by hard
names, all victims of idle words, the real enemy of all
religion, unbelief,—systematic indifference, cynical con
tempt for all high principles,—is sapping the strength
of every civilisation. No student of history can view
without concern the moral dangers which attend the
crumbling of any religion. We have before us the
fearful scenes which followed the decline of the gods
and goddesses of Rome in universal contempt and
unbelief: amid the fragments of their statues and the
blackened ruins of their temples stands Caligula
knocking off the head of Jupiter and setting his own
in its place, and Nero lighting up his orgies with
burning Christians for his torches. When Vespasian
came to rebuild the temples, repair the altars, and set
the gods back in their shrines, what he could not
bring back was belief in them. Titus tried the same.
Titus was strong enough to carry to the temple of
�9
Jerusalem the same desolation that Nero had brought
on Rome, but Titus was not strong enough to carry
into any mind the faith that had become a mythology.
And amid those ruins Belief never sprang up again
until called from its grave by the voice of a great soul,
whom the old moral world crucified because he an
nounced a new moral world——setting the religion of
simple purity and love against established superstition
and proud sacerdotalism.
There are not wanting prophets who remembering
these things—remembering too the terrors amid which
Romanism went down in France, Germany and
England—predict that the decay of dogmas m the
popular mind will be followed here too by the carni
val of rapine and lust. I hope not. But if we are.
saved it will be because the real believers of our time
—the disbelievers in superstition—have grown wise
enough to anticipate and forestall the danger. The
evil in those historic examples was" that moral princi
ples had not been cultivated in and for themselves.
The light suddenly blazed on a long bandaged eye
nnd inflamed it. The whole order of society had
been made to rest on gods and goddesses, and when
belief in them gave way the superstructure tumbled
down. Undoubtedly the like fate would befall us if
the people were still taught that the only motive to
be honest is to get to heaven; that self-restraint is
�IO
only a prudent investment in paradise; that any
crime may be outweighed by accepting the blood of
Christ. If popular morality has no root of its own,
if it is a mere graft on the decaying limb of a dying
trunk, then when the dead tree falls, down goes all that
was grafted on it.
But I would fain believe that such is not the case
with our public morality. It has crept into our courts
that a man may testify the truth without kissing the
Bible, and may minister justice without believing in
hell or heaven. It has made its way even into the
admissions of the priest that his church presents no
higher morality than the societies of those who reject
his morality. The noble lives of the great disbelievers,
who were yet the martyrs of their belief,—the Lyells
and Grotes, Mills and Channings, Mazzinis, Strausses,
Parkers, who sleep in honourable graves j the Emersons,
Huxleys, Darwins, Carlyles, Spencers, at whose feet
this living generation sits and learns not so much any
theory as the great moral lesson of courage and fidelity,
—these have not spoken to the world in vain. How
far it has penetrated into the popular mind that virtue,
kindness, truth and honesty, are independent of
religious phantasms—good and essential in themselves
—rooted in the honour of humanity;—this cannot
be estimated. Our sanguine hopes that we shall
escape the political Nemesis which has heretofore
�II
pursued legally established falsehood may be dis
appointed.
Assuredly we cannot escape the moral Nemesis.
Even now one phase of the decay of superstition is.,
upon us,—a phase which in previous ages was repre
sented in social ruin. It is the phase of mere unbelief.,
the general dropping out of belief of the old orthodoxy,
accompanied by an indifference to all religion, chiefly
shown in a pretence to believe what is not believed.
One hundred years ago when Soame Jenyns wrotehis hard dogmatic defence of Christianity, a certaim
clergyman wrote on it: “ Almost thou persuadest me
not to be a Christian.” Since then the dismal theology
of Soame Jenyns has run its course; it has sought m
nature signs of the vindictiveness of God; in heredi
tary disease proofs of God’s hatred of man for Adams,
sin; it has paraded human misery on earth as a happy
augury of endless misery hereafter. It so completed
in the real mind of this country the work Soame
Jenyns began in that old clergyman,—it has quite
persuaded men not to be Christians. Nobody can
see the gay, smiling, money-getting, eating and drinking
multitudes around us, from the merry-makers of Good
Friday—once funereal—to the clergyman with his old
port, and imagine that they believe in hell, or the
devil, that riches hinder heaven, and the world is all
accursed. But, alas, the departure of belief has left
�12
them in mere unbelief. One thing untrue as another,
they stick to that which is most convenient. They
make religion a mere minister to their social, political,
or even pecuniary advantages.
Now, because this phase of no-faith does not break
out in blood and riot, let us not imagine that it can
•exist without serious harm. A reign of terror were
hardly worse than a reign of chronic hypocrisy and
■selfishness. Real unbelief means heartlessness, and
it must lower the whole character of both individual
and national life. Maybe society can get along in
that way ; a colony of ants gets along ; but there can
be no grandeur in a country which has no faith, there
•can be no ascent of national genius where there is no
moral earnestness. Also a man may get along in one
way by cauterising conscience and burying enthusiasm.
When a shrewd fellow once defended his base occu
pation by saying, “I must live,” a wit replied, “ I don’t
see the necessity.” A man has indeed to justify his
right to consume and occupy a part of nature. A weed
has no right to soil and sunshine that might turn to
corn and wine. But what good thing can grow in
barren soil under a sunless roof?
Under no such murky atmosphere, shrouding every
star of ideality, can we raise our own minds and
hearts, or those of our children, to any high aims, or
■.secure beautiful characters. It can not be done by a
�i3
spurious devotionalism, the hectic spot of a dying
faith ; it can as little be done by cold-hearted absorp
tion in pleasures of life, which should be only its.
fringe. It is no true belief to have faith in the senses
and their satisfactions. Belief is that which trusts in
principles, recognises laws and obeys them, and what
soever it finds to be true, raises that to be the pole-star
of its progress. The man of unbelief is the mere or
ganism of external influences. When you have found
what is respectable in his neighbourhood—what is
strongest—the biggest church, the successful party,
you have found all there is of him. There is nothing
in him to build on. In the far West, among rough
adventurers, along the Mississippi, with all their oathsand vices, one often finds that after all they have
some principle j deep down there’s something they’ll
fight for, some point of honour they’ll die for. The
half-savage pilot who swears and drinks, and then
sinks with his boat to save the passengers; thatjnoted
gambler who at the late St. Louis’ fire lost his life in
saving others,—you can build that man into your
social wall. But you can do nothing with your smooth
polished gentleman who believes in nothing, and holds
himself ready to affirm or deny anything you please
so long as the mellifluous flow of his self-seeking
existence is undisturbed.
It should be recognised that the great ages have
�14
«always been ages of Belief, and though they have
uttered their mighty disbelief, they have never sunk
to the sunless gulf of Unbelief.
There are two etymologies of the word Belief,—
some derive it from the old German belieben to belove;
others making it be-leben,—to live by. But in either
■case it marks the height from which the ordinary use
■of the word has descended.
Whether belief was of old that which a man lives
by, or whether that a man loves, or beloves,—such
indeed must a true belief be to any man if it is to
:serve him or others. Eight hundred years ago two
great French theologians were teaching the world.
One Abelard, the other Anselm. Abelard said, Inteldige ut credas; Anselm replied, Crede ut iiitelligas.
The world turned from Abelard, who said “ Under
stand, that you may believe,” to follow Anselm, who
said “ Believe, that you may understand.” So putting
•out their eyes that they might see better, they groped
their way until, mad with disappointment in the thick
ening darkness, like blind Samson, they pulled down
■pillars of throne and temple in revolutionary wrath.
It is time now to remember the long-forgotten
motto of Abelard,—“ Understand, that you may be
lieve ! ” He only reaches his aim to whom his aim is
clear. You can only live by a belief when it has
■entered profoundly into both brain and heart. It is
�i5
something you are to believe, belove, live by. 1 ou shall
fall in love with it. Where that faith goes there will
you go, its people shall be your people, its God your
God. And if amid all the great events and causes of
our time you can find nothing that can so kindle your
enthusiasm, it is because you are the victim of that
organised Unreason which has set up a tyrant for men
to worship, and made the merit of belief consist in
the absurdity of the thing believed.
Wonderful, indeed, it would have been if after ages
of monster-worship and compulsory belief of the
incredible, the very organ of faith should not have
suffered atrophy in many. But let none rest content
with that mere despair—the suicide of faith—Unbelief.
Let every mind know that it is its nature to believe.
If a mind will only ascend from unbelief to disbelief,
if it will face the fact that the dogmas do not fill it
with conviction and joy, and ask itself why not; if it
will consider and think, it will intelligently disbelieve,
and that disbelief will be the other side of a belief.
An aged authoress once told me—“ I do not believe
in miracles because I believe in God.” If you do not
believe in jealous Jehovah it is because you believe in
supreme Love. If not in depravity, it is because you
believe in Man. Follow that earnest scepticism, and
it shall fall like a blossom before the fair fruitage of a.
larger faith.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Unbelief : its nature, cause and cure : a discourse given at South Place Chapel, April 8th 1877
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 15 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1.
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[South Place Chapel]
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[1877]
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G3335
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Free thought
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Unbelief : its nature, cause and cure : a discourse given at South Place Chapel, April 8th 1877), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Belief and Doubt
Free Thought
Moral Philosophy
Morality
Morris Tracts
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ZSZ 1 & W o|?
LIBERTY AND MORALITY:
3. ^isrnixrsf
GIVEN AT
SOUTH PLACE'CHAPEL, FINSBURY.
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
Notice.—The proceeds of this Pamphlet will be given by Mr. Conway
to a Testimonial to Mr. Truelove, if such shall be offered, on his
release from prison.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1878.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�LONDON Z
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH,
28, STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
Among the most painful phenomena of nature are those of
recurrence in things evil. From the earliest period, man’s
courage has been daunted by the perception that though it
might conquer an evil thing, that thing was pretty sure to
return. Darkness vanished before the dawn, but it returned;
the storm-cloud cleared away, but it came again; the sickly
season might pass, but went its rounds again under its dog
star ; fevers were only intermittent; the cancer was eradi
cated only to reappear; the tyrant might be slain, tyranny
remained. Such phenomena underlie all those ancient
fables which led man up to the conception of Fate—the
doctrine of despair. Hercules might kill any one head of
the nine-headed hydra, but two heads grew in its place; and
when he had burned away all the other heads, one was
immortal, and he could only bury it; but its venomous
breath came up and gave life to venomous creatures after its
kind. Science has, to a large extent, released the European
man from this paralysing notion of fatality in things evil.
Some of the old hydras it has slain altogether. It has
trampled out leprosy, and the black death, and some other
ancient plagues, and civilisation has cleared some regions of
the wolf, the bear, and the worst serpents.
But there are other regions among us—in us—where the
phenomena of evil recurrence are still present and powerful,
and where some bow before them with a feeling of despair.
There are social hydras whose heads seem to be immortal.
Tyranny is a monster that never dies. It has passed into a
proverb that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; and
that is because the spirit of oppression is never destroyed,
and, on its part, is sleeplessly vigilant. Behold here to-day
this great people, whose passion for liberty is recorded in
splendid pages of history, whose resolution to build on these
islands a commonwealth of justice and freedom is written on
every acre of its soil in their heart’s blood, and in royal
blood too; and yet after all those sacrifices and heroic
�4
LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
martyrdoms, the scratch of one man’s pen can run through
the achievements of centuries, and turn the arm of England
to a bulwark of barbarism.
The cause of such recurrences is not far to seek. The
fatality is not in the evil thing, but in some strange popular
hallucination like that which Hercules had about the ninth
hydra head. Instead of killing that, he hid it under a
stone; and, in the same way, whenever in history the AngloSaxon has vanquished a wrong, he has always spared one of
its heads. He hides it away; he calls it obsolete ; but, after
lying still for a long time, up it starts again at the call of
some ambitious partisan, all through this curious disinclina
tion to eradicate a wrong utterly and leave no germ of it
behind. The chief art of reform is to be radical. No un
repealed statute is ever obsolete. The head of every wrong
lives still while its principle is spared, and though it seem
antiquated one day, it may be a “spirited policy” the next.
The evil that is vanquished, but not slain-—only hid—has
not only power of recurrence, but of self-multiplication.
Where one head fell, behold two, or perhaps more. The
resuscitation of irresponsible power anywhere is accom
panied by a corresponding revival of old oppressions gene
rally. Vernacular Press Laws in India, Turkish alliances,
and attacks on free printing at home, have all one neck. If
anyone had told me ten years ago that I should some day
have to defend freedom of thought and of the press in this
metropolis of civil liberty, I should have been as much sur
prised as if he had predicted that we should all be hunting
wolves out of Epping Forest. I should have said to him,
“ Why, John Milton settled all that over two hundred years
ago. Do you mean to say that the time can come again
when a man can personally suffer for his honest thought and
its honest publication ? ”
Such a prophet ten years ago might, indeed, have reminded
us of how often the oppression of intellectual liberty had
recurred since Milton’s time ; of how long Richard Carlile
and his sister lay in Dorchester Gaol for selling Paine’s
works; but he would have been rash, indeed, had he pre
dicted that we should live to assemble in our free societies,
hard by a prison in which an innocent Freethinker lan
guishes, and beside a court which robs a mother of her child
because of her metaphysics.
But now, let me say, such a prophet would have been only
half-right. Though oppression of thought has returned, it
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
5
has had to put on such a disguise, that it cannot be universally
recognised. It is, I believe, true that it would be impossible
at this day to punish a man for his opinions in any such
open way as Richard Carlile and Holyoake were punished.*
I will not say such oppression will never return, for as our
Prime Minister once said, the impossible is always coming to
pass; but, at any rate, no attack on free thought or free
printing, open and above-board, could now be made without
very serious and general resistance. This recent oppression
has, if you will allow me the expression, sneaked back; it has
subtly complicated itself with the moral feeling of the com
munity ; it has hid its horns under a white cowl rf purity
it has masked itself as a defender of virtue and suppressor of
vice. By so doing oppression of thought confesses that it
cannot otherwise succeed even in seizing here and there an
exceptional victim.
In the English breast there is but one sentiment higher
than that of liberty—the moral sentiment. Nearer to man
than his nation is his family, and dearer even than the free
dom of his tongue is the purity of his home. As the moral
sentiment when educated makes a nation’s greatness, when
ignorant it becomes a nation’s weakness. All history has
shown that when oppression has been foiled on every other
side, its last resort is to alarm the moral sentiment of the
masses, to confuse their common sense with black spectres of
immorality. In that fear, that confusion, selfish power has
often found a community’s vulnerable heel, and there planted
its fang. We can see through such masks in the past; we
can recognise in many massacres which pretended to defend
virtue the concealed hand of vice; but, alas, the lessons of
history are not yet wisdom for the people, and the old
device may still, it seems, be tried with success. I hardly
need remind you that the recent cases in which Freethought
has been judicially punished were complicated with moral
questions. The priest watched for that opportunity. For
years the mother had promulgated her religious heresies; it
was only when a moral heresy was ascribed to her that his
blow could be struck without recoiling upon himself from
every heart in England that knows what is manly towards
woman, and what is due to a mother. For years, Edward
Truelove, as honest a man as any in England, had openly
sold the books which sent men to prison in the last genera
tion ; it was a book unrelated to the old struggle for free
printing, a book apparently involving moral questions, which
�6
LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
was adroitly used to confuse the public mind and veil this
last stab at the heart of personal liberty.
These things could not have occurred were it not that the
public mind is at sea so far as the precise relation between
liberty and morality is concerned.
The absence from
popular discussions of any clear principle by which liberty
is distinguishable from licentiousness, constitutes a new and
startling danger. For liberty of thought involves liberty of
speech, of printing, and of moral action. Liberty is no
more sacred when it criticises the creed of the community
than when itcriticises moral institutions. Freedom of thought
were an empty name if it did not carry with it the freedom
that brings thought to bear upon the social laws and customs
founded on past and fettered thought. “ Unproductive thought
is no thought at all.” The intellect is man’s instrument for
conforming society and the world to reason and right; and
to restrain its free play among the moral and social super
stitions of mankind were like folding a living seed in
wrappings of a mummy.
Many crimes, it is said, have been committed in the name
of liberty; yes, but never one by the reality of liberty.
Many crimes have been committed in the name of religion,
I but they were none the less irreligious. The very common
mental confusion which regards things evil as only good
pressed too far, is continually shown in the common phrase
about “ liberty degenerating into licence.” That is taking
the name of liberty in vain. You cannot press a good
r principle too far.Liberty cannot degenerate into licentiousI ness; not any more than a diamond can degenerate into
J. glass. Liberty can only be ascribed to a man as member of
society, and means his right to seek happiness, to develop his
nature, to do his duty, all to the best of his ability—in fact,
his right to be a man—without hindrance from others or
from the community, to whose well-being he is loyal. By its
very essence, therefore, liberty can never mean the destruc
tion of others’ liberty, the sway of brute force, or selfish
defiance of the public welfare. You may call that reckless
ness, if you please, or licentiousness, or anarchy, but it has
no relation whatever to human liberty; liberty never runs
to that kind of seed, but, on the contrary, finds in such the
tares and briars that choke its growth.
But how, it may be asked, are we to distinguish the wheat
from the tares ? how discriminate the licentiousness to be
punished from the liberty that is essential ?
I
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
7
In the cases that concern freedom of thought and of
printing, the Courts have recently given their answer to the
question—an answer which, I affirm, cannot be maintained,
and which could not be equally applied in any community
without bringing on revolution. A man publishes and sells
a certain book. Somebody dislikes the sentiments of that
book, and believes the perusal of such sentiments would
corrupt the community. He asks the judge to restrain his
neighbour from circulating that book. The judge calls about
him a jury, and asks them if they think the book will tend
to deprave public morals. They say, Yes. Then the judge
orders the book to be suppressed, and the seller of it to be
punished. From first to last, the whole procedure is specu
lative. It is not shown that any injury has been done; it is
not shown, or even suggested, that any evil was intended;
it is a decision based upon the powers of imagination, at best;
more correctly, perhaps, upon capacities for panic.
Such a decision reverses the chief aim of all real law, '
which is to protect the weak from the strong, to protect the !
individual from the brute-force .of majorities It changes
the jury from defenders of rights to inquisitors of opinion. 1
The judges of Athens put Socrates to death on the ground
that his opinions tended to corrupt the youth of that city. The
High Court of Jerusalem sentenced Jesus to death on similar
grounds. Practical Pilate asked, “ What evil hathhe done ?”
—but he got no answer. Jesus had done no evil; he had
only advanced opinions which the majority considered sub
versive of the moral foundations of society. And, in short, i
there is no persecution, no oppression of conscience, no
massacre in history which may not be justified on the prin- i
ciple that you may punish a man for the evils which may be
imaginatively and prospectively attributed to the influence of
his opinions. Nay, all contemporary discussion of vital I
problems, all new ideas, are thus placed at the mercy of
nervous apprehensions. It is very probable that you might
take the first twelve men you happen to meet on the street,
and find that, put on oath, they would .affirm their belief that
the opinions of Dr. Martineau, of the Jewish Rabbins, of
our own chapel, must tend to deprave public morals. Such
doctrines, they would say, by taking away hell, remove the
restraints of fear from human passions, and by denying
authority of the Bible, tend to destroy the influence of the
clergy, of Christianity, and the ten commandments. The
.same arguments which imprisoned Edward Truelove would
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LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
imprison any liberal thinker, if his jury happened to be
orthodox, and the same authority which suppresses one
honestly-written book would suppress another if it happened
to be distasteful to a jury.
It makes no difference that one book deals roughly with
moral conventionalities, while another attacks such as are
theological. That may make a great deal of difference to
.our tastes and sentiments, but none at all as to the principle
of justice. Every idea must have its influence on morals ;
whether that influence will be good or evil, cannot be deter
mined by any foresight, least of all by the prejudices of those
who do not hold that idea, who hate it, and have not impar
tially studied its bearings. Many of the best books in the
world have been pronounced immoral and wicked in their
time, and after it; and if the .average commonplace of any
period, as represented by judges that know only precedents,
and jurors instructed by them, be allowed to suppress all
thoughts and works that do not merely repeat the prevailing
notions, all inquiry is at an end, all progress paralysed.
. What defence, then, has -society against obscene books ?
it may be asked. Are we to allow men under plea of liberty
of the press to send forth a stream of pollution into our
homes, and corrupt the people ?
I answer, No. Every person who is guilty of such an
offence should be punished. Many such have been punished
and nobody has raised any protest, because they really were
guilty. They have never defended their publications. But
you must show a man to be guilty before you can safely
punish him. The verdict of a jury is not infalliable even
then; but we need not quarrel about that: it is the best
means we can have of discovering guilt. The cases would
be very rare where a jury would unanimously affirm wicked
ness in a man whose life has been upright. Where, for in
stance, is the jury willing to swear that they believe Edward
Truelove to be a wicked, corrupt, and malicious man, who for
base and selfish ends has aimed to deprave society and
injure his neighbours ? No such jury could be empannelled'.
in England. In the trial of Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant,.
the jury were careful to assert the innocence of the accused,,
and the rectitude of their purpose in publishing the book
they condemned. The judge then compelled them to bring
in a verdict of “ G-uilty; ” forced them to pronounce guilty
persons they had just declared innocent on oath !
Suppose the charge had been one of murder, and the jury
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
&
had brought in a verdict, that though the prisoner had killed
a man, it was in the effort to do that man a service, what
would have been said had a judge compelled them to find
that prisoner guilty of murdering the man he was trying to
benefit ? Or suppose, instead of an obscene libel, it had been
a personal libel; suppose a man charged with printing a
libel on another, and the jury declared that the matter printed
was not meant to injure, that it was without malice, put forth
in good faith and purely for the public good, would it be
possible for any judge to turn that into a verdict of guilty—
even if the plaintiff were injured—and to punish a public
benefactor as if he were a criminal ?
There are ordinary civil cases—cases of damages, where
the law rightly ignores the question of intent; but it is not
so in criminal cases. There, character is involved; there
punishment implies guilt; and it is unjust where there is no
guilt. Malice aforethought makes murder; and a guilty
mind must equally characterise every blow aimed at social
virtue. Where the law is violated, the law is compelled to
assume such guilt, because it does not know more than the
appearance; but when innocence is proved—when it is
admitted—it is criminal to act on the technical and dis
proved assumption. Such has been the grievous wrong done
by the recent decisions—criminal intent being arbitrarily
excluded from consideration in each case, when it was the
essence of each case.
So much for the persons involved. But let us recur to
the books indicted. They may not be to your taste or mine ;
they may be contrary to our moral views; that is not th equestion. Have those who believe such views true and i
beneficial to society the right to advocate and advance them !
openly? Has society any right to suppress them by force
because they are unwelcome to the majority ? Once let it be
admitted that the publication is in good faith, meant for the
public good, entirely free from corrupt motive, and it cannot
be suppressed without violation of the fundamental princi
ples of liberty. This would appear at once if such suppres
sion were equitably applied to all works which are liable to
the charge of offending the conventional moral sentiment.
Goethe, being once in Kiel, was invited to attend a meeting
called by some clergymen, for the suppression of obscene
literature. He attended, and proposed that they should begin
with the Bible. That ended the conference, and it was
never heard of again. And that will end all these attempts
�10
LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
to suppress books called immoral by prurient imaginations,
just so soon as the same measure is meted out to Freethinkers
and Bible Societies. Edward Truelove is in gaol, but justice
sees Solomon by his side and those who circulate Solomon ;
and St. Paul also, and Shakespeare, Bocaccio, Montaigne,
Dean Swift, Smollett, Goethe, and many other great men,
who were not afraid to write of the facts of nature; nay,
many naturalists and physiologists of our time and
country would be there with him to-day if equal justice
were done.. There is no difference between the plain speech
in many classic works and in those which have been lately
condemned as immoral, and no difference is alleged between
the motives with which they are all published. The book
may be very able in one case, very poor in another, but the
principles of freedom and right protect them equally. To
contend that a book which is decent for the rich becomes
indecent when priced within reach of the poor, is a mere
insult to the people; it is on a par with the religion which
regards subscribers visiting the Zoological Gardens on
Sunday as pious people, whereas sixpence would make them
Sabbath-breakers.
Unless this nation is prepared to assume that all religious
truth has been attained, it must allow free criticism of popular
opinions, even though the majority say such criticisms destroy
millions of souls. Unless the nation assumes that it has
I reached the supreme social and moral perfection it must
■ allow free criticism of social and moral customs; and if such
1 freedom be accepted as right, all ita results must be accepted.
If the honest Malthusian can be thrown into prison for cor
rupting morals, the honest heretic may be thrown there for
destroying souls. In every branch of inquiry errors will
arise : that is incidental to the search for truth. But Milton
uttered the mature verdict of mankind when he said:
1 “ Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play
upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously,
by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let
her and falsehood grapple. Who ever knew Truth put to the
worse in a free and open encounter ? Her confuting is the
1 best and surest suppressing.”
Nay, confutation by Truth is the only suppression of error.
Persecution only fans it into strength by mingling with its
smoke the glow of martyrdom. In the present cases, several
poor pamphlets have been drawn out of their obscurity and
scattered broadcast through the land; and any man of com-
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
11
mon-sense must have known that such would have been the
result of attempting their suppression.
What, then, are we to infer concerning those who have
instituted these recent proceedings ? Are we to suppose they
have not the common-sense to know that they would in
crease enormously the circulation of the opinions they pro
fess to abhor ?
I am sorry to say that, for one, I can not come to so
charitable a theory—not even after the blundering ignorance
shown by their rigidly righteous lawyers. I can not believe
that this is any bond fide effort to suppress immorality.
There are too many signs about it which compel to the
sorrowful conclusion that there has grown up among us
a Society, whose original aim may ha’ve been to suppress
vice, but which has now fallen under control of persons
with other aims. It would appear that to these the circula
tion of many thousands of a book they call vicious is of
little importance compared with making a sensation, and
parading their own spotlessness before the public; and
beyond this, it is to be feared that a still baser influence has
been at work to degrade this association of (originally, no
doubt) well-meaning, though weak-minded people. There is
money in it. A good deal of patronage and wealth has gone
to it in the past, and its agents are highly paid ; and if this
stream of money and patronage is to continue to flow and
gladden the host of agents, they must keep up a show of
activity. They must always be attitudinising as purifiers of
society. If the nests of crime and vice are trampled out,
and the funds begin to fall low, they must try and make
their subscribers think there are nests where there are none ;
and, knowing well how unpopular Freethinkers are, how few
friends they have in high places, they found among them a
book which repeated the details of ordinary physiological
and medical books—a book whose pages, with all their faults,
are nowhere of biblical impurity. It must have brought
their secretaries, and their lawyers, and their secret-service
agents, a golden Pactolus from orthodox purses to thus
prove that the society might do injury to Freethinkers under
cover of attacking immorality. The old privilege of the
orthodox to imprison their opponents—the privilege so loved,
but lost—must seem about to come back again, when it has
been decided that facts familiar in the libraries of medicine
and science cannot be printed by Freethinkers in a form
accessible to the people without imprisonment. They know
I
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�12
LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
that many of these Freethinkers value their freedom highly
enough to go to gaol for it, and they are, no doubt, hoping
for more victims and a flourishing business with plenty of
vice to suppress.
For that organisation, which, in its degradation, reveals
that most miserable social gangrene, selfishness and hypocrisy
affecting the sentiments of virtue and philanthropy, I, forone, feel only loathing. But there is nothing new and
nothing very formidable in that kind of thing, and it
reaches its level at last.
Lucifer began, mythologically, as a heavenly detective.
He was the lawyer retained by the gods for the suppression
of vice; and, from long engaging in that business, he
came to love it. When he had nobody to accuse, he was
in distress, and went about accusing innocent people. So he
was called the Accuser. And then he fell lower still, and
went about tempting people to sin, in order that he might
prosecute them ; and then he was called Satan. That was
the course of the first Vice Society, and the end of its
attorney.But while we may smile at these traders in corruption, the
degree to which they have been able to infect the Bench,
and through it large numbers of the least thoughtful people,
supplies grave cause for alarm. There are some ugly chap
ters in English history connected with attempts to suppress
conviction, to throttle its expression under pretence of its
being wicked or immoral. But we are so far away from
those eras, that many hardly remember their lesson ; which is
a pity, for such lessons are costly, and, if forgotten, can
sometimes only be recovered at a heavier cost. The lesson
taught by every effort to repress honest and public discussion
of any subject whatever is, that all such efforts are revolu
tionary. Every honest man in prison is tenfold more
dangerous than fire burning near fire-damp. The majesty of
law is defiled when the innocent are punished deliberately
with the guilty. Edward Truelove, in prisou, has exchanged
places with his judges, and his sentence on them, for their
most immoral judgment, will be affirmed when their decisions
have become byewords of judicial prejudice and folly.
They who menace man’s freedom of thought and speech
are tampering with something more powerful than gun
powder. They who suppress by force even an erroneous book
honestly meant for human welfare, are justifying all the
crimes ever committed against human intelligence ; they are
�LIBERTY AND MORALITY.
13
laying again the trains that have always ended in revolu
tion ; and, right as it is to suppress books notoriously meant
for corruption, and punish the vile who through them
seek selfish ends at cost of the public good, even that is a
task requiring the utmost care and wisdom. Better that
many base men and many bad books escape, than that one
honest woman be robbed of her child by violence calling
itself law, or one honest man suffer the felon’s chain from
the very hand provided for protection of honesty.
�14
READINGS
From Milton’s Areopagitica.
This is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever
should arise in the Commonwealth: that let no man in this world ex
pect ; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and
speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty obtained
that wise men look for.
Martin V., by his will, not only prohibited, but was the first that
excommunicated the reading of heretical works; for about that time
Wickliffe and Husse, growing terrible, were they who first drove the
papal court to a stricter policy of prohibiting. Which course Leo X.
and his successors followed, until the Council of Trent and the Spanish:
Inquisition, engendering together, brought forth or perfected these
catalogues and expurging indexes, that rake through the entrails of
many a good old author, with a violation worse than any could be offered
to his tomb.
Nor did they stay in matters heretical, but any subject that was not
to their palate, they either condemned in a prohibition or had it
straight into the new purgatory of an index. To fill up the measure of
encroachment, their last invention was to ordain that no book, pam
phlet, or paper should be printed (as if St. Peter had bequeathed them
the keys of the Press as well as of Paradise) unless it were approved
and licensed under the hands of two or three gluttonous friars...........
“ To the pure all things are pure; ” not only meats and drinks, but all
kinds of knowledge, whether of good or evil; the knowledge cannot
defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not
defiled. For books are as meats and viands are, some of good, some of
evil substance; and yet God in that unapocryphal vision said without
exception, “ Rise, Peter, slay and eat;” leaving the choice to each
man’s discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little^
or nothing from unwholesome; and best books, to a naughty mind, are
not unapplicable to occasions of evil.
As, therofore, the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be tochoose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil?
... I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and
unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks
out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not with
out dust and heat. Our sage and serious poet Spenser (whom I dare
be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas), describing
true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his
palmer through the Cave of Mammon and the Bower of Earthly Bliss,,
that he might see and know, and yet abstain............ They are not
skilful considerers of human things who imagine to remove sin by
�removing the matter of sin-; for, besides that it is a huge heap,
increasing under the very act of diminishing, though some part of it
may for a time be withdrawn from some persons, it cannot from all, in
such a universal thing as books are; and when this is done, yet the sin
remains entire. Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, 1
he has yet one jewel left, ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. I
Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline^
that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste
that come not thither so; such great care and wisdom is required to theright managing of this point. Suppose we could expel sin by this
means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of
■ virtue, for the matter of them both is the same; remove that, and you
remove them both alike. It would be better done, to learn that the law
must needs be frivolous which goes to restrain things uncertainly yet
equally working to good and evil. And were I the chooser, a dram of
well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible
hindrance of evil-doing.
He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have obtained the
utmost prospect of reformation which the mortal glass wherein we con
template can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this
very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth..............The
light which we have gained was given us not to be ever staring on, but
by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. . . .
Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself
like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks : me
thinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling
her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam ; purging and unsealing
her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while
the whole noise of Jrmor.Qus and flocking birds, with those also that love
the twilight, flutter about, amazed at—what she means............... The
temple of Janus, with his two controversial faces, might now not unsignificantly be set open............ Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who
ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter ?
�
Dublin Core
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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Liberty and morality: a discourse given at South Place Chapel, Finsbury.
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Annotations in pencil. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. "Notice: The proceeds of this Pamphlet will be given by Mr Conway to a Testimonial to Mr. Truelove, if such shall be offered, on his release from prison'. [Title page]. The last two pages carry an extract from Milton's Areopagitica.
Publisher
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Freethought Publishing Company
Date
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1878
Identifier
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G4860
Subject
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Ethics
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Evil
Liberty
Morality
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WHAT 18 RELIGION?
{F. Max Muller's First Hibbert Lecture)
A DISCOURSE
GIVEN AT
JSOUTH
J^LACE
JThAFEL,
MAY $th, 1878,
by'
MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
LONDON :
SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY WATERLOW AND SONS LIMITED,
LONDON WALL.
�WHAT IS RELIGION?
The community may congratulate itself upon the fact
that the bequest of an advanced liberal man for the
promotion of free religious inquiry, should find its
fulfilment in the ancient chapter-house of Westminster
Abbey. It is probable that if the dogmas which
founded that Abbey still reigned, the first Hibbert
lecturer would have been sooner burnt than listened
to. But now, amid those historic walls are repre
sented ideas of religion which have been raised quite
out of the region of authority, and worthily claim only
to stand or fall along with the reason and knowledge
, of man,—acknowledging no revelation but the history
of man.
On Thursday last, in his second lecture, the Pro
fessor remarked that, even if the theory of human pro
gression could be proved in all other affairs of mankind,
that would not prove the same theory true of religion.
�4
This remark applied to the far past; and it is true
that what is called religion was for ages the unpro
gressive, the stationary institution of the world. And
this because the religious sentiment was confused with
theology,—identified with alleged revelations,—thus
removed from the normal current of human interests.
But the scene in the chapter-house marks a great
change. The Hibbert Trust is, I believe, outcome
of money earned by toiling negroes on West Indian
plantations. The House of Commons freed those
slaves. The wealth they coined comes back to the
room in which the House of Commons first sat.
There African degradation is turning to English cul
ture. The progress in civilisation represented in that
fact is not greater than ,the religious progress it
implies. The leading Unitarian (Martineau) and the
Dean of Westminster have united to bring a German
• liberal there to raise the standard of a human religion.
It is now a religious House of Commons. Four
centuries ago an old monk frescoed the walls of it
with the visions of the Apocalypse. The angels and
dragons are now fading around a wider apocalypse.
The Isle of Patmos sinks beneath the horizon. The
Isle of England rises from the night, its awakened eye
■ holding the Apocalypse of Man.
The eminence of Max Muller is the work he has
done in recovering the vast fields of human experi
�5
ence represented by the Aryan race. No West Indian
slave was more bound under his master than our
English brains under thraldom to ancient Semitic
notions. Hebraism waved its sceptre over European
culture, and excluded two-thirds of the world and of
history as heathenism and devil’s work. Many have
been our deliverers from that prison, but no one of
them has done more than our first Hibbert lecturer
to carry this liberation from the scholar’s study to
the layman’s home. It was because of this that he
was called to expound the religion of humanity amid
walls built to fortify the dogmas of one tribe against
the rest of mankind, and against universal progress.
Westminster Abbey has survived to hear sentence
passed upon every creed for which it stood. And so
at last even tardy religion is caught up into the great
loom of the world to be woven in with general civili
sation.
That is, so far as it is a sound thread. But is it
sound ? Is it real ? Some say it is rotten, some say
unreal: man’s childish awe of phantoms, conjured up
by his own ignorance. But Max Muller detaches re
ligion from all its special forms or accidents; maintains
its reality and vitality; rests it upon the universal human
sense and feeling of the Infinite. He appeals to the
broad facts common to the civilized man and the
barbarian, to East, West, North, South; and he thus,
�6
in laying his foundation, leaves out of sight those
facts not universal; such as the special and narrow
theories of which a Christian may feel conscious here
and a Buddhist there. His question relates not to
this so-called religion or that, but to religion itself.
All religions might perish, and this essential religion
still stand. That he declares to be a natural thing,
which has had natural evolutions comprehensible by
science. Supernaturalism may, therefore, so far as the
present atmosphere of Westminster Abbey is con
cerned, be regarded as a small way one religion’ has
of saying to another “ Stand aside, I am holier than
thou.” The interest of the human intellect has
passed beyond that pious egotism. It is now pro
foundly concerned to know, not whether Christianity
is true, but whether religion itself is real; or whether
our spiritual emotion is merely surviving emotion of
waves after the blasts of superstition have so long
swept over them.
The main principle affirmed is, that religion is man’s
apprehension of the Infinite. In searching the largest
and the smallest, man reaches an end of his com
prehension, the limit of the heavens he can see, the
limit of the atom he can divide; but where compre
hension ends, apprehension continues; imagination,
wonder, admiration, faith, hope, soar on into an immea
surable expanse; and the emotion awakened within
�7
for that transcendent immensity is the religious emo
tion.
Now there are certain inferences from this principle
which it hardly lay in the way of the lecturer to un
fold. It was intimated, however, in what he said
about the progressive development of conceptions of
colour, and I will use that to illustrate my own point.
In arguing that the ancient races of men apprehended
the Infinite vaguely, though they had no word for it,
he said, 11 We divide colour by seven rough degrees.
Even those seven degrees are of late date in the evolu
tion of our sensuous knowledge. In common Arabic, as
Palgrave tells us, the names for green, black and brown
are constantly confounded. In the Edda the rainbow is
called a three-coloured bridge. Xenophanes says that
what people call Iris is a cloud, purple, red and yellow.
Even Aristotle still speaks of the tricoloured rainbow,
red, yellow and green. Blue, which seems to us so
definite a colour, was worked out of the infinity of
colours at a comparatively late time. There is hardly
a book now in which we do not read of the blue sky.
But in the ancient hymns of the Veda, so full of the
dawn, the sun and the sky, the blue sky is never men
tioned in the Zendavesta the blue sky is never men
tioned ; in Homer the blue sky is never mentioned ;
in the Old, and even in the New, Testament, the blue
sky is never mentioned. In the Teutonic languages
�§
blue comes from a root which originally meant bleak
and black. The Romance languages found no useful
word for blue in Latin and 'borrowed their word from
the Germans.”
The Hibbert lecturer believes those ancients saw
the blue sky as we do, but they had no word
for it because they had not detached it mentally from
dark or bright. But whether the outer eye has un
folded or the inner eye,—visual power or the analytic
mind behind it,—-it is equally shown that the full
phenomena were not revealed j and we are again
reminded that in going back to the ancient world for
his beliefs man suffers a relapse from the height he
has attained. In the matter of blue sky the Bible is
as much a blank as the Vedas. So far neither was a
revelation—or unveiling—of phenomena. That know
ledge, by natural means and scientific culture, we have
reached, and see seven colours where our ancestors
saw three or four. Are we to suppose their spiritual
senses were finer, while their other senses were duller,
than ours ? Are we to suppose that their religious
analysis was more perfect than ours ? If so, it would
be a miracle; but where is the evidence of any such
miracle ? Compare the God of the Vedas or of the
Bible—Indra or Jehovah—with the God of Theodore
Parker, nay, of any living Theist, and only a blindness
worse than blue-blindness can declare those thunder-;
�9
gods equal to the Divine Love adored by the en
lightened heart to-day.
That conclusion is inevitable from the moment it
is admitted that religion is a subject for scientific
treatment. Once let it be admitted that religion is to
be dealt with by unbiassed reason,—by such calm
sifting of facts as if the subject were electricity,—and
from that instant every particular system of religion
must take its place in the natural history of mankind.
Be it Brahminism, be it Christianity, it comes down
from the bench and goes into the witness-box. Each
testifies what it knows, but it cannot coerce the judg
ment of Reason. Christianity may testify that it saw
miracles; Confucianism that it saw none; Islamism
that it was revealed from Allah; but it is no longer
the sword which determines their credibility; it is
Reason. So their testimony goes for precisely what
it is worth. If they saw only three colours where
there were seven, possibly they also saw miracle
where there was only natural fact. The world cannot
go back to the year One for its ideas of the Infinite
any more than for its optics. It may recognise in
Christ a great religious teacher, just as it recognises
in Aristotle a great scientific teacher; but as it
cannot diminish the known colours because Aristotle
knew only three, so it cannot deny religious facts
because unknown to Christ. But it may find fresh
�IO
reason for faith in science and religion in that, with
grand vitality, they far outgrow both Aristotle and
Christ, and all the systems that would confine them.
Now, as to this apprehension of the Infinite in
which the Hibbert lecturer finds the religious faculty ;
it souhds at first rather metaphysical. It is tolerably
clear that no abstract notions of the Infinite can have
any commanding power over the nature and passions
of mankind. We must, therefore, in considering
historic religions, think rather of the forms with which
human imagination has peopled the Infinite. The
Infinite in itself is metaphysical ; but its vault, popu
lous with gods, becomes practical. The creed which
has swayed the world has been in an Infinite just
transcending man’s finite in power or excellence ;
while it is finite enough to deal with him and feel
with him. The god or personality which man asso
ciates with infinitude may be of unknown strength,
so separate from finite man ; but he may be angry,
loving, ambitious, so linked on to the finite?
It is just in this twofold aspect of these images of
the Infinite that we may discover the reality and
meaning of religion. To which side of the god does
it belong—his finite or his infinite side ? his likeness
to man or his transcendency of man? his compre
hensibility or incomprehensibility.
Religion,—whether it be a sense of dependence, or
�II
awe, of emotion, or aspiration—whatever its aspect,
refers to that in which the object of worship passes
beyond the worshipper. In this it differs from
theology, which concerns itself with that side of the
god which is within the knowledge of man. The
Theology of one period may describe the gods, as the
Greeks did, even to the colour of their hair; the
Theology of another period may disprove such gods’
'existence, substituting invisible Beings, as that of Paul
‘did. One Theology may build up a Trinity; another
may supersede it with a Quaternity or Unity. But it
would be an error to suppose that Religion is either
'directly making those images,or directly replacing them.
These personifications are the successive inventions
of a changing science; they are utilised by priests who
support theologians to maintain them, or, when they
become discredited, to modify or replace them. But,
although the religious condition of man may be har
monious with such images at one time, discordant
with them at another, what human worship adores is
the unknown, the eternal, the vast, the perfect,—all
expanding beyond its conception, but yet believed to
■be powerfully existent.
Thus Religion is different from Fear. Man would
hover fear the Infinite. It is only when to its vastness
Theology adds a smallness like man’s own that men
beginto tremble. It is not Jove, the incomprehensible
�.12
Heaven, man fears; but Jove, the comprehensible
Chieftain, going about with a thunderclub to kill him.
That Jove men fear, because they understand him;,
they go about themselves with clubs less big but
equally murderous. That is not Religion—it is
Theology; a primitive speculative science of gods.
But we have reached now a Science of Religion, and
understand that its reverence, its devoutness, emotion,
love, so far as really awakened in man, were for what
rose above his own weakness, his passions, and his
sorrows.
What, then, does this apprehension (which must be
distinguished from comprehension) this feeling about
the Infinite amount to ? Simply to man’s belief in
something better than himself. Man believes in a
Wisdom greater than his own. Theology may per
sonify it in Minerva, or in the Holy Ghost; but the
worship is not. for the work of man’s wisdom—it is
for the wisdom ascending beyond man. So the forms
perish : the worship of wisdom perishes not. Man
adores a power beyond his own: theology may
identify it with mountain and lightning, sea and whirl
wind, and these may overawe his heart so long as he
knows nothing of them : but when the mountain is
climbed, and the sea voyaged over, the cloud seen as
vapour, the wind weighed, the lightning bottled and
sealed up, the ever-kneeling spirit of Religion passes
�T3
onward, and amid innumerable forms and names that
come and go, seeks still the better, the wiser, the,
more powerful and happy,—ever leading on from the
finite to the Infinite.
And this high seeking, born of each heart’s faith in
a better than it knows, is the religious force, because
it is the controlling and creative force. It is idle to
tell us, in face of the moral progress of the world,
that the life of man has been the result of correct
metaphysics, theological definitions, abstractions about
the Absolute and co-eternal Persons. The force that
is moving the world onward 'is the longing in each
human being for somewhat more perfect than what
they have or are. It is Maya in India praying her
babe Siddartha (Buddha) may be wise beyond all men
she ever knew; or Mary in Palestine praying the same
as she watches her baby Jesus ; or any mother that
hears me, whose tender breast feels stirring within
hope that the new nature she has started on its career
may ascend till she can kneel in homage before it. It
may be the humblest workman dreaming of a more
perfect skill; the young artisan feeling after an inven
tion pregnant with results incalculable. Wherever
and however manifested it is the great vision of a
glory transcending our own; and though such ideals
are always being reached and passed by—infinites
becoming Unites—so endlessly the spirit grows, so
�14
immortal is its nature, so unceasing the work of
creation, the outline is never filled up. Over crumbled
gods and goddesses, religion ascends for ever, burning,
disintegrating, generating, regenerating,—Humanity’s
passion for the Perfect.
There is a danger in the method of the historian
and archaeologist of religion. Because he must trace
the evolution of religion through its visible and
definable effects—fetish, shrine, dogma, temple—
there is danger that these may be regarded as types
and forms of religion itself. When a geologist walks
over hills, cliffs, rocks, he traces the path of drifting
glaciers scratched on rock; he finds sea-shells on
the hill-tops, boulders dropped in meadows, pebbles
rounded by waves long ebbed away to channels many
miles distant: he says, seas and rivers have smoothed
and deposited these shells and sands, and shaped
these undulations of hill and vale. Yet these are
not the sea,—they are but fringes and accidents in the
history of the sea. But in religion men still have the
habit of seeing the shards and shells of theory—the
pebbles of theology worn from crumbled temples—as
forms of Religion itself. They are but things which
Religion influenced, they report its ancient tides and
currents, but they are not—never were—religion
itself.
Having now detached the religious sentiment from
�i5
the forms which have borrowed its consecration;
having identified it as man’s impulse towards the
Perfect—which philosophy calls the Infinite—let us
ask whether we are genuine and true in calling this
religion. Or is our use of that word only a piece of
conventionality ? Does Religion mean anything diffe
rent from morality, or different from conscience ? If
not, then our use of it is mystification, conformity,
cowardice.
I believe Religion to be a different thing from
Morality. I understand by morality rules and stan
dards of conduct relating to recognised social duties.
But there is something in man which leads him to
defy the rules and standards around him. A bad man
violates moral rules for the sake of self: but another
man breaks them at the cost of self. What leads Jesus
to break the Sabbath, or Buddha to refuse offerings
to the gods ? Or what leads the reformer of to-day to
challenge the social and political order ?
Are such men seeking the benefit of the majority ?
The majority are against them. The majority is made
uncomfortable by them. Are they seeking general
advantages ? They are often plunging everything into
revolution, and doing it consciously. You might per
suade a freethinker that to disestablish the Church
would leave the majority poorer than now; or that
innumerable advantages to millions would be lost if
�the Athanasian Creed were exploded. But would any
consideration of majorities make him support the
Church: would any advantages make him advocate
the Creed ? It may be said he is obeying the voice of
conscience. That explains nothing. Conscience is
an organ of forces beyond itself. It dictates war to
one tribe, peace to another. Conscience is a majestic
throne, but we search for the power behind the
throne.
Now, here we have a force in man which often
confronts customs, moralities, the social and political
order, which disregards majorities and their interests,
disregards self-interest also; and this force with
passion, enthusiasm and martyrdom, seeks something
it never saw, something that never existed. It is
manifested in all history, and is known in universal
experience; it actuates theists and non-theists; it is
especially visible in the overthrow of popular idols
and dogmas claiming its worship. Is that morality?
Not a whit more than it is politics, or trade, or art, or
any one of the manifold human interests which slowly
but steadily follow the lead of that pillar of cloud and
fire.
I call it Religion, because that is a universal name
which no sect or nation has ever tried to monopolise :
but I do not care for that name if any one has a
better. I do care that it shall not be confused with
�i7
wholly different things, with either morality, politics
or science. Much less, with Theology. For Theology
is the great enemy of religion. Morality, Society,
Science, are its ministers, but Theology is its rival,—
the Opposer that would arrest the current of its life,
and nail man down to bestow upon a fragment of his
universe and himself the passion born for aspiration
to the perfect whole. To call it ideality, poetry,
harmony, love of humanity, is to name the fruits by
which this religious life is known. To name it
Religion may, indeed, be very inadequate ; neither
etymologically or practically can that word do more
than preserve the distinction and witness the existence
of that which language cannot define; but as in
accuracy of words like “ sunrise ” and “ sunset ”
cannot now mar the glories they suggest, so no
etymologic fault can disparage that only catholic
name we have (Religion) so long as it is left
us by Sectarianism and Superstition to designate
the universal aspirations of mankind. Christianity
can only claim to be a religion; it cannot claim
to be Religion. No sect can claim to be Religion
itself. That is an older banner than any existing
nation or church; under its broad folds and
heaven-born tints thousands of sects have perished;
it widens with the ages, blends with all grandeurs
without and within, leads onward the steady march of
�i8
man with his world to that supreme beauty which
enchains his senses and enchants his heart.
For essential religion no adequate word or definition
has ever been discovered, or is likely to be discovered.
If the lecturer’s statement there halts, it is because
the Infinite, the Perfect, cannot be defined. To call
it the Infinite leaves the moral sentiment unexpressed.
To call it “ morality touched with enthusiasm,” leaves
the progressive life untold. The philosophers of Germany
and America in the beginning of this generation called
it Transcendentalism;—but that white light wanted
fire, and faded. Some have called it absolute Being.
Jesus called it Love; and no fairer emblem of it was
ever named than that supreme glory which quickens
the world, from the marriage of flower with flower
which to-day clothes the earth with blossoms, to the
mother and her babe, and all the manifestations of
that unselfish joy which alone can transfigure human
passions. But man needs Light as well as Love.
And so it is that the highest in us is as ineffable as that
which it seeks. When we have dwelt on its varied
intimations ; when we have thought of Ideality and
Poetry, perfect Being, the Infinite, the Immortal,
Supreme Reason, pure Beauty, universal Love—even
then the wise heart is conscious that it has touched
but a few chords of the harp with a thousand strings ;
and when the thousand strings have all been swept,
�i9
when human language has rehearsed all its concepts
and its dreams to the last accent, yet in the silent
heart the still small voice will go on sweetly singing of
a dawn fairer than all the rest.
Waterldw & Sons Limited, Printers, London Wall, London.
�WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY.
BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A.
PRICES,
s.
The Sacred Anthology: A Book
of Ethnical Scriptures ..
The Earthward Pilgrimage
Do.
do.
Republican Superstitions..
Christianity
.........................
Human Sacrifices in England ..
David Frederick Strauss ..
Sterling and Maurice
Intellectual Suicide
The First Love again
Our Cause and its Accusers
Alcestis in England
Unbelief: its nature, cause, and cure
Entering Society.........................
The Religion of Children
The Peri! of War
10
5
2
2
1
1
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0
0
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0
0
0
0
d.
0
0
6
6
6
0
3
2
2
2
1
2
2
2
2
2
Idols and Ideals fincluding the Essay
on Christianity^, 350 pp............................ 7
6
NEW WORK BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A.
Members of the Congregation, can obtain this
work in the Library at 5/-.
BY A. J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.8., &c., &c.
Salvation ..........
0
Truth
.......................................................0
Speculation
........................ ;
..
0
Duty
..........
0
The Dyer's Hand ........
0
2
2
2
2
2
BY REV. P. H. WICKSTEED, M.A.
Going Through and Getting Over
..
0
2
BY REV. T. W. FRECKELTON.
The Modern Analogue of the Ancient
Prophet ..........
02
BY W. C. COUPLAND, M.A.
The Conduct of Life
Hymns and Anthems
..
..
..
0
2
V; 2f: 3/.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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What is religion? : a discourse given at South Place Chapel, May 5th 1878
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 19, [1] p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. List of works to be obtained from the Library of South Place Chapel at end of pamphlet. Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. About F. Max Muller's First Hibbert Lecture on 'The Perception of the Infinite' given at Westminster Abbey in April 1878.
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[South Place Chapel]
Date
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[1878]
Identifier
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G3338
Subject
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Religion
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (What is religion? : a discourse given at South Place Chapel, May 5th 1878), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
God (Christianity)
Moral Philosophy
Morality
Morris Tracts
Religion and science
Science and Religion
-
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Supernatural and rational morality
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Bradlaugh, Charles
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh,63, Fleet St., E. C. - 1886 (p. 8).
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Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh
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1886
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G903
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Rationalism
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English
Free Thought
Morality
Rationalism
Religion
Supernatural
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ON MORAL EVIL
A LETTER
FROM
A
FRIEND.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Sixpence.
�..
.. -.
�ON MORAL EVIL.
---------- t----------
My dear Friend,—It cannot be disguised that in
this age there is a great amount of atheism, or, what
is nearly akin to it, great distrust of God, arising from
the difficulty of reconciling the phenomena of moral
evil with the attributes of a holy and beneficent God.
For your readers there will be no necessity to enter
into any consideration of those explanations which
orthodox theology has given to account for the exist
ence of moral evil, because those explanations cannot
be reconciled with the most approved conclusions
respecting primitive man, and because the theories of
the remedy for moral evil do violence alike to our
highest instincts and to the honour of God.
I shall, therefore, confine my attention to the purely
rational side of the argument, in the hope of getting
a hearing from those wise and thoughtful men
amongst us who are willing to listen to reason, and tn
accept whatever can be shown to harmonise with the
facts of human nature and the moral instincts.
In dealing with a theme almost exhausted by con
troversy, of stupendous interest, and of very nearly
inscrutable mystery, it is impossible to refrain at the
outset from putting in a plea for indulgence, on the
score of my deeply felt incapacity to handle the sub
ject worthily; and, what is far more important, it is
necessary to caution my readers against any hasty
conclusion unfavourable to moral effort, which might
be- drawn from a sort of outside and comprehensive
�4
On Moral Evil.
view of the whole subject. My sole object in medi
tating on this momentous theme is to strengthen, not
to weaken my own sense of duty, to deepen, and not
to efface the moral obligations engraved upon my own
conscience. In writing therefore for others, my aim
can only be to endeavour, by setting forth the truth,
or what I believe to be the truth, to serve the cause
of pure morality and true religion, to lead my fellow
men by the shortest and most direct road to triumph
over moral evil in themselves, and to make that
triumph easier for others.
I must assume that there is a God—a moral
Governor of mankind—a Being from whom has
emanated all that we are and all that we desire, to
whom can be traced, so to speak, the ultimate respon
sibility of all that happens throughout the universe.
There was a time when I felt disposed to question
this complete and undivided sovereignty, but I per
ceive that it is no longer tenable to conceive of a First
Great Cause of all things, and yet to deny the connec
tion with that cause of any of the visible undisputed
phenomena of the world. God must be all or none;
that is to say, the Almighty power and perfect wis
dom and foreknowledge which we attribute to God,
prevent the possibility of any accidental frustration of
His purpose, or the real rebellion against Him of any
one of His creatures. Of every part of His creation,
we must at all times affirm that it is exactly what the
Creator intended that it should be then and there;
and of every thought, word, and deed, of men, we
must likewise affirm that each one is part of God's
original plan, and is the direct or indirect result of
forces which He himself, foreknowing all, set in oper
ation at the beginning of time. Find me the basest
man you know, and try if you can, to separate him and
his depraved condition, in any single point of his his
tory or antecedents, from the chain of God's order and
providence. Find one gap if you can, where a missing
�On Moral Evil.
5
link betokens an independent set of forces; shew me
but one instance in which his thoughts, words, or
deeds, are his own—independently of his Creator—■
and I will then admit that the Creator is not ulti
mately responsible for what that man is, or for what
he has done.
I know he has done worse when he might have
done better, but how was such a depraved choice
made possible to him ? Whence did he get his evil
bias ? From his companions ? or early training 1 or
from inherited moral weakness ? So far as he is con
cerned, he had no control over two of these corrupting
influences, and, in all probability, as little control over
the lot into which he was cast. As a creature, he is
the victim rather than the criminal, and in the sight
of the Creator he may be an object of pity, but never
of hatred. But his parents were wicked before him,
and transmitted the increased tendency to evil ?
Granted, and the man’s very birth into the world,
may have been the result of an unlawful, perhaps an
adulterous union. At first sight, it might seem as if
the very creation of this bad man had been taken out
of the Creator’s hands, and done in spite of His holy
will. But a moment’s consideration shews that we are
only pushing the difficulty further and further back,
and at last we should have to ask the question regard
ing the first and least corrupted of the man’s ancestors
(if the first were really the least corrupted); Who made
these people, in the first instance, what they were,
knowing what would be their debased offspring after
a thousand generations 1 It was still God at the
beginning who constituted man as he was, liable to
these moral aberrations and corruptions, and having
a certain degree of liberty within which he could do
evil instead of good; it was still God who knew all
the endless and countless variabilities of the human
will and character, and who, foreknowing it all, did
not prevent or provide for the prevention of those
�6
On Moral Evil.
results which we call evil. In the foregoing case you
will observe that I have admitted the worst form in
which moral evil can be imagined to take shape, viz.
—in the steady downward course of moral debase
ment, from slight weakness to actual sin, from bad to
worse, spreading and growing continually more loath
some from generation to generation, giving no hope
of amendment or of arrest in its downward course.
All we know of primitive man teaches us that just
the contrary of this has been the course of mankind,
that mankind began with a far lower moral condition
than we have now, that mankind is continually rising
and advancing (as a whole), and that superior moral
races take the place of those which are inferior. But
I took the other hypothesis, because the greater in
cludes the less. If under the worst aspect of human
depravity we must still trace the ultimate responsi
bility to our Creator, a fortiori, we must surely do so
in considering human depravity under the more
favourable aspect, which is offered to us through
modern researches into the history of primaeval man.
The atheist and the profligate may, however, be
inclined to cry exultingly that I have given them
all they ask. The atheist says, There cannot be a
God, because of all this moral evil in the world. I
admit the facts which are called evil, and I say the
ultimate responsibility of them lies with the Creator.
I cannot deny that God is the cause of all things.
The profligate and the criminal may rejoice to think
that God is to blame for what they do; and that, as
the Creator is responsible, they may as well do as they
like.
Much as one deplores the mis-use of any truth, it
affords no just ground for keeping it back, or for
putting a falsehood in its place. There ever will be
persons who must derive temporary injury from the
announcements of truths, however wholesome for the
mass, or salutary for mankind in the future. We
�On Moral Evil.
7
cannot be silent, and miss our chance; I ought rather
to say, we must not neglect our bounden duty, lest
some evil effects should mingle with the good effects
of what we have to make known. The world would
never have emerged from its primitive barbarism, had
its wise men and seers waited till all possible danger
of the mis-use of truth was past. Like one who said,
** He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” I would
only caution my readers against fastening on any one
isolated fact or truth, to the exclusion of other facts
and truths which we are equally bound to recognize.
If it be true that God is the author of all that happens,
is the ultimate cause of all which we call evil as well
as of all which we call good, there are other truths
and facts of our nature and moral organization quite
as fundamental and important, which we cannot ignore
without perverting the first cardinal truth respecting
our Creator's responsibility.
It has been well said, the use of abstract instead of
concrete terms has given rise to an enormous amount
of error in philosophy in general, and in ethics in par
ticular. The terms “evil” and “sin” when used as
abstract terms are fraught with mischief. There can
be no moral evil apart from some thought, word, or
deed, of man. There can be no sin without a sinner.
In endeavouring to discover what moral evil or sin is,
we shall go astray at the outset, if we begin to define
the abstract term, as theologians vainly do. We must
study men and women, their desires, motives, and
actions; and from that study we may come in time
to be able to generalize, and come to use abstract
terms in safety.
Let us then first consider what are the factors in
ourselves which go to produce an immoral act. We
are certainly conscious of having a body, which is the
subject of certain normal and natural desires. This
body, so far as we can discover, is in one respect
analogous to the individual beings around us, in
�On Moral Evil.
every class of animal life. The body at all times
seeks its own pleasure and satisfaction. It is en
dowed with absolute self-love, and is made dependent
on its own selfishness for its very life and power.
All its functions and its appetites are arranged for its
own good, its own safety, health, enjoyment, and that
without any regard to the safety, health, or enjoyment
of any other body, i.e., whenever such foreign interests
stand in its way.
Just as the different individuals in the vegetable
and animal worlds, each and all, struggle for existence,
if not for supremacy, so the bodies of men and women
are by nature under the same law of self-preservation;
and, but for the moral element in us which has led to
civilization and self-denial, we should differ in nothing
fundamentally from the animals around us. This is
as much God's own doing as all the rest of the Kosmos.
It is quite as necessary to our very existence, and to
the perpetuation of the race, that our bodies should be
organized as they are, as that the world should keep
its mean distance from the sun and revolve diurnally
on its axis. I find, then, all I am in search of to ex
plain the source of our wrong-doing, in the very con
stitution of our bodies and brains ; that is to say, we
are constituted by nature to gratify our bodies as we
please, just according to our several tastes, or the
varying dominance of certain appetites, utterly regard
less of any interests or pleasures but our own. Even
some beautiful instances of happiness shared with
others, do not form exceptions to this rule. I may
delight in cherishing my wife and in feeding my little
ones, but in this I only share the same lovely instinct
of many birds, quadrupeds, and insects. It adds to
my own comfort to contribute to theirs ; and I may
discharge this function all my life, without a spark of
moral goodness entering into a single act of fatherly
devotion. Another man may prefer the gratification
of being constantly drunk; and so he seeks his own
�On Moral Evil.
9
pleasure at the entire sacrifice of his family. In both
cases, the course of conduct pursued may be suggested
by the desires of the flesh, and as natural to the body
as eating when hungry, and drinking when thirsty.
By far the largest number of evil deeds belongs to
the class which we rightly call self-indulgent. And of
the rest, which are predatory, destructive, brutal—
such as the deeds of rapine, cruelty, and murder—we
can only say they are the acts of the indulgence of less
common appetites—such as envy, anger, jealousy,
revenge, and the like—which are more or less excep
tional, but which, equally with other appetites, ori
ginate in the bodily and cerebral frame. Now, it is
manifest, without the necessity for illustration, that
some appetites and natural cravings may be, and are
constantly, gratified without any sin at all; and also
that in some instances it would be a sin not to gratify
them. To these facts we must add a third, viz., all
the natural appetites whatever (and by the term
“natural” I, of course, exclude appetites which are
created or aggravated by cerebral disease) are in
themselves needful, beneficial to the welfare of indi
viduals possessing them, and, subject to certain con
trol, good for the world at large.
The appetite for sexual intercourse, which is gene
rally considered the most fruitful source of moral
evil, I believe to be, on the contrary, one of the
highest and noblest of our physical desires, and mani
festly necessary for the world’s welfare. That it has
been abused, and in many cases unduly stimulated,
is no argument against its intrinsic value. Even that
ambition or envy, which is the spring of robbery, and
the fruitful source of tyranny and injustice, is a neces
sary adjunct to our natural state. Without the desire
to emulate others, and to possess for ourselves what
we perceive has added to their comfort or advantage,
we should be infinitely less active and progressive
than we are, if indeed progress in the arts of civilisaB
�IO
On Moral Evil.
tion were then possible at all. And that very anger
which leads to cruelty and to murder, is an element
in our constitution just as vital to the protection of
the race—to the protection not only of individuals
who are the subjects of anger, but also of others under
their care—as the desire for food and the instinct to
cherish our offspring. I cannot find a single element
in man’s nature, not even the murderous element and
love of cruelty, which has not its rightful place in the
economy of man, as an animal—and I might also add,
of man considered as a moral agent, destined for im
mortality.
I need not enlarge further on this factor of moral
evil. It must be evident to any one who will care
fully examine several instances of sin, that it invari
ably arises on one side from the action of some phy
sical impulse or appetite—that it is always an act
done to gratify the animal part of our nature. I now
proceed to consider the other factor, without which
moral life cannot be produced.
On examining ourselves, we find a principle or
power within us which is more or less in antagonism
to our natural physical impulses. It matters little to
oui* argument whether we call this inward controlling
power by the name of Reason, or Conscience, or Love.
We are considering only the thing itself, the nature
of which we shall discover from the observation of its
mode of action; and we can therefore for the present
waive discussion as to its proper name.
While a very large portion of our life is spent in
the unrestricted indulgence of some of our natural
desires, with which no voice within us interferes,
there are at the same time other natural desires which
are under the control of an inward power, antagonis
tic to their indulgence, either altogether or beyond
certain limits.
The body cannot do as it likes in all cases, without
being brought more or less under the censure of an
�On Moral Evil.
11
inward voice, which either checks the body in its wish
for gratification, or, being disobeyed, punishes the
body by reproaches or remorse. Every one knows
that he is thus under restraint, and that there is no
possibility of his doing just what the appetites and
impulses of his flesh suggest, without being opposed
from within by a power which demands the submis
sion of his will, or bitterly reproaches him when that
power is disobeyed. Illustration is scarcely required
here, but we can all recall instances of the remark
able exercise of this power. Some persons have felt
the tendency to theft or falsehood, and know that this
inward power has held them in check. Some have
had a similar tendency to intoxication, and have felt
the same restraint, whether they have obeyed it or
not. The free indulgence of sexual appetite is subject
to the same control, or punished by loss of self-respect
whenever that control has been defied.
And yet the proper indulgence of appetites has not
been thus interfered with or censured. We find anger
sometimes justified, sometimes forbidden. Love of
wealth, the same. Even strict truthfulness may some
times, and for certain ends, be relaxed. A person in
a very critical state of health may be lawfully screened
by deception from the danger of being killed by a
sudden shock, which some fatal news might cause.
Of course, cases in which deception is justifiable are
extremely rare. I only instance one, to show what I
am aiming to prove—viz., that the inward controlling
power permits, under certain circumstances, those
actions which, under other circumstances, it would
unhesitatingly forbid. There must be a law forbid
ding, an inward power or voice restraining, in order
to evolve sin out of any act of physical impulse. We
see this exemplified in human society. The existence
of law must in every case precede the birth of crime.
Different states have not always the same laws. I
may whistle for my dog in the streets of London on
�12
On Moral Evil.
a Sunday without infringing any statute or municipal
regulation. If I do the same in Glasgow, I am tapped
on the shoulder by a policeman, and reminded of the
law which turns my harmless or benevolent action
into an offence. In England bigamy is a felony. If
I am a Turkish subject, I may have four wives if I
please. Then again, some evil things are not pro
hibited at all. Many forms of fraud and extortion
are perfectly legal. Prostitution, and the use thereof,
are not crimes, nor even misdemeanours. From this
it is evident that states and governments make cer
tain crimes by enacting certain laws. That is, the
law alone is the legal measure of certain acts. Where
no law against them has been passed, the actions are
not recognised as offences.
Now, in precisely the same way, a man can only
sin when he disobeys the inner law which forbids cer
tain thoughts, words, and deeds. A certain act may
present itself to a thousand different persons as an act
which their consciences would forbid, and so they may
come to call that act immoral under all possible cir
cumstances, and no doubt they would be right in nine
hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand. For
this is how the standard of morality has been formed
in all ages, and why it is gradually rising. But we
should fall into a serious mistake if we tried to make
a leap over the one man’s conscience, and, ignoring
that, denounced him as guilty of immorality, simply
because he did what public opinion had condemned.
If the act was sinful at all, it was so only because it
was done in disobedience to the man’s own conscience.
The mere fact that a multitude of men have a common
experience about a certain act does not entitle them
to make the philosophical error of ignoring a principal
factor in the product of sin. It is not necessarily sin
ful—nay, it is sometimes greatly virtuous—to act in
direct violation of public opinion; so this in itself
would not be enough to convict a man of immorality.
�On Moral Evil.
A man does right so long as he exercises that degree
of control over his physical appetites demanded by
his inner moral sense. The moment that he oversteps
that limit, or disobeys the inward voice, he commits
an act of immorality.
Supposing he should outrage public decency in
England, so far as to marry two wives, and supposing
him at the same time to be a trained-up Mormonite,
taught from infancy to believe that polygamy is law
ful in God’s sight, we should do right in punishing
him as a felon for his felony, but we should be wrong
in accusing him of immorality, because his conscience
had sanctioned his conduct. This brings us to per
ceive that merely written laws, whether in the Bible
or in the Statute Book, are not by themselves the
other factor in the product of moral evil. Unless
there is a sense of obligation there can be no sin. There
may be crime against the State, or a violation of Bible
precept, which some may deem irreverent or impious,
but there cannot be sin, without a violation of one’s
own sdhse of moral obligation. Moreover, there may
be some laws of the State which are bad laws, and
some Bible precepts directly opposed to morality, in
which case disobedience would be virtuous, though, in
the one instance, punished by the State, and in the
other by the public opinion of the orthodox; there
may be other cases, too, in which a man might be
a grievous sinner, though he had broken no written
law anywhere.
This may be deemed a dangerous doctrine to teach,
but, in the first place, it is not a doctrine at all, but
a question of fact as to what constitutes guilt—for
guilt can only be the result of previous sense of obli
gation. And men only feel obliged or bound to do
that which they can do. They never really feel
bound to do what is known to be beyond their
power, and therefore they never can feel guilty for
omitting to do what is impossible to them, or for
�14
On Moral Evil.
doing what they really could not help. The previous
sense of obligation which alone can constitute a sub
sequent sense of guilt springs from within, and not
from without; it is a part of ourselves, and is one of
the modes in which the inner voice or conscience acts
upon our lower nature. It cannot be so dangerous to
speak the truth about any matter as to say what is
false—nor can it endanger morality to endeavour to
get a right understanding of the true nature and source
of immorality.
The two factors of moral evil, then, are simply the
whole physical nature on one side, and on the other,
an inward power or law which sometimes opposes
our natural instincts and seeks to control them.
The action of the physical nature by itself is neither
moral nor immoral.
The submission of the physical nature to the moral
sense is virtue. The rebellion of the physical nature
against the moral sense resulting in action is vice
or moral evil. Conscious conformity to the moral
sense is morality. Conscious disobedience to it is
immorality.
From observation and induction, we are enabled to
form moral codes, for the greater facility of education,
i.e., for the cultivation of the moral sense, and for the
welfare of society. But it is putting these cases quite
out of place, to teach that they must be obeyed merely
because they are recognised codes, or to describe the
infringement of them as immorality, upon any lower
ground than that infringement is in every case a vio
lation of individual moral obligation. In a general
way, it is true, that certain acts are immoral, done by
whom they may, and under any circumstances; but
it will only mislead us to suppose that they can ever
be immoral except in one invariable way, viz., in that
they do violence to the moral sense of every individual
who commits them.
It may here be objected : The moral sense gets
�On Moral Evil.
*5
weaker the oftener it is violated, and the appetites of
the flesh get stronger the oftener they are indulged. In
this case it is said, men may go on doing wrong, from
worse to worse, until they cease to feel any sense of
moral obligation, or any sense of guilt in the commis
sion of those acts which were once felt to be immoral;
and at last they become as hardened and indifferent
to right and wrong as the beasts of the field, and yet,
according to my theory, it is alleged, they would not
be immoral, for their conduct would not violate any
inner law or moral sense. Hence, if any one wished
to escape the unpleasantness of being morally con
trolled, and the remorse of a guilty conscience, it is
urged, he would have nothing to do but to be sinful
to the utmost of his power—-doing all he could, and
as fast as he could, to kill all conscience within him.
This would be indeed a formidable objection to the
promulgation of the statement that men are only im
moral, sinful, guilty, in exact proportion to the activity
of their moral sense, unless the objection were based
on a misconception of the possibilities of man’s nature.
The supposed case of a man extinguishing, by repeti
tion of immoral acts, all moral sense whatever, is
purely gratuitous and unwarrantable. We have no
reason for supposing that any man, unless diseased in
body or mind, can by his own act rid himself of a
sense of moral obligation. It is true that it is in our
power to increase and develop that moral sense by
cultivation and strict obedience, but it by no means
follows that it is in our power to destroy it altogether;
even, if for a time we can contrive to weaken and
resist it.* I refuse to believe in the possibility of a
* Granting that this does take place in some instances,
the fact does not overthrow the author’s theory. The de
praved man has ceased to sin by ceasing to be what God
created him. He has fallen lower than a sinner, for he
has forfeited his natural human condition. The myth of
Nebuchadnezzar would seem to have this meaning.—Note
by a Friend.
�16
On Moral Evil.
man thus destroying his moral sense after having
had one in normal exercise, until such a man is pro
duced and exhibited. All my experience goes to
prove that men cannot lose their moral sense, and it
more frequently happens, that the self-reproach and
remorse grow deeper, the more sin has been indulged.
But granted such a case as the objector mentions.
Some few instances of the kind among many millions
would not overturn the overwhelming testimony on
the other side. Exceptions would but prove the rule.
The great mass of mankind are incapable of losing
their moral sense, and they would not be less or more
under its influence for any theories which might be
started to account for its agency in producing moral
evil. Vast numbers are kept as they are, neither
better nor worse, through the chief agency of custom
and public opinion. Their good and their bad actions
are alike the result of moulding circumstances, and
surrounding example, rather than of any conscious
moral effort, or immoral resistance of conscience.
Times and opportunities come to all for virtue and
vice, but the even tenor of many lives is, by compa
rison, seldom disturbed by any great conflict between
the flesh and the moral sense. The usual aspect of
such lives is best described as w-moral, not as moral
or immoral at all. Great drinkers, great profligates,
and great criminals, are as much the exception as
great heroes, great moralists, and great martyrs.
Both classes, both extremes of honour and baseness,
are doubtless the products of much moral conflict, of
which the easy-going world knows little or nothing.
A celebrated preacher, a man of exemplary life and
morals, once said to me, “ If I had not been a saint, I
should have been a devil,” and, really, to look at him
was enough to make one believe his words. There
was tremendous power in his head, and the furrows
of spiritual conflict had been ploughed deep into his
very face. The very good and the very bad are near
�On Moral Evil.
*7
a,kin, depend upon it. And the judgment of God,
who knows all, may be very different from ours, as
to the exact moral status of each one—
Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman ;
Though they may gang a kenning wrang,
To step aside is human.
One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving why they do it:
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far perhaps they rue it.
Who made the heart, ’tis He alone
Decidedly can try us ;
He knows each chord—its various tone,
Each spring—its various bias:
Then at the balance let’s be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What’s done we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.*
From the foregoing observations on the source of
moral evil, we cannot but draw some important con
clusions.
(1) . There is no such thing at all as moral evil,
apart from the thoughts, words, and deeds of moral
beings, i.e., of beings endowed with a moral sense, a
power which offers resistance to the physical impulses.
Therefore, there is nothing so absurd as to suppose
that evil has originated in any spiritual being or
devil; or has been imported into man’s nature from
without, or, still less, is the result of God’s defeat, or
of some flaw or defect in His original plan.
(2) . The mere fact of man being able to commit an
immoral act furnishes evidence of his superiority over
other kinds of animal organism. He could not
sin unless he first possessed a moral sense— -a sense of
obligation. It is a mark, if anything, of divine favour,
* Burns’ Address to the Unco Guid.
�i8
On Moral Evil.
rather than of divine anger. It is the token of God’s
blessing rather than of God’s cursing.
(3) . It is an indication of man’s destiny. What
possible benefit could be derived from the endowment
of man with a moral sense, if this life were the only
field for its exercise 1 If this be the only sphere in
which the moral sense will ever be developed, then its
presence in human nature must be admitted to be a
profound mistake, a mere wanton disturbance of
human animal contentment, without any correspond
ing advantage. The moral sense is to some men an
incessant check on the appetites and inclinations of
the flesh, submitted to only for the sake of an eternal
moral progress, which man’s inmost heart desires, and for
which alone he is willing to make the sacrifices of his
fleshly indulgence. To undergo all this in pure delu
sion—a delusion for which no set of priests, or pro
phets, no sacred books or churches are responsible—a
delusion purely originating in the highest and noblest
part of man’s own nature, is to submit to a moral
government based on immorality—to be kept truth
ful and honourable by a lie, and to be the utter dupe
of the Creator. If men can bring themselves to be
lieve that this faith in eternal moral progress after
death is utterly false and without foundation, they
can only do so by denying the goodness of God, and
by affirming that, if there be a Creator at all, he must
be the most treacherous and cruel of fiends.
(4) . As the relative powers of the flesh and the
moral sense are absolutely due to the Creator, partly
by the constitution of each man’s nature, and by the
circumstances in which he is placed, and over which
he has often no control, it follows that the failure of
the moral sense to regulate the body must be regarded
by the Creator in a very different light to what is
generally supposed. It is, of course, right to employ
language which conveys in the most clear and forcible
manner the divine authority of the moral sense, and
�On Moral Evil.
J9
to teach young persons and men of little intellectual
culture how wicked and wrong it is not to control
themselves ; and so we naturally say, “ G-od is angry
with sin.” “ God will punish it.” I say this language
is in use among us from the exigencies of the case, and
is justifiable only so long as we find it the best by
which to convey the incontrovertible truth that it is
man’s duty to control himself, and to act in strict
obedience to the moral sense, and further, that dis
obedience will entail painful consequences in order to
train him back into obedience and virtue.
But if this be kept well in view, and insisted on by
teachers, and preachers, and parents, they will be more
successful in their efforts to promote virtue, and to
diminish moral evil, if they ascertain clearly how all
sin is really punished, and skilfully expose the num
berless fallacies commonly entertained with regard to
punishment; and if to this they add true views of
God’s relation to the world, and of His moral govern
ment, they will get rid of those dreadful notions about
the Creator which make the lives of so many needlessly
sad, and weaken morality by weakening hope. It
is not true that sin is always punished by bodily pain.
Pain administered as punishment can only serve to
discipline the body, just as little children may be
trained into civilized animals by a little wholesome
chastisement in early years, which must on no acconnt
be inflicted after the moral sense is sufficiently de
veloped to make them ashamed of having done wrong.
As a matter of fact, the body gets more punished by
virtue than by vice. Provided a vicious man is
prudent in his self-indulgence, he can secure comfort
and gratification to his body by his very sins; whereas,
in very many cases of true virtue, the body suffers by
the moral conduct of the individual. To use an old
Bible phrase which is very expressive, “ the flesh, with
its affections and lusts, is mortified.” Being called to
a life of moral excellence is, in many instances, really
�20
On Moral Evil.
being called to a life of much physical pain. Loss of
liberty, loss of pleasure, and often positive discomfort,
and even misery, have arisen purely out of the rigid
exercise of moral control. We cannot, therefore,
look for the punishment of moral evil in the region
of physical pain or bodily discomfort. As the only
reward. or compensation for virtue is to be found in
the satisfaction of the moral sense, either on account
of what has been gained by self-conquest in moral
progress, or on account of some manifest benefit which
has been conferred thereby on others; so the only
true punishment for moral evil—that is, pain which
can be felt as punishment—is in shame and remorse.
Our Creator has so ordered it that we must reproach
ourselves for all failure in duty, for all conscious
disobedience to the higher law within us. He
has so constituted us, that we blame ourselves in
exact proportion to our real guilt; that we measure
our own guilt by the previous sense of obligation,
which is, in turn, measured by the power of doing
right of which we were conscious at the time of the
sinful act. Thus a man’s own sense of guilt is the
exact measure of guilt. Of course, that sense of
guilt may not come into exercise all at once. The
better feelings may be overpowered by a delirium of
self-indulgence, which, for a time, makes him as it
were out of his mind ; but when he comes to himself,
and reviews his conduct, the full sense of guilt comes
over him, and he is tortured by shame and selfreproach. There is just this difference between
God’s moral government and ours : we cannot reach
the inner life; we can only deal with the body: and
so the criminal is punished by us in his body. We
take our revenge, just or unjust, for his offences by
various methods of inflicting pain on the cerebral
and physical frame of the offender. But God’s way
of punishing is just the opposite. For the most part
the body is left alone, or only indirectly affected
�On Moral Evil.
21
through the emotions. God makes the sinner to be
his own judge and his own executioner. The stings
of remorse are the only real ministers of divine justice.
Thus we are brought by a single step to question the
accuracy of that common sentiment, “ God is angry
with sin,” “ God will surely punish it.” These common
phrases plainly declare a change of mind or feeling in
God, and a determination on His part to interfere—
to do something—in consequence of our sin. Though
well intended and often practically useful, because
not clearly understood, these phrases are unsound and
untrue. God cannot be made angry by anything
whatever which occurs in the universe which He him
self has planned and built. God cannot be the sub
ject of variable emotions, such as are common to the
finite human being. God cannot be disturbed by any
consequence of those manifold forces which He at
first, foreknowing all, set in operation. It is quite
absurd to talk of God’s anger at all, when one con
templates the complete foreknowledge which must
have ever filled the Creator’s mind. To say that one
is displeased, or angry, is to express that the will of
the angry person has been thwarted, his plans in some
way defeated; and to ascribe such defeat to any part
of God’s plans, is to divest Him either of Infinite
Power or Infinite Wisdom. To say that God is angry
with sin, is only to use a figure of speech whereby we
wish to describe the fact that our own moral sense
has a divine authority for the control of the body in
which it dwells. Beyond that, the phrase is false and
misleading, and has done infinite mischief in the world
by representing sinful man as an object of God’s dis
pleasure, and as an offender doomed to some terrible
fate. So, too, the phrase, “ God will surely punish
sin,” misleads us by carrying away our thoughts from
the present punishment which the Creator has made
man to inflict upon himself. It originates all sorts of
absurd and cruel theories of delayed vengeance, brew
�22
On Moral Evil.
ing wrath, and a future hell of endless torment,
when, all the. while, the only just, and suitable, and
beneficial punishment is being already borne. Besides
this, the punishment of moral evil by shame and re
morse, is in itself remedial and not vindictive. It is
a pure medicine, and not the scourge or axe of an
executioner. It contains the germs of repentance and
amendment of life, and was intended to do so.
We have been too long under this horrid nightmare
of the dread of God, and the sense of His anger. It
is “ high time to awake out of sleep.” Men have been
estranged from their great Friend, who alone knew
how to help them. They have lived all their lives
under a dark cloud, or in the wild endeavour to
lighten up their gloom by the glare of reckless revel
ling. They have sometimes abandoned all efforts at
self-control, and smothered the appeals of conscience,
by trusting to “ atoning blood” or “imputed right
eousness.” They have multiplied schemes on schemes
for escaping from God, though all the while He was
their Father and Friend, and no more angry with
them than the tender mother is angry with her sick
babe.
I am not afraid myself of believing that God is not
angry with sin, and that He will not punish it by
any other method than that already in force—through
the moral sense itself. Though I have long held this
view, it has never made me careless about right and
wrong, or diminished, by the weight of a grain, the
burden of self-reproach whenever I have done amiss.
I don’t know what I might have been, or have done in
the whole range of sins, but for the constant and stedfast assurance of God’s unabated love and friendship.
It has helped and not hindered me in the struggle
between good and evil. So I am not afraid to tell the
truth to my fellowmen, whenever I can tell it wholly,
and not partially. At the same time, God’s own pro
vision for the moral progress of mankind is ample and
�On Moral Evil.
23
unassailable. We can only do temporary harm, if
even that, by our false theories. We cannot unmake
a single man, woman, or child, or wrest from them
the moral sense which God has given.
(5.) It is a relief to turn from the ugly distortions
of man's relation to God, as described by theologians
to those happier views which you have done so much
to make known. In the pamphlets on “The Analogy
of Nature and Religion” and “ Law and the Creeds,”
and others in that series, we breathe an atmosphere
of. calmness and hope, instead of the alarm and despair
fostered by the old theologies.* Moral evil is only
relative ; we create it, so to speak, by our aspirations,
by our widening knowledge, and by our increasing
desire to walk in the will of God. We learn by it
what we have been created for, and what destiny God
has in store for us. We cannot shut our eyes to the
fearful and wicked things which are done in the
world, but we ought to be thankful that we have the
power of seeing them to be wicked and fearful, the
sense of abhorrence of them, and the capacity for
struggling against their commission by ourselves, and
for making a manful attempt to remedy their bitter
consequences, and prevent them in future. We are
apt to forget that there was a time when people who
were accounted holy and saintly, and believed them
selves to be so, practised lying and fraud without a
sense of shame; f when a man fervent in piety,
and full of honest trust in His Maker’s love and
righteousness could turn brigand, and seize other
men’s wives for his own lust, and day by day make
deadly raids upon the property and dependants of the
man who was giving him a shelter and a home, and
all this without any sense of having done amiss, or
broken the law of common humanity4 The very
saint who was called the Father of the Faithful §
* This subject is also treated in “The Sling and the Stone,”
in various sermons on sin.
t Jacob, &c.
I David.
§ Abraham.
�24
On Moral Evil.
could deliberately tell a lie in order that his own wife
might be taken to be ravished in a royal couch, with
out the necessity of his being previously murdered.
What should we say now if such deeds could be done,
as they once were done, without exciting any sense of
shame or calling forth the indignation of a whole
people ?
Times have changed indeed, and morality has made
great strides. True, many fearful crimes are now
perpetrated, but they are no longer committed with
out the abhorrence of the multitude. Terrible inroads
on domestic morality have been lately revealed to us
through our Divorce Courts, but only to meet with
the reproaches and indignation which they deserve.
And to pass from classes to individuals. We have
had living amongst us in the past century, men whose
virtues had never before been reached, much less sur
passed. Such men leave their impress on the age
which follows them, by an improved standard of
morals, and so the whole race is lifted on, step by
step, up the mountain of holiness which leads to the
throne of God.
But each man, as his body falls asleep in death, wakes
up, as we believe, to a new life in the world which we
cannot see, wherein the great work begun here is
carried on more rapidly, with fewer falls and blunders
than we make in our earliest essays at moral progress
here below. There are vast differences between us on
earth, as to the degrees of the strength and develop
ment of the moral sense, but this no more hinders us
from believing that all must take the same blissful
journey upwards to light and goodness, than the fact
of pur children being of different ages prevents our
believing that they will all in succession grow up to
manhood.
Whatever view we take of evil, we can only struggle
against it as we ought when we are assured that the
contest is not hopeless, and that a great and kind
�On Moral Evil.
*5
Friend has subjected us all to it for a purpose which
shall bring infinite good to every one. If our aspira
tions are above our capacities, the result will be a
temporary sense of bitter failure; it need not involve
any sense of guilt for any failure but such as was
clearly within our power to prevent. It need not
involve any regret—still less despair—so long as we
are sensitive to our position, earnestly desiring to im
prove. And while we can take comfort from the
assurance that God cannot be angry with us, we shall
be only more angry with ourselves for not achieving
what we might have achieved, and for failing when we
wight, have prevailed. The love and friendship of
God will thus cast a bright light about us in our
deepest sadness and bitterest repentance, and will
strengthen us more than anything else to amend our
lives, and to conquer the foe that stands still be
fore us.
I have only briefly, and very imperfectly, touched
on this vast subject, but the little I have said may
lead some of your more able readers to correct my
errors and to supplement my defects.
Ever most truly yours,
*****
To Thomas Scott, Esq.,
Mount Pleasant,
Ramsgate.
�26
On Moral Evil.
POSTSCRIPT.
A Review of one of your pamphlets, “ Is Death the
End of all things for man,” in the “Rock ” of June 10th,
leads me to add a few more words, which may help to
correct the erroneous impressions now current amongst
the orthodox, respecting our views of rewards and
punishments. The writer of that Review represents
the author of the above-named pamphlet as being
‘‘shut up to one or other of the only other pos
sible doctrines—the reward of all, or the punishment of all, or haply, a temporary punishment of
some, in order to the ultimate issue of the reward or
blessedness of all.”
I cannot, of course, answer for the author of that
pamphlet, but most Theists are agreed in believing
that all men will be gradually brought to a state of
holiness at last. It is not a question with them of
reward and punishment at all, but one relating to the
good purpose of God in having created us. That, in
this process of becoming holy, the punishment of
remorse will still be used hereafter, as it is in this life,
is, to say the'least, highly probable; but it does not in
volve any notions of Purgatory, such as are referred to
by the Reviewer in the “Rock.” As to reward, the only
reward for which the Theist hopes or seeks to attain
is that of success—of becoming at last what he wishes
and tries to be—of being able to do the perfect will
of God, and to love it entirely. Happiness of any
other sort is out of all consideration, and the hope of
it has been cast away as one of the attractions of our
childhood. The blessedness of being good, of growing
up into perfect sonship to God—this alone is our
aspiration and our well-grounded hope. We do not
pretend to describe, or even to suggest, the details of
�On Moral Evil.
God’s future discipline of us, which must remain hid
den from our knowledge on this side the grave, but
only so far as analogy helps us, we believe that moral
discipline will be carried on with each of us when we
die, and that then, as now, we shall find in the pun
ishment which comes by remorse the best medicine for
faults still incurred. To compare this to the doctrine
of Purgatory is to disclose an entire ignorance of our
standpoint. The Reviewer, after stating, in his own
language, the doctrine that (til will hereafter be
blessed, goes on to say, “ It has no foundation to rest
upon excepting general notions respecting the good
ness of God, and His purpose and His power to make
His creatures happy.”
Now this hope does not rest at all on “general
notions,” many of which are rejected by the Theist,
and none of which are ever accepted by him as authori
tative, but the hope, wherever it exists, rests on the
individual’s firm belief in the goodness of God, and m
His purpose and power to make His children good.
What foundation for our hope, we ask, can possibly
be so strong, or so wide, as this conviction of God s
good purpose, and His boundless power to carry it
out ? No voices from without, no parade of Church
authority, no library full of Bibles and Testaments, no
miracles of raising the dead, no word of Christ Himself,
or of the whole army of martyrs, not even the chorus of
angels or archangels, and all the company of heaven,
could make so certain our blessed hope as this still
small voice in our own hearts, “ God is love.” Those
who cannot feel this are yet unbelievers; they do not
know what real faith is; they do not yet “understand
the loving kindness of the Lord.” From the dark
cloud of orthodox infidelity, the wind moans and the
atmosphere is loaded with profound gloom; the hope
of the final bliss of all is swept away by a scornful
scepticism which reckons on the sympathy of the
“ Christian” multitude. “ Now, with respect to this
doctrine” (i.e., the final good of all) it might be
�28
On Moral Evil.
enough, to say that it has no foundation to rest upon,
excepting general notions respecting the goodness of
God/’ &c. Can infidelity sink lower than this ?
Another fallacy lies near at hand. After errone
ously putting the term “happy” for “good” (a con
fusion which we studiously avoid, although it may
be. true that the only real happiness consists in
being good), the Reviewer asks, “ Why is there any
unhappiness in the universe at all ? God could pre
vent it, but He does not. There must be good reasons
for His refraining, and how can we tell that these rea
sons shall cease to act when men cease to live in this
world? If the existence of suffering in the world
were incompatible with the Divine goodness, the exis
tence of it for a lifetime, or for an hour, were as
incompatible with that goodness as its existence
throughout eternity. This can never be answered.”
We don’t want to answer it; we quite agree with the
Reviewer that unhappiness is in the world, might be
preventible by God, is not prevented by God for certain
good reasons. We further agree in believing that God’s
good reasons will continue to act in the next world as
in this. We accept this life with its present share of
unhappiness only and entirely on the ground that God
is working by this means, amongst others, to certain
ends, of which the chief is that every man under pre
sent discipline shall be made good at last. We do not
rebel against the suffering—nay, we would not wish
one iota of it diminished, if thereby God’s good pur
poses should risk a failure. ; We believe in Him, and
therefore we are willing to bear what He appoints.
We trust Him implicitly, and therefore are willing to
wait, in perfect confidence, in sure and certain hope.
But the Reviewer, to whom I should be sorry to
attribute, even by mistake, any opinions which are not
his, seems evidently to think his closing sentence in
the above paragraph a triumphant argument for the
endless torment in which he believes.
�On Moral Evil.
*9
The fallacy lies in his not distinguishing between
the abstract and the concrete. “ Suffering,” I beg to
remind him, implies a sufferer, or sufferers. Now, it
does make all the difference to Divine goodness
whether a human being suffers for a time, with a
view to his final good, or suffers for all eternity.
This “suffering” which exists in the universe is a
state into which multitudes of individuals are being
born, and out of which they are constantly passing.
The suffering may only be correctly described as
eternal as regards its permanence as a system, and
the unbroken succession of individuals subjected to it
(supposing that this present state of human life is to
continue on the earth for ever). But as regards the
beings who suffer, it is not only not eternal, but tem
porary; as compared with a millennium, even very
temporary, and as compared with eternity, in the lan
guage of the apostle, “ it is but for a moment.”
Were it not temporary, and inflicted for a purpose
beneficent to the sufferer, suffering would be really
incompatible with the Divine goodness; but this just
makes all the difference. The orthodox man believes
in the endless suffering of some human beings whom
God has created, who were actually born morally
weak, and who were perhaps so trained and circum
stanced that moral improvement was hardly possible
to them at all; or, to speak in more orthodox terms,
they “rejected the Saviour,” because they had not
that “faith” which the New Testament affirms “is
not of ourselves, but is the gift of God.”
To remain for ever and ever wicked and unhappy,
incurable by God, even if He had the will to redeem
and reform the poor sinner, would be a standing wit
ness of the triumph of evil over good, of the defeat of
Him whom the very orthodox call “Almighty.”
No ! the existence of suffering in the world, when
once understood, is not incompatible with the Divine
goodness, but rather one of its strongest proofs, lout
�30
On Moral Evil.
only when understood. As a means to an end, as in
flicted for a time on each individual, in order to secure
his everlasting good, it is a mark of God’s fatherlylove for us all; but without this condition it would
convey to us, an irresistible evidence that we were
the sport of a fiend, or the victims of the most gigan
tic blunder.
The Reviewer, of course, after what he hadTsaid,
could not help falling into the error of supposing that
morality would be weakened by the final prospect of
universal happiness. Taught as we teach it, the doc
trine of final good for all can only tend to strengthen
our moral sense ; and to hasten, not to retard, amend
ment. Our belief is, not that God intends us all to
be indiscriminately 1 happy,’ but that He intends to
make us all good, to make us not only obedient to
His will, but to love it, and be drawn towards it by
impulses from within corresponding to His laws with
out. That is our summurn bonum, the only fruition
of our earthly trials for which we have any right to
look to our Creator, and that of itself teaches the
supreme importance of losing no time in beginning,
and relaxing no effort in continuing, the great work
of our moral progress. I cannot do better than re
mind the Reviewer and his readers of the “ Bock,” of
these apostolic words which on this subject express
the mind of the theist so forcibly : “ Work out your
own .salvation, for it is God who is working in you, both to
will and to do of His good pleasure.”
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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On moral evil: a letter from a friend
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Voysey, Charles
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 30 p. ; 18 p.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. The letter, published anonymously, is written to Thomas Scott. The author attribution of Charles Voysey taken from Scott's publications list at the end of item catalogued in Conway Tracts 32, no. 13. Date of publication from British Library catalogue.
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Thomas Scott
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[187-?]
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G5472
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Ethics
Evil
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English
Conway Tracts
Good and Evil
Morality
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un L i7
What is the Religion of Humanity ?
A DISCOURSE
p
AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL,
MAY i 6th, 1880,
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
LONDON :
SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY.
PRICE TWOPENCE,
i
Mcfi
2.9 2.
�LONDON :
Waterlow & Sons Limited,
LONDON
WALL.
�WHAT IS THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY?
^JpHE phrase Religion of Humanity has been
much and vaguely used; and best phrases so
used are liable to degenerate into cant. There is some
thing pleasant to everybody in the word “Humanity”;
no doubt all sects would claim that theirs is the
religion of humanity. Even sects with creeds based
upon a curse on human nature would declare their
religion adapted to, and revealed to save, humanity,
therefore the religion of humanity.
Among more liberal people we sometimes hear the
word ‘ humanitarian ’ used for a believer in the
religion of humanity. ‘ Humanitarian ’ was coined
to represent the doctrine that the nature of Jesus
was human as distinguished from divine or angelic :
it is a good sign when such theological disputes are
so far past that their phrases are put to more
substantial work.
And this other phrase, the
Religion of Humanity, which I believe came from
the mint of Positivism, also shows a tendency to do
various duty. To the majority it probably means a
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religion which believes in the perfectibility of
mankind; it would include the idea of human
progress, also the sentiment of charity, of sympathy
with mankind, and a spirit of benevolent reform.
No doubt underneath the humanitarian hypothesis
of the nature of Jesus there was at work a faith in
human nature; and under any conception of a
religion of humanity there would be found the spirit
of love to man, the feeling of fraternity, and belief in
a happy destiny for all mankind.
These high feelings will, however, be reinforced in
proportion as it can be made clear to our minds
whether there is any sense in which that group of
sentiments in us which relate to humanity can be
defined as a religion; if so, in what sense it is a
religion distinct from other so-called religions; and
whether it is one which is fully credible to us,—
whether, that is, it represents the facts and phenomena
regarded by the religious sentiment.
That which we call ‘ Humanity ’ is the totality of
all that is moral in nature ; all that distinguishes and
chooses, which discriminates right from wrong, good
from evil, where all nature not human is unmoral—
gives equal support to good and bad,
All history is the history of the war of mankind
against external nature ; when we go beyond history
to tradition, and behind tradition to mythology, we
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we find this and only this—man combating Arctic
frost and torrid heat, tempest and flood, the barren
ness, the ferocities of the earth, the pitiless cruelties
of the pestilential and the rainless atmosphere. That
siege of man against nature has never been relaxed ;
it goes on still; and in that time man has learned
that his own nature represents all that is moral in the
universe he can comprehend.
I say represents : for certain animals seem
capable of love and mutual service; but they possess
this in the ratio of their approach to human nature,
and of their association with it. Therefore they
are man’s humble constituency; their feebler
minds and affections are represented by him as
against the inorganic universe, their common
enemy.
Now, this ancient interminable war
between man and inanimate nature has not been
one of sentiment, but of necessity. To wage it
has always been the condition of human existence
on the planet; all the animals that could not
wage it to some extent have become fossil; and
man would have followed them into extinction if
he had not steadily resisted his hostile environment.
But during all this war man’s sentiments were on
the side of his great adversary. He sang hymns
to the sun which consumed him, to the storm
which beat upon him; evoked a vast array of
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deities out of the elements, and prostrating himself
before them in one moment, in the next arose to
fight and conquer their cruelty.
Primitive man ascribed to the gods as their
particular realm all the elements and regions of
nature which he himself could not control.
His
own empire was built up in practical hostility to
this elemental empire of the gods.
It was the
necessity of the humanised world that it should
ever be encroaching on the gods’ world, turning
the chaos they had created to order and use.
Thus there was no love lost between the two.
Man’s attitude towards the gods was fear; and
that of the gods towards man was deemed to be
jealousy, sometimes fear also, lest he might build
a tower high enough to besiege heaven, or seize
on the apples of immortality. There resulted a
divorce between man’s practical life and his theology.
That set of beliefs, and diplomatic ceremonials to
the sky which were called religion, had nothing ,
to do with man’s humanity, which was necessarily
devoted to constant revision and correction of that
nature supposed to be the creation of the gods.
All of which may seem very childish notions.
Yet the so-called religions of the world have been
generally cast in the same mould; and that is the
shape they bear to this day.
�(
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)'
The wild powers of nature are translated by
theology and catalogued in the creeds. Where do
you find the doctrine of satisfaction or expiation?
Where do you find any basis for the doctrine that
no deity can forgive an offence except the penalty
be suffered and the law satisfied? You find it in
every creed, but you do not find it in the heart
and life of humanity.
People do not so exact
from others rigid legal satisfaction.
The parent
who worships a god demanding satisfaction, forgives
the child daily without any satisfaction. Humanity
could not have survived if it had practised the
theology of invariable expiation. But you will find
that dogma a reflection of the unswerving course
of natural objects, the unvarying sun and seasons,
the ever-recurring remorseless powers that now freeze,
now bring famine, and listen to no entreaties.
Where will you find the doctrine of vicarious
suffering?
Not in the voluntary life of humanity.
The judge or the parent may worship a deity
satisfied by the suffering of the just for the unjust,
but he would be shocked at any suggestion in the
court or the home that the innocent should, be
made to suffer for the guilty. And in the house
hold or in society, who would deliberately visit
the sin of a father upon his children ?
Where
then, do the creeds get these notions ? From the
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hard forces of nature, which punish transgressions
of natural law even though they be virtuous deeds,
secure the good of one by sacrifice of another;
now make the mother victim of the child, next
the child heir of the parent’s infirmities.
We might indeed go through the whole list of
dogmas that make up what is called religion, and
we should find them to be a rough translation of
nature’s roughness; not religion at all, because
confusing good and evil; unrelated to the moral
sentiment; a crude primitive science, or attempt
at a scientific theory of nature. Those which were
anciently deities personifying the inorganic aspects
of nature, are now abstract dogmas reflecting the
same thing; and as when they were deities or
demons, so now when they have become dogmas,
they represent precisely all that part of nature
which it is the business of humanity to resist,
restrain, or even exterminate.
We must, indeed, never forget that human .
beings are much better than their creeds; that
inside their stony dogmatic walls are cultured
spots of humane feeling; that they speak and act
gently while they worship wrath, and deal justly
while worshipping an unjust deity. There is a
blessed necessity which exterminates from the
practical life anti-social principles; and while it
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allows tongues to recite what creeds they please,
holds heart and hand to their need and duty
with an iron grip. Nevertheless mankind are not
passing unharmed through this opposition between
their dogmas and their humanity.
It is a very
serious thing that men should throw the sanctions
of sentiment and piety around deified reflections of
that inorganic world which it were man’s real
religion to master, and make into his own human
image and likeness.
These ancient ‘ religions ’
have adopted many humane sentiments, some of
them even patronise human life and its joys; but
they never make humanity the main thing, the
great religous force and director: all that immense
power of piety, devotion, enthusiasm, which to
gether make religion, are still on the side of the
inorganic universe and its traditional phantasms.
We may then answer our question, ‘ What is
the Religion of Humanity,’ by saying, it is a
religion which transfers to the moral and intellectual
forces which are mastering nature all the piety
that now worships personifications of the ob
structions mastered.
There is need that our
sentiment and our work should be on the same
side in this great struggle of humanity with
mountain and desert, volcano and flood. It is a
grievous anomaly to worship the mountain-god
�(
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while we tunnel the mountain, and praise the
lightning-god while we raise a rod to divert his
bolt.
That kind of homage and praise are due
to skill and to science, and hard-handed labour;
not to the wild powers they are levelling and
curbing for us.
It may be said that such
adorations of natural forces do no harm; they
are directed to powers that cannot hear or heed
them.
But there is harm done when the finest
seed are sown on clouds, instead of in a soil
where they might bear fruit. We can little dream
what a reinforcement of the human work of the
world it would be if all the devotion and wealth
lavished on deities and dogmas were directed to
aid and animate man in his tremendous task of
humanising his world.
But, it may be asked, and it is the anxious
question of many hearts, is there no God of nature,
no God in nature? Is there no power above our
selves—or power not ourselves—that makes for
righteousness? And, if there be none, are we not
orphans? Are we not robbed of all heart and
hope in our struggle with earthly evil, having no
certainty of ultimate success ?
The Religion of Humanity answers, Yes, there is
a God in nature, a God and ruler of nature; but
that divine parent is nowhere discoverable except in
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the spirit of humanity. You may cry for help to
glowing suns and circling stars, to gravitation and
electricity, to ocean and sky, or to all of them
together; but no help or ray of pity will you get
until you have turned to lean on the heart and arm of
human love and strength. For these are the answers
of the universe to your cry. The proof of love in
nature outside you is a loving heart inside you.
Nature has laboured through untold ages to give you
that heart to rest upon, that hand to clasp yours.
We must credit nature with -what has come out of
it. Wild as are the forces around us, terrible as is
this vast machinery roaring around us,—amid which
we move like wondering children, or at some misstep
of ignorance are caught up and crushed, we may
still say that out of it all was evolved the thinker to
warn us, the man of skill to devise good for us, the
man of science to show us the safe path, the
physician to heal us, the artist to beguile us on the
way, the poet to cheer us; the friend, the lover, the
father, the mother, who try to guard us, or, if we are
wounded, seek to heal our wounds. All these were
evolved out of nature. They show us nature pointing
us to humanity,—to humanity, the crown and hope of
nature’s own self, the power which nature has created
for its own deliverance,—in distrusting which we
distrust the only God in nature, the God manifest
within us, and in the sweet humanities around us.
�(
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Therefore must we love nature. As we go froth to
contend against its inorganic forces, we recognise
that our contest with nature is a friendly contest, for
deliverance of that inanimate world itself which
suffers the pains of labour until now, awaiting its
adoption into the liberty of the sons of God : it is
the steadfast transfiguration of nature in a light
higher than any dawn, a grandeur which its beauties
but faintly hint and symbolize.
In these days when, under the fierce light that
beats upon the throne of superstition, the ancient
images are falling from many household shrines,—
images which, however low their origin, have been
hallowed by the tender pieties and associations
twining around them,—there is a pathetic cry on
the air. The fine gold has waxed dim! the white
statues are crumbling ! ‘ Give us back our gods ! ’
cried the pagans of old when the Christians
shattered the fair idols of Europe; ‘Give us back
our Saints, our Blessed Mother,’ cried the Catholics
when Protestantism broke up the altars; ‘Give us
back our Faith, our divine Lord,’ cry Protestant
hearts in turn.
But know they not why these
perished and can never return? They could not
do the work of humanity; they could not hear,
they could not heed the cry of hearts that needed
something more than statues, pictures, or sentimental
beliefs.
�(
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The other day we heard of the Holy Virgin
appearing in Ireland. The press even sent reporters
who gathered detailed information about the light
that was seen, and Mary, Joseph and John in the
midst. But in their descent these heavenly beings
did not bring bread to save one starving Irish
family. That was left to Saint America who came
over with a loaded ship, and is now doing for poor
human beings what the Virgin Mary does only for
her own altars and priests.
The heretic is not heartless because he cannot be
silenced by the piteous appeal of piety that its
idols and illusions shall be spared. He is listening
to a more sorrowful cry than that; it comes from
the great deeps of human agony, want, evil, despair;
it is a cry ever burthening the air, but never heeded
by the idols which have neither eye, ear, heart,
nor hand. How sweet those idols seem to those
who decorate them, cover them with devotion,
heap on them their gold, their love, and bathe
them with their tears; even so cruel they seem
to one who knows that it is for want of just
that devotion that millions of human beings find
this world a hell.
Poor Humanity, how is it tortured even by those
abstract dogmas, which inheriting the sway of demons,
have power to pervert the human heart; to make it
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act cruelly, unrelentingly, like the brutal elements
they embody in words and images !
I picture
Humanity as poor Juliet in her agony. There she is,
the beautiful soul, the perfect heart, the supremest
thing in nature ! Around her an environment of
persons who represent the wild elements. The vin
dictive feud of Montague and Capulet, cruel as
venom of serpents; parents who have taken pea
cock pomp into their breast instead of hearts; a silly
ignorant nurse.
They all represent the inorganic
elements surviving in human nature, pride, ignorance,
vengeance; these not hidden there as shameful things
but consecrated as duty and dignity: this is the lot
with which that heaven, to which Juilet has prayed all
her life, has surrounded her gentle soul in its sore
need 1
Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the Lottom of my grief ?
O, sweet my mother, cast me not away !
But the mother, slave of her lord, has gone. Then
once more to the clouds Juliet cries, ‘ O God ! ’ No
answer. The poor ignorant nurse alone is left her.
O nurse! how shall this be prevented ?
My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven ;
How shall that faith return again to earth,
Unless that husband send it me from heaven
By leaving earth ? —comfort me, counsel me.—
Alack, alack, that Heaven should practice stratagems
Upon so soft a subject as myself!
�(
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)
Alas, Juliet finds that heaven is against her. She
thinks how different it would be if Romeo were only
able to leave earth and be god for a time. She meets
religion presently: the sympathetic, helpful friar, is a
disguise for the Religion of Humanity. For this friar
is a true holy father where the lordly father had
failed ; he does not point Juliet or Romeo to heaven
nor bid them pray, sing, or confess. When Romeo
has slain one in his desperation, the friar gets him off
to a safe place. He has drugs, and secret schemes,
by which he tries hard to outwit the inorganic tempers
that are crushing the lovers. He fails in the end ;
but that torch he holds over the dead faces of those
he sought to save, is the torch of the true Religion,
burning through a midnight of tragedies on to the
hour that shall raise its light to be a flaming dawn.
Do you ask what tidings more glad can the Religion
of Humanity bring to hearts in their agony, the agony
caused by the discord, pride, ungentleness of
spirit in men and women ? Why, it brings hope of a
time when hearts will not be proud and harsh,
because religion will have concentrated all its power
of renovation upon them. Religion will recall its
protecting forces from the nature-gods and gather
them all around human beings, to love them, help
them, save them; so that when Juliet cries ‘O God!
her father shall be at hand, her mother shall serve her
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as if Juliet were the one Holy Virgin, so that no
human being shall ever be brought up to fancy that
there is any higher religion than to promote human
happiness, purity, and wisdom.
The religion of humanity thus has its meaning
and promise for the individual heart, for the soul
with its own grief, in that it brings back piety from its
wanderings to seek out and love the divine in every
heart; but it also holds out to the world at large a
hope unknown to any theology, the promise of a
perfectly developed Humanity implying a perfect
world. For this religion shows mankind to be the
creator, and a loving creator ; whose eternal design is
not the salvation of certain elect ones, of those only
after they are dead, and from evils that do not exist,
but the salvation of all, of the living, from actual
evils. It reveals to each generation that it is not only
the heir of all the ages, but the incarnation of their
summed-up powers; that this trust bequeathed from
all preceding generations, represents not only man in
the past, but all that preceded man; every bird that
ever sang to its mate, every tiger that ever defended
its young; nay, every atom that ever clung to its
fellow-atom amid the star-mist, in the first throb of
that spirit of life which has climbed on to the
splendour of reason and glory of a heart, beside
which the sun and moon are mere sparks.
�This is the Holy Mother. This is the ever-blessed
unwearied Madonna bearing the man-child in her
arms. A legend runs that when Mary was travelling
in Egypt, and her arm failed from long bearing her
babe, a third hand grew out to sustain Jesus : even so
is it with the maternal spirit which is caring for the
world, watching over human hearts, bearing it onward.
Does the old support fail ? Io, another ! Already our
dear Mother is many-handed. Wherever are love,
thought, sympathy, and a devotion to truth and right,
there are her sustaining arms. Her unwearied watch
is with the student seeking truth and wisdom, with
the reformer, the philanthropist, the physician, the
man of science, the poet, the artist. Wherever there
is one who is contriving a new benefit for the earth,
some relief from evil, some mitigation of pain, some
beauty which shall soothe and delight earth’s wayworn pilgrims, some sweet song to beguile sorrow and
pain into self-forgetfulness, win hearts from vain
regrets, cast a sunbeam into the darkened breast of
guilt, proffer a draught of Lethe to the lips of Despair
and Death, there is our divine Father, and there our
heavenly Mother, majestic and beautiful: nature is
glorified in them : with them are the sign and seal by
which all nature, however wild, is for ever bound to
follow and obey their eternal attraction.
This Religion of Humanity therefore has not the
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disadvantages of some new sect or new idea: it
not only exists already, but it has existed for ages.
I believe it to be the only religion that does really
exist, and that alone which the great teachers have
taught.
It is a very common experience with those who
abandon an established church, sect, or creed, that
they never cease to honour the great teacher said
to have founded that church or creed. Most free
thinkers feel that they love Christ much more
genuinely than Christians. The same phenomenon
appears throughout the world. Wherever there is a
protestant movement we hear the cries, ‘Not
Buddhism but Buddha!’ ‘Not Confucianism but
Confucius!’ ‘Not Christianity but Christ!’
It
is not difficult to see why we love the teacher while
opposing the system named after him. The teacher
represented the religion of humanity. No matter
what he taught, he was another step; he sought to
remove some evil or error, and added something to
the growing life of the world.
But the system
which has borrowed his good name is invariably
one based on that which he resisted. Every socalled religion is a new edition of the old nature
worship : it is a system trying to sanction its power
with the prestige of a breaker of systems. But
such power can never be built up except by reversing
�the freedom and humanity of the system-breaker,
because it must rule by bribe and menace. There
never was a prophet who did not teach love,
forgiveness, gentleness; there never was a system
which did not make its prophet teach wrath,
expiation, satisfaction. ‘ Love your 'enemies,’ says
the prophet as he was; £ Depart into fire,’ says the
prophet as the system makes him.
As time goes on this anomaly is seen.
The
human religion is at work; people grow ashamed
of their dogmas; they more and more dwell on the
sweet parables, the kindly deeds, the human side of
their prophet; they try to hide and forget the awful
character which the system assigns him.
But it is
impossible : that awful character is an old role in the
drama of the gods; Jehovah had to play it, and
Jove, and Jesus; every successful name has to be
put to that part if a creed is to survive after it is
unloved and unbelieved. So, steadily, as know
ledge and liberty advance must such systems
crumble and their idols follow them; when their
supernatural terrors have become grotesque and
their celestial promises antiquated, there are left
only the vulgar fears and interests to which an
existing order appeals, and from that moment the
familiar face of selfishness is seen beneath the mask
of piety.
Such is the process now going on;
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by it true and faithul hearts are hourly set
free; and there is fair prospect of seeing a
swiftly-growing and expanding spiritual union among
the really religious, though the discovery that what
each sincerely loves in his prophet his seeming
opponent loves equally; and what he discards is
that which none can love, though it may be
tolerated. No man loves Jesus for his miracles:
no heart responds to his curse on a figtree; none
rejoices in his formula for cursing the goats at the
last day. The Jesus beloved is he who spoke of
the forgiven prodigal, who wept tears over his dead
friend, knew the scripture of the lilies and the
waving corn, promised peace, and gave men rest in
the faith that even as they forgave the trespasses of
men all the more would the divine love forgive
them.
That is the Jesus really beloved by the
sincere and lowly hearts that are not concerned in
Christianity as a politic system; and they do not
love him more than those called ‘infidels.’
There is one belief concerning Christ in which all
sects, churches, Secularists, Theists, Atheists agree:
they all agree that he was a man. Some believe he
was a God-man, others a miraculous man; all agree
that he was a man. That then is the only doctrine
that can be pronounced literally Catholic, that is
universal. And as the definition of a man grows
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truer, and as more and more mankind come to feel
how dependent they are for all advancement upon the
fidelity and wisdom of great and good men, it will
not be thought derogatory to Jesus that he should be
called a man. But it will be found derogatory to
connect him with the thundergods of primitive ages.
It will be resented more and more as a lowering of
his goodness and greatness to call him the incarnation
of Jehovah, whose biblical record is one of wrath,
injustice and cruelty. As Jove and Jehovah have
died of inhumanity, so will the Doomsday Christ pass
out of human love and belief. It will be realised
that the whole thought and work of Jesus was to
abolish that system of belief which Jehovah repre
sented, and all the gods like unto him. Those
personifications of crude, cruel nature, and Jesus
representing the love and morality which soften and
subdue nature, are practically opposite principles, and
their necessary combat makes all the serious contro
versies of our time.
When the orthodox talk of God becoming man, we
have only to say,—Let him be a real man and we can
believe on him. Remove from him the theologic
costume of miracle, of unforgiving last day wrath, of
ceremonial and ritual preserved from' the ancient
worship of the elements by cowed and terrified
barbarians; give us the great heart and brain, the real
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man as he was, ally him with the grand work of
humanity on earth, unite him with his true brothers,
his peers of every age and race, and be sure there
will be no heart on earth which shall fail to surround
him with love and homage !
Already there are signs that this is the way
Christianity is tending. The character of its defence
has completely changed. We no longer hear its
defenders resting it upon miracles or upon Judaic
history, but upon the morality and the humanities
they believe bound up with it. They plead for the
social and domestic virtues, and say that to the
masses these rest upon Christianity. That is a good
sign.
It is necessary to prove to them that
Christianity does not come into this moral tribunal
with clean hands; that it carries into innumerable
homes a book containing cruelties and obscenities,
as God’s word; that it propagates superstition, and
teaches man to rest for safety upon metaphysical
dogmas rather than righteousness : but, while main
taining this, we may gladly recognise the happy
change by which the dogmas are being steadily
overlaid by considerations of practical virtue. This
I believe will go on until out of these transitional
controversies shall emerge the full-formed religion
of Humanity, to be loved and honoured of all,
and to include all races in a fraternal competition
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to promote the health, happiness, and virtue
of the family of man.
Christian apostles felt
and foresaw this.
‘ Be not deceived,’ cried one,
‘ he who doeth righteousness is righteous.’ Said
another, ‘ Pure religion and undefiled is to visit
the widow and the fatherless in their affliction, and
to keep oneself unspotted by the world.’ A third
added, ‘ Love is the fulfilling of the Law.’ Equally
was this the testimony of Zoroaster, of Buddha, of
Confucius. In this religion have the prophets and
sages lived and died ; and this will remain for ever
the religion of the faithful and true, the helpful and
the just, when all our controversies have died away.
When the dogmatic systems have taken their place
among other relics of antiquated philosophy, there
will still be growing and expanding in the earth the
religion of humanity,—the hatred of pain, which
superstition worshipped; hatred of all sacrifice of
human welfare; passionate horror of all evil, and that
which inflicts suffering; passionate love of all that
promotes welfare; concentration of all powers within
and without to the humanisation of man and his
world; and the immortal hope that Humanity will
survive for ever, conquer all evil, attain perfect know
ledge and joy. .This religion will flourish over the
graves of all idols and creeds,—and this is the
Religion of Humanity.
�SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL.
WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY.
BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A.
The Sacred Anthology: a Book of Ethnical s. d.
Scriptures...........................................
.... 10 0
The Earthward Pilgrimage.................................
5 0
Do.
do.......................................... 2 6
Republican Superstitions .................................
2 6
Christianity .......................
.............
... 1 6
Human Sacrifices in England
.......................
1 0
Sterling and Maurice...........................................
0 2
Intellectual Suicide...........................................
0 2
The First Love again...........................................
0 2
Our Cause and its Accusers.................................
0 1
Alcestis in England......................
0 2
Unbelief : its nature, cause, and cure ............. 0 2
Entering Society
...........................................
0 2
The Religion of Children.................................
0 2
What is Religion ?
0 2
Atheism: a Spectre...........................................
0 2
The Criminal’s Ascension.................................
0 2
Idols and Ideals (including the Essay on Chris
tianity ), 350 pages
.................................
6 0
Members of the Congregation can obtain this Work in the
Library at 5s.
BY A. J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.S., &c., &c.
Salvation
......................................................
Truth ................................................................
Speculation ......................................................
Duty
................................................................
The Dyer’s Hand
...........................................
0
0
0
0
0
2
2
2
2
2
New Work by Mr. Conway—“A Necklace of Stories,”
illustrated by W. J. Hennessy, is now ready. Price 6s.
Mr. ALEXANDER J. Ellis’s Discourses:—“ Salvation:”
“Truth:” “Speculation:” “Duty:” and “The Dyer’s
Hand. Bound in 1 Vol., price Is.
Mr. Conway’s “ Demonology and Devil-lore.” Second
edition, revised and enlarged, 2 vols, illustrated. 28 s.
Members of the Congregation may obtain this work in
the Library at 23 s. 4 d.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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What is the religion of humanity?: a discourse at South Place Chapel, May 16th 1880
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. With a list of works to be obtained in the Library of South Place Chapel at end of pamphlet.
Publisher
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[South Place Chapel]
Date
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[1880]
Identifier
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G3347
Subject
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Religion
Ethics
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (What is the religion of humanity?: a discourse at South Place Chapel, May 16th 1880), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Free Thought
God-Attributes
Human Nature
Humanism
Moral Theology
Morality
Morris Tracts
Positivism
Religion and Ethics