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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Outspoken Essays, by William Ralph Inge
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Outspoken Essays
+
+Author: William Ralph Inge
+
+Release Date: March 4, 2005 [EBook #15249]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, and the
+PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS
+
+BY
+
+WILLIAM RALPH INGE, C.V.O., D.D.
+
+DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S
+
+FIFTH IMPRESSION
+
+LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
+FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
+BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
+
+1920
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+All the Essays in this volume, except the first, have appeared in the
+_Edinburgh Review_, the _Quarterly Review_, or the _Hibbert Journal_. I
+have to thank the Publishers and Editors of those Reviews for their
+courtesy in permitting me to reprint them. The articles on _The
+Birth-Rate, The Future of the English Race, Bishop Gore and the Church
+of England_, and _Cardinal Newman_ are from the _Edinburgh Review_;
+those on _Patriotism, Catholic Modernism, St. Paul_, and _The Indictment
+against Christianity_ are from the _Quarterly Review_; those on
+_Institutionalism and Mysticism_ and _Survival and Immortality_ from the
+_Hibbert Journal_. I have not attempted to remove all traces of
+overlapping, which I hope may be pardoned in essays written
+independently of each other; but a few repetitions have been excised.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                  PAGE
+
+   I. OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS                        1
+
+  II. PATRIOTISM                                    35
+
+ III. THE BIRTH-RATE                                59
+
+  IV. THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH RACE                82
+
+   V. BISHOP GORE AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND        106
+
+  VI. ROMAN CATHOLIC MODERNISM                     137
+
+ VII. CARDINAL NEWMAN                              172
+
+VIII. ST. PAUL                                     205
+
+  IX. INSTITUTIONALISM AND MYSTICISM               230
+
+   X. THE INDICTMENT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY          243
+
+  XI. SURVIVAL AND IMMORTALITY                     266
+
+
+
+
+Photera theleist soi malthaka pseydhê lhegô, hê sklhêr' alêthhê;
+phrhaze, shê gar hê krhisist.
+
+_Euripides_.
+
+
+The case of historical writers is hard; for if they tell the truth
+they provoke man, and if they write what is false they offend
+God.--_Matthew Paris_.
+
+Quattuor sunt maxime comprehendendae veritatis offendicula; videlicet,
+fragilis et indignae auctoritatis exemplum, consuetudinis diuturnitas,
+vulgi sensus imperiti, et propriae ignorantiae occultatio cum
+ostentatione sapientiae superioris.--_Roger Bacon_.
+
+    Iudicio perpende; et si tibi vera videntur,
+    Dede manus; aut si falsum est, accingere contra.
+
+_Lucretius_.
+
+
+Eventu rerum stolidi didicere magistro.
+
+_Claudian_.
+
+
+'All' hê toi men tahyta thehôn en gohynasi kehitai.
+
+_Homer_.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS
+
+(AUGUST, 1919)
+
+
+The Essays in this volume were written at various times before and
+during the Great War. In reading them through for republication, I have
+to ask myself whether my opinions on social science and on the state of
+religion, the two subjects which are mainly dealt with in this
+collection, have been modified by the greatest calamity which has ever
+befallen the civilised world, or by the issue of the struggle. I find
+very little that I should now wish to alter. The war has caused events
+to move faster, but in the same direction as before. The social
+revolution has been hurried on; the inevitable counter-revolution has
+equally been brought nearer. For if there is one safe generalisation in
+human affairs, it is that revolutions always destroy themselves. How
+often have fanatics proclaimed 'the year one'! But no revolutionary era
+has yet reached 'year twenty-five.' As regards the national character,
+there is no sign, I fear, that much wisdom has been learnt. We are more
+wasteful and reckless than ever. The doctrinaire democrat still vapours
+about democracy, though representative government has obviously lost
+both its power and its prestige. The labour party still hugs its
+comprehensive assortment of economic heresies. Organised religion
+remains as impotent as it was before the war. But one fact has emerged
+with startling clearness. Human nature has not been changed by
+civilisation. It has neither been levelled up nor levelled down to an
+average mediocrity. Beneath the dingy uniformity of international
+fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been--a splendid
+fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a bloodthirsty savage.
+Human nature is at once sublime and horrible, holy and satanic. Apart
+from the accumulation of knowledge and experience, which are external
+and precarious acquisitions, there is no proof that we have changed much
+since the first stone age.
+
+The war itself, as we shall soon be compelled to recognise, had its
+roots deep in the political and social structure of Europe. The growth
+of wealth and population, and the law of diminishing returns, led to a
+scramble for unappropriated lands producing the raw materials of
+industry. It was, in a sense, a war of capital; but capitalism is no
+accretion upon the body politic; it is the creator of the modern world
+and an essential part of a living organism. The Germans unquestionably
+made a deep-laid plot to capture all markets and cripple or ruin all
+competitors. Their aims and methods were very like those of the Standard
+Oil Trust on a still larger scale. The other nations had not followed
+the logic of competition in the same ruthless manner; there were several
+things which they were not willing to do. But war to the knife cannot be
+confined to one of the combatants; the alternative, _Weltmacht oder
+Niedergang_, was thrust by Germany upon the Allies when she chose that
+motto for herself. If the modern man were as much dominated by economic
+motives as is sometimes supposed, the suicidal results of such a
+conflict would have been apparent to all; but the poetry and idealism of
+human nature, no longer centred, as formerly, in religion, had gathered
+round a romantic patriotism, for which the belligerents were willing to
+sacrifice their all without counting the cost. Like other idealisms,
+patriotism varies from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.
+
+But there was another cause which led to the war. Germany was a curious
+combination of seventeenth century theory and very modern practice. An
+Emperor ruling by divine right was the head of the most scientific state
+that the world has seen. In many ways Germany, with an intelligent,
+economical, and uncorrupt Government, was a model to the rest of the
+world. But the whole structure was menaced by that form of
+individualistic materialism which calls itself social democracy, and
+which in practice is at once the copy of organic materialism and the
+reaction against it. The motives for drilling a whole nation in the
+pursuit of purely national and purely materialistic aims are not strong
+enough to prevent disintegration. The German _Kriegsstaat_ was falling
+to pieces through internal fissures. A successful war might give the
+empire a new lease of life; otherwise, the rising tide of revolution was
+certain to sweep it away. As Sir Charles Walston has shown, it was for
+some years doubtful whether the democratic movement would obtain control
+before the bureaucracy and army chiefs succeeded in precipitating a war.
+There was a kind of race between the two forces. This was the situation
+which Lord Haldane found still existing in his famous visit to Germany.
+In the event, the conservative powers were able to strike and to rush
+public opinion. Perhaps the bureaucracy was carried along by its own
+momentum. Two or three years before the war a German publicist, replying
+to an eminent Englishman, who asked him who really directed the policy
+of Germany, answered: 'It is a difficult question. Nominally, of course,
+the Emperor is responsible; but he is a man of moods, not a strong man.
+In reality, the machine runs itself. Whither it is carrying us we none
+of us know; I fear towards some great disaster.' This seems to be the
+truth of the matter. No doubt, a romantic imperialism, with dreams of
+restoring the empire of Charlemagne, was a factor in the criminal
+enterprise. No doubt the natural ambitions of officers, and the greed of
+contractors and speculators, played their part in promoting it. But when
+we consider that Germany held all the winning cards in a game of
+peaceful penetration and economic competition, we should attribute to
+the Imperial Government a strange recklessness if we did not conclude
+that the political condition of Germany itself, and the automatic
+working of the machine, were the main causes why the attack was made.
+There is, in fact, abundant evidence that it was so. The scheme failed
+only because Germany was foolish enough to threaten England before
+settling accounts with Russia. But this, again, was the result of
+internal pressure. Hamburg, and all the interests which the name stands
+for, cared less for expansion in the East than for the capture of
+markets overseas. For this important section of conservative Germany,
+England was the enemy. So the gauntlet was thrown down to the whole
+civilised world at once, and the odds against Germany were too great.
+
+For the time being, the world has no example of a strong monarchy. The
+three great European empires are, at the time of writing, in a state of
+septic dissolution. The victors have sprung to the welcome conclusion
+that democracy is everywhere triumphant, and that before long no other
+type of civilised state will exist. The amazing provincialism of
+American political thought accepts this conclusion without demur; and
+our public men, some of whom doubtless know better, have served the
+needs of the moment by effusions of political nonsense which almost
+surpass the orations delivered every year on the Fourth of July. But no
+historian can suppose that one of the most widespread and successful
+forms of human association has been permanently extinguished because the
+Central Empires were not quite strong enough to conquer Europe, an
+attempt which has always failed, and probably will always fail. The
+issue is not fully decided, even for our own generation. The ascendancy
+will belong to that nation which is the best organised, the most
+strenuous, the most intelligent, the most united. Before the war none
+would have hesitated to name Germany as holding this position; and until
+the downfall of the Empire the nation seemed to possess those qualities
+unimpaired. The three Empires collapsed in hideous chaos as soon as they
+deposed their monarchs. In the case of Russia, it is difficult to
+imagine any recovery until the monarchy is restored; and Germany would
+probably be well-advised to choose some member of the imperial family as
+a constitutional sovereign. A monarch frequently represents his
+subjects better than an elected assembly; and if he is a good judge of
+character he is likely to have more capable and loyal advisers.
+President Wilson's declaration that 'a steadfast concert for peace can
+never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations; for
+no autocratic government could ever be trusted to keep faith within it,'
+is one of the most childish exhibitions of doctrinaire _naïveté_ which
+ever proceeded from the mouth of a public man. History gives no
+countenance to the theory that popular governments are either more moral
+or more pacific than strong monarchies. The late Lord Salisbury, in one
+of his articles in the _Quarterly Review_, spoke the truth on this
+subject. 'Moderation, especially in the matter of territory, has never
+been a characteristic of democracy. Wherever it has had free play, in
+the ancient world or the modern, in the old hemisphere or the new, a
+thirst for empire and a readiness for aggressive war has always marked
+it. Though governments may have an appearance and even a reality of
+pacific intent, their action is always liable to be superseded by the
+violent and vehement operations of mere ignorance.' The United States
+are no exception to this rule. They have extended their dominion by much
+the same means as the empire of the Tsars or our own. Texas and Upper
+California, the Philippines and Porto Rico, were annexed forcibly; New
+Mexico, Alaska, and Louisiana were bought; Florida was acquired by
+treaty; Maine filched from Canada. In no case were the wishes of the
+inhabitants consulted. Our own experience of republicanism is the same.
+It was during the short period when Great Britain had no king that
+Cromwell's court-poet, Andrew Marvell, urged him to complete his
+glorious career by demolishing our present allies:
+
+    A Cæsar he, ere long, to Gaul,
+    To Italy an Hannibal.
+
+On the other hand, none of the 'autocrats' wanted this war. The Kaiser
+was certainly pushed into it.
+
+Democracy is a form of government which may be rationally defended, not
+as being good, but as being less bad than any other. Its strongest
+merits seem to be: first, that the citizens of a democracy have a sense
+of proprietorship and responsibility in public affairs, which in times
+of crisis may add to their tenacity and endurance. The determination of
+the Federals in the American Civil War, and of the French and British in
+the four years' struggle against Germany, may be legitimately adduced as
+arguments for democracy. When De Tocqueville says that 'it is hard for a
+democracy to begin or to end a war,' the second is truer than the first.
+And, secondly, the educational value of democracy is so great that it
+may be held to counterbalance many defects. Mill decides in favour of
+democracy mainly on the ground that 'it promotes a better and higher
+form of national character than any other polity,' since government by
+authority stunts the intellect, narrows the sympathies, and destroys the
+power of initiative. 'The perfect commonwealth,' says Mr. Zimmern,' is a
+society of free men and women, each at once ruling and being ruled,' It
+is also fair to argue that monarchies do not escape the worst evils of
+democracies. An autocracy is often obliged to oppress the educated
+classes and to propitiate the mob. Domitian massacred senators with
+impunity, and only fell '_postquam cerdonibus esse timendus coeperat_.'
+If an autocracy does not rest on the army, which leads to the chaos of
+praetorianism, it must rely on '_panem et circenses_.' Hence it has some
+of the worst faults of democracy, without its advantages. As Mr. Graham
+Wallas says: 'When a Tsar or a bureaucracy finds itself forced to govern
+in opposition to a vague national feeling which may at any moment create
+an overwhelming national purpose, the autocrat becomes the most
+unscrupulous of demagogues, and stirs up racial or religious or social
+hatred, or the lust for foreign war, with less scruple than a newspaper
+proprietor under a democracy,' The autocrat, in fact, is often a slave,
+as the demagogue is often a tyrant. Lastly, the democrat may urge that
+one of the commonest accusations against democracy--that the populace
+chooses its rulers badly--is not true in times of great national danger.
+On the contrary, it often shows a sound instinct in finding the
+strongest man to carry it through a crisis. At such times the parrots
+and monkeys are discarded, and a Napoleon or a Kitchener is given a
+free hand, though he may have despised all the demagogic arts. In other
+words, a democracy sometimes knows when to abdicate. The excesses of
+revolutionists are not an argument against democracy, since revolutions
+are anything rather than democratic.
+
+Nevertheless, the indictment against democracy is a very heavy one, and
+it is worth while to state the main items in the charge.
+
+1. Whatever may be truly said about the good sense of a democracy during
+a great crisis, at ordinary times it does not bring the best men to the
+top. Professor Hearnshaw, in his admirable 'Democracy at the
+Crossroads,' collects a number of weighty opinions confirming this
+judgment. Carlyle, who proclaimed the merits of silence in some thirty
+volumes, blames democracy for ignoring the 'noble, silent men' who could
+serve it best, and placing power in the hands of windbags. Ruskin,
+Matthew Arnold, Sir James Stephen, Sir Henry Maine, and Lecky, all agree
+that 'the people have for the most part neither the will nor the power
+to find out the best men to lead them.' In France the denunciations of
+democratic politicians are so general that it would be tedious to
+enumerate the writers who have uttered them. One example will suffice;
+the words are the words of Anatole Beaulieu in 1885:
+
+     The wider the circle from which politicians and
+     state-functionaries are recruited, the lower seems their
+     intellectual level to have sunk. This deterioration in the
+     personnel of government has been yet more striking from the
+     moral point of view. Politics have tended to become more
+     corrupt, more debased, and to soil the hands of those who
+     take part in them and the men who get their living by them.
+     Political battles have become too bitter and too vulgar not
+     to have inspired aversion in the noblest and most upright
+     natures by their violence and their intrigues. The élite of
+     the nation in more than one country are showing a tendency
+     to have nothing to do with them. Politics is an industry in
+     which a man, to prosper, requires less intelligence and
+     knowledge than boldness and capacity for intrigue. It has
+     already become in some states the most ignominious of
+     careers. Parties are syndicates for exploitation, and its
+     forms become ever more shameless.
+
+A later account of French politics, drawn from inside knowledge and
+experience, is the remarkable novel, 'Les Morts qui parlent,' by the
+Vicomte Le Vogué. Readers of this book will not forget the description
+of the _bain de haine_ in which a new deputy at once finds himself
+plunged, and the canker of corruption which eats into the whole system.
+It is no wonder that the majority of Frenchmen do not care to record
+their votes. In 1906, 5,209,606 votes were given, 6,383,852 electors did
+not go to the poll. The record of democracy in the new countries is no
+better. We must regretfully admit that Louis Simond was right when he
+said, 'Few people take the trouble to persuade the people, except those
+who see their interest in deceiving them.'
+
+2. The democracy is a ready victim to shibboleths and catchwords, as all
+demagogues know too well. 'The abstract idea,' as Schérer says, 'is the
+national aliment of popular rhetoric, the fatal form of thought which,
+for want of solid knowledge, operates in a vacuum.' The politician has
+only to find a fascinating formula; facts and arguments are powerless
+against it. The art of the demagogue is the art of the parrot; he must
+utter some senseless catchword again and again, working on the
+suggestibility of the crowd. Archbishop Trench, 'On the Study of Words,'
+notices this fact of psychology and the use which is commonly made of
+it.
+
+     If I wanted any further evidence of the moral atmosphere
+     which words diffuse, I would ask you to observe how the
+     first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others,
+     is ever to assume some honourable name to themselves, such
+     as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and
+     at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which
+     shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious
+     light. A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men give any
+     account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go;
+     that multitudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on
+     one side or the other, will yet be receptive of the
+     influences which these words are evermore, however
+     imperceptibly, diffusing. By argument they might hope to
+     gain over the reason of a few, but by help of these
+     nicknames the prejudices and passions of the many.
+
+The chief instrument of this base art is no longer the public speech
+but the newspaper.
+
+The psychology of the crowd has been much studied lately, by Le Bon and
+other writers in France, by Mr. Graham Wallas in England. I think that
+Le Bon is in danger of making The Crowd a mystical, superhuman entity.
+Of course, a crowd is made up of individuals, who remain individuals
+still. We must not accept the stuffed idol of Rousseau and the
+socialists, 'The General Will,' and turn it into an evil spirit. There
+is no General Will. All we have a right to say is that individuals are
+occasionally guided by reason, crowds never.
+
+3. Several critics of democracy have accused it not only of rash
+iconoclasm, but of obstinate conservatism and obstructiveness. It seems
+unreasonable to charge the same persons with two opposite faults; but it
+is true that where the popular emotions are not touched, the masses will
+cling to old abuses from mere force of habit. As Maine says, universal
+suffrage would have prohibited the spinning-jenny and the power-loom,
+the threshing-machine and the Gregorian calendar; and it would have
+restored the Stuarts. The theory of democracy--_vox populi vox dei_--is
+a pure superstition, a belief in a divine or natural sanction which does
+not exist. And superstition is usually obstructive. 'We erect the
+temporary watchwords of evanescent politics into eternal truths; and
+having accepted as platitudes the paradoxes of our fathers, we
+perpetuate them as obstacles to the progress of our children.'[1]
+
+4. A more serious danger is that of vexatious and inquisitive tyranny.
+This is exercised partly through public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent,
+anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who
+is not content to be the average man. But partly it is seen in constant
+interference with the legislature and the executive. No one can govern
+who cannot afford to be unpopular, and no democratic official can afford
+to be unpopular. Sometimes he has to wink at flagrant injustice and
+oppression; at other times a fanatical agitation compels him to pass
+laws which forbid the citizen to indulge perfectly harmless tastes, or
+tax him to contribute to the pleasures of the majority. In many ways a
+Russian under the Tsars was far less interfered with than an Englishman
+or American or Australian.
+
+5. But the two diseases which are likely to be fatal to democracy are
+anarchy and corruption. A democratic government is almost necessarily
+weak and timid. A democracy cannot tolerate a strong executive for fear
+of seeing the control pass out of the hands of the mob. The executive
+must be unarmed and defenceless. The result is that it is at the mercy
+of any violent and anti-social faction. No civilised government has ever
+given a more ludicrous and humiliating object-lesson than the Cabinet
+and House of Commons in the years before the war, in face of the
+outrages committed by a small gang of female anarchists. The
+legalisation of terrorism by the trade-unions was too tragic a surrender
+to be ludicrous, but it was even more disgraceful. None could be
+surprised when, during the war, the Government shrank from dealing with
+treasonable conspiracy in the same quarter.
+
+     The _Times_ for May 24, 1917, contained a noteworthy example
+     of justice influenced by pressure, and therefore applied
+     with flagrant inequality. In parallel columns appeared
+     reports of 'sugar-sellers fined' and 'strike leaders
+     released.' The former paid the full penalty of their
+     misdeeds because no body of outside opinion maintained them.
+     The latter, who were stated to have committed offences for
+     which the maximum penalty was penal servitude for life, got
+     off scot-free because they were members of a powerful
+     organisation which was able to bring immense weight to bear
+     on the Government.[2]
+
+The 'immense weight' was, of course, the threat of virtually betraying
+the country to the Germans. The country is at this moment at the mercy
+of any lawless faction which may choose either to hold the community to
+ransom by paralysing our trade and channels of supply, or by organised
+violence against life and property. Democracy is powerless against
+sectional anarchism; and when such movements break out there is no
+remedy except by substituting for democracy a government of a very
+different type.
+
+Democracy is, in fact, a disintegrating force. It is strong in
+destruction, and tends to fall to pieces when the work of demolition
+(which may of course be a necessary task) is over. Democracy dissolves
+communities into individuals and collects them again into mobs. It pulls
+up by the roots the social order which civilisation has gradually
+evolved, and leaves men _déracinés_, as Bourget says in one of his best
+novels, homeless and friendless, with no place ready for them to fill.
+It is the opposite extreme to the caste system of India, which, with all
+its faults, does not seem to breed the European type of _enragé_, the
+enemy of society as such.
+
+6. The corruption of democracies proceeds directly from the fact that
+one class imposes the taxes and another class pays them. The
+constitutional principle, 'No taxation without representation,' is
+utterly set at nought under a system which leaves certain classes
+without any effective representation at all. At the present time it is
+said that one-tenth of the population pays five-sixths of the taxes. The
+class which imposes the taxes has refused to touch the burden of the war
+with one of its fingers; and every month new doles at the public expense
+are distributed under the camouflage of 'social reform.' At every
+election the worldly goods of the minority are put up to auction. This
+is far more immoral than the old-fashioned election bribery, which was a
+comparatively honest deal between two persons; and in its effects it is
+far more ruinous. Democracy is likely to perish, like the monarchy of
+Louis XVI, through national bankruptcy.
+
+Besides these defects, the democracy has ethical standards of its own,
+which differ widely from those of the educated classes. Among the poor,
+'generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before
+chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one.
+In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of
+any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation.[3] In this
+country, at any rate, democracy means a victory of sentiment over
+reason. Some may prefer the softer type of character, and may hope that
+it will make civilisation more humane and compassionate than it has been
+in the past. Unfortunately, experience shows that none is so cruel as
+the disillusioned sentimentalist. He thinks that he can break or ignore
+nature's laws with impunity; and then, when he finds that nature has no
+sentiment, he rages like a mad dog, and combines with his theoretical
+objection to capital punishment a lust to murder all who disagree with
+him. This is the genesis of Jacobinism and Bolshevism.
+
+But whether we think that the bad in democracy predominates over the
+good, or the good over the bad, a question which I shall not attempt to
+decide, the popular balderdash about it corresponds to no real
+conviction. The upper class has never believed in it; the middle class
+has the strongest reasons to hate and fear it. But how about the lower
+class, in whose interests the whole machine is supposed to have been set
+going? The working man has no respect for either democracy or liberty.
+His whole interest is in transferring the wealth of the minority to his
+own pocket. There was a time when he thought that universal suffrage
+would get for him what he desires; but he has lost all faith in
+constitutional methods. To levy blackmail on the community, under
+threats of civil war, seems to him a more expeditious way of gaining his
+object. Monopolies are to be established by pitiless coercion of those
+who wish to keep their freedom. The trade unions are large capitalists;
+they are well able to start factories for themselves and work them for
+their own exclusive profit. But they find it more profitable to hold the
+nation to ransom by blockading the supply of the necessaries of life.
+The new labourer despises productivity for the same reason that the old
+robber barons did: it is less trouble to take money than to make it. The
+most outspoken popular leaders no longer conceal their contempt for and
+rejection of democracy. The socialists perceive the irreconcilable
+contradiction between the two ideas,[4] and they are right. Democracy
+postulates community of interest or loyal patriotism. When these are
+absent it cannot long exist. Syndicalism, which seems to be growing, is
+the antipodes of socialism, but, like socialism, it can make no terms
+with democracy. 'If syndicalism triumphs,' says its chief prophet Sorel,
+'the parliamentary régime, so dear to the intellectuals, will be at an
+end.' 'The syndicalist has a contempt for the vulgar idea of democracy;
+the vast unconscious mass is not to be taken into account when the
+minority wishes to act so as to benefit it.'[5] 'The effect of political
+majorities,' says Mr. Levine, 'is to hinder advance,' Accordingly,
+political methods are rejected with contempt. The anarchists go one step
+further. Bakunin proclaims that 'we reject all legislation, all
+authority, and all influence, even when it has proceeded from universal
+suffrage.' These powerful movements, opposed as they are to each other,
+agree in spurning the very idea of democracy, which Lord Morley defines
+as government by public opinion, and which may be defined with more
+precision as direct government by the votes of the majority among the
+adult members of a nation. Even a political philosopher like Mr. Lowes
+Dickinson says, 'For my part, I am no democrat.'
+
+Who then are the friends of this _curieux fétiche_, as Quinet called
+democracy? It appears to have none, though it has been the subject of
+fatuous laudation ever since the time of Rousseau. The Americans burn
+incense before it, but they are themselves ruled by the Boss and the
+Trust.
+
+The attempt to justify the labour movement as a legitimate development
+of the old democratic Liberalism is futile. Freedom to form
+combinations is no doubt a logical application of _laisser faire_; and
+the anarchic possibilities latent in _laisser faire_ have been made
+plain in the anti-democratic movements of labour. But Liberalism rested
+on a too favourable estimate of human nature and on a belief in the law
+of progress. As there is no law of progress, and as civilised society is
+being destroyed by the evil passions of men, Liberalism is, for the
+time, quite discredited. It would also be true to say that there is a
+fundamental contradiction between the two dogmas of Liberalism. These
+were, that unlimited competition is stimulating to the competitors and
+good for the country, and that every individual is an end, not a means.
+Both are anarchical; but the first logically issues in individualistic
+anarchy, the last in communistic anarchy. The economic and the ethical
+theory of Liberalism cannot be harmonised. The result--cruel competition
+tempered by an artificial process of counter-selection in favour of the
+unfittest--was by no means satisfactory. But it was better than what we
+are now threatened with.
+
+That the labour movement is economically rotten it is easy to prove. In
+the words of Professor Hearnshaw, 'the government has ceased to govern
+in the world of labour, and has been compelled, instead of governing, to
+bribe, to cajole, to beg, to grovel. It has purchased brief truces at
+the cost of increasing levies of Danegeld drawn from the diminishing
+resources of the patient community. It has embarked on a course of
+payment of blackmail which must end either in national bankruptcy or in
+the social revolution which the anarchists seek.' The powerful
+trade-unions are now plundering both the owners of their 'plant,' and
+the general public. It is easy to show that their members already get
+much more than their share of the national wealth. Professor Bowley[6]
+has estimated that an equal division of the national income would give
+about £160 a year to each family, free of taxes. But even this estimate,
+discouraging as it is, seems not to allow sufficiently for the fact that
+under the present system much of the income of the richer classes is
+counted twice or three times over. Abolish large incomes, and jewels,
+pictures, wines, furs, special and rare skill like that of the operating
+surgeon and fashionable portrait painter, lose all or most of their
+money value. All the large professional incomes, except those of the low
+comedian and his like, are made out of the rich, and are counted at
+least twice for income-tax. It is certain that a large part of the
+national income could not be 'redistributed,' and that in the attempt to
+do so credit would be destroyed and wealth would melt like a snow man.
+The miners, therefore, are not seeking justice; they are blackmailing
+rich and poor alike by their monopoly of one of the necessaries of life.
+And now they strike against paying income-tax!
+
+It is not necessary or just to bring railing accusations against any
+class as a body. Power is always abused, and in this case there is much
+honest ignorance, stimulated by agitators who are seldom honest. In a
+recent number of the _Edinburgh Review_ Sir Lynden Macassey speaks of
+the widespread, almost universal, fallacies to which the hand-worker has
+fallen a victim. They believe that all their aspirations can be
+satisfied out of present-day profits and production. They believe that
+in restricting output they are performing a moral duty to their class.
+They do not believe that the prosperity of the country depends upon its
+production, and are opposed to all labour-saving devices. They refuse
+co-operation because they desire the continuance of the class-war. Such
+perversity would seem hardly credible if it were not attested by
+overwhelming evidence. The Government remedy is first to create
+unemployment and then to endow it--the shortest and maddest road to ruin
+since the downfall of the Roman Empire.
+
+We may have a faint hope that some of these fallacies will be abandoned
+by the workmen when their destructive results can no longer be
+concealed. But sentimentalism seems to be incurable. It erects
+irrationality into an act of religious faith, gives free rein to the
+emotion of pity, and thinks that it is imitating the Good Samaritan by
+robbing the Priest and Levite for the benefit of the man by the
+road-side. The sentimentalist shows a bitter hatred against those who
+wish to cure an evil by removing its causes. A good example is the
+language of writers like Mr. Chesterton about eugenics and population.
+If social maladies were treated scientifically, the trade of the
+emotional rhetorician would be gone.
+
+We have seen that democracy--the rule of majorities--has been
+discredited and abandoned in action, though officially we all bow down
+before it. Another popular delusion is that the chief change in the last
+fifty years has been a conversion of the world from individualism to
+socialism. In the language of the Christian socialists, who wish to
+combine the militant spirit and organisation of medieval Catholicism
+with a bid for the popular vote, we have 'rediscovered the Corporate
+Idea.' But if we take socialism, not in the narrower sense of
+collectivism, which would be an economic experiment, but in the wider
+sense of a keen consciousness of the solidarity of the community as an
+organic whole, there is very little truth in the commonly held notion
+that we have become more socialistic. It is easy to see how the idea has
+arisen. It became necessary to find some theoretical justification for
+raising taxes, no longer for national needs, but for the benefit of the
+class which imposed them; and this justification was found in the theory
+that all wealth belongs to 'the State,' and may be justly divided up as
+'the State'--that is to say, the majority of the voters--may determine.
+Whenever the question arises of voting new doles to the dominant section
+of the people at the expense of the minority, our new political
+philosophers profess themselves fervent socialists. But true socialism,
+which is almost synonymous with patriotism, is as conspicuously absent
+in those who call themselves socialists as it is strong in those who
+repudiate the title. This paradox can be easily proved. The most
+socialistic enterprise in which a nation ever engages is a great war. A
+nation at war is conscious of its corporate unity and its common
+interests, as it is at no other time. The nation then calls upon every
+citizen to surrender all his personal rights and to offer his life and
+limbs in the service of the community. And what has been the record of
+the 'socialists' in the struggle for national existence in which we have
+been engaged? In the years preceding the war they ridiculed the idea
+that the country was in danger of being attacked, and used all their
+power to prevent us from preparing against attack. They steadily opposed
+the teaching of patriotism in the schools. When the war began, they
+prevented the Government from introducing compulsory service until our
+French Allies, who were left to bear the brunt, were on the point of
+collapse; they, in very many cases, refused to serve themselves, thereby
+avowing that, as far as they were concerned, they were willing to see
+their country conquered by a horde of cruel barbarians; and they nearly
+handed over our armies to destruction by fomenting strikes at the most
+critical periods of the war. This attitude cannot be accounted for by
+any conscientious objection to violence, which is in fact their
+favourite weapon, except against the enemies of their country. Their
+socialism is, in truth, individualism run mad; it is the very antithesis
+to the consciousness of organic unity in a nation, which is the
+spiritual basis of socialism. In this sense, the nation as a whole has
+shown a fine socialistic temper; but the disgraceful exception has been
+the socialist party. The intense and perverted individualism of the
+so-called socialist is shown in another way. Whatever liberties a State
+may permit to its citizens, it is certain that no nation can be in a
+healthy condition unless the government keeps in its own hands the keys
+of birth and of death. The State has the right of the farmer to decide
+how many cows should be allowed to graze upon ten acres of grass; the
+right of the forester to decide how many square feet are required for
+each tree in a wood. It has also the right and the duty of the gardener
+to pull up noxious weeds in his flower-beds. But the socialist
+vehemently repudiates both these rights. Being an ultra-individualist,
+he is in favour of _laisser faire_, where _laisser faire_ is most
+indefensible and most disastrous.
+
+It would be easy to maintain that the organic idea was more potent, both
+under medieval feudalism and under nineteenth-century industrialism,
+than it is now. In former days, economic and social equality were not
+even aimed at, because it was thought inevitable that in a social
+organism there must be subordination and a hierarchy of functions.
+Essentially, and in the sight of God, all are equal, or, rather, the
+essential differences between man and man are absolutely independent of
+social status. In a few years Lazarus may be in heaven and Dives in
+hell. Beside this equality of moral opportunity and tremendous
+inequality in self-chosen destiny, the status of master and servant
+seemed of small importance; it was a temporary and trivial accident.
+Accordingly, in feudal times, as to-day in really Catholic communities,
+feelings of injustice and social bitterness were seldom aroused and
+class differences take on a more genial colour. In spite of the
+lawlessness and brutality of the Middle Ages it is probable that men
+were happier then than they are now.
+
+The French Revolution, which was a disintegrating solvent, pulverised
+society, and was impotent to reconstruct it. Yet under the industrial
+régime which followed it in this country, the nation was conscious of
+its unity. The system was the best that could have been devised for
+increasing the population and aggregate wealth of the country; and even
+those who suffered most under it were not without pride in its results.
+The ill-paid workman of the last century would have thought it a poor
+thing to do a deliberately bad day's work.
+
+I am not praising either the age of feudalism or the 'hungry forties' of
+the nineteenth century. In the latter case especially the sacrifice
+exacted from the poor was too great for the rather vulgar success of
+which it was the condition. But to call that age the period of
+individualism, and our own generation the period of socialism, is in my
+opinion a profound mistake. In Germany, too, the real socialists are not
+the 'Spartacist' scoundrels who have betrayed and ruined their country,
+but the bureaucracy with their _Deutschland über Alles_. If I were a
+little more of a socialist, I could almost admire them, in spite of all
+their crimes.
+
+The landed gentry (and in honesty I must add the endowed clergy) are a
+survival of feudalism, as the capitalist is a survival of industrialism.
+Both have to a large extent survived their functions. The mailclad
+baron, round whose fortified castle the peasants and others gathered for
+protection, has become the country gentleman, against whom the
+indictment is not so much that his only pursuit is pleasure, as that his
+only pleasure is pursuit. 'The rich man in his castle, the poor man at
+his gate' were intelligible while the rich man protected the poor man
+from being plundered and killed by marauders; but in our times nobody
+wants a castle or to live under the shadow of a castle. The clerical
+profession was a necessity when most people could neither read nor
+write. But to-day our best prophets and preachers are laymen. As at
+ancient Athens, in the time of Aristophanes, 'the young learn from the
+schoolmaster, the mature from the poets.' Similarly, the captain of
+industry cannot hold the same autocratic position as formerly, in view
+of the growing intelligence and capacity of the workmen; and the
+capitalist who is not a captain of industry is a debtor to the community
+to an extent which he does not always realise. This class is becoming
+painfully conscious of its vulnerability.
+
+There are, therefore, irrational survivals in our social order; and
+though it may be proved that they are not a severe burden on the
+community, it is natural that popular bitterness and discontent should
+fasten upon them and exaggerate their evil results. It cannot be
+disputed that this bitterness and discontent were becoming very acute in
+the years before the war. An increasing number of persons saw no meaning
+and no value in our civilisation. This feeling was common in all
+classes, including the so-called leisured class; and was so strong that
+many welcomed with joy the clear call to a plain duty, though it was the
+duty of facing all the horrors of war. What is the cause of this
+discontent? There are few more important questions for us to answer.
+
+Those who find the cause in the existence of the survivals which we have
+mentioned are certainly mistaken. It is no new thing that there should
+be a small class more or less parasitic on the community. The whole
+number of persons who pay income-tax on £5000 a year and upwards is
+only 13,000 out of 46 millions, and their wealth, if it could be divided
+up, would make no appreciable difference to the working man. The
+wage-earners are better off than they have ever been before in our
+history, and the danger of revolution comes not from the poor, but from
+the privileged artisans who already have incomes above the family
+average. We must look elsewhere for an explanation of social unrest. If
+we consider what are the chief centres of discontent throughout the
+civilised world, we shall find that they are the great aggregations of
+population in wealthy industrial countries. Social unrest is a disease
+of town-life. Wherever the conditions which create the great modern city
+exist, we find revolutionary agitation. It has spread to Barcelona, to
+Buenos Ayres, and to Osaka, in the wake of the factory. The inhabitants
+of the large town do not envy the countryman and would not change with
+him. But, unknown to themselves, they are leading an unnatural life, cut
+off from the kindly and wholesome influences of nature, surrounded by
+vulgarity and ugliness, with no traditions, no loyalties, no culture,
+and no religion. We seldom reflect on the strangeness of the fact that
+the modern working-man has few or no superstitions. At other times the
+masses have evolved for themselves some picturesque nature-religion,
+some pious ancestor-worship, some cult of saints or heroes, some stories
+of fairies, ghosts, or demons, and a mass of quaint superstitions,
+genial or frightening. The modern town-dweller has no God and no Devil;
+he lives without awe, without admiration, without fear. Whatever we may
+think about these beliefs, it is not natural for men and women to be
+without them. The life of the town artisan who works in a factory is a
+life to which the human organism has not adapted itself; it is an
+unwholesome and unnatural condition. Hence, probably, comes the
+_malaise_ which makes him think that any radical change must be for the
+better.
+
+Whatever the cause of the disease may be (and I do not pretend that the
+conditions of urban life are an adequate explanation) the malady is
+there, and will probably prove fatal to our civilisation. I have given
+my views on this subject in the essay called _The Future of the English
+Race._ And yet there is a remedy within the reach of all if we would
+only try it.
+
+The essence of the Christian revelation is the proclamation of a
+standard of absolute values, which contradicts at every point the
+estimates of good and evil current in 'the world.' It is not necessary,
+in such an essay as this, to write out the Beatitudes, or the very
+numerous passages in the Gospels and Epistles in which the same lessons
+are enforced. It is not necessary to remind the reader that in
+Christianity all the paraphernalia of life are valued very lightly; that
+all the good and all the evil which exalt or defile a man have their
+seat within him, in his own character; that we are sent into the world
+to suffer and to conquer suffering; that it is more blessed to give than
+to receive; that love is the great revealer of the mysteries of life;
+that we have here no continuing city, and must therefore set our
+affections and lay up our treasures in heaven; that the things that are
+seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal. This is
+the Christian religion. It is a form of idealism; and idealism means a
+belief in absolute or spiritual values.
+
+When applied to human life, it introduces, as it were, a new currency,
+which demonetises the old; or gives us a new scale of prices, in which
+the cheapest things are the dearest, and the dearest the cheapest. The
+world's standards are quantitative; those of Christianity are
+qualitative. And being qualitative, spiritual goods are unlimited in
+amount; they are increased by being shared; and we rob nobody by taking
+them.
+
+Secularists ask impatiently what Christianity has done or proposes to do
+to make mankind happier, by which they mean more comfortable. The answer
+is (to put it in a form intelligible to the questioner) that
+Christianity increases the wealth of the world by creating new values.
+Wealth depends on human valuation. For example, if women were
+sufficiently well educated not to care about diamonds, the Kimberley
+mines would pay no dividends, and the rents in Park Lane would go down.
+The prices of paintings by old masters would decline if millionaires
+preferred to collect another kind of scalps to decorate their wigwams.
+Bookmakers and company-promoters live on the widespread passion for
+acquiring money without working for it. It is hardly possible to
+estimate the increase of real wealth, and the stoppage of waste, which
+would result from the adoption of a rational, still more of a Christian,
+valuation of the good things of life. I have dealt with this subject in
+the essay on _The Indictment against Christianity_, and have emphasised
+the importance of taking into consideration, in all economic questions,
+the _human costs_ of production, the factors which make work pleasant or
+irksome, and especially the moral condition of the worker. Good-will
+diminishes the toll which labour takes of the labourer; envy and hatred
+vastly increase it while they diminish its product. It is, of course,
+impossible that the worker should not resent having to devote his life
+to making what is useless or mischievous, and to ministering to the
+irrational wastefulness of luxury. Christianity, in condemning the
+selfish and irresponsible use of money, seeks to remove one of the chief
+causes of social bitterness. Senseless extravagance is the best friend
+of revolution.
+
+The abuse poured upon 'the old political economy,' as it is called, is
+only half deserved. As compared with the insane doctrines now in favour
+with the working-man, the old political economy was sound and sensible.
+Hard work, thrift, and economy in production are, in truth, as we used
+to be told, the only ways to increase the national wealth, and the
+contrary practices can only lead to economic ruin. There is not much
+fault to find with the old economists so long as they recognised that
+their science was an abstract science, which for its own purposes dealt
+with an unreal abstraction--the 'economic man.' Every science is obliged
+to isolate one aspect of reality in this way. But when political economy
+was treated as a philosophy of life it began to be mischievous. A book
+on 'the science of the stomach,' without knowledge of physiology or the
+working of other organs, would not be of much use. Man has never been a
+merely acquisitive being; for example, he is also a fighting and a
+praying being. If our dominant motives were changed, the whole
+conditions dealt with by political economy would change with them. There
+have been civilisations in which the passion for accumulation was
+comparatively weak; and notoriously there are many persons in whom it is
+wholly absent. Devotion to art, to scientific investigation, and to
+religion is strong enough, where it exists, to kill 'the economic man'
+in human nature. A civilised nation honours its idealists, and
+recognises the immense benefit which they confer on the community by
+creating or revealing new and inexhaustible values; in an uncivilised
+country they can hardly live. Ruskin and William Morris saw, and
+doubtless exaggerated, the danger to which spiritual values were exposed
+at the hands of the dominant economism. Our danger now is that neglect
+of the simplest economic laws may plunge the nation into such misery
+that the people will no longer be willing to support art, science,
+learning, and philosophy. A large section of the labour party has the
+same standard of values as the hated 'capitalist,' and detests those
+whom it calls intellectuals and sky-pilots because they depreciate the
+currency which their class, no less than the capitalist, believes to be
+the only sound money.
+
+It may be asked whether there is any reason to think that there is now
+less regard for the higher, the qualitative values of life, than at
+other periods. My opinion is that ever since the time of Rousseau and
+his contemporaries, we have been led astray by a will-of-the-wisp akin
+to the apocalyptic dreams of the Jews in the last two centuries before
+Christ, dreams which also filled the minds of the first generation of
+Christians. The Greeks never made the mistake of throwing their ideals
+into the future, a practice which, as Dr. Bosanquet has said, 'is the
+death of all sane idealism.' The belief in 'a good time coming' is a
+Jewish delusion. It nourished the Jews in their amazing obstinacy, and
+led to the annihilation of their State which, to the very end, they saw
+in their dreams bruising all other nations with a rod of iron, and
+breaking them in pieces like a potter's vessel. But, as any idealism is
+better than none, the Hebrew race has won remarkable triumphs, though of
+a kind which it never desired.
+
+The myth of progress is our form of apocalyptism. In France it began
+with sentimentalism, developing normally into homicidal mania. In
+England it took the form of a kind of Deuteronomic religion. As a reward
+for our national virtues, our population expanded, our exports and
+imports went up by leaps and bounds, and our empire received additions
+every decade. It was plain that when Christ said 'Blessed are the meek,
+for they shall inherit the earth,' He was thinking of the British
+Empire. The whole structure of our social order encouraged the
+measurement of everything by quantitative standards. Everyone could
+understand that a generation which travels sixty miles an hour must be
+five times as civilised as one which only travelled twelve. Thus the
+beneficent 'law of progress' was exemplified in that nation which had
+best deserved to be its exponent. The myth in question is that there is
+a natural law of improvement, manifested by greater complexity of
+structure, by increase of wants and the means to satisfy them. A nation
+advances in civilisation by increasing in wealth and population, and by
+multiplying the accessories and paraphernalia of life.
+
+Belief in this alleged law has vitiated our natural science, our
+political science, our history, our philosophy, and even our religion.
+Science declared that 'the survival of the fittest' was a law of nature,
+though nature has condemned to extinction the majestic animals of the
+saurian era, and has carefully preserved the bug, the louse, and the
+spirochaeta pallida.
+
+    We dined as a rule on each other;
+    What matter? the toughest survived,
+
+is a fair parody of this doctrine. In political science, by a portentous
+snobbery, the actual evolution of European government was assumed to be
+in the line of upward progress. Our histories contrasted the benighted
+condition of past ages with the high morality and general enlightenment
+of the present. In philosophy, the problem of evil was met by the
+theory that though the Deity is not omnipotent yet, He is on His way to
+become so. He means well, and if we give Him time, He will make a real
+success of His creation. Human beings, too, commonly make a very poor
+thing of their lives here. But continue their training after they are
+dead and they will all come to perfection. We have been living on this
+secularised idealism for a hundred and fifty years. It has driven out
+the true idealism, of which it is a caricature, and has made the deeper
+and higher kind of religious faith abnormally difficult. Even the hope
+of immortality has degenerated into a belief in apparitions and voices
+from the dead.
+
+Nature knows nothing of this precious law. Her figure is not the
+vertical line, nor even the spiral, but the circle--the vicious circle,
+according to Samuel Butler. 'Men eat birds, birds eat worms, worms eat
+men again.' Some stars are getting hotter, others cooler. Life appears
+at a certain temperature and is extinguished at another temperature.
+Evolution and involution balance each other and go on concurrently. The
+normal condition of every species on this planet is not progress but
+stationariness. 'Progress,' so-called, is an incident of adaptation to
+new conditions. Bees and ants must have spent millennia in perfecting
+their organisation; now that they have reached a stable equilibrium, no
+more changes are perceptible. The 'progress' of humanity has consisted
+almost entirely in the transformation of the wild man of the woods, not
+into _homo sapiens_ but into _homo faber_, man the tool-maker, a process
+of which nature expresses her partial disapproval by plaguing us with
+diverse diseases and taking away our teeth and claws. It is not certain
+that there has been much change in our intellectual and moral endowments
+since pithecanthropus dropped the first half of his name. I should be
+sorry to have to maintain that the Germans of to-day are morally
+superior to the army which defeated Quintilius Varus, or that the modern
+Turks are more humane than the hordes of Timour the Tartar. If there is
+to be any improvement in human nature itself we must look to the infant
+science of eugenics to help us.
+
+It is not easy to say how this myth of progress came to take hold of
+the imagination, in the teeth of science and experience. Quinet speaks
+of the 'fatalistic optimism' of historians, of which there have
+certainly been some strange examples. We can only say that secularism,
+like other religions, needs an eschatology, and has produced one. A more
+energetic generation than ours looked forward to a gradual extension of
+busy industrialism over the whole planet; the present ideal of the
+masses seems to be the greatest idleness of the greatest number, or a
+Fabian farm-yard of tame fowls, or (in America) an ice-water-drinking
+gynæcocracy. But the superstition cannot flourish much longer. The
+period of expansion is over, and we must adjust our view of earthly
+providence to a state of decline. For no nation can flourish when it is
+the ambition of the large majority to put in fourpence and take out
+ninepence. The middle-class will be the first victims; then the
+privileged aristocracy of labour will exploit the poor. But trade will
+take wings and migrate to some other country where labour is good and
+comparatively cheap.
+
+The dethronement of a fetish may give a sounder faith its chance. In the
+time of decay and disintegration which lies before us, more persons will
+seek consolation where it can be found. 'Happiness and unhappiness,'
+says Spinoza, 'depend on the nature of the object which we love. When a
+thing is not loved, no quarrels will arise concerning it, no sadness
+will be felt if it perishes, no envy if it is possessed by another; no
+fear, no hatred, no disturbance of the mind. All these things arise from
+the love of the perishable. But love for a thing eternal and infinite
+feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself untainted with any
+sadness; wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with our
+whole strength.' It is well known that these noble words were not only
+sincere, but the expression of the working faith of the philosopher; and
+we may hope that many who are doomed to suffer hardship and spoliation
+in the evil days that are coming will find the same path to a happiness
+which cannot be taken from them. Spinoza's words, of course, do not
+point only to religious exercises and meditation. The spiritual world
+includes art and science in all their branches, when these are studied
+with a genuine devotion to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful for
+their own sakes. We shall need 'a remnant' to save Europe from relapsing
+into barbarism; for the new forces are almost wholly cut off from the
+precious traditions which link our civilisation with the great eras of
+the past. The possibility of another dark age is not remote; but there
+must be enough who value our best traditions to preserve them till the
+next spring-time of civilisation. We must take long views, and think of
+our great-grandchildren.
+
+It is tempting to dream of a new Renaissance, under which the life of
+reason will at last be the life of mankind. Though there is little sign
+of improvement in human nature, a favourable conjunction of
+circumstances may bring about a civilisation very much better than ours
+to-day. For a time, at any rate, war may be practically abolished, and
+the military qualities may find another and a less pernicious outlet.
+'Sport,' as Santayana says, 'is a liberal form of war stripped of its
+compulsions and malignity; a rational art and the expression of a
+civilised instinct.' The art of living may be taken in hand seriously.
+Some of the ingenuity which has lately been lavished on engines of
+destruction may be devoted to improvements in our houses, which should
+be easily and cheaply put together and able to be carried about in
+sections; on labour-saving devices which would make servants
+unnecessary; and on international campaigns against diseases, some of
+the worst of which could be extinguished for ever by twenty years of
+concerted effort. A scientific civilisation is not impossible, though we
+are not likely to live to see it. And, if science and humanism can work
+together, it will be a great age for mankind. Such hopes as these must
+be allowed to float before our minds: they are not unreasonable, and
+they will help us to get through the twentieth century, which is not
+likely to be a pleasant time to live in.
+
+Some writers, like Mr. H.G. Wells, recognising the danger which
+threatens civilisation, have suggested the formation of a society for
+mutual encouragement in the higher life. Mr. Wells developed this idea
+in his 'Modern Utopia.' He contemplated a brotherhood, like the
+Japanese Samurai, living by a Rule, a kind of lay monastic order, who
+should endeavour to live in a perfectly rational and wholesome manner,
+so as to be the nucleus of whatever was best in the society of the time.
+The scheme is interesting to a Platonist, because of its resemblance to
+the Order of Guardians in the 'Republic.' A very good case may be made
+out for having an ascetic Order of moral and physical aristocrats, and
+entrusting them with the government of the country. Plato forbade his
+guardians to own wealth, and thus secured an uncorrupt administration,
+one of the rarest and best of virtues in a government. But political
+events are not moving in this direction at present; and the question for
+us is whether those who believe in science and humanism should attempt
+to form a society, not to rule the country, but to protect themselves
+and the ideas which they wish to preserve. But I agree with Mr. Wells'
+second thoughts, that the time is not ripe for such a scheme.[7]
+Christianity, 'the greatest new beginning in the world's history,'
+appeared, as he says, in an age of disintegration, and 'we are in a
+synthetic rather than a disintegrating phase.... _Only a very vast and
+terrible war-explosion can, I think, change this state of affairs.'_ The
+vast explosion has occurred, and the stage of disintegration, which Mr.
+Wells ought perhaps to have seen approaching even eleven years ago, has
+clearly begun. But it will have to go further before the need of such a
+society is felt. The time may come when the educated classes, and those
+who desire freedom to live as they think right, will find themselves
+oppressed, not only in their home-life by the tyranny of the
+trade-unions, but in their souls by the pulpy and mawkish emotionalism
+of herd-morality. Then a league for mutual protection may be formed. If
+such a society ever comes into being, the following principles are, I
+think, necessary for its success. First, it must be on a religious
+basis, since religion has a cohesive force greater than any other bond.
+The religious basis will be a blend of Christian Platonism and Christian
+Stoicism, since it must be founded on that faith in absolute spiritual
+values which is common to Christianity and Platonism, with that sturdy
+defiance of tyranny and popular folly which was the strength of
+Stoicism. Next, it must not be affiliated to any religious organisation;
+otherwise it will certainly be exploited in denominational interests.
+Thirdly, it must include some purely disciplinary asceticism, such as
+abstinence from alcohol and tobacco for men, and from costly dresses and
+jewellery for women. This is necessary, because it is more important to
+keep out the half-hearted than to increase the number of members.
+Fourthly, it must prescribe a simple life of duty and discipline, since
+frugality will be a condition of enjoying self-respect and freedom.
+Fifthly, it will enjoin the choice of an open-air life in the country,
+where possible. A whole group of French writers, such as Proudhon,
+Delacroix, Leconte de Lisle, Flaubert, Leblond, and Faguet agree in
+attributing our social _malaise_ to life in great towns. The lower
+death-rates of country districts are a hint from nature that they are
+right. Sixthly, every member must pledge himself to give his best work.
+As Dr. Jacks says, 'Producers of good articles respect each other;
+producers of bad despise each other and hate their work.' It may be
+necessary for those who recognise the right of the labourer to preserve
+his self-respect, to combine in order to satisfy each other's needs in
+resistance to the trade-unions. Seventhly, there must be provision for
+community-life, like that of the old monasteries, for both sexes. The
+members of the society should be encouraged to spend some part of their
+lives in these institutions, without retiring from the world altogether.
+Temporary 'retreats' might be of great value. Intellectual work,
+including scientific research, could be carried on under very favourable
+conditions in these lay monasteries and convents, which should contain
+good libraries and laboratories. Lastly, a distinctive dress, not merely
+a badge, would probably be essential for members of both sexes.
+
+This last provision tempts me to add that the Government would do well
+to appoint at once a Royal Commission, or, rather, two Commissions, to
+decide on a compulsory national uniform for both sexes. Experts should
+recommend the most comfortable, becoming, and economical dress that
+could be devised, with considerable variety for the different trades and
+professions. Such a law would do more for social equality than any
+readjustment of taxation. It has been often noticed that every man looks
+a gentleman in khaki; and it is to be feared that many war brides have
+suffered a painful surprise on seeing their husbands for the first time
+in civilian garb. There need be no suggestion of militarism about the
+new costume; but a man's calling might be recorded, like the name of his
+regiment, on his shoulder-straps, and the absence of such a badge would
+be regarded as a disgrace, whether the subject was a tramp or one of the
+idle rich. This suggestion may seem trivial, or even ludicrous; and I
+may be reminded of my dislike of meddling legislation; but the
+importance of the philosophy of clothes has not diminished since 'Sartor
+Resartus.' Clerical dignitaries might be trusted to vote for this
+mitigation of their lot.
+
+Some may wonder why I have not expressed a hope that the guardianship of
+our intellectual and spiritual birthright may pass into the hands of the
+National Church. I heartily wish that I could cherish this hope. But
+organised religion has been a failure ever since the first concordat
+between Church and State under Constantine the Great. The Church of
+England in its corporate capacity has never seemed to respect anything
+but organised force. In the sixteenth century it proclaimed Henry VIII
+the Supreme Head of the Church; in the seventeenth century it
+passionately upheld the 'right divine of kings to govern wrong'; in the
+eighteenth and nineteenth it was the obsequious supporter of the
+squirearchy and plutocracy; and now it grovels before the working-man,
+and supports every scheme of plundering the minority. In fact, we must
+distinguish sharply between ecclesiasticism, theology, and religion. The
+future of ecclesiasticism is a political question. In the opinion of
+some good judges, the acute nationalism now dominant in Europe will
+quickly pass away, and a duel will supervene between the 'Black
+International' and the 'Red.' Catholicism, it is supposed, will shelter
+all who dread revolution and all who value traditional civilisation; its
+unrivalled organisation will make it the one possible centre of
+resistance to anarchy and barbarism, and the conflict will go on till
+one side or the other is overthrown. This prediction, which opens a
+truly appalling prospect for civilisation, might be less terrible if the
+Church were to open its arms to a new Renaissance, and become once more,
+as in the beginning of the modern period, the home of learning and the
+patroness of the arts. But we must not overlook the new and growing
+power of science; and science can no more make terms with Catholic
+ecclesiasticism than with the Revolution. The Jacobins guillotined
+Lavoisier, 'having no need of chemists'; but the Church burnt Bruno and
+imprisoned Galileo. Science, too strong to be victimised again, may come
+between the two enemies of civilisation, the Bolshevik and the
+Ultramontane; it is, I think, our best hope.
+
+I am conscious that I have spoken with too little sympathy in one or two
+of these essays about the Ritualist party. I was more afraid of it a few
+years ago than I am now. The Oxford movement began as a late wave of the
+Romantic movement, with wistful eyes bent upon the past. But
+Romanticism, which dotes on ruins, shrinks from real restoration.
+Medievalism is attractive only when seen from a short distance. So the
+movement is ceasing to be either medieval or Catholic or Anglican; it is
+becoming definitely Latin. But a Latin Church in England which disowns
+the Pope is an absurdity. Many of the shrewder High Churchmen are, as I
+have said in this volume, throwing themselves into political agitation
+and intrigue, for which Catholics always have a great aptitude; but this
+involves them in another inconsistency. For Catholicism is essentially
+hierarchical and undemocratic, though it keeps a 'career open to the
+talents.' The spirit of Catholicism breathes in the Third Canto of the
+'Paradiso,' where Dante asks the soul of a friend whom he finds in the
+lowest circle of Paradise, whether he does not desire to go higher. The
+friend replies: 'Brother, the force of charity quiets our will, making
+us wish only for what we have and thirst for nothing more. If we
+desired to be in a sublimer sphere, our desires would be discordant with
+the will of Him who here allots us our diverse stations.... The manner
+in which we are ranged from step to step in this kingdom pleases the
+whole kingdom, as it does the King who gives us the power to will as He
+wills.' Accordingly, these ecclesiastical votaries of democracy cut a
+strange figure when they seek to legislate for the Church. The High
+Church scheme (defeated the other day by a small majority) for drawing
+up a constitution for the Church, consisted in disfranchising the large
+majority of the electorate and reserving the initiative and veto for the
+House of Lords (the Bishops). In fact, the constitution which our
+Catholic democrats would like best for the Church closely resembles that
+of Great Britain before the first Reform Bill. In the same way the
+ritualistic clergy, while professing a superstitious reverence for the
+episcopal office, make a point of flouting the authority of their own
+bishop. The movement, in my opinion, is beginning to break up, and Rome
+will be the chief gainer. But many of its leaders have been among the
+glories of the Church of England, and I could never speak of them with
+disrespect.
+
+Catholicism, whether Roman or Anglican, stands to lose heavily by the
+decay of institutionalism as an article of faith. It is becoming
+impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe
+that the grace of God is distributed denominationally. The Christian
+virtues, so far as we can see, flower impartially in the souls of
+Catholic and Protestant, of Churchman and Schismatic, of Orthodox and
+Heretic. And the test, 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' cannot be
+openly rejected by any Christian. But fanatical institutionalism has
+been the driving force of Catholicism as a power in the world, from the
+very first. The Church has lived by its monopolies and conquered by its
+intolerance. The war has given a further impetus to the fall of this
+belief, which, with its dogma, _Extra ecclesiam nulla salus_, was
+tottering before the crisis came.
+
+The prospects of Christian theology are very difficult to estimate; and
+I am so convinced myself of the superiority of the Catholic theology
+based on Neoplatonism, that I cannot view the matter with impartial
+detachment. We all tend to predict the triumph of our own opinions. But
+miracles must, I am convinced, be relegated to the sphere of pious
+opinion. It is not likely, perhaps, that the progress of science will
+increase the difficulty of believing them; but it can never again be
+possible to make the truths of religion depend on physical portents
+having taken place as recorded. The Christian revelation can stand
+without them, and the rulers of the Church will soon have to recognise
+that in very many minds it does stand without them.
+
+I have already indicated what I believe to be the essential parts of
+that revelation. Whether it will be believed by a larger number of
+persons a hundred years hence than to-day depends, I suppose, on whether
+the nation will be in a more healthy condition than it is now. The chief
+rival to Christianity is secularism; and this creed has some bitter
+disappointments in store for its worshippers. I cannot help hoping that
+the human race, having taken in succession every path except the right
+one, may pay more attention to the narrow way that leadeth unto life. In
+morals, the Church will undoubtedly have a hard battle to fight. The
+younger generation has discarded all _tabus_, and in matters of sex we
+must be prepared for a period of unbridled license. But such lawlessness
+brings about its own cure by arousing disgust and shame; and the
+institution of marriage is far too deeply rooted to be in any danger
+from the revolution.
+
+I have, I suppose, made it clear that I do not consider myself specially
+fortunate in having been born in 1860, and that I look forward with
+great anxiety to the journey through life which my children will have to
+make. But, after all, we judge our generation mainly by its surface
+currents. There may be in progress a storage of beneficent forces which
+we cannot see. There are ages of sowing and ages of reaping: the
+brilliant epochs may be those in which spiritual wealth is squandered,
+the epochs of apparent decline may be those in which the race is
+recuperating after an exhausting effort. To all appearance, man has
+still a great part of his long lease before him, and there is no reason
+to suppose that the future will be less productive of moral and
+spiritual triumphs than the past. The source of all good is like an
+inexhaustible river; the Creator pours forth new treasures of goodness,
+truth, and beauty for all who will love them and take them. 'Nothing
+that truly _is_ can ever perish,' as Plotinus says; whatever has value
+in God's sight is safe for evermore. Our half-real world is the factory
+of souls, in which we are tried, as in a furnace. We are not to set our
+hopes upon it, but to learn such wisdom as it can teach us while we pass
+through it. I will therefore end these thoughts on our present
+discontents with two messages of courage and confidence, one from
+Chaucer, the other from Blake.
+
+    That thee is sent, receyve in buxomnesse,
+    The wrastling for this worlde axeth a fall.
+    Her is non hoom, her nis but wildernesse:
+    Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stall!
+    Know thy contree, look up, thank God of all:
+    Weyve thy lust, and let thy gost thee lede;
+    And trouthe shall delivere, it is no drede.
+
+And this:--
+
+    Joy and woe are woven fine,
+    A clothing for the soul divine;
+    Under every grief and pine
+    Runs a joy with silken twine.
+    It is right it should be so;
+    Man was made for joy and woe;
+    And when this we rightly know
+    Safely through the world we go.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+     [1] _Times Literary Supplement_, July 18, 1918.
+
+     [2] Hearnshaw, _Democracy at the Crossroads_, p. 63.
+
+     [3] Miss M. Loane. Mr. Stephen Reynolds has said the same.
+
+     [4] Professor Hearnshaw quotes: 'Il y a opposition évidente
+     et irréductible entre les principes socialistes et les
+     principes démocratiques. Il n'y a pas de conceptions
+     politiques qui soient séparées par des abîmes plus profonds
+     que la démocratie et le socialisme' (Le Bon). 'Socialism
+     must be built on ideas and institutions totally different
+     from the ideas and institutions of democracy' (Levine). 'La
+     democratic tend à la conciliation des classes, tandis que le
+     socialisme organise la lutte de classe' (Lagardelle).
+
+     [5] A.D. Lewis, _Syndicalism and the General Strike_.
+
+     [6] _The Division of the Product of Industry_.
+
+     [7] _First and Last Things_ (pp. 148-9. Published in 1908).
+
+
+
+
+PATRIOTISM
+
+(1915)
+
+
+The sentiment of patriotism has seemed to many to mark an arrest of
+development in the psychical expansion of the individual, a half-way
+house between mere self-centredness and full human sympathy. Some
+moralists have condemned it as pure egoism, magnified and disguised.
+'Patriotism,' says Ruskin, 'is an absurd prejudice founded on an
+extended selfishness.' Mr. Grant Allen calls it 'a vulgar vice--the
+national or collective form of the monopolist instinct.' Mr. Havelock
+Ellis allows it to be 'a virtue--among barbarians.' For Herbert Spencer
+it is 'reflex egoism--extended selfishness.' These critics have made the
+very common mistake of judging human emotions and sentiments by their
+roots instead of by their fruits. They have forgotten the Aristotelian
+canon that the 'nature' of anything is its completed development (hê
+phusis telos estin). The human self, as we know it, is a transitional
+form. It had a humble origin, and is capable of indefinite enhancement.
+Ultimately, we are what we love and care for, and no limit has been set
+to what we may become without ceasing to be ourselves. The case is the
+same with our love of country. No limit has been set to what our country
+may come to mean for us, without ceasing to be our country. Marcus
+Aurelius exhorted himself--'The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; shall
+not I pay, Dear city of God?' But the city of God in which he wished to
+be was a city in which he would still live as 'a Roman and an Antonine.'
+The citizen of heaven knew that it was his duty to 'hunt Sarmatians' on
+earth, though he was not obliged to imbrue his hands with 'Cæsarism.'
+
+Patriotism has two roots, the love of clan and the love of home. In
+migratory tribes the former alone counts; in settled communities
+diversities of origin are often forgotten. But the love of home, as we
+know it, is a gentler and more spiritual bond than clanship. The word
+home is associated with all that makes life beautiful and sacred, with
+tender memories of joy and sorrow, and especially with the first eager
+outlook of the young mind upon a wonderful world. A man does not as a
+rule feel much sentiment about his London house, still less about his
+office or factory. It is for the home of his childhood, or of his
+ancestors, that a man will fight most readily, because he is bound to it
+by a spiritual and poetic tie. Expanding from this centre, the sentiment
+of patriotism embraces one's country as a whole.
+
+Both forms of patriotism--the local and the racial, are frequently
+alloyed with absurd, unworthy or barbarous motives. The local patriot
+thinks that Peebles, and not Paris, is the place for pleasure, or asks
+whether any good thing can come out of Nazareth. To the Chinaman all
+aliens are 'outer barbarians' or 'foreign devils.' Admiration for
+ourselves and our institutions is too often measured by our contempt and
+dislike for foreigners. Our own nation has a peculiarly bad record in
+this respect. In the reign of James I the Spanish ambassador was
+frequently insulted by the London crowd, as was the Russian ambassador
+in 1662; not, apparently, because we had a burning grievance against
+either of those nations, but because Spaniards and Russians are very
+unlike Englishmen. That at least is the opinion of the sagacious Pepys
+on the later of these incidents. 'Lord! to see the absurd nature of
+Englishmen, that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at anything that
+looks strange.' Defoe says that the English are 'the most churlish
+people alive' to foreigners, with the result that 'all men think an
+Englishman the devil.' In the 17th and 18th centuries Scotland seems to
+have ranked as a foreign country, and the presence of Scots in London
+was much resented. Cleveland thought it witty to write:--
+
+    Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom;
+    Not forced him wander, but confined him home.
+
+And we all remember Dr. Johnson's gibes.
+
+British patriotic arrogance culminated in the 18th and in the first half
+of the 19th century; in Lord Palmerston it found a champion at the head
+of the government. Goldsmith describes the bearing of the Englishman of
+his day:--
+
+    Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
+    I see the lords of human kind pass by.
+
+Michelet found in England 'human pride personified in a people,' at a
+time when the characteristic of Germany was 'a profound impersonality.'
+It may be doubted whether even the arrogant brutality of the modern
+Prussian is more offensive to foreigners than was the calm and haughty
+assumption of superiority by our countrymen at this time. Our
+grandfathers and great-grandfathers were quite of Milton's opinion,
+that, when the Almighty wishes something unusually great and difficult
+to be done, He entrusts it to His Englishmen. This unamiable
+characteristic was probably much more the result of insular ignorance
+than of a deep-seated pride. 'A generation or two ago,' said Mr. Asquith
+lately, 'patriotism was largely fed and fostered upon reciprocal
+ignorance and contempt.' The Englishman seriously believed that the
+French subsisted mainly upon frogs, while the Frenchman was equally
+convinced that the sale of wives at Smithfield was one of our national
+institutions. This fruitful source of international misunderstanding has
+become less dangerous since the facilities of foreign travel have been
+increased. But in the relations of Europe with alien and independent
+civilisations, such as that of China, we still see brutal arrogance and
+vulgar ignorance producing their natural results.
+
+Another cause of perverted patriotism is the inborn pugnacity of the
+_bête humaine_. Our species is the most cruel and destructive of all
+that inhabit this planet. If the lower animals, as we call them, were
+able to formulate a religion, they might differ greatly as to the shape
+of the beneficent Creator, but they would nearly all agree that the
+devil must be very like a big white man. Mr. McDougall[8] has lately
+raised the question whether civilised man is less pugnacious than the
+savage; and he answers it in the negative. The Europeans, he thinks, are
+among the most combative of the human race. We are not allowed to knock
+each other on the head during peace; but our civilisation is based on
+cut-throat competition; our favourite games are mimic battles, which I
+suppose effect for us a 'purgation of the emotions' similar to that
+which Aristotle attributed to witnessing the performance of a tragedy:
+and, when the fit seizes us, we are ready to engage in wars which cannot
+fail to be disastrous to both combatants. Mr. McDougall does not regret
+this disposition, irrational though it is. He thinks that it tends to
+the survival of the fittest, and that, if we substitute emulation for
+pugnacity, which on other grounds might seem an unmixed advantage, we
+shall have to call in the science of eugenics to save us from becoming
+as sheeplike as the Chinese. There is, however, another side to this
+question, as we shall see presently.
+
+Another instinct which has supplied fuel to patriotism of the baser sort
+is that of acquisitiveness. This tendency, without which even the most
+rudimentary civilisation would be impossible, began when the female of
+the species, instead of carrying her baby on her back and following the
+male to his hunting-grounds, made some sort of a lair for herself and
+her family, where primitive implements and stores of food could be kept.
+There are still tribes in Brazil which have not reached this first step
+towards humanisation. But the instinct of hoarding, like all other
+instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the
+institution of private property comes another institution--that of
+plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at
+present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which, unlike
+most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough
+when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then. The
+acquisition and possession of land satisfies this desire in a high
+degree, since land is a visible and indestructible form of property.
+Consequently, as soon as the instincts of the individual are transferred
+to the group, territorial aggrandisement becomes a main preoccupation of
+the state. This desire was the chief cause of wars, while kings and
+nobles regarded the territories over which they ruled as their private
+estates. Wherever despotic or feudal conditions survive, such ideas are
+likely still to be found, and to cause dangers to other states. The
+greatest ambition of a modern emperor is still to be commemorated as a
+'Mehrer des Reichs.'
+
+Capitalism, by separating the idea of property from any necessary
+connection with landed estate, and democracy, by denying the whole
+theory on which dynastic wars of conquest are based, have both
+contributed to check this, perhaps the worst kind of war. It would,
+however, be a great error to suppose that the instinct of
+acquisitiveness, in its old and barbarous form, has lost its hold upon
+even the most civilised nations. When an old-fashioned brigand appears,
+and puts himself at the head of his nation, he becomes at once a popular
+hero. By any rational standard of morality, few greater scoundrels have
+lived than Frederick the Great and Napoleon I. But they are still names
+to conjure with. Both were men of singularly lucid intellect and
+entirely medieval ambitions. Their great achievement was to show how
+under modern conditions aggressive war may be carried on without much
+loss (except in human life) to the aggressor. They tore up all the
+conventions which regulated the conduct of warfare, and reduced it to
+sheer brigandage and terrorism. And now, after a hundred years, we see
+these methods deliberately revived by the greatest military power in the
+world, and applied with the same ruthlessness and with an added pedantry
+which makes them more inhuman. The perpetrators of the crime calculated
+quite correctly that they need fear no reluctance on the part of the
+nation, no qualms of conscience, no compassionate shrinking, no remorse.
+It must, indeed, be a bad cause that cannot count on the support of the
+large majority of the people at the _beginning_ of a war. Pugnacity,
+greed, mere excitement, the contagion of a crowd, will fill the streets
+of almost any capital with a shouting and jubilant mob on the day after
+a war has been declared.
+
+And yet the motives which we have enumerated are plainly atavistic and
+pathological. They belong to a mental condition which would conduct an
+individual to the prison or the gallows. We do not argue seriously
+whether the career of the highwayman or burglar is legitimate and
+desirable; and it is impossible to maintain that what is disgraceful for
+the individual is creditable for the state. And apart from the
+consideration that predatory patriotism deforms its own idol and makes
+it hateful in the eyes of the world, subsequent history has fully
+confirmed the moral instinct of the ancient Greeks, that national
+insolence or injustice (hybrist) brings its own severe punishment. The
+imaginary dialogue which Thucydides puts into the mouth of the Athenian
+and Melian envoys, and the debate in the Athenian Assembly about the
+punishment of revolted Mitylene, are intended to prepare the reader for
+the tragic fate of the Sicilian expedition. The same writer describes
+the break-up of all social morality during the civil war in words which
+seem to herald the destruction not only of Athens but of Greek freedom.
+Machiavelli's 'Prince' shows how history can repeat itself, reiterating
+its lesson that a nation which gives itself to immoral aggrandisement is
+far on the road to disintegration. Seneca's rebuke to his slave-holding
+countrymen, 'Can you complain that you have been robbed of the liberty
+which you have yourselves abolished in your own homes?' applies equally
+to nations which have enslaved or exploited the inhabitants of subject
+lands. If the Roman Empire had a long and glorious life, it was because
+its methods were liberal, by the standard of ancient times. In so far as
+Rome abused her power, she suffered the doom of all tyrants.
+
+The illusions of imperialism have been made clearer than ever by the
+course of modern history. Attempts to destroy a nationality by
+overthrowing its government, proscribing its language, and maltreating
+its citizens, are never successful. The experiment has been tried with
+great thoroughness in Poland; and the Poles are now more of a nation
+than they were under the oppressive feudal system which existed before
+the partitions. Our own empire would be a ludicrous failure if it were
+any part of our ambition to Anglicise other races. The only English
+parts of the empire were waste lands which we have peopled with our own
+emigrants. We hauled down the French flag in Canada, with the result
+that Eastern Canada is now the only flourishing French colony, and the
+only part of the world where the French race increases rapidly. We have
+helped the Dutch to multiply with almost equal rapidity in South Africa.
+We have added several millions to the native population of Egypt, and
+over a hundred millions to the population of India. Similarly, the
+Americans have made Cuba for the first time a really Spanish island, by
+driving out its incompetent Spanish governors and so attracting
+immigrants from Spain. On the whole, in imperialism nothing fails like
+success. If the conqueror oppresses his subjects, they will become
+fanatical patriots, and sooner or later have their revenge; if he treats
+them well, and 'governs them for their good,' they will multiply faster
+than their rulers, till they claim their independence. The Englishman
+now says, 'I am quite content to have it so'; but that is not the old
+imperialism.
+
+The notion that frequent war is a healthy tonic for a nation is scarcely
+tenable. Its dysgenic effect, by eliminating the strongest and
+healthiest of the population, while leaving the weaklings at home to be
+the fathers of the next generation, is no new discovery. It has been
+supported by a succession of men, such as Tenon, Dufau, Foissac, de
+Lapouge, and Richet in France; Tiedemann and Seeck in Germany; Guerrini
+in Italy; Kellogg and Starr Jordan in America. The case is indeed
+overwhelming. The lives destroyed in war are nearly all males, thus
+disturbing the sex equilibrium of the population; they are in the prime
+of life, at the age of greatest fecundity; and they are picked from a
+list out of which from 20 to 30 per cent. have been rejected for
+physical unfitness. It seems to be proved that the children born in
+France during the Napoleonic wars were poor and undersized--30
+millimetres below the normal height. War combined with religious
+celibacy to ruin Spain. 'Castile makes men and wastes them,' said a
+Spanish writer. 'This sublime and terrible phrase sums up the whole of
+Spanish history.' Schiller was right; 'Immer der Krieg verschlingt die
+besten.' We in England have suffered from this drain in the past; we
+shall suffer much more in the next generation.
+
+    We have fed our sea for a thousand years,
+      And she calls us, still unfed,
+    Though there's never a wave of all her waves
+      But marks our English dead.
+
+    We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest,
+      To the shark and the sheering gull,
+    If blood be the price of admiralty,
+      Lord God, we ha' paid in full.
+
+Aggressive patriotism is thus condemned by common sense and the verdict
+of history no less than by morality. We are entitled to say to the
+militarists what Socrates said to Polus:
+
+     This doctrine of yours has now been examined and found
+     wanting. And this doctrine alone has stood the test--that we
+     ought to be more afraid of doing than of suffering wrong;
+     and that the prime business of every man [and nation] is not
+     to seem good, but to be good, in all private and public
+     dealings.
+
+If the nations would render something more than lip-service to this
+principle, the abolition of war would be within sight; for, as Ruskin
+says, echoing the judgment of the Epistle of St. James, 'The first
+reason for all wars, and for the necessity of national defences, is that
+the majority of persons, high and low, in all European countries, are
+thieves.' But it must be remembered that, in spite of the proverb, it
+takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep
+to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains
+of a different opinion.
+
+Our own conversion to pacificism, though sincere, is somewhat recent.
+Our literature does not reflect it. Bacon is frankly militarist:
+
+     Above all, for empire and greatness, it importeth most, that
+     a nation do profess arms, as their principal honour, study,
+     and occupation. For the things which we formerly have spoken
+     of are but habilitations towards arms; and what is
+     habitation without intention and act?... It is so plain that
+     a man profiteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth
+     not to be stood upon. It is enough to point at it; that no
+     nation, which doth not directly profess arms, may look to
+     have greatness fall into their mouths.
+
+A state, therefore, 'ought to have those laws or customs, which may
+reach forth unto them just occasions of war.' Shakespeare's 'Henry V'
+has been not unreasonably recommended by the Germans as 'good
+war-reading.' It would be easy to compile a _catena_ of bellicose maxims
+from our literature, reaching down to the end of the 19th century. The
+change is perhaps due less to progress in morality than to that
+political good sense which has again and again steered our ship through
+dangerous rocks. But there has been some real advance, in all civilised
+countries. We do not find that men talked about the 'bankruptcy of
+Christianity' during the Napoleonic campaigns. Even the Germans think it
+necessary to tell each other that it was Belgium who began this war.
+
+But, though pugnacity and acquisitiveness have been the real foundation
+of much miscalled patriotism, better motives are generally mingled with
+these primitive instincts. It is the subtle blend of noble and ignoble
+sentiment which makes patriotism such a difficult problem for the
+moralist. The patriot nearly always believes, or thinks he believes,
+that he desires the greatness of his country because his country stands
+for something intrinsically great and valuable. Where this conviction is
+absent we cannot speak of patriotism, but only of the cohesion of a
+wolf-pack. The Greeks, who at last perished because they could not
+combine, had nevertheless a consciousness that they were the trustees
+of civilisation against barbarism; and in their day of triumph over the
+Persians they were filled, for a time, with an almost Jewish awe in
+presence of the righteous judgment of God. The 'Persæ' of Æschylus is
+one of the noblest of patriotic poems. The Romans, a harder and coarser
+race, had their ideal of _virtus_ and _gravitas_, which included
+simplicity of life, dignity and self-restraint, honesty and industry,
+and devotion to the state. They rightly felt that these qualities
+constituted a vocation to empire. There was much harshness and injustice
+in Roman imperialism; but what nobler epitaph could even the British
+empire desire than the tribute of Claudian, when the weary Titan was at
+last stricken and dying:
+
+    Hæc est, in gremium victos quæ sola recepit,
+    humanumque genus communi nomine fovit
+    matris non dominæ ritu, civesque vocavit
+    quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit?
+
+Jewish patriotism was of a different kind. A federation of fierce
+Bedouin tribes, encamped amid hostile populations, and set in the
+cockpit of rival empires against which it was impossible to stand, the
+Israelites were hammered by misfortune into the most indestructible of
+all organisms, a theocracy. Their religion was to them what, in a minor
+degree, Roman Catholicism has been to Ireland and Poland, a consecration
+of patriotic faith and hope. Westphal says the Jews failed because they
+hated foreigners more than they loved God. They have had good reason to
+hate foreigners. But undoubtedly the effect of their hatred has been
+that the great gifts which their nation had to give to humanity have
+come through other hands, and so have evoked no gratitude. In the first
+century of our era they were called to an almost superhuman abnegation
+of their inveterate nationalism, and they could not rise to it. As
+almost every other nation would have done, they chose the lower
+patriotism instead of the higher; and it was against their will that the
+religion of civilised humanity grew out of Hebrew soil. But they gained
+this by their choice, tragic though it was, that they have stood by the
+graves of all the empires that oppressed them, and have preserved their
+racial integrity and traditions in the most adverse circumstances. The
+history of the Jews also shows that oppression and persecution are far
+more efficacious in binding a nation together than community of interest
+and national prosperity. Increase of wealth divides rather than unites a
+people; but suffering shared in common binds it together with hoops of
+steel.
+
+The Jews were the only race whose spiritual independence was not crushed
+by the Roman steam-roller. It would be unfair to say that Rome destroyed
+nations; for her subjects in the West were barbarous tribes, and in the
+East she displaced monarchies no less alien to their subjects than her
+own rule. But she prevented the growth of nationalities, as it is to be
+feared we have done in India; and the absence of sturdy independence in
+the countries round the Mediterranean, especially in the Greek-speaking
+provinces, made the final downfall inevitable. The lesson has its
+warning for modern theorists who wish to obliterate the sentiment of
+nationality, the revival of which, after a long eclipse, has been one of
+the achievements of modern civilisation. For it was not till long after
+the destruction of the Western Roman Empire that nationality began to
+assume its present importance in Europe.
+
+The transition from medieval to modern history is most strongly marked
+by the emergence of this principle, with all that it involves. At the
+end of the Middle Ages Europe was at last compelled to admit that the
+grand idea of an universal state and an universal church had definitely
+broken down. Hitherto it had been assumed that behind all national
+disputes lay a _ius gentium_ by which all were bound, and that behind
+all religious questions lay the authority of the Roman Catholic Church,
+from which there was no appeal. The modern period which certainly does
+not represent the last word of civilisation, has witnessed the
+abandonment of these ideas. The change took place gradually. France
+became a nation when the English raids ceased in the middle of the 15th
+century. Spain achieved unity a generation later by the union of Castile
+and Aragon and the expulsion of the Moors from the peninsula. Holland
+found herself in the heroic struggle against Spain in the 16th century.
+But the practice of conducting wars by hiring foreign mercenaries, a
+sure sign that the nationalist spirit is weak, continued till much
+later. And the dynastic principle, which is the very negation of
+nationalism, actually culminated in the 18th century; and this is the
+true explanation of the feeble resistance which Europe offered to the
+French revolutionary armies, until Napoleon stirred up the dormant
+spirit of nationalism in the peoples whom he plundered. 'In the old
+European system,' says Lord Acton, 'the rights of nationalities were
+neither recognised by governments nor asserted by the people. The
+interests of the reigning families, not those of the nations, regulated
+the frontiers; and the administration was conducted generally without
+any reference to popular desires.' Marriage or conquest might unite the
+most diverse nations under one sovereign, such as Charles V.
+
+While such ideas prevailed, the suppression of a nation did not seem
+hateful; the partition of Poland evoked few protests at the time, though
+perhaps few acts of injustice have recoiled with greater force on the
+heads of their perpetrators than this is likely to do. Poles have been
+and are among the bitterest enemies of autocracy, and the strongest
+advocates of republicanism and racialism, in all parts of the world. The
+French Revolution opened a new era for nationalism, both directly and
+indirectly. The deposition of the Bourbons was a national act which
+might be a precedent for other oppressed peoples. And when the
+Revolution itself began to trample on the rights of other nations, an
+uprising took place, first in Spain and then in Prussia, which proved
+too strong for the tyrant. The apostasy of France from her own ideals of
+liberty proved the futility of mere doctrines, like those of Rousseau,
+and compelled the peoples to arm themselves and win their freedom by the
+sword. The national militarism of Prussia was the direct consequence of
+her humiliation at Jena and Auerstädt, and of the harsh terms imposed
+upon her at Tilsit. It is true that the Congress of Vienna attempted to
+revive the old dynastic system. But for the steady opposition of
+England, the clique of despots might have reimposed the old yoke upon
+their subjects. The settlement of 1815 also left the entire centre of
+Europe in a state of chaos; and it was only by slow degrees that Italy
+and Germany attained national unity. Poland, the Austrian Empire, and
+the Balkan States still remain in a condition to trouble the peace of
+the world. In Austria-Hungary the clash of the dynastic and the
+nationalist ideas is strident; and every citizen of that empire has to
+choose between a wider and a narrower allegiance.
+
+Europeans are, in fact, far from having made up their minds as to what
+is the organic whole towards which patriotic sentiment ought to be
+directed. Socialism agrees with despotism in saying, 'It is the
+political aggregate, the state,' however much they may differ as to how
+the state should be administered. For this reason militarism and
+state-socialism might at any time come to terms. They are at one in
+exaggerating the 'organic' unity of a political or geographical
+_enclave_; and they are at one in depreciating the value of individual
+liberty. Loyalty to 'the state' instead of to 'king and country' is not
+an easy or a natural emotion. The state is a bloodless abstraction,
+which as a rule only materialises as a drill-sergeant or a
+tax-collector. Enthusiasm for it, and not only for what can be got out
+of it, does not extend much beyond the Fabian Society. Cæsarism has the
+great advantage of a visible head, as well as of its appeal to very old
+and strong thought-habits; and accordingly, in any national crisis,
+loyalty to the War-lord is likely to show unexpected strength, and
+doctrinaire socialism unexpected weakness.
+
+But devotion to the head of the state in his representative capacity is
+a different thing from the old feudal loyalty. It is far more
+impersonal; the ruler, whether an individual or a council, is reverenced
+as a non-human and non-moral embodiment of the national power, a sort of
+Platonic idea of coercive authority. This kind of loyalty may very
+easily be carried too far. In reality, we are members of a great many
+'social organisms,' each of which has indefeasible claims upon us. Our
+family, our circle of acquaintance, our business or profession, our
+church, our country, the comity of civilised nations, humanity at large,
+are all social organisms; and some of the chief problems of ethics are
+concerned with the adjustment of their conflicting claims. To make any
+one of these absolute is destructive of morality. But militarism and
+socialism deliberately make the state absolute. In internal affairs this
+may lead to the ruthless oppression of individuals or whole classes; in
+external relations it produces wars waged with 'methods of barbarism.'
+The whole idea of the state as an organism, which has been emphasised by
+social reformers as a theoretical refutation of selfish individualism,
+rests on the abuse of a metaphor. The bond between the dwellers in the
+same political area is far less close than that between the organs of a
+living body. Every man has a life of his own, and some purely personal
+rights; he has, moreover, moral links with other human associations,
+outside his own country, and important moral duties towards them. No one
+who reflects on the solidarity of interests among capitalists, among
+hand-workers, or, in a different way, among scholars and artists, all
+over the world, can fail to see that the apotheosis of the state,
+whether in the interest of war or of revolution, is an anachronism and
+an absurdity.
+
+A very different basis for patriotic sentiment is furnished by the
+scientific or pseudo-scientific theories about race, which have become
+very popular in our time. When the history of ideas in the 20th century
+comes to be written, it is certain that among the causes of this great
+war will be named the belief of the Germans in the superiority of their
+own race, based on certain historical and ethnological theories which
+have acted like a heady wine in stimulating the spirit of aggression
+among them. The theory, stated briefly, is that the shores of the Baltic
+are the home of the finest human type that has yet existed, a type
+distinguished by blond hair, great physical strength, unequalled mental
+vigour and ability, superior morality, and an innate aptitude for
+governing and improving inferior races. Unfortunately for the world,
+this noble stock cannot flourish for very long in climates unlike its
+own; but from the earliest historical times it has 'swarmed'
+periodically, subjugating the feebler peoples of the south, and
+elevating them for a time above the level which they were naturally
+fitted to reach. Wherever we find marked energy and nobleness of
+character, we may suspect Aryan blood; and history will usually support
+our surmise. Among the great men who were certainly or probably Germans
+were Agamemnon, Julius Cæsar, the Founder of Christianity, Dante, and
+Shakespeare. The blond Nordic giant is fulfilling his mission by
+conquering and imposing his culture upon other races. They ought to be
+grateful to him for the service, especially as it has a sacrificial
+aspect, the lower types having, at least in their own climates, greater
+power of survival.
+
+This fantastic theory has been defended in a large number of German
+books, of which the 'Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,' by the
+renegade Englishman Houston Chamberlain, is the most widely known. The
+objections to it are numerous. It is notorious that until the invention
+of gunpowder the settled and civilised peoples of Europe were in
+frequent danger from bands of hardier mountaineers, forest-dwellers, or
+pastoral nomads, who generally came from the north. But the formidable
+fighting powers of these marauders were no proof of intrinsic
+superiority. In fact, the most successful of these conquerors, if
+success is measured by the amount of territory overrun and subdued, were
+not the 'great blond beasts' of Nietzsche, but yellow monsters with
+black hair, the Huns and Tartars.[9] The causes of Tartar ascendancy had
+not the remotest connection with any moral or intellectual qualities
+which we can be expected to admire. Nor can the Nordic race, well
+endowed by nature as it undoubtedly is, prove such a superiority as this
+theory claims for it. Some of the largest brains yet measured have been
+those of Japanese; and the Jews have probably a higher average of
+ability than the Teutons. Again, the Germans are not descended from a
+pure Nordic stock. The Northern type can be best studied in Scandinavia,
+where the people share with the Irish the distinction of being the
+handsomest race in the world. The German is a mixture of various
+anatomical types, including, in some parts, distinct traces of Mongolian
+blood, which indicate that the raiding Huns meddled, according to their
+custom, with the German women, and bequeathed to a section of the nation
+the Turanian cheek-bones, as well as certain moral characteristics.
+Lastly, the German race has never shown much aptitude for governing and
+assimilating other peoples. The French, by virtue of their greater
+sympathy, are far more successful.
+
+The French have their own form of this pseudo-science in their doctrine
+of the persistence of national characteristics. Each nation may be
+summed up in a formula: England, for example, is 'the country of will.'
+A few instances may, no doubt, be quoted in support of this theory.
+Julius Cæsar said: 'Duas res plerasque Gallia industriosissime
+prosequitur, rem militarem et argute loqui'; and these are still the
+characteristics of our gallant allies. And Madame de Staël may be
+thought to have hit off the German character very cleverly about the
+time when Bismarck first saw the light. 'The Germans are vigorously
+submissive. They employ philosophical reasonings to explain what is the
+least philosophic thing in the world, respect for force and the fear
+which transforms that respect into admiration.' But the fact remains
+that the characters of nations frequently change, or rather that what we
+call national character is usually only the policy of the governing
+class, forced upon it by circumstances, or the manner of living which
+climate, geographical position, and other external causes have made
+necessary for the inhabitants of a country.
+
+To found patriotism on homogeneity of race is no wiser than to bound it
+by frontier lines. As the Abbé Noël has lately written about his own
+country, Belgium,
+
+     the race is not the nation. The nation is not a
+     physiological fact; it is a moral fact. What constitutes a
+     nation is the community of sentiments and ideals which
+     results from a common history and education. The variations
+     of the cephalic index are here of no great importance. The
+     essential factor of the national consciousness resides in a
+     certain common mode of conceiving the conditions of the
+     social life.
+
+Belgium, the Abbé maintains, has found this national consciousness amid
+her sufferings; there are no longer any distinctions between
+French-speaking Belgians and Walloons or Flemings. This is in truth the
+real base of patriotism. It is the basis of our own love for our
+country. What Britain stands for is what Britain is. We have long known
+in our hearts what Britain stands for; but we have now been driven to
+search our thoughts and make our ideals explicit to ourselves and
+others. The Englishman has become a philosopher _malgré lui_, 'Whatever
+the world thinks,' writes Bishop Berkeley. 'he who hath not much
+meditated upon God, the human soul, and the _summum bonum_, may possibly
+make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry
+patriot and a sorry statesman.' These words, which were quoted by Mr.
+Arthur Balfour a few years ago, may seem to make a large demand on the
+average citizen; but in our quiet way we have all been meditating on
+these things since last August, and we know pretty well what our _summum
+bonum_ is for our country. We believe in chivalry and fair play and
+kindliness--these things first and foremost; and we believe, if not
+exactly in democracy, yet in a government under which a man may think
+and speak the thing he wills. We do not believe in war, and we do not
+believe in bullying. We do not flatter ourselves that we are the
+supermen; but we are convinced that the ideas which we stand for, and
+which we have on the whole tried to carry out, are essential to the
+peaceful progress and happiness of humanity; and for these ideas we have
+drawn the sword. The great words of Abraham Lincoln have been on the
+lips of many and in the hearts of all since the beginning of the great
+contest: 'With malice towards none; with charity for all: with firmness
+in the right as God gives us to see the right--let us strive on to
+finish the work we are in.'
+
+Patriotism thus spiritualised and moralised is the true patriotism.
+When the emotion is once set in its right relations to the whole of
+human life and to all that makes human life worth living, it cannot
+become an immoral obsession. It is certain to become an immoral
+obsession if it is isolated and made absolute. We have seen the
+appalling perversion--the methodical diabolism--which this obsession has
+produced in Germany. It has startled us because we thought that the
+civilised world had got beyond such insanity; but it is of course no new
+thing. Machiavelli said, 'I prefer my country to the salvation of my
+soul'--a sentiment which sounds noble but is not; it has only a
+superficial resemblance to St. Paul's willingness to be 'accursed' for
+the sake of his countrymen. Devil-worship remains what it was, even when
+the idol is draped in the national flag. This obsession may be in part a
+survival from savage conditions, when all was at stake in every feud;
+but chiefly it is an example of the idealising and universalising power
+of the imagination, which turns every unchecked passion into a
+monomania. The only remedy is, as Lowell's Hosea Biglow reminds us, to
+bear in mind that
+
+     our true country is that ideal realm which we represent to
+     ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like.
+     Our terrestrial organisations are but far-off approaches to
+     so fair a model; and all they are verily traitors who resist
+     not any attempt to divert them from this their original
+     intendment. Our true country is bounded on the north and the
+     south, on the east and west, by Justice, and when she
+     oversteps that invisible boundary-line by so much as a
+     hair's breadth, she ceases to be our mother, and chooses
+     rather to be looked upon _quasi noverca_.
+
+So Socrates said that the wise man will be a citizen of his true city,
+of which the type is laid up in heaven, and only conditionally of his
+earthly country.
+
+The obsession of patriotism is not the only evil which we have to
+consider. We may err by defect as well as by excess. Herbert Spencer
+speaks of an 'anti-patriotic bias'; and it can hardly be disputed that
+many Englishmen who pride themselves on their lofty morality are
+suffering from this mental twist. The malady seems to belong to the
+Anglo-Saxon constitution, for it is rarely encountered in other
+countries, while we had a noisy pro-Napoleonic faction a hundred years
+ago, and the Americans had their 'Copperheads' in the Northern States
+during the civil war. In our own day, every enemy of England, from the
+mad Mullah to the mad Kaiser, has had his advocates at home; and the
+champions of Boer and Boxer, of Afridi and Afrikander, of the Mahdi and
+the Matabele, have been usually the same persons. The English, it would
+appear, differ from other misguided rascals in never being right even by
+accident. But the idiosyncrasy of a few persons is far less important
+than the comparative insensibility of whole classes to the patriotic
+appeal, except when war is actually raging. This is not specially
+characteristic of our own country. The German Emperor has complained of
+his Social Democrats as 'people without a fatherland'; and the cry 'À
+bas la patrie' has been heard in France.
+
+It is usual to explain this attitude by the fact that the manual workers
+'have no stake in the country,' and might not find their condition
+altered for the worse by subjection to a foreign power. A few of our
+working-men have given colour to this charge by exclaiming petulantly
+that they could not be worse off under the Germans; but in this they
+have done themselves and their class less than justice. The
+anti-militarism and cosmopolitanism of the masses in every country is a
+profoundly interesting fact, a problem which demands no superficial
+investigation. It is one result of that emancipation from traditional
+ideas, which makes the most important difference between the upper and
+middle classes on the one side and the lower on the other. We lament
+that the working-man takes but little interest in Christianity, and rack
+our brains to discover what we have done to discredit our religion in
+his eyes. The truth is that Christianity, as a dogmatic and
+ecclesiastical system, is unintelligible without a very considerable
+knowledge of the conditions under which it took shape. But what are the
+ancient Hebrews, and the Greeks and Romans, to the working-man? He is
+simply cut off from the means of reading intelligently any book of the
+Bible, or of understanding how the institution called the Catholic
+Church, and its offshoots, came to exist. As our staple education
+becomes more 'modern' and less literary, the custodians of organised
+religion will find their difficulties increasing. But the same is true
+about patriotism. Love of country means pride in the past and ambition
+for the future. Those who live only in the present are incapable of it.
+But our working-man knows next to nothing about the past history of
+England; he has scarcely heard of our great men, and has read few of our
+great books. It is not surprising that the appeal to patriotism leaves
+him cold. This is an evil that has its proper remedy. There is no reason
+why a sane and elevated love of country should not be stimulated by
+appropriate teaching in our schools. In America this is done--rather
+hysterically; and in Germany--rather brutally. The Jews have always made
+their national history a large part of their education, and even of
+their religion. Nothing has helped them more to retain their
+self-consciousness as a nation. Ignorance of the past and indifference
+to the future usually go together. Those who most value our historical
+heritage will be most desirous to transmit it unimpaired.
+
+But the absence of traditional ideas is by no means an unmixed evil. The
+working-man sees more clearly than the majority of educated persons the
+absurdity of international hatred and jealousy. He is conscious of
+greater solidarity with his own class in other European countries than
+with the wealthier class in his own; and as he approaches the whole
+question without prejudice, he cannot fail to realise how large a part
+of the product of labour is diverted from useful purposes by modern
+militarism. International rivalry is in his eyes one of the most serious
+obstacles to the abolition of want and misery. Tolstoy hardly
+exaggerates when he says: 'Patriotism to the peoples represents only a
+frightful future; the fraternity of nations seems an ideal more and more
+accessible to humanity, and one which humanity desires.' Military glory
+has very little attraction for the working-man. His humanitarian
+instincts appear to be actually stronger than those of the sheltered
+classes. To take life in any circumstances seems to him a shocking
+thing; and the harsh procedure of martial law and military custom is
+abhorrent to him. He sees no advantage and no credit in territorial
+aggrandisement, which he suspects to be prompted mainly by the desire to
+make money unjustly. He is therefore a convinced pacificist; though his
+doctrine of human brotherhood breaks down ignominiously when he finds
+his economic position threatened by the competition of cheap foreign
+labour. If an armed struggle ever takes place between the nations of
+Europe (or their colonists) and the yellow races, it will be a
+working-man's war. But on the whole, the best hope of getting rid of
+militarism may lie in the growing power of the working class. The poor,
+being intensely gregarious and very susceptible to all collective
+emotions, are still liable to fits of warlike excitement. But their real
+minds are at present set against an aggressive foreign policy, without
+being shut against the appeals of a higher patriotism.
+
+And yet the irritation which is felt against preachers of the
+brotherhood of man is not without justification. Some persons who
+condemn patriotism are simply lacking in public spirit, or their loyalty
+is monopolised by some fad or 'cause,' which is a poor substitute for
+love of country. The man who has no prejudices in favour of his own
+family and his own country is generally an unamiable creature. So we
+need not condemn Molière for saying, 'L'ami du genre humain n'est pas du
+tout mon fait,' nor Brunetière for declaring that 'Ni la nature ni
+l'histoire n'ont en effet voulu que les hommes fussent tous frères.' But
+French Neo-catholicism, a bourgeois movement directed against all the
+'ideas of 1789,' seems to have adopted the most ferocious kind of
+chauvinism. M. Paul Bourget wrote the other day in the _Écho de Paris_,
+'This war must be the first of many, since we cannot exterminate
+sixty-five million Germans in a single campaign!' The women and children
+too! This is not the way to revive the religion of Christ in France.
+
+The practical question for the future is whether there is any prospect
+of returning, under more favourable auspices, to the unrealised ideal
+of the Middle Ages--an agreement among the nations of Europe to live
+amicably under one system of international law and right, binding upon
+all, and with the consciousness of an intellectual and spiritual unity
+deeper than political divisions. 'The nations are the citizens of
+humanity,' said Mazzini; and so they ought to be. Some of the omens are
+favourable. Militarism has dug its own grave. The great powers increased
+their armaments till the burden became insupportable, and have now
+rushed into bankruptcy in the hope of shaking it off. In prehistoric
+times the lords of creation were certain gigantic lizards, protected by
+massive armour-plates which could only be carried by a creature thirty
+to sixty feet long. Then they died, when neither earth, air, nor water
+could support them any longer. Such must be the end of the European
+nations, unless they learn wisdom. The lesson will be brought home to
+them by Transatlantic competition. The United States of America had
+already, before this war, an initial advantage over the disunited states
+of Europe, amounting to at least 10 per cent. on every contract; after
+the war this advantage will be doubled. It remains to be seen whether
+the next generation will honour the debts which we are piling up.
+Disraeli used to complain of what he called 'Dutch finance,' which
+consists in 'mortgaging the industry of the future to protect property
+in the present.' Pitt paid for the great war of a hundred years ago in
+this manner; after a century we are still groaning under the burden of
+his loans. We may hear more of the iniquity of 'Dutch finance' when the
+democracies of the next generation have a chance of repudiating
+obligations which, as they will say, they did not contract. However that
+may be, international rivalry is plainly very bad business; and there
+are great possibilities in the Hague Tribunal, if, and only if, the
+signatories to the conference bind themselves to use force against a
+recalcitrant member. The conduct of Germany in this war has shown that
+public opinion is powerless to restrain a nation which feels strong
+enough to defy it.
+
+Another cause which may give patriots leisure to turn their thoughts
+away from war's alarms is that the 'swarming' period of the European
+races is coming to an end. The unparalleled increase of population in
+the first three quarters of the 19th century has been followed by a
+progressive decrease in the birth-rate, which will begin to tell upon
+social conditions when the reduction in the death-rate, which has
+hitherto kept pace with it, shall have reached its natural limit. Europe
+with a stationary population will be in a much happier condition; and
+problems of social reform can then be tackled with some hope of success.
+Honourable emulation in the arts of life may then take the place of
+desperate competition and antagonism. Human lives will begin to have a
+positive value, and we may even think it fair to honour our saviours
+more than our destroyers. The effects of past follies will then soon be
+effaced; for nations recover much more quickly from wars than from
+internal disorders. External injuries are rapidly cured; but 'those
+wounds heal ill that men do give themselves.' The greatest obstacle to
+progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency
+to parasitism. The true patriot will keep his eye fixed on this, and
+will dread as the state's worst enemies those citizens who at the top
+and bottom of the social scale have no other ambition than to hang on
+and suck the life-blood of the nation. Great things may be hoped from
+the new science of eugenics, when it has passed out of its tentative and
+experimental stage.
+
+In the distant future we may reasonably hope that patriotism will be a
+sentiment like the loyalty which binds a man to his public school and
+university, an affection purged of all rancour and jealousy, a stimulus
+to all honourable conduct and noble effort, a part of the poetry of
+life. It is so already to many of us, and has been so to the noblest
+Englishmen since we have had a literature. If Henry V's speech at
+Agincourt is the splendid gasconade of a royal freebooter, there is no
+false ring in the scene where John of Gaunt takes leave of his banished
+son; nor in Sir Walter Scott's 'Breathes there a man with soul so dead,'
+etc. 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
+cunning.' We cannot quite manage to substitute London for Zion in
+singing psalms, though there are some in England--Eton, Winchester,
+Oxford, Cambridge--which do evoke these feelings. These emotions of
+loyalty and devotion are by no means to be checked or despised. They
+have an infinite potency for good. In spiritual things there is no
+conflict between intensity and expansion. The deepest sympathy is,
+potentially, also the widest. He who loves not his home and country
+which he has seen, how shall he love humanity in general which he has
+not seen? There are, after all, few emotions of which one has less
+reason to be ashamed than the little lump in the throat which the
+Englishman feels when he first catches sight of the white cliffs of
+Dover.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+     [8] In his _Introduction to Social Psychology_.
+
+     [9] The reasons of their irresistible strength have been
+     explained in a most brilliant manner by Dr. Peisker in the
+     first volume of the 'Cambridge Medieval History.'
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRTH-RATE
+
+(1917)
+
+
+The numbers of every species are determined, not by the procreative
+power of its members, which always greatly exceeds the capacity of the
+earth to support a progeny increasing in geometrical progression, but by
+two factors, the activity of its enemies and the available supply of
+food. Those species which survive owe their success in the struggle for
+existence mainly to one of two qualities, enormous fertility or parental
+care. The female cod spawns about 6,000,000 eggs at a time, of which at
+most one-third--perhaps much less--are afterwards fertilised. An
+infinitesimal proportion of these escapes being devoured by fish or
+fowl. An insect-eating bird is said to require for its support about
+250,000 insects a year, and the number of such birds must amount to
+thousands of millions. As a rule there is a kind of equilibrium between
+the forces of destruction and of reproduction. If a species is nearly
+exterminated by its enemies, those enemies lose their food-supply and
+perish themselves. In some sheltered spot the survivors of the victims
+remain and increase till they begin to send out colonies again. In some
+species, such as the mice in La Plata, and the beasts and birds which
+devour them, there is an alternation of increase and decrease, to be
+accounted for in this way. But permanent disturbances of equilibrium
+sometimes occur. The rabbit in Australia, having found a virgin soil,
+multiplied for some time almost up to the limit of its natural fertility
+and is firmly established on that continent. The brown rat (some say)
+has exterminated our black rat and the Maori rat in New Zealand. The
+microbe of the terrible disease which the crews of Columbus brought back
+to Europe, after causing a devastating epidemic at the end of the
+fifteenth century, established a kind of _modus vivendi_ with its hosts,
+and has remained as a permanent scourge in Europe. Other microbes, like
+those of cholera and plague, emigrate from the lands where they are
+endemic, like a horde of Tartars, and after slaying all who are
+susceptible disappear from inanition. The draining of the fens has
+driven the anopheles mosquito from England, and our countrymen no longer
+suffer from 'ague.' Cleanlier habits are banishing the louse and its
+accompaniment typhus fever.
+
+Fertility and care for offspring seem as a rule to vary inversely. The
+latter is the path of biological progress, and is characteristic of all
+viviparous animals. That any degree of parental attention is
+incompatible with the immense fecundity of the lower organisms needs no
+demonstration. Such fertility is not necessary to keep up the numbers of
+the higher species, which find abundant food in the swarming progeny of
+the lower types, and are not themselves exposed to wholesale slaughter.
+Speaking of fishes, Sutherland says:
+
+     Of species that exhibit no sort of parental care, the
+     average of forty-nine gives 1,040,000 eggs to a female each
+     year; while among those which make nests or any apology for
+     nests the number is only about 10,000. Among those which
+     have any protective tricks, such as carrying the eggs in
+     pouches or attached to the body, or in the mouth, the
+     average number is under 1000; while among those whose care
+     takes the form of uterine or quasi-uterine gestation which
+     brings the young into the world alive, an average of 56 eggs
+     is quite sufficient.
+
+Man is no exception to these laws. His evolution has been steadily in
+the direction of diminishing fertility and increasing parental care.
+This does not necessarily imply that the modern European loves his
+children better than the savage loves his. It is grim necessity, not
+want of affection, which determines the treatment of children by their
+parents over a great part of the world, and through the greater part of
+human history. The homeless hunters, who represent the lowest stage of
+savagery, are now almost extinct. In these tribes the woman has to
+follow the man carrying her baby. Under such conditions the chances of
+rearing a large family are small indeed. Very different is the life of
+the grassland nomads, who roam over the Arabian plateau and the steppes
+of Central Asia. These tribes, who really live as the parasites of their
+flocks and herds, depending on them entirely for subsistence, often
+multiply rapidly. Their typical unit is the great patriarchal family, in
+which the _sheikh_ may have scores of children by different mothers.
+These children soon begin to earn their keep, and are taken care of. If,
+however, the patriarch so chooses, Hagar with her child is cast adrift,
+to find her way back to her own people, if she can. The grasslands are
+usually almost as full as they can hold. A period of drought, or
+pressure by rivals, in former times sent a horde of these hardy
+shepherds on a raid into the nearest settled province; and if, like the
+Tartars, they were mounted, they usually killed, plundered, and
+conquered wherever they went, until the discovery of gunpowder saved
+civilisation from the recurrent peril of barbarian inroads. Barbarians
+of another type, hunters with fixed homes, seldom increase rapidly,
+partly because the dangers of forest-life for young children are much
+greater than on the steppe.
+
+In the primitive river-valley civilisations, such as Egypt and
+Babylonia, the conditions of increase were so favourable that a dense
+population soon began to press upon the means of subsistence. In Egypt
+the remedy was a centralised government which could undertake great
+irrigation works and intensive cultivation. In Babylonia, for the first
+time in history, foreign trade was made to support a larger population
+than the land itself could maintain. There was little or no infanticide
+in Babylonia, but the death-rate in these steaming alluvial plains has
+always been very high.
+
+When we turn to poor and mountainous countries like Greece, the
+conditions are very different. It was an old belief among the Hellenes
+that in the days before the Trojan War 'the world was too full of
+people.' The increase was doubtless made possible by the trade which
+developed in the Minoan period, but the sources of food-supply were
+liable to be interfered with. Hence came the necessity for active
+colonisation, which lasted from the eighth to the sixth century B.C.
+This period of expansion came to an end when all the available sites
+were occupied. In the sixth century the Greeks found themselves headed
+off, in the west by Phoenicians and Etruscans, in the east by the
+Persian Empire. The problem of over-population was again pressing upon
+them. Incessant civil wars between Hellenes kept the numbers down to
+some extent; but Greek battles were not as a rule very bloody, and every
+healthy nation has a surprising capacity of making good the losses
+caused by war. The first effect of the check to emigration was that the
+old ideal of the 'self-sufficient life,' which meant the practice of
+mixed farming, had to be partially abandoned. The most flourishing
+States, and especially Athens, had to take to manufactures, which they
+exchanged for the food-products of the Balkan States and South Russia.
+The result was an increasing urbanisation, and a new population of free
+'resident aliens.' Conservatives hated this change and wished to revive
+the old ideal of a small self-supporting State, with a maximum of 20,000
+or 30,000 citizens. Plato, in his latest work, the 'Laws,' wishes his
+model city to be not too near the sea, the proximity of which 'fills the
+streets with merchants and shopkeepers, and begets dishonesty in the
+souls of men.' On the other side Isocrates, the most far-seeing of
+Athenian politicians, realised that the day of small city-states was
+over, and that the limited, 'self-sufficient' community would not long
+maintain its independence. He urged his countrymen to pursue a policy of
+peaceful penetration in Western Asia, as the Greeks were soon to do
+under the successors of Alexander. But the prejudice against
+industrialism was very strong. Greece in the fifth century remained a
+poor country; her exports were not more than enough to pay for the food
+of her existing population; and that population had to be artificially
+restricted. The Greeks were an exceptionally healthy and long-lived
+race; their great men for the most part lived to ages which have no
+parallel until the nineteenth century. The infant death-rate from
+natural causes may have been rather high, as it is in modern Greece, but
+it was augmented by systematic infanticide. The Greek father had an
+absolute right to decide whether a new-comer was to be admitted to the
+family. In Ephesus alone of Greek cities a parent was compelled to prove
+that he was too poor to rear a child before he was allowed to get rid of
+it.[10] Even Hesiod, centuries earlier, advises a father not to bring up
+more than one son, and daughters were sacrificed more frequently than
+sons. The usual practice was to expose the infant in a jar; anyone who
+thought it worth while might rescue the baby and bring it up as a slave.
+But this was not often done. At Gela, in Sicily, there are 233 'potted'
+burials in an excavated graveyard, out of a total of 570.[11] The
+proportion of female infants exposed must have been very large. The
+evidence of literature is supported by such letters as this from a
+husband at Oxyrhynchus: 'When--good luck to you--your child is born, if
+it is a male, let it live; if a female, expose it.'[12] Besides
+infanticide, abortion was freely practised, and without blame.[13] The
+Greek citizen married rather late; but as his bride was usually in her
+'teens this would not affect the birth-rate. Nor need we attach much
+importance, as a factor in checking population, to the characteristic
+Greek vice, nor to prostitution, which throughout antiquity was
+incredibly cheap and visited by no physical penalty. As for slaves,
+Xenophon recommends that they should be allowed to have children as a
+reward for good conduct.[14]
+
+A rapid decline in population set in under the successors of Alexander.
+Polybius ascribes it to selfishness and a high standard of comfort,
+which is doubtless true of the upper and middle classes;[15] but the
+depopulation of rural Greece can hardly be so accounted for. Perhaps
+the forests were cut down, and the rainfall diminished. It was the
+general impression that the soil was far less productive than formerly.
+The decay of the Hellenic race was accelerated after the Roman conquest,
+until the old stock became almost extinct. This disappearance of the
+most gifted race that ever inhabited our planet is one of the strangest
+catastrophes of history, and is full of warnings for the modern
+sociologist. Industrial slavery, indifference to parenthood, and
+addiction to club-life were certainly three of the main causes, unless
+we prefer to regard the two last as symptoms of hopelessness about the
+future.
+
+The same disease fell upon Italy, and was coincident not with the
+murderous war against Hannibal and the subsequent campaigns, costly
+though they were, in Spain, Syria, and Macedonia, but with the
+Hellenisation of social life. Lucan, under Nero, complains that the
+towns have lost more than half their inhabitants, and that the
+country-side lies waste. Under Titus it was estimated that, whereas
+Italy under the Republic could raise nearly 800,000 soldiers, that
+number was now reduced by one-half. Marcus Aurelius planted a large
+tribe of Marcomanni on unoccupied land in Italy. In the fourth century
+Bologna, Modena, Piacenza, and many other towns in North Italy were in
+ruins. The land of the Volscians and Aequians, once densely populated,
+was a desert even in Livy's time. Samnium remained the wilderness that
+Sulla had left it; and Apulia was a lonely sheep-walk.
+
+The causes of this depopulation have been often discussed, both in
+antiquity and in our own day. Slavery, infanticide, celibacy, wars and
+massacres, large estates, and pestilence have all been named as causes;
+but I am inclined to think that all these influences together are
+insufficient to account for so rapid a decline. The toll of war was
+lighter by far than in periods when the population was rising;
+infectious disease (unless we suppose, as some have suggested, that
+malaria became for the first time endemic under the Roman domination)
+invaded the empire in occasional and destructive epidemics, but a
+healthy population recovers from pestilence, as from war, with great
+rapidity. The large grazing ranches displaced farms because corn-growing
+in Italy was unprofitable, but there was a large supply of grain from
+Sicily, Africa, and other districts. Slavery undoubtedly accounts for a
+great deal. This institution is excessively wasteful of human life; it
+is never possible to keep up the numbers of slaves without slave-hunting
+in the countries from which they come. And we must remember that ancient
+civilisation was almost entirely urban. The barbarians found ample waste
+lands between the towns, which they did not as a rule care to visit,
+probably because those who did so soon fell victims to microbic
+diseases. The sanitary condition of ancient cities was better than in
+the Middle Ages; but the death-rate was probably too high to permit of
+any increase in the population. But after admitting that all these
+causes were operative, it may be that we shall be obliged to acknowledge
+also a psychological factor. If a nation has no hopes for the future, if
+it is even doubtful whether life is worth living, if it is disposed to
+withdraw from the struggle for existence and to meet the problems of
+life in a temper of passive resignation, it will not regard children as
+a heritage and gift that cometh from the Lord, but rather as an
+encumbrance. That such was the temper of the later Roman Empire may be
+gathered not only from the literature, which is singularly devoid of
+hopefulness and enterprise, but from the rapid spread of monasticism and
+eremitism in this period. The prevalence of this world-weariness of
+course needs explanation, and the cause is rather obscure. It does not
+seem to be connected with unfavourable external conditions, but rather
+with a racial exhaustion akin to senile decay in the individual. But
+there is no real analogy between the life of an individual and that of a
+nation, and it would be very rash to insist on the hypothesis of racial
+decay, which perhaps has no biological basis.
+
+The influence of Christianity on population is very difficult to
+estimate. Nothing is more unscientific than to collect the ethical
+precepts and practices of nations which profess the Christian religion,
+and to label them as 'the results of Christianity.' The historian of
+religion would indeed be faced by a strange task if he were compelled to
+trace the moral ideals of Simeon Stylites and of Howard the
+philanthropist, of Francis of Assisi and Oliver Cromwell, of Thomas
+Aquinas and Thomas à Becket, to a common source. The only ethical and
+social principles which can properly be called Christian are those which
+can be proved to have their root in the teaching and example of the
+Founder of Christianity. But the Gospel of Christ was a product of
+Jewish soil. It is historically connected with the Jewish prophetic
+tradition, which it carried to its fullest development and presented in
+an universalised and spiritualised form. Its social teaching consists
+chiefly of general principles which have to be applied to conditions
+unlike those contemplated by its first disciples, who were under the
+influence of the apocalyptic expectations prevalent at the time. Jewish
+morality was in its origin the morality of a tribe of nomad Bedouins;
+and we have seen that infant life is held sacred by these peoples.
+Marriage is regarded as a duty, and childlessness as a misfortune or a
+disgrace. The forward look, characteristic of the Hebrews from the
+first, made every Jew desirous to leave descendants who might witness
+happier times, and one of whom might even be the promised Deliverer of
+his people. No Hebrew of either sex was allowed to be a servant of vice;
+abnormal practices, though screened by Canaanite religion, were far less
+common than in Greece or Italy. To this wholesome morality Christianity
+added the doctrines of the value, in the sight of God, of every human
+life, and of the sanctity of the body as the 'temple of God.' To the
+Pagans, the continence of the Christians was, next to their affection
+for each other, their most remarkable characteristic. From the first,
+the new religion set itself firmly against infanticide and abortion, and
+won one of its most signal moral triumphs in driving underground and
+greatly diminishing homosexual vice. Its encouragement of celibacy,
+especially for those who followed the 'religious' vocation, was an
+offset to its healthy influence on family life, and ultimately, as
+Galton has shown, worked great mischief by sterilising for centuries
+many of the gentlest and noblest in each generation; but this tendency
+was adventitious to Christianity, and would never have taken root on
+Palestinian soil. The cult of virginity has lasted on, with much else
+that belongs to the later Hellenistic age, in Catholicism.
+
+In the Middle Ages the population question slumbered. The miserable
+chaos into which the old civilisation sank after the barbarian
+invasions, the orgies of massacre and plunder, the almost total oblivion
+of medical science, and the pestiferous condition of the medieval walled
+town, which could be smelt miles away, averted any risk of
+over-population. Families were very large, but the majority of the
+children died. Millions were swept away by the Black Death; millions
+more by the Crusades. Such books as that of Luchaire, on France in the
+reign of Philip Augustus, bring vividly before us the horrible condition
+of society in feudal times, and explain amply the sparsity of the
+population.
+
+The early modern period contains another notable example of a sudden and
+unaccountable decline in population. The scene is Spain, which, after
+playing an active and very prominent part in the world's history, sank
+quickly into the lethargy from which it has never recovered. It may be
+noted that here, as in the case of Rome, the decay of population and
+energy followed a great influx of plundered wealth. On the other hand,
+the increase of population in our newly-planted North American colonies
+must have been extremely rapid for two or three generations.
+
+The enormous multiplication of the European races since the middle of
+the eighteenth century is a phenomenon quite unique in history, and
+never likely to be repeated.[16] It was rendered possible by the new
+labour-saving inventions which immensely increased the exports which
+could be exchanged for food, and by the opening up of vast new
+food-producing areas. The chief method by which the increase was
+effected, especially in the later period, has been the lengthening of
+human life by improved sanitation and medical science.[17] Since 1865
+the average duration of life in England and Wales has been raised by a
+little more than one-third. Other European countries show the same ratio
+of improvement. This astonishing result, so little known and so seldom
+referred to, was bound to have a great effect on the birth-rate. So long
+as the swarming period continued at its height, a net annual increase of
+15 or even 20 per thousand could be sustained; but the expansion of the
+European peoples has now passed its zenith, and a tendency to revert to
+more normal conditions is almost everywhere observable. One of the most
+advanced nations, France, has already reached the equilibrium towards
+which other civilised nations are moving. The old-established families
+in the United States are believed to be actually dwindling.
+
+The student of international vital statistics will be struck first by
+the very wide differences in the birth-rate of different countries. He
+will then notice that the more backward countries have on the whole a
+considerably higher birth-rate than the more advanced. Thirdly, he will
+observe the parallelism between the birth-rate and death-rate, which
+makes the net increase in countries with a high birth-rate very little
+larger than that of countries with a low birth-rate. The following
+figures will illustrate these points; they are taken from the
+Registrar-General's Blue Book for 1912.
+
+
+                      Birth-rate Death-rate Net rate of
+                                              increase
+United Kingdom           23.9       13.8         10.1
+Australia                28.7       11.2         17.5
+Austria                  31.3       20.5         10.8
+Belgium                  22.9       16.4          6.5
+France                   19.0       17.5          1.5
+Germany                  28.6       17.3         11.3
+Italy                    32.4       18.2         14.2
+New Zealand              26.5        8.9         17.6
+Norway                   25.4       13.4         12.0
+Roumania                 43.4       22.9         20.5
+Russia                   44.0       28.9         15.1
+
+It will be seen that Australia and New Zealand, with low birth-rates and
+the lowest death-rates in the world increase more rapidly than Russia
+with an enormous birth-rate and proportionately high death-rate. No one
+can doubt that our colonies achieve their increase with far less
+friction and misery than the prolific but short-lived Slavs.
+Civilisation in a high form is incompatible with such conditions as
+these figures disclose in Russia. The figures for Egypt and India are
+similar to the Russian, but in India, which is overfull, the mortality
+is greater than even in Russia, and the same is true of China, in which
+we are told that seven out of ten children die in infancy. It has been
+suggested that the fairest measure of a country's well-being, as regards
+its actual vitality, is the square of the death-rate divided by the
+birth-rate.
+
+It is well known that a decline in the birth-rate set in about forty
+years ago in this country, and has gone on steadily ever since, till the
+fall now amounts to about one-third of the total births. It thus
+corresponds very nearly to the fall in the death-rate during the same
+period. It is also well known that this decline is not evenly
+distributed among different classes of the people. Until the decline
+began, large families were the rule in all classes, and the slightly
+larger families of the poor were compensated by their somewhat higher
+mortality. But since 1877 large families have become increasingly rare
+in the upper and middle classes, and among the skilled artisans. They
+are frequent in the thriftless ranks of unskilled labour, and in one
+section of well-paid workmen--the miners. The highest birth-rates at
+present are in the mining districts and in the slums. The lowest are in
+some of the learned professions. In the Rhondda Valley the birth-rate is
+still about forty, which is double the rate in the prosperous
+residential suburbs of London. In the seats of the textile industry the
+decline has been very severe, although wages are fairly good; among the
+agricultural labourers the rate is also low. It will be found that in
+all trades where the women work for wages the birth-rate has fallen
+sharply; the miner's wife does not earn money, and has therefore less
+inducement to restrict her family. In agricultural districts the housing
+difficulty is mainly responsible; in the upper and middle classes the
+heavy expense of education and the burden of rates and taxes are
+probably the main reasons why larger families are not desired. We may
+add that in almost all the professions old men are overpaid and young
+men under-paid. Mr. and Mrs. Whetham[18] have found that, before 1870,
+143 marriages of men whose names appear in 'Who's Who' resulted in 743
+children, an average of 5.2 each; after 1870 the average is only 3.08.
+Celibacy also is commoner among the educated. 'From the reports issued
+by two Women's Colleges, it appears that, excluding those who have left
+college within three years or less, out of 3000 women only 22 per cent.
+have married, and the number of children born to each marriage is
+undoubtedly very small.' The writers consider that this state of things
+is extremely dangerous for the country, inasmuch as we are now breeding
+mainly from our worst stocks (the feeble-minded are very prolific),
+while our best families are stationary or dwindling. Without denying the
+general truth of this pessimistic conclusion,[19] it may be pointed out
+that the miners are, physically at least, above the average of the whole
+population, and that the very low birth-rate of residential districts is
+partly due to the presence in large numbers of unmarried domestic
+servants. The death-rate of the slums is also very high.
+
+The fears of the eugenist about the quality of the population are far
+more reasonable than the invectives of the fanatic about its defective
+quantity. Of the latter class we may say with Havelock Ellis that 'those
+who seek to restore the birth-rate of half a century ago are engaged in
+a task which would be criminal if it were not based on ignorance, and
+which is in any case fatuous.' And yet I hope to show before the close
+of this article that for two or three generations the British Empire
+could absorb a considerable increase, and that the Government might with
+advantage stimulate this by schemes of colonisation. The lament of the
+eugenist resounds in all countries alike. The German complains that the
+Poles, whom he considers an inferior race, breed like rabbits, while the
+gifted exponents of _Kultur_ only breed like hares. The American is
+nervous about the numbers of the negro; he has more reason to be nervous
+about the fecundity of the Slav and South Italian immigrant. Everywhere
+the tendency is for the superior stock to dwindle till it becomes a
+small aristocracy. The Americans of British descent are threatened with
+this fate. Pride and a high standard of living are not biological
+virtues. The man who needs and spends little is the ultimate inheritor
+of the earth. I know of no instance in history in which a ruling race
+has not ultimately been ousted or absorbed by its subjects. Complete
+extermination or expropriation is the only successful method of
+conquest. The Anglo-Saxon race has thus established itself in the
+greater part of Britain, and in Australasia. In North America it has
+destroyed the Indian hunter, who could not be used for industrial
+purposes; but the temptation to exploit the negro and the cheaper
+European races was too strong to be resisted, and Nature's heaviest
+penalty is now being exacted against the descendants of our sturdy
+colonists. We did not lose America in the eighteenth century; we are
+losing it now. As for South Africa, the Kaffir can live like a gentleman
+(according to his own ideas) on six months' ill-paid work every year;
+the Englishman finds an income of £200 too small. There is only one end
+to this kind of colonisation. The danger at home is that the larger part
+of the population is now beginning to insist upon a scale of
+remuneration and a standard of comfort which are incompatible with any
+survival-value. We all wish to be privileged aristocrats, with no serfs
+to work for us. Dame Nature cares nothing for the babble of politicians
+and trade-union regulations. She says to us what Plotinus, in a
+remarkable passage, makes her say: 'You should not ask questions; you
+should try to understand. _I am not in the habit of talking._' In
+Nature's school it is a word and a blow, and the blow first. Before the
+close of this article I will return to the eugenic problem, and will
+consider whether anything can be done to solve it.
+
+At the present time, when an apparently internecine conflict is raging
+between the British Empire and Germany, a more detailed comparison of
+the vital statistics of the two countries will be read with interest. In
+England and Wales the birth-rate culminated in 1876 at a little over 36,
+after slowly rising from 33 in 1850. From 1876 the line of decline is
+almost straight, down to the ante-war figure of about 24. In Prussia,
+owing partly to wars, the fluctuations have been violent. In 1850 the
+figure (omitting decimals) was 39; in 1855, 34; in 1859, 40; in 1871,
+34; in 1875, nearly 41. From this date, as in England, the steady
+decline began. In 1907 the rate had fallen to 33; in 1913 (German
+Empire) to 27.5. Here we may notice the abnormally high rate in the
+years following the great war of 1870, a phenomenon which was marked
+also throughout Europe after the Napoleonic wars. We may also notice
+that the decline has been of late slightly more rapid in Germany,
+falling from a high birth-rate, than in England, where the maximum was
+never so high. Another fact which comes out when the German figures are
+more carefully examined is that urbanisation in Germany has a
+sterilising effect which is not operative in England. Prinzing gives the
+comparative figures of _legitimate_ fertility for Prussia as follows:
+
+                               1879-1882  1894-1897
+
+Berlin                            23.8      16.9[20]
+Other great towns                 26.7      23.5
+Towns of 20,000 to 100,000        26.8      25.7
+Small towns                       27.8      25.9
+Country districts                 28.8      29.0
+
+Now urbanisation is going on even more rapidly in Germany than in
+England. The death-rate in England and Wales rose from 21 in 1850 to
+23.5 in 1854; after sharp fluctuations it reached 23.7 in 1864; since
+then it has declined to its present figure (in normal times) of 14. In
+Prussia after the war of 1870 and the small-pox epidemic of 1871, there
+has been a steady fall from 26 to 17.3 (German Empire in 1911). The net
+increase is only slightly larger (in proportion to the population) in
+Germany than in England; and the increase in our great colonies,
+especially in Australasia, is much higher than in Germany. There is
+therefore no reason to suppose that a rapid alteration is going on to
+our disadvantage.
+
+It is widely believed that the Roman Catholic Church, by sternly
+forbidding the artificial limitation of families, is increasing its
+numbers at the expense of the non-Catholic populations. To some extent
+this is true. The Prussian figures for 1895-1900 give the number of
+children per marriage as:
+
+Both parents Catholic            5
+Both parents Protestant          4
+Both parents Jews                3.7
+
+An examination of the entries in 'Who's Who' gives about the same
+proportion for well-to-do families in England. The Catholic birth-rate
+of the Irish is nearly 40.[21] The French-Canadians are among the most
+prolific races in the world. On the other hand, their infant mortality
+is very high, and it is said that French-Canadian parents take these
+losses philosophically. It is quite a different question whether it is
+ultimately to the advantage of a nation which desires to increase its
+numbers to profess the Roman Catholic religion. The high birth-rates are
+all in unprogressive Catholic populations. When a Catholic people begins
+to be educated, the priests apparently lose their influence upon the
+habits of the laity, and a rapid decline in the births at once sets in.
+The most advanced countries which did not accept the Reformation, France
+and Belgium, are precisely those in which parental prudence has been
+carried almost to excess. We must also remember that the Dutch Boers,
+who are Protestants, but who live under simple conditions not unlike
+those of the French-Canadians, are equally prolific, as were our own
+colonists in the United States before that country was industrialised.
+The advantages in numbers gained by Roman Catholicism are likely to be
+confined to half-empty countries, where there is really room for more
+citizens, and where social ambition and the love of comfort are the
+chief motives for restricting the family.
+
+The population of a settled country cannot be increased at will; it
+depends on the supply of food. The choice is between a high birth-rate
+combined with a high death-rate, and a low birth-rate with a low
+death-rate. The great saving of life which has been effected during the
+last fifty years carries with it the necessity of restricting the
+births. The next question to be considered is how this restriction is to
+be brought about. The oldest methods are deliberate neglect and
+infanticide. In China, where authorities differ as to the extent to
+which female infants are exposed, the practice certainly prevails of
+feeding infants whom their mothers are unable to suckle on rice and
+water, which soon terminates their existence. Such methods would happily
+find no advocates in Europe. The very ancient art of procuring
+miscarriage is a criminal act in most civilised countries, but it is
+practised to an appalling extent. Hirsch, who quotes his authorities,
+estimates that 2,000,000 births are so prevented annually in the United
+States, 400,000 in Germany, 50,000 in Paris, and 19,000 in Lyons. In our
+own country it is exceedingly common in the northern towns, and attempts
+are now being made to prohibit the sale of certain preparations of lead
+which are used for this purpose. Alike on grounds of public health and
+of morality, it is most desirable that this mischievous practice should
+be checked. Its great prevalence in the United States is to be
+attributed mainly to the drastic legislation in that country against the
+sale and use of preventives, to which many persons take objection on
+moral or æsthetic grounds, but which is surely on an entirely different
+level from the destruction of life that has already begun. The
+'Comstock' legislation in America has done unmixed harm. It is worse
+than useless to try to put down by law a practice which a very large
+number of people believes to be innocent, and which must be left to the
+taste and conscience of the individual. To the present writer it seems a
+_pis aller_ which high-minded married persons should avoid if they can
+practise self-restraint. Whatever injures the feeling of
+'sanctification and honour' with which St. Paul bids us to regard these
+intimacies of life, whatever tends to profane or degrade the sacraments
+of wedded love, is so far an evil. But this is emphatically a matter in
+which every man and woman must judge for themselves, and must refrain
+from judging others.
+
+In every modern civilised country population is restricted partly by the
+deliberate postponement of marriage. In many cases this does no harm
+whatever; but in many others it gravely diminishes the happiness of
+young people, and may even cause minor disturbances of health. Moreover,
+it would not be so widely adopted but for the tolerance, on the part of
+society, of the 'great social evil,' the opprobrium of our civilisation.
+In spite of the failure hitherto of priests, moralists, and legislators
+to root it out, and in spite of the acceptance of it as inevitable by
+the majority of Continental opinion, I believe that this abomination
+will not long be tolerated by the conscience of the free and progressive
+nations. It is notorious that the whole body of women deeply resents the
+wrong and contumely done by it to their sex, and that, if democracy is
+to be a reality, the immolation of a considerable section of women drawn
+from the poorer classes cannot be suffered to continue. It is also plain
+to all who have examined the subject that the campaign against certain
+diseases, the malignity and wide diffusion of which are being more fully
+realised every year, cannot be successful through medical methods alone.
+If the institution in question were abolished, medical science would
+soon reduce these scourges to manageable limits, and might at last
+exterminate them altogether; but while it continues there is no hope of
+doing this. I believe then that the time will come when the trade in
+vice will cease; and if I am right, early marriages will become the rule
+in all classes. This will render the population question more acute,
+especially as the diseases which we hope to extirpate are the commonest
+cause both of sterility and of infant mortality. Under this pressure, we
+must expect to see preventive methods widely accepted as the least of
+unavoidable evils.
+
+When we reflect on the whole problem in its widest aspects, we see that
+civilised humanity is confronted by a Choice of Hercules. On the one
+side, biological law seems to urge us forward to the struggle for
+existence and expansion. The nation in that case will have to be
+organised on the lines of greatest efficiency. A strong centralised
+government will occupy itself largely in preventing waste. All the
+resources of the nation must be used to the uttermost. Parks must be cut
+up into allotments; the unproductive labours of the scholar and thinker
+must be jealously controlled and limited. Inefficient citizens must be
+weeded out; wages must be low and hours of work long. Moreover, the
+State must be organised for war; for its neighbours, we must suppose,
+are following the same policy. Then the fierce extra-group competition
+must come to its logical arbitrament in a life and death struggle. And
+war between two over-peopled countries, for both of which more
+elbow-room is a vital necessity, must be a war of complete expropriation
+or extermination. It must be so, for no other kind of war can achieve
+its object. The horrors of the present conflict will be as nothing
+compared with a struggle between two highly-organised State socialisms,
+each of which knows that it must either colonise the territory of the
+other or starve. It is idle to pretend that such a necessity will never
+arise. Another century of increase in Europe like that of the nineteenth
+century would bring it very near. If this policy is adopted, we shall
+see all the principal States organising themselves with a perfection far
+greater than that of Germany to-day, but taking German methods as their
+model; and the end will be the extermination of the smaller or looser
+organisations. Such a prospect may well fill us with horror; and it is
+terrible to find some of the ablest thinkers of Germany, such as Ernst
+Troeltsch, writing calm elegies over 'the death of Liberalism' and
+predicting the advent of an era of cut-throat international competition.
+Juvenal speaks of the folly of _propter vitam vivendi perdere causas_;
+and who would care to live in such a world? But does Nature care whether
+we enjoy our lives or not?
+
+The other choice is that which France has made for herself; it is on the
+lines of Plato's ideal State. Each country is to be, as far as
+possible, self-sufficing. If it cannot grow sufficient food for itself,
+it must of course export its coal or its gold, or the products of its
+industry and ingenuity. But it must know approximately what 'the number
+of the State' (as Plato said) should be. It must limit its population to
+that number, and the limit will be fixed, not at the maximum number who
+can live there anyhow, but at the maximum number who can 'live well.'
+The object aimed at will not be constant expansion, but well-being. The
+energies liberated from the pitiless struggle for existence will be
+devoted to making social life wiser, happier, more harmonious and more
+beautiful. Have we any reason to hope that this policy is not contrary
+to the hard laws which Nature imposes on every species in the world?
+
+In the first place, would such a State escape being devoured by some
+brutal 'expanding' neighbour? What would have happened to France if she
+had stood alone in this war? The danger is real; but we may answer that
+France, as a matter of fact, did not stand alone, because other nations
+thought her too precious to be sacrificed. And the completely organised
+competitive State which I have imagined would be a far more unlovely
+place than Germany, and more unpleasant to live in. The spectacle of a
+saner and happier polity next door would break up the purely competitive
+State from within; the strain would be too great for human nature. We
+cannot argue confidently from the struggle for existence among the lower
+animals to our own species. For a long time past, human evolution has
+been directed, not to living anyhow, but to living in a certain way. We
+are guided by ideals for the future, by purposes winch we clearly set
+before ourselves, in a way which is impossible to the brutes. These
+purposes are common to the large majority of men. No State can long
+maintain a rigid and oppressive organisation, except under the threat of
+danger; and a nation which aims only at perfecting its own culture is
+not dangerous to its neighbours. It is probable that without the
+supposed menace of another military Power on its eastern flank German
+militarism would have begun to crumble.
+
+In the second place, would the absence of sharp competition within the
+group lead to racial degeneration? This is a difficult question to
+answer. Perhaps a diminution of pugnacity and of the means to gratify
+this instinct would not be a misfortune. But it is certainly true that,
+if the operation of natural selection is suspended, rational selection
+must take its place. Failing this, reversion to a lower type is
+inevitable. The infant science of eugenics will have much to say on this
+subject hereafter; at present we are only discovering how complex and
+obscure the laws of heredity are. The State of the future will have to
+step in to prevent the propagation of undesirable variations, whether
+physical or mental, and will doubtless find means to encourage the
+increase of families that are well endowed by Nature.
+
+Assuming that a nation as a whole prefers a policy of this kind, and
+aims at such an equilibrium of births and deaths as will set free the
+energies of the people for the higher objects of civilised life, how
+will it escape the cacogenic effects of family restriction in the better
+classes combined with reckless multiplication among the refuse which
+always exists in a large community? This is a problem which has not yet
+been solved. Public opinion is not ready for legislation against the
+multiplication of the unfit, and it is not easy to see what form such
+legislation could take. Many of the very poor are not undesirable
+parents; we must not confound economic prosperity with biological
+fitness. The 'submerged tenth' should be raised, where it is possible,
+into a condition of self-respect and responsibility; but they must not
+be allowed to be a burden upon the efficient; and the upper and middle
+classes should simplify their habits so far as to make marriage and
+parenthood possible for the young professional man. Special care should
+be taken that taxation is so adjusted as not to penalise parenthood in
+the socially valuable middle class.
+
+For some time to come we are likely to see, in all the leading nations,
+a restricted birth-rate, prompted by desire for social betterment,
+combined, however, with concessions to the rival policy of commercial
+expansion, growing numbers, and military preparation. The nations will
+not cease to fear and suspect each other in the twentieth century, and
+any one nation which chooses to be a nuisance to Europe will keep back
+the progress and happiness of the rest. The prospect is not very bright;
+a too generous confidence might betray some nation into irretrievable
+disaster. But the bracing influence of national danger may perhaps be
+beneficial. For we have to remember the pitiable decay of the ancient
+classical civilisation, which was partly due, as we have found, to a
+desire for comfortable and easy living. There have been signs that many
+of our countrymen no longer think the strenuous life worth while; part
+of our resentment against Germany resembles the annoyance of an
+old-fashioned firm, disturbed in its comfortable security by the
+competition of a young and more vigorous rival. It is even suggested
+that after the war we should protect ourselves against German
+competition by tariff walls. This abandonment of the free trade policy
+on which our prosperity is built would soon bring our over-populated
+island to ruin.
+
+In conclusion, if we leave the distant future to fend for itself when
+the time comes, what should be our policy with regard to population for
+the next fifty years? I am led to an opinion which may seem to run
+counter to the general purport of this article. For though the British
+Isles are even dangerously full, so that we are liable to be starved out
+if we lose the command of the sea, the British Empire is very far from
+being over-populated. In Canada and Australasia there is probably room
+for nearly 200,000,000 people. These countries are remarkably healthy
+for Northern Europeans; there is no reason why they should not be as
+rich and powerful as the United States are now. We hope that we have
+saved the Empire from German cupidity--for the time; but we cannot tell
+how long we may be undisturbed. It would be criminal folly not to make
+the most of the respite granted us, by peopling our Dominions with our
+own stock, while yet there is time. This, however, cannot be done by
+casual and undirected emigration of the old kind. We need an Imperial
+Board of Emigration, the officials of which will work in co-operation
+with the Governments of our Dominions. These Governments, it may be
+presumed, will be anxious, after the war, to strengthen the colonies by
+increasing their population and developing their resources. They, like
+ourselves, have had a severe fright, and know that prompt action is
+necessary. Systematic plans of colonisation should be worked out, and
+emigrants drafted off to the Dominions as work can be found for them.
+Young women should be sent out in sufficient numbers to keep the sexes
+equal. We know now that our young people who emigrate are by no means
+lost to the Empire. The Dominions have shown that in time of need they
+are able and willing to defend the mother country with their full
+strength. Indeed, a young couple who emigrate are likely to be of more
+value to the Empire than if they had stayed at home; and their chances
+of happiness are much increased if they find a home in a part of the
+world where more human beings are wanted. But without official advice
+and help emigration is difficult. Parents do not know where to send
+their sons, nor what training to give them. Mistakes are made, money is
+wasted, and bitter disappointment caused. All this may be obviated if
+the Government will take the matter up seriously. The real issue of this
+war is whether our great colonies are to continue British; and the
+question will be decided not only on the field of battle, but by the
+action of our Government and people after peace is declared. The next
+fifty years will decide for all time whether those magnificent and still
+empty countries are to be the home of great nations speaking our
+language, carrying on our institutions, and valuing our traditions. When
+the future of our Dominions is secure, the part of England as a
+World-Power will have been played to a successful issue, and we may be
+content with a position more consonant with the small area of these
+islands.
+
+I believe, then, that if facilities for migration are given by
+Government action, it will be not only possible but desirable for the
+increase in the population of the Empire, taken as a whole, to be
+maintained during the twentieth century. It is, of course, possible that
+chemical discoveries and other scientific improvements may greatly
+increase the yield of food from the soil, and that in this way the final
+limit to the population of the earth may be further off than now seems
+probable. But within a few centuries, at most, this limit must be
+reached; and after that we may hope that the world will agree to
+maintain an equilibrium between births and deaths, that being the most
+stable and the happiest condition in which human beings can live
+together.[22]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+     [10] Myres, _Eugenics Review_, April, 1915.
+
+     [11] Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, _Kultur der Gegenwart_, 2, 4, 1.
+
+     [12] Cimon, Pericles, and Socrates all had three sons, and
+     apparently no daughters.--Zimmern, _The Greek Commonwealth_,
+     p. 331.
+
+     [13] _Cf. (e.g.)_ Plato, _Theaetetus_, 149.
+
+     [14] We may suppose that the disproportion of the sexes,
+     caused by female infanticide, was about rectified by the
+     deaths of males in battle and civic strife. We do not hear
+     that the Greek had any difficulty in finding a wife.
+
+     [15] Families, he says, were limited to one or two 'in order
+     to leave these rich.'
+
+     [16] The population of England and Wales is said to have
+     been 4,800,000 in 1600, and 6,500,000 in 1750. It was
+     8,890,000 in 1801, 32,530,000 in 1901, and approximately
+     37,000,000 in 1914.
+
+     [17] Statistics are wanting for the early part of the
+     industrial revolution, but my study of pedigrees leads me to
+     think that the average duration of life was considerably
+     increased in the eighteenth century.
+
+     [18] _The Family and the Nation_, p. 143.
+
+     [19] The births per 1000 married men under fifty-five in the
+     different classes are:--Upper and middle class, 119;
+     Intermediate, 132; Skilled workmen, 153; Intermediate, 158;
+     Unskilled workmen, 213.
+
+     [20] It must be remembered that the illegitimate birth-rate
+     in Berlin is scandalously high.
+
+     [21] The crude birth-rate of Ireland is wholly misleading,
+     because so many young couples emigrate before the birth of
+     their first child.
+
+     [22] The possible effect of the labour movement in
+     diminishing the population is considered in the next Essay.
+     The last two years have, in my opinion, made the outlook
+     less favourable.
+
+
+
+
+THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH RACE
+
+(THE GALTON LECTURE, 1919)
+
+
+In the year 1890 Sir Charles Dilke ended his survey of 'Greater Britain'
+and its problems with the prediction that 'the world's future belongs to
+the Anglo-Saxon, the Russian, and the Chinese races.' This was in the
+heyday of British imperialism, which was inaugurated by Seeley's
+'Expansion of England' and Froude's 'Oceana,' and which inspired Mr.
+Chamberlain to proclaim at Toronto in 1887 that the 'Anglo-Saxon stock
+is infallibly destined to be the predominant force in the history and
+civilisation of the world.' It was an arrogant, but not truculent, mood,
+which reached its climax at the 1897 Jubilee, and rapidly declined
+during and after the Boer war. These writers and statesmen were utterly
+blind to the German peril, though the disciples of Treitschke were
+already working out a theory about the future destinies of the world, in
+which neither Great Britain nor Russia nor China counted for very much.
+There were illusions on both sides of the North Sea, which had to be
+paid for in blood. In both countries imperialism was a sentiment
+curiously compounded of idealism and bombast, and supported by very
+doubtful science. In the case of Germany the distortion of facts was
+deliberate and monstrous. Not only was every schoolboy brought up on
+cooked population statistics and falsified geography, but the thick-set,
+brachycephalous Central European persuaded himself that he belonged to
+the pure Nordic race, the great blond beasts of Nietzsche, which, as he
+was taught, had already produced nearly all the great men in history,
+and was now about to claim its proper place as master of the world.
+Political anthropology is no genuine science. Race and nationality are
+catchwords for which rulers find that their subjects are willing to
+fight, as they fought for what they called religion four hundred years
+ago. In reality, if we want to find a pure race, we must visit the
+Esquimaux, or the Fuegians, or the Pygmies; we shall certainly not find
+one in Europe. Our own imperialists had their illusions too, and we are
+not rid of them yet, because we do not realise that the fate of races is
+decided, not in the council-chamber or on the battle-field, but by the
+same laws of nature which determine the distribution of the various
+plants and animals of the world. It may be that by approaching our
+subject from this side we shall arrive at a more scientific, if a more
+chastened, anticipation of our national future than was acceptable to
+the enthusiasts of expansion in the last twenty years of Queen
+Victoria's reign.
+
+The history of the world shows us that there have been three great human
+reservoirs which from time to time have burst their banks and flooded
+neighbouring countries. These are the Arabian peninsula, the steppes of
+Central Asia, and the lands round the Baltic, the original home of the
+Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples. The invaders in each case were
+pastoral folk, who were driven from their homes by over-population, or
+drought and famine, or the pressure of enemies behind them. It is easy
+for nomads to 'trek,' even for great distances; and till the discovery
+of gunpowder they were the most formidable of foes. The Arabs and
+Northern Europeans have founded great civilisations; the Mongol hordes
+have been an unmitigated curse to humanity. The invaders never kept
+their blood pure. The famous Jewish nose is probably Hittite, and
+certainly not Bedouin. There are no pure Turks in Europe, and the
+Hungarians have lost all resemblance to Mongols. The modern Germans seem
+to belong mainly to the round-headed Alpine race, which migrated into
+Europe in early times from the Asiatic highlands. In England there is a
+larger proportion of Nordic blood, because the Anglo-Saxons partially
+exterminated the natives; but the old Mediterranean race, which had
+made its way up the warm western coasts, still holds its own in
+Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, and the Western Highlands; and within the last
+hundred years, owing to frequent migrations, has mixed so thoroughly
+with the Anglo-Saxon stock that the English are becoming darker in each
+generation. This is not the result of a racial decay of the blonds, as
+the American, Dr. Charles Woodruff, supposes, but is to be accounted for
+by the fact that dark eyes seem to be a Mendelian dominant, and dark
+hair a more potent character than light. The inhabitants of these
+islands are nearly all long-headed, this being a characteristic of both
+the Nordic and Mediterranean races. The round-headed invaders, who
+perhaps brought with them the so-called Celtic languages at a remote
+period, and imposed them upon the inhabitants, seem to have left no
+other mark upon the population, though their type of head is prevalent
+over a great part of France.
+
+The ability of races to flourish in climates other than their own is a
+question of supreme importance to historians and statesmen, and, it need
+not be said, to emigrants. But it is only lately that it has been
+studied scientifically, and the results are still tentative. German
+ethnologists, of what we may call the _ædicephalous_ school, already
+referred to, regard it as one of the tragedies of nature that the noble
+Nordic race, to which they think they belong, dies out when it
+penetrates southwards. In accordance with this law, the yellow-haired
+Achæans decayed in Greece, the Lombards in North Italy, the Vandals in
+Spain and Africa. After a few generations of life in a warm climate the
+Aryan stock invariably disappears. We shall show reasons for thinking
+that this theory is much exaggerated; but there is undoubtedly some
+truth in it. It has been found to be impossible for white men to
+colonise India, Burma, tropical America, and West Africa. It has been
+said that 'there is in India no third generation of pure English blood.'
+It is notoriously difficult to bring up even one generation of white
+children in India. The French cannot maintain themselves without race
+admixture in Martinique and Guadaloupe, nor the Dutch in Java, though
+it is said that the expectation of life for a European in Java is as
+good as in his own country. It seems to be also true that the blond race
+suffers most in a hot climate. In the Philippines it was observed that
+the fair-haired soldiers in the American army succumbed most readily to
+disease. In Queensland the Italian colonists are said to stand the heat
+better than the English, and Mr. Roosevelt, among other items of good
+advice which he bestowed so liberally on the European nations, advised
+us to populate the torrid parts of Australia with immigrants from the
+Latin races. In Natal the English families who are settled in the
+country are said to be enervated by the climate; and on the high
+plateaux of the interior our countrymen find it necessary to pay
+periodical visits to the coast, to be unbraced. The early deaths and not
+infrequent suicides of Rand magnates may indicate that the air of the
+Transvaal is too stimulating for a life of high tension and excitement.
+There are even signs that the same may be true in a minor degree of the
+United States of America. Both the capitalist and the working man, if
+they come of English stock, seem to wear out more quickly than at home;
+and the sterility of marriages among the long settled American families
+is so pronounced that it can hardly be due entirely to voluntary
+restriction of parentage. The effects of an unsuitable climate are
+especially shown in nervous disorders, and are therefore likely to tell
+most heavily on those who engage in intellectual pursuits, and perhaps
+on women rather more than on men. The sterilising effects of women's
+higher education in America are incontrovertible, though this inference
+is hotly denied in England. At Holyoake College it was found that only
+half the lady graduates afterwards married, and the average family of
+those who did marry was less than two children. At Bryn Mawr only 43 per
+cent, married, and had 0.84 children each; the average family per
+graduate was therefore 0.37. If it be objected that new immigrants and
+their children are healthy and vigorous in America, it may be truly
+answered that the effects of an unfavourable climate are manifested
+fully only in the third and later generations. The argument may be
+further supported by the fate of black men who try to settle in Europe.
+Their strongly pigmented skin, which seems to protect them from the
+actinic rays of the tropical sun, so noxious to Europeans, and their
+broad nostrils, which inhale a larger number of tubercle bacilli than
+the narrow nose-slits of the Northerner, are disadvantages in a
+temperate climate. In any case, of the many thousands of negro servants
+who lived in England in the eighteenth century, it would be difficult to
+find a single descendant.
+
+But there are other factors in the problem which should make us beware
+of hasty generalisations. It is obvious that since the American Republic
+contains many climates in its vast area, there may be parts of it which
+are perfectly healthy for Anglo-Saxons, and other parts where they
+cannot live without degenerating. Very few athletes, we are told, come
+from south of the fortieth parallel of latitude. But the decline in the
+birth-rate is most marked in the older colonies, the New England States,
+where for a long period the English colonists, living mainly on the
+land, not only throve and developed a singularly virile type of
+humanity, but multiplied with almost unexampled rapidity. The same is
+true not only of the French Canadian farmers, but of the South African
+Boers, who rear enormous families in a climate very different from that
+of Holland. The inference is that Europeans living on the land may
+flourish in any tolerably healthy climate which is not tropical.
+
+There are, in fact, two other causes besides climate which may prevent
+immigrants from multiplying in a new country. The first of these is the
+presence of microbic diseases to which the old inhabitants are wholly or
+partially immune, but which find a virgin soil in the bodies of the
+newcomers. The strongest example is the West Coast of Africa, of which
+Miss Mary Kingsley writes: 'Yet remember, before you elect to cast your
+lot with the West Coasters, that 85 per cent, of them die of fever, or
+return home with their health permanently wrecked. Also remember that
+there is no getting acclimatised to the Coast. There are, it is true, a
+few men out there who, although they have been resident in West Africa
+for years, have never had fever, but you can count them on the fingers
+of one hand.' There can be no acclimatisation where the weeding out is
+as drastic as this. Either the anopheles mosquito or the European must
+quit. There are parts of tropical America where the natives have
+actually been protected by the malaria, which keeps the white man at
+arm's length. But more often the microbe is on the side of the civilised
+race, killing off the natives who have not run the gauntlet of
+town-life. The extreme reluctance of the barbarians who overran the
+Roman Empire to settle in the towns is easily accounted for if, as is
+probable, the towns killed them off whenever they attempted to live in
+them. The difference is remarkable between the fate of a conquered race
+which has become accustomed to town-life, and that of one which has not.
+There are no 'native quarters' in the towns of any country where the
+aborigines were nomads or tillers of the soil. To the North American
+Indian, residence in a town is a sentence of death. The American Indians
+were accustomed to none of our zymotic diseases except malaria. In the
+north they were destroyed wholesale by tuberculosis; in Mexico and Peru,
+where large towns existed before the conquest, they fared better. Fiji
+was devastated by measles; other barbarians by small-pox. Negroes have
+acquired, through severe natural selection, a certain degree of
+immunisation in America; but even now it is said that 'every other negro
+dies of consumption.' There are, however, two races, both long
+accustomed to town-life under horribly insanitary conditions, which have
+shown that they can live in almost any climate. These are the Jews and
+the Chinese. The medieval Ghetto exterminated all who were not naturally
+resistant to every form of microbic disease; the modern Jew, though
+often of poor physique, is hard to kill. The same may be said of the
+Chinaman, who, when at home, lives under conditions which would kill
+most Europeans.
+
+The other factor, which is really promoting the gradual disappearance of
+the Anglo-Saxons from the United States, is of a very different
+character. The descendants of the old immigrants are on the whole the
+aristocracy of the country. Now it is a law which hardly admits of
+exceptions, that aristocracies do not maintain their numbers. The ruling
+race rules itself out; nothing fails like success. Gibbon has called
+attention to the extreme respect paid to long descent in the Roman
+Empire, and to the strange fact that, in the fourth century, no
+ingenuity of pedigree makers could deny that all the great families of
+the Republic were extinct, so that the second-rate plebeian family of
+the Anicii, whose name did appear in the Fasti, enjoyed a prestige far
+greater than that of the Howards and Stanleys in this country. Our own
+peerage consists chiefly of parvenus. Only six of our noble families, it
+is said, can trace their descent in the male line without a break to the
+fifteenth century. The peerage of Sweden tells the same tale. According
+to Gallon, the custom or law of primogeniture, combined with the habit
+of marrying heiresses who, as the last representatives of dwindling
+families, tend to be barren, is mainly responsible for this. Additional
+causes may be the greater danger which the officer-class incurs in war,
+and, in former times, the executioner's axe. In our own day the
+reluctance of rich and self-indulgent women to bear children is
+undoubtedly a factor in the infertility of the leisured class.
+
+This brings us naturally to the second part of our discussion--the
+consideration of the causes which lead to the increase or decrease of
+population. It is the most important part of our inquiry; for it is
+usually assumed that the British Isles will continue to send out
+colonists in large numbers, as it did in the last century, and the hopes
+of the imperialist that a large part of the world will speak English for
+all time depend on the untested assurance that the swarming-time of our
+race is not yet over. Our starting-point must be that the pressure of
+population upon the means of subsistence is a constant fact in the human
+race, as in every other species of animals and plants. There is no
+species in which the numbers are not kept down, far below the natural
+capacity for increase, by the limitation of available food. It may not
+always be easy to trace the connection between the appearance of new
+lives and the passing away of old, nor to say whether it is the
+birth-rate which determines the death-rate, or the death-rate the
+birth-rate. But it is well known that, wherever statistics are kept, the
+numbers of births and of deaths rise and fall in nearly parallel lines,
+so that the net rate of increase hardly alters at all, unless some
+change, which can easily be traced, occurs in the habits of the people
+or in the amount of the food supply. In civilised countries the greater
+care taken of human life, and its consequent prolongation, has reduced
+the birth-rate, just as in the higher mammals we find a greatly
+diminished fertility as compared with the lower, and a much higher
+survival-rate among the offspring born. The average duration of life in
+this country has increased by about one-third in the last sixty years,
+and the birth-rate has fallen in almost exactly the same proportion. The
+position of a nation in the scale of civilisation may almost be gauged
+by its births and deaths. The order in Europe, beginning with the lowest
+birth-rate, is France, Belgium, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Switzerland,
+Norway, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Spain, Austria, Italy, Hungary, the
+Balkan States, Russia. The order of death-rates, again beginning at the
+bottom, is Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United
+Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Serbia, Spain,
+Bulgaria, Hungary, Roumania, Russia. These two lists, as will be seen,
+correspond very nearly with the scale of descending civilisation, the
+only notable exception being the low position of France in the second
+list. This anomaly is explained by the fact that France having a
+stationary population, the death-rate in that country corresponds nearly
+with the mean expectation of life, whereas in countries where the
+population is increasing rapidly, either by excess of births over deaths
+or by immigration, the preponderance of young lives brings the
+death-rate down. We must, therefore, be on our guard against supposing
+that countries with the lowest death-rates are necessarily the most
+healthy. In New Zealand, for example, the death-rate is under 10 per
+1000, the lowest in the world; and though that country is undoubtedly
+healthy, no one supposes that the average duration of life in New
+Zealand is a hundred years. To ascertain whether a nation is long-lived,
+we must correct the crude death-rate by taking into account the average
+age of the population. When this correction has been made, a low
+death-rate, and the low birth-rate which necessarily accompanies it, is
+a sign that the doctors are doing their duty by keeping their patients
+alive. If our physicians desire more maternity cases, they must make
+more work for the undertaker. Large families almost always mean a high
+infant mortality; and it is significant that a twelfth child has a very
+much poorer chance of survival than a first or second. The agitation for
+the endowment of motherhood and the reduction of infant mortality is
+therefore futile, because, while other conditions remain the same, every
+baby 'saved' sends another baby out of the world or prevents him from
+coming into it. The number of the people is not determined by
+philanthropists or even by parents. Children will come somehow whenever
+there is room for them, and go when there is none. But other conditions
+do not remain the same, and it is in these other conditions that we must
+seek the causes of expansion or contraction in the numbers of a
+community.
+
+At the end of the sixteenth century the population of England and Wales
+amounted to about five millions, and a hundred years later to about six.
+There is no reason to think that under the conditions then existing the
+country could have supported a larger number. The birth-rate was kept
+high by the pestilential state of the towns, and thus the pressure of
+numbers was less felt than it is now, since it was possible to have,
+though not to rear, unlimited families. Occasionally, from accidental
+circumstances, England was for a short time under-populated, and these
+were the periods when, according to Professor Thorold Rogers, Archdeacon
+Cunningham, and other authorities, the labourer was well off. The most
+striking example was in the half-century after the Black Death, which
+carried off nearly half the population. Wages increased threefold, and
+the Government tried in vain to protect employers by enforcing
+pre-plague rates. Not only were wages high, but food was so abundant
+that farmers often gave their men a square meal which was not in the
+contract. The other period of prosperity for the working man, according
+to our authorities, was the second quarter of the eighteenth century. It
+has not, we think, been noticed that this also followed a temporary
+set-back in the population. In 1688 the population of England and Wales
+was 5,500,520; in 1710 it was more than a quarter of a million less. The
+cause of this decline is obscure, but its effects soon showed themselves
+in easier conditions of life, especially for the poor. Such periods of
+under-saturation, which some new countries are still enjoying, are
+necessarily short. Population flows in as naturally as water finds its
+level.
+
+It was not till the accession of George III that the increase in our
+numbers became rapid. No one until then would have thought of singling
+out the Englishman as the embodiment of the good apprentice. Meteren, in
+the sixteenth century, found our countrymen 'as lazy as Spaniards'; most
+foreigners were struck by our fondness for solid food and strong drink.
+The industrial revolution came upon us suddenly; it changed the whole
+face of the country and the apparent character of the people. In the far
+future our descendants may look back upon the period in which we are
+living as a strange episode which disturbed the natural habits of our
+race. The first impetus was given by the plunder of Bengal, which, after
+the victories of Clive, flowed into the country in a broad stream for
+about thirty years. This ill-gotten wealth played the same part in
+stimulating English industries as the 'five milliards,' extorted from
+France, did for Germany after 1870. The half-century which followed was
+marked by a series of inventions, which made England the workshop of the
+world. But the basis of our industrial supremacy was, and is, our coal.
+Those who are in the habit of comparing the progressiveness of the
+North-Western European with the stagnation or decadence of the Latin
+races, forget the fact, which is obvious when it has once been pointed
+out, that the progressive nations are those which happen to have
+valuable coal fields. Countries which have no coal are obliged to
+import it paying the freight, or to smelt their iron with charcoal This
+process makes excellent steel--the superiority of Swedish razors is due
+to wood-smelting--but it is so wasteful of wood that the Mediterranean
+peoples very early in history injured their climate by cutting down
+their scanty forests, thereby diminishing their rainfall, and allowing
+the soil to be washed off the hillsides. The coasts of the Mediterranean
+are, in consequence, far less productive than they were two thousand
+years ago. But in England, when the start was once made, all
+circumstances conspired to turn our once beautiful island into a chaos
+of factories and mean streets, reeking of smoke, millionaires, and
+paupers. We were no longer able to grow our own food; but we made masses
+of goods which the manufacturers ware eager to exchange for it; and the
+population grew like crops on a newly-irrigated desert. During the
+nineteenth century the numbers were nearly quadrupled. Let those who
+think that the population of a country can be increased at will, reflect
+whether it is likely that any physical, moral, or psychological change
+came over the nation coincidently with the inventions of the
+spinning-jenny and the steam-engine. It is too obvious for dispute that
+it was the possession of capital wanting employment, and of natural
+advantages for using it, that called these multitudes of human beings
+into existence, to eat the food which they paid for by their labour. And
+it should be equally obvious that the existence of forty-six millions of
+people upon 121,000 square miles of territory depends entirely upon our
+finding a market for our manufactures abroad, for so only are we able to
+pay for the food of the people. It is most unfortunate that these
+exports must, with our present population, include coal, which, if we
+had any thought for posterity, we should guard jealously and use
+sparingly; for in five hundred years at the outside our stock will be
+gone, and we shall sink to a third-rate Power at once. We are
+sacrificing the future in order to provide for an excessive and
+discontented population in the present. During the present century we
+have begun to be conscious that our foreign trade is threatened; and so
+sensitive is the birth-rate to economic conditions that it has begun to
+curve very slightly downward in relation to the death-rate, instead of
+descending with it in parallel lines.[23] This may be partly due to the
+curtailment of facilities for emigration, owing to the filling up of the
+new countries. For emigration does not diminish the population of the
+country which the emigrants leave; it only increases its birth-rate.
+
+We are now in a position to enumerate the causes which actually lead to
+an increase in the population of a country. The first is an increase in
+the amount of food produced in the country itself. If the parks and
+gardens of the gentry were ploughed up or turned into allotments, a few
+hundred thousands would be added to the population of the United
+Kingdom, at the cost of one of the few remaining beauties which make our
+country attractive to the eye. The introduction of the potato into
+Ireland added several millions of squalid inhabitants to that
+ill-conditioned island, and when the crop failed, large numbers of them
+inflicted themselves on the United States, to the detriment of that
+country. The richest countries to-day are those which produce more food
+than they require, such as the United States, Canada, Australia,
+Roumania, and the Argentine. (We need hardly say that throughout this
+survey we are using the statistics of the years immediately before the
+war.) But this state of things cannot last long, for the net increase in
+such countries is invariably high, either by reason of a very high
+birth-rate, as in Roumania, or because newcomers flock in to enjoy a
+land of plenty. Another condition which leads to abnormally rapid
+increase is found when a civilised nation conquers and administers a
+backward country, introducing better methods of agriculture, and
+especially irrigation and the reclamation of waste lands. The alien
+Government also gives greater security, without raising the standard of
+living among the natives, since the dominant race usually monopolises
+the lucrative careers. In this way we are directly responsible for
+increasing the population of Egypt from seven millions in 1883 to nine
+and three-quarter millions in 1899, an augmentation which, in the
+absence of immigration, illustrates the great natural fertility of the
+human race in the rare circumstances when unchecked increase is
+possible. Still more remarkable is the rise in the population of Java
+from five millions in 1825 to twenty-eight and a half millions in the
+first decade of this century. The cause of this increase is the
+augmented supply of food combined with a very low standard of living, a
+combination which is specially characteristic of Asia, where extreme
+supersaturation exists in India and China. A third cause is production
+of goods which can be exchanged for food grown abroad. This exchange, as
+we have seen, is stimulated by the presence of capital seeking
+employment. Our large towns are the creation of the capitalist, much
+more than if he had populated their depressing streets with his own
+children. Fourthly, a reduction in the standard of living of course
+makes a larger population possible. The misery of the working class in
+the generation after the Napoleonic Wars was a condition of the
+prosperity of our export trade at this period; and conversely, the
+prosperity of our export trade was necessary to the existence of the new
+inhabitants. Capitalism is the cause of our dense population; and the
+proletariat would infallibly cut their own throats by destroying it.
+
+It is an important question whether a crowded population adds to the
+security of a nation or not. Numbers are undoubtedly of great importance
+in modern warfare. The French would have been less able to resist the
+Germans without allies in 1914 than they were in 1870. But we must not
+suppose that France could support a much larger population without
+reducing her standard of living to the point of under-deeding; and an
+under-fed nation is incapable of the endurance required of first-class
+soldiers. A nation may be so much weakened in physique by under-feeding
+as to be impotent from a military point of view, in spite of great
+numbers; this is the case in India and China. Deficient nourishment also
+diminishes the day's work. If European and American capital goes to
+China, and provides proper food for the workmen, we may have an early
+opportunity of discovering whether the supporters of the League of
+Nations have any real conscientious objection to violence and bloodshed.
+We may surmise that the European man, the fiercest of all beasts of
+prey, is not likely to abandon the weapons which have made him the lord
+and the bully of the planet. He has no other superiority to the races
+which he arrogantly despises. Under a régime of peace the Asiatic would
+probably be his master. To return from a short digression, we must note
+further that a nation with a low standard has no reserve to fall back
+upon; it lives on the margin of subsistence, which may easily fail in
+war-time, especially if much food is imported when conditions are
+normal. It can hardly be an accident that in this war the nations with a
+high birth-rate broke up in the order of their fecundity, while France
+stood like a rock. The sacrifice of comfort to numbers, which we have
+seen to be possible by maintaining a low standard of living, not only
+diminishes the happiness of a nation, and keeps it low in the scale of
+civilisation; it may easily prove to be a source of weakness in war.
+
+The expedients often advocated to encourage denser population--which
+those who urge them thoughtlessly assume to be a good thing--such as
+endowment of parenthood, and better housing at the expense of the
+taxpayer--have no effect except to penalise and sterilise those who pay
+the doles, for the benefit of those who receive them. They are intensely
+dysgenic in their operation, for they cripple and at last eliminate just
+those stocks which have shown themselves to be above the average in
+ability. The process has already advanced a long way, even without the
+reckless legislation which is now advocated. The lowest birth-rates,
+less than half that of the unskilled labourers, are those of the
+doctors, the teaching profession, and ministers of religion. The
+position of this class, intellectually and often physically the finest
+in the kingdom, is rapidly becoming intolerable, and it is the wastrels
+who mainly benefit by their spoliation.
+
+The causes of shrinkage in population are the opposites of those which
+we have found to promote its increase. The production of food may be
+diminished by the exhaustion of the soil, or by the progressive aridity
+caused by cutting down woods. The manufacture of goods to be exchanged
+for food may fall off owing to foreign competition, a result which is
+likely to follow from a rise in the standard of living, for the labourer
+then demands higher wages, and consumes more food per head, which of
+itself must check fertility, since the same amount of food will now
+support a smaller number. The delusion shared by the whole working class
+that they can make work for each other, at wages fixed by themselves, is
+ludicrous; a community cannot subsist 'by taking in each other's
+washing.' Or the supply of importable food may fail by the peopling up
+of the countries which grow it. Any conditions which make it no longer
+worth while to invest capital in business, or which destroy credit, have
+the same effect. One of the causes of the decay of the Roman Empire was
+the drain of specie to the East in exchange for perishable commodities.
+When trade is declining a general listlessness comes over the industrial
+world, and the output falls still further. There have been alleged
+instances of peoples which have dwindled and even disappeared from
+_taedium vitae_. This is said to have been the cause of the extinction
+of the Guanches of the Canary Islands; but the symptoms described rather
+suggest an outbreak of sleeping-sickness.
+
+Paradoxical as it may seem, neither voluntary restriction of births, nor
+famine, nor pestilence, nor war, has much effect in reducing numbers.
+Birth-control instead of diminishing the population, may only lower the
+death-rate. France in 1781, with a birth-rate of 39, had much the same
+net increase as in the years before the war with a birth-rate of 20. The
+parallel lines of the births and deaths in this country have already
+been mentioned. Famine and pestilence are followed at once by an
+increased number of births. India and China, though frequently ravaged
+by both these scourges, remain super-saturated. Of course, if the famine
+is chronic, the population must fall to the point where the food is
+sufficient; and a zymotic disease which has become endemic may be too
+strong for the natural fertility of the nation attacked, as has happened
+to several barbarous races; but an invasion of plague, cholera, or
+influenza has no permanent effect on the numbers of Europeans. War
+resembles plague in its action upon population. When, as in the late
+war, nearly the whole of the able-bodied men are on active service, the
+loss of population caused by cessation of births is greater than all the
+fatal casualties of the battle-field. A rough calculation gives the
+result that twelve million lives have been lost to the belligerent
+nations by the separation of husbands and wives during the war. And yet
+it may be predicted that these losses, added to the eight millions or so
+who have been killed, would be made good in a very few years but for the
+destruction of capital and credit which the war has caused. If we study
+the vital statistics of a country like Germany, which has engaged in
+several severe wars since births and deaths began to be registered, we
+shall find that the contour-line representing the fluctuations of the
+birth-rate indicates a steep ravine in the year or years while the war
+lasted, followed by a hump or high table-land for several years after.
+In a short time, as far as numbers are concerned, the war is as if it
+had never been. When we remember that the number of possible fathers is
+much reduced by casualties, this rise in the birth-rate after a war
+offers a strong confirmation of the thesis which we have been
+maintaining, that the ebb and flow of population are not affected by
+conscious intention, but by increased or diminished pressure of numbers
+upon subsistence. If the German people, who before the war consumed more
+food than was good for them, have been habituated by our blockade to a
+reasonable abstemiousness, we shall have contributed to the eventual
+increase of the German people, in spite of all their soldiers whom we
+killed in France, and the civilians whom we starved in Germany. And if
+our success leads to a greater consumption by our working class, our
+population will show a corresponding decline. Emigration, as we have
+seen, does not diminish the home population by a single unit; and so,
+while there are empty lands available for colonisation, it is by far the
+best method of adding to the numbers of our race.
+
+It should now be possible to form a judgment on the prospects of the
+Anglo-Saxon race in various parts of the world. In India, Burma, New
+Guinea, the West Indian Islands, and tropical Africa there is no
+possibility of ever planting a healthy European population. These
+dependencies may grow food for us, or send us articles which we can
+exchange for food, but they are not, and never can be, colonies of
+Anglo-Saxons. The prospects of South Africa are very dubious. The white
+man is there an aristocrat, directing semi-servile labour. The white
+population of the gold and diamond fields will stay there till the mines
+give out, and no longer. Large tracts of the country may at last be
+occupied only by Kaffirs. The United States of America are becoming less
+Anglo-Saxon every year, and this process is likely to continue, since in
+unskilled labour the Italian and the Pole seem to give better value for
+their wages than the Englishman or born American, with his high standard
+of comfort. In Canada, the temperate part of Australia, New Zealand, and
+Tasmania the chances for a large and flourishing English-speaking
+population seem to be very favourable, though in these dominions the
+high standard of living is a check to population, and in the case of
+Australasia the possibility of foreign conquest, while these priceless
+lands are still half empty, cannot be altogether excluded.
+
+Even more interesting to most of us is the future of our race at home.
+As regards quality, the outlook for the present is bad. We have seen
+that the destruction of the upper and professional classes by taxation
+directed expressly against them has already begun, and this
+victimisation is certain to become more and more acute, till these
+classes are practically extinguished. The old aristocracy showed a
+tendency to decay even when they were unduly favoured by legislation,
+and a little more pressure will drive them to voluntary sterility and
+extermination. Even more to be regretted is the doom of the professional
+aristocracy, a caste almost peculiar to our country. These families can
+often show longer, and usually much better pedigrees than the peerage;
+the persistence of marked ability in many of them, for several
+generations, is the delight of the eugenist. They are perhaps the best
+specimens of humanity to be found in any country of the world. Yet they
+have no prospects except to be gradually harassed out of existence, like
+the _curiales_ of the later Roman Empire. The power will apparently be
+grasped by a new highly privileged class, the aristocracy of labour.
+This class, being intelligent, energetic, and intensely selfish, may
+retain its domination for a considerable time. It is a matter of course
+that, having won its privilege of exploiting the community, it will use
+all its efforts to preserve that privilege and to prevent others from
+sharing it. In other words, it will become an exclusive and strongly
+conservative class, on a broader basis than the territorial and
+commercial aristocracies which preceded it. It will probably be strong
+enough to discontinue the system of State doles which encourages the
+wastrel to multiply, as he does multiply, much faster than the valuable
+part of the population. We are at present breeding a large parasitic
+class subsisting on the taxes and hampering the Government. The
+comparative fertility of the lowest class as compared with the better
+stocks has greatly increased, and is still increasing. The competent
+working-class families, as well as the rich, are far less fertile than
+the waste products of our civilisation. Dr. Tredgold found that 43
+couples of the parasitic class averaged 7.4 children per family, while
+91 respectable couples from the working class averaged only 3.7 per
+family. Mr. Sidney Webb examined the statistics of the Hearts of Oak
+Benefit Society, which is patronised by the best type of mechanic, and
+found that the birth-rate among its members has fallen 46 per cent,
+between 1881 and 1901; or, taking the whole period between 1880 and
+1904, the falling off is 52 per cent. This decline proves that the
+period of industrial expansion in England is nearly over. It would be
+far better if our birth-rate were as low as that of France, as it would
+be but for the reckless propagation of the 'submerged tenth,' England
+being now a paradise for human refuse, the offscourings of Europe
+(170,000 in 1908) take the place of the better stocks, whose position is
+made artificially unfavourable. These doles are at present paid by the
+minority, and this method may be expected to continue until the looting
+of the propertied classes comes to an enforced end. This will not take
+long, for it is certain that the amount of wealth available for plunder
+is very much smaller than is usually supposed. It is easy to destroy
+capital values, but very difficult to distribute them. The time will
+soon arrive when the patient sheep will be found to have lost not only
+his fleece but his skin, and the privileged workman will then have to
+choose between taxing himself and abandoning socialism. There is little
+doubt which he will prefer. The result will be that the festering sore
+of our slum-population will dry up, and the gradual disappearance of
+this element will be some compensation, from the eugenic point of view,
+for the destruction of the intellectual class. This process will
+considerably, and beneficially, diminish the population: and there are
+several other factors which will operate in the same direction. High
+wage industry can only maintain itself against the competition of
+cheaper labour abroad by introducing every kind of labour-saving device.
+The number of hands employed in a factory must progressively diminish.
+And as, in spite of all that ingenuity can do, the competition of the
+cheaper races is certain to cripple our foreign trade, the trade unions
+will be obliged to provide for a shrinkage in their numbers. We may
+expect that every unionist will be allowed to place one son, and only
+one, in the privileged corporation. A man will become a miner or a
+railwayman 'by patrimony,' and it will be difficult to gain admission to
+a union in any other way. The position of those who cannot find a place
+within the privileged circle will be so unhappy that most unionists will
+take care to have one son only. Another change which will tend to
+discourage families will be the increased employment of women as
+bread-winners. Nothing is more remarkable in the study of vital
+statistics than the comparative birth-rates of those districts in which
+women earn wages, and of those in which they do not. The rate of
+increase among the miners is as great as that of the reckless casual
+labourers, and the obvious reason is that the miner's wife loses nothing
+by having children, since she does not earn wages. Contrast with these
+high figures (running up to 40 per thousand) the very low birth-rates of
+towns like Bradford, where the women are engaged in the textile industry
+and earn regular wages in support of the family budget. If the time
+comes when the majority of women are wage-earners, we may even see the
+pressure of population entirely withdrawn. Thus in every class of the
+nation influences are at work tending to a progressive decrease in our
+national fertility. It must be remembered, however, that at present the
+annual increase, in peace time, is 9 or 10 per thousand, so that it may
+be some time before an equilibrium is reached. But if our predictions
+are sound, a positive decrease, and probably a rapid one, is likely to
+follow. For our ability to exchange our manufactures for food will grow
+steadily less, as the self-indulgent and 'work-shy' labourer succeeds in
+gaining his wishes. If the coal begins to give out, the retreat will
+become a rout.
+
+We are witnessing the decline and fall of the social order which began
+with the industrial revolution 160 years ago. The cancer of
+industrialism has begun to mortify, and the end is in sight. Within 200
+years, it may be--for we must allow for backwashes and cross-currents
+which will retard the flow of the stream--the hideous new towns which
+disfigure our landscape may have disappeared, and their sites may have
+been reclaimed for the plough. Humanitarian legislation, so far from
+arresting this movement, is more likely to accelerate it, and the same
+may be said of the insatiate greed of our new masters. It is indeed
+instructive to observe how cupidity and sentiment, which (with
+pugnacity) are the only passions which the practical politician needs to
+consider, usually defeat their own ends. The working man is sawing at
+the branch on which he is seated. He may benefit for a time a minority
+of his own class, but only by sealing the doom of the rest. A densely
+populated country, which is unable to feed itself, can never be a
+working-man's paradise, a land of short hours and high wages. And the
+sentimentalist, kind only to be cruel, unwittingly promotes precisely
+the results which he most deprecates, though they are often much more
+beneficial than his own aims. The evil that he would he does not; and
+the good that he would not, that he sometimes does.
+
+For, much as we must regret the apparently inevitable ruin of the upper
+and upper middle classes, to which England in the past has owed the
+major part of her greatness, we cannot regard the trend of events as an
+unmixed misfortune. The industrial revolution has no doubt had some
+beneficial results. It has founded the British Empire, the most
+interesting and perhaps the most successful experiment in government on
+a large scale that the world has yet seen. It has foiled two formidable
+attempts to place Europe under the heel of military monarchies. It has
+brought order and material civilisation to many parts of the world which
+before were barbarous. But these achievements have been counterbalanced
+by many evils, and in any case they have done their work. The
+aggregation of mankind in large towns is itself a misfortune; the life
+of great cities is wholesome neither for body nor for mind. The
+separation of classes has become more complete; the country may even be
+divided into the picturesque counties where money is spent, and the ugly
+counties where it is made. Except London and the sea-ports, the whole of
+the South of England is more or less parasitic. We must add that in the
+early days of the movement the workman and his children were exploited
+ruthlessly. It is true that if they had not been exploited they would
+not have existed; but a root of bitterness was planted which, according
+to what seems to be the law in such cases, sprang up and bore its
+poisonous fruit about two generations later. It is a sinister fact that
+the worst trouble is now made by the youngest men. The large fortunes
+which were made by the manufacturers were not, on the whole, well spent.
+Their luxury was not of a refined type; literature and art were not
+intelligently encouraged; and even science was most inadequately
+supported. The great achievements of the nineteenth century in science
+and letters, and to a less degree in art, were independent of the
+industrial world, and were chiefly the work of that class which is now
+sinking helplessly under the blows of predatory taxation. Capitalism
+itself has degenerated; the typical millionaire is no longer the captain
+of industry, but the international banker and company promoter. It is
+more difficult than ever to find any rational justification for the
+accumulations which are in the hands of a few persons. It is not to be
+expected that the working class should be less greedy and unscrupulous
+than the educated; indeed it is plain that, now that it realises its
+power, it will be even more so. In some ways the national character has
+stood the strain of these unnatural conditions very well. Those who
+feared that the modern Englishman would make a poor soldier have had to
+own that they were entirely wrong. But as long as industrialism
+continues, we shall be in a state of thinly disguised civil war. There
+can be no industrial peace while our urban population remains, because
+the large towns are the creation of the system which their inhabitants
+now want to destroy. They can and will destroy it, but only by
+destroying themselves. When the suicidal war is over we shall have a
+comparatively small population, living mainly in the country and
+cultivating the fruits of the earth. It will be more like the England of
+the eighteenth century than the England which we know. There will be no
+very rich men; and if the birth-rate is regulated there should be no
+paupers. It will be a far pleasanter age to live in than the present,
+and more favourable to the production of great intellectual work, for
+life will be more leisurely, and social conditions more stable. We may
+hope that some of our best families will determine to survive, _coûte
+que coûte_, until these better times arrive. We shall not attempt to
+prophesy what the political constitution will be. Every existing form of
+government is bad; and our democracy can hardly survive the two diseases
+which generally kill democracies--reckless plunder of the national
+wealth, and the impotence of the central government in face of
+revolutionary and predatory sectionalism.
+
+Meanwhile, we must understand that although the consideration of mankind
+in the mass, and the calculation of tendencies based on figures and
+averages, must lead us to somewhat pessimistic and cynical views of
+human nature, there is no reason why individuals, unless they wish to
+make a career out of politics (since it is the sad fate of politicians
+always to deal with human nature at its worst), should conform
+themselves to the low standards of the world around them. It is only 'in
+the loomp' that humanity, whether poor or rich, 'is bad.' There are
+materials, though far less abundant than we could wish, for a spiritual
+reformation, which would smooth the transition to a new social order,
+and open to us unfailing sources of happiness and inspiration, which
+would not only enable us to tide over the period of dissolution, but
+might make the whole world our debtor. No nation is better endowed by
+nature with a faculty for sane idealism than the English. We were never
+intended to be a nation of shopkeepers, if a shopkeeper is doomed to be
+merely a shopkeeper, which of course he is not. Our brutal commercialism
+has been a temporary aberration; the quintessential Englishman is not
+the hero of Smiles' 'Self-help'; he is Raleigh, Drake, Shakespeare,
+Milton, Johnson, or Wordsworth, with a pleasant spice of Dickens. He is,
+in a word, an idealist who has not quite forgotten that he is descended
+from an independent race of sea-rovers, accustomed to think and act for
+themselves. Mr. Havelock Ellis, one of the wisest and most fearless of
+our prophets to-day, quotes from an anonymous journalist a prediction
+which may come true: 'London may yet be the spiritual capital of the
+world; while Asia--rich in all that gold can buy and guns can give, lord
+of lands and bodies, builder of railways and promulgator of police
+regulations, glorious in all material glories--postures, complacent and
+obtuse, before a Europe content in the possession of all that matters.'
+For, as the Greek poet says, 'the soul's wealth is the only real
+wealth.' The spirit creates values, while the demagogue shrieks to
+transfer the dead symbols of them. 'All that matters' is what the world
+can neither give nor take away. The spiritual integration of society
+which we desire and behold afar off must be illuminated by the dry light
+of science, and warmed by the rays of idealism, a white light but not
+cold. And idealism must be compacted as a religion, for it is the
+function of religion to prevent the fruits of the flowering-times of the
+spirit from being lost. Science has not yet come to its own in forming
+the beliefs and practice of mankind, because it has been so much
+excluded from higher education, and so much repressed by sentimentalism
+under the wing of religion. The nation that first finds a practical
+reconciliation between science and idealism is likely to take the front
+place among the peoples of the world. In England we have to struggle not
+only against ignorance, but against a deep-rooted intellectual
+insincerity, which is our worst national fault. The Englishman hates an
+idea which he has never met before, as he hates the disturber of his
+privacy in a steam-ship cabin; and he takes opportunities of making
+things unpleasant for those who utter indiscreet truths. As Samuel
+Butler says: 'We hold it useful to have a certain number of melancholy
+examples whose notorious failure shall serve as a warning to those who
+do not cultivate a power of immoral self-control which shall prevent
+them from saying, or even thinking, anything that shall not be to their
+immediate and palpable advantage.' To do our countrymen justice, it is
+often not self-interest, but a tendency to deal with the concrete
+instance, in disregard of the general law, that blinds them to the
+larger aspects of great problems. Those who are able to trace causes and
+effects further than the majority must expect to be unpopular, but they
+will not mind it, if they can do good by speaking. The logic of events
+will justify them, and science has a new weapon in official statistics
+which will register at once the disastrous effects upon wealth and trade
+which the insane theories of the demagogue will bring about. No agitator
+can explain away ascertained figures; if we go down hill, we shall do it
+with our eyes open. It may be that reactions will be set up which will
+render the anticipations in this article erroneous. Things never turn
+out either so well or so badly as they logically ought to do. Prophecy
+is only an amusement; what does concern us all deeply is that we should
+see in what direction we are now moving.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+     [23] In the small islands round our coast increase has
+     ceased for some decades. The vital statistics of these
+     islands furnish an excellent illustration of automatic
+     adjustment to a state of supersaturation.
+
+
+
+
+BISHOP GORE AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
+
+(1908)
+
+
+The strength and the weakness of the Anglican Church lie in the fact
+that it is not the best representative of any well-defined type of
+Christianity. It is not strictly a Protestant body; for Protestantism is
+the democracy of religion, and the Church of England retains a
+hierarchical organisation, with an order of priests who claim a divine
+commission not conferred upon them by the congregation. It is not a
+State Church as the Russian Empire has[24] a State Church. That is a
+position which it has neither the will nor the power to regain. Still
+less could it ever justify a claim to separate existence as a purely
+Catholic Church, independent of the Church of Rome. A community of
+Catholics whose claim to be a Catholic and not a Protestant Church is
+denied by all other Catholics, by all Protestants, and by all who are
+neither Catholics nor Protestants, could not long retain sufficient
+prestige to keep its adherents together. The destiny of such a body is
+written in the history of the 'Old Catholics,' who seceded from Rome
+because they would not accept the dogma of Papal infallibility. The
+seceders included many men of high character and intellect, but in
+numbers and influence they are quite insignificant. The Church of
+England has only one title to exist, and it is a strong one. It may
+claim to represent the religion of the English people as no other body
+can represent it. 'No Church,' Döllinger wrote in 1872, 'is so national,
+so deeply rooted in popular affection, so bound up with the institutions
+and manners of the country, or so powerful in its influence on national
+character.' These words are still partly true, though it is not possible
+to make the assertion with so much confidence as when Döllinger wrote.
+The English Church represents, on the religious side, the convictions,
+tastes, and prejudices of the English gentleman, that truly national
+ideal of character, which has long since lost its adventitious connexion
+with heraldry and property in land. A love of order, seemliness, and
+good taste has led the Anglican Church along a middle path between what
+a seventeenth-century divine called 'the meretricious gaudiness of the
+Church of Rome and the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles.' A keen
+sense of honour and respect for personal uprightness, a hatred of
+cruelty and treachery, created and long maintained in the English Church
+an intense repugnance against the priestcraft of the Roman hierarchy,
+feelings which have only died down because the bitter memories of the
+sixteenth century have at last become dim. A jealous love of liberty,
+combined with contempt for theories of equality, produced a system of
+graduated ranks in Church government which left a large measure of
+freedom, both in speech and thought, even to the clergy, and encouraged
+no respect for what Catholics mean by authority. The Anglican Church is
+also characteristically English in its dislike for logic and
+intellectual consistency and in its distrust of undisciplined
+emotionalism, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was
+known and dreaded under the name of 'enthusiasm.' This type is not
+essentially aristocratic. It does not traverse the higher ideals of the
+working class, which respects and admires the qualities of the
+'gentleman,' though it resents the privileges long connected with the
+name. But it has no attraction for what may be impolitely called the
+vulgar class, whose religious feelings find a natural vent in an
+unctuous emotionalism and sentimental humanitarianism. This class, which
+forms the backbone of Dissent and Liberalism, is instinctively
+antipathetic to Anglicanism. Nor does the Anglican type of Christianity
+appeal at all to the 'Celtic fringe,' whose temperament is curiously
+opposite to that of the English, not only in religion but in most other
+matters. The Irish and the Welsh are no more likely to become Anglicans
+than the lowland Scotch are to adopt Roman Catholicism. Whether Dissent
+is a permanent necessity in England is a more difficult question, in
+spite of the class differences of temperament above mentioned. If the
+Anglican organisation were elastic enough to permit the order of
+lay-readers to be developed on strongly Evangelical lines, the lower
+middle class might find within the Church the mental food which it now
+seeks in Nonconformist chapels, and might gain in breadth and dignity by
+belonging once more to a great historic body.
+
+The Church of England, then, can justify its existence as English
+Christianity, and in no other way. It began its separate career with a
+series of (doubtless) illogical compromises, in the belief that there is
+an underlying unity, though not uniformity, in the religion as well as
+in the character of the English people, which would be strong enough to
+hold a national Church together. The dissenters from the Reformation
+settlement were numerically insignificant, and their existence was not
+regarded as a peril to the Church, for it was recognised that in a free
+country absolute agreement cannot be secured. The Roman Catholics, after
+some futile persecution, were allowed to remain loyal to their old
+allegiance in spiritual matters, while the Independents and similar
+bodies were anarchical on principle, and upheld the 'dissidence of
+Dissent' as a thing desirable in itself. But the defection of the
+Wesleyan Methodists was another matter. This was a blow to the Church of
+England as irreparable as the loss of Northern Europe to the Papacy. It
+finally upset the balance of parties in the Church, by detaching from it
+the larger number of the Evangelicals, particularly in the tradesman
+class. It gave a great stimulus to Nonconformity, which now became for
+the first time an important factor in the national life. Till the
+Wesleyan secession, the Nonconformists in England had been a feeble
+folk. From a return made to the Crown in 1700, it appeared that the
+Dissenters numbered about one in twenty of the population. Now they are
+as numerous as the Anglicans. Their prestige has also been largely
+augmented by their dominating position in the United States, where the
+Episcopal Church, long viewed with disfavour as tainted with British
+sympathies, has never recovered its lost ground, and is a comparatively
+small, though wealthy and influential sect. Within the Anglican
+communion, the inevitable religious revival of the nineteenth century
+began on Evangelical lines, but soon took a form determined by other
+influences than those which covered England with the ostentatiously
+hideous chapels of the Wesleyans. The extent of the revival has indeed
+been much exaggerated by the numerous apologists of the Catholic
+movement. The undoubted increase of professional zeal, activity, and
+efficiency among the clergy has been taken as proof of a corresponding
+access of enthusiasm among the laity, for which there is not much
+evidence. In spite of slovenly services and an easy standard of clerical
+duty, the observances of religion held a larger place in the average
+English home before the Oxford Movement than is often supposed, larger,
+indeed, than they do now, when family prayers and Bible reading have
+been abandoned in most households.
+
+The Oxford Movement claimed to be, and was, a revival of the principles
+of Anglo-Catholicism, which had not been left without witness for any
+long period since the Reformation. The continuity is certain, as is the
+continuity of the Ritualism of our day with the Tractarianism of seventy
+years ago; but the development has been rapid, especially in the last
+thirty years. Those who can remember the High Churchmen of Pusey's
+generation, or their disciples who in many country parsonages preserved
+the faith of their Tractarian teachers whole and undefiled, must be
+struck by the divergence between the principles which they then heard
+passionately maintained, and those which the younger generation, who use
+their name and enjoy their credit, avow to be their own.
+
+In the Tractarians the Nonjurors seemed to have come to life again, and
+one might easily find enthusiastic Jacobites among them. Unlike their
+successors, they showed no sympathy with political Radicalism. Their
+love for and loyalty to the English Church, which found melodious
+expression in Keble's poetry, were intense. They were not hostile to
+Evangelicalism within the Church, until the ultra-Protestant party
+declared war against them; but they viewed Dissent with scorn and
+abhorrence. They would gladly have excluded Nonconformists from any
+status in the Universities, and opposed any measures intended to
+conciliate their prejudices or remove their disabilities. Archdeacon
+Denison, in his sturdy opposition to the 'conscience clause' in Church
+schools, was a typical representative of the old High Church party. But
+still more bitter was their animosity against religious Liberalism. Even
+after the feud with the Evangelicals had developed into open war, Pusey
+was ready to join with Lord Shaftesbury and his party in united
+anathemas against the authors of 'Essays and Reviews.' The beginnings of
+Old Testament criticism evoked an outburst of fury almost unparalleled.
+When Bishop Gray, of Cape Town, solemnly 'excommunicated' Bishop
+Colenso, of Natal, and enjoined the faithful to 'treat him as a heathen
+man and a publican,' for exposing the unhistorical character of portions
+of the Pentateuch, he became a hero with the whole High Church party,
+and even the more liberal among the bishops were cowed by the tempest of
+feeling which the case aroused. In the same period, many Oxford men can
+remember Bishop Wilberforce's attack upon Darwinism, and, somewhat
+later, Dean Burgon's University sermon which ended with the stirring
+peroration: Leave me my ancestors in Paradise, and I leave you yours in
+the Zoological Gardens!' From the same pulpit Liddon, a little before
+his death, uttered a pathetic remonstrance against the course which his
+younger disciples were taking about inspiration and tradition.
+
+Reverence for tradition was a very prominent feature in the theology of
+the older generation. They spent an immense amount of time, learning,
+and ingenuity in establishing a _catena_ of patristic and orthodox
+authority for their principles, reaching back to the earliest times, and
+handed down in this country by a series of Anglo-Catholic divines. This
+unbroken tradition was conceived of as purely static, a 'mechanical
+unpacking,' as Father Tyrrell puts it, of the doctrine once delivered to
+the Apostles. The Church, according to their theory, was supernaturally
+guided by the Holy Ghost, and its decisions were consequently
+infallible, as long as the Church remained undivided. Thus the earlier
+General Councils, before the schism between East and West, may not be
+appealed against, and the Creeds drawn up by them can never be revised.
+Since the great schism, the infallible inspiration of the Church has
+been in abeyance, like an old English peerage when a peer leaves two or
+more daughters and no sons. This fantastic theory condemns all later
+developments, and leaves the Church under the weight of the dead hand.
+On the question of the Establishment the party was divided, some of its
+members attaching great value to the union of Church and State, while
+others made claims for the Church, in the matter of self-government,
+which were hardly compatible with Establishment. Their bond of union was
+their conviction of 'the necessity of impressing on people that the
+Church was more than a merely human institution; that it had privileges,
+sacraments, a ministry, ordained by Christ Himself; that it was a matter
+of highest obligation to remain united to the Church.'[25]
+
+As compared with their successors, the Tractarians were academic and
+learned; they preached thoughtful and carefully prepared sermons; they
+cared little for ecclesiastical millinery, and often acquiesced in very
+simple and 'backward' ceremonial. Their theory of the Church, their
+personal piety and self-discipline, were of a thoroughly medieval type,
+as may be seen from certain chapters in the life of Pusey. They fought
+the battle of Anglo-Catholicism, at Oxford and elsewhere, with a
+whole-hearted conviction that knew no misgivings or scruples. Oxford has
+not forgotten the election, as late as 1862, of an orthodox naval
+officer to a chair of history for which Freeman was a candidate.
+
+A change of tone was already noticeable, according to Dean Church, soon
+after Newman's secession. Many High Churchmen, in speaking of the
+English Church, became apologetic or patronising or lukewarm.
+Progressive members of the party professed a distaste for the name
+Anglican, and wished to be styled Catholics pure and simple. The same
+men began to speak of their opponents in the Church as Protestants; no
+longer as ultra-Protestants. Other changes soon manifested themselves.
+The archaeological side of the movement lost its interest; the appeal to
+antiquity became only a convenient argument to defend practices adopted
+on quite other grounds. The _epigoni_ of the Catholic revival are not
+learned; they know even less of the Fathers than of their Bibles. Their
+chief literature consists of a weekly penny newspaper, which reflects
+only too well their prejudices and aspirations. On the other hand, they
+are far busier than the older generation. The movement has become
+democratic; it has passed from the quadrangles of Oxford to the streets
+and lanes of our great cities, where hundreds of devoted clergymen are
+working zealously, without care for remuneration or thought of
+recognition, among the poorest of the populace. Of late years, the more
+energetic section of the party has not only abandoned the 'Church and
+King' Toryism of the old High Church party, but has plunged into
+socialism. The Mirfield community is said to be strongly imbued with
+collectivist ideas; and the Christian Social Union, which is chiefly
+supported by High Churchmen, tends to become more and more a Union of
+Christian Socialists, instead of being, as was intended by its founders,
+a non-political association for the study of social duties and problems
+in the light of the Sermon on the Mount. This attitude is partly the
+result of a close acquaintance with the sufferings of the urban
+proletariat, which moves the priests who minister among them to a
+generous sympathy with their lot; and, partly, it may be, to an unavowed
+calculation that an alliance with the most rapidly growing political
+party may in time to come be useful to the Church. Their methods of
+teaching are also more democratic, though many of them make the fatal
+mistake of despising preaching. They rely partly on what they call
+'definite Catholic teaching,' including frequent exhortations to the
+practice of confession; and partly on appeals to the eye, by symbolic
+ritual and elaborate ceremonial. Their more ornate services are often
+admirably performed from a spectacular point of view, and are far
+superior to most Roman Catholic functions in reverence, beauty, and good
+taste. The extreme section of the party is contemptuously lawless, not
+only repudiating the authority of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
+Council, but flouting the bishops with studied insolence. A glaring
+instance is to be found in the correspondence between Mr. Athelstan
+Riley and the Bishop of Oxford, which followed the Report of the Royal
+Commission on ritual practices.
+
+Doctrinally, the modern Ritualist is prepared to surrender the old
+theory of inspiration. He takes, indeed, but little interest in the
+Bible; his oracle is not the Book, but 'the Church.' What he means by
+the Church it is not easy to say. The old Anglican theory of the
+infallible undivided Church is not repudiated by him, but does not
+appeal to minds which look forward much more than backward; he is not
+yet, except in a few instances, disposed to accept the modern Roman
+Church as the arbiter of doctrine; and the English Church has no living
+voice to which he pays the slightest respect. The 'tradition of Western
+Catholicism' is a phrase which has a meaning for him, and he probably
+hopes for a reunion, at some distant date, of the Anglican Church with a
+reformed Rome. It is therefore essential, in his opinion, that no
+alteration shall take place in the formularies which we share with Rome;
+the Bible may be thrown to the critics, but the Creeds are inviolable.
+The Thirty-nine Articles he passes by with silent disdain. They are, he
+thinks not unjustly, a document to which no one, High, Low, or Broad,
+can now subscribe without mental reservations.
+
+The theory of development in doctrine, which, in its latest application
+by 'Modernists' like Loisy and Tyrell, is now agitating the Roman
+Church, is exciting interest in a few of the more thoughtful
+Anglo-Catholics; but the majority are blind to the difficulties for
+which the theory of two kinds of truth is a desperate remedy. Nor is it
+likely, perhaps, that the plain Englishman will ever allow that an
+ostensibly historical proposition may be false as a matter of fact, but
+true for faith.
+
+This party in the Church has a lay Pope, who represents the opinions of
+the more enterprising among the rank and file, and is president of their
+society, the English Church Union. It has the ably conducted weekly
+newspaper above referred to, and it has the general sympathy and support
+of the strongest man in the English Church, Charles Gore, Bishop of
+Birmingham. This prelate, partly by his personal qualities--his
+eloquence, high-minded disinterestedness, and splendid generosity, and
+partly by knowing exactly what he wants, and having full courage of his
+opinions, has at present an influence in the Anglican Church which is
+probably far greater than that of any other man. It is therefore a
+matter of public interest to ascertain what his views and intentions
+are, as an ecclesiastical statesman and reformer, and as a theologian.
+
+Bishop Gore exercised a strong influence over the younger men at Oxford
+before the publication of 'Lux Mundi.' But it was his editorship of this
+book, and his contribution to it, which first brought his name into
+prominence as a leader of religious thought. The religious public, with
+rather more penetration than usual, fastened on the pages about
+inspiration, and the limitations of Christ's human knowledge, which are
+from the editor's own pen, as the most significant part of the book. The
+authors are believed to have been annoyed by the disproportionate
+attention paid to this short section. But in truth these pages indicated
+a new departure among the High Church party, a change more important
+than the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, which was being made
+smoother for the religious public by the brilliant writings of Aubrey
+Moore. The acceptance of the verdict of modern criticism as to the
+authorship of the 110th Psalm, in the face of the recorded testimony of
+Christ that it was written by David, was a concession to 'Modernism'
+which staggered the old-fashioned High Churchman. Liddon did not conceal
+his distress that such doctrine should have come out of the Pusey House.
+But the manifesto was well timed; it enabled the younger men to go
+forward more freely, and sacrificed nothing that was in any way
+essential to the Anglo-Catholic position. Since the appearance of 'Lux
+Mundi,' the High Church clergy have been able without fear to avow their
+belief in the scientific theories associated with Darwin's name, and
+their rejection of the rigid doctrine of verbal inspiration, while the
+Evangelicals, who have not been emancipated by their leaders, labour
+under the reproach of extreme obscurantism in their attitude towards
+Biblical studies.
+
+As Canon of Westminster, and then as Bishop of Worcester, and of
+Birmingham, Dr. Gore has written and spoken much, and has defined his
+position more closely in relation to Anglo-Catholicism, to Church
+Reform, and to the social question. It will be convenient to take these
+three heads separately.
+
+This Bishop regards the excesses of the Ritualists as a deplorable but
+probably inevitable incident in a great movement. He quotes Newman's
+remonstrance against some hot-headed members of his adopted Church, who,
+'having done their best to set the house on fire, leave to others the
+task of extinguishing the flames.'[26] But he reminds us that there has
+always been 'intemperate zeal' in the Church, from the time of St.
+Paul's letters to the Church at Corinth to our own day. 'It must needs
+be that offences come,' wherever persons of limited wisdom are very much
+in earnest. The remedy for extravagance is to give fair scope for the
+legitimate principle. In the case of the so-called Ritualist movement,
+the inspiring principle or motive is easily found. It is the idea of a
+visible Church, exercising lawful authority over its members.
+
+This is the key to Bishop Gore's whole position. It rests on the
+conviction that Jesus Christ founded, and meant to found, a visible
+Church, an organised society. It is reasonable, the Bishop says, to
+suppose that He did intend this, for it is only by becoming embodied in
+the convictions of a society, and informing its actions, that ideas have
+reality and power. Christianity could never have lived if there had been
+no Christian Church. And, from the first, Christians believed that this
+society, the Catholic Church, was not left to organise itself on any
+model which from time to time might seem to promise the best results,
+but was instituted from above, as a Divine ordinance, by the authority
+of Christ Himself.[27] The witness of the early Christian writers is
+unanimous that the conception of a visible Church was a prominent
+feature in the Christianity of the sub-apostolic age, and it is plain
+that the civil power suspected the Christians just because they were so
+well organised. The Roman Empire was accustomed to tolerate
+superstitions, but it was part of her policy to repress _collegia
+illicita_. The witness of the New Testament points in the same
+direction. Jesus Christ committed His message, not to writing, but to a
+'little flock' of devoted adherents. He instituted the two great
+sacraments (Bishop Gore will admit no uncertainty on this point) to be a
+token of membership and a bond of brotherhood. He instituted a _civitas
+Dei_ which was to be wide enough to embrace all, but which makes for
+itself an exclusive claim. The 'heaven' of the first century was a city,
+a new Jerusalem; Christians are spoken of by St. Paul as citizens of a
+heavenly commonwealth. The distinction between the universal invisible
+Church and particular visible Churches is 'utterly unscriptural,' and
+was overthrown long ago by William Law in his controversy with Hoadly.
+
+As for the 'Apostolical Succession,' Dr. Gore thinks that its principle
+is more important than the form in which it is embodied. The succession
+would not be broken if all the presbyters in the Church governed as a
+college of bishops; and if something of this kind actually happened for
+a time in the early Church no argument against the Apostolical
+Succession can be based thereon.[28] The principle is that no ministry
+is valid which is assumed, which a man takes upon himself, or which is
+delegated to him from below. That this theory is Sacerdotalism in a
+sense may be admitted. But it does not imply a _vicarious_ priesthood,
+only a representative one. It does not deny the priesthood which belongs
+to the Church as a whole. The true sacerdotalism means that Christianity
+is the life of an organised society, in which a graduated body of
+ordained ministers is made the instrument of unity. It is no doubt true
+that in such a Church unspiritual men are made to mediate spiritual
+gifts, but happily we may distinguish character and office. Nor must we
+be deterred from asserting our convictions by the indignant protests
+which we are sure to hear, that we are 'unchurching' the non-episcopal
+bodies,[29] We do not assert that God is tied to His covenant, but only
+that we are so.
+
+Dr. Gore has no difficulty in proving that the sacerdotal theory of the
+Christian ministry took shape at an early date, and has been
+consistently maintained in the Catholic Church from ancient times to our
+own day. It is much more difficult to trace it back to the Apostolic
+age, even if, with Dr. Gore, we accept as certain the Pauline authorship
+of the Pastoral Epistles, which is still _sub judice_. The 'Didache' is
+a stumbling-block to those who wish to find Catholic practice in the
+century after our Lord's death; but that document is dismissed as
+composed by a Jewish Christian for a Jewish Christian community. After
+the second century, the apologists for the priesthood are in smooth
+waters.
+
+The conclusion is that 'the various presbyterian and congregationalist
+organisations, in dispensing with the episcopal succession, violated a
+fundamental law of the Church's life.'[30] 'A ministry not episcopally
+received is invalid, that is to say, it falls outside the conditions of
+covenanted security, and cannot justify its existence in terms of the
+covenant.'[31] The Anglican Church is not asking for the cause to be
+decided all her own way; for she has much to do to recall herself to her
+true principles. 'God's promise to Judah was that she should remember
+her ways and should be ashamed, when she should receive her sisters
+Samaria and Sodom, and that He would give them to her for daughters, but
+not by her covenant.'[32] The 'covenant' which the Church is to be
+content to forgo in order to recover Samaria and _Sodom_ (the 'Free
+Churches' can hardly be expected to relish this method of opening
+negotiations) is apparently the covenant between Church and State. 'In
+the future the Anglican Church must be content to act as, first of all,
+part and parcel of the Catholic Church, ruled by her laws, empowered by
+her spirit.' The bishops are to be ready to maintain, at all cost, the
+inherent spiritual independence which belongs to their office.
+
+Such a theory of the essentials of a true Church necessarily requires,
+as a corollary, a refutation of the Roman Catholic theory of orders,
+which reduces the Anglican clergy to the same level as the ministers of
+schismatical sects. Bishop Gore answers the objection that the Roman
+Church is the logical expression of his theory of the ministry, by
+saying that Roman Catholicism is not the development of the whole of the
+Church, but only of a part of it; and moreover, that spiritually it does
+not represent the whole of Christianity as it finds expression in the
+first Christian age or in the New Testament.[33] The Roman Church is a
+one-sided outgrowth of the religion of Christ--a development of those
+qualities in Christianity with which the Latin genius has special
+affinity. It has committed itself to unhistorical doctrines, involving a
+deficient appreciation of the intellectual and moral claim of truth to
+be valued for its own sake no less than for its results. Much of its
+teaching can only be explained as the result of an 'over-reckless
+accommodation to the unregenerate natural instincts in religion.'[34]
+The fact that the largest section of Christendom has become what Rome
+now is, is no proof that theirs is the line of true development. We can
+see this clearly enough if we consider the case of Buddhism. The main
+existing developments of Buddhism are a mere travesty of the spirit of
+Sakya Muni.[35] In this way Dr. Gore anticipates and rejects the
+argument since then put forward by Loisy, and other Liberal Catholic
+apologists, that history has proved Roman Catholicism to be the proper
+development of Christ's religion. In short, the Anglican Church, which
+indisputably possesses the Apostolic Succession, has no reason to go
+humbly to Borne to obtain recognition of her Orders.
+
+So far, in reviewing Bishop Gore's published opinions, we are on
+familiar High Anglican ground. But what is the Bishop's seat of
+authority in doctrine? He has shown himself willing, within limits, to
+apply critical methods to Holy Scripture. He has very little respect for
+the infallible Pope. And he would be the last to trust to private
+judgment--the _testimonium Spiritus Sancti_ as understood by some
+Protestants. Where, then, is the ultimate Court of Appeal? Bishop Gore
+finds it in the two earliest of the three Creeds, 'in which Catholic
+consent is especially expressed;' and in a half apologetic manner he
+adds that this Catholic basis has been 'generally understood' to imply
+'an unrealisable but not therefore unreal appeal to a General
+Council.'[36] No revision, therefore, of the Church's doctrinal
+formularies can be made except by the authority of a court which can
+never, by any possibility, be summoned! The unique sanctity and
+obligation which Bishop Gore considers to attach to the Creeds have been
+asserted by him again and again with a vehemence which proves that he
+regards the matter as of vital importance. 'There must be no compromise
+as regards the Creeds.... If those who live in an atmosphere of
+intellectual criticism become incapable of such sincere public
+profession of belief as the Creed contains, the Church must look to
+recruit her ministry from classes still capable of a more simple and
+unhesitating faith.'[37] And, again, in his most recent book: 'I have
+taken occasion before now to make it evident that, as far as I can
+secure it, I will admit no one into this diocese, or into Holy Orders,
+to minister for the congregation, who does not _ex animo_ believe the
+Creeds.'[38] Dr. Gore has not spared to stigmatise as morally dishonest
+those who desire to serve the Church as its ministers while harbouring
+doubts about the physical miracle known as the Virgin Birth, and one of
+his clergy was a few years ago induced to resign his living by an
+aspersion of this kind, to which the Bishop gave publicity in the daily
+press.
+
+Now it has been generally supposed that the Anglican clergy are bound to
+declare their adhesion not only to the Creeds, but to the Thirty-nine
+Articles, and to the infallible truth of Holy Scripture. Bishop Gore,
+however, holds that when a new deacon, on the day of his ordination,
+solemnly declares that he 'assents to the Thirty-nine Articles,' and
+that he 'believes the doctrine therein set forth to be agreeable to the
+word of God,' he 'can no longer fairly be regarded as bound to
+particular phrases or expressions in the Articles.'[39] And further,
+when the same new deacon expresses his 'unfeigned belief in all the
+canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments,' 'that expression of
+belief can be fairly and justly made by anyone who believes heartily
+that the Bible, as a whole, records and contains the message of God to
+man in all its stages of delivery and that each one of the books
+contains some element or aspect of this revelation.'[40]
+
+The Bishop himself has affirmed his personal belief that some narratives
+in the Old Testament are probably not historical. It may fairly be asked
+on what principle he is prepared to evade the plain sense and intention
+of a doctrinal test in two cases while stigmatising as morally
+flagitious any attempts to do the same in a third. For it is
+unquestionable that a general assent to the Articles does not mean that
+the man who gives that assent is free to repudiate any 'particular
+phrases or expressions' which do not please him. A witness who admitted
+having signed an affidavit with this intention would cut a poor figure
+in a law court. And it is difficult to see how adhesion to the
+antiquated theory of inspiration could be demanded more stringently than
+by the form of words which was drawn up, as none can doubt, to secure
+it. These things being so, either the accusation of bad faith applies to
+the treatment which the Bishop justifies in the case of the Articles and
+the Bible, or it should not be brought against those who apply to one
+clause in their vows the principle which is admitted and used in two
+others.
+
+There are some honourable men who have abstained from entering the
+service of the Church on account of these requirements. But there are
+many others who recognise that knowledge grows and opinions change,
+while formularies for the most part remain unaltered; and who consider
+that, so long as their general position is understood by those among
+whom they work, it would be overscrupulous to refuse an inward call to
+the ministry because they know that they will be asked to give a formal
+assent to unsuitably worded tests drawn up three centuries ago. Dr. Gore
+himself would probably have been refused ordination fifty years ago on
+the ground of his lax views on inspiration; and the Bishops who approved
+of the condemnation of Colenso, who condemned 'Essays and Reviews,' and
+who would have condemned 'Lux Mundi,' were more 'honest' to the tests
+than their successors. But an obstinate persistence in that kind of
+honesty would have excluded from the ministry all except fools, liars,
+and bigots. Again, it might have been supposed that the laity also, who
+at their baptism and confirmation made the same declaration of belief in
+'all the articles' of the Apostles' Creed, and who are bidden by the
+Church to repeat the same Creed every week, are in the same position as
+the clergy. But the Bishop again attempts to draw a distinction. 'The
+responsibility of joining in the Creed is left to the conscience of the
+layman,' but not to the conscience of the clergyman, nor, we suppose, of
+the choir.[41] This plea seems to us a very lame one. The Church of
+England has never thought of imposing severer doctrinal tests on the
+clergy than on the laity, and assent to the Creeds is as integral a part
+of the baptismal as of the ordination vows.
+
+No loyal Christian wishes to impugn a doctrine which touches so closely
+the life of the Redeemer as the account of His miraculous conception,
+which appears, in our texts, in two books of the New Testament. If the
+tradition is as old as the Church, which is very doubtful, it must, from
+the nature of the case, rest on the unsupported assertion of Mary, the
+mother of Jesus; for Joseph could only testify that the child was not
+his. It is therefore useless to reinforce the Gospel narrative by
+appealing to 'Catholic tradition,'[42] as if it could add anything to
+the evidence. It is significant, however, of the Bishop's own feelings
+about tradition, that he quietly sets aside the plain statement of the
+Synoptic Gospels that Joseph and Mary had a large family of four sons
+and more than one daughter by their marriage. This statement, which is
+doubtless historical, became intolerable to the conscience of the Church
+during the long frenzy of asceticism, when marital relations were
+regarded as impure and degrading; and in consequence the perpetual
+virginity of Mary, though contradicted in the New Testament, became as
+much an article of faith as her conception of Jesus by the Holy Ghost.
+We have no wish to criticise the arguments for the Virgin Birth which
+Dr. Gore has collected in his 'Dissertations.' But when a strenuous
+effort is made to exclude from the ministry of the Church all who cannot
+declare _ex animo_ that they believe it to be a certain historical fact,
+it becomes a duty to point out that, on ordinary principles of evidence,
+the story must share the uncertainty which hangs over other strange and
+unsupported narratives. The Bishop expresses his doubt whether those who
+regard this miracle as unproven can be convinced of the Divinity of
+Christ. This only shows how difficult it is for an ecclesiastic in his
+high position to induce either clergy or laity to talk frankly to him.
+To most educated men there would be no difficulty in believing that the
+Son of God became incarnate through the agency of two earthly parents.
+The analogy of hybrids in the animal world is not felt to apply to the
+union of the human and divine natures, except by persons of very low
+intelligence. We should have preferred to be silent on this delicate
+subject, but for the fact that some men whom the Church can ill spare
+have been advised officially not to apply for ordination, on account of
+their views about this miracle. Fortunately, the practice of demanding
+more specific declarations than the law requires has not been adopted
+in most dioceses.
+
+The question of the miraculous element in religious truth has indeed
+reached an acute stage. The Catholic doctrine is and always has been
+that there are two 'orders'--the natural and the supernatural--on the
+same plane, and distinguishable from each other. The Catholic theologian
+is prepared to define what occurrences in the lives of the Saints are
+natural, and what supernatural. Miracles are of frequent occurrence, and
+are established by ordinary evidence. Three miracles have to be placed
+to the credit of each candidate for canonisation before he or she is
+entitled to bear the title of saint, and the evidence for these miracles
+is sifted by a commission. This theory has been practically abandoned in
+the English Church. There are few among our ecclesiastics and
+theologians who would spend five minutes in investigating any alleged
+supernatural occurrence in our own time. It would be assumed that, if
+true, it must be ascribed to some obscure natural cause. The result is
+that the miracles in the Creeds, or in the New Testament, are isolated
+as they have never been before. They seem to form an order by
+themselves, a class of fact belonging neither to the world of phenomena
+as we know it, nor to the world of spirit as we know it. From this
+situation has arisen the tendency, increasingly prevalent both in the
+Roman Church and in Protestant Germany, to distinguish 'truths of faith'
+from 'truths of fact,' The former, it is said, have a representative,
+symbolic character, and are only degraded by being placed in the same
+category as physical phenomena. This contention is open to very serious
+objections, but it at least indicates the actual state of the problem,
+viz. that to most educated men the miraculous element in Christianity
+seems to float between earth and heaven, no longer essentially connected
+with either, while on the other hand the majority of religious people,
+including a few men of high intelligence, find it difficult to realise
+their faith without the help of the miraculous. Supernaturalism, which
+from the scientific point of view is the most unsatisfactory of all
+theories, traversing as it does the first article in the creed of
+science--the uniformity of nature--gives, after all, a kind of crude
+synthesis of the natural and the spiritual, by which it is possible to
+live; it is, for many persons, an indispensable bridge between the world
+of phenomena and the world of spirit. But when the heavy-handed
+dogmatist requires a categorical assent to the literal truth of the
+miraculous, in exactly the same sense in which physical facts are true,
+a tension between faith and reason cannot be avoided. And it is in this
+literal sense that Bishop Gore requires all his clergy to assent to the
+miracles in the Creeds.
+
+The fact is that the Catholic party in the Church are in a hopeless
+_impasse_ with regard to dogma. They cannot take any step which would
+divide them from 'the whole Church,' and the whole Church no longer
+exists except as an ideal--it has long ago been shivered into fragments.
+The Roman Church is in a much better position. The Pope may at any time
+'interpret' tradition in such a manner as to change it completely--there
+is no appeal from his authoritative pronouncements; but for the High
+Anglican there is no living authority, only the dead hand, and a Council
+which can never meet. It is much as if no important legislation could be
+passed in this country without a joint session of our Parliament and the
+American Congress. It is difficult to see any way of escape, except by
+accepting the principle of development in a sense which would repudiate
+the time-honoured 'appeal to antiquity.'
+
+We have next to consider Bishop Gore as a Church Reformer. We have seen
+that he desires an autonomous Church, which can legislate for itself.
+The dead hand, which weighs so lightly upon him when it forbids any
+attempt to revise the formularies of the faith, seems to him intolerably
+heavy when it obliges the Church to conform to 'the laws, canons, and
+rubrics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which it cannot
+alter or add to.'[43] The only remedy, he thinks, is a really
+representative assembly, of bishops, presbyters, and laymen. In the
+early Church, as he points out, the laity were always recognised as
+constituent members of the government of the Church. In a democratic
+age, the laity as a body should exercise the powers which in the Middle
+Ages were delegated to, or usurped by, 'emperors, kings, chiefs and
+lords.' The parish ought to have the real control of the Church
+buildings, except the chancel; the Church servants ought to be appointed
+and removed by the parish meeting. It would be a step forward if these
+parish councils could be organised under diocesan regulation, and
+invested with the control of the parish finances, except the vicar's
+stipend; the right to object to the appointment of an unfit pastor; and
+some power of determining the ceremonial at the Church services. The
+diocesan synod should become a reality; there should also be provincial
+synods, which could become national by fusion. But in the last resort
+the declaration of the mind of the Church on matters of doctrine and
+morals ought to belong to the bishops.[44]
+
+But who are the laity? 'By a layman,' he says, 'I mean one who fulfils
+the duties of Church membership--one who is baptised into the Church,
+who has been confirmed if he has reached years of discretion, and who is
+a communicant.' A roll of Church members, he suggests, should be kept in
+each parish, on which should be entered the name of each confirmed
+person, male or female. The names of those who had passed (say) two
+years without communicating should be struck off the roll. Further,
+names should be removable for any scandalous offences.[45]
+
+It is easy to see that the 'communicant franchise' would work entirely
+in favour of that party in the Church which attaches the greatest
+importance to that Sacrament. It would exclude a large number of
+Protestant laymen who subscribe to Church funds, and who on any other
+franchise would have a share in its government. But we need not suspect
+Dr. Gore of any _arrière pensée_ of this kind. His ideal of parochial
+life is one which must appeal to all who wish well to the Church. We
+will quote a few characteristic sentences:
+
+     'Are we to set to work to revive St. Paul's ideal of the
+     life of a Church? If so, what we need is not more
+     Christians, but better Christians. We want to make the moral
+     meaning of Church membership understood and its conditions
+     appreciated. We want to make men understand that it costs
+     something to be a Christian; that to be a Christian, that
+     is, a Churchman, is to be an intelligent participator in a
+     corporate life consecrated to God, and to concern oneself,
+     therefore, as a matter of course, in all that touches the
+     corporate life, its external as well as its spiritual
+     conditions.... We Christians are fellow-citizens together in
+     the commonwealth that is consecrated to God, a commonwealth
+     of mortal men with bodies as well as souls.'[46]
+
+With regard to ritual, he will not allow that the disputes are
+unimportant. The vital question of self-government is at stake. From
+this point of view, a 'mere ceremony' may mean a great deal. St. Paul,
+who said 'Circumcision is nothing,' also said, 'If ye be circumcised
+Christ shall profit you nothing,'[47] This is quite consistent with his
+hearty disapproval of the introduction of purely Roman ceremonial.
+
+Does this ideal of a free Church in a free State involve
+disestablishment? Not necessarily, Dr. Gore thinks. Why should not legal
+authority be entrusted to diocesan courts, with a right of appeal to a
+court of bishops, abolishing the jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee
+in spiritual cases? It is the paralysis of spiritual authority, in his
+opinion, which pushes into prominence all extravagances, and conceals
+the vast amount of agreement which exists in essentials. 'We are weary
+of debating societies; we want the healthy discipline of co-operative
+government.'[48] The policy of this self-governing Church is to be
+'Liberal-Catholic,' a type which 'responds to the moral needs of our
+great race.'
+
+Such is the scheme of Church reform towards which the Bishop is working;
+and he has told us, in the sentence last quoted, what kind of Church he
+looks forward to see. But what kind of Church would it actually be, if
+his designs were carried out? It would not be a national Church; for
+his belief that Catholicism 'responds to the moral needs of our race' is
+contradicted by the whole history of modern England. The laity of
+England may not be quite 'as Protestant as ever they were, though we
+often hear that they are so; but they show no disposition to become
+Catholics. Catholicism as we know it is Latin Christianity, and even in
+the Latin countries it is now a hothouse plant, dependent on a special
+education in Catholic schools and seminaries, with an _index librorum
+prohibitorum_. Such a system is impossible in England. Seminaries for
+the early training of future clergymen may indeed be established; but
+beds of exotics cannot be raised by keeping the gardeners in greenhouses
+while the young plants are in the open air. The 'Liberal Catholic'
+Church, accordingly, would shed, by degrees, the very large number of
+Churchmen who still call themselves Protestant. Nor would the adjective
+'Liberal' secure the adhesion of the 'intellectuals.' Bishop Gore's
+Liberalism would exclude most of them as effectually as the most rigid
+Conservatism. It would also be a disestablished and disendowed Church;
+for surely it is building castles in the air to think of episcopal
+courts recognised by law. The prospect of disestablishment does not
+alarm the Bishop. Some of his utterances suggest that he would almost
+welcome it. Indeed, disestablishment is viewed with complacency by an
+increasing number of High Church clergy. They feel that they can never
+carry out their plans for de-Protestantising the Church while the Crown
+has the appointment of the bishops. For even if, as has lately been the
+case, their party gets more than its due share of preferment, there will
+always, under the existing system, be a sufficient number of Liberal and
+Evangelical bishops on the bench to make a consistent policy of
+Catholicising impossible. And the Catholic party are so admirably
+organised that they are confident in their power to carry their schemes
+under any form of self-government, even though the mass of the laity are
+untouched by their views. Moreover, the town clergy, among whom are to
+be found advocates of disestablishment, find in many places that the
+parochial idea has completely broken down. The unit is the congregation,
+no longer the parish, and the clergy are supported by pew-rents and
+voluntary offerings, not by endowments. In such parishes,
+disestablishment might, they think, give them greater liberty, and would
+make little difference to them in other ways. But in the country
+districts the case is very different. Thirty years after
+disestablishment, the quiet country rectory, nestling in its bower of
+trees and shrubs, with all that it has meant for centuries in English
+rural life, would in most villages be a thing of the past.
+
+For these reasons, the Bishop's policy of reconstructing the Church of
+England as a self-governing body, professing definitely Catholic
+principles and enjoining Catholic practices, seems to us an impossible
+one. The chief gainer by it would be the Church of Rome, which would
+gather in the most consistent and energetic of the Anglo-Catholics, who
+would be dissatisfied at the contrast between the pretensions of their
+own Church and its isolated position. The non-episcopal bodies would
+also gain numerous recruits from among the ruins of the Evangelical and
+Liberal parties in the Church.
+
+But, it may be said, this dismal forecast may be falsified if the
+Anglican Church can win the masses. The English populace are at present
+neither Protestant nor Catholic; they are, if we count heads, mainly
+heathen. May not the working man, who has no leaning to dissent, unless
+it be the 'corybantic Christianity' of the Salvation Army, be brought
+into the Church?
+
+Bishop Gore has always shown an earnest sympathy with the aspirations of
+the working class to improve their material condition. He is also
+profoundly impressed by the apparent discrepancy between the teachings
+of Christ about wealth and the principles which His professed disciples
+wholly follow and in part avow. These anxious questionings form the
+subject of a fine sermon which he preached at the Church Congress of
+1906, on the text about the camel and the needle's eye. Jesus Christ
+chose to be born of poor and humble parents, in a land remote from the
+centre of political or intellectual influence, and in the circle of
+labouring men. He chose to belong to the class of the respectable
+artisan, and most of the twelve Apostles came from the same social
+level. In His teaching He plainly associated blessedness with the lot of
+poverty, and extreme danger with the lot of wealth. All through the New
+Testament the assumption is that God is on the side of the poor against
+the rich. As Jowett once said, there is more in the New Testament
+against being rich, and in favour of being poor, than we like to
+recognise. And is not this the cause of our failure to win the masses?
+Is it not because we are the Church of capital rather than of labour?
+The Church ought to be a community in which religion works upward from
+below. The Church of England expresses that point of view which is
+precisely not that which Christ chose for His Church. The incomes of the
+bishops range them with the wealthier classes; the clergy associate with
+the gentry and not with the artisans. We must acknowledge with deep
+penitence that we are on wrong lines. For himself, the Bishop admits
+that he has 'a permanently troubled conscience' in the matter. Then,
+with that admirable courage and practicality which is the secret of much
+of his influence, he proceeds to indicate four 'lines of hopeful
+recovery.' First, the Church must get rid of the administration of poor
+relief. Where the charity of the Church is understood to mean the
+patronage of the rich, it can do nothing without disaster. All will be
+in vain till it has ceased to be a plausible taunt that a man or woman
+goes to church for what can be got. Secondly, we must give the artisans
+their true place in Church management, and must consult their tastes in
+all non-essentials. Thirdly, the clergy should 'concentrate themselves
+upon bringing out the social meaning of the sacraments,' and giving
+voice to the spirit of Christian brotherhood. Lastly, we ought to free
+the clerical profession entirely from any association of class.
+
+The Bishop is not a Collectivist, but he has great sympathy with some of
+the aims of Socialism. In a 'Pan-Anglican Paper' just issued, he
+discusses the attitude of the Church towards Socialism. Christianity, he
+says, must remain independent of State-Socialism, as of other
+organisations of society. Socialism would make a far deeper demand on
+character than most of its adherents realise. 'An experiment in
+State-Socialism, based on the average level of human character as it
+exists at present, would be doomed to disastrous failure.' (Bishop
+Creighton said the same thing more epigrammatically. 'Socialism will
+only be possible when we are all perfect, and then it will not be
+needed.') But what we have is no Socialistic State, but a great body of
+aspiration, based on a great demand for justice in human life. The
+indictment of our present social organisation is indeed overwhelming,
+and with this indictment Christianity ought to have the profoundest
+sympathy, for it is substantially the indictment of the Old Testament
+prophets. The prophets were on the side of the poor; and so was our
+Lord. Where is the prophetic spirit in the Church to-day? We need 'a
+tremendous act of penitence.' Our charities have been mere
+ambulance-work; but 'the Christian Church was not created to be an
+ambulance-corps.' We have followed the old school of political economy
+instead of the prophets and Christ. Broadly, we may contrast two ideals
+of society: individualism, which means in the long run the right of the
+strong; and socialism, which means that the society is supreme over the
+individual. 'On the whole, Christianity is with Socialism.'
+
+This 'Pan-Anglican Paper' is a fair representation of the views which
+are spreading rapidly among the High Church clergy. The party is in fact
+making a determined effort to enlist the sympathies of the working man
+with the Church, by offering him in return its sympathy and countenance
+in his struggle against capitalism. This is a phase of the movement
+which it is very difficult to judge fairly. Dr. Gore's sermon was
+calculated to give any Christian who heard it, whether Conservative or
+Liberal, 'a troubled conscience;' and his practical suggestions are as
+convincing as any suggestions that are not platitudes are likely to be.
+But in weaker hands this sympathy with the cause of Labour is in great
+danger of becoming one of the most insidious temptations that can attack
+a religious body. The Church of England has been freely accused of too
+great complaisance to the powers that be, when those powers were
+oligarchic. Some of the clergy are now trying to repeat, rather than
+redress, this error, by an obsequious attitude to King Working-man. But
+the Church ought to be equally proof against the _vultus instantis
+tyranni_ and the _civium ardor prava iubentium_. The position of a
+Church which should sell itself to the Labour party would be truly
+ignominious. It would be used so long as the politicians of the party
+needed moral support and eloquent advocacy, and spurned as soon as its
+services were no longer necessary. The taunt of Helen to Aphrodite in
+the third book of the 'Iliad' sounds very apposite when we read the
+speeches of some clerical 'Christian Socialists,' who find it more
+exciting to organise processions of the unemployed than to attend to
+their professional duties.
+
+    hêso par' ahython hiohysa, thehôn d' haphoeike kelehythoy,
+    mêd' heti sohisi phodessin hypostrhepseiast 'Holympon,
+    hall' ahiehi perhi kehinon hohizye kahi he phylasse,
+    ehist ho khe s' hê halochon poihêsetai, hê ho ge dohylên.[49]
+
+It is as a slave, not as an honoured help-mate, that the Social
+Democrats would treat any Christian body that helped them to overthrow
+our present civilisation. And rightly; for Christ's only injunction in
+the sphere of economics was, 'Take heed and beware of all covetousness,'
+He refused pointedly to have anything to do with disputes about the
+distribution of property; and in the parable of the Prodigal Son the
+demand, 'Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me,' is the
+prelude to a journey in that 'far country' which is forgetfulness of God
+(_terra longinqua est oblivio Dei_). Christ unquestionably meant His
+followers to think but little of the accessories of life. He believed
+that if men could be induced to adopt the true standard of values,
+economic relations would adjust themselves. He promised His disciples
+that they should not want the necessaries of subsistence, and for the
+rest, He held that the freedom from anxiety, covetousness, and envy,
+which He enjoined as a duty, would also make their life happy. This is
+a very different spirit from that which makes Socialism a force in
+politics.
+
+Bishop Gore, we may be sure, will not willingly allow the High Church
+party to be entangled in corrupt alliances. When he handles what may be
+called applied Christianity, he does so in a manner which makes us
+rejoice at the popularity of his books. The little commentaries on the
+Sermon on the Mount, and on the Epistles to the Romans and Ephesians,
+are admirable. They are simple, practical, and profound. We subjoin a
+short analysis of the notes on the first part of the Sermon on the
+Mount, as an illustration of the teaching which runs all through the
+three commentaries.
+
+     The Sermon on the Mount is not the whole of Christianity. It
+     is the climax of law, of the letter that killeth. The Divine
+     requirement is pressed home with unequalled force upon the
+     conscience; yet not in the form of mere laws of conduct, but
+     as a type of character. It is promulgated not by an
+     inaccessible God, but by the Divine Love manifested in
+     manhood. The hard demand of the letter is closely connected
+     with the promise of the Spirit. We are told that many of the
+     precepts in the sermon were anticipated by Pagan and Jewish
+     writers. But this we might have expected, since all men are
+     rational and moral through fellowship with the Word, who is
+     also the Reason of God. Christ is the light which in
+     conscience and reason lightens every man throughout the
+     history of the race. But the Sermon is comprehensive where
+     other summaries are fragmentary, it is pure where they are
+     mixed. It is teaching for grown men, who require principles,
+     not rules. And it is authoritative, reinforced by the
+     mysterious Person of the speaker. The Beatitudes are a
+     description of character. Christ requires us, not to do such
+     and such things, but to be such and such people. ... True
+     blessedness consists in membership of the kingdom of heaven,
+     which is a life of perfect relationship with man and nature
+     based on perfect fellowship with God.... The Beatitudes
+     describe the Christian character in detail; in particular,
+     they describe it as contrasted with the character of the
+     world, which, in the religious sense, may be defined as
+     human society as it organises itself apart from God. The
+     first Beatitude enjoins detachment, such as His who emptied
+     Himself, as having nothing and yet possessing all things. We
+     are all to be detached; there are some whom our Lord
+     counsels to be literally poor. 'Blessed are they that
+     mourn' means that we are not to screen ourselves from the
+     common lot of pain. We must distinguish 'godly sorrow' from
+     the peevish discontent and slothfulness which St. Paul calls
+     the sorrow of the world, and which in medieval casuistry is
+     named acedia. 'Blessed are the meek' means that we are not
+     to assert ourselves unless it is our duty to do so. The true
+     Christian is a man who in his private capacity cannot be
+     provoked. On a general view of life, though not always in
+     particular cases, we must allow that we are not treated
+     worse than we deserve. The fourth Beatitude tells us that if
+     we want righteousness seriously, we can have it. The fifth
+     proclaims the reward of mercy, that is, compassion in
+     action. Pity which does nothing is only hypocrisy or
+     emotional self-indulgence. On the whole, we can determine
+     men's attitude to us by our attitude to them; the merciful
+     do obtain mercy. 'Purity of heart' means singleness of
+     purpose; but in the narrower sense of purity it is worth
+     while to say that those who profess to find it 'impossible'
+     to lead a pure life might overcome their fault if they would
+     try to be Christlike altogether, instead of struggling with
+     that one fault separately. 'Sincerum est nisi vas,
+     quodcunque infundis acescit.' On the seventh--there are many
+     kinds of false peace, which Christ came to break up; but
+     fierce, relentless competition is an offence in a Christian
+     nation. The last shows what our reward is likely to be in
+     this world, if we follow these counsels. Where the
+     Christ-character is not welcomed, it is hated.
+
+From the later sections a few characteristic comments may be given in an
+abridged form.
+
+     We are apt to have rather free and easy notions of the
+     Divine fatherhood. To call God our Father, we must ourselves
+     be sons; and it is only those who are led by the Spirit of
+     God who are the sons of God.... Ask for great things, and
+     small things will be given to you. This is exactly the
+     spirit of the Lord's Prayer.... Act for God. Direct your
+     thoughts and intentions Godward, and your intelligence and
+     affections will gradually follow along the line of your
+     action.... You must put God first, or nowhere.... It is a
+     perilous error to say that we have only to follow our
+     conscience; we have to enlighten our conscience and keep it
+     enlightened.... There is no greater plague of our generation
+     than the nervous anxiety which characterises all its
+     efforts. We ought to be reasonably careful, and then go
+     boldly forward in the peace of God.... Our Lord did not
+     mean to make of His disciples a new kind of Pharisee.
+     ....'Judge not,' means, Do not be critical. The condemnation
+     of one who is always finding fault carries no moral weight.
+     It is those who have the lowest and vaguest standards of
+     what is right who are often the most critical in judgment of
+     other people.... We ought so to limit our desires that what
+     we want for ourselves we can reasonably expect also for
+     others.... A man who wants to do his duty must always be
+     prepared to stand alone.... Christianity is not so much a
+     statement of the true end or ideal of human life, as a great
+     spiritual instrument for realising the end.
+
+These extracts will be sufficient to show what are the characteristics
+of these little commentaries. They exhibit extreme honesty of purpose,
+fearless acceptance of Christ's teaching honestly interpreted, scorn of
+unreality and empty words, and a determination never to allow preaching
+to be divorced from practice. No more stimulating Christian teaching has
+been given in our generation.
+
+The valuable treatise on the Holy Communion, called 'The Body of
+Christ,' is too theological for detailed discussion in these pages. The
+points in which the Roman Church has perverted and degraded the really
+Catholic sacramental doctrine are forcibly exposed, and the true nature
+of the sacrament is unfolded in a masterly and beautiful manner.
+
+A study of the whole body of theological writings from the pen of this
+remarkable man leaves us with the conviction that he is one of the most
+powerful spiritual forces in our generation. It is the more to be
+regretted that in certain points he seems to be hampered by false
+presuppositions and misled by unattainable ideals. His loyalty to
+'Catholic truth,' as understood by the party in the Church to which he
+consents to belong, prevents him from understanding where the shoe
+really pinches among those of the younger generation who are both
+thoughtful and devout. He makes a fetish of the Creeds, documents which
+only represent the opinions of a majority at a meeting; and what manner
+of meetings Church Councils sometimes were, is known to history. He is
+still impressed with the grandeur of the Catholic idea, as embodied in
+the Roman Church, and will do nothing to preclude reunion, should a
+more enlightened policy ever prevail at the Vatican. But this country
+has done with the Roman Empire, in its spiritual as well as its temporal
+form. The dimensions of that proud dominion have shrunk with the
+expansion of knowledge; new worlds have been opened out, geographical
+and mental, which never owned its sway; the _caput orbis_ has become
+provincial, and her authority is spurned even within her own borders.
+There is no likelihood of the English people ever again accepting
+'Catholicism,' if Catholicism is the thing which history calls by that
+name. The movement which the Bishop hopes to lead to victory will
+remain, as it has been hitherto, a theory of the ministry rather than of
+the Church, and its strength will be confined, as it is now, mainly to
+clerical circles.
+
+Catholicism and Protestantism (in so far as they are more than names for
+institutionalism and mysticism, which are permanent types) are both
+obsolescent phases in the evolution of the Christian religion. 'The time
+cometh when neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem shall men
+worship the Father.'
+
+A profound reconstruction is demanded, and for those who have eyes to
+see has been already for some time in progress. The new type of
+Christianity will be more Christian than the old, because it will be
+more moral. A number of unworthy beliefs about God are being tacitly
+dropped, and they are so treated because they are unworthy of Him. The
+realm of nature is being claimed for Him once more; the distinction
+between natural and supernatural is repudiated; we hear less frequent
+complaints that God 'does nothing' because He does not assert Himself by
+breaking one of His own laws. The divinity of Christ implies--one might
+almost say it means--the eternal supremacy of those moral qualities
+which He exhibited in their perfection. 'Conversio fit ad Dominum ut
+Spiritum,' as Bengel said. The visible or Catholic Church is not the
+name of an institution which has the privilege of being governed by
+bishops. It is 'dispersed throughout the whole world,' under many
+banners and many disguises. Its political reunion is (Plato would say)
+an hen mhythô ehychê, and is at present neither to be expected nor
+desired. Among those who are by right citizens of the spiritual kingdom,
+those only are in danger of exclusion from it who entrench themselves in
+a little fort of their own and erect barriers, which may make them their
+own prisoners, but which will not hinder the great commonwealth of
+seekers after truth from working out modern problems by modern lights,
+until the whole of our new and rich inheritance, intellectual, moral,
+and æsthetic, shall be brought again under the obedience of Christ.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+     [24] In 1908.
+
+     [25] Palmer's _Narrative_, p 20.
+
+     [26] _Contemporary Review_, April 1899.
+
+     [27] _The Church and the Ministry_, pp. 9, 10.
+
+     [28] _Ibid_., p. 74.
+
+     [29] _The Church and the Ministry_, p. 110.
+
+     [30] _Ibid_., p. 344.
+
+     [31] _Ibid_., p. 345.
+
+     [32] _Ibid_., p. 348.
+
+     [33] _The Mission of the Church_, p. 32.
+
+     [34] _Church Congress Report_, 1896, p. 143.
+
+     [35] _Ibid_., p. 142.
+
+     [36] _Church Congress Report_, 1903, p. 15.
+
+     [37] _Ibid_., p. 17.
+
+     [38] _The New Theology and the Old Religion_, p. 162.
+
+     [39] _Church Congress Report_, 1903, p. 16.
+
+     [40] _Ibid_.
+
+     [41] _The New Theology and the Old Religion_, p. 163.
+
+     [42] _Dissertations_, pp. 41-49.
+
+     [43] _Church Congress Report_, 1899, p. 63.
+
+     [44] _Church Congress Report_, 1899, pp. 65-67.
+
+     [45] _Ibid_., 1896, pp. 342-346.
+
+     [46] _Epistle to the Ephesians_, pp. 113, 114.
+
+     [47] _Contemporary Review_, April 1899.
+
+     [48] _Ibid_.
+
+     [49] 'Go and sit thou by his side, and depart from the way
+     of the gods; neither let thy feet ever bear thee back to
+     Olympus; but still be vexed for his sake and guard him, till
+     he make thee his wife--or rather his slave.'
+
+
+
+
+ROMAN CATHOLIC MODERNISM
+
+(1909)
+
+
+The Liberal movement in the Roman Church is viewed by most Protestants
+with much the same mixture of sympathy and misgiving with which
+Englishmen regard the ambition of Russian reformers to establish a
+constitutional government in their country. Freedom of thought and
+freedom of speech are almost always desirable; but how, without a
+violent revolution, can they be established in a State which exists only
+as a centralised autocracy, held together by authority and obedience?
+This sympathy, and these fears, are likely to be strongest in those who
+have studied the history of Western Catholicism with most intelligence.
+From the Edict of Milan to the Encyclical of Pius X, the evolution which
+ended in papal absolutism has proceeded in accordance with what looks
+like an inner necessity of growth and decay. The task of predicting the
+policy of the Vatican is surely not so difficult as M. Renan suggested,
+when he remarked to a friend of the present writer, 'The Church is a
+woman; it is impossible to say what she will do next.' For where is the
+evidence of caprice in the history of the Roman Church? If any State has
+been guided by a fixed policy, which has imposed itself inexorably on
+its successive rulers, in spite of the utmost divergences in their
+personal characters and aims, that State is the Papacy.
+
+Beneath all the eddies which have broken the surface, the great stream
+has flowed on, and has flowed in one direction. The same logic of events
+which transformed the constitutional principate of Augustus into the
+sultanate of Diocletian and Valentinian, has brought about a parallel
+development in the Church which inherited the traditions, the policy,
+and the territorial sphere of the dead Empire. The second World-State
+which had its seat on the Seven Hills has followed closely in the
+footsteps of the first. It is not too fanciful to trace, as Harnack has
+done, the resemblance in detail--Peter and Paul in the place of Romulus
+and Remus; the bishops and arch-bishops instead of the proconsuls; the
+troops of priests and monks as the legionaries; while the Jesuits are
+the Imperial bodyguard, the protectors and sometimes the masters of the
+sovereign. One might carry the parallel further by comparing the schism
+between the Eastern and Western Churches, and the later defection of
+northern Europe, with the disruption of the Roman Empire in the fourth
+century; and in the sphere of thought, by comparing the scholastic
+philosophy and casuistry with the _Summa_ of Roman law in the
+Digest.[50]
+
+The fundamental principles of such a government are imposed upon it by
+necessity. In the first place, progressive centralisation, and the
+substitution of a graduated hierarchy for popular government, came about
+as inevitably in the Catholic Church as in the Mediterranean Empire of
+the Caesars. The primitive colleges of presbyters soon fell under the
+rule of the bishops, the bishops under the patriarchs; and then Rome
+suffered her first great defeat in losing the Eastern patriarchates,
+which she could not subjugate. The truncated Church, no longer
+'universal,' found itself obliged to continue the same policy of
+centralisation, and with such success that, under Innocent III, the
+triumph of the theocracy seemed complete. The Papacy dominated Europe
+_de facto_, and claimed to rule the world _de jure_. Boniface VIII, when
+the clouds were already gathering, issued the famous Bull 'Unam
+sanctam,' in which he said: 'Subesse Romano pontifici omnes humanas
+creaturas declaramus, definimus, et pronuntiamus omnino esse de
+necessitate salutis.' The claim is logical. A theocracy (when religion
+is truly monotheistic)[51] must claim to be universal _de jure_; and its
+ruler must be the infallibly inspired and autocratic vicegerent of the
+Almighty. He is the rightful lord of the world, whether he gives a
+continent to the King of Spain by a stroke of the pen, or whether his
+secular jurisdiction is limited by the walls of his palace. In the
+fourteenth century the Pope is already called 'dominus deus
+noster'--precisely the style in which Martial adulates Domitian. In the
+Bull of Pius V (1570) the claim of universal dominion is reiterated; it
+is asserted that the Almighty,
+
+     'cui data est omnis in caelo et in terra potestas, unam
+     sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam, extra quam
+     nulla est salus, uni soli in terris, videlicet apostolorum
+     principi Petro Petrique successori Romano pontifici in
+     potestatis plenitudine tradidit gubernandam.'
+
+But the final victory of infallibilism was the achievement of the
+nineteenth-century Jesuits, who completed the dogmatic apotheosis of the
+Pope at the moment when the last vestiges of his temporal power were
+being snatched from him.
+
+Now a government of this type is always in want of money. The spiritual
+Roman Empire was as costly an institution as the court and the
+bureaucracy of Diocletian and his successors. The same necessity which
+suppressed democracy in the Church drove it to elaborate an oppressive
+system of taxation, in which every weakness of human nature was
+systematically exploited for gain, and every morsel of divine grace
+placed on a tariff. But this method of raising revenue is only possible
+while the priests can persuade the people that they really control a
+treasury of grace, from which they can make or withhold grants at their
+pleasure. It stands or falls with a non-ethical and magical view of the
+divine economy which is hardly compatible with a high level of culture
+or morality. The Catholic Church has thus been obliged, for purely
+fiscal reasons, to discourage secular education, particularly of a
+scientific kind, and to keep the people, so far as possible, in the
+mental and moral condition most favourable to such transactions as the
+purchase of indulgences and the payment of various insurances against
+hell and purgatory.
+
+Another necessity of absolute government is the repression of free
+criticism directed against itself. Heresy and schism in an autocratic
+Church take the place of treason against the sovereign. Cyprian, in the
+third century, had already laid down the principles by which alone the
+central authority could be maintained.
+
+     'Ab arbore frange ramum; fractus germinare non poterit. A
+     fonte praecide rivum; praecisus arescit.... Quisquis ab
+     ecclesia separatus adulterae iungitur, a promissis ecclesiae
+     separatur. Alienus est, hostis est. Habere non potest Deum
+     patrem, qui ecclesiam non habet matrem.'
+
+Schismatics are therefore rebels, whose lives are forfeit under the laws
+of treason. Heretics are in no better case; for the Church is the only
+infallible interpreter both of Scripture and of tradition; and to differ
+from her teaching is as disloyal as to secede from her jurisdiction.
+Even Augustine could say, 'I should not believe the Gospel, if the
+authority of the Church did not determine me to do so'; a statement
+which a modern ultra-montane has capped by saying, 'Without the
+authority of the Pope, I should not place the Bible higher than the
+Koran.' Bellarmine claims an absolute monopoly of inspiration for the
+Roman Church on the ground that Rome alone has preserved the apostolic
+succession beyond dispute.[52] As for the treatment which heretics
+deserve, the same authority is very explicit.
+
+     'In the first place, heretics do more mischief than any
+     pirate or brigand, because they slay souls; nay more, they
+     subvert the foundations of all good and fill the
+     commonwealth with the disturbances which necessarily follow
+     religious differences. In the second place, capital
+     punishment inflicted on them has a good effect on very many
+     persons. Many whom impunity was making indifferent are
+     roused by these executions to consider what is the nature of
+     the heresy which attracts them, and to take care not to end
+     their earthly lives in misery and lose their future
+     happiness. Thirdly, it is a kindness to obstinate heretics
+     to remove them from this life. For the longer they live, the
+     more errors they devise, the more men they pervert, and the
+     greater damnation they acquire for themselves.'[53]
+
+In all matters which are not essential for the safety of the
+autocracy, an absolutist Church will consult the average tastes of its
+subjects. If the populace are at heart pagan, and hanker after
+sensuous ritual, dramatic magic, and a rich mythology, these must be
+provided. The 'intellectuals,' being few and weak, may be safely
+rebuffed or disregarded until their discoveries are thoroughly
+popularised. The pronouncements of the Roman Inquisition in the case
+of Galileo are typical.
+
+     'The theory that the sun is in the centre of the world, and
+     stationary, is absurd, false in philosophy, and formally
+     heretical, because it is contrary to the express language of
+     Holy Scripture. The theory that the earth is not the centre
+     of the world, nor stationary, but that it moves with a daily
+     motion, is also absurd and false in philosophy, and,
+     theologically considered, it is, to say the least, erroneous
+     in faith.'
+
+The exigencies of despotic government thus supply the key to the whole
+policy and history of the Papacy. 'The worst form of State' can only be
+bolstered up by the worst form of government. There should therefore be
+no difficulty in distinguishing between the official policy of the Roman
+See--which has been almost uniformly odious--and the history of the
+Christian religion in the Latin countries, which has added new lustre to
+human nature. The Catholic saints did not fly through the air, nor were
+their hearts pierced with supernatural darts, as the mendacious
+hagiology of their Church would have us believe; but they have a better
+title to be remembered by mankind, as the best examples of a beautiful
+and precious kind of human excellence.
+
+The papal autocracy has now reached its Byzantine period of decadence.
+During the Middle Ages Catholicism suited the Latin races very well on
+the whole. Their ancestral paganism was allowed to remain substantially
+unchanged--the _nomina_, but not the _numina_ were altered; their awe
+and reverence for the _caput orbis_, ingrained in the populations of
+Europe by the history of a thousand years, made submission to Rome
+natural and easy; a host of myths 'abounding in points of attachment to
+human experience and in genial interpretations of life, yet lifted
+beyond visible nature and filling a reported world believed in on
+faith,'[54] adorned religion with an artistic and poetical embroidery
+very congenial to the nations of the South. But a monarchy essentially
+Oriental in its constitution is unsuited to modern Europe. Its whole
+scheme is based on keeping the laity in contented ignorance and
+subservience; and the laity have emancipated themselves The Teutonic
+nations broke the yoke as soon as they attained a national
+self-consciousness. They escaped from a system which had educated, but
+never suited them. Nor has the shrinkage been merely territorial. The
+Pyrrhic victories over Gallicanism, Jansenism, Catholic democracy
+(Lamennais), historical theology (Döllinger and the Old Catholics), each
+alienated a section of thinking men in the Catholic countries. The Roman
+Church can no longer be called Catholic, except in the sense in which
+the kingdom of Francis II remained the Holy Roman Empire. It is an
+exclusive sect, which preserves much more political power than its
+numbers entitle it to exert, by means of its excellent discipline, and
+by the sinister policy of fomenting political disaffection. Examples of
+this last are furnished by the contemporary history of Ireland, of
+France, and of Poland.
+
+These considerations are of primary importance when we try to answer the
+questions: To what extent is the Roman Church fettered by her own past?
+Is there any insuperable obstacle to a modification of policy which
+might give her a new lease of life? We have seen how much importance is
+attached to the Church's title-deeds. Is tradition a fatal obstacle to
+reform? Theoretically, the tradition which she traces back to the
+apostles gives her a fixed constitution. So the Catholic Church has
+always maintained. 'Regula quidem fidei una omnino est, sola immobilis
+et irreformabilis.'[55] The rule of faith may be better understood by a
+later age than an earlier, but there can be no additions, only a sort of
+unpacking of a treasure which was given whole and entire in the first
+century. In reality, of course, there has been a steady evolution in
+conformity to type, the type being not the 'little flock' of Christ or
+the Church of the Apostles, but the absolute monarchy above described.
+It has long been the _crux_ of Catholic apologetics to reconcile the
+theoretical immobility of dogma with the actual facts.
+
+The older method was to rewrite history. It was convenient, for example,
+to forget that Pope Honorius I had been anathematised by three
+ecumenical councils. The forged Decretals gave a more positive sanction
+to absolutist claims; and interpolations in the Greek Fathers deceived
+St. Thomas Aquinas into giving his powerful authority to infallibilism.
+This method cannot be called obsolete, for the present Pope recently
+informed the faithful that 'the Hebrew patriarchs were familiar with the
+doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and found consolation in the
+thought of Mary in the solemn moments of their life.'[56] But such
+simple devices are hardly practicable in an age when history is
+scientifically studied. Moreover, other considerations, besides
+controversial straits, have suggested a new theory of tradition. A Cæsar
+who, like the kings of the Medes and Persians, is bound by the laws of
+his predecessors, is not absolute. Acceptance of the theory of
+development in dogma would relieve the Pope from the weight of the dead
+hand.
+
+The new apologetic is generally said to have been inaugurated by
+Cardinal Newman. His work 'The Development of Christian Doctrine,' is
+no doubt an epoch-making book, though the idea of tradition as the
+product of the living spirit of a religious society, preserving its
+moral identity while expressing itself, from time to time, in new forms,
+was already familiar to readers of Schleiermacher. Newman gives us
+several 'tests' of true development. These are--preservation of type;
+continuity of principles; power of assimilation; logical sequence;
+anticipation of results; tendency to conserve the old; chronic vigour.
+These tests, he considered, differentiate the Roman Church from all
+other Christian bodies, and prove its superiority. The Church has its
+own genius, which yes and works in it. This is indeed the Holy Spirit of
+God, promised by Jesus Christ. Through the operation of this spirit, old
+things become new, and fresh light is shed from the sacred pages of
+Scripture. Catholic tradition is, in fact, the glorified but
+ever-present Christ Himself, reincarnating Himself, generation after
+generation, in the historical Church. It is unnecessary to enquire
+whether there is apostolic authority for every new dogma, for the Church
+is the mouthpiece of the living Christ.
+
+This theory marks, on one side, the complete and final apotheosis of the
+Pope and the hierarchy, who are thereby made independent even of the
+past history of the Church. Pius IX was not slow to realise that the
+only court of appeal against his decisions was closed in 1870. 'La
+tradizione sono io,' he said, in the manner of Louis XIV. The Pope is
+henceforth not the interpreter of a closed cycle of tradition, but the
+pilot who guides its course always in the direction of the truth. This
+is to destroy the old doctrine of tradition. The Church becomes the
+source of revelation instead of its custodian. On the other side, it is
+a perilous concession to modern ideas. There is an obvious danger that,
+as the result of this doctrine, the dogmas of the Church may seem to
+have only a relative and provisional truth; for, if each pronouncement
+were absolutely true, there would be no real development, and the
+appearance of it in history would become inexplicable.
+
+This new and, in appearance, more liberal attitude towards modern ideas
+of progress has raised the hopes of many in the Roman Church whose
+minds and consciences are troubled by the ever-widening chasm which
+separates traditional dogma from secular knowledge. While dogma was
+stationary--_immobilis et irreformabilis_--there seemed to be no
+prospect except that the progress of human knowledge would leave
+theology further and further behind, till the rupture between
+Catholicism and civilisation became absolute. The idea that the Church
+would ever modify her teaching to bring it into harmony with modern
+science seemed utterly chimerical. But if the static theory of
+revelation is abandoned, and a dynamic theory substituted for it; if the
+divine part of Christianity resides, not in the theoretical formulations
+of revealed fact, but in the living and energising spirit of the Church;
+why should not dogmatic theology become elastic, changing periodically
+in correspondence with the development of human knowledge, and no longer
+stand in irreconcilable contradiction with the ascertained laws of
+nature?
+
+Thus the dethronement of tradition by the Pope contributed to make the
+Modernist movement possible. The Modernists have even claimed Newman as
+on their side. This appeal cannot be sustained. 'The Development of
+Christian Doctrine' is mainly a polemic against the high Anglican
+position, and an answer to attacks upon Roman Catholicism from this
+side. Anglicanism at that time had committed itself to a thoroughly
+stationary view of revelation. Its 'appeal to antiquity'--a period
+which, in accordance with a convenient theory, it limited to the
+councils of the 'undivided Church'--was intended to prove the
+catholicity and orthodoxy of the English Church, as the faithful
+guardian of apostolic tradition, and to condemn the medieval and modern
+accretions sanctioned by the Church of Rome. The earlier theory of
+tradition left the Roman Church open to damaging criticism on this side;
+no ingenuity could prove that all her doctrines were 'primitive.' Even
+in those early days of historical criticism, it must have been plain to
+any candid student of Christian 'origins' that the Pauline Churches were
+far more Protestant than Catholic in type. But Newman had set himself to
+prove that 'the Christianity of history is not Protestantism; if ever
+there were a safe truth, it is this,' Accordingly, he argues that
+'Christianity came into the world as an idea rather than an institution,
+and had to fit itself with armour of its own providing.' Such
+expressions sound very like the arguments of the Modernists; but Newman
+assuredly never contemplated that they would be turned against the
+policy of his own Church, in the interests of the critical rationalism
+which he abhorred. His attitude towards dogma is after all not very
+different from that of the older school. 'Time was needed' (he says)
+'for the elucidation of doctrines communicated once for all through
+inspired persons'; his examples are purgatory and the papal supremacy.
+He insists that his 'tests' of true development are only controversial,
+'instruments rather than warrants of right decisions.' The only real
+'warrant' is the authority of the infallible Church. It is highly
+significant that one of the features in Roman Catholicism to which he
+appeals as proving its unblemished descent from antiquity is its
+exclusiveness and intolerance.
+
+     'The Fathers (he says complacently) anathematised doctrines,
+     not because they were old, but because they were new; for
+     the very characteristic of heresy is novelty and originality
+     of manifestation. Such was the exclusiveness of the
+     Christianity of old. I need not insist on the steadiness
+     with which that principle has been maintained ever since.'
+
+The Cardinal is right; it is quite unnecessary to insist upon it; but,
+when the Modernists claim Newman as their prophet, it is fair to reply
+that, if we may judge from his writings, he would gladly have sent some
+of them to the stake.
+
+The Modernist movement, properly so called, belongs to the last twenty
+years, and most of the literature dates from the present century. It
+began in the region of ecclesiastical history, and soon passed to
+biblical exegesis, where the new heresy was at first called
+'concessionism,' The scope of the debate was enlarged with the stir
+produced by Loisy's 'L'Évangile et l'Église' and 'Autour d'un Petit
+Livre'; it spread over the field of Christian origins generally, and
+problems connected with them, such as the growth of ecclesiastical power
+and the evolution of dogma. For a few years the orthodox in France
+generally spoke of the new tendency as _loisysme_. It was not till 1905
+that Edouard Le Roy published his 'Qu'est-ce qu'un dogme?' which carried
+the discussion into the domain of pure philosophy, though the studies of
+Blondel and Laberthonnière in the psychology of religion may be said to
+involve a metaphysic closely resembling that of Le Roy. Mr. Tyrrell's
+able works have a very similar philosophical basis, which is also
+assumed by the group of Italian priests who have remonstrated with the
+Pope.[57] M. Loisy protests against the classification made in the papal
+Encyclical which connects biblical critics, metaphysicians,
+psychologists, and Church reformers, as if they were all partners in the
+same enterprise. But in reality the same presuppositions, the same
+philosophical principles, are found in all the writers named; and the
+differences which may easily be detected in their writings are
+comparatively superficial. The movement appears to be strongest in
+France, where the policy of the Vatican has been uniformly unfortunate
+of recent years, and has brought many humiliations upon French
+Catholics. Italy has also been moved, though from slightly different
+causes. In the protests from that country we find a tone of disgust at
+the constitution of the Roman hierarchy and the character of the papal
+_entourage_, about which Italians are in a position to know more than
+other Catholics. Catholic Germany has been almost silent; and Mr.
+Tyrrell is the only Englishman whose name has come prominently forward.
+
+It will be convenient to consider the position of the Modernists under
+three heads: their attitude towards New Testament criticism, especially
+in relation to the life of Christ; their philosophy; and their position
+in the Roman Catholic Church.
+
+The Modernists themselves desire, for the most part, that criticism
+rather than philosophy should be regarded as the starting-point of the
+movement. 'So far from our philosophy dictating our critical method, it
+is the critical method that has of its own accord forced us to a very
+tentative and uncertain formulation of various philosophical
+conclusions.... This independence of our criticism is evident in many
+ways.'[58] The writers of this manifesto, and M. Loisy himself, appear
+not to perceive that their critical position rests on certain very
+important philosophical presuppositions; nor indeed is any criticism of
+religious origins possible without presuppositions which involve
+metaphysics. The results of their critical studies, as bearing on the
+life of Christ, we shall proceed to summarise, departing as little as
+possible from the actual language of the writers, and giving references
+in all cases. It must, however, be remembered that some of the group,
+such as Mr. Tyrrell, have not committed themselves to the more extreme
+critical views, while others, such as the Abbé Laberthonnière, the most
+brilliant and attractive writer of them all, hold a moderate position on
+the historical side. It is perhaps significant that those who are
+specialists in biblical criticism are the most radical members of the
+school.
+
+The Gospels, says M. Loisy, are for Christianity what the Pentateuch is
+for Judaism. Like the Pentateuch, they are a patchwork and a compound of
+history and legend. The differences between them amount in many cases to
+unmistakable contradictions. In Mark the life of Jesus follows a
+progressive development. The first to infer His Messiahship is Simon
+Peter at Cæsarea Philippi; and Jesus Himself first declares it openly in
+His trial before the Sanhedrin. In Matthew and Luke, on the contrary,
+Jesus is presented to the public as the Son of God from the beginning of
+His ministry; He comes forward at once as the supreme Lawgiver, the
+Judge, the anointed of God. The Fourth Gospel goes much further still.
+His heavenly origin, His priority to the world, His co-operation in the
+work of creation and salvation, are ideas which are foreign to the other
+Gospels, but which the author of the Fourth Gospel has set forth in his
+prologue, and, in part, put into the mouth of John the Baptist.[59] The
+difference between the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels and the Christ of
+John may be summed up by saying that 'the Christ of the Synoptics is
+historical, but is not God; the Johannine Christ is divine, but not
+historical.'[60] But even Mark (according to M. Loisy) probably only
+incorporates the document of an eye-witness; his Gospel betrays Pauline
+influence.[61] The Gospel which bears his name is later than the
+destruction of Jerusalem, and was issued, probably about A.D. 75, by an
+unknown Christian, not a native of Palestine, who wished to write a book
+of evangelical instruction in conformity with the ideas of the
+Hellenic-Christian community to which he belonged.[62] The tradition
+connecting it with Peter may indicate that it was composed at Rome, but
+has no other historical value.[63]
+
+The Gospel of Matthew was probably written about the beginning of the
+second century by a non-Palestinian Jew residing in Asia Minor or Syria.
+He is before all things a Catholic ecclesiastic, and may well have been
+one of the presbyters or bishops of the churches in which the
+institution of a monarchical episcopate took root.[64] The narratives
+peculiar to Matthew have the character rather of legendary developments
+than of genuine reminiscences. The historical value of these additions
+is _nil_. As a witness to fact, Matthew ranks below Mark, and even below
+Luke.[65] In particular, the chapters about the birth of Christ seem not
+to have the slightest historical foundation. The fictitious character of
+the genealogy is proved by the fact that Jesus seems not to have known
+of His descent [from David]. The story of the virgin birth turns on a
+text from Isaiah. Of this part of the Gospel, Loisy says, 'rien n'est
+plus arbitraire comme exégèse, ni plus faible comme narration
+fictive.'[66] Luke has taken more pains to compose a literary treatise
+than Mark or Matthew. The authorities which he follows seem to be--the
+source of our Mark, the so-called Matthew _logia_, and some other source
+or sources. But he treats his material more freely than Matthew. 'The
+lament of Christ over the holy city, His words to the women of
+Jerusalem, His prayer for His executioners, His promise to the penitent
+thief, His last words, are very touching traits, which may be in
+conformity with the spirit of Jesus, but which have no traditional
+basis.'[67] 'The fictitious character of the narratives of the infancy
+is less apparent in the Third Gospel than in the First, because the
+stories are much better constructed as legend, and do not resemble a
+_midrash_ upon Messianic prophecies. "Le merveilleux en est moins banal
+et moins enfantin. II paraît cependant impossible de leur reconnaître
+une plus grande valeur de fond."'[68]
+
+The Gospel of Luke was probably written (not by a disciple of St. Paul)
+between 90 and 100 A.D.; but the earliest redaction, which traced the
+descent of Jesus from David through Joseph, has been interpolated in the
+interests of the later idea of a virgin birth. The first two chapters
+are interesting for the history of Christian beliefs, not for the
+history of Christ. As for the Fourth Gospel, it is enough to say that
+the author had nothing to do with the son of Zebedee, and that he is in
+no sense a biographer of Christ, but the first and greatest of the
+Christian mystics.[69]
+
+The result of this drastic treatment of the sources may be realised by
+perusing chapter vii of Loisy's 'Les Évangiles Synoptiques,' The
+following is a brief analysis of this chapter, entitled 'La Carrière de
+Jésus.' Jesus was born at Nazareth about four years before the Christian
+era. His family were certainly pious, but none of His relatives seems to
+have accepted the Gospel during His lifetime. Like many others, the
+young Jesus was attracted by the terrifying preaching of John the
+Baptist, from whom He received Baptism. When John was imprisoned He at
+once attempted to take his place. He began to preach round the lake of
+Galilee, and was compelled by the persistent demands of the crowd to
+'work miracles.' This mission only lasted a few months; but it was long
+enough for Jesus to enrol twelve auxiliaries, who prepared the villages
+of Galilee for His coming, travelling two and two through the north of
+Palestine. Jesus found His audience rather among the _déclassés_ of
+Judaism than among the Puritans. The staple of His teaching was the
+advent of the 'kingdom of God'--the sudden and speedy coming of the
+promised Messiah. This teaching was acceptable neither to Herod Antipas
+nor to the Pharisees; and their hostility obliged Jesus to fly for a
+short time to the Phoenician territory north of Galilee. But a
+conference between the Master and His disciples at Cæsarea Philippi
+ended in a determination to visit the capital and there proclaim Jesus
+as the promised Messiah. As they approached Jerusalem, even the ignorant
+disciples were frightened at the risks they were running, but Jesus
+calmed their fears by promising that they should soon be set on twelve
+thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 'Jésus n'allait pas à
+Jérusalem pour y mourir.'[70]
+
+The doomed prophet made his public entry into Jerusalem as Messiah, and,
+as a first act of authority, cleared the temple courts by an act of
+violence, in which He was doubtless assisted by His disciples. For some
+days after this He preached daily about the coming of the kingdom, and
+foiled with great dexterity the traps which His enemies laid for Him.
+'But the situation could only end in a miracle or a catastrophe, and it
+was the catastrophe which happened.'[71] Jesus was arrested, after a
+brief scuffle between the satellites of the High Priest and the
+disciples; and the latter, without waiting to see the end, fled
+northwards towards their homes. When brought before Pilate, Jesus
+probably answered 'Yes' to the question whether He claimed to be a king;
+but 'la parole du Christ johannique, Mon royaume n'est pas de ce monde,
+n'aurait jamais pu être dite par le Christ d'histoire.' This confession
+led naturally to His immediate execution; after which
+
+     'on peut supposer que les soldats détachèrent le corps de la
+     croix avant le soir et le mirent dans quelque fosse commune,
+     où l'on jetait pêle-mêle les restes des suppliciés. Les
+     conditions de sépulture furent telles qu'au bout de quelques
+     jours il aurait été impossible de reconnaître la dépouille
+     du Sauveur, quand même on l'aurait cherchée.'[72]
+
+The disciples, however, had been too profoundly stirred by hope to
+accept defeat. None of them had seen Jesus die; and though they knew
+that He was dead, they hardly realised it. Besides, they were
+fellow-countrymen of those who had asked whether Jesus was not Elijah,
+or even John the Baptist, come to life again. What more natural than
+that Peter should see the Master one day while fishing on the lake? 'The
+impulse once given, this belief grew by the very need which it had to
+strengthen itself.' Christ 'appeared also to the eleven,' So it was that
+their faith brought them back to Jerusalem, and Christianity was born.
+
+'The supernatural life of Christ in the faithful and in the Church has
+been clothed in an historical form, which has given birth to what we
+might somewhat loosely call the Christ of legend.' So the Italian
+manifesto sums up the result of this reconstruction or denudation of the
+Gospel history.[73] 'Such a criticism,' say the authors not less frankly
+than truly, 'does away with the possibility of finding in Christ's
+teaching even the embryonic form of the Church's later theological
+teaching.'[74]
+
+Readers unfamiliar with Modernist literature will probably have read the
+foregoing extracts with utter amazement. It seems hardly credible that
+such views should be propounded by Catholic priests, who claim to remain
+in the Catholic Church, to repeat her creeds, minister at her altars,
+and share her faith. What more, it may well be asked, have rationalist
+opponents of Christianity ever said, in their efforts to tear up the
+Christian religion by the roots, than we find here admitted by Catholic
+apologists? What is left of the object of the Church's worship if the
+Christ of history was but an enthusiastic Jewish peasant whose pathetic
+ignorance of the forces opposed to Him led Him to the absurd enterprise
+of attempting a _coup d'état_ at Jerusalem? Is not Jesus reduced by this
+criticism to the same level as Theudas or Judas of Galilee? and, if this
+is the true account, what sentiment can we feel, when we read His tragic
+story, but compassion tinged with contempt?
+
+And on what principles are such liberties taken with our authorities?
+What is the criterion by which it is decided that Christ said, 'I am a
+king,' but not 'My kingdom is not of this world'? Why must the
+resurrection have been only a subjective hallucination in the minds of
+the disciples? To these questions there is a plain answer. The
+non-intervention of God in history is an axiom with the Modernists.
+'L'historien,' says M. Loisy, 'n'a pas à s'inspirer de l'agnosticisme
+pour écarter Dieu de l'histoire; il ne l'y rencontre jamais.'[75] It
+would be more accurate to say that, whenever the meeting takes place,
+'the historian' gives the Other the cut direct.
+
+But now comes in the peculiar philosophy by which the Modernists claim
+to rehabilitate themselves as loyal and orthodox Catholics, and to turn
+the flank of the rationalist position, which they have seemed to occupy
+themselves. The reaction against Absolutism in philosophy has long since
+established itself in Germany and France. In England and Scotland the
+battle still rages; in America the rebound has been so violent that an
+extreme form of anti-intellectualism is now the dominant fashion in
+philosophy. It would have been easy to predict--and in fact the
+prediction was made--that the new world-construction in terms of will
+and action, which disparages speculative or theoretical truth and gives
+the primacy to what Kant called the practical reason, would be eagerly
+welcomed by Christian apologists, hard-pressed by the discoveries of
+science and biblical criticism. Protestants, in fact, had recourse to
+this method of apologetic before the Modernist movement arose. The
+Ritschlian theology in Germany (in spite of its 'static' view of
+revelation), and the _Symbolo-fidéisme_ of Sabatier and Ménégoz, have
+many affinities with the position of Tyrrell, Laberthonnière, and Le
+Roy.
+
+It is exceedingly difficult to compress into a few pages a fair and
+intelligible statement of a _Weltansicht_ which affects the whole
+conception of reality, and which has many ramifications. There is an
+additional difficulty in the fact that few of the Modernists are more
+than amateurs in philosophy. They are quick to see the strategic
+possibilities of a theory which separates faith and knowledge, and
+declares that truths of faith can never come into collision with truths
+of fact, because they 'belong to different orders.' It suits them to
+follow the pragmatists in talking about 'freely chosen beliefs,' and
+'voluntary certainty '; Mr. Tyrrell even maintains that 'the great mass
+of our beliefs are reversible, and depend for their stability on the
+action or permission of the will.' But philosophy is for them mainly a
+controversial weapon. It gives them the means of justifying their
+position as Catholics who wish to remain loyal to their Church and her
+formularies, but no longer believe in the miracles which the Church has
+always regarded as matters of fact. Nevertheless, an attempt must be
+made to explain a point of view which, to the plain man, is very strange
+and unfamiliar.
+
+Two words are constantly in the mouth of Modernist controversialists in
+speaking of their opponents. The adherents of the traditional theology
+are 'intellectualists,' and their conception of reality is 'static.' The
+meaning of the latter charge may perhaps be best explained from
+Laberthonnière's brilliantly written essay, 'Le Réalisme Chrétien et
+l'Idéalisme Grec.' The Greeks, he says, were insatiable in their desire
+to _see_, like children. Blessedness, for them, consisted in a complete
+vision of reality; and, since thought is the highest kind of vision,
+salvation was conceived of by them as the unbroken contemplation of the
+perfectly true, good, and beautiful. Hence arose the philosophy of
+'concepts'; they idealised nature by considering it _sub specie
+æternitatis_. Reality resided in the unchanging ideas; the mutable, the
+particular, the individual was for them an embarrassment, a 'scandal of
+thought.' The sage always tries to escape from the moving world of
+becoming into the static world of being. But an ideal world, so
+conceived, can only be an abstraction, an impoverishment of reality.
+Such an idealism gives us neither a science of origins nor a science of
+ends. Greek wisdom sought eternity and forgot time; it sought that which
+never dies, and found that which never lives.
+
+     'An abstract doctrine, like that of Greek philosophy or of
+     Spinoza, consists always in substituting for reality, by
+     simplification, ideas or concepts which they think
+     statically in their logical relations, regarding them at the
+     same time as adequate representations and as essences
+     immovably defined.'[76]
+
+Hellenised Christianity, proceeds our critic, regarded the incarnation
+statically, as a fact in past history. But the real Christ is an object
+of faith. 'He introduces into us the principles of that which we ought
+to be. That which He reveals, He makes in revealing it.' In other words,
+Christ, and the God whom He reveals, are a power or force rather than a
+fact. 'A God who has nothing to become has nothing to do.' God is not
+the idea of ideas, but the being of beings and the life of our life. He
+is not a supreme notion, but a supreme life and an immanent action. He
+is not the 'unmoved mover,' but He is in the movement itself as its
+principle and end. While the Greeks conceived the world _sub specie
+æternitatis_, God is conceived by modern thought _sub specie temporis_.
+God's eternity is not a sort of arrested time in which there is no more
+life; it is, on the contrary, the maximum of life.
+
+It is plain that we have here a one-sided emphasis on the dynamic aspect
+of reality no less fatal to sound philosophy than the exclusively static
+view which has been falsely attributed to the Greeks. A little clear
+thinking ought to be enough to convince anyone that the two aspects of
+reality which the Greeks called sthasist and khinêsist are correlative
+and necessary to each other. A God who is merely the principle of
+movement and change is an absurdity. Time is always hurling its own
+products into nothingness. Unless there is a being who can say, 'I am
+the Lord, I change not,' the 'sons of Jacob' cannot flatter themselves
+that they are 'not consumed.'[77] But Laberthonnière and his friends are
+not much concerned with the ultimate problems of metaphysics; what they
+desire is to shake themselves free from 'brute facts' in the past, to be
+at liberty to deny them as facts, while retaining them as representative
+ideas of faith. If reality is defined to consist only in life and
+action, it is a meaningless abstraction to snip off a moment in the
+process, and ask, 'Did it ever really take place?' This awkward question
+may therefore be ignored as meaningless and irrelevant, except from the
+'abstract' standpoint of physical science.
+
+The crusade against 'intellectualism' serves the same end. M. Le Roy and
+the other Christian pragmatists have returned to the Nominalism of Duns
+Scotus. The following words of Frassen, one of Scotus' disciples, might
+serve as a motto for the whole school:
+
+     'Theologia nostra non est scientia. Nullatenus speculativa
+     est, sed simpliciter practica. Theologiae obiectum non est
+     speculabile, sed operabile. Quidquid in Deo est practicum
+     est respectu nostri.'
+
+M. Le Roy also seems to know only these two categories. Whatever is not
+'practical'--having an immediate and obvious bearing on conduct--is
+stigmatised as 'theoretical' or 'speculative.' But the whole field of
+scientific study lies outside this classification, which pretends to be
+exhaustive. Science has no 'practical' aim, in the narrow sense of that
+which may serve as a guide to moral action; nor does it deal with
+'theoretical' or 'speculative' ideas, except provisionally, until they
+can be verified. The aim of science is to determine the laws which
+prevail in the physical universe; and its motive is that purely
+disinterested curiosity which is such an embarrassing phenomenon to
+pragmatists. And since the faith which lies behind natural science is at
+least as strong as any other faith now active in the world, it is
+useless to frame categories in such a way as to exclude the question,
+'Did this or that occurrence, which is presented as an event in the
+physical order, actually happen, or not?' The question has a very
+definite meaning for the man of science, as it has for the man in the
+street. To call it 'theoretical' is ridiculous.
+
+What M. Le Roy means by 'interpreting dogmas in the language of
+practical action' may be gathered from his own illustrations. The dogma,
+'God is our Father,' does not define a 'theoretical relation' between
+Him and us. It signifies that we are to behave to Him as sons behave to
+their father. 'God is personal' means that we are to behave to Him as if
+He were a human person. 'Jesus is risen' means that we are to think of
+Him as if He were our contemporary. The dogma of the Real Presence means
+that we ought to have, in the presence of the consecrated Host, the same
+feelings which we should have had in the presence of the visible Christ.
+'Let the dogmas be interpreted in this way, and no one will dispute
+them.'[78]
+
+The same treatment of dogma is advocated in Mr. Tyrrell's very able book
+'Lex Orandi.' The test of truth for a dogma is not its correspondence
+with phenomenal fact, but its 'prayer-value.' This writer, at any rate
+before his suspension by the Society of Jesus, to which he belonged, is
+less subversive in his treatment of history than the French critics whom
+we have quoted. Although in apologetics the criterion for the acceptance
+of dogmas must, he thinks, be a moral and practical one, he sometimes
+speaks as if the 'prayer-value' of an ostensibly historical proposition
+carried with it the necessity of its truth as matter of fact.
+
+     'Between the inward and the outward, the world of reality
+     and the world of appearances, the relation is not merely one
+     of symbolic correspondence. The distinction that is demanded
+     by the dualism of our mind implies and presupposes a causal
+     and dynamic unity of the two. We should look upon the
+     outward world as being an effectual symbol of the inward, in
+     consequence of its natural and causal connection
+     therewith.'[79]
+
+But Mr. Tyrrell does not seem to mean all that these sentences might
+imply. He speaks repeatedly, in the 'Lex Orandi,' of the 'will-world' as
+the only real world.
+
+     'The will (he says) cannot make that true which in itself is
+     not true. But it can make that a fact relatively to our mind
+     and action which is not a fact relative to our
+     understanding.... It rests with each of us by an act of will
+     to create the sort of world to which we shall accommodate
+     our thought and action. ....It does not follow that harmony
+     of faith with the truths of reason and facts of experience
+     is the best or essential condition of its credibility....
+     Abstractions (he refers to the world as known to science)
+     are simple only because they are barren forms created by the
+     mind itself. Faith and doubt have a common element in the
+     deep sense of the insufficiency of the human mind to grasp
+     ultimate truths.... The world given to our outward senses is
+     shadowy and dreamy, except so far as we ascribe to it some
+     of the characteristics of will and spirit.... The world of
+     appearance is simply subordinate to the real world of our
+     will and affections.'
+
+Because the 'abstract' sciences cannot and do not attempt to reach
+ultimate truth, it is assumed that they are altogether 'barren forms,'
+This is the error of much Oriental mysticism, which denies all value to
+what it regards as the lower categories. In his later writings Mr.
+Tyrrell objects to being classed with the American and English
+pragmatists--the school of Mr. William James. But the doctrine of these
+passages is ultra-pragmatist. The will, which is illegitimately
+stretched to include feeling,[80] is treated as the creator as well as
+the discerner of reality. The 'world of appearance' is plastic in its
+grasp. It is this metaphysical pragmatism which is really serviceable to
+Modernism. If the categories of the understanding can be so disparaged
+as to be allowed no independent truth, value, or importance, all
+collisions between faith and fact may be avoided by discrediting in
+advance any conclusions at which science may arrive. Assertions about
+'brute fact' which are scientifically false may thus not be untrue when
+taken out of the scientific plane, because outside that plane they are
+harmless word-pictures, soap-bubbles blown off by the poetical
+creativeness of faith Any assertion about fact which commends itself to
+the will and affections and which is proved by experience to furnish
+nutriment to the spiritual life, may be adhered to without scruple. It
+is not only useful, but true, in the only sense in which truth can be
+predicated of anything in the higher sphere.
+
+The obvious criticism on this notion of religious truth as purely moral
+and practical is that it is itself abstract and one-sided. The universe
+as it appears to discursive thought, with its vast system of seemingly
+uniform laws, which operate without much consideration for our wishes or
+feelings, must be at least an image of the real universe. We cannot
+accept the irreconcilable dualism between the will-world and the world
+of phenomena which the philosophical Modernists assume. The dualism, or
+rather the contradiction, is not in the nature of things, nor in the
+constitution of our minds, but in the consciousness of the unhappy men
+who are trying to combine two wholly incompatible theories. On the
+critical side they are pure rationalists, much as they dislike the name.
+They claim, as we have seen, to have advanced to philosophy through
+criticism. But the Modernist critics start with very well-defined
+presuppositions. They ridicule the notion that 'God is a personage in
+history'; they assume that for the historian 'He cannot be found
+anywhere'; that He is as though He did not exist. On the strength of
+this presupposition, and for no other reason, they proceed to rule out,
+without further investigation, all alleged instances of divine
+intervention in history. Unhampered by any of the misgivings which
+predispose the ordinary believer to conservatism, they follow the
+rationalist argument to its logical conclusions with startling
+ruthlessness. And then, when the whole edifice of historical religion
+seems to have been overthrown to the very foundations, they turn round
+suddenly and say that all their critical labours mean nothing for faith,
+and that we may go on repeating the old formulas as if nothing had
+happened. The Modernists pour scorn on the scholastic
+'faculty-psychology,' which resolves human personality into a syndicate
+of partially independent agents; but, in truth, their attempt to blow
+hot and cold with the same mouth seems to have involved them in a more
+disastrous self-disruption than has been witnessed in the history of
+thought since the fall of the Nominalists. In a sceptical and
+disillusioned age their disparagement of 'intellectualism' or rather of
+discursive thought in all its operations, might find a response. But in
+the twentieth century the science which, as critics, they follow so
+unswervingly will not submit to be bowed out of the room as soon as
+matters of faith come into question. Our contemporaries believe that
+matters of fact are important, and they insist, with ever-increasing
+emphasis, that they shall not be called upon to believe, as part of
+their religious faith, anything which as a matter of fact, is not true.
+The Modernist critic, when pressed on this side, says that it is natural
+for faith to represent its ideas in the form of historical facts, and
+that it is this inevitable tendency which causes the difficulties
+between religion and science. A sane criticism will allow that this is
+very largely true, but will not, we are convinced, be constrained to
+believe with M. Loisy that the historical original of the Christian
+Redeemer was the poor deluded enthusiast whom he portrays in 'Les
+Évangiles Synoptiques.'
+
+However this may be--and it must remain a matter of opinion--the very
+serious question arises, whether it is really natural for faith to
+represent its ideas in the form of historical facts when it knows that
+these facts have no historical basis. The writers with whom we are
+dealing evidently think it is natural and inevitable, and we must assume
+that they speak from their own spiritual experience. But this state of
+mind does not seem to be a very common one. Those who believe in the
+divinity of Christ, but not in His supernatural birth and bodily
+resurrection, do not, as a rule, make those miracles the subject of
+their meditations, but find their spiritual sustenance in communion with
+the 'Christ who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Those who
+regard Jesus only as a prophet sent by God to reveal the Father,
+generally pray only to the God whom He revealed, and cherish the memory
+of Jesus with no other feelings than supreme gratitude and veneration.
+Those, lastly, who worship in God only the Great Unknown who makes for
+righteousness, find myths and anthropomorphic symbols merely disturbing
+in such devotions as they are still able to practise. In dealing with
+convinced Voluntarists it is perhaps not disrespectful to suggest that
+the difficult position in which they find themselves has produced a
+peculiar activity of the will, such as is seldom found under normal
+conditions.
+
+We pass to the position of the Modernists in the Roman Catholic Church.
+It is well known that the advisers of Pius X have committed the Papacy
+to a wholesale condemnation of the new movement. The reasons for this
+condemnation are thus summed up by a distinguished ecclesiastic of that
+Church[81]:
+
+     'Why has the Pope condemned the Modernists? (1) Because the
+     Modernists have denied that the divine facts related in the
+     Gospel are historically true. (2) Because they have denied
+     that Christ for most of His life knew that He was God, and
+     that He ever knew that He was the Saviour of the world. (3)
+     Because they have denied the divine sanction and the
+     perpetuity of the great dogmas which enter into the
+     Christian creed. (4) Because they have denied that Christ
+     Himself personally ever founded the Church or instituted the
+     Sacraments. (5) Because they deny and subvert the divine
+     constitution of the Church, by teaching that the Pope and
+     the bishops derive their powers, not directly from Christ
+     and His Apostles, but from the Christian people.'
+
+
+The official condemnation is contained in two documents--the decree of
+the Holy Inquisition, 'Lamentabili sane exitu,' July 3, 1907, and the
+Encyclical, 'Pascendi dominici gregis,' September 8, 1907. These
+pronouncements are intended for Catholics; and their tone is that of
+authoritative denunciation rather than of argument. In the main, the
+summary which they give of Modernist doctrines is as fair as could be
+expected from a judge who is passing sentence; but the papal theologians
+have not always resisted the temptation to arouse prejudice by
+misrepresenting the views which they condemn. We have not space to
+analyse these documents, nor is it necessary to do so. It will be more
+to the purpose to consider whether, in spite of their official
+condemnation, the Modernists are likely in the future to make good their
+footing in the Roman Church.
+
+Even before the Encyclical the Modernists had used very bold language
+about the authority of the Church.
+
+     'The visible Church (writes Mr. Tyrrell in his "Much-abused
+     Letter") is but a means, a way, a creature, to be used where
+     it helps, to be left where it hinders.... Who have taught us
+     that the consensus of theologians cannot err, but the
+     theologians themselves? Mortal, fallible, ignorant men like
+     ourselves! ... Their present domination is but a passing
+     episode in the Church's history.... May not history repeat
+     itself? [as in the transition from Judaism to Christianity].
+     Is God's arm shortened that He should not again out of the
+     very stones raise up seed to Abraham? May not Catholicism,
+     like Judaism, have to die in order that it may live again in
+     a greater and grander form? Has not every organism got its
+     limits of development, after which it must decay and be
+     content to survive in its progeny? Wine-skins stretch, but
+     only within measure; for there comes at last a
+     bursting-point when new ones must be provided.'
+
+In a note he explains: 'The Church of the Catacombs became the Church of
+the Vatican; who can tell what the Church of the Vatican may not turn
+into?'
+
+It is thus on a very elastic theory of development that the Modernists
+rely. 'The differences between the larval and final stages of many an
+insect are often far greater than those which separate kind from kind.'
+And so this Proteus of a Church, which has changed its form so
+completely since the Gospel was first preached in the subterranean
+galleries of Rome, may undergo another equally startling metamorphosis
+and come to believe in a God who never intervenes in history. We may
+here remind our readers of Newman's tests of true development, and mark
+the enormous difference.
+
+Mr. Tyrrell's 'Much-abused Letter' reaches, perhaps, the high-water mark
+of Modernist claims. Not all the writers whom we have quoted would view
+with complacency the prospect of the Catholic Church dying to live
+again, or being content to live only in its progeny. The proverb about
+the new wine-skins is one of sinister augury in such a connection. If
+the Catholic Church is really in such an advanced stage of decay that it
+must die before it can live, why do those who grasp the situation wish
+to keep it alive? Are they not precisely pouring their new wine into old
+bottles? Mr. Tyrrell himself draws the parallel with Judaism in the
+first century. Paul, he says, 'did not feel that he had broken with
+Judaism,' But the Synagogue did feel that he had done so, and history
+proved that the Synagogue was right.
+
+Development, however great the changes which it exhibits, can only
+follow certain laws; and the development of the Church of Rome has
+steadily followed a direction opposite to that which the Modernists
+demand that it shall take. Newman might plausibly claim that the
+doctrines of purgatory and of the papal supremacy are logically involved
+in the early claims of the Roman Church. The claim is true at least in
+this sense, that, given a political Church organised as an autocracy,
+these useful doctrines were sure, in the interests of the government, to
+be promulgated sooner or later. But there is not the slightest reason
+to suppose that the next development will be in the direction of that
+peculiar kind of Liberalism favoured by the Modernists. It is difficult
+to see how the Vatican could even meet the reformers half-way without
+making ruinous concessions.' This supernatural mechanism,' M. Loisy says
+in his last book, 'Modernism tends to ruin completely,' Just so; but the
+Roman Church lives entirely on the faith in supernatural mechanism. Her
+sacramental and sacerdotal system is based on supernatural mechanism--on
+divine interventions in the physical world conditioned by human agency;
+her theology and books of devotion are full of supernatural mechanism;
+the lives of her saints, her relics and holy places, the whole
+literature of Catholic mysticism, the living piety and devotion of the
+faithful, wherever it is still to be found, are based entirely on that
+very theory of supernaturalistic dualism which the Modernist, when he
+acts as critic, begins by ruling out as devoid of any historical or
+scientific actuality. The attractiveness of Catholicism as a cult
+depends almost wholly on its frank admission of the miraculous as a
+matter of daily occurrence. To rationalise even contemporary history as
+M. Loisy has rationalised the Gospels would be suicide for Catholicism.
+
+It is tempting to give a concrete instance by way of illustrating the
+impassable chasm which divides Catholicism as a working system from the
+academic scheme of transformation which we have been considering.
+
+     'The French Catholics (writes the _Times_ correspondent in
+     Paris on June 25, 1908) are awaiting with concern the report
+     of a special commission on a mysterious affair known as the
+     Miraculous Hailstones of Remiremont. On Sunday, May 26,
+     1907, during a violent storm that swept over that region of
+     the Vosges, among the great quantity of hailstones that fell
+     at the time a certain number were found split in two. On the
+     inner face of each of the halves, according to the local
+     papers that appeared the next day, was the image of the
+     Madonna venerated at Remiremont and known as Notre Dame du
+     Trésor. The local Catholics regarded it as a reply to the
+     municipal council's veto of the procession in honour of the
+     Virgin. So many people testified to having seen the
+     miraculous hailstones that the bishop of Saint-Dié
+     instituted an inquiry; 107 men, women, and children were
+     heard by the parish priest, and certain well-known men of
+     science [names given] were consulted. The report has just
+     been published in the _Semaine Religieuse_, and concludes in
+     favour of the absolute authenticity of the fact under
+     inquiry. ....The last word rests with the bishop, who will
+     decide according to the conclusions of the report of the
+     special commission.'
+
+This is Catholicism in practice. Those who think to reform it by their
+contention that supernatural interventions can never be matters of fact,
+are liable to the reproach which they most dislike--that of scholastic
+intellectualism, and neglect of concrete experience.
+
+This denial of the supernatural as a factor in the physical world seems
+to us alone sufficient to make the position of the Modernists in the
+Roman Church untenable. That form of Christianity stands or falls with
+belief in miracles. It has always sought to bring the divine into human
+life by intercalating acts of God among facts of nature. Its whole
+sacred literature, as we have said, is penetrated through and through by
+the belief that God continually intervenes to change the course of
+events. What would become of the cult of Mary and the saints if it were
+recognised that God does not so interfere, and that the saints, if
+criticism allows that they ever existed, can do nothing by their
+intercessions to avert calamity or bring blessing? The Modernist priest,
+it appears, can still say 'Ora pro nobis' to a Mary whose biography he
+believes to be purely mythical. At any rate, he can tell his consultants
+with a good conscience that if they pray to Mary for grace they will
+receive it. But what is the good of this make-believe? And, if it is
+part of a transaction in which the worshipper pays money for assistance
+which he believes to be miraculous and only obtainable through the good
+offices of the Church, is it even morally honest? The worshipper may be
+helped by his subjective conviction that his cheque on the treasury of
+merit has been honoured; but if, apart from the natural effects of
+suggestion, nothing has been given him but a mere _placebo_, is the
+sacerdotal office one which an honourable man would wish to fill?
+
+We have no wish whatever to make any imputation against the motives of
+the brave men who have withstood the thunders of the Vatican, and who in
+some cases have been professionally ruined by their courageous avowal of
+their opinions. Perhaps none but a Catholic priest can understand how
+great the sacrifice is when one in his position breaks away from the
+authority of those who speak in the name of the Church, and deliberately
+incurs the charge, still so terrible in Catholic ears, of being a
+heretic and a teacher of heresy. Not one man in twenty would dare to
+face the storm of obloquy, hatred, and calumny which is always ready to
+fall on the head of a heretical priest. The Encyclical indicates the
+measures which are to be taken officially against Modernists. Pius X
+ordains that all the young professors suspected of Modernism are to be
+driven from their chairs in the seminaries; that infected books are to
+be condemned indiscriminately, even though they may have received an
+_imprimatur_; that a committee of censors is to be established in every
+diocese for the revision of books; that meetings of liberal priests or
+laymen are to be forbidden; that every diocese is to have a vigilance
+committee to discover and inform against Modernists; and that young
+clerical Modernists are to be put 'in the lowest places,' and held up to
+the contempt of their more orthodox or obsequious comrades. But this
+persecution is as nothing compared with the crushing condemnation with
+which the religious world, which is his only world, visits this kind of
+contumacy; the loss of friendships, the grief and shame of loved
+relatives, and the haunting dread that an authority so august as that
+which has condemned him cannot have spoken in vain. Assuredly all lovers
+of truth must do homage to the courage and self-sacrifice of these men.
+The doubt which may be reasonably felt and expressed as to the
+consistency of their attitude reflects no discredit on them personally.
+Nevertheless, the alternative must be faced, that a 'modernised'
+Catholicism must either descend to deliberate quackery, or proclaim that
+the bank from which the main part of her revenues is derived has stopped
+payment.
+
+What will be the end of the struggle, and in what condition will it
+leave the greatest Church in Christendom? There are some who think that
+the Church will grow tired of the attitude of Canute, and will retreat
+to the chair which Modernism proffers, well above high-water mark. But
+the policy of Rome has never been concession, but repression, even at
+the cost of alienating large bodies of her supporters; and we believe
+that in the present instance, as on former occasions, the Vatican will
+continue to proscribe Modernism until the movement within her body is
+crushed. She can hardly do otherwise, for the alternative offered is not
+a gradual reform of her dogmas, but a sweeping revolution. This we have
+made abundantly clear by quotations from the Modernists themselves. If
+the Vatican once proclaimed that such views about supernaturalism as
+those which we have quoted are permissible, a deadly wound would be
+inflicted on the faith of simple Catholics all over the world. The Vicar
+of Christ would seem to them to have apostatised. The whole machinery of
+piety, as practised in Catholic countries, would be thrown out of gear.
+Nor is there any strong body of educated laymen, such as exists in the
+Protestant Churches, who could influence the Papacy in the direction of
+Liberalism. Not only are the laity taught that their province is to
+obey, and never to call in question the decisions of ecclesiastics, but
+the large majority of thoughtful laymen have already severed their
+connection with the Church, and take no interest in projects for its
+reform. Everything points to a complete victory for the Jesuits and the
+orthodox party; and, much as we may regret the stifling of free
+discussion, and the expulsion of earnest and conscientious thinkers from
+the Church which they love, it is difficult to see how any other policy
+could be adopted.
+
+Of the Modernists, a few will secede, others will remain in the Church,
+though in open revolt against the Vatican; but the majority will be
+silenced, and will make a lip-submission to authority. The disastrous
+results of the rebellion, and of the means taken to crush it, will be
+apparent in the deterioration of the priesthood. Modern thought, it will
+be said, has now been definitely condemned by the Church; war has been
+openly declared against progress. Many who, before the crisis of the
+last few years, believed it possible to enter the Roman Catholic
+priesthood without any sacrifice of intellectual honesty, will in the
+future find it impossible to do so. We may expect to see this result
+most palpable in France, where men think logically, and are but little
+influenced by custom and prejudice. Unless the Republican Government
+blows the dying embers into a blaze by unjust persecution, it is to be
+feared that Catholicism in that country may soon become 'une quantité
+négligeable.' The prospects of the Church in Italy and Spain do not seem
+very much better. In fact the only comfort which we can suggest to those
+who regret the decline of an august institution, is that decadent
+autocracies have often shown an astonishing toughness. But as head of
+the universal Church, in any true sense of the word, Rome has finished
+her life.
+
+A more vital question, for those at least who are Christians, but not
+Roman Catholics, is in what shape the Christian religion will emerge
+from the assaults upon traditional beliefs which science and historical
+criticism are pressing home. We have given our reasons for rejecting the
+Modernist attempt at reconstruction. In the first place, we do not feel
+that we are required by sane criticism to surrender nearly all that M.
+Loisy has surrendered. We believe that the kingdom of God which Christ
+preached was something much more than a patriotic dream. We believe that
+He did speak as never man spake, so that those who heard Him were
+convinced that He was more than man. We believe, in short, that the
+object of our worship was a historical figure. Nothing has yet come to
+light, or is likely to come to light, which prevents us from identifying
+the Christ of history with the Christ of faith, or the Christ of
+experience.
+
+But, if too much is surrendered on one side, too much is taken back on
+the other. The contention that the progress of knowledge has left the
+traditional beliefs and cultus of Catholics untouched is untenable. It
+is not too much to say that the whole edifice of supernaturalistic
+dualism under which Catholic piety has sheltered itself for fifteen
+hundred years has fallen in ruins to the ground. There is still enough
+superstition left to win a certain vogue for miraculous cures at
+Lourdes, and split hailstones at Remiremont. But that kind of religion
+is doomed, and will not survive three generations of sound secular
+education given equally to both sexes. The craving for signs and
+wonders--that broad road which attracts so many converts and wins so
+rapid a success--leads religion at last to its destruction, as Christ
+seems to have warned His own disciples. Science has been the slowly
+advancing Nemesis which has overtaken a barbarised and paganised
+Christianity. She has come with a winnowing fan in her hand, and she
+will not stop till she has thoroughly purged her floor. She has left us
+the divine Christ, whatever may be the truth about certain mysterious
+events in His human life. But assuredly she has not left us the right to
+offer wheedling prayers to a mythical Queen of Heaven; she has not left
+us the right to believe in such puerile stories as the Madonna-stamp on
+hailstones, in order to induce a comfortably pious state of mind.
+
+The dualism alleged to exist between faith and knowledge will not serve.
+Man is one, and reality is one; there can no more be two 'orders of
+reality' not affecting each other than there can be two faculties in the
+human mind working independently of each other. The universe which is
+interpreted to us by our understanding is not unreal, nor are its laws
+pliant to our wills, as the pragmatists do vainly talk. It is a divinely
+ordered system, which includes man, the roof and crown of things, and
+Christ, in whom is revealed to us its inner character and meaning. It is
+not the province of faith either to flout scientific knowledge, or to
+contaminate the material on which science works by intercalating what M.
+Le Roy calls 'transhistorical symbols'--myths in fact--which do not
+become true by being recognised as false, as the new apologetic seems to
+suggest. Faith is not the born storyteller of Modernist theology. Faith
+is, on the practical side, just the resolution to stand or fall by the
+noblest hypothesis; and, on the intellectual side, it is a progressive
+initiation, by experiment which ends in experience, into the unity of
+the good, the true, and the beautiful, founded on the inner assurance
+that these three attributes of the divine nature have one source and
+conduct to one goal.
+
+The Modernists are right in finding the primary principle of faith in
+the depths of our undivided personality. They are right in teaching that
+faith develops and comes into its own only through the activity of the
+whole man. They are right in denying the name of faith to correct
+opinion, which may leave the character untouched. As Hartley Coleridge
+says:
+
+    'Think not the faith by which the just shall live
+       Is a dead creed, a map correct of heaven,
+    Far less a feeling fond and fugitive,
+       A thoughtless gift, withdrawn as soon as given.
+    It is an affirmation and an act
+    That bids eternal truth be present fact.'
+
+For all this we are grateful to them. But we maintain that the future of
+Christianity is in the hands of those who insist that faith and
+knowledge must be confronted with each other till they have made up
+their quarrel. The crisis of faith cannot be dealt with by establishing
+a _modus vivendi_ between scepticism and superstition. That is all that
+Modernism offers us; and it will not do. Rather we will believe, with
+Clement of Alexandria, that pistê hê gnhôsist, gnôsthê de hê phistist.
+
+If this confidence in the reality of things hoped for and the
+hopefulness of things real be well-founded, we must wait in patience for
+the coming of the wise master-builders who will construct a more truly
+Catholic Church out of the fragments of the old, with the help of the
+material now being collected by philosophers, psychologists, historians,
+and scientists of all creeds and countries. When the time comes for this
+building to rise, the contributions of the Modernists will not be
+described as wood, hay, or stubble. They have done valuable service to
+biblical criticism, and in other branches, which will be always
+recognised. But the building will not (we venture to prophesy) be
+erected on their plan, nor by their Church. History shows few examples
+of the rejuvenescence of decayed autocracies. Nor is our generation
+likely to see much of the reconstruction. The churches, as institutions,
+will continue for some time to show apparent weakness; and other
+moralising and civilising agencies will do much of their work. But,
+since there never has been a time when the character of Christ and the
+ethics which he taught have been held in higher honour than the present,
+there is every reason to expect that the next 'Age of Faith,' when it
+comes, will be of a more genuinely Christian type than the last.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+     [50] Bishop Creighton always emphasised this view of Roman
+     Catholicism. 'The Roman Church,' he wrote, 'is the most
+     complete expression of Erastianism, for it is not a Church
+     at all, but a state in its organisation; and the worst form
+     of state--an autocracy.' (_Life and Letters_, ii. 375.)
+
+     [51] In contrast with 'henotheism' or 'monolatry,' such as
+     the worship of the early Hebrews.
+
+     [52] 'Nunc defecit certa successio in omnibus ecclesiis
+     apostolicis, praeterquam in Romana, et ideo ex testimonio
+     huius solius ecclesiae sumi potest certum argumentum ad
+     probandas apostolicas traditiones.' Bellarmine, _De Verbo
+     Dei scripto et non scripto_, IV, ix, 10.
+
+     [53] Bellarmine, _De Laicis_, III, xxi, 22.
+
+     [54]: Santayana, _Return in Religion_, p. 108.
+
+     [55] Tertullian, _De Virg. Vel_., 1.
+
+     [56] Encyclical of October 27, 1901.
+
+     [57] In _The Programme of Modernism_, and _Quello che
+     vogliamo_.
+
+     [58] _The Programme of Modernism_, p. 16.
+
+     [59] _The Programme of Modernism_, pp. 50-54.
+
+     [60] Loisy, _Simples Réflexions_, p. 168.
+
+     [61] _Ibid. L'Évangile et l'Église_, pp. 3-5.
+
+     [62] _Ibid. Les Évangiles Synoptiques_, p. 119.
+
+     [63] _Ibid_.
+
+     [64] _Ibid_. p. 143.
+
+     [65] _Ibid_. pp. 138, 139.
+
+     [66] _Ibid_. p. 104.
+
+     [67] Loisy, _Les Évangiles Synoptiques_, p. 166.
+
+     [68] _Ibid_. p. 169.
+
+     [69] _Ibid. Le Quatrième Évangile_, passim.
+
+     [70] Loisy, _Les Évangiles Synoptiques_, p. 214.
+
+     [71] _Ibid_. p. 218.
+
+     [72] Loisy, _Les Évangiles Synoptiques_, p. 223.
+
+     [73] _The Programme of Modernism_, pp. 82, 83.
+
+     [74] _Ibid_. p. 90.
+
+     [75] Loisy, _Simples Réflexions_, p. 211.
+
+     [76] Laberthonnière, _Le Réalisme Chrétien et l'Idéalisme
+     Grec,_ pp. 44, 45.
+
+     [77] _Malachi_, ii. 6.
+
+     [78] Le Roy, _Dogme et Critique_, p. 26.
+
+     [79] _Lex Orandi_, p. 165 (abridged).
+
+     [80] This is not carelessness on the part of the writer.
+     Paulsen also says (_Introduction to Philosophy_, p. 112), 4
+     It is impossible to separate feeling and willing from each
+     other.... Only in the highest stage of psychical life, in
+     man, does a partial separation of feeling from willing
+     occur.' But it is the highest stage of psychical life, the
+     human, with which we are alone concerned; and in this stage
+     it is both possible and necessary to distinguish between
+     feeling and willing. Some Voluntarists, hard pressed by
+     facts, try to make 'will' cover the whole of conscious and
+     subconscious life, with the exception of logical reasoning,
+     which is excluded as a sort of pariah!
+
+     [81] Mgr. Moyes, in _The Nineteenth Century_, December,
+     1907.
+
+
+
+
+CARDINAL NEWMAN
+
+(1912)
+
+
+The life of Newman was divided into two nearly equal portions by his
+change of religion in October 1845. For the earlier half of his career
+we have long had his own narrative; and Newman is a prince of
+autobiographers. It was his wish that the 'Apologia' should be the final
+and authoritative account of his life in the Church of England, and of
+the steps by which he was led to transfer his allegiance to another
+communion. The voluminous literature of the Tractarian movement, which
+includes large collections of Newman's own letters, has confirmed the
+accuracy of his narrative, and has made any further description of that
+strange episode in English University life superfluous. With the
+'Apologia' and Dean Church's 'Oxford Movement' before him, the reader
+needs no more. Mr. Wilfrid Ward has therefore been well advised to
+adhere loyally to the Cardinal's wishes, by confining himself to the
+last half of Newman's life, after a brief summary of his childhood,
+youth, and middle age till 1845. Nevertheless, it is misleading to give
+the title 'The Life of Cardinal Newman' to a work which is only, as it
+were, the second volume of a biography. There are very few men, however
+long-lived, who have not done much of their best work before the age of
+forty-five, and Newman was certainly not one of the exceptions. From
+every point of view, except that of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical
+historian, Newman's Anglican career was far more interesting and
+important than his residence at Birmingham. He will live in history, not
+as the recluse of Edgbaston, nor as the wearer of the Cardinal's hat
+which fell to his lot, almost too late to save the credit of the
+Vatican, when he had passed the normal limit of human life, but as the
+real founder and leader of nineteenth century Anglo-Catholicism, the
+movement which he created and then tried in vain to destroy. The
+projects and failures and successes of his later life seem very pale and
+almost petty when compared with the activities of the years while he was
+making a chapter of English history. His greatest book, though it was
+written many years after his secession, is the record of a drama which
+ended in the interview with Father Dominic the Passionist. It is 'The
+History of my Religious Opinions'; and after 1845 his religious opinions
+had, as he says himself, no further history. The incomparable style
+which will give him a permanent place among the masters of English prose
+was the product of his life at Oxford, where he lived in a society of
+highly cultivated men, whose writings show many of the same excellences
+as his own. Newman's English is only the Oriel manner at its best. Such
+an instrument could hardly have been forged at the Birmingham Oratory,
+where his associates, who had followed him from Littlemore, were of such
+an inferior type that Mark Pattison, who knew them, was surprised that
+he could be satisfied with their company. His best sermons and his best
+poetry belong to his Anglican period. 'The Dream of Gerontius,' with all
+its tender grace, is far less virile than 'Lead, kindly Light,' and
+other short poems of his youth. Moreover, his record as a Roman
+ecclesiastic is one of almost unrelieved failure. If he had died
+eighteen years after his secession, when he already looked upon himself
+as an old man whose course was nearly run, he would have been regarded
+as one who had sacrificed a great career in the Church of England for
+neglect and obscurity. From the first he was distrusted by the 'Old
+Catholics' (the old Roman Catholic families in England), and suspected
+at the Vatican, where Talbot assiduously represented him as 'the most
+dangerous man in England.' When Manning, Archdeacon of Chichester,
+followed his example and joined the Roman Church, Newman was confronted
+with a still more subtle and relentless opponent, whose hostility was
+never relaxed till the accession of a Liberal Pope made it no longer
+possible to resist the bestowal of tardy honours upon a feeble
+octogenarian. The recognition came in time to soothe his decline, but
+too late to enable him to leave his mark upon the administration of the
+Roman Church.
+
+The main events in a very uneventful career are narrated at length in
+Mr. Ward's volumes. After his 'conversion' Newman first resided in a
+small community at Maryvale (Oscott) but soon left it on a journey to
+Rome, where he spent some time at the Collegio di Propaganda, and had a
+foretaste of the distrust with which Pius IX and his advisers always
+regarded him. His plan at this time was to found a theological seminary
+at Maryvale; and in this scheme he had the support of Wiseman, the
+ablest Roman ecclesiastic in the United Kingdom. But the 'Essay on
+Development,' with its unscholastic language and unfamiliar line of
+apologetic, seriously alarmed the theologians at Rome; and Newman,
+accepting the first of many rebuffs, abandoned this project in favour of
+another. He resolved to join the Oratorians, an order founded by St.
+Philip Neri, and obtained permission to modify, in his projected
+establishment, the rules of the Order, which, among other things,
+prescribed frequent floggings in public. He visited Naples, and came
+back a believer in the liquefaction of the saint's blood. The amazing
+letter to Henry Wilberforce, writter from Santa Croce, shows that he was
+the most docile and credulous of converts. Even the Holy House at Loreto
+caused him no difficulty. 'He who floated the ark on the surges of a
+world-wide sea, and inclosed in it all living things, who has hidden the
+terrestrial paradise, who said that faith might remove mountains ...
+could do this wonder also.' It 'may have been'; 'everybody believes it
+in Rome'; therefore Newman 'has no doubt'!
+
+The new Oratory was placed by Papal brief at Birmingham. The first
+members of it were his friends who had left the English Church with him.
+Recruits soon came in, and branch houses were talked of. But for many
+years Newman had reason to complain of neglect and want of sympathy. He
+even found empty churches when he preached in London. In conjunction
+with Faber, he next started a series of 'Lives of the Saints,' in which
+the most absurd 'miracles' were accepted without question as true. The
+'Old Catholics,' who had no stomach for such food, protested; and
+Newman, this time thoroughly irritated, had to admit another failure.
+The Oratory, however, and its London offshoot under Faber were
+prosperous, and the churches where Newman preached were not long empty.
+In 1850 we find him in better spirits. He employed his energies in a
+series of clever lectures on 'Anglican Difficulties,' in which he
+ridiculed the Church of his earlier vows with all the refined cruelty of
+which he was a master. But he was soon in trouble again. One Dr.
+Giacinto Achilli, formerly a Dominican friar, gave lectures in London
+upon the scandals of the Roman Inquisition, which had imprisoned him for
+attacking the Catholic faith and fomenting sedition. The temper of the
+British public at this time made it ready to believe anything to the
+discredit of the Roman Church, and Achilli became a popular hero.
+Wiseman published a libellous article upon him in the _Dublin Review_,
+which passed unnoticed. But when Newman repeated the charges of
+profligacy in a public lecture, Achilli brought an action for libel,
+which in costs and expenses cost Newman £12,000. The money however was
+paid, and much more than paid, by his co-religionists. This trial was
+quickly followed by the inauguration of a scheme for founding a Catholic
+University in Ireland, the avowed object of which was to withdraw young
+Catholics from the liberalising influences of mixed education. This
+scheme was sure to appeal strongly to Newman. Liberalism had come in
+with a rush at Oxford, after the dissipation of the 'long nightmare' (as
+Mark Pattison calls it) while the University was dominated by religious
+medievalism. The Oxford of Newman had become the Oxford of Jowett. The
+ablest of Newman's young friends and disciples, such as Mark Pattison
+and J.A. Froude, were now in the opposite camp, full of anger and
+disgust at the seductive influences from which they had just escaped.
+Newman, as might be expected, was anxious to protect Catholic students
+from similar dangers, and accepted the post of Rector of the proposed
+Catholic University. He intended it to provide 'philosophical defences
+of Catholicity and Revelation, and create a Catholic literature.' The
+lectures in which he expounded his ideals at Dublin were a great
+success, and he returned to England full of hope. With a curious
+inability to read the character of one who was to be his worst enemy, he
+offered Manning the post of Vice-Rector. Manning's refusal was followed
+by his failure to obtain the support of Ward, Henry Wilberforce, and
+others; and Catholic opinion in Ireland was much divided. For three or
+four years Newman was engaged in ineffectual efforts to push his scheme
+forward. At last, in 1855, he was installed as Rector, and began his
+work at Dublin. A fine church was built at St. Stephen's Green with the
+surplus of the Achilli subscriptions, and Newman produced some excellent
+literary work in the form of University lectures and sermons. But the
+whole movement was viewed with distrust by the Irish ecclesiastics, who,
+as he said in a moment of impatience, 'regard any intellectual man as
+being on the road to perdition.' There was a cloud over his work from
+first to last. He had been promised a bishopric, without which he was
+made to feel himself in an inferior position by the Irish prelates; but
+the promise was not fulfilled. The Irish objected to one or two English
+professors on his staff, because they were English. Dr. Cullen, the
+ruling spirit in the Irish hierarchy, was a narrow conservative, who
+wished to use Newman merely as an instrument against progressive
+tendencies in Church and State. In 1857 he resigned an impossible task,
+and returned to Birmingham.
+
+New undertakings followed, no more successful than the abortive
+university scheme. There was to be a new translation of the Bible, and a
+new Catholic magazine called the _Rambler_. The former enterprise was
+already well advanced when the general indifference of the Catholic
+public caused it to be abandoned. The _Rambler_, the contributors to
+which used a freedom of discussion unpalatable to Roman ecclesiastics,
+struggled on amid a storm of criticism till 1859, when Newman, who was
+then himself editor, resigned, and one more humiliating failure was
+registered. The management of the magazine passed into other hands. The
+Oratory School at Birmingham, a much less contentious undertaking, was
+successfully launched in the same year.
+
+In 1860 came the emancipation of the States of the Church by Cavour and
+Victor Emmanuel. Newman referred to the Piedmontese as 'sacrilegious
+robbers,' but his advocacy of the temporal power was not strong enough
+to please the Vatican, while the strength of Manning's language left
+nothing to be desired. Newman became more unpopular than ever. His
+reputation suffered by his former connection with the _Rambler_ and his
+supposed connection with the _Home and Foreign Review_, which Acton
+intended to represent the views of progressive Catholics, till it also
+was snuffed out by the hierarchy. The five years from 1859 to 1864 are
+considered by Mr. Ward to have been the saddest in Newman's life. He
+felt, truly enough, that the dominant party had no sympathy with his
+aims, and that he was treated as 'some wild incomprehensible beast, a
+spectacle for Dr. Wiseman to exhibit to strangers, as himself being the
+hunter who captured it.' 'All through my life I have been plucked,' he
+writes to an old Oxford friend. There was even in his mind at this time
+a wistful yearning after the friends and the Church that he had left--a
+feeling, doubtless transient, but significant, which his biographer has
+allowed to show itself in a few pages of his book. After reminding
+himself, in his diary, of the warning against those who, after putting
+their hand to the plough, 'look back,' he proceeds to look back, because
+he cannot help it.
+
+     'I live more and more in the past, and in hopes that the
+     past may revive in the future.... I think, as death comes
+     on, his cold breath is felt on soul as on body, and that,
+     viewed naturally, my soul is half dead now, whereas then [in
+     his Protestant days] it was in the freshness and fervour of
+     youth.... I say the same of my state of mind from 1834 to
+     1845, when I became a Catholic. It is a time past and
+     gone--it relates to a work done and over. "Quis mihi
+     tribuat, ut sim iuxta menses pristinos, secundum dies,
+     quibus Deus custodiebat me? Quando splendebat lucerna eius
+     super caput meum, et ad lumen eius ambulabam in tenebris?"
+     ... I have no friend at Rome; I have laboured in England, to
+     be misrepresented, backbitten and scorned. I have laboured
+     in Ireland, with a door ever shut in my face....
+     Contemporaneously with this neglect on the part of those for
+     whom I laboured, there has been a drawing towards me on the
+     part of Protestants. Those very books and labours which
+     Catholics did not understand, Protestants did. I am under
+     the temptation of looking out for, if not courting,
+     Protestant praise.... What I wrote as a Protestant has had
+     far greater power, force, meaning, success, than my Catholic
+     works.'
+
+Such reflections might seem to indicate a disposition to return to the
+Anglican fold. But a man must have vanquished pride in its most
+insidious form before he can leave the Church of Rome for any other. The
+aristocratic _hauteur_ of the _civis Romanus_ among barbarians lives on
+in the sentiment of the Roman Catholic towards Protestants. When Newman
+was publicly charged with intending to return to Anglicanism, this
+spirit broke out in a disagreeable and insulting manner.
+
+The bitterness of these five years of neglect, in which he had been
+eating his heart in silence, must be remembered in connexion with the
+famous Kingsley controversy, which in 1864 roused him to put on his
+armour and fight for his reputation. There had always been an element of
+combativeness in Newman's disposition. '_Nescio quo pacto_, my spirits
+most happily rise at the prospect of danger,' he wrote early in life.
+And when he could persuade himself that not only his honour but that of
+the Church was at stake, he could feel and show the true Catholic
+ferocity, the cruellest spirit on earth. 'A heresiarch,' he had written
+even in his Anglican days, 'should meet with no mercy. He must be dealt
+with by the competent authority as if he were embodied evil. To spare
+him is a false and dangerous pity. It is to endanger the souls of
+thousands, and it is uncharitable towards himself'! This was the temper,
+soured by defeat and not mellowed by age, which Charles Kingsley in an
+evil moment for himself chose wantonly to provoke. At Christmas 1863
+there appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_ a review of Froude's 'History
+of England,' in which Kingsley wrote 'Truth for its own sake has never
+been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it
+need not be, and on the whole ought not to be--that cunning is the
+weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the
+brute male force of the wicked world.' This charge was in fact based on
+a careless reading, or an imperfect recollection, of the twentieth
+discourse in 'Sermons on Subjects of the Day.' The discourse in question
+is a somewhat nauseous glorification of the servile temper, but it only
+says that the meekness of the saints is (by Divine providence) so
+successful that it is always mistaken for craft. The _imputation_ of
+cunning is therefore a note of sanctity in its victim. Kingsley ought to
+have read the sermon again, and withdrawn unreservedly from an untenable
+position. But he thought that something less than a complete apology
+would serve; and so gave Newman the opportunity of his life. When the
+withdrawal which he offered was rejected, Kingsley made matters ten
+times worse for himself by an ill-considered pamphlet called 'What then
+does Dr. Newman mean?' In this effusion he vents all his scorn and
+hatred for Catholicism--for its tortuous tactics, its monstrous
+credulity and appetite for miracles, which must proceed, according to
+him, either from infantile folly or from deliberate imposture.
+Forgetting altogether that he has to defend himself against a specific
+charge of slander, he offers his great opponent the choice between
+writing himself down a knave or a fool--a knave if he pretends to
+believe in the Holy Coat and the blood of St. Januarius, a fool if he
+does believe in them.
+
+The coarseness of this attack upon an elderly man of saintly character
+and acknowledged intellectual eminence, who had to all appearance
+blighted a great career by honestly obeying his conscience, offended the
+British public, which was now fully disposed to give a respectful and
+favourable hearing to whatever Newman might care to say in reply. In a
+Catholic country it would have been useless for a Protestant, however
+falsely attacked, to appeal to Catholic public opinion for justice; but
+Newman understood the English character, and saw his splendid chance.
+
+The famous defence was, from every point of view except the highest, a
+complete triumph. And although Hort was strictly accurate in describing
+the treatment of Kingsley as 'horribly unchristian,' it is demanding too
+much of human nature to expect a master of fence, when wantonly attacked
+with a bludgeon, to abstain from the pleasure of pricking his adversary
+scientifically in the tender parts of his body. The bitterest passages
+were excised in later editions; and the 'Apologia' remains a masterpiece
+of autobiography, and a powerful defence of Catholicism. To Newman this
+appeared to be the turning-point in his fortunes. He felt strong enough
+to administer a severe snub to Monsignor Talbot, his old enemy, who,
+hearing of the success the 'Apologia,' invited him to preach at Rome.
+Then at once he threw himself into a great scheme for founding an
+Oratory at Oxford. Eight and a half acres were bought between Worcester
+College, the Clarendon Press, the Observatory, and Beaumont Street, a
+magnificent site, which the Oratorians acquired for only £8400. But here
+again he was thwarted. W.G. Ward opposed the scheme with all his might,
+insisting on the necessity of 'preserving the purity of a Catholic
+atmosphere throughout the whole course of education.' The whole tendency
+of the Ultramontane movement was to secure, before all other things, a
+body of militant young Catholics to fight the battles of the Church.
+Newman was willing to support the English Church in its warfare against
+unbelief; to the Ultramontane a Protestant is as certainly damned as an
+atheist, and is more mischievous as being less amenable to Catholic
+influence. Manning and Talbot seem to have given the project its _coup
+de grâce_ at Rome, and Newman sold the land which he had bought. He was
+bitterly disappointed; but the growth of public esteem had given him
+self-confidence, and he did not again fall into despondency, though he
+had a strange presentiment of approaching death, which prompted his last
+famous poem, 'The Dream of Gerontius.' A second attempt to go to Oxford
+was thwarted by enemies at Home and in England in 1866-7. The extreme
+party, with Manning, now Archbishop, at their head, seemed to be
+victorious all along the line. They were able to proceed to their
+supreme triumph in the Vatican Council which issued the dogma of Papal
+Infallibility. Newman, while others were intriguing and haranguing, was
+quietly engaged in preparing his subtlest and (on one side) his most
+characteristic work, 'The Grammar of Assent,' an attempt at a Catholic
+apologetic on a 'personalist,' as opposed to an 'intellectualist' basis.
+He declined to take an active part in the theological conferences about
+infallibility, being by this time well aware how little weight such
+arguments as he could bring were likely to have at Rome. He was
+disgusted at the insolent aggressiveness of the Ultramontanes, but he
+had no wish to combat it. The situation was hopeless, and he knew it.
+The death of several friends increased the sense of isolation, and
+during the years 1875 to 1879 his silence and depression were very
+noticeable to those who lived with him. His dearest friend, Ambrose St.
+John, was one of several who died about this time. But Trinity College,
+Oxford, made him an honorary fellow in 1877, an honour which seemed to
+prognosticate the far higher distinction which was soon to be conferred
+upon him.
+
+The death of Pius IX in 1878 brought to an end the long reign of
+obscurantism at the Vatican, and with the election of Leo XIII Newman
+emerged from the cloud under which he had remained for more than a
+generation. The new Pope lost no time in making him a Cardinal, though
+even now the prize seemed to be on the point of slipping through his
+fingers. He valued the honour immensely as setting the official seal of
+approbation on his life's work, and the last ten years of his life were
+quietly happy. He was able to mingle actively in affairs of public
+interest, and to write long letters, till near the end. He died on
+August 11, 1890, in his ninetieth year, and was buried, by his own
+request, in the same grave with his friend Ambrose St. John.
+
+Why is it that this sad, isolated, broken life, in which the young man
+renounces the creed of the boy, and the elder man pours scorn upon the
+loyalties of his prime; which found its last haven in a society which
+wished to make a tool of him but distrusted him too much for even this
+pitiful service, has still an absorbing interest for our generation? For
+it is not only in England that Newman's fame lives and grows. In France
+there is a cult of Newman, which has produced biographies by Bremond and
+Faure, as well as a history of the Catholic Revival in England by
+Thureau-Dangin. In England, besides Dean Church's 'Oxford Movement,' we
+have biographies by R.H. Hutton and W. Barry, and appreciations or
+depreciations by E. Abbott, Leslie Stephen, Froude, Mark Pattison, and
+several others.
+
+The interest is mainly personal and psychological. Newman's writings,
+and his life, are a 'human document' in a very peculiar degree. Bremond
+is right in calling attention to the _autocentrism_ of Newman. 'Although
+(he says) the words "I" and "me" are relatively rare in Newman's
+writings, whether as preacher, novelist, controversialist, philosopher,
+or poet, he always reveals and always describes himself.' Even his
+historical portraits are reconstructed from his inner consciousness;
+hence their historical falsity--all ages are mixed in his histories--and
+their philosophical truth. In a sense he was the most reserved of men.
+We do not know whether he had any ordinary temptations; we do not know
+whether he ever fell in love. But the texture of his mind and the growth
+of his opinions have been laid bare to us with the candour of a saint
+and the accuracy of a dissector or analyst. He reminds us of De Quincey,
+who also could tell the story of his own life, but no other, and whose
+style, like his own, was modelled on the literary traditions of the
+eighteenth century.
+
+He has left us, in the 'Apologia,' a picture of his precocious and
+dreamy boyhood, when he lived in a world of his own, peopled by angels
+and spirits, a world in which the supernatural was the only nature. He
+was lonely and reserved, then as always. It is not for nothing that in
+his sermons he expatiates so often on the impenetrability of the human
+soul. A nature so self-centred has always something hard and inhuman
+about it; he was loved, but loved little in return. And yet he craved
+for more affection than he could reciprocate. 'I cannot ever realise to
+myself,' he wrote once, 'that anyone loves me.' It is a common feeling
+in imaginative, withdrawn characters. Deepseated in his nature was a
+reverence for the hidden springs of thought, action, and belief. When he
+spoke of 'conscience,' as he did continually, he meant, not the faculty
+which decides ethical problems, but the undivided soul-nature which
+underlies the separate activities of thought, will, and feeling. In this
+sense the epigrammatist was right who said that 'to Newman his own
+nature was a revelation which he called conscience.' He 'followed the
+gleam,' uncertain whither it would lead him. The poem 'Lead, kindly
+Light' is the most intimate self-revelation that he ever made. This
+mental attitude, which he took early in life, became the foundation of
+his 'personalist' philosophy, and of the anti-intellectualism which was
+the negative side of it. But this reliance on the inner light, which
+nearly made a mystic of him, was clouded by a haunting fear of God's
+wrath, which imparts a gloomy tinge to his Anglican sermons, and which,
+while he was halting between the English Church and Rome, plied him with
+the very unmystical question 'Where shall I be most _safe_?' an argument
+which he had used repeatedly and without scruple in his parochial
+sermons.[82]
+
+It is nevertheless true that this self-centred spirit was, at least in
+early life, impressionable and open to the influence of others. His
+friendship with Hurrell Froude and Keble affected his opinions
+considerably: and still more potent was the pervading intangible
+influence of Oxford--the academic atmosphere. It cannot indeed be said
+that the University was at this time in a healthy condition. Mark
+Pattison has described with caustic contempt the intellectual lethargy
+of the place, and the miserable quality of the lectures. Oxford was
+still _de facto_ a close clerical corporation, and in most colleges
+'clubbable men' rather than scholars were chosen for the fellowships.
+Oriel won its unique position by breaking through this tradition, and
+also by making originality rather than success in the university
+examinations the main qualification for election. But even at Oriel, and
+among the ablest men, there was great ignorance of much that was being
+thought and written elsewhere. Knowledge of German was rare. Even the
+classics were not read in a humanistic spirit. 'Of the world of wisdom
+and sentiment--of poetry and philosophy, of social and political
+experience, contained in the Latin and Greek classics, and of the true
+relation of the degenerate and semi-barbarous Christian writers of the
+fourth century to that world--Oxford, in 1830, had never dreamt.[83]
+Theological prejudice in fact distorted the whole outlook of the
+resident fellows, and confounded all estimation of relative values.
+Newman never, all through his life, took a step towards overcoming this
+early prejudice. He imagined a golden age of the Church, or several
+golden ages, and found them in 'the first three centuries,' in the time
+of Alfred the Great or of Edward the Confessor, or in the seventeenth
+century. He was only sure that the sixteenth century was made of much
+baser metal. This unhistorical idealisation of the past, even of a
+barbarous past, was very characteristic of Newman and his friends. They
+bequeathed to the Anglican Church the strange legend of an age of pure
+doctrine and heroic practice, to which it should be our aim to 'return.'
+The real strength of this legend lies in the fact that it has no
+historical foundation. The ideal which is presented as a return or a
+revival is nothing of the kind, but a creation of our own time,
+projected by the imagination into the past, from which it comes back
+with a halo of authority. Newman had his full share of these illusions.
+In his youth and prime he was more of an Englishman than an Anglican. He
+despised foreigners, unless they were Catholic saints, could not bear
+the sight of the _tricolor_, and hated all the 'ideas of the
+Revolution.' His dictum, 'Luther is dead, but Hildebrand and Loyola are
+alive,' throws a flood of light upon the contents of his mind, as does
+the truly British prejudice which caused him to be horrified at the
+sight of ships coaling at Malta 'on a holy day.' His range of ideas was
+so much restricted that Bremond, a sincere admirer, says that his
+imagination lived on 'une poignée de souvenirs d'enfant.' How tragic was
+the fate which caught this loyal Englishman and more than loyal Oxonian
+in the meshes of a cosmopolitan institution in which England counted for
+little and Oxford for nothing at all!
+
+The Reform of 1832 seemed to threaten the English Church with
+destruction. Arnold in this year wrote 'The Church, as it now stands, no
+human power can save.' The bishops were stunned and bewildered by the
+unexpected outbreak of popular hostility. Old methods of defence were
+plainly useless; some new plan of campaign must be devised against the
+double assault of political radicalism and theological liberalism. To
+Newman both alike were of the devil; theological liberalism especially
+was only specious infidelity. He never had the slightest inkling that a
+deep religious earnestness and love of truth underlay the revolt against
+orthodox tradition. His fighting instincts were aroused. When Keble
+attributed the scheme for suppressing some Irish bishopries to 'national
+apostasy,' he rushed to arms in defence of Church privileges and
+property. In the first Tract (1833) he says:
+
+     'A notion has gone abroad that the people can take away your
+     power. They think they have given it and can take it away.
+     They have been deluded into a notion that present palpable
+     usefulness, produceable results, acceptableness to your
+     flocks--that these and such-like are the tests of your
+     Divine commission. Enlighten them in this matter. Exalt our
+     holy fathers the Bishops, as the representatives of the
+     Apostles, and the Angels of the Churches, and magnify your
+     office, as being ordained by them to take part in their
+     ministry.'
+
+That was the keynote of the whole Tractarian movement. A weapon was
+needed to smite liberalism. Nothing but a compact and powerful
+organisation could repel the foe. God must have provided such an
+organisation: a Divine society, certain of ultimate victory, must exist
+somewhere. Newman and his friends hoped to find it in the Anglican
+Church; and such was the power of their contagious zeal and confident
+enthusiasm, that the immediate danger was actually staved off, and the
+Establishment was allowed a new lease of life. But the national Church
+of England was not constituted to resist the national will, and the
+attempt to reorganise it on Catholic lines was fore-doomed to failure.
+And so, since the assumption that a great institutional fighting Church
+_must_ exist was never even questioned, when Anglicanism failed him
+there was no other refuge but Rome.
+
+He was certainly more logical than his friends who remained behind.
+Anglo-Catholicism has its theoretical basis in a definition of
+Catholicity which is repudiated by all other Catholics; its traditions
+are largely legendary. But it is an eclectic system well suited to the
+English character, and the distorted view of history which Newman
+bequeathed to the party has enabled it to borrow much that is good from
+different sides, without any sense of inconsistency. The idea of a
+Divine society has been and is the inspiration of thousands of ardent
+workers in the Anglican Church. It lifted the religion of many
+Englishmen from the somewhat gross and bourgeois condition in which the
+movement found it, to a pure and unworldly idealism. And, unlike most
+other religious revivals, especially in this country, it has remained
+remarkably free from unhealthy emotionalism and hysterics. The social
+atmosphere of Oxford, always alien to mawkish sentiment, penetrated the
+whole movement, and maintained in it for many years a certain sanity and
+dignity which, while they doubtless prevented it from spreading widely
+in the middle class, made the Tractarians respected by men of taste and
+education. But these influences could not be permanent. The goodwill of
+the Tractarian firm (if we may so express it) has now been acquired by
+men with very different aims and methods. The ablest members of the
+party are plunging violently into social politics, while the rank and
+file in increasing numbers are fluttering round the Roman candle, into
+which many of them must ultimately fall.
+
+The progress of the movement between 1833 and 1845 was almost entirely
+in the direction of teaching the clergy to 'magnify their office.' The
+other part of the scheme, the combat against theological liberalism,
+fell quite into the background. The main reason for this was that during
+those strange years the theologians so completely dominated Oxford that
+liberalism could hardly raise its head, and was despised as well as
+hated. Only after Newman's secession could the regeneration of the
+University begin. Then indeed liberalism came in like a flood, though it
+was a very shallow flood in some cases. This was the day of the
+self-satisfied young rationalist, 'ecarté par une plaisanterie des
+croyances dont la raison d'un Pascal ne réussit pas à se dégager,' as
+Renan says--an orgy of facile free thought which after a generation was
+chastised by another clerical reaction.
+
+If Newman could have foreseen the victory of his party in the English
+Church, he might perhaps have been content to remain in it. We cannot
+tell. But it is doubtful whether he would have taken Pusey's place as
+leader of the party. Newman's influence was disturbing and subtly
+disintegrating to every cause for which he laboured. His startling
+candour often seemed like treachery. He could not work with others, and
+broke with nearly all his friends, retaining only his disciples. He
+confessed himself a bad judge of character. It is doubtful, after all,
+whether he was much injured by the jealousy and almost instinctive fear
+which he inspired among the Roman Catholic hierarchy. If he had been
+allowed to take the place due to his abilities, his character, and his
+reputation, what could he have done that he was unable to do at
+Edgbaston? We cannot fancy him plunged in crooked ecclesiastical
+intrigue, like that _Inglese italianato_, Cardinal Manning. Still less
+can we fancy him haranguing strikers, and stealing the credit of
+composing a trade dispute. No doubt he suffered under the sense of
+injury; but probably he did what was in him to do. If the Roman Church
+would not use him as a tool, it was probably because he would not have
+been a good tool. There are some mistakes which that Church seldom
+makes; it knows how to choose its men.
+
+What will be the verdict of history on the type of Catholicism which
+Newman represented? He was kept out in the cold by a conservative Pope,
+and honoured by a liberal Pope. Which was right, from the point of view
+of Catholic interests and policy? This is perhaps the most important
+question which the life of Newman raises; for it affects our
+anticipations of the future even more than our judgments of the past. Is
+Newman a safe or a possible guide for Catholics in the twentieth
+century?
+
+Newman was no metaphysician; he confesses it himself. 'My turn of
+mind,' he says, 'has never led me towards metaphysics; rather it has
+been logical, ethical, practical.'[84] For metaphysics requires an
+initial act of faith in human reason, and Newman had not this faith.
+Even in his Anglican days he uttered many astonishing things in contempt
+of reason. 'What is intellect itself (he asks) but a fruit of the Fall,
+not found in paradise or in heaven, more than in little children, and at
+the utmost but tolerated by the Church, and only not incompatible with
+the regenerate mind?... Reason is God's gift, but so are the
+passions.... Eve was tempted to follow passion and reason, and she
+fell.'[85] 'Faith does not regard degrees of evidence.'[86] 'Faith and
+humility consist, not in going about to prove, but in the outset
+confiding in the testimony of others.' 'The more you set yourself to
+argue and prove, in order to discover truth, the less likely you are to
+reason correctly.'[87] The amazing crudity of this avowed obscurantism
+is likely to make the orthodox apologist writhe, and to move the
+rationalist to contemptuous laughter. In this and many other cases,
+Newman seems to love to caricature himself, and to put his beliefs in
+that form in which they outrage common sense most completely. We can
+imagine nothing more calculated to drive a young and ingenuous mind into
+flippant scepticism than a course of Newman's sermons. The _reductio ad
+absurdum_ of his arguments is not left to the reader to make; it is
+innocently provided by the preacher.
+
+And yet Newman's central position is not absurd, or only becomes absurd
+when it is applied to justify belief in gross superstition. He holds
+that what he calls 'reasoning' deals only with abstractions, and is not
+the faculty on which we rely in forming 'judgments.' These judgments, to
+which we give our 'assent,' and by which we regulate our conduct, are
+affirmations of the basal personality. And these have an authority far
+greater than can ever arise out of the logical manipulation of concepts.
+'There is no ultimate test of truth besides the testimony borne to the
+truth by the mind itself.' The 'mind itself,' the concrete personality,
+is concerned with realities, while the intellect, which for him
+corresponds very nearly with the discursive reason (dihanoia) of the
+Greek philosophers, is at home only in mathematics and, up to a certain
+point, in logic. The concepts of the intellect have no existence outside
+it. 'The mind has the gift, by an act of creation, of bringing before it
+abstractions and generalisations which have no counterpart, no
+existence, out of it.'[88] Parenthetically, we may remark that passages
+like this show how wide of the truth Mr. Barry is when he speaks of
+Newman as a 'thorough Alexandrine.' To deny the existence of universals,
+to regard them as mere creations of the mind, is rank blasphemy to a
+Platonist; and the Alexandrines were Christian Platonists. No more
+misleading statement could be made about Newman's philosophy than to
+associate him with Platonism of any kind, whether Pagan or Christian.
+Newman adopts the sensationalist (Lockian) theory of knowledge. Ideas
+are copies or modifications of the data presented by the senses; 'first
+principles are abstractions from facts, not elementary truths prior to
+reasoning.' This is pure nominalism, in its crudest form. It makes all
+arguments in favour of the great truths of religion valueless; for if
+there are no universals, rational theism is impossible. It follows that
+the famous scholastic 'proofs of God's existence' have for Newman no
+cogency whatever; indeed it is difficult to see how he can have escaped
+condemning the whole philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas as a juggling with
+bloodless concepts. Newman himself pleaded that he had no wish to oppose
+the official dogmatics of his Church. But protestations are of no avail
+where the facts are so clear. 'The natural theology of our schools,'
+says a writer in the _Tablet_, quoted by Dr. Caldecott in his
+'Philosophy of Religion,' 'is based frankly and wholly on the appeal to
+reason.' This is notoriously true; and what Newman thought of reason we
+have already seen. His extreme disparagement of the intellect seems to
+preclude what he calls 'real assent' to the creeds and dogmas of
+Catholicism; for these clearly consist of 'notional' propositions. But
+Newman would answer that the Church is a concrete fact, to which 'real
+assent' can be given; and the Church has guaranteed the truth of the
+notional propositions in question. But since reason is put out of court
+as a witness to truth, on what faculty, or on what evidence, does Newman
+rely? Feeling he distrusts; that side of mysticism, at any rate, finds
+no sympathy from him. Nor does he, like many Kantians and others, make
+the will supreme over the other faculties. Rather, as we have seen, he
+bases his reliance on the verdicts of the undivided personality, which
+he often calls conscience. This line of apologetic was at this very time
+being ably developed by Julius Hare. It is in itself an argument which
+has no necessary connexion with obscurantism. 'Personalism,' as it is
+technically called, reminds us that we do actually base our judgments on
+grounds which are nob purely rational; that the intellect, in forming
+concepts, has to be content with an approximate resemblance to concrete
+reality; and that the will and feelings have their rights and claims
+which cannot be ignored in a philosophy of religion. But while it is
+compatible with a robust faith in the powers of the constructive
+intellect, personalism is beyond question a self-sufficient,
+independent, individualistic doctrine. When it is combined with a
+nominalist theory of knowledge, it naturally suggests that every man may
+and should live by the creed which bests suits his idiosyncrasies. Now
+there was much in Newman's temperament which made him turn in this
+direction. 'Lead, kindly Light' has been the favourite hymn of many an
+independent thinker, to whom the authority of the Church is less than
+nothing. But on another side Newman was all his life a fierce upholder
+of the principle of authority. His reason for accepting the dogmas of
+the Church, and for wishing to destroy heresiarchs like wild beasts, was
+certainly not that his basal personality testified to the truth and
+value of all ecclesiastical dogmas. He believed them 'by confiding in
+the testimony of others'--in other words, on the authority of the
+Catholic Church. If we push back the enquiry one step further, and ask
+on what grounds he chooses to prefer the authority of the Catholic
+Church to other authorities, such as natural science or philosophy, we
+are driven again to lay great stress on the almost political necessity
+which he felt that such a Divine society should exist. In accepting the
+authority of the Church, he accepted the authority of all that the
+Church teaches, in complete independence of human reason. But the Roman
+Church never professes to be independent of human reason. The official
+scholastic philosophy claims to be a demonstrative proof of theism.
+
+Newman, then, was only half a Catholic. He accepted with all the fervour
+of a neophyte the principle of submission to Holy Church. But in place
+of the official intellectualist apologetic, which an Englishman may
+study to great advantage in the remarkably able series of manuals issued
+by the Jesuits of Stonyhurst, he substituted a philosophy of experience
+which is certainly not Catholic. The authority claimed by the Roman
+Church rests on one side upon revelation, on the other upon an elaborate
+structure of demonstrative reasoning, which the simple folk are allowed
+to 'take as read,' only because they cannot be expected to understand
+it, but which is declared to be of irresistible cogency to any properly
+instructed mind. To deny the validity of reasoning upon Divine things is
+to withdraw one of the supports on which Catholicism rests.
+Subjectivism, based on vital experience, mixes no better with this
+system than oil with water. Scholasticism prides itself on clear-cut
+definitions, on irrefragable logic, on using words always in the same
+sense. For Newman, as for his disciples the Modernists, theological
+terms are only symbols for varying values, and he holds that the moment
+they are treated as having any fixed connotation, error begins. It is no
+wonder if learned Catholics thought that Newman did not play the game.
+Father Perrone, in spite of his friendship for the object of his
+criticism, declared that 'Newman miscet et confundit omnia.'
+
+The accusation of scepticism, which was not unnaturally brought against
+him, was hotly resented by Newman, and with some justice. Of the
+intensity of his personal conviction there can be no doubt whatever.
+Indeed, it was just because his faith was in no danger that he cared so
+little for any intellectual defence of it. He might have made his own
+the lines of Wordsworth:
+
+    'Here then we rest; not fearing for our creed
+     The worst that human reasoning can achieve
+     To unsettle or perplex it.'
+
+Wordsworth too, it may be remembered, speaks of 'reason' with hardly
+more respect than Newman himself as:
+
+              'The inferior faculty that moulds
+    With her minute and speculative pains
+    Opinion, ever changing.'
+
+Robert Browning also, especially in his later years, uses
+anti-intellectualist language equally uncompromising. 'Wholly distrust
+thy reason,' he says in 'La Saisiaz.' Coleridge's distinction between
+'understanding' and 'reason,' or Westcott's distinction between 'reason'
+and 'reasoning,' might have saved these great writers from the
+appearance, and perhaps more than the appearance, of blaspheming against
+the highest and most divine faculty of human nature. For the reason is
+something much higher than logic-chopping; it can provide, from its own
+resources, a remedy for the intellectual error which is just now
+miscalled intellectualism; it is the activity of the whole personality
+under the guidance of its highest part; and because it is a real
+unification of our disordered nature, it can bring us into real contact
+with the higher world of Spirit. Newman's scepticism was not
+doubtfulness about matters of faith; it was only a wholly unjustifiable
+contempt and distrust for the unaided activity of the human mind. This
+activity, as far as he could see, produced only various forms of
+'liberalism,' which he strangely enough regarded as a kind of
+scepticism. Thus he retorted, with equal injustice, the unjust charge
+brought against himself.
+
+Newman has often been suspected or accused of quibbling and intellectual
+dishonesty. Kingsley, whose healthy but somewhat rough English morality
+and common sense were revolted by Newman's whole attitude to life and
+conduct, was unable to conceive how any educated man could believe in
+winking Virgins and liquefying blood, and thought that Newman must be
+dishonest. More recently Dr. Abbott has accused him of being a
+_philomythus_. Judged by ordinary standards, Newman's criteria of belief
+do seem incompatible with intellectual honesty. Locke, whom Newman
+resembles in his theory of knowledge, lays down a canon which condemns
+absolutely the Cardinal's doctrine of assent. 'There is one unerring
+mark,' he says, 'by which a man may know whether he is a lover of truth
+in earnest, namely, the not entertaining any proposition with greater
+assurance than the proofs it is built on will warrant.' Newman himself
+quotes this dictum, and argues against it that men do, as a matter of
+fact, form their judgments in a very different fashion. To most people,
+however, the fact that opinions _are_ so manufactured is no proof that
+they _ought_ to be so. To most people it seems plain that the practical
+necessity of making unverified assumptions, and the habit of clinging to
+them because we have made them, even after their falsity has been
+exposed, is a satisfactory explanation of the prevalence of error, but
+not a reason for acquiescing in it. It is useful, they hold, to point
+out how assumption has a perilous tendency to pass for proof, not that
+we may contentedly confuse assumption with proof, but that we may be on
+our guard against doing so. But such is Newman's dislike of 'reason'
+that he rejoices to find that the majority of mankind are, in fact, not
+guided by it. And then, having made this discovery, he is quite ready to
+'reason' himself, but not in the manner of an earnest seeker after
+truth. Reason, for him, is a serviceable weapon of attack or defence,
+but he is like a man fighting with magic impenetrable armour. He enjoys
+a bout of logical fence; but it will decide nothing for him: his
+'certitude' is independent of it. It is easy to see that such an
+attitude must appear profoundly dishonest to any man who accepts Locke's
+maxim about truth-seeking. It is equally easy to see that Newman would
+spurn the charge of dishonesty as hotly as the charge of scepticism. His
+principles made it easy for him to adopt the characteristic Catholic
+habit of 'believing' anything that is pleasing to the religious
+imagination. His sermons are full of such phrases as 'Scripture _seems_
+to show us'; 'why should we not believe ...'; 'who knows whether ...,'
+and the like, all introducing some fantastic superstition. He
+deliberately accepts the insidious and deadly doctrine that 'no man is
+convinced of a thing who can endure the thought of its contradictory
+being true.' To which we may rejoin that, on the contrary, no man has a
+right to be convinced of anything until he has fairly faced the
+hypothesis of its contradictory being true. So long as Newman's method
+prevailed in Europe, every branch of practical knowledge was condemned
+to barrenness.
+
+For what kind of knowledge is it which is acquired, not by the exercise
+of the discursive intellect, or by the evidence of our senses, but by
+the affirmations of our basal personality? Surely the legitimate
+province of 'personalism' lies in the region of general ideas, or rather
+in the _Weltanschauung_ as a whole. Our undivided personality protests
+against any philosophy which makes life irrational, or base, or
+incurably evil. It claims that those pictures of reality which are
+provided by the intellect, by the æsthetic sense, and by the moral
+sense, shall all have justice done to them in any attempted synthesis.
+It rejects materialism, metaphysical dualism, solipsism, and pessimism,
+on one or other of these grounds. Such a final interpretation of
+existence as any of these offers, leaves out some fundamental and
+essential factor of experience, and is therefore untenable. If no
+metaphysical scheme can be constructed which is at once comprehensive
+and inwardly consistent, personalism insists that we must acknowledge
+defeat for the time, rather than take refuge in a logical system which
+may be free from inner contradictions but which does not satisfy the
+whole man as a living and active spiritual being. This is a sound
+argument. But it is absurd to suppose that our personality, acting as an
+undivided whole, can decide whether the institutional Church, or one
+branch of it, is the Body of Christ and the receptacle of infallible
+revelation; whether Christ was born at Bethlehem or Nazareth; or whether
+Nestorius was a heretic. We have no magical sword for cutting these
+knots, and no miraculous guide to tell us that authority A is to be
+believed implicitly, while the possibility of authority B being right is
+not to be entertained even in thought. Newman as usual supplies us with
+the best weapons against himself. It startles us to find, even in 1852,
+such a sentence as this: 'Revealed religion furnishes facts to other
+sciences, which those sciences, left to themselves, would never reach.
+Thus, in the science of history, the preservation of our race in Noah's
+ark is an historical fact, which history never would arrive at without
+revelation.' The transition from belief on the purely internal ground of
+personal assent to belief on the purely external ground of Church
+authority is certainly abrupt and hard to explain; but Newman makes it
+habitually, without any consciousness of a _salto mortale_. In the
+'Apologia' he even says that the argument from personality is 'one form
+of the argument from authority.' The argument seems to be--'There is no
+third alternative besides Catholicism or Rationalism. But "personality"
+will not accept the dictation of reason; therefore it must accept the
+authority of the Church.' It is a strange argument. All through his life
+he enormously exaggerated the moral and intellectual weight which should
+be attached to Church tradition. 'Securus judicat orbis terrarum' were
+the words which rang in his ears at the supreme moment of his great
+decision. His 'orbis terrarum' was the Latin empire. And when even in
+those countries the authority of the Pope is rejected, he condemns
+modern civilisation as an aberration. This however is a complete
+abandonment of his own test. He first says 'The judgment of the great
+world is final'; and then 'If the world decides against Rome, so much
+the worse for the world.' After all, Newman had no right to complain if
+his opponents found his reasoning disingenuous. To make up our minds
+first, and to argue in favour of the decision afterwards, is in truth to
+make the reason a hewer of wood and drawer of water to the irrational
+part of our nature.
+
+It is precisely his sympathy with Catholicism on the religious side, and
+his alienation from its intellectual method, which makes Newman's
+apologetic such a two-edged weapon. In attempting to defend Catholicism,
+he has gone far to explain it. To the historian, there is no great
+mystery about the growth and success of the Western Catholic Church.
+Christianity was already a syncretistic religion in the second century.
+Like the other forms of worship with which it competed for the popular
+favour, it contained the necessary elements of mystery-cult, of ethical
+rule, of social brotherhood, and of personal devotion. But besides many
+genuine points of superiority, it had a decisive advantage over the
+religions of Isis and Mithra in the exclusiveness and intolerance which
+it derived from the Jewish tradition. When the failure of the last
+persecution forced the Empire to make a concordat with the Church, the
+transformation of the federated but autonomous Christian communities
+into a centralised theocratic despotism, claiming secular as well as
+spiritual sovereignty, was only a matter of time. It was inevitable,
+just as the principate of Augustus and the sultanate of Diocletian were
+inevitable; but there is nothing specially divine or glorious about any
+of these phases of human evolution. The revolt of Northern Europe in the
+sixteenth century was equally inevitable; and so is the alienation of
+enlightened minds from the Roman Church at the present day. Newman shows
+with great force and ingenuity that all the developments in the Roman
+system which Protestantism rejects as later accretions were natural and
+necessary. But this only means that the Catholic Church, in order to
+live, was compelled to adapt itself to the prevailing conditions of
+human culture in the countries where it desired to be supreme. The
+argument, so far as it goes, tells against rather than in favour of any
+special supernatural character belonging to that institution. And if the
+'orbis terrarum,' which once gave its verdict in favour of Latin
+Catholicism, is now disposed to reverse its decision, how, on Newman's
+principle, can its right to do so be denied? The true reasons for the
+strength and vitality which the Roman Church still retains are not
+difficult to find. Its system possesses an inner consistency, which is
+dearly purchased by neglecting much that should enter into a large and
+true view of the world, but which guarantees to those who have once
+accepted it an untroubled calm and assurance very acceptable to those
+who have been tossed upon a sea of doubt. It surrounds itself with an
+impenetrable armour by persuading its adherents that all moral and
+intellectual scruples, in matters where Holy Church has pronounced its
+verdict, are suggestions of the Evil One, to be spurned like the
+prickings of sensuality. It has succeeded, by long experience, in
+providing satisfaction for nearly all the needs of the average man, and
+for all the needs of the average woman. In particular, the æsthetic
+tastes which, in Southern Europe at any rate, are closely connected with
+religious feeling, are fully catered for; and those superstitions which
+the majority of mankind still love in their hearts, though they are
+somewhat ashamed of them, are allowed to luxuriate unchecked. Further,
+Catholicism encourages and blesses that _esprit de corps_ which has
+produced the brightest triumphs of self-abnegation as well as the
+darkest crimes of cruel bigotry in human history. A Church which unites
+these advantages is in no danger of falling into insignificance, even if
+the best intellect and morality of the age are estranged from it. It may
+even have a great future as the nucleus of a conservative resistance to
+the social revolution. It is doubtful whether those who wish to preserve
+the traditions and civilisation of the past will be able to find
+anywhere, except in the Latin Church, an organisation sufficiently
+coherent and universal to provide a rallying ground for defence against
+the new barbarian invasion--proceeding this time not from the rude
+nations of the North, but from the crowded alleys of our great
+towns--which threatens to plunge us into a new Dark Age. The menace of
+the Red Peril will secure, for a long time to come, the survival of the
+Black.
+
+But the Roman Catholicism which has a future is probably that of
+Manning, and not that of Newman. A Church which depends for its strength
+and prestige on the iron discipline of a centralised autocracy, and on
+the fanatical devotion of soldiers who know no duty except obedience, no
+cause except the interests of their society, can make no terms with the
+disintegrating nominalism, the uncertain subjectivism, of a mind like
+Newman's. It has been the strange fate of this great man, after driving
+a wedge deep into the Anglican Church, which at this day is threatened
+with disruption through the movement which he helped to originate, to
+have nearly succeeded in doing the same to the far more compact
+structure of Roman Catholicism. The Modernist movement has from the
+first appealed to Newman as its founder, and has sought to protect
+itself under his authority. It is necessary to consider, as the last
+topic of this article, whether this affiliation can be allowed to be
+true. No one who has read any of Newman's works can doubt that he would
+have recoiled with horror from the destructive criticism of Loisy, the
+contempt for scholastic authority of Tyrrell, and the defiance hurled at
+the Papacy in the manifesto of the Italian Modernists. Newman's doctrine
+of Development was far removed from that of Bergson's 'L'Évolution
+Créatrice.' He defended the fact of development against the staticism of
+contemporary Anglicanism; but his notion of development was more like
+the unrolling of a scroll than the growth of a tree or the expansion and
+change of a human character. 'Every Catholic holds,' he says, 'that the
+Christian dogmas were in the Church from the time of the Apostles; that
+they were ever in their substance what they are now.' Compare this with
+the following words from the Italian manifesto: 'The supernatural life
+of Christ in the faithful and in the Church has been clothed in an
+historical form, which has given birth to what we might somewhat loosely
+call the Christ of legend.... Such a criticism does away with the
+possibility of finding in Christ's ministry even the embryonic form of
+the Church's later theological teaching.' 'A dogma,' says Le Roy, one of
+the ablest philosophers of the school, 'proclaims, above all, a
+prescription of practical order; it is the formula of a rule of
+practical conduct. Why then should we not bring theory into harmony with
+practice?'
+
+These extracts mark a much later phase of the revolt against Catholic
+dogma and scholastic theology than can be found in Newman's writings.
+They are contemporary with the Pragmatism of James and Schiller, and the
+Activism of Bergson. So bold a defiance of tradition would have been
+impossible thirty years earlier. And yet, when Newman pours scorn upon
+human reason, and when he enthrones the 'conscience' as the supreme
+arbiter of truth, is he not, in fact, preparing the way for these
+startling declarations, which imply a complete rupture with Catholic
+authority? Dogmas are indisputably 'notional' propositions; that is to
+say, they belong to that class of truths to which Newman ascribes only a
+very subordinate importance. We cannot, in his sense,'assent' to an
+historical proposition as such, but only to the authority which has
+ordered us to believe it. And is there any justification for Newman's
+confidence that this authority may make apparent innovations, such as he
+admits to have been made throughout the history of the Church, but no
+real changes? If he had been able to think out the implications of his
+doctrine of development with the help of such arguments as those of
+Bergson, would he not have seen that without change and real innovation
+there can be no true evolution? Do not the fluidity and pragmatic
+character of dogma, so much insisted on by Sabatier and Le Roy, follow
+from the anti-intellectualist personalism which we have seen to be the
+foundation of Newman's philosophy of religion? The Modernist might argue
+that he is only extending to the history of the Church the doctrine of
+education by experience which Newman found to be true in the
+life-history of the individual. Life itself, with its experiences and
+its needs, is the revealer of truth. We cannot anticipate the wisdom of
+the future.
+
+                      'I do not ask to see
+    The distant scene; one step enough for me.'
+
+The kindly light leads a man on step by step; it conducts him from
+experience to experience, not without lapses into error; it reproves him
+if he desires to 'choose and see his path.' If this is true in the
+history of the individual, is it not probably also true in the history
+of the Church? And if it is true in the history of the Church, are not
+the dogmatists wrong who have tried to legislate not only for the
+present but the future, and to bind the Church for all time to the
+formulations which appeared satisfactory to themselves? If Providence is
+leading the Church through varied experiences in order to teach it
+greater wisdom, is it not clear that we must not rashly preclude the
+possibility of future revelation by stereotyping the results of some
+earlier stage of experience? Thus the empiricism of Newman leads
+logically to consequences which he would have been among the first to
+reject.
+
+Some rather shallow thinkers in this country have expressed their
+surprise and regret that the Vatican has refused to make any terms with
+Modernism. They have supposed that the fault lies with an ignorant and
+reactionary Pope. But there are many reasons why this dangerous and
+disintegrating tendency must be rigorously excluded from Roman
+Catholicism. In the first place, Modernism destroys the historical basis
+of Christianity, and converts the Incarnation and Atonement into myths
+like those of other dying and rising saviour-gods, which hardly pretend
+to be historical. But it was this foundation in history which helped
+largely to secure the triumph of Christianity over its rivals. In the
+place of the historical God-Man, Modernism gives us the history of the
+Church as an object of reverence. We are bidden to contemplate an
+institution of amazingly tough vitality but great adaptability, which in
+its determination to survive has not only changed colour like a
+chameleon but has from time to time put forth new organs and discovered
+new weapons of offence and defence. We ask for evidence that the Church
+has regenerated the world; and we are shown how, by hook or by crook, it
+has succeeded in safeguarding its own interests. Ecclesiastical
+historians are ingenious and unscrupulous; but it is impossible even for
+them to exhibit Church history as the record of a continuous
+intervention of the Spirit of Christ in human affairs. If any Spirit has
+presided over the councils of popes, cardinals, and inquisitors it is
+not that of the Founder of Christianity.
+
+Further, the religious philosophy of Modernism is bad, much worse than
+the scholasticism which it derides. It is in essentials a revival of the
+sophistry of Protagoras. And if it were metaphysically more respectable
+than it is, it is so widely opposed to the whole system of Catholic
+apologetics, that if it were accepted, it would necessitate a complete
+reconstruction of Catholic dogma. Let any man read the Stonyhurst
+manuals, and say whether the radical empiricism of the Modernists could
+find a lodgment anywhere in such a system without disturbing the
+stability of the whole. Catholicism is one of the most compact
+structures in the world, and it rests on presuppositions which are far
+removed from those of Modernism. It is one thing to admit that dogmas in
+many cases have a pragmatic origin, and quite another to say that they
+may be invented or rejected with a pragmatic purpose. The healthy human
+intellect will never believe that the same proposition may be true for
+faith and untrue in fact; but this is the Modernist contention.
+
+Lastly, the subjectivism of Newman and the Modernists is fatal to that
+exclusiveness which is the corner-stone of Catholic policy. The analogy
+between the individual and the Church suggests that God may 'fulfil
+Himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world.' As
+there are many individuals, each of whom is being guided separately by
+the 'kindly light,' so there may be many churches. The pragmatic proof
+of the truth of a religion, from the fact of its survival and successful
+working, does not justify the Roman claim to monopoly. The Protestant
+churches also display vitality, and their members seem to exhibit the
+fruits of the Spirit. The condemnations of Modernism published by the
+Vatican show that the Papal court is quite alive to this danger. To the
+outsider, indeed, it might seem a happy solution of a long controversy
+if the Roman Church would be content to claim the gifts of grace which
+are really hers, without denying the validity of the Orders and
+Sacraments of other bodies, and the genuineness of the Christian graces
+which they exhibit. It would then be admitted on all hands that some
+temperaments are more suited to Catholicism, others to Protestantism,
+and that the character of each man develops most satisfactorily under
+the discipline which suits his nature. But we must not expect any such
+concession from Rome; and in truth such an admission would be the
+beginning of the end for Catholicism in its present form.
+
+Our conclusion then is that although Newman was not a Modernist, but an
+exceedingly stiff conservative, he did introduce into the Roman Church a
+very dangerous and essentially alien habit of thought, which has since
+developed into Modernism. Perhaps Monsignor Talbot was not far wrong,
+from his own point of view, when he called him 'the most dangerous man
+in England.' One side of his religion was based on principles which,
+when logically drawn out, must lead away from Catholicism in the
+direction of an individualistic religion of experience, and a
+substitution of history for dogma which makes all truth relative and all
+values fluid. Newman's writings have always made genuine Catholics
+uneasy, though they hardly know why. It is probable that here is the
+solution.
+
+The character of Newman--for with this we must end--may seem to have
+been more admirable than lovable. He was more apt to make disciples than
+friends. Yet he was loved and honoured by men whose love is an honour,
+and he is admired by all who can appreciate a consistently unworldly
+life. The Roman Church has been less unpopular in England since Newman
+received from it the highest honour which it can bestow. Throughout his
+career he was a steadfast witness against tepid and insincere
+professions of religion, and against any compromise with the shifting
+currents of popular opinion. All cultivated readers, who have formed
+their tastes on the masterpieces of good literature, are attracted,
+sometimes against their will, by the dignity and reserve of his style,
+qualities which belong to the man, and not only to the writer. Like
+Goethe, he disdains the facile arts which make the commonplace reader
+laugh and weep. 'Ach die zärtlichen Herzen! ein Pfuscher vermag sie zu
+rühren!' Like Wordsworth, he might say 'To stir the blood I have no
+cunning art.' There are no cheap effects in any of Newman's writings. He
+is the most undemocratic of teachers. Such men do what can be done to
+save a nation from itself, its natural enemy. They are not indifferent
+to fame, because they desire influence; but they will do nothing to
+advertise themselves. The public must come to them; they will not go to
+the public. There have been other great men who have been as indifferent
+as Newman to the applause of the vulgar. But they have been generally
+either pure intellectualists or pure artists, in whom
+
+    'The intellectual power through words and things
+     Went sounding on a dim and perilous way.'
+
+Newman's 'confidence towards God' was of a still nobler kind. It rested
+on an unclouded faith in the Divine guidance, and on a very just
+estimate of the worthlessness of contemporary praise and blame. There
+have been very few men who have been able to combine so strong a faith
+with a thorough distrust of both logic-chopping and emotional
+excitement, and who, while denying themselves these aids to conviction,
+have been able to say, calmly and without petulance, that with them it
+is a very small thing to be judged of man's judgment.
+
+     'What (he asks) can increase their peace who believe and
+     trust in the Son of God? Shall we add a drop to the ocean,
+     or grains to the sand of the sea? We pay indeed our
+     superiors full reverence, and with cheerfulness as unto the
+     Lord; and we honour eminent talents as deserving admiration
+     and reward; and the more readily act we thus, because these
+     are little things to pay.'[89]
+
+Such unworldliness as this, in the well-chosen words of R.H. Hutton,
+'stands out in strange and almost majestic contrast to the eager turmoil
+of confused passions, hesitating ideals, tentative virtues, and groping
+philanthropies, amidst which it was lived.'
+
+Another mark of greatness is unbroken consistency and unity of aim in a
+long life. There are few parallels to the neglect of his own literary
+reputation by Newman. Higher interests, he thought, were at stake; and
+so he had no dream of building for himself 'a monument more durable than
+brass,' and of claiming a pedestal among the great writers of English
+prose and verse. He accepted long years of literary barrenness; he wrote
+historical essays for which he had no special aptitude, and dogmatic
+disquisitions which even his genius could not save from dulness; he even
+descended into mere journalism. The 'Apologia' would probably not have
+been written but for the accident of Kingsley's attack. It has, no
+doubt, been said with truth that Newman showed great dexterity in
+choosing opponents with whom to cross swords--Kingsley, Pusey,
+Gladstone, and his old Anglican self. But this does not alter the fact
+that a man who must have been conscious of rare literary gifts made no
+attempt to immortalise himself by them. It was for the Church, and not
+for himself, that he wrote as well as lived.
+
+That his life is for the most part a record of sadness and failure is no
+indication that he was not one of the great men of his time.
+Independence is no passport to success in a world where, as Swift said,
+climbing and crawling are performed in much the same attitude. And if we
+are right in our view that there was something in the composition of his
+mind which prevented him from being either a complete Catholic or a
+complete Protestant, this too is no obstacle to our recognition of his
+greatness. He has left an indelible mark upon two great religious
+bodies. He has stirred movements which still agitate the Church of
+England and the Church of Rome, and the end of which is not yet in
+sight. Anglo-Catholicism and Modernism are alien growths, perhaps, in
+the institutions where they have found a place; but the man who beyond
+all others is responsible for grafting them upon the old stems is secure
+of his place in history.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+     [82] Cf. e. _Parochial and Plain Sermons_, vi. 259.
+
+     [83] Mark Pattison, _Memoirs_, p. 97.
+
+     [84] _Stray Essays_, p. 94.
+
+     [85] _Parochial and Plain Sermons_, v. 112.
+
+     [86] _Ibid_. vi. 259.
+
+     [87] _Ibid_. vi. 340.
+
+     [88] _Grammar of Assent_, part i. c. 1 and 2.
+
+     [89] _Parochial and Plain Sermons_, vii. 73.
+
+
+
+
+ST. PAUL
+
+(1914)
+
+
+Among all the great men of antiquity there is none, with the exception
+of Cicero, whom we may know so intimately as Saul of Tarsus. The main
+facts of his career have been recorded by a contemporary, who was
+probably his friend and travelling companion. A collection of letters,
+addressed to the little religious communities which he founded, reveals
+the character of the writer no less than the nature of his work. Alone
+among the first preachers of Christianity, he stands before us as a
+living man. Ohiost phepnytai, toi de skiai hahissoysi. We know very
+little in reality of Peter and James and John, of Apollos and Barnabas.
+And of our divine Master no biography can ever be written.
+
+With St. Paul it is quite different. He is a saint without a luminous
+halo. His personal characteristics are too distinct and too human to
+make idealisation easy. For this reason he has never been the object of
+popular devotion. Shadowy figures like St. Joseph and St. Anne have been
+divinised and surrounded with picturesque legends; but St. Paul has been
+spared the honour or the ignominy of being coaxed and wheedled by the
+piety of paganised Christianity. No tender fairy-tales are attached to
+his cult; he remains for us what he was in the flesh. It is even
+possible to feel an active dislike for him. Lagarde ('Deutsche
+Schriften,' p. 71) abuses him as a politician might vilify an opponent.
+'It is monstrous' (says he) 'that men of any historical training should
+attach any importance to this Paul. This outsider was a Pharisee from
+top to toe even after he became a Christian'--and much more to the same
+effect. Nietzsche describes him as 'one of the most ambitious of men,
+whose superstition was only equalled by his cunning. A much tortured,
+much to be pitied man, an exceedingly unpleasant person both to himself
+and to others.... He had a great deal on his conscience. He alludes to
+enmity, murder, sorcery, idolatry, impurity, drunkenness, and the love
+of carousing.' Renan, who could never have made himself ridiculous by
+such ebullitions as these, does not disguise his repugnance for the
+'ugly little Jew' whose character he can neither understand nor admire.
+These outbursts of personal animosity, so strange in modern critics
+dealing with a personage of ancient history, show how vividly his figure
+stands out from the canvas. There are very few historical characters who
+are alive enough to be hated.
+
+It is, however, only in our own day that the personal characteristics of
+St. Paul have been intelligently studied; and the most valuable books
+about him are later than the unbalanced tirades of Lagarde and
+Nietzsche, and the carping estimate of Renan. In the nineteenth century,
+Paul was obscured behind Paulinism. His letters were studied as
+treatises on systematic theology. Elaborate theories of atonement,
+justification, and grace were expounded on his authority, as if he had
+been a religious philosopher or theological professor like Origen and
+Thomas Aquinas. The name of the apostle came to be associated with
+angular and frigid disquisitions which were rapidly losing their
+connexion with vital religion. It has been left for the scholars of the
+present century to give us a picture of St. Paul as he really was--a man
+much nearer to George Fox or John Wesley than to Origen or Calvin; the
+greatest of missionaries and pioneers, and only incidentally a great
+theologian. The critical study of the New Testament has opened our eyes
+to see this and many other things. Much new light has also been thrown
+by studies in the historical geography of Asia Minor, a work in which
+British scholars have characteristically taken a prominent part. The
+delightful books of Sir W.M. Ramsay have now been supplemented by the
+equally attractive volume of another travelling scholar, Professor
+Deissmann. A third source of new information is the mass of inscriptions
+and papyri which have been discovered in the last twenty years. The
+social life of the middle and lower classes in the Levant, their
+religious beliefs and practices, and the language which they spoke, are
+now partially known to us, as they never were before. The human interest
+of the Pauline Epistles, and of the Acts, is largely increased by these
+accessions to knowledge.
+
+The Epistles are real letters, not treatises by a theological professor,
+nor literary productions like the Epistles of Seneca. Each was written
+with reference to a definite situation; they are messages which would
+have been delivered orally had the Apostle been present. Several letters
+have certainly been lost; and St. Paul would probably not have cared
+much to preserve them. There is no evidence that he ever thought of
+adding to the Canon of Scripture by his correspondence. The Author of
+Acts seems not to have read any of the letters. This view of the
+Epistles has rehabilitated some of them, which were regarded as spurious
+by the Tübingen school and their successors. The question which we now
+ask when the authenticity of an Epistle is doubted is, Do we find the
+same man? not, Do we find the same system? There is, properly speaking,
+no system in St. Paul's theology, and there is a singularly rapid
+development of thought. The 'Pastoral Epistles' are probably not
+genuine, though the defence of them is not quite a desperate
+undertaking. Of the rest, the weight of evidence is slightly against the
+Pauline authorship of Ephesians, the vocabulary of which differs
+considerably from that of the undoubted Epistles; and the short letter
+called 2 Thessalonians is open to some suspicion. The genuineness of
+Ephesians is not of great importance to the student of Pauline theology,
+unless the closely allied Epistle to the Colossians is also rejected;
+and there has been a remarkable return of confidence in the Pauline
+authorship of this letter. All the other Epistles seem to be firmly
+established.
+
+The other source of information about St. Paul's life is the Acts of
+the Apostles, the value of which as a historical document is very
+variously estimated. The doubts refer mainly to the earlier chapters,
+before St. Paul appears on the scene. Sane criticism can hardly dispute
+that the 'we-passages,' in which the writer speaks of St. Paul and
+himself in the first person plural, are the work of an eye-witness, and
+that most of the important facts in the later chapters are from the same
+source. The difficult problem is concerned with the relation of this
+writer to the editor, who is responsible for the 'Petrine' part of the
+book. There is very much to be said in favour of the tradition that this
+editor, who also compiled the Third Gospel, was Lucas or Lucanus, the
+physician and friend of St. Paul. It does not necessarily follow that he
+was the fellow-traveller who in a few places speaks of himself in the
+first person. Luke (if we may decide the question for ourselves by
+giving him this name) must have been a man of very attractive character;
+full of kindness, loyalty, and Christian charity. He is the most
+feminine (not effeminate) writer in the New Testament, and shows a
+marked partiality for the tender aspects of Christianity. He is
+attracted by miracles, and by all that makes history picturesque and
+romantic. His social sympathies are so keen that his gospel furnishes
+the Christian socialist with nearly all his favourite texts. Above all,
+he is a Greek man of letters, dominated by the conventions of Greek
+historical composition. For the Greek, history was a work of art,
+written for edification, and not merely a bald record of facts. The
+Greek historian invented speeches for his principal characters; this was
+a conventional way of elucidating the situation for the benefit of his
+readers. Everyone knows how Thucydides, the most conscientious historian
+in antiquity, habitually uses this device, and how candidly he explains
+his method. We can hardly doubt that the author of Acts has used a
+similar freedom, though the report of the address to the elders of
+Ephesus reads like a summary of an actual speech. The narrative is
+coloured in places by the historian's love for the miraculous. Critics
+have also suspected an eirenical purpose in his treatment of the
+relations between St. Paul and the Jerusalem Church.
+
+Saul of Tarsus was a Benjamite of pure Israelite descent, but also a
+Roman citizen by birth. His famous old Jewish name was Latinised or
+Graecised as Paulos (Sahylost means 'waddling,' and would have been a
+ridiculous name); he doubtless bore both names from boyhood. Tarsus is
+situated in the plain of Cilicia, and is now about ten miles from the
+sea. It is backed by a range of hills, on which the wealthier residents
+had villas, while the high glens of Taurus, nine or ten miles further
+inland, provided a summer residence for those who could afford it, and a
+fortified acropolis in time of war. The town on the plain must have been
+almost intolerable in the fierce Anatolian summer-heat. The harbour was
+a lake formed by the Cydnus, five or six miles below Tarsus; but light
+ships could sail up the river into the heart of the city. Thus Tarsus
+had the advantages of a maritime town, though far enough from the sea to
+be safe from pirates. The famous pass called the 'Cilician Gates' was
+traversed by a high-road through the gorge into Cappadocia. Ionian
+colonists came to Tarsus in very early times; and Ramsay is confident
+that Tarshish, 'the son of Javan,' in Gen. x. 4, is none other than
+Tarsus. The Greek settlers, of course, mixed with the natives, and the
+Oriental element gradually swamped the Hellenic. The coins of Tarsus
+show Greek figures and Aramaic lettering. The principal deity was
+Baal-Tarz, whose effigy appears on most of the coins. Under the
+successors of Alexander, Greek influence revived, but the administration
+continued to be of the Oriental type; and Tarsus never became a Greek
+city, until in the first half of the second century B.C. it proclaimed
+its own autonomy, and renamed itself Antioch-on-Cydnus. Great privileges
+were granted it by Antiochus Epiphanes, and it rapidly grew in wealth
+and importance. Besides the Greeks, there was a large colony of Jews,
+who always established themselves on the highways of the world's
+commerce. Since St. Paul was a 'citizen' of Tarsus, i.e. a member of
+one of the 'Tribes' into which the citizens were divided, it is probable
+(so Ramsay argues) that there was a large 'Tribe' of Jews at Tarsus; for
+no Jew would have been admitted into, or would have consented to join, a
+Greek Tribe, with its pagan cult.
+
+So matters stood when Cilicia became a Roman Province in 104 B.C. The
+city fell into the hands of the barbarian Tigranes twenty years later,
+but Gnaeus Pompeius re-established the Roman power, and with it the
+dominance of Hellenism, in 63. Augustus turned Cilicia into a mere
+adjunct of Syria; and the pride of Tarsus received a check.
+Nevertheless, the Emperor showed great favour to the Tarsians, who had
+sided with Julius and himself in the civil wars. Tarsus was made a
+'libera civitas,' with the right to live under its own laws. The leading
+citizens were doubtless given the Roman citizenship, or allowed to
+purchase it. Among these would naturally be a number of Jews, for that
+nation loved Julius Cæsar and detested Pompeius. But Hellenism could not
+retain its hold on Tarsus. Dion Chrysostom, who visited it at the
+beginning of the second century A.D., found it a thoroughly Oriental
+town, and notes that the women were closely veiled in Eastern fashion.
+Possibly this accounts for St. Paul's prejudice against unveiled women
+in church. One Greek institution, however, survived and flourished--a
+university under municipal patronage. Strabo speaks with high admiration
+of the zeal for learning displayed by the Tarsians, who formed the
+entire audience at the professors' lectures, since no students came from
+outside. This last fact shows, perhaps, that the lecturers were not men
+of wide reputation; indeed, it is not likely that Tarsus was able to
+compete with Athens and Alexandria in attracting famous teachers. The
+most eminent Tarsians, such as Antipater the Stoic, went to Europe and
+taught there. What distinguished Tarsus was its love of learning, widely
+diffused in all classes of the population.
+
+St. Paul did not belong to the upper class. He was a working artisan, a
+'tent-maker,' who followed one of the regular trades of the place.
+Perhaps, as Deissmann thinks, the 'large letters' of Gal. vi. 11 imply
+that he wrote clumsily, like a working man and not like a scribe. The
+words indicate that he usually dictated his letters. The 'Acts of Paul
+and Thekla' describe him as short and bald, with a hook-nose and
+beetling brows; there is nothing improbable in this description. But he
+was far better educated than the modern artisan. Not that a single
+quotation from Menander (1 Cor. xv. 33) shows him to be a good Greek
+scholar; an Englishman may quote 'One touch of nature makes the whole
+world kin' without being a Shakespearean. But he was well educated
+because he was the son of a strict Jew. A child in such a home would
+learn by heart large pieces of the Old Testament, and, at the Synagogue
+school, all the _minutiæ_ of the Jewish Law. The pupil was not allowed
+to write anything down; all was committed to the memory, which in
+consequence became extremely retentive. The perfect pupil 'lost not a
+drop from his teacher's cistern.' At the age of about fourteen the boy
+would be sent to Jerusalem, to study under one of the great Rabbis; in
+St. Paul's case it was Gamaliel. Under his tuition the young Pharisee
+would learn to be a 'strong Churchman.' The Rabbis viewed everything
+from an ecclesiastical standpoint. The interests of the Priesthood, the
+Altar, and the Temple overshadowed everything else. The Priestly Code,
+says Mr. Cohu, practically resolves itself into one idea: Everything in
+Israel belongs to God; all places, all times, all persons, and all
+property are His. But God accepts a part of His due; and, if this part
+is scrupulously paid, He will send His blessing upon the remainder.
+Besides the written law, the Pharisee had to take on himself the still
+heavier burden of the oral law, which was equally binding. It was a
+seminary education of the most rigorous kind. St Paul cannot reproach
+himself with any slackness during his novitiate. He threw himself into
+the system with characteristic ardour. Probably he meant to be a
+Jerusalem Rabbi himself, still practising his trade, as the Rabbis
+usually did. For he was unmarried; and every Jew except a Rabbi was
+expected to marry at or before the age of twenty-one.
+
+He suffered from some obscure physical trouble, the nature of which we
+can only guess. It was probably epilepsy, a disease which is compatible
+with great powers of endurance and great mental energy, as is proved by
+the cases of Julius Cæsar and Napoleon. He was liable to mystical
+trances, in which some have found a confirmation of the supposition that
+he was epileptic. But these abnormal states were rare with him; in
+writing to the Galatians he has to go back fourteen years to the date
+when he was 'caught up into the third heaven,' The visions and voices
+which attended his active ministry prove nothing about his health. At
+that time anyone who underwent a psychical experience for which he could
+not account believed that he was possessed by a spirit, good or bad. It
+is significant that Tertullian, at the end of the second century, says
+that 'almost the majority of mankind derive their knowledge of God from
+visions.' The impression that St. Paul makes upon us is that of a man
+full of nervous energy and able to endure an exceptional amount of
+privation and hardship. A curious indication, which has not been
+noticed, is that, as he tells us himself, he five times received the
+maximum number of lashes from Jewish tribunals. These floggings in the
+Synagogues were very severe, the operator being required to lay on with
+his full strength. There is evidence that in most cases a much smaller
+number of strokes than the full thirty-nine was inflicted, so as not to
+endanger the life of the culprit. The other trials which he
+mentions--three Roman scourgings, one stoning, a day and night spent in
+battling with the waves after shipwreck, would have worn out any
+constitution not exceptionally tough.
+
+We must bear in mind this terrible record of suffering if we wish to
+estimate fairly the character of the man. During his whole life after
+his conversion he was exposed not only to the hardships of travel,
+sometimes in half-civilised districts, but to 'all the cruelty of the
+fanaticism which rages like a consuming fire through the religious
+history of the East from the slaughter of Baal's priests to the
+slaughter of St. Stephen, and from the butcheries of Jews at Alexandria
+under Caligula to the massacres of Christians at Adana, Tarsus, and
+Antioch in the year 1909'--(Deissmann). It is one evil result of such
+furious bigotry that it kindles hatred and resentment in its victims,
+and tempts them to reprisals. St. Paul does speak bitterly of his
+opponents, though chiefly when he finds that they have injured his
+converts, as in the letter to the Galatians. Modern critics have
+exaggerated this element in a character which does not seem to have been
+fierce or implacable. He writes like a man engaged in a stern conflict
+against enemies who will give no quarter, and who shrink from no
+treachery. But the sharpest expression that can be laid to his charge is
+the impatient, perhaps half humorous wish that the Judaisers who want to
+circumcise the Galatians might be subjected to a severer operation
+themselves (Gal. v. 12). The dominant impression that he makes upon us
+is that he was cast in a heroic mould. He is serenely indifferent to
+criticism and calumny; no power on earth can turn him from his purpose.
+He has made once for all a complete sacrifice of all earthly joys and
+all earthly ties; he has broken (he, the devout Jewish Catholic) with
+his Church and braved her thunders; he has faced the opprobrium of being
+called traitor, heretic, and apostate; he has 'withstood to the face'
+the Palestinian apostles who were chosen by Jesus and held His
+commission; he has set his face to achieve, almost single-handed, the
+conquest of the Roman Empire, a thing never dreamed of by the Jerusalem
+Church; he is absolutely indifferent whether his mission will cost him
+his life, or only involve a continuation of almost intolerable hardship.
+It is this indomitable courage, complete self-sacrifice, and
+single-minded devotion to a magnificently audacious but not
+impracticable idea, which constitute the greatness of St. Paul's
+character. He was, with all this, a warm-hearted and affectionate man,
+as he proves abundantly by the tone of his letters. His personal
+religion was, in essence, a pure mysticism; one worships a Christ whom
+he has experienced as a living presence in his soul. The mystic who is
+also a man of action, and a man of action because he is a mystic, wields
+a tremendous power over other men. He is like an invulnerable knight,
+fighting in magic armour.
+
+It is an interesting and difficult question whether we should regard the
+intense moral dualism of the Epistle to the Romans as a confession that
+the writer has had an unusually severe personal battle with temptation.
+The moral struggle certainly assumes a more tragic aspect in these
+passages than in the experience of many saintly characters. We find
+something like it in Augustine, and again in Luther; it may even be
+suggested that these great men have stamped upon the Christian tradition
+the idea of a harsher 'clash of yes and no' than the normal experience
+of the moral life can justify. But it is not certain that the first
+person singular in such verses as 'O wretched man that I am! who shall
+deliver me from this body of death?' is a personal confession at all. It
+may be for human nature generally that he is speaking, when he gives
+utterance to that consciousness of sin which was one of the most
+distinctive parts of the Christian religion from the first. It does not
+seem likely that a man of so lofty and heroic a character was ever
+seriously troubled with ignominious temptations. That he yielded to
+them, as Nietzsche and others have suggested, is in the highest degree
+improbable. Even if the self-reproaches were uttered in his own person,
+we have many other instances of saints who have blamed themselves
+passionately for what ordinary men would consider slight transgressions.
+Of all the Epistles, the Second to the Corinthians is the one which
+contains the most intimate self-revelations, and few can read it without
+loving as well as honouring its author.
+
+We know nothing of the Apostle's residence at Jerusalem except the name
+of his teacher. But it was at this time that he became steeped in the
+Pharisaic doctrines which loamed the framework in which his earlier
+Christian beliefs were set. It is now recognised that Pharisaism, far
+from being the antipodes of Christianity, was rather the quarter where
+the Gospel found its best recruits. The Pharisaic school contained the
+greater part of whatever faith, loyalty and piety remained among the
+Jewish people; and its dogmatic system passed almost entire into the
+earliest Christian Church, with the momentous addition that Jesus was
+the Messiah. A few words on the Pharisaic teaching which St. Paul must
+have imbibed from Gamaliel are indispensable even in an article which
+deals with Paul, and not with Paulinism.
+
+The distinctive feature of the Jewish religion is not, as is often
+supposed, its monotheism, Hebrew religion in its golden age was
+monolatry rather than monotheism; and when Jahveh became more strictly
+'the only God,' the cult of intermediate beings came in, and restored a
+quasi-polytheism. The distinctive feature in Jewish faith is its
+historical and teleological character. The God of the Jew is not natural
+law. If the idea of necessary causation ever forced itself upon his
+mind, he at once gave it the form of predestination. The whole of
+history is an unfolding of the divine purpose; and so history as a whole
+has for the Jew an importance which it never had for a Greek thinker,
+nor for the Hellenised Jew Philo. The Hebrew idea of God is dynamic and
+ethical; it is therefore rooted in the idea of Time. The Pharisaic
+school modified this prophetic teaching in two ways. It became more
+spiritual; anthropomorphisms were removed, and the transcendence of God
+above the world was more strictly maintained. On the other hand, the
+religious relationship became in their hands narrower and more external.
+The notion of a covenant was defined more rigorously; the Law was
+practically exalted above God, so that the Rabbis even represent the
+Deity as studying the Law. With this legalism went a spirit of intense
+exclusiveness and narrow ecclesiasticism. As God was raised above direct
+contact with men, the old animistic belief in angels and demons, which
+had lasted on in the popular mind by the side of the worship of Jahveh,
+was extended in a new way. A celestial hierarchy was invented, with
+names, and an infernal hierarchy too; the malevolent ghosts of animism
+became fallen angels. Satan, who in Job is the crown-prosecutor, one of
+God's retinue, becomes God's adversary; and the angels, formerly
+manifestations of God Himself, are now quite separated from Him. A
+supramundane physics or cosmology was evolved at the same time. Above
+Zion, the centre of the earth, rise seven heavens, in the highest of
+which the Deity has His throne. The underworld is now first divided into
+Paradise and Gehenna. The doctrine of the fall of man, through his
+participation in the representative guilt of his first parents, is
+Pharisaic; as is the strange legend, which St. Paul seems to have
+believed (2 Cor. xi. 3), that the Serpent carnally seduced Eve, and so
+infected the race with spiritual poison. Justification, in Pharisaism as
+for St. Paul, means the verdict of acquittal. The bad receive in this
+life the reward for any small merits which they may possess; the sins of
+the good must be atoned for; but merits, as in Roman Catholicism, may be
+stored and transferred. Martyrdoms especially augment the spiritual
+bank-balance of the whole nation. There was no official Messianic
+doctrine, only a mass of vague fancies and beliefs, grouped round the
+central idea of the appearance on earth of a supernatural Being, who
+should establish a theocracy of some kind at Jerusalem. The righteous
+dead will be raised to take part in this kingdom. The course of the
+world is thus divided into two epochs--'this age' and 'the age to come.'
+A catastrophe will end the former and inaugurate the latter. The
+promised deliverer is now waiting in heaven with God, until his hour
+comes; and it will come very soon. All this St. Paul must have learned
+from Gamaliel. It formed the framework of his theology as a Christian
+for many years after his conversion, and was only partially thrown off,
+under the influence of mystical experience and of Greek ideas, during
+the period covered by the letters. The lore of good and bad spirits (the
+latter are 'the princes of this world' in I Cor. ii. 6, 8) pervades the
+Epistles more than modern readers are willing to admit. It is part of
+the heritage of the Pharisaic school.
+
+It is very unlikely (in spite of Johannes Weiss) that St. Paul ever saw
+Jesus in the flesh. But he did come in contact with the little Christian
+community at Jerusalem. These disciples at first attempted to live as
+strict members of the Jewish Church. They knew that the coming Messiah
+was their crucified Master, but this belief involved no rupture with
+Judaism. So at least they thought themselves; the Sanhedrin saw more
+clearly what the new movement meant. The crisis came when numerous
+'Hellenists' attached themselves to the Church--Jews of the Dispersion,
+from Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere. A threatened rupture between these and
+the Palestinian Christians was averted by the appointment of seven
+deacons or charity commissioners, among whom Stephen soon became
+prominent by the dangerously 'liberal' character of his teaching. Philo
+gives important testimony to the existence of a 'liberal' school among
+the Jews of the Dispersion, who, under pretext of spiritualising the
+traditional law, left off keeping the Sabbath and the great festivals,
+and even dispensed with the rite of circumcision. Thus the admission of
+Gentiles on very easy terms into the Church was no new idea to the
+Palestinian Jews; it was known to them as part of the shocking laxity
+which prevailed among their brethren of the Dispersion. With Stephen,
+this kind of liberalism seemed to have entered the group of 'disciples.'
+He was accused of saying that Jesus was to destroy the temple and change
+the customs of Moses. In his bold defence he admitted that in his view
+the Law was valid only for a limited period, which would expire so soon
+as Jesus returned as Messiah. This was quite enough for the Sanhedrin.
+They stoned Stephen, and compelled the 'disciples' to disperse and fly
+for their lives. Only the Apostles, whose devotion to the Law was well
+known, were allowed to remain. This last fact, briefly recorded in Acts,
+is important as an indication that the persecution was directed only
+against the liberalising Christians, and that these were the great
+majority. Saul, it seems, had no quarrel with the Twelve; his hatred and
+fanaticism were aroused against a sect of Hellenist Jews who openly
+proclaimed that the Law had been abrogated in advance by their Master,
+who, as Saul observed with horror, had incurred the curse of the Law by
+dying on a gibbet. All the Pharisee in him was revolted; and he led the
+savage heretic-hunt which followed the execution of Stephen.
+
+What caused the sudden change which so astonished the survivors among
+his victims? To suppose that nothing prepared for the vision near
+Damascus, that the apparition in the sky was a mere 'bolt from the
+blue,' is an impossible theory. The best explanation is furnished by a
+study of the Apostle's character, which we really know very well. The
+author of the Epistles was certainly not a man who could watch a young
+saint being battered to death by howling fanatics, and feel no emotion.
+Stephen's speech may have made him indignant; his heroic death, the very
+ideal of a martyrdom, must have awakened very different feelings. An
+undercurrent of dissatisfaction, almost of disgust, at the arid and
+unspiritual seminary teaching of the Pharisees now surged up and came
+very near the surface. His bigotry sustained him as a persecutor for a
+few weeks more; but how if he could himself see what the dying Stephen
+said that he saw? Would not that be a welcome liberation? The vision
+came in the desert, where men see visions and hear voices to this day.
+They were very common in the desert of Gobi when Marco Polo traversed
+it. 'The Spirit of Jesus,' as he came to call it, spoke to his heart,
+and the form of Jesus flashed before his eyes. Stephen had been right;
+the Crucified was indeed the Lord from heaven. So Saul became a
+Christian; and it was to the Christianity of Stephen, not to that of
+James the Lord's brother, that he was converted. The Pharisee in him was
+killed.
+
+The travelling missionary was as familiar a figure in the Levant as the
+travelling lecturer on philosophy. The Greek language brought all
+nationalities together. The Hellenising of the East had gone on steadily
+since the conquests of Alexander; and Greek was already as useful as
+Latin in many parts of the West. A century later, Marcus Aurelius wrote
+his Confessions in Greek; and even in the middle of the third century,
+when the tide was beginning to turn in favour of Latin, Plotinus
+lectured in Greek at Rome. Christianity, within a few years after the
+Crucifixion, had allied itself definitely with the speech, and
+therefore inevitably with the spirit, of Hellenism. At no time since
+have travel and trade been so free between the West of Europe and the
+West of Asia. A Phrygian merchant (according to the inscription on his
+tomb) made seventy-two journeys to Rome in the course of his
+business-life. The decomposition of nationalities, and the destruction
+of civic exclusiveness, led naturally to the formation of voluntary
+associations of all kinds, from religious sects to trade unions;
+sometimes a single association combined these two functions. The
+Oriental religions appealed strongly to the unprivileged classes, among
+which genuine religious faith was growing, while the official cults of
+the Roman Empire were unsatisfying in themselves and associated with
+tyranny. The attempt of Augustus to resuscitate the old religion was
+artificial and unfruitful. The living movement was towards a syncretism
+of religious ideas and practices, all of which came from the Eastern
+provinces and beyond them. The prominent features in this new devotion
+were the removal of the supreme Godhead from the world to a
+transcendental sphere; contempt for the world and ascetic abnegation of
+'the flesh'; a longing for healing and redemption, and a close
+identification of salvation with individual immortality; and, finally,
+trust in sacraments ('mysteries,' in Greek) as indispensable means of
+grace or redemption. This was the Paganism with which Christianity had
+to reckon, as well as with the official cult and its guardians. The
+established church it conquered and destroyed; the living syncretistic
+beliefs it cleansed, simplified, and disciplined, but only absorbed by
+becoming itself a syncretistic religion. But besides Christians and
+Pagans, there were the Jews, dispersed over the whole Empire. There were
+at least a million in Egypt, a country which St. Paul, for reasons
+unknown to us, left severely alone; there were still more in Syria, and
+perhaps five millions in the whole Empire. In spite of the fecundity of
+Jewish women, so much emphasised by Seeck in his history of the Downfall
+of the Ancient World, it is impossible that the Hebrew stock should have
+multiplied to this extent. There must have been a very large number of
+converts, who were admitted, sometimes without circumcision, on their
+profession of monotheism and acceptance of the Jewish moral code. The
+majority of these remained in the class technically called
+'God-fearers,' who never took upon themselves the whole yoke of the Law.
+These half-Jews were the most promising field for Christian
+missionaries; and nothing exasperated the Jews more than to see St. Paul
+fishing so successfully in their waters. The spirit of propagandism
+almost disappeared from Judaism after the middle of the second century.
+Judaism shrank again into a purely Eastern religion, and renounced the
+dangerous compromise with Western ideas. The labours of St. Paul made an
+all-important parting of the ways. Their result was that Christianity
+became a European religion, while Judaism fell back upon its old
+traditions.
+
+It is very unfortunate that we have no thoroughly trustworthy records of
+the Apostle's earlier mission preaching. The Epistles only cover a
+period of about ten years; and the rapid development of thought which
+can be traced during this short time prevents us from assuming that his
+earlier teaching closely resembled that which we find in the Letters.
+But if, during the earlier period, he devoted his attention mainly to
+those who were already under Jewish influence, we may be sure that he
+spoke much of the Messiahship of Jesus, and of His approaching return,
+these being the chief articles of faith in Judaic Christianity. This
+was, however, only the framework. What attracted converts was really the
+historical picture of the life of Jesus; his message of love and
+brotherhood, which they found realised in the little communities of
+believers; and the abolition of all external barriers between human
+beings, such as social position, race, and sex, which had undoubtedly
+been proclaimed by the Founder, and contained implicitly the promise of
+an universal religion. We can infer what the manner of his preaching was
+from the style of the letters, which were probably dictated like
+extempore addresses, without much preparation. He was no trained orator,
+and he thoroughly disdained the arts of the rhetorician. His Greek,
+though vigorous and effective, is neither correct nor elegant. His
+eloquence is of the kind which proceeds from intense conviction, and
+from a thorough knowledge of Old Testament prophecy and psalmody--no bad
+preparation for a religious teacher. If at times he argued like a Rabbi,
+these frigid debates were as acceptable to ancient Jews as they are to
+modern Scotsmen. And when he takes fire, as he deals with some vital
+truth which he has lived as well as learned and taught, he establishes
+his right to be called what he never aimed at being--a writer of genius.
+Such passages as 1 Cor. xiii., Phil, ii., Rom. viii., rank among the
+finest compositions in later Greek literature. Regarded merely as a
+piece of poetical prose, 1 Cor. xiii. is finer than anything that had
+been written in the Greek language since the great Attic prose-writers.
+And if this was dictated impromptu, similar outbursts of splendid
+eloquence were probably frequent in his mission-preaching. Their effect
+must have been overwhelming, when reinforced by the flashing eye of the
+speaker, and by the absolute sincerity which none could doubt who saw
+his face and figure, furrowed by toil and scarred by torture.
+
+In addressing the Gentiles, we may assume that he followed the customary
+Jewish line of apologetic, denouncing the folly of idolatry--an aid to
+worship which is quite innocent and natural in some peoples, but which
+the Jews never understood; that he spoke much of judgment to come; and
+especially that he contrasted the pure and affectionate social life of
+the Christian brotherhood with the licentiousness, cruelty, injustice,
+oppression, and mutual suspicion of Pagan society. This argument
+probably struck home in very many 'Gentile' hearts. The old
+civilisation, with all the brilliant qualities which make many moderns
+regret its destruction, rested on too narrow a base. The woman and the
+slave were left out, the woman especially by the Greeks, and the slave
+by the Romans. Acute social inequalities always create pride, brutality,
+and widespread sexual immorality. And when the structure which
+maintained these inequalities is itself tottering, the oppressed classes
+begin to feel that they are unnecessary, and to hope for emancipation.
+When St. Paul drew his lurid pictures of Pagan society steeped in
+unnatural abominations, without hope for the future, 'hateful and hating
+one another,' and then pointed to the little flock of Christians--among
+whom no one was allowed to be idle and no one to starve, and where
+family life was pure and mutual confidence full, frank and seldom
+abused--the woman and the slave, of whom Aristotle had spoken so
+contemptuously, flocked into his congregations, and began to organise
+themselves for that victory which Nietzsche thought so deplorable.
+
+It is not necessary in this essay to traverse again the familiar field
+of St. Paul's missionary journeys. The first epoch, which embraces about
+fourteen years, had its scene in Syria and Cilicia, with the short tour
+in Cyprus and other parts of Asia Minor. The second period, which ends
+with the imprisonment in A.D. 58 or 59, is far more important. St. Paul
+crosses into Europe; he works in Macedonia and Greece. Churches are
+founded in two of the great towns of the ancient world, Corinth and
+Ephesus. According to his letters, we must assume that he only once
+returned to Jerusalem from the great tour in the West, undertaken after
+the controversy with Peter; and that the object of this visit was to
+deliver the money which he had promised to collect for the poor 'saints'
+at Jerusalem. He intended after this to go to Rome, and thence to
+Spain--a scheme worthy of the restless genius of an Alexander. He saw
+Rome indeed, but as a prisoner. The rest of his life is lost in
+obscurity. The writer of the Acts does not say that the two years'
+imprisonment ended in his execution; and if it was so, it is difficult
+to see why such a fact should be suppressed. If the charge against him
+was at last dismissed, because the accusers did not think it worth while
+to come to Rome to prosecute it, St. Luke's silence is more explicable.
+In any case, we may regard it as almost certain that St. Paul ended his
+life under a Roman axe during the reign of Nero.
+
+'There is hardly any fact' (says Harnack) 'which deserves to be turned
+over and pondered so much as this, that the religion of Jesus has never
+been able to root itself in Jewish or even upon Semitic soil.' This
+extraordinary result is the judgment of history upon the life and work
+of St. Paul. Jewish Christianity rapidly withered and died. According to
+Justin, who must have known the facts, Jesus was rejected by the whole
+Jewish nation 'with a few exceptions.' In Galilee especially, few, if
+any, Christian Churches existed. There are other examples, of which
+Buddhism is the most notable, of a religion gaining its widest
+acceptance outside the borders of the country which gave it birth. But
+history oilers no parallel to the complete vindication of St. Paul's
+policy in carrying Christianity over into the Græco-Roman world, where
+alone, as the event proved, it could live. This is a complete answer to
+those who maintain that Christ made no break with Judaism. Such a
+statement is only tenable if it is made in the sense of Harnack's words,
+that 'what Gentile Christianity did was to carry out a process which had
+in fact commenced long before in Judaism itself, viz. the process by
+which the Jewish religion was inwardly emancipated and turned into a
+religion for the world.' But the true account would be that Judaism,
+like other great ideas, had to 'die to live,' It died in its old form,
+in giving birth to the religion of civilised humanity, as the Greek
+nation perished in giving birth to Hellenism, and the Roman in creating
+the Mediterranean empire of the Caesars and the Catholic Church of the
+Popes. The Jewish people were unable to make so great a sacrifice of
+their national hopes. With the matchless tenacity which characterises
+their race they clung to their tribal God and their temporal and local
+millennium. The disasters of A.D. 70 and of the revolt under Hadrian
+destroyed a great part of the race, and at last uprooted it from the
+soil of Palestine. But conservatism, as usual, has had its partial
+justification. Judaism has refused to acknowledge the religion of the
+civilised world as her legitimate child; but the nation has refused also
+to surrender its life. There are no more Greeks and Romans; but the Jews
+we have always with us.
+
+St. Paul saw that the Gospel was a far greater and more revolutionary
+scheme than the Galilean apostles had dreamed of. In principle he
+committed himself from the first to the complete emancipation of
+Christianity from Judaism. But it was inevitable that he did not at
+first realise all that he had undertaken. And, fortunately for us, the
+most rapid evolution in his thought took place daring the ten years to
+which his extant letters belong. It is exceedingly interesting to trace
+his gradual progress away from Apocalyptic Messianism to a position very
+near that of the fourth Gospel. The evangelist whom we call St. John is
+the best commentator on Paulinism. This is one of the most important
+discoveries of recent New Testament criticism.
+
+In the earliest Epistles--those to the Thessalonians--we have the naïve
+picture of Messiah coming on the clouds, which, as we now know, was part
+of the Pharisaic tradition. In the central group the Christology is far
+more complex. Besides the Pharisaic Messiah, and the records of the
+historical Jesus of Nazareth, we have now to reckon with the
+Jewish-Alexandrian idea of the generic, archetypal man, which is
+unintelligible without reference to the Platonic philosophy. Philo is
+here a great help towards understanding one of the most difficult parts
+of the Apostle's teaching. We have also, fully developed, the mystical
+doctrine of the Spirit of Christ immanent in the soul of the believer, a
+conception which was the core of St. Paul's personal religion, and more
+than anything else emancipated him from apocalyptic dreams of the
+future. We have also a fourth conception, quite distinct from the three
+which have been mentioned--that of Christ as a cosmic principle, the
+instrument in creation and the sustainer of all his in the universe. We
+must again have recourse to Philo and his doctrine of the Logos, to
+understand the genesis of this idea, and to the Fourth Gospel to find it
+stated in clear philosophical form. In this second period, these
+theories about the Person of Christ are held concurrently, without any
+attempt to reconcile or systematise them. The eschatology is being
+seriously modified by the conception of a 'spiritual body,' which is
+prepared for us so soon as our 'outward man' decays in death. The
+resurrection of the flesh is explicitly denied (1 Cor. xv. 50); but a
+new and incorruptible 'clothing' will be given to the soul in the future
+state. Already the fundamental Pharisaic doctrine of the two ages--the
+present age and that which is to come--is in danger. St. Paul can now,
+like a true Greek, contrast the things that are seen, which are
+temporal, with the things that are not seen, which are eternal. The
+doctrine of the Spirit as a present possession of Christians brings down
+heaven to earth and exalts earth to heaven; the 'Parousia' is now only
+the end of the existing world-order, and has but little significance for
+the individual. These ideas have not displaced the earlier apocalyptic
+language; but it is easy to see that the one or the other must recede
+into the background, and that the Pharisaic tradition will be the one to
+fade.
+
+The third group of Epistles--Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians--are
+steeped in ideas which belong to Greek philosophy and the Greek
+mystery-religions. It would be impossible to translate them into any
+Eastern language. The Rabbinical disputes with the Jews about
+justification and election have disappeared; the danger ahead is now
+from theosophy and the barbarised Platonism which was afterwards matured
+in Gnosticism. The teaching is even more Christocentric than before; and
+the Catholic doctrine of the Church as the body of Christ is more
+prominent than individualistic mysticism. The cosmology is thoroughly
+Johannine, and only awaits the name of the Logos.
+
+This receptiveness to new ideas is one of the most remarkable features
+in St. Paul's mind. Few indeed are the religious prophets and preachers
+whose convictions are still malleable after they have begun to govern
+the minds of others. St. Paul had already proved that he was a man who
+would 'follow the gleam,' even when it called him to a complete breach
+with his past. And the further development of his thought was made much
+easier by the fact that he was no systematic philosopher, but a great
+missionary who was willing to be all things to all men, while his own
+faith was unified by his strength of purpose, and by the steady glow of
+the light within.
+
+It is difficult for us to realise the life of his little communities
+without importing into the picture features which belong to a later
+time. The organisation, such as it was, was democratic. The congregation
+as a whole exercised a censorship over the morals of its members, and
+penalties were inflicted 'by vote of the majority' (2 Cor. ii. 6). The
+family formed a group for religious purposes, and remained the
+recognised unit till the second century. In Ignatius and Hermas we find
+the campaign against family churches in full swing. The meetings were
+like those of modern revivalists, and sometimes became disorderly. But
+of the moral beauty which pervaded the whole life of the brotherhoods
+there can be no doubt. Many of the converts had formerly led
+disreputable lives; but these were the most likely to appreciate the
+gain of being no longer outlaws, but members of a true family. The
+heathen were amazed at the kind of people whom the Christians admitted
+and treated like brethren; but in the first century scandals do not seem
+to have been frequent. Women, who were probably always the majority,
+enjoyed a consideration unknown by them before. The extreme importance
+attached by the early Church to sexual purity made it possible for them
+to mix freely with Christian men; indeed, the strange and perilous
+practice of a 'brother' and a virgin sharing the same house seems to
+have already begun, if this is the meaning of the obscure passage in I
+Cor. vii. 36.
+
+Chastity and indifference to death were the two qualities in Christians
+which made the greatest impression on their neighbours. Galen is
+especially interesting on the former topic. But we must add a third
+characteristic--the cheerfulness and happiness which marked the early
+Christian communities. 'Joy' as a moral quality is a Christian
+invention, as a study of the usage of charha in Greek will show. Even in
+Augustine's time the temper of the Christians, 'serena et non dissolute
+hilaris' was one of the things which attracted him to the Church. The
+secret of this happy social life was an intense realisation of
+corporate unity among the members of the confraternity, which they
+represented to themselves as a 'mystery'--a mystical union between the
+Head and members of a 'body.' It is in this conception, and not in
+ritual details, that we are justified in finding a real and deep
+influence of the mystery-cults upon Christianity. The Catholic
+conception of sacraments as bonds uniting religious communities, and as
+channels of grace flowing from a corporate treasury, was as certainly
+part of the Greek mystery-religion as it was foreign to Judaism. The
+mysteries had their bad side, as might be expected in private and
+half-secret societies; but their influence as a whole was certainly
+good. The three chief characteristics of mystery-religion were, first,
+rites of purification, both moral and ceremonial; second, the promise of
+spiritual communion with some deity, who through them enters into his
+worshippers; third, the hope of immortality, which the Greeks often
+called 'deification,' and which was secured to those who were initiated.
+
+It is useless to deny that St. Paul regarded Christianity as, at least
+on one side, a mystery-religion. Why else should he have used a number
+of technical terms which his readers would recognise at once as
+belonging to the mysteries? Why else should he repeatedly use the word
+'mystery' itself, applying it to doctrines distinctive of Christianity,
+such as the resurrection with a 'spiritual body,' the relation of the
+Jewish people to God, and, above all, the mystical union between Christ
+and Christians? The great' mystery' is 'Christ in you, the hope of
+glory' (Col i. 27). It was as a mystery-religion that Europe accepted
+Christianity. Just as the Jewish Christians took with them the whole
+framework of apocalyptic Messianism, and set the figure of Jesus within
+it, so the Greeks took with them the whole scheme of the mysteries, with
+their sacraments, their purifications and fasts, their idea of a
+mystical brotherhood, and their doctrine of 'salvation' (sôtêrhia is
+essentially a mystery word) through membership in a divine society,
+worshipping Christ as the patronal deity of their mysteries.
+
+Historically, this type of Christianity was the origin of Catholicism,
+both Western and Eastern; though it is only recently that this character
+of the Pauline churches has been recognised. And students of the New
+Testament have not yet realised the importance of the fact that St.
+Paul, who was ready to fight to the death against the Judaising of
+Christianity, was willing to take the first step, and a long one,
+towards the Paganising of it. It does not appear that his personal
+religion was of this type. He speaks with contempt of some doctrines and
+practices of the Pagan mysteries, and will allow no _rapprochement_ with
+what he regards as devil-worship. In this he remains a pure Hebrew. But
+he does not appear to see any danger in allowing his Hellenistic
+churches to assimilate the worship of Christ to the honours paid to the
+gods of the mysteries, and to set their whole religion in this
+framework, provided only that they have no part nor lot with those who
+sit at 'the table of demons'--the sacramental love-feasts of the heathen
+mysteries. The dangers which he does see, and against which he issues
+warnings, are, besides Judaism, antinomianism and disorder on the one
+hand, and dualistic asceticism on the other. He dislikes or mistrusts
+'the speaking with tongues' (glôssolalhia), which was the favourite
+exhibition of religious enthusiasm at Corinth. (On this subject Prof.
+Lake's excursus is the most instructive discussion that has yet
+appeared. The 'Testament of Job' and the magical papyri show that
+gibberish uttered in a state of spiritual excitement was supposed to be
+the language of angels and spirits, understood by them and acting upon
+them as a charm.) He urges his converts to do all things 'decently and
+in order.' He is alarmed at signs of moral laxity on the part of
+self-styled 'spiritual persons'--a great danger in all times of ecstatic
+enthusiasm. He is also alive to the dangers connected with that kind of
+asceticism which is based on theories of the impurity of the body--the
+typical Oriental form of world-renunciation. But he does not appear to
+have foreseen the unethical and polytheistic developments of sacramental
+institutionalism. In this particular his Judaising opponents had a
+little more justification than he is willing to allow them.
+
+
+ST. PAUL
+
+There is something transitional about all St. Paul's teaching. We cannot
+take him out of his historical setting, as so many of his commentators
+in the nineteenth century tried to do. This is only another way of
+saying that he was, to use his own expression, a wise master-builder,
+not a detached thinker, an arm-chair philosopher. To the historian,
+there must always be something astounding in the magnitude of the task
+which he set himself, and in his enormous success. The future history of
+the civilised world for two thousand years, perhaps for all time, was
+determined by his missionary journeys and hurried writings. It is
+impossible to guess what would have become of Christianity if he had
+never lived; we cannot even be sure that the religion of Europe would be
+called by the name of Christ. This stupendous achievement seems to have
+been due to an almost unique practical insight into the essential
+factors of a very difficult and complex situation. We watch him, with
+breathless interest, steering the vessel which carried the Christian
+Church and its fortunes through a narrow channel full of sunken rocks
+and shoals. With unerring instinct he avoids them all, and brings the
+ship, not into smooth water, but into the open sea, out of that perilous
+strait. And so far was his masterly policy from mere opportunism, that
+his correspondence has been 'Holy Scripture' for fifty generations of
+Christians, and there has been no religious revival within Christianity
+that has not been, on one side at least, a return to St. Paul.
+Protestants have always felt their affinity with this institutionalist,
+mystics with this disciplinarian. The reason, put shortly, is that St.
+Paul understood what most Christians never realise, namely, that the
+Gospel of Christ is not _a_ religion, but religion itself, in its most
+universal and deepest significance.
+
+
+
+
+INSTITUTIONALISM AND MYSTICISM
+
+(1914)
+
+
+It happens sometimes that two opposite tendencies flourish together,
+deriving strength from a sense of the danger with which each is
+threatened by the popularity of the other. Where the antagonism is not
+absolute, each may gain by being compelled to recognise the strong
+points in the rival position. In a serious controversy the right is
+seldom or never all on one side; and in the normal course of events both
+theories undergo some modification through the influence of their
+opponents, until a compromise, not always logically defensible, brings
+to an end the acute stage of the controversy. Such a tension of rival
+movements is very apparent in the religious thought of our day. The
+quickening of spiritual life in our generation has taken two forms,
+which appear to be, and to a large extent are, sharply opposed to each
+other. On the one side, there has been a great revival of mysticism.
+Mysticism means an immediate communion, real or supposed, between the
+human soul and the Soul of the World or the Divine Spirit. The
+hypothesis on which it rests is that there is a real affinity between
+the individual soul and the great immanent Spirit, who in Christian
+theology is identified with the Logos-Christ. He was the instrument in
+creation, and through the Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit,
+in which the Incarnation is continued, has entered into the most
+intimate relation with the inner life of the believer. This revived
+belief in the inspiration of the individual has immensely strengthened
+the position of Christian apologists, who find their old fortifications
+no longer tenable against the assaults of natural science and
+historical criticism. It has given to faith a new independence, and has
+vindicated for the spiritual life the right to stand on its own feet and
+rest on its own evidence. Spiritual things, we now realise, are
+spiritually discerned. The enlightened soul can see the invisible, and
+live its true life in the suprasensible sphere. The primary evidence for
+the truth of religion is religious experience, which in persons of
+religious genius--those whom the Church calls saints and
+prophets--includes a clear perception of an eternal world of truth,
+beauty, and goodness, surrounding us and penetrating us at every point.
+It is the unanimous testimony of these favoured spirits that the
+obstacles in the way of realising this transcendental world are purely
+subjective and to a large extent removable by the appropriate training
+and discipline. Nor is there any serious discrepancy among them either
+as to the nature of the vision which is the highest reward of human
+effort, or as to the course of preparation which makes us able to
+receive it. The Christian mystic must begin with the punctual and
+conscientious discharge of his duties to society; he must next purify
+his desires from all worldly and carnal lusts, for only the pure in
+heart can see God; and he may thus fit himself for 'illumination'--the
+stage in which the glory and beauty of the spiritual life, now clearly
+discerned, are themselves the motive of action and the incentive to
+contemplation; while the possibility of a yet more immediate and
+ineffable vision of the Godhead is not denied, even in this life. There
+is reason to think that this conception of religion appeals more and
+more strongly to the younger generation to-day. It brings an intense
+feeling of relief to many who have been distressed by being told that
+religion is bound up with certain events in antiquity, the historicity
+of which it is in some cases difficult to establish; with a cosmology
+which has been definitely disproved; and with a philosophy which they
+cannot make their own. It allows us what George Meredith calls 'the
+rapture of the forward view.' It brings home to us the meaning of the
+promise made by the Johannine Christ that there are many things as yet
+hid from humanity which will in the future be revealed by the Spirit of
+Truth. It encourages us to hope that for each individual who is trying
+to live the right life the venture of faith will be progressively
+justified in experience. It breaks down the denominational barriers
+which divide men and women who worship the Father in spirit and in
+truth--barriers which become more senseless in each generation, since
+they no longer correspond even approximately with real differences of
+belief or of religious temperament. It makes the whole world kin by
+offering a pure religion which is substantially the same in all climates
+and in all ages--a religion too divine to be fettered by any man-made
+formulas, too nobly human to be readily acceptable to men in whom the
+ape and tiger are still alive, but which finds a congenial home in the
+purified spirit which is the 'throne of the Godhead.' Such is the type
+of faith which is astir among us. It makes no imposing show in Church
+conferences; it does not fill our churches and chapels; it has no
+organisation, no propaganda; it is for the most part passively loyal,
+without much enthusiasm, to the institutions among which it finds
+itself. But in reality it has overleapt all barriers; it knows its true
+spiritual kin; and amid the strifes and perplexities of a sad and
+troublous time it can always recover its hope and confidence by
+ascending in heart and mind to the heaven which is closer to it than
+breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
+
+But on the other side we see a tendency, even more manifest if we look
+for external signs, to emphasise the institutional side of religion,
+that which prompts men and women to combine in sacred societies, to
+cherish enthusiastic loyalties for the Church of their early education
+or of their later choice, to find their chief satisfaction in acts of
+corporate worship, and to subordinate their individual tastes and
+beliefs to the common tradition and discipline of a historical body. It
+is now about eighty years since this tendency began to manifest itself
+as a new phenomenon in the Anglican Church. Since then, it has spread to
+other organisations. It has prompted a new degree of denominational
+loyalty in several Protestant bodies on the Continent, in America, and
+in our own country; and it has arrested the decline of the Roman
+Catholic Church in countries where the outlook seemed least hopeful from
+the ecclesiastical point of view. Such a movement, so widespread and so
+powerful in its results, is clearly a thing to be reckoned with by all
+who desire to estimate rightly the signs of the times. It is a current
+running in the opposite direction to the mystical tendency, which
+regards unity as a spiritual, not a political ideal. Fortunately, the
+theory of institutionalism has lately been defended and expounded by
+several able writers belonging to different denominations; so that we
+may hope, by comparing their utterances, to understand the attractions
+of the theory and its meaning for those who so highly value it.
+
+Aubrey Moore, writing in 1889, connected the Catholic revival with the
+abandonment of atomism in natural philosophy and of Baconian
+metaphysics. These were, he thought, the counterpart of individualism in
+politics and Calvinism in religion. The adherents of mid-Victorian
+science and philosophy were bewildered by the phenomenon of 'men in the
+nineteenth century actually expressing a belief in a divine society and
+a supernatural presence in our midst, a brotherhood in which men become
+members of an organic whole by sharing in a common life, a service of
+man which is the natural and spontaneous outcome of the service of
+God.'[90] In the view of this learned and acute thinker, Catholicism, or
+institutionalism, is destined to supplant Protestantism, as the organic
+theory is destined to displace the atomic.
+
+More recently Troeltsch, writing as a Protestant, has emphasised the
+institutional side of religion in the most uncompromising way.
+
+     'One of the clearest results of all religious history and
+     religious psychology is that the essence of all religion is
+     not dogma and idea, but cultus and communion, the living
+     intercourse with the Deity--an intercourse of the entire
+     community, having its vital roots in religion and deriving
+     its ultimate power of thus uniting individuals, from its
+     faith in God.... Whatever the future may bring us, we cannot
+     expect a certainty and force of the knowledge of God and of
+     His redemptive power to subsist without communion and
+     cultus. And so long as a Christianity of any kind shall
+     subsist at all, it will be united with a cultus, and with
+     Christ holding a central position in the cultus.'[91]
+
+From America, the last refuge of individualism, there has come a
+pronouncement not less drastic. Professor Royce, the author of the
+admirable metaphysical treatise entitled 'The World and the Individual,'
+has recently published a double series of Hibbert Lectures on 'The
+Problem of Christianity,' in which he affirms the institutionalist
+theory with a surprising absence of qualification. The whole book is
+dominated by one idea, advocated with a _naïveté_ which would hardly
+have been possible to a theologian--the idea that churchmanship is the
+essential part of the Christian religion.
+
+     'The salvation of the individual man is determined by some
+     sort of membership in a certain spiritual community--a
+     religious community, and in its inmost nature a divine
+     community, in whose life the Christian virtues are to reach
+     their highest expression and the spirit of the Master is to
+     obtain its earthly fulfilment. In other words, there is a
+     certain universal and divine spiritual community. Membership
+     in that community is necessary to the salvation of man....
+     Such a community exists, is needed, and is an indispensable
+     means of salvation for the individual man, and is the
+     fitting realm wherein alone the kingdom of heaven which the
+     Master preached can find its expression, and wherein alone
+     the Christian virtues can be effectively preached.'[92]
+
+These statements, which in vigour and rigour would satisfy the most
+extreme curialist in the Society of Jesus, are not a little startling in
+an American philosopher, who, as far as the present writer knows, does
+not belong to any 'Catholic' Church. The thesis thus enunciated is the
+argument of the whole book, in which 'loyalty to the beloved community'
+is declared to be the characteristic Christian virtue. It is true that
+the satisfaction of Professor Royce's Catholic readers is destined to be
+damped in the second volume, where he forbids us to look for the ideal
+divine community in any existing Church, and expresses his conviction
+that great changes must come over the dogmatic teaching of Christianity.
+But for our purpose the significant fact is that throughout the book he
+insists that Christianity is essentially an institutional religion, the
+most completely institutional of all religions. For Professor Royce to
+be a Christian is to be a Churchman.
+
+Our last witness shall be the learned Roman Catholic layman, Baron
+Friedrich von Hügel, the deepest thinker, perhaps, of all living
+theologians in this country. 'It is now ever increasingly clear to all
+deep impartial students that religion has ever primarily expressed and
+formed itself in cultus, in social organisation, social worship,
+intercourse between soul and soul and between soul and God; and in
+symbols and sacraments, in contacts between spirit and matter.' He
+proceeds to discuss the strength and weakness of institutionalism in a
+perfectly candid spirit, but with too particular reference to the
+present conditions within the Roman Church to help us much in our more
+general survey. He mentions the drawbacks of an official philosophy,
+prescribed by authority; 'only in 1835 did the Congregation of the Index
+withdraw heliocentric books from its list.' He emphasises the necessity
+of historical dogmas, but admits that orthodoxy cherishes, along with
+them, 'fact-like historical pictures' which 'cannot be taken as
+directly, simply factual.' He vindicates the orthodoxy of religious
+toleration, and refuses to consign all non-Catholics to perdition,
+lamenting the tendency to identify absolutely the visible and invisible
+Church, which prevails among 'some of the (now dominant) Italian and
+German Jesuit Canonists.' Lastly, he boldly recommends the frank
+abandonment of the Papal claim to exercise temporal power in Italy. This
+is not so much a critique of institutionalism as the plea of a Liberal
+Catholic that the logic of institutionalism should not be allowed to
+override all other considerations. The Baron is, indeed, himself a
+mystic, though also a strong believer in the necessity of institutional
+religion.
+
+We have then a considerable body of very competent opinion, that a man
+cannot be a Christian unless he is a Churchman. To the mystic pure and
+simple, such a statement seems monstrous. Did not even Augustine say, 'I
+want to know God and my own soul; these two things, and no third
+whatever'? What intermediary can there be, he will ask, between the soul
+and God? What sacredness is there in an organisation? Is it not a matter
+of common experience that the morality of an institution, a society, a
+state, is inferior to that of the individuals who compose it? And is
+organised Catholicism an exception to this rule? And yet we must admit
+the glamour of the idea of a divine society. It arouses that _esprit de
+corps_ which is the strongest appeal that can be made to some noble
+minds. It calls for self-sacrifice and devoted labour in a cause which
+is higher than private interest. It demands discipline and co-operation,
+through which alone great things can be done on the field of history. It
+holds out a prospect of really influencing the course of events. And if
+there has been a historical Incarnation, it follows that God has
+actually intervened on the stage of history, and that it is His will to
+carry out some great and divine purpose in and by means of the course of
+history. With this object, as the Catholic believes, He established an
+institutional Church, pledged to the highest of all causes; and what
+greater privilege can there be than to take part in this work, as a
+soldier in the army of God in His long campaign against the spiritual
+powers of evil? The Christian institutionalist is the servant of a grand
+idea.
+
+There are, however, a few questions which we are bound to ask him.
+First, is his idea of the Church Christian? Did the Founder of
+Christianity contemplate or even implicitly sanction the establishment
+of a semi-political international society, such as the Catholic Church
+has actually been? Orthodox Catholicism maintains that He did. Modernism
+admits that He did not, but adds that if He had known that the Messianic
+expectation was illusory, and that the existing world-order was to
+continue for thousands of years, He would certainly have wished that a
+Catholic Church should exist. And, argues the Modernist, if it is a good
+thing that a Catholic Church should exist, it is useless to quarrel with
+the conditions under which alone it can maintain its existence. The
+philosophical historian must admit that all the changes which the
+Catholic Church has undergone--its concessions to Pagan superstition,
+its secular power, its ruthless extirpation of rebels against its
+authority, its steadily growing centralisation and autocracy--were
+forced upon it in the struggle for existence. Those who wish that Church
+history had been different are wishing the impossible, or wishing that
+the Church had perished. But this argument is not valid as a defence of
+a divine institution. It is rather a merciless exposure of what happens,
+and must happen, to a great idea when it is enslaved by an institution
+of its own creation. The political organisation which has grown up round
+the idea ends by strangling it, and continues to fight for its own
+preservation by the methods which govern the policy of all other
+political organisations--force, fraud, and accommodation. There is
+nothing in the political history of Catholicism which suggests in the
+slightest degree that the spirit of Christ has been the guiding
+principle in its councils. Its methods have, on the contrary, been more
+cruel, more fraudulent, more unscrupulous, than those of most secular
+powers. If the Founder of Christianity had appeared again on earth
+during the so-called ages of faith, it is hardly possible to doubt that
+He would, have been burnt alive or crucified again. What the Latin
+Church preserved was not the religion of Christ, which lived on by its
+inherent indestructibility, but parts of the Aristotelian and Platonic
+philosophies, distorted and petrified by scholasticism, a vast quantity
+of purely Pagan superstitions, and the _arcana imperii_ of Roman
+Cæsarism. The normal end of Scholasticism is a mummified philosophy of
+authority, in which there are no problems to solve, but a great many
+dead pundits to consult. The normal end of a policy which exploits the
+superstitions of the peasant is a desperate warfare against education.
+The normal end of Roman Imperialism is a sultanate like that of
+Diocletian. It is difficult to find a proof of infallible and
+supernatural wisdom in the evolution of which these are the last terms.
+We read with the utmost sympathy and admiration Baron von Hügel's loyal
+and reverent appeals to the authorities of his Church, that they may
+draw out the strong and beneficent powers of institutionalism, and avoid
+its insidious dangers. But it may be doubted whether such a policy is
+possible. The future of Roman Catholicism is, I fear, with the
+Ultramontanes. They, and not the Modernists, are in the line of
+development which Catholicism as an institution has consistently
+followed, and must continue to follow to the end. I can see no other
+fate in store for the _soma_ of Catholicism; the germ-cells of true
+Christianity live their own life within it, and are transmitted without
+taint to those who are born of the Spirit.
+
+We must further ask the institutionalist what are his grounds for
+identifying the Church of God with the particular institution to which
+he belongs. On the institutionalist hypothesis, it might have been
+expected either that there would have been no divisions in Christendom,
+or that all seceding bodies would have shown such manifest inferiority
+in wisdom, morality, and sanctity, that the exclusive claims of the
+Great Church would have been ratified at the bar of history. This is, in
+fact, the claim which Roman Catholics make. But it can only be upheld by
+writing history in the spirit of an advocate, or by giving a preference,
+not in accordance with modern ethical views, to certain types of
+character which are produced by the monastic life of the Catholic
+'religious,' It is increasingly difficult to find, in the lives of those
+who belong to any one denomination, proofs of marked superiority over
+other Christians. Of course, we know little of the real character of our
+neighbours as they appear in the eyes of God; but in considering a
+theory which lays so much stress on history as Catholic institutionalism
+does, we are bound to make use of such evidence as we have. And the
+evidence does not support the theory that we cannot be Christians unless
+we are Catholics. Nor does it even countenance the view that we cannot
+be Christians unless we are enthusiastic members of _some_ religious
+corporation. Professor Royce seems to have been carried away by the idea
+which prompted him to write his book; but a little thought about the
+characters of his acquaintances might have given him pause.
+
+The mechanical theory of devolution which assumes so much importance in
+some fashionable Anglican teaching about the Church need not detain us
+long. The logical choice must ultimately be between the great
+international Catholic Church and what Auguste Sabatier called the
+religion of the Spirit. The religion of all Protestants, when it is not
+secularised, as it too often is, belongs to this latter type, even when
+they lay most stress on the idea of brotherhood and corporate action.
+For with them institutions are never much more than associations for
+mutual help and edification. The Protestant always hopes to be saved
+_qua_ Christian, not _qua_ Churchman.
+
+A third question which must be asked is whether institutionalism in
+practice makes for unity among Christians, or for division. Too often
+the chief visible sign of the 'corporate idea' of which so much is said,
+is the rigidity of the spikes which it erects round its own particular
+fold. The obstacles to acts of reunion (which in no way carry with them
+the necessity of formal amalgamation) are raised almost exclusively by
+stiff institutionalists. The much-discussed Kikuyu case has brought this
+home to everybody. But for these uncompromising Churchmen, Christians of
+all denominations would be glad enough to meet together at the Lord's
+table on special occasions like the service which gave rise to this
+controversy. Anglicans are well aware that the differences of opinion
+within their body are far greater than those which separate some of them
+from Protestant Nonconformity, and others of them from Home. Allegiance
+to this or that denomination is generally an accident of early
+surroundings. To make these external classifications into barriers which
+cannot be crossed is either an absurdity or a confession that a Church
+is a political aggregate. A Roman Monsignor explained, _à propos_ of the
+Kikuyu service, that no Roman Catholic could ever communicate in a
+Protestant church, because in so doing he would be guilty of an act of
+apostasy, and would be no longer a Roman Catholic. The attitude is
+consistent with the Roman claim to universal jurisdiction; for any other
+body it would be absurd. The stiff institutionalist is debarred by his
+theory from fraternising with many who should be his friends, while he
+is bound to others with whom he has no sympathy. His theory is once more
+found to conflict with the facts.
+
+Lastly, we must ask whether institutionalism is really a spiritual and
+moral force. Of the advantages of _esprit de corps_ I have spoken
+already. No one can doubt that unity is strength, or that Catholicism
+has an immense advantage over its rivals in the efficiency of its
+organisation. But is not this advantage dearly purchased? Party loyalty
+is notoriously unscrupulous. The idealised institution becomes itself
+the object of worship, and it is entirely forgotten that a Christian
+Church ought to have no 'interests' except the highest welfare of
+humanity. The substitution of military for civil ethics has worked
+disastrously on the conduct of Churchmen. Theoretically it is admitted
+by Roman casuists that an immoral order ought not to be obeyed; but it
+is not for a layman to pronounce immoral any order received from a
+priest; if the order is really immoral, 'obedience' exonerates him who
+executes it; in all other cases disobedience is a deadly sin. The result
+of this submission of private judgment is that the voice of conscience
+is often stifled, and unscrupulous policies are carried through by
+Churchmen, which secular public opinion would have condemned decisively
+and rejected. The persecution of Dreyfus is a recent and strong
+instance. If all France had been Catholic, the victim of this shocking
+injustice would certainly have died in prison. It is extremely doubtful
+whether the presence of a highly organised Church is conducive to moral
+and social reform in a country. The temptation to play a political game
+seems to be always too strong. In Ireland the priesthood has probably
+helped to maintain a comparatively high standard of sexual morality, but
+it cannot be said that the Irish Catholic population is in other
+respects a model of civilisation and good citizenship. In education
+especially the influence of ecclesiasticism has been almost uniformly
+pernicious, so that it seems impossible for any country where the
+children are left under priestly influence to rise above a certain
+rather low level of civilisation. The strongest claim of
+institutionalism to our respect is probably the beneficial restraint
+which it exercises upon many persons who need moral and intellectual
+guidance. It is the fashion to disparage the scholastic theology, and it
+has certainly suffered by being congealed, like everything else that
+Rome touches, into a hard system; but it is immeasurably superior to the
+theosophies and fancy religions which run riot in the superficially
+cultivated classes of Protestant countries. The undisciplined mystic, in
+his reliance on the inner light, may fall into various kinds of
+_Schwärmerei_ and superstition. In some cases he may even lose his
+sanity for want of a wise restraining influence. It is not an accident
+that America, where institutionalism is weakest, is the happy
+hunting-ground of religious quacks and cranks. Individualists are too
+prone to undervalue the steadying influence of ancient and consecrated
+tradition, which is kept up mainly by ecclesiastical institutions. These
+probably prevent many rash experiments from being tried, especially in
+the field of morals. Even writers like Dr. Frazer insist on the immense
+services which consecrated tradition still renders to humanity. These
+claims may be admitted; but they come very far short of the
+glorification of institutionalism which we found in the authors quoted a
+few pages back.
+
+The institutionalist, however, may reply that he by no means admits the
+validity of Sabatier's antithesis between religions of authority and the
+religion of the Spirit. His own religion, he believes, is quite as
+spiritual as that of the Protestant individualist. He may quote the fine
+saying of a medieval mystic that he who can see the inward in the
+outward is more spiritual than he who can only see the inward in the
+inward. We may, indeed, be thankful that we have not to choose between
+two mutually exclusive types of religion. The Quaker, whom we may take
+as the type of anti-institutional mysticism, has a brotherhood to which
+he is proud to belong, and for which he feels loyalty and affection. And
+Catholicism has been rich in contemplative saints who have lived in the
+light of the Divine presence. The question raised in this essay is
+rather of the relative importance of these two elements in the religious
+life, than of choosing one and rejecting the other. I will conclude by
+saying that our preference of one of these types to the other will be
+largely determined by our attitude towards history. I am glad to see
+that Professor Bosanquet, in his fine Gifford Lectures, has the courage
+to expose the limitations of the 'historical method,' now so popular. He
+protests against Professor Ward's dictum that 'the actual is wholly
+historical,' as a view little better than naïve realism. History, he
+says, is a hybrid form of experience, incapable of any considerable
+degree of being or trueness. It is a fragmentary diorama of finite
+life-processes seen from the outside, and very imperfectly known. It
+consists largely of assigning parts in some great world-experience to
+particular actors--a highly speculative enterprise. To set these
+contingent and dubious constructions above the operations of pure
+thought and pure insight is indeed a return to the philosophy of the man
+in the street. 'Social morality, art, philosophy, and religion take us
+far beyond the spatio-temporal externality of history; these are
+concrete and necessary living worlds, and in them the finite mind begins
+to experience something of what individuality must ultimately mean.' Our
+inquiry has thus led us to the threshold of one of the fundamental
+problems of philosophy--the value and reality of time. For the
+institutionalist, happenings in time have a meaning and importance far
+greater than the mystic is willing to allow to them. Like most other
+great philosophical problems, this question is largely one of
+temperament. Christianity has found room for both types. I believe,
+however, that the aberrations or exaggerations of institutionalism have
+been, and are, more dangerous, and further removed from the spirit of
+Christianity than those of mysticism, and that we must look to the
+latter type, rather than to the former, to give life to the next
+religious revival.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+     [90] Moore, _Science and the Faith_, Introduction.
+
+     [91] Troeltsch, _Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu
+     für den Glauben,_ pp. 25 _sq_.
+
+     [92] Royce, _The Problem of Christianity_, vol. i. 39.
+
+
+
+
+THE INDICTMENT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY
+
+(1917)
+
+
+No thinking man can deny that this war has grievously stained the
+reputation of Europe. Even if the verdict of history confirms the
+opinion that the conspiracy which threw the torch into the
+powder-magazine was laid by a few persons in one or two countries, and
+that the unparalleled outrages which have accompanied the conflict were
+ordered by a small coterie of brutal officers, we cannot forget that
+these crimes have been committed by the responsible representatives of a
+civilised European power, and that the nation which they represent has
+shown no qualms of conscience. That such a calamity, the permanent
+results of which include a holocaust of European wealth and credit,
+accumulated during a century of unprecedented industry and ingenuity,
+the loss of innumerable lives, and the destruction of all the old and
+honourable conventions which have hitherto regulated the intercourse of
+civilised nations with each other, in war as well as in peace, should
+have been possible, is justly felt to be a reproach to the whole
+continent, and especially to the nations which have taken the lead in
+its civilisation and culture. The ancient races of Asia, which have
+never admitted the moral superiority of the West, are keenly interested
+spectators of our suicidal frenzy. A Japanese is reported to have said,
+'We have only to wait a little longer, till Europe has completed her
+_hara kiri_.' This is, indeed, what any intelligent observer must think
+about the present struggle. Just as the feudal barons of England
+destroyed each other and brought the feudal system to an end in the
+Wars of the Roses, so the great industrial nations are rending to pieces
+the whole fabric of modern industrialism, which can never be
+reconstructed. Mr. Norman Angell was perfectly right in his argument
+that a European war would be ruinous to both sides. The material objects
+at stake, such as the control of the Turkish Empire and the African
+continent, are not worth more than an insignificant fraction of the
+war-bill. We are witnessing the suicide of a social order, and our
+descendants will marvel at our madness, as we marvel at the senseless
+wars of the past.
+
+There has, it is plain, been something fundamentally wrong with European
+civilisation, and the disease appears to be a moral one. With this
+conviction it is natural that men should turn upon the official
+custodians of religion and morality, and ask them whether they have been
+unfaithful to their trust, or whether it is not rather proved that the
+faith which they profess is itself bankrupt and incapable of exerting
+any salutary influence upon human character and action. Christianity
+stands arraigned at the bar of public opinion. But it is not without
+significance that the indictment should now be urged with a vehemence
+which we do not find in the records of former convulsions. It was not
+generally felt to be a scandal to Christianity that England was at war
+for 69 years out of the 120 which preceded the battle of Waterloo.
+Either our generation expected more from Christianity, or it was far
+more shocked by the sudden outbreak of this fierce war than our
+ancestors were by the almost chronic condition of desultory campaigning
+to which they were accustomed. The latter is probably the true reason.
+The belief in progress, which at the beginning of the industrial
+revolution was an article of faith, had become a tacitly accepted
+presupposition of all serious thought; and even those who were dubious
+about the moral improvement of mankind in other directions, seldom
+denied that we were more humane and peaceable than our forefathers. The
+disillusion has struck our self-complacency in its most vital spot.
+Nothing in our own experience had prepared us for the hideous savagery
+and vandalism of German warfare, the first accounts of which we
+received with blank amazement and incredulity. Then, when disbelief was
+no longer possible, there awoke within us a sense of fear for our homes
+and women and children--feeling to which modern civilised man had long
+been a stranger. We had not supposed that the non-combatant population
+of any European country would ever again be exposed to the horrors of
+savage warfare. This, much more than the war itself, has made thousands
+feel that the house of civilisation is built upon the sand, and that
+Christianity has failed to subdue the most barbarous instincts of human
+nature. Christians cannot regret that the flagrant contradiction between
+the principles of their creed and the scenes that have been enacted
+during the last three years is fully recognised. But the often repeated
+statement that 'Christianity has failed' needs more examination than it
+usually receives from those who utter it.
+
+History acquaints us with two kinds of religion, which, though they are
+not entirely separate from each other, differ very widely in their
+effects upon conduct and morality. The _religio_ which Lucretius hated,
+and from which he strangely hoped that the atomistic materialism of
+Epicurus had finally delivered mankind, has its roots in the sombre and
+confused superstitions of the savage. Fear, as Statius and Petronius
+tell us, created the gods of this religion. These deities are mysterious
+and capricious powers, who exact vengeance for the transgression of
+arbitrary laws which they have not revealed, and who must be propitiated
+by public sacrifice, lest some collective punishment fall on the tribe,
+blighting its crops and smiting its herds with murrain, or giving it
+over into the hand of its enemies. This religion makes very little
+attempt to correct the current standard of values. Its rewards are
+wealth and prosperity; its punishments are calamity in this world and
+perhaps torture in the next. It is not, however, incapable of
+moralisation. The wrath of heaven may visit not the innocent violation
+of some _tabu_, but cruelty and injustice. In the historical books of
+the Old Testament, though Uzzah is stricken dead for touching the ark,
+and the subjects of King David afflicted with pestilence because their
+ruler took a census of his people, Jehovah is above all things a
+righteous God, who punishes bloodshed, adultery, and social oppression.
+So in Greece the Furies pursue the homicide and the perjurer, till the
+name of his family is clean put out. Herodotus tells us how the family
+of Glaucus was extinguished because he consulted the oracle of Delphi
+about an act of embezzlement which he was meditating.
+
+International law was protected by the same fear of divine vengeance.
+The murder of heralds must by all means be expiated. When the Romans
+repudiate their 'scrap of paper' with the Samnites, they deliver up to
+the enemy the officers who signed it, though (with characteristic
+'slimness') not the army which the mountaineers had captured and
+liberated under the agreement. To destroy the temples in an enemy's
+country was an act of wanton impiety; Herodotus cannot understand the
+religious intolerance which led the Persians to burn the shrines of
+Greek gods. Thus religion had a restraining influence in war throughout
+antiquity, and in the Middle Ages. The Pope, who was believed to hold
+the keys of future bliss and torment, was frequently, though by no means
+always, obeyed by the turbulent feudal lords, and often enforced the
+sanctity of a contract by the threat or the imposition of
+excommunication and interdict. In order to make these penalties more
+terrible, the torments of those who died under the displeasure of the
+Church were painted in the most vivid colours. But in the official and
+popular Christian eschatology, as in the terrestrial theodicy of the Old
+Testament, there is little or no moral idealism. The joys or pains of
+the future life are made to depend, in part at least, on the observance
+or violation of the moral law, but they are themselves of a kind which
+the natural man would desire or dread. They are an enhanced, because a
+deferred, retribution of the same kind which in more primitive religions
+promises earthly prosperity to the righteous, and earthly calamities to
+the wicked. Values, positive and negative, are taken nearly as they
+stand in the estimation of the average man.
+
+But there is another religious tradition, which in Greece was almost
+separated from the official and national cults, and among the Hebrews
+was often in opposition to them. The Hebrew prophets certainly
+proclaimed that 'the history of the world is the judgment of the world,'
+and often assumed, too crudely as it seems to us, that national
+calamities are a proof of national transgression; but the whole course
+of development in prophecy was towards an autonomous morality based on a
+spiritual valuation of life. Its quarrel with sacerdotalism was mainly
+directed against the unethical _tabu_-morality of the priesthood; the
+revolt was grounded in a lofty moral idealism, which found expression in
+a half-symbolic vision of a coming state in which might and right should
+coincide. The apocalyptic prophecies of post-exilic Judaism, which were
+not based, like some political predictions of the earlier prophets, on a
+statesmanlike view of the international situation, but on hopes of
+supernatural intervention, had their roots in visions of a new and
+better world-order. This aspiration, which had to disentangle itself by
+degrees from the patriotic dreams of a stubborn and unfortunate race,
+was projected into the near future, and was mixed with less worthy
+political ambitions which had a different origin. The prophet always
+foreshortens his revelation, and generally blends the city of God with a
+vision of his own country transfigured. We see him doing this even
+to-day, in his Utopian dreams of social reconstruction.
+
+And so it has always been. We remember Condorcet foretelling a reign of
+truth and peace just before he was compelled to flee from the storm of
+calumny to die in a damp cell at Bourg la Reine; and Kant hailing the
+approach of a peaceful international republic while Napoleon was
+preparing to drown Europe in blood. Apocalyptism is a compromise between
+the religion of rewards and punishments and the religion of spiritual
+deliverance. It calls a new world into existence to redress the balance
+of the old; but its discontent with the old is mainly the result of a
+moral and spiritual valuation of life. Greek philosophy has really much
+in common with Hebrew prophecy, though the Greek envisaged his ideal
+world as the eternal background of reality, and not under the form of
+history. In its maturest form, it is a transvaluation of all values in
+accordance with an absolute ideal standard--that of the Good, the True,
+and the Beautiful. This idealism appears in a still more drastic form in
+the religions of Asia, which preach deliverance by demonetising at a
+stroke all the world's currency. Spiritual values are alone accepted;
+man wins peace and freedom by renouncing in advance all of which fortune
+may deprive him.
+
+We are apt to assume, in deference to our theories of human progress,
+that the evolution of religion is normally from a lower to a higher
+type. It would, indeed, be absurd to question that the religion of a
+civilised people is usually more spiritual and more rational than that
+of barbarians. But none the less, the history of religions is generally
+a history of decline. In Judaism the prophets came before the Scribes
+and the Pharisees. Brahmanism and Buddhism were both degraded by
+superstitions and unethical rites. Christianity, which began as a
+republication of the purest prophetic teaching, has suffered the same
+fate. In each case, when the revelation has lost its freshness, and the
+enthusiasm which it evoked has begun to cool, a reversion to older
+habits of thought and customs takes place; and sometimes it may be said
+that the old religion has really conquered the new.
+
+Christianity, as taught by its Founder, is based on a transvaluation of
+values even more complete than that of Stoicism and the later Platonism,
+because, while it regards the objects of ordinary ambition as a positive
+hindrance to the higher life, it accepts and gives value to those pains
+of sympathy which Greek thought dreaded, as detracting from the calm
+enjoyment of the philosophic life. This acceptance of the world's
+suffering, from which every other spiritual religion and philosophy
+promise a way of escape, is perhaps the most distinctive feature of
+Christian ethics. In practice, it thus achieves a more complete conquest
+of evil than any other system; and by bringing sorrow and sympathy into
+the Divine life, it not only presents the character and nature of the
+Deity in a new light, but opens out a new ideal of moral perfection.
+This is not the place for a discussion of the main characteristics of
+the Gospel of Christ, and they are familiar to us all. But, since we are
+now considering the charge of failure brought against Christianity in
+connexion with the present world-war, it seems necessary to emphasise
+two points which are not always remembered.
+
+The first is that there is no evidence that the historical Christ ever
+intended to found a new institutional religion. He neither attempted to
+make a schism in the Jewish Church nor to substitute a new system for
+it. He placed Himself deliberately in the prophetic line, only claiming
+to sum up the series in Himself. The whole manner of His life and
+teaching was prophetic. The differences which undoubtedly may be found
+between His style and that of the older prophets do not remove Him from
+the company in which He clearly wished to stand. He treated the
+institutional religion of His people with the independence and
+indifference of the prophet and mystic; and the hierarchy, which, like
+other hierarchies, had a sure instinct in discerning a dangerous enemy,
+was not slow to declare war to the knife against Him. Such, He reminded
+His enemies, was the treatment which all the prophets had met with from
+the class to which those enemies belonged. This, then, is the first fact
+to remember. Institutional Christianity may be a legitimate and
+necessary historical development from the original Gospel, but it is
+something alien to the Gospel itself. The first disciples believed that
+they had the Master's authority for expecting the end of the existing
+world-order in their own lifetime. They believed that He had come
+forward with the cry of 'Hora novissima!' Whether they misunderstood Him
+or not, they clearly could not have held this opinion if they had
+received instructions for the constitution of a Church.
+
+The second point on which it is necessary to insist is that Christ never
+expected, or taught His disciples to expect, that His teaching would
+meet with wide acceptance, or exercise political influence. 'The
+world'--organised human society--was the enemy and was to continue the
+enemy. His message, He foresaw, would be scorned and rejected by the
+majority; and those who preached it were to expect persecution. This
+warning is repeated so often in the Gospels that it would be superfluous
+to give quotations. He made it quite plain that the big battalions are
+never likely to be gathered before the narrow gate. He declared that
+only false prophets are well spoken of by the majority. When we consider
+the revolutionary character of the Christian idealism, its indifference
+to nearly all that passes for 'religion' with the vulgar, and its
+reversal of all current valuations, it is plain that it is never likely
+to be a popular creed. As surely as the presence of high spiritual
+instincts in the human mind guarantees its indestructibility, so surely
+the deeply-rooted prejudices which keep the majority on a lower level
+must prevent the Gospel of Christ from dominating mundane politics or
+social life.
+
+Moreover, the actual extent of its influence cannot be estimated. The
+inwardness and individualism of its teaching make its apparent
+effectiveness smaller than its real power, which works secretly and
+unobserved. The vices which Christ regarded with abhorrence are
+perversions of character--hypocrisy, hard-heartedness, and worldliness
+or secularity; and who can say what degree of success the Gospel has
+achieved in combating these? The method of Christianity is alien to all
+externalism and machinery; it does not lend itself to those
+accommodations and compromises without which nothing can be done in
+politics. As Harnack says, the Gospel is not one of social improvement,
+but of spiritual redemption. Its influence upon social and political
+life is indirect and obscure, operating through a subtle modification of
+current valuations, and curbing the competitive and acquisitive
+instincts, which nearly correspond with what Christ called 'Mammon' and
+St. Paul 'the flesh.' Christianity is a spiritual dynamic, which has
+very little to do directly with the mechanism of social life.
+
+It is, therefore, certain that when we speak of Christianity as a
+factor in human life, we must not identify it with the opinions or
+actions of the multitudes who are nominally Christians. We must not even
+identify it, without qualification, with the types of character
+exhibited by those who try to frame their lives in accordance with its
+precepts. For these types are very largely determined by the ideals
+which belong to the stage through which the life of the race is passing;
+and these differ so widely in different ages and countries that the
+historian of religion might well despair if he was compelled to regard
+them all as typical manifestations of the same idea. There are times
+when the disciple of Christ seems to turn his back upon society; he is
+occupied solely with the relation of the individual soul to God. These
+are periods when the opportunities for social service are much
+restricted by a faulty structure of the body politic; periods when
+secular civilisation is so brutal, or so servile, that the religious
+life can only be led in seclusion from it. At another time the typical
+Christian seems to be the active and valiant soldier of a militant
+corporation. At another, again, he is a philanthropist, who devotes his
+life to the redress of some great wrong, such as slavery, or the
+promotion of a more righteous system of production and distribution. In
+all these types we can trace the operation of the genius of
+Christianity, but they are partial manifestations of it, with much alien
+admixture. The spirit of the age, as well as the spirit of Christ, has
+moulded the various types of Christian piety.
+
+If there has ever been a time when organised Christianity was a concrete
+embodiment of the pure principles of the Gospel, we must look for it in
+the era of the persecutions, when the Church had already gained
+coherence and discipline and a corporate self-consciousness, and was
+still preserved from the corrupting influence of secularity by the
+danger which attended the profession of an illicit creed. A vivid
+picture of the Christian communities at this period has been given by
+Dobschütz, whose learning and impartiality are unimpeachable. The Church
+at this time demanded from its followers an unreserved confession, even
+when this meant death. It was a brotherhood within which there was no
+privileged class. Men and women, the free and the slave, had an equal
+share in it. It abolished the fundamental Greek distinction of civilised
+and barbarian. It looked with contempt on none. Its great organisation
+was spread by purely voluntary means, till it gained a firm footing
+throughout the Empire and beyond it. To a large extent it was an
+association for mutual aid. Wherever anyone was in need, help was at
+hand. The tangible advantages of belonging to such a guild were so great
+that the Church had to enforce labour on all who could work, as a
+condition of sharing in the benefits of membership. Social distinctions,
+such as those of rich and poor, master and slave, were not abolished,
+but they had lost their sting, because genuine affection, loyalty and
+sympathy neutralised these inequalities. Great importance was laid on
+truth, integrity in business, and sexual purity. A complete rupture with
+pagan standards of morality was insisted on from new members. The human
+body must be kept holy, as the temple of God. Revenge was forbidden, and
+injustice was endured with meekness and pardon. This is no imaginary
+picture. In that brief golden age of the Church, such were indeed the
+characteristics of the Christian society. In the opinion of Dobschütz
+the moral condition of the Church in the second century was much higher
+than among St. Paul's converts in the first. The paucity of references
+to sins of the flesh, and to fraud, is to be accounted for by the actual
+rarity of such offences. For a short time, then, the artificial
+selection effected by the persecutions kept the Church pure; and from
+the happy pictures which we can reconstruct of this period we can judge
+what a really Christian society would be like.
+
+The history of institutional Catholicism must be approached from a
+different side. Troeltsch argues with much cogency that the Catholic
+Church must be regarded rather as the last creative achievement of
+classical antiquity than as the beginning of the Middle Ages. Its growth
+belongs mainly to the political history of Europe; the strictly
+religious element in it is quite subordinate. There is, as Modernist
+critics have seen, a real break between the Palestinian Gospel and the
+elaborate mystery-religion, with its graded hierarchy, its Roman
+organisation, its Hellenistic speculative theology, which achieved the
+conquest of the Empire in the fourth century. The Church, as Loisy says,
+determined to survive and to conquer, and adapted itself to the demands
+of the time. It has travelled far from the simple teaching of the
+earthly Christ; though we may, if we choose, hold that His spirit
+continued to direct the growing and changing institution which, as a
+matter of history, had its source in the Galilean ministry. In truth,
+however, the extremely efficient organisation of the Roman Church began
+in self-defence and was continued for conquest. It is one of the
+strongest of all human institutions, so that it was said before the war
+that it is one of the 'three invincibles,' the other two being the
+German Army and the Standard Oil Trust.
+
+But our admiration for the subtle and tenacious power of this
+corporation must not blind us to its essentially political character.
+Its policy has been always directed to self-preservation and
+aggrandisement; it is an _imperium in imperio_, which has only checked
+fanatical nationalism by the competing influence of a still more
+fanatical partisanship. In the present war, the problem before the
+Pope's councillors was whether the friendship of the Central Powers or
+that of the Entente was best worth cultivating; and the unshaken loyalty
+of Austria to the Church, together with a natural preference for German
+methods of governing as compared with democracy, turned the scale
+against us. In Ireland, in Canada and in Spain the Catholic priests have
+been formidable enemies of our cause. As for the other Churches, they
+have not the same power of arbitrating in national quarrels. The Russian
+Church has never been independent of the secular government; and the
+Anglican and Lutheran Churches can hardly be expected to be impartial
+when the vital interests of England or Germany are at stake. Lovers of
+peace have not much to hope for from organised religion. National
+Christianity, as Mr. Bernard Shaw says, will only be possible when we
+have a nation of Christs.
+
+The downfall of the medieval European system, though in truth it was a
+theory rather than a fact, has removed some of the restraints upon war.
+The determining principle of the medieval political theory was the
+conception of a 'lex Dei,' which included the 'lex Mosis,' the 'lex
+Christi,' and the 'lex ecclesiae,' but which also, as 'lex naturæ,'
+comprised the law, science, and ethics of antiquity. These laws were
+super-national, and no nation dared explicitly to repudiate them. They
+formed the basis of a real system of international law, resting, like
+everything else in the Middle Ages, on supposed divine authority.
+
+This theory, with its sanctions, was shattered at the Renaissance; and
+the Machiavellian doctrine of the absolute State, accepted by Bacon and
+put into practice by Frederick the Great, has prevailed ever since,
+though not without frequent protests. The rise of nationalities, each
+with an intense self-consciousness, has facilitated the adoption of a
+theory too grossly immoral to have found favour except in the peculiar
+circumstances of modern civilisation. The emergence of nationalities was
+often connected with a legitimate struggle for freedom; and at such
+times _esprit de corps_ seems to be almost the sum of morality, the
+substitute for all other virtues. Loyalty is one of the most attractive
+of moral qualities, and it necessarily inhibits criticism of its own
+objects, which has the appearance of treason. But, unless the aims of
+the corporate body which claims our absolute allegiance are right and
+reasonable, loyalty may be, and often has been, the parent of hideous
+crimes, and a social evil of the first magnitude. The perversion of
+_esprit de corps_ does incalculable harm in every direction, destroying
+all sense of honour and justice, of chivalry and generosity, of sympathy
+and humanity. It involves a complete repudiation of Christianity, which
+breaks down all barriers by ignoring them, and insists on love and
+justice towards all mankind without distinction. The worship of the
+State has during the last half-century been sedulously and artificially
+fostered in Germany, until it has produced a kind of moral insanity.
+Even philosophical historians like Troeltsch seem unable to see the
+monstrosity of a political doctrine which has caused his country to be
+justly regarded as the enemy of the whole human race. Eucken, writing
+some years before the war, in a rather gingerly manner deprecates
+_Politismus_ as a national danger; but he does not dare to grasp the
+nettle firmly. It is possible that this deification of the State in
+Germany may be in part due to an unsatisfied instinct of worship. In
+Roman Catholic countries, where there must be a divided allegiance,
+patriotism never, perhaps, assumes such sinister and fanatical forms.
+
+But we shall not understand the attraction which this naked immoralism
+in international affairs exercises over the minds of many who are not
+otherwise ignoble, if we do not remember that the repudiation of the
+Christian ethical standard has been equally thorough in commercial
+competition. The German officer believes himself to have chosen a
+morally nobler profession than that of the business-man; he serves (he
+thinks) a larger cause, and he is content with much less personal
+reward. Socialist assailants of our industrial system, much as they
+dislike war, would probably agree with him. It is not necessary to
+condemn all competition. The desire to excel others is not
+reprehensible, when the rivalry is in rendering useful social service.
+But it cannot be denied that the present condition of industry is such
+that a heavy premium is offered to mere cupidity; that the fraternal
+social life which Christianity enjoins is often literally impossible,
+except at the cost of economic suicide; and that in a competitive system
+a business man is, by the very force of circumstances, a warrior, though
+war is an enemy of love and destructive of Christian society. When the
+object of bargaining is to give as little and gain as much as possible,
+the Christian standard of values has been rejected as completely as it
+was by Machiavelli himself. The competition between two parties to a
+bargain is often a competition in unserviceableness. Money is very
+frequently made by creating a local and temporary monopoly, which
+enables the vendor to squeeze the purchaser. In all such transactions
+one man's gain is another man's loss. This state of things, the evils of
+which are almost universally recognised and deplored, marks the end of
+the glorification of productive industry which was one result of the
+Reformation.
+
+Hardly anything distinguishes modern from medieval ethics more sharply
+than the emphasis laid by Protestant morality on the duty of making and
+producing something tangible. Theoretically the Protestant may hold that
+'doing ends in death,' and he may sing these words on Sunday; but his
+whole life on week days is occupied in strenuous 'doing.' We find in
+Calvinism and Quakerism the genuinely religious basis of the modern
+business life, which, however, has degenerated sadly, now that the
+largest fortunes are made by dealing in money rather than in
+commodities. In the books of Samuel Smiles, and in Clough's poem
+beginning 'Hope ever more and believe, O Man,' we find the Gospel of
+productive work preached with fervour. It is out of favour now in
+England; but in America we still see quaint attempts to make business a
+religion, as in the Middle Ages religion was a business. In these
+circles, it is productive activity as such to which value is attached,
+without much enquiry as to the utility of the product. The result has
+been an immense accumulation of the apparatus of life, without any
+corresponding elevation in moral standards. The mischiefs wrought by
+modern commercialism are largely the fruit of the purely irrational
+production which it encourages. There are, says Professor Santayana,
+Nibelungen who toil underground over a gold which they will never use,
+and in their obsession with production begrudge themselves all
+inclinations to recreation, to merriment, to fancy. Visible signs of
+such unreason appear in the relentless and hideous aspect which life
+puts on; for those instruments which emancipate themselves from their
+uses soon become hateful. 'A barbaric civilisation, built on blind
+impulse and ambition, should fear to awaken a deeper detestation than
+could ever be aroused by those more beautiful tyrannies, chivalrous or
+religious, against which past revolutions have been directed.' We
+cannot, indeed, be surprised that this ideal of productive work as a
+means of grace, precious for its own sake, has no attraction for the
+masses, and that independent thinkers like Edward Carpenter should write
+books on 'Civilisation, its Cause and Cure.'
+
+This Puritan ideal is not so much unchristian as narrow and
+unintelligent; but the money-making life has of late become more and
+more frankly predatory and anti-social. The great trusts, and the arts
+of the company-promoter, can hardly be said to perform any social
+service; they exist to levy tribute on the public. We may say therefore
+that, though war between the leading nations of the world had become a
+strange idea and a far-off memory, we had by no means risen above the
+principles and practices of war in our internal life. The immunity from
+militarism hitherto enjoyed by Britain and the United States was a
+fortunate accident, not a proof of higher morality. Our fleet protected
+both ourselves and the Americans from the necessity of maintaining a
+conscript army; but we had drifted into a condition in which civil war
+seemed not to be far off, and in which violence and lawlessness were
+increasing. By a strange inconsistency, many who on moral or religious
+grounds condemned wars between nations were found to condone or justify
+acts of war against the State, organised by discontented factions of its
+citizens. Revolutionary strikes, prepared long in advance by forced
+levies of money which were candidly called war-funds, had as their
+avowed aim the paralysis of the industries of the country and the
+reduction of the population to distress by withholding the necessaries
+of life. These acts of civil war, and disgraceful outbreaks of criminal
+anarchism, were justified by persons who professed a conscientious
+objection to defending their homes and families against a foreign
+invader. This state of mind proves how little essential connexion there
+is between democracy and peace. It discloses a confusion of ideas even
+greater than the antithesis between industrialism and militarism in the
+writings of Herbert Spencer. On this latter fallacy it is enough to
+quote the words of Admiral Mahan; 'As far as the advocacy of peace rests
+on material motives like economy and prosperity, it is the service of
+Mammon; and the bottom of the platform will drop out when Mammon thinks
+that war will pay better.' This is notoriously what has happened in
+Germany. A short war, with huge indemnities, seemed to German financiers
+a promising speculation. If such were the rotten foundations upon which
+anti-militarism in this country was based, the Churches cannot be blamed
+for giving the peace-movement a rather lukewarm support.
+
+In Germany there was no internal anarchy, such as prevailed in England;
+there was also no illusion about the imminence of war. Our politicians
+ought to have read the signs of the times better; but they were too
+intent on feeling the pulse of the electorate at home to attend to
+disturbing and unwelcome symptoms abroad. The causes of the war are not
+difficult to determine. War has long been a national industry of
+Germany, and the idea of it evoked no moral repugnance. The military
+virtues were extolled; the military profession enjoyed an astonishing
+social prestige; the learned class proclaimed the biological necessity
+of international conflicts. The army believed itself to be invincible,
+and it had begun to control the policy of the country; where these two
+conditions exist, no diplomacy can avert war. Professionalism always has
+a selfish and anti-social element in its code, and the professionalism
+of the soldier is always prone to override the rights and disdain the
+scruples of civilians.
+
+The dominant classes in Germany also found that their power was being
+undermined by the growing industrialisation. The steady increase in the
+social-democratic vote was a portent not to be disregarded. A letter
+from a German officer to a friend in Roumania, which found its way into
+the newspapers, tells a great deal of truth in a few words. 'You cannot
+conceive,' he wrote, 'what difficulty we had in persuading our Emperor
+that it was necessary to let loose this war. But it has been done; and I
+hope that for a long time to come we shall hear no more in Germany of
+pacifism, internationalism, democracy, and similar pestilent doctrines.'
+Sir Charles Walston, in his thoughtful book 'Aristodemocracy,' lays
+great stress on this. 'It appeared to me,' he says, 'ever since 1905,
+that in the immediate future it was all a question as to whether the
+labour-men, the practical pacifists, would arrive at the realisation of
+their power before the militarists had forced a war upon us, or whether
+the military powers would anticipate this result, and within the next
+few years force a war upon the world.' To the influence of the military
+was added the cupidity of the commercial and financial class. The law of
+diminishing returns was driving capital further and further afield; and
+large profits, it was hoped, might be made by the exploitation of
+backward countries and the reduction of their inhabitants to serfdom. To
+a predatory and parasitic class war seems only a logical extension of
+the principles upon which it habitually acts; and for this reason
+privileged orders seldom feel much moral compunction about a war-policy.
+Lastly, among the causes of the war must be reckoned one which has
+received far too little attention from social and political
+philosophers--the tenacious and half-unconscious memories of a race.
+Injustice comes home to roost, sometimes after an astonishingly long
+interval. The disaffection of Catholic Ireland would be quite
+unintelligible without the massacres of the sixteenth century and the
+unjust trade-legislation of the seventeenth and eighteenth. The
+bitterness of the working class in England has its roots in the earlier
+period of the industrial revolution (about 1760-1832), when the
+labourer, with his wife and children, was treated as the 'cannon-fodder'
+of industry. Similarly, the seeds of Prussian brutality and
+aggressiveness were sown at Jena and in the raiding of Prussia for
+recruits before the Moscow expedition. If such were the causes of the
+great world-war, how little can be hoped from courts of international
+arbitration!
+
+These considerations have, perhaps, made it clear that the main causes
+of international conflicts are what the Epistle of St. James declares
+them to be--'the lusts that war in your members,' the pugnacious and
+acquisitive instincts which pervade our social life in times of peace,
+and not least in those nations which pride themselves on having advanced
+beyond the militant stage. There are some who accept this state of
+things as natural and necessary, and who blame Christianity for carrying
+on a futile campaign against human nature. This is a very different
+indictment from that which condemns Christianity for tolerating a
+preventible evil; and it is, in our opinion, even less justified. The
+argument that, because war has always existed, it must always continue
+to exist, is justly ridiculed by Mr. Norman Angell. 'It is commonly
+asserted that old habits of thought can never be shaken; that, as men
+have been, so they will be. That, of course, is why we now eat our
+enemies, enslave their children, examine witnesses with the thumbscrew,
+and burn those who do not attend the same church.'
+
+The long history of war as a racial habit explains why a ruinous and
+insane anachronism shows such tenacity; for the conditions which
+established the habit among primitive tribes demonstrably no longer
+exist. It is probably true, as William James says, that 'militarist
+writers without exception regard war as a biological or sociological
+necessity'; lawyers might say the same about litigation. But laws of
+nature 'are not efficient causes, and it is open to any one to prove
+that they are not laws, if he can break them with impunity. It would be
+the height of pessimistic fatalism to hold that men must always go on
+doing that which they hate, and which brings them to misery and ruin.
+Man is not bound for ever by habits contracted during his racial nonage;
+his moral, rational, and spiritual instincts are as natural as his
+physical appetites; and against them, as St. Paul says, 'there is no
+law,' Huxley's Romanes Lecture gave an unfortunate support to the
+mischievous notion that the 'cosmic process' is the enemy of morality.
+The truth seems to be that Nature presents to us not a categorical
+imperative, but a choice. Do we prefer to pay our way in the world, or
+to be parasites? War, with very few exceptions, is a mode of parasitism.
+Its object is to exploit the labour of other nations, to make them pay
+tribute, or to plunder them openly, as the Germans have plundered the
+cities of Belgium. War is a parasitic industry; and Christianity forbids
+parasitism. Nature has her own penalties for the lower animals which
+make this choice, and they strike with equal severity 'the peoples that
+delight in war,' The bellicose nations have nearly all perished.
+
+There remains, however, a class of wars which escapes this
+condemnation; and about them difficult moral problems may be raised. We
+can hardly deny to a growing and civilised nation the right to expand at
+the expense of barbarous hunters and nomads. No one would suggest that
+the Americans ought to give back their country to the Indians, or that
+Australia should be abandoned to the aborigines. But were the
+Anglo-Saxons justified in expropriating the Britons, and the Spaniards
+the Aztecs? There is room for differences of opinion in these cases; and
+a very serious problem may arise in the future, as to whether the
+European races are morally justified in using armed force to restrict
+Asiatic competition. As a general principle, we must condemn the
+expropriation of any nation which is in effective occupation of the
+soil. The popular estimate of superior and inferior races is thoroughly
+unchristian and unscientific, as is the prejudice against a dark skin.
+The opinion that a nation which is increasing in population has a right
+to expel the inhabitants of another country to make room for its own
+emigrants is surely untenable. If it justifies war at all, it sanctions
+a war of extermination, which would attain its objects most completely
+by massacring girls and young women. The pressure of population is a
+real cause of war; but the moral is, not that war is right, but that a
+nation must cut its coat according to its cloth, and limit its numbers.
+
+Unless we justify wars of extermination, war has no biological sanction,
+and Christianity is not flying in the face of nature by condemning it.
+On the contrary, by condemning every form of parasitism, it indicates
+the true path of evolution. It is equally right in rejecting the purely
+economic valuation of human goods. The 'economic man' does not exist in
+nature; he is a fictitious creature who is responsible for a great deal
+of social injustice. Some modern economists, like Mr. Hobson, would
+substitute for the old monetary standards of production and distribution
+an attempt to estimate the 'human costs' of labour. Creative work
+involving ingenuity and artistic qualities is not 'costly' at all,
+unless the hours of labour, or the nervous strain, exceed the powers of
+the worker. More monotonous work is not costly to the worker if the
+day's labour is fairly short, or if some variety can be introduced. The
+human cost is greatly increased if the worker thinks that his labour is
+useless, or that it will only benefit those who do not deserve the
+enjoyment of its fruits. Work which only produces frivolous luxuries is
+and ought to be unwelcome to the producer, even if he is well paid. It
+must also be emphasised that worry and anxiety take the heart out of a
+man more than anything else. Security of employment greatly reduces the
+'human cost' of labour. These considerations are comparatively new in
+political economy. They change it from a highly abstract science into a
+study of the conditions of human welfare as affected by social
+organisation. The change is a victory for the ideas of Buskin and
+Morris, though not necessarily for the practical remedies for social
+maladjustments which they propounded. It brings political economy into
+close relations with ethics and religion, and should induce economists
+to consider carefully the contribution which Christianity makes to the
+solution of the whole problem. For Christianity has its remedy to
+propose, and it is a solution of the problem of war, not less than of
+industrial evils.
+
+Christianity gives the world a new and characteristic standard of
+values. It diminishes greatly the values which can accrue from
+competition, and enhances immeasurably the non-competitive values. 'A
+man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he
+possesseth.' 'Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
+raiment?' 'The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness
+and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.' Passages like these are found in
+every part of the New Testament. This Christian idealism has a direct
+bearing on the doctrine of 'human costs.' Work is irksome, not only when
+it is excessive or ill-paid, but when the worker is lazy, selfish,
+envious or discontented. There is one thing which can make almost any
+work welcome. If it is done from love or unselfish affection, the human
+cost is almost _nil_, because it is not counted or consciously felt.
+This is no exaggeration when it is applied to the devoted labour of the
+mother and the nurse, or to that of the evangelist conscious of a divine
+vocation. But in all useful work the keen desire to render social
+service, or to do God's will, diminishes to an incalculable extent the
+'human cost' of labour. This principle introduces a deep cleavage
+between the Christian remedy and that of political socialism, which
+fosters discontent and indignation as a lever for social amelioration.
+Men are made unhappy in order that they may be urged to claim a larger
+share of the world's wealth. Christianity considers that, measured by
+human costs, the remedy is worse than the disease. The adoption of a
+truer standard of value would tear up the lust of accumulation by the
+roots, and would thus effect a real cure. It would also stop the
+grudging and deliberately bad work which at present seriously diminishes
+the national wealth.
+
+The Christian cure is the only real cure. It is the fashion to assume
+that militarism and cupidity are vices of the privileged classes, and
+that democracies may be trusted neither to plunder the minority at home
+nor to seek foreign adventures by unjust wars. There is not the
+slightest reason to accept either of these views. Political power is
+always abused; an unrepresented class is always plundered. Nor are
+democracies pacific, except by accident. At present they do not wish to
+see the capital which they regard as their prospective prey dissipated
+in war; and for this reason their influence in our time will probably be
+on the side of peace. But, as soon as the competition of cheap Asiatic
+labour becomes acute, we may expect to see the democracies bellicose and
+the employing class pacific. This is not guess-work; we already see how
+the democracies of California and Australia behave towards immigrants
+from Asia. Readers of Anatole France will remember his description of
+the economic wars decreed by the Senate of the great republic, at the
+end of 'L'Île des Pingouins.' It would, indeed, be difficult to prove
+that the expansion of the United States has differed much, in methods
+and morals, from that of the European monarchies; and the methods of
+trade-unions are the methods of pitiless belligerency. Democracy and
+socialism are broken reeds for the lover of peace to lean upon.
+
+In conclusion, our answer to the indictment against Christianity is
+that institutional religion does not represent the Gospel of Christ, but
+the opinions of a mass of nominal Christians. It cannot be expected to
+do much more than look after its own interests and reflect the moral
+ideas of its supporters. The real Gospel, if it were accepted, would
+pull up by the roots not only militarism but its analogue in civil life,
+the desire to exploit other people for private gain. But it is not
+accepted. We have seen that the Founder of Christianity had no illusions
+as to the reception which His message of redemption would meet with. The
+'Prince of this World' is not Christ, but the Devil. Nevertheless, He
+did speak of the 'whole lump' being gradually leavened, and we shall not
+exceed the limits of a reasonable and justifiable optimism if we hope
+that the accumulated experience of humanity, and perhaps a real though
+very slow modification for the better of human nature itself, may at
+last eliminate the wickedest and most insane of our maleficent
+institutions. The human race has probably hundreds of thousands of years
+to live, whereas our so-called civilisation cannot be traced back for
+more than a few thousand years. The time when 'nation shall not lift up
+sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,' will
+probably come at last, though no one can predict what the conditions
+will be which will make such a change possible.
+
+The signs are not very favourable at present for internationalism. The
+great nations, bankrupt and honey-combed with social unrest, will be
+obliged after the war to organise themselves as units, with governments
+strong enough to put down revolutions, and directed by men of the
+highest mercantile ability, whose main function will be to increase
+productiveness and stop waste. We may even see Germany mobilised as one
+gigantic trust for capturing markets and regulating prices. A
+combination so formidable would compel other nations, and our own
+certainly among the number, to adopt a similar organisation. This would,
+of course, mean a complete victory for bureaucratic state-socialism, and
+the defeat of democracy and trade-union syndicalism. Such a change,
+which few would just now welcome, will occur if no other form of state
+is able to survive; and this is what we may live to see. But there is
+no finality about any experiments in government. A period of
+internationalism may follow the intense nationalism which historical
+critics foresee for the twentieth century. Or perhaps the international
+labour-organisations may be too strong for the centralising forces. It
+is just possible that Labour, by a concerted movement during the violent
+reaction against militarism which will probably follow the war, will
+forbid any further military or naval preparations to be made.
+
+Whatever forms reconstruction may take, Christianity will have its part
+to play in making the new Europe. It will be able to point to the
+terrible vindication of its doctrines in the misery and ruin which have
+overtaken a world which has rejected its valuations and scorned its
+precepts. It is not Christianity which has been judged and condemned at
+the bar of civilisation; it is civilisation which has destroyed itself
+because it has honoured Christ with its lips, while its heart has been
+far from Him. But a spiritual religion can win a victory only within its
+own sphere. It can promise no Deuteronomic catalogue of blessings and
+cursings to those who obey or disobey its principles. Social happiness
+and peace would certainly follow a whole-hearted acceptance of Christian
+principles; but they would not certainly bring wealth or empire.
+'Philosophy,' said Hegel, 'will bake no man's bread'; and it is only in
+a spiritual sense that the meek-spirited can expect to possess the
+earth. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to suppose that a Christian nation
+would be unable to hold its own in the struggle for existence. A nation
+in which every citizen endeavoured to pay his way and to help his
+neighbour would be in no danger of servitude or extinction. The mills of
+God grind slowly, but the future does not belong to lawless violence. In
+the long run, the wisdom that is from above will be justified in her
+children.
+
+
+
+
+SURVIVAL AND IMMORTALITY
+
+(1917)
+
+
+The recrudescence of superstition in England was plain to all observers
+many years before the war; it was perhaps most noticeable among the
+half-educated rich. Several causes contributed to this phenomenon. The
+craving for the supernatural, a very ancient and deeply rooted
+thought-habit, had been suppressed and driven underground by the
+arrogant dominance of a materialistic philosophy, and by the absorption
+of society in the pursuit of gain and pleasure. Modern miracles were
+laughed out of court. But materialism has supernaturalism for its
+nemesis. An abstract science, erecting itself into a false philosophy,
+leaves half our nature unsatisfied, and becomes morally bankrupt before
+its intellectual errors are exposed. Supernaturalism is the refuge of
+the materialist who wishes to make room for ideal values without
+abandoning the presuppositions of materialism. By dovetailing acts of
+God into the order of nature, he materialises the spiritual, but brings
+the Divine will into the world of experience, from which it had been
+expelled, and produces a rough scheme of providential government, by
+which he can live.
+
+The revolt against scientific materialism was made much easier by the
+disintegration of the mechanical theory itself. Biology found itself
+cramped by the categories of inorganic science, and claimed its
+autonomy. The result was a fatal breach in the defences of materialism,
+for biology is being driven to accept final causes, and would be glad to
+adopt some theory of vitalism, if it could do so without falling back
+into the old error of a mysterious 'vital force.' Biological truth, it
+is plain, cannot be reduced to the purely quantitative categories of
+mathematics and physics. Then psychology aspired to be a philosophy of
+real existence, and attacked both absolutism and materialism. The
+pretensions of psychology rehabilitated subjectivism and founded
+pragmatism, till reactionary theology took heart of grace and defended
+crude supernaturalism, with the whole apparatus of sacerdotal magic, as
+the 'Gospel for human needs.' All protection against the grossest
+superstitions was thus swept away. With no fixed standard of reference
+to distinguish fact from fiction, it was possible to argue that
+'whatever suits souls is true.'
+
+In this atmosphere many old habits of thought reasserted themselves.
+While we enjoyed peace and prosperity, the credulity of the public found
+its chief outlet in various systems of faith-healing and in the
+time-honoured pretensions of priest-craft. But the devastation which the
+war has brought into countless loving families has turned the current of
+superstition strongly towards necromancy. The 'will to believe,' no
+longer inhibited and suspected as a reason for doubt, has been allowed
+to create its own logic. A few highly educated men, who have long been
+playing with occultism and gratifying their intellectual curiosity by
+exploring the dark places of perverted mysticism, have been swept off
+their feet by it, and their authority, as 'men of science,' has
+dispelled the hesitation of many more to accept what they dearly wished
+to believe. The longing of the bereaved has created for itself a
+spurious and dreary satisfaction.
+
+One cause of this strange movement cannot be emphasised too strongly. It
+proves that the Christian hope of immortality burns very dimly among us.
+Those who study the utterances of our religious guides must admit that
+it is so. References to the future life had, before the war, become rare
+even in the pulpit. The topic was mainly reserved for letters of
+condolence, and was then handled gingerly, as if it would not bear much
+pressure. Working-class audiences and congregations listened eagerly to
+the wildest promises of an earthly utopia the day after tomorrow, but
+cooled down at once when they were reminded that 'if in this life only
+we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.' Accordingly,
+the clerical demagogue showed more interest in the unemployed than in
+the unconverted. Christianity, which began as a revolutionary idealism,
+had sunk into heralding materialistic revolution. Such teachers have no
+message of hope and comfort for those who have lost their dearest. And
+they have, in fact, been deserted. Their secularised Christianity was
+received with half-contemptuous approval by trade unions, but far deeper
+hopes, fears, and longings have now been stirred, which concern all men
+and women alike, and on the answers to which the whole value of
+existence is now seen to depend. Christianity can answer them, but not
+the Churches through the mouths of their accredited representatives. And
+so, instead of 'the blessed hope of everlasting life,' the bereaved have
+been driven to this pathetic and miserable substitute, the barbaric
+belief in ghosts and dæmons, which was old before Christianity was
+young. And what a starveling hope it is that necromancy offers us! An
+existence as poor and unsubstantial as that of Homer's Hades, which the
+shade of Achilles would have been glad to exchange for serfdom to the
+poorest farmer, and with no guarantee of permanence, even if the power
+of comforting or terrifying surviving relations is supposed to persist
+for a few years. Such a prospect would add a new terror to death; and
+none would desire it for himself. It is plainly the dream of an aching
+heart, which cannot bear to be left alone.
+
+But, it will be said, there is scientific evidence for survival. This
+claim is now made. Cases are reported, with much parade of scientific
+language and method, and those who reject the stories with contemptuous
+incredulity are accused of mere prejudice. Nevertheless, I cannot help
+being convinced that if communications between the dead and the living
+were part of the nature of things, they would have been established long
+ago beyond cavil. For there are few things which men have wished more
+eagerly to believe. It is no doubt just possible that among the
+vibrations of the fundamental ingredients of our world--those attenuated
+forms of matter which are said to be not even 'material,' there may be
+some which act as vehicles for psychical interchange. If such psychic
+waves exist, the discovery is wholly in favour of materialism. It would
+tend to rehabilitate those notions of spirit as the most rarefied form
+of matter--an ultra-gaseous condition of it--which Stoicism and the
+Christian Stoic Tertullian postulated. The meaning of 'God is Spirit'
+could not be understood till this insidious residue of materialism had
+been got rid of. It is a retrograde theory which we are asked to
+re-examine and perhaps accept. The moment we are asked to accept
+'scientific evidence' for spiritual truth, the alleged spiritual truth
+becomes for us neither spiritual nor true. It is degraded into an event
+in the phenomenal world, and when so degraded it cannot be
+substantiated. Psychical research is trying to prove that eternal values
+are temporal facts, which they can never be.
+
+The case for necromancy is no better if we leave 'scientific proof'
+alone, and appeal to the relativist metaphysics of the psychological
+school. Intercourse with the dead is, we are told, a real psychical
+experience, and we need not worry ourselves with the question whether it
+has any 'objective truth.' But we cannot allow psychology to have the
+last word in determining the truth or falsehood of religious or
+spiritual experience. The extravagant claims of this science to take the
+place of philosophy must be abated.
+
+Psychology is the science which describes mental states, as physical
+science describes the behaviour of matter in motion. Both are abstract
+sciences. Physical science treats nature as the totality of things
+conceived of as independent of any subject; psychology treats inner
+experience as independent of any object. Both are outside any idea of
+value, though it is needless to say that the votaries of both sciences
+trespass habitually, and often unconsciously. Both are dualisms with one
+side ignored or suppressed. When psychology meddles with ontological
+problems--when, for instance it denies the existence of an Absolute, or
+says that reality cannot be known--it is taking too much upon itself,
+and has fallen into the same error as the materialism of the last
+century. On such questions as the immortality of the soul it must remain
+silent.
+
+Faith in human immortality stands or falls with the belief in _absolute
+values_. The interest of consciousness, as Professor Pringle-Pattison
+has said in his admirable Gifford Lectures, lies in the ideal values of
+which it is the bearer, not in its mere existence as a more refined kind
+of fact. Idealism is most satisfactorily defined as the interpretation
+of the world according to a scale of value, or, in Plato's phrase, by
+the Idea of the Good. The highest values in this scale are absolute,
+eternal, and super-individual, and lower values are assigned their place
+in virtue of their correspondence to or participation in these absolute
+values. I agree with Münsterberg that the conditional and subjective
+values of the pragmatist have no meaning unless we have acknowledged
+beforehand the independent value of truth. If the proof of the merely
+individual significance of truth has itself only individual importance,
+it cannot claim any general meaning. If, on the other hand, it demands
+to be taken as generally valid, the possibility of a general truth is
+acknowledged from the start. If this one exception is granted, the whole
+illusory universe of relativism is overthrown. To deny any thought which
+is more than relative is to deprive even scepticism itself of the
+presuppositions on which it rests. The logical sceptic has no _ego_ to
+doubt with. 'Every doubt of absolute values destroys itself. As thought
+it contradicts itself; as doubt it denies itself; as belief it despairs
+of itself.' It is not necessary or desirable to follow Münsterberg in
+identifying valuation with will. He talks of the will judging; but the
+will cannot judge. In contemplating existence we use our will to fix our
+attention, and then try conscientiously to prevent it from influencing
+the verdict. But this illegitimate use of the word 'will' does not
+impair the force of the argument for absolute values.
+
+Now, valuation arranges experience in a different manner from natural
+science. The attributes of reality, in our world of values, are
+Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. And we assert that we have as good reason
+to claim objective reality for these Ideas as for anything in the world
+revealed to our senses. 'All claims on man's behalf,' says Professor
+Pringle-Pattison, 'must be based on the objectivity of the values
+revealed in his experience, and brokenly realised there. Man does not
+make values any more than he makes reality.' Our contention is that the
+world of values, which forms the content of idealistic thought and
+aspiration, is the real world; and in this world we find our own
+immortality.
+
+But there could be no greater error than to leave the two worlds, or the
+two 'judgments,' that of existence and that of value, contrasted with
+each other, or treated as unrelated in our experience. A value-judgment
+which is not also a judgment of existence is in the air; it is the
+baseless fabric of a vision. Existence is itself a value, and an
+ingredient in every valuation; that which has no existence has no value.
+And, on the other side, it is a delusion to suppose that any science can
+dispense with valuation. Even mathematics admits that there is a right
+and a wrong way of solving a problem, though by confining itself to
+quantitative measurements it can assert no more than a hypothetical
+reality for its world. It is quite certain that we can think of no
+existing world without valuation.
+
+'The ultimate identity of existence and value is the venture of faith to
+which mysticism and speculative idealism are committed.'[93] It is
+indeed the presupposition of all philosophy and all religion; without
+this faith there can, properly speaking, be no belief in God. But the
+difference between naturalism and idealism may, I think, be better
+stated otherwise than by emphasising the contrast between existence and
+value, which it is impossible for either side to maintain. Naturalism
+seeks to interpret the world by investigation of origins; idealism by
+investigation of ends. The one finds the explanation of evolution in
+that from which it started, the other in that to which it tends. The one
+explains the higher by the lower; the other the lower by the higher.
+This is a plain issue; either the world shows a teleology or it does
+not. If it does, the philosophy based on the inorganic sciences is
+wrong. And the attempt to explain the higher by the lower becomes
+mischievous or impossible when we pass from one _order_ to another. In
+speaking of different 'orders,' we do not commit ourselves to any sudden
+breaks or leaps in evolution. The organic may be linked to the
+inorganic, soul to the lower forms of life, spirit to soul. But whether
+the 'scale of perfection' is a ladder or an inclined plane, new
+categories are necessary as we ascend it. And unless we admit an inner
+teleology as a determining factor in growth, many facts even in
+physiology are hard to explain.
+
+If the basis of our faith in the world-order is the conviction that the
+Ideas of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are fully real and fully
+operative, we must try to form some clear notion of what these Ideas
+mean, and how they are related to each other. The goal of Truth, as an
+absolute value, is unity, which in the outer world means harmony, in the
+intercourse of spirit with spirit, love; and in the inner world, peace
+or happiness. The goal of Goodness as an absolute value is the
+realisation of the ought-to-be in victorious moral effort. Beauty is the
+self-recognition of creative Spirit in its own works; it is the
+expression of Nature's own deepest character. Beauty gives neither
+information nor advice; but it satisfies a part of our nature which is
+not less Divine than that which pays homage to Truth and Goodness.
+
+Now, these absolute values are supra-temporal. If the soul were in time,
+no value could arise; for time is always hurling its own products into
+nothingness, and the present is an unextended point, dividing an unreal
+past from an unreal future. The soul is not in time; time is rather in
+the soul. Values are eternal and indestructible. When Plotinus says that
+'nothing that really _is_ can ever perish' (hapolehitai ohyden thôn
+hontôn), and when Höffding says that 'no value perishes out of the
+world,' they are saying the same thing. In so far as we can identify
+ourselves in thought and mind with the absolute values, we are sure of
+our immortality.
+
+But it will be said that in the first place this promise of immortality
+carries with it no guarantee of survival in time, and in the second
+place that it offers us, at last, only an impersonal immortality. Let us
+take these two objections in turn, though they are in reality closely
+connected.
+
+We must not regard time as an external, inhuman, unconscious process.
+Time is the frame of soul-life; outside this it has no existence. The
+entire cosmic process is the life-frame of the universal Soul, the
+Divine Logos. With this life we are vitally connected, however brief and
+unimportant the span and the task of an individual career may seem to
+us. If my particular life-meaning passes out of activity, it will be
+because the larger life, to which I belong, no longer needs that form of
+expression. My death, like my birth, will have a teleological
+justification, to which my supra-temporal self will consent. When a good
+man's work in this world is done, when he is able to say, without
+forgetting his many failures, 'I have finished the work that Thou gavest
+me to do,' surely his last word will be, 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy
+servant depart in peace'; not, 'Grant that I may flit for a while over
+my former home, and hear what is happening to my country and my family.'
+We may leave it to our misguided necromancers to describe the adventures
+of the disembodied ghost--
+
+    'Quo cursu deserta petiverit, et quibus ante
+     Infelix sua tecta supervolitaverit alis.'
+
+The most respectable motive which leads men to desire a continuance of
+active participation in the affairs of time is that which Tennyson
+expresses in the often-quoted line, 'Give her the wages of going on, and
+not to die.' We may feel that we have it in us to do more for God and
+our fellow-men than we shall be able to accomplish in this life, even if
+it be prolonged to old age. Is not this a desire which we may prefer as
+a claim? And in any case, it is admitted that time is the form of the
+will. Are we to have no more will after death? Further, is our probation
+over when we die? What is to be the fate of that large majority who, so
+far as we can see, are equally undeserving of heaven and of hell? To
+these questions no answer is possible, because we are confronted with a
+blank wall of ignorance. We do not know whether there will be any future
+probation. We do not know whether Robert Browning's expectation of
+'other tasks in other lives, God willing,' will be fulfilled.
+
+         'And I shall thereupon
+          Take rest, ere I be gone
+    Once more on my adventure brave and new.'
+
+The question here raised is whether there is such a thing as
+reincarnation. This belief, so widely held at all times by eminent
+thinkers, and sanctioned by some of the higher religions, cannot be
+dismissed as obsolete or impossible. But if it is put in the form, 'Will
+the same self live again on earth under different conditions?' it may be
+that no answer can be given, not only because we do not know, but
+because the question itself is meaningless. The psycho-physical organism
+which was born at a certain date and which will die on another date is
+compacted of idiosyncrasies, inherited and acquired, which seem to be
+inseparable from its history as born of certain parents and living under
+certain conditions. It is not easy to say what part of such an organism
+could be said to maintain its identity, if it were housed in another
+body and set down in another time and place, when all recollection of a
+previous state has been (as we must admit) cut off. The only continuity,
+it seems to me, would be that of the racial self, if there is such a
+thing, or of the directing intelligence and will of the higher Power
+which sends human beings into the world to perform their allotted tasks.
+
+The second objection, which, as I have said, is closely connected with
+the first, is that idealism offers us a merely impersonal immortality.
+But what is personality? The notion of a world of spiritual atoms,
+'_solida pollentia simplicitate_,' as Lucretius says, seems to be
+attractive to some minds. There are thinkers of repute who even picture
+the Deity as the constitutional President of a _collegium_ of souls.
+This kind of pluralism is of course fundamentally incompatible with the
+presuppositions of my paper. The idea of the 'self' seems to me to be an
+arbitrary fixation of our average state of mind, a half-way house which
+belongs to no order of real existence. The conception of an abstract ego
+seems to involve three assumptions, none of which is true. The first is
+that there is a sharp line separating subject from object and from other
+subjects. The second is that the subject, thus sundered from the object,
+remains identical through time. The third is that this indiscerptible
+entity is in some mysterious way both myself and my property. In
+opposition to the first, I maintain that the foci of consciousness flow
+freely into each other even on the psychical plane, while in the eternal
+world there are probably no barriers at all. In opposition to the
+second, it is certain that the empirical self is by no means identical
+throughout, and that the spiritual life, in which we may be said to
+attain real personality for the first time, is only 'ours' potentially.
+In opposition to the third, I repeat that the question whether it is
+'my' soul that will live in the eternal world seems to have no meaning
+at all. In philosophy as in religion, we had better follow the advice of
+the Theologia Germanica and banish, as far as possible, the words 'me
+and mine' from our vocabulary. For personality is not something given to
+start with. It does not belong to the world of claims and counter-claims
+in which we chiefly live. We must be willing to lose our soul on this
+level of experience, before we can find it unto life eternal.
+Personality is a teleological fact; it is here in the making, elsewhere
+in fact and power. So in the case of our friends. The man whom we love
+is not the changing psycho-physical organism; it is the Christ in him
+that we love, the perfect man who is struggling into existence in his
+life and growth. If we ask what a man is, the answer may be either, 'He
+is what he loves,' or 'He is what he is worth.' The two are not very
+different. Thus I cannot agree with Keyserling, who in criticising this
+type of thought (with which, none the less, he has great sympathy) says
+that 'mysticism, whether it likes it or not, ends in an impersonal
+immortality.' For impersonality is a purely negative conception, like
+timelessness. What is negated in 'timelessness' is not the reality of
+the present, but the unreality of the past and future. So the
+'impersonality' which is here (not without warrant from the mystics
+themselves) said to belong to eternal life is really the liberation of
+the idea of personality. Personality is allowed to expand as far as it
+can, and only so can it come into its own. When Keyserling adds, 'The
+instinct of immortality really affirms that the individual is not
+ultimate,' I entirely agree with him.
+
+The question, however, is not whether in heaven the circumference of the
+soul's life is indefinitely enlarged, but whether the centre remains.
+These centres are centres of consciousness; and consciousness apparently
+belongs to the world of will. It comes into existence when the will has
+some work to do. It is not conterminous with life; there is a life which
+is below consciousness, and there may be a life above consciousness, or
+what we mean by consciousness. We must remind ourselves that we are
+using a spatial metaphor when we speak of a centre of consciousness, and
+a temporal one when we ask about a continuing state of consciousness;
+and space and time do not belong to the eternal world. The question
+therefore needs to be transformed before any answer can be given to it.
+Spiritual life, we are justified in saying, must have a richness of
+content; it is, potentially at least, all embracing. But this
+enhancement of life is exhibited not only in extension but in intensity.
+Eternal life is no diffusion or dilution of personality, but its
+consummation. It seems certain that in such a state of existence
+individuality must be maintained. If every life in this world represents
+an unique purpose in the Divine mind, and if the end or meaning of
+soul-life, though striven for in time, has both its source and its
+achievement in eternity, this, the value and reality of the individual
+life, must remain as a distinct fact in the spiritual world.
+
+We are sometimes inclined to think, with a natural regret, that the
+conditions of life in the eternal world are so utterly unlike those of
+the world which we know, that we must either leave our mental picture of
+that life in the barest outline, or fill it in with the colours which we
+know on earth, but which, as we are well aware, cannot portray truly the
+life of blessed spirits. To some extent this is true; and whereas a bare
+and colourless sketch of the richest of all facts is as far from the
+truth as possible, we may allow ourselves to fill in the picture as best
+we can, if we remember the risks which we run in doing so. There are,
+it seems to me, two chief risks in allowing our imagination to create
+images of the bliss of heaven. One is that the eternal world, thus drawn
+and painted with the forms and colours of earth, takes substance in our
+minds as a second physical world, either supposed to exist somewhere in
+space, or expected to come into existence somewhen in time. This is the
+heaven of popular religion; and being a geographical or historical
+expression, it is open to attacks which cannot be met. Hence in the
+minds of many persons the whole fact of human immortality seems to
+belong to dreamland. The other danger is that, since a geographical and
+historical heaven is found to have no actuality, the hope of eternal
+life, with all that the spiritual world contains, should be relegated to
+the sphere of the 'ideal.' This seems to be the position of Höffding,
+and is quite clearly the view of thinkers like Santayana. They accept
+the dualism of value and existence, and place the highest hopes of
+humanity in a world which has value only and no existence. This seems to
+me to be offering mankind a stone for bread. Martineau's protest against
+this philosophy is surely justified:
+
+     'Amid all the sickly talk about "ideals," it is well to
+     remember that as long as they are a mere self-painting of
+     the yearning spirit, they have no more solidity than
+     floating air-bubbles, gay in the sunshine and broken by the
+     passing wind. You do not so much as touch the threshold of
+     religion, so long as you are detained by the phantoms of
+     your thought; the very gate of entrance to religion, the
+     moment of its new birth, is the discovery that your gleaming
+     ideal is the everlasting real.'[94]
+
+But though our knowledge of the eternal world is much less than we could
+desire, it is much greater than many thinkers allow. We are by no means
+shut off from realisation and possession of the eternal values while we
+live here. We are not confined to local and temporal experience. We know
+what Truth and Beauty mean, not only for ourselves but for all souls
+throughout the universe, and for God Himself. Above all, we know what
+Love means. Now Love, which is the realisation in experience of
+spiritual existence, has an unique value as a hierophant of the highest
+mysteries. And Love guarantees personality, for it needs what has been
+called _otherness_. In all love there must be a subject and an object,
+and a bond between them which transcends without annulling their
+separateness. What this means for personal immortality has been seen by
+many great minds. As an example I will quote from Plotinus' picture of
+life in the spiritual world. This writer is certainly not inclined to
+overestimate the claims of separate individuality, and he is under no
+obligation to make his doctrine conform to the dogmas of any creed.
+
+     'Spirits yonder see themselves in others. For there all
+     things are transparent, and there is nothing dark or
+     resisting, but everyone is manifest to everyone internally,
+     and all things are manifest; for light is manifest to light.
+     For everyone has all things in himself and sees all things
+     in another, so that all things are everywhere and all is all
+     and each is all, and infinite the glory.'[95]
+
+This eternal world is about us and within us while we live here. 'Heaven
+is nearer to our souls than the earth is to our bodies.' The world which
+we ordinarily think of as real is an arbitrary selection from
+experience, corresponding roughly to the average reaction of life upon
+the average man. Some values, such as existence, persistence, and
+rationality, are assumed to be 'real'; others are relegated to the
+'ideal' Under the influence of natural science, special emphasis is laid
+on those values with which that science is engaged. But our world
+changes with us. It rises as we rise, and falls as we fall. It puts on
+immortality as we do. 'Such as men themselves are, such will God appear
+to them to be.'[96] Spinoza rightly says that all true knowledge takes
+place _sub specie æternitatis_. For the pneymatikost the whole of life
+is spiritual, and, as Eucken says, he recognises the whole of the
+spiritual life as his own life-being. He learns, as Plotinus declares in
+a profound sentence, that 'all things that are Yonder are also Here
+below.'
+
+Is it then the conclusion of the whole matter that eternal life is
+merely the true reading of temporal life? Is earth, when seen with
+purged vision, not merely the shadow of heaven, but heaven itself? If we
+could fuse past, present, and future into a _totum simul_, an 'Eternal
+Now,' would that be eternity? This I do not believe. A full
+understanding of the values of our life in time would indeed give us a
+good _picture_ of the eternal world; but that world itself, the abode of
+God and of blessed spirits, is a state higher and purer than can be
+fully expressed in the order of nature. The _perpetuity_ of natural laws
+as they operate through endless ages is only a Platonic 'image' of
+eternity. That all values are perpetual is true; but they are something
+more than perpetual: they are eternal. These laws are the creative
+forces which shape our lives from within; but all the creatures, as St.
+Augustine says in a well-known passage, declare their inferiority to
+their Creator. 'We are lower than He, for He made us.' Scholastic
+theologians interposed an intermediary which they called _ævum_ between
+time and eternity. _Ævum_ is perpetuity, which they rightly
+distinguished from true eternity. Christianity is philosophically right
+in insisting that our true home, our _patria_, is 'not here.' Nor is it
+in any place: it is with God,'whose centre is everywhere and His
+circumference nowhere.' There remaineth a rest for the people of God,
+when their warfare on earth is accomplished.
+
+A Christian must feel that the absence of any clear revelation about a
+_future_ state is an indication that we are not meant to make it a
+principal subject of our thoughts. On the other hand, the more we think
+about the eternal values the happier we shall be. As Spinoza says, 'Love
+directed towards the eternal and infinite fills the mind with pure joy,
+and is free from all sadness. Wherefore it is greatly to be desired, and
+sought after with our whole might.' But he also says, and I think
+wisely, that there are few subjects on which the 'free' man will ponder
+less often, than on death. The end of life is as right and natural as
+its beginning; we must not rebel against the common lot, either for
+ourselves or for our friends. We are to live in the present though not
+for the present. The two lines of Goethe which Lewis Nettleship was so
+fond of quoting convey a valuable lesson:
+
+    'Nur we du bist, sei alles, immer kindlich:
+     So bist du alles, bist unüberwindlich.'
+
+'Death does not count,' as Nettleship used to say; and he met his own
+fate on the Alps with a cheerfulness which showed that he believed it.
+The craving for mere survival, no matter under what conditions, is
+natural to some persons, and those who have it not must not claim any
+superiority over those who shudder at the idea of resigning this
+'pleasing, anxious being.' Some brave and loyal men, like Samuel
+Johnson, have feared death all their lives long; while others, even when
+fortune smiles upon them, 'have a desire to depart and to be with
+Christ, which is far better.' But the longing for survival, and the
+anxious search for evidence which may satisfy it, have undoubtedly the
+effect of binding us to earth and earthly conditions; they come between
+us and faith in true immortality. They cannot restore to us what death
+takes away. They cannot lay the spectre which made Claudio a craven.
+
+    'Ay, but to die and go we know not where;
+     To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
+     This sensible warm motion to become
+     A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
+     To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
+     In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
+     To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
+     And blown with restless violence round about
+     The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
+     Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts
+     Imagine howling! 'tis too horrible!
+     The weariest and most loathed earthly life
+     That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
+     Can lay on nature, is a paradise
+     To what we fear of death.'
+
+We know now, if we did not know it three years ago, that the average man
+can face death, and does face it in the majority of cases, with a
+serenity which would be incomprehensible if he did not know in his
+heart of hearts that it does not matter much. He may have no articulated
+faith in immortality, but, like Spinoza, he has 'felt and experienced
+that he is eternal.' Perhaps he only says to himself, 'Who dies if
+England lives?' But the England that lives is his own larger self, the
+life that is more his own life than the beating of his heart, which a
+bullet may still for ever. And if the exaltation of noble patriotism can
+'abolish death, and bring life and immortality to light' for almost any
+unthinking lad from our factories and hedgerows, should not religion be
+able to do as much for us all? And may it not be that some touch of
+heroic self-abnegation is necessary before we can have a soul which
+death cannot touch? When Christ said that those who are willing to lose
+their souls shall save them, is not this what He meant? We must accustom
+ourselves to breathe the air of the eternal values, if we desire to live
+for ever. And a strong faith is not curious about details. 'Beloved, now
+are we sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But we
+know that when He is made manifest we shall be like Him, for we shall
+see Him as He is.'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+     [93] Quoted by Professor Pringle-Pattison from an article by
+     me in the _Times_ Literary Supplement.
+
+     [94] _Study of Religion_, vol. i. 12.
+
+     [95] _Ennead_, v. 8, 4.
+
+     [96] From John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Outspoken Essays, by William Ralph Inge
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